Law, Race & Empathy Featuring Michael Klarman and Joseph Margulies

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Welcome. I'm Eric Fleming, host of A Moment with Eric Fleming, the podcast of our time.

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The following program is hosted by the NVG Podcast Network.

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Hello, and welcome to another moment with Eric Fleming. I am your host, Eric Fleming.

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And so today I have two powerful interviews, two gentlemen who are lawyers by

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training and currently professors.

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One is a professor at Harvard, and he has written a, he's part of that America

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Unfinished essay book that we talked to the.

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Co-author or the, as she liked to say, the conspirator that put all this together.

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And so one of the other people that wrote an essay, Michael Klarman,

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who wrote one on white supremacy.

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So yeah, we got him on. And then And Joseph Margulies, Joseph Margulies,

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who was a notable constitutional lawyer in his own right,

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a defense attorney, criminal defense attorney, and is now a professor at Cornell University.

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And he also has written a book called Cast Out, which will challenge your value system.

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And we'll get into that in the interview. But this is a really,

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really great, powerful and great show.

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And I hope that you will enjoy it. As always, please let people know how great this podcast is.

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Go to www.momenteric.com and, you know, write reviews, donate either one time

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or subscribe to the podcast.

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Whatever you want to do to show that you support and you enjoy the conversations that we are having.

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All right. So I'm so excited that I want y'all to hear this.

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So we're going to get right into it. And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.

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Thanks, Eric. Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty in federal court to fatally shooting

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United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, averting a federal trial.

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Todd Blanche was narrowly confirmed as Attorney General after a contentious

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Senate battle regarding his independence and role in President Trump's legal

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and financial agreements.

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U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement will fully deploy body-worn cameras

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to all field personnel by the end of August.

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The Justice Department indicted the former CFO of the Southern Poverty Law Center

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on federal fraud and money laundering charges The U.S.

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Senate passed a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown which

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must now be reconciled with the House and signed by the President

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President Trump signed an executive order to reduce the childhood vaccination

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schedule advancing a controversial initiative led by the Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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A federal judge blocked the implementation of President Trump's executive order

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aimed at tightening mail-in voting rules ahead of the November elections.

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Economist and friend of the podcast, Amanda Janew, won the Vermont Democratic primary for governor.

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Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated Congresswoman Angie Craig in Minnesota's

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Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.

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U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar won the Minnesota Democratic primary for governor.

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Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley won a contentious Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor.

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Rhett Marcus won the Alabama Republican primary for the 2nd District U.S.

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House seat and will face the incumbent Shamari figures in November.

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Darlene Graham and Ralph Norman will face each other in the South Carolina Republican

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runoff for the U.S. Senate.

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And former President Joe Biden's prostate cancer has painfully spread beyond

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his bones, according to his son Hunter Biden.

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I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News.

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All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. Now it is time for my

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guest, Michael Klarman.

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Professor Michael J. Klarman is the Charles Warren Professor of Legal History

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at Harvard Law School, where he joined the faculty in 2008.

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He received his B.A. and M.A. in political theory from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, his J.D.

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From Stanford Law School in 1983, and his Doctor of Philosophy and Legal History

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from the University of Oxford in 1988, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

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After law school, Professor Clark Klarman clerked for the Honorable Ruth Bader

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Ginsburg on the United States Courts of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

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He contributed an essay to the recent book, America Unfinished,

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250 Years of Law and Governance.

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Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest

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on this podcast, Michael Klarman.

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All right. Michael Klarman, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you very much for having me.

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Well, I'm really, really honored to have you. It's like I was able to interview

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Ms. Natapoff last episode who

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got all of you all together to write your essays in America Unfinished.

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And I don't think I'm going to get all 62 of you, but I'll get a few.

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So I'm glad that I was able to get you.

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And I know that you're a man of high esteem. You were chosen by the last law

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class, I believe, to give the last lecture,

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which I think is an honor that the students pick those professors,

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the last professors they want to hear before they graduate.

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And they get to pick you. So I understand you were one of the four.

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So I know that was a great honor for you.

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So what I want to do is I normally start off the interviews with a couple of icebreakers.

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So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want to respond to.

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And the quote is, you need to do something. You don't need to do everything.

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I think the country is experiencing an existential threat to democracy.

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We've never seen anything like this in our history except for during the Civil War.

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And I think the key to overcoming efforts at autocratic rule is for everybody

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to pitch in and do their part.

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No autocrat is physically more powerful than a majority of the citizenry,

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but everybody has to understand the threat and everybody has to be willing to do something.

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So whether it's giving money or doing the sort of protests that those noble

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people in Minneapolis did back in January, or,

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I think there's a group that is trying to pressure one of the big banks into stopping...

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Loaning money to the private organization that runs many of these DHS holding

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pens, a bunch of, you know, ordinary people got together and they managed to

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convince a giant bank to stop doing this.

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So everybody needs to do their part if it's being out on a bridge brigade or

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if it's, you know, contributing money to a group that's trying to protect immigrants

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or being having their lives ruined for no reason. Everybody has to do something.

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Yeah. I noticed you had said that you're not necessarily the guy that's going

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to be out in the protest, but you're going to do your part and you encourage

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everybody else to do their part, whatever that is.

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So that's, that's pretty cool. All right. So now the next one is called 20 questions.

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So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.

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13 13 all right do you think there's such a thing as unbiased news or media and why.

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Everybody has a perspective i don't think there's any way to avoid having a perspective,

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i think there's still a difference between lies and truth so you know the earth

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rotates around the sun, the earth is round.

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Barack Obama was born in the United States.

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The 2020 election was not stolen from Donald Trump.

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There are facts, but once you start getting into.

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What we should do about complicated questions, like what exactly our immigration

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policy should be, exactly how much should we be participating in the rest of

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the world, how isolationist, how interventionist.

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Everybody has a perspective. So, you know, and the political right says that

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the mainstream media is biased and it has a left-leaning bias.

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In one sense, that's true. I mean, most of the people who work for the New York

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Times, most of the people who, work for the big network news companies,

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at least until recently, they're very well-educated people.

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More likely than not, they've been to college. More likely than not,

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they're less religious than the average American. And with those characteristics

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go certain views about the world. So those people are much more likely to support

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gay marriage than maybe the average American.

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And if they write a story about people who write a story about white Christian

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nationalists, they're likely to be pretty critical of them.

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So, yes, I mean, everybody has a perspective, but.

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We shouldn't go from that premise to the idea that all perspectives are equally

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legitimate because Fox News is just propaganda and the Trump White House just

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lies to you, whereas the New York Times never lies to you.

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If they make a mistake, they admit it. So, you know, complicated answer.

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Everybody has a perspective. Yes, there is no neutral position,

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But there is still fact versus lies.

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And we're subjected today more than I think we've ever been in,

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you know, really in our history, because I don't think we've ever had anything

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quite like Fox News, which has the reach that it does, yet feels very little

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obligation to tell the truth.

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Yeah. All right. So I don't know if you ever played T-ball in your life,

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but I'm going to tee a question up for you. This is probably going to be easy.

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Why is history of American law important?

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Well, I think history is generally important because I think it's hard to understand,

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why things are the way they are today unless you've understood how they came to be that way.

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So if I'm trying to understand why, you know, 75 or 80 million people voted

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for Donald Trump, I need to understand

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how so many members of the white working class got so alienated that they were

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willing to support an autocratically,

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openly autocratic buffoon.

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I mean, why would people do that? And the answer is, you know,

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some combination of racism, Christian nationalism, and especially kind of.

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The extreme neoliberalism of the last 50 years, which has made the working class,

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much worse off objectively than their parents and grandparents were.

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And, you know, even though African-Americans and Latino-Americans are objectively still worse off.

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When they're unhappy with the status quo, they turn politically leftwards,

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whereas the white working class has turned dramatically politically rightwards

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toward a kind of neo-fascism.

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So just to understand how we got to the current state of affairs,

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I think you need to understand history,

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You know, if African-Americans today have shorter life expectancies,

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are much more likely to be unemployed, higher death rates for black women who

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are pregnant, higher death rates for black infants.

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How do we get there? Right. Why is that when other groups that have been discriminated

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against have prospered? Right.

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Jews used to be treated like dogs and yet Jews have done pretty well.

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Italian and Irish Americans used to be treated like dogs. Why is it that they

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have not suffered in the same way?

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And the only way to understand that is to understand the history of Jim Crow

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and how pervasive it was, how ruthless it was, and how recently we got away with it.

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We got rid of it formally, although in lots of its ramifications.

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We're still seeing the consequences.

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And I'm writing a book on race and sports, so I often think about these things.

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But think about when did integration happen? Well, Jackie Robinson in 1947,

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the NFL in 1946, the NBA in 1950.

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But, you know, that was hardly the end of racism. You really didn't have any

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significant number of black quarterbacks till the 1980s because of the stereotype

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that blacks couldn't run a team and weren't intelligent enough.

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The NFL didn't have a black head coach until 1989, Major League Baseball until 1975.

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So we're talking 30 or 40 years before you got that. And, you know,

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even today, the NFL is like 60, 70 percent African-American.

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There's something like three black head coaches. How can that possibly be?

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So, you know, there are lots of ways you can look around American society and

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still see the consequences of that racism or the consequences of current stereotype

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thinking that flowed out of that history of slavery and Jim Crow.

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So to me, I'm biased, I'm an historian, but I don't think you can understand

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anything without understanding the history of how we got to where we are.

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Yeah. So I'll let you in on something. And people that listen to podcasts,

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I think I've told this before, but usually when I move into a city,

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one of the first places I go is like the oldest cemetery in the city.

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Cause I want to know who the founders of that city is, right?

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It's like, why is this street named? Oh, okay. So that, that,

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that's the person that's streets named after or whatever.

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And it just gives me a connection. Right. And I think that's,

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that's, that that's what you're conveying to me is,

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you got to have a connection you got to understand it's like a jigsaw puzzle

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you've got the foundation but you've got to know how to fit those other pieces

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and if you don't have that foundation of history you're not you're going to be,

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you know lost trying to put that puzzle together so i i i'm a big history guy so,

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i i definitely agree with you on that and that's that's why i said it was a

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t-ball question because I knew you were going to.

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Bring that one on home.

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All right. In 2007, you wrote a book entitled Unfinished Business.

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The Virginia Law Review said the author argues that court decisions tend to

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reflect the racial mores of the times, which is why the Supreme Court has not

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been a heroic defender of the rights of racial minorities.

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And even when the court court has promoted progressive racial change,

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its decisions have often been unenforced, in part because severely oppressed

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groups rarely have the resources necessary to force the issue.

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So my question to you is, has anything changed in the nearly 20 years since you wrote the book?

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Well, things have gotten dramatically worse in a way that I don't think I could

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have predicted. So you can see the roots of the Republican Party's demise dating

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back to the 1990s with Newt Gingrich.

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You can see the way Mitch McConnell behaved, stealing a Supreme Court seat from Barack Obama in 2016.

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But the idea that the United States would twice elect somebody like Donald Trump

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president, or even that we would see kind of the openly white supremacist behavior

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of this administration, I think was kind of unpredictable.

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I mean, you could imagine the Supreme Court clamping down on race-based affirmative

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action. There had been conservatives who wanted to do that for a long time,

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but now they've gutted the Voting Rights Act.

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You know, we're going to lose a dozen, maybe more African-American congressional

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representatives in Southern states. I'm a little amazed that the Supreme Court would do that.

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I certainly would not have thought that in 2007. The administration's policy

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on refugees is we only allow whites from South Africa and nobody else from anywhere in the world.

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The president refers to African nations and Haiti as shithole countries.

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President refers to Haitian Americans as garbage.

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President, you know, runs social media accounts that portray the Obamas as monkeys.

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I guess maybe I was naive because after all, I am white.

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I have not experienced what it's like to be in the United States as a black

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person and maybe black people are less surprised.

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But I never thought we could have this kind of regression.

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The defense secretary trying to prevent African-Americans from being promoted

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in the military, renaming Confederate army bases after Confederate soldiers,

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the president saying slavery wasn't that bad. I didn't see this coming.

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And I guess I don't think, you know, I deal with young people and I don't think

00:19:22.707 --> 00:19:27.390
more than a tiny percentage of my students are openly white supremacist in the

00:19:27.390 --> 00:19:29.169
same way the administration is.

00:19:29.494 --> 00:19:33.270
I think some of them, you know, have bought a certain narrative that makes them

00:19:33.270 --> 00:19:36.060
think race-based affirmative action is hard to justify.

00:19:36.437 --> 00:19:42.085
But I don't think that they're racist in the same way that Donald Trump or Stephen Miller are racist.

00:19:42.393 --> 00:19:46.860
I think they've grown up in a society that is just very different from the society

00:19:46.860 --> 00:19:51.380
that I grew up in or you grew up in. And I don't think that kind of acceptance

00:19:51.380 --> 00:19:53.695
of racial diversity is going to go away.

00:19:54.102 --> 00:19:59.230
What we've done is we put a very small minority in charge and they see it as

00:19:59.230 --> 00:20:03.380
in their interest to appeal to this base, which wants a wider,

00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:07.975
more Christian nation. And I don't really see that being the wave of the future.

00:20:08.388 --> 00:20:11.890
If nothing else, if we have fair free and fair elections, they're going to get

00:20:11.890 --> 00:20:14.384
annihilated in November. I really believe that.

00:20:15.058 --> 00:20:18.920
But, you know, we're going to need a new Voting Rights Act, and we're going

00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:22.793
to need to get rid of this Supreme Court and get a court that's willing to allow,

00:20:23.008 --> 00:20:24.520
you know, they're going after medical

00:20:24.520 --> 00:20:28.020
schools, trying to prevent them from diversifying the medical community.

00:20:28.020 --> 00:20:31.722
We're going to go back to a world where you only have a handful of black doctors.

00:20:32.946 --> 00:20:36.673
I just don't see that being the future of the country. Yeah.

00:20:37.219 --> 00:20:42.215
So was that what was going through your mind when you decided to write your

00:20:42.215 --> 00:20:43.963
essay in America Unfinished?

00:20:44.803 --> 00:20:48.325
You know, they came to us, you know, I guess early this year and said,

00:20:48.325 --> 00:20:53.405
do you want to write something? And I was giving a lecture at Fordham in late

00:20:53.405 --> 00:20:56.953
February, and the lecture was called How Did We Get Here?

00:20:57.336 --> 00:21:03.885
So I start by listing the anti-democratic stuff that the Trump administration has done.

00:21:03.885 --> 00:21:08.227
So things like going after law firms, going after universities,

00:21:08.569 --> 00:21:13.575
refusing to spend money that's been appropriated, spending money that hasn't been appropriated.

00:21:13.575 --> 00:21:19.295
Things that are a direct contradiction of basic rule of law and democracy,

00:21:19.295 --> 00:21:21.907
the Justice Department going after the president's enemies.

00:21:22.511 --> 00:21:26.685
And then I tried to explain it. So I had a top 10 list. I listed 10 ways in

00:21:26.685 --> 00:21:29.419
which the administration is a threat to democracy and the rule of law.

00:21:29.854 --> 00:21:34.615
And then I tried to explain how we got here. And some of that is derived from,

00:21:34.975 --> 00:21:38.881
I was asked six years ago to write what's called the foreword to the Harvard Law Review.

00:21:39.369 --> 00:21:44.755
And it was called, what was the title the degradation of american democracy

00:21:45.115 --> 00:21:50.035
and the supreme court so this is where i talk about racism i talk about christian

00:21:50.035 --> 00:21:53.436
nationalism i talk about neoliberalism i talk about opening,

00:21:53.947 --> 00:21:56.900
inequality rampant inequality and.

00:21:57.573 --> 00:22:02.107
I tried to write that for this book we were asked to write a thousand words

00:22:02.450 --> 00:22:10.286
and i tried to you know to distill my fordham lecture into a thousand word version and it just didn't work.

