Loading summary
Transcript178 lines
- [00:01]
Joy Reid
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places.
- [00:10]
Dr. Peter Hotez
That has your personal info and if.
- [00:12]
Joy Reid
Any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft.
- [00:16]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Lifelock monitors millions of data points a second.
- [00:19]
Joy Reid
If you become a victim, they'll fix.
- [00:21]
Dr. Peter Hotez
It, guaranteed or your money back.
- [00:23]
Joy Reid
Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply. Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening. Happy Monday. One day I'm just going to play the whole song. You guys, you guys big up in the chat or let me know in the chat if you guys want a one day have us just play you the entire song. That song is by the food chain. Big up to Oren and the food chain. That is who made our opening song and it's actually pretty dope. It's on an album that's called Lunch and it's actually, it's a few years old that it came out and one day I'm just gonna play the whole song for you guys. Cause I know you guys wanna hear it. Good evening everybody. Welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Big, big up to everybody that's listening on YouTube. I see you in the chat. Hello to. Who is that? That's RC Roy, I think it is. Who's a team TJRS members. Thanks to everybody that's listening to the chat. Big up to everybody that's listening on Substack. Also our Spotify friends. We just appreciate y'. All. Thank you so much for being here. Don't leave without hitting like subscribe and share. We know that that's very important. The algorithm needs it. You have to feed the algorithm at all times. I want to remind y', all, as you may have seen on my social media and on the Joy Rico social media that tomorrow night, tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel, right here at 7pm we will be debuting our interview with former vice president Kamala Debbie Harris, our forever vp. She sat down with this independent podcast ahead of her big book tour. She has a sold out book tour across the country and she sat down with us, the Joy Reid show, this independent, independent media outlet before she sat down with with most of the media outlets. The major media outlets got beat by us. That is a very, very big deal guys. It's a big deal not just for the team TJRS family. It's also a big deal for independent media writ large. I really want to thank Vice President Harris and her team for seeing the value of independent media and not just going to the usual spaces, the usual places to promote her new book, which by the way, is T field, y'. All. It is tfield. You definitely are going to want to read it. Also, Vice President Harris was on with Win with Black Women last night, which was a huge nod to the independent voices who supported her during her campaign. Big ups to Jotaka Edie, who is the greatest and she is the one who pulled together that Oprah put together with Vice President Harris during the campaign. So big ups to her. She lands all the big voices, y', all, all the time. So we're going to, by the way, share a link to Vice President Harris's book here on the channel so that y' all can order your copy. It is now in pre orders. It's really important if you want to support a book to get it in pre order phase because that is how you help folks get on that New York Times bestseller list. And I would know because I've been on it twice. I was number one last time for Maker and Merle Woohoo. So I promise you it's worth the read. Y' all definitely want to read it. She says all the things she gives a lot of tea. She, she's on that big book tour right now, by the way. Tomorrow night she's going to be in New York. If you're in New York, she's doing a big Q and A with my friend and fellow machete, Erin Haynes in New York City. So if you're in New York, that is where you can see that book tour live with the bp. So that takes care of Tuesday. Now on Wednesday, we're going to have a great panel on this show in this hour to react to our interview and say more about where we think former Vice President Harris goes from here. So you don't want to miss that either. Also coming up this week we're gonna be dropping our interview with the head of Doctors Without Borders Canada. And that is on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and what her team saw on the ground all throughout this summer. That's a huge story. I wanna note that today is the opening of the UN General assembly in New York. And this is the day that multiple western countries, the uk, France, Canada, Australia and others officially are recognizing Palestine as a state, joining more than 140 out of the 193 countries on Earth, mainly in the global south, that already have been recognizing Palestine as a state, some of them since the 1980s. That interview also goes up this week. So this is a power packed week for the Joy Reid show. It's a big week. We're very, very proud of this show and how far we've gotten. Big up to our I think we're at like what about 300,000 subscribers just here on YouTube. Also our 170 some odd subscribers on Substack. We are growing, y'. All. The TJRS nation is growing. Also want to note that we are in a bonus hour of the show tonight. So housekeeping wise going forward, our bonus hours are going to be on the back half of the show, so after the 7pm hour. But tonight we're just going early because we've got some really great guests who are available in the six o' clock schedule. So we decided to do this. We were also on tape all of last week. Thanks to all of you who tuned in to those shows, the Vicky Ward show, the Letitia James show, those were on tape. So we decided we'll give you guys an extra hour this on today just to give you some bonus. Now coming up, just to preview what's going to happen in this hour. A little bit later, we're going to talk with Representative Robert Garcia of California. He is the ranking Democrat on the oversight, the House Oversight Committee. He's going to talk about some of the latest revelations in their investigation of the Jeffrey Epstein clientless scandal. Also the many political officials, including Mr. Acosta, who helped him get away with his crimes over the decades. He's also on that committee that is raising real questions about what ABC and Paramount and others are doing to bend the knee to the Trump regime, particularly abc, getting rid of, at least temporarily, of Jimmy Kimmel's show. So that is going to be important. Also in the 7 o' clock hour, this is a big one. We're going to be talking with Karen Attia, the former Washington Post columnist who was fired last week supposedly for comments about Charlie Kirk. That's what the mainstream media said. But as she's going to reveal, it really wasn't about Charlie Kirk at all. So we're going to talk about what really got her fired. It's something I'm quite familiar with. We're also going to talk about right wing cancel culture, the shredding of the First Amendment with Karen, along with our friend Liz Winstead, who's co founder of the Daily show at Comedy Central. We're also going to talk with Tim, Tim Wise, been wanting to talk to Tim Wise. He's an anti racism educator. If you don't know him, people call him the White Michael Eric Dyson. Sometimes that's what people call him. You will enjoy him. So please stick around for that. That's in our second hour, the 7 o' clock hour, and we're going to try to unpack this wild insanity on the right that already worships Donald Trump as a God and is now turning Charlie Kirk into their slash Jesus/MLK. In their mind, He's Jesus and MLK at the same time. It's very weird. Apparently the rapture is coming tomorrow, so hopefully it won't come before our interviews drop and we can be here on Wednesday because they claim the Rapture is coming and that it's all ending tomorrow. So we go keep that together and we'll try to get Tim Wise to help us sort that out. So that's the housekeeping. But I want to start this hour off by talking to y' all about the truly terrifying direction that our public health is taking under the leadership of one worm in the brain nepotism beneficiary, RFK Jr. Whose job for which he is, by the way, completely unqualified, is as our director of the Department of Health and Human Services, hhs. That is the big health agency that's on top of all the other agencies like the cdc. He's in charge of all of it. One of the people that he's got under him is Dr. Oz. All of this should terrify you. We're going to talk about that and all that he is doing on the national level, but also at the state level. But I want to start by playing RFK junior on cnn. This is a little over a week ago. Lying, lying about his personal disbelief in vaccines. This is a one. Jason's going to play that for you. Now. You have gained notoriety for your skepticism about vaccines. And over the summer in an interview you said, quote, there's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective. Do you still believe that?
- [08:21]
Tim Wise
I never said that.
- [08:22]
Joy Reid
So stop me. We have the clip. Please play the clip. I just talked about that. The media slanders you by calling you an anti vaxxer and you've said that you're not anti vaccine, you're pro safe vaccine.
- [08:36]
Tim Wise
Difficult question.
- [08:37]
Joy Reid
Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?
- [08:41]
Tim Wise
I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they're causing. There's no vaccine that is know safe and effective. What I'm saying is that none of the 72 vaccines has ever been tested.
- [08:59]
Joy Reid
In a safety study pre license. So let me ask you if you think it's wise for people to take these vaccines because you had this to say on a different podcast about whether people with young babies should be getting them shots. Watch. For many, many years, I think parents were so gaslighted and they were scapegoated and they were vilified and marginalized. Even parents of kids who were very, very badly injured knew what happened to their kid, but they were just reluctant to talk about it. And I think now those days are over. Our job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. You're walking down the street and I do this now myself, which is, you know, I don't want to do. I'm not a visiting potty. I see somebody on a hiking trail.
- [09:53]
Karen Attia
With a carrying little baby, and I.
- [09:55]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Say to them, better not get him vaccinated.
- [09:57]
Joy Reid
And he hear that from me, if he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won't do it. Maybe he will save that child. Maybe he will save that child. You think preventing vaccines for a child will save that child? Do you still say this to parents today?
- [10:13]
Tim Wise
What I say again is I had three vaccines. Casey was when I. I was a kid, and I was fully compliant.
- [10:19]
Joy Reid
My kids got 72. The current recommendations are, I think, around 77. And I have a vaccine record for my child, and there are not 77, 77 doses.
- [10:32]
Tim Wise
There are 72 doses of 16 vaccines.
- [10:36]
Joy Reid
Oh, that's just a fact. Yeah. Heroin is one hell of a drug. Right. So that guy, former heroin addict, that guy is in charge of our healthcare, and he's been on a tear firing anybody, anybody in our public, federal health and infrastructure, Right. That does believe in vaccines and that does believe in science. And that includes the former head of the Centers for Disease Control, the cdc, and they report up, as I mentioned, to the Department of Health and Human Services. So he fired a woman named Susan Monarres. She got fired for failing to, quote, be aligned with President Donald Trump's agenda and for refusing to resign. When she refused to resign, the White House fired her. She then gets called to testify before a congressional committee. Now, I want you to listen to some of her testimony. This is Dr. Susan Manarez. Here she goes. On the morning of August 25th, Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me. They were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not pre approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence and I had no basis to fire scientific experts. He told me he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed. For three decades I have worked at the intersection of public health center, science and technology innovation, always challenging the status quo and welcoming the changes that come from research and discovery. Even under pressure, I could not replace evidence with ideology or compromise my integrity. So that is that. That is Dr. Susan Menares. And it's not just at the federal level. In red states, MAGA officials are implementing the exact same anti vax policies, ensuring that people living in those states have neither federal nor state protection for themselves or their children's health. So enter Florida, the some might say least evolved state of the union. So let's listen to that interesting state. My former state's Surgeon General, his name is Dr. Joseph Latapo. And here he is making a very important announcement.
- [13:18]
Tim Wise
What I'm most excited about is an announcement that we're going to make that we're making now, which is that the Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law.
- [13:37]
Joy Reid
All of them.
- [13:38]
Karen Attia
All of them.
- [13:42]
Tim Wise
All of them. Every last one of them.
- [13:50]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [13:58]
Tim Wise
Yeah. Every last one of them.
- [14:01]
Joy Reid
All of them.
- [14:10]
Tim Wise
Every last one of them. Every last one of them is wrong and. And drips with disdain and slavery. Okay. Who am I as a government or anyone else? Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body? I don't have that right. Your body. Your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body.
- [14:50]
Joy Reid
What.
- [14:50]
Tim Wise
You put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God. I don't have that right. Government does not have that right. They want you to believe they have that right. And unfortunately, they've been successful. They've been successful.
