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Abby Phillip on Jesse Jackson, Black Power, and Wild Debate TV | The Joy Reid Show Bonus Episode
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- [00:04]
Joy Reid
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com welcome to this special episode of the Joy Reid Show. Thank you for watching on substack or YouTube or if you're listening on Spotify or other podcast platforms. Know that we appreciate you. Be sure to hit like and subscribe and share to help us with that old algorithm. You know how that goes. So in 1984, Reverend Jesse L. Jackson became the second African American after Shirley Chisholm to run for president, shocking the Democratic Party by winning five primaries in caucuses Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi and Washington, D.C. winning 1/5 of the popular vote but gaining just 8% of the delegates. When he ran again four years later, repeating his campaign platform of reversing Reaganomics, giving reparations to the descendants of slaves, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment for women and ending the disastrous war on drugs, opposing South African apartheid and supporting statehood for Palestine, he came in second, beating much more experienced politicians like Senators Al Gore and Joe Biden and narrowly losing the race to the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis. In the process, he changed the way delegates were awarded inside the Democratic Party in a way that made Barack Obama's election as the first black president possible. A generation later, Jackson, like Bernie Sanders would be much later on, was an unapologetic progressive but also unapologetically black. And his run was an exercise in black power.
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Unknown Poet or Introductory Speaker
Leaders change things. No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership, it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs and peace and justice. Only leadership, that intangible culmination of gifts, discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation. Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the promised land. Leadership can lift the boat stuck at the bottom.
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Joy Reid
In her first book, A Dream Deferred, Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power, CNN anchor Abby Philipp dives deep into Jackson's story, from his longing for a father figure to the ways he pushed his way into Dr. King's inner circle and the controversial way he made himself king's heir after the civil rights icon's assassination. We also talked about Abby's work on CNN and some of the criticisms she's faced while leading sometimes raucous conversations about our nation's politics and social upheavals to the Smithsonian. He's effectively now has some random person deciding what is appropriate for the Smithsonian to teach in terms of American history, things that don't offend parts of the MAGA base. Right. So we're now literally reviewing parts of American history and parts of American culture to make sure it comports with Dear Leader and what the maga. Can we address some of those things that are there? Because have you looked at some of the things? Yes. Slavery was a bad thing that we should talk about. Okay. Like, he forgave. He's not whitewashing slavery. So he's not. He's not. No, he's not. And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does. But let's talk about the fact that when you. Let's talk about the fact slavery in America was Only less than 2% of white Americans own slaves, but it was.
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Unknown Poet or Introductory Speaker
A system of white supremacy.
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Joy Reid
You know, slavery is thousands of years old. White people were enslaved. And American first race text is controversial. Wait a second. Well, what's controversial?
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Abby Phillip
I'm very surprised.
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Joy Reid
This is an extraordinary exercise in historical revisionism. I'm really.
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Abby Phillip
Do you realize that, Gillian, I'm surprised that you're trying to litigate who was the beneficiary of slavery, and I'm not.
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Joy Reid
What I'm trying to tell you is.
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Abby Phillip
That context of American history. In the context of American history, what are you saying is incorrect by saying that it was white people oppressing every single thing is like, oh, no, no, no.
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Joy Reid
This is all because white people bad. And CNN's Abby Phillip joins me now.
- [05:27]
Abby Phillip
Hey.
- [05:28]
Joy Reid
Hey, girl. Hey. Or author Abby Phillips joins me now. Welcome to the basement.
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Abby Phillip
Thank you so much.
- [05:32]
Joy Reid
Thank you, Sarah. Well, great. Great to have you here. So let's talk about this book, A Dream Deferred. That is the name of the book. I'm going to skip to the end where you talk about how you came to write the book. Whose idea was it and why?
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Abby Phillip
You know, in 2020, this was the pandemic. We had just lost John Lewis. We were kind of in this moment where it really felt like we were about to be past the generation of civil rights leaders and heroes and these people who actually experienced history. And it also struck me that so many of those people had not really had their stories fully told. And I'll be honest, I did not think Jesse Jackson was one of them, because I thought to myself, yeah, I feel like we know what we need to know about Jesse Jackson. He's been a part of our lives nationally for 60 years. And I didn't really think that there was anything that was untold until I started to talk to people about his political campaigns. And remember, this is after. It's obviously after Obama, but after Bernie Sanders had run twice for president and had really become a phenomenon. And there were people who said to me, you can't understand why Bernie Sanders is what he is in American politics without first understanding Jesse Jackson. And there has not been a lot written about his role in the 1984 and 1988 campaigns. And it's a part of his legacy that is much less understood, but so important. And it felt in that moment that that was actually the best time to fully understand what he ran on. Because if you just looked at it in the 80s, you would have thought, well, this is nice. He got pretty far, but didn't quite make it, and you wouldn't have thought much more of it. But the intervening time, the 20, 30 years since, has been where we really see a lot of what he ran on actually starting to come to fruition. And that's what the book is about.
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Joy Reid
So, you know, we just did a book event earlier today on the day that we're recording this interview, in which I revealed that you were born in 1988, the year that Jesse Jackson ran his second campaign.
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Abby Phillip
Literally three weeks after the 88 campaign.
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Joy Reid
Three weeks after the 88 campaign. That was the first time I ever voted. I'm gonna go ahead and reveal my age a little bit, but that was my first. I voted for him in the primary. I was so excited because he was somebody that I grew up with seeing on Sesame Street. He would do his rhymes on Sesame Street. He was probably one of the most famous black people, other than Muhammad Ali, that we saw. And so celebrity was a whole part of that experience. And I agree with you, having written a bit about him myself, that people do not, I think, realize how close he came to getting the nomination not once, but twice.
- [08:21]
Abby Phillip
Absolutely. And, you know, for a black man in the 1980s, to not only have that level of celebrity, but then to have the audacity to run for president was really remarkable. And the degree to which he was dismissed as a candidate and then even in spite of that, as how close he came to the Presidency. I think that's the part that people remember, run, Jesse, run.
- [08:45]
Joy Reid
Right.
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Abby Phillip
But they don't remember that he was second in the race for the President's for the Democratic nomination in 1980.
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Joy Reid
He did better than Joe Biden.
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Abby Phillip
He did way better than Joe Biden. He beat Al Gore. He beat all of these different people in the primary, getting more votes, winning more states, picking up more delegates. And it wasn't just a vanity project because the things that he insisted on getting, changes to the platform, changes to the Democratic nominating process, are part of the Democratic Party's foundation right at this moment. And without it, Obama would never have been elected.
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Joy Reid
Right. Because the changes in delegates, I mean, I think what people have to realize, he got so close and they had to give him something.
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Abby Phillip
They had to give him something.
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Joy Reid
And then we're like, we'll give you these delegate rules that Obama then later uses to beat Hillary Clinton.
