Ari Berman (12:05)

Hey, Joy. Well, thank you for having Me and. Hi, Joy. It's great to see you as well. Two of my favorite people in one room. And we've sadly had this conversation way too many times. And it keeps getting worse because the Supreme Court keeps gutting the Voting Rights Act. And every time they got the Voting Rights act, they said, oh, it's not going to disturb the other parts of the Voting Rights Act. And then they go after those other parts of the Voting Rights Act. This is now the third major decision gutting the Voting Rights act in the last 10 years or so. And it could have a catastrophic impact on minority representation. It could lead to the largest drop in black representation since the end of Reconstruction. It really renders the Voting Rights act all but meaningless. They didn't actually strike down Section two of the Voting Rights act, but they basically did without saying it. And so it's going to lead to. To many states redrawing their districts. We'll see how many do it in 2026, but certainly in 2027, 2028, you're gonna see many Southern states, if not all of them, redraw their districts. And you could have a situation where there are no black representatives left in the south as a result of this decision. And so it really hollows out the country's most important civil rights law.

Joy Reid (13:20)

Yeah. And you know, Joyce, the South is the key here. Right? I mean, Axios has a piece up saying that this could result in 19 new seats for Republicans, and most of those would come from the south, and most of them would come by deleting black seats. The Calais case was about a second black majority seat in Louisiana, which will now be gone. Florida has already moved to delete four Democratic seats, leaving almost nothing in Florida in the hands of Democratic leaning Floridians, other than a few seats in South Florida were likely to see. Texas has already done it. They went right after black seats and Latino seats. This is why we call them neo confederates. They're effectively trying to reverse any gains in the south, and it looks like

Joyce Vance (14:06)

they're on track to do that. Joy, I think it's difficult to express how disturbing this decision is. And I want to echo Ari's comments, his very generous comments. If we have to go through a depressing case like this, I'd rather do it with the two of you than anybody else. Because, frankly, this is a conversation we have been having for a long time. Ever since a case called Shelby county versus Holder out of my district in north Alabama was decided and gutted the Voting Rights Act. And in her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that the majority's opinion. I'm going to. I always screw up the language. I can never quote her exactly, but she wrote that the majority's decision was like shutting your umbrella in the middle of a rainstorm because you hadn't gotten wet yet. That was exactly what we saw in the years following Shelby County. All of these gains were eroded. And as Ari says, the court, the Supreme Court, with the majority written by the Chief justice, said in Shelby county, but don't worry, folks, Section two is still there. And now Section two is no longer there in a meaningful way. The standard has become so high that it's essentially impossible to prevent improve in most cases. Although, interestingly, when we look at the number of 19 seats we might lose, which comes out of some research that Fair Fight in Georgia and others have put together and pushed out. You know, Alabama may be the bright, shining example, but in a really sad way, because in ongoing voting rights litigation in Alabama, we actually met that high standard. We actually proved that there was intent to discriminate in Alabama, which is very difficult to do. Legislatures don't typically say, hey, we want to gut the rights of black voters when we draw these maps. They're much more clever and they talk about politics and. And other reasons. But to say that Alabama, with its bad practices, is the example of how far you would have to go to invalidate maps after Calais, I think that tells us what a sad state we're in tonight.

Joy Reid (16:18)

Yeah. I mean, Ari, you know, in states like Mississippi, they have one black representative in Congress. And even though Mississippi is one third black. Right. They've already in the south, they've perfected this art of drawing a map that leaves all of the black people in the state in one district. And now what they've essentially said in Louisiana is you can do that to make sure that black voters don't have options that would actually represent them, that would culturally represent them, that would care about them. You can't do that. But you can draw districts that help a political party that benefits from racially polarized voting. So what they're saying is white voters effectively have more rights than black voters. You can draw districts to make sure that white voters have as much representation as they want, but black voters don't, because doing it for black voters means you're taking race into account. Have I explained that correctly?

Ari Berman (17:12)

No. I mean, I think that's the double standard that the court always uses. Right. That if. If somehow a map helps white voters, that's just the status quo. But then if you somehow do something that puts black voters on somewhat equal footing, and it's never actually equal because there's still going to be a majority of white members of Congress in all of these states, then that's somehow a violation of the 15th amendment. What they've done is they've turned the 15th amendment on its head. 15th amendment was something that was meant to end slavery and to give black men the right to vote. And what they're basically saying is if you consider race in redistricting, that violates the 15th Amendment, which of course distorts the whole reason we have a 15th amendment, and the whole reason we have a Voting Rights act, which is the 15th amendment, was essentially a dead letter in the south for nearly a century during Jim Crow. And the Voting Rights act was one of the seismic pieces of legislation that changed that. And so what I'm concerned about is the issue in Alabama and Louisiana was trying to get two majority black districts. That is still an underrepresentation for black voters. Now you have a situation where you could go not from two to one, but from. To none, potentially. I mean, and that. That quite literally is Jim Crow, because that is what happened during Jim Crow. We had black members of Congress who from the south who were elected for the first time during Reconstruction. Then we had things like literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, all white primaries. And then suddenly there were no more black legislators throughout the South. And that is the uncomfortable history that I worry that both you and Joyce know so well. That I worry is coming back with these kind of decisions.

Joy Reid (18:58)

Right. And the idea of doing that, Joyce, is that black voters tend to vote for more progressive policies. They tend to vote for higher taxes. They tend to vote for more permissive education policies. They tend to vote for access to services. They tend to vote more liberally. And so now what they're essentially saying is we'll just be paternalistic toward these black voters. They will now live in districts where they're like 30 black people and 30,000 white voters. So they can ensure that no black person can get elected because it's just a fact that racially polarized voting is real. And so now if they want to end school lunches, if they want to end, you know, equal. Equal sort of schools and have some schools be really well resourced and some be not, they can do it because what are the black voters going to do about it? There's not enough of them to stop it. And so this would effectively turn us back to the 19th century. This is why they want to end the idea of dei because they don't want people to even think about this as discrimination. They want us to believe that that kind of a world is what real equality is.

Joyce Vance (19:54)

Well, isn't that Donald Trump's world? Right. The world of the 1950s. Because in Calais, the plaintiffs identify themselves as, get this, a group of non African American voters. And so when you say this is really justifying discrimination, you know, you hit the nail right on the head. Race can be used for white voters in the guise of. It's just politics. But when black voters look to history and ask for the promise of not just constitutional amendments after the end of the Civil War, but the Voting Rights act itself, itself to be enforced, this course says, oh, no, we can't do that. That would harm white voters. So something that you say that I hope your viewers will focus on is how the legislatures will do this. It will impact, by the way, not just congressional races, it also has the impact. Ari is better versed on this than I am. To impact state races that are run in districts. So state legislatures can be impacted, too, and others. And so what now happens is you pack all of the black, or historically, they've packed all of the black voters into one district and said, okay, let's just limit their power to this one district. And then they've cracked apart voters throughout the remaining districts in a state so that, as you say, they lack the voter concentration to elect candidates of their choice. Now they're free to crack black populations across the states in ways that make it difficult to. To elect candidates of choice. And just so we don't leave this incredibly depressed, I want to say this one thing. Voters in Hungary led the way when they threw Orban out. What we saw was really high turnout. We need the same thing here, because very high turnout can defeat these gerrymandered maps. And that is the path forward.

Joy Reid (21:51)

That and. Exactly. And this is the thing, Ari, when, when, when, you know, the Republicans, who they've now become, the Southern, what the old Dixiecrats were, they were the States Rights Party. Now they're basically like, we're the States Rights Party. We can do whatever we want in the state. That means it's never been more important who controls your state. This is a message to black voters in every state. Your governor's race just got a lot more important. Your low turnout state rep and state Senate races just got a lot more important. Because if they can wipe out black representation in those state Senate and state House races and they get the governorship and they get the attorney general, you're effectively saying, that even if you live in Mississippi, which is one third black, the black voters there will essentially be chattel. They will have no rights, they will have no representation, and they'll have to count on the benevolence of right wing MAGA Republicans to make every decision for them. So doesn't this now mean that now there needs to be a hyper focus on the statewide races, particularly in the South. We know they're coming up in places like Kentucky and Mississippi. Whether it's a Senate or a governor, y' all need to pay attention to these statewide races. No.

Ari Berman (23:00)

Yeah. And there needs to be a lot more investment in the south because that's where so many of these battles are going to be fought and that that's where so many of these states have been neglected, that, oh, they're too red, therefore we can't invest in them. But these are the places where the battles by and large will be fought. And also, it's important to note that if you dismantle these majority black districts, black voters still have to go somewhere. Right. You can't just disappear them altogether. And that's why it's going to be really important to activate black voters. Because if you unpack some of these districts, as Joyce said, that can make other districts potentially competitive. Right. Especially if people turn out at higher numbers. So what I, what I hope this decision leads to is people paying more attention to local races, people paying more attention to the impact of the Supreme Court. And then ultimately at the national level, this impacting the need to reform the Supreme Court. Because at the end of the day, I believe the Supreme Court is the greatest impediment to progress in America right now. And you can elect whoever you want in Congress, you can elect whoever you want as president, whoever you want at the state level. If this Supreme Court is able to continue in its current iteration, it will roll back so much of that progress. And they're very clear they're not gonna stop. They've already weakened the Voting Rights act three times. They're not gonna stop here. And ultimately, I think it's essential for the survival of American democracy to do something to reform this current Supreme Court.

Joy Reid (24:36)

I think the guy's name was James taney. The Plessy vs Ferguson Chief Justice John Roberts is him. John Roberts is no better than the Plessy Court and just understand that he's got decent manners. He comes across more genteel, but he's no different. He let Alito write this one, but he's really no different than any of the rest of Them be alarmed. Before we let you all go, Joyce, I want to show you this video by James Comey, who's now been indicted a second time, apparently coming upon a set of seashells on the beach that say 86, 46 or whatever it was. That's a bigger crime than trying to overthrow the government for which you get a pardon. Let's listen to his post. This is James Comey. This is A eight, Jason, back this time about a picture of seashells on

Hasan Piker (25:26)

a North Carolina beach a year ago.

Joy Reid (25:29)

And this won't be the end of it. But nothing has changed with me. I'm still innocent, I'm still not afraid.

Ari Berman (25:37)

And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.

Joy Reid (25:40)

So let's go. But it's really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country. This is not how the Department of

Stacey Davis Gates (25:49)

Justice is supposed to be.

Joy Reid (25:51)

And the good news is we get

Hasan Piker (25:52)

closer every day to restoring those values.

Joy Reid (25:58)

You posted on Substack about this, Joyce, and so I wanted to let you come on and talk about it. And you said not long ago, Donald Trump posted a picture of a bound and gagged President Biden in the back of a truck. Trump didn't apologize and he didn't take it down. I wrote about it here. The analysis stands up in the light of the indictment of James Comey today. Your thoughts? Further thought. And Mary Trump, by the way, I will add, she added that no one has incited more violence than her uncle Donald. Your thoughts? Yeah.

Joyce Vance (26:31)

So look, I'm a former prosecutor, so let me be technical and boring. The government has to prove that Jim Comey intended to inflict violence on Donald Trump to convict. They will not be able to do that. They will not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that's what 86, 47 means. I spent a lot of time in high school waiting tables. You know, 86 means take it off the menu. And the fact that there's not universal agreement, that it means kill Donald Trump, that it could simply mean, as Comey says, remove him from office, that means conviction is just not going to happen here. But I think the comparison is important because Donald Trump has resorted to these sorts of violent references repeatedly. He has not apologized. He has not backed down. There's the incident with President Biden and there are numerous others that I referred to in my substack last night. You know, everything from his starting moments where he talked about roughing up up protesters and reporters in his crowd at rallies in 2016. So it's really rich for this administration and this acting Attorney general who's in the process of auditioning for the permanent job to talk about their commitment to prosecuting these kinds of cases. Because it's not a real thing. It's politics, not prosecution.

Joy Reid (27:54)

Yeah. And the process is the punishment. Right. Just to make him have to go through this is what he thinks that the base is one he's feeding the base with, serving him up. Jim Comey and to the point that you so eloquently made. Joyce. Let's just play a 10. Jason. Just a little taste of Donald Trump in action.

