Speaker 1: Native Lampod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with
Speaker 1: Reason Choice Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 3: Home, Everybody. This is episode counted ninety one, Just nine Shype,
Speaker 3: our one hundredth episode of Native Lampod where we give
Speaker 3: you our breakdown on all things politics and.
Speaker 4: Of course culture.
Speaker 3: We're your co hosts today, Angelouri, Andrew Gillham, and our
Speaker 3: sister friend Tiffany Cross, who is the third co host.
Speaker 3: Happens to be away, but we got an update from
Speaker 3: the ground directly from her, so you don't want to
Speaker 3: miss that. Angela, what will be talking about today, Well, we.
Speaker 1: Are talking about missing our sister Tip, but also you
Speaker 1: all won't miss her because you'll hear from her. But
Speaker 1: I am really excited. We did a mini pod yesterday
Speaker 1: on Texas redistricting. Andrew, We're going to get into how
Speaker 1: this is in all the states and we might have
Speaker 1: missed a major key alert in North Carolina in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 3: Well, along with those topics, we're going to be able
Speaker 3: to get into it with our first guest, Meddi Hassan,
Speaker 3: who some of you may know from a viral video
Speaker 3: going around, and ju believe where he debated a room
Speaker 3: full of well, I'll let him describe what the room
Speaker 3: was full of coming up next to you here from
Speaker 3: the man himself, Meddi. But before we do that, we
Speaker 3: want to remind you if you like this show. In fact,
Speaker 3: if you love this show or if you like it,
Speaker 3: we want you to go ahead and please rate and review,
Speaker 3: share this episode or whatever your favorite episode may be,
Speaker 3: with your friend's family, loved ones, frenemies, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And if you don't like it, jump in the lake.
Speaker 1: That's what he was trying to say. Also, you know
Speaker 1: the other thing, Andrew, we should tell people right now
Speaker 1: is we have a survey right now. Black people like
Speaker 1: free stuff. I think there's some other people in the
Speaker 1: world that like free stuff too, So if you do,
Speaker 1: you might want to fill out this survey. We launched
Speaker 1: it this past Monday, and folks are already chiming in.
Speaker 1: We got a little fifty dollars gift card for you,
Speaker 1: and also a signed poster of us because somebody wants that.
Speaker 1: Somebody may want it, Andrew, but I don't need a sign.
Speaker 3: Anytime, but there may be some out there who might
Speaker 3: appreciate it. Maybe your three year old child's loves our faces.
Speaker 5: And Davis Davis is absolutely in the building, by the way,
Speaker 5: along with gall I am managing them from upstairs.
Speaker 1: We don't detain my nephews and my niece.
Speaker 3: Please listen well to the audience, y'all stay tuned, because
Speaker 3: we've got some very great, great, great, great great show.
Speaker 3: On the other side of this, we've got Neddie Hassan
Speaker 3: who is repping real hard that shirt today, representing the
Speaker 3: network that he has found then and is now in
Speaker 3: charge of Zito. Now he's teased Angela and I that
Speaker 3: this merch that you're looking at, it is priced in
Speaker 3: pounds and so you want to compare the.
Speaker 4: Diction about it if you're in the UK. Thanks guys
Speaker 4: for having me, and thanks for the plug. But it
Speaker 4: isn't dollars the tail dot com shop dot detail dot com.
Speaker 4: I'm a shameless small businessman.
Speaker 1: Now we should be jos, but I have to I
Speaker 1: have to do this. I did tell him before we
Speaker 1: got on, y'all that it's more expensive because we say merch. Maddie,
Speaker 1: what do you say.
Speaker 5: I say, merch much that's much more priceing.
Speaker 4: I've been in ten years. I've been a citizen for
Speaker 4: five years. I'm proud to still keep my accent speaking.
Speaker 1: Of you being a citizen. We sorry you tearing it
Speaker 1: up on Jubilee, and we actually want to go right
Speaker 1: to that clip. Let's watch.
Speaker 4: Do you believe the wages? I'm just wondering how naive
Speaker 4: you are. You believe that the one percent will.
Speaker 6: Raise wages in the federal wage They will be forced
Speaker 6: to when you increase labour's relationship to capital. Okay, and
Speaker 6: you give labor more bargaining power because you're understanding economics.
Speaker 4: Because you explain I'm wrong, I'm telling you how you're wrong,
Speaker 4: because you're ignoring the fact that when immigrants come into
Speaker 4: an area, they spend money, they create jobs, they spend
Speaker 4: that's a good thing. Also, because you don't like us
Speaker 4: a foreign aid, so this is the point they created
Speaker 4: into this country. So far, everyone of my assumptions about
Speaker 4: you as being correct, But listen to me. I am
Speaker 4: an immigrant. I'm speaking for us experience. I don't even
Speaker 4: like I should get the hell out.
Speaker 1: Yes, why I don't watch here?
Speaker 6: Why because you come here and say all this bullshit
Speaker 6: about how Americans are lazy, You push your left Americans.
Speaker 3: Oh my lord, how do you mentallysty How do you
Speaker 3: mentally prepare for that room? I mean I was, I
Speaker 3: was frustrated off jump, but I stuck in there, you know,
Speaker 3: giving my moral support to you. But how do you
Speaker 3: mentally prepare yourself for such ignorance on such a scale
Speaker 3: where everywhere you turn, literally you're confronted by the same level,
Speaker 3: if not a greater level of ignorance.
Speaker 4: I mean, the show is called Surrounded, and you are
Speaker 4: literally surrounded by twenty of them, and actually the worst ones.
Speaker 4: As I discovered in hindsight, the most openly white supremacist
Speaker 4: of the bunge were actually behind me, so I didn't
Speaker 4: see them for a lot of the taping. So when
Speaker 4: I watched it back on YouTube, you can see them
Speaker 4: kind of pouting and preening and making faces and gestures.
Speaker 4: They were actually behind me, so I missed a lot
Speaker 4: of their facial expressions as I was winding them up.
Speaker 4: How do you prepare for that? A lot of people
Speaker 4: have told me that they haven't been able to watch
Speaker 4: all our forty minutes. They watch it in like portions
Speaker 4: because he gets their blood pressure up. And I was like,
Speaker 4: how do you think I felt I was sitting there
Speaker 4: for the whole time. We got one toilet break in
Speaker 4: the middle, in which I was able to go, what
Speaker 4: the fuck is happening here? Yeah, and then go back
Speaker 4: into the lion's den. It was this very strange experience.
Speaker 4: I knew it was going to be weird, it was
Speaker 4: going to be different to anything I'd done, But it's
Speaker 4: like nothing I've ever done in my life, personally or professionally.
Speaker 4: To be in that room, in that studio in LA
Speaker 4: with twenty of them, and one after another, they're each
Speaker 4: crazier than the next. And I've talked about jubilee. It's
Speaker 4: been out now for a couple of weeks. But what's
Speaker 4: interesting is you guys are the first people I'm talking
Speaker 4: to you since I saw the latest jubilee a couple
Speaker 4: of days back. Chenk Wiger of the Young Turks, he
Speaker 4: just did a jubilee that just came out a couple
Speaker 4: of days ago on one populist versus twenty Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 4: And I noticed again that he has some normal people
Speaker 4: in there. And people keep asking you, why did you
Speaker 4: go sit down with fascists? I didn't know that it
Speaker 4: all be fascist. I knew there'd be a couple of crazies.
Speaker 4: Sam Cedar from Majority reported earlier this year, good friend
Speaker 4: of mine, he said you should do it, and I
Speaker 4: did it, and he had a couple of nutjobs. But
Speaker 4: some normal people. I seem to be the only person
Speaker 4: who wanted Jubilee, and they were all that jobs.
Speaker 3: They were all there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I watched it and I was thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, they weren't ready for that DEI and
Speaker 1: for d by d Y, I mean DA's education and intelligence,
Speaker 1: like they were not ready for all of what you
Speaker 1: brought to them. But Meddi, the thing that I am
Speaker 1: concerned about is what I heard you say after And
Speaker 1: I think many of us are roaming this country right
Speaker 1: now with some of that same anxiety. Talk about how
Speaker 1: you felt when you left that set.
