Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump has called on ABC
Speaker 1: to fire its entire staff since nothing is ever his fault.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today the
Speaker 1: Leadership Conferences. Maya Wiley talks to us about her new book,
Speaker 1: Remember You Are Wiley. Then we'll talk to doctor Nicorlai
Speaker 1: Corte about his book Kamala, The Motherland and Me. But
Speaker 1: first we have NBC News is John Allen. John Allen
Speaker 1: is a senior national political reporter at NBC and the
Speaker 1: author of Lucky How Joe Biden Barely won the Presidency.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, my friend John Allen.
Speaker 2: Hey, Molly, I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Talk to you because I felt like I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what is going on after this debate, like what
Speaker 1: your take was on the state of the race and
Speaker 1: if it changed things.
Speaker 3: So I think it did change things in some ways
Speaker 3: that may not, you know, immediately show up and pulling.
Speaker 3: I think, first and foremost, it appeared that Kamala Harris's
Speaker 3: goal was to get under Trump's skin, and I think
Speaker 3: she did that. Yeah, and he had been riding pretty high.
Speaker 3: He just knocked out the previous Democratic nomedy. In the
Speaker 3: most recent debate, he was feeling pretty good about himself,
Speaker 3: and he looked very agitated in the debate at various times.
Speaker 3: So I think, you know, she was able to knock
Speaker 3: him off his game a little bit. What I'm not
Speaker 3: as certain about is whether she has persuaded all those
Speaker 3: folks or even a majority of them who still feel
Speaker 3: like they don't know enough about her or enough about
Speaker 3: her plans that you know, they're ready to cast ballots
Speaker 3: for her. From a first debate perspective, I think she
Speaker 3: hit the mark that she wanted to. You know, we'll
Speaker 3: have to see if they're necessarily the ones she needed to.
Speaker 3: I would suspect that there will be another debate, that
Speaker 3: both sides will feel a desire to do that.
Speaker 1: WHOA, you think there's going to be another debate. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like the hot topic. Now, why do you.
Speaker 3: Think that give you our Harris? You still have to
Speaker 3: feel that deal. He's still to finish making that case,
Speaker 3: that positive case for yourself. It is an imaginary bar,
Speaker 3: but there is some bar in every voter's mind for
Speaker 3: when somebody has shown themselves to be presidential, and I
Speaker 3: think obviously for most of the Democrats, Konwall Harris is
Speaker 3: not Donald Up and therefore is more presidential than Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure she's cleared that bar yet for all
Speaker 3: of the people that she needs to clear that bar.
Speaker 3: Trump has been president. It is not hard to imagine
Speaker 3: him as president because we all watched it for four years.
Speaker 3: You know, she's trying to effectively unpresident him right now,
Speaker 3: and I think that's a tall order. I think that
Speaker 3: she's still got some work to do to convince people
Speaker 3: either that he has disqualified himself or that she has qualified.
Speaker 3: And I think at the very least, you know, she'll
Speaker 3: want another opportunity to hammer him from his perspective. I
Speaker 3: think there's incentive to do another debate because it was
Speaker 3: pretty clear that he lost it, and you don't have
Speaker 3: to ask Democrats that or independent political analysts that. You
Speaker 3: can just see what Trump dide. He showed up in
Speaker 3: the spin room right after the debate. You don't have
Speaker 3: to spin if you win. He blamed the moderators. You
Speaker 3: have to call out the refs if you win. And
Speaker 3: you know there was all this sort of conspiracy chatter
Speaker 3: about Kamala Harris wearing an earpiece rather than in the
Speaker 3: ear a sort of ridiculous conspiracy chatter that, you know,
Speaker 3: is another sort of tell that Trump and the people
Speaker 3: close to him felt like he lost because if you win,
Speaker 3: you don't accuse the opponent of cheating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those were just Tiffany earrings.
Speaker 1: By the way, the whole idea that she's somehow needed
Speaker 1: to have an ear piece to come up, It's like
Speaker 1: a lot of these conspiracy theories. I feel like we're
Speaker 1: built around the idea that Joe Biden had dementia. So
Speaker 1: the idea was Joe Biden might need an ear piece
Speaker 1: because he has dementia. Okay, he doesn't have dementia and
Speaker 1: he didn't have an earpiece. But the idea that then
Speaker 1: fifty nine year old former prosecutor, sex crimes prosecutor, attorney's General,
Speaker 1: senator who has done this kind of thing for the
Speaker 1: last like thirty years and she's been in career government
Speaker 1: work somehow need a magic earing your.
Speaker 2: Piece just is pretty dumb, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes. Also, if you watch the debate, it's pretty clear
Speaker 3: that she rehearsed a lot of what she was saying. Which,
Speaker 3: by the way, all the candidates do. It did not
Speaker 3: look like she needed somebody to tell her what to say.
Speaker 3: You know, you could see her going through the progressions
Speaker 3: of her answers to various questions in my debate time.
Speaker 3: I would just say that, like over the course of
Speaker 3: the last twenty years, there have been any number of
Speaker 3: debates where candidates accused the other candidate of having some
Speaker 3: sort of communication with their rank, and not once, is
Speaker 3: that anyone ever shown that to me? True?
Speaker 2: It's a pretty good sign you want, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on the other side saying that they think you
Speaker 3: were so good you cheated, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a pretty good sense that you
Speaker 1: might have won. Absolutely, let's talk about what she did
Speaker 1: on the stage. Because I have this theory if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: you can tell me i'm wrong.
Speaker 3: I want me to confirm your bias.
Speaker 1: No, no, I want you to maybe tell me I'm wrong
Speaker 1: and then have the people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: and really like me get mad at you.
Speaker 2: I mean just kidding. No, No, I'm just kidding. I
Speaker 2: don't want that.
Speaker 1: Well, I sort of want that, but maybe I'm maybe
Speaker 1: I'm right, So talk to me about this idea. I
Speaker 1: have this idea that she kind of flipped the script
Speaker 1: a little bit during that debate, that she was able
Speaker 1: to kind of bait him. I mean, obviously she was
Speaker 1: able to bait him into going crazy, but one of
Speaker 1: the things she did was because she has this rhetorical
Speaker 1: style that's very call and response and that's very sort
Speaker 1: of well thought out, she actually seemed very powerful, and
Speaker 1: then he tried to do some of the things she did,
Speaker 1: like I'm speaking, and he seemed really diminished. Does this
Speaker 1: sound right to you? And if it's wrong, why, And
Speaker 1: if it's right, expand on it.
Speaker 3: I think you're right that she has a commanding presence
Speaker 3: on stage. I mean, I think that's something that we
Speaker 3: saw when she watched her first campaign. It's something we saw,
Speaker 3: you know, on the debate stage in twenty nineteen when
Speaker 3: she ran for president. You know, having that presence is
Speaker 3: not a problem for her. She's got that presence, she's
Speaker 3: got that thing. That doesn't mean that he doesn't.