Hasan Piker (28:10)

Donald Trump took to true social branding.

Joy Reid (28:12)

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and five other congressional Democrats as traitors who deserve the death penalty. Over the weekend, Trump effectively said that Milley should be executed for treason.

Hasan Piker (28:24)

The president reacting to Mueller's death on Truth Social saying, I'm glad he's dead.

Ari Berman (28:30)

Knock the crap out of him, would you? I will pay for the legal fees. If I say don't hurt him, then the press says, well, Trump isn't as tough as he used to be.

Joyce Vance (28:39)

President Trump is responding to Rob Reiner's

Joy Reid (28:41)

death, posting on Truth Social.

Joyce Vance (28:43)

Reiner's death was due to, quote, the

Joy Reid (28:45)

anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome. The former president posted this photo of himself getting ready to swing a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg. Today. Bragg's office received a package containing white powder and a threatening note.

Hasan Piker (29:03)

I love the old days.

Ari Berman (29:04)

You know what they used to do to guys like that? They'd be carried out on a stretcher. Folks like to punch him in the

Joy Reid (29:09)

face, I'll tell you.

Stacey Davis Gates (29:10)

President Trump tweeting, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, try not to hurt him.

Ari Berman (29:15)

If you do, I'll defend you in court. We had some people, some rough guys like we have right in here, and they started punching back. It was a beautiful thing. I would have been, boom, boom, boom, I'll beat that. He's threatening riots if he gets charged with a misdemeanor, she says, does he know that, quote, potential death and destruction

Joy Reid (29:35)

in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country?

Ari Berman (29:39)

I don't know if I'll do the

Joy Reid (29:40)

fighting myself or if other people will.

Ari Berman (29:42)

Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head. I said, you can take the hand away. Okay, problem boys, stand back and stand by. Our country is under siege. We're going to the Capitol to make your voices heard. And you have to get your people to fight because you'll never take back our country with weakness. If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Joy Reid (30:08)

To add to that, he's going to have to if this is what the new Injustice Department's mission is, there are going to be some MAGA people that they're going to have to maybe look up Jack Krasobiak, who's one of the lead flamethrowers on the right. There he is posting an 86 of his own doing exactly the same thing, 8,646 meaning Obama. Your thoughts, Joyce?

Joyce Vance (30:37)

Jim Biden, Jim Comey is capably represented by one of my former U.S. attorney colleagues. I think he's got the mother of all vindictive and selective prosecution motions on his hands here because this is clearly, you know, Jim Comey has lived rent free in Donald Trump's head for about a decade now. And that's what this prosecution is. This is just an expression of folks at the Justice Department who really want to please Donald Trump so much that they're willing to abandon principles of justice that have guided the department, really the modern Justice Department, for its entire iteration. And now that's all out the window.

Joy Reid (31:17)

Before I let you both go, Ari, because, you know, I see this Comey indictment as part of the attempt to influence the election. Donald Trump has a problem with his base. His base is angry about the Epstein files not being released, about the economy, about oil prices, about the Iran war. This is a way to serve them something. But there's also, you know, Reuters is reporting a pretty more direct attempt to control these elections from the federal level to go state by state, seizing their ballots. You and I have talked about this before on the show and going state to state, including Ohio, they seem to be now worried about Ohio. When you combine that with gerrymandering, what are some, you know, some pushback tools that we should be thinking about about how to fight for our free elections in November?

Ari Berman (31:59)

Well, you're right. The fact is that gerrymandering is just one part of a multifaceted strategy to try to interfere in the midterms, to predetermine election outcomes and to control who can and can't vote. And it's being done at all levels of the government by election deniers and prominent positions of power, particularly weaponizing law enforcement to go after people's rights. And I'm really glad that Joyce mentioned Hungary, because what happened in the last election in Hungary, there were 50,000 election monitors on the ground in a country of 10 million people to prevent the vote from being stolen. So we need that level of mobilization here. We can't just have people run for office. We can't just fund groups that work on get out the vote. People have to volunteer to be poll workers. People have to volunteer to be election monitors. People have to get involved in the voting process. They have to be ready to protest and march if they try to steal the election. And it's going to take a massive mobilization of civil society to really protect people's rights and to understand that Trump is operating from a position of weakness rather than a position of strength. They see how unpopular he is. They see the fact that the House and other offices are trending in one direction. That's why they're so reliant on trying to break the election system. But ultimately, I believe what they're doing is unpopular. And ultimately, I believe that there's enough people that are willing to stand up, both inside the government and also outside, to be able to protect people's rights.

Joy Reid (33:37)

Ari Berman and Joyce Vance. I can't think of two better friends to have had on in this dark moment, but you all explain things so well and make everything so clear. I appreciate you both. Thank you very much, and we will talk again soon. Thank you.

Ari Berman (33:49)

Thank you.

Joyce Vance (33:50)

Thanks, Joy.

Joy Reid (33:51)

Thank you very much. By the way, black folks have been here before. A lot of Republicans are feeling very smug today, particularly on social media. But you all forget how we became Democrats. I'm gonna leave it there. You all forget how we switched from your party to the Democratic Party and why we switched when that party controlled the south and wouldn't let us vote and wouldn't let us participate. Y' all forget how we became Democrats. We have strategies we can pull from the past, just like you can. Let's thank one of our wonderful advertisers that make this show possible. The Joy Read show is brought to you by our friends at Biologica. Now, there is a version of you that sleeps through the night, thinks clearly, and actually feels like yourself again. You have not lost her friends. You just need support that's built for your body. That is exactly where I was when I found Biologica. Now, Biologica is a drinkable daily supplement that goes well beyond a multivitamin, which we're all taking. They have brought together a comprehensive vitamin and mineral foundation, probiotics, electrolytes, and clinically researched botanicals all in one drink. No more juggling a handful of pills trying to cover your bases. Now, what makes it different is that it's not a one size fits all. Biologica has three different formulas designed for different hormonal life stages. So you're actually supporting your body based on where you are right now in this moment now. I also love how easy it is. It is an effervescent powder that you mix with water so it absorbs really, really well. And honestly, it just tastes good. No pills, no complicated routine. I'm not a pill person. It's difficult to do it if you're going to just go with the pills, right? It is made with clean ingredients, no added sugar, and developed alongside women's health experts who actually still care about how women's nutritional needs change over time. That's a great way to handle all of the things that we know we are dealing with at this wonderful life stage. Being sleep deprived is a big one for me. Feeling bloated, feeling like, you know, you're having those dumb skin breakouts, your hair feeling dry, all of the things that are happening. And you cannot beat the changes in your energy and mood, which are all just game changing. If you want to try it, just head to biologica.com joy to get started, take their quick hormone light stage quiz and find the formula that is right for you. And right now, subscribers can receive up to 32% for their purchase. Or lead all viewers of the Joy Reach out again, make sure you go to biologica.com joy get up to 32%. That's like a third off of your first subscription order today. All right, y', all. So my next guest has a way of enraging, just enraging both centrist Democrats and right wingers, particularly those on Fox who are like, obsessed with him. Even the New York Times made time to profile him, of course, focusing on Charlie Kirk and make him the latest boogeyman for the pro Israel bipartisan crowd left and right have accused him of promoting extremism. Now, Hasan Piker, who is one of the leading voices that bridges young people, the digital generation, progressive politics and culture, has a massive platform. He's got over 11.3 million combined followers, including 1.9 million on YouTube, 3.1 million on Twitch. That's why I said our Twitchies are having their moment. Okay, y', all, Twitchies, this is your day. And for a lot of particularly younger people, he is becoming a primary source of political commentary on domestic and international politics, whether the Democratic Party and Fox like it or not. Now, his latest venture is sure to provoke even more outrage. Here is the first minute of his mini doc on his investigative report and trip to our next war, Cuba.

Hasan Piker (37:32)

As we speak, there are 11 million people living 90 miles off the coastline of the United States of America and a Caribbean island nation known as Cuba experiencing a severe crisis. Everyday life is being brought to a screeching halt. There are nationwide blackouts caused by a total collapse of the country's electrical grid. There's a shortage of food and medicine. They can't pump drinking water. Cuba has been starved of the most important, important resource to make modern life work. Oil. For over 60 years, the United States has maintained a trade embargo against Cuba. Under the embargo, it's nearly impossible for foreign companies to invest and do business in Cuba while trading with the United States. For years, I've wanted to visit Cuba. I wanted to learn about the problems caused by the embargo. I wanted to see a socialist society in person. Last month, I took the opportunity to go as part of a humanitarian mission to bring aid that my government won't. I'd be accompanying progressive of international alongside hundreds of others from around the world. Activists, journalists, artists and politicians will be coming to the island by boat and plane to deliver over 40 tons of necessary supplies, food, medicine and medical equipment. Our first stop is Miami, Florida, and

Joy Reid (38:33)

Hassan Piker joins me now. Hey, Hasan, how are you? Welcome to the show as we speak. Oh,

Hasan Piker (38:42)

can you hear me?

Joy Reid (38:43)

We got you. We got you. How are you?

Hasan Piker (38:45)

Perfect. Hi. Thank you for having me. That was a. That was a fantastic introduction and I'm honored to be here. This is, this is very exciting. It's, you know, I put myself down as Dangerous Radical in my, in my title, but I guess your producers changed that and they thought, you know, it's better to put Twitch streamer and political commentator down there.

Joy Reid (39:05)

I don't see Dangerous Radical in the. I'm going to have to talk to my producers because I would have preferred to say Dangerous Radical. I'm going to read you the intro. Joining me now is Dangerous Radical Hassan Biker, who scares the crap out of everybody left and right. Before I get to the Cuba piece. Why do you suppose people are so obsessed with you? Why are you that dude that's causing all that conversation? What are you doing?

Hasan Piker (39:27)

I think to explain it in the shortest way possible. I'm unbought and unbossed, and that is precisely the reason why I'm uncontrollable. I'm only accountable to my own opinion, to my own integrity, to my own audience. And that is a very frustrating phenomena that A lot of the Democratic Party has never had to deal with. For the longest time, they were the gatekeepers of appropriate conversations. And they could just cast aside voices on the sidelines that wanted more from the Democrats, that wanted a more responsive party, that wanted a party to focus on the working class. They could, they could determine the conditions, they could determine what kind of concessions they would give to the working class. And now, now they have a megaphone, a megaphone that hasn't. That doesn't have any sort of corporate sponsorships whatsoever and is entirely funded by his own audience. And that, that is terrifying for a lot of people. And of course, one of the major issues that even Ken Martin was just talking to the podjaws about is this autopsy that I think we all know revealed a lot of information about the Democratic Party's allegiance to Israel's genocide and how that may have played a really negative role and a huge role in the loss that Kamala Harris withstood in front of an incompetent fascist by the name of Donald Trump.

Joy Reid (41:05)

Do you consider yourself a Democrat, or are you dsa? Like, what do you hold to a political party?

Hasan Piker (41:10)

I am, I'm organization agnostic is what I say. I mean, I, I work most commonly with the dsa, but I work with the Democrats. And the DSA obviously filters their electives through the Democratic Party's machine. But I, you know, I work with the PSL as well. Party for Socialism and Liberation. Um, I have, you know, I work with anybody and everybody that wants to fight fascism in this country. I'm an anti fascist first and foremost.

Joy Reid (41:36)

Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. I was reading your bio and what's interesting is I, you know, I'm Generation X. I guess you'd be an Alpha or millennial. I feel like Generation X, we're kind of the last captured generation, if that makes sense. Like, we are the generation that was pretty much like, captured by the Reagan economy and sort of the Reagan culture. And really we're either like Democrats or Republicans. I feel like I even am policing my own, you know, kid alts who are your age and younger, they're not captured. They are not necessarily have any. They don't really have any fealty to a political party. They're more ideologically kind of free. Right. And so they kind of look at politics in a different way. And so I think that is where this sort of intense critique of the Israel thing is coming from. It's where the, you know, critique of the wars are coming from. Do you feel that the, the way that you think about Israel and Palestine, which weirdly enough, is the way I think about it too, but I was lonely, alone in Generation X. Most of us didn't think that way. I was kind of on my own there. But do you think that the way that you're thinking about it is. That is the common parlance, right, for.