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Abby Phillip
Exactly. If Obama were running on the delegate rules that Jesse Jackson had run on, he wouldn't be the nominee.
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Joy Reid
Hillary would have gotten accepted.
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Abby Phillip
Hillary would have gotten it.
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Joy Reid
So you're born in 1988. I'm going to do a little biographical here with you. You are a trinity, both Caribbean American people. But, you know, the 90s version of Jesse Jackson, he had had a different, there was a different vibe toward him, let's just put it that way. And people had a certain level of disdain for him, I think, by then, or people had a different attitude a little bit toward him, I'll say. What did you learn about Jesse Jackson? Growing. What did you know about him?
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Abby Phillip
You know, I mean, he just was a ubiquitous figure and he just seemed to be everywhere. And you know, I think I knew him as a civil rights leader, as an activist, as somebody who would kind of show up wherever there was a camera. And all of that is true. But I didn't know much about his political identity beyond that he was a Democrat. But even this idea that when he was running as a Democrat, he was running as an anti establishment figure, that's not really what anybody, what I knew.
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Joy Reid
It'S not what people learn.
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Abby Phillip
People learn about him. And even you brought up the 90s because in the 90s, something changed for Jesse Jackson. He went from being an outsider to being an insider. He was inside the Bill Clinton White House. He had installed his people in Clinton's administration. They were his top aides, his cabinet secretaries. Jesse Jackson was Bill Clinton's spiritual advisor at a certain point. And so he himself had a different role in the 90s and beyond. Than he had had in the 70s and the 80s. And that shift. In that shift, I think we lose a little bit of where he started off as a political candidate and a political figure. He was not this sort of like centrist aligned figure. He was actually seen as much more radical than that, much more left wing, much more progressive before progressive was even a term that people used to describe themselves or other politicians.
- [11:33]
Joy Reid
And you know, I am struck very. You write a lot about this in the book, which I'm glad that you treated a lot of the reason that people by the 90s were starting to view Jesse Jackson as you said, somebody. I don't think he got the respect that he deserved, to be honest. And I think people saw him as this sort of. I don't know how you would describe the figure they thought. But one of the reasons he was seen as controversial is that he was very outspokenly pro Palestinian. Yes, he was for a Palestinian state before it was cool to be for a Palestinian state, before Bernie Sanders was openly saying for a Palestinian state. He was running a Bernie Sanders style campaign. And I think people have lost that aspect. And there was such a. It was so controversial in the 90s to be openly pro Palestine. Do you get the sense how, having done the journalism for this book, that that's one of the reasons he was dismissed? He would not throw Farrakhan under the bus as he was being demanded to do?
- [12:23]
Abby Phillip
Well, certainly the Farrakhan thing did not help him at all in either 84 or 88. And he was a, of sort associated with a certain degree of radicalism. But you have to understand in the 80s, I mean, we can talk now in American politics about a two state solution that's a part of actually American diplomatic policy. Now. It was not in the 80s, exactly, in the 80s you could not say the word Palestinian. It was associated with terrorism, with antisemitism. And, and he was tagged with that for many, many years. And look, the Farrakhan thing, there were many key moments when he should have thrown Farrakhan under the bus because of truly anti Semitic things that Farrakhan had said. And at a certain point in the campaign, Farrakhan had threatened the reporter who wrote about the anti Semitic remark that Jesse Jackson acknowledged that he made.
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Joy Reid
And that was the X Y M I E town. Yes, right.
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Abby Phillip
So Farrakhan was a problem for him and also relished in some ways his ability to kind of create problems for Jesse Jackson. And at some point they did sort of distance themselves from him. But I think that among the average American, mostly white Americans. Jesse Jackson's association with ideas like pro Palestinian rights, anti apartheid activism, those things made him a radical. You know, when he had the. You remember when he had the Afro?
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Joy Reid
Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
In the 70s, he had a pretty glorious Afro. Yeah, an afro in the 70s. And that is the image, by the way.
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Joy Reid
My mother had that hairstyle, which I love.
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Abby Phillip
And also, actually, when he was on Sesame Street.
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Joy Reid
Yeah, he had the big fro.
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Abby Phillip
He had the fro. And that image was indelible for a lot of white Americans in particular. They just thought of him as this, like, black power figure. Even though, if you really understand the kind of lanes in the sort of black leadership in those times, he was not really in the black power lane.
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Joy Reid
Right. He was with Dr. King. He was with Dr. King and really, like.
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Abby Phillip
But none of that mattered.
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Joy Reid
None of that mattered. And I think the Farrakhan thing. And I'm gonna stick with the. Just for a moment, because I think that people. I mean, you can say whatever you want about Louis Farrakhan. He's a free black man, and he's not gonna change from his, you know, his beliefs, et cetera. But what I thought was interesting that you wrote is that when he was told, you have to distance yourself from him, he said, I'm with my people when they're good. Or essentially, he said, you're not gonna order me to distance myself from somebody who's been with me. And he just refused to do it. There was a certain amount of loyalty that he said, I'm just not gonna do it. And he was willing to take the bricks for it. He.
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Abby Phillip
I think there was a lot of resentment that he was being. First of all, he was being tagged with the words of another man.
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Joy Reid
Right. Because he didn't say the things.
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Abby Phillip
He didn't say the things, but Farrakhan did. But I spent a lot of time on this because I really wanted to understand in my reporting, understand what was the mindset, what was going on there. And the people I spoke to said that he approached that issue and Farrakhan as not a political decision, but a moral decision. And that's the difference between Jesse Jackson as a politician and Jesse Jackson as a person who considers himself more of a movement leader and a moral leader. And he. He basically said, I don't believe in abandoning anyone. This is the same Jesse Jackson, by the way, who went down to the south and met with the, you know, the former segregationist governor.
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Joy Reid
Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
Of Alabama, George Wallace. And George Wallace, and sat there with him. So he said, I don't really want to throw anybody under the bus. And the fact that you're insisting that I do that kind of. It goes against my moral code as a faith leader. But I think he also, to your point about the loyalty, Farrakhan was an important Chicago figure and was providing his.
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Joy Reid
Security, by the way, the Nation of.
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Abby Phillip
Islam was providing us security. So back before he was running for president and had Secret Service protection, he was going all the way around in the south and registering voters. And he was a black, prominent black man whose life was in jeopardy every day. And the Nation of Islam would show up and stand guard outside of these black churches in the south to protect him.
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Joy Reid
Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
And so that's where a lot of the loyalty came from. When he went to Syria to bring back Lt. Goodman, who was black.
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Joy Reid
You know, I had forgotten this when I was a kid, so I think I had blocked out of my mind. He literally went on essentially a mission, outside of being a governmental official, to bring back an American member of the American military who was being detained by the Syrian government by the Assad regime. And got him back.