Speaker 2: No, he's very charismatic.
Speaker 3: So the two of them, you know, present as people
Speaker 3: on relatively equal footing on that, saye, and that's somewhat
Speaker 3: different for him. You know, most of the times he's debated,
Speaker 3: did all those primary debates in twenty twenty, and you know,
Speaker 3: he was a more commanding presence than any of the
Speaker 3: other people in the debate stage. And I think you know,
Speaker 3: in the debates with Joe Biden, both in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and earlier this year, you were more transfixed by Trump
Speaker 3: want stage than you are by Biden. It doesn't mean that,
Speaker 3: you know, Trump necessarily won all those debates. It just
Speaker 3: means he was sort of a dominant figure on stage.
Speaker 3: And that's not the case with Harris. She has whatever
Speaker 3: that is, that factor that you do as a viewer,
Speaker 3: you gravitate toward her too, So there's a much more
Speaker 3: equal footing.
Speaker 1: I thought one of the things that sometimes was Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: she would struggle to be heard or she would struggle
Speaker 1: to project in a certain way. It seems to me
Speaker 1: that Harris doesn't have that problem at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Harris says just such a different style, right, and
Speaker 3: her style is one you know, she does project well,
Speaker 3: she does deliver. Part of that, I think is probably
Speaker 3: the courtroom prosecutor's experience of you know, selling a case
Speaker 3: to the jury and being believable and being you know,
Speaker 3: having convictions not convictions like thirty four felony convictions in
Speaker 3: New York, but having the convictions of her principles. And
Speaker 3: you know, look, you could see during the debate there
Speaker 3: were times where she felt like she was on more
Speaker 3: comfortable ground, particularly around you know, when she was talking
Speaker 3: about abortion, where you see, you know, kind of that
Speaker 3: full energy and that full authority from her in times
Speaker 3: where you know, she felt less comfortable. The first question
Speaker 3: to her was whether people are better off now than
Speaker 3: they were four years ago? And she walked right around it, right, So,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, she's still finding her way a
Speaker 3: little bit, and maybe that's what she would want to
Speaker 3: do if given another opportunity, walk right around that very
Speaker 3: difficult question to answer at a time when a lot
Speaker 3: of Americans don't feel like they're better off today than
Speaker 3: they were four years ago. But I think if she
Speaker 3: can get a little more consistency, if she can, you know,
Speaker 3: rise up on those things that she made feel like
Speaker 3: a little less comfortable on and have more evenness, that's
Speaker 3: a benefit. Tournament.
Speaker 1: You saw that there were a number of focus groups
Speaker 1: we saw so along well right about this in the Atlantic. Obviously,
Speaker 1: all these focus groups are anecdotal at best, right, because
Speaker 1: they're small groups, but.
Speaker 3: Like three people in our rooms right in town.
Speaker 2: They are anecdotal. But like you know, so are polls.
Speaker 1: Right now, let's look at the state of the race, right,
Speaker 1: how are we going to look at it?
Speaker 2: Polling?
Speaker 1: Voter registration, which again is not a straight line and
Speaker 1: sometimes doesn't mean anything. Though I think this huge surge
Speaker 1: from the tailor swift voter registration might mean more, but
Speaker 1: it might mean less.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, you'd rather have people who agree with you registering
Speaker 3: to vote than.
Speaker 1: Not, right, So registration, focus groups, polls, donations, and I
Speaker 1: mean that's it, right, is there?
Speaker 2: And lawn signs? I mean, is there.
Speaker 1: Anything else that we should be looking at as an
Speaker 1: indicator of this election?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the big question in my mind is,
Speaker 3: you know, typically the end of an election, and our
Speaker 3: elections are drawn out more now because there's more early voting,
Speaker 3: but you know, typically toward the end of an election,
Speaker 3: the undecided will break in one direction or the other.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, not one hundred percent in
Speaker 3: one direction, but say say it's ten percent of the electorate,
Speaker 3: you know it'll break seventy thirty in one direction or
Speaker 3: the other, and that will help determine who the president is.
Speaker 3: You know, I think trying to watch if there are
Speaker 3: any indications among that set about where they're weaning. And
Speaker 3: some of that's deeper polling questions, not just cruity you
Speaker 3: want to win or who are you going to vote for,
Speaker 3: but some of the deeper questions that get to people's
Speaker 3: values and their fears and you know what they're going
Speaker 3: to vote on. Those may provide some indications. But if
Speaker 3: you look at polling, we're basically in the place with
Speaker 3: that we were, you know, prior to the June debate,
Speaker 3: where you've got two candidates that are locked in a
Speaker 3: very close election and the handful of swing states that
Speaker 3: will determine the outcome. I would say the only difference
Speaker 3: is that there's probably greater variance with Harris than there
Speaker 3: was with Biden, meaning her ceiling is probably higher. Right,
Speaker 3: she has the ability to break out past where Biden
Speaker 3: would have been able to, and her floor is probably
Speaker 3: a little lower then pre debate Biden, Post debate Biden,
Speaker 3: the floor you know, there wasn't a floor, The floor
Speaker 3: was lava.
Speaker 1: And then versus Trump, whose ceiling is lower and whose
Speaker 1: floor is about forty two.
Speaker 3: Right, there's been nobody in American politics who has a
Speaker 3: more consistent base than Donald Trump. Right, his force seems
Speaker 3: to be pretty immovable. But I guess what I would
Speaker 3: say is that there's some ability to, you know, on
Speaker 3: the Democratic side, to move it a little bit right,
Speaker 3: to take people who are thinking beforehand, like I don't
Speaker 3: really like Biden, I don't really like Trump. I'm going
Speaker 3: to hold my nose and vote for Trump. There's some
Speaker 3: ability to take that layer, that very sort of thin
Speaker 3: and loose layer of his support and move it.
Speaker 1: Part of the secret sauce of Trump was that he
Speaker 1: got these low frequency voters, these ones, right, So low
Speaker 1: frequency voters one in a two or people who never vote.
Speaker 1: A four and a five are people who vote in
Speaker 1: you know, the five is someone who votes in every
Speaker 1: primary everything. Right, So one of his secrets was that
Speaker 1: he got these ones and twos to vote. I mean,
Speaker 1: to have that happen again. I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: that is that it's for sure that he will get
Speaker 1: those people out again, or do you think there's some
Speaker 1: waning enthusiasm. Remember, like I'm just thinking about twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and you had he lost by five million obviously won
Speaker 1: the electoral college. Twenty twenty, he lost by seven million,
Speaker 1: but it was still more voters than had ever voted before.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, the conclusion that I think you should
Speaker 3: draw from that is that he brings out low propensity
Speaker 3: voters on both sides. So he brings out the local
Speaker 3: pensity Republicans, but he's also bringing out low propensity Democrats.