Hasan Piker (42:42)

Oh, absolutely. I mean.

Joy Reid (42:43)

Right.

Hasan Piker (42:44)

Yeah. It wasn't necessarily the case, especially shortly after October 7th, but. But now it's. It's become the, the universal position. There's clearly a generational divide here as well. Obviously, for, for the generation 50 and above, they definitely have more loyalty to the most moral democracy in the Middle east, the only democracy in the Middle East. And that, that, that sort of narrative building has, has been very effective in capturing the attention of the older generation. But for, for people under the age of 50, it's. It's gone, it's done. People look at this as a, as a maligned foreign actor that is causing tremendous instability, tremendous harm in the region. And people simply don't understand why we have to have this unlimited loyalty pledge to this foreign country. And it's also created a very interesting media environment, especially paired up with how much misinformation runs amok in a system where we don't really have consensus reality any longer, where a lot of people start making up their own minds on why. They start making up their own theories as to why people are so. Why. Why our politicians are so unresponsive to our demands and why they have this. This loyalty to the state of Israel. And that's where, you know, anti Semitic conspiracies start manifesting left and right.

Joy Reid (44:16)

Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think that is probably why you're not shamable on, you know, issues. Like, I mean, I noticed whenever you do an interview, people ask you about Hamas. Like, this is a thing that happens with a lot of people who are on the left, and then you're asked to, you know, justify. You know, is Hamas the worst thing in the world? And you're like, well, Israel's killed more people. And you kind of leave it there on an interview where you did that. But I want to talk a little bit about Cuba because this is the other issue where for people my age, it's just baked into the cake that, you know, Cuba is an authoritarian country. Jason, I actually went to Cuba as well. We're going to put up some video. I cut together a few of our stills. Jason. We went In 2017, when President Obama opened it up and allowed us Briefly, you could go and I watched your Cuba documentary. It was very well done. You, Ryan Graham and some others went down and one of the things I noticed that is very different about the narrative that you were presenting and the narrative that I've always understood and even experienced in Cuba is that Cuba's an authoritarian place. I don't know if you experienced this part of it that there is, there are men with long guns watching you like you are on video cam all the time and being watched. Like did you get that sense or did you only get the sense of like the struggle which is what you really well explained.

Hasan Piker (45:26)

Yeah, no, as a matter of fact, in comparison to China, who I went to, who I visited, the place I visited last year, I would say that their, their surveillance state was virtually non existent. And I actually had some independent journal journalists that work in Cuba, some of which have even been arrested by the Cuban government in the past. I asked them about their, their experiences in Cuba. They've worked all around Latin American countries, including in Venezuela. And they were saying that the Cuban government's surveillance initiatives are actually far less comprehensive than what you would see even in a place like America. Of course, the American surveillance state is much more insidious and nowhere near as hands on, or at least it doesn't show itself until it needs to. But as far as the authoritarianism goes, I think these countries are especially Cuba. It's 90 miles off the coastline of the United States of America and it's been in a state of unlimited warfare by the largest hegemonic superpower since it, you know, committed the ultimate crime of fighting and winning sovereignty and dignity for its people. The initial Cuban revolution wasn't necessarily a communist or a socialist revolution. It was an agrarian revolution. It was a national revolution, it was a social revolution. But it became a communist country after a couple years in to the initial revolution. And throughout that process, they've always wanted to maintain decent relations with America. They know they have to. And yet America has had unbelievable revenge fantasies and, and chose to punish Cuba relentlessly and even push Cuba into the hands of the USSR in many respects. So having all of that in mind, I think I, I guess I understand why countries that are in a constant state of warfare, especially poor and smaller countries, are going to engage in some level of repression because they're worried about instability, instability born out of CIA interventions, quite frankly. And in comparison to many of these countries that I've read about and many of these countries that I've been to, I would say that the Cuban surveillance state or the Cuban authoritarianism is, is outright marginal, if not inconsequential even. Of course, there are still political prisoners and, and people that get arrested, but then I always pair that up with, you know, my country, the United States of America. And I think about 3,500 colle protesters that were arrested in the encampments that I personally visited, that I saw these kind people, these, these brave people that got not only violently apprehended by police forces and, and had their careers put in jeopardy, but also got physically attacked by counter protesters. Like in the case in the UCLA encampments where I watched counter protesters that don't go to UCLA storm the, the student encampment that was demonstrating peacefully in the quad and, and throw fireworks at these students, brutalize them with two by fours and even deploy lab rats. To this day, we don't know what they were trying to do, but they, they. There was a backpack, someone brought a backpack full of rats and just released those rats into the student encampment. So potentially even biological warfare. To say, I mean, to think that this is happening in Westwood, Los Angeles, California is unbelievable. And yet I experienced it, I saw it happen in real time. So I think it's not a justification for state repression in any way, shape or form, but it's more so the reality that the United States of America does not need to engage in this level of repression as the dominant force around the planet, and yet it chooses to do so. And then, you know, it feels insincere of me to go and criticize a country that is in a constant state of economic warfare and maybe even potentially direct hot war now as Donald Trump is threatening to turn around and say, oh, they're very repressive in comparison to the United States.

Joy Reid (49:42)

You know, what's so interesting is that like all of the narratives that, you know, that we all grew up and that I grew up in, in my generation and the boomers above ahead of me grew up with Donald Trump has destroyed them all just by the activities of our government. Right? I mean, when we can't talk about repression, because as you said, the repression here is so stark. I mean, people here are being put in concentration camps and in private prisons and there are gray vans driving up to people and throwing random people into the van because they have an accent, it's really hard to then make the argument because like I said, when I went to Cuba and we went to Cuba, we saw the men with the Kalashnikovs. You know, they were on the. We were like, oh, this is really Weird. There's three TV channels, but then here, okay, there's not three TV channels, but, like, three billionaires control TV channels. So it's like the same things are happening. And I think about. I want to talk a little bit about this idea of exiles. I lived in Florida. You said your first stop was Miami. I don't know if you talked to a lot of exiles on your way before you got to Cuba, but they're hardcore. Like, these were the landowners, the property owners that lost their property when this revolution took place. They're in Miami. They want their country back. And they are hardcore Republicans. Right. Your family is from Thessaloniki, which is, to me, one of the fun things about that is that is where Paul was writing to the Thessalonians in Turkey. I'm quite sure that Bibi, Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben GVIR want to steal your former. Your family's country and take that part of it and put it in Greater Israel, as far as I knew. But. So that's where your family came from. I know you're from New Jersey, but I'm just saying your family. We interviewed your uncle Janku. I didn't know it was your uncle until literally, like, two weeks ago. And I'm like, my mind is blown. But, you know, as yourself, Turkey is one of those countries, right. It's got a repressive government. Erdogan.

Janae Nelson (51:24)

Yeah.

Joy Reid (51:24)

Terrible person. And the exile community says, overthrow it. Replace it with something different.

Hasan Piker (51:30)

I don't.

Joy Reid (51:31)

He's Iranian, right? You don't. I. I watched that piece. Yeah. On it. So talk about that. Yeah.

Hasan Piker (51:37)

So I can't. Yeah, so I can't go back to. To Turkey. My whole family's there. My uncle passed away last year, and I couldn't go to his funeral because there is a very serious threat that if I do go back to Turkey, I would go to jail. And I know that the American government would never demand my release. Considering that, you know, the. The current American government is. Is not exactly too fond of me either. I've been detained by ICE in the past. So I. In spite of all of that, there was a coup that took place that was facilitated. At this point, it's damn near assured that it was the CIA. There. There was a. A Muslim cleric by the name of Fethullah who lived in the Poconos, and he was a CIA asset, and they had designed this. This parallel state inside of Turkey, and they facilitated a coup d'. Etat. It failed. And at the time, I remember thinking, I would much rather have the repressive government of Receptaye B. Erdogan than an American puppet installed in his stead. Because at least like, regardless of how much Richard Tayyip Erdogan still is a servant of American empire, there is still some semblance of sovereignty there in the decision making process as opposed to a CIA installed puppet like Fethullah. And, and I wasn't alone in this because regardless of his unpopularity at the time, there was a referendum that took place in the immediate aftermath of this coup d' etat where Erdogan was able to, by referendum, change the Turkish constitution to a presidential system so we could actually secure more power and, and power that he is still using to this day. And that referendum gave him the popular majority vote. And the reason for why that happened was because people said we would rather, we hate Erdogan, but we would rather have Erdogan than someone who is a puppet of, of Western forces. This, of course, this, this calculation of course doesn't necessarily factor in the, the, the reality that Erdogan is a Western puppet himself as well. But still there are sovereign decisions that he makes as opposed to someone who would be directly in the hands of the American state.

Joy Reid (53:55)

Well, I mean, Iran is the same thing. I mean, there are Iranian exiles who were doing the Trump dance. They were so excited that we bombed Iran, that we've invaded Iran. You know, you talk about the Iran war a lot on your stream. Your generation is the one that's being asked to fight this. You know, they've now reinstalled. They have now for the first time made signing up for the draft automatic. Selective service will not just automatically scoop everyone up, including undocumented people in it. Are you worried about a draft?

Hasan Piker (54:23)

Well, I'm, I'm 34. I'm about to be 35, so I feel like it's, it's probably not going to get to me.

Joy Reid (54:29)

They Put it up 42, my friend. It's up to four.

Hasan Piker (54:31)

I've seen that. But also the other side of it, of course, is that, you know, I'm a dangerous trader. So if they're, they must be really desperate if they're trying to get my old ass in there. Having said that, am I worried about a draft? Yes and no. I'm always worried about a draft. But there is also a, a sense of opportunity. Because part of the reason why I think the American population has been unresponsive to all of our military adventurism overseas is, is because we have a draft right now. It's, it's the Poverty draft. Either, uh, people join the military because their family members were a part of it and it's like a generational thing, or they do it because they want a semblance of upward social mobility that the military offers. In other countries, of course, these amenities are not really amenities at all. Free college education, or a college education that actually has the state paying you to go get educated and free health care are provided to every single citizen in most OECD nations unconditionally. Here in the United States of America, you have to sign the dotted line and sell your soul to the Pentagon so you can go wage wars. Sometimes at the behest of petro capitalist pedophiles and, and other times at the behest of Israel, even like we're seeing here in Iran, then that's the only way you can get these amenities right. If there was a draft, on the other hand, it would force a lot of people to be more responsive and, and force a lot of people's hand into actually taking action like we saw in the Vietnam era. That's the reason why there is, I mean that's at least one of the reasons why there isn't really a massive, robust anti war movement that's active in the streets right now. That and of course the unbelievable amount of suppression that both the Biden administration and the Trump administration put on the pro Palestinian movement.

Joy Reid (56:28)

Yeah. You said in one of your posts that was on your stream that you voted for Kamala Harris. You called yourself a harm reduction voter. She may run again. There are lots of people who are teeing up, maybe Cory Booker and others. What case would need to be made to you to support a Democrat in 2028? What would you need to see them have on their agenda?