00:22:10.693 --> 00:22:14.766
So I wrote to the editors and said, just do it without me. I don't have anything for you.

00:22:15.080 --> 00:22:17.035
And they said, well, we really want you to do it. And I thought,

00:22:17.035 --> 00:22:18.830
okay, I'll just carve off the race stuff.

00:22:19.323 --> 00:22:23.433
So I don't have to talk about the Christian nationalism and I've talked about the inequality.

00:22:23.840 --> 00:22:29.466
So that's what I did. I wrote an essay about the Renaissance of open white supremacy. Yeah.

00:22:30.615 --> 00:22:35.867
Do you agree with political scholars that believe that the 2016 election of

00:22:35.867 --> 00:22:40.257
Donald Trump was a backlash to the first black president being elected?

00:22:41.117 --> 00:22:46.057
I'm sure it was in part. You know, any event in the world has multiple causes.

00:22:46.892 --> 00:22:52.227
If James Comey had not started investigating Hillary Clinton's emails again

00:22:52.227 --> 00:22:56.227
10 days before the election, I'm pretty sure that we would never have heard

00:22:56.227 --> 00:22:57.437
from Donald Trump again.

00:22:57.437 --> 00:23:02.569
And my guess is if Joe Biden had been the nominee, he wouldn't suffer from.

00:23:03.400 --> 00:23:07.395
You know, the people who won't vote for a woman. I don't think it was inevitable

00:23:07.395 --> 00:23:10.130
that Trump would win the election.

00:23:10.507 --> 00:23:15.735
I do think that a lot of what made the Trump nominee, Trump the nominee,

00:23:15.735 --> 00:23:17.824
is a backlash against Obama.

00:23:18.033 --> 00:23:20.674
I think political scholars have pretty much demonstrated that.

00:23:21.104 --> 00:23:27.215
There's a very strong correlation between Republican voters who score high on

00:23:27.215 --> 00:23:30.061
what political scientists call racial resentment.

00:23:30.496 --> 00:23:34.635
So racial resentment is not identical to white supremacy, but the people we

00:23:34.635 --> 00:23:38.345
call racially resentful are the people who still believe Obama was not born

00:23:38.345 --> 00:23:42.165
in the United States, the people who think that whites are more discriminated

00:23:42.165 --> 00:23:44.602
against today in the United States than blacks.

00:23:45.009 --> 00:23:48.631
And when you look at the people who have high levels of racial resentment,

00:23:48.933 --> 00:23:53.234
and one thing that changed dramatically from, say, the 1980s to the 2010s

00:23:53.583 --> 00:23:58.355
is that that group of people who score high on racial resentment used to be

00:23:58.355 --> 00:24:00.978
equally represented in both political parties,

00:24:01.350 --> 00:24:05.836
and they've mostly migrated into the Republican Party over those 20 or 30 years.

00:24:06.236 --> 00:24:09.335
But the people who had the highest levels were the ones who were most likely

00:24:09.335 --> 00:24:13.324
to vote for Trump in the Republican primaries in 2016.

00:24:13.719 --> 00:24:15.385
So I don't think there's any doubt about that.

00:24:16.045 --> 00:24:21.381
But let's be clear, the backlash is probably among a significant minority.

00:24:21.666 --> 00:24:25.745
Most Americans actually admire Obama and still, by majority vote,

00:24:25.745 --> 00:24:29.835
I'm sure would regard him as a successful president and somebody they would

00:24:29.835 --> 00:24:32.449
very much like their children to grow up to be like.

00:24:33.616 --> 00:24:38.173
It's not a majority of the country that embraces this racial resentment.

00:24:38.434 --> 00:24:42.745
It may be a majority of the Republican Party, and those people are the ones

00:24:42.745 --> 00:24:44.639
who put Trump in power. Yeah.

00:24:46.645 --> 00:24:50.595
It's maybe a majority group of the minority party. Maybe it's not even a majority

00:24:50.595 --> 00:24:53.080
of the minority party, but it's a substantial percentage.

00:24:53.762 --> 00:25:00.305
All right. So let me ask you this question. Do you think that because you talk

00:25:00.305 --> 00:25:06.940
about the percentage breakdown in the United States from 1950 to now I believe,

00:25:07.856 --> 00:25:14.072
And so do you think that insecurity from.

00:25:15.252 --> 00:25:23.532
White people is a major factor into why there's this resurgence or renaissance

00:25:23.532 --> 00:25:27.945
in white supremacy or even just the racial resentment that's out there?

00:25:28.865 --> 00:25:32.371
Yeah, in some way, that's maybe the main factor.

00:25:32.783 --> 00:25:37.582
And Obama is just a reminder of how quickly that's happening.

00:25:37.582 --> 00:25:42.222
So to use the numbers that you're referring to, in the 1950 census,

00:25:42.222 --> 00:25:44.980
the country was 90% white, 10% black.

00:25:45.427 --> 00:25:49.480
In 1980, it was still 80% white.

00:25:49.829 --> 00:25:54.507
The last census shows that the United States is now about 58% white,

00:25:54.966 --> 00:25:59.243
and it's projected by demographers to be majority non-white,

00:25:59.705 --> 00:26:01.412
black, Latino, Asian, black.

00:26:02.295 --> 00:26:08.028
Within 20 or 25 years, that's inevitable. You could end immigration tomorrow,

00:26:08.028 --> 00:26:12.988
which the administration might like to do, and the country will still be majority non-white.

00:26:13.324 --> 00:26:16.648
Maybe it'll take a little bit longer. So if you look at all children in the

00:26:16.648 --> 00:26:21.608
United States below the age of 18, they're already majority non-white.

00:26:21.915 --> 00:26:25.888
So if you don't allow any more immigrants of color into the country,

00:26:25.888 --> 00:26:28.542
sure, it'll slow down the change, but it won't prevent the change.

00:26:29.082 --> 00:26:32.398
And we can tell that that's a big factor because that's going on around the

00:26:32.398 --> 00:26:33.538
rest of the world, right?

00:26:33.538 --> 00:26:37.708
So in France and England and Germany, they didn't have a black prime minister

00:26:37.708 --> 00:26:42.398
or president, but they nonetheless have a rise in far-right parties like the

00:26:42.398 --> 00:26:44.518
neo-fascist alternative for Germany.

00:26:44.901 --> 00:26:48.748
I think in France, it's more likely than not that the next prime minister will

00:26:48.748 --> 00:26:53.168
be from the party that isn't, you know, they've cleaned up their act a little

00:26:53.168 --> 00:26:56.538
bit, but they were founded by neo-Nazis, by fascists.

00:26:56.793 --> 00:26:59.043
So yeah, the whole world is seeing that.

00:26:59.440 --> 00:27:03.518
Immigration, people looking different, the other.

00:27:05.789 --> 00:27:09.127
It's almost human nature, right? If you think evolutionarily,

00:27:09.457 --> 00:27:12.948
to see somebody who's not like your tribe is to recognize a threat.

00:27:12.948 --> 00:27:15.042
I'm talking about tens of thousands of years ago.

00:27:15.402 --> 00:27:18.496
And now, because of that kind of natural impulse,

00:27:19.553 --> 00:27:25.393
And buying that with politicians' demagogic incentive to appeal to fear and,

00:27:25.881 --> 00:27:29.979
you know, the Muslims are coming to get us, the Mexicans are coming to get us,

00:27:30.973 --> 00:27:32.283
people are manipulable.

00:27:32.283 --> 00:27:36.573
And that's really sad. And, you know, the Biden administration didn't help with

00:27:36.573 --> 00:27:40.231
their immigration policy. You know, the United States should have lots of immigrants.

00:27:40.638 --> 00:27:44.983
We can digest lots of immigrants helping the economy, but you can't have what

00:27:44.983 --> 00:27:49.883
appears to be chaos at the southern border without people wanting to do something about it.

00:27:49.883 --> 00:27:54.073
And there's a saying in politics that if the left progressives don't handle

00:27:54.073 --> 00:27:55.799
immigration, then the fascists will.

00:27:56.136 --> 00:27:58.231
And that's unfortunately what we've done.

00:27:58.626 --> 00:28:04.017
But again, you know, the United States is going to be, I still believe,

00:28:04.423 --> 00:28:10.033
you know, one of the world's first successful multiracial democracies.

00:28:10.033 --> 00:28:14.791
And it's a it's a difficult accomplishment. And we're going through some terribly difficult times.

00:28:15.859 --> 00:28:19.254
We should be glad that Trump is such a buffoon and he's doing,

00:28:19.254 --> 00:28:22.929
you know, dozens of things to undermine his appeal.

00:28:23.592 --> 00:28:28.674
So when I, you know, I started this podcast during the first administration

00:28:28.674 --> 00:28:34.678
and I was saying then that this was like the last gasp of white supremacy.

00:28:35.309 --> 00:28:40.734
So my question to you is, why do you think they are bolder now than they were

00:28:41.114 --> 00:28:44.893
when they first had an opportunity with their first four years?

00:28:45.699 --> 00:28:48.624
Right. That's a great question. I'm not sure I know the answer.

00:28:49.162 --> 00:28:53.116
I want to say that Trump won the election in 2024.

00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:58.148
Again, every event in the world has multiple causes, but it was the inflation

00:28:58.554 --> 00:29:02.293
that I think led a number of voters,

00:29:02.793 --> 00:29:06.170
the people who are in the middle, who don't pay much attention to politics,

00:29:06.496 --> 00:29:08.608
who don't have strong ideological views.

00:29:08.975 --> 00:29:13.544
You know, they voted for Trump because the cost of living was quite a bit higher

00:29:13.544 --> 00:29:17.464
and it was higher everywhere in the world. It wasn't higher in the United States

00:29:17.464 --> 00:29:20.486
relative to Europe or relative to Japan or whatever.

00:29:20.868 --> 00:29:26.208
It was higher everywhere because of the supply chains being disrupted by COVID.

00:29:26.538 --> 00:29:30.410
And, you know, that's not a great reason to vote for an aspiring autocrat.

00:29:30.771 --> 00:29:34.564
But, you know, lots of people don't pay close attention and they didn't have

00:29:34.564 --> 00:29:37.184
those high prices during Trump's first administration.

00:29:37.509 --> 00:29:41.134
Now, Trump hasn't solved the problem and those people have largely turned against

00:29:41.134 --> 00:29:45.258
him and he's going to get a beating in the November elections, I'm pretty sure.

00:29:45.658 --> 00:29:48.160
Why are they more open about what they're doing?

00:29:48.896 --> 00:29:53.510
You know, it's a complicated political coalition and, you know,

00:29:53.850 --> 00:29:57.090
they see an opportunity and this could be their last opportunity,

00:29:57.090 --> 00:30:00.630
right? The country they want, you know, they make America great.

00:30:00.630 --> 00:30:03.850
They want a white country dominated by white people.

00:30:04.152 --> 00:30:08.285
They want a country with a, you know, Protestant Anglo-Saxon majority.

00:30:08.674 --> 00:30:14.550
Those things are disappearing. And I think they probably believe it's now or never, right?

00:30:14.550 --> 00:30:17.759
In the same way I see Trump as an existential threat to democracy,

00:30:18.095 --> 00:30:22.180
the MAGA people see the world as an existential threat.

00:30:22.180 --> 00:30:25.500
And, you know, what's her name? The press secretary who's leaving just said

00:30:25.500 --> 00:30:28.870
that the other day. I mean, it's the Democrats are an existential threat to

00:30:28.870 --> 00:30:31.139
the country. I think she really believes that.

00:30:31.470 --> 00:30:35.280
But what she's worried about are, you know, we're not going to have all white

00:30:35.280 --> 00:30:39.121
people in charge. We're going to have, you know, Muslims who have equal rights.

00:30:39.451 --> 00:30:45.668
And we're going to do some serious redistribution like Biden tried to do with Build Back So,

00:30:46.312 --> 00:30:51.188
you know, the people at Heritage Foundation with their 2025 project,

00:30:51.559 --> 00:30:55.410
they're also, you know, they're going to lose in the long term if we have democracy.

00:30:55.410 --> 00:30:58.890
If we have democracy, people are going to vote to tax billionaires and they'll

00:30:58.890 --> 00:31:02.890
vote for a wealth tax and they'll vote for all the aspects of Build Back Better

00:31:02.890 --> 00:31:06.420
that didn't get adopted. Free community college, free child care.

00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:10.537
And they're scared to death of that. So, yeah.

00:31:11.638 --> 00:31:15.820
I don't know. I don't think I have a great answer for why they're more desperate

00:31:15.820 --> 00:31:17.455
and more focused right now.

00:31:17.919 --> 00:31:21.070
You know, the Trump administration did have a lot more constraints.

00:31:21.070 --> 00:31:26.186
So, you know, a lot of the people Trump appointed, you know, people like John Kelly,

00:31:26.991 --> 00:31:33.051
people like his first chief of staff, Republican senators like Jeff Blake,

00:31:33.422 --> 00:31:36.610
you know, the Republican Party hadn't completely lost its mind,

00:31:36.610 --> 00:31:40.636
but now they've chased out anyone who has a constraint on Trump.

00:31:40.956 --> 00:31:47.040
And Trump only appointed seriously unqualified people who have no backbone and

00:31:47.040 --> 00:31:48.860
will not tell him anything he doesn't want to hear.

00:31:48.860 --> 00:31:53.170
So you had serious people in the first cabinet and, you know,

00:31:53.590 --> 00:31:56.978
you don't have that. Now you have Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy and.

00:31:58.252 --> 00:32:02.658
A bunch of people who have no real principles or convictions,

00:32:03.262 --> 00:32:06.868
but I don't know that I've given a great answer. I think they're desperate.

00:32:07.530 --> 00:32:10.473
Yeah. All right. So I'm going to ask you a personal question.

00:32:11.232 --> 00:32:15.655
Sure. You are a white man, highly educated, highly successful,

00:32:16.242 --> 00:32:17.995
affiliated with Harvard University.

00:32:18.645 --> 00:32:20.845
White privilege is at your disposal.

00:32:21.640 --> 00:32:24.926
Why hasn't the rot of white supremacy affected you?

00:32:25.809 --> 00:32:30.590
Well, you know, I've never been to try to be empathetic to the people who are,

00:32:31.580 --> 00:32:35.882
losing their minds politically. And I do try to be empathetic because I think

00:32:35.882 --> 00:32:37.153
lots of them are good people.

00:32:37.565 --> 00:32:40.807
Donald Trump is not a good person. He's a very, very bad person.

00:32:41.260 --> 00:32:44.672
He's a very flawed person. You could feel sorry for him. He grew up in a family

00:32:44.672 --> 00:32:47.448
where I don't think anybody loved him. His father was a horrible person.

00:32:47.930 --> 00:32:52.992
But, you know, the average farmer in Iowa who voted for Trump three times,

00:32:53.468 --> 00:32:56.082
I think would give you the shirt off their back if you were in trouble.

00:32:56.402 --> 00:32:59.221
I don't think they're bad people. I think they're kind of ignorant.

00:32:59.726 --> 00:33:04.312
And I think they don't, you know, if they don't understand history,

00:33:04.312 --> 00:33:07.441
they don't understand why we have race-based affirmative action.

00:33:07.905 --> 00:33:12.392
I've never suffered from race-based affirmative action. I'm at Harvard Law School,

00:33:12.392 --> 00:33:14.134
right? I mean, I've had every benefit.

00:33:15.018 --> 00:33:18.102
I do think it helps to understand the history of the country.

00:33:18.102 --> 00:33:22.612
Sometimes I think if everybody knew some more history, maybe they'd have a more

00:33:22.612 --> 00:33:25.090
liberal perspective on some of these issues.

00:33:25.999 --> 00:33:29.158
But it's people, you know, the people who support Trump, there's been a big

00:33:29.158 --> 00:33:34.668
political shift. So a lot of these people voted for Obama in 2008 and maybe

00:33:34.668 --> 00:33:37.345
even in 2012, right? He won Ohio.