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Abby Phillip
And got him back. And the thinking at the time was that the Reagan administration didn't really care to bring him back among black people.
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Joy Reid
It's a black man.
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Abby Phillip
The idea was that, oh, because he was black, but for all kinds of diplomatic reasons, they didn't want to deal with Assad, they didn't want to negotiate. But Jesse Jackson got on a plane and he took Farrakhan with him and other religious leaders, and they went over there. And one of the reasons that Assad was willing to talk to him was because of the connection between the Muslim leader, Farrakhan, and the Syrians. And so there was that they had had a lot of experiences together, and there was loyalty there. And Jesse Jackson did not see himself as a sort of craven politician who just needed to do what he needed to do in order to win. Wasn't willing to do that. And honestly, had he done it, I don't know, it might have helped him. Well, because that would have been what was required politically.
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Joy Reid
I mean, one of those scenes in the book that I think is interesting is Ronald Reagan being like, let's celebrate. This man who's running against him can't argue with success. Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
And he has had to invite Jesse Jackson into the White House for a photo op.
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Joy Reid
Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
Which is what I know. Reagan knew that Jackson wanted and was forced to give it to him.
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Joy Reid
You know, the other piece that I think is interesting in the book is that you really do get you get to understand how he becomes the successor to King. Because for us growing up, the two successors to King were really Jesse Jackson and Reverend Sharpton. Right. For us, for my age group, yeah.
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Abby Phillip
And for the average person.
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Joy Reid
And for the average person. But there's this question of how he gets. Gets there, because he's not Ralph Abernathy, who is King's best friend. He's not the designated successor. He's not one of those people who we think of as the true insiders to King. He kind of comes in late, like around Selma. We're already at 65. When he's really getting close. How does he manage to get from being somebody who was in seminary school, who wanted to be with King, and who revered King kind of the way Medgar Evers did? Like, these people want to be with King. They all want to go to this. This sort of central light of the movement. How does he get there?
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Abby Phillip
You know, he kind of bogarts his way, right? Like, he kind of like everything else that he did in his life, he just shows up. And he and some other classmates of his took. This is after Bloody Sunday. So Bloody Sunday had happened, right. And there were plans for a subsequent march because they wanted to complete the march. So people were showing up in Selma, and there were all these agitated activists who were angry because of the scenes that had unfolded, and they were eager to go. And there were confrontations happening with white people. And Jesse Jackson shows up on a bus with his. With his classmates. And he goes to Andy Young, one of another very close.
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Joy Reid
Who's very close to King.
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Abby Phillip
Yeah, to King's, and says, you guys go to sleep. I'll watch these folks. I'll make sure no one does anything. And Andy Young was like, well, he says he's gonna do it, so, yeah, sure, go ahead. So they rested while Jesse Jackson stayed up all night and kept people from getting into fights and going off on their own and doing things and giving speeches and rallying them. And at that moment, they knew that, hey, this guy has some leadership ability. But he kept at it. He kept hanging around, asking for a job, waiting for a job. At this point, he has a couple of kids and a wife and no money, and he's just waiting for Dr. King to hire him. And finally he does, and he kind of becomes almost like the youth, what you would almost call like the youth director of the larger civil rights organization, the sclc. And he's in that role is where he kind of gets his entree. Later on, he runs Operation Breadbasket and Operation Breadbasket becomes a really pivotal job for him because that's where he learns the power of leverage. And his whole life then becomes this game of leverage where he basically says, how do we take the economic power of black people and operationalize it, Forcing companies to serve us higher quality food, to hire us, to give us opportunities, to have franchises, to allow us to open banks, to give us access to capital. How do you use that leverage? And he becomes a master at that.
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Joy Reid
Or literally saying, you will hire this many people or you will be boycotted, which is a Kenyan idea at the very end of his life.
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Abby Phillip
Exactly. Or you will be boycotted. And so that's where he. That's how he came up in King's world. But he also learned very early on the power of the media. He just knew how to get in front of a camera, how to talk to reporters. He had those relationships. He knew how the power of just saying something could prompt events to happen. And so he used that very astutely. And it was for that reason that it wasn't. I mean, he could have been anybody and then tried to take on the mantle of King, and people would have been like, who are you? But he had already been this kind of public figure in that world because of his use of the media. And that's what helped him actually be able to. To make a credible case that he could be King's successor.
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Joy Reid
There's a thing in the book where you really kind of get the kind of dramatic succession of events by which Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jackson, bypasses Ralph Abernathy and the other, even John Lewis, who could have easily been the successor. Right. Who's around his age, but he kind of bypasses all of these other. King's only 12 years older than him, even though he's treating him like a father figure. But when King is assassinated, set this stage, because there is a thing that Reverend Jackson does that angers the family, that angers King's close friends, but that really. It causes him to take the lead in the race to succeed King. And that is, he's not next to King when he dies, but he ends up covered in King's blood for, like, several days.
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Abby Phillip
Several days.
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Joy Reid
And talk about that.
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Abby Phillip
I mean, so the bloody shirt is sort of lore of that era. And, you know, essentially, Dr. King is assassinated and Jesse Jackson is not on the balcony, but he's down in the courtyard and probably had been speaking with him.
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Joy Reid
He was on the phone with him just before.
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Abby Phillip
Yeah, maybe seconds before, they were shouting up at each other because he was literally down in the courtyard.
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Joy Reid
Yeah.
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Abby Phillip
And the shots ring out, and King is killed, but he's not. Jesse is not on the balcony. What he does do is he calls Coretta and says he's been shot. You need to come quickly. Things are moving very, very quickly. Dr. King dies in the hospital, and everybody is sort of distraught and in mourning. And Jesse Jackson tells them, I'm not feeling well. And he doesn't. He's not there in the hotel room as they're trying to pick up the pieces and figure out what's next. Next thing they know, he shows up the next morning in Chicago, and he's covered. He's wearing a shirt.
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Joy Reid
He flies home from Memphis to Chicago.
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Abby Phillip
He flies home from Memphis to Chicago. He's wearing a shirt, and it's covered in Dr. King's blood. And he's on TV and he's speaking, and he's talking to people about. About the assassination. And his close friends, his best friends, his family, they're all watching from Memphis, and they're asking themselves, why are you there? And we're here. Why are you wearing that shirt? You weren't even on the balcony. And everyone's assessment of that was that he, at some point, would have had to go onto the balcony, scoop up the blood and apply it to his shirt. And how do you answer for that? You know, that's. It's dogged him for many, many years. It really. It fractured those relationships in ways that, I don't know ever fully recovered. But he explained it by basically saying, I was young and I was hurt, I was angry, and I was in a. Almost like a stupor of grief. And he literally. It wasn't just for the cameras. He walked around his home and wherever he went, for days. Didn't shower, didn't take it off, nothing. He just walked around for days with that shirt on. And both things are true, that both. It was a demonstration of a certain kind of narcissism about wanting to be. Wanting to embody the story in that moment. But it was also, I think, grief, authentic grief. I mean, he thought of King as a father figure. And so that moment actually becomes really important because all those years later when he starts talking about running a black man for president, running himself for president, and he goes to those same people, Coretta Scott King, Andy Young, all of those same people, and he says to them, will you run? First of all, will you support me? And they say no. They say no for a lot of different reasons. Some of them practical and political, but some of them personal, too. And I think that part of the story, it is a big part of how he was and was not able to use all those years in Dr. King's circle to propel himself into this other chapter. Eventually some of them did come around, especially by 1988.