Hasan Piker (56:49)

Well, I think they need to be anti genocide. I think that they need to commit to holding Israel accountable. Not just on arms embargo, but I want them to also hold Israel accountable for this genocide that they committed. This would also obviously include holding our American administrations accountable as well. And not just on the issue of Israel not abiding by the pre existing laws like the Lehi law that dictates that no arms trades can take place if a country is found in violation of, of human rights with the American arms that we're shipping and we're selling. And Israel certainly has been violating all rules in the rule book with the weapons that we've trafficked to Israel. So I, I also think that accountability is necessary on the domestic issues as well. I want an, I want an American president who will Say, look, there's been far too much graft, uh, far too much grifting in this country. Uh, uh, and, and we are no longer, uh, going to let these uh, corrupt people steal your money and engage in these sorts of schemes with impunity. We are going to hold them to account. John Ossoff, regardless of my criticisms of John Ossoff, has actually done a very convincing case on this issue in Georgia. He talks about this extensively and I think that's going to be a major issue in, in the midterms and certainly in the upcoming election as well. I think that there are, there is a lot of appetite in the base for someone who will actually say enough is enough. We have to hold these people accountable. Because if we don't, if no one feels like there's any accountability, then they're going to continue committing crimes. And I think it's, it's totally ridiculous that we've allowed the wealthy to get away with stealing our resources, our productive output for far too long. And now they're more bold, they're more brazen with their, with their rampant theft. So someone's got to put an end to that. So I hope that a Democratic politician can commit to that as well. And then on top of that, I want a politician that will uplift the working class, the material conditions of the working class. I want a politician that is truly anti war, a politician that says we have spent far too much money on the military industrial complex to wage wars overseas. It's time to focus on building this country. It's time to make America truly great. And that means we are going to focus on healing ourselves. We're going to focus on Medicare for all. We're going to focus on educating ourselves and become a competitive country in the global marketplace again. That means free college education for all unconditionally, without any, without having the need to sign your soul to the Department of Defense. And those are amenities that we absolutely could provide to every single citizen. We are the wealthiest nation on the planet, after all, the wealthiest nation that's ever existed in the history of the planet. So I find it unbelievable that Democrats can't come together and unite around this convincing message that would be very popular with not just the existing base of the Democrats, but very popular with the independents and certainly even with Republicans too, regardless of how cult like they are currently.

Joy Reid (60:06)

Yeah, before I let you go, you know, the Republicans seem to be uniting around a message that it is the left that is politically dangerous and that is using dangerous rhetoric to make to put Republicans lives In danger around this White House correspondence dinner situation. They're trying to say, aha. This proves that, you know, there really is a left wing attempt to attack Republicans. They have put you in that. They've said that you are dangerous to them, that your rhetoric is dangerous. What do you make of this? Because it's, it's stupid. I played, just played a whole minute clip of. Wait, wait, go on. No. Go on. Yeah.

Hasan Piker (60:41)

No, it's true. I, I am, I am the danger. We are the danger. And I need them to understand this. We're dangerous to the corporate bottom line. We're dangerous to profit seekers. And that's the only thing that our politicians and many in the media care about right now. So in some respects they are correct. The danger is what might happen to, to profit seekers who want to pay while health care. And I don't mean like, you know, divine retribution or punishment of any sort of. I mean the worst punishment of all where they can no longer, they can no longer justify multi million dollar salaries. I am a danger to those who seek profit and put the interests of profit over the interests of people. And that's precisely the reason why they attack people like myself. Because I'm beholden to no one but my own community. I'm beholden to no one but the American working class, which, as Zoron also says, is the majority in this country.

Joy Reid (61:39)

It is indeed. Hassan Parker, I hope you have your passport updated because the new one has Trump's picture on it. I don't know if you've talked about this yet.

Hasan Piker (61:45)

I have not seen it.

Joy Reid (61:47)

Look, he's so handsome now. Don't lie now. Your credibility was really good up until you said that. He is not, he is not handsome. He looks crazy. And I'm thankful that my passport does not expire for like until like the2030s. Hasan Piker, I hope you'll come back. Thank you for being on and I

Hasan Piker (62:04)

appreciate you for having me.

Joy Reid (62:05)

Thank you very much. All right, take care. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. This is somebody that has been sort of portrayed as this sort of insane person, but I feel like you do have to hear people in their authentic voice. And a lot of the time because somebody is doing their streaming, etcetera, and they're saying stuff, people are taking it as verbatim. I actually have listened to a lot of his content. I did a lot of homework going into this to listen to the stuff that he has said and out of context, you could take some of those clips and you could mash them together and make him look crazy. But this is somebody that actually is a very, as you could hear, very intelligent person. He's somebody who's thought a lot about foreign policy and international affairs. I don't agree with him on everything, but I do think that he's the kind of young voice that we need to take seriously. Because if we're just going to come up and harangue them about whether or not they think Hamas is bad enough already with that. Every interview he's done, I've seen, it's all that. But at the end of the day, the left is what's rising because people are sick of getting screwed. They're sick of being taken to the cleaners by these big corporations, by AI companies, by billionaires, by healthcare companies. They're sick of it. You know, and not everybody who's sick of it is violent, but they're just opposed to it. So I think we need to listen to voices like that. I want to try to have more of these young voices on the show because these are the people who are talking to you, if you're my age, to your kids. That's who's talking to your grands. This is who's talking to your. The college students, if you're a professor at your school, that's who. And so we need to talk to them. And he's got a lot of intelligent ideas, and his documentary is actually quite good. We'll put a link to it in the show. You can watch it and make your own mind up. We're not here to make up your mind for you. We're to let you make up your mind for yourself. All right, welcome to hour two of the Joy Reid Show. We appreciate everybody who's here. Hit like and subscribe. I forgot to say that at the top. See, I am still new to the streaming world. I have to remember to keep saying hit like and subscribe, especially if you're on YouTube. Right now, we're trying to get to 500,000. We're now at 447,000 subscribers. We are on the climb. Once we get to 500,000, you know where we're going to go next, right? We're going to climb our way to a million because this is what we're doing. We are a newbie. We're still a toddler. We're going to be one. We're not even a toddler. We're still an infant in this streaming business. We're going to be one on June 9th. Can you believe that? We're all Jason. We're almost one years old. We're almost at. We're almost ready to go to pre K. Little babies.

Ari Berman (64:23)

Little babies.

Joy Reid (64:25)

We're just. We're so young. So young and spry. We will be one year old on June 9. We got a lot. We got. We have some big things coming for our birthday week. Super excited about our birthday week. We are planning that right now as we speak. But we want to make sure that you are in the place. But also that we are among 500, 000 YouTubers. That's what we want. We want to get to 250 on substack. Please climb. There are little twitchies who. This was your day. We put the biggest twitch streamer on with you today. Hassan Piker. I'm sure all of you follow him. So please follow him. Somebody said Hassan is unk. YouTube said he's unk. He said he's an old man of 34. He's the same age as Zor Momdani and people are mad about Zoramdani taking photos with him. It's like, why are you mad about it? He's literally a streamer. He's. It's fine. He's fine. He and I actually were on the. I was on the. He was on the. We were on the opposite sides of the Bernie Hillary thing. But I've admitted I was on the wrong side on that one. I think I said on the other side on that one in that moment in history. But, you know, I'm big enough to admit that I was on the wrong

Ari Berman (65:21)

side of that one.

Joy Reid (65:21)

Anyway, let's thank one of our advertisers. This wonderful show. The joy retail is brought to you by our friends at Quint. Now, you know that I've been doing my little spring reset, right? Including with my closet, focusing more on quality over quantity. I'm actually trying to bring down the numbers and up the quality to build that wardrobe. So I have pieces that are well made, they're versatile, they're easy to work in every day stuff I can wear again. But like switch it up and make it cute. That's going to be high quality but also maintainable. You can throw it in the washer. That is why I love Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are super thoughtful and the pricing. And this is important in these economic times. Actually makes sense. Quince makes beautiful everyday pieces using premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton, super soft denim with style starting around 50 bucks. Their spring pieces are lightweight, breathable and effortless. The kind of things you can throw on to instantly look put together. And the same focus on materials carries over to their accessories like their leather bags which are made from 100% hand woven Italian leather. And honestly, they look way more expensive than they really are, which is key. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman so that you are paying for the quality not the brand markup. And if you guys caught my Maury Povich interview and if you also caught when I did a TikTok dance with him, which they did, his producers got us to do, you will see what I mean. That little quince lightweight black sweater. It is one of my favorite go to's. It's super cute. It looked great on but it's also great that I can throw on with a pair of jeans and work it into my wardrobe every day. Works perfectly. Check out that video and you will see that quince in action. And as it is now cashmere season and almost Mother's Day, just saying, Quince has a lot of fabulous looks for your mama too. Refresh your spring wardrobe with quince. Go to quint.com joyread for free shipping and 365 day returns. It's now available in our friends in Canada. I see some folks in the group chat are from Canada. Go to q u I-n c e.com joyread for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com joyread a friend the other day just text me and ask for that code. So they, because they want to get some quints, they were like what's your code again? So listen, you can always text me if you know me and I'll give you, I'll give you the codes. You got to remember to buy and let them know that we sent you so that they'll know that you are our friends. All right, let's talk a little bit more about this. The absurdity of Donald Trump trying to look stately next to the king. So one of the things that Donald Trump said as he's sucking up to King Charles is that his mother had a crush on Charles.

Ari Berman (67:54)

She really did love the family. But I also remember her saying very clearly, charles, look, young Charles, he's so cute. My mother, my mother had a crush on Charles.

Joy Reid (68:13)

Can you believe it? Amazing how I wonder what she's thinking right now. But okay, so Charles, you know, whatever, Charles Mountbatten, whatever his last name is, King Charles, he was born in 1948, two years after Donald Trump. So if Mary McLeod Trump, who was born in 1912 had a crush on Charles. That means she would have had a crush on somebody two years younger than her own son. Which I guess could explain a lot when it comes to Trump's proclivities. Trump is also putting up a tacky giant gold monument 15ft tall at his Doral golf course to make sure that anybody, including foreign dignitaries who are visiting, and a lot of them will go to Doral. And by the way, he didn't pay the statue maker initially. So the password maker held onto it until he got his final payment. So at least the guy got paid. A 15 foot statue. And look what he's doing in the statue. He's replicating. Remember, he never talks about this Butler alleged assassination attempt. He's replicating it in that video. That's the fight, fight, fight stance. Meanwhile, this week, Whiskey Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill attempting to explain what has this war accomplished. Whiskey PETE and on getting a nuclear

Hasan Piker (69:40)

weapon and get them to a point

Ari Berman (69:42)

where they're at the table giving it

Joy Reid (69:43)

up in a way that. So they haven't have it.

Ari Berman (69:46)

So they haven't broken yet.

Joy Reid (69:48)

Okay, we haven't gotten there yet for all of the.

Hasan Piker (69:50)

Well, their nuclear facilities have been obliterated underground.

Ari Berman (69:54)

They're buried and watching 24 7.

Joy Reid (69:57)

So we know where any nuclear material. Reclaiming my time.

Hasan Piker (70:00)

We're watching a second here.

Joy Reid (70:02)

We had to start this war, you

Ari Berman (70:04)

just said 60 days ago because the

Joy Reid (70:08)

nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated, not given up their nuclear ambitions and they had a conventional shield of thousands. So Operation Midnight Hammer moment nothing of substance. It left us at exactly the same place we were before.

Hasan Piker (70:25)

So much so their facilities are bombed and obliterated.

Joy Reid (70:28)

Their, their ambitions continued and they're building a conventional shield. Let me try again.

Ari Berman (70:33)

It's the North Korea strategy.

Joy Reid (70:35)

You know this very well. The North Korea strategy was use conventional missiles to prevent anybody from challenging them

Ari Berman (70:40)

so they could slow walk their way to a weapon.

Hasan Piker (70:43)

President Trump saw Iran at its weakest moment, took an action to ensure in

Joy Reid (70:47)

a way that only the United States of America could do with our Israeli partners to ensure they'll have an shield.

Ari Berman (70:54)

Was was brought up one of the

Joy Reid (70:55)

questions we've done if I could get to it. So on you. We took out their nuclear stockpile so that they would think about building another nuclear stockpile so that we could invade Iran to take out the nuclear stockpile. They were thinking about in their minds that they were going to reconstitute after we had deconstituted it back last year when we unconstituted the Constitution. And then we went back and see to make sure that their minds could not reconstitute a nuclear stockpile that we already obliterated. Don't you see what we've done? We at the Department of War. At the Department of War. Lethal effect. Not politically correct. Yeah, we bombed a school. But there might have been nukes under that school. How do you know those little girls weren't planning to reconstitute the nukes? What is Whiskey Pete actually doing with this time? He's hanging around with Kid Rock. Apparently, he allowed Kid Rock to take a joyride in some very expensive military planes. And then he posted about it because. Because Kegseth. Whiskey Pete has no brain, no sense. He allowed Kid Rock to address the Pentagon to talk about the Strait of Hormuz. He. He. He allowed Kid Rock to fly in a US Apartment Apache plane to get an Apache helicopter and fly around in it, which is an expensive military plane. And now public citizen is like, we need to investigate this. Why are they using expensive military planes for, like, joyriding around? He's like an adolescent. That got to be Department of War. It's not Department of War. It's Department of Defense. Still Defense Secretary. Meanwhile, remember the whole outrage over all the political rhetoric that's making people want to kill Donald Trump. And there was the White House correspondents Dinner, which Wolf Blitzer. I'm sorry, Donald Trump was targeted. You know, Wolf Blitzer was the center of the story.