00:33:37.601 --> 00:33:44.137
He won Iowa. Those are both states with disproportionately large white working class compositions.

00:33:44.584 --> 00:33:48.598
And Trump won them both by more than 10 points. So we're talking about a lot

00:33:48.598 --> 00:33:50.163
of people who shifted sides.

00:33:50.441 --> 00:33:53.738
And I think their view is the world is getting worse for me.

00:33:53.738 --> 00:33:57.898
And it is, right? Their life expectancies have gone down, which almost never

00:33:57.898 --> 00:33:59.311
happens in human history.

00:34:00.218 --> 00:34:05.808
Their children are addicted to opioids. These are people whose lives have gotten

00:34:05.808 --> 00:34:11.538
objectively worse. A lot of the working class unionized jobs in the auto industry,

00:34:11.538 --> 00:34:13.787
the steel industry, those are gone.

00:34:14.106 --> 00:34:20.398
It used to be that every generation, they would double their income and their

00:34:20.398 --> 00:34:24.277
children could be expected to do even better. And since 1980, that stopped.

00:34:24.648 --> 00:34:28.594
So the world's getting worse for them and they're looking for answers.

00:34:28.821 --> 00:34:32.388
And you've got these demagogic politicians who will give them answers.

00:34:32.388 --> 00:34:34.938
So the reason your life is worse

00:34:34.938 --> 00:34:39.061
is because African-Americans benefit from race-based affirmative action.

00:34:39.305 --> 00:34:42.027
And we have Muslims coming in and they're all terrorists.

00:34:42.428 --> 00:34:45.538
And the Democrats are trying to take your guns away, right?

00:34:46.058 --> 00:34:51.078
Like Obama talked about. And, you know, I'm not in that world, right?

00:34:51.078 --> 00:34:54.938
I have a really good, easy life, and I've done much better than my father did.

00:34:54.938 --> 00:34:58.858
So I don't think it's anything special about me. I think most of the people

00:34:58.858 --> 00:35:03.168
I know feel the same way. I know very few people who vote for Donald Trump.

00:35:03.534 --> 00:35:07.738
I have one or two crazy colleagues at Harvard Law School, but out of the 110,

00:35:07.738 --> 00:35:11.888
120 people, I'd be surprised if two of them voted for Donald Trump.

00:35:11.888 --> 00:35:15.126
They understand he's a demigod and an autocrat.

00:35:16.823 --> 00:35:21.303
I am empathetic to people whose world has gotten worse, but they're voting for

00:35:21.303 --> 00:35:25.373
a political party that pretty openly makes it even worse, right?

00:35:25.373 --> 00:35:28.593
We're going to cut millions of these people off of Medicaid,

00:35:28.593 --> 00:35:34.273
and we've cut taxes on billionaires, and we're not doing anything for them economically.

00:35:34.273 --> 00:35:35.967
They have $4 gasoline now.

00:35:36.262 --> 00:35:39.123
They should vote for Democrats who are going to make their lives better.

00:35:39.123 --> 00:35:42.451
But in order to do that, you need to nullify these other issues,

00:35:42.833 --> 00:35:45.301
and that's not easy to do. Yeah.

00:35:46.311 --> 00:35:51.643
All right. You end your essay with this passage. The present necessarily shapes

00:35:51.643 --> 00:35:53.192
how we think about the past,

00:35:53.773 --> 00:35:58.184
and the future will determine whether the Trump's, whether the Trump's administration's

00:35:58.579 --> 00:36:04.611
present efforts to distort our nation's rich racial history prove successful.

00:36:05.261 --> 00:36:11.281
So that leads me to two questions. One, how should Americans think about the country's past?

00:36:12.993 --> 00:36:17.447
Well, we should try to understand the reality. We should understand facts.

00:36:18.017 --> 00:36:22.864
With regard to race, Americans had slavery almost from the beginning.

00:36:23.351 --> 00:36:28.153
And under slavery, a racial ideology developed to justify the institution.

00:36:28.153 --> 00:36:29.644
So Blacks were inferior.

00:36:30.129 --> 00:36:34.853
We had a civil war. As you know, the civil war was initially not fought to end

00:36:34.853 --> 00:36:38.672
slavery. It was fought to prevent Southerners from seceding.

00:36:39.056 --> 00:36:43.773
It only gradually turned into a war against slavery. And as Americans came to

00:36:43.773 --> 00:36:46.623
condemn slavery, that doesn't mean they gave up white supremacy.

00:36:46.623 --> 00:36:52.033
So, you know, white Southerners, when they ratified the 13th Amendment abolishing

00:36:52.033 --> 00:36:56.573
slavery, they added resolutions making it clear that abolishing slavery didn't

00:36:56.573 --> 00:36:58.189
mean ending white supremacy.

00:36:58.613 --> 00:37:02.843
We had a period of Reconstruction where we tried to force some change in the

00:37:02.843 --> 00:37:05.967
South. We forced white Southerners to allow black people to vote.

00:37:06.473 --> 00:37:10.595
And that worked for about 10 years. We had some genuinely...

00:37:11.517 --> 00:37:16.812
Racially egalitarian politicians, true heroes, people like Charles Sumner and

00:37:16.812 --> 00:37:22.092
Thaddeus Stevens, who really did believe that any kind of racism was a badger

00:37:22.092 --> 00:37:24.522
incident of slavery and it should all be abolished.

00:37:24.522 --> 00:37:27.702
So you shouldn't have laws segregating railroads and you shouldn't have bans

00:37:27.702 --> 00:37:31.696
on interracial marriage and we should really just be colorblind.

00:37:32.009 --> 00:37:36.152
But that didn't last because as I understand it, the history of Reconstruction

00:37:36.152 --> 00:37:40.322
is white Northerners ultimately didn't fight as hard for racial equality as

00:37:40.322 --> 00:37:41.802
white Southerners fought against it.

00:37:41.802 --> 00:37:46.582
So within 40 years of the 15th Amendment, which bars disfranchisement based

00:37:46.582 --> 00:37:52.452
on race, 0% of Blacks were voting in the South, 0%, right? Not literally zero

00:37:52.452 --> 00:37:55.748
people, there are 100 Blacks voting in Atlanta, but 0%.

00:37:56.190 --> 00:38:00.172
So constitutional amendment completely nullified. That didn't really start to

00:38:00.172 --> 00:38:04.692
change until after World War II, the war against fascism, Black soldiers fighting

00:38:04.692 --> 00:38:08.531
for democracy, risking their lives, coming back, demanding civil rights.

00:38:08.849 --> 00:38:12.337
We didn't get that civil rights legislation until the mid-1960s.

00:38:12.732 --> 00:38:16.912
But even then, legislation is one thing, and changing attitudes is something

00:38:16.912 --> 00:38:20.372
else. How could there be no Black quarterbacks until the 1980s?

00:38:20.372 --> 00:38:23.297
How could the NFL not have a Black coach until 1989?

00:38:23.715 --> 00:38:27.262
How could there not be a Black president in the country until 2008?

00:38:27.639 --> 00:38:35.192
So these things take a very long time to undo and the effort to undo it was

00:38:35.192 --> 00:38:40.195
never committed to by all americans only by some americans and since the civil rights movement

00:38:40.636 --> 00:38:43.962
there's always been a backlash that you're competing against so richard nixon

00:38:43.962 --> 00:38:48.062
running against crime running on law and order ronald reagan running against

00:38:48.062 --> 00:38:50.748
welfare queens right there's always been.

00:38:51.330 --> 00:38:55.341
A very powerful resistance movement to the racial reform movement.

00:38:55.712 --> 00:38:59.832
And now we've gone even further than I would have thought possible in that direction.

00:38:59.832 --> 00:39:02.539
We have an openly white supremacist administration.

00:39:03.038 --> 00:39:06.864
On the other hand, you know, there's a lot of change going on.

00:39:07.312 --> 00:39:10.732
You know, black quarterbacks run the NFL right now. And, you know,

00:39:10.732 --> 00:39:12.722
there are two black people on the Supreme Court.

00:39:12.722 --> 00:39:18.262
And I don't think they can reinstate white supremacy as hard as they try in

00:39:18.262 --> 00:39:23.342
a country that's as diverse and where the young people are even more supportive of diversity.

00:39:23.708 --> 00:39:29.298
I still think the United States will be a successful interracial democracy.

00:39:29.803 --> 00:39:34.192
I do worry that some of the damage Trump is doing, especially in international

00:39:34.192 --> 00:39:36.647
affairs, will be difficult to undo.

00:39:37.175 --> 00:39:39.619
I don't know why anyone in the world would ever trust us again.

00:39:40.223 --> 00:39:43.102
So what is your vision for America's future?

00:39:44.150 --> 00:39:47.992
Well, do you mean my prediction or my hope? Well, I'll get to your hope in a

00:39:47.992 --> 00:39:49.776
minute, but what's your prediction?

00:39:51.221 --> 00:39:54.892
I think Trump, assuming we have free and fair elections, and it's hard for me

00:39:54.892 --> 00:39:59.062
to know for sure, I think the Democrats will win the House and maybe win the

00:39:59.062 --> 00:40:05.734
Senate in 2026. I think Democrats will have a very good chance to win the presidency in 2028.

00:40:06.348 --> 00:40:11.912
My concern is that I don't think enough Democrats necessarily understand how

00:40:11.912 --> 00:40:16.352
bad the situation is and are willing to fight back in aggressive ways.

00:40:16.352 --> 00:40:22.282
So I think at a minimum, with a Democratic trifecta, you need to break the filibuster.

00:40:22.282 --> 00:40:24.699
Otherwise, you'll never get voting rights legislation.

00:40:25.063 --> 00:40:28.682
You need to make the District of Columbia a state. You need to allow Puerto

00:40:28.682 --> 00:40:32.992
Rico to have a referendum and become a state because the malapportionment in

00:40:32.992 --> 00:40:35.901
the Senate is so heavily in the direction of Republicans.

00:40:36.371 --> 00:40:39.232
And you can't do anything about that. You're never going to get a constitutional

00:40:39.232 --> 00:40:43.581
amendment to change that according to the Constitution. You can't even change it by amendment.

00:40:44.137 --> 00:40:47.189
I also think you have to pack the Supreme Court. I think you could solve a lot

00:40:47.189 --> 00:40:50.604
of our problems if you just had a Democratic Supreme Court.

00:40:51.023 --> 00:40:54.509
And I think we need a lot of economic redistribution. So we're going to need

00:40:54.509 --> 00:40:56.816
to start taxing billionaires very heavily.

00:40:57.170 --> 00:41:00.549
We're going to need to do things like Mondami wants to do in New York,

00:41:00.549 --> 00:41:05.029
you know, free child care, free pre-K, free community college.

00:41:05.279 --> 00:41:10.149
We need to do the same sort of things that the New Deal did in the 1930s,

00:41:10.149 --> 00:41:12.729
though, as you knew, the New Deal didn't really apply to Black people,

00:41:12.729 --> 00:41:14.375
right? That's an important part of our history.

00:41:14.718 --> 00:41:18.769
People don't understand, but Social Security, a lot of the New Deal measures

00:41:18.769 --> 00:41:22.809
were designed so that they didn't cover agricultural workers or domestic workers,

00:41:22.809 --> 00:41:26.689
which is basically saying Black people are not going to benefit from this legislation.

00:41:26.689 --> 00:41:28.151
It was a New Deal for white people.

00:41:28.638 --> 00:41:34.426
Same with a great society. So we're going to need really dramatic economic and political change.

00:41:34.791 --> 00:41:38.629
And if we did that, I actually think, you know, that that can be reinforcing.

00:41:38.629 --> 00:41:42.769
Right. Once the government does stuff that benefits people, they like it and

00:41:42.769 --> 00:41:45.937
they'll vote for the party that wants to keep that. Right. Like Obamacare,

00:41:46.158 --> 00:41:48.213
like Medicare, like Social Security.

00:41:48.526 --> 00:41:51.729
Those were things that were very popular and Republicans tried to take them

00:41:51.729 --> 00:41:54.279
away, but they were never successful at taking them away.

00:41:54.650 --> 00:41:58.369
But I think it has to happen very quickly because you never know what's going

00:41:58.369 --> 00:42:01.963
to be around the next bend in the corner. It could be another pandemic.

00:42:02.288 --> 00:42:06.642
It could be mass unemployment from, you know, the AI bubble bursting.

00:42:06.886 --> 00:42:10.209
And once that happens, there's going to be a big backlash. And you may not,

00:42:10.209 --> 00:42:13.419
you know, Obama had two years that he could effectively do anything,

00:42:13.419 --> 00:42:15.146
the first two years of his presidency.

00:42:15.535 --> 00:42:19.979
And even then, you know, if it weren't for Nancy Pelosi being the best speaker

00:42:19.979 --> 00:42:23.339
of the House in history, they wouldn't have gotten the Affordable Care Act passed

00:42:23.339 --> 00:42:28.115
because people got old feet really quickly and the right, you know, engineered this,

00:42:29.061 --> 00:42:32.445
this fake, what's called the tax protesters, uh.

00:42:33.641 --> 00:42:39.783
The Tea Party people. Thank you. Which also was more rooted in race than most

00:42:39.783 --> 00:42:44.158
people tell you. I mean, they treat it as being a tax protest.

00:42:44.541 --> 00:42:49.853
But actually, if you go to these rallies, they have people dressed as witch

00:42:49.853 --> 00:42:54.503
doctors pretending to be Obama. And there's very high correlation between racial

00:42:54.503 --> 00:42:56.829
resentment and support for the Tea Party.

00:42:57.218 --> 00:43:02.849
It's not simply about anti-tax policy. It's also about racial resentment towards Obama.

00:43:03.301 --> 00:43:07.922
And now, of course, who orchestrated that? I mean, Trump was the number one birther, right?

00:43:08.550 --> 00:43:14.291
Yeah. All right. So finish this sentence. I have hope because.

00:43:15.121 --> 00:43:19.348
You know, my students give me hope. Young people give me hope. I am a pessimist.

00:43:19.812 --> 00:43:24.633
And I don't mean by nature. I think the United States has done a truly terrible

00:43:24.633 --> 00:43:30.267
thing in electing this administration. And I think it is going to be very, very difficult to undo.

00:43:30.685 --> 00:43:33.593
As I said a second ago, I don't think the world will ever trust us.

00:43:33.593 --> 00:43:35.869
I don't know why they should. I think NATO is over.

00:43:36.240 --> 00:43:39.572
I think it'll be hard to recreate public health service.

00:43:39.950 --> 00:43:44.350
You know, measles epidemics in the United States in 2026, unbelievable.

00:43:44.611 --> 00:43:46.521
God help us if we have another pandemic.

00:43:46.945 --> 00:43:50.503
I think we're driving scientists away by the hundreds, by the federal government

00:43:50.503 --> 00:43:52.988
cutting their grants. They're going to China. They're going to Europe.

00:43:53.400 --> 00:43:56.568
I think a lot of those things are very, very difficult to undo.

00:43:56.980 --> 00:44:00.203
To the extent I'm optimistic, it's because I think, you know,

00:44:00.203 --> 00:44:03.833
the people who are supporting Trump are the 70-year-old white guys who watch

00:44:03.833 --> 00:44:06.183
Fox News, and they're not going to be in charge.

00:44:06.183 --> 00:44:09.113
They're not going to be around that much longer. It's going to be younger people.

00:44:09.461 --> 00:44:13.867
And the younger people are much more supportive of racial diversity.

00:44:14.134 --> 00:44:17.983
The younger people are much more left-leaning in their economic views because

00:44:17.983 --> 00:44:19.950
they're going to college and they're not getting jobs.

00:44:20.287 --> 00:44:22.615
They're going to demand that something be done about that.