Speaker 4: Not safe, deeply depressed, shocked. I and a producer at
Speaker 4: a security guard got the hell out of Dodge people saying, oh,
Speaker 4: did you chat to them afterwards?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 4: Of course I didn't chat to them afterwards. There was
Speaker 4: one guy as he was leaving, one of them lean over.
Speaker 4: They were leaving the set, and then I left separate
Speaker 4: door and he leant over and he whispered I wouldn't
Speaker 4: deport you, and I was like, thanks, okay, that's that's
Speaker 4: very charitable of you. No, I got a hell out
Speaker 4: of there. And in fact, this was taped the same
Speaker 4: day that Trump bombed Durran, so I didn't have time
Speaker 4: to collect my thoughts. I had a producer telling me,
Speaker 4: while you've been taping this, Trump as bombed Duran. So
Speaker 4: we just kind of spent Saturday night covering that. So
Speaker 4: I really it was later on when I went out
Speaker 4: to dinner with some family and friends in La where
Speaker 4: I was just telling them what happened, that it really
Speaker 4: was hitting me. These people were insane. What did I
Speaker 4: just go through? And now I've watched it back a
Speaker 4: couple of times, and the point I have to make,
Speaker 4: and this is going to sound I don't I don't
Speaker 4: really care if it sounds slow flaky, but it's kind
Speaker 4: of as a journalist and a debate, and Andrew, You're very
Speaker 4: kind about you know what I brought to the debate.
Speaker 4: I enjoy doing debates. I don't have many skills in life.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty good at arguing.
Speaker 3: I made it that I have.
Speaker 4: Very few skills in life, so I'm happy to brag
Speaker 4: about the one that I clearly do have. And it
Speaker 4: doesn't always work in my favor, I ask my wife,
Speaker 4: But I enjoy doing it. And I agreed to do
Speaker 4: the debate because I believe in debates, and I've written
Speaker 4: a book about debating and all of that, and that's great.
Speaker 4: And I watch it back and say, hey, there's a
Speaker 4: viral clip of me owning some guy. Great, but put
Speaker 4: that all to one side. Take off the journalist hat,
Speaker 4: the debater, hat I am a brown Muslim immigrant in
Speaker 4: the United States. Nobody should have to sit through an
Speaker 4: hour forty minutes of twenty people seventeen I think of
Speaker 4: them white saying get out of our country. You're not
Speaker 4: a real American, you can't be an American, you hate
Speaker 4: our country. Were fascists, et cetera, et cetera. That is
Speaker 4: that is I want to say unacceptable, but it's not unacceptable.
Speaker 4: Clearly it is acceptable in America today. And why I
Speaker 4: still think there is value to having done it. And
Speaker 4: I'm on the fence of, you know, the good and
Speaker 4: bad of having done it. The one clear benefit of
Speaker 4: doing it is it's kind of it's really is eyes
Speaker 4: wide open moment for a lot of liberals a lot
Speaker 4: of white liberals who've been in denial. I spent much
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty four people telling me, Oh, it won't.
Speaker 7: Be that bad.
Speaker 4: Oh, the Trump people aren't that bad. Angelie. You and
Speaker 4: I have had these discussions before. In the past, Tiffany
Speaker 4: and I have had many discussions on this, like the
Speaker 4: whole number twenty sixteen. Is it economic anxiety or is
Speaker 4: it racial resentment? It's like, go watch Jubilee. It's racial
Speaker 4: resentment about the economy. They don't give a shit about
Speaker 4: the constitution, they don't give a shit about democracy. All
Speaker 4: they wanted to talk about was immigration and race. That's all.
Speaker 4: They didn't care about anything else I brought to the party.
Speaker 4: That was it. And you know, for me, that's the
Speaker 4: kind of case closed.
Speaker 3: Really, you know, I want to I wonder how much
Speaker 3: of you thinks that this was the rights sentiment on
Speaker 3: steroids versus like, this is what you will encounter when
Speaker 3: you encounter Donald Trump voters in today's day and age.
Speaker 4: I mean, look, I'm not going to say all Donald
Speaker 4: Trump voters are like the people in that room. Clearly not.
Speaker 4: I have people in my family who Donald Trump voters. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: but the wait.
Speaker 1: A minute, we can't blow pass that one issue, but
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: I want one angelo, one in three, one in four Muslims,
Speaker 4: whether it depending on which polls you believe, voted for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. It's very scary. There are people in the
Speaker 4: Muslim community who I know well, who are good people,
Speaker 4: and they'll be like, oh, yeah, vote of Trump. What
Speaker 4: that's just like just I know there's a smaller proportion
Speaker 4: of the black community, but in the Muslim brown not
Speaker 4: the Black Muslim community, in the Brown Muslim community, the
Speaker 4: Pakistani Indian community and Arab American community. In a place
Speaker 4: like Dearborn, Michigan, a lot of people, unfortunately bought the
Speaker 4: bullshit about Trump being anti war and Trump being better
Speaker 4: for the economy and voted for Trump. So I'm not
Speaker 4: of the position every Trump voter is a racist. I
Speaker 4: am of the position that every Trump voter is fine
Speaker 4: with his racism. But the people in that room, I
Speaker 4: think what's scary. Andrew answer your question is they A
Speaker 4: lot of them turned out to be kind of influencers online.
Speaker 4: They weren't just ordinary folks. They have like a wrap online,
Speaker 4: and I think that makes it in one sense, it
Speaker 4: makes it better. Okay, They're not just random twenty people
Speaker 4: picked up his story. On the other hand, these is
Speaker 4: scarier because these people exist online. They're doing very well online.
Speaker 4: They've got big followings. I'm sure Jubilee will have helped
Speaker 4: them grow their followings. They are winning arguments online with
Speaker 4: certain subsections of population who are going down these rabbit
Speaker 4: holes and getting red pilled. So in that sense, like
Speaker 4: the way in which white supremacy and white supremacist propaganda
Speaker 4: is so organized and so mainstream, that is very work.
Speaker 4: Like the stuff those people said to me in that room.
Speaker 4: Americans have been saying for decades you both know better
Speaker 4: than me, but they didn't say it so proudly and
Speaker 4: loudly in front of a camera. That was what was
Speaker 4: And by the way, one guy claims to have got fired,
Speaker 4: which I think is false, the guy who said he
Speaker 4: was a fascist since that taping. But my question is,
Speaker 4: so the rest of them, their employers are fired.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, oh yeah, sire, all of them.
Speaker 1: So here's here's the next thing. And and and to
Speaker 1: get out of the trauma of the Jubilee experience, which
Speaker 1: is also very oxymoronic. But you have founded this company,
Speaker 1: Zteo and I and I want to just stay here
Speaker 1: for a moment, because there's a prophet who also is
Speaker 1: a hip hop artist, Lauren Hill, who said, you may
Speaker 1: win some, but you just lost one. And so I'm
Speaker 1: wondering now, as a mainstream network that shall not be
Speaker 1: named looks as you are rapid rise and the way
Speaker 1: in which this company has filled a void that we
Speaker 1: clearly had when you set out to found this company,
Speaker 1: medi what was behind it? What were the gaps that
Speaker 1: you were seeking to feel?
Speaker 4: So end of twenty twenty four, end of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 4: excuse me, MSNBC told me they were canceling my shows.
Speaker 4: They said, you can stay on as a guest host
Speaker 4: and a political pundit analyst. I said no thanks. It
Speaker 4: was very clear to me that twenty twenty four would
Speaker 4: be one of the most important news years of our life,
Speaker 4: with a presidential election and ongoing genocide in Gaza. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to be sitting on the bench. I needed
Speaker 4: to have my voice out there. So I remember talking
Speaker 4: to my wife about this. On the day that I
Speaker 4: got the news that I'm not staying. I got to leave.