Stacey Davis Gates (72:59)

He's the mobile.

Joy Reid (73:00)

He's the whole story. Everyone eat everything. Well, what did they use that for? They, you know, they never, never let a political opportunity go to waste. So in this case, this alleged assassination attempt, which is the third 314th assassination attempt against Donald Trump, apparently, what they're using it for, per all the influencers who all got the email all at the same time, and all started posting about it. And per everyone else. Now, what they're gonna use it for, to shift from having the donors like Jeff Bezos and the guy from Apple who's just retired and all of the big donors pay for the ballroom. That's gonna go on top of our destroyed East Wing. Now you're gonna pay for it. Let's listen to Lindsey Graham. We're gonna introduce legislation that would authorize $400 million to be spent to secure the. To build the Presidential Ballroom. Underneath, there will be a lot of military stuff. There will be a Secret Service annex,

Hasan Piker (74:03)

and we've paid for it by offsetting

Joy Reid (74:06)

it with custom fees.

Hasan Piker (74:08)

But the estimate is 332 million.

Joy Reid (74:11)

We're going to do 400 million because

Hasan Piker (74:12)

I think it's probably going to take more private donations can be used, but

Joy Reid (74:17)

I think they should be used for

Hasan Piker (74:18)

buying China and stuff like that.

Joy Reid (74:21)

Underneath this ballroom will be infrastructure that is national security centric. The ballroom itself will avoid the dilemma of having to leave the White House

Hasan Piker (74:32)

grounds with future presidents and this president's to go downtown in a place that's less secure. President Trump said to me this morning,

Joy Reid (74:43)

excuse me, yesterday, we need the ballroom,

Hasan Piker (74:46)

not just for me, but for future presidents. He literally could have left his bedroom,

Joy Reid (74:52)

walked out the back of the White

Hasan Piker (74:53)

House and been at the ballroom.

Joy Reid (74:56)

That's what needs to happen when you

Hasan Piker (74:58)

have a thousand or two thousand people gathered in day's environment. And the sooner we get the ballroom

Joy Reid (75:05)

built, the more hardened it is, the better for the country. So I hope and pray that most

Hasan Piker (75:14)

people in the Senate after Saturday night

Joy Reid (75:17)

will support this bill. Why don't I, can I channel wise for a minute? Why don't you just use your bubble wand and make the money appear instead of making the taxpayers pay for it? Lindsay, first of all, use your bubble wand. Bing. No, no. He said there's going to be military stuff in the basement. You realize he is a, he is a member of the United States military, right? Lindsey Graham. He is actually a member of the United States military himself. And he said there's gonna be military stuff in the basement and the President can just walk out of his bedroom and walk right into the ballroom. And I'm sorry, why do we need that? Because isn't that supposed to be paid for by his friends, his rich friends? And now what happens to the $400 million that he raised? Does he get to keep that? I'm sure he's gonna probably get to keep that and probably Lindsey Graham will write legislation for him to keep it. So we've gone from a ballroom that's going to cost nothing, it's going to cost the taxpayers nothing. Everybody's going to have it paid, but it's not going to be suddenly, it's going to cost you everything. And know who else is on it. This is how you know that they're all paid spokespeople. They all, you know, all the influencers all at the same time, tweeted, we need the ballroom. We need the ballroom. We need the ballroom. And now, Q Fox Jesse, do we need the ballroom? I never understood the opposition to the ballroom. I mean, all women love ballrooms and what do guys care? It's free. The argument that it's a lavish vanity project, maybe, but it's mostly for national security. They're building a nerve center for the Defense Intelligence Agency underneath. And you can't get a drone through a missile. Through is the safest place on planet Earth. We can have not only White House correspondence centers, we can have Kid Rock concerts in there. And if you think about it, it's. How dare you? It's the People's House. Don't you want more people in the house? What are. They can hold like, a hundred right now. 150. It's not enough. Let's all just gather around each other and have everybody show up. Yeah, Dana, you have. Why is Kid Rock at the middle of everything? Have you noticed that? It's like they only know one entertainer? I mean, you guys have Nicki Minaj now. Don't you want to use her for some stuff? Everything is Kid Rock. Kid Rock, Kid Rock. Everything is built so the Kid Rock can be there. I don't understand. I don't understand why Kid Rock is at the center of all these plans. And I'm sorry, We're gonna buy how much China? He said it's going to be $400 million. They're going to buy China with it. What kind of China are you talking about, Lindsey? What is happening? So you mean to tell me that all of that was so that Donald Trump could get his freaking ballroom? You see it now? This is all just a grift with your money. That and Trump's face on your passport and on the money. All of this is for Trump to have giant statues. An arc to Trump, his face on the passport, his crypto grift, to have a private ballroom that clearly he's never going to leave as long as he's going to get up from his bedroom for the rest of his life and walk to this giant ballroom where Kid Rock is going to be doing personal conferences for him. He thinks he's the king of the United States. The only problem is he doesn't have the class to be a king, and he has a queen that hates him. It is for this and so many other reasons that the day after tomorrow, on May 1, the May Day Strong Coalition will host its first National Day of Action. Because, by the way, while they're doing all of that, you can't afford your rent, your mortgage, gas, food. Everyone else is going hungry. It is like a monarchy. So this Mayday Day of Action hosted by the Mayday Strong Coalition, it's a National Day of Action. It's the same coalition that was behind the new Kings protest, the ICE out rallies, and Minnesota's general strike in January. The organizers are calling Mayday 2026 their biggest mobilization yet. They're organized by labor unions and Democratic organizations and community groups to do an economic blackout this year to commemorate May Day. Right. It's also internat. Mayday is International Workers Day. That's the real name of it. It's a day that's honoring labor unions, immigrant workers, et cetera. And this year, the protest is inspired by that economic boycott blackout in Minnesota during the massive ICE operation there. So Mayday events. Mayday strong events are being planned across the country with organizers calling for no school, no work, no shopping in protest of government policy they say put billionaires needs ahead of those of workers. Joining me now is Stacey Davis Gates, internationally recognized leader in labor, racial justice movements and progressive politics and president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and of the Chicago Teachers Union in the state where, as it happens, International Workers Day was born in 1886. Welcome, Stacey.

Stacey Davis Gates (79:47)

Thank you for having me, Joy.

Joy Reid (79:49)

So talk about what these events are going to look like and why.

Stacey Davis Gates (79:53)

Well, May Day is going to look like us. Practicing what we are experiencing currently in this country is a president that keeps practicing horror, terror, the audacity of each action, from taking away SNAP benefits to making sure that black women lose their jobs by rolling back their contracts at the federal government. So he's practicing how to do harm to basically every subset of our society. So workers have to practice solidarity. We have to practice mobilization. Because as you know, today's Supreme Court ruling rips away the very thing that workers gave this country. So often, the enslaved Africans walking off of their plantations has been described as an emancipatory act by the president of the United States at the time, Abraham Lincoln. Instead of being told in the truest form of how it happened, our enslaved African ancestors were the catalyst to the greatest general strike that this country has ever seen. And by walking off those plantations and becoming liberated, they offered a more expanded version of democracy that is being ripped away by the great, great grandsons of the Confederacy. And so it is incumbent upon workers to tell the truth about our power. Our power has produced the 13th amendment, the 14th amendment, the 15th amendment, the right to vote was enshrined by Africans allied with white abolitionists, allied with black abolitionists, and led by women. And so what workers have to do this May Day is recommit to a solidarity that unifies this country, that expands the possibilities and that gives democracy the diversity it deserves.

Joy Reid (81:58)

And so what does that look like on the ground? If I'm a person, that I'm in Chicago, I want to be a part of this. What do I do in order to demonstrate that I want to be a part of this movement?

Stacey Davis Gates (82:07)

We're here in Chicago. We're doing a lot of things. Our school district, we were able to negotiate as a union that our school district recognized this holiday. After all, as you said in your intro, it was founded here in Chicago. Four years later, our union was founded here in Chicago. So this is the birthplace of the labor movement. And so now we're able to teach that history to our young people. So there will be walking marches around neighborhoods anchored in the gains that workers gave this country. There will be panels at Operation Push to create the capacity to give our black children, our black students, an understanding of their ancestors, courage, sacrifice and brilliance. There will be teen summits where young people get to talk about their responsibility and commitment to this democracy. So in Chicago, it will look like school. It will look like civic education. It will look like our public librarians in reading circles teaching our kindergarteners the very basis of our country community. It will also look like a rally with other labor, rallying against the atrocity of ice, rallying for the expansion of democracy. And at this point, it has to pivot into also being a place where we talk about why workers should be recommitted even more now than ever to securing the voting rights into perpetuity for all of us.

Joy Reid (83:45)

I mean, you talked about. And I think it's really important for people to get that context right. People forget the first labor movements and the first civil rights movement were enslaved people, right, who were just like, we're not gonna labor for you for free. We're just gonna walk off this plantation. And then the next sort of big movement really was among impoverished workers, white and black, like this union movement that was put down with violence. I mean, people were. They were shooting union members back in the late 18. Late late 1800s, early 1900s, who were trying to unionize. And so the idea now that labor, which is what makes this country rich, it isn't people like, you know, Elon Musk that make this country rich. It's labor. It's the people who actually make the things. And. And they've always had the least power, the workers, right? And so what does it mean for labor to sort of reconnect with that history and mobilize itself? Because people are feeling demoralized, Stacy. I think workers feel demoralized they're making less money, they're doing worse than their parents. They're not able to get homes. They can barely afford their rent. And now this Iran war is making it even worse. So how do we get people to reconnect with their power in that situation?

Stacey Davis Gates (84:56)

Well, I think this is where workers play in a very important role. So in all 50 states, there will be mayday participation, Mayday rallies, mayday installations. All 50 states are practicing that. We'll have over 5,000 events all over this country. However, most importantly, and I think to your question directly, is that what mayday gives us an opportunity to do is tell our history. Forward. My family doesn't get to Chicago without the sanctuary by Pullman Porters bringing to Sunflower County, Mississippi, a Chicago defender that spoke of safety and liberation. Workers have always played a very profound role in uniting people. Remember, the word worker is white and black. It's male, is female, it's queer, it's everything. Because all of us work, it is our responsibility to not just say, register to vote. Our responsibility is to make the infrastructure we're registering. The vote is just a part of our liberation. You have to mobilize. You have to organize, you have to resist. You have to call truce to power. You have to vote, you have to litigate. You have to do all of the things, especially in times like this. We have seen repeatedly through our American history that when people are mobilizing, they're organizing, and they are creating community for all of us, it changes, it expands. Public education is a byproduct of the labor rights movement. If black people don't leave the plantation and demand a public education, then none of us get that. So we have to tell the story and the power in which it actually happened to create the capacity for those of us who have been disconnected from our power, for those of us who have been stripped of our power to become empowered. And so we're going to use Labor Day here in Illinois, here in Chicago, and all over this country to reconnect our community of workers. Workers are people who are being marginalized because they're queer. Workers are people who are being harassed by ICE because they're immigrants. Workers are black men being stopped unjustly in their cars because they are black. Workers are students who work at Starbucks for less than what they deserve. Workers are all of us. And so this Mayday, we need to recommit to the broadest definition of worker and to the biggest community of worker, because the people who are in power have been very transparent and strategic and they've been effective in removing the rights that the workers who came before us made possible. Again, we can despair or we can mobilize.