00:44:23.021 --> 00:44:28.513
They're turning on Trump. So, you know, in my kids' friend groups,

00:44:28.513 --> 00:44:32.436
you know, my kids are in their late 20s, early 30s. My daughter...

00:44:33.357 --> 00:44:38.175
I have adopted kids and biological child. So I have both white and black kids.

00:44:38.483 --> 00:44:42.685
My white biological daughter, I think, doesn't know anybody in our friend group

00:44:42.685 --> 00:44:45.141
who isn't a pretty lefty Democrat.

00:44:46.250 --> 00:44:49.955
There were some white men who voted for Trump. Trump won white men,

00:44:49.955 --> 00:44:54.175
but those young white men are deserting him because they wanted jobs, right?

00:44:54.175 --> 00:44:58.815
They don't want a war in Iran, and they don't want gasoline at $4 a gallon.

00:44:58.815 --> 00:45:04.135
And so I do think that the younger generation has internalized a different set

00:45:04.135 --> 00:45:05.705
of values, and that's often true, right?

00:45:05.705 --> 00:45:10.275
I mean, it's often the case with racial change, with change with regard to attitudes

00:45:10.275 --> 00:45:15.657
toward gender roles, with change in regard to attitudes toward same-sex relationships,

00:45:16.005 --> 00:45:19.935
that it's not that the older generation changes its mind, it's that you get

00:45:19.935 --> 00:45:21.595
a generational displacement.

00:45:22.182 --> 00:45:26.605
I think that's actually a view that some scientists have about changing paradigms in science.

00:45:26.605 --> 00:45:32.355
It's not that the older scientists are persuaded by something that the younger scientists came up.

00:45:32.355 --> 00:45:36.275
It's just the older scientists leave and the younger scientists replace them.

00:45:36.275 --> 00:45:40.405
And so, you know, I think that's the story about race in the United States.

00:45:40.405 --> 00:45:45.605
You know, it's not that Brown created this change. It's that kind of World War

00:45:45.605 --> 00:45:50.425
II, you know, the ideological rejection of fascism, the role of black soldiers,

00:45:50.425 --> 00:45:53.939
the great migration, the greater education of African-Americans.

00:45:54.294 --> 00:45:56.929
Those things were having an effect on young people.

00:45:57.434 --> 00:46:01.535
And I wrote a book about gay marriage. You can see it happening with gay marriage.

00:46:01.535 --> 00:46:07.963
Basically, every year from 2000, 1% to 2% of the population increasingly supported it.

00:46:08.306 --> 00:46:12.885
And that enables you to go in one generation from 30% of the country supporting

00:46:12.885 --> 00:46:15.579
it to 70% of the country supporting it.

00:46:16.067 --> 00:46:20.828
By the time of Brown, 50% of Americans agreed with the Brown decision,

00:46:21.200 --> 00:46:23.345
which would not have been true before World War II.

00:46:23.625 --> 00:46:28.995
And by 1970, it was hard to find a lot of Americans who said Brown was wrong.

00:46:29.349 --> 00:46:33.865
I think a lot of that is generational change, and I like the values of the younger

00:46:33.865 --> 00:46:38.011
generation better than the values of my generation. Yeah.

00:46:38.777 --> 00:46:44.922
All right. So, Michael Klarman, how can people reach out to you other than,

00:46:45.049 --> 00:46:46.419
you know, enrolling in Harvard?

00:46:47.445 --> 00:46:51.805
How can they pick their brain of yours and pick up any of your writings,

00:46:51.805 --> 00:46:53.020
your books, all that stuff?

00:46:53.715 --> 00:46:58.165
I am religious about responding to emails. I would just ask to keep them short

00:46:58.165 --> 00:46:59.462
because I get a lot of emails.

00:46:59.967 --> 00:47:05.458
I'm always happy. I love suggesting stuff to read, whether it's my own stuff or other stuff.

00:47:05.882 --> 00:47:10.285
But if somebody emails me and I have a question about something you said or

00:47:10.285 --> 00:47:12.393
something that's going on, I'll respond.

00:47:13.025 --> 00:47:16.105
As I said, it's hard when you get 10-paragraph emails.

00:47:16.825 --> 00:47:20.143
It's good to keep it short and sweet. What's your address?

00:47:21.008 --> 00:47:28.021
M, as in Michael, Klarman, K-L-A-R-M-A-N, at law.harvard.edu.

00:47:28.235 --> 00:47:32.235
Or you can just go to Harvard Law School and look up faculty and just remember

00:47:32.235 --> 00:47:35.062
my last name is Klarman and you'll get it there. Yeah.

00:47:35.602 --> 00:47:39.901
Well, Michael Klarman, I really enjoyed this interview.

00:47:40.725 --> 00:47:44.845
I am glad that we were able to have this conversation. You were one of the people

00:47:44.845 --> 00:47:48.536
I really wanted to talk to, especially reading your essay.

00:47:49.407 --> 00:47:52.835
And I know you were limited in what you could do in, I guess,

00:47:52.835 --> 00:47:57.585
a thousand words or whatever, but I think you got your message across and I

00:47:57.585 --> 00:48:01.895
look forward to your book. So one One of the rules I have is that once you've

00:48:01.895 --> 00:48:04.214
been on the show, you have an open invitation to come back.

00:48:04.602 --> 00:48:09.475
So when you finish that book on sports, I definitely want you to come back on.

00:48:09.475 --> 00:48:14.315
I love sports as much as I love politics, if not more. So, yeah,

00:48:14.315 --> 00:48:18.081
yeah, I would love to have you come back on and we'll talk about the book as well.

00:48:18.728 --> 00:48:21.984
Well, thank you. That's very kind. I would enjoy that. All right.

00:48:22.559 --> 00:48:25.032
All right, guys, we're going to catch you all on the other side.

00:48:44.289 --> 00:48:50.530
All right, and we are back. So now it is time for my next guest, Joseph Margulies.

00:48:51.207 --> 00:48:57.262
Joseph Margulies is a writer and litigator and professor of the practice of

00:48:57.262 --> 00:48:59.067
government at Cornell University.

00:48:59.706 --> 00:49:05.752
Civil rights lawyer, he was counsel of record in Razul v. Bush in 2004,

00:49:05.752 --> 00:49:12.436
which gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in federal court.

00:49:13.040 --> 00:49:18.942
And in Munaf v. Guerin in 2008, which gave American citizens the right to challenge

00:49:18.942 --> 00:49:21.132
their detention by the U.S. government.

00:49:21.893 --> 00:49:26.072
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest,

00:49:26.641 --> 00:49:29.968
on this podcast, Joseph Margulies.

00:49:40.969 --> 00:49:44.307
All right. Joseph Margulies. How are you doing, sir? You doing good?

00:49:44.620 --> 00:49:46.210
I'm doing very well, sir. And you?

00:49:46.680 --> 00:49:50.920
I'm doing lovely. I'm on a roll, man. I had some Harvard professors on last

00:49:50.920 --> 00:49:55.899
week. Now I got a guy that beat George Bush in the Supreme Court. I'm just, I'm rolling.

00:49:57.380 --> 00:50:02.510
Cornell professor at that. So yeah, I'm seriously, yeah, I'm really,

00:50:02.510 --> 00:50:08.380
really honored to have you on to talk about your new book and hold on,

00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:09.839
hold on. I'm going to get this right.

00:50:10.140 --> 00:50:15.200
I'm going to read the whole title. The book is called cast out a call for a

00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:18.535
forgiving society in an age of incarceration.

00:50:19.187 --> 00:50:25.070
So we're going to talk about what happens, your thoughts on that book and some

00:50:25.070 --> 00:50:26.867
other things that might be related to it.

00:50:27.496 --> 00:50:32.040
Right. But before we do that, I do a couple of icebreakers to kind of get the

00:50:32.040 --> 00:50:38.180
conversation started. So the first icebreaker is a quote that I want you to respond to.

00:50:38.313 --> 00:50:42.052
And the quote is, if you feel pain, you are alive.

00:50:42.378 --> 00:50:44.955
If you feel other people's pain, you are a human being.

00:50:45.961 --> 00:50:52.410
Yeah, that's widely attributed to Tolstoy. It is the, you know,

00:50:52.410 --> 00:50:54.478
the opening quote of my book.

00:50:55.699 --> 00:51:00.226
And it is something I believe in my core.

00:51:00.865 --> 00:51:05.640
I think that the capacity for empathy,

00:51:06.434 --> 00:51:13.539
very different from sympathy, but empathy, that is to see yourself in the journey

00:51:13.539 --> 00:51:16.729
of another, is hardwired into our DNA.

00:51:17.029 --> 00:51:24.449
It is part of our soul and that it's popular nowadays to deny our capacity for

00:51:24.449 --> 00:51:29.283
empathy or to ridicule it and to say it's a bad thing. I think that is horribly misguided.

00:51:29.910 --> 00:51:37.779
I think that our capacity to recognize, to see ourselves in another and to see,

00:51:37.779 --> 00:51:44.524
and this is perhaps even more important, to see them in us, us in them and them in us,

00:51:45.180 --> 00:51:55.192
is essential to our character as humans and essential to the idea of a shared,

00:51:55.831 --> 00:51:59.800
humanity that comes together to solve its greatest problems.

00:52:00.707 --> 00:52:07.029
So I believe in that very, very strongly. Yeah. All right. So now the next icebreaker

00:52:07.029 --> 00:52:08.857
is what I call 20 questions.

00:52:09.118 --> 00:52:12.996
Okay. So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.

00:52:13.645 --> 00:52:17.169
You want me to say it out loud? Yes, sir. 16. All right.

00:52:18.186 --> 00:52:25.375
What is a misconception people often have about your beliefs or values? Oh, wow. That's great.

00:52:26.824 --> 00:52:27.666
Wow. That's great.

00:52:31.252 --> 00:52:36.588
The most urgent misconception, I think,

00:52:37.232 --> 00:52:46.569
is that because I speak on behalf of those who have done horrific things,

00:52:47.260 --> 00:52:56.345
people think that I do not recognize or I diminish or I do not appreciate the pain they have caused.

00:52:56.986 --> 00:53:02.031
And that, in fact, what I'm interested in doing is excusing their behavior.

00:53:02.309 --> 00:53:07.383
And that is a profound error. That is a very serious error.

00:53:07.911 --> 00:53:16.222
There is, as I just say in the book, a difference between an excuse and an explanation.

00:53:16.917 --> 00:53:19.577
And ordinarily, we don't have trouble understanding that difference.

00:53:19.577 --> 00:53:25.677
An excuse absolves. It absolves you of responsibility. but an explanation accounts.

00:53:26.333 --> 00:53:32.480
It accounts for how you got from where you were to where you are and to where you will go.

00:53:33.270 --> 00:53:38.529
I believe in explanations. I believe in the complexity of the human experience.

00:53:39.307 --> 00:53:44.572
That does not mean that I excuse people who have done great wrongs.

00:53:45.048 --> 00:53:49.177
I think they need to be held accountable, but accountability should take the

00:53:49.177 --> 00:53:56.670
form of a recognition of that entire experience or that entire explanation, right?

00:53:57.284 --> 00:54:03.224
Yeah. So why did you decide to write this book at this time?

00:54:03.898 --> 00:54:05.622
Yeah. Wow. These are great questions.

00:54:06.638 --> 00:54:12.346
There's a sense in which I've been writing this book for decades because my

00:54:12.346 --> 00:54:16.093
work, I'm a lawyer, I'm trained as a lawyer, I still practice law,

00:54:16.746 --> 00:54:20.926
and my work has always been basically for the same population.

00:54:20.926 --> 00:54:24.194
I represent, as a criminal defense lawyer and a civil rights lawyer,

00:54:25.049 --> 00:54:31.765
folks who have been cast out because they have done or are alleged to have done horrific things.

00:54:32.235 --> 00:54:34.882
These are the people we identify as monsters.

00:54:36.421 --> 00:54:38.096
And my great frustration as

00:54:38.096 --> 00:54:43.950
a lawyer has been my inability to communicate the humanity of my clients.

00:54:45.539 --> 00:54:49.844
The fact that I know in my soul that in all the ways that matter,

00:54:50.184 --> 00:54:52.690
I am no different from him and he is no different from me.

00:54:53.298 --> 00:55:00.084
That if I had traveled his path, I would be sitting behind these bars and he

00:55:00.084 --> 00:55:02.285
would be interviewing me or she.

00:55:04.960 --> 00:55:10.764
And the law is a very difficult tool to try to communicate that because of the

00:55:10.764 --> 00:55:14.701
restraints imposed on you by the architecture of legal practice.

00:55:15.775 --> 00:55:21.974
And so I, and because there are no other books that really grapple with the

00:55:21.974 --> 00:55:26.980
problem of the shared humanity of people who have done great wrongs.

00:55:27.206 --> 00:55:28.716
There's a lot of books about innocence.

00:55:29.470 --> 00:55:32.721
There's a lot of books, generally speaking, about prisons in general.

00:55:33.487 --> 00:55:39.963
But there are very few books, there are no books, that take the worst cases.

00:55:40.462 --> 00:55:43.597
As you know, the book is built around the lives of six people,

00:55:43.788 --> 00:55:48.684
all of whom did something really horrible and asked what brought them to this

00:55:48.684 --> 00:55:52.345
day? What brought them to this day? What happened?

00:55:53.416 --> 00:55:59.272
And in that telling, we come to see us in them and them in us, right?

00:55:59.805 --> 00:56:02.714
And leads to the conclusion, which is my personal philosophy,

00:56:02.714 --> 00:56:07.632
which I've held for many years, is that there is no them. There is no them. There is only us.

00:56:08.091 --> 00:56:09.931
I am him. I am him. He is me.

00:56:10.548 --> 00:56:12.253
And that's the motivation for the book.

00:56:13.703 --> 00:56:18.950
So I have been in law enforcement.

00:56:19.747 --> 00:56:22.917
I've done six and a half years in law enforcement.

00:56:23.771 --> 00:56:29.130
And one of the things I used to tell the guys when I was in jail was that the

00:56:29.130 --> 00:56:32.990
only difference between you and me is that you've got a blue jumpsuit on or

00:56:32.990 --> 00:56:35.722
an orange jumpsuit on, and I've got this uniform.

00:56:37.107 --> 00:56:40.730
It's like I could have very easily have made a mistake and been in the same

00:56:40.730 --> 00:56:46.150
position you're in. Or you very easily could have not been accused of what you've

00:56:46.150 --> 00:56:49.036
been accused of, and you've been working alongside me.

00:56:49.605 --> 00:56:53.050
So, you know, I totally get what you're saying.

00:56:53.470 --> 00:56:57.280
I think a lot of people, I think you're in tune with the fact that a lot of

00:56:57.280 --> 00:56:59.885
people don't, and we're going to dive into that a little more.

00:57:00.477 --> 00:57:05.322
But yeah, to me, that should be a basic concept.

00:57:06.059 --> 00:57:08.870
And so I'm going to ask you this question, even though you've kind of answered

00:57:08.870 --> 00:57:14.160
it in the previous two other questions, but I love the way that you phrased

00:57:14.160 --> 00:57:17.106
it. So explain who the whatabouts are.

00:57:18.566 --> 00:57:24.017
Yeah. So as I was working on this book, I would talk to people.

00:57:24.574 --> 00:57:28.870
I'm writing a book, and it's not really about forgiveness. I'm not saying people

00:57:28.870 --> 00:57:35.447
should be forgiven. I'm saying that our society has become really grotesquely unforgiving, right?

00:57:35.807 --> 00:57:42.100
We are uncaring and ungenerous and unyielding, and we cast people out for when

00:57:42.100 --> 00:57:45.646
they stumble, right, without recognizing that any of us could stumble this way.

00:57:46.274 --> 00:57:50.517
And people would say, yes, that's so true. That's so true. It is awful what we do.