- [15:08]
Joy Reid
Wow. First of all, let me unpack a couple of things there. First of all, the state of Florida has a almost total ban on abortion. So they do feel that they have the right to tell women what to keep in their bodies if they are impregnated, including via rape. So they do believe that you. That the government does have the right to tell women what to do with their bodies, just not when it comes to measles, mumps, rubella and polio vaccines, et cetera. So they can make your kids go to school with people who might have rubella or whooping cough. And, and then you just take your chances because they also don't believe in masking. So this is great. This is going to be great. So who is that guy? Joseph Ladipo? Let's, let's talk about who he is. Now, unlike RFK Jr. At least he is a doctor and he also went to Harvard Medical School. But he's not the doctor with this kind of expertise in things like, I don't know, vaccines. I'm going to read this from Yahoo. News. I'm going to read just a little bit of this. This is who is Joseph Ladapo? Okay, let me go through this in one second. I'm going to pull it up. I'm sorry, I'm pulling it up. I'm pulling it up. Joseph Latipo. Joseph Latipo. Let me find this. There it is, there it is, there it is. Okay, so Florida's Joseph Ladapo. Scrolling, scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling scrolling apologies Reading it, reading it Joseph Abiodun Latapo, 46 years old, is a native of Nigeria and the son of a microbiologist who immigrated to the US with his family in the 1980s. Ladapo earned a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Wake Forest University and an MD and a PhD in health policy from Harvard University. He worked at different hospitals in New York City and served as a professor at the NYU School of Medicine and a staff fellow at the Food and Drug Administration before becoming a researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine in ucla. Ladapo is married with three young sons. Ladapo's primary research interests include, according to his previous online about page with UCLA Health, included assessing the cost effectiveness of diagnostic technologies and reducing the population burden of cardiovascular disease. Despite his lack of specification in infectious diseases, he's also become prominent in the movement against mainstream medical communities positions on treatments, vaccines and masking. Latapo wrote editorials for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Daily News on the topic, saying masks have little or no effect on respiratory virus transmission despite studies to the contrary, and recommending treatments such as antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, which have since been proven ineffective. Ladapo has been associated with extremist groups such as America's Frontline Doctors and Tea Party Patriots Action and was a signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized most pandemic mitigation measures and instead recommended allowing people to be infected to create a natural or herd immunity. On the idea, an idea that was supported by President Donald Trump in his first term but considered dangerous by researchers and the larger medical community. Supporters have said he's an intelligent and credentialed scientist and fully qualified. Some of Latapo's previous colleagues at ucla, though, have expressed surprise and shock at his views after the pandemic began. So this is a guy who specialized in the, the, the sort of monetary impact of disease, not on. He's not an epidemiologist. Okay. He has no expertise on anything related to vaccines. But he does have a Harvard degree. So just. Again, not every Harvard degree is equal. Now, before you think that Latapo just cares about the safety of kids, I want you to listen to him answering CNN's Jake Tapper on whether he consulted any actual scientific studies before pushing to Nick's vaccine requirements in Florida. This is a 7.
- [18:53]
Tim Wise
Vaccine mandates absolutely, positively should not be something that is part of our society.
- [18:59]
Congressman Robert Garcia
I'm looking at this report from your department from April showing that more people in Florida are seeking religious exemptions for vaccines. And at the same time, Florida is seeing rising cases of hepatitis A and.
- [19:12]
Joy Reid
Whooping cough and chickenpox.
- [19:14]
Congressman Robert Garcia
This is in your own report, your own department's report before you made this decision to try to lift vaccine mandates.
- [19:21]
Joy Reid
For Florida, which include obviously public schools.
- [19:24]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Did your department do any data analysis, did you do any data projection of how many new cases of these diseases there will be in Florida once you remove vaccine mandates?
- [19:40]
Tim Wise
Absolutely. So absolutely not. Because it's not a. You know, you mentioned whooping cough there. So there's this conflation of the science and sort of what is the right and wrong thing to do. So scientifically, you mentioned whooping cough. So that's an example. This is part of the issue with informed consent. That's an example of a vaccine that is ineffective. The data show that it's ineffective at preventing transmission. So sort of mandates with. That really don't have anything to do with, with the notion of transmission and then in terms of, you know, like analysis. Well, ultimately, this is an issue very clearly of parents rights. So I need to analyze.
- [20:17]
Joy Reid
So let's stop there. And last thing, I'm going to play for you. Okay. So he said he didn't consult any scientific journals. He just said it's about parents rights. Okay, last thing I'm going to play for you. And this is a nine for Jason. I want to play him because I think answering. Okay, let's listen. This is him talking about parents rights when it comes to puberty, Bl blockers whether parents have a right to give their kids their own kids and make informed consent and give them puberty blockers. Here he is.
- [20:38]
Tim Wise
They're just instinctively as parents thinking that it doesn't make sense to be interfering with these processes that happen in adolescence in terms of hormonal development. And is it really okay for. Am I really doing the right thing if my child says that he or she feels like another gender, which we have compassion for? Kids feel all sorts of things and they go through all sorts of changes. And compassion as a parent is probably the most important thing that we need to bring. But so parents feel uncomfortable with this innately. But here you have all of these MDs and PhDs saying that, oh, it's okay to block these hormones and it's okay to change sex organs in your little kid who is, you know, who he or he him or he or herself is changing.
- [21:32]
Joy Reid
We could leave it there. Joining Me now is Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the co author with Michael Mann of a timely new book. It is called Science Under Siege, how to fight the five most powerful forces that threaten our world. Dr. Hotez, so good to see you. Thanks so much for being here, Joy.
- [21:48]
Dr. Peter Hotez
It's great to see you.
- [21:49]
Joy Reid
Great to see you.
- [21:50]
Dr. Peter Hotez
I wish it wasn't under these circumstances, but it's great to see you.
- [21:53]
Joy Reid
I feel like it's always these circumstances that I'm afraid so, yeah. It just gets worse and worse. I want to talk first of all about Dr. Latipo, because this is a man who has. He's not an epidemiologist, but he has said that parents should be able to figure out on their own whether or not to give their kids whooping cough vaccine. But they shouldn't be trusted to decide if their kids, in consultation with a doctor, should have any sort of hormone therapy if they are trans. Does that make sense to you? No.
- [22:22]
Dr. Peter Hotez
You know, he pushes a lot of pseudoscience. I mean, I remember a few months back when it was last year, he pushed this idea that MRNA vaccines are causing turbo cancers because they're integrating into our genome. And it sounds very sciency. Right. But it was all bs. I mean, so I had to explain, maybe it was even on your show, that first of all, there's no such thing as a turbo cancer. That term is totally made up. Second, the lipid nanoparticle, which delivers nucleic acid through the cell membrane, stays in the cytosol. It doesn't go past the nuclear membrane into the nucleus. For that, you need electroporation. And that's why we have no licensed DNA vaccines. And third, even if some contaminating DNA were to get into our genome, we have proteins of our innate immune system that block its integration into the genome. Otherwise every time we ate a hamburger, we'd have cow DNA in our genome. And. And so it was, you know, but I can do it because I have not only have an MD, I have a PhD in biochemistry and I develop vaccines. But the hard thing is for general physician in practice who hasn't taken biochemistry since first year in medical school, they're not gonna scramble to look that up. And so that's how the disinformation works. And unfortunately, it's becoming, as I used the term, sciency. Cause it sounds like the guy knows what he's talking about, but it's all pseudoscience.
- [23:55]
Joy Reid
Yeah, only if you don't know. If you don't know anything about it, it sounds smart to you. But see, this is the challenge with saying to parents in Florida, a state that we raised our kids and I thank God we got our kids out of there before it was too late, that parents can on their own read something sciency and decide whether their children should get polio vaccine or get measles vaccine. How crazy does that sound to you as a kid?
- [24:17]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Well, particularly joy in the setting of this massive onslaught of, of health disinformation, which is hence the reason that Michael Mann and I wrote the book. It's because it's hard for parents to even download on the Internet, even those with a college education, what's real and what's not. And this is what the anti vaccine activists do. They take advantage of that and target people. And so when a parent decides not to vaccinate their child, you know, it's easy to get angry with them. And I take a different tact. I say they're victims themselves. They're victims of this targeted disinformation campaign. And as I often like to point out, you know, too often we call it misinformation or infodemic. Like it's random junk out there in the Internet. And it's not. It's organized, it's politically motivated, it's financially motivated. Because it's coming from a very corrupt health and wellness industry. Have you ever wondered why it's always anti parasitic drugs like Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fenbendazole. Where does that come from? Well, those medications are available in bulk and they're cheap. And so what the wellness influencers do is they can buy a Bucket of it. They can repackage it, jack up the price, and then they'll pair it with a $1,600 telehealth visit, and they make money. And. And for the business model to work, they have to discredit mainstream interventions like vaccines. And they also target people like myself. They have to portray serious scientists as public enemies or cartoon villains. And that's part of the whole disinformation machine.
- [26:04]
Joy Reid
And how much is the supplements industry a part of this? Because RFK Jr. Is known to make a buck, but that's it.
- [26:09]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Right. So it's, you know, it's. I looked up the numbers recently. It's not as big as the pharmaceutical companies, but it's getting there. It's a half a trillion dollar industry. Joy. And now you see Mr. Kennedy shifting his rhetoric to adapt to the health and wellness influencer empire. So, for instance, if you remember, we had our terrible measles epidemic this year. It started in West Texas and moved up into the panhandle and Oklahoma and Kansas and Colorado. And So you had Mr. Kennedy up there saying, well, you can either get the measles mumps rubella vaccine or you can get this cocktail of budesonide and vitamin A and clarithromycin. And you're thinking, where the heck did that come from? Well, it's all coming from the wellness influencer industry that's buying that stuff up and then peddling it and pushing it. And so it's gotten. So it's politically motivated and it's financially motivated.
- [27:06]
Joy Reid
It's as well. And I think that the political motivation is. It comes beneath the financial motivation. I always believe most of these things that they do on the right. Even the hate speech, all of it. At the end of the day, you're gonna find somebody making a dollar off of it. Right. And in this instance, it does feel like RFK Jr. Has set himself up for financial success by, as you said, pushing this anti science. But the ne his next phase is to now claim that they're gonna find the cure for autism. And they've already. You've already seen the stock in the company that owns Tylenol drop because it appears they're preparing to blame Tylenol. People taking Tylenol while pregnant for autism with absolutely no scientific basis.
- [27:47]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Yeah. So, you know, I've had long discussions with Mr. Kennedy and at the request of the NIH, and actually that's the reason I wrote the book. A previous book called Vaccines did not cause Rachel's Autism. Cause I have a daughter with autism. And intellectual disabilities. And it came out of that year of discussions that I had with him. And you know, I, you know, we have a hundred autism genes all involved in early fetal brain development. And that's the basis, and we did genomic sequencing on my daughter Rachel and my wife Anna. We found Rachel's autism gene. They're involved in neuronal connections. That's the basis of autism. Now, it doesn't mean that there's no environmental exposure, but if it's an environmental exposure in early pregnancy, and we've identified about half a dozen chemical exposures or the neuroscientists have, that have been linked to autism, the best example we have is an anti seizure medication called Depakote, also known as valproic acid. So if you're pregnant, not aware of it, taking that anti seizure medicine, valproic acid, it has the ability to interact with autism genes and have the child born with an autism phenotype. And, and I would talk to Mr. Kennedy about that, you know, years ago, and he had no interest in it because, you know, he was too fixed on vaccines. Now he's interested in environmental exposures, but he's focusing on Tylenol. Now, Tylenol is, is, is, you know, if I had to pick my list of things to avoid, you know, Tylenol was not really that much on my radar screen because a year ago there was a very good study of 2 million people done by the Karolinska Institute, which is the top research institute in Sweden. You know, it's like the Scripps or Rockefeller Institute. And it clearly showed there was no association. The reason they're revisiting Tylenol is there was a subsequent, what's called systematic review where they compile, looking at all the different studies. And they concluded, well, some of the studies show an association, others don't. And so I think there's enough there there to warrant another, you know, another more in depth evaluation. So if at that White House press conference they had said, look, we, you know, we're concerned enough about environmental exposures, we know about Depakote, maybe Tylenol has a role, but it's very weak at that point, we're going to convene all of the leading neuroscientists and environmental health experts to really work together to come up with a plan, you know, who would not support that? Right, of course, that's a great. But then to again do this kind of laser focus on Tylenol when the association is not very strong and focus only on that, it doesn't make sense. And just the whole way they talk about autism is saying the cause of autism. There's 100 different genes, Joy. It's like saying, today we found the cause of cancer. Right. It doesn't work that way.
- [30:53]
Tim Wise
Right.
- [30:53]
Dr. Peter Hotez
We've got complex interplay between oncogenes and different environmental exposures. And so they talk about. It's almost like baby talk. It's almost. They talk about in these very simplistic terms that doesn't really follow the science.
- [31:10]
Joy Reid
Dr. Peter Hotez. The book is called Science Under Siege. How to fight the five Most Powerful Forces that threaten our World. It is out now. Last thing. The last question before I let you go. I know you have to go. What is the most important thing people will learn from this book?
- [31:24]
Dr. Peter Hotez
I think the most important thing people will learn from the book is that it's not just sort of misinformation or infodemic. Right. It's not some random chunk out there on the Internet. It is organized, it's politically motivated, it's financially motivated, and it's killing Americans. And if you think about the two of the big existential threats to the American people, other than pandemics and, and the climate crisis, there's now a third leg to that tripod. And that is this health disinformation empire or this anti science disinformation empire that now makes it almost impossible to address it. And that's why we need to care about it.