Joy Reid (87:56)

Amen to that. Stacey Davis Gates, Please let everybody know what website they can go to if they want to participate in these mayday activities across the the country.

Stacey Davis Gates (88:03)

Well, go to maydaystrong.org again. It's maydaystrong.org it is a collection of labor unions. It is a collection of labor groups, worker centers and community groups all across this country, all 50 states, over 5,000 rallies, actions, installations. We hope that you find a space that you create that community with us and practice some solidarity.

Joy Reid (88:28)

Charity. We love it. Sign me up. Stacy Davis Gates, thank you very much. Really appreciate you being here. Thank you. And come back again.

Stacey Davis Gates (88:36)

Thank you.

Joy Reid (88:37)

Thank you very much. This is important. I want to point out, by the way, and look, this is the fact. I love that she weaved the history into it because it's right. It is workers that make this country function. It's workers that make the rich people rich. You don't become rich without workers. Nothing happens without the workers. Nothing. And they get the short shrift and they don't get the credit. And they're the first ones to get called lazy. They're the first ones to get fired. They're the first ones to get laid off. As soon as the profit motive, you know, sort of takes advantage, takes, takes, you know, precedence, the first thing that people do to boost their stock price is lay a bunch of people off. The stock price goes up, but the workers get hurt. So it is really important that we reconnect with that. It used to be that CEOs made about, you know, maybe 50 times what their workers made. Now these CEOs make 400 and 500 and 1000 times what their workers make. And they get paid in stock. And the people who are actually making them rich not only make the least money, but they also get laid off first. As soon as there's a little bit of a problem, the workers are the first to go. I want to show you guys something else because this is, this is one of those things that doesn't seem like a big story, but it seems like a small story, but it's not. Look at this Reuters headline. This is C8, Jason, if you have it. So the Trump administration has rejected women. There's a soybean board. This seems like something super niche. So there's this board that helps to make policy for the soybean industry. This is for farmers, soybean farmers and the board is federally appointed. The Trump regime overruled the decisions of states, or they're supposed to be the states rights people because some of those states chose women to be on this United Soybean board. And so the administration swept all the women off the board and replaced them with men. So even on a board that just makes policy for farmers who are really hurting. Donald Trump destroyed the soybean industry with his tariffs, and now you have this federally appointed board that's supposed to be making policy for farmers who are still able to survive even if they're still there. You know, gas is maybe gonna hit 200 a barrel soon. Gas prices are at 423 a gallon. If you have diesel, if you use diesel, you know, to run your tractors, you're screwed. A lot of farmers are losing their farms. There's like a record suicide rate. It's getting really bad. So this soybean board gets appointed and the regime sweeps off all the women and replaces them with men. And it reminded me of this, this clip. Let me actually read you the Reuters story a little bit. The Trump administration rejected all four women farmers chosen by their peers to represent them in an industry group called the United Soybean Board earlier this year, a rare intervention by the U.S. department of Agriculture that three of the women suspected was because of their gender. From the Pentagon to the US Department of Education, the Trump administration has vowed to root out policies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, or dei, from every layer of government. Normally, soybean soy farmers pick their representatives, and the USDA signs off. This time, the USDA rejected at least 5 of the farmers selected for the United Soybean Board, including four women. It did not give any reason, according to three of the women. Sarah Stelter, a Wisconsin farmer stripped of her role on the soy board, saw the decision as part of Trump's broader policy. Quote, it seems like a small thing, Stelter said, but in other ways, it's really a big deal because it's just another thing of where the current administration views women, I believe, and what their role should be. I mean, I mean, I mean, it's giving Handmaid's Tale, right? Do you remember when we played you this clip from Scott Yinor from the Heritage Foundation? Take a listen to this. Again, every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school and the law and every trade. If every Nobel Prize winner is a man, that's not a failure. It's kind of a cause. For celebration. Why can't our celebration of male excellence in sports be translated into all facets of life? More successful men will mean more happy citizenry and a stronger nation. Such medicated, quarrelsome and meddlesome women gain their meaning through the seeming participation in the global project. They are agents of the new world,

Ari Berman (93:08)

but not new life.

Joy Reid (93:10)

Such women are now the backbone of every left wing cosmopolitan party in the

Ari Berman (93:16)

Western world, from the Greens in Germany

Joy Reid (93:19)

to the Democratic Party in America. And if our ideal woman is a childless media scold or a barren bureaucratic apparatchik, there is no question whether we can have a future. We can't. There is a question of whether we deserve one. Women have fewer options. So it's giving Handmaid's Tale, right? That's the guy from the Heritage foundation, the people who wrote Project 2025. And they, by the way, they have a new thing called Project Esther, part of whose goal would be to end all resistance to obeying Israel, end all protest against Israel, and also wipe women off the map when it comes to any opportunity in education, defense or the workforce. They're trying to put women back into the 1950s guys, the pre1950s guys. That's half of the working population that would just be off the table as far as being workers. They would just be. They would just no longer be able to work. And why would you want to remove effectively half the workforce and make them unemployable and send them home to cook and churn butter or whatever all day? Why would you do that? It partly could be because we're going to get into this in later shows because you're planning on eliminating a lot of different jobs. Jason and I were in a wormhole this weekend about AI and what it's going to do to us. We're going to talk more about this on Friday. And all of the sort of the ways in which it's going to destroy society. One way it's going to destroy society is it's going to eliminate a lot of jobs. The AI barons, the AI oligarchs, are talking about eliminating teachers, replacing them with AI, eliminating doctors and nurses, making all your diagnoses come from AI and all of the problems that are worked into that. Because AI has got a lot of racial biases, a lot of gender biases that come from the people who program them. And then once they sort of develop their own sort of autonomous sense, they've already started to value different cultures based on their own criteria. So they value some cultures more than others. Some People more than others, working class people, less than upper class people. And so we're talking about replacing a lot of jobs. You know, you've heard what's his name, the, the, the Ellison, Larry Ellison, say we can replace police with AI and they can watch you all day. They can keep an eye on society. If they see something that's a threat, they can send a robot to deal with it. That would eliminate all the police. And he's like, that would be safer because they'll. They. And I'm sorry, what criteria does the robot get to shoot you? They could get rid of factory workers, have that all be robots. They could get rid of a lot of different workers. They could get rid of farm workers. Notice that they're buying a lot of farmland, these AI oligarchs. And they're probably happy that a lot of farmers are going under because they can buy their land and put bunkers under it or build their AI farms on it or whatever. But the idea, if you're going to eliminate a lot of jobs, it helps if you pre. Eliminate half the workforce, send them home. So now you only have to deal with half the workforce and their pending joblessness. Then you got to figure out what to do with them. So what are you doing with the men who they're willing to allow to be in the workforce? Because they're going to lose their jobs too. We have to placate them and make sure that they don't get guns and kill you. So then you have to figure out ways to placate them, which is why you invent this religion, you invent this version of Christianity that is all about them becoming, you know, the kind of macho man of their dreams, you know, becoming, you know, sort of the Hulk Hogan or whatever in real life. And, and, and to, you know, to keep the woman in line at home and to create this fake Christianity that says that wealth is a sign of God's blessing and that all, you know, that you should worship the wealthy, that the wealthy should be obeyed, that they should be beloved, you know, and that militarism should be lauded because militarism is how a lot of them make money. You know, that's where Palantir gets its money, surveillance and militarism. So you have to laud that. And so they're doing all these things to sort of build a society that is like the Handmaid's Tale. Remember in the Handmaid's Tale, the commanders were lascivious, wealthy, privileged. They were debauched. They got to do whatever they wanted because the women were completely, you know, subdued. And then they had a class of workers that just had to be maids and effectively slaves. In the Handmaid's Tale, they actually are rebuilding the Handmaid's Tale. I mean, Project 2025, if you combine it with Project Esther, it's just the Handmaid's Tale. It's like they saw the Handmaid's Tale or Reddit its kids and thought, oh, this is goals. And part of what you need in order to do that is you need to corrupt every part of the government. Every part of it has to be corrupt. If there is one uncorrupted part of the government remaining, you can't do what you want to do. So in 2020 and 2020 election, what Donald Trump needed in order to succeed in getting to stay in office and continue to elevate his level of corruption, he needed the Republican Party to be completely corrupt. But the Republican Party at that point in our history still had a modicum of uncorruption. Maybe not complete uncorruption, but it still had a modicum of ethics. And so there were individual Republicans, were all Republicans, Republican officials in Arizona and in Georgia and in Pennsylvania and other states who refused to go along with stealing the election. They refused to accept the fake electors. They refused to commit felonies for Trump, even though he was low key, promising to pardon everyone, which he wound up doing most of the people. So you need complete corruption. In our next blog, we're going to talk about that complete corruption. Because it is that, you know, that corruption that actually allowed all of this stuff to take place. Because without the corruption, you can't really do the things. Do we have one more. I'm sorry, I'm missing it. I'm missing. I'm missing. Let's. I think we already did quints. I think we already did it. Oh. So what I want to get to in our next block is to reconnoiss, reset, set us back to where we started, which is to show you this Drudge Report headline. Let's look at this Drudge Report headline. Supremes eviscerate the Voting Rights act and they void a black majority district. And when you do something like that, what you're doing effectively is you're showing that this one last part of the government is now fully corrupted. Right. The Republican Party was not fully corrupted. As of 2020, there were still Republican officials who were willing to defy Donald Trump and refuse to commit felonies on his behalf in order to let him remain president and stay in office after he lost the election to Joe Biden. So that part was not fully corrupt. Now the congressional part of the Republican Party was completely gone. They were already completely corrupted. They were willing to overthrow the election. They wanted to do it. They wanted Mike Pence to do it. Mike Pence himself was not fully corrupted. He had a lot of other corruption in him, but not that he wouldn't do that, but enough. Republicans were trying to continue. Even after the the sacking of the Capitol, they still wanted to try to throw the election back to Trump and let him stay president. So that part was totally corrupted at that point. The Supreme Court still had not gone into its full corrupted gaze. There's full corruption gaze. They still were trying to hang on to a little bit of credibility to say that they were not completely, completely gone in terms of being a part of the government that was still ethical and still adhering to the Constitution. But since then, it's been gloves off, mask off. John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault and got away with it. These corrupted men, the two of them who go on paid vacations for the super rich. Don Roberts wife is doing lots and lots of financial dealings in which she's profiting off of his decisions. These are the most corrupt six people maybe in the country besides Donald Trump and his immediate family. And these six corrupt motherfuckers have decided to rip any mask off that indicated that there might be some uncorruption left in the Supreme Court and said, you know what, it's mask off. And of these six, it's hard to decide which one is the most corrupt. I have a nomination. I would argue that it's Clarence Thomas. Out of all of them, I think Samuel Alito is the biggest asshole and he's the meanest and he's the most angry and most miserable. I think John Roberts is the most secretly corrupt. He's basically Sam Alito with better manners. I think Gorsuch is corrupt when it comes to things like the environment. He's a corporate whore. I think Amy Coney Barrett is. Sometimey she tries to pretend like she's sort of decent, but she's really not. And we know about Kavanaugh. Again, where? How does $700,000 debt get paid off? I don't know. We'll never know. And did he really sexually abuse his high school friend? Probably did. He got away with it. But of all of the six, I have to call them Republican justices. Clarence might be the worst. Let me read you his concurrent. It wasn't enough for him to rule in the Klay case on the wrong side of history. It was not enough. He had to add to that. I would go further, he said. As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that Section 2 of the Voting Rights act does not regulate districting at all. The relevant text prohibits states from imposing or implying voting qualification prerequisite to voting or standard practice or procedure in a manner that results in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on race. How states draw district lines does not fall within any of those three categories. He cites Shelby Beholder. He cites a couple other cases. He says the words in section 2 instead reach only enactments that regulate citizens access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot. They do not include a state's choice of one districting scheme over another. Therefore, no Section 2 challenge to districting should ever succeed. Joining me now is Janae Nelson, who's director counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, who argued on the Klay case before the United States Supreme Court. We were very hopeful, Janae, that it would go in a different way. We wanted it to be one way, but it is another. I have to be honest, as brilliant as you are, and I listened to some of that oral. I mean, I know that you're brilliant, but I figured it was going to go this way because I know these men are corrupt. And you don't have to say it. I'm saying it. That's why I said in my intro, so you don't have to say it. These are corrupt people. But I would just like for you, as a person who is arguing this case, just to tell us, how are you feeling right now? How much of a deep, deep, deep, dark hole are we in?

