Sherrilyn Ifill on Rebuilding Post-Trump: " It's Gotta Come Down to the Studs”

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Best People with Nicolle Wallace – Sherrilyn Ifill on Rebuilding Post-Trump: “It's Gotta Come Down to the Studs”

Episode Overview Date: April 20, 2026
Host: Nicolle Wallace
Guest: Sherrilyn Ifill – Former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard University.

This episode features a profound and candid conversation about the state of American democracy in the aftermath of the Trump era. Sherrilyn Ifill, a self-described “democracy warrior,” joins Nicolle Wallace to dissect how American institutions have been weakened, why culture so often overrides courage and ethics, and what is required to truly rebuild democratic norms and practices “down to the studs.”

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Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Is American Democracy Going to “Make It”?

• Opening Inquiry: Nicolle immediately addresses the night’s central anxiety—will America survive as a democracy?
  • Ifill’s answer is cautiously optimistic: “I do believe it's going to get worse before it gets better. But I do believe that ultimately... we will have a unique opportunity to actually build the country that we want. The country that I've been fighting for is not the country that existed before 2016.” (04:05)
  • Trump described not as the cause but “an accelerant” of underlying weaknesses.

2. Trump’s Exploitation of American Vulnerabilities

• Nicolle wonders if Trump’s divisive strategies were calculated or instinctive.
• Ifill argues that Trump isn’t a “subtle thinker,” but possesses animal cunning about racism, white supremacy, and Americans’ obsession with wealth, drawing on examples from popular culture (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, 1980s Wall Street). (05:43–09:52)
  • “He’s always been an unrepentant racist, but he understood that he could tap into that.” (05:57)
  • Trump’s birtherism signaled “the illegitimacy of the first black president.”
• Racism figured as a “national security vulnerability.” The GOP used the “voter fraud” myth years before Trump.

3. The Enduring Damage to Voting Rights & Institutional Culture

• Wallace raises concerns about regression on voting rights, noting the “train barreling down the tracks” based on the lie of election fraud (09:52).
• Ifill details the racist and fabricated roots of “voter fraud” rhetoric and policies: “It was a political tactic by the Republican Party that was used.” (10:28)
  • Even before Trump, Republicans passed laws meant to shrink the electorate and built obstacles like voter ID and voter purges.
  • The work ahead is not just Trump’s removal, but addressing “other institutional elements that have allowed our democracy to become weakened.” (13:31)
• Corporate America also indicted for maximizing profit without regard for democracy: “Corporations...exist within a democracy. They are all chartered by the states. You're part of the system.” (14:10)
  • The culture of business is described as “grab the profits... or you're a chump.” (16:19)

4. How Culture Eats Courage, Ethics, and Institutions

• A repeated motif: “In every institution we believed would resist... we have seen culture eat courage. We have seen culture eat integrity. We have seen culture eat ethics.” (17:45, later echoed at 31:20)
• This observation applies to the Supreme Court, business, media, legal profession, and even the military.

5. The Supreme Court: Power, Detachment, and Dysfunction

• Wallace asks if the Supreme Court conservatives are aware they’ve “created a Frankenstein.” (20:23)
• Ifill sees two monsters: Trump himself and the emboldened, ideologically driven Supreme Court majority.
  • “They are products of a culture that is no longer relevant... they are simply not up to the job.” (23:52)
  • The Court takes fewer cases (now just 65 a year) and seeks “simple solutions” to complex problems.

6. The Role and Responsibility of Media and the Law

• Media’s complicity: “If you...print that description of what he said and you turn it into something coherent when it was obviously incoherent, you are not neutral.” (25:19)
• Reluctance to label racism, repeated failures to candidly cover Trump's conduct, and a “culture” of self-protecting neutrality are critiqued.
• Legal profession under fire for ethical lapses in service to Trump: “It is beyond the pale of our ethical responsibilities...and that we are seeing successive waves of lawyers...engaging in that kind of conduct before federal courts.” (39:09)
• Call to the professions: start institutional reckoning and self-examination now.

7. DNA of White Supremacy & Historical Amnesia

• Ifill rebukes the insistence that elections are always about “the price of eggs”: “They get it wrong because they want to not have to confront the truth about what lives in our national DNA, which is the force of white supremacist ideology in our country.” (43:29)
• She compares German memorials for the Holocaust to America’s “erasing history” via restoration of Confederate monuments.
• “We will never remove white supremacist ideology from the DNA of this country, but we can do things that would protect against the worst manifestation of it.” (46:54)

8. The Social Contract, DEI, and Trump’s “Permission to Be Your Worst Self”

• Ifill tracks the unraveling of civil rights-era reforms and social norms, which she frames as intentional and liberating for many of Trump’s supporters:
  • “What I didn't know was that so many Americans were anxious to have permission to be their worst self. I admit I didn't know that. But that's what was on offer. And people liked it.” (47:28)

9. Hope, Backlash, and the Need for Honest Rebuilding

• Ifill sees the current backlash as expected, but progress real: “We can't throw in the towel as though we are not still making progress...This backlash was to be expected. We also have to remember...we are part of a global phenomenon.” (51:03)
• The necessity of rooting out not just Trump but the lies that enabled him: “The rebuilding has to start at the truth. And there's so much of the Republican Party now deeply embedded in the lies.” (54:11)
• Final call for citizenship: true participation means more than voting—it means engagement, responsibility, and maturity.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The resetting that we have to do is like, it's gotta come down to the studs." – Sherrilyn Ifill (00:24, 31:20)
• "Donald Trump is not a subtle thinker at all. But he is very effective at understanding the kind of raw animal core of this country." – Ifill (05:43)
• "Racism is a national security vulnerability. And it is." – Ifill (08:25)
• "Culture eats courage. We have seen culture eat integrity. We have seen culture eat ethics." – Ifill (17:45; echoed 31:20)
• On the Supreme Court: “They are simply not up to the job. I mean, I'm gonna say that again because we don't talk about it that way. We talk about it as about their ideology. They're not up to the job.” – Ifill (23:52)
• "If you take a speech that Trump gives...and you print that description...and you turn it into something coherent...you are not neutral. You are actually doing the work for him." – Ifill (25:19)
• "We will never remove white supremacist ideology from the DNA of this country, but we can do things that would protect against the worst manifestation of it." – Ifill (46:54)
• "What I didn’t know was that so many Americans were anxious to have permission to be their worst self. I admit I didn't know that." – Ifill (47:28)
• "If that feels like it's too much for you, then this is the wrong country for you to be a citizen in...it is a responsibility that is placed in our hands." – Ifill (57:25)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:42 – Ifill on long-term optimism for democracy.
• 05:43–09:52 – On Trump, American racism, and wealth culture.
• 10:28–14:10 – Institutional failures on voting rights, business, the Republican Party’s long strategy.
• 20:23–24:30 – Supreme Court’s cultural detachment and dysfunction.
• 25:19–27:59 – Media complicity and the dangers of “neutrality.”
• 39:09–41:36 – Legal profession’s ethics crisis under Trump.
• 43:29–47:05 – National DNA, historical memory, and racism.
• 47:28–49:32 – The unraveling of the post-Civil Rights social contract.
• 54:11–57:59 – On truthful rebuilding, responsible citizenship, and the urgent need for civic engagement.