Speaker 4: Then it was an issue of getting out of my
Speaker 4: contract to be fed at MSNBC. It was all very
Speaker 4: pleasant and easy, and by January I was announcing on
Speaker 4: air on my last show that I'm leaving formerly a
Speaker 4: zeteo in April. It was pretty fast for me, there
Speaker 4: was it was a no brainer that only was I
Speaker 4: going to leave MSNBC, but I wasn't going to go
Speaker 4: to another network, another newspaper, another media outlet. Because I
Speaker 4: kind of done that, got the T shirt. And you know,
Speaker 4: I'm now forty six years old. I've worked in the
Speaker 4: media for twenty five years. I've worked in the UK,
Speaker 4: I've worked in the US. I've worked for Sky News,
Speaker 4: the BBC, Al Jazeera internationally, you know, obviously NBC in
Speaker 4: the US, and I was kind of like, now it's
Speaker 4: time to do my own thing. If not now, when
Speaker 4: And in terms of the if not me, who to
Speaker 4: get ego maniacal? I did look at the independent media
Speaker 4: marketplace and say, hold on, Tucker Coulson Network, he's doing
Speaker 4: really well. Sadly, Daily Wire is now this multi billion
Speaker 4: dollar behemoth. You know, Barry Weiss and the Free Press.
Speaker 4: What are they all have in common? How can it's
Speaker 4: all right wingers dominating our independent media space, the subscription space. Yes,
Speaker 4: Chenk and the young Turks have been you know around
Speaker 4: credit to them, blessed them on YouTube for two decades
Speaker 4: and Sam Cedar and others. But like in the subscript
Speaker 4: scription independent space, in the sub stacks of this world,
Speaker 4: how come the progressives are not that well represented? How
Speaker 4: come no one's trying to do this? Why don't I
Speaker 4: have a go? So for me, that was the driving force.
Speaker 4: And clearly I'm not you know, I'm not a natural businessman.
Speaker 4: Friends of mine's like, you can't run a bath, how
Speaker 4: are you going to run a company? But one thing
Speaker 4: I did identify was a gap in the market. Clearly
Speaker 4: there was a gap because the response has been so
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly positive. Touch lots of Wood. We're over a million
Speaker 4: subscribers on YouTube right now, less than a year and
Speaker 4: a half in, We're half a million subscribers on substack.
Speaker 4: We've won a Webby for our podcast. People are coming
Speaker 4: to us internationally and domestically because I think they are
Speaker 4: fed up with mainstream media. They are fed up with cable,
Speaker 4: they are fed up with the kind of inability to
Speaker 4: cover the rise of fascism at home and the genocide abroad.
Speaker 4: And that gap has been there, and you know, making
Speaker 4: a commercial success I'm very proud of. I want to
Speaker 4: build something where even if I said this the other
Speaker 4: day in an interview, I said, if I'm run over
Speaker 4: by a bus and then my mother rang me into
Speaker 4: never used that phrase again. Don't talk about your death.
Speaker 4: So even if I were to retire and go quietly
Speaker 4: into the night, the company would survive. I'm trying to
Speaker 4: build something beyond me. I'm not trying to build the
Speaker 4: mere the huss On network, which is why we've got
Speaker 4: great people from around the world as contributors. We've got
Speaker 4: Credit Tunberg and Naomi Klein and Bars some USAF and
Speaker 4: Owen Jones. We got really good people, and that's what
Speaker 4: we're trying to build. We need to build, like you
Speaker 4: guys with the podcast. We're trying to build in these
Speaker 4: spaces where the right have occupied these spaces and own
Speaker 4: these spaces for so long, which is why you get
Speaker 4: a kind of Jubilee crowd because that's where they're dominant online.
Speaker 3: That's incredible. Well, I just want to a countray dig
Speaker 3: one thing, which is just because you saw avoid and
Speaker 3: sort to fit in that space didn't mean you'd be
Speaker 3: a rocket success. Your rocket success because your brilliance is
Speaker 3: on Ford.
Speaker 7: This very much.
Speaker 3: I appreciate when we hear you it is usually backed
Speaker 3: up and substantiated by what we know to be facts.
Speaker 3: Now turn to what we're all living through, which is
Speaker 3: a complete disassociation with what facts are. Everybody's got their
Speaker 3: own and none of it connects to anything. We're in
Speaker 3: the throes of what may be an arms race, if
Speaker 3: you will, around redistricting, where we've got these you know,
Speaker 3: big states, bohemit of states, including the one that I
Speaker 3: live in, no threatening to do half disential. You know
Speaker 3: five point you know, five years point census redrawing of
Speaker 3: districts to basically rig the game so that Republicans have
Speaker 3: a better shot at maintaining control come this midterm election.
Speaker 3: And I'm just curious, based off of your assessment of
Speaker 3: the field, the field of states that are at play
Speaker 3: here and where, and which states are helmed by which governors,
Speaker 3: how much do you think Democrats are prepared for this
Speaker 3: arms race and are they really willing? And what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is this potential of meeting Texas where
Speaker 3: they're at, which is to say, if you redraw at
Speaker 3: this midpoint, we're going to redraw at this midpoint and
Speaker 3: We're going to just fight it out until uh one
Speaker 3: party has the greatest advantage. Where do you size this
Speaker 3: up and where do you think it's going.
Speaker 4: I think you're right to use the phrase Andrew Alms race,
Speaker 4: because it is about trying to get yourself an advantage
Speaker 4: with political weapons. I mean, this is what's so wrong
Speaker 4: with jerry mandering. Let's just make clear, in a perfect world,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't have jerry mandry. Actually it's not even a
Speaker 4: perfect world. In a normal country, you wouldn't have jerry
Speaker 4: mandrew because every other normal Western democracy does not have
Speaker 4: jerry Manderin Canada, Britain, France, Germany, jerry mandering does not exist.
Speaker 4: They have independent election commissions. Politicians don't get to pick
Speaker 4: their voters. Voters get to pick their politicians. In the
Speaker 4: United States, we have jerry mandreing on steroids now and
Speaker 4: thanks to the Supreme Court. And yeah, I'm glad that
Speaker 4: we have some democratic governors now willing to at least
Speaker 4: talk the talk. Let's see if they do it. But
Speaker 4: Gavin Newsom in California, Pritzker in Illinois, and even Hockel,
Speaker 4: who I'm not a fan of in New York came
Speaker 4: out this week, saying, you know, I'm not with one
Speaker 4: hand behind my back. Maybe that's the Mamdani effect there,
Speaker 4: I say, but I'm not going to fight with one
Speaker 4: hand behind my back. She said, Let's see if they
Speaker 4: actually do it. The problem we have, Andrew, of course,
Speaker 4: is that a lot of Democratic run states have already
Speaker 4: done the right thing and did independent registricts. So in Michigan,
Speaker 4: for example, they had a referendum, they won the referendum,
Speaker 4: they brought in independent So even if Gretchen Whitmer wanted
Speaker 4: to match Greg Abbotts cynicism and rigging, she can't. So
Speaker 4: there is a limit to what democratic states can do.
Speaker 4: I believe I'm not an expert on this, that Newsome
Speaker 4: can redistrict in California despite them having an independent body
Speaker 4: because the independent body would kick it in twenty thirty
Speaker 4: or some such technicality. But look, one hundred percent, they
Speaker 4: have to fight fire with fire. It's the only it's
Speaker 4: the only language that Republicans understand. I interviewed James Tallarico
Speaker 4: this week, the Texas state rep who's out in now
Speaker 4: in Illinois, part of the fled contingent, and he made
Speaker 4: the point as well. He said look, you've got to
Speaker 4: do it. It's got to be done otherwise they have
Speaker 4: no no block on their behavior. I just saw a
Speaker 4: Republican state lawmaker from Texas, I can't remember his name.
Speaker 4: I stow them on CNN early this morning with Brianna
Speaker 4: Kayla just bluntly. I've not seen them say it's sober
Speaker 4: three things.