00:57:50.935 --> 00:57:54.301
And then they would stop and they would say, but what about,

00:57:55.561 --> 00:57:57.000
and everybody has a what about,

00:57:57.818 --> 00:58:02.322
Everybody has that person or that category of people that they think,

00:58:02.711 --> 00:58:04.951
no, that person is not one of us.

00:58:05.602 --> 00:58:11.872
That person has done something that I cannot do other than cast them out.

00:58:12.490 --> 00:58:16.334
And so it was, and it's different people for different folks, right?

00:58:17.429 --> 00:58:21.772
Back when George Floyd was murdered, for a lot of people, it was Derek Chauvin.

00:58:23.134 --> 00:58:29.034
The police officer who drove his knee into the neck of George Floyd on tape

00:58:29.034 --> 00:58:31.883
for the whole world to watch for over nine minutes.

00:58:32.180 --> 00:58:35.814
He was there. What about? I would say to my students that I don't believe in

00:58:35.814 --> 00:58:37.619
demonization and there is no them.

00:58:38.060 --> 00:58:41.827
And all my students would say, yes, yes. But what about Derek Chauvin?

00:58:42.509 --> 00:58:48.024
For me, for the longest time, it was Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist,

00:58:48.729 --> 00:58:54.492
who just behaved horribly when he,

00:58:55.074 --> 00:59:01.974
denied the truth of the Sandy Hook shootings and said that the grieving parents,

00:59:01.974 --> 00:59:03.989
it's horrible, horrible what he did,

00:59:05.014 --> 00:59:10.334
were actors who were putting on a show as part of an effort to control,

00:59:10.334 --> 00:59:11.884
take people's guns away.

00:59:11.884 --> 00:59:14.558
I mean, it was a horrible behavior, this horrible behavior.

00:59:15.347 --> 00:59:20.544
And I had to really ask myself, well, what about for me personally,

00:59:20.544 --> 00:59:25.119
what about Alex Jones? Is he, is he the other? Is he a monster?

00:59:26.269 --> 00:59:31.348
And for some people, it's others. And I don't know Mr. Jones. I've never met with him.

00:59:31.877 --> 00:59:39.511
But I dug deep into the psychology of the conspiracy theorist and what the seduction,

00:59:40.265 --> 00:59:45.211
of being perceived as a messiah and a truth teller to so many people,

00:59:45.501 --> 00:59:46.981
what that must do to someone.

00:59:47.497 --> 00:59:51.601
And I came to the conclusion that if I'm really honest, and as hard as this

00:59:51.601 --> 00:59:53.809
was for me to admit, I could be Alex Jones.

00:59:54.911 --> 00:59:58.551
I do not view Alex Jones as the other, which is not to say I excuse what he

00:59:58.551 --> 01:00:00.783
did. What he did was wrong, and he needs to be held accountable.

01:00:02.894 --> 01:00:06.167
That's that misconception that we were talking about.

01:00:06.846 --> 01:00:15.454
Everybody has their whatabout, but if you are truly honest and open to understanding

01:00:15.454 --> 01:00:19.036
what happened, I see him in me and me in him.

01:00:19.344 --> 01:00:22.769
I do not view myself as other than Alex Jones.

01:00:23.194 --> 01:00:27.488
It's painful as it is for me to say that. Well, you know, it caught me off guard

01:00:27.866 --> 01:00:32.314
when I'm reading that. You said, my whatabout was Alex Jones.

01:00:32.314 --> 01:00:36.090
I was like, oh, OK, let me let me see where he's going with that one.

01:00:36.404 --> 01:00:42.504
But I mean, I agree with you about, you know, what he said and all this stuff.

01:00:42.504 --> 01:00:48.066
And he he has a tone for it in a way, but it wasn't a criminal civil.

01:00:48.585 --> 01:00:51.744
And so I guess that's what threw me off, because it was like you had been dealing

01:00:51.744 --> 01:00:53.543
with all of these criminal cases.

01:00:53.949 --> 01:00:57.960
And then your what about was a guy that said something stupid. Right.

01:00:58.874 --> 01:01:06.524
And so but but I get it. And, you know, I may have a few whatabouts.

01:01:06.524 --> 01:01:10.594
I may need to have some therapy counseling with you on that and try to purge

01:01:10.594 --> 01:01:11.921
me from some of this stuff.

01:01:12.421 --> 01:01:17.444
There's nothing wrong with having the whatabout. It's what's wrong is refusing

01:01:17.444 --> 01:01:22.835
to entertain the thought that he is me and I am him, right?

01:01:23.894 --> 01:01:29.354
To even entertain the thought that I could be him, he could walk in my shoes

01:01:29.354 --> 01:01:31.766
just as easy as I could walk in his. Yeah.

01:01:32.364 --> 01:01:36.634
So, you brought it up that America has become an unforgiving society.

01:01:36.634 --> 01:01:38.784
In your opinion, why do you think that is?

01:01:39.304 --> 01:01:43.082
Oh, I think it's a combination of things. There's never any single thing,

01:01:43.732 --> 01:01:48.057
but we have long embraced...

01:01:49.264 --> 01:01:56.142
Individual blame as explanations for when things go wrong, whenever anything goes wrong.

01:01:56.772 --> 01:01:59.869
This is throughout society. It's not just in the criminal legal system.

01:02:00.982 --> 01:02:05.519
We look for someone to blame as though it were one person's fault.

01:02:06.182 --> 01:02:10.318
And ideally, it's someone that we can cast out.

01:02:10.666 --> 01:02:18.402
That is, we can single them out and hold them up for a particular kind of ostracism and calumny.

01:02:18.402 --> 01:02:23.122
And in the criminal legal system, we can literally, not just figuratively and

01:02:23.122 --> 01:02:27.572
metaphorically, but literally cast them out as though that will purge ourselves,

01:02:28.372 --> 01:02:32.115
of this demon, this monster. That's how we deal with it.

01:02:32.916 --> 01:02:37.426
We're not comfortable looking at systemic or root causes.

01:02:37.629 --> 01:02:41.897
That's just not our style. What we do is look for bad actors.

01:02:43.534 --> 01:02:48.642
That's really behind the enormous growth of the carceral state.

01:02:50.352 --> 01:02:55.301
In the way that it has just exploded and we've become the incarceration capital of the world,

01:02:56.271 --> 01:03:03.342
and it has intensified that impulse to look at you know single bad actors has

01:03:03.342 --> 01:03:06.546
intensified in this moment of hyper polarization.

01:03:07.212 --> 01:03:14.932
So we are living in a time when instead of asking ourselves whether a person

01:03:14.932 --> 01:03:16.993
who believes something very different than I believe,

01:03:17.794 --> 01:03:23.609
could be acting in good faith, could be just like me, if I were walking in his shoes, I would,

01:03:24.434 --> 01:03:30.553
see the world as they do. Instead, we attach moral judgment.

01:03:30.553 --> 01:03:35.593
They're bad people because they, e.g., vote for Donald Trump,

01:03:35.593 --> 01:03:37.285
or they're a member of MAGA.

01:03:38.713 --> 01:03:45.973
Or they're a democratic socialist, whatever the enemy of the day is, the nemesis of the day.

01:03:46.403 --> 01:03:54.783
This kind of reflexive, hypercritical, hyper-judgmental approach is increasingly

01:03:54.783 --> 01:03:57.125
hardwired in the way we see the world.

01:03:57.706 --> 01:04:00.057
And that's very, very dangerous.

01:04:00.773 --> 01:04:04.201
As a society, that's just a bad way to view the world.

01:04:04.527 --> 01:04:09.213
Yeah. And, you know, and that explains the title of the book,

01:04:09.213 --> 01:04:13.993
Cast Out. And I remember getting into a debate with a friend of mine and he

01:04:13.993 --> 01:04:18.013
was, you know, we were talking about the carceral system.

01:04:18.313 --> 01:04:23.595
And, you know, I was explaining to him, I said, there's really three types,

01:04:24.255 --> 01:04:29.023
but we don't use the system that way. Right. So there's jail where it's like,

01:04:29.023 --> 01:04:32.344
that's your temporary holding until you go to court.

01:04:34.024 --> 01:04:39.109
But then where we got into it was the difference between penitentiary and prison.

01:04:39.714 --> 01:04:43.853
Right. Because the wording says that it's different.

01:04:44.474 --> 01:04:48.724
Penitentiary, especially when the system first started in the United States,

01:04:49.402 --> 01:04:53.213
you know, no matter how cruel you think it is, it was only supposed to be for

01:04:53.213 --> 01:04:57.536
a time certain, and you were supposed to be literally penitent for your sins.

01:04:58.513 --> 01:05:04.734
You were supposed to come to some absolution and then go back out to society, whereas a prison,

01:05:05.404 --> 01:05:09.952
It's like, you blew your shot. We wanted you to be a citizen.

01:05:09.952 --> 01:05:13.062
It didn't look like it's not going to work out for us. You're too much of a

01:05:13.062 --> 01:05:16.776
threat. So we're going to exile you to this place.

01:05:19.782 --> 01:05:27.044
But in the political jargon, it's become penitentiary and prison become synonymous.

01:05:27.705 --> 01:05:35.122
And I think if we just went back to that, I think that would improve the system.

01:05:35.122 --> 01:05:39.302
It wouldn't fix it but it would improve the system if we understood there's

01:05:39.302 --> 01:05:41.385
a place where you've got to do some time,

01:05:41.937 --> 01:05:46.642
and come to some absolution and then there's a place where because i'm i'm not

01:05:46.642 --> 01:05:48.549
in favor of death penalty so it's like

01:05:48.961 --> 01:05:52.862
to me that's the people that go to prison the ones that you think you should

01:05:52.862 --> 01:05:58.556
execute those are the ones you say well we you you can't be back in society anymore,

01:05:59.192 --> 01:06:04.068
yeah and you know and so that's that's kind of my mindset of that but.

01:06:04.955 --> 01:06:10.163
When you're talking about the society being unforgiven, it doesn't matter if

01:06:10.163 --> 01:06:13.233
you just went to the county jail for some people.

01:06:13.927 --> 01:06:17.093
It's like, you know, it's like, oh, you did that. You know what I'm saying?

01:06:17.093 --> 01:06:21.203
And they want to put a pall on you. And that's why a lot of us in the political

01:06:21.203 --> 01:06:26.313
arena was like saying when people are applying for jobs, that's the first indication

01:06:26.313 --> 01:06:27.980
they're trying to get back in society.

01:06:28.369 --> 01:06:32.926
So why would we put a box or question on an application saying,

01:06:33.169 --> 01:06:34.209
have you ever been arrested?

01:06:34.952 --> 01:06:39.352
Or have you been convicted because at that point even though the law says,

01:06:40.084 --> 01:06:44.223
technically you can't discriminate against somebody like that you know good

01:06:44.223 --> 01:06:49.223
and well that if you mark that box yes your your your chance of even getting

01:06:49.223 --> 01:06:53.869
a second interview is out the door right so you know we,

01:06:54.594 --> 01:06:59.963
anyway we'll get into that a little more i want i want to ask you this question about environment.

01:06:59.963 --> 01:07:04.722
You make the case that a person's environment doesn't necessarily define them,

01:07:05.314 --> 01:07:08.234
but their tolerance for trauma can impact them.

01:07:08.692 --> 01:07:11.196
Go deeper into that. Wow. Yeah.

01:07:11.823 --> 01:07:14.903
So I don't think that environment is destiny, right?

01:07:15.543 --> 01:07:21.653
If we believed that, we would have a hard time explaining why the great majority

01:07:21.653 --> 01:07:26.064
of folks who are raised in horrific circumstances,

01:07:26.661 --> 01:07:30.373
do not become embroiled and ensnared in the criminal legal system,

01:07:30.373 --> 01:07:32.449
and do not commit acts of violence.

01:07:34.000 --> 01:07:34.738
So,

01:07:36.940 --> 01:07:44.420
when you are trying to account, again, not excuse, but account for the path

01:07:44.420 --> 01:07:45.803
that a person has followed,

01:07:46.546 --> 01:07:51.750
you have to look deeper than the fact that they grew up in a very poor,

01:07:51.750 --> 01:07:55.298
very violent, blood-soaked neighborhood, right?

01:07:55.850 --> 01:07:59.400
So I write about Eric Matthews, for instance, and he's the first story in the

01:07:59.400 --> 01:08:03.000
book, first chapter in the book. And Eric has become a very good friend,

01:08:03.000 --> 01:08:10.386
is a remarkable guy, and spent 30 years in Angola, the Louisiana State Prison at Angola.

01:08:11.071 --> 01:08:14.838
Eric grew up in the St. Thomas homes before they were torn down,

01:08:15.221 --> 01:08:20.910
when it was literally one of the most violent, dangerous neighborhoods in the

01:08:20.910 --> 01:08:23.561
country, a really rough time.

01:08:24.447 --> 01:08:28.850
And I talk about how living in that environment, what he would describe to me,

01:08:28.850 --> 01:08:34.170
I'd go to Angola and we'd talk and he would describe how when you were living

01:08:34.170 --> 01:08:37.095
in that neighborhood, there was never a moment in which you,

01:08:38.300 --> 01:08:41.763
didn't think that something was about to pop off, right?

01:08:42.221 --> 01:08:44.828
It was just the constant level of threat.

01:08:46.030 --> 01:08:50.745
You may get home safely that evening, and in fact, nothing may go on.

01:08:50.913 --> 01:08:57.757
But the level of stress and cortisol and hyper-awareness affects you.

01:08:59.026 --> 01:09:02.660
He grew up remarkable, had no involvement in the criminal legal system,

01:09:02.660 --> 01:09:08.480
never been arrested, never had no cases at all, you know, co-valedictorian in

01:09:08.880 --> 01:09:13.080
high school, served in the National Guard, joined the military, right?

01:09:14.080 --> 01:09:16.135
On the surface, a very successful guy.

01:09:17.344 --> 01:09:20.980
But you have to dig a little bit deeper, and there was another piece that's

01:09:20.980 --> 01:09:26.510
hidden, and that was the trauma that he was experiencing at home that compounds

01:09:26.510 --> 01:09:28.240
the circumstances of his life,

01:09:28.873 --> 01:09:33.117
and was creating a kind of hyper-

01:09:34.597 --> 01:09:41.332
Taut wire that was just always on the edge of just snapping, right?

01:09:41.709 --> 01:09:50.370
As he goes through life superficially to all who know him in a sort of casual way, man, this is Eric.

01:09:50.597 --> 01:09:57.660
He has escaped from the clutches that ensnare so many young black men.

01:09:58.279 --> 01:10:03.497
And so these expectations, you know, He's a deacon in the church, right?

01:10:03.968 --> 01:10:10.709
He's going to make it. He's the symbol of those who—and they didn't see the

01:10:10.709 --> 01:10:14.869
pain and the strain that was—and occasionally, he would just erupt.

01:10:14.869 --> 01:10:19.779
It was just—right? Because what he needed really was somehow to process all

01:10:19.779 --> 01:10:23.429
that had happened to him. And I talk about all that had happened to him in the

01:10:23.429 --> 01:10:26.559
book, and I don't want to reveal too much.

01:10:27.679 --> 01:10:33.409
And he snapped and lost it on one occasion, as he had before,

01:10:33.856 --> 01:10:39.963
and erupted and beat a child that he loved dearly to death.

01:10:40.953 --> 01:10:47.344
His environment was not destiny, but the combination of his environment and the life he lived—.

01:10:49.069 --> 01:10:53.294
Allows me not to excuse, and Eric does not excuse what he did.

01:10:53.294 --> 01:10:59.348
He is immersed in his guilt and remorse and the pain that he feels.

01:10:59.944 --> 01:11:04.534
But I understand it. I understand. And if I lived his life, I think I probably

01:11:04.534 --> 01:11:08.596
would have snapped long before he did. He was 22 when the crime happened.