- [32:01]
Joy Reid
Indeed. Indeed. We're gonna put a link so that people can order the book and get informed. Don't take advice from RFK Jr. Or Marcelo Latifo. Take it from this brilliant gentleman, Dr. Peter Hotez. Thank you, my friend.
- [32:12]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Thank you, thank you. You're the best.
- [32:13]
Joy Reid
Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. Well, there it is, y' all be afraid. Be very afraid. I mean, the reality is people are making money telling you that you should take this supplement that they happen to sell and make money from rather than go to your doctor and listen to your doctor. There is an industry out there that is designed to steal from you by getting you to not listen to scientists and doctors, but to listen to people like RFK Jr and Latipo. And then, surprise, surprise, they're all selling supplements, they're all selling ivermectin juice and say you should get that instead of the thing your doctor is telling you to get. Because they're saying that big pharma and big medicine are hurting you, but they just want to replace them and make the money that big pharma is making. I'm not saying big pharma is great, by the way, the insurance industry, terrible, Big pharma, terrible. But that doesn't mean that these people are trustworthy either. Okay, let's move on. I'm sure that you've heard by now, after being a week after week in the doghouse, Disney, ABC is now unsuspected, suspending Jimmy Kimmel. Last week, the company did suspend Jimmy Kimmel, his show indefinitely, triggering a massive boycott and cancel movement with people dumping their Disney plus, their Hulu, canceling Disney properties, trips that were going to go to Disney. They're like, they're not going anymore. But I have to tell you, the real story that I would offer on the capitulation of these big media companies is not just like fashion, you know, that they're fascism, curious or just obeying in advance because they're weak. And that is all true. It's also a bid to make sure that their money doesn't start getting funny, that their money doesn't stop flowing, and that the agency that approves their mergers and acquisitions, the Federal Communications Commission, the fcc, does not stand in the way of those mergers and acquisitions, which they could do because they can actually remove the licenses from local stations very quickly. As a reminder, this is the joke that caused ABC to feel the need to bump Jimmy Kimmel off the air. Let's play that joke real quick.
- [34:02]
Tim Wise
We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which got some criticism. But on a human level, you can see how hard the President is taking this.
- [34:26]
Congressman Robert Garcia
My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk.
- [34:29]
Joy Reid
May I ask, sir, personally, how are you holding up over the last day and a half, Sir? I think very good.
- [34:34]
Tim Wise
And by the way, right there, you.
- [34:35]
Dr. Peter Hotez
See all the trucks?
- [34:36]
Tim Wise
They've just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as.
- [34:42]
Joy Reid
You know, for about 150 years.
- [34:45]
Tim Wise
And it's going to be a beauty. Yes. He's at the fourth stage of grief.
- [34:50]
Joy Reid
Construction. Okay, okay. So construction. We can leave it there. We can leave it there. So after that, Brendan Carr, who, by the way, is not just the head of the FCC, he's the guy who wrote the chapter in Project 2025 about how to Warp the FCC to fit the agenda of an autocracy. That guy, he went on a right wing podcast by the guy's name is Benny Johnson is the podcaster. He went on that show and made a mafia style threat to Disney, ABC and its affiliates. And here is that threat threat by Brendan.
- [35:21]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Frankly, when you see stuff like this.
- [35:23]
Joy Reid
I mean look, we can do this.
- [35:24]
Dr. Peter Hotez
The easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change.
- [35:28]
Joy Reid
Conduct to take action, frankly on Kimmel.
- [35:33]
Dr. Peter Hotez
Or you know, there's going to be additional work for the fcc. Again, there's actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it's really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. Because we, we licensed broadcaster are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.
- [36:04]
Joy Reid
So yeah, it's a, it's a nice little broadcast you got there to be a shame if something happened to it. Brendan Carr had to say now after he made that threat for the New York Times. And this is not on screen, so I'm just gonna read it to you guys. Let me just read this very, very, very quickly after the podcast interview. Nexstar, which owns 32 ABC affiliate stations, announced that it would preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live for the foreseeable future. And added nexstar strongly objects to recent Comments made by Mr. Kimmel Conserving the killing of Charlie Kirk, which is not what he did. He made fun of Trump. Nexstar has good reason, per the New York Times, to appease the FCC at the moment. In August, the company announced that it intended to buy one of its competitors, Tegna, which owns 13 ABC affiliate stations. But in order for the deal to go through, Mr. Carr and the FCC would have to not only approve it, but potentially raise the nationwide cap on the percentage of households a single entity's television stations are allowed to reach. Broadcasters have pushed the government for decades to raise and repeal or repeal the cap, which is currently set at 39%, meaning stations can only cover 39% of the population in that region by owning those many stations. Now, if the nexstar Tegna deal went through, nexstar's reach is likely to exceed that limit. Shortly after nexstar's announcement, Sinclair Broadcasting, a conservative right wing company, I added that, that owns 31 ABC affiliate stations said it would also suspend Mr. Kimmel's program. Of ABC's 205 affiliate stations, 63 are owned by Nexstar and Sinclair. Another 13 are owned by Tegna. Together, they make up about 37% of all of ABC's local affiliates. Minutes after Nexstar's announcement and just hours after Mr. Carr's podcast appearance, ABC announced that it was suspending Kimmel and suspending his program indefinitely. That, my friends, is direct government censorship. And I will add that Carr also low key, threatened Jimmy Kimmel himself that he better make a financial donation to Charlie Kirk and his billionaire donors nonprofit Christian nationalist campus crusade organization Turning Points usa. So here is how California Congressman Robert Garcia, who is the ranking Democratic member, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, responded to all of that in an interview on My Friend Amen Moyudine show on msnbc. Here's Congressman Garcia and it's B for.
- [38:20]
Congressman Robert Garcia
I think the idea that Donald Trump can likely make a call to the FCC or to Mr. Carr, the chairman of the FCC, and then work through Sinclair and all these stations to pull a talk show. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel is a talk show host, comedian who during a monologue gave an opinion and he's going to lose his show over that. This is an immense overreach by the President, by his administration. And it happened to Colbert, it's happened now to Jimmy Kimmel. Donald Trump is saying that it may happen to others, that other folks should lose their license. I mean, this is the First Amendment. This is free speech under direct attack by the President of the United States. And I hope that folks are as outraged as I am and the folks that I'm talking to on the street because people are viewing this as an attack on free speech. And what happened to the Republican Party that was against council culture and promoted freedom of speech and that believes that everyone should have a chance to be heard. I mean, the hypocrisy is immense here. And so the Oversight Committee has already sent letters, we've already opened investigations up against, on Sinclair on the fcc. And I'll tell you this, we got James Comer on the Oversight Committee to commit publicly, I got it publicly that he would bring Brendan Carr in front of the Oversight Committee. So we are expecting and hoping that happens because we have a lot of questions there.
- [39:47]
Joy Reid
And joining me now is Congressman Robert Garcia, the youngest ranking member to serve on the House Oversight Committee ever. His committee is also investigating the Epstein files and the many powerful people in government who helped Jeffrey Epstein get away with his crimes for so long. I have questions about that as well. But, Congressman, welcome. Thanks for being here.
- [40:04]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Happy to be here. I'm actually excited to be with you again. I miss talking to you. So I hope I can come back often.
- [40:10]
Joy Reid
Absolutely. I know last time I saw you, I was actually in person. This was like post Covid. You were on set with me on the readout at MSNBC, which is Ms. Now. So we need to change their name. So let's talk about this investigation on oversight. Is this bipartisan? Are your Republican colleagues on board with investigating these super mergers that seem to now be tied to essentially making sure comedians don't make fun of Donald Trump?
- [40:35]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, whether it's bipartisan or not, I mean, they pretend it's bipartisan. They, they often will say, oh, we're also concerned. We know at the end of the day that most Republicans are going to do whatever Donald Trump tells them to do. That that just is the modern Republican Party. It's very unfortunate, but what we are doing is to think through the public and through public pressure and through being aggressive and through using the same tactics that they've used on us now for years, we are now forcing some progress. And I think whether it's been on the Epstein files, whether it's been, unfortunately, subpoena votes, look at this Brendan Carr commitment from Comer. He didn't want to bring Mr. Carr in, but we made a big fuss about it at the Oversight committee. And, and Mr. And Chairman Comer said, okay, well, let's try to get him. I'll get him on the phone. And we pushed hard and got a verbal commitment that we're going to try to get Brendan Carr in front of the Oversight Committee because there are obviously a lot of questions here. And so we hope that Republicans will join us from the investigations, but even the minority Democrats have tools in front of us that we have to use and the power of investigation. We don't need to wait for Republicans to give us permission to investigate and ask questions of private companies and the fcc. That's exactly what we're doing.
- [41:46]
Joy Reid
Yeah, because it seems to me that, you know, when people talk about the First Amendment, they often misquote the First Amendment. They think it is cancel culture or, you know, one group of people saying, well, I don't like what you said, therefore you're quote, unquote canceled. That's not the First Amendment violation. It's when the government is interfering. And this definitely feels like the, you know, the New York Times lays that sequence out that Brendan Carr And I think it's clear to anyone who understands anything about Donald Trump, this was about him. This was about Jimmy Kimmel making fun of him. And he's already said he wanted Kimmel fired, he wants Jimmy Fallon fired. He hates Saturday Night Live. There's a pattern here. He was cheering about Colbert's show being canceled. And it's all because he doesn't have a sense of humor and he can't take a joke. And so he's decided he wants to get all these comedians off the air. And then all of a sudden, Brendan Carr is saying, oh, we could take action if you guys don't lay the, you know, if you don't end the show. It does it seem to you as clear a violation of the First Amendment as it does to me, and that it's collusion and extortion?
- [42:42]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Of course. It's all of those things. It's all of those things. And it's a pattern and behavior from Donald Trump. I mean, let's. This is also not like a surprise. He's been talking about this. He is on his revenge tour ever since the first day of his second term. And so he's going to go after people that criticize him. He's going after educational institutions, he's going after the media, he's going after comedians. And all the hypocrisy, of course, on the Republican side, particularly on issues of speech that should be protected, is crazy. I mean, I remember and Joey, we've talked about this before. I mean, just in my first few months of this last term, I was criticizing Elon Musk. And Donald Trump sent me an investigation letter from the DOJ because I called Elon Musk a dick on tv. And it was like, you're opening an Investigation from the U.S. attorney on U.S. attorney letterhead. Because I complained about someone and made a euphemism on. On tv. But this is, this is who they are at this moment. I think we can expect more of it. And this is why it's so dangerous when you have someone like Trump making appointments and essentially guiding the FCC and other agencies and remoulding them in his image. I think this is a future we can expect certainly over the next couple years.
- [43:59]
Joy Reid
Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I think that's really dangerous is this idea that is, you know, I did a show on this podcast, an episode that talked about the weird ways in which QAnon was almost kind of right, not about the entirety of their sort of insane conspiracy theory, but the part that said that powerful people are protecting Pedophiles. Turns out they were right about that, right? Broken clocks. And the idea that you had somebody like Alex Acosta, Alexander Acosta, who is the former U.S. attorney in Miami, he is the one who gave Jeffrey Epstein this sweetheart deal, this insanely sweetheart deal where he could go to prison and then leave prison every day to go to his nonprofit and work and still continue to abuse underage girls. You guys got a chance to question him before a closed door hearing on the oversight committee. Talk about what did he say? Did he have an apology for the victims?
