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- [00:01]
Joy Reid
Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify.
- [00:06]
Aya Ibrahim
They have the tools you need to
- [00:07]
Joy Reid
start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing, to selling and beyond. Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com specialoffer.
- [00:33]
Wajahat Ali
Okay,
- [00:41]
Joy Reid
Well, hello everyone. Happy tax day. Everybody paid up? Everybody all set with your IRS situation? Happy tax day and welcome to the Joy Reach show. Big up to all the chats Everybody watching on YouTube, Substack, Facebook, of course, our Twitches. I'm actually looking at Twitch right now. That's what I'm going to look at. So hello Twitchies. Welcome to everybody that's watching on all the different forms as well as if you're listening on a podcast format. We just appreciate you all being here. Please be sure to hit like and share. We have now hit 443000 subscribers. I'm giving you guys the count as every show we're just climbing and climbing and clawing our way up to 500000 because that is our touch point on the way to a million subscribers. So we are pushing to for that. We're still just a baby. We're only what like a nine month old show but we are almost at 445,000. So I'm really excited. You can help us get there by not only hitting like and also subscribe if you're not already a subscriber. About 55% of the people who watch the who watch any program on YouTube and even on subsec mainly are not subscribed. So we want you to subscribe, be a part of the family. You can also share. Hit the little share button and share it with five people. Share. Grab the link, share it with five friends. Make sure that everybody can get involved. We want everybody to be part of our TJRS family. We like a big family. We're like, we like the Waltons format. We want to be like the Waltons. Like hello John boy. You can see obviously that you guys, I have on my new pair of Vontel fabulous frames. I see some people in the chats already noticing. Pretty fabulous. And the reason I'm wearing these as we mentioned on Monday, is that over the next few days, over this entire week, I'm going to be introducing three of my favorite Bondail frames exclusively Available to at our friends@shopredbag.com and it's a partnership between us, the Joy Reid show, shopredbag.com and Vontel Eyewear. And if you do not know Vontel, lots of people, when I got these glasses and started trying them on, people said, oh my, I love Vontel Eyewear because they are a fabulous black woman owned company that was founded by two brilliant women who set out to like solve a problem, right? The best business solves a problem. So they wanted to create frames that actually fit the faces of people of color. We'll have wider nose bridges, longer temples. And so they make these glasses with proportions that are designed to be comfortable on our faces and to give you the confidence of looking fabulous and fierce without like the pinching, then when they slide down your nose, all that kind of stuff. Just beautiful design that celebrates culture, color and individuality. And here's the best part. When you shop@shopredbag.com you are not just buying something beautiful, you are also investing in, in brands and creators who reflect your community, who reinvest in the community. It's a platform that's all about discovery, culture and supporting diverse founders. So a lot of the people who have their businesses on shopredbag.com are people of color, immigrants, women. You get the idea. So on Monday, I tried on the Romare bearden the block two 1972 frames that celebrate Romari Bearden, the artist. And today these are called the Amina Tiffany Black. They are fabulous. They're classic on the outside. But let me show you guys inside. What look what they look like inside. I don't know if you can see this, but the inside has this fabulous green tortoise on the inside. Isn't this amazing? It's picking up nice and clear. Oh, it's gorgeous. So they're black on the outside and then they've got this fabulous tortoise on the inside. This is so their fears. Even if you actually drop your class, like, oh, I dropped my glasses, people gonna be like, baby, those glasses are fabulous. Even when you pull them off your face, they're fabulous. So that's what I'm trying on today. And I have to say, I definitely like them. I feel like very regal in these glasses. I don't know what you guys think. I think they're fat. I liked my, my Mondays were fabulous too. But these are so popular. They're actually currently sold out on shopredbag.com and they're on back order, which tells you lots of people love them. But if you're feeling them. They are Amina Tiffany Black, I want to hear your thoughts. And here's how you do that. You're going to grab a quick pick of the screen. Let me let you get a picture. You look fabulous. Got it? Okay, you got that? And just write down Amina, am I n a Tiffany Black. And next Monday, after you've gotten to see all three frames, don't decide yet. You remember the Monday. You've now seen the Amina. And then you're going to see a new one on Friday, which is also absolutely fabulous as well. We're going to let you guys vote on which frame you like the best. And the reason we're doing this is to help me figure out kind of what style I want to have when we create with Vontel, my personalized readers. A lot of you in the chat, especially all YouTubers and y' all lemon heads, been saying you need to create some readers like custom glasses. And we're going to do that with Fontel. But we want to decide, like, what style we want. And I love to have multiple frames. So I also will be wearing these as well. We love them. And because you're part of the community, if you are interested in purchasing these frames or the frames you saw on Monday, you can do so if you go to shopredbag.com and then at checkout, just use the code Joy, they'll give you 10% off the order. Okay, one piece of housekeeping. So do do that. Just go on. Use Joy at checkout shopraidbag.com they'll give you 10 off. Fabulous. Okay, one more piece of housekeeping. I'm gonna take these off in just a second.
- [05:38]
Wajahat Ali
I mean, they look great, but it's
- [05:40]
Joy Reid
just that the light. The light just shines in your eyes and. Let me do another pose. Yeah, do another. Do us do a still post so they can get a screenshot. There you go. Hold it. Pose. Strike another pose. Hold it. There you go. Give me another one. Give me face, face, face, face, face. Okay, there you go. Now take those glasses off, please. Okay. Jason's like, take the glasses off me. Can I just show you guys the box too? I love. I'm a box girl. I do love a package. The packaging is bomb. Okay? That's the package. And the interior package comes out with little thing like this is like their little thing to clean your glasses. And then it opens up like this here. Oh, my God. Soft open, soft close. Baby. I'm telling you, I love luxury, but that's not like super crazy expensive because it's like luxury, but you're not like breaking the bank. You know, money's tight now. It's tax day. People, people, people, like, I'm trying to hold on to my money. So, yeah, so that's the vontel glass. Okay, let's do another piece of housekeeping tomorrow. If you are a substack premium subscriber or a reader, who are the subs on both YouTube and Premium Substack, we're going to be having our weekly Joy's House insider conversation with Drum roll, Tim Miller. Hi. Tim Miller of the Bull Work is going to be joining us. This is going to be fun. Former Republican political strategist, you know, reformed Republican and a regular on cable. And these podcast streets, we're going to be talking California Governor madness and how we gonna fix that mess and how we're looking going into the midterms in 2028. That's what these Joyce House insiders are about. They're about like, strategy, like, how do we get our, our shit together before these midterms? So that's gonna be the conversation. Very excited to talk to Tim on tomorrow. Okay. Also, one more piece of housekeeping on Friday after this show, which wherever you're watching it, whether you're on Facebook or LinkedIn, if you're on Twitch, wherever you're watching it after the show, we want you to come right back at 8pm on YouTube and substack because we're doing our members Only live. So the Members Only live is at 8pm on Friday. That's YouTube and substack. So make sure you write that down. Or maybe you guys are smart enough to keep it in your heads. You have to write it down. Okay. People saying, I like Tim Miller. I like Tim Miller, too. Tim actually is a former. We both are former Denverites, and so we can talk. We can talk Denver stuff. If you guys want us to do that, we'll do that, too. Okay, so let's get to the headlines. You guys know, most of them, the Straits of Hormuz, they're still mostly shut down. It's. It's an embarrassment. The, the Trump regime has blockaded it. They're intercepting some ships that are trying to go through the strait, but some ships are actually getting through because it does seem like China is able to get their ships through. So people are sort of. I'm going to show you a little bit later, sort of conflicting headlines on that because it doesn't make much sense. Meanwhile, the Iranian government, they have taken to just daily mocking and trolling Trump, via their various embassies around the world who are retweeting these AI, this AI mockery, and I mean, Tanzania, South Africa, their embassies all over the world are just mocking him. But the main one that you guys have seen have been these Lego mockeries of Trump. Here's the latest one that's mocking Donald Trump's apostasy and sacrilege in which he pretended to be Jesus. Here it is.
- [08:42]
Wajahat Ali
Your reckoning has come. What is this?
- [08:52]
Joy Reid
He got thrown into hell. So that is going all over Twitter. I don't believe it was created. This was created by. I think it might have been a creator here, maybe even in the U.S. but whoever created that, that's getting retweeted by the Iranian government.
- [09:04]
Robert P. Jones
Now.
- [09:05]
Joy Reid
Even the President of Iran waded into Donald Trump's attacks on Pope Leo to defend the Catholic leader. So Mosud, his name is Mosud Pezakyan. That is the Iranian president, not the supreme leader, but their president. He went on X Twitter, went on X Twitter, went right into Elon's forum, saying he condemns Trump's claims that the Pope was not doing a good job. And here's his quote. I condemn the insult to your excellency on behalf of the great nation of Iran and declare that the desecration of Jesus, the prophet of peace and brotherhood, is not acceptable to any free person. I wish you glory by Allah, because you know that Muslims also revere Jesus. He is all up in the Quran. So he is more respectful toward the Pope and Jesus than Trump is. Okay. Now, earlier today, the Pope himself spoke out after Trump shared that sacrilegious image of Trump pretending to be Jesus. He's responded too, saying, I'm not afraid of Trump and I have no fear of speaking out. He was asked, are you fearful of some sort of attack on you? The Avignon papacy, where the French went and basically kidnapped the Pope back in the 13th century or something and took control. He's like, I'm not afraid of him. He should have said, I'm from Chicago. We ain't afraid of nobody. So, no, I'm not afraid of him. Right. And then Trump himself was asked about, why did you post yourself as Jesus? And his answer, Chef's kiss. Spectacular madness. Here it is. Mr. President, did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?
- [10:45]
Wajahat Ali
Well, it wasn't depiction. It was me. I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross. As a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake News could come up with that one. So I, I, I had, I just heard about it and I said, how do they come up with that? It's supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better. As an example, the 11,000. I understand your husband's going through treatment.
- [11:18]
Robert P. Jones
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
- [11:19]
Wajahat Ali
He's going through some very serious cancer treatment. So, yes, this goes a long way.
- [11:24]
Robert P. Jones
Yes, sir, it sure does.
- [11:26]
Joy Reid
So, so Donald Trump brought like a random woman to stand next to him that, like, had a husband who needs medical care and said, well, I was obviously being a doctor. It's very clear that I was a doctor. Maybe the red thing over me was the Red Cross. Like, does he think people are just morons? Like he is? His excuse is, well, I thought I was. He said, I just heard about it. I just heard about it. I thought I was being a doctor. It's like, it's like a Halloween costume gone wrong. Oh, I thought that was a doctor costume. I know it's, it was in a package that said Jesus costume, but I thought it said Dr. Jesus. Come on. Here's how that meme is being sublimely mocked on these Internet streets. Here it is. A3. Bold Oen. Whoever you are, kudos. Well played, sir or madame. Yeah. Because the only way Donald Trump is a doctor is that he's reaching in the till and stealing all the money from cancer patients. Because you do know that he canceled all of the money that had been allocated for the big cancer moonshot that President Biden created. He's like, yeah, f that I need that money in my pocket. Even as the. So, so let's, let's, let's try the next person that maybe could try to do a good defense, like J.D. vance. You're up to the, to the till. Let's see if J.D. vance did a better job trying to defend his boss man, since he's done such a great job helping Viktor Orban get not reelected after 16 years and all of his other exploits, which has made him actually the most unpopular vice president poll wise in American history since the beginning of polling. But you know what, J.D. give it a shot. Let's hear it.
- [13:13]
J.D. Vance
Look, I think the President has the prerogative to set American foreign policy. He's got the prerogative to set American immigration policy. He has to look out for the interests of the United States of America. And that inevitably means that when the Vatican comments on issues of public policy, sometimes there's going to be agreement. Of course, and sometimes there's going to be disagreement. I think that's a reasonable thing, Brett. Again, I don't think that it's particularly newsworthy, but I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of, you know, what's going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President, United States stick to dictating American public policy. But when they're in conflict, they're in conflict. I don't worry about it too much, Brett. I think it's a natural thing. I'm sure it'll happen in the future. And it's not that big of a deal that it happened in the past.