01:11:09.170 --> 01:11:11.469
I think I would have snapped long before that.

01:11:12.119 --> 01:11:17.954
Eric is not a monster. Eric is me. Yeah, I know he's involved in the ministry

01:11:17.954 --> 01:11:20.595
there at the prison and all that.

01:11:21.575 --> 01:11:26.876
Oh, and Angola. Yeah, that's a very interesting place.

01:11:27.154 --> 01:11:29.684
Yeah, that's a whole other, right. Yeah, you could.

01:11:30.404 --> 01:11:33.124
People have written, but you said people have written books about prison.

01:11:33.124 --> 01:11:36.240
That's one of the books that's been written. That's right. That's right.

01:11:36.554 --> 01:11:41.434
But, you know, I think about the young man that just got elected or got the

01:11:41.434 --> 01:11:44.619
Democratic nomination in Wisconsin, David Crowley.

01:11:45.199 --> 01:11:50.104
David Crowley, his parents, both his parents were drug addicts. Oh, I didn't know that.

01:11:50.864 --> 01:11:54.291
Yeah, he grew up he grew up in the projects in Milwaukee.

01:11:54.936 --> 01:12:01.459
And so when you talk about people like Eric Matthews, there's David Crowley in there, too.

01:12:02.022 --> 01:12:08.624
And fortunately for him, obviously, he's gotten to a place where now he's been

01:12:08.624 --> 01:12:10.672
an elected official for a long time.

01:12:11.188 --> 01:12:15.937
And he's and he's channeling his trauma through public service.

01:12:16.268 --> 01:12:18.416
Right. He found an outlet for his.

01:12:18.933 --> 01:12:24.169
Right. So that's like you said, you never know what will trigger somebody.

01:12:24.963 --> 01:12:28.404
But you've got to give people an outlet. And yeah.

01:12:28.857 --> 01:12:33.924
All right. So now in telling the story of Lucas Walling, you talk about the

01:12:33.924 --> 01:12:37.118
allure of white supremacy to those that are incarcerated.

01:12:37.838 --> 01:12:42.545
But why do you think it has the same appeal to those outside the correctional system?

01:12:44.515 --> 01:12:50.423
That's another great question. Lucas, all the people that I write about,

01:12:50.719 --> 01:12:54.859
they follow a different path to the worst day of their life.

01:12:54.859 --> 01:12:59.270
And the reason I, they're not all the same story, in other words, right?

01:13:00.651 --> 01:13:05.249
And Eric, for instance, is about growing up in this particular kind of neighborhood.

01:13:05.829 --> 01:13:11.799
And one of the women that I write about, Lisa Montgomery, is about mental illness

01:13:11.799 --> 01:13:14.192
and the particular trauma that she suffered.

01:13:14.806 --> 01:13:21.269
Lucas is really about the seductive power of fury and rage.

01:13:21.609 --> 01:13:28.029
And as a result of what happened to him when he was young, he just was so angry.

01:13:28.029 --> 01:13:32.079
And so it was really self-loathing that he directed outward.

01:13:32.079 --> 01:13:38.935
He was going to be the person that deserved to be hated as much as he hated himself.

01:13:40.114 --> 01:13:44.479
And for him, when he was in prison, white supremacy gave him an outlet for that.

01:13:44.897 --> 01:13:49.229
Fury, right? It told him that, yeah, it's a good thing to be angry.

01:13:49.909 --> 01:13:52.439
All these people on the outside who were telling him how you got to get over

01:13:52.439 --> 01:13:56.200
your anger, you got to get over your rage, you got to stop fighting all the time.

01:13:56.553 --> 01:13:59.599
That was just the opposite when he was in prison, right? And it was like,

01:13:59.599 --> 01:14:03.769
oh no, that's exactly what you got to be. And you got to be only more so,

01:14:04.112 --> 01:14:06.068
right? So it was very seductive.

01:14:07.531 --> 01:14:11.601
Other people are drawn to it inside and outside for different reasons, right?

01:14:11.601 --> 01:14:18.921
So there's a lot of, and this is true for a lot of gangs, not just white supremacy,

01:14:19.432 --> 01:14:23.014
or a lot of things that have a gang-type structure,

01:14:24.304 --> 01:14:28.969
a type of surrogate family, a type of surrogate brotherhood,

01:14:29.310 --> 01:14:33.760
a sense of belonging that folks lack in other circumstances.

01:14:34.977 --> 01:14:36.074
That's very common.

01:14:37.322 --> 01:14:42.545
A lot of folks, it gives them an outlet for a pre-existing racism.

01:14:42.731 --> 01:14:46.330
That's part of the white supremacy, right? So what Lucas would say is that.

01:14:47.780 --> 01:14:55.261
It was great because it tells you that, you know, whatever sort of latent racism

01:14:55.261 --> 01:14:57.811
that you feel, well, here's a label for it.

01:14:57.821 --> 01:15:04.177
Here's a name for it. And it has a sort of great deep historical pedigree and so on.

01:15:05.170 --> 01:15:09.751
Now, I mean, I should say, Lucas, through a great deal of work on his own when

01:15:09.751 --> 01:15:13.024
he was inside, came to the conclusion that it was all a bunch of baloney,

01:15:13.250 --> 01:15:18.308
right? And he repudiated it, and he's now diametrically opposite of it.

01:15:19.399 --> 01:15:22.591
But I understand it. He understands it.

01:15:23.256 --> 01:15:28.511
It made sense to him when he first came in. First came in, he was 17 when he

01:15:28.511 --> 01:15:33.208
was arrested, 18, I think, when he was convicted about a very, very bad homicide.

01:15:33.382 --> 01:15:36.215
A little guy, little geeky guy.

01:15:36.928 --> 01:15:40.641
And for him, white supremacy was.

01:15:43.924 --> 01:15:44.682
A kind of,

01:15:46.821 --> 01:15:53.711
family and membership and belonging that he had never had before.

01:15:53.711 --> 01:15:58.459
And so it was a very, and it's a great outlet for his, you know,

01:15:58.958 --> 01:16:00.931
this fury that he felt all the time.

01:16:02.901 --> 01:16:06.280
And that can exist inside, outside, everywhere. Yeah.

01:16:07.454 --> 01:16:13.585
Donovan X. Ramsey said, All events are the result of countless others,

01:16:14.031 --> 01:16:17.490
big and small, coming together at a particular moment.

01:16:18.115 --> 01:16:21.830
Even though you use that quote in the context of the Attica uprising,

01:16:22.306 --> 01:16:26.232
isn't that really the overarching theme of this book? Wow.

01:16:27.212 --> 01:16:29.582
I'd actually never thought about that, but yes, I believe it is.

01:16:31.907 --> 01:16:35.106
No event simply speaks for itself, right?

01:16:35.593 --> 01:16:40.392
And especially not the events that we look at and we say, holy cow,

01:16:40.392 --> 01:16:44.773
that's utterly inexplicable. The only way we can explain it is because he is a monster.

01:16:44.889 --> 01:16:47.309
Monsters do inexplicable things, right?

01:16:47.984 --> 01:16:54.422
When we say that an event like this is inexplicable, what we really mean is

01:16:54.422 --> 01:16:59.083
that we haven't made the effort to understand it. And we haven't traced the arc.

01:17:00.232 --> 01:17:03.982
And Donovan Ramsey was talking about that in terms of the crack epidemic,

01:17:03.982 --> 01:17:10.036
but you're right. It is true for, it's true for Alex Jones and it's true for

01:17:10.356 --> 01:17:13.942
Stephen Miller and it's true for Donald Trump, but it's also true for all these

01:17:13.942 --> 01:17:15.208
really, really serious.

01:17:15.998 --> 01:17:19.934
It's true for the riots at the Capitol on January 6th, but it's,

01:17:20.120 --> 01:17:22.616
it's also true for the crimes and the guys that I talk about.

01:17:24.104 --> 01:17:28.402
In your closing chapter, you wrote, yes, the journey from here to there will

01:17:28.402 --> 01:17:30.606
be more difficult. than we all might hope.

01:17:31.529 --> 01:17:36.701
However, current leadership experts are stressing empathy and accountability in the workplace.

01:17:37.386 --> 01:17:41.473
If that is the trend, then why would the journey be difficult?

01:17:43.121 --> 01:17:46.978
It's really seductive to demonize.

01:17:48.458 --> 01:17:54.636
I agree with you. There is a narrative that is encouraging us to think empathetically,

01:17:55.216 --> 01:18:01.018
but folks are resistant to it. It's very easy.

01:18:04.478 --> 01:18:07.198
To—hatred is seductive. Hatred is—and,

01:18:09.323 --> 01:18:15.732
building walls is really seductive. And we are engaging in that. We do it literally.

01:18:16.127 --> 01:18:21.558
We do it geographically. People are separating out into their own little colonies.

01:18:22.438 --> 01:18:27.080
Blue are moving to blue areas. Blue areas are getting bluer and red areas are getting redder.

01:18:27.614 --> 01:18:35.516
And our ability to sit down and commune with people who think very differently,

01:18:36.138 --> 01:18:37.558
is getting more difficult.

01:18:37.558 --> 01:18:43.745
That's why one of the chapters is about a guy who, in Missouri, was on death row.

01:18:44.099 --> 01:18:51.218
And I sort of tell the story through the experience of two correctional officers,

01:18:52.198 --> 01:18:53.519
who were in prison with him.

01:18:53.877 --> 01:18:58.098
And they were wonderful people. I loved spending time with them. Delightful.

01:18:58.598 --> 01:19:02.698
Worked at Potosi Maximum Security Correctional Center near St.

01:19:02.698 --> 01:19:04.663
Louis for a long, long time.

01:19:05.139 --> 01:19:10.248
They are extremely conservative folks with Trump flags out in the front yard.

01:19:10.248 --> 01:19:15.297
I mean, they think that the 2020 election was stolen, that Donald Trump won.

01:19:15.808 --> 01:19:20.428
We had a great time. We had a wonderful time. And they felt very strongly that

01:19:20.428 --> 01:19:24.800
Brian Dorsey should not be executed and said as much to the governor.

01:19:26.233 --> 01:19:29.182
So, people surprise you if you let them.

01:19:29.640 --> 01:19:35.181
But unfortunately, we are not inclined to let them now. That's why I think it's difficult. Yeah.

01:19:35.958 --> 01:19:38.953
So, what do you want readers of this book to take away from it?

01:19:39.687 --> 01:19:43.295
What I want people to take away is the idea that.

01:19:46.921 --> 01:19:50.630
The picture you have in your head about us and them,

01:19:52.661 --> 01:19:57.183
and the monsters that are out there that we need to be protected from,

01:19:57.905 --> 01:20:01.979
that those ideas need to be broken down.

01:20:02.696 --> 01:20:09.431
And that once you understand someone's story, if you truly understand their

01:20:09.431 --> 01:20:11.865
story, what brings them to where they are,

01:20:12.638 --> 01:20:18.841
in all its nuance and complexity and richness, you see them in you and you in

01:20:18.841 --> 01:20:23.846
them, and then you come to realize that there is no them, there is only us,

01:20:24.646 --> 01:20:28.646
that that is true for everyone, right? That that is true for everyone.

01:20:29.122 --> 01:20:35.731
Those who you are inclined to view empathetically and those who you are inclined

01:20:35.731 --> 01:20:40.047
to view as your whatabout it is true for everyone and so,

01:20:40.693 --> 01:20:44.843
and you can do this you can you can come to this empathetic realization,

01:20:45.534 --> 01:20:50.241
and so i view it as a hopeful book it is a practice is it like meditation is

01:20:50.241 --> 01:20:57.481
a practice it is a practice of seeing me and them and them in me every single

01:20:57.481 --> 01:20:59.534
day that's what I want people to take away.

01:21:00.205 --> 01:21:06.027
All right. So this is a challenge that I've been offering all the guests this particular year.

01:21:06.649 --> 01:21:10.115
Finish this sentence. I have hope because.

01:21:11.238 --> 01:21:13.547
Wow. Thank you for that.

01:21:15.463 --> 01:21:25.284
I have hope because I believe that people want to be connected.

01:21:26.190 --> 01:21:33.490
They want to see the shared humanity in each other.

01:21:34.413 --> 01:21:38.469
And ultimately, I think that will save us. Yeah.

01:21:39.716 --> 01:21:43.612
All right. Well, Joseph Margulies, thank you for doing this.

01:21:43.612 --> 01:21:45.135
And thank you for writing this book.

01:21:45.579 --> 01:21:52.591
And the book, again, is called Cast Out, A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration.

01:21:53.004 --> 01:21:55.807
How can people get this book? How can people reach out to you?

01:21:58.118 --> 01:22:01.609
The book is available on all the—it'll be published September 15th,

01:22:01.788 --> 01:22:06.482
but you can pre-order it on all the independent and regular websites,

01:22:06.482 --> 01:22:11.312
the bookseller.org and Amazon and all the other outlets.

01:22:11.312 --> 01:22:15.712
You can go to any bookstore and pre-order it, and they'll have it delivered to you.

01:22:16.032 --> 01:22:22.662
I believe in supporting independent booksellers, so I encourage folks to look

01:22:22.662 --> 01:22:26.257
at those outlets, but it can be purchased anywhere.

01:22:26.460 --> 01:22:31.586
Just do a search for Cast Out, a call for a forgiving society, and you'll find it.

01:22:32.692 --> 01:22:36.324
Reaching out to me, I'm happy to respond to it. Well, I don't respond to the,

01:22:37.032 --> 01:22:41.082
hate mail that you get sometimes, but I'm not a big social media person.

01:22:41.082 --> 01:22:49.122
But my email is jm, as in Joseph and Mary, jm347 at cornell.edu,

01:22:49.122 --> 01:22:53.882
C-O-R-N-E-L-L.edu, as in Cornell University. That's me.

01:22:54.615 --> 01:23:01.342
Well, again, Mr. Margulis, I really, really am honored to have you on the podcast

01:23:01.342 --> 01:23:05.404
to talk about this book. I think it is very, very timely.

01:23:06.338 --> 01:23:12.942
And, and it, you know, it just, anything that kind of makes you reflect on yourself,

01:23:13.166 --> 01:23:15.473
I think is a noble exercise.

01:23:15.473 --> 01:23:21.113
And like I said, I can, being in the political world, I can really get caught

01:23:21.113 --> 01:23:24.513
up in the, in those whatabouts, right.

01:23:24.920 --> 01:23:27.753
And, and get caught up in, in judging people.

01:23:28.385 --> 01:23:33.983
But, you know, everybody has a lot of times when I interview some guests,

01:23:34.583 --> 01:23:36.843
I dive into their origin story.

01:23:36.843 --> 01:23:43.749
Right. I call it their superhero origin story and and and try to find out why do you do what you do?

01:23:44.315 --> 01:23:50.003
And so I think that's even appropriate for people that we don't think we would

01:23:50.003 --> 01:23:54.969
ever meet in society, people that we'll read about on the news and have this.

01:23:55.516 --> 01:24:01.561
You know, people are amazed about the young man, Mangione.

01:24:01.896 --> 01:24:07.376
Oh, yeah. You know, and he just pled guilty this week, you know,

01:24:07.962 --> 01:24:13.873
but there were literally people out there with signs that basically said,

01:24:13.873 --> 01:24:15.483
we understood what you did.

01:24:15.483 --> 01:24:20.495
There's some that even said, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd do the same thing.

01:24:22.083 --> 01:24:26.823
And just the pain that he personally went through and the pain that a lot of

01:24:26.823 --> 01:24:29.150
these other folks are going through with the healthcare system,

01:24:29.736 --> 01:24:35.502
that's the kind of stuff, you know, like you said, you're not trying to excuse bad behavior,

01:24:36.231 --> 01:24:38.802
but there's a reason why people do what they do.

01:24:40.003 --> 01:24:43.633
And your book challenges us to dig and find out what that is.