- [44:48]
Congressman Robert Garcia
No apology. And what was really stunning. And we had him first for maybe almost six hours. And so you can imagine the depth of questioning and we got a lot of really important information as we're building our case, of course, but some things stood out, which I think are clear. And before I mentioned that, I want to add to one thing that you said. I think it's really important. Not only were all those things true that he got the sweetheart deal, but remember that his own main prosecutor, the line prosecutor that was working on this case for Acosta's office, they brought forward an 80 page multi person indictment that was going to go in the direction of a massive federal case of which co conspirators would have been revealed, of which there was evidence, according to those line prosecutors, of enormous amount of sex trafficking, of going of the, the attacks and the trauma that these underage girls were going through. It was intense, it was substantive and it was the recommendation to Acosta. And then Acosta comes back after his own people say we've got to go after Jeffrey Epstein and all these other men and says actually no, we're going to actually instead negotiate a state negotiated as we know, process and he's going to end up with 18 months. We're going to agree to it. He's going to get work release and then during that time, of course he goes on to abuse these other women. So what the hell happened between that actual recommendation from his line prosecutor to the decision? I think is, is, is, is really key to this whole Epstein scandal. Now I will tell you this also. Yeah, I asked him directly to, to Acosta. Do you actually can, looking back, can you see that this was a sweetheart deal for Epstein? He refused. He was the best thing that they could have gotten. He said this was the best we could do was this 18 months sentence. He I also said, do you also acknowledge that Epstein went on to rape other women and girls during that period of time? And he said, well I don't really, I can't prove I don't. I don't know that I can't prove that that actually happened. And I said, we just heard from a woman two, three weeks ago that was actually abused during that period of time. But he refused to acknowledge that he caused any sort of harm. And he also is very, very cagey about questions as it related to Donald Trump. And so I think that it's really interesting. One thing that we learned, for example, was that the Trump administration didn't approach him to be Labor Secretary. He approached the Trump administration and made a pitch. And so what that pitch actually looked like, I think we're also very interested in trying to get more information about.
- [47:28]
Joy Reid
Very interesting. So it was his idea to join the Trump Cabinet. He makes the pitch. Trump says, sure, absolutely, you're in, and he's not. Does he have any expertise for the Cabinet position that he was in? Or was it. Maybe it's just.
- [47:41]
Congressman Robert Garcia
No, absolutely not. I mean, the highest profile thing Alex Acosta had done at the time was give Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal that allowed him to abuse more, abuse more people. But some things are really, I think, interesting. And again, things, things. All arrows point back to Palm Beach, Florida. They point back to Mar a Lago. They also point to New York. And it's all of these people ran in these circles in New York, in Palm beach, at Mar a Lago, these ring of kind of these, you know, national kind of beauty pageants that were set up for. For young girls, this trafficking that was happening from other parts of the world. It is a complex scheme that Jeffrey Epstein put in place. But we have to remember, and this is just the truth, that Jeffrey Epstein himself said that Donald Trump was his best friend, not an acquaintance, not someone he knew, his best friend.
- [48:33]
Joy Reid
For a decade.
- [48:34]
Congressman Robert Garcia
For a decade. There was an 8 by 10 picture of Donald Trump on Jeffrey Epstein's desk that we learned about from some of the survivors. They, when they would go to Jeffrey Epstein's home to be raped, they said they saw his desk and there's a picture of Donald Trump on his desk.
- [48:49]
Joy Reid
This is. And the other piece of it. So there are two parts of it that I think are really important for the public to know because people are like, well, why do you care about this? Number one, these victims deserve justice. These victims. I mean, I think people have to get in your mind and remember, Jeffrey Epstein died in prison. And I'm not so sure he died of his own hand. I don't know that I believe that he died in prison literally a month after he was incarcerated. He never went to trial. So there was no Jeffrey Epstein trial. The only person who's actually been on trial in the federal sense, right outside of that Florida throwaway case. It was like the Diddy case. They got him for what? Prostitution. Right. They claimed the girls were prostitutes and they sort of wrote them off as prostitutes and not credible in the federal case. Ghislaine Maxwell is the one who got 20 years for what Jeffrey Epstein and she did together. So there's the piece of wanting those young women to get justice. They totally deserve it. The other piece is the question of whether Jeffrey Epstein had international connections and was using the predation that these men were into to bribe them and to force them to do things for maybe foreign governments. Is your committee going to get into that question?
- [49:52]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Yes, because I am. I am. I've got to tell you, there's so much out there right now, but I got to tell you this, this piece about possible foreign governments involved is a lot of. A lot of signs you're pointing in this direction. There's a lot of evidence that is being laid out. We are wanting to do our due diligence. It's very delicate, as you can imagine. But there, there is no question that this was an international effort. And, and there were women that were being trafficked here in the US and there were women that were being trafficked from other parts of the world, Eastern Europe, other places to the United States. And Epstein was absolutely involved in that. And so all of that information needs to come out and what I've told folks and, you know, and, you know, I probably hear this a lot. I hear. But, well, you know what, why weren't you guys more active or more loud when, When President Biden was there before and that what I told people is the truth. I go, look, I think I always, I never knew first how extensive this was.
- [50:55]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [50:55]
Congressman Robert Garcia
And I also want to know why more wasn't done in the bike during the Biden years. Why weren't we more aggressive? We should have been it, especially with what we know today. And I think what it comes down to is, regardless of Epstein and what Donald Trump may or may not have done, and I think our expectation is to find out exactly this is not just about Donald Trump. There is clearly a long list of powerful men of both political parties of enormous wealth and power who most, I imagine, are still alive today that are being protected and that have so much wealth and so much power that our own Department of Justice has been twisted and moved and directed away from actually shedding out the truth. And that just concern every single person. And I told people, people, oh, you know, in the past, they were like, oh, are you concerned? What if X person's name is on there? Or I was like, I don't give a fuck.
- [51:55]
Joy Reid
You don't care.
- [51:55]
Congressman Robert Garcia
I could care. Agree who's on the damn list or what party they're in or how much money they have.
- [52:01]
Joy Reid
That's right. The truth. Amen. And the third, and I will add a third piece that I think is also really important and hopefully you guys are going to get to this too, is also the financial aspect of it, because we're talking about some of the most wealthy men in the world. Jeffrey Epstein, y' all, was a billionaire. How did he become a billionaire? He was a math teacher who would become a billionaire. He was not an expert in finance, but was running the finances for the guy who owned Victoria's Secret. Okay. And this gentleman, I guess Leo Black, the other guy, these are people who are involved in some of the highest level high finance in the world. They were some of the richest men in the world. So the finance piece is important too. But I will answer your question. I know you have to go. Congressman, the reason that it never got this far during the Biden administration is that we had inert material inside of the Department of Justice named Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland couldn't be bothered to directly prosecute Donald Trump for stealing classified documents. He couldn't be bothered to directly prosecute Donald Trump for what Bolsonaro just got 22 years in prison for in Brazil. They managed to get the guy who tried to overturn their election and put him in jail for 22 years. Merrick Garland had to hide behind Jack Smith to even begin the process of prosecuting Donald Trump. If you want to understand why this didn't happen during the Biden era, Congressman, look no further than Merrick laying on the ground sleeping on the job. Garland, who didn't for four years.
- [53:25]
Congressman Robert Garcia
I listen, I have to agree with a lot of what you just said. Merrick Garland would actually be. We're going to depose Merrick Garland, actually.
- [53:31]
Joy Reid
Please.
- [53:31]
Congressman Robert Garcia
He's going to come. He's. I understand that's being worked on right now. The timing from on the Republican side, because they want to talk to Merrick Garland. So do we. Because I have all these, I have all these exact same questions. I mean, look, we're get to the bottom of it and I hope that folks realize that this committee, we're going to be aggressive and people just trust that we're going to fight like hell. We're going to get the information out there. We're not stopping every day, so we'll get out there.
- [53:56]
Joy Reid
Congressman Robert Garcia, one of the best in the Congress because he actually cares and actually does the work. I appreciate you, my friend. Hopefully I'll see you in person sometime soon. Thank you. Keep the work up. Keep a door open to us and let us know how things are going because we'd love to have you back anytime. Thanks, Jerry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, that's it. You all see, that is the question. That is the million, billion dollar question, is why nothing was done during the Biden administration. That's the answer. Merrick Garland was an utterly useless human. He did literally nothing useful during his time. And I'm sorry, I have made Merrick Garland hater. I am a hater. I'm an OG hater because he didn't do his job. Christopher Wray, when he was FBI director, and Christopher Wray is a Republican, he came out and he gave this really searing testimony that talked about the fact that the biggest threat to our security, our domestic security, was white nationalism, racially motivated extremism, white nationalist extremism. He said that. That was Christopher Wray, not Joy Reid, not, you know, not the liberals on msnbc. He said it. And what was the action that was taken inside of the Department of Justice to combat that or to deal with that? There was no action taken. Then when January 6th happened, that was driven by the Proud boys, the Oath Keepers, far right wing extremist armed organizations, and they attempted to overthrow the government. What did Merrick Garland do about that? Nothing. He decided that it was too scary as the Attorney General of the United States to himself undertake an investigation of that attempted couple, and he decided to pass it off to a special counsel. Let me be clear, and this is not me talking. We had really smart people at MSNBC that used to come on, and these were our experts. These were legal experts, people who had come from the doj, and they made it very clear, especially Weissman, our friend, former U.S. attorney Weissman, who worked at the sovereign, what they call. They call it the sovereign office, the New York version of the. I'm sorry, I'm going to forget the DOJ office who said that there was no need for a special counsel, that Merrick Garland himself could have undertaken that investigation. Look what Pamela Jo is doing. Pamela Joe is out there threatening to investigate everybody. What is Jeanine Pirro doing? Jeanine Pirro has the Southern District of New York. Sorry, The Southern District of New York is what I was trying to think of. You know, she's out here, Jeanine Pirro's out here trying to investigate the guy who threw a sandwich at a federal agent. The guy threw a Subway sandwich, and she's ready to give him 50 years in prison. She's not scared. She's not holding back. None of these people are holding back. Pamela Joe is now under orders to investigate Letitia James for nothing. Literally for nothing. For literally nothing. Right. They're trying to get her for mortgage fraud. They're looking for ways. Because Donald Trump is so desperate to have his political opponents, what he considers his enemies, prosecuted. Because he was prosecuted. He's still mad about the fact that, that people prosecuted him and investigated him for committing actual crimes. He committed crimes, and he's mad that he got prosecuted for them. And now he wants to see Democrats prosecuted. He wants payback. He wants Adam Schiff prosecuted for God knows what. He's trying to invent things to prosecute people for because he wants them to feel the same pain that he felt. Donald Trump, who is desperate to make other people do the perp walks, he didn't even really have to do, but he's so mad about the fact that he got caught stealing classified documents, that he got caught trying to overthrow the government. Right. That he is determined and desperate to have people prosecuted. And he's got a DOJ that, unlike Merrick Garland, who literally did nothing with his time as the Attorney General of the United States, he's got somebody who will do it. So my answer, and I hope that they do depose Merrick Garland, is that the reason that we did not see prosecutions in the Jeffrey Epstein case or further investigation is because Merrick Garland, I'm not sure what he was doing all the time when he was there, but he wasn't doing that. All right, coming up in our next hour, are we going to get to our normal 7 o' clock hour? We've got a lot more on the corporate media, capitulation to the Trump regime, the sellout of customers for the love of profits. But we're going to also talk about how they're kicking themselves in the face. Kick yourself in the face. Kicking themselves in the foot or the face, however you do that, I don't think you can kick yourself in the foot. You know what I'm saying? They're ruining their own businesses because the people are not having it, y'. All, even the celebs are mad. Karen Attia is going to join us next hour. Along with Liz Winstead and Tim Wise, we're going to talk about right wing cancel culture. I also want to remind you that tomorrow we're going to be running this special bonus edition of the Joy Reid show featuring our interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. I did ask her about that moment on the View and the question about whether she'd be different from Joe Biden. Also about the convention and not inviting a Palestinian speaker and also about that ride with JD And Usha Vance. I had to ask her about that. But mainly we talked about Biden World and whether her loyalty to them was returned. Here is a quick promo. You when you unpack the results of this election, do you feel that your loyalty to the president was returned and do you feel that your loyalty to a fault cost you the election? That's called a tease, y'. All. You have to wait till tomorrow to hear what she said, hear her answer. All right, so that is gonna be our hour one. We are going to head on into hour two. We're really excited, by the way, about that Tuesday tomorrow. I really, really, really hope you guys will tune in. It's at 7 o'. Clock. We're gonna stream it at 7 o' clock right here on this TJRS station because it's really, really important that we support independent media. We got this interview before a whole bunch of major mainstream media outlets got it. We were first to the table. And so I really want you guys to support it because that is the way that we encourage more Democrats and more of these high profile guests to choose independent media and to work independent media into their schedule when they are promoting things like a book or they've got policy things. You saw Representative Robert Garcia show up here. We saw Peter Hotez, Dr. Hotez show up here. These are people that I used to routinely book on major network news, but now they are coming to independent media because they know that's where you guys are. All right, let's get into hour two. Welcome to hour two of the Joy Reid Show. Now, if you missed the Early Bird hour, no worries, you can always whine it back. That's the power of YouTube, Spotify and Substack. You can whine it back. Whine it back. So I want to pick up the chat again. We've got a few people in here who are saying that what Merrick Garland is doing is just what half the country voted for. I have to dispute that and that your comment has gone by quickly because there's so many people in the chat. I would dispute that Half of America did not vote for this. Half of America did not vote for this. A third of Americans voted for Donald Trump. A third of Americans voted for Kamala Harris. They were difference by, you know, less than 1% between the two of them. But the biggest chunk of Americans, and this is about 30, 32, 33%, didn't vote at all. So most people didn't vote for anything. But two thirds of Americans did not vote for this, whether they didn't vote or they voted for Kamala Harris. All right, so let's, let's move on. Before we get to anything else, I do want to show you guys my favorite story. I have to share this with you guys. Okay. You remember Tom Holman, the border czar, the, the ogre who threatens he's going to arrest all the mayors and the governors who stand in the way and of his and puppy killer Barbie and Nosferatu's mass kidnap squads. Let's show you a refresher on Tom Holman. Here it is.