- [14:04]
Joy Reid
Not that big of a. Not that big of a deal. Okay, let's. Let's go through this. A few things. J.D. john Donald. What's your name? John Donald Heyman. John Donald Hamel, Whatever the hell your name is. Okay. Because it's not J.D. vance. You're the guy who was running for Vice President of the United States, a secular office that has nothing to do with whether women marry or have children. But you spent much of that campaign campaigning against childless cat ladies. What in the hell does that have to do with you, with the Vice Presidency of the United States? Literally nothing. You spent part of your campaign lying about constituents in your own state because you were a senator from the great state of Ohio. Lying and saying that Haitian American immigrants in your own home state were eating people's cats and dogs. What the hell did that have to do with your office? Now, the Pope, first of all, he shouldn't meddle in affairs of state. Do you understand that the United States has an actual ambassador to the Vatican, an ambassador to the Holy See. Why do we send an ambassador to the Vatican? Do we send an ambassador to the Presbyterian Church? The heads of the Presbyterian Church? Do we send an ambassador to the head of the Lutheran Church? No. Vatican City is a. Is its own governmental city, its own governmental entity inside of Italy separate from the Italian government. It has ambassadors in and out. It is treated effectively as a state, and that is why we send ambassadors there. James. Donald. Donald. James, whatever the hell your name is. So you don't even understand the Pope's job. So his job is not just to speak to matters of morality, which he's doing when he says that the wars that you and Donald and crazy ass Pete Heg, Seth, who we hope is sober on a good day, the wars that you're waging and the genocides that you're enabling, it's literally his job to speak to the morality of that. That's literally his job. And on the case of theology, he would know more about that than you. But you keep on lecturing him, just as you did his predecessor, Pope Francis, not just on American policy, but on morality. You have taken it upon yourself, John Donald Danes Hayden, whatever the hell your name is, to lecture the Pope in the past, both Popes Francis and Pope Leo, about their job and about the Bible and about Catholicism and Catholic doctrine. And you've been a Catholic for like five minutes. You're such a light Catholic. You've been a Catholic for such a short time that the book you just recently wrote that talks about your conversion to Catholicism, which happened like four minutes ago, you couldn't even put a picture of a Catholic church on the COVID The the church you picked, you depicted on the COVID of your book about converting to Catholicism was a Methodist church whose constituents and members have never heard of you and don't know or they've heard of you, but they've never met you. You never been to the church. You didn't even bother to attend the church so that you could at least have a semblance of connection to that church when you put it on the damn cover of your book. So I think the, the phrase I'm looking for for you, James Donald David Hamill, Donald, whatever your hell your name is is S F T U. Let's throw it over to the Iranian embassy. They've got another post. The Iranian embassy. And look, we hate to say this is the Iranian embassy in Thailand. They're doing them in all the embassies all over the world. They've said that, you know, Trump maybe is Trump 20, 28, $20.28 a gallon gas, Because they've got a better sense of humor than you. And one of the pieces that is really interesting and I'm going to talk to my next guest about it. Iran is winning the meme wars, guys. It's arguable. They're winning the actual war and they're winning the meme wars for sure. They're winning the messaging for sure because the reverse messaging has been a disaster. But on this subject of the papacy, the pope versus the regime, it's like pope 100, regime nil. Joining me now is our pal Wajahat Ali, host of the Democracy Ish podcast, writer, recovering attorney, creator of the Left Hook on Substack, which I was just on earlier today because we do a two a day. We're like a football. Like we're, we're we're like preparing for football season. We do two a days. We, when we get together, we're like piss them off in the morning, in the early afternoon and then come back and finish the job on the Joy Reed Show. He's author. I can't wait for your memoir and play. I need to read that. Watch.
- [18:52]
Wajahat Ali
Hey, Joy, you were on fire earlier today and I recommend everyone go and listen to her at the Left Hook. I'm not shamelessly just promoting the step. She was like Angela Basset's character from Waiting to Excel. But the end. Spoiler alert. Literally with the cigarette throws it and the car explodes and she just sashays away. And that's, you know, you're reflecting the righteous rage of a growing majority of people who want to burn down this AI Crypto Epstein class. These grifters, these frauds. And you're seeing the crack show now with maga, right? They lied to their base about no more wars. You got an unfreaking winnable war in Iran where, yes, Iran is winning this war. It's painful to say they're cracking, crushing us when it comes to the Lego movies. They're crushing us when it comes to the memes. They're even doing better when it comes to elevating the American Pope. The Iranian Foreign Minister elevates the American Pope more so than Donald Trump who thinks the Pope is like Batman and has to fight crime. They lied to their base about the Epstein files because this mother effort is all up in the Epstein files.
- [19:49]
Joy Reid
Come on.
- [19:50]
Wajahat Ali
They lied to their base about bringing down grocery prices, his increased grocery prices and oil prices with his failed trade war that we've all forgotten. And by the way, it's all a big incestuous circle jerk because all these dudes, the Epstein's, the David Sachs, the Elon Musk, the Crypto Bros, the Witkoffs, the Palantirs, the Alex Karps, they're all part of the same club making money off of our misery as factory workers are literally collapsing in Amazon workhouses. You got Bezos's wife saying, I'm not going to apologize for being rich. Here's my daily gratitude list. I'm not making this up. There was a New York Times puff piece on Laura Bezos talking about her gratitude and happiness as Amazon workers are dropping dead. You can't make this shit up.
- [20:35]
Joy Reid
Joy, can you go back and tell the story? Because so earlier Waj was giving me the news like I was like, so I was not paying attention to it and I missed this completely. Please Tell this Amazon story. Watch. Because it's absolutely batshit.
- [20:46]
Wajahat Ali
All right, so couple of days ago, about a week ago, in the Oregon Amazon warehouse facility, a worker drops dead. As the worker's dead body is there, lifeless on the floor, other workers said they were instructed to look away and continue working. The Amazon spokesperson said, no, no, no. That's just misinformation. We had three people come in and try to administer cpr. He died of natural causes. But more and more of this story is getting mainstream, especially today, because people have reached out to the workers, like, nope, they told us to look away and keep working. You can't make this up. And this weekend, Laura Bezos, you know, the wife of Jeff Bezos, you know, they had a $50 million wedding in Venice, she comes up with this puff piece in the New York Times. Can't make this up, telling rich people to stop apologizing for being rich and talking about how they have a gratitude list, and they wake up every day in their $240 million cottage with a gratitude list. And then just today, Amazon's like, let's settle for $200 million for, you know, pollution. And on top of this story, I was telling Joy this. She goes, what? What just happened? I was in the makeup chair for an hour. You had another young man do a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's house. Sam Altman is the deranged CEO of OpenAI. And then you have another Molotov cocktail being thrown at a Tesla sales dealership. And I'm telling y', all, I see the signs, Joy. And I'm seeing. Oh, the other one I told you about, the man who filmed himself burning down the paper factory, which he works at. And he then says, all you had to do was pay us a living wage. And he says he was inspired by Luigi Mangione. How long do you think the 1% of the Epstein class can stay safe in their castles and their cottages, Joy?
- [22:33]
Joy Reid
I mean, not long. I mean, at a certain point, they're going to do what white South Africans did. You know, in South Africa, they just built their homes behind really high walls because they had no intention of actually sharing the wealth with the indigenous people of South Africa. They were like, oh, no, no, no, no. We're just going to treat you as slaves, but we'll just live behind really high walls. That's where we're going. They're going to not be able to walk around on the streets. They're going to have to just barricade themselves in, I guess.
- [23:00]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah, but look, you can't. You can't run. The only place you can go is space. So I want you to go to space.
- [23:06]
Joy Reid
Please go to space.
- [23:07]
Wajahat Ali
Bezos must feel. Go to space. Go terraform Mars. Go, you know, integrate with AI. I have faith in you. Inshallah. You can do it. You guys are brilliant. You're geniuses.
- [23:19]
Robert P. Jones
Go for it.
- [23:19]
Wajahat Ali
Bismillah alaikum. See you in space, shooting star.
- [23:23]
Robert P. Jones
Or go.
- [23:24]
Wajahat Ali
Go to the bunkers and stay there and stay secluded. But look, what we're witnessing today was some good news, Joy. You saw Live Nation lose their loss. The jury ruled against them despite the Trump administration intervening. The jury said, the Live Nation Ticketmaster are engaging in monopolistic practices. That was a huge loss. And Trump administration came in and tried to help them. They lost. Then you saw a thousand a listers in Hollywood literally sign a letter saying, we are against this Paramount Warner Brothers merger that is orchestrated by Larry Ellison and his Nepo baby son, David Ellison. Oh, you know, the single largest donor to the Friends of Israel, a broligarch who is a massive donor to Donald Trump and supports Netanyahu in Israel and by the way, also bought TikTok. And then you're seeing more and more people with this rising rage. And then you saw Kathy Hochul, who was a center left Democrat getting literally bullied by Zoran Mamdani, Chef's kiss. And he's like, hey, you rich billionaires who did not leave after I won, guess what? You know, your second house worth $5 million, we're going to tax you and take that money and help our budget. And New Yorker is like, that's dope. So I see, I sense it in the air, Joy. Like, you know, I talked to you earlier today. We saw the patterns with Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and maga. We saw Hungarians come out. We saw the downfall of Orban. You're seeing violence, you're seeing these victories. I think people are done with the 1%. And if Gavin Newsom thinks he can be president by saying, the billionaires are part of my big tent, you ain't part of my tent. Gavin Newsom, good luck indeed.
- [24:58]
Joy Reid
As a matter of fact, I mean, Tom Steyer, who is seen as kind of maybe the saving grace in California after the mess that the leadership in the Democratic Party made of that race by anointing Eric Swalwell without vetting him even, or maybe even like asking around some AIDS on Capitol Hill if he was a good candidate. Tom Steyer is going to have a challenge. We're trying to get Tom Steyer to come on and talk on the show and be interviewed on the show. People, young people in California are looking at him funny, even though he's a, he's a great environmentalist because he's a billionaire. People are just literally now just saying, are you a billionaire? And for some people, that alone is too much.
- [25:32]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah, I don't like, this is my thing. You know, people ask me, I talked to Jess Craven earlier today, fantastic organizer. She's in California. And you know, we're not one for to be at loss of opinions. I'm originally from California and they're like, whoever remains in the race, who do you pick? And I'm like, you know, these guys have completely effed it up because I don't trust billionaires. Yes. Sty checks the boxes. He is a billionaire.
- [25:52]
Robert P. Jones
Enjoy.
- [25:52]
Wajahat Ali
You and I have traveled the world. We've been in some interesting company. We've rubbed shoulders with the rich and the wealthiest. And we're like, how did you fail up? You're not that smart. But I digress. And we've seen. And I'm going to say something and I think you're going to agree with me. It's an assumption. The rich are their own tribe. Joy. I've traveled around the world. I've seen that the rich, regardless of ethnicity, nationality, religion, they are their own tribe. They protect their own. Which is why I don't have faith in Pritzker the billionaire saving us. I don't have faith in Bloomberg the billionaire saving us. And I'll be honest, Steyer, as a billionaire saving the day, I don't trust it. Joy, Even though he checks a lot of the boxes and I hope I'm wrong.
- [26:31]
Joy Reid
It is tough because the Democrats because. And look, Nancy Pelosi has earned a lot of respect. But people just decided if she says it's Swalwell, that's it. And no one thought second gave it a second thought. And yet 5011 other people running in, no strategy, no plan B. But anyway, we're not going to do California for right now. I want to talk about the media just a little bit and some of these sort of interesting takes here. The first one is, is I do want to talk a little bit more about these parodies, right? And so the BBC did interview one of the creators of all of these parodies that are going after Donald Trump. Let me play a little bit of the first one. Jason. This is a six. This is the one about him being a fake Jesus. Here it is. Then said, I was just the doctor
- [27:11]
Wajahat Ali
fake Jesus, fake Jesus? You put on the robe and the glowing light pretending to hear why you start the fight I ran on his Jesus, the pure and the truth? You marked the faith, what a shame from you you attacked the Pope calling we can confuse and drop that AI pick like you're the one who's been chosen. White robe, shining hands healing the man why your bombs fall on our children and Iran? The Pope stands tall. Paul says he's not afraid of you. You keep playing savior like the whole world is fooled. You think you're holy? Nah, you're just a clown pretending to be Christ while you tear the world down.
- [27:46]
Joy Reid
Listen, first of all. First of all, there are three things I want to point out. Number one, the way that Donald Trump was able to triumph over the Democratic Party in large part was because he captured young people and he captured meme culture.
- [28:00]
Aya Ibrahim
Yeah.
- [28:01]
Joy Reid
Iran has picked this up, or whoever is creating these. And the BBC again did, and he says he's not working for the government, but we don't know. It's propaganda on one level. But it's also like breaking news. Donald Trump does something stupid on Monday. By Tuesday, they've got a new bop out with using hip hop. And it's very interesting. They specifically use hip hop, reggaeton sounds. Reggae sounds are using culture. Black, really black culture. And Legos. And Lego not saying nothing about it. What do you make of this strategy?
- [28:29]
Wajahat Ali
They are destroying America in the information war. It's painful that a foreign country is owning us at our own game, but since it's the Trump administration, I'll allow it. Literally, less than a day later, they're even like, it used to be South Park. Remember south park later. Yes, South Park. They're dropping bangers, like you said in English, using hip hop, using Lego, which is the world's, I think, most successful toy company. Right. Very universal. They're combining those together with facts. They do their facts. They actually research it's factual and literally just mocking him and ridiculing him. And so far, for six weeks, MAGA has no response. They're being outclassed in the information war. They're being outclassed by Iran's foreign diplomats. They're being outclassed on social media. Like we said. Iran's like, the Pope is actually a great man. You should respect him. And Donald Trump's like, bop. You're not fighting crime. Like Batman. You're not fighting crime.
- [29:22]
Robert P. Jones
And.
