Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and You

Summary

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The Joy Reid Show: "Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and You"

Date: November 27, 2025
Host: Joy-Ann Reid

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Overview

This episode dives into the intersections of power, technology, politics, and morality, with a thematic exploration of Peter Thiel’s influence, the weaponization of faith, right-wing infighting, and the continued struggle for justice and economic empowerment in America. Joy Reid unpacks Peter Thiel’s fixation on the Antichrist, the self-dealing and cronyism of Trump's pardons, MAGA's internal chaos, fights over news media objectivity, and grassroots calls for Black Friday economic action. The show also honors the Tulsa Massacre survivors and advocates for reparatory justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Housekeeping & Joy’s Movement Actions

(00:09 - 05:15)

• Joy announces a Black Friday Boycott in solidarity with the "We Ain't Buying It" movement, emphasizing the importance of economic activism against exploitative corporations that support right-wing causes.
• Saturday will be a “Subathon” with live appearances on multiple platforms to boost subscriber numbers and support small business advocacy.

"We are joining the blackout, the ‘we ain't buying it’ movement...We want to increase that. We want to get the 1.3 million people who follow me on IG and the 800 some odd thousand on TikTok...consolidate all our friends on Saturday." (Joy Reid, 02:40)

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2. Breaking News: National Guard Shooting & Media Misinformation

(05:16 - 06:34)

• Coverage of a DC shooting involving West Virginia National Guard members under Trump’s occupation orders. The West Virginia governor erroneously reported their deaths, later retracting.
• Immediate politicization by the Trump regime to justify increased occupation and militarization of D.C.

"This is one of those life lessons in how not to use social media." (Joy Reid, 05:32)

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3. Trump’s Pardon Ceremony & Rambling Public Remarks

(06:34 - 09:22)

• Joy airs Trump's meandering Turkey pardon speech, full of deflections, grievance, and confusion—even in the presence of children.
• Questions his cognitive health and the appropriateness of his language.

“I highly doubt Donald Trump calls his wife darling. And also, what the hell, Beyonce?” (Joy Reid, 08:45)

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4. The Corrupt World of Trump Pardons

(09:22 - 18:05)

• Liz Royer, ex–DOJ pardon attorney, explains Trump’s recent pardons—often for the politically connected or wealthy fraudsters, facilitated by ultra-right operatives (Berkman and Wohl) and transactional lobbying.
• List of questionable pardons: Trevor Milton, Imad Zuberi, Michelle Fiore, Rod Blagojevich, Michael Grimm, Devin Archer, Jason Galanis, Todd & Julie Chrisley, Paul Walak, Scott Howard Jenkins, Brian Kelsey, and more.
• Pardons are described as “corrupt, transactional, and self-dealing.”

"We now have convicted fraudsters lobbying for pardons on behalf of other convicted fraudsters. And it seems to be working." (Liz Royer, 11:28)

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5. MAGA World in Chaos: Infighting, Paranoia, and Conspiracies

(21:28 - 24:10)

• Joy highlights MAGA fracturing—Candace Owens spinning conspiracies about Charlie Kirk being replaced; Alex Jones angry over Trump dropping Marjorie Taylor Greene; Tucker Carlson’s hostility toward Trump leaks ("big old piece of shit" [25:15]).
• Points to the base’s shared objective: installing a white Christian nationalist oligarchy powered by cynical grifting, even as key players privately hate Trump.

“They are serving a bigger cause and a bigger master. Despite all of their many differences...they collectively desire to put the United States under the control of a white Christian nationalist authoritarian hierarchy led by a CEO king.” (Joy Reid, 25:45)

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6. Peter Thiel, The Antichrist, and Techno-Authoritarianism

(26:11 - 31:36)

• Replay of Peter Thiel’s talk on AI, technology, and the Antichrist, with Thiel musing that "peace and safety", the Antichrist’s slogan in 1 Thessalonians 5:3, is being used to justify global surveillance and authoritarianism—ironically enabled by tech he develops.
• Joy highlights Thiel’s attempt to cast left-leaning advocacy (e.g., Greta Thunberg) as more likely Antichrist than any technological overlord, inverting the obvious irony.

"Is this so preposterous, what I've just told you, as a broad account of the stagnation that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to Peace and Safetyism?...the slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety."
(Peter Thiel, 28:08)

• Joy contextualizes: Thiel created J.D. Vance (now VP); both push Catholic-tinged hard-right ideas dissociated from Pope Francis’s actual teachings (compassion, climate action).

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7. Interview: Philip D’Amico on Peter Thiel’s Path

(34:13 - 49:44)

A deep-dive with documentary creator Philip D’Amico (Volksgeist) into Thiel’s life:

• Origins: Thiel’s childhood in a notorious Nazi outpost in Namibia; upbringing surrounded by authoritarian power structures.