Speaker 9: He just said.
Speaker 4: She said, why are you doing and he said, because
Speaker 4: we can, Yes, and you know you can? Yeah, And
Speaker 4: she goes, but should you and he goes, yes, it
Speaker 4: is good for our party. I was like, Wow, the
Speaker 4: only good thing about MAGA Republicans is they do say
Speaker 4: the quiet part out loud all the time, and that
Speaker 4: is somewhat beneficial when you're at least in terms of
Speaker 4: getting your own side to wake up to the threat
Speaker 4: because we've had far too many bipolgisanship obsessed Democrats for
Speaker 4: far too long, and that's why we're in this situation.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's I think that's such a fair point.
Speaker 1: I do think that it's important as we talk about
Speaker 1: grounding in this moment. One thing that you don't shy
Speaker 1: away from mehdie is criticizing Donald Trump. But there's one
Speaker 1: place where we see folks culpable on both sides of
Speaker 1: the aisle, and I think that is really what is
Speaker 1: the reason why you met your demise at MSNBC, the
Speaker 1: critique around the genocidey Gaza.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I just want to say rebirth, renaming demise.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm like, I'm like, I'm just like, what happened?
Speaker 6: If can?
Speaker 1: I almost check in my mic to see it because
Speaker 1: I'm mute. Sorry. So one of the reasons why the
Speaker 1: relationship with the network ended is because of your unashamed,
Speaker 1: unabashed critique of this country and its role and culpability
Speaker 1: and what's happening in God, can you talk about what
Speaker 1: people need to know just as human beings. When you
Speaker 1: sink into morality, you move politics aside, you move partisans
Speaker 1: partisanship aside, and you focus on the people, the innocent
Speaker 1: people who are being impacted with what's happening in that country.
Speaker 1: Talk about what folks really need to know at home.
Speaker 3: Good Angela.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question. And one thing that's upset
Speaker 4: me quite a bit and disappointed me is that since
Speaker 4: January the twentieth, suddenly lots of ordinary democrats and liberals
Speaker 4: and people I follow online have suddenly woken up to
Speaker 4: the genocide in Gaza. And so this is really bad
Speaker 4: because Donald Trump's president. Oh look at the bat, and
Speaker 4: Trump is doing some horrific things in the Middle East.
Speaker 4: You know, they'll point to Trump saying ethnic cleansing, They'll
Speaker 4: point to Trump signing off on two thousand pound bombs.
Speaker 4: They'll point to Trump, you know, using Palestinian as a slut,
Speaker 4: all horrific things, things that I oppose and warned about
Speaker 4: last year when people were trying to give Trump a
Speaker 4: pass on foreign policy. But what upsets me is there's
Speaker 4: no real reckoning with what Biden oversaw, with what Harris
Speaker 4: refused to disown, with what Schumer and Jeffrey signed off on.
Speaker 4: And I think that reckoning has to happen the inability.
Speaker 4: Every time you hear a Democratic Party post mortem, they
Speaker 4: refuse to mention Gaza. It's kind of the elephant in
Speaker 4: the room where they don't talk about how much it
Speaker 4: custom votes in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. They don't
Speaker 4: talk about how much it damaged their credibility as a
Speaker 4: party that claims to care about democracy, human rights, to quality.
Speaker 4: So I think that reckoning has to be had. I
Speaker 4: saw KARRMLA. Harris recently advertise her new upcoming memoir and
Speaker 4: she said, I'm going to be very candid. All right,
Speaker 4: I'll wait and see. If there's not a chapter on Gaza,
Speaker 4: then it won't be a very candid memoir. Because she
Speaker 4: went on multiple TV shows and was asked, are you
Speaker 4: going to break with Biden on anything? And she didn't
Speaker 4: say Gaza. She didn't say anything, to be honest, She
Speaker 4: went on the view and said nothing. Huge strategic error.
Speaker 4: And I actually know for a fact because I know
Speaker 4: people who were in the White House in the campaign
Speaker 4: who all know the privately Harris was better than Biden
Speaker 4: on Gaza, but publicly she wasn't. She didn't ever actually
Speaker 4: message that she would be different. And I think Democrats
Speaker 4: have to own the hundreds of thousands of children and
Speaker 4: women and men who were injured and the at least
Speaker 4: thirty to forty thousand people minimum who were killed on
Speaker 4: Joe Biden before Donald Trump even stepped foot into office,
Speaker 4: the number of deaths in Gaza. Even before Donald Trump
Speaker 4: became president, Gaza was the worst place in the world
Speaker 4: to be a child, the worst place in the world
Speaker 4: to be an aid worker, the worst place in the
Speaker 4: world to be a journalist, right, That was all before
Speaker 4: Trump became president. We have to be able to have
Speaker 4: a reckoning about that. We can argue about Wood, Biden
Speaker 4: or Harris had been better than Trump, who cares at
Speaker 4: this point. The point is right now, as you say, Angela,
Speaker 4: it was a bipartisan both sides policy to back the
Speaker 4: Netanyahu government as he carried out the worst war crimes
Speaker 4: of our time. We are seeing children being shot in
Speaker 4: the testicles, according to Dr Nick Maynard, the UK doctor,
Speaker 4: in a pattern he says as really sold as a
Speaker 4: using civilians and children just for sport, just for target practice.
Speaker 4: We are paying for that. And I'm so thought up
Speaker 4: with people coming out and say, oh, how come I'm
Speaker 4: not hearing protests about Sudan. Actually we've covered Sudan on
Speaker 4: our show, but people cynically going Sudan or some other
Speaker 4: part of the world, and it's like, well, we're not
Speaker 4: funding the militaries in those places doing the killing. My
Speaker 4: and your tax dollars helping to kill children and make
Speaker 4: Gaza's kids the most amputated cohort of children in modern
Speaker 4: world history. We paid for that. So yes, we're going
Speaker 4: to be pissed off about that forever.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw, but and I'm going
Speaker 1: to yield to you.
Speaker 7: Andrew, I.
Speaker 1: Just was nodding so hard my headphones a little ya
Speaker 1: fell off, So I'm.
Speaker 4: A sort Well.
Speaker 3: We warned y'all that you were going to hear a
Speaker 3: truth teller on this side of the conversation, and many
Speaker 3: you you don't disappoint in telling the truth. And I
Speaker 3: just wonder, as we we we apart from each other,
Speaker 3: we're the bright spot. What if there is a bright
Speaker 3: spot people can be left with on our side? Where
Speaker 3: are you seeing it and sensing it right now? And
Speaker 3: then where can people find you?
Speaker 4: The bright spot has always been the same place, even
Speaker 4: at the height of the Gaza killings last year, the
Speaker 4: same answer, which is young people, which is students, which
Speaker 4: is activists, which is organizers. You look at the generational
Speaker 4: divide in American politics, it is massive. It's not just
Speaker 4: on Gaza, but on multiple issues. The kids are all right,
Speaker 4: as they say, and that's why the Trump administration is
Speaker 4: cracking down on campus is one very simple reason, because
Speaker 4: they know that the biggest threat is from the youth vote.
Speaker 4: You look at Mamdani and how he won that New
Speaker 4: York Democratic mayoral primary. Huge surge in young people turning
Speaker 4: out to vote who had never voted before. So that's
Speaker 4: what keeps me hopeful, is that the young folks have
Speaker 4: got their heads in the right place. And as for me,
Speaker 4: where you can find me detail dot com. We z
Speaker 4: e t e o dot com. That's where we are
Speaker 4: become a subscriber to support independent journalism because mainstream media
Speaker 4: is part of the reason we are in the ship show.
Speaker 3: We're in again. Absolutely, I love it. Well, we just
Speaker 3: want to thank you, I'll say, on my part, in
Speaker 3: on Tiffany's part, who misses you?