- [29:22]
Wajahat Ali
And then J.D. van's baby Catholic is like, I think the Pope shouldn't really talk about theology. I know more than the Pope, by the way. Buy my book, Catholicism. That's my book coming out with the Presbyterian Church on the COVID You can't make this shit up. So I think, honestly, this is an unfavorable war. This is a war without any entry and exit strategy. This is a war where every week he's losing favorability rating. Our allies have said, f you, we not joining our allies. Spain is openly saying, yeah, peace out. We're going to be talking to China. No one's coming to help us. Donald Trump and America, by extension, sadly look weak. We're a punchline. We are isolated. Our allies are dumping us. And furthermore, we have linked up with, I don't know, Israel, who probably, probably is the most hated country in the world right now. Only more hated than Trump is Benjamin Netanyahu and who dog walks Donald Trump into a war that no other Republican or Democratic president actually agreed to in the past 47 years. Netanyahu, Trump. It can't get even worse, but it'll probably get worse by this week.
- [30:25]
Joy Reid
A Polish, I guess a far right Polish politician literally unfurled a picture of the Israeli flag with a swastik on it saying that they are the new Third Reich or they're the Fourth Reich. I mean, that's how bad it's gotten. And the other piece of it. And Jason, this is a seven. It's actually still is that it's not even clear whether we've actually blockaded the Strait of Hormuz. Like, depending on. I put four different headlines up. These are the first four headlines I found when I just said, let me pull up the headlines some mil. You know, the NBC is saying, yeah, the US Military has been turning back ships, but Reuters is saying that traffic is barely impacted. You've got CNBC saying that the Hormuz blockade is fully implemented, but then CNN is like, well, why are some ships going through? Like, it's like we. There is not even a coherent answer to whether we've actually blockaded the Strait.
- [31:19]
Wajahat Ali
Listen, Joy, you're being nasty. I have blocked the Strait of Hummus. It's thick and garlicky. I put in some red pepper. The Strait of Hummus is completely clogged up. We don't need the Strait of Hummus. We don't need it. We're in America. We're the hottest country right now. Who cares about the. It'll open up. The Strait of Hamas will open up magically, which is why I'm sending 10,000 troops to open up the Strait of Hamas. Okay. By the way the regime is friendly, the regime loves us, but they have to be destroyed. And we've already won the war. But that's why we're doing negotiations. Okay, stop being nasty. I'm actually not even making up. That's almost exact quotes of Donald Trump.
- [31:53]
Joy Reid
I mean, literally. But if there was a straight of hummus, like, I'm actually really for it and I think they should not blockade it.
- [31:58]
Wajahat Ali
Let me have all of it in my head. That's what he says. It's straight of hummus.
- [32:02]
Joy Reid
Straight of hummus. He probably thinks it's what it is,
- [32:06]
Wajahat Ali
like garlic. It hurts the breath, but the straight of hummus will open it up. We have the best hummus.
- [32:11]
Joy Reid
It's, it's just give me some celery with it is all I'm saying.
- [32:13]
Wajahat Ali
It's unwinnable. It's an unwinnable. This is the problem. The psyche of Donald Trump. He's a disciple of Roy Cohn, one of the most evil human beings of the 20th century. Roy Cohn taught him, even when you're wrong, you never say you're wrong. You attack, attack, attack. Right? So that is what Donald Trump learned. Even when I'm wrong, I'll never say I'm wrong. I'll deflect and I'll attack. Also, he has the world's thinnest skin. He has weak knees, weak chins and weak cankles, right? This is a man who always needs more. It's Festivus every day. More, more, more. He cannot be content. He's the president. Still not content. He has billions of dollars off the cryptograph. Still not content. He cannot appear to look weak. That's the mindset of these fragile white men who surround him. Cosplay crusaders, right? Pete Kegseth sits there with all his cosplay crusader tattoos. But then a photographer takes a photo of his butt that makes it look big. He gets rid of the photographers. They're all weak. So because this man is so weak, so fickle, so insecure, so self loathing, he can't admit to the world I effed up. So he doubles down, he takes the shovel and goes, let me just keep dig myself out of it by digging down. And so we are all held hostage by a vain, fickle vulgarian who refuses to admit what everyone else knows. Bro, you effed up. Just get out.
- [33:28]
Joy Reid
Just say something.
- [33:29]
Wajahat Ali
Just come out and say I won. Iran sucks. All of our allies are gay. You suck, you suck, you suck. I won. Everything's great. And we're like, okay, fine. Bravo.
- [33:40]
Joy Reid
You won.
- [33:41]
Wajahat Ali
Have Pakistan give him, like, a little award. Pakistan will give him an award, you know, and then move on. But he refuses to because of his ego. Joy.
- [33:48]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Imran Khan wouldn't have, but the new one, the new guy definitely will. Yeah. Let's talk about his. Because J.D. vance, you know, I feel like he might be behind some of these leaks, trying to say that what he was against it. And people are sort of trying to take sort of quiet distance in the back. But you can see the impact of this war on the base. If you look at this crowd, JD Vance recently did a Turning Point USA event.
- [34:14]
Wajahat Ali
Look at the crowd when he speaks
- [34:16]
J.D. Vance
on issues today, frankly, even when I disagree with how he's applying.
- [34:20]
Wajahat Ali
So the most obvious example is, I
- [34:23]
Joy Reid
mean, that was like 25% of those seats, if that were filled. This is a turning point. Turning Point USA used to easily fill a space like that. And you're now starting to see these young, young white conservatives say, yeah, maybe not.
- [34:35]
Wajahat Ali
And you saw him with his future wife, Erica. I'm sorry, Charlie Kirk's widow, Erica Kirk. And if you saw some of those clips, folks, people were heckling him, why do you support a genocide? Why do you support this war? And so this young maga, which is now America first, is against Israel's genocide. They're against forever wars. They hate this war. They hate the Epstein class. They hate AI. And they're questioning him, and he got heckled. And so J.D. vance is stuck. And I'm so glad you mentioned the media, because if you saw last week, God, the corporate media, they're just such remorse. They're such reeks. They still haven't learned they were laundering his reputation for him. JD Vance, who was skeptical, goes to Pakistan.
- [35:12]
Joy Reid
Yes.
- [35:12]
Wajahat Ali
No, he is uttering it. Listen, he is utterly complicit because what we got from the reporting was everyone around Donald Trump said that Benjamin Netanyahu selling you bullshit, that was the words of Marco Rubio. You had Ratcliffe saying it was farcical. You had Vance saying, no, this is not going to work. But at the end of the day, Donald Trump said, I'm going to trust my gut. And all of them were complicit. Well, boss man says we got to go to war, so be it. So this man so complicit that as a Catholic who's coming out with a book on Catholicism, he is literally, for his boss, Donald Trump, going against the Pope, saying that the Pope doesn't know more about theology than the Trump administration. I refuse to give him any Passes. And the fact that you saw a little bit of corporate media do that, J.D. vance, who was hesitant, goes to make peace. I'm like, shut the F up. And also send J.D. vance to Israeli elections because whoever J.D. vance touches dies. Pope dies, Peace treaty dies. Orban dies. Politically sending. Send them to Israel.
- [36:09]
Joy Reid
Indeed. And let me, let me give you a couple more examples because we are on the eve on the brink of White House correspondence dinner, which is, I know I'm not going, but they're going to have a mentalist, you know. A mentalist. Yeah, they're kind of like a, like a, like a hypnotist or something because they're too scared to have somebody make fun of Trump. But I want to just go through a few sort of items here. So the new Hungarian prime minister went on a channel that had actually banned him as an opposition leader. And he went at them. He said, I realized that you would not let me come on here when. But we, and he said this, he said, we are no longer going to have a North Korean style or bond media monopoly. Okay, I'm going to put a pin in that. That is what's happening in Hungary where they have done a full 180, a full heel turn away from organism. And he said, yeah, no more of that kind of media. Meanwhile, in our country watch. I want to show you a difference. We asked our wonderful interns to pull me. I said, pull, Pull me. An alternate headline to the Fox headline about our latest murder strike in the Caribbean. These are murder strikes. This is illegal. It's war crimes. Fox represented the killing of another set of people in a boat which they are lying about. And it says US Military kills two suspected cartel operatives in latest eastern Pacific lethal strike. So they're taking the administration's word for it. The Associated Press, which is still neutral and thank God, still alive and still calls it the Gulf of Mexico, says another boat strike in the eastern Pacific Ocean leaves two dead. US Military says that's more of a clean, neutral headline without sort of presuming in the headline because people just read the headline will think, oh, well, those people were cartel operatives.
- [37:46]
Wajahat Ali
That's right.
- [37:47]
Joy Reid
There's no evidence of that.
- [37:48]
Wajahat Ali
None. And so far, I'm so glad you brought up Venezuela because I want to remind you all that over 120 people have been killed by the United States without due process in. And most of these people are fishermen. And we have a video of two people literally hanging onto the side of the boat, which is a war crime instead of being saved. Pete Kexseth ordered a double tap strike. Everyone's forgotten about that, that war crime. And then he said, someone else did it, not me. Let me blame someone else. And so far, we have had no evidence that these are drug traffickers. No due process. Donald Trump says I have the power as king. If I say that someone's a terrorist, I can kill them. And what I was telling people, Joy, was watch this a thread, because Pam Bondi several months ago said, we're gonna do to Antifa and these domestic terrorists what we're doing to Venezuelans. I'm like, kill them without due process. And that's exactly what they did to Renee Nicole Good. That's what they did to Alex Preddy. So what happens abroad is now coming home. The war on terror has come home.
- [38:47]
Joy Reid
The.
- [38:48]
Wajahat Ali
The type of green light that Americans gave to the military industrial complex. Let's be honest, to go kill Muslims and brown people and terrorists. Well, what did world's smallest violin for? Christine Ome, former DHS secretary, refer to Renee Nicole Good. As domestic terrorists. Right. I want you all to see it's all connected. So the more we allow this to happen, the more we allow 120 people without due process to just be straight up murdered by the Trump administration. And now it's, it's expanded from Venezuela to Ecuador. People have forgotten that because it's Iran war. So we've joined Ecuador in killing drug traffickers. No proof, by the way. And recently there was a article, it only lasted the day for like, like one day because we have 47 crises at all times that Pete Kexseth said he was, you know, going for a drug smuggling operation in Ecuador. Bombs a dairy farm. How many people have we killed? How many future terrorists has the Trump administration created? And also look at Iran. You've strengthened the theocracy. You've replaced the older, dying Khamenei with his now radicalized, wounded son. Oh, by the way, you kill his family. And then you killed 165 girls because of outdated AI sent the tomahawk missile on a school. And oh, by the way, both Democrats. I know there's Democrats who listen to this, but I always spit facts here. Democrats and Republicans are still in bed with Netanyahu and Israel and AIPAC as Israel is occupying southern Lebanon and has displaced 1 million Lebanese people. Join.
- [40:16]
Joy Reid
Yeah, I'm going to just let you know right now, since you gave me some news earlier. I'm going to give you back some news. So a vote to try to stop the Iran war fails in the United States Senate Again, Democrats are saying they're going to keep trying, but they couldn't get the votes. Once again to try to stop this president from raising and from waging an illegal war fails once again. I don't know how hard Democrats are fighting, but clearly not hard enough. Let me get one more question for you before you go. Do you expect the White House Correspondence association to address, as you said, the genocide that is now spread to Lebanon? This is clearly. They're waging a Gaza style genocidal campaign against Lebanon, clearing it out so that they can have it. They want to annex southern Lebanon. And do you think that the, let's say they don't address that there is yet another journalist who's been killed. The Committee to Protect Journalists, if you can put this up, Jason. A11 There's a gentleman named Shihab Al Din. He's an award winning journalist who posts prolifically on social media, has not posted online or been seen in public in Kuwait where he was visiting family. Since March 2nd. It's understood that authorities have charged him with spreading false information, harming national security and misusing his mobile phone. Vague and overly broad accusations that are routinely used to silence independent journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists has made a statement calling for him to be released. His name is Ahmad Shihab Eldin. They're calling for the charges to be dropped. I feel like the US media has been super silent as nearly 300 journalists were killed by Israel in Gaza and now we have one disappearing in Kuwait.
- [41:53]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah. Ace is a former colleague of mine from Al Jazeera. He hosted Al Jazeera. English is the stream. I was later the co host of Al Jazer. America is the stream. And, and we knew about this for a bit but we were waiting for people to come out and talk about it. He's been detained. It's very dangerous and scary and he's very well known internationally. Will they talk about Ahmed? I don't know. Cpj, like you said, came out recently, said the country that killed more journalists than any other country, Israel. I see a double standard. And I'll leave you with something spicy, a question. We're against extremism, we're against domestic violence, we're against terrorism. I've been very consistent across the board. You can all check the receipts. Look at the double standard in language. Look who is killed and look who dies. Look who is allowed to pick up weapons and arms against an occupation. Ukrainians. But then when it comes to black folks and Palestinians, they're just supposed to. I don't know what joy Die, get genocided, right? Look whose lives matter, right? If there were European journalists, maybe people would care. But the fact that Israel, the ally of both the Democratic Party and let's be honest, the Republican Party in the United States, has killed more journalists than any other country. Will they talk about it? Will they use the G word genocide? Will they use the word occupation? Will they talk about Ace? If they do, they'll give it national attention, put pressure on Kuwait to bring out Ahmed. Will they talk about, I don't know, Israel killing more journalists than any other country? You would think at the White House correspondence dinner they would bring it up. I will not hold my breath. I look forward to hopefully being corrected. And I want to be wrong about this, Joy, but I ask you,
- [43:28]
Joy Reid
no. My assumption is they will not. And that is why I vowed never to go back to that party. It feels quite self serving. And those are the kind of issues that don't get addressed. And so what's the point, right? In the end, what's the point if we're not going to, as journalists? Stand up for Don Lemon. Stand up for Georgia Ford. Stand up for the nearly 300 journalists killed by Israel in Gaza. Stand up for your friend Ace. If we're not doing that, what's the hell? What the hell is the point?