- [27:04]
Joy Reid
Right.
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Abby Phillip
But.
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Joy Reid
Because they saw how successful he was in 84.
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Abby Phillip
But that relationship, complicated is the best way to describe it. And that, I think, describes a lot of Reverend Jackson's relationships with a lot of key figures. Not just the King family and the civil rights era folks, but even more recently with Obama and others.
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Joy Reid
So we're gonna talk about that. And even Shirley Chisholm, there's this whole dynamic, right, where she runs in 72 and the men don't support her, including, really, Reverend Jackson. But then when he runs, I guess by ADH, she's supported.
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Abby Phillip
In fact, she's there the day he announces his campaign. She introduces him, but. But again, flashback to 1972, and she's like, where were you guys? Yeah, when I'm running for president, you're not taking me seriously. You didn't even invite me to the black political convention in Gary, Indiana. You didn't. You weren't there. That was her feeling. And she felt that Jesse Jackson was of this era of black men who were the leaders of the civil rights movement. And she thought that there was some patriarchy involved. You know, she thought that as a black woman, even these black men who were for the liberation of black people weren't ready to support a black woman running for president.
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Joy Reid
It's so interesting because you have. There are all of these sort of connections, Right. That happens because then when Kamala Harris runs for president, you then have her running on the mantle of a Shirley Chisholm. And the person who is the most, who is sort of fetid in the sort of opening moments and hours of that convention is Jesse Jackson. Right. And there's this sort of culmination of that, and it's in Chicago, and there's all these emotions. I was there. It was really sort of incredible. This book is subtitled the Fight for Black Political Power. And you really are sort of tracing the way Jesse Jackson is really pivotal to the way that you exercise black power. He is a civil rights person. But unlike King, who never got into politics and never wanted to be a political leader, he pivots from being a civil rights leader into a genuinely powerful political leader.
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Abby Phillip
Yeah.
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Joy Reid
How, in your view, does his pivot into politics help pave the way. Other than the delegate thing, which was huge, but how does it set Up Obama.
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Abby Phillip
You know, one of the big things that Jesse Jackson did was he moved the consciousness of black Americans from do I have my basic right, my basic access to the ballot? To what do you then do with that access? How do you actually exercise power with your ballot? And that's the thing about Jesse Jackson, is that he was always strategic in that way. He really believed that black people voting as a bloc could exercise a huge amount of power in the Democratic Party. And guess what? He was right about that. That's why black voters to this day are perhaps the most important component of the Democratic coalition. And that was exactly what Jesse Jackson envisioned. He went around and was registering millions of Americans, but mostly black Americans, to vote on this premise that they were. They were David's rocks lying around waiting to be used in a slingshot against Goliath. And that imagery that he painted was maybe a little premature because I don't think it was until much later. Not even, I mean, there was the Obama of it all. But even post Obama, I think 2020 was where we really saw how black voters operate within the Democratic Party in a way that is flexes their full muscle. And Joe Biden actually was the benefit of that. Of all people, the person who Jesse.
- [30:48]
Joy Reid
Jackson beats in 1988, yeah, essentially he beats Gordon.
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Abby Phillip
He ends up being the beneficiary of that. And so when we talk about black political power, he was the person who helped make that transition from King to where we are now from black people saying, yes, I have the right to vote, but how do we use our right to vote in a way that actually creates leverage within the party system? And even on top of that, I mean, I think Jesse Jackson understood the need for the structure of the Democratic Party to reflect the constituent voters. So not just black people, but women and other people of color.
- [31:24]
Joy Reid
He did coalition politics Fred Hampton style.
- [31:26]
Abby Phillip
Yes. And so Barack Obama, even though I would argue ran as a much more centrist candidate, he benefited from the coalition of voters that Jesse Jackson helped create in the 80s. He benefited from this party that was big and diverse and was represented all across the country. Asian Americans, Arab Americans, black Americans, white Americans. Obama benefited from the fact that that coalition even existed and built on it. And that is one of the reasons that he, you know, he. And I think he understand. He understands that stands on the shoulders of a Jesse Jackson.
- [32:08]
Joy Reid
Yeah. It's interesting that you tell the story of. I believe this is Vincent Chin, the young Chinese man who is lynched by a white man who's angry about the auto industry and you know, he sits with the family, with the mom and you know, he's doing this weird thing, this not weird thing, it's this really, I think, important thing in coalition politics and saying, I'm gonna go to these white farmers who would normally never even listen to a black man. And some of them are having their faces covered. They don't even wanna be seen necessarily publicly listening to him. But he's getting involved in Farm Aid. He's literally doing this sort of coalition politics that Obama later does as well.
- [32:39]
Abby Phillip
He went to places that Democrats weren't really going and don't go now. And this is the other lesson, I think, in his candidacy was that I think that people today, one of the things, the challenges that Democrats have is that sometimes they don't go where they don't think they're welcome. And one of the things that Jesse Jackson did was always go. He went everywhere, even where he was not welcome or you wouldn't think he was welcome. And he gave everybody the same message. He wasn't like delivering a different speech to different people. He had crafted a message that he knew would resonate not just in the Bronx, but also in Missouri and in rural Wisconsin and Michigan and other places like that.
- [33:26]
Joy Reid
It's interesting because you now cover the politics of the Democratic Party. You're seeing them literally almost go into physical upheavals of rejection of Mamdani. And Mamdani's campaign to me is very Jesse Jackson esque in that he's saying it's about finances and money and about affordability. And this is something Jesse Jackson was much about, was very much about not just political power, but economic power. Let's flex our political, our economic power as well as our political power. And let's talk economics to people. It's very Bernie Sanders, like his campaign and Bernie's campaign, very similar. Even some of the stuff Trump was lying about and saying he was going to do for people on affordability, like they kind of are doing the same thing. What do you make of the fact that all of these decades later, after rejecting a Jesse Jackson, you know, Jesse Jackson candidacy twice for two people who lost, you know, Mondale and then Dukakis not learning that lesson that Democrats are still saying, yeah, we don't really like a liberal populist, we really would rather have a moderate centrist?