Speaker 3: The increase in the raw total of Democratic votes between
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and twenty twenty was more than twenty percent.
Speaker 3: Never seen anything like I saw in twenty twenty in
Speaker 3: terms of voter turned out, and a lot of those
Speaker 3: people were turning out to stop him from getting a
Speaker 3: second term. And that's a challenge for Harris. She's got
Speaker 3: to try to keep that, you know, maintain that energy
Speaker 3: on the Democratic side. And I think that's one of
Speaker 3: the reasons you you know, you saw her spend time
Speaker 3: attacking and trying to get under his skin and trying
Speaker 3: to remind Democratic voters of what they don't like about
Speaker 3: She's still knew for a lot of these voters. I
Speaker 3: know that sounds weird. She's been vice president for four years,
Speaker 3: but you know, as the presidential candidate, she still knew
Speaker 3: if there are voters that she's got to get out
Speaker 3: to the that are not already super attached to her. Yes,
Speaker 3: by the way, So I think the conclusion from you know,
Speaker 3: from what we're seeing from the Hairs campaign so far
Speaker 3: is that in order to attach them to her, it's
Speaker 3: really more about attaching them to the idea of stopping Trump.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Whether or not that's the right strategy, I can't say,
Speaker 3: but it does appear to be the strategy that they
Speaker 3: are pursuing.
Speaker 1: Right. For example, his strategy is to tarnish her without
Speaker 1: tarnishing himself more than he already has, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: But he benefits from me from the inability to make
Speaker 3: people dislike him more.
Speaker 2: Why is that.
Speaker 3: I think it's because if you are inclined to dislike him,
Speaker 3: you really dislike him. It's not like people are like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that that's a new gutter for Trump.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, that's that's.
Speaker 3: Than he was before.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: They haven't watched him over the last ten years, and
Speaker 3: they're suddenly discovering that they find him to be, you know,
Speaker 3: objectionable on a personal level, or you know, find that
Speaker 3: his policies that don't match up with their views.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the eating dogs.
Speaker 3: By the way, I am certain that you eat peace
Speaker 3: and ducks. I am sure that you have had floggra.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that I had a Actually
Speaker 1: I'm not going to finish the sentence because it sounds
Speaker 1: so bad, But just assume that something fancy happened with
Speaker 1: the geese.
Speaker 3: There's a whole term that someone's goose is cooked right,
Speaker 3: right right, and you would only cook a goose if
Speaker 3: you're planning to eat it.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here is the lie that
Speaker 1: Trump said that people were eating dogs that Haitian immigrants
Speaker 1: in Ohio.
Speaker 2: It's a very specific lie, we're eating dogs and cats.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence of this that it has been
Speaker 1: just routinely debunked as debunked as a lie could possibly be.
Speaker 2: But Jadie Vance is not convinced.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, there were there have been complaints registered,
Speaker 3: but no evidence of that happening. I think there was
Speaker 3: a video of really showing up in a nearby town
Speaker 3: where where like that. Someone who was on drags was like,
Speaker 3: mostly it's not that it comes from nowhere, I guess,
Speaker 3: but like I'm not sure how like this before we
Speaker 3: overblown and relatively unfounded allegation how that has anything to
Speaker 3: do with immigration policy for an entire country.
Speaker 1: Right, Like right, But it's more like this is the thing, right,
Speaker 1: this is the Trump thing. But more importantly than this
Speaker 1: being Trump's thing, it is also pretty clear indication of
Speaker 1: where Trump is that he's not gotten any less racist.
Speaker 3: The whole concept, right, is fraught with that. The guy's
Speaker 3: seventy eight years old. They're like, do you expect him
Speaker 3: to suddenly become somebody who wasn't.
Speaker 1: You'd think that saying that kind of smear would make
Speaker 1: him unelectable. I was surprised by that there were still
Speaker 1: undecided voters who were like, yeah, he talked about people
Speaker 1: eating dogs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't care. People who will look at Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and say he's racist and that they think that
Speaker 3: racism is bad and still vote for him because it's
Speaker 3: not the thing they care the much about.
Speaker 2: Insane.
Speaker 3: There will be young black men who think that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is racist to will vote for him. Will be
Speaker 3: young Hispanic men who think that Donald Trump is racist
Speaker 3: or anti Hispanic and still vote for him. I don't
Speaker 3: think it will be the majority in either case. I
Speaker 3: don't think it'll be close to the majority in terms
Speaker 3: of young African American men. Democrats will still window by
Speaker 3: a large margin, but there will be some who say, like,
Speaker 3: this isn't my biggest issue, and I like the cut
Speaker 3: of his jib or whatever. Probably won't actually use that term.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Thank you John Allen for.
Speaker 3: Using the most anniquated possible term.
Speaker 4: We have even more tour d eights for you. Did
Speaker 4: you know the Lincoln Projects. Rick Wilson of Fast Politics
Speaker 4: MALEI jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring
Speaker 4: you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape.
Speaker 4: Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at
Speaker 4: the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty
Speaker 4: seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
Speaker 4: We'll be at the Bavarium in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 4: first of September, and on the twenty second, we'll be
Speaker 4: in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
Speaker 4: the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
Speaker 4: at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October
Speaker 4: we'll be in Affiliates City Winery, and then DC on
Speaker 4: the second at the Miracle Theater, and today we just
Speaker 4: announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
Speaker 4: of October at City Winery. If you need the laugh
Speaker 4: as we get through this election and hopefully never hear
Speaker 4: from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
Speaker 4: we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
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Speaker 4: by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
Speaker 4: as Unusual dot bio.
Speaker 1: Maya Wiley is the CEO of the Leadership Conference. Doctor
Speaker 1: Nikorlai Corte is the author of Kamala, The Motherland and
Speaker 1: Me Welcome Back Too Fast Politics, My friend.
Speaker 5: It's so great to be with you, Amali always.
Speaker 1: I really love you and respect you and am in
Speaker 1: awe of you. And by the way, I often want
Speaker 1: to know what you think of things, so it's pretty
Speaker 1: fun to get to have you on the podcast for
Speaker 1: that reason.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, and you know I love you right
Speaker 5: on back, Molly, you know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really mutual.
Speaker 1: So before we talk about your book, remember you are
Speaker 1: a Wiley, which is a memoir. I want to also
Speaker 1: point out that you and I are doing a book
Speaker 1: event together.