- [43:54]
Wajahat Ali
Can I end you with this? This real quick? I know we got to go, but I've been joking about this since the first Trump administration. Some dark humor. I've been telling a few friends and I always imagine this. All right, so he wins. They put us in camps. We're going in camps, right? Brown people, black people, whoever they don't like. And the journalists are going there because he's called the enemy of the people. So I said, okay, once they put us in camps, you know, you and me will be like the great escape. Shout out to a great movie. You know, I'll try to be like Steve McQueen, but fatter. And so we'll put someone else on a motorcycle and we'll try our best to get out. Meanwhile, let me tell you what these correspondents and journalists will do. They'll be sitting there with a microphone sticking out of the fence, talking to a MAGA guard and say, can you give us a scoop? The MAGA guard will say, sure, we're going to kill you all tomorrow, starting with the journalists. And they'll be like, is that an exclusive? They're like, yeah, great. So they'll come back and say, we got the scoop and the exclusive. And we're like, fantastic. We're Trying to get out of here. They still haven't changed. Joy. I came up with that scenario eight years ago.
- [44:51]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Wajahat Ali
While I give you the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Chickens for Colonel Sanders.
- [44:55]
Joy Reid
Chickens for Colonel Sanders. Wajahat Ali. Always making it plain, keeping it real. We appreciate you all. Please support the left hook. Go ahead and subscribe. Make sure that you're following all the things that Waj is doing on all of the various platforms. Watch. I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you so much. All right, let's go on to our second block. We are all at this point, I think, kind of numb to how evil these AI overlords are. But in case you've forgotten, let me reacquaint you with Palantir CEO Alex Karp.
- [45:26]
Justin J. Pearson
A higher purpose.
- [45:27]
Wajahat Ali
And I also think you often need a lower purpose.
- [45:30]
Justin J. Pearson
Like the higher purpose for me.
- [45:32]
J.D. Vance
What's a lower purpose?
- [45:34]
Robert P. Jones
Well, I love the idea of getting
- [45:36]
Joy Reid
a drone and having light fentanyl laced urine spraying on analysts who tried to screw us. So that's my lower purpose. And yeah, but. And others. And you wonder why people have turned against the AI. What about the supposedly good CEOs, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who initially brought OpenAI to, to market, saying that ChatGPT was going to be the good guys, we were going to be the good, you know, positive version of AI. Here's some testimony he did in 2023 before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.
- [46:20]
J.D. Vance
Like with all technological revolutions, I expect there to be significant impact on jobs, but exactly what that impact looks like is very difficult to predict. If we went back to the the other side of a previous technological revolution, talking about the jobs that exist on the other side, you know, you can go back and read books of this. It's what people said at the time. It's difficult. I believe that there will be far greater jobs on the other side of this and that the jobs of today will get better. I think it's important. First of all, I think it's important to understand and think about GPT4 as a tool, not a creature which is easy to get confused. And it's a tool that people have a great deal of control over in how they use it. And second, GPT4 and things other systems like it are good at doing tasks, not jobs. And so you see already people that are using GPT4 to do their job much more efficiently by helping them with tasks. Now, GPT4 will, I think, entirely automate away some jobs and it will create new ones that we believe will be much better. This happens again. My understanding of the history of technology is one long technological revolution, not a bunch of different ones put together. But this has been continually happening. We as our quality of life raises and as machines and tools that we create can help us live better lives, the bar raises for what we do and our human ability and what we spend our time going after goes after more ambitious, more satisfying projects. So there will be an impact on jobs. We try to be very clear about that, and I think it will require partnership between the industry and government, but mostly action by government to figure out how we want to mitigate that. But I'm very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be.
- [48:08]
Joy Reid
Yeah, you're very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be. Okay. He's also turned around and said, oh, by the way, customer service jobs are going to kick first. And clearly not everybody believes what Sam Altman says. They don't believe in his fidelity to humankind. There's a damning new piece on Altman at the New Yorker in in the New Yorker magazine by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Morantz on what OpenAI insiders really think about him. Spoiler alert. They don't seem to think much of him. They seem to think he's dangerous. But at least one person who seems to have taken matters into their own hands is this person. Take a look. Footage Photos released by the Department of Justice appear to capture the moment as suspect through an incendiary device that OpenAI CEO Sam O. Altman's home. The FBI says the suspect, Daniel Moreno Gama, later struck at the glass doors of OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters with a chair. He was arrested at the scene and no one was injured. Moreno Gama, a 20 year old from Texas, is alleged to have authored documents opposing AI and advocating for the killing of CEOs and investors of AI companies. He now faces attempted murder and attempted arson charges CNN is working to determine in his legal representation. Joining me now is A. Ibrahim. She is an AI global tech and economic policy expert. She's currently a Senior Fellow for Economic and National Security at the AI Now Institute. She previously served as a senior policy advisor, even though she seems very young, at the State Department in the White House where she led on the President's blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and in Congress as Representative Ayanna Pressley's senior Economic Advisor overseeing her economic, tech and civil liberties priorities. Joining her alongside her is our friend Representative Justin Pearson of the great city of Memphis, Tennessee, one of Our favorite cities in the whole world. Thank you both for being here. I want to start welcome you both to the show and start with you first, Aya, and ask you about what really does feel like a turning away from the Tech Bros. Right? They were considered the cool kids, young men in particular kind of really work, sort of hero worship them. People like Elon Musk and Sam Altman and even I don't know about Peter Thiel, he's a bit odd. But now it does feel like there's a shift away from them and even like an anger and a rage toward them. Can you sort of disassemble that for me for a little bit?
- [50:29]
Wajahat Ali
Yeah.
- [50:30]
Aya Ibrahim
I mean, I think for a long time there was this assumption that technology would always be additive and that it would make people's lives better. And for a long time that was true, at least for a significant portion of people. More recently, I think people are starting to experience the other side of technology, right? The surveillance, the policing, the control. And what we're seeing among many of these fairly loud voices in Silicon Valley, there seems to be this reactionary streak among them. You know, there's this outsized reaction to what they felt was oppressive DEI policies, the sense of, of grievance. It's not clear, given that in every single way they've won, right? They are running the largest companies, they have enormous influence over the direction of the economy. They have tremendous reach, both in terms of their platforms, but also in terms of their access to political leadership, not just here, but around the world. So I think you're right. There is this shift and people are very angry. But I do think that it's part of a larger trend of concentration of power and wealth among a few. And so our version of this is the Tech Bros. But we've had classes of robber barons in the past, so this is not new. I mean, history doesn't always repeat, but it does rhyme.
- [52:09]
Joy Reid
Yeah, it does indeed. And it just. You just put this up before. I mean, if you look at the, the oligarchs, they're angry that for like, from George Floyd until like last year, they had to think about DEI and think about diversity a little bit. But look at the panoply of them, right? These are our oligarchs. There's only one brown guy in there, right? It's a sea of very privileged, born rich, privileged men. They're either white, South African, or, you know, then of course there's Alex Karp, who's sort of ambiguously black. But there are, you know, they are by and large white men who've been done very well and gotten very rich. And in many cases, they had gotten rich as teams like Alex Karp's company gets investment from Peter Thiel and Google, which is the one Brown. The one brown guy. Southeast Asians, I guess there. Two brown people there. You know, they're all investing in each other's company, so they keep the money among them.
- [52:58]
Aya Ibrahim
Yeah, yes, yes. And we see it with an AI investment now. Right. It seems there's a lot of circular financing. An Oracle investors in OpenAI, which invests, you know, says that they're going to buy Nvidia chips, and Nvidia says that they're going to put money into Oracle. And it just, you know, rinse and repeat. The other thing that we're seeing, a common thread among these companies is a lot of these technology companies are effectively now defense contractors, too. And so everyone is also trying to get in on Pentagon spending, frankly, because, you know, if you have the government as a customer, that's probably the most reliable customer you could ask for.
- [53:37]
Joy Reid
Yeah, absolutely. The greatest wealth is made. People think the greatest wealth is made through entrepreneurship. It's actually made through government contracts. Most millionaires are made through government contracts. Representative Pearson. The other thing they all seem to have in common is that they really don't care what the factories. Right. The sort of industrial base of their businesses does to humans. And unfortunately, Memphis is now finding out firsthand what it's like when the AI boys come to town. Talk about that. Yeah.
- [54:08]
Justin J. Pearson
I mean, we are dealing with a world where billionaires are in control of democratic institutions. And the deleterious effects of AI and their pollution are having the worst impact on communities that are already suffering. Black communities, communities of lower income or lower wealth. And so in Memphis, we had almost 35 gas turbines illegally polluting our air. Ultimately, they got a permit for 15, but then they went across the border to South Haven, Mississippi, and Elon Musk and XAI built a power plant illegally with 27 gas turbines.
- [54:41]
Robert P. Jones
And.
- [54:42]
Justin J. Pearson
And then they sought a permit for 41 gas turbines that we know will ultimately lead to dozens of people having premature deaths, more asthma, more copd. And the consequences again fall on the people who are benefiting the least from this on behalf of the billionaire class. And so we have to pay attention and realize that what is happening right in front of our eyes is those with the power, the resources, and the money against the rest of us.
- [55:07]
Joy Reid
And Representative Pierson, do any of those men who are building these AI gas turbine facilities, do they live Anywhere near where these turbines are.
- [55:18]
Justin J. Pearson
Absolutely not. And this is one of the things that I say to the chamber of commerce. We've got some elected officials who are all saying, you know, this is so necessary, this is so good. Build the power plant next to your house, right? Don't build it three miles away from my wife and I's house. Go put it right next to your house. Because if I agree with you that this is a necessary economic engine, then prove it by you having to deal with the impacts and, and the implications of more kids going to the emergency room, when in our district, we already have the most children in the state of Tennessee in the emergency room for respiratory illnesses. This is environmental racism, this environmental injustice, and it is all to benefit the wealthiest, already most powerful people in the world. And I think more people are catching onto this reality, and that's why they're fighting back. That's why they're resisting. That's why they're showing up, and that's why they're even unelecting some people who are supporting data centers.
- [56:07]
Joy Reid
Yeah, you know, you talked about the robber barons earlier. I mean, this is the new robber barons, right? But at least the old robber barons were building railroads, which can get you from, you know, one place to another. You know, these guys, they're not building anything other than tools, which make you stupider. Right? There. There are people, there are studies that show that particularly young people and children are becoming almost like a frog in a boiling pot, like losing the ability to reason, losing the ability to do basic research, Relying on Grok to answer simple questions, or open or chatgpt to do simple tasks that normally would have taken more cognition, like it's not making us smarter. And then on top of it, the other business, as you also alluded to that they're in is war and surveillance. Those are their two most lucrative businesses. So they're polluting our communities and then literally using the technology to surveil, to spy on, to track us with, you know that. To allow ICE to track us. They're literally surveilling the same people they're hurting.
- [57:07]
Aya Ibrahim
I mean, that's exactly right. Robert Barron's used to build things and where they leverage their market power to exploit. I think that this class of robber barons uses that market power to extract. They're extracting your data, they're extracting value. They're taking your creative work, your intellectual property, they're using it to train their models and making money off of that. I worry, as you noted, that there is a. There's this drive to have people as dependent on these technologies as possible, and then they try and mask it as benevolence. So, you know, an OpenAI will put out, you know, whatever vision they have for shared prosperity and, and something along the lines of universal basic income. But, okay, you're pushing for that because what do you plan on getting rid of? All the jobs? You're assuming that these technologies that you're building will make it so that nobody has to work. But there's power in labor and there's power in worker organizing. And so if they're envisioning a world in which that doesn't matter, that, to me feels like a world in which power and wealth, again, are even more concentrated than they are today. The real fear that I have, and I think this week particularly, is an important one for people to pay attention to this. It's the. The marrying of our national security apparatus and surveillance state with a lot of these technology companies. And we saw it play out most visibly with Anthropic and the department formerly known as Department of Defense. And what we have come to know is that these partnerships run pretty deep. Anthropic is the only company that, at least as we know, it's the most widely used among those agencies and particularly those that are dealing in classified and sensitive information. But there is a drive to have other companies have access to. To it. And this week, Congress is debating a reauthorization of FISA, particularly Section 702, which is a surveillance provision.
- [59:26]
Joy Reid
And the thing is, Representative Pierson, a lot of the debates, and I played a little bit earlier, Sam Altman's 2023 testimony, in general, the people in Congress who are asking these questions and trying to figure out how to write legislation to try to rein this in or at least to try to deal with it. Not that they can't learn or understand it, you know, but some of them are baby boomers for whom this technology is kind of alien. I know you're running for Congress probably for that reason that we need to get some fresh voices in, in the, in the, you know, that actually understand this technology a little more. What do you think that Congress is lacking in terms of trying to figure out how to wrap their arms around how to regulate this?