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Final Reflections

Ifill and Wallace’s exchange shines as both a warning and a roadmap for the future. The solution, Ifill argues, is not a return to “normal” or merely ejecting Trump, but a sweeping, foundation-level reconstruction of American institutions, standards, and citizenship—work that should begin now.

“All of us have to get better at this and take it seriously.” – Sherrilyn Ifill (57:59)

This episode is essential listening for anyone wrestling with the future of American democracy and searching for honest hope.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Visit Wells Fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply. I wrote a little song to remind you. Choice hotels get you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar. Have a ball. Cocktails up here. Feel just right. Ms. Cambria. Amazing. All right, bring a date, your teen, or even your mom. Book [e-mail] See you on the roof. In every institution that we believed would be institutions that could resist and save us from going down the authoritarian rabbit hole, we have seen culture eat courage. We have seen culture eat integrity. We have seen culture eat ethics. And that is true at the Supreme Court as well. And so the resetting that we have to do is like, it's gotta come down to the studs. And we have to be having serious conversations now about what we want to see on the other side

[C]

when the history of this time is written. That history may very well say that the people, the ordinary people living in places like Minneapolis and Chicago and Portland everywhere really are the reason that our country dodged the autocratic abyss. But standing right there next to the people are the heroes, the advocates and the activists and the lawyers who have stood on the front lines in this fight for our democracy for decades now. And chief among them is this week's guest, Sherrilyn Ifill. Sherilyn calls herself a democracy warrior, and she walks the walk like none other. The former head of the storied civil rights organization, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and currently the founding director of of the 14th Amendment center for Law and Democracy at Howard University. We call on Sherrilyn whenever there is news, whenever there's any kind of news, but especially when there's news made about voting rights, about civil rights, about this Supreme Court, you name it. So without any further ado, this is the best people. And this is Sherrilyn Ifill. Thank you so much for being here.

[B]

I'm thrilled to be with you. Nicole,

[C]

I asked you before we started rolling if we were gonna make it, and I guess more than anything else, that's the question that keeps me up at night. What do you think?

[B]

Way to go. To start with A small question, Nicole.

[C]

I know I was a terrible first date, right? You know, I was like, you know, how many kids do you want? You know, I was terrible.

[B]

No, terrible first day.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

What kind of coffee are you drinking? Okay.

[C]

I feel like Trump killed small talk. Like, what is there to. What is there to, like, chit chat about these days? Like, does the drink democracy, indoor feels like the only thing that matters.

[B]

It does feel like a top tier question that you got to clear that question first. You know, it's interesting to even ask that question. You know, are we going to make it? And the question, of course, is, are we going to make it as a democracy? Are we going to make it as an America that any of us really actually want to live in? And my answer to that is yes. And I do believe that. I do believe it's going to get worse before it gets better. But I do believe that ultimately, not only will we be in an America that at least holds the markings, the core markings of a democracy, but I actually believe that this time, when we are past this moment, and I admit it's longer than a moment, but when we're past this moment, we will have a unique opportunity to actually build the country that we want. The country that I've been fighting for is not the country that existed before 2016. Right. Because there were still rampant injustice. And all of the things that I think have been conspiring together to make our democracy weak have all been there, and they were not created by Donald Trump. I have often called him an accelerant, and that's what he's done. So on the other side of this, we have a chance to build a stronger democracy that is resilient to the inevitable wins of would be authoritarians who will try to destroy it. We're not the only ones. We just watched Hungary finally overcome Viktor Orban. We're not the only ones. And I think the story of American exceptionalism made people believe that it could not happen here. But we had all the ingredients. In fact, we have more than some countries, the ingredients that anyone who wanted to be an accelerant could use to unravel democracy here. And that's what we have to confront and then build on the other side something stronger and more resilient.

[C]

Do you think he came in aware of those conditions and had a strategy to capitalize on them, or do you think he sort of accidentally tapped into the nativism and the isolationism and the racism and stumbled into victory?

[B]

That I don't. I mean, Donald Trump is not a subtle thinker at all. But he is very effective at understanding the kind of raw animal core of this country. And there are elements in that raw animal core that make us quite vulnerable. You've identified some of them. Absolutely. Racism and white supremacy is one. He absolutely tapped into that and he started it. But long before he came down that escalator, he started it when he was demanding President Obama's birth certificate. It was a way of signaling what he regards as the illegitimacy of the first black president. That resonated for many people, as you know, and that was a sign. He recognized that he's always been an unrepentant racist, but he understood that he could tap into that. Donald Trump also understands that Americans are in large measure obsessed with wealth and obtaining wealth. When I was a kid in the 70s, I dreamed of youngest of 10 kids in a family with no money in Queens. I dreamed of what I wanted to be in life. I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. And I also dreamed of being really comfortable, of having a house and having a nice car. I don't think I ever thought about being a billionaire. That was just not something that was on the radar round about the 1980s. There was a kind of a change in the zeitgeist during the period of Ronald Reagan as president. You know, it was Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was on every Saturday, and I watched it religiously. Many people did.