Speaker 3: Yay.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, September twenty third at seven pm at the
Speaker 1: Strand Bookstore in New York City, which is very cool
Speaker 1: because the woman who owns the Strand is just a
Speaker 1: very wonderful person whose family has owned the Strand since
Speaker 1: it was the Strand. So it's a very cool New
Speaker 1: York story. Maya tell me about the book.
Speaker 5: Well, the book is a memoir, and in a way
Speaker 5: it's as much a family memoir as a personal memoir,
Speaker 5: although obviously it's very personal because as I was reflecting on,
Speaker 5: you know, this era we are in as a country
Speaker 5: and era where frankly, racism and sexism are set out
Speaker 5: loud as if they're legitimate and longer shun at a
Speaker 5: time when we're also seeing protests and protest movements increasing
Speaker 5: everything from Black Lives Matter we had Times up five
Speaker 5: for fifteen, all of the things we you know, and
Speaker 5: also even on the international front in terms of thinking
Speaker 5: about justice issues and all the complexity it creates, and
Speaker 5: all the things we need to do in the society
Speaker 5: to make this country wonderful place for all of us.
Speaker 5: You know, it was very hard for me not to
Speaker 5: be really thinking about what shaped me and what the
Speaker 5: struggles are to be an advocate, an activist, a mom,
Speaker 5: a black woman in a context where we're constantly trying
Speaker 5: to make this a better place and how much it's
Speaker 5: shifted and what hasn't shifted, and you know what I
Speaker 5: feel like, you know are sometimes we have to share
Speaker 5: our personal struggles to empower the next generation to keep
Speaker 5: on plowing right on through.
Speaker 2: You and I both come from politically minded families. Just
Speaker 2: tell us a.
Speaker 1: Little bit about how your parents shaped what you do
Speaker 1: now and how you see the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean know, first of all, you know,
Speaker 5: my parents were an interracial couple. A father black man
Speaker 5: and then trained as an organic chemist, which was its
Speaker 5: own major milestone back in the fifties. And my mother
Speaker 5: is a white woman from West Texas from you know,
Speaker 5: the Southern Baptist tradition, the Southern Baptist tradition that is
Speaker 5: also a racist tradition, that is a tradition that only
Speaker 5: in the late twentieth century apologized for segregationist views. And
Speaker 5: that's how she was raised, but it is also what
Speaker 5: she transcended. So the very fact of their marriage and
Speaker 5: relationship and how they both navigated in a hostile society,
Speaker 5: and the lessons they taught about that, and even the
Speaker 5: personal decisions and their personal bravery in refusing to accept
Speaker 5: the boundaries of a race and sexist society was its
Speaker 5: own modeling. But they part of that modeling was that
Speaker 5: they left it. My father left organic chemistry and a
Speaker 5: promising career as a professor to be one hundred percent
Speaker 5: full time in the civil rights movement and at the
Speaker 5: forefront of the economic justice movement, and my mother as
Speaker 5: very much a partner, very much the one who was
Speaker 5: more radical when they first met in terms of her activism,
Speaker 5: but also the one who became the wage earner so
Speaker 5: that he could be an activist. All of those things
Speaker 5: were personal decisions that modeled that you do what your
Speaker 5: passion and your heart tells you to do, and you
Speaker 5: find a way, but that you also always leave with
Speaker 5: love and with a strong sense of living your principles.
Speaker 5: And they did it with joy. You know. I think
Speaker 5: about that a lot as we're in this moment and
Speaker 5: watching Kamala Harris be joyful, a joyful warrior. But that
Speaker 5: was my parents. They were joyful they were silly, they
Speaker 5: were funny, and you know from your own family history
Speaker 5: how dangerous the work can be, and how this society
Speaker 5: has always skirted on the edges of authoritarianism because that's
Speaker 5: what racism and sexism produces. And so the fact that
Speaker 5: we have family members who have lived that dangerous experience
Speaker 5: and yet, you know, learning just compassion and joy and
Speaker 5: hope in that fight, in that struggle in difficult times
Speaker 5: was a big, big, big part of what I learned
Speaker 5: from my parents.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about the sort of connection between the
Speaker 1: Jim Crow South and the way in which democracy was
Speaker 1: really taken away from a group of people and what
Speaker 1: Trump and Trumpet are trying to do more generally.
Speaker 2: Right, there's a connection there.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I really
Speaker 5: look at this time we're in right now with the
Speaker 5: outright now, it's no longer dog whistle racism, you know,
Speaker 5: the racism that Southern strategy where it's like coming out
Speaker 5: of the Jim Crow South and the success of the
Speaker 5: civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties and sixties, which
Speaker 5: came with blood, sweat, tears, life loss and danger, beatings
Speaker 5: all the things, and my father and mother working very
Speaker 5: hard to show that the North was not better. Black
Speaker 5: folks got beat downs by the police. Is Syracuse, New York,
Speaker 5: black housing was being torn down. There was no replacement
Speaker 5: for that housing. They were fighting school segregation, they were
Speaker 5: fighting for a housing opportunity, they were fighting police brutality
Speaker 5: in the North in Syracuse, New York, in a college town.
Speaker 5: They even had to fight to buy their house because
Speaker 5: my father was black. Of course, yeah, and there's a
Speaker 5: great story there about how my father did that joyfully
Speaker 5: and did get his house. But I think the point
Speaker 5: is the connection to showing that racism in this country
Speaker 5: is throughout this country and intentional, but having won that
Speaker 5: getting to a point in this country where it wasn't okay,
Speaker 5: racism was still there. Sexism is still there, but it
Speaker 5: wasn't okay to be out front and out loud and
Speaker 5: explicit about it. And you know, the era we've returned
Speaker 5: to and what Trump is them because it's not only
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, right, it's the wave he rode, but those
Speaker 5: roiling waters were there and as far too many Americans
Speaker 5: will want to jump into that water and create those waves.
Speaker 5: Are hate groups, our extremism are telling people that their
Speaker 5: problems are people of color of this what we just
Speaker 5: saw in this last debate round, which was not only
Speaker 5: the most crazy and offensive lies about Haitian people eating
Speaker 5: dogs for God's sake, but the fact that those sane
Speaker 5: people who had been in these community for a long
Speaker 5: period of time are now getting death threats, are getting
Speaker 5: rape threats because of this disinformation. What this has unleashed
Speaker 5: is the permission to suggest that there is nothing wrong
Speaker 5: with hate, and that there is nothing wrong with the
Speaker 5: violent expression and threatening nature of hate, and that there's
Speaker 5: nothing wrong and that you can claim the mantle of
Speaker 5: somehow defending this country by tearing it apart and using
Speaker 5: race and using gender and tapping all the hate and
Speaker 5: misogyny of that. To do it is very much a
Speaker 5: demonstration that this is a marathon and a relay race.