- [60:06]
Justin J. Pearson
I think first thing that's lacking is courage. You have to be willing to stand up against billionaires and tell them no. And a lot of people are too afraid to do it. They're welcoming them into the community like my opponent did, instead of saying, wait, we need to. We need to hit a pause here, which is why I'm supporting, you know, Senator Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's moratorium. We need to put a pause until regulation can catch up to what is happening to our communities. The consequences of this are truly dire. And to what a was saying there, the use cases that we have seen overwhelmingly for artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence, robotics, have been to the displacement of workers. Of course, there are other ways that AI could be being used in order to help our communities to deal with poverty, to maybe answer some of these questions, but that's not what we are seeing. It is being used overwhelmingly to increase the profit margins for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and rich. Congress has a responsibility to regulate this industry just like we regulate everyone else. We need better regulations for pharma, but we have some. We need better regulations for fossil fuel companies, but we have some. We need better regulations for the sugar industry, but we have some. AI has been able to corrupt our democratic institutions, lowercase D to the point of the presidency, to be able to be allowed to run their businesses with complete deregulation, with no idea or understanding about the consequences that that is going to have for our humanity. This is real in people's labor and people's access to health with an EPA that's being gutted. And it's also that the people who are in power aren't doing the work to understand this. They're trying to deal with it at arm's length. When you have to be really aggressive in addressing this because you are up against people who have more wealth than half of the world.
- [61:50]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And aren't they all. I mean, aren't they literally stealing water? I mean, like, people are competing for fresh water with these plants and the people regulating it on Capitol Hill, most of them, as I said, are. They're boomers. They don't even really understand what's happening.
- [62:04]
Justin J. Pearson
Yeah, I mean, you have age and a totally different generation. That's one thing. But you also have them benefiting financially. You have people in Congress who are trading stocks with these types of companies who are benefiting from investing in Raytheon. And so when Raytheon is trying to get a contract that also then uses Grok or with the Department of Defense, like, it becomes much more intertwined. And so they're not really looking and seeking those solutions. But you think about Memphis, the Memphis Sant Aquifer, the freshest, purest drinking water in the United States of America. Now billions of gallons of our drinking water is going to be used to cool plants, drinking water. This is absurd. And we can't allow for these companies that say they have all of this power and all this money to continue to abuse our natural resources and the communities like the one that I represent for their profit margins. We have to put people over the profits of these companies, point blank, period. But you have to have people who understand these issues in positions of power in order to fight for our communities.
- [63:03]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And listen before y' all come at me in the comments, I love my boomers and I love my oldies, I love my oldie goldies. But it's a, it literally is a generational challenge that your grandchildren and children are going to have to deal with for generations. Which is why, and I want to come back to you on this because what I've noticed, even among Jason, our kidults, they're young, but a lot of them are just like actually not that excited about tech. Right. You're starting to see younger people go to old timey tech to say, I don't want anything to do with this and sort of turning against AI, turning against technology because I guess they can see the harm. Right? I mean, you had Melania Trump walk out with a robot who she bragged could replace teachers. There are a lot of young people graduating from college to be a teacher and now they have to face the idea that they're going to be replaced by a robot. Machines replacing all sorts of jobs that younger people, people who are trying to graduate from college and start their lives, will not be able to have. So how much of you think that the danger that people, younger generations are feeling is about the surveillance piece and about the threat and how much of it is about just losing your ability to live your life because robots take over?
- [64:12]
Aya Ibrahim
I mean, I think it's all of the above. This is the first generation of digital natives. And so they have come up in a world where this technology has always existed and it continues to evolve. So I think there's just a natural fluency and skepticism that comes with that fluency. The other thing is this is a generation. If you look at their economic prospects, they're not particularly great. When many of these tech leaders talk about how this technology is going to transform the workforce, they often point to jobs that are entry level. We've seen firms do mass layoffs. There was another announcement, I think today SNAP laid off several thousand people or is going to lay off several thousand people. So there's both. The we are going to automate or use AI to eliminate some entry level work. But then there's also the use of AI to get more productivity, to get more work out of workers. But for 40 plus years, there has been this growing gap between the wages that we pay people for the work they do and the sum of the work that they do, the value of the work that they do and this. I mean, the advent of this technology is just going to supercharge all of that. There's no conversation about, okay, well, we're going to get more productivity out of our workers. Well, are we going to pay them more? So I think that this generation just understands all of those. Those pieces. And as we saw with the TikTok debate, right. They understood the different forces pushing in different directions to try and influence people's understanding of why a particular platform might be problematic. There is a reason that many people turned to it because they felt like they could get information that they wouldn't get otherwise and you would know better than most. The increased media consolidation. You have a handful of people that own everything that's supposed to provide information for folks. So across the board, they have good reason to be suspicious. They also see the writing on the wall in many ways and they haven't been able to establish themselves financially and even politically just yet. So whatever disruption is going to happen, it is going to be acute for them.
- [66:33]
Joy Reid
Yeah, indeed. This is a really important conversation. I hope that you guys will come back and talk about it more because this is what we're going to be dealing with moving forward, particularly on. Look, there's a reason they pretended to rename it the Department of War. They're not trying to defend anything. They're trying to use this technology because they have to pay for it. Right. They've paid all these big contracts out. They want to use it and that's the reason they're fighting wars all over the country. We'll get into this war. We bring you all back. Aya Ibrahim, thank you so much. We appreciate you. Where can people find you if they want to find you online? Oh, I think she froze. Thank you for having me. Of course. And let's go to our friend, Justin J. Pearson. Representative, where can people find you if they want to support your campaign for Congress?
- [67:17]
Justin J. Pearson
Yes, please go to votejustinjay.com. you can also find me@justinj.pearson on all social media platforms, TikTok and Instagram, Facebook. Would love to have you support and just appreciate you joy for the opportunity to talk about this very important issue because always tenable.
- [67:32]
Joy Reid
Amen. Amen. Let's give a one More chance. Let's let folks know where they can find you. If you want to share where we can find you online?
- [67:38]
Aya Ibrahim
Oh, just at the A Ibrahim on Instagram and TikTok stuff. Same thing. Yep.
- [67:46]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much, both of you. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of your day. We're rooting for Justin. Like I'm almost. I, I'm not. I don't have to be unbiased now. I don't work for corporate media. I'm rooting for Justin in that congressional race. Let's take a quick ad break because we, we have some amazing sponsors and the Joy Read Show. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Quints. Now, you know I've been doing my little spring reset in my closet. I told you I did my pantry closet this weekend. But before that I was doing my closet closet because, you know, it's springtime, we got to do spring cleaning. And one of the things I'm definitely focused on is quality, not quantity. Right? You just got to build that wardrobe. You want pieces that are going to last, that are well made, that are versatile, that are easy to reach for every day that you don't have to think too much about, but that look amazing. That is why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are fabulous and thoughtful, and the pricing, it actually makes sense, particularly on this tax day when we trying to watch our coins. Now, Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100 European linen, organic cotton, and super soft denim with style starting at around 50 bucks. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable and effortless. The kind of things you can just throw on and instantly look put together and amazing. And that same focus on materials carries over to their accessories, like their leather bags, which are made from 100% hand woven Italian leather and honestly look way more expensive than they are. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman so that you are paying for quality, not for quality, not that big brand markup. Now I want to show you guys the outfit that I'm going to be wearing tomorrow. This is my fit for tomorrow, guys. This is my quince that I'm being wearing tomorrow. I'm doing an interview on Maury Povich's show. This is like kind of classic and this is what I'm going to be wearing. This is fabulous. This jacket, it's black, it's a beautiful sort of cable knit. And I don't know if you guys can really see it on here. It's kind of difficult because it's black. But it's fabulous and it's got like great texture, great feel. It's gorgeous and it's going to look incredible. I have a fabulous pant that I'm going to wear with it as well. It's going to look amazing. And what I love about it is it doesn't cost what you think it would cost because of the quality linen. You think it would cost more, but it actually really doesn't. It's a fabulous price as well as a fabulous fit. You'll see it tomorrow when you see me on more. So let me know how you think it looks on that. If you want to refresh your spring wardrobe with Quint, just go to quint.com joyread for free shipping and 365 day returns. It's also now available in our favorite place, Canada as well. Go to Q U I n c e.com joyread for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com joyread okay, we are well into our next edition, our next hour of the Joy Reid Show. I want to very quickly get to the stories that Waj mentioned a little bit earlier. This new wealth tax. This is C1 for you, Jason, that Waj mentioned. This is happening. Mayor Zorhan Mamdani tweeted with Governor Kathy Hochul to announce that what they're going to do is they're going to add a surtax, a surcharge on people's second home. If you have a second home in New York city that's worth $5 million or more, that's the only people who are going to be impacted by it. They're going to receive a surtax to try to close the budget gap, the budget deficit in the city. So this is one thing that he promised and he's doing it. And now recently Mamdani, who just got through his first hundred days, he did a press conference in which he was asked the question of whether his, you know, tax the billionaires policies are running rich people out of New York City. And I really want you to listen to what he said. Here it is. I actually had a New Yorker turn to me and self identify as someone who would be taxed by this proposal. He said, you know, I'm a millionaire and is it true that you want to raise taxes this on me? And I said, it is true. And they said, well, I would leave. I said, I don't think you would. They said, why not? I said, because we're looking to raise income taxes on the top 1% by 2%.
- [71:27]
Robert P. Jones
So for a million dollars a year,
- [71:28]
Joy Reid
that's an increase of $20,000 in taxes.
- [71:31]
Robert P. Jones
And when I told them the amount,
- [71:33]
Joy Reid
they realized that it wasn't enough to
- [71:34]
Robert P. Jones
actually make them change where they would consider their residents. I think what we've seen for far too long is the city hasn't even
- [71:40]
Joy Reid
advocated for itself when it comes to Albany. And what we are going to do
- [71:43]
Robert P. Jones
is exist, exhaust every option to make it clear that the time has come to reset the relationship between the city,
- [71:50]
Joy Reid
its wealthiest residents, its most profitable corporations, and with Albany. And I believe that together we can get there. And they're not leaving because again, I think when people hear you're going to tax the millionaires and billionaires, you think, oh, you're going to tax them? No, if you're pay, if you have a million dollars extra laying around, that's going to cost you 20 grand. That's nothing to these people. And they're not going to leave because New York City is a great city, the greatest city in the world. They're not leaving. Okay, let's go and mention that we are in our two of the Joy Reach. I want to remind you guys that we are doing our Insiders Only chat. I'm sorry, our Members Only chat on Friday. So we just want to don't forget that. And also that we're going to be doing that Thursday bit on the Joyce House Insiders with Tim Miller. That's tomorrow. But I also want to note that we have one more amazing sponsor who is. There we go. That's the Tim Miller. That's tomorrow at noon. So if you're on Substack, it's Substack only. So if you're not a member yet, a premium member, that's the time to do it. It's like eight bucks a month. It's really not that expensive. But this is the way you can talk to Tim because I like you guys to ask questions. So if you're going to do this tomorrow, you're going to be in that chat. Please come with questions for Tim because we want you all to interact as well. We don't want to just be me yapping. We want it to be both of us. And then of course there'll be the Insiders Only chat or the Members only chat on this show on Friday after the show. So throwing that in. But I also want to note that our second sponsor on this fabulous show is our friends at 120 Life. Now, we all know that the biggest quiet health problem that's damaging people's bodies every day and that almost no one knows is happening is high blood pressure. It's a huge risk. It's the number one risk factor for mortality. 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So go ahead and do it. 120Life.com use the code joy or read and take that discount 20% off. These statements have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. It's just meant to make you better. All right, so let's go into a little bit of. We don't do too much theology. Again, we believe in separation of church and state. But since the regime is trying to establish a theocracy, we have to break down what it is they're doing. And of course, this is our third Wednesday of the month. And so this is the Wednesday in which we battle against white Christian nationalism. Okay, so let me go into just a little bit of. A little bit of background on some of these theological issues. So in the Bible, the books that are called the Thessalonians, T H E S A L O N I N S I think it is Thessalonians, the Thessalonians, Thessalonians 1 and first Thessalonians and Thessalonians, second Thessalonians. They are a series of letters that were written by Paul, you know, the former Saul of Tarsus who went on the, you know, had the conversion on the road. That guy, he had the conversion on the road to Tarsus. That guy, he wrote a bunch of letters to the churches in a place called Thessalonica. I'll show you the map. Thessalonica. It is a place in Greece called Thessalonica. So he's writing to these churches because these churches were dealing with a lot of stress. They were being persecuted because they were following this, you know, kooky woke man Jesus and they were being persecuted for it. They were also very anxious. This is, you know, remember Paul lives way after Jesus is gone. And these, these, these, these folks in Thessalonica are very anxious about when Jesus is going to return, AKA Armageddon. So I want to read you a couple of these verses. They a quick thinking Twitterer posted to apply to your president. You can see it on the end there. And this is from 2nd Thessalonians, verse 2 and 3. All right, here it is. Do not be so easily disconcerted or alarmed by any spirit or message or letter seeming to be from us, meaning the collective sort of Jesus Church, alleging that the day of the Lord has already come. Let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come until the rebellion occurs. And the man of lawlessness, the Son of destruction is revealed. He will oppose and exalt himself above every so called God or object of worship. So he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Okay? He will seat himself in the temple of God proclaiming himself to be God, the man of lawlessness, the Son of destruction seems appropriate to what Donald Trump is up to. And while he may be able to convince his most well paid, sorry, I mean most faithful supporters that he really just did mean to pretend that he was a doctor. Put this up. Just a minute. Jason. This is D2. So a bunch of these very prominent Christian nationalist, right wing Christian content creators put up almost identical defenses of Trump. I don't believe the President intended to depict himself as Jesus when he posted he is a believer after all. I do appreciate that he deleted it, something President Trump has rarely done. Graham Allen I don't believe the President intended to depict himself as Jesus when he posted it. He's a believer after all. Ali Beth Shocky I don't believe Trump that he attended. You see what I'm saying? They're all thing D Donald J. Harris Personally, I don't believe that the President intended to pick himself as Jesus when he posted He's a believer after all. They all posted like the same thing. Ali Beth Stucky is the other one. It's weird, right? Maybe it's just a coincidence. Discipline. How does this explain though, the fact that Donald Trump didn't do this? This wasn't the first go round with him portraying himself as someone related to the church, right? Look at this. AI Remember this one? When he posted himself after Pope Francis died, this is what Donald Trump put on his truth social after Pope Francis died, not a day after JD Vance visited with him. Weirdly enough, completely coincidentally, I'm sure that's what Donald Trump posted. He posted himself and an AI post and made himself into the Pope. So but this posting himself as Jesus, himself as the Christ is actually causing a very unusual rash of anger among self proclaimed right wing Christians, even some of the theocratic variety. And so you're now seeing even some of his stalwarts asking out loud whether Donald Trump is the Antichrist person that was raised a Catholic. I did all the sacraments, I read the book, you know, I lost my face. But I still find that deeply, deeply offensive.