- [61:09]
Tim Wise
That's incredible. But I don't care who the mayor is. We're going to do our job. If mayors and governors don't want to.
- [61:16]
Joy Reid
Help, then get out of the way.
- [61:17]
Tim Wise
Because if you don't want to make your city safer, we will.
- [61:21]
Joy Reid
Because I'm not saying every illegal alien.
- [61:23]
Tim Wise
Is a significant public safety threat, but many are. So there's a percentage of those criminals that are here illegally, we're coming for them.
- [61:30]
Joy Reid
They're not going to stop us.
- [61:31]
Tim Wise
They can stay on the side and watch us do their job. However, they better not step over the line. They better not impede our efforts or there's going to be consequences. Pam Bonney has been all over this for the last few weeks.
- [61:42]
Joy Reid
So we're coming.
- [61:43]
Tim Wise
We're going to be there tomorrow. We're going to be there next day. We're going to be there next month. We're going to be there next year. You're not stopping from what we're doing. We're making this country safer every day. And we got a lot of work to do.
- [61:54]
Joy Reid
We're coming for you. We're coming for you criminals. If you're a criminal, if you're a crook, we're coming for you. Tom Holman said. Well, what happened was the same. Tom Holman apparently got taken what sure looks like unpokito bribe. NBC News in very exclusive reporting by the great Carol Lennig and Ken Delaney. Here's the story. In an undercover operation last year, the FBI, remember, this is last year. This is during The Chris Wray, FBI this is not the cash Patel play FBI. This is the real FBI. They recorded one Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash. In cash, cash, cash after indicating that he could help the agents, who were posing as business executives, win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by msnbc. The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation's immigration top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled somehow soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation after FBI Director Kashidi Kash Patel, big Cash Patel, requested a status update on the case, two of the people said. It is unclear what reasons the FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting the investigation down, but a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a deep state probe in the early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, say the sources. This investigation was actually launched in West Texas after a subject in a separate investigation claimed that Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department's Publicly Public Integrity Section to join the ongoing probe into the border czar and former acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement. So he's out to make sure that the criminals get deported from the country. But who is going to deport Tom Homan? Just a question. I'm just asking questions. Just asking questions. Moving on to another story this hour. As we noted in the previous hour, the backlash to these media companies bending the knee to Trump got real. Over the weekend, Hollywood celebrities actually joined in the march to join the march to, you know, boycott all of these ABC affiliates. Even Disney stars joined in, saying they actually concurred with the idea of boycotting abc, of canceling all of your ABC product, including Hulu and espn. Apparently there were mass cancellations. The company lost a ton of money. People were canceling their Disney trips. This also comes on the heels of Paramount plus also being canceled by lots of people. I'll tell you, I canceled my Paramount Plus I also canceled Hulu. I also didn't have espn, but I had that bundle canceled. It also canceled the Washington Post subscription because you have to vote with your dollars, right? You have to let these people know that if they're going to grovel in advance to Donald Trump, they don't get our money, just like Target doesn't get our money. And that is what people are doing. They're voting with their feet and they're voting with their wallets and it's hurting Disney, abc. They actually have stopped releasing their cancellation numbers because apparently the cancellation numbers are so high. So even some Republicans are saying, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa. All of this cancellation, by the way, they have put Jimmy Kimmel back on. They're going to now restart the show on Tuesday. He's coming back on tomorrow. Be very interesting to see what he says when he does come back. They were quickly, rapidly negotiating apparently over the weekend to try to make sure he came back on. They got, you know, literally taken to the cleaners by David Letterman, came out against them. Every comedian has been coming out and just shredding ABC for what they did with Jimmy Kimmel and also what cbs, Paramount did with, did with canceling, I mean, literally canceling forever, the Colbert show, et cetera. So there's been a lot of blowback, but I will say that the capitulation in advance did not begin with Jimmy Kimmel. I think a lot of people are sort of portraying it that way, but it actually has been happening on the news side as well. As you will recall, you did see Matt Dowd get fired by my former network msnbc because he said something that they didn't like about Charlie Kirk being divisive, which is like literally true. He said he's divisive. They fired him. But we also have seen the firing at the Washington Post, which was already Jeff Bezos down, the firing of Karen Attia, and she was the global news editor for that paper. She was best known, I think, to a lot of people in her role as global editor, as the person who recruited journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was then killed by the Saudis. Assassinated by the Saudis. She had already become the final and last black columnist at the paper. There were no other black columnists left. They had been put purging all of them until she was herself unceremoniously fired by the new management. And this comes amid a huge backlash where teachers, members of the military, professors are getting sacked for taking the right wing podcaster's name in vain, apparently as he's been hoisted up to deified status on the American. Right. The ACLU issued a letter denouncing all of it, denouncing all of these firings and saying that the people would not stand for it. Let me bring in Karen ati. And now she is here. Karen, thanks so much for being here.
- [67:46]
Karen Attia
Oh, gosh, Joy, I'm so happy to be on with you. I don't know, the last time I think I saw you, we were in studio with you on msnbc and now here we are.
- [67:59]
Joy Reid
No, actually, the last time I saw you, we were eating at a restaurant. I think we were in a restaurant. I think the last time I saw you was in real life. Like it's someplace in real life where we're eating food. Right. I think we were there with Michael, Harriet, something like that.
- [68:11]
Karen Attia
Facts. That's true. That's true.
- [68:13]
Joy Reid
It's.
- [68:14]
Karen Attia
Yeah. It's been such a wild. A wild journey to the outside now, I suppose.
- [68:21]
Joy Reid
Well, welcome. Welcome to Fun Employment, as my daughter calls it. We are the. We are the. We are the fun employed. I want to talk about this because the initial story behind your firing at the Washington Post claimed that you were fired for something you wrote on Blue sky about Charlie Kirk. That actually is not true. You released on your substack the actual letter that was sent to you. We're going to put it up on screen. And that letter was not about. This is D13. That was not about Charlie Kirk at all. Didn't mention him at all. Tell us what you were actually told was the reason you were terminated.
- [68:57]
Karen Attia
Right? Yeah, there was a lot of. Due to a. I think, you know, a certain tweet, crops. There was a lot of assumption on both sides that I'd been fired because I had characterized or quoted Charlie Kirk's views on black women, specifically Katanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Obama, as, you know, lacking brain processing power, when in actuality, the reason I was fired, according to the Washington Post, accused of gross misconduct and putting my colleague's safety at risk, allegedly was because I mentioned white men and violence in relation to. Not even in relation to Charlie Kirk. If they had actually read my police guy posts. But that was the reason.
- [69:49]
Joy Reid
Let me. Let me just read to you guys, if you guys. It's small on your screen, so I'm going to. I'm going to squint a little bit and I'm going to read it myself. It says, this is Karen. I'm writing to inform you that the Post is terminating your employment effective immediately for gross misconduct. Your public comments on social media regarding the death of Charlie Kirk violate the Post social media policies harm the integrity of our organization and potentially endanger the physical safety of our staff. So they're saying a black woman is endangering the physical safety of their staff? Among other requirements. The company wide social media policy mandates that all employees social media postings be respectful and prohibit specific postings that disparage people based on their race, gender or other protected characteristics. The policy also reminds employees that everything they post is a reflection on the company and should not affect the integrity of the Post's journalism. Your postings on bluesky, which also identifies you as a Post columnist about white men in response to the killing of Charlie Kirk, do not comply with our policy. For example, you posted, quote, refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is not the same as violence. And another quote, part of what keeps America violent is the insistence that people platform that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence. I think those comments sound accurate to me, but it is interesting that your employer saw them as somehow putting white men in danger. Can you understand in what way what you said would put white men in danger? Just general white men, not violent white men or any white man.
- [71:34]
Karen Attia
I mean, if anything, I'm like, you know, they're saying my comments in regard to white men. I am very clear with my words. To me, words mean things to me and I live and make money and pay my rent with words. So I am very clear in what I say. I only referred to violent white men. I am not the one who said all white men are this, all white men are that. Even some white men are this. Some white men are that. I am choosing to talk about the ones who espouse violence and commit it. And even the, you know, my quote about part of what keeps America so violent is the absolution is the coddling of of violent white men. Basically. That was not in reaction to Kirk. That was actually the second piece of a thread talking about the Minnesota lawmakers that were killed. It had nothing to do with Kirk. Because you know what, Joy? I'm a journalist and I know what happens during fast breaking, highly emotional news events where we don't have all the facts is I actually stay away from speculation and I stay away from for the most part talking mostly about what is happening in a situation where we don't know what was happening. We actually didn't know who the shooter was. We didn't know or the alleged shooter was we didn't know the race, we didn't know the motive. So my commentary is very general about lamenting the state of American sort of gun violence. And again, there were two shootings that day. There was Charlie Kirk and then there were the shootings at the school in Colorado. And so I'm taking all of that in and lamenting the state of this country that we have, all this rhetoric about political violence has no place here. Thoughts and prayers. This is not who we are. I was seeing all that coming in, all of that coming in, and I was like, this is empty cliches and learned helplessness because this country is sick. And we keep saying these things and it keeps happening. Including to Charlie Kirk. Right. It consumed him too, consumed children and Charlie Kirk, this gun violence problem and this absolution. Yes. Of white men who commit the violence, which by the way, is supported by data, by facts, by statistics. As much as they want to try to scrub that from the Department of Justice about right wing political violence in this country, domestic terrorism, extremist violence, it is committed by white men. That is just descriptive.
- [74:09]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [74:10]
Karen Attia
And not disparagement. And so somehow this has now become forbidden to talk about. Like, that's the precedent that this letter sets, not just for me, but for journalists.
- [74:24]
Joy Reid
Yeah, I think that is the scariest thing about it. And I'm gonna try to pull back up the ACLU's comments about this, because the reality is you can't do journalism if you can't be descriptive. Right. And we're both writers, and so the descriptive is the point. Right. And so if, for instance, would they believe that playing Christopher Wray's sworn testimony, in which he was under oath in front of the United States Congress and testified that the biggest threat to domestic tranquility and to our domestic security are violent white racist organizations, that white race based violence by white men was actually the biggest danger to the United States national security. That is what he said. And so when he testified to that, was that somehow harming white men? Because Christopher Wray, who was himself a white man, said that. The other piece of it is, to your point, the FBI statistics, before they were scrubbed by this current Justice Department, said that more than two thirds of political violence was committed by white men and by right wingers. It's something like 3/4 when it comes to right wingers. So the majority of our political violence is committed by white men, mainly of the right wing. And we saw, as you said, Charlie Kirk shooter was a white male, the young man who killed his classmates and killed himself Shot his classmates and killed himself in Colorado. White male. And yet when Cash Patel was asked about Dylann Roof who slaughtered nine black people inside of a church inside of Mother Emanuel, he pretended he didn't know who that was. They are acting as if this is a smear against white men when it is just literally a statistical fact. Last thing I will say before I let you back in is that when we used to unfortunately have to do these mass shooter stories when I was at msnbc, the FBI profilers that we would book would say that statistically it's probably a white male between 22 and 49 years old. That is what the white FBI agents we would book would always say. So law enforcement are very clear that if there's a mass shooting or a political assassination, the likelihood is it's going to be a white male between 22 and 49. Yet we don't have these deep conversations about white on white crime and white culture that is producing that, because apparently that is disparagement. Your turn. Sorry.