Speaker 5: You know, that democracy is no promise. And my parents
Speaker 5: used to debate this, like, what's the endgame is it?
Speaker 5: Can we ever hope to get to the endgame? You know?
Speaker 5: And at the end of the day, my mother's lesson
Speaker 5: was a powerful one that has really kept me motivated
Speaker 5: in this really dark time we're in, and it's a
Speaker 5: time that will only get darker. Unless we get more activists,
Speaker 5: and that's also what I learned from them, and not
Speaker 5: shirk away from the dangers of this time and recognize
Speaker 5: that the dangers are real, but that the reality is
Speaker 5: we've always been facing this down as a country, and
Speaker 5: the way we have made progress is that we have
Speaker 5: faced it down and that people did do it with compassion.
Speaker 5: They did it with love, they did it with principle,
Speaker 5: they did it with joy, and they did it by
Speaker 5: creating coalition. And my mother used to say, you know,
Speaker 5: she she would say she was not optimistic that this
Speaker 5: would we would ever be done with this, but she
Speaker 5: was absolutely committed to the fight and that the fight
Speaker 5: was the point. And I just think we have to
Speaker 5: hold on to that rather than saying, well, we won't
Speaker 5: fight unless we know we're not that everyone says this,
Speaker 5: but we won't fight unless we know we're gonna win. No,
Speaker 5: we all fight because that's how we win. And we
Speaker 5: don't know how long it's Goi'll take, but guess what,
Speaker 5: every generation's got to pay a forward. And that's really
Speaker 5: what my parents taught me, and that's what their experiences
Speaker 5: taught me, and I draw strengths from that in these times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that lie and then the fact that
Speaker 1: they won't admit that it's a lie.
Speaker 2: Ye together, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean I was thinking about my grandfather and the
Speaker 1: Peak skill riot. Yeah, and when we were talking about
Speaker 1: the racism that absolutely occupied the North. And obviously from
Speaker 1: watching that insane debate, we know that racism is really everywhere.
Speaker 1: And I think what you said is really important. That
Speaker 1: it's maybe not the same way that it was in
Speaker 1: certain ways, but the blatantness of it is obviously. You know,
Speaker 1: we will never stop fighting this kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: I wonder how much of the last gasps of a
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller group of people who are just trying
Speaker 1: desperately to hold on to their privilege.
Speaker 5: I think of this in a couple of different ways.
Speaker 5: I mean one and to your point, Mollie, the majority
Speaker 5: of this country thinks this is offensive and appalling. Right,
Speaker 5: there's no question about that. I actually have a pillow
Speaker 5: behind me. I'm sitting in my office at the Leadership
Speaker 5: Conference on Civil and Human Rights. You know, the nation's
Speaker 5: oldest and largest civil rights coalition. I mean, we got
Speaker 5: over to one hundred national organizations. They look like America,
Speaker 5: that's you know, almost every racial group, gender, that's LGBTQ,
Speaker 5: that's religious, faith based, many different faiths, geographically diverse. We've
Speaker 5: got unions, we've got service providers, we own everybody. But
Speaker 5: it really is and all of the polling, we know
Speaker 5: this from all the research. A majority of this country
Speaker 5: wants well, not just a stronger democracy, you know, believes
Speaker 5: that everyone should have opportunity, believes that everyone deserves a
Speaker 5: fair chance, believes that hat should not divide us, believes
Speaker 5: diversity is important, believes we should have voting rights, all
Speaker 5: the things. But you know we are the majority. Is
Speaker 5: the pillow I had in my office and it's our
Speaker 5: mantra here. But I think the issue is, and this
Speaker 5: is how countries fall into authoritarianism, is that if the
Speaker 5: minority can take over the leavers of democratic institutions, which
Speaker 5: is exactly what we're seeing. That's what Project twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five out of the Heritage Foundation is all about continuing.
Speaker 5: But it's what Donald Trump did as a president and
Speaker 5: trying to control the Department of Justice, for example. But
Speaker 5: it's also what we're seeing in states in the twenty
Speaker 5: six states that have put bans on our bodies or
Speaker 5: are fighting about whether we can learn history, actual factual
Speaker 5: history in our schools about racism, or about immigration or
Speaker 5: about you know, gender, that we're seeing books being banned
Speaker 5: by a minority of people. It's always a minority. But
Speaker 5: if you read the rules, if you and if we
Speaker 5: allow the rules to be rigged, whether it's voting, whether
Speaker 5: it's fear mongering, and sometimes this happens in blue places too.
Speaker 5: It's not just a partisan issue. I mean, New York
Speaker 5: City is putting police officers in civilian departments right now.
Speaker 5: I mean, all of these things are the kinds of
Speaker 5: things we have to say. We have to recognize that
Speaker 5: we got to fight to protect all our democratic institutions,
Speaker 5: and that includes our government and our ability to have
Speaker 5: a say and who leads us. That means that we
Speaker 5: have to be involved locally, It means we have to
Speaker 5: be involved at state level. It means we have to
Speaker 5: be involved at federal level. And we have to understand
Speaker 5: that that is a long term fight because they've done
Speaker 5: a lot of work right now, that minority of extremist people,
Speaker 5: and to your point about the history, they haven't stopped
Speaker 5: since the Civil War. This is an ongoing ideological front
Speaker 5: of extremism. Of white ethno nationalism at its core, that
Speaker 5: it has been and has had a long term project
Speaker 5: of doing things like ensuring its ideology is represented on
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court, ensuring that it has control of state
Speaker 5: houses because it makes it harder for people to vote
Speaker 5: because it's not the majority. So I agree with you
Speaker 5: about the majority, but it's only a last gasp if
Speaker 5: we are able to focus our strategic attention as a
Speaker 5: coalition of the willing, which is the majority, to say
Speaker 5: we're going to take back our institutions. We aren't going
Speaker 5: to allow where we don't have perfect agreement, because we don't,
Speaker 5: but but where we can say we agree that everybody
Speaker 5: should have a right to vote. We agree that it's
Speaker 5: a big lie that our elections are not free and fair.
Speaker 5: We agree that there has to be some protections against racism.
Speaker 5: There has to be robust civil rights laws. We have
Speaker 5: to have a free press. We have to have journalism
Speaker 5: do better. We have to have more mechanisms for fact sharing,
Speaker 5: and social media companies got to get in line. We
Speaker 5: got to regulate artificial intelligence because it's spreading disinformation. You know,
Speaker 5: all of these things are about democracy and democratic institutions
Speaker 5: that don't serve in ideology, but that do serve the
Speaker 5: democratic promise of the people deciding and figuring out how
Speaker 5: to make this a more perfect union. And that's something
Speaker 5: that we have to fight for even though we're the majority,
Speaker 5: because they have been so effected at stealing power from us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So let me ask you, as you look
Speaker 1: back on the sort of legacy of the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement and the fight that your parents did, what do
Speaker 1: you think that our place in this is?