- [80:06]
Justin J. Pearson
Which bit of it?
- [80:07]
Joy Reid
All of it.
- [80:07]
Aya Ibrahim
How dare you.
- [80:08]
Joy Reid
That is blasphemous. That is what?
- [80:10]
Justin J. Pearson
The picture.
- [80:10]
Joy Reid
You mean the picture is blasphemous. It's a huge, huge disrespect. That in itself is the breaking of a commandment. The man himself has broken all in my mind, all but eight. So he's brought. But he's broken eight of the ten Commandments. This guy in my opinion is The Antichrist. So no wonder he doesn't like the Pope. Oops. That's a British content creator who says he's the Antichrist. I mean and you're starting to see a lot of people get really, really angry, right? Even Doug Wilson had to say something and he is kind of the leader of the American theocrats of the right wing. He's kind of their, their, their, their, their, their grand poobah of the white Christian nationalist movement in the U. S. Remember, he's the sort of big brother, you know, sort of theological big brother of the guy who wrote the Sin of Empathy. Doug Wilson, the guy who pastors at The Pentagon with Keg Mr. Kegseth as a watch calls him. He says, I was very grateful to see how many conservative Christians immediately denounced the blasphemous Jesus Trump image. I mean he had to say something, right? Then he adds, I was also grateful to see how many center left Christians suddenly agreed that public blasphemy is a thing we should all be concerned about. A bit late, but so good. Really. What public blasphemy can you recall Doug? And by the way, I wonder if he's going to accept our offer to have him and Joe Rigney debate Father Flager and Bishop Harbor. We're going to put that out and see if they're going to do it because I would bet on our team because I can't think of any public blasphemy like that anyway. But he says he's glad to see him take it down. Here's what the Pope has had to say himself that he does not fear
- [81:46]
Wajahat Ali
MAGA for a policy that fear of the Trump administration. I have no fear neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel and the that's what I believe I am called to do what the church is called to do. We're not politicians. We're not looking to make foreign policy as he calls it with the same perspective that he might understand it. But I do believe with fetching the gospel Blessed are the peacemakers is a message that the world needs to hear today.
- [82:21]
Joy Reid
Joining me now is our good friend Robert P. Jones. He is the chief demographer and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, our partner partner in attempting to beat back white Christian nationalism. And his new book is called Backslide. It's available in the store. Robbie, what do you make of I haven't gotten to talk to you because you've been traveling so I haven't gotten to talk to you about all of this. I the other Day just called it apostasy. I think that's the only word for it. Your thoughts?
- [82:53]
Robert P. Jones
Well, it turns out in the new book, chapter two is titled Apostasy.
- [82:59]
Joy Reid
Great minds. I mean, dude.
- [83:03]
Robert P. Jones
Yeah. Same chapter one's called Backslide, and chapter two is called Apostasy in. In my new book, Backslide. And precisely for this reason is that, you know, what we. This whole situation we're in right now is a unprecedented Democratic backsliding in the political realm that is aided and abetted along by a Christian apostasy. Like, that's the argument of the book. And boy, you know, just when you think you. I mean, we should all learn our lesson now that we haven't found the bottom yet. Right. That just when you think the last line you could imagine being crossed is being crossed. Right. I thought gear, I'm glad you showed the picture of him in that AI image as the Pope, because, you know, that was especially in the right after the death of Pope Francis, I mean, at this very insensitive time to do that. And, and if you remember what he, what he said the occasion was, he was asked if he had a preference who the next Pope was. Well, me. Yeah. Maybe it'll be me. That's right. And, you know, I think that's. That's sort of it here is. And as I think about the trajectory we've had, we've had Hegseth standing in the Department of Defense that he loves to call the Department of War on a weekly basis now, like reading Bible verses, calling on God to break the teeth of the enemy and bring. Reading all of these violent verses. We've got Trump posting himself as Jesus. We got Vance kind of quarreling with the Pope and telling him he knows more about how to do careful theology than the Pope does, who is only a recent convert Catholicism himself. So, wow. I mean, it is a lot to take in. But when you see the likes of Doug Wilson saying, you know, this is a bridge too far, boy, you know, we are in some weird space.
- [84:57]
Joy Reid
Indeed. I mean, there's a thing, there's a concept, you know, in something else that Donald Trump is quite familiar with since he was best friends with Jeffrey Epstein called grooming. And the right likes to accuse gay people of grooming. Everybody they're around, they're grooming. But the kind of grooming that you've seen among white conservative Christians has been that they've pushed the bar further and further toward Donald Trump being appointed by God, anointed by God, sent by God to make Christ is king, to make sure. That the world knows that Christ is king. He's doing God's work. They said at one point, well, you know, yes, he's immoral, but he's immoral like David in the Bible. He's like a biblical character from the Old Testament who may be immoral. He maybe has multiple wives. He may cheat on his wives, he may do. He may break the commandments, but he's doing it in order to further God's kingdom. They kept pushing and grooming white Christian conservatives to say, he's closer to God. He's closer to God. It isn't surprising to me that Donald Trump took from that. I can push the envelope, just like rumors do. They keep pushing the envelope with people that they're trying to molest and attack until they figure out how far they can get with them. And. And Donald Trump, I'm sure, sincerely believed that he had taken his MAGA base so far, that he could proclaim to be God, that he could do it.
- [86:17]
Robert P. Jones
No, I think that's right. And, you know, it occurred to me, too, that the thing that's really missing here, you know, is any real religious sensibility. You know, like, I think of the. It's kind of phrases coming to me, you know, that the. For authoritarians. I mean, their gods always have to be smaller than them. Yes, Right. Because they are. They are actually just another chess piece to be deployed on the board. They're not really. So if you think about. Think about this claim, the God of the universe, the creator of all, that is they are claiming, right, to be on their side in this particular conflict at this particular time. And I think of other presidents, like, you know, we've had plenty of God talk from presidents in times of war. But I think about Lincoln's second inaugural address. Right. You know, or even then, we're talking about the evils of slavery. Right. And he's musing over this. And even then, Lincoln has what I would call, like, a sense of piety, a sense of awe, a real religious sensibility where he has to say, look, the Almighty has his own purposes. And like, that's the fundamental religious sentiment, the sense of awe, deference, humility, you know, that you can't claim that God is on your side. The best you can do is try to be on God's side. And I think that's the real difference here, that we hear Pope Leo saying, look, God does not bless violence. Right. Even if you might be able to say, you know, this is morally permissible under. Under a kind of serious theological kind of Scrutiny, which they by the way, have not even begun to do. But even then God would not bless it, right? As, as if God's on our side, right? Even if it's something that might be like morally permissible to do it. But that sense of deference and fear, right, the fear of God is what is wholly absent here. And I think most people who have a sense of piety and a real sense of religion start recognizing that, oh, wait, like, yeah, this, the fear of God is wholly missing here from this. God is just something to be deployed for political ends. Another way I thought about Trump in particular is the other image I had was like refrigerator magnet theology, right? Where Trump just like, you know those magnets you can buy and do poetry on your, on your refrigerator. Trump knows a few religious words and he'll just kind of move around and like literally throw them up there and see what sticks. And you know, in this case, I think he's finally run into some, into some resistance.
- [89:03]
Joy Reid
And the thing about it is, you know, we know that, you know, the power of positive thinking is the closest he ever came to a church, right. That church that taught that. But it's the people around him, right? It is the Doug Wilson's and others who, the other kind of grooming that they've been doing is they literally have gotten a vast majority. We're going to get into some of these slides from your research soon. They've gotten a majority of, of right wing white Christians to believe that empathy itself is evil. Like they, they, they are so bold and so brazen in their apostasy. They know what the Bible says. That's what apostasy is, right? But they, they literally refute it. They say it is wrong. If you open the Bible and you read the red letters of Jesus that say blessed are the poor, the meek, you know, take care for the immigrant, that is wrong. What's really good is the rich. What's what? What Jesus really loved were the rich that he, what he really loves is wealth and violence and killing and murder and it doesn't matter what he loves. Domination and that. If you don't believe that, you're just wrong. Even if you see it and read it in the red letters of the Bible, they, they've decided to rewrite the Bible into their, to fit their political and their power desires. And a lot of people have gone along with it.
- [90:19]
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, I mean, so we've seen Rigney, we've seen Stuckey, who you mentioned there, also wrote a book called Toxic Empathy, you know, and this is There's a through line here, though, with J.D. vance. So this is not the first time Vance has tangled with the Pope. Right? He actually tangled Pope Francis.
- [90:36]
Joy Reid
He did.
- [90:37]
Robert P. Jones
And where he got into trouble there is that he tried to limit love. That was what was so remarkable about that tangle with Pope Francis that he tried to explain. He tried to basically square love with the othering of immigrants, Right? And he. So he tried to make this theological argument that, you know, first we love our family, then we love the people in the next concentric circle out, and finally you get out here and we don't actually have to love anymore, right? We can set these boundaries. And some people fall outside the boundary of moral commitment. And Pope Francis, who was much more, you know, much less likely to kind of make specific responses, felt compelled to respond to that. And actually, and J.D. vance quoted the Latin ordo amoris, which the ordering of loves in Latin, and try to make it sound all sophisticated. And he just got slapped down by Pope Francis like, no, actually that's not the way this theology works at all. You do not limit love in that way. And that's the same thing this empathy thing is doing, right? It's about setting the bounds where some people are outside of our moral concern. They're outside of our moral obligations, they're outside of even the obligation to love our neighbors. And that is the cornerstone of fascism.
- [91:48]
Joy Reid
And also, how dare they try to rewrite the Bible and say that, no, the Bible is what Trump says it is. The Bible is what Stephen Miller says it is. The Bible is what Kristi Noem says it is. What you think it is is not to the point where literally pastors on the right cannot teach Jesus in the church because they get accused of being woke. And people will not come to church and will not give if they teach Jesus's words like, well, that's woke. We don't like weak Jesus.
- [92:14]
Robert P. Jones
We want.
- [92:15]
Joy Reid
We want mean, killer Jesus. You know, let's do one more thing
- [92:19]
Robert P. Jones
on this thing about that you said about grooming. It's reminding me of Hannah Arendt, German philosopher, who was, you know, actually fled Germany, fled Nazi Germany and reflected. Actually did a lot of reporting back in post war Germany. And I read something she wrote after the war, and she was talking about the way in which this. This thing, you're talking about this kind of creep, this moral creep that the Nazi party kept bringing people along. And first it was just this thing, and then it was this thing, right? And then it was all of it. Then it was the final solution, right? And by the time they kind of got there, people were so accustomed to just saying yes right to the great leader that they kind of went along and she made this like chilling evaluation at the end of the war. And she said even people who went along for kind of pragmatic reasons for power, who weren't the ideologues, who didn't truly, truly believe, but she said at the end of the day, they could not hold on to the moral dissonance and they ended up actually coming along. And her words were, by the end, they didn't know how to tell the truth anymore, even if they wanted to, because they had so given themselves over in the end.