- [34:24]
Abby Phillip
You know, I think that this is a constant battle that is happening within the Democratic Party where they're afraid of the left flank of their own party. But I think when you look at the popularity of Bernie Sanders and someone like Mamdani, both of them, they use the term socialism, which is scary in.
- [34:44]
Joy Reid
But it's democratic socialism, isn't it? Yeah, but it isn't regular socialism.
- [34:47]
Abby Phillip
Is that everybody. They're just afraid of the S word. Right, but hear me out on this, right? Voters are not as concerned about these labels as I think politicians think that they are. And you do have to ask yourself the question, what is it about these messages that is resonating not just with Mamdani and with Bernie Sanders, but also with Donald Trump, who's doing a kind.
- [35:12]
Joy Reid
Of version of national socialism where he's taking like, parts of companies and saying that the government's gonna have a part of it. That's a bit national socialism, isn't it?
- [35:20]
Abby Phillip
Absolutely. I mean, I think that in so many ways, Trump has just figured out how to take economic populism and make it force the Republican Party to nod their heads and be okay with it. But what he's doing is speaking directly to what he's recognize is what voters want, which is somebody who's saying to them, the system is not working for you. In fact, it might very well be rigged against you. All those folks in Washington who are part of the establishment are not working for you. They're working for the powers that be. That's the message. Now, you can argue about whether or not the policies actually speak to that, but that was the message that he offered. And that's the same message in its sort of core part that you're hearing from Bernie Sanders, but Mamdani and Jesse Jackson. And so for both parties, what are voters saying? Americans are clamoring for an outsider because they don't like the system as it is. And they are also clamoring for somebody who says to them, I'm going to speak to your day to day life, whether you have a job or not. You know, in Jesse Jackson's speeches, both of his speeches, 84 and 88 convention speeches, you know, he talked about bringing back jobs for steelworkers, about hollowed out, you know, working class Midwestern towns. He was painting a very similar picture of what was wrong with the American economy that Donald Trump keyed in on and ran on in 2016 and 2020 and 2024.
- [36:55]
Joy Reid
Well, 2024 was more I'm your revenge and are the problem.
- [37:00]
Abby Phillip
But this idea that Americans don't feel like things are great and don't want candidates who are running primarily to defend the status quo is not new and it's actually present across the political spectrum right now. In our politics. And it would be smart for both parties to recognize what's happening there and respond to it, because there's a lot of energy there. I mean, when you see someone like Mamdani putting 15 or 20,000 people in a stadium in a mayoral election, that's crazy. When you see Bernie Sanders putting 30,000 people in a stadium on a college campus in a presidential primary, that's not really something to be ignored. And that's actually a very similar thing to what Jesse Jackson was doing. He was filling massive stadiums, massive crowds of people in the primary. And still the party was basically saying, we need to figure out how to make this guy go away.
- [38:00]
Joy Reid
And they did the same thing with Barack Obama, by the way, who was the upstart sort of that was filling stadiums, that was giving the energy. But people were like, no, the Clintons are our people. There is like a sort of doctrinaire, we want the person we need.
- [38:10]
Abby Phillip
Establishment, anti establishment type of dynamic.
- [38:12]
Joy Reid
Yeah, all the time, for sure. The other piece of it that I do think brings President Obama, former President Obama, Imam Donnie, type A Bernie Sanders, in some ways, in sort of evil way, Donald Trump, but also, you know, a Jesse Jackson is this idea of winning the attention economy. Because part of what, you know, there's an art and a science to politics, and the science of it is getting the numbers right, getting the numbers through the door and the number of votes, but the art of it is keeping people's attention. And people have less and less and less of an attention span as time goes on. In his era, Jesse Jackson understood how to communicate in a way that kept your attention. Right. And it was like a show business sort of thing. But also, honestly, Dr. King had that too. You had to keep your attention. We still have a challenge in Democrats, not necessarily embracing the people who understand how to keep the attention and how to win the attention economy. The jasmine crockets, the AOCs, the people who know how to do that. The party still says, I'm not sure, right. Because they don't seem controllable. Because it doesn't seem so. It doesn't seem like that has changed.
- [39:15]
Abby Phillip
I think that control piece is huge because when you start to become somebody who themselves starts to garner interest and attention and media attention and the attention of voters, then the establishment is kind of like, well, you're not playing by the rules.
- [39:32]
Joy Reid
Right?
- [39:33]
Abby Phillip
And I do think that that reflexive reaction is kind of missing the point. But it's to be expected because the job of the establishment is to sort of police the rules. Of the party. But all of these anti establishment figures are figures that are sort of not coming up the right way. What they understand is that the voters will decide. And you named some figures, but those are all people who get it, who they figured out their moment and they're exploiting their moment. And there was no one better at that in his time than Jesse Jackson. It also is incredibly polarizing. I think you have to understand that, that when you start to become that type of person who can garner media attention on a regular basis, you have to be ready for the backlash, because there is a lot of backlash. And Jesse Jackson understood that well too. So it was one of the reasons why he became. He was one of the most popular black figures at the time. He was a cultural figure. He could, he could bring Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson and all of these figures together, Aretha Franklin, for whatever cause he wanted to bring them together for. And so he was this cultural figure in that respect. He was a civil rights leader. But to a lot of people, black and white people were like, why is he always in front of a camera? And that polarizing part of it is part and parcel of to what it means to be everywhere.
- [41:04]
Joy Reid
Well, I can tell you I was a big fan in my household. We loved us some Jesse Jackson.
- [41:09]
Abby Phillip
I didn't know what I'm talking about.
- [41:10]
Joy Reid
But I know there were people who were offended by it.
- [41:11]
Abby Phillip
Yeah. And I think you really have to remember that because I think when we ask ourselves why did it end the way that it ended, it's because not everybody was in agreement, even in the black community, that this was the right strategy or he was the right person. And that helps to explain why it ended up stalling out at a certain point.
- [41:36]
Joy Reid
Let's talk about this, because the media attention piece, you obviously host a very popular program on cnn. He used to host a CNN show, by the way.
- [41:43]
Abby Phillip
Yes, he did.
- [41:43]
Joy Reid
For years, right? Yeah, he did host the show. So he knew how to even translate that into being a television star as well. So this whole idea of holding attention and in some ways being performative about it, and not just Jesse Jackson, but what you experience on a day to day basis at cnn, people come on to your show and they perform.
- [42:04]
Abby Phillip
Some of them do.
- [42:05]
Joy Reid
Some of them do. Right. And in some cases you have people who really know their stuff and they're there to talk about something that's central to what their expertise is. And then you have other people who. It isn't their expertise, but they're still performing, they're still performing for A partisan effect. Right. How do you just, as a journalist, as somebody who has to navigate that table, how much credence do you give to the opinions of people who are far out of the pocket of what is even their expertise, but who are pining on your program to perform for a partisan effort?