[C]

Me too.

[B]

Yes. And you know, the yacht, I think that's good.

[C]

The first time I saw a yacht was on the Lifestyle Famous.

[B]

I was like, exactly.

[C]

Champagne, you know, how lavish a lifestyle

[B]

would you lead if you were the richest man on earth in this world?

[C]

Exclusive edition of Lifestyles.

[B]

I credit him with part of the downfall of America.

[C]

Totally. Me too.

[B]

So we, yeah, we had that. We had Wall street, you know, these movies, Greed is Good. And we had this whole obsession and growing relationship with excessive wealth, with being attracted to excessive wealth. And Donald Trump was part of it at that time when he was in New York. And so he understood very well how attractive that was. And of course, he had spent, you know, all those years on the apprent, so he understood those two things. So there's even a kind of a Frisian of cruelty, particularly where criminal justice is involved. Like, if you in this country, if you can make the case around crime and public safety, you can get many Americans, if not most Americans, to follow you down the road. It's perfectly understandable that people would be concerned about public safety. But when you wind that together with the racism piece and the desire for excessive wealth and so on and so forth, it has some toxic possibilities that Donald Trump was able to tap into. So I think it was less a kind of subtle understanding of American history or anything like that, and much more of an animal sense of what lies at the core of. You know, there are good things in the American core as well, I'll just say. But there are some things that are quite exploitable, and he recognized them. And it's not because he's the smartest guy in the world. There's a reason that in 2016, when Russia began interfering in our election online using the Internet, that they tapped into race, that they tried to pit racial groups against each other, that they tried to. They had people pose as black activists and to denigrate Hillary Clinton. So even, you know, I wrote a piece in 2018 saying racism is a national security vulnerability. And it is. And so it wasn't just that Trump saw it. Any country knows that if you want to get Americans, you know, at each other's throat, and if you want to get Americans thinking a certain kind of way, that that is a rather nice entryway. And so Trump used it. And unfortunately, America was too weak to withstand it for, again, a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with Donald Trump.

[C]

I guess I go back to the beginning because I want to believe that we will build something better on the other side of this. But I worry about all the regression. And you look at what's happened to voting rights predicated on a lie, right? There isn't any election fraud, and that is a train barreling down the tracks. And so, based on the lie of fraud in 2020, we are making it harder to vote today. Right now, it just feels like we're still moving so far away from the place we'd have to start if we wanted to build something better. How do you deal with that?

[B]

Yeah, that's a good example because. So I've been a voting rights lawyer for a very long time. I started in 1988 at the legal Defense Fund as a young lawyer. The voter fraud myth started in the 1990s, late 1990s, and for basically the entire first decade of the 21st century, we have been hearing the drumbeat about voter fraud coming from the Republican Party. Even then, we had studies that demonstrated that there is no substantial voter fraud, certainly no substantial in person voter fraud. But in those years, because of that drumbeat, Republicans were successful in passing a whole series of laws designed to address a problem that doesn't exist. It was Made up. It was a political tactic by the Republican Party that was used. And so, once again, yes, Donald Trump has picked up the mantle, but who left the mantle? And so when I talk about getting to the other side, I think we have to really begin to confront these realities that many of the narratives that Donald Trump has used and used effectively and made even more lurid than they ever were hanging out there because they were found to be politically useful by the Republican Party. And I say this because, not because I ever worked in an atmosphere in which I was a partisan. I only worked for nonpartisan civil rights organizations. And as I am fond of saying, as a voting rights lawyer, I've sued Democrats. We have always been focused on do racial minorities have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice and be free from voter suppression. But there is no question that some turn happened and it really became part of the Republican Party platform that they were going to create this fantasy of voter fraud and use it as a way of shrinking the electorate. And that brings us to voter purges. So purging people from the voter rolls, that brings us to voter id. That brings us to having officials at the polling place to make sure that people are citizens, and so on and so forth. So on the other side, what we need to do is really strip down and dismantle these fantasies. Look at what Trump has done with mail in voting, something that's been with us for a very long time that was Republican.

[C]

Right? So I came up in politics working for some of the people that pioneered mail in voting as a Republican political turnout advantage for Republican voters who couldn't get off work. Don't worry, you don't have to take it off. You can mail in your ballot. And to see them now smear and malign forms of voting that used to make the difference in their elections. And the party still is high on their own supply of bullshit, I find that is sort of argues against the optimistic belief that on the other side, we'll build something better. It seems like we have to. It seems like, like whatever he puts in place of the E swing, it seems like, like we're. We're gonna have to demolish a lot of bad, faulty, unsound stuff before we get to the other side, I think.

[B]

So the stripping that has to happen is going to be a. A stripping of the way in which parties have conducted themselves as well. It's not going to be Donald Trump leaves and then we begin again. It's actually not going to be that. It's actually going to be Donald Trump Leaves. And then we have to look at the other institutional elements that have allowed our democracy to become weakened. And I've identified a number of them. I think the business community and the way it conducts itself, that we have allowed a corporate community that sees itself as having bearing no responsibility to democracy itself.

[C]

Right.

[B]

But simply to maximizing profits for shareholders. We have allowed that. Corporations are entities that exist within a democracy. They are all chartered by the states. So you're part of the system. And by the way, Nicole, corporations were granted corporate personhood, which allows them to sue, for example, in cases like Citizens United States or to have the right of religious freedom, which the Supreme Court found in Hobby Lobby. They were granted corporate personhood under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, the provision that was created for the full citizenship of black people. We're having all this conversation about birthright citizenship now, but the 14th Amendment was also created. That equal protection clause was created for the full and fair and first class citizenship of black people. But in the 1880s, the Supreme Court decided that corporations were also persons who were entitled to equal protection of the laws. They are getting things from the democracy, but they would articulate their responsibility as purely to their shareholders.

[C]

We've allowed that, which I don't understand, and it's demonstrably wrong. You want to go do business in an autocracy, knock yourself out. What is the missing chip to them? Failing to understand that it is imperative to their continued ability to have a vibrant and healthy workforce, to have safe places for their companies or their offices, or if they're retail, I mean, what is the missing chip where they don't seem to understand that they should have skin in the game in America remaining a democracy.