- [76:53]
Karen Attia
Oh, I'm glad you said all that. Please send that to my former boss at the Washington Post.
- [76:59]
Joy Reid
So they probably also fire me even.
- [77:01]
Karen Attia
So that they can better journalism. So, yeah, absolutely. So that is precisely why my comments did not get any backlash. If anything, fine. There were some who said, now is not the time. Create space for Charlie Kirk. Which is precisely why I actually did not say much about him at all, knowing his background and comments and even his stance on the Second Amendment, saying that some gun deaths were necessary journalistically, even just objectively leaving my own sort of feelings out of it. I mean, just. It was not a constructive thing to do for me to go over the top and mourn someone. Right. Who I and plenty of other people clear like, he is a clearly a divisive figure. If I'm even being super, super mild about it. Maybe I shouldn't be because I'm free. But just in that time, my mindset was more about being somber and being balanced. And I'm like, I am not going to engage in sort of this over the top again, over the top, you know, talking about branding garments and smearing ashes of my face. That is a performative, almost hysterical way of mourning that I just wasn't going to do. So then it begs the question that me. And again, the full quote was me refusing to do that is not the same as endorsing violence.
- [78:34]
Joy Reid
Right, Right. Yeah. We're not all going to pull a. A cross on wheels across the stage like they did at the memorial service that we're gonna leave that to the other side. Can you hang on just for a few minutes? I just need to pay some bills really quickly. Okay, Karen, we're gonna put you backstage for just a moment while we pay for a little bit of a bill. Because, look, we know that we're in a moment where the First Amendment is very much under threat, which is why we're so happy that the Joy Reid show is being brought to you tonight by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Now here's some good news for those of us who believe in the First Amendment. The Freedom from Religion foundation just helped stop two big pushes to inject religion into our public schools. In Texas, a federal judge blocked a law that would have required the Ten Commandments to hang in every single public classroom. In Arkansas, another FFRF lawsuit caused a judge to order Conway schools to immediately remove their Ten Commandments posters. These rulings remind us that public schools are for all of our kids, regardless of their faith or lack of faith. That wall between church and state is what keeps Christian nationalism from taking over our country. And it is only holding on thanks to advocacy, thanks to people fighting to keep our public institutions free and fair and free of one person sect of religion. So if you want to support go to FFRF US School and just text or just text my first name Joy to 511-511. To stand up for real freedom, just text Joy my name to 51151 1. Because once you let religion make the rules in Schools, it's Project 2025, baby. It's only a matter of time before it's making the rules for everyone and everywhere. Go to FFRF US School or text JOY to 511-511- Message and data rates may apply. Okay, let's get back to the show because now joining us along with a great Karen Attia is Liz Winstead, who's the founder of the Abortion Access front and the co host of the feminist Bud Skills podcast, which I feel like I should get on the show. And the co creator. Yes, okay. And the co creator of the Daily show on Comedy Central. I want to let you in here before I bring Karen back in, Liz, because we have this moment where apparently we're being told that simply identifying the fact that white men are the majority of mass shooters and the majority of political assassins, apparently that is a firing offense. Now at the great Washington Post. Your thoughts.
- [80:45]
Liz Winstead
First of all, I wanna say, Karen, you are really brave and your work is brilliant. And I am sickened by the this drumbeat that doesn't seem new right that calling out oppressors is now somehow against all rules of decorum and truth. Right. And it seems to me that not only calling them out, but not bending a knee for the people who oppress us as well is also something that we are now punished for. And it is a lesson that you've learned, Joy, that I've learned now. And, Karen, I'm sorry you're part of this crappy club that Joy and I belong to, where we actually believed in for five seconds that corporate media was going to actually be.
- [81:37]
Joy Reid
What were we thinking? Our voices.
- [81:41]
Liz Winstead
But this is the time that we all need to be telling our fan base where the independent voices are, how to follow them, why they should follow them, and to be creating spaces all over this universe so that wherever we land, it's gonna be in places that are committed to making sure we are protected and that our voices are reaching those that need to hear it.
- [82:11]
Joy Reid
Amen. And Karen, you're doing that. I mean, it's interesting that in the, you know, you were the last black columnist, so it was already sort of. And I know that you were already thinking about how to educate the next generation of journalists and how you could do that in a way that also avoids the other capitulators, which is a lot of the educational institutions, in some cases, doing the same thing.
- [82:31]
Karen Attia
Yeah, I've just been catching the proverbial sort of corporate bullet like twice in one calendar year. So, yeah, for a lot of people, been following my journey. I was teaching about race and media and power in international relations. My background is actually in international relations, not journalism. And I was teaching that at Columbia School for International and Public affairs when due to Gaza Trump, all of that, that funding was canceled despite my class being over enrolled, oversubscribed. I'd worked on the syllabus for three years. I was an alum of that place. And that was not enough to save my class. So I decided to, you know what? Screw this. I don't need permission. I'm going to teach it anyway. So I taught it online. 500 students this summer, this past summer. So much demand. We're going to. I'm going to teach again, so I'm going to do that in October. I think in my mind, I, you know, I. I remember hearing one great piece of advice I've heard is that jobs will come and go, but your mission remains to find a way to still do the work. There's your job and then there's your work. It's what you feel called to do, I suppose. And I suppose for me, holding up a mirror to society and to the world is what I am just built to do. And being in conversation and difficult conversation. You know, again, I'm hearing people are talking about free speech, debate. I'm hearing from people who are like, Karen, I didn't even like your work that much, but, like, I stand by your right to say it. Like, you know, and others who.
- [84:18]
Joy Reid
I loved it.
- [84:19]
Karen Attia
You guys stand by your right to say it. But it's the ones who are like, you know what? I didn't really rock with you like that, but I'm gonna fight for you to be able to be heard. Because you know what? Those people realize that what happens to me, and I think white folks needs to realize, because what happened to me and then what happened to Jimmy Kimmel and then you got reinstated. I know, but, like, I think especially black people and especially black women have been saying, like, this never stops at us, ever. And I teach about this in my class, and I teach about also about this. It comes for white people, too, actually.
- [84:53]
Joy Reid
You know, and it came from Matt Dowd, you know, I mean, Liz, and you and I both know Matt, you know, and literally, I mean, it came for Matt even before Karen, the sort of test case was firing him for literally saying Charlie Kirk's words were divisive. This is the most benign way of describing Charlie Kirk. I have a supercut, which I'm not even gonna play right now because my spirit doesn't need it on a Monday. You could pull. You could throw a rock at anything he said. And he was out, literally, deliberately offending people. Liz. And like, you're. You come from the comedy world, where the idea of offending people is about tweaking people. It's not about destroying them. Right. And it's also about punching up and not punching down. The comedians that are getting thrown under the bus right now are the people who don't punch at the little guy. They punch at Trump. And in the end, what they're saying is, you can disparage black people, you can disparage women, you can disparage trans people, f them gay people, you can disparage anyone you want, but not white men and not Donald Trump. That is a dangerous place for us to be. Liz Winstead.
- [85:54]
Liz Winstead
It's true. And I think that people like when we have this conversation, and trust me, I'm really livid just about Jimmy and Steven and all of that. But let's be clear to both Yalls point when they say when they come for the comedians first, it's Like, I'm sorry, they have been coming for black women for all of eternity. They've been coming for women for all of eternity. And queer people and trans people and the test balloons of firing hundreds of women of color, people of color in research and in government and in institutions of higher learning. And then they come for the comedians. And when they say they come for the comedians, the ones we know are the only white dudes who've ever hosted late night. Let's be clear about that. When I was at Air America Radio, when I was at the Daily show, it was, you're not an activist. You're a comedian. I'm like, well, I'm actually both. I never professed I wasn't. And so since 2004, when I got fired at Air America Radio for being too divisive, and because Danny Goldberg, a progressive white guy liberal, said comedy isn't a good tool for social change, and he fired Marc Maron. And me, from that moment forward, I was like, I can't work in these spaces. They're not gonna keep me. They're not gonna honor me. Nobody wants me. So I taught myself to edit. I taught myself to make graphics. I taught myself every single platform that's out there so that I could be a voice in the world. And, you know, the truth is, everything you said, joy is right. But let's not forget, my journey started taking on the manosphere. And when Joe Rogan got real mad at me, when comics would say stuff and I would say my mantra over and over again, when they'd step in it, I'd be like, say whatever you want. But the second it passes your lips, everybody else gets to have feelings about it. And so the power of your words versus the power of how they're heard, that's the battle. And if you lose that battle, that's on you. Now, this is different because the government's saying, I don't want you to say that about me. You know, this isn't the marketplace of ideas. This is the marketplace of Donald Trump's feels. And that is a terrible place to be.
- [88:17]
Karen Attia
Right?
- [88:18]
Liz Winstead
And so it's shocking to me to actually see all these First Amendment warriors, you know, like Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, and all these people silent because it's not their speech.
- [88:29]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [88:29]
Liz Winstead
Their speech is fine because, you know, the fascist loves it. So here we sit. But, like, again, I just. I'm just not even. I'm wanting to be excited that they're reinstating Jimmy Kimmel. But what does that even mean? It means that do people, like, go put the snooze alarm on corporate media is not your friend.
- [88:51]
Joy Reid
Well, I mean, the other piece of it, Karen, I mean, absolutely everything you said, Liz, is 1,000% true. But I'm looking at a world in which Jeff Bezos went into the Washington Post even before they got rid of all of the other black columnists, leaving only you, and then got rid of you, but even before that, saying, well, we're gonna turn this paper's editorial direction toward liberty and economic liberty and warping the mission of the paper. They're interfering. These billionaires are interfering in journalism at this point. They're saying what and what you cannot say as a journalist. And they're also saying what comedians can and cannot say in their comedy. And they're doing it all for their bottom line. They have business before this government. They want to do mergers and acquisitions. They want to do business. And they know that Donald Trump is a baby and a child who can't take a joke and who can't stand criticism. And they're like, we'll stop that for you, Mr. Trump. We'll stop these black women, these women. We'll stop these gays. We'll make them all go away so you'll be happy. Can journalism, Karen, survive in a world in which its purpose is to serve the president of the United States and not to serve the people? It is a rhetorical question.
- [89:56]
Karen Attia
Yeah. Then it becomes something else. And look like I would say I joined when. Right when Bezos bought the paper. So I was brought on as part of the Bezos wave of this reinvention. I was actually very young, very diverse from. For journalism standard, which isn't. But it was very diverse. We had a lot of power. We had a lot of freedom. I got to be global opinions editor and build a section from scratch of diverse writers from around the world, including, as you mentioned earlier, before Jamal Khashoggi. So very specifically, Bezos and the Washington Post planted their flag in us having a diverse range of voices. I mean, this is a man. You know, Bezos is the man who basically helped come up with and was proudly behind Democracy Dies in Darkness, the slogan. He came and he told us, as an opinion section, be provocative, be swashbuckling, and was very much behind. For a lot of people who don't know, I actually, before I became a journalist, I very much was in the press freedom world. I worked for Freedom House. I did a lot of the freedom of the press reports, doing those sort of analysis. So I actually like media development and Press freedom, from an almost academic standpoint was actually what I was doing before I became a journalist. So I was brought onto the Post precisely because of being a champion for free speech both at home and abroad. So here's the thing, right, about true values. Your true values are what they are when times are easy, but especially when times are hard, right? And so what does it mean for, you know, not just the Washington Post, Columbia, that they are just these waves, these, these spineless, spineless amoeba depending on who's in power. Then what I find myself questioning then what is that about? I. They were proud to collect all the awards, all the accolades when I put my life on the line to advocate for Jamal against a Saudi government that had him dismembered. We still don't know where his body is. Only for me now to be a victim, not even granted the conversation. I was fired via email with no conversation. And that I am a risk to the Post. When I took on, I was on a watch list for this. This is how deeply my convictions are. I have never changed. People may not, you know, like me all the time, but they'll say, like, she knows that she stands up for something and the Post is proud to profit off of that. My from a image perspective. And now.