- [42:37]
Abby Phillip
You know, I look at it in kind of two separate veins. I think that there is a. Some of that performance that you're talking about does happen. But I try to. I'm in a position where I can actually say, okay, now tell us what you really think. Because I do think that that is part of my role is to sort of be that voice for the people watching at home who are like, there's no way he really believes that, or, there's no way she's really actually gonna defend this thing. And so engaging with those moments directly and just sort of almost like breaking the third wall, where you're just sort of like, come on, really?
- [43:16]
Joy Reid
How do you decide you get to be at your table?
- [43:18]
Abby Phillip
That's part of it.
- [43:19]
Joy Reid
Okay.
- [43:20]
Abby Phillip
But here's the other part. And this is the other part. This speaks exactly to that. What I will say is that I actually don't think that the bar necessarily needs to only be credentialed expertise, because guess what? Whether you are credentialed or not, you have a ballot in this country. And there are many regular people who are not experts in anything who have opinions about things, and then they vote based on those opinions. So in a way, I actually welcome people who are not. They're not Washington people, they're not political people. They don't have a degree in this or that, but they have viewpoints that reflect average Americans. And so there is a degree to which I actually. We actively seek out voices, some of whom are expertise, but some of whom are authentic to people who share their point of view. Because that is also what I want represented at the table. Because I recognize that in this country, nobody is giving you some kind of test in order to have a ballot, and we need to speak to those people, too. That I think sometimes this sort of credentialed view of, like, you can't speak unless you have a degree in political science is not a good reflection of where regular people are. I would actually like to have regular people at the table to express their views and to have those views debated, because that's part of what's happening in this country is that everybody is sort of saying, well, you don't know what you're talking about. You can't have that Opinion. And people do have opinions that are based on their gut, based on what information they're receiving, which might not be complete. And I want to engage with those viewpoints because I know that millions of Americans out there have them.
- [45:14]
Joy Reid
So let me ask you, how do you decide who gets to be at your table? Because, I mean, you have taken some criticism for like, a Jillian Michaels opining about race, and she doesn't know anything about museums, et cetera, but how do you decide who gets to be at your table?
- [45:26]
Abby Phillip
Listen, listen. I think that there are people like, I don't wanna talk about Jillian Michaels because, of course, she thinks that I'm talking about her all the time I'm asked about her, but this is perhaps something that she might like to hear. She represents a MAGA point of view, and she is an influential MAGA voice. And that's part of my point. You don't have to be credentialed in politics to have influence in that world, to have influence with our sitting president. Just think about that, which is actually.
- [45:59]
Joy Reid
Frightening, I mean, because this is my question, and I think this is how I think it does tie to your book.
- [46:04]
Abby Phillip
But do you see what I'm saying?
- [46:04]
Joy Reid
No, what you're saying.
- [46:05]
Abby Phillip
I totally see what you're saying. Like, I've been covering Trump since the 2016 election, and one thing I know about covering Trump and his movement is that if you only look to the sort of quote, unquote, political voices, you would miss who is influencing him and who is setting the agenda. And part of what we have to do on the platform that I have is to basically say, okay, what's really going on in the country? What really is the direction that MAGA wants to take the country? And you cannot understand that without putting those voices in the conversation.
- [46:44]
Joy Reid
So let me ask you, is there a place where you're like, you know what? Jack Prisobiak is too much for me. That is taken too. That's the Pizzagate guy who gets on cnn. Absolutely, absolutely. Is there a point where you say this person is taking too far, they're too close to white nationalism there?
- [46:58]
Abby Phillip
Absolutely.
- [46:58]
Joy Reid
But he ends up on cnn. So I think that's when people go.
- [47:01]
Abby Phillip
On, well, not on your show. I've never had him on, so I can't speak to that. And my understanding was that that was in the context of a piece about Charlie Kirk, who was a friend, a good friend of his, but we've never had him on. We don't put on conspiracy theorists. We don't put on white Supremacists, white nationalists. Look, obviously we have a vetting process, but I also think that we need to be real about who is influencing what in this country. You will miss the whole story if you don't understand who Trump is calling in the afternoons and talking to. And, you know, when people come on the show and they are Trump supporters, that is a viewpoint that we need at the table. Because otherwise you're sort of like you're shadow boxing. Who are you, who are you debating if you're not debating the actual other side? So, again, I know it's controversial. I know, trust me, I understand.
- [48:10]
Joy Reid
I'm sure you hear feedback.
- [48:13]
Abby Phillip
I understand it. But I also think, look, we all have different roles, and where I am and where CNN is in the media ecosystem is different from other outlets. And we're not trying to talk to all sides of the political spectrum just to say that we're doing it, but it's from a genuine belief that we want to reflect what is actually the political conversation in the country. And if we only had a conversation at our table between Democrats and anti Trump Republicans, that would be a completely false representation of the political dynamic in this country. But that also includes that I've had people on who, you know, who've said, you know, they're just, they're, they're actually establishment Republicans, but they support Trump. And then all of a sudden, it'll come up.
- [49:09]
Joy Reid
Scott Jennings.
- [49:10]
Abby Phillip
Well, no, not even, not even him. I'm not even talking about him. I'm talking about other people. And then all of a sudden it'll be like, well, there was cheating in the 2020 election and I have to be away. Hold up.
- [49:18]
Joy Reid
Right, right. You have to fact check. Because that is, I think the thing is, you have to fact check it.
- [49:21]
Abby Phillip
But again, we know that 35 to 40% of Republican voters believe Trump when he says the election is stolen. And so we are not selecting for election deniers, and we don't tolerate election denying at the table. But just know that there's like more than a quarter of the country that has those viewpoints. Or, or even if they agree that Joe Biden won, they'll still say like, oh, there was a caveat with a caveat that there was cheating. All of that gets checked and corrected at the table. But even, even when we don't know that that's their viewpoint, sometimes it comes up and we're like, wait, whoa. Yeah, but, but guess what? That is this great country that we are in. Well, they are here, they are voting. And, and we have to address that head on.
- [50:13]
Joy Reid
Right. And how. How do you. So talk to me a little bit about just your kind of your take as how journalism is managing this world in which, as you said, you have large percentages of people who believe completely false things and who believe it with their full chest, and they believe it, and it's very hard to talk them down from it. As you said, if you put them in the table, they're just gonna say the election was stolen. There's nothing you can do. How is journalism helping and is just having the conversation with somebody who has these beliefs? Does it help in the end? Do you walk away from it saying this is advancing the cause of us getting back to a common set of facts or not?
- [50:51]
Abby Phillip
Yeah, look, I think that we are in this insanely siloed media ecosystem and there should be.
- [50:58]
Joy Reid
You definitively state that they're not being properly trained.
- [51:01]
Abby Phillip
You know, that they're shooting dogs. They're shooting dogs in people's that have.