[B]

You know, every American institution develops a culture. There's a culture on Capitol Hill, for example. Right. So very often, you know, ordinary people say, why won't they do this or this or why are they shaking hands? Why do they keep talking about bipartisan things? Why do they blow up a filibuster? Yeah, exactly. You know, all the things institutions become captured by the culture that they have created. Right. So I've had the filibuster conversations. I mean, I had countless filibuster conversations with Joe Manchin, you know, who. About voting rights. Essential.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And about the filibuster. Because we wanted to try and get a voting rights bill, you know, before Congress in 2022. And he would just insist he equated the filibuster with democracy. And I just was so confused by that. And so, you know, they get captured by Their culture. And the Democrats also did not want to blow up the filibuster. So I think the business community also has a culture. And the culture is that if you are not grabbing those profits to the full extent that you can, you are a chump. And no one wants to be a chump. If you look at how they have behaved over the past two years, business leaders, some of whom I have had the occasion to be engaged with and who I know are decent people, to stand in the Oval Office with Trump while he offers the most grotesque and macabre vile exposition on Somalis in our country. And they stand there silently refusing to absent themselves. When you see companies who, if those of us who are liberals had suggested that the government would own a piece of a major corporation, they would have said we are communists. And they would have said, this is why we can't allow you into power, because you are socialists, because you wanna turn everything over to the state. But I watched. And you watched Nvidia give up 10% of its corporation to the United States at the demand of Donald Trump. And there are five other companies that have done the same. Corporations who have given up part of their ownership to the United States. So what they all think is that the smart calculation for maximizing profits is to go along, to get along, to pay your tax, just as the tech guys did, to give Donald Trump your billion to avoid him bothering you, or so that he will open doors for you, or so that he will make connections to your company so that you can make even more money and more profits. I think it's such a degradation that these folks believe that's the price of the ticket, that that's the price of the game. So that has to be dealt with. On the other side. We need a cultural reset on so many levels. And if we don't start thinking about it that way, then we will just revert to what everyone knows, because that's the comfortable thing, even though it wasn't working and it's what got us here.

[C]

We'll take a quick break here. When we come back, much, much more Moore with former head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, civil rights attorney and Howard University law professor Sherilyn Ifill. Don't go anywhere.

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[C]

When you look at this Supreme Court, do you see any signs of cognizance that with the immunity ruling or with any of the other sort of outside the mainstream things that have put them on the other side of public opinion, taking away a right they're rolling on? Dobbs, do you see them operating either in the questioning or in their opinions, the conservatives, in any way that, to you, represents any cognizance that they've sort of created a Frankenstein?

[B]

My instinct is to say I don't think it bothers them very much. I think they believe that they have the power to contain this Frankenstein when they think it needs to be contained. And I think they're very clear that they will make that decision of when it needs to be contained and when it doesn't need to be contained. I mean, so I think that there are two Frankensteins. I think that Donald Trump is the one who's rampaging through the village, you know, while people are chasing him with torches. But I think the Supreme Court has become its own Frankenstein monster. I think it has been engaged in its own power grab. I think that the majority believes that they alone have the power to determine when the president should be checked. And I think they are. So they have their own list of things they have longed to accomplish. You know, we were just talking about culture. They emanate from a culture. And you know, this culture, Nicole, you know, many of the conservatives, the Roberts and the Alitos and Gorsuch and so forth, come from a time, you know, they were forged in the cradle of a kind of Republican elite legal community that believes in the president, believes the president needs to have maximized power. They were trained by those lawyers like Ed Meese and others who thought Nixon got a raw deal. They were in the Justice Department at a time like Justice Roberts, when they were pushing back against and trying to fight the 1982amendments to the Voting Rights Act. I mean, I think they were forged. You know, Kavanaugh never stops talking about politics because he was forged by his time spent at Ken Starr's side. You know, he uses phrases like the Clintons, you know, which we heard at his confirmation hearing. So I think they are products of a culture that is no longer relevant to how democracy is appropriately executed at this time in our country. And I have long said that we do not have a Supreme Court that has the range. We do not have the Supreme Court that we need to be the kind of court that has the power to say what the law is in the 21st century, in a multiracial America of 340 million people. They are simply not up to the job. I mean, I'm gonna say that again because we don't talk about it that way. We talk about it as about their ideology. They're not up to the job. They can't solve the problems that are coming before them. That's why we're seeing all these cases on the shadow docket, for heaven's sakes. When I was in law school, the Supreme Court took 150 cases a year. Now they're taking 65. They're not up to it. The world only gets more complicated, and they are individuals who are seeking very simple solutions. Remember John Roberts comment in the school desegregation case parents involved in, I think it was 2006, where he said, the only way to stop discriminating based on race is to stop discriminating based on race. They want it to be a nice math equation like that. Or when the partisan gerrymandering case was before them, Rucho v. Common Cause. And they were presented with a very elegant way of addressing how to identify bipartisan gerrymandering that gets to the point that it is undermining democracy. And Chief Justice Roberts called it gobbledygook. You know, they simply can't do what we need them to do.

[C]

Well, to your point about corporate culture, they don't seem tethered to the outcome of this duel between autocratic forces and democratic forces. They seem to be comfortable on the sidelines of that existential boundary battle. Yes, in the same way that some news organizations are like, that's.

[B]

Oh, my goodness, right?

[C]

I mean, like that to me is the pounding my fists on. On the table. Why don't they care? You know, all of the big banks. Why don't they care? I mean, do they really think they do as well? If we became a full fledged autocracy Every news organization should have a, A rating system for the person who does the best on the First Amendment because we don't exist if it goes away. I don't understand the hard wiring for neutrality and a. When our very democracy is on the line.

[B]

Well, and worse, Nicole, they're not neutral. They're not being neutral. Right. If you take a speech that Trump gives or a statement that he makes standing outside his plane in which none of the subjects and verbs agree, in which he is barely making sense, he is trailing off, he is, you know, pulling things out of a hat, and you print that description of what he said and you turn it into something coherent when it was obviously incoherent. You are not neutral. You are actually doing the work for him.