Speaker 4: Mistif bose of us have been reborn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it, be reborn to produce even greater and
Speaker 3: your mission and work is is greater. But we want
Speaker 3: to thank you for taking some time we got to
Speaker 3: come back it up with us. Yes, indeed, thank you both.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Best wishes, so appreciate it. So everybody you know that
Speaker 1: our girl didn't get to see her favorite guy, Mehdi
Speaker 1: Hassan join us for that incredible interviewing conversation. He is
Speaker 1: a brilliant debater and also, as Andrew said, a brilliant
Speaker 1: true tailor, our good friend and sister is in the
Speaker 1: continent and she has a very special message from the
Speaker 1: ground that she wants to share with all of us.
Speaker 1: Let's take a look.
Speaker 10: Welcome home, Native lamb Bam. Of course it's here, our
Speaker 10: co host, Tiffany Cross. I'm so sorry I'm missing this
Speaker 10: week's show, but I am actually here in the Democratic
Speaker 10: Republic of Congo. I am in the capital of Conshaza.
Speaker 10: You can see behind me, just over my shoulder, just
Speaker 10: across that river is Brazaville, and I am here on
Speaker 10: ground learning about the conflict that's happening here because of cobalt,
Speaker 10: which is a mineral here that powers our cell phones,
Speaker 10: very thing i'm filming on and millions of people have
Speaker 10: lost their lives because rebel fighting in the east. I am,
Speaker 10: of course in the west at the capital in Gonsaza,
Speaker 10: but a lot of fighting in the east that could
Speaker 10: very easily find its way to the west has claimed
Speaker 10: the lives of so many people here. And this really
Speaker 10: should be one of the wealthiest countries on the continent,
Speaker 10: given the amount of minerals that they have here.
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, the people of.
Speaker 10: The Democratic Republic of Congo have not benefit at all
Speaker 10: from the billions and billions of dollars of minerals here.
Speaker 10: I was here for an event called Genocas and they
Speaker 10: show video where the rebels would show up and kill
Speaker 10: people on site, and children as young as two and
Speaker 10: three years old would just be walking around aimlessly in
Speaker 10: their communities where they lived. After coming back and finding
Speaker 10: their entire families slaughtered.
Speaker 7: Women have been raped here. The rebels use rape as
Speaker 7: a weapon of war.
Speaker 10: After raping the women, they have inserted weapons in their
Speaker 10: vaginal area, anything from knives to stones.
Speaker 7: The intention is to destroy.
Speaker 10: Now, while this is completely inhumane and reprehensible, I would
Speaker 10: like to when I come back, share on Native Land
Speaker 10: how these cell phones are, computers, batteries, so many things
Speaker 10: that we use mindlessly and effortlessly contribute to this conflict
Speaker 10: here now. Earlier this year, Donald Trump signs an agreement
Speaker 10: and he somewhat did the country as solid by securing
Speaker 10: the border between the country of the Congo and Rwanda.
Speaker 10: I will break all that down on a later episode
Speaker 10: of Native Land Pod.
Speaker 7: But I did want to let you know why I'm
Speaker 7: not there.
Speaker 10: I had an opportunity to speak with the President and
Speaker 10: the first Lady of the Congo here and it's as
Speaker 10: you can see, it is a country that has so
Speaker 10: much potential. There is also beauty in this country, and
Speaker 10: it never astonishes me how much war, how much barbarism,
Speaker 10: how much agony the people of the entire continent have suffered,
Speaker 10: mostly at the hands of European nations, and it does
Speaker 10: not take away from the beauty of the land nor
Speaker 10: the beauty of the people. I've been to the homes
Speaker 10: of people who live here that are gorgeous, beautiful artwork,
Speaker 10: the vegetation here, So I don't want to present only
Speaker 10: one side of this beautiful country or one side of
Speaker 10: this beautiful continent. But it has been a very eye
Speaker 10: opening experience. It's one thing to read about the conflict.
Speaker 10: It's another thing completely to be on ground and understand.
Speaker 7: It from a different perspective.
Speaker 10: So hopefully I'll be able to say more on a
Speaker 10: future episode of Native Land Pod about the conflicts here
Speaker 10: the role we play in it as America being the
Speaker 10: largest consumer economy that benefits from the minerals here. So
Speaker 10: sorry to miss this week's episode, I will be back
Speaker 10: soon and welcome home y'all.
Speaker 3: Well, that is our sister Tiffany Cross bringing us as
Speaker 3: a true journalist that she is bringing us her take
Speaker 3: from the Congo of where she is, and we look
Speaker 3: forward to welcoming her back home physically here and hearing
Speaker 3: what more lessons she may have to share with us.
Speaker 1: You Know, what I really appreciate about what Tip shared
Speaker 1: Andrew is there's been so much conversation when Gaza is addressed,
Speaker 1: just like it was with Mehdi, and there are black
Speaker 1: folks who say, well, what about what's happening with in
Speaker 1: Rwanda the congo ers today and what we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: and what about it is and more are oppression Olympics.
Speaker 1: But what we also shouldn't do is turn a blind
Speaker 1: eye to what is happening in the motherland. So I'm
Speaker 1: very very grateful for what Tiff is saying. She's you know,
Speaker 1: questioning and checking and hearing about firsthand, and I just
Speaker 1: hope that we will all be accountable to continue to
Speaker 1: do that same work ourselves.
Speaker 3: That's real, especially where it's Western habits and Western you know,
Speaker 3: desires that are fueling so so much of what's happening
Speaker 3: to devastating degree outside of our outside of American US borders.
Speaker 3: But we thank her for that what's.
Speaker 1: The matter with Texas and Missouri and Louisiana and a
Speaker 1: lot more. We're going to get to all of that
Speaker 1: right after this breaking.
Speaker 11: Greetings, Native Pod. My name is Keith. I'm from DC,
Speaker 11: and recently you will talk me about the redistricting of Texas. Well,
Speaker 11: here's my idea I brought this before, is that we
Speaker 11: redistrict the whole nation, which means we would revise the
Speaker 11: electoral college to increase the representation of representatives in the
Speaker 11: House of Representative. Right now, we're severely underrepresentative. My idea
Speaker 11: is that we would take the population of the smallest
Speaker 11: state Union, which is Wiring right now, that has five
Speaker 11: hundred and eighty thousand people. We would divide each state
Speaker 11: by the size of Wyoming and make increase the representation
Speaker 11: in each one of those states. For example, the representation
Speaker 11: in California would increase from fifty five to sixty seven
Speaker 11: point one. And he asked us, what do we do
Speaker 11: that point one? Well, we will have a chief electorial
Speaker 11: and that chief electoral will have a voting power of
Speaker 11: one point one and that he as far as the
Speaker 11: national electin of president, you only have a power of one. Again,
Speaker 11: that is my idea is to increase, revise it. We
Speaker 11: can squash all this redistricting all over the state. We
Speaker 11: can just do a ratification of Electoria College. Get it done. Thanks,
Speaker 11: that's my recommendation. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: All right, so we got a recommendation there on how
Speaker 3: we might make the the electoral college map look a
Speaker 3: little bit more for fair Angela. And just before you,
Speaker 3: before we take your response, I just wanted for the
Speaker 3: viewers to help us understand where we sit today, which is, yes,
Speaker 3: Wyoming is the lowest populated state in the Union. They
Speaker 3: have two US Senate seats, as every state in the
Speaker 3: Union has two seats, and they've got one Congressional seat.
Speaker 3: And the question was right, mister Keith, they said, at
Speaker 3: about you know, about what half No. On average, each
Speaker 3: member of Congress represents about seven hundred and sixty one
Speaker 3: thousand people. Wyoming sits under that at about five hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty plus thousand folks living in that state. However,
Speaker 3: the constitution limits, actually it's law that limit. Since nineteen eleven,
Speaker 3: I believe the practice has been that the Congress will
Speaker 3: be capped at four hundred and thirty five members, and
Speaker 3: that the minimum a number of people required to constitute
Speaker 3: a seat will basically be divided based off that five
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty five members amongst the various states, with
Speaker 3: again Wyoming, that not being applicable because Wyoming will maintain
Speaker 3: one seat unless it increases beyond that average number seven
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty plus population, but they will maintain one
Speaker 3: seat right now. The problem with the recommendation is that
Speaker 3: we would have to grow the House of Representative pretty
Speaker 3: substantially if we began dividing the US population basically by
Speaker 3: five hundred and fifty thousand people per every seat in Congress.