- [51:05]
Joy Reid
Been locked in people's bathrooms.
- [51:07]
Abby Phillip
They're abandoning small children alone in cars while they. No, no, it's not false. Look it up. Don't just say false. I actually.
- [51:15]
Joy Reid
Abandoning small children. They turned children over to hsv.
- [51:17]
Abby Phillip
There were actually small children abandoned in a highway in a car in Cicero, Illinois. How do you make these sweeping statements? Would you like me to trust they're.
- [51:26]
Joy Reid
Not training Ice Ages with examples of what is happening? Of course they're training them.
- [51:30]
Abby Phillip
Well, look, Scott, she had a specific example where conservatives are living in a completely different information world than liberals. And breaking that down needs to be done. Because when you don't ever even hear the facts, it's hard to even know that you're wrong. And that happens a lot. I mean, half my job sometimes is knowing what the latest conspiracy is, so that if it comes up, I'm ready to address it. Because it happens a lot where people don't even know that what they're saying or what they've seen and believe is not true. And so that happens a lot. And I don't come away from that saying, what's the point of this? People are just saying false things. I think that one time that that person brings up something that is debunked and false, and I debunk it at the table might be the very first time that someone out there has heard an alternative point of view. And so again, the siloing of our information landscapes is one of the biggest problems in media today. And it is not gonna resolve all of our political problems or differences but less siloing is better than more. That's my view of it.
- [52:49]
Joy Reid
I hear that, absolutely. Do you trust that when people are coming to your table, that they are genuinely. If they're wrong, they're just genuinely wrong. And that they're not performing for an audience of one and saying things they don't even believe because they're trying to are performing. Yeah.
- [53:04]
Abby Phillip
You know, for an audience of one. And I will call them out on happens all the time. The nature of the show is that we have the ability to call people out on the BS and it happens. And sometimes it's me, sometimes it's other people, other panelists that do it. But I also think that there are a lot of people who come on, and those are actually truly their deeply held beliefs. And some of it is because they've never heard otherwise.
- [53:28]
Joy Reid
Right, They've heard otherwise.
- [53:29]
Abby Phillip
They've literally never heard otherwise.
- [53:30]
Joy Reid
I want to take this back to what you wrote here, because there has never, to your point, been a kind of media figure that was also a political figure like Jesse Jackson. And I wonder how you think he would perform in this very hectic media marketplace where, as you said, you've got a lot of really polarized views where people are not communicating across these silos. How would he operate in an operation if he was still fully operational?
- [53:59]
Abby Phillip
I think that if he, if he were sort of transposed from sort of 1980 self superhero, he would perform well because he got it. And not just the demand of the media, but how you speak to people, how you actually reach people. And that's a skill, an art of politics, of persuasion, of using your words to make people feel things that he understood so well. And I've said recently, and I'll say it again, like one of the big changes that has happened in Democratic politics is this kind of fixation on a sort of technocratic type of candidate, somebody who just has this, like, laundry list of things that they want people to know that they're doing. But so much of politics is the art of making people feel that you are aligned with them, that you care about them, that you understand them, and also that you're gonna bring them into the future that they see for themselves and for the country. That is a. That is a persuasive art. It is something that people like Obama have, like Bill Clinton, like Donald Trump. He paints a picture for people on an emotional level that. That resonates with them. And so that skill is what Jesse Jackson understood and allowed him to kind of have this go everywhere approach. That when he went down to Austin, Texas, and spoke at Farm Aid in front of a bunch of farmers with the knowledge and his belief that whatever he was going to say, it didn't matter if they were black, white, green, yellow or whatever, that that message would still resonate. And that's, you know, there is a lesson in that about politics writ large, that politics is an art. It is not just a series of lists. And also, you cannot just go to voters and say, well, you're just not knowledgeable. You're just not educated. You have to convince them, because guess what? Voters are not. They don't need to be. That's not the price to entry to participating in our democracy is how knowledgeable you are. But they need to feel and believe that you are on their side. And that is a political art more than anything else.
- [56:17]
Joy Reid
And just as we sort of wrap up here, the media landscape that we're in today, it's not the friendliest place for black women in this moment. It is not the friendliest place for women in this moment or for, you know, there's a lot of pressure that is coming from, you know, the government to sort of roll, you know, sort of dial back the criticism of the administration. Do you feel that yourself?
- [56:41]
Abby Phillip
I call it like I see it. And look, I don't know. You know, I wake up every day and I. And I do my job and that's it. And I don't. I don't know how long, Lord willing, I'm able to do this for a long time, but who knows? And it doesn't really matter because the thing. The thing is that the fidelity that I have is to the truth, to the extent that I know it. And part of that is knowing that sometimes we don't know all the facts around situations and you can't make a conclusion. But also some of that is pointing out lies when they're lies, pointing out illogical things that are happening, bringing facts to bear. Some of that is also using common sense, because sometimes in today's world, they want you to just ignore everything that you're seeing. And if it's that, oh, the White House denies that X, Y and Z happen, but you're seeing it happen with their own eyes, with your own eyes. Sometimes it's just acknowledging that fact that even their denials don't comport with what we are seeing and hearing with our own eyes. And so to me, that is also journalism. And I've never had anybody tell me that, that. That I can't do that.
- [57:53]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [57:54]
Abby Phillip
And I'M grateful for that. And the nice thing about what I'm doing right now is that we. We're creating a space where everyone has a voice. And I see my role as encouraging conversation, encouraging critical thinking, debating, pushing back on things, just testing ideas, testing the logic of ideas, debating real policy. We're not just debating the politics of things, but asking, really, let's look at this economic program and from a factual perspective, does this actually work? Who actually pays the tariff? We know the answer to that question. And so we are debating not just how does this play, do voters like it, do they not like it? But actually what is the actual underlying policy. And we are creating a space for everybody to have their viewpoints heard. They're not always going to go unchallenged, but they will be heard.
- [58:57]
Joy Reid
Right. And there are some times when people have gone too far. I mean, I think at the Mehdi Hassan moment where he was, you know, where somebody said that his phone should explode, like, there are some people who take some people negative advantage of the opportunity.
- [59:08]
Abby Phillip
They take it way too far sometimes. And that's happened, thankfully, not terribly often. You know, we've been doing this for a long time, and it's probably on one hand, I can count the number of times where it's been like, okay, this person can't come back. But, you know, I also think that we, we do want people to come to the show authentically, and it's not even just a crazy, you know, that crazy Mehdi Hasan moment, but it's also, if you're showing up and it's really fake and not real, and it's kind of hard to have a conversation with somebody who doesn't. Either they don't know what they're talking about and it shows, or they don't really believe what they're saying. So I do think that some of that comes into play, too, that it doesn't make for great conversation. Sort of like typical partisan hacks, so to speak, don't really do that well on the show because they can't come out of their talking points in a way that we need them to in order to truly disagree.