- [93:35]
Joy Reid
What is it that you think that the, you know, what do you think they think they can really build? Because Doug Wilson has said he wants a theocracy. He has said that he wants a world in which non Christians, including non, non Protestant right wing Christians, so even Catholics could only worship in private. They could not do so in public. The public life would be reserved for right wing Christians of his particular sect. Everyone else would have to go behind closed doors. He's like, Muslims can exist, but they cannot exist publicly. Everybody else has to go behind closed doors. Obviously they don't believe that women should have the right to vote. They think that should go away because women have this sin of empathy. They are beset with this sinful empathy. And when they vote, they vote for like sad empathetic things like preschool, you know, like free preschool and healthcare and we can't have that in taxes and. Right. So they, so women get no vote. There's a family vote that the man controls. They essentially want women to go back to being chattel. And you know, he sort of laid out some of the things, the ways and, and they now control the government. Russ Vote is the office of management and Budget chair. He's one of them. They run the government now. What's the end game in your view? What do you think their end game is? Well, what kind of country?
- [94:47]
Robert P. Jones
Yeah, well, in the country, I think it, the key word here is caste and hierarchy. Right. I guess the key two words here. And so there is a clear sense of a kind of pyramid of being right. And who's at the top of that pyramid are white, straight, Christian, Protestant men. Right. And then everybody else falls somewhere below that. So that's why the gender thing. That's why the, it's, it's white Christian nationalism that they're, that they're pursuing. That's why they have no concern that like most of the People they've gone after in their mass deportation are Christian. It's happening to be brown Christians and not white Christians. But. And that's why this household voting thing, repealing the 19th amendment. Yeah. You know, it's all about men over women, white over black, Christian over everything else. And so that's the vision. But the one thing I would say is that we had a clue that this is not just a domestic agenda, this is an international agenda. So what was J.D. vance doing in Hungary this past week? He was trying to advance this international agenda. Right. And it's a vision of these kinds of states that are all in a kind of confederation, essentially a kind of Western read, white Christian nationalist federation of illiberal states. That's really what the end game is. And partly that's because if they can put that together, they can use that. And that coalition with the tech Bros. Means none of that's going to get regulated. The corporations, the multinational corporations run amok. And they use this kind of ethno religious ideology to kind of like run it all.
- [96:32]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And also they would counter things like bricks, which is setting itself up as the Global South's kind of NATO. Right. They're like, let's just make our own thing to counter that. Let's. Let me, let you, before we get into the research there, this was a. One of many of these. I just picked this one. A lot of this content I've seen and I want to just, if I ask you, as a demographer, as somebody who researches this stuff, if you believe this, this is D7.
- [96:57]
Wajahat Ali
He can post this picture of himself depicting Jesus and it's just straight up blasphemy. So now Trump and the MAGA movement have officially lost all my support.
- [97:21]
Joy Reid
Christians is and will always be king. That's plastic in there, my man. That's probably why it went up like that. How much support do you think this, or can you tell at this point whether the Trump posting as Jesus genuinely loses him? Some of these, particularly young Christians who've signed up for maga.
- [97:43]
Robert P. Jones
Yeah. Well, it's certainly too early to tell from, from polling, but here's, here's my, my thought. I mean, this is sort of a broad white Christian coalition. I would think that based on what we've seen, the white evangelical portion of that coalition, I'm not going to expect that many defections from there. I mean, they have been locked in, locked in, locked in. I mean, we have a trend that goes all the way back to 2015 before he started running. And once he gets to be the Republican nominee. His favorability among white evangelicals. I mean, you name any scandal we've been through in the last decade. Seven and ten favorability. Right. And this is not job approval. This is favorability. Like, I like this guy. Yeah. You know, kind of measures there. It's like 7 and 10 where you see more wobble. And I think this is really where the political consequences may come in. And, and yeah, they've, they've supported him 85. Right. Every time he's been on the ballot. But among Catholics, it's not that way. And this is where there may be a particular danger. Catholics have support. White Catholics have supported him about 6 and 10. Right. And again, pretty much every time he's been on the ballot, about 60% of white Catholics have supported him. However, here's the thing to remember. Latino Catholics have not. In fact, his, his support among them is basically the inverse. It's only about 4 in 10 who support him. About 6 in 10 have supported Democrat, his Democratic opponents there. And that part of the Catholic church is growing while the white Catholic part of it is shrinking. So over time, we're now looking at, you know, white to non white Catholics is about 55, 45, and it's nearly at parity. White to non white Catholic used to be 10 to 1, 30, like 30 years ago. So here's, and one last point I'll make on this is that if you look at the places where elections are contested, you know, key Midwest states and then even places like Texas. Right. I mean, Texas is a lot more Catholic than people think think it is. And people forget about that. But in Texas, one in four residents are Catholic and the Latino Catholics outnumber the white Catholics 3 to 1 in Texas. In California, it's 3 in 10 are Catholic and the Latino Catholics outnumber the white Catholics 4 to 1. In like Nevada, it's. It's again 1 in 5. And Latino Catholics are even with white Catholics. Big other big states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona. What do all those states have in common? They are where elections are won and lost in this country and both in presidential. But in the midterms, there were a lot of the key race. And so, you know, if he, even if he lost 10 points among White evangelicals, it might not make that much difference because they're usually safely tucked into heavily led districts and states. But if he loses 10 points among White Catholics, it is game over for, for, for Republicans in the midterms and in, in the next presidential election.
- [100:51]
Joy Reid
Oh, and I can tell you, I don't know about white Catholics, but I know Latino Catholics don't play about their Jesus. You're not going to dress yourself up as Jesus and get away with that with them. So we'll see. And also black evangelicals either don't play about that Jesus.
- [101:04]
Robert P. Jones
And right now he's underwater with Catholics on the war, right?
- [101:07]
Joy Reid
Yes, he is.
- [101:08]
Robert P. Jones
White Catholics only 46 support. And hear this. Latino Catholics, 33% support.
- [101:13]
Joy Reid
There you go. Let's talk about these polls. So you went out and polled this question of whether people want to be called Christian nationalists. We'll put up this is slide one. And by the way, if you are not over@joanne reid.com which is the the Joyous House substack, we have it here. We also have it on the Public Religion Research Institute substack as well. I think, Robbie, you have it on your substack as well. So 2/3 of those who would qualify as being a Christian nationalist have a favorable vert term. So they're not mad about being called Christian nationalist. Explain.
- [101:44]
Robert P. Jones
Well, you know, there's been so sociologists have been studying Christian nationalism in very rigorous quantitative ways for about a decade now. And what every time we put out a new study, we'll always hear from the kind of white evangelical apologist crowd. Oh, this is just liberal elite academics using this term to kind of beat up on, you know, people who are just conservative want to see their faith in the public realm. But it turns out that as the public has heard more and more about this term, so we have fewer Americans today saying they never heard of it. And as more people have heard of it, we're finding out, oh, actually a majority of Republicans now say they actually approve of this term. I have a favorable view of the term itself, Christian nationalism. That majority of white evangelicals have a favorable view and super majorities. So we have separate measures of measuring people who kind of qualify as Christian nationalists by their attitudes. And when we measure, take those people that question qualify because of their attitudes as Christian nationalists, it is overwhelming majorities of them that support the term. So the term this should put an end this study should certainly put an end to, you know, the hand wringing about this is just being a term to being used to beat beat up on conservative Christians. It is a term that they themselves are embracing. And those who embrace the term are also more likely to support all the things you think they would anti immigrant things. Racist.
- [103:14]
Joy Reid
Three. Can you put up D10? I think we'll put up D9. D10? Yeah. D9. Okay. So this is D9. Well, this, let's go through them in order. So this is, you talk about the Republicans. You can see them all alone up there.
- [103:25]
Robert P. Jones
Just in the last four years. Right now we're in a majority. Yeah. Saying. Yeah. That Republicans saying yes, have a favorable term, favorable view of the term Christian nationalism.
- [103:35]
Joy Reid
So the, the, the fact that independence have an even slightly more favorable view of Christian nationalism, should that alarm us?
- [103:43]
Robert P. Jones
You know, I don't know. I mean it, you know, independents are a broad swath. And in our polls, I should say, we don't push people to the partisan side. So we don't. Some polls you'll see, they'll ask people their independence and then they'll say, yeah, but which way do you lean? Do you lean or not? And we don't do that. We allow independents to just stay in that category. So these are Republican. You know, what we're seeing is the same thing you're seeing in the, in the red line is those Republican leaning independents that are probably going to vote Republican anyway or kind of pushing those numbers that way. But one thing you can see in this chart that we see all over the map on a whole range of issues is you've probably heard me say this term that I'm trying to kind of get into public use, asymmetric polarization. Right. And it means that, yeah, we're polarized, but not evenly here. You see Independence much closer to Democrats on this issue. Right. You know, it was like 10 points between independents and Democrats and there's 30 points between independents and Republicans. And on, on immigration, on the war, on all kinds of things. This is what we're seeing, the MAGA Republican Party drifting farther and farther from the center into more and more extreme territory.
- [104:49]
Joy Reid
And then here's dtn. Jason, if you could put that up. So this one is at the bottom of the screen. You can see what you just talking about. So we've got the various categories of religious types at the top and you could see how favorable they are toward Christian nationalism. Very favorable to, very unfavorable. But right at the bottom it says holding a favorable view of the term Christian nationalism is strongly correlated with holding racist conspiracy theories toward immigrants in support for concentration camps on US soil. Say more, please.
- [105:21]
Robert P. Jones
Well, we've been polling on this and I have to say the first time we asked a question about internment camps on US soil, we got a lot of pushback from people that we were asking such an extreme thing. And this was a few years ago we first asked about this. And lo and behold, you know, here we are where this is a reality in America. But what we. Yeah, we actually see that. That you can just take people who say, yes, I have a favorable view of this term Christian nationalism. They are more likely to hold that. That racist, great replacement theory, right, that Emirates are coming into the country and replacing true Americans. Like, they're much more likely than it's essentially linear. The more happy you are with that term, Christian nationalism, the more likely you are to support this racist conspiracy theory. And then even this question about whether immigrants should be rounded up and put in internment camps until they can be deported. Again, those who have a favorable view of Christian nationalism, much more likely than other Americans to say, yes, we're down. We're down with concentration camps on US Soil.
- [106:28]
Joy Reid
So when. When Fox talks about these people, they try to say, if you're not for Trump, that, you know, you hate half of all Americans. Your polling shows me it's not half of all Americans. This is a relatively small percentage of people. Right?
- [106:44]
Robert P. Jones
Yeah. You know, and whenever, you know, their favorite line is, well, this is what people voted for. For all. Right. But here's the thing to remember, like, there were more people who did not vote in this last election than voted for either candidate. I mean, that's the state of affairs. Right. So if you kind of break it down, it's really, you know, Trump got a little more than a third, Kamala Harris got a little more than a third, and then a little bit more than that just sat it out. So the country did not vote for these racist, extremist, violent policies. Right. And so that's how you get this minority rule into power. But when we ask about these harsh ICE tactics, favorability of ice, all the kind of things that mark the MAGA movement, we get majority opposition to this. So we really are living in something that's more like a 60, 40 country where. And it's the 60%, they're actually opposed what's happening in the country today. And, and that's, I think, really important to remember. Christian nationalists, for example, the people that qualify in our polls as Christian nationalist adherents or sympathizers. It's only 3 in 10America now, it's a majority of Republicans, and it's a majority super majority of white evangelical Protestants, that religious base of the Republican Party. But it. It really is only 3 in 10. That means the rest of us who still want a pluralistic democracy outnumber them by two to one. Yeah, we just got to figure out how to kind of translate that back into power.
- [108:15]
Joy Reid
Right. Because apartheid was the same thing, you know, the apartheid whites were only 15% of the country, but because they had all 100% of the power, they were able to implement horrible policies against the 80%. Right. And against the Asian immigrants that they brought in to be also enslaved. And so the big key, I think, for Democrats is that Republicans being in power at all is what empowers this. And so when we say this is not to say we're sort of anti Republican. This is not a partisan thing. It's that the Republican Party is overtaken with this. It's like a zombie apocalypse. They've been all turned into this. Like they are run by this. Even if they themselves are not white Christian nationalists, the white Christian nationalists run the party. Right. They are in control of the Republican. Is that fair?
- [109:03]
Robert P. Jones
I think it is fair. I mean, you know, the key thing that. And not just. I'm just gonna say this, a little evidence here, it's worth remembering that under Trump, the Republican Party, for the first time in modern history, decided they didn't need a party platform.
- [109:19]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [109:20]
Robert P. Jones
They just said, yeah, whatever that guy. That's what we're for. And that is the very definition of abdicating political responsibility. The reason why political parties have platforms so citizens can decide does that party resonate with what I believe and what I want to see in the country, or does this party. And so basically all they said was, we're with the authoritarian guy. And so if you're with. If you're with that, you're with us otherwise. But it's notable that they. That kind of deference and kind of giving the. That was. I think that was the moment where I was like, okay, they have literally given the party over to this one man. When that happens, I don't, I don't. And the other thing I'd say, I don't want to let the sitting. And this is, again, not partisan. We're talking about saving the country here, right. From an anti Democratic movement that's taken over one of our two political parties. It is still notable to me that on any given day in Congress, if we had six righteous Republicans stand up, a lot of this stuff could. We could pump the brakes on a lot. We couldn't kick him out of office, but we could pump the brakes on the war tariffs, all kinds of things that Congress holds the, the kind of purse strings for, but we just can't find. I mean, I think I, I kind of just don't want to let the sitting Republicans off the hook here.