Speaker 5: You know, one of the things, and one of the
Speaker 5: things that motivated me to write the book was the
Speaker 5: incredible importance of compassion coupled with our fierceness.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: My parents had and the civil rights movement had a
Speaker 5: very big vision about what the country should look like.
Speaker 5: So I mean that big vision was citizenship, not in
Speaker 5: the sense of a passport, in a sense of being
Speaker 5: treated fairly and equally, but that meant things like we
Speaker 5: should have housing, we shouldn't have housing torn down and
Speaker 5: people not getting housing they can afford. In other words,
Speaker 5: the schools and school integration was not just bodies sitting
Speaker 5: next to each other.
Speaker 7: It was the.
Speaker 5: Quality of learning and the quality of relationship and citizenship
Speaker 5: that gets the developed out of that and that nobody
Speaker 5: should be hungry in this country. And this was part
Speaker 5: of why my father started organizing on welfare rights, the
Speaker 5: National Welfare Rights Organization. Like the promise of the Civil
Speaker 5: rights movement was that we were going to end poverty.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a big vision.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: The vision of the civil rights movement was that we
Speaker 5: would have peace, you know, I mean that was a
Speaker 5: big vision, that we would be a country that lived
Speaker 5: our principles and that mint all our people had everything
Speaker 5: they needed. It was a big vision, and it was
Speaker 5: a racial justice vision, but it was a big vision
Speaker 5: for everyone. But there was a compassion in that that
Speaker 5: was constantly expressed in how the protest, how the activism happened.
Speaker 5: That's why nonviolence was such a critical part. That's why,
Speaker 5: I mean much of the civil rights movement came out
Speaker 5: of the faith community.
Speaker 7: It's not about.
Speaker 5: Being religious per se, but it was the principle of
Speaker 5: that beloved community. But it was also very strategic, meaning
Speaker 5: it understood that it had to help build the tent
Speaker 5: and the will of the American public that didn't understand
Speaker 5: that wasn't experiencing racism. You know, my father, you know,
Speaker 5: very famously got a Goldwater Republican, a guy named Jaqui
Speaker 5: who actually thought that, you know, the Rockefellers were not
Speaker 5: conservative enough for New York State. Wow, and was a
Speaker 5: very Goldwater Republican. I mean, you can't think of farther
Speaker 5: to the right in those times, right in those politics
Speaker 5: of that era. And my father convinced him, figured out
Speaker 5: how to convince him by helping him feel the experience
Speaker 5: of black people to support school integration. So there's a
Speaker 5: story in the book about that. But if you think
Speaker 5: about and then all the strategies both of protests but
Speaker 5: also persuasion and connection, that was part of the strategy.
Speaker 5: I think it is critically important that we understand how
Speaker 5: that contributed to the success of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 5: It was radical, It was a big, radical vision for
Speaker 5: the country. It had the militancy of protests, it didn't
Speaker 5: shy away from it, but it expressed itself in a
Speaker 5: compassionate and human and connecting way. And I just think
Speaker 5: that that lesson, those lessons learned is something that we
Speaker 5: have to make sure we are continuing to utilize because
Speaker 5: when we do, we are the majority and we win,
Speaker 5: and because we.
Speaker 2: Can so true.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Maya, Thank you so much, Molly.
Speaker 5: I am so looking forward to speaking with you at
Speaker 5: our event at the Strand on September twenty third at
Speaker 5: seven pm.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
Speaker 1: a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have just released the final episode of this five
Speaker 1: episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you
Speaker 1: are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: you can hit play and put your phone in the
Speaker 1: lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
Speaker 1: All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 2: We need to educate.
Speaker 1: Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
Speaker 1: to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 1: Maya Wiley is the CEO of the Leadership Conference. Doctor
Speaker 1: Nikorlai Corte is the author of Kamala, The Motherland and Me.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Doctor Corte.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: You're an academic really.
Speaker 1: But you went on this trip that was not your beat,
Speaker 1: and tell us about this trip, and then you wrote
Speaker 1: a book about it.
Speaker 6: Stuart stortaet wiving of myself as a scholar practitioner, and
Speaker 6: I spent a number of years doing advocacy on public
Speaker 6: affairs work before I returned to my first love of journalism.
Speaker 6: And so I cover national affairs. I cover campaigns and elections,
Speaker 6: and so that is my typical beat. But you're right,
Speaker 6: this was a very unusual assignment. I'd never taken on
Speaker 6: an international assignment, but I couldn't resist this dream assignment
Speaker 6: to cover Vice President Harris's voyage to Africa. It was
Speaker 6: a trip written in the stars. You might know that
Speaker 6: my father was born and raised in Ghana. My mother
Speaker 6: is Black American. They met at an HBCU in Texas
Speaker 6: and had me many years later in California, And so
Speaker 6: you can already see the parallels between my story and
Speaker 6: Vice President Harrison's story. Being the daughter of immigrants, this
Speaker 6: was such an incredible opportunity at a time where there's
Speaker 6: so many divisive efforts to erase black history and to
Speaker 6: ban books. And so although I didn't think I was
Speaker 6: going to write a book about this. I knew that
Speaker 6: I needed to capture this story on the page.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so important, and also there were so many similarities here.
Speaker 1: But this Africa trip was a big trip. It was
Speaker 1: a long number of days, You went to a bunch
Speaker 1: of different countries. Can you explain to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about why the Vice president decided to do this
Speaker 1: trip and sort of what was the larger diplomatic effort.
Speaker 6: This trip was over a year in the making. The
Speaker 6: Vice President Haser team with planning a trip to Africa
Speaker 6: that wouldn't be your typical public health trip or your
Speaker 6: typical humanitarian aid trip, but a trip that allowed her
Speaker 6: to turn the page on how we view Africa, opportunities
Speaker 6: for investment, opportunities to support entrepreneurship. Every stop on the trip,
Speaker 6: Vice President here has reminded us, but by twenty fifty
Speaker 6: one and four people on the planet will live in Africa,
Speaker 6: and right now the average age on the constant is
Speaker 6: nineteen years old, and so the continent really is oh
Speaker 6: a potential full of possibilities when we think about the
Speaker 6: global economy and supercharging the future of this economy. But
Speaker 6: while on the trip, the Vice President took on issues
Speaker 6: related to national security issues related to reorganizing the debt
Speaker 6: of our allies on the continent. At one leg of
Speaker 6: the trip, she was joined by Emmy Award winning actress
Speaker 6: Shiry Lee Ralf and actor Didris Elba to shine a
Speaker 6: light on some of the opportunities there with the creative economy,
Speaker 6: you know, and to invest in some of the infrastructure
Speaker 6: that would allow people to you know, create movies and
Speaker 6: TV shows and other content on the continent. And she
Speaker 6: didn't back away from the opportunity to shine a light
Speaker 6: on some of the climate resilience work that's happening right
Speaker 6: there on the continent. We visited a farm, Panuka Farm
Speaker 6: in Zambia, where they're using a high power technology to
Speaker 6: better manage their crops and their harvest and to maximize
Speaker 6: the yield there. And so I had even some of
Speaker 6: my assumptions about Africa, you know, as a Ghanaian American,
Speaker 6: some of my assumptions about Africa were disrupted on this trip.