01:24:43.633 --> 01:24:47.919
So again, thank you for doing this, writing the book, and thank you for coming on the show.

01:24:48.491 --> 01:24:52.313
Happy to be here, and I appreciate the time. I was, can I just make one more

01:24:52.313 --> 01:24:54.802
remark just in response to what you're saying? Sure.

01:24:57.591 --> 01:25:01.611
I love what you just said, and I would just say that what I have come to learn

01:25:01.611 --> 01:25:08.481
over many years doing this work is that the most precious gift that one person

01:25:08.481 --> 01:25:12.252
can give to another is their story, right?

01:25:13.371 --> 01:25:19.751
Because their story, their history is who they are. It is how they came to be.

01:25:20.111 --> 01:25:24.613
It is the answer to the question, why do you think what you think? Why do you do what you do?

01:25:26.493 --> 01:25:32.461
The answer is, well, let me tell you my story. And it is so deeply personal.

01:25:33.241 --> 01:25:40.968
And when someone entrusts you with their story, they are giving you a gift of

01:25:40.968 --> 01:25:43.177
inestimable value, right?

01:25:43.939 --> 01:25:47.618
Because they don't know what you're going to do with it. You may not listen

01:25:47.618 --> 01:25:51.183
to it. You may not respect it. You may not treat it with dignity.

01:25:51.590 --> 01:25:55.810
You may not treat it with grace. You may not treat it with understanding. You may mock it.

01:25:56.181 --> 01:26:00.355
It is a gesture of extraordinary trust.

01:26:00.917 --> 01:26:06.058
And I love, I love spending time with my clients, spending time with the folks

01:26:06.058 --> 01:26:11.428
I wrote about in this book, spending time with everybody, and just listening to their story.

01:26:11.428 --> 01:26:17.072
And if they are willing to share with me, I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate.

01:26:17.548 --> 01:26:22.758
And the least I can do is be respectful of it, And that is to understand it

01:26:22.758 --> 01:26:27.654
in all its complexity and not to just treat folks as one-dimensional.

01:26:30.088 --> 01:26:35.608
The kind of Hollywood versions you see or irresponsible journalistic versions

01:26:35.608 --> 01:26:39.308
which create these sort of hall of mirrors, phony person.

01:26:39.708 --> 01:26:41.812
I don't know. I mean, that's not who people are.

01:26:42.322 --> 01:26:47.538
If someone entrusts you with their story, they have given you a great gift and

01:26:47.538 --> 01:26:49.855
you have an obligation to treat it with respect.

01:26:50.029 --> 01:26:54.127
And I love it when I hear, doesn't matter, left, right. I don't care.

01:26:54.505 --> 01:27:00.117
Young, old. I'd love to sit down with Mr. Mangione and just learn his story.

01:27:00.413 --> 01:27:02.888
Just learn his story. Yeah.

01:27:03.788 --> 01:27:07.808
Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and end it on that.

01:27:07.808 --> 01:27:10.638
But thanks again for doing this.

01:27:11.288 --> 01:27:13.634
All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.

01:27:25.714 --> 01:27:31.404
All right, and we are back. And so I want to thank Michael Klarman and Joseph

01:27:31.404 --> 01:27:33.823
Margulies for coming on the show.

01:27:34.635 --> 01:27:38.281
Incredible interviews, powerful, powerful interviews.

01:27:39.165 --> 01:27:45.094
And I hope that you understand that there are people out here who are trying,

01:27:45.094 --> 01:27:50.193
trying, trying to make America better, whether it's through their writings.

01:27:51.191 --> 01:27:54.404
You know, go get America unfinished. If you haven't already,

01:27:54.404 --> 01:27:58.178
go get cast out. by Mr. Margulies. Yeah.

01:27:59.032 --> 01:28:05.388
Powerful, powerful stuff. And I enjoyed the conversations with both of them.

01:28:05.929 --> 01:28:11.322
And hopefully, you know, we can get them both of them back sometime,

01:28:11.909 --> 01:28:14.786
you know, in any future endeavors that they get into.

01:28:15.938 --> 01:28:21.854
I did want to get into my commentary. And what I'm going to do is I'm going

01:28:21.854 --> 01:28:26.803
to read a story, and we'll go from there.

01:28:27.556 --> 01:28:33.542
So the story starts. Jason Arday, the former Cambridge University scholar,

01:28:34.123 --> 01:28:38.334
whose remarkable rise to stardom was followed by a rapid fall from grace in

01:28:38.334 --> 01:28:41.292
recent weeks, has died, his family said.

01:28:42.393 --> 01:28:48.168
Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse in the years since he accepted

01:28:48.168 --> 01:28:50.712
a role at Cambridge, his family wrote in a statement.

01:28:51.450 --> 01:28:56.948
The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentleman who

01:28:56.948 --> 01:28:59.535
always wanted to see the best in everyone.

01:29:00.270 --> 01:29:04.288
The Metropolitan Police of London said an ambulance was called on Friday afternoon

01:29:04.288 --> 01:29:09.778
to a South London residence connected to Mr. Arde after a report that a man

01:29:09.778 --> 01:29:11.593
there had been found unresponsive.

01:29:12.306 --> 01:29:16.118
The man was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said, without confirming

01:29:16.118 --> 01:29:19.040
his identity in keeping with British police practice.

01:29:19.639 --> 01:29:25.397
The death was being treated as unexpected, but was not believed to be suspicious, the police said.

01:29:25.998 --> 01:29:29.800
We are desperately saddened to hear this tragic news, Professor Deborah Prentice.

01:29:30.288 --> 01:29:35.068
Cambridge Vice Chancellor said in a statement, Our heartfelt sympathies go to

01:29:35.068 --> 01:29:39.052
Jason Arday's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.

01:29:39.643 --> 01:29:44.172
Mr. Arde, who was 41, grew up in a working-class quarter of South London,

01:29:44.753 --> 01:29:48.799
the child of Guyanian immigrants.

01:29:49.531 --> 01:29:52.928
Earlier on, he was identified as having learning difficulties.

01:29:52.928 --> 01:29:56.021
He wrote in his memoir that he could not speak until age 11,

01:29:56.677 --> 01:30:05.134
could not read until age 18, charting a remarkable trajectory from nonverbal preteen to PhD.

01:30:05.764 --> 01:30:09.308
Mr. Arday, who had written and lectured on racism in higher education,

01:30:09.308 --> 01:30:14.898
became Cambridge's youngest Black professor in 2023 when the university hired

01:30:14.898 --> 01:30:20.676
him for a prestigious post and established chair of education at the school's Jesus College.

01:30:21.396 --> 01:30:26.308
Last month, a public firestorm over Mr. Arday's career erupted after a blog

01:30:26.308 --> 01:30:31.428
post accused him of plagiarism in his dissertation and embellishing his personal story.

01:30:32.038 --> 01:30:36.638
Was written by a scholar known for work suggesting that black people were genetically

01:30:36.638 --> 01:30:39.300
predisposed to be less intelligent than white people.

01:30:40.077 --> 01:30:45.246
Scrutiny intensified ahead of the publication of Mr. R. Day's memoir by Simon

01:30:45.246 --> 01:30:49.060
& Schuster as journalists found more inconsistencies in the story.

01:30:49.646 --> 01:30:51.627
He resigned from Cambridge last week.

01:30:52.254 --> 01:30:56.335
Allegations about Mr. R. Day's work circulated within Cambridge for years,

01:30:56.844 --> 01:31:01.069
but the institution disregarded repeated warnings about possible duplication

01:31:01.487 --> 01:31:06.236
in Mr. R. Day's work, according to the academic integrity site Retraction Watch.

01:31:07.080 --> 01:31:11.776
The elite university initially defended Mr. Arday, but in a letter sent to faculty,

01:31:12.619 --> 01:31:17.616
it promised an independent investigation of his hiring and called the case an

01:31:17.616 --> 01:31:18.940
aberration and troubling.

01:31:19.928 --> 01:31:24.106
Some faculty had supported Mr. Arday. Others signed an open letter questioning

01:31:24.106 --> 01:31:28.206
the university's handling of the allegations and criticizing it for crafting

01:31:28.206 --> 01:31:33.606
a media narrative focusing on his youth, his race, and his transformative potential.

01:31:34.266 --> 01:31:38.656
Nick Clark, who has known Mr. Arde since childhood, described him in an interview

01:31:38.656 --> 01:31:43.376
last week as a caring person, would go out of his way to make others feel comfortable

01:31:43.376 --> 01:31:45.115
in everyday social settings.

01:31:45.788 --> 01:31:50.226
Mr. Arde was modest when discussing his career with his friends and Mr.

01:31:50.226 --> 01:31:53.933
Clark, but those who knew him personally, took pride in his accomplishments.

01:31:54.687 --> 01:31:59.330
He has always been that kind, caring, friendly character, he added. That's Jason.

01:32:00.003 --> 01:32:03.406
We are in shock to have lost his amazing father, partner, brother,

01:32:03.406 --> 01:32:06.968
uncle, and son, Mr. Arday's family said in his statement.

01:32:07.682 --> 01:32:13.346
The intense attention took a toll on Mr. Arday, he wrote in a blog post upon

01:32:13.346 --> 01:32:14.690
resigning from Cambridge.

01:32:15.429 --> 01:32:20.555
The years since my appointment have also been marked by an unrelenting level,

01:32:21.176 --> 01:32:23.591
of public scrutiny and personal attack, he wrote.

01:32:24.042 --> 01:32:29.146
Adding the relentless accusations, speculation, and public commentary had taken

01:32:29.146 --> 01:32:33.708
a profound toll on me and on those I love.

01:32:34.838 --> 01:32:38.066
So that came from the New York Times.

01:32:39.220 --> 01:32:42.226
And as stated, Jason Arday was...

01:32:44.475 --> 01:32:49.389
A rock star in the academic world. He was like 37, 38.

01:32:50.006 --> 01:32:56.214
He became a professor at Cambridge University in England.

01:32:58.525 --> 01:33:04.645
Which made him the youngest professor ever there and definitely was the youngest

01:33:04.645 --> 01:33:07.038
professor at that point.

01:33:07.827 --> 01:33:15.295
And, you know, it's, you know, it's not the first tragedy we've seen or we've

01:33:15.295 --> 01:33:19.175
heard of among black professors and administrators.

01:33:20.353 --> 01:33:27.757
You know, we had young ladies who were administrators who died of health reasons,

01:33:28.365 --> 01:33:31.499
you know, stress from being fired from the job.

01:33:32.431 --> 01:33:41.453
You know, we've had professors who have been accused of plagiarizing work and all that stuff.

01:33:42.293 --> 01:33:45.175
You know, but it kind of goes back to the interview I was having Mr.

01:33:45.175 --> 01:33:50.387
Margulies. It's like, you know, people make judgments and say things about folks,

01:33:51.078 --> 01:33:53.051
and they don't really know the whole story.

01:33:53.796 --> 01:33:59.175
And they don't quite understand the struggles and the journeys that people have.

01:33:59.175 --> 01:34:07.034
They just have this blatant mindset that somebody like him shouldn't be in their spot.

01:34:07.574 --> 01:34:12.386
He had to have cheated to get there. And so they were trying to dig up anything.

01:34:12.595 --> 01:34:16.281
Now, I don't know if he actually did plagiarize something or not.

01:34:17.024 --> 01:34:22.575
You know, they got the sister at Harvard for changing a word or a paragraph

01:34:22.575 --> 01:34:23.966
or something, I don't know.

01:34:24.598 --> 01:34:28.725
You know, it's just, but when they, when it's somebody black,

01:34:28.992 --> 01:34:31.359
they coming, just understand.

01:34:31.922 --> 01:34:39.955
And those of us that are in my generation that, you know, have lived their lives,

01:34:39.955 --> 01:34:42.614
worked their careers, all that stuff, raised their kids.

01:34:44.079 --> 01:34:49.482
You know, we've been through that. Our parents went through that, right?

01:34:50.116 --> 01:34:54.768
Some of our grandparents didn't even come close to the opportunities we had, right?

01:34:55.500 --> 01:35:02.202
And so, you know, what we're trying to do is warn our children and our grandchildren,

01:35:02.882 --> 01:35:06.579
about what to experience and how to navigate.

01:35:06.579 --> 01:35:09.679
Now, hopefully, with people like Mr.

01:35:09.679 --> 01:35:15.729
Klarman and Mr. Margulies and others who are reminding us of our past and reminding

01:35:15.729 --> 01:35:21.031
us of our better humanity and the trends of leadership that's happening,

01:35:21.846 --> 01:35:28.906
that our children's journey further into adulthood, our grandchildren's journey,

01:35:29.712 --> 01:35:33.859
and generations to come after that, We'll not have to experience or go through

01:35:33.859 --> 01:35:37.159
what we've been through, what our parents been through, what our grandparents

01:35:37.159 --> 01:35:39.157
and so on have been through, right?

01:35:41.578 --> 01:35:49.934
It's time to stop, especially when the counter is what we're seeing in Washington, D.C., right?

01:35:50.825 --> 01:35:57.085
So we literally had a young man who's in the middle of a war zone jump off an

01:35:57.243 --> 01:36:05.424
aircraft carrier because he's been deployed on that one aircraft carrier for 280-plus days.

01:36:06.470 --> 01:36:13.979
That is unheard of. That is, so they unwittingly now are like a Guinness Book

01:36:13.979 --> 01:36:15.901
World Record thing for endurance.

01:36:16.861 --> 01:36:23.038
These sailors have been out for 280 days, right?

01:36:23.848 --> 01:36:29.251
And so a young man tried to commit suicide, and his wife basically reached out

01:36:29.691 --> 01:36:34.615
to the press, I think it was a young lady on MS Now, and told the story.

01:36:35.308 --> 01:36:40.295
And of course, oh, no, it's fake news, whatever it is, until it was like,

01:36:40.608 --> 01:36:44.199
no, that happened. These folks are out here on this boat. This boat really is

01:36:44.199 --> 01:36:46.751
out here, and this boat really has been out for 280 days.

01:36:47.266 --> 01:36:52.085
Just to put it in perspective, in a normal deployment like that,

01:36:52.805 --> 01:36:56.622
they would have made port call at least six times.

01:36:57.721 --> 01:37:05.008
That boat would have docked somewhere safe six times if this was a normal deployment.

01:37:06.220 --> 01:37:12.849
Because you got to get supplies. You got to clean the boat, the aircraft carrier.

01:37:12.849 --> 01:37:15.849
You know, you got to get fresh water in there and all that kind of,

01:37:15.849 --> 01:37:18.319
you got to do all the stuff to maintain

01:37:18.319 --> 01:37:22.450
that massive infrastructure that's floating out there in the ocean.

01:37:23.471 --> 01:37:26.408
These guys went 280 days straight.

01:37:27.513 --> 01:37:32.239
And so, Eric, what's the correlation with Mr. Arde? So the correlation is that

01:37:32.239 --> 01:37:37.680
Mr. Arde was pressured into taking his own life.

01:37:39.089 --> 01:37:45.044
Because people were trying to hold him to a standard. And nobody is holding

01:37:45.044 --> 01:37:50.064
the people who are making the decision to strand our sailors for 280 days on

01:37:50.064 --> 01:37:53.148
an aircraft carrier. Nobody is trying to hold them to any kind of standard.

01:37:54.242 --> 01:37:59.745
And in the United States of America, we elect people to hold those folks to a standard.

01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:07.392
That's called the United States Congress. That's their job, to hold the executive branch in check.

01:38:08.261 --> 01:38:10.569
To say, hey, what are we doing?

01:38:11.650 --> 01:38:14.454
You know, we let y'all play the war games and all that stuff,

01:38:14.454 --> 01:38:16.044
but you still got to come to us for the money.

01:38:16.729 --> 01:38:20.534
But now if you're going too far, if you're not, first of all,

01:38:20.534 --> 01:38:22.807
you didn't ask us for permission to do this.