“If you go and Google Swakopmund, the first result is a New York Times article where the journalist was greeted by the employee with 'Heil Hitler.' ...That was where Peter Thiel grew up.” (Philip D’Amico, 34:55)

• PayPal Mafia: The myth of Thiel and Musk as inventors; they were investors/assemblers rather than true technologists.
• Palantir and Surveillance: Transition from anti-phishing algorithms to mass surveillance tools, now used by US and global spy agencies.
• Thiel’s Contradictions: His “Antichrist” thesis is a smokescreen for pure self-interest; frames taxation/regulation as near-evil.

“He always comes back to this idea that he’s the one who should be given unlimited power to fix it… he’s just really trying to find a strange way of justifying his own desire for just more money, more power, more control.” (Philip D’Amico, 41:21)

• Tactics: Thiel manipulates religious and culture-war grievances to hide his greed, weaponizing Catholic identity; his followers project their struggles onto him, even when it’s not in their interest.

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8. Media Manipulation & Centrist News Illusion

(64:45 - 68:30)

• Bari Weiss (now running CBS News) claims a new centrist objectivity but, as Joy contends, draws the “acceptable debate” line narrowly around pro-Israel, anti-woke voices like Dana Loesch and Alan Dershowitz, excluding meaningful discussion on Palestinian rights or genuine diversity.

"She's talking about people who care about equality of opportunity. She’s vehemently anti-diversity...this is sort of sane-washing a policy that essentially says we will not tolerate criticism of Israel in American media anymore."
(Joy Reid, 68:30)

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9. Survivors of Tulsa: Fight for Justice Continues

(79:16 - 90:36)

• Interview with Demario Solomon Simmons, lawyer for Tulsa Massacre survivors, after the death of Viola Fletcher (age 111). Only one survivor left.
• Discusses ongoing efforts for reparatory justice, dual citizenship in Ghana, revitalization plans for Greenwood district, and the importance of direct financial redress.

"She never received any meaningful reparations or reparatory justice from the actual perpetrators of the massacre, like the city of Tulsa, Tulsa Chamber, etc...for her to pass away at 111 is a travesty."
(Demario Solomon Simmons, 79:44)

Action:
Donations made by listeners go directly to justiceforgreenwood.org.

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10. Economic Stress and Black Friday Activism

(95:50 - 110:00)

• Harry Enten lays out the reality of inflation: 85% feel grocery prices have risen, utility and housing inflation, etc. Majority blame now lies with Trump’s regime.
• Latasha Brown from Black Voters Matter joins to promote the "We Ain’t Buying It" campaign:
  • Calls for economic action: boycott big box stores supporting Trump, redirect resources to Black, minority, small businesses.
  • Advocates for conscious spending, especially on Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

"If they got all this extra money to give Trump $300 million...then they don’t need my money." (Latasha Brown, 100:25)

• Highlights tools and apps for finding Black-owned businesses (e.g. "Blap"), urges scaling back holiday excess to reduce corporate profiteering.

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11. Closing Thoughts: The Real Power Play

(110:00 - End)

• Joy emphasizes the need for moral and financial discipline: the only language billionaires understand is money; community solidarity is essential.
• Critiques religious and tech overlords’ self-styled genius status: “They’re just really, really rich. And really, could it be that they are human like everybody else?”
• Stresses that resistance transcends religious posturing; real empathy, kindness, community control, and economic redirection are crucial.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession:
  “The slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety. And we've submitted.”
  (Peter Thiel, 28:05)

• On Trump's Pardons:
  “Complete corruption. Surprise, surprise. That's what Donald Trump is doing with his pardon power.”
  (Joy Reid, 11:49)

• On Today's Tech Oligarchs:
  "We are being run by a group of people who are warping and using religion as a crutch in order to get you to go along with the idea that we're simply going to have overlords, lords and serfs. That's what they all agree on. Trump wants to be a lord. You're a serf."
  (Joy Reid, 53:44)

• On the Power of Collective Economic Action:
  "We are not buying what Trump enablers sell this Black Friday."
  (Latasha Brown, 100:14)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Black Friday Boycott & Subathon Announcements – 00:09 – 05:15
• National Guard Shooting & Political Spin – 05:16 – 06:34
• Trump’s Turkey Pardon Speech – 06:34 – 08:45
• Liz Royer on Corrupt Pardons – 09:22 – 11:49
• Notorious Trump Pardons List – 11:49 – 18:05
• MAGA Infighting & Right-Wing Media Leak – 21:28 – 24:10
• Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Thesis – 26:11 – 31:36
• Philip D’Amico Interview – 34:13 – 49:44
• Bari Weiss on “Centrist” News – 64:45 – 68:30
• Tulsa Massacre Survivors/Justice Interview – 79:16 – 90:36
• Economic Impact, Black Friday Activism – 95:50 – 110:00

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Takeaway

This episode delivers a vivid, compelling tapestry of contemporary American culture and politics, exposing the cynical power games of tech oligarchs and right-wing populists, while championing grassroots empowerment, historical truth, and the real meaning of solidarity. Joy’s voice remains sharp, passionate, and unfiltered, offering both practical calls to action and trenchant critique of the sinister fusion of money, faux religion, and technology threatening democracy.