- [110:41]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [110:41]
Robert P. Jones
They've Got an obligation to the country first, not to a party. Right. To kind of save democracy in the country. And they've just been completely unwilling to do that, even on the more extreme things.
- [110:54]
Joy Reid
Robbie Jones, our third Wednesdays. I look forward to them. It's scary as caring time here at the Joy Reed show because we have to fight this white Christian nationalism again, right? Not for some other religious sect that we'd prefer to be in charge. We don't want any of them in charge. We talk a lot of religion on this show. We talk a lot of religion, but that is because we have to fight people who are warping religion in order to assume absolute, absolute power and telling Donald Trump that he is. The platform is how you get a guy to cosplay as Jesus on his truth Social. Robbie Jones, thank you, my friend. Remind everybody, remind everybody where they can find you.
- [111:31]
Robert P. Jones
Well, you can find me over at Substack at Redeeming Democracy and our data is all@prri.org Amen.
- [111:40]
Joy Reid
Amen. Amen. Thank you very much, my friend. I'll see you in four more Thursdays. All right, thank you very much. And listen, I think if you don't understand now how it is that Donald Trump developed the hubris to put up an AI of himself as Jesus, now you understand it, you have to understand that the Republican Party has built a cult around him. He's Jim Jones. And so he is behaving like Jim Jones. And you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing your bait. Yes, we love, we love, love Robbie Jones. Thank you. We really do. He is a great guy. You know, you keep pushing your base to the point where you believe that you're their God. They treat you like you're their God. Remember Paula White said to Trump, no one suffered like Jesus suffered until you. She told him. She told him that he was God. People are asking where the data is. You can find Robbie's data, first of all. You can find it right now. The data that we just put up on screen, that whole thing is cross posted on the Public Religion Research Institute website, which is P rri.org Paul Ron Ron igloo.org or you can get it right away@joann reid.com because Robbie Cross posts that data on the Joy's House website. So you can just go right to Joann reid.com if you're on subsec right now, when you're done with this live, pop right back over to the homepage. It's literally, I think it's in the upper left hand corner. Click it, it's free to read. It is not put behind any kind of pay wall. You can read it all. It's also not pay walled. On prri.org you can also read Robbie's substack, which I'm going to link when we repost the live from tonight. So we'll make sure you, and you can just go right there and you can read it for free. And that data, if you're a data person, if you're a data nerd and you love it, you're going to want to go ahead and bookmark the Public Religion Research Institute. It's to me, it's the best data that you can get other than it's, you know, it's, it is the best data you can get. I think, to me personally, I think it's the best, most quality data. They do like a, it's like they pull like 15, 000 people. It's a huge, huge, huge, huge poll. But yes, it is a cult. Those who are saying that in Travis, Steven saying in this, in the, in the YouTube chat that it's a cult. Yeah, it's a cult and it's a blasphemic cult. It's an apostatic co. Quote. That's the quote you can, that's the big word you can use with your friends and family, die. It's apostatic, meaning they are engaged in apostasy. If you missed Wednesday's show, go back and go to like about 40 minutes, about an hour and 10 minutes in, and I go through and I explain what apostasy versus blasphemy is. Because blasphemy is one thing. Apostasy is something entirely worse. What Donald Trump is doing is it is blasphemy in that he is taking the Lord's name and he's lying about it and attributing false things to it. But apostasy is when you literally know what the scriptures say and you twist them on purpose into evil for evil means, you know what the, it's not that you accidentally got something wrong because you just had bad theology. Maybe you were taught poorly in Sunday school. Apostasy is when you deliberately knowing what you're doing, twist the gospel, twist the religion for your own purposes, completely stripping it. Like, it's like you take the shell of the religion, you scoop out the real insides and you put in something new. That's what Donald Trump has done. Maga Christianity is false Christianity. It is an apostatic version of Christianity. It is a blasphemic version It's a blasphemous version of Christianity. It's a Christianity that literally replaces Jesus with Trump. And they'll say, no, we don't. We don't worship Trump. We just like his policies. Which policies? I always ask them that. Which policies? Which policies do you like? The mass deportation, the rounding up of immigrants, the hatred toward the poor. Stripping away school lunches, stripping away health care, stripping away all of the supports that the federal government provides to the poor. Which policy? What did you say there, Jason? Which policies do you all like? You say, I like the policies. Well, which ones? Tax cuts for the super rich while stealing away money for the poor. War and genocide. Which policies? Every time they say, well, I don't worship Trump, I just like his policies. Ask them to tell you which policies. Be specific, because I need to know. Because if you. If you don't mind the genocide and stripping the poor of even the minimum support from the federal government. Donald Trump literally said, we can't do preschool. We're doing wars. My friends have defense contracts. If we don't use the missiles and the bombs, how will my sons make more money making more drones? If we don't actually shoot the drone, if we don't shoot the bullets out of the drones, we can't buy more drones. How will my children make a living? Donald Trump says, how can my children get to be billionaires if we can't have more war? How can Palantir become a trillionaire company, A trillion dollar company if we don't let them surveil you? If Palantir can't supply ICE with surveillance technology to track your every move, how will my friend Alex Carp become a trillionaire? How can my friend Elon Musk become a trillionaire if we don't replace NASA with his penis rocket? Same thing with my friend Jeff Bezos. They need to be trillionaires, guys. Priorities, people, priorities. You guys want food and health care and decent jobs and you want enough money to be able to live and pay your rent. My friends need billion. My friends need to be trillionaires. My friends need to be trillionaires. We have needs. We're already billionaires. We need to be trillionaires. We need crypto. And so we're just going to create a religion. It's a penis rocket. Their rockets are all shaped like penises and they were like a replacement because they're all incels. Even if they've got a relationship, they're all. They have incel energy. And so the react. Yes, please watch that moral Monday. I'm telling y', all, take note that second half, baby, when Father Flager and Bishop Barber got in there, yo, you need to watch it. Because what they've done is they've taken the gospel that Father Pfleger and Bishop Barber understand because they are theologians, and they've taken. They scooped out that gospel and replaced it with Empathy is evil. Being empathetic towards your fellow man is evil. Empathy toward trans people is evil. Empathy towards immigrants is evil. Love is evil. Loving your neighbor, evil. Loving the poor, evil. Caring about the immigrant, evil. What's good is hurting the immigrant. Killing the immigrant. I think it was Paul, Pastor Webbing, who said you could go out and hurt and kill immigrants in the name of Jesus, make Jesus smile. Harming people, hurting people. They literally taken the Ten Commandments and flipped them upside down. Thou shalt kill. Thou shalt kill. Thou shalt covet. Israel, you, you Israel, you shall covet. It's not your nothing. Thou shalt not know you. Thou shalt covet, Covet all your neighbor's land. Mike Huckabee said they should covet all their neighbor's land. He's supposed to be a Christian and a pastor, and his theology is that Israel shall covet Lebanon's land and Gaza and West bank and Syria's land and Iraq's land and Egypt's land. They shall covet. They shall covet. They shall kill. Thou shalt kill. Yes. Pete Hegseth that commandment says, thou shalt kill. You shall Thou shalt make unto thee graven images. You shall that whole honor the Lord thy God. I'm a jealous God. Thou shalt have none. No God before me. You shall have a God before God. That God is named Donald Trump. You shall have Donald Trump. They've taken the Ten Commandments and flipped them on their head and said, you shall do all of the evils that the. That Moses said on them tablets that you shouldn't do. That's evil, y'. All. That is. That is apostasy. It's apostatic. It's worse than blasphemy. It's worse than accidentally getting the theology wrong. It's blasphemy, yes, but it's apostasy. Google it. All right, let's get to our moment of joy. We have two. The first one is, I like this one because it's really important for people. When we talk about scaring is caring. But the other thing that's caring is. Is noting the winds. You've got to note the wins. You can't just go through life Constantly looking at the doom and gloom and where we're losing, you've got to look at the places where the good guys are winning. And Hungary is one of those places. Hungary suffered for 16 years under their version of Donald Trump. They got out, they survived, they got to the other side. And the joy that you have seen in the streets of Hungary is like nothing I've ever seen. First of all, hip hop is undefeated. Because when I tell you, most of the celebrations are to hip hop music, okay? They be playing, like, west coast hip hop. All of a sudden you're hearing all the beats from. Hip hop has taken over the whole world, honey, because they're. They're dancing to hip hop music. They're getting it in. They're dancing like nobody's watching. They're feeling so good. Young and old, no matter what their age, they are so happy to be free. They're doing can you feel a brand new day? But they're doing their version of it. Let's look at this politician. So the new prime minister gives his victory speech, and then they start playing this hip hop. This sort of. This sort of. Oh, no, we're gonna. I'm gonna just describe what it is. They. They. They start playing this like. Like dance music. It's like music that's in a club, right? And we're going to turn the sound down, so you can't. But you just have to. I want you to picture it in your head. There's this like, very, like, modern music playing. And this man dances his ass off. Look at him. Look at him dance.
- [121:13]
Robert P. Jones
He.
- [121:13]
Joy Reid
He's got moves. He's got the moves like Jagger. He's bouncing. He's getting in. He's getting low. He's getting low. He's shaking. Oh, he's got it. Let's get to do it again. Do it again. Yes. Oh, he's hopping, hopping, hopping, dancing. Oh, he's doing a little bit of a jumping jack. He's got moves. I love it. Dance like nobody's watching you. I love it. I love him so much. He said, the fascism is over. The fascism is over. The fascism is over. And I can tell you that when the sound is on. He was on me. He was on me. Everybody can dance if you play what they like. That's what Dave Chappelle said back on the Chappelle. So everybody can dance. Why? He said white people could dance if you play what they like. Well, obviously they were playing what he liked because he was dancing. He got it in. He let go and let God all right, our second. Our second moment of joy is this is what we're gonna play the other night. Because this past weekend, I too, was doing a bit of dancing. I received a fabulous award from the Prince George's County Caribbean Council. It was wonderful. All the elected officials from Prince George's county came and showed up for the 35th annual red dress Ball. It was a hoot. Myself and my cousins Lorraine and Faye went with me. Two of my girl cousins, my best girl cousins, we went and we had a ball. Here's the video. This is our moment of joy. That's our look. I'm going to talk over it because there's no sound, but this is our fabulous gowns. It was a red dress ball, so we had to get in red dresses. That's all the local elected officials. That's me with my little award. All the folks who run Prince George's county when they're running for office. We got even a little Delta picture in. These were Faye's good friends that were at our table. That's my cousin Lorraine. And we were just chilling, having a good time. Those are Deltas. We got to get together, did a little Delta picture. We had a really good time. It was fabulous. I want to thank the Prince George's County Caribbean Council. We had a wonderful time. When we get to that last video, we did a dollar wine. Oh, they had a beautiful performance of Caribbean dance and the fabulous, fabulous costumes. And it was great because it was. And I was saying this on. Read this. Read that. With Jackie. The other day when we did our live with Jackie, that what. What I loved about it is that it completely crushed. This is us doing the dollar wine. $$. That's me doing the dollar wine. You see me doing the dollar wine. You see me dollar wine. $$. Jason trying to criticize my dollar wine. Doing my dollar wine. So, yes, bottom line being it crushed this idea that all the Caribbean islands don't get along and that all the Caribbean islands fight among each other and don't respect each other. We had everything from Haitians to Grenadians to Guyanese to Jamaicans, of course, the Trinity. We had everybody. St. Kitts people from St. Kitts American, African Americans were there. We had Africans. It was the full diaspora that was in the house, having a wonderful time together and dancing like no one was watching. We had a great time. So that's what my message is to you all. Dance like no one's watching. Be happy. Live your life. Because we are far outnumbering the Bad guys. Thank you all for watching and we will see you not only on the next the Joy Reid show, but don't forget tomorrow Tim Miller and me at noon on at Joyce House joyce house.com you still have time to sign up to become a Premium member if you want to be a part of that conversation and come with questions because Tim is going to have a lot to say. He's a lot of fun. All right guys, and don't forget the our members only chat on Friday after the show. So that's my housekeeping like and subscribe hit share help us get to 500, 000 and goodbye. I love you guys.
- [124:38]
Wajahat Ali
Getting back to the basics, grassroots level,
- [124:41]
Robert P. Jones
Let me dig a little deeper with
- [124:42]
Wajahat Ali
the shovel Plenty can't tell the force from the trees and I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in a
- [124:48]
Justin J. Pearson
jar Injustice anywhere it's a threat to
- [124:50]
Wajahat Ali
justice everywhere Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.
- [125:04]
Joy Reid
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
- [125:23]
Wajahat Ali
I don't know if you knew this,
- [125:24]
Joy Reid
but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been to able enjoying.
- [125:30]
J.D. Vance
It's not just for celebrities.
- [125:31]
Joy Reid
So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com.