Speaker 6: And I thought, what a shame if more of our
Speaker 6: fellow Americans didn't know the real story here, didn't know
Speaker 6: how competent, capable and cutting edge our Vice president is
Speaker 6: on the world stage. And now well received.
Speaker 1: She was, Yeah, we're going to go back and talk
Speaker 1: about this fucking election that will be the end of
Speaker 1: all of us a lot of times, a lot of
Speaker 1: the or at least I've read these focus groups with
Speaker 1: undecided voters and they will say even women voters, which
Speaker 1: to me, as the daughter of of a second wave feminist,
Speaker 1: it just I kind of begin to comprehend how stupid
Speaker 1: it is. But it is something that people do say,
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about it, even though it's stupid.
Speaker 1: Is that they're worried about her on the world stage
Speaker 1: because she's a woman. It's sexist, it's bullshit. But talk
Speaker 1: to us about what you saw because you observed her
Speaker 1: on the world stage.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I saw her being very well received
Speaker 6: by men and women on the world stage. I saw
Speaker 6: her use her bully pulpit to shine a light on
Speaker 6: the fact that two thirds of folks who have access
Speaker 6: to the internet on the continent of Africa are men,
Speaker 6: not women, so much that she has championed an initiative
Speaker 6: around digital inclusion. You know, this is a vice president
Speaker 6: that isn't shy about working the phone and reaching out
Speaker 6: to corporate partners to figure out what it is that
Speaker 6: they can do to do more to provide infrastructure and
Speaker 6: to address a critical need that's leaving out a lot
Speaker 6: of women from participating in the economy across the continent.
Speaker 6: That's no different from how Vice President Harris has governed
Speaker 6: here in the United States, calling attention to the issues
Speaker 6: that impact the women that make up more than half
Speaker 6: of the electorate here. Right. I mean, she's not just
Speaker 6: out there talking of women's reproductive rights and unapologetically, but
Speaker 6: she's out there talking about economic issues that impact women,
Speaker 6: that impact families.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: That twenty five thousand dollars first time home buyer credit,
Speaker 6: that six thousand dollars tax credit for new families, that
Speaker 6: thirty five or thirty nine hundred dollars child tax credit.
Speaker 6: You know, that makes a difference in the lives of
Speaker 6: families across this country. But it makes a big difference
Speaker 6: in the lives of women who are oftentimes I'M not
Speaker 6: able to fully participate in this economy because they don't
Speaker 6: have the capital to do so. And so you're seeing
Speaker 6: Vice President Harris on the world stage use her political
Speaker 6: capital to reinvest in women, to reinvest in people across Africa.
Speaker 6: It was very, very well received, and I might add, Molly,
Speaker 6: you know, I remember, on a lighter note, when we
Speaker 6: were in Tanzania, and it's important that your audience knows
Speaker 6: that Tanzania had their first black woman vice president that
Speaker 6: became the first black woman president of the.
Speaker 7: Country, and President Hassan.
Speaker 6: During a joint press conference, at one point, she turns
Speaker 6: to Vice President Harris and she addresses her as my
Speaker 6: dear sister.
Speaker 7: Right, And something as small but meaningful as that is
Speaker 7: a sign that the world is open.
Speaker 6: The world is open to embracing a woman like Vice
Speaker 6: President Harris to become the next leader of the free world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, really good point.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed her, but obviously I've never taken a trip
Speaker 1: with her.
Speaker 2: What did you feel that she was like? I mean,
Speaker 2: just tell.
Speaker 1: Us what your sort of impressions of traveling with her
Speaker 1: work life.
Speaker 6: I found her to be very focused, very disciplined, joyful, warrior.
Speaker 6: I think those are two words to describe Vice President Harris.
Speaker 6: She is very well aware of where she stands in history,
Speaker 6: and she is doing her very best to meet the moment,
Speaker 6: and to do so in a way that is me eatingful,
Speaker 6: to do so in a way that's consequential. This is
Speaker 6: someone who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area
Speaker 6: like me, a part of the country, a part of
Speaker 6: the world steeped in the history of the women's liberation
Speaker 6: movement and the anti war movement, and the Black panther
Speaker 6: movement and the gay rights movement, and so it's no
Speaker 6: surprise how she shows up on the world stage. She
Speaker 6: shows up with an appreciation, with a respect, with a
Speaker 6: reverence for that kind of movement building.
Speaker 7: And I think, you know.
Speaker 6: She sees herself as an extension of all of those things, right,
Speaker 6: and I think people feel that when they are engaged
Speaker 6: with her more directly. It's very interesting when you see
Speaker 6: people engage with her in person versus how that gets
Speaker 6: reported on or you know, how that gets packaged for
Speaker 6: mass media consumption. I found that there's a bit of
Speaker 6: a gap in the in person experience versus you know,
Speaker 6: the second or third person experience and Molly, That's a
Speaker 6: part of the why I thought it was so important
Speaker 6: to write the book Kamal of the Motherland and Me,
Speaker 6: so that folks could re examine some of their assumptions
Speaker 6: about mad and Vice President, about the continent of Africa
Speaker 6: and ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. So there
Speaker 1: has been really horrible, stupid, fucked up lie and it's
Speaker 1: also racist lie about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating dogs.
Speaker 1: There is nothing to this. It is disgusting. We have
Speaker 1: seen a lot of really good reporting about the incredible
Speaker 1: way that Haitian immigrants are serving the population, that are
Speaker 1: working hard in factories and have been brought to Ohio
Speaker 1: and are actually doing incredible stuff. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: what this lie is about.
Speaker 6: Really, I think this lie is a continuation of the
Speaker 6: grievance politics that the former president and the Republican Party
Speaker 6: are so invested in. You know, I was in the
Speaker 6: spin room following the presidential debate in Philadelphia, and you know,
Speaker 6: I was personally taken aback at how many Republicans we're
Speaker 6: willing to turn a blind eye to that. I didn't
Speaker 6: see that as weird or cringey or hingey right or
Speaker 6: beneath the office of the president of the presidency, and
Speaker 6: you know, you meet. Al Sindoor recently filed a report
Speaker 6: for NBC Nightly News that focused on the very human
Speaker 6: impact that this conspiracy theory is having on Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.