Speaker 3: The number of seats are capped four thirty five, and
Speaker 3: then obviously the US Senate has capped at two members
Speaker 3: per state. So I don't know, do you have a
Speaker 3: reaction to that idea. I just wanted to set the
Speaker 3: plate so that folks, you know, sort of had a
Speaker 3: sense of how we got or where we are.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I think that you've done a great job of answering
Speaker 1: Keith's question or responding to Keith's ideas. Keith always has
Speaker 1: big ideas for those of you at home listening, because
Speaker 1: you are welcome home. We always welcome your big ideas,
Speaker 1: no matter how crazy, large, miraculous they sound, or basic,
Speaker 1: and we should abandoned that we here for So please
Speaker 1: make sure you continue to send in your questions, thoughts
Speaker 1: and ideas, and your challenge is to the host, especially
Speaker 1: when you say Angela, miss Cross. I was gonna say, Andrew,
Speaker 1: you know what is fascinating about this redistricting conversation to
Speaker 1: me is that it's not new we have seen. It's
Speaker 1: not just Texas. Of course, recently in Missouri, the governor
Speaker 1: said that he's interested in redrawing the lines where the
Speaker 1: first black member of Congress in Missouri sits in Kansas City,
Speaker 1: rather not in all of Missouri, but in Kansas City.
Speaker 1: Who's a former mayor of Kansas City, My former boss,
Speaker 1: the former CBC chair, Congressman Emmanuel Cleeved. The second they're
Speaker 1: talking about redrawing the line so that he would not
Speaker 1: be in a district that represents Kansas City anymore. We're
Speaker 1: hearing these same things about Louisiana. As you know, there
Speaker 1: was an open court case Calais Kaye in Louisiana that
Speaker 1: would have would challenge again the seat that Cleo Fields
Speaker 1: now operates or occupies in in the Baton Rouge area.
Speaker 1: What I think that we have to wrestle with here
Speaker 1: is why. And the thing that is most troubling to me,
Speaker 1: as you all know NLP listeners, I had Jelanda jones On,
Speaker 1: who's a state repon Texas representing the Houston area, yesterday
Speaker 1: this week, Yes, sorry this week in case you didn't
Speaker 1: hear it, we record on Wednesdays. I'm sorry, y'all, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I have ad D bad today and now when you
Speaker 1: do that, I can't remember what I'm saying. Jones at
Speaker 1: Jelanda jones On yesterday, and she is one of the
Speaker 1: members of the Texas delegation that has fled the state
Speaker 1: to prevent Governor Abbott from getting this very unconstitutional, hyper
Speaker 1: racist redistricting and Jerry Vander process done in and off year.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, y'all, as Andrew just said, it is
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. This happens in twenty twenty. Generally, by
Speaker 1: the time we get to about twenty twenty two, by
Speaker 1: the time we get to a midterm election, this has
Speaker 1: been asked, answered and resolved, even if we don't like
Speaker 1: the outcome. So what has happened is there was an
Speaker 1: off year test and Julanda brought this up on the
Speaker 1: podcast on Tuesday. There's been off your test. That off
Speaker 1: your test didn't start with Texas. The off year test
Speaker 1: started with North Carolina. And Andrew might be ready to
Speaker 1: fight because you might say, well, they really tested it
Speaker 1: out in Florida first, but at least in Florida it
Speaker 1: was attached to the twenty twenty census. This in North
Speaker 1: Carolina last year was just randomly. In twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: Republican leaders decided that they wanted to redraw maps to
Speaker 1: see what would happen and to restrict the number of
Speaker 1: black elected officials in North Carolina. So now that case
Speaker 1: is going to a three panel court close to Winston
Speaker 1: Salem to determine whether or not it's constitutional or unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: Here's the bottom line. We're watching Texas legislators flee. But
Speaker 1: what we're really watching, Andrew, I think for people who
Speaker 1: don't understand redistricting, what is that? Jerry mandering? What is that?
Speaker 1: Why should we care? All people right now are watching
Speaker 1: is like they are on the run, and we here
Speaker 1: for the fight. My favorite thing about this is you
Speaker 1: brought up earlier. Your memory is so good. You brought
Speaker 1: up earlier. What happened when Texas legislators. Texas state legislators
Speaker 1: did this in twenty twenty one, and you said, that
Speaker 1: is how Jasmine Crockett met her rise to fame.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so let us see how a lot of us
Speaker 3: came to nowhere.
Speaker 1: And here, let's watch that clip.
Speaker 12: We have not committed a crime, and so under the
Speaker 12: US Constitution and the Texas constitution, you can't arrest people
Speaker 12: that haven't committed a crime. So we've not committed a crime.
Speaker 12: What can happen is we can be detained, so we
Speaker 12: can have someone come and get us. But that's so
Speaker 12: long as they have jurisdiction. And I know that the
Speaker 12: governor may believe that he's president now, but he's not
Speaker 12: and hopefully will never be the president of these United States.
Speaker 12: But he does not have jurisdiction over all United States.
Speaker 12: He has jurisdiction over Texas. And so it's actually our
Speaker 12: sergeants in the House that it says in the rules
Speaker 12: that they.
Speaker 1: Can actually go after us.
Speaker 12: The law is still unclear as to whether or not
Speaker 12: the speed maker can then go ahead and say, hey,
Speaker 12: we're going to deputize these DPS officers, and these officers
Speaker 12: can go after them, but even still, their jurisdiction would
Speaker 12: not extend outside the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: This is such an important point, uh, Angela, that you
Speaker 3: bring up, because we're hearing a lot of conversation right now,
Speaker 3: a lot of bluster blunder out of the governor of
Speaker 3: Texas saying they're creating you know, he has he has
Speaker 3: now said or issued a writ to go and bring
Speaker 3: these members back to Texas to arrest them, warrants, warrants,
Speaker 3: issue warrants for them on a civil civil laws site.
Speaker 3: Uh citation if you will, so Jasmine Congressman Crockett, who
Speaker 3: we many of us got introduced to through means like
Speaker 3: Don Lemon through her interviews that she did the last
Speaker 3: time Texas tried to try some corrupt stuff, and we're
Speaker 3: her comment, as les I listened, is just as apropos
Speaker 3: today as it was, you know, back in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one about the jurisdiction of the governor to come after
Speaker 3: them and to arrest them. But your point was, people
Speaker 3: are saying that they're fleeing the battle, fleeing the fight.
Speaker 3: Talk about how they're fleeing is not running from the fight,
Speaker 3: but in fact bringing the fight directly to the jaw
Speaker 3: of the governor and to the Republican that legislature.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what I love about the strategy is
Speaker 1: one we keep saying in this moment, we don't have
Speaker 1: to go and create new tactics. Andrew, I love what
Speaker 1: you've done also on your solo pods where you train
Speaker 1: people how to organize, and this is one of those tactics.
Speaker 1: The Texas State Legislature has been engaging in fleeing as
Speaker 1: a strategy since eighteen seventy. It is not new. We say,
Speaker 1: there's nothing new under the sun. We can fight with
Speaker 1: old tactics and just update how we use those old
Speaker 1: tactics and tools. They are doing that right now. And
Speaker 1: what Jasmine is saying is like, look, he can issue
Speaker 1: a warrant. You don't have any jurisdiction outside of the state.
Speaker 1: And I think that's so important for people to realize.