- [92:54]
Joy Reid
It is interesting, the irony, Karen, of, you know, you're the thing, like I said, people most know you for is advocating for recruiting and advocating for Jamal Khashoggi. And then the political dismembering of your career happens as a result of a different autocrat. You know, the crown prince didn't like what Khashoggi was writing. And they said he, you know, needs to pay the ultimate price for it. And Donald Trump didn't like what you were writing. And I guess a lot of white Christian nationalists didn't like it. And so they decided you have to be silenced, you have to go away, you have to stop talking because they can't stand it. And so I think we're just in this place where we are behaving much more. And I'll let you comment on this and I know I've kept you quite a long time. We are behaving a lot like the countries that you probably used to study. No.
- [93:41]
Karen Attia
Well, this is why in a lot of my work, especially my Back to Comedy, I used to write satires about how we would cover America if we covered it like other countries that we are, you know, a former British colony awash with gun violence and impoverished. And we probably should have never been independent because we don't know how to govern ourselves. So I used to write these things all the time to kind of break pierce the myth of American exceptionalism. So I write that, write that for. For years and years and years. One thing I want to actually come back to with Jamal Khokj and Trump and MBS is something that a lot of people actually don't know. And I've written this is Jamal Khashoggi. Before I found him to write in 2017, he'd been banned from writing from Saudi Arabia. And it actually was not because he criticized mbs. He was banned because he criticized Donald Trump, actually. What a lot of. Yes, that's the reality. He was criticized because he was critical of Trump, and Trump and MBS's relationship were buttoning. You know, obviously he was criticized because he could. He was stopped from writing, put in writer jail for an entire year because he criticized Donald Trump. And me giving him the chance to write his first piece in 2017 was the first time he had. His writing had been seen. Since then, he had been seen.
- [95:13]
Joy Reid
That is. Well, that is a blockbuster, Karen. I did not know that. That is some very breaking news to me. Wow. That is wow. I have nothing other to say than wow. I want to let you all know that the great Tim Wise has joined the podcast. He is the anti racism educator, one of my favorite voices out there in the world. He is there. We are going to definitely let him in on the conversation, but I want to make sure that with our. We close out our previous panel by letting Liz Winstead have the last word on this. Your reaction to that? And also, Liz, you know, like you just described, the same thing has happened to you. You've been through this ringer. Your. Your. Your final thoughts.
- [95:50]
Liz Winstead
I mean, anytime you challenge what has been foundational oppression, right. That has not allowed our voices to be forward.
- [96:03]
Joy Reid
You.
- [96:04]
Liz Winstead
You just. I understand there's gonna be pushback. And I think that, like, for everybody, you know, Karen and Joy, we don't do this work because it's easy because people are gonna like us. You know, we are part of a club that I don't know any other way. Right? I don't know any other way. And so it takes fear away. It takes a lot away. And it also helps me get moral clarity about who I'm taking on. And, like, if I can swear, can I swear on your show? I can't remember.
- [96:34]
Joy Reid
Of course you can. We are not on FCC broadcasts, but regulated.
- [96:38]
Liz Winstead
So this is something I say to people in my crassest of tones. I say, if Someone is not feeding you, fucking you, or paying you their opinion. And their attack should be at the bottom of every barrel you have when it comes to putting it into your mental psyche. So think about those things a lot, and you will actually be able to fight harder.
- [97:00]
Joy Reid
I love it. Liz Winstead, Karen Attia, thank you both very much. I have so much respect for you ladies. I'm gonna let Tim say goodbye because I want to have a little chat with Tim. So I'm going to let you ladies have the rest of your evening. Tim, if you have anything to say before the ladies leave the screen, I.
- [97:14]
Tim Wise
Just want to say one thing. First of all, I love Karen and Liz both. And it's been weird being on cam with you guys while you talk, because it's like the white guy that's, like, spying on you in the midst of the summer days.
- [97:24]
Joy Reid
And.
- [97:25]
Tim Wise
And I feel very awkward about that. But I like the fact that it's the white guy who didn't get to talk while you all were talking. So that part I like because it actually reverses the normal dynamic where I would suck up all the oxygen in the room. Now we're going to let you go, and I guess I'm going to suck up the rest of the oxygen.
- [97:42]
Liz Winstead
Tim, you're never a lurker. You're never a lurker.
- [97:46]
Joy Reid
Never lurker. Karen at Liz Wynn said, y' all come back anytime. Thank you both very much, my friends. I appreciate you both. Thank you. All right, now they have left me alone with the white guy. Who's gonna get to talk now? Tim, I have been really wanting to talk to you. I have to say, when all of this past week of foolishness has gone on, I immediately texted my team and I said, can you get me Tim Wise? Because there's this thing that's happening that happened to Karen, and that also happened to me in different ways. I mean, I was called in to HR meetings, mainly about Gaza when I was at my old job. The other incident, the other thing that got me, you know, I think three different complaints were white Christian men that were unnamed, that I worked with, that were upset that I was talking about white Christian nationalism. The exact thing that Karen Attieh was fired for, I was also told was a problem. And I had to be read this sort of long form about, you know, violating, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I never could understand it. Cause I'm like, white men are the most powerful people in the American. In American history. They own the vast majority of the wealth on the vast majority of the land have the vast majority of the power, political and economic. Most of the businesses are run by white CEOs who are men. Like, what is going on? What is behind this sudden sort of fragility where white men feel like they're the biggest victims in the country?
- [99:07]
Tim Wise
Well, on the one hand, it's not. It's not current or new. It's not recent in the sense that whenever in history white supremacy and white male domination has been challenged institutionally or even significantly, rhetorically, there is always that kind of pushback. Right. I mean, Carol Anderson has written about that. Her brilliant book White Rage talks about that. If you look at history, you know, the very first time that the whole concept of reverse discrimination or the oppression of white people gets floated is when Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights act of 1866 because it was trying to offer a modicum of equal opportunity to people who had literally just been freed from enslavement. And he said, you know, we've never done anything special like this for white people. What, except for like the whole history of the country up until that point. Right. But that was the first articulation and he vetoed. Now the Congress overwrote it. But then later in the 1880s, the Supreme Court said the same thing in one of their famous cases, Justice Bradley said that it was time for the Negro to stop being the special favorite of the law and just become a regular citizen, ignoring that black folks had literally only been citizens for less than 20 years at that point. So this, this history of white victimhood is not a modern phenomena. But in this current moment, it has been ramped up by a number of things that I think have pushed it to the forefront. And I wrote about these in 2012 in my book, Dear White America. The election of Barack Obama broke some folks brains. We all know that. The, the economic meltdown which confronted white people with a level of economic insecurity that we really hadn't felt since the Great Depression. Right. Black folks, brown folk, double digit unemployment was not all that rare. That was like Tuesday. You know, that was just like a normal week. But for white folks, that was like 1930s grandparents stuff. So that came along same time that Obama's getting elected. Right. Then you have the cultural shift, the multiculture, right. Which is now like, you can't really pull a thread out of our cultural dynamic and not have it unravel the whole garment because whether it's food, entertainment, music, movies, athletics, everything that we take for granted in culture is totally inter and multicultural. That scares people. Right. Because they grew up with this notion of America as a white nation, the all American boy or girls white. So now the culture is shifting and the demographic change, right, which has got people freaked out about the quote, unquote, great replacement, all that's happening at once. And so as a result of that, you have people who have been able to take for granted their. Not just their privilege, that's almost too easy, their normalcy gotten to take for granted their hegemonic dominance of the system and not have it questioned. And so now when folks question creates this level of freakout, and it's not just whiteness, it's the Christian piece, it's the straight and cisgender piece, right? All of those things being questioned at the same time. My. My Christian hegemony, my straight and cisgender hegemony, my white hegemony, my. My English speaking hegemony, you know, all of those things become this, this. This brew, this toxic brew of. Of white anxiety. And so I think that's part of it. And so when you push back, as you did, when you push back, as Karen did, when you push back simply by noting the things that Charlie Kirk said, simply quoting him, and again, the other side would tell us, we take his quotes out of context, and yet they never post the clip and then tell us what the context, if we're clipping it wrong, like if Media Matters for America is taking the clip and getting it wrong, or if you are or anyone else is by all means maga, show us the full clip and where it says, I didn't really mean to say that Joe Biden should be executed. I didn't really mean that black women are not smart enough to do any job. I didn't really mean all of the things that I said about LGBTQ folks or that women ought to submit to their husbands. The actual context is I'm just a really bad comedian doing bad bits and y' all just didn't understand, by all means, explain the context. But if simply saying, here's what your boy said, here's what he said, and that makes him racist, and that makes him sexist, and that makes him nativist, and that makes him a Christian bigot, then you either can debate the idea. Since y' all say this, he was a debater. He just liked to debate ideas. Okay, well, he's not here. His ideas still are. Let's debate them because they're pretty offensive. And the fact that white folks aren't used to having our views challenged and our position challenged is why we're in this place, in a weird way, privilege has set white people up to not be able to take a hit. And I say that as a white person who's been white for a really long time, like 50 years of whiteness, I know my people well and I know our fragility quite well.
- [103:46]
Joy Reid
And the thing is. Well, then explain to me, because most of the people I think in the country, to be honest, had no idea who Charlie Kirk was until he was killed. Just, let's be honest, most people don't listen to right wing podcasts. They're not on campuses where Turning Points USA is showing up and quote, unquote, debating freshmen and whatever. So that's not somebody that then as people got to know. To your point, the only way to tell people who this was was to play his clips. And I'm sorry, but I couldn't find clips. You know, we, we, you know, when, even when we decided to do it on this show, all the clips were bad. Like all the clips were mean, all the clips were cruel. So it wasn't a lot. But can you explain this reverence for this person? Again, no one should be shot. No one should be killed. I'm anti killing people. That's why I am for the people in Gaza. I think no one should just be summarily killed. You got people in Gaza, you know, people anywhere in Israel. I don't believe anybody should be killed. Right. So he shouldn't. That's wrong. And we can set that aside and say we absolutely abhor him being killed by another white man. By the way, this was white on white crime.
- [104:53]
Tim Wise
I want to say very clear, I despise all white on white violence. And I think it needs to stop. And we need to ask what it is about white families, white dads, not in the picture. What happened? You not get enough love from your daddy? What, you didn't have enough men in your life? I need some excuses for why white folks keep blasting white folks. And we don't even use the phrase white on white violence.
- [105:12]
Joy Reid
We don't use that phrase. I want to get, let me dig into that for a minute because I want to get into what the worship of him is about. But before we go, since we went on white on white crime because again, when white people kill other white people, we just call it crime. Right? We don't say it's white. But the vast majority of all crime is affinity crime. I looked at the FBI statistics before. They also took those down. Most white people, when they kill someone, kill another white person, usually someone they Know, when black people kill someone, they usually kill another black person, someone they know. But historically, transracial crime has been almost universally white on black lynchings. You know, burning down of entire towns by, by white men burning black towns. You don't have history of the reverse of black men marauding into a white town and burning it down. You had Nat Turner and a few other, you know, really sort of well known cases of black people, you know, killing their enslavers. But you didn't have rampant black on white crime number one, because even stealing a pig gets you executed and lynched in the South. So black people were so afraid of, you know, basically even walking outside and looking, not looking at the ground. They weren't doing crime against white people, but white people effectively were, could legally kill any black person they wanted up until the 1960s. And so you had transracial crime that was always the other way. So why is it that when we look at white men who were free to commit violence and in some ways, Tim, in the south encouraged to commit violence, it was like the purge. It was a way to let off steam, go ahead and rape and kill whoever you wanted. As long as they weren't white. As long as they were black.
- [106:41]
Tim Wise
Right.
- [106:41]
Joy Reid
That is an acculturation that to me explains some of the sort of rampant violent culture. Then you add that to gun culture. Why don't we ever have that comment about that conversation about white on white crime?