- [60:07]
Joy Reid
Does Scott Jennings believe what he's saying?
- [60:09]
Abby Phillip
I think he does now.
- [60:10]
Joy Reid
You think he does? I think he does now because he was on January 6 or January 7, he was a different guy.
- [60:16]
Abby Phillip
Look, he's been confronted with his own words many a time on the show, many a time, but he's acknowledged he has completely changed his view of Trump and Trumpism, and guess what? That's valuable. And Important, too, because that's the story of millions of Americans. How does someone go from where Scott was on January 6th to where he is today?
- [60:41]
Joy Reid
Well, there's an incentive structure. He wants to run for office, maybe.
- [60:44]
Abby Phillip
But millions of Americans have. Have made that very same shift. We are seeing it play out before our eyes. So why understanding that, understanding what they're able to tolerate and what they're not is important and valuable if you want to understand where we are as a country.
- [61:02]
Joy Reid
What's the most important thing or maybe the surprising thing that you learned right in this book?
- [61:07]
Abby Phillip
Yeah, you know, I think maybe the most surprising thing actually was actually the depth that Jesse Jackson had on policy. It was way deeper than he was given credit for at the time. And his intellectual ability was also not very well understood or recognized. You know, he could take incredibly complex ideas and convert them into digestible information to voters in a matter of minutes, going from learning the information to converting it into a speech. And I think there's a lot about his legacy that is incredibly complex. And you can go back and forth with people about what's good and what's bad. And this book actually does not argue that you should view him as sort of this sort of perfect figure. He's a man good, bad and indifferent. But he was also uniquely brilliant in certain ways. And because of that, I think, is one of the most consequential figures that we've had, you know, in the last century in American politics and in American life. And the depth of the man, I think, is what people don't understand. And there were so many anecdotes about how he was able to operate at these incredibly high levels that I think really reveal someone who was more than a flash in the pan.
- [62:33]
Joy Reid
What was the Ronald Reagan story you wanted?
- [62:35]
Abby Phillip
Yeah, there was, you know, so. So leading into the 1980 campaign, Reagan was running for president, and he came calling on Jesse Jackson for an endorsement. He wanted Jesse Jackson to endorse him. Actually, Medgar Evers brother endorsed Reagan.
- [62:50]
Joy Reid
In that case, he did. Charles Evers?
- [62:52]
Abby Phillip
Charles Evers did. And he came to Chicago and wanted to meet with Jesse and sat in the lobby of the PUSH Coalition, and he was talking to some other black man and thought it was Jesse Jackson, mistook him for Jesse Jackson because he was a tall black man. And then they were like, reverend Jackson's in there. He'll see you now. And he goes in and meets with Jesse Jackson, and at the end of that meeting, he doesn't endorse, but one of Jesse Jackson's Sons told me that was the day that Jesse Jackson realized that he could be president because he had sat in the room with Ronald Reagan and said, nothing special about that guy. I can do what he did. And that completely changed his view of what it took to be president, was that he had sat in the room with this man who was about to.
- [63:44]
Joy Reid
Be president eventually and said, he ain't all that.
- [63:46]
Abby Phillip
And said, he ain't all that. And it completely. It radically changed his view of what it meant to run for that office, what it took, what skills you needed. And I think that stuck with him for the next few years as he was deliberating. What are the next steps? Who's gonna run? And should it be me?
- [64:01]
Joy Reid
I have to ask you the two most important questions in the basement. Question number one. And there is the right answer. Oh, Lord. Best musical ever.
- [64:07]
Abby Phillip
Oh. Ooh, Ooh. Oh. Or your favorite musical. There's a right answer. Oh, man. Okay, I'm gonna get this because I'm not a big musical person.
- [64:19]
Joy Reid
Oh, okay.
- [64:20]
Abby Phillip
Can you just give me your answer?
- [64:21]
Joy Reid
The Wizard.
- [64:23]
Abby Phillip
Okay. I was gonna say the Wiz, but I didn't wanna get it wrong. I love the Wiz and I love Color Purple. Look what I've also seen, you know?
- [64:29]
Joy Reid
But the Color Purple makes you sad.
- [64:30]
Abby Phillip
I saw the Cynthia Erivo version of the Color Purple and it was like a life changing experience.
- [64:35]
Joy Reid
Her voice is just ridiculous, I have to say.
- [64:38]
Abby Phillip
Like, that was also.
- [64:39]
Joy Reid
Yeah, yeah, it's ridiculous. Okay, well, we'll let you make that a tie. What gives you hope? What gives you joy?
- [64:44]
Abby Phillip
Ooh. What gives me hope is that we are still here and we can still speak our minds. And I think that's really important. That's the foundation, that's a bedrock of everything else that happens in this great nation. We're still here. We can still speak our minds. What brings me joy. Oh, my beautiful little baby.
- [65:09]
Joy Reid
I knew you were gonna say she.
- [65:10]
Abby Phillip
Is such a cute, but because it's true.
- [65:11]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [65:12]
Abby Phillip
Like, you know what I'm talking about. You wake up every morning and you're just like, okay.
- [65:16]
Joy Reid
Yeah, yeah.
- [65:17]
Abby Phillip
Thank you for God, for another day to see this beautiful face.
- [65:22]
Joy Reid
When's the last time you've been to Trinidad?
- [65:24]
Abby Phillip
Pre pandemic.
- [65:25]
Joy Reid
Okay. Yeah. Because your family. Trinity. I met the parents today. Yes.
- [65:29]
Abby Phillip
I'm way overdue.
- [65:30]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [65:30]
Abby Phillip
Like, I need to go probably next year.
- [65:32]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [65:33]
Abby Phillip
But, yeah, the pandemic, they really locked down. They did not let anybody in.
- [65:36]
Joy Reid
They were like, nobody coming over here. So.
- [65:39]
Abby Phillip
Yeah, it's been a while, but you know, my I still have a lot of family there. My mother's whole family practically is there.
- [65:45]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [65:46]
Abby Phillip
And, yeah, I miss them.
- [65:47]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [65:47]
Abby Phillip
I need to go back.
- [65:48]
Joy Reid
Thank you, Abby.
- [65:49]
Abby Phillip
Thank you, Joy. Appreciate it.
- [65:50]
Joy Reid
Thank you, Abby. Phillip. And you can get your copy of A Dream Deferred at our store at shop.joyread.com or shop.joannread.com Keep reading, readers. Be sure to hit like and subscribe and share this episode and we will see you on the next the Joy Reed Show.
- [66:08]
Unknown Poet or Introductory Speaker
Back to the basics grassroot level Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel plenty can't tell the force from the trees and I'm hard to detect like a black hole in the dark injustice anywhere it's a threat to 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.