Janae Nelson (104:43)

We're in it. We're in. We're in the abyss. I'm not going to pull any punches. Today was a gut punch. Not, not to me personally, but to all of us. Every person who believes in this multiracial democracy and who has been fighting to make it inclusive, to make it fair, to make it legitimate, to make it consonant with our Constitution. All of that, all of that was blown to smithereens today. And you know, you said, you know who might be the worst actor here, there's stiff competition. But I have to say the gaslighting that is just on full display in this opinion is just outrageous and it should be a cause of concern for all Americans. It obviously is for the three Justices on the Court who dissented. But it's this type of gamesmanship. It's this type of blatant disregard of the principles of adjudication and being a objective jurist that winds up creating fissures even within a conservative block of the Court. I can't forget that in the McDonnell case that dealt with campaign finance, Justice Scalia, I mean, Justice Alito did something similar to this. He pretended that he wasn't really overturning precedent, and Justice Scalia called him out on it, even though they were on the same side in the opinion, but said, let's not basically pretend that we're not upending, you know, prior precedent and that this is faux, faux judicial modesty, and it is judicial obfuscation. And that is exactly what we see on full blast today in this opinion, where Justice Alito is basically saying, there's not really much to see here. This is still in line with what we said just three years ago in Allen vs. Milligan, another case that LDF litigated and won before this support before the Supreme Court. And he said, this is fine because Milligan didn't really address the 14th Amendment. And we're not really changing much. We're just updating the test. And some conditions have changed. He had a lot of excuses to sort of minimize the treachery that is in black and white print on these pages of this decision. And nobody's fooled. I don't know who he thinks he's fooling. Nobody's fooled by this. Nobody's fooled by this blatant partisan capture that we are experiencing right now in an institution that is supposed to be above all of that and supposed to respect its co. Equal branch of government, Congress, that enacted the Voting Rights act and made very clear that intentional discrimination is not required to be proven to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And the Court didn't even respect its own precedent. The whole principle of stare decisis, right? So the number of norms and principles and rules that had to be blown straight through to get to this result, this act of judicial activism is staggering. And I think for a court that is already struggling and hanging on a thread in terms of its public credibility, this dealt a death blow not only to our democracy, not only to the Voting Rights act, but to the integrity of the Court itself. This is a dark, dark day for our democracy. It really is. And what it's going to mean in terms of what happens on the ground for our politics and our electoral processes is just equally alarming. And we are already seeing it play out in states across the country just in mere hours. The same thing happened when the Shelby county decision came down. Within mere hours, we saw voter suppression laws being enacted immediately that had already been proven to be discriminatory, racially discriminatory. And we're now seeing the same thing happen with maps. So buckle up.

Joy Reid (109:09)

Yeah, I mean, Ari Berman was on the show earlier and he said it could mean that the south, the American south, goes from one or two congressional representatives in big states like Mississippi or one in Mississippi to none. And that's the goal of Republicans will be to eliminate all black elected officials at the state and federal level and make it so that they're, you know, fixing DEI by getting rid of everyone who isn't white. That's probably what we're looking at them at least trying to do, right?

Janae Nelson (109:41)

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And when you pair that with the uber partisan extreme gerrymandering that's happening across the country in the off cycle redistricting. Right. The in Texas and in so many other places, when you pair this decision with that, we know that our electoral process is nothing but a sham because it's the politicians choosing their voters and not the other way around. And what that does is it creates entrenched power. Right. Voters have no recourse. They really can't vote someone out because the lines are so fixed. And it is only going to increase polarization in this country. It's only going to produce a growing number of completely disaffected Americans who do not believe in the political system as a peaceful means for change. This is creating a cocktail that is quite explosive in this moment, because what we are doing is we are erecting barriers to the processes that can allow us to function peacefully, even with disagreement, even with rancor, but peacefully to debate our issues and battle for power and have those types of rough and tumble fights, but in the context of the electoral arena. Now, the Supreme Court has basically given that arena over to partisan hacks and the rest of us are going to be left to fend for ourselves.

Joy Reid (111:22)

Yeah, they've effectively said they can also gerrymander for partisan purposes anywhere they want, anytime they want. They've also ratified the idea that they don't even have to wait for the census. They can do it anytime they want. They can gerrymander twice a year if the maps they create don't create enough Republicans, like literally, effectively, the Supreme Court has unleashed unlimited gerrymandered whenever it doesn't even have to be based on the census. Can you walk us through this, Clarence Thomas Concurrence because it seems to me that he's one of those soothsayers who seems to keep saying, hey, bring me more cases. He's like, you want to get rid of gay marriage, Bring it to me. He said that when Roe was overturned. He's basically calling for more cases. He's like, bring me Obergefell. We'll overturn that, too. He's like Trump. He's like the most honest one in the sense that he'll just say the corrupt stuff openly. He has said that. No, no Section two challenge to districting should ever, ever succeed. Isn't he effectively just telling John Roberts, let's stop playing where we want to eliminate the Voting Rights Act. Let's just eliminate it. Just get rid of it.

Janae Nelson (112:21)

Well, listen, I give him. I give him credit for being transparent, and especially because in this instance, he really didn't have to be, because he kind of already got what he wanted. Because truly enforcing Section 2 of the Voting Rights act in future redistricting cases will be extremely difficult. It won't be impossible, but it's a bit of an academic exercise, you know? Right. I mean, I can think of theoretical scenarios where we can meet all of the new criteria that Justice Alito has since put before us and has, you know, he's now rewritten the rules entirely. Not only did he rewrite the rules, but he retroactively applied them to the case that we brought, where we proved before six federal judges that Louisiana's map was racially discriminatory. Right. We cleared all of those hurdles with robust mountains of evidence. And then he said, well, they did not prove a Section 2 violation under my new standards that we didn't have to operate with when we litigated. So Justice Thomas effectively has what he wants because it will be, you know, it'll be a very, very rare scenario where you can use Section 2 to really vindicate the rights of disenfranchised voters.

Joy Reid (113:34)

Let me read a little bit of President Obama's statement on the Supreme Court's ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Today's Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights act, bringing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities, as long as they do it under the guise of partisanship rather than explicit racial bias. And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach. The Good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our Democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers, not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and at every level. And I love that he's the hope monger, is always bringing the hope. But the reality is black voters have faced these barriers before. The Democratic Party used to say it was a private organization and we couldn't register as Democrats because it was a private organization. Black people overcame that, too. And so there are ways that people can respond to it. One of the ways would be to attempt to vote out every single state legislature in your state and replace them with people who obey the people. Because right now, even if you're a Republican in one of these gerrymandered districts, are your legislators obeying you? Because it seems to me they're obeying a foreign country, Israel. They're putting your kids up to go to war in Iran. They are making gas prices. I just looked. California, they're over $5. A lot of the state, they're over three or four dollars a gallon. They've made grocery prices more expensive. They've made rent more expensive. People losing their farms. At this point, even though this is a restriction on voting, Janae, voting still is one of our best weapons to respond, right?

Janae Nelson (115:27)

It absolutely is. You know, I like to say that voting is the currency that we all hold in equal measure. I don't care how rich you are, I don't care what your background is. I don't care what defines you in so many other ways or your conditions in so many other respects. If you are an eligible Voter, if you're 18 years old and an American citizen, you have a right to vote. A right to vote that is theoretically equal to the richest person in the country. And what undermines that is when the weight of that vote that I said should be held in equal measure is diluted because of the way that you have been placed in districts intentionally to subjugate your power, intentionally to submerge the power of your vote so that it's drowned out by others routinely. People lose elections all the time. So many Americans are fully accustomed to not having their candidate be elected. But when you are continually and perpetually shut out of the political system, not because you chose to live in a district where people are ideologically different than you, or, you know, there are other reasons and you just live with that, but if it's primarily on account of your race on account of the fact that you vote with other people who share your concerns and interests, and you vote along with other members of your racial group for preferred candidates. And you can never elect someone who you believe you can hold to account and who answers to you and your needs and your policies and your wants. That, again, creates a combustible scenario. You are leaving people with no outlet for change, no process through which they can petition the government for redress when they don't have their needs met or want to pursue some measure of change. So I think that this was extraordinarily shortsighted, and I can only think that this court had to understand what it was doing. And the Roberts Court will be defined as it has been by the Shelby county decision, as it has been by so many ignominious decisions like SFFA. This Louisiana vs Calais case will define the Roberts Court. We know that this Supreme Court, and Roberts in particular, has had, you know, put a bullseye on the Voting Rights act from the very beginning, from his time in the Department of Justice under the Reagan administration. But this, this should have even given him pause given the environment and the landscape that we are currently in.

Joy Reid (118:21)

So

Janae Nelson (118:24)

this is an interesting legacy that he is attaching himself to.

Joy Reid (118:28)

Indeed. Janae Nelson, President and Director Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, thank you very much for being here. And I want to again commend you on your arguments attempting to save democracy. This is not for lack of your brilliance. It is just the evil of men who are determined to do wrong. And when somebody is determined to do evil, no brilliance can stand in their way. They'll just roll right over the brilliant arguments and go right to. To where they want to go and where they wanted to go anyway. But I thank you for standing up for our democracy. We appreciate you, sis. Thank you.

Janae Nelson (118:55)

Appreciate you.

Joy Reid (118:56)