01:38:23.454 --> 01:38:26.404
We're just going to keep reminding you of that. So now that you're doing this

01:38:26.404 --> 01:38:28.107
thing, you got to do it right.

01:38:29.350 --> 01:38:37.049
And again, Mike Johnson, the worst Speaker of the House ever in the history of the United States.

01:38:37.368 --> 01:38:44.007
Ever, only because he doesn't know what power he has, or he's abdicated it.

01:38:44.761 --> 01:38:49.714
So, he could be in good graces with this incompetent man who is leaving his

01:38:49.714 --> 01:38:52.873
sailors on a boat for 280 days.

01:38:55.569 --> 01:39:02.674
280 days. You're going to put pressure on this brother about his academic credentials

01:39:02.674 --> 01:39:05.393
to the point where he took his own life at 41.

01:39:06.418 --> 01:39:09.884
But you're not going to put pressure on this 80-year-old man who's got folks

01:39:09.884 --> 01:39:12.761
stranded for 280 days on a boat.

01:39:13.868 --> 01:39:17.285
You're not going to check him. You're not going to call him to the carpet.

01:39:17.928 --> 01:39:21.753
You're not going to drag the Secretary of Defense in there and explain to us,

01:39:22.619 --> 01:39:29.432
why this boat hasn't even made one port call in 280 days. Why is that?

01:39:30.406 --> 01:39:39.079
You know, and they seem like they get a rush or a thrill at gaslighting the American public.

01:39:39.631 --> 01:39:44.647
Oh, everything's fine. We've got control of the strait. So why are we still over there?

01:39:45.531 --> 01:39:50.678
If everything is back to normal, no nuclear weapons, the straight home movies

01:39:50.678 --> 01:39:52.620
is open, why are we still over there?

01:39:53.545 --> 01:39:57.921
Why are these folks on a boat for 280 days if everything was normal?

01:39:58.878 --> 01:40:05.578
And then that 80-year-old man got on a microphone and said he wished that they

01:40:05.578 --> 01:40:07.682
could be out there longer.

01:40:08.727 --> 01:40:14.788
We just sat here and had a conversation with two legal scholars using the word empathy.

01:40:15.428 --> 01:40:19.898
And the president of the United States, after these guys have been reported

01:40:19.898 --> 01:40:26.981
to be out for 280 days with a poor call, said, I wish they could have stayed out there longer.

01:40:28.042 --> 01:40:35.728
You wanted grown men and women to be on one of the largest structures ever built.

01:40:36.553 --> 01:40:39.298
The history of mankind, an aircraft carrier.

01:40:40.352 --> 01:40:46.208
This thing is big enough for jet planes to land and take off and have cannons

01:40:46.208 --> 01:40:51.465
and missiles and all this stuff and to hold 5,000 human beings.

01:40:52.569 --> 01:40:57.533
You wanted them to be out there longer than 280 days without a clean shower, without food.

01:40:58.602 --> 01:41:02.808
That's where your mind went. That's where your mouth opened up to say you wish

01:41:02.808 --> 01:41:06.788
they could have been out there longer and nobody is holding this man in check.

01:41:08.071 --> 01:41:12.701
Nobody is questioning him. You want to question a young man who overcame personal

01:41:12.701 --> 01:41:20.595
adversity to be a scholar, question his credentials to the point now where he's no longer with us.

01:41:21.344 --> 01:41:27.091
But this man who allows men and women who took an oath to defend this nation

01:41:27.091 --> 01:41:31.180
and the constitution, foreign and domestic enemies.

01:41:32.229 --> 01:41:36.308
No, he gets no check at all. He can just do what he want to do.

01:41:37.599 --> 01:41:44.679
Yeah, we got news for that, brother. So I send my condolences to the R.A.

01:41:44.679 --> 01:41:50.079
Family. And I pray that those of you all who are in the academic arena,

01:41:50.079 --> 01:41:52.231
those of you who are in the corporate arena,

01:41:53.075 --> 01:41:59.850
don't ever let these folks get you to the point where you take yourself away from us.

01:42:00.904 --> 01:42:05.866
Don't do that. Get some support. Hell, call a press conference.

01:42:06.719 --> 01:42:10.869
Do whatever act of defiance you got to do. Don't ever surrender to them,

01:42:10.869 --> 01:42:12.246
especially with your life.

01:42:13.291 --> 01:42:20.769
We know people go through this. If you know somebody or you are thinking that

01:42:20.769 --> 01:42:25.179
you have these ideations, 988.

01:42:26.064 --> 01:42:32.190
Dial that number, 988. Do not let these folks take you away from us.

01:42:33.079 --> 01:42:39.793
If you have any concerns, dial 988. get some help, talk to somebody, right?

01:42:40.927 --> 01:42:47.841
But now for this guy who has been given the title of commander-in-chief by virtue of his office,

01:42:48.913 --> 01:42:53.743
if he has that kind of disregard for the people who serve under him,

01:42:54.348 --> 01:43:00.299
if he has that disregard for the citizens that he is supposed to represent around the world.

01:43:01.281 --> 01:43:06.699
If he has that kind of disregard and the people of his same political party

01:43:06.699 --> 01:43:11.849
will not stand up to him and check him on that, then they all need to go.

01:43:12.789 --> 01:43:15.453
And we can't do anything about him till 2028.

01:43:16.404 --> 01:43:20.241
But the folks in Congress that are not, get rid of all of them.

01:43:21.023 --> 01:43:25.849
All of the Republicans got to go. If none of them are going to stand up to him

01:43:25.849 --> 01:43:28.507
and condemn him for what he said and just did.

01:43:29.373 --> 01:43:35.185
280 plus days on an aircraft carrier with no port call. These folks don't have food.

01:43:36.510 --> 01:43:41.824
280 days. And he says, I wish they could have stayed out there longer.

01:43:42.489 --> 01:43:46.025
And no Republican is going to say anything about that. Then you need to go.

01:43:46.790 --> 01:43:51.410
Especially those of you who literally served. I know there's some people that

01:43:51.410 --> 01:43:54.556
went to West Point that's in the Congress right now.

01:43:55.260 --> 01:43:57.089
Black folk. You ain't say nothing.

01:43:57.894 --> 01:44:02.427
I understand y'all ran for other things, but you're still in Congress right now. Nothing.

01:44:03.158 --> 01:44:07.577
Got a black man running for governor in Florida. Nothing.

01:44:08.635 --> 01:44:11.642
You got a black man sitting in the U.S. Senate in South Carolina.

01:44:12.970 --> 01:44:16.940
He busy talking about who might be his colleague from Michigan or who might

01:44:16.940 --> 01:44:20.280
be his colleague from Minnesota, but he ain't got nothing to say to the president.

01:44:21.168 --> 01:44:25.300
Please don't let it be anybody from South Carolina on their boat. Y'all got to go.

01:44:26.103 --> 01:44:31.329
So if you don't have the moral turpitude and courage to do your job,

01:44:32.077 --> 01:44:37.296
your job is to check the president, even if he is in the same party. That's your job.

01:44:38.343 --> 01:44:42.640
People criticize the Democrats for doing it too much. Are you going to hurt

01:44:42.640 --> 01:44:44.406
the president chance to get reelected?

01:44:44.534 --> 01:44:47.198
If he's doing something foul, I got to check him.

01:44:48.537 --> 01:44:53.826
Might cost me my job. If the president's popular, if I'm a member of Congress,

01:44:54.284 --> 01:44:57.780
calling the president, hey, you can't do that, I might not get reelected.

01:44:58.642 --> 01:45:00.587
But the election is not the end game.

01:45:01.611 --> 01:45:08.225
Doing the job is the end game. If you do your job, the politics will fall in line. Period.

01:45:09.381 --> 01:45:13.037
If the people want to go in another direction, regardless, so be it.

01:45:13.839 --> 01:45:17.740
You offered yourself, They chose to vote for somebody else. Keep it moving.

01:45:18.146 --> 01:45:21.109
It's not the end of your life. It's really not.

01:45:22.819 --> 01:45:28.642
I can bear witness to that. I can bear witness to depression and pain.

01:45:28.851 --> 01:45:30.134
I can bear witness to all that.

01:45:31.164 --> 01:45:35.117
But when I was elected, it didn't matter who the governor was,

01:45:35.117 --> 01:45:40.245
how close I was to that individual, how much I respected and liked them.

01:45:41.056 --> 01:45:43.193
If you were doing something that was going to hurt my folks,

01:45:43.402 --> 01:45:44.481
you were going to hear from me.

01:45:45.162 --> 01:45:47.327
If you were doing something that was going to hurt black folks,

01:45:47.327 --> 01:45:49.510
you were going to hear from me and a few others.

01:45:50.387 --> 01:45:54.227
That's how that works. It doesn't matter about Democrat or Republican.

01:45:54.227 --> 01:45:58.568
It matters that all of us, once we take the oath, we have responsibilities.

01:45:59.510 --> 01:46:04.467
And if you can't check the president because he's a member of the same party

01:46:04.467 --> 01:46:07.127
you are, then you don't need to be in the job.

01:46:07.127 --> 01:46:12.737
You need to put on an outfit with an elephant on it and some pom-poms and just

01:46:13.177 --> 01:46:15.607
stand in front of the White House and shake your pom-poms.

01:46:16.605 --> 01:46:19.275
We don't need cheerleaders. We need leaders.

01:46:20.353 --> 01:46:25.717
And if you are not fit to do that job, if you are not courageous enough to stand

01:46:25.717 --> 01:46:28.896
up to the President of the United States and say, Sir, you're wrong.

01:46:29.519 --> 01:46:34.169
Sir, you can't do that. Sir, that's illegal. Then you've got to go.

01:46:35.106 --> 01:46:39.140
If that means 435 Democrats for the next two years, so be it.

01:46:39.881 --> 01:46:44.117
You've earned that right for not being man and woman enough to stand up to the

01:46:44.117 --> 01:46:45.953
president when he needs to be checked.

01:46:47.367 --> 01:46:54.240
Needed to be checked at 12.05 on January the 20th, 2025.

01:46:54.756 --> 01:46:56.080
He needed to be checked dead.

01:46:56.986 --> 01:47:01.767
And you won't do it. But you want to say the Democrats are this and the Democrats

01:47:01.767 --> 01:47:07.131
are that and the evil people and how they want to transform our children and,

01:47:08.227 --> 01:47:10.423
they want to make us all communists and all that stuff.

01:47:11.414 --> 01:47:15.876
But you ain't done nothing that you said you were going to do. Gas is going up.

01:47:16.610 --> 01:47:19.467
Price of eggs going up. We're at war.

01:47:20.491 --> 01:47:23.907
Y'all told the folks, we aren't doing none of that. Everything's going to be

01:47:23.907 --> 01:47:27.625
better with us. Two years in, not so much.

01:47:28.477 --> 01:47:33.637
And then you don't even have the gumption to tell the president no when he needs

01:47:33.637 --> 01:47:35.910
to be told no on a constant basis.

01:47:36.932 --> 01:47:42.397
I was talking to Professor Klarman. Why do you think he's doing all the crazy

01:47:42.397 --> 01:47:47.320
stuff now and he's not doing it, he didn't do it the first term, or as much as the crazy.

01:47:48.527 --> 01:47:52.068
It's because nobody is telling him no. Nobody.

01:47:53.107 --> 01:47:56.137
And then the people that tell him no, on the Democratic side,

01:47:56.137 --> 01:47:57.259
he's trying to put in jail.

01:47:58.289 --> 01:48:03.890
That's not how America works. We can have a debate about how it's working,

01:48:04.588 --> 01:48:07.839
but that's not how the American system of government works.

01:48:08.652 --> 01:48:15.118
It is written that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are co-equal.

01:48:16.191 --> 01:48:20.857
All of them have the ability to check the other one. But if the Supreme Court

01:48:20.857 --> 01:48:23.110
says you've got immunity, if the Congress says.

01:48:25.185 --> 01:48:33.977
Say anything at all. All of you have abdicated your constitutional obligations, all of you.

01:48:34.999 --> 01:48:40.287
We got people committing suicide because they felt their integrity was questioned.

01:48:41.499 --> 01:48:47.545
And nobody acts like they got any integrity at all in the United States government.

01:48:48.556 --> 01:48:51.830
And it's all your fault. If you're a Republican, you're in charge.

01:48:52.003 --> 01:48:55.711
You control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court.

01:48:56.359 --> 01:49:01.267
So all this is on you. Every last thing, whatever good thing happens,

01:49:02.348 --> 01:49:04.165
but definitely every bad thing that happens.

01:49:05.233 --> 01:49:08.541
And you have no empathy, you have no integrity, you have no accountability.

01:49:10.025 --> 01:49:15.983
If this was a world where we're looking at resumes and looking at actions,

01:49:16.645 --> 01:49:22.385
there'd be 435 Democrats in the House and 36 new Democrats in the Senate.

01:49:23.153 --> 01:49:27.335
That's the only way that's really going to happen. Because if you bring anybody

01:49:27.335 --> 01:49:30.427
else in, out of this group, like Ken Paxson, really?

01:49:31.297 --> 01:49:33.190
People saying he's still got a chance?

01:49:35.670 --> 01:49:43.265
This boy out here in Ohio, he's married to a, he's married to the U.S.

01:49:43.265 --> 01:49:45.806
Senator's daughter and he's throwing hot water on her.

01:49:46.602 --> 01:49:51.227
The kid is, the child is terrified of him. But he got a chance to win.

01:49:52.930 --> 01:50:00.065
Telling you, we've got to do better, us as a society. We got to do better.

01:50:00.907 --> 01:50:06.580
We cannot allow these people to continue to claim to be our leaders because

01:50:06.580 --> 01:50:08.256
they haven't shown the ability to do so.

01:50:09.399 --> 01:50:13.370
November 3rd, you can fix some of that. You can fix it in the House,

01:50:13.370 --> 01:50:14.578
you can fix it in the Senate.

01:50:15.416 --> 01:50:19.323
And that'll be a step in the right direction because then you will have a Congress,

01:50:19.863 --> 01:50:23.659
that will act like Congress and check the president when he goes too far.

01:50:24.697 --> 01:50:31.358
That's it. He gonna say some nasty things. He gonna get on his true social and do all that. So what?

01:50:32.560 --> 01:50:36.027
We literally had to explain to governors, we're not your friends.

01:50:36.965 --> 01:50:41.330
Once we all get sworn in, we're not loyal to you.

01:50:42.522 --> 01:50:45.338
All right, I'm gonna make these guys. No, no, you ain't gonna make us do nothing.

01:50:46.597 --> 01:50:52.070
We can negotiate. We can compromise, reason out something, but you ain't going

01:50:52.070 --> 01:50:55.689
to make us do nothing because that's not in the job description.

01:50:56.747 --> 01:51:01.226
But you can't tell by these folks who's in Congress now, not the Republicans.

01:51:02.097 --> 01:51:07.370
They ain't get that memo. All they wanted was something to put on Instagram,

01:51:07.370 --> 01:51:11.304
I guess, in their life. I served in Congress.

01:51:12.368 --> 01:51:18.111
Again, condolences to the R.A. family. May y'all have peace and comfort in this hour.

01:51:19.130 --> 01:51:25.428
And to my fellow citizens, vote these people out November 3rd. Get them out.

01:51:26.184 --> 01:51:29.947
Send them a message that you want your country back. Get them out.

01:51:30.947 --> 01:51:33.043
Let's start doing the right thing.

01:51:34.085 --> 01:51:38.135
Not the popular thing, not the convenient thing. The right thing.

01:51:38.759 --> 01:51:41.656
Let's truly rebuild this nation in the way that we want it.

01:51:42.703 --> 01:51:48.424
And that starts November 3rd, 2026. That's all I got.

01:51:48.801 --> 01:51:50.728
Thank y'all for listening. Till next time.