Speaker 1: I also think there's something that gets in the psyche
Speaker 1: of a democratic governor right that may have lacked the courage,
Speaker 1: the political courage, the political will to engage in this
Speaker 1: type of fight, But now they may have a little
Speaker 1: sauce because the Texas Dems who are fleeing and walking
Speaker 1: and embodying courage. They got to be like, well, I
Speaker 1: can't just let y'all hang out there by yourselves, so
Speaker 1: let me meet you where you are. One of those
Speaker 1: governors who surprised me, and we heard this from Mehdi earlier,
Speaker 1: is Governor Hochal in New York. Let's roar what she
Speaker 1: said recently.
Speaker 9: I have newsflash for Republicans in Texas. This is no
Speaker 9: longer the wild West. We're not going to tolerate our
Speaker 9: democracy being stole in a modern day stage called choice
Speaker 9: hoist by a bunch of lawbreaking cowboys. Americans don't want
Speaker 9: a system that's stacked against them.
Speaker 13: They've believed in fairness. It's fundamental. I'll tell you this.
Speaker 9: They're done with the chaos, they're done with the cruelty,
Speaker 9: and I would say they're ready to vote Republicans out
Speaker 9: of power in Washington, certainly in the upcoming twenty twenty
Speaker 9: six elections.
Speaker 13: Republicans know this. They've seen the polls.
Speaker 9: They know they're sliding downhill because Americans are rejecting their policies.
Speaker 13: So this is why they're fighting.
Speaker 9: They want to They know they'll lose the elections, but
Speaker 9: to subvert the will of the people. They're hell bent
Speaker 9: on rigging the system. Rigging the system is un American.
Speaker 9: All's fair in love and war. That's why I'm exploring
Speaker 9: with our leaders every option to redraw our state congressional
Speaker 9: lines as soon as possible. Our state legislatives' leaders Carol
Speaker 9: hoastein with Joy Leader on to rest their cousins. They're
Speaker 9: on board, as are their members. We're already working on
Speaker 9: a legislative process, reviewing our legal strategies, and we'll do
Speaker 9: everything our power to stop this brazen assault.
Speaker 3: Andrew Angela, I tell us, so, why for you? Was
Speaker 3: that a surprise?
Speaker 4: And I'll say my piece, cause she.
Speaker 1: Say all kind of crazy stuff all the time. I'll
Speaker 1: be mad at how most of the time. So I
Speaker 1: just was like, oh, okay, that's what we're doing. We
Speaker 1: gotta fight. And I love this speaker was right next
Speaker 1: to her. The thing that I appreciate about this moment.
Speaker 1: We keep saying that people want to see a fight.
Speaker 1: We keep hearing that too, right, But part of the
Speaker 1: fight isn't just this resistance tactic. People want to see
Speaker 1: an alternative. That alternative is the vision of the opposition.
Speaker 1: What you get to see from her comments is what
Speaker 1: the vision of the opposition is, so the resistance was
Speaker 1: brought to you by the Texas state legislators, right, the
Speaker 1: Democratic legislators who left the opposition strategy, and the vision
Speaker 1: is roped to you by those who can govern. And
Speaker 1: they'll say, if this is what the what the right
Speaker 1: wants to do, this is what those who are representing
Speaker 1: a political entity that will be the demise of our democracy.
Speaker 1: We are going to show you how we're going to
Speaker 1: fight back against this democracy. Sure, ideally we'd love to
Speaker 1: have this bipartisan or nonpartisan commission that does this great thing,
Speaker 1: but in the absence of people who are willing to
Speaker 1: fight on an on an even and level playing field,
Speaker 1: we gonna meet them in the mud. And so they're saying,
Speaker 1: we're not going to let them imbalance the scales of justice.
Speaker 1: Wherever they create an imbalance, we're gonna right.
Speaker 3: Say that's it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's I think that is what a
Speaker 1: resolution and an alternative looks like. So resistance should not
Speaker 1: stand alone. Resistance should be met with resolution, and that
Speaker 1: is where governors, those who can govern, can meet folks
Speaker 1: in the middle. And I think that's what people want
Speaker 1: to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so and just so our listeners understand what
Speaker 3: the oven or and even we're referring to when we
Speaker 3: talk about this in balance and the changing of the rules,
Speaker 3: as it's already been established. These processes are changing congressional
Speaker 3: maps happen after the census, typically between the change and
Speaker 3: the census, and maybe two years out. Mostly by and large,
Speaker 3: litigation has been settled, and those maps are now the
Speaker 3: maps that are in place, with some very very large exceptions.
Speaker 3: Those maps are established within time, and then new members
Speaker 3: of Congress are elected. In this case, the rigging comes in, y'all,
Speaker 3: and that Texas is saying, all right, we're five years
Speaker 3: in to this census, why don't we two advantage. In fact,
Speaker 3: they were instructed to do this. Let me be clear
Speaker 3: about this. They were instructed by Donald Trump to change
Speaker 3: their maps to produce five more congressional Republican congressional seats.
Speaker 3: This is basically Donald Trump calling Raffinsburger in Georgia and saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you go ahead and find me one hundred, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: ninety eight whatever whatever, thousand votes so that we can
Speaker 3: win this race.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: We all knew that was illegal. We all knew that
Speaker 3: that was a foul call. So he made that foul
Speaker 3: call again on this occasion to the governor of Texas.
Speaker 14: Governor of Texas, Oh yeah, yeah, why don't we go ahead,
Speaker 14: and why don't we go ahead and do that. Let's
Speaker 14: let's find you five more seats. Okay, we'll find you
Speaker 14: the seats that you want. So that for the seats
Speaker 14: that we may lose coming up in the midterm elections,
Speaker 14: thereby putting Democrats in control of the House of Representatives,
Speaker 14: and if they stuck together, they could basically end at
Speaker 14: least the legislative agenda for Donald Trump for the remainder
Speaker 14: of his term in office.
Speaker 3: So high stakes. But in this case, they are going
Speaker 3: about it by breaking the rules, but basically saying they
Speaker 3: haven't gotten any new, grand new numbers of population. They
Speaker 3: haven't had all these new folks moving to the state
Speaker 3: in this period of time. What they're gonna do is
Speaker 3: they're gonna take seats that right now Democrats hold. They're
Speaker 3: gonna move huge sums of Democrats out of those districts
Speaker 3: that create democratic seats, put them in to strong Republican
Speaker 3: seats by breaking them up and basically creating a situation
Speaker 3: where they could not elect a Democrat. If their full
Speaker 3: breath and body were to go out and vote wholesale
Speaker 3: to elect Democrats, they couldn't do it anymore because those
Speaker 3: Democratic votes would now be broken up and spread out.
Speaker 3: In some cases, in the case of Austin, Texas, they
Speaker 3: would be broken off into a district that spans three
Speaker 3: and a half hours drive away from their city center,
Speaker 3: where they may not have anything in common by interests
Speaker 3: of the folks who are three and a half hours
Speaker 3: away from them, but they would be split that hard
Speaker 3: so that they could never ever elect a Democrat to
Speaker 3: their seat in Congress. That's the complete subversion of the rules.
Speaker 3: They are cheating just so that they can maintain their advantage.
Speaker 3: That's the illegal part of this, and the question that
Speaker 3: Angela is raising, well, the point that she's making is
Speaker 3: that there are democratic governors who right now sit in
Speaker 3: position where they could also force their states or take
Speaker 3: steps to force their states and to redrawn their seats
Speaker 3: and doing the same thing basically taking Republican seats right now,
Speaker 3: splitting those seats out by taking conservatives and diving them
Speaker 3: up amongst other seats, and creating the opportunity for only
Speaker 3: Democrats to be elected there that hasn't been the take
Speaker 3: that we have, that's not been the step of the
Speaker 3: direction we've gone in the past. And there are probably
Speaker 3: some people out there. I think we may even have
Speaker 3: a clip of someone making this argument who were saying
Speaker 3: we shouldn't do that because we have been the good
Speaker 3: government people that have been pushing for you know, independent
Speaker 3: redistrict and commissions that are nonpartisan. Well, that may be
Speaker 3: the ideal, but the question is is should we stick
Speaker 3: to that now or do we have to meet the
Speaker 3: knife fight with a knife and not a spoon, a.