[C]

That is right.

[B]

News organizations would insist that what they saw was not what they saw. The calls I would get every week. But do you think Donald Trump is racist? But why do you think Donald Trump is racist? And I would be like, okay, well, so here's all the stuff. Here's all the stuff which you can read as well as I can read, right? Why are you asking me that question? You need a black person who's a civil rights lawyer to say that the president is racist. When the Department of Justice said he was racist, when he has made all of these racist statements, when he called for the execution of these young black boys who actually were later exonerated and when they were exonerated, refused to retract what he had said before, when he was involved in the birther stuff, when he said during the campaign that the Mexican American judge that was deciding one of his cases that he couldn't decide in my favor because he's Mexican and we're building a wall. I mean, when he's palling around with proud boys and white supremacist groups, when he recently said that the Civil Rights act harmed America, The Civil Rights act, which ended racial segregation and public accommodations. Why are you calling me to ask me that question? There is such a thing as racism, and it is in law identified and proven by objective facts. Do people understand that? I know people are very upset about calling people racist and that this is a terrible thing. But in law, I'm a lawyer. When we charge someone with racial discrimination, when we file a claim, we have to prove that claim. And the Supreme Court has given us a factors that bear on the question of whether the person has engaged in racial discrimination. That's what I operate from. I don't care about anyone's feelings. I don't care if they say they never see race, I don't care if they say, you know, I don't care if you're black, purple, or red. That's usually a sign that they are. But any case, in any case, I don't care if they say any of those things, because as a matter of law, as a matter of public policy, it is not actually about whether you are a good or a bad person. It is the provable by objective fact. And when news organizations refuse to do that, refuse to do that work, refuse to assemble the objective facts and come to the conclusion, then they are not being neutral. They are putting their finger on the scale, and they are gaslighting those of us who are willing to do that work.

[C]

And they make us look radical.

[B]

They make us look crazy.

[C]

I think it happens. If every time we covered Access Hollywood, we described Donald Trump as saying he could grab women in the pussy, I'm not sure he would have won. But because that word is so abhorrent, we said, grab women in the bleep or grab women between the legs. He tweeted on Easter Sunday about closing the fucking straight. But because Saying fucking at 4pm is offensive and polarizing, it's like fingers on the chalkboard, I think I've said it three times, which is probably three times more than most. But if we said that the President of the United States of America, in the middle of a hot combat war with Iran, said, you fucking, you open the fucking straight, he might be perceived differently even by his own base. I think it's more than putting the finger on the skin. I think it endangers the people who were sort of standing there saying, the emperor is buck ass naked. And I wonder how in year nine when he's so plainly out of his mind we still don't know how to cover him.

[B]

Nicole, you know this. Most of the people who are the pundits in mainstream media, especially 15, 20 years ago, were not people who know very much about race or who feel comfortable talking about race. And so they didn't. And so they turned the whole conversation into one about economics, ignoring the racial piece that actually was the stalking horse for Trump. So they were playing to their own strengths. They were going to diners and interviewing people who voted for Trump and endlessly excusing their views about Trump. And so the media has failed us because they have a culture. Look at you're having a White House correspondence dinner that's gonna celebrate Trump. That's gonna celebrate Trump, who just this past year is calling reporters piggyback and is calling them nasty and rude. And what kind of culture has been created in the media?

[C]

Pete Hegseth is going to be there. Who kicked the press out. Pete Hegseth is an invited guest of cbs. They invited him as their guest as he's at war. It is like sitting down with your

[B]

abuser, but it begins with not standing up for one another. In Trump 1.0, when Trump was calling out reporters and being cruel to reporters, and the next reporter doesn't just repeat the question that the reporter who was chastised asked. They try to go on. That's a culture that you want to get your question answered. So you're not going to stand in solidarity with the team of people that you work with every day that has to be culturally changed. So all of these are pieces. Do you remember when people told us the generals will refuse to go along with this? Well, we watched all of those generals sitting in that room while someone like Pete Hegseth, who's not fit to shine their shoes, disparaged them all. He called them from all corners of the world, which in and of itself was insane, and then talked about how we're not gonna have fat people in the Pentagon, and we're not gonna have DEI and we're not gonna. All of this was happening so in every institution that we believed would be institutions that could resist and save us from going down the authoritarian rabbit hole. We have seen culture eat courage. We have seen culture eat integrity. We have seen culture eat ethics. And that is true at the Supreme Court as well. And so the resetting that we have to do is like, it's gotta come down to the studs. It's gotta come down to the studs. And we have to be having serious conversations now about what we want to see on the other side, which is one of the reasons I started the center at Howard was like, can we start having the conversations now? I know it's not over yet. I mean, we still have to fight, but, you know, when it goes, it goes fast.

[C]

Fast.

[B]

It goes fast. Right. We don't know when it will go, but when it goes, you're on that other side. And now what?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, like, in Hungary, they're going to investigate now why Hungarian people's money, taxpayer money, went to cpac. Yes. Like the investigations. Cpac. This is insane. I want to come back to the Supreme Court and ask you. Like, I find the federal courts to be almost universally reassuring. I mean, he has been stopped maybe 80, 90% of the time by district courts and by judges that Sort of with the exception of the six conservatives on the Supreme Court, and I guess with the exception of tariffs, how do you explain the delta between all the judges not just saying no to him, but rebuking him? I mean, they have been fearless and they have universally articulated the law and pointed out when Trump is breaking it. What explains the delta between their rulings and their tone and their near universal willingness and fearlessness in calling him out and the very different result he gets at the Supreme Court?