- [106:52]
Tim Wise
Well, we don't have it because whiteness is so normalized that when white people do commit crime against whomever, it is presumed to only adhere to the individual. In other words, culpability is that individual person. It is not considered a racial culpability. It is not collectivized. The blame is not collectivized. On the other hand, when a black person commits a crime, it is in fact collectivized. And I'll give you an example. So, for instance, sure, if you look at the data right now, there's plenty of quote unquote, black on white crime, although it is the clear minority, but it's retail crime. It's the kind of crime that we know from studies over 30 countries are related to socioeconomic conditions, things that have nothing to do with race. These are not hate crimes. These are not racially motivated crimes. They are, you know, a disproportionate robbery for robberies, for instance, burglary or assaults that are connected to robberies. Which is, you know, when you have a, a highly unequal society with whites disproportionately better off than Black folks, if I'm going to steal something, I'm going to go where the money is. That's why folks rob banks. That's why robberies are more likely to be black on white than the reverse. It's not a hate crime. It's not like black folks, as Charlie Kirk said, are rolling around looking for white people to attack. That just doesn't make sense. So, yeah, there's retail black on white, quote, unquote violence. And when it happens, even when there's no evidence of racial motivation, the assumption is, oh, it's anti white crime. But the fact is, if a white person historically has engaged in wholesale violence, white people engage in wholesale violence, not retail violence. Wholesale violence, burning entire neighborhoods, attacking groups of people and marginalizing them violently on purpose. That is, as you said, always been white on black. And it's never been assumed that the people who did it, even people that were lynching folks, it wasn't assumed to be an indictment on the white soul. It wasn't assumed to be evidence of white people's inherent depravity. People who condemn it now in retrospect will say, oh, well, you know, those were just some bad apples. Those were bad people. They were horrible as individuals. But it's not, it's not an indictment on whiteness itself. It's not. See, I would say that it is. I would say it's an indictment.
- [108:52]
Joy Reid
It wasn't even a crime ticket worse than that, right? It wasn't even a crime. Let's start with the fact that it wasn't even a crime.
- [108:59]
Tim Wise
The fact that it wasn't a crime is part of the problem. And so I think we don't name it because whiteness is normalized. And in this particular instance, let me tell you something I haven't heard anyone say, and maybe someone did, and if so, I would gladly give them credit. I just hadn't heard it. This thing that happened to Charlie Kirk, this murder, or if you prefer assassination, whatever term you prefer. Here's the irony of it is because of course it's a horrible crime. No question. The irony is if Charlie Kirk had been speaking at the University of Chicago, if he had been speaking at nyu, if he had been speaking in a, in a campus in a major urban, mostly not white and not Republican area, they'd have swept the rooftops. Joy, you understand what I'm saying? Like, there's no question in my mind that part of the reason they didn't check the rooftops, they didn't actually do the kind of security sweep that you would expect such an important figure to get, who gets death threats, who's wearing a bulletproof vest, from what I understand, who's got a security team down on the state? But they were probably thinking, it's Utah. You know, it's Utah. Nobody's going to hurt him here. But if he was around black and brown folk and people that were mostly Democrats, they would have been convinced that he was going to get sniped by people who don't snipe.
- [110:15]
Joy Reid
Right. And by the way, to your very excellent point, I spoke with a Capitol Police, a retired Capitol Police officer about the January 6th insurrection who made your exact point that if this had been a Black Lives Matter march that was going to happen on January 6, 2021, there would have been 10 times the number of Capitol Police. There would have been snipers, there would have been National Guard. They would have prepared for that like it was going to be an invasion. They lightly sent, staffed the Capitol that day because they said, these are friendlies, even when they knew proud boys were coming, because proud boys were considered friendlies to the police. So they knew, and some of them, maybe even informants. So the reality is the Oath Keepers are military. They're like, these are our people. When Trump says to his aide, those are our people, he meant it. Right? They did not fear them because they said, these are our armed white people. They won't hurt us.
- [111:04]
Congressman Robert Garcia
Right.
- [111:04]
Tim Wise
And the irony is Charlie Kirk would be alive today if white. If, if the, if the not even white privilege, I want to say the presumption of white innocence, the presumption of white innocence and non criminality and non danger is what allowed them to not think that maybe there's going to be, you know, you saw the governor of Utah. Everybody gives credit for being more ecumenical than, you know, Donald Trump, which I don't know what that means exactly. I mean, I'll give it to him, but I mean, I don't know that. It's sort of damning with faint praise. And he, you know, he was horrified that it was, as he said, one of us, by which he met the Utah and a Mormon and all these things, that's it. The idea that y' all don't do stuff. The idea that white people in the safe, nice white places don't do stuff. Littleton was a nice, safe place. Paducah was a nice, safe place. Santee, California, was a nice, safe place. All of these places where these mass school shootings happen are all nice places, lots of these. And, and yet people don't learn And I've been talking about this for. For literally. I mean, the first time I wrote a piece on this, talking about how whiteness allows white people to let our guard down to the violence that mostly threatens us, which is, in fact, white on white. The dysfunction that mostly threatens us, which is white on white. I wrote about that in 2001, and I wasn't. And black and brown folks have been saying it for years, and I said it, and all of a sudden it went viral, because, you know, white privilege. That's how it works. But like I said, and every time it happens, I'm like, another one. And y' all are like, another one. And everybody on our side is like, another one. And everybody's like, but. But it's. It's. You know, it's gotta be the left or it's gotta be black people, or it's gotta. And they wanted it so badly to be someone of color. They wanted it so badly to be someone.
- [112:42]
Joy Reid
A Muslim. A black person. Yeah. And I'll tell you, I used to work way back when, but I used to work as a copywriter. And in the retail world, the most successful shoplifters are always white women, because no one assumes that they're criminals. They could walk out with an entire outfit tucked under their clothes and walk right out the store. When we were working there, we had to get scanned to walk through. And we were employees as black. They were always suspicious of black employees. And we would always laugh and say, baby, it's not us. Them white ladies walking out of here with all your stuff.
- [113:14]
Tim Wise
Listen, I went into a department store just to test this theory. Like, 20 years ago, I was. I had nothing better to do on a. I was shopping, and I'm like, you know, let me just. I'm gonna go test this theory. Because I'd heard this theory, and I believed this theory. So I went into a Dillard's in Nashville, Tennessee, at the mall, at the high end High Fashion mall in Green Hills, Tennessee. I went in there. I was ducking down behind racks. I was putting stuff under my arm. I wasn't even trying to look innocent. I was trying to look like I might steal something because I actually walk out. I hadn't done anything. I'm just being weird. So I'm acting like a thief, and no one is looking at me. In fact, somebody was like, can I help you? I'm like, no, I'm good. You know, I got, like, skirts under my arm. I. I could have walked out thousands of dollars of merchandise while I was there doing that a young black man walked in the same store and they would not take their eyes off of him. And he was dressed nicer than me and wasn't trying. He wasn't up to any kind of foolishness. But they didn't want to look at me. They wanted to look at him. And I think it tells you so. This is, again, the great irony going back to Charlie Kurt, is the very fact that that happened would not have happened but for the presumption of white innocence that he, the victim in this case, preached every single day.
- [114:27]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Before we let you go, and I want to let y' all know, if you don't know, Tim Wise, he. He fought to make sure David Duke didn't become both a senator and governor of Louisiana. That was what he did as a.
- [114:37]
Tim Wise
Young man going to become the head of the RNC 30 years later. But, you know, I thought we won the battle, but I guess we lost the war for the minute.
- [114:44]
Joy Reid
So who knew? Before we let you go, explain, if you could, the worship, how we've taken Charlie Kirk from podcaster that a lot of people enjoyed to apparently the son of God. They have decided that he is going to rise again. Tomorrow, apparently, is the rapture. I hope you've gotten all your affairs together, because I think it's over as of tomorrow. And they have turned this guy into their mlk. Jesus. What's that about? That's weird.
- [115:07]
Tim Wise
I mean, it's such an incredible. You know, I'm Jewish, so I'm not anybody to tell Christians how to worship, but I'm gonna tell you something.
- [115:12]
Joy Reid
Well, so is Jesus, right?
- [115:14]
Tim Wise
Well, well, Jesus. Yeah, Jesus was Jewish.
- [115:19]
Liz Winstead
So.
- [115:19]
Tim Wise
So, yes. But I think it's fascinating that Christianity, that's. And I. If I were a Christian, I would be so horribly offended. And I. Many of my friends who are. Are terribly offended by the way in which this. I don't even want to put this on all of evangelical Christianity. I don't even want to put it on all white evangelical Christianity. David French doesn't believe in this. There are a lot of evangelical Christians that reject this. I just find it fascinating that people have substituted Charlie Kirk for Jesus or Trump for Jesus, or they have substituted that whole mega church vibe, which, that. Which that thing yesterday was a megachurch vibe. That was a mega church celebration of life or in this case, you know, going home party, though they don't call it that. For people like Charlie Kirk, it's not a homegoing. It's just a big rally in Donald Trump's mind. But to me, that is the ultimate mega church, sort of stifling any kind of real religiosity, any kind of reality, real sacredness, was something that is quite profane. The idea that Charlie Kirk, someone who, even if you agree with his politics, the way in which he said the things he said, was deliberately cruel, a cruelty that never emanated from the mouth of Jesus or anyone who's truly been a follower of Jesus. So it's offensive, but I think it's part of the taking of the sacred in this country. Among right wing Christians who have now decided that all that matters is power and wringing the sacred out of their politics, replacing it only with the will to power. They have, they have replaced Jesus with Nietzsche. They have essentially said, we don't care about the least of these. In fact, we will crap on the least of these. We will oppress the least of these. We will split their families up, send them to prisons to be tortured. We don't care about any of that. What we care about is power and hurting our enemies. You will not find that anywhere in the Gospels, but you will find it in the Maga playbook. And I would say if Christians really want to be redeemed in their own faith, they, they ought, they ought to be offended by that, the same way that those of us looking in on the outside are offended by. Because you're not going to get any converts with that message.
- [117:18]
Joy Reid
You will not, but you will get a lot of cash because apparently they're going to be able to convert it. They will ring in the money. Tim Wise, one of my favorite people to talk to. Thank you so much for making the time. Appreciate you coming in on a Monday night. Thank you, my friend. No problem.
- [117:31]
Tim Wise
Thank you for having me, Joy.
- [117:32]
Joy Reid
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, there you go. By the way, I will note that at this evangelical movement service, Donald Trump declared that he hates his opponents. He said hate. He hates them. That's supposed to be a bad word in religious talk. If you're a Christian, you're not supposed to hate anybody. But he said he hates them. You guys, we have come to the end of the program. I want to make sure that you guys do something for me right now. If you are not already a subscriber, I would really appreciate it if you would take this moment to go ahead and hit like and subscribe right now. Because it's really, really important to the algorithm. I want to thank those who have given us already 2400 likes. The likes, if they're over a thousand, are actually great for the algorithm. So we really appreciate, appreciate that. I want to big up the people listening on Substack. We don't give you guys enough love and also our Spotify friends, thank you all for tuning in. Let me shout out a couple of the folks here that are members. Fayetta Brown, I'm looking on my other computer here. Fayetta Brown, thank you so much for being here and being a team. Tate. TJRS member shouts out to everybody in the chat. I'm scrolling through it and you guys are so active and saying all the things and you guys are so smart and saying all the intelligent stuff, throwing hearts up. We appreciate it. We appreciate it. We have here lucky. Is this luck? Dragon says America the beautiful, America the plurable. America the terrible. No, America mine did like a little poem. It's always nice when somebody does a poem. So make sure that you guys tune in tomorrow at 7pm for the Team TJRS Kamala Harris interview. You don't want to miss that. And with that, you guys, I'm going to release you to the rest of your Sunday because we have come to the end of the road. Although we've come to the end of the road. You guys be safe, be well, be good. What'd you say there? What'd you say there, Jason? It's, it's Monday. He said not a thing. He said it's Monday, guys. I'm gonna release you guys tomorrow. Did I say release to your Tuesday? Because I'm already in the Tuesday Kamala Harris interview. You guys watch that interview. It's really great. So we'll see you guys and then on Wednesday we're going to talk about it. We're going to have a panel that's going to react to the interview. So we're going to make sure that we got get you all set up with that with some reaction. We but watch the interview tomorrow at 7pm streaming right here on thejoyreadshow.com this is the channel. This is the place you can come for real news, real information, real facts, great guests, all of our friends. Big up to Maurice French. Maurice French is a member of Team tjrs. Thank you all for joining. Thank you all for being here. We will see you on the next the Joy Reid Show. Bye Bye.