Speaker 1: Plastic spoon, a plastic ass well, maybe compostable. As soon
Speaker 1: as you try to pick some up the thing break
Speaker 1: off in their shout out to the compostables. Though I
Speaker 1: do love y'all. I was going to say, Andrew, you
Speaker 1: raise a great point. We should continue that part of
Speaker 1: the conversation in the mini pod, okay, because I think
Speaker 1: that we should analyze like you know, id ID a
Speaker 1: versus reality, like should you be in the ideals or
Speaker 1: should you be in the real And I have to
Speaker 1: tell you this, this is very important. They're doing this
Speaker 1: on the sixtieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. This
Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act that has been virtually gutted again. We
Speaker 1: talked about this mostly on the Solo Pod Tuesday, but
Speaker 1: I have something else very important I need to tell you,
Speaker 1: and it's an apology, and I wish Tiff was here
Speaker 1: for this. I got so chin checked this week talking
Speaker 1: to someone who is a hero to many of us,
Speaker 1: Shriylyn Eifel, who used to run the Legal Defense Fund
Speaker 1: now is a prestigious and amazing leader professor at Howard
Speaker 1: University leading the Fourteenth Amendment Center there. What we have
Speaker 1: to know is this. Cherylyn said that Donald Trump asked
Speaker 1: for Texas to find him five seats. He wanted those
Speaker 1: five seats so that he could have the Kung rational majority.
Speaker 1: She said that there absolutely will be an election in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six because he's going to search for this majority. Now,
Speaker 1: she says she didn't know about twenty eight, So I'm
Speaker 1: retracting my apology for twenty twenty eight, Andrew. But now
Speaker 1: I'm going to eagerly count down with you how many
Speaker 1: days we have left until the election. But I wanted
Speaker 1: to apologize to you because it's a perspective I hadn't
Speaker 1: considered when she said that he's going to hunt for seats, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if he's going to hunt for seats, of course states
Speaker 1: can determine if they're going to have an election or not. Again,
Speaker 1: we don't know if it's going to be fair or not.
Speaker 1: But the point around, well, clearly it's not going to
Speaker 1: be fair if he can get these seats. But the
Speaker 1: point around he's going to hunt for the seats, which
Speaker 1: means he knows that he needs more power, is a
Speaker 1: fair one. In it was a perspective I hadn't considered,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to humble myself in front of the
Speaker 1: Native Lampod fam to say, sorry.
Speaker 3: Hey, accept it and really proud of you guys. Well
Speaker 3: you did that, well, say normally I do.
Speaker 1: I just wish I didn't say the thing to have to.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, only only a few times as it
Speaker 3: happened in broad daylight.
Speaker 4: So we think I'm messing with you.
Speaker 3: I'm messing with you because I don't want to lose
Speaker 3: this strand. The reason why they would be hunting for
Speaker 3: votes is that they are going to need a Congress
Speaker 3: that is positioned to say whether or not they will
Speaker 3: count electoral votes at the next presidential election. Again, the
Speaker 3: president in the presidential election, the electoral College votes, they
Speaker 3: must be accepted by the sitting US Congress. The sitting
Speaker 3: US Congress that gets elected in twenty twenty six will
Speaker 3: be the people who will be sitting in those seats
Speaker 3: come time to count the electoral votes that are produced
Speaker 3: from the elections in twenty twenty five, the presidential elections
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five. So if those if those members
Speaker 3: of Congress, those radical members of Congress who Trump is
Speaker 3: trying to get seated in this next congressional election, decide
Speaker 3: that they don't want to count the electoral votes it's
Speaker 3: not necessary, or they can't come to agreement on those
Speaker 3: electoral votes, does then the president get to extend his term?
Speaker 3: Does the sitting president now extend their term because there
Speaker 3: are not there is not a Congress that's willing to
Speaker 3: account and certify the electoral College votes that gets us
Speaker 3: to the required amount needed for a new president to
Speaker 3: be seated. Yeah, well, that's what's at stake.
Speaker 1: All of that is at stake. And as you can see, y'all,
Speaker 1: we have a lot more to talk about with this,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go ahead and get right into that
Speaker 1: in our mini pod today on if we should be
Speaker 1: in what is ideal or what is real, and on
Speaker 1: the other side of repentance should always be calls to action.
Speaker 1: So we'll be right back with us shortly. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: my call to action is if y'all see Tiff at
Speaker 1: the airport. Yeah, welcome home, y'all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yes, I'd be a beautiful welcome back into the country.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: And for my CTA, I just want us to pay
Speaker 3: as much attention as we can and lift up in
Speaker 3: our own social media as much as we can. This
Speaker 3: redistricting fight, as Angelus said in her mini this week,
Speaker 3: as we try to emphasize here on this week's show,
Speaker 3: this is not a fight that is left to one state.
Speaker 3: While it may be kicking off as far as you're
Speaker 3: concerned in the state of Texas, you already hear rumors
Speaker 3: in my state, the state of Florida, which is rarely
Speaker 3: mentioned in the national conversation about this, the governor is
Speaker 3: already putting out there, hey, I may be interested in
Speaker 3: calling a special session to redraw the maps here in Florida,
Speaker 3: And already they have been committed to erasing black representation
Speaker 3: and congressional seeks from the state of Florida but if
Speaker 3: this race, if this arms race is to continue, it's
Speaker 3: possible that every Democrat and Republican state and governor who
Speaker 3: have the power to open back up this conversation, they
Speaker 3: may do so. And I think is going to be
Speaker 3: a race to the bottom for the country. But I
Speaker 3: have to say I'm in full favor of fighting fire
Speaker 3: with fire unless we lose the entire threat of our democracy.
Speaker 3: So pay attention, lift this argument up. It's not as nine,
Speaker 3: it's not unrelated. It's extremely related to the future of
Speaker 3: where we had as a country.
Speaker 1: That's my CITU Andrew. Since Tiff is in't here, can
Speaker 1: we have one more CTA? Yeah, you're going to give
Speaker 1: it go y'all take the survey. We got fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: You know how the looney said, I got five on it.
Speaker 1: We got fifty on it. That is ten times five
Speaker 1: on it. My mad ain't that good? But that's good enough.
Speaker 3: And when has it? I know a co host is
Speaker 3: trying to, you know, raise that, so y'all, hey, get
Speaker 3: in this game right now.
Speaker 1: You're trying to raise fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: No I heard you were trying to raise the sum,
Speaker 3: increase the raise the sun, raise the Sun.
Speaker 1: Well, now that I found out that people are active
Speaker 1: on the fifty, I think I'm gonna keep it.
Speaker 3: We're gonna ride it out for a minute again.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Welcome home, y'all. Andrew, do you want to tell
Speaker 1: him how many days tell the mid term since a parents.
Speaker 3: Well, now that we on this spot here podcasts is
Speaker 3: almost in full agreement, we'll see what're teughing the tiffanysm'
Speaker 3: it comes back there already four hundred and fifty three
Speaker 3: days until the midterm elections, which we believe are going
Speaker 3: to occur. For no other reason, this is just another
Speaker 3: route for this president to maintain permanent power. As always,
Speaker 3: we want you and everyone to leave us a review
Speaker 3: and subscribe to Native Lampid. We're available on all podcasts
Speaker 3: platforms as well as you two. And if you're looking
Speaker 3: for more shows like ours, well check out a few
Speaker 3: other shows on Recent Choice Media. They are Spoloitics with
Speaker 3: Jamil Hill, We Love You, Jamil Off, the Cup Cupp
Speaker 3: with se Cup, and our newest edition, our friend le
Speaker 3: Man Demand, Noah Debrasso, who you've heard on this show,
Speaker 3: and others who also has his show. Now you know,
Speaker 3: all right, follow us don't forget on social media. Subscribe
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Speaker 3: get there by Native lampid dot com of course, and subscribe.
Speaker 3: We are your host, Angela Rye fifteen Cross and Appsania
Speaker 3: and I'm Andrew give them Welcome home, Moran.
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