[B]

I have the answer. And the answer goes to. The answer goes to precisely what you were saying earlier about knowing the consequences of what happens. And you may have heard Justice Sotomayor last week in a conversation, seeming to call out Justice Kavanaugh for not understanding the consequences of the decision that he wrote about what are now called Kavanaugh stops, in which ICE stops and detains people. And she described the way in which he's so insulated from the consequences. And the difference is, I always tell people there are courts and there are courts. We have been trained in this country to focus only on the Supreme Court, as though it's the only one that matters. It's the highest court, as though it's the only. But I just told you, the Supreme Court decides 65 cases a year. That is the smallest fraction you can imagine of the amount of litigation that happens in the United States in state and federal courts. There are courts and there are courts. There are courts all over the place. And the Supreme Court's not the only one. In the federal system, we have three levels of court. We have district court judges who are trial courts. We have appellate court judges, which we call the circuit courts. And then from there, cases go to the Supreme Court if the Supreme Court chooses to take the case. And what you're seeing right now is a battle between trial court judges and the Supreme Court. Trial court judges are doing a different kind of work than the Supreme Court is doing. And for me, as a civil rights lawyer, I have been ringing this bell forever that the most important to me are the trial court judges, because that's where you get to make the. That's where you put the witnesses on. That's where you show the evidence. That's where you present the documents. That's where you put on the expert witnesses. This is where you get to your clients, get to tell the story of what actually happened to them. And when trial judges are faced with that evidence, they have to make a decision. They make what's called findings of fact. In our legal system, findings of fact are considered the province of the trial court. And therefore they cannot be overturned by the appellate court, the circuit court, or even the Supreme Court unless they are clearly erroneous. What you are seeing are trial courts who are getting the factual information about what happened to Kilmar Abregu. They're getting the information about what ICE knew and what they didn't know. They're getting the information about whether he had charges against him or not. They're getting the information about what was said before the person was shot. They are the people who know what actually happened. And so what you're getting is you're getting from the trial judges who know, and it's not that they don't know law. Also, they are bound to apply the law as it exists with the facts as stated by the Supreme Court, to the facts of the situation. And that's what they are doing. That's usually about as authentic as it's going to get at the trial court level. What we are seeing, though, particularly at the Supreme Court, is the Supreme Court engaging in shenanigans because the trial court record has become inconvenient for them. So they're deciding things on the shadow docket or they're misrepresenting what happened in the trial court. I mean, when I read the concurrence that Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the case out of California about these stops case that was brought by Latino American citizens who were worried about their. Their rights being denigrated, his description of what these stops were like read like he had gotten it off of the ICE website. All of us have seen what these stops looked like, right? And the trial judge saw what the stops looked like and had the evidence and the testimony of witnesses and of the parties who described what happened to them when they were stopped in their own backyard, and so on and so forth. So what you're seeing then is a Supreme Court that finds these factual findings inconvenient, and they have therefore recast these factual findings as the district court somehow being insolent and refusing right, to follow our cues. Our cues are that we think this is okay, and the district courts are resisting that. That's how they're recasting the district courts who are doing their jobs and they are courageous. History will write the stories of Judge Chutkan and Judge Boasberg and Judge Ali and all of these judges who at the district court level are doing their applying the Constitution. They are Article 3 judges. They are also federal judges who sit for life. They also have lifetime tenure. Right. We need to understand that they are just as legitimate and what they are doing, the records they are creating are why we know a lot about what has happened in these ICE cases, Nicole, not because of the Supreme Court. We know what happened because of these cases and because of the record being created and the trial judges willingness to this to let us hear the evidence that they are hearing.

[C]

I think all the time too about the disparity between how those judges who have to interact with the clowns that are left at doj. I mean, basically district judges appointed by Republicans up to and including Donald Trump have rebuked countless DOJ attorneys and U.S. attorneys. Those offices have been purged of people with competence and morality and they've been filled with, I don't know, people that are willing to do Donald Trump's bidding and they've been rebuked by those judges you're describing. And then you watch Sauer in the Supreme Court and he's treated so differently by the conservatives on the Supreme Court than the judges appointed even by Donald Trump Treat other DOJ officials well.

[B]

There's another one, the legal profession also. And I'm proud to say that there are many aspects of the profession that are doing self examination and trying to do some reckoning. I've been very gratified to see state bar associations taking up these disciplinary proceedings against lawyers who are lying and violating our ethical code. That is yet another culture that has to reexamine itself. We're a profession. Professions have codes, right. If you are an architect, you can't just build a building any old way, right? Well, unless you're building troubles Ballroom.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Unless you're building the ballroom or certain, yes, high rise buildings in Florida. But you have a code and we are bound by an ethical code as lawyers and we take an oath. I would challenge anyone to suggest that they are more zealous in their representation of their client than I have been over the years. But I still, even in that zeal, would never lie to a federal court judge about what I have done in a particular case or about what my client has done about whether I have allowed the removal of my client from a particular place. I would never tell a federal judge that I didn't follow your order because it was verbal and not written. I wouldn't make misrepresentations about what a case actually stands for in a filing that I make with the court. It just I wouldn't do it. It is beyond the pale of our ethical responsibilities as officers of the court and that we are seeing successive waves of lawyers first in the Trump election cases in 2020, and now lawyers who actually work for the Department of Justice engaging in that kind of conduct before federal courts. I think it's doing a grievous injury to our professions. I ask law firms, when I go to law firms, I ask the partners, and after these issues come out and the judges issue these decisions in which they're rebuking these laws, lawyers, what do you all say to associates in the law firm? Do you all just eat lunch in the lunchroom, you just pass them in the hallways? Or do you call meetings? Do you talk with them about what is acceptable and unacceptable? Are you allowing this to go forward without commentary? Because if we are to recalibrate and ensure that this profession continues to have integrity and dignity, then you have to speak immediately to these excesses by lawyers who are wearing the mantle of what was considered the pinnacle of lawyering in this country, that is being a lawyer for the Department of Justice. So this is yet another area in which these institutions are being unraveled and that institutional work can start now. That's part of how we make sure on the other side, Nicole, that we are doing the work. Why wait? We don't have to wait to have these conversations. As media, as business leaders, as the legal profession, as judges, we can be working on this now and should be working on this now.

[C]

My conversation with Sherrilyn Ifill continues right after the break. We'll be right back.

[A]

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[D]

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[C]

The American people are basically telling the

[B]

president that they are not okay with any of this.

[D]

Sign up for the Project 47 newsletter at Ms. Now. Project 47.