Speaker 6: And we forget these are real people, these are real families.
Speaker 6: We remember what happened when the former president was out
Speaker 6: there making our fellow Asian Americans the target of his
Speaker 6: conspiracy theories in the early days of the COVID pandemic,
Speaker 6: calling it kung flu and creating a rise and hate
Speaker 6: crimes impacting Asian Americans. And so you know, as Vice
Speaker 6: President Harris has said, it's the same tired playbook. The
Speaker 6: only difference is now the target of this aren't Haitian immigrants.
Speaker 6: It is wrong, Republicans should condemn it, and ultimately, our
Speaker 6: fellow Americans have an opportunity to weigh in at the
Speaker 6: ballot box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: If you are a Haitian immigrant in Ohio, or if
Speaker 1: you love Haitian immigrants or in Ohio, or if you
Speaker 1: know a Haitian immigrant in Ohio, you should fucking register
Speaker 1: to vote. I'm obviously a Jewish immigrant, several generations removed
Speaker 1: from my immigrant experience. But again it's the same idea
Speaker 1: that they are just trying to other right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's racism, but it's also othering. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the electorate is hearing this racism for what it is
Speaker 1: and getting galvanized by it.
Speaker 6: There's a critical mass of people that hear it. They
Speaker 6: hear the dog whistle, they see the racism, they see
Speaker 6: the sexism, they see the massage noir right, and I
Speaker 6: think they have decided that this race shouldn't need to
Speaker 6: be close, right, and they have made their decisions. But
Speaker 6: there are somehow, these undecided voters out there there, you know,
Speaker 6: that are somehow waiting for the former president to suddenly
Speaker 6: lose the spots, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it was.
Speaker 6: Maya Angel who said, when people show you who they
Speaker 6: really are, believe them the first time. And you know,
Speaker 6: it's hard to believe that there are still enough of
Speaker 6: our fellow Americans that are unwilling to believe what they
Speaker 6: have seen on repeat again and again and again and again. Meanwhile,
Speaker 6: every hurdle that's been put in front of Vice President Harris,
Speaker 6: she seemed to clear that hurdle. You know, there were
Speaker 6: people that weren't so sure if she could raise the money. Well,
Speaker 6: she's raised more money than any candidate running for president
Speaker 6: in the history of this country. You know, there are
Speaker 6: people that weren't so sure. You know, is she going
Speaker 6: to be able to assemble a unity coalition, right, Uh,
Speaker 6: the Obama coalition.
Speaker 7: Well, she's done even more than that. We're seeing you know, Democrats, Independents, Republicans.
Speaker 7: I mean, who would have.
Speaker 6: Ever thought Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, you know, John McCain's kid,
Speaker 6: to over two hundred Republicans that work for Bush and
Speaker 6: for Rama and more lining up behind Vice President Harris. Right,
Speaker 6: and oh, well, what about policy? She needs to make
Speaker 6: her policy clear. If you are not more clear after
Speaker 6: this week's presidential debate, you know about what it is
Speaker 6: that Vice President Harris is intending to do for our
Speaker 6: fellow Americans as a matter of economic policy, right, you
Speaker 6: know what her foreign policy priorities would be, and why
Speaker 6: you know? Then I would say, replay the tape. Right,
Speaker 6: So every hurdle being put in front of her, she's
Speaker 6: clearing that hurdle, you know. Yet and still there's still
Speaker 6: some people that are wringing their hands in I don't know, right,
Speaker 6: And so our job is to turn up the volume
Speaker 6: and shine a light on the truth. Right. And that's
Speaker 6: the part of why I wrote this book, and so
Speaker 6: people could get a third party view, you know, of
Speaker 6: who she is when she's not in country. Who she
Speaker 6: is when she's on the world stage. You know who
Speaker 6: she is when she is representing the values of this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and really important.
Speaker 1: What do you think the best way to push back
Speaker 1: against this racism is?
Speaker 6: I think the best way to push back against the
Speaker 6: racism and the sexism is to register to vote. Is
Speaker 6: to text ten friends and make sure that they're registered.
Speaker 6: You can go to I will vote dot com get
Speaker 6: all the information that you need, no matter where you live.
Speaker 6: But my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, Eddie May Thomas, Missi,
Speaker 6: rests in peace. One of the things she taught me
Speaker 6: that I hold on to and I will offer to
Speaker 6: you and your listeners is that we got to pray
Speaker 6: with our hands and pray with our feet. Pray with
Speaker 6: our hands and pray with our feet. And praying with
Speaker 6: our hands also means using our voice and not taking
Speaker 6: our vote for granted. Praying with our feet means doing
Speaker 6: everything we can to spread the truth while others decide
Speaker 6: to spread lives. We've got to spread the truth. We've
Speaker 6: got to correct misinformation. We know that some of us,
Speaker 6: not all of us, are the target, you know, of
Speaker 6: misinformation campaigns. That is what we can do do what
Speaker 6: you can and where you are with what you have,
Speaker 6: and I think we will feel a lot better about
Speaker 6: the future of this country after election day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Tell us what the book's called again.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Molly, and thanks to all of your listeners
Speaker 6: and followers. Please pick up Kamala the Motherland and me
Speaker 6: an opportunity and invitation really to re examine your assumptions
Speaker 6: about mad and Vice President, the continent of Africa and ourselves.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 4: Molly jog Fast, you know what you want. A debate
Speaker 4: with the dog warden of a small town in Ohio
Speaker 4: has to get involved.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that during the debate Donald Trump he said
Speaker 1: a racist smear where he said that Haitian immigrants were
Speaker 1: eating dogs.
Speaker 2: There is absolutely no truth to this. Smear is a lie.
Speaker 2: It is a big, big lie.
Speaker 1: But because it's happening in Ohio and because j Devance
Speaker 1: as an enabler, Jademan said, well, maybe it's happening, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not happening, because we've heard from constituents.
Speaker 2: There is no truth to this.
Speaker 1: The Clark County dog Warden, by the way, when you
Speaker 1: get the dog Warden involved. Things have really gone wrong.
Speaker 1: Refutes the viral pet eating allegations in Springfield, Ohio, after
Speaker 1: Donald Trump regurgitated those unfounded claims. So this is what
Speaker 1: she said, Sandy Klick. She's going to end up getting
Speaker 1: death threats because this is how this works in this
Speaker 1: new country, this new America we live in.
Speaker 2: But she says, nobody has proof of anything. It's all
Speaker 2: just a bunch of hearst and that is our moment
Speaker 2: of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.