Thank you. Thank you. And listen, what Janae was saying in a much more polite way than I will say it, is that you sow the seeds of revolution when you say to millions and millions of people, you will have no representation. You will have no outlet in order to get your needs met. You will have no means by which to peacefully obtain services from your government. Your government will not serve you. Your government will only serve people in the majority and by the way, in the majority who are of the right political party. Because if you are a white liberal, you also will not be served if you are gay, if you are a woman, if you are lgbtq, any of it. You will not be served. You will not if you tell millions of people who in fact are the majority and that actually outnumber you, that they will not be served by the government, that through voting they can achieve nothing. What do you think they're going to do? You're sowing the seeds of revolution and then complaining about the revolutionary spirit that you're seeing in the country and the anger and rage you're seeing in the country. Country. Why do you think people are so angry? Because they cannot survive. And you're telling them you will not survive. And while you are failing to or you cannot survive, not through anything you did wrong, but because you're the wrong color, you live in the wrong state, you're the wrong political party, that if you don't literally bend the knee, bow down and kiss the ring of a fake clown king, if you don't get on your knees, you will have no bread, no food, nothing. No oil, no gas. Your house can't be heated, you can't have anything, nothing. No diesel to run your tractor. If you tell people that long enough, eventually you're going to get revolution. And you're never going to like how that ends. You're never going to like how that ends. It's how it ended for England. If you recall what King George III was doing, in addition to being a madman, as he was taxing Americans without representation, people, these slaveholding colonizers felt they were not getting the representation that was equivalent to the tax they were paying to the king. They're saying we're paying in, but we're not getting anything back. You're taking our money, but you're not giving us the services that we want. We're not getting represented, we're ill represented. Based on the amount of taxes you're taking, you're still going to take. Remember, poor people pay the most taxes. They pay taxes every time they shop, they pay sales taxes, they, they pay the most taxes. Percentage wise, they pay higher taxes than their bosses. They're the ones paying, you know, 15 of their income, 20% of their income, 30% of their income and don't get anything back. What are you getting back? You get to go to war. You get in a war in Iran that you didn't want. You're not getting anything. Even if you're a right wing maga. What did you get? You didn't get mass deportation. They're not deporting people, they're just keeping them in camp so they can enslave them, make them work. You didn't even get that. If you're a maga, you didn't get mass Deportation, not deporting those people, except for the few that, you know, for theatrics they send to the Congo so they can be in a country they've never been in before. But most of people are being retained in private prisons, where private prisons are getting rich. You guys got posed and lied to as well. And then meanwhile, while you're grabbing these people off the street and putting them in mass detention, the businesses they used to work at are going under because they don't have any workers. And the workers they do have are afraid to come to work. So you're destroying people's businesses, you're making people bankrupt, you're making people go hungry and their children go hungry. Then you're taking their health care, you're taking that away and then offering them this website. They can go on and sign up for Trump care and then it gives you like, you know, prescriptions that would be $20 under Obamacare and they're like $200 under Trump care. You're giving them an app where they like to find out what's happening with the government and then it surveils you. You're giving them mass surveillance. You have drones over their houses. You know people are showing up at their house because they posted something on Facebook. You're giving mass surveillance, mass war without end, automatic registration of your 18 year old to go to war if they want. What are you getting? Nothing. And you keep on, keep, keep that up, you're gonna get what England got. You're going to get the same kind of revolution they got the French king got. All of these oligarchies always end in revolution and it's literally how Cuba got made. I was interested in talking to Hassan Piker about Cuba. A lot of criticisms of the Cuba government. It is quite repressive, to be honest. It is very repressive. You will be watched the whole time you're there. But they're built by us because they had a repressive Trump like leader who was an oligarch, who was hoarding all the money and not letting ordinary Cubans eat. And after a while they got sick of that shit and they overthrew him. And you ended up with what we have now. You end up with Fidel Castro. Not just because fit Castro was sitting around with nothing better to do, but because he was from the hungry class. He was from actually the hungry dark brown class. And so Batista, who was basically their Trump, was letting rich Americans run the place like one giant casino. They had hotels, lavish hotels, lavish parties. All the celebrities were Hanging out there. And the poor Cubans had nothing to do. And so they said to all the rich Cubans, get the hell out and chase them to Miami. It's how we ended up with that. It's how we ended up with the mullahs in Iran, because we had a rich oligarch thieving from the country, stealing everything. And when that broke down, we got a revolution, and we wound up with the mullahs. Every place we've gone and screwed it up. We did it in the Congo. Mobutu was stealing everything, everything that moved. That man was getting to be a billionaire while his people were literally starving. Is it shocking that now that that was overthrown, you end up with a government that's a mess? Same thing in Haiti. We messed it up. Haiti was a playground of the rich and famous. There are rich people there, and they have everything. And the ordinary people like, no, we want to eat, too. We want bread, we want food, we want commerce. We want to have businesses. We want to survive. And every time that we've propped up one of these billionaire oligarch, greedy oligarchs, where their families get rich, their kids get rich, their kids owner. We do it every time, and it always ends badly. It ends in revolution. And one day it's going to end that way for us, too. And the Supreme Court of the United States, some of whom are financially corrupt. And I put John Robertson, these men are also getting rich. Their families have contracts. Their wives have contracts. They're enriching their kids. Their kids will have plum jobs on the Hill. They are part of the oligarchy, and they like it like that. They don't want the House and the Senate to go Democratic. No. They might get investigated. Somebody might try to find out how Kavanaugh's $700,000 debt got paid off poof. In one day. Somebody might want to reopen that case about his high school friend and her other friends that maybe accuse him. Somebody might want to look into Clarence Thomas's fancy trips he's getting from oligarchs who are paying him. Is he doing rulings based on what they're telling him? We don't know. But there might be an investigation. Somebody might want to look into John Roberts wife. What does she do for a living? How does she get them contracts? Somebody might want to do that. So they don't want the Democrats to win. Not because the Democrats are fearsome or scary or really super organized. They're not. But they're good at hearings. Like, they'll hold a hearing. They'll at least try. And they are like, nope, this gravy train will never end. We're part of the gravy train. We made Trump a king for a reason. Because we benefit, too. Our clients benefit. They're part of that sort of federalist society oligarch. They're the commanders. They too are the commanders. And they're like, we got to keep this Handmaid's tail shit going, baby. We're never going to let this grift go. We own the six of us. Hold tight. Stand together. And we're going to keep it. We're going to keep it just like it is now. And we're never going to let it change. We're never going to let Democrats win. And by the way, we know that the people who are the weakest link in oligarchy are the blacks. Always have been. The blacks keep on resisting. They kept resisting when they were slaves. They could have just stayed down, ate the chicken bones and chicken necks and been quiet. But no, they had to keep rebelling. And when they got free, they were like, we want free public schools. And boom, South Carolina did it. And then the white kids got free public schools, damn it. Then they were like, we want civil rights. And then that went to the women, too. They were like, labor rights. They wanted to join unions, these poor ass workers. And like, why do they keep on wanting rights? They hate workers. They hate poor people and working class people. These. All these people hate y'. All. They hate working class people of every race. They hate women who want to vote, women who want to be free. They're like, all these people are a majority. And in order for us, the oligarchs, including the six of them, to hold onto their shit, they have to make sure nobody can vote. So they're like, yeah, we're going to get rid of the Voting Rights act, but we'll do it in a way that you can't say we got rid of the Voting Rights act because technically it's still on the books. But we're going to gut it and scoop out the insides of it. And then no blacks can vote. And if no blacks can vote, it's a wrap. There'll be no progressive policy. There are not enough white voters who are Progressives. Only about 20% of white voters are progressives. Most white voters are conservative. 60% vote Republican. No matter what. If it's Satan on the ballot, it says, are most white Americans, vote for them. Not disparaging, not disparagement against white people. The most white people are Republicans. They're going to vote for every Republican. Look at Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, a perfectly great alternative. And they're like, nah, we're going to keep the Republican. And so they know that's going to happen in every one of these districts. So those six people got behind closed doors and say, you know what? We're going to make sure Republicans never lose. Let's give them 19 more seats in the House. Let's make sure they never lose the House. Because if they lose the House and they lose the Senate, they're coming for us. I guarantee that's their conversations. We got to protect our shit. And Clarence is like, am I one of our. And they're like, yeah, Negro, for now you are. By the way, before we go and I play the Moment of Joy, I have to say this. Please stop calling that man Uncle Tom. Please stop calling him Uncle Tom. Don't call him Uncle Tom anymore. And this is why I'm going to say that. Because Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Harriet Beecher Stowe classic that, by the way, sold more than the Bible when it was written in that book. Uncle Tom is based on a real person. It's based on a real guy. And the story of Uncle Tom's Cabin is that the person who we call Uncle Tom and we disparage was actually a hero in the story. He refused to give the names of some slaves who had fled the plantation. And he knew that he was going to be beaten to death if he didn't tell. And Uncle Tom's heroic act, that was the sort of denouement of the story, is that he didn't tell. Uncle Tom was actually a hero in that story. The reason that people started calling black sellouts Uncle Tom is that when that thing, it was so popular, I can't even tell you how popular it was. Uncle Tom was the most popular book in the entire country. It was an anti slavery book, and it became super popular. It was a bestseller before they had a such thing. And so all these vaudeville shows started performing Uncle Tom. They would, like, take it on the road as a play. But they knew, the people who made these plays knew that nobody would want to watch a heroic black man. So they kept the parts of his story in which Uncle Tom, who was not like old in the story, he was actually younger than he was portrayed. He actually was super, like, obsequious to the white people. This was his guise. He was obsequious and super Christian. And so he was just this obsequious character. They kept that part in Order to portray all black men as being weak and obsequious while also saying all black men were like crazy rapists who want to rape white women. They were trying to say both. They were trying to do both. They were obsequious and slavey and slavey people. And they were also like monsters. The ones that raped the white. Where the white women at? They're trying to make black people be black men, be both. But this. So the plays, the sort of performances of Uncle Tom's Cabin made it look like Uncle Tom was a sellout, but he wasn't. The actual character was a hero. So I would just propose, you know, what is the guy, George, who's doing the black delegations? Stop calling him Uncle Tom. Don't call him Uncle Tom no more. You could call Uncle Ruckus. Or maybe just throwing it out there. I'm just throw it out there. Maybe the new name for that might have to be a Justice Clarence. I'm just throwing it out there. We can send it to the black delegation. Say that again. That maybe instead of using the term Uncle Tom. Since the guy who keeps betraying us is named Justice Clarence, why isn't he the moniker for selling out black folks? I don't understand why you call it. Why we call it Uncle Tom when Uncle Tom was not a bad guy. Uncle Tom was a hero. So I'm just gonna throw it out there. And I know I'm gonna get attacked for it. People are gonna be mad. But I'm saying we are. If we. I used to say Uncle Clarence. People didn't like it at my old job. When I say Uncle Clarence, it's something like that. Y' all come up with something. But I mean. And also, people have nice uncles that are named Clarence. You could have, like, a friendly. Uncle Clarence is like a good guy. But Justice Clarence is literally the guy who is playing the ultimate super villain on a court that's destroying the ability of black people to vote. And he wasn't enough for him to just say, y' all gonna lose your Section two. He had to rub people's face face in it and say, no future section 2. No future section 2 case should ever win. No section 2. 0. Wipe it off the books. It's not enough for him to have gotten Roe v. Wade. He had to say, bring me Obergefell, bring me gay marriage, bring me every single Lawrence v. Texas. That's literally people being able to bust in your house and arrest you because you're gay. He's like, bring that to me, too. I'll take it all. I don't understand why Uncle Thomas is still being maligned in the year of our Lord 2026. And we got a real Negro right there doing the bad stuff. I'm just saying. And this is. I take it this is. I said this only with me on. This is not. Don't put this on any of my guests. I'm just saying. All right, let's go into our moment of joy. Our moment of joy. Today, Trump and his entire regime and their paid trolls are busy freaking out about Jimmy Kimmel's hilarious White House Correspondence day dinner. He did his own fake version of it and using the fake outrage to try to score his precious ballroom at Dax Bear expense. But not to be outdone, John Stewart had his very own take on the incident at the Hinckley Hotel. And here it is. It's our moment of joy.

Ari Berman (132:03)

Definitely not the emotion he was feeling.

Joy Reid (132:05)

I wasn't worried.

Ari Berman (132:07)

I could see what was going on at the door. I also saw a lot of very strong, physically strong, really attractive law enforcement

Joy Reid (132:19)

people come through those doors. Does, does that matter? Is that part of how attract.

Hasan Piker (132:34)

Look, I don't want my life saved by a six. I don't want some pig face walking.

Joy Reid (132:46)

We got to go, Mr. President.

Hasan Piker (132:48)

Not with you, friend. Not happening.

Joy Reid (132:56)

Oh, I got to do my cash Patel eyes for that one, everybody. Thank you for watching the Joy Reach show. Don't forget tomorrow at noon. If you are a Substack premium subscriber, please join us for our In Joyce House Insiders live, we are going to be talking with Damon Hewitt, great civil rights voice. And we're going to dig into what this means. I'm going to throw on his plate. Also, Damon, if you're listening, we're going to also throw in this Supreme Court case and see what that implication is going to be, particularly for voting rights in the south, in the dirty South. So that is at 12 noon Eastern time on substack, which is joyandread.com that's what we call Joy's house. Also, please be sure to vote. Put the QR code one more time. Please vote in our vontel. Let's break this tie. We don't want to have a tie going in. We want a definitive winner so we can start designing our glasses. I want to note that if you like the frames, don't worry about what's inside the frame. Even if the frame looks like it's a sunglass, it doesn't have to be. We're just looking at the shape of the frame. They just send them to us like that. So even if it has, like a sunglass, it's not necessarily a sunglass. We just like the shape, the color. You know, we're picking it based on the way it looks, the shape, and then all that kind of stuff. So please vote. Thank you. I'll see you on Friday. And on Friday, we are going to get into these missing scientists. I keep promising it. We are going to get into it because it's super weird. We're going to get into it on Friday. We're gonna. We're trying to book an actual rocket scientist to talk about it. See you all on Friday. Thank you for watching the Joy Reid show. Have a great night and goodbye.

Hasan Piker (134:17)

Getting back to the basics.

Ari Berman (134:19)

Grassroot level Let me dig a little

Joy Reid (134:21)

deeper with the shovel plenty can't tell the force from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole

Ari Berman (134:26)

in the dark Injustice anywhere it's a threat to justice everywhere Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk

Joy Reid (134:36)

about it they wrap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.