[C]

I want to come back to your point about racism and about the price of eggs and economic anxiety because I feel like we did this again. I mean, he acts insane, but if insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Many well intentioned People shorthanded the 24 election as an election about anxiety about the price of eggs. How do, it's just, how do we, how do people who want to do better keep getting that wrong?

[B]

They get it wrong because they want to, they want to not have to confront the truth about what lives in our national DNA, which is the force of white supremacist ideology in our country seems so overwhelming and so unsolvable that people feel like you can solve economic issues. And so they tell themselves once again that it's math, you know, if people just do better, then it will all go away. And it's simply not true. It is its own independent thing. It is a phenomenon. The framers of the 14th Amendment, the reconstruction Congress knew that's why they created those constitutional amendments, because they did not expect it to go away anytime soon. But it became clear to them that this would need to be embedded in the Constitution because they believed that the white supremacist ideology and the spirit of it, they believed that the spirit of insurrection was something that was deeply embedded in the DNA of this country. And they tried to create constitutional amendments that would protect our country against those things that live within us. And I think people covering and talking about our elections and our political system, these are people who lived through Willie Horton. These are people who know President Reagan started his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi and gave a speech about states rights. That was his campaign kickoff. What were we supposed to do with that information? What were we supposed to do with the information about he and Richard Nixon calling black people monkeys? And what were we, we were supposed to just forget that. And you all were conveniently forgetting it, you know, and so there's just a kind of habit that's developed that that's what we shouldn't be talking about. And that when we assign the issue of race as a explanation for some of the political problems in our country, that's lazy. That's what we're told. When in fact it is lazy to deny the truth of it and denying the truth of it. It's just undisciplined and ahistorical. And that's why I describe it as DNA, because it's not again about whether one person is a good person or a bad person. Just have to know what's in the DNA of your country. When you go to Germany and you're in Berlin and you can't walk 10 steps without tripping over markers on the sidewalk, that are telling you where there was a work camp down this street, the street that looks perfectly lovely and ordinary, but they're gonna tell you that this was where a concentration camp was, or this was a work camp was. Or this is where they had the conversation about what they were gonna do to Jewish people. Right. Why did they do that? What are they trying to accomplish? They are recognizing what's in their DNA, and they are trying to guard against the worst manifestation of it by the constant reminder of what it was like when there was the worst manifestation of it. But, no, we have a president who is returning Confederate monuments back to their place. Right. Because we're doing the exact opposite and erasing history because we don't want to admit what's in our DNA. And the reason I say in our DNA is because you probably have things in your family DNA. You know, I have diabetes in my DNA. I'm not mad at my DNA, you know, but knowing that there's diabetes in my family, I do certain things about my health to guard against the worst manifestation of it. I can't remove it from my DNA.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we will never remove white supremacist ideology from the DNA of this country, but we can do things that would protect against the worst manifestation of it. And that's what happened after the civil rights movement.

[C]

Why does it scare people?

[B]

I don't know. I mean, we had created a set of norms and a set of laws and a set of social contracts around how we dealt with each other. That's why you couldn't say certain things in the workplace. That's why you couldn't call women certain things. That's why you didn't use the N word. That's why. Right. And to turn something like dei, three of the most. The softest, most sleepy words in the English diversity, equity, and inclusion, to turn that into a slur that's used to denigrate any black person of achievement or any black person of success is a disgrace. So what we learned, Nicole, is that those agreements we came to after the civil rights movement, including civil rights laws that ended segregation in public accommodations, that supported voting rights, that tried to stop discrimination in housing, and that created this social contract of how we talk with each other and how we move with each other and the kind of inclusion we were trying to create, apparently there were a set of Americans, white Americans, for whom this was just too hard, and they felt that they were put upon by this. And in comes Donald Trump, who says, you don't have to do any of that. You can Just be who you want to be. And me, too, was part of this, too. You don't have to worry about how you talk to women or whether you made a joke that might be considered sexist in the workplace. This was a way of just unleashing. Unleashing everybody, of unraveling the social contract that we had created, which any country trying to be a true multiracial democracy would have to make. We were doing something actually noble. We were creating space for one another. And Donald Trump came and removed the velvet rope and said, you know what? You don't have to do any of that. What I didn't know was that so many Americans were anxious to have permission to be their worst self. I admit I didn't know that. But that's what was on offer. And people liked it. That's why they liked it. At the rallies when he said, punch him in the mouth and let's do it the way we used to do it. There were waves of people just howling with excitement. Lock her up. That they wanted to be free. They felt oppressed by the social contracts we had created as a way to make room for all of us in a true multiracial democracy in which justice and equality were at the core as much as liberty and freedom. It is a rejection of that.

[C]

How do you turn it back around?

[B]

Well, I continue to believe that the vast majority of Americans did not feel oppressed by it or at least recognize its usefulness. And I think every time we give them the off ramp of saying it's about groceries, we actually disempower them from exercising the best of themselves as citizens. I do think there's more of us than there are of them. I do think that you know this, Nicole. You read all the comments to something that you posted, and if there's one negative comment, you think about it all day.

[C]

All day. I mean, I had to quit because I think about it for a month, I'd end up in therapy. The one thing, usually it was a Russian troll. And I would be like, fixate.

[B]

Absolutely.

[C]

That's why I'm not. I quit Twitter. I can't take it.

[B]

But the one negative has so much more power. It's the statement that travels longer. It's the thing that stays in your head longer. It is. So we are doing something lopsided when we're basically having plebiscite votes every four years over these two things. And the people who get really passionate and come out are the people who are into this. And I think there are many people who are not into it, and we're not doing too badly. We're coming out. But we also have to recognize that the last election, there was a black and Indian woman running. We can't pretend that race and gender wasn't part of it. And Honestly, she got 74 million votes, which in the arc of American history, is a pretty big deal.

[C]

It's more than anyone else other than Trump. Right.

[B]

So, like, I understand he got 77, but she got 74 million votes. That's nothing to sniff at, you know, and you hear people saying, oh, it was just a disaster. It was a catastrophe. Well, I will just tell you from, you know, Sheryl and Ifill, from when I was a little girl in the 70s and still running to the TV when black people came on and seeing Barbara Jordan and all that stuff, that was a pretty big damn deal. So I think we can't throw in the towel as though we are not still making progress and as though we are not still doing the work. This backlash was to be expected. We also have to remember Nicole. And that's why what happened this week is so important, is that we are part of a global phenomenon. We are in a global moment of authoritarian rise. And therefore, what happened to Viktor Orban in Hungary is very important. It's very important. Seeing European leaders say, no, we will not join you in this mad adventure in Iran, Seeing Canada say, we would love to be part of the eu, Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

We cannot allow someone to make us part of an axis. If those of us remember our World War II, when there was the allies in the axis. Trump wants us to be in the axis with his buddies. He wants us to be with Putin. He wants us to be with North Korea. That's what he wants. And we have to decide in fighting for our country who we are going to be. And if we get to the point where someone is saying that the price of eggs or the price of gas is more important to me than whether or not I live in a democracy, it is. Because we have not explained to people what it means to live in a democracy. The mere fact that you can say the things that you say, that's part of living in a democracy.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And so I just think it's okay for us to be clear about that, about what it means to live in a democracy and the freedom it gives, it doesn't always advantage me either.

[C]

How do you feel about late joiners? You know, I have a really hard time figuring out how to cover Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Megyn Kelly and people who Say things that have been so clear to me since the beginning. It seems like it's politically important because their voices with, you know, the calls are all coming from inside the house. But. And so maybe some of the other people in that side of that house or listen to them. But he's been the same person, to your point, he's been the same person forever. And so I wonder how open you are to the. I mean, obviously I wouldn't have the career I have if people didn't accept that I've changed. But how open are you at a human level to people changing?

[B]

Yeah, at a political level, I'm quite open to it. You know, I think it's. I think it's great. I think we need more people to do that, to say this is, you know, manifestly insane. I have difficulty with people who, who, you know, for whom it's only the tariffs that have gotten them or the, you know, like, all the other things that he's done have been okay.

[C]

Right.

[B]

What bothers me more, though, Nicole, is were you okay with all the stuff that led up to this? Because then again, I'm interested on getting on the other side, like, what we're going to build. And so I need to know, are you okay with the voter fraud myth, which predated Trump? Are you okay with laws that try to keep eligible people from voting? Like. Like. Cause that's been going on before Trump. Right.

[C]

Well, it answers. And this is just back to where we started, I guess to end what you are on the other side is only better if all the lies go with the toxic figure that parroted the lies. So I think, and I think I realized this as someone who'd been in the Republican Party around marriage equality. Marriage is the most conservative institution on the planet, and if you're not for marriage, you are actually not at all conservative. And so, like, like I. And I think Stu Stevens, who I worked with, wrote a book like, it was all bullshit. If the whole party doesn't blow itself up on the realization that the vast majority of it was bs, the rebuilding has to start at the truth. And there's so much of the Republican Party now deeply embedded in the lies.

[B]

Yeah, the deficit lie. I mean, you know, you can be a fiscal conservative in the sense that you think that government should contain spending. Okay. I mean, that doesn't sound terrible to me, but it just doesn't make any sense. Right.

[C]

Or tax cuts, the two most expensive things. Wars and tax cuts.

[B]

I mean, come on. And then, like, where do we stand on. So you Think it's okay for people to have to work until they die at age 90 without health care?

[C]

It's insane.

[B]

Without. Without health care, without Social Security? You think somehow that that's a moral stance, and then you see yourself as the party of morality. You have to make it all make sense coherently. And it is the Republican Party that describes itself in these broad terms. You know, the party of the. Of the faithful, you know, the Christian. Well, I'm. I'm a black person who grew up in the black church, so I. I reject that idea that they are the, you know, and that's a media piece, too. And we want to talk to faith voters. If you were talking to faith voters, you would be talking to black people who still have the, you know, highest church attendance, you know, of any folks in America, like, please. You know, so we would have to make it make sense. We would have to actually make it real and not just be this mythological idea of who you are. And I think it begins with being able to show a certain maturity as a citizen. This is what I think is the project before us, Nicole. We all have not sufficiently performed as responsible citizens in the. In a democracy that purports to be the most powerful country in the world, or at least one of the most powerful, it's actually a huge responsibility. And that means we don't just get to vote like how we feel. That Trump makes me laugh. I think he's funny, so I'm going to vote for him. That is utterly irresponsible, and it suggests that we are not competent citizens to participate in a democracy that has this kind of influence around the world. And so part of what we have to do is to reexamine our. Our definition of what it means to be a responsible citizen in this country. It is not just to vote. It is to be fully engaged in the decisions that are made about this country. It is about voting. It is about visiting your representative. It is about showing up for jury duty and not trying to get out of it. It is about showing up at city council meetings and understanding what's happening in your community. It is about making sure that your local police department understands what you expect of them when they approve young people. It is about caring about those who don't have the money for private school and those who need an opportunity to learn and to expand their wings and their imagination. That's what it means to be a citizen. And if that feels like it's too much for you, then this is the wrong country for you to be a citizen. In because we have a huge footprint around the world no matter what we do for good or for ill and it is a responsibility that is placed in our hands. All of us have to get better at this and take it seriously.

[C]

Sherlyn Ifill, you are an inspiration and I have three more hours of questions. Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care.

[C]

Thank you. Thank you so much for Listening to the Best People. You can subscribe to Ms. Now Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNow Originals ad free. You'll also get early access and exclusive bonus content. All episodes of this podcast are also available on YouTube. Visit msnow. The best people to Watch the Best People is produced by Vicki Vergelina with additional production support from Ayan Chatterjee, Max Jacobs, Rana Shabazzi, and Colette Holcomb. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Hazik bin Ahmad Fared. Katie Lau is our Senior Manager of Audio Production, Pat Burkey is the Senior Executive Producer of Deadline White House Brad Gold is the Executive Producer of Content Strategy, Aisha Turner is the Executive Producer of Audio and Madeline Herringer is Senior VP in Charge of Audio, Digital and Long form. Search for the Best People wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to find Follow the series.

[D]

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