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For more:

• Donate to Justice for Greenwood
• Explore Black-owned businesses with apps like Blap
• Follow Latasha Brown’s #WeAintBuyingIt campaign
• Tune in Saturday for Joy's subathon and boost independent media!

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Shopping is hard. I can never find anything in my size. I don't even know my size. I buy my clothes the same place.

[Liz Royer]

I buy my groceries.

[Joy Reid]

There's a better way. Make it easy with Stitch Fix. Just share your size, style, budget and done. Your personal stylist sends pieces picked just for you. That was easy. Stitch Fix Online personal styling for everyone. Free shipping and returns. No subscription required. Get started today@stitch fix.com. Okay. Good afternoon or good evening. Sorry about that. Welcome and happy Thanksgiving Eve to everybody. Welcome to the Joy Reid show. Thanks to Everybody who's on YouTube on substack, wherever you get your podcast. We appreciate everybody. Hello to the chat. Let's get into it. We have a lot to get into, so I'm going to jump right in before we get to our actual breaking news, because we do actually have some breaking news. I want to do a little bit of housekeeping to let you guys know on Friday of this. This week. Friday, we will not have a show at this normal time from 6 to 8pm like we normally do. We are going to join the Black Friday boycott by taking the whole day off. Spoiler alert. Jason and Meyer, our son Jamar surprised us and, well, he didn't surprise him, he surprised me and he flew all the way across the country to be with us. So we are going to spend Friday hanging out with the gang. We're going to go to the movies, we're going to do something fun, but we're not going to be shopping in the big box retail because we are joining the blackout, the we ain't buying it movement. And Latasha Brown is going to be here in hour two of the show to get deeper into it. We've been telling you about all these different Black Friday blackouts. We're going to be joining in that and we're going to be blacked out on this air on Friday. However, on Saturday, on Saturday, we're going to be doing like a little subathon. It's going to be kind of fun. I'm going to jump on multiple lives. I'm going to go live on TikTok. I'm going to go live on Instagram. I'm going to go live on Substack. I'm even going to maybe try Twitch and try to go live. I'm going to do a bunch of lives on Saturday. It's small business Saturday. We're a small business. So we're going to go live in encouraging people on all my different social medias to follow us here and join the Team TJRS family and subscribe here on the YouTube channel and on Substack, I want to announce we got to 360,000. We've crossed 360,000 subscribers on YouTube and we've crossed 188,000 subscribers on Substack at Joy's house. So a lot of great new friends and fam. But we want to increase that. We want to get, you know, the 1.3 million people who follow me on IG and the 800 some odd 1000 on TikTok, you know, join us, come hang out with us because, you know, it'll be fun. That'll be Saturday. So that is that piece of sort of housekeeping. So if you are interested in joining us and also talking about how to hold the MAGA economy accountable or if you want to chat with me, because a lot of it's just going to be me talking with you. Ask questions, do whatever you want, make sure that you join us here. The part that's going to be on this channel will be from noon to 2pm so from noon to 2pm we'll be back here. But the rest of the day you're going to have to like follow my various social media because I might pop up on your phone on your TikTok or IG. So it's going to be a lot of fun little subathon. So we're going to try to consolidate all our friends on Saturday. So that is that announcement. Now let's get to the headlines. I want to start with some breaking news. I'm sure you have now seen and heard on all your social media that two West Virginia National Guard members or shot accrediting this video that you're seeing right now to Sam Stein, courtesy of na, our amazing producer who caught this literally five minutes before we went on air. This is video from Sam Stein's social media. And you'll see at the end of this video that the the suspect who was caught was tackled. These were two West Virginia National Guardsmen who were deployed as part of Donald Trump's occupation of D.C. now, this is one of those life lessons in how not to use social media. The governor of West Virginia went on his Twitter account and said that the two National Guard members who were shot had died. That is not true. They are in critical condition. They're in hospital. They have not died. The West Virginia governor had to retract that. This is the guy who replaced billionaire Jim justice as governor of West Virginia. He had to then retract it and say, we're praying for the families, that's what everyone is doing. So, no, actually, no, they had not died. But this is, of course now being used by the Trump regime to increase their intensity. The White House went into lockdown because of this. This was blocks or, you know, very close to where the White House is. So, of course, Donald Trump went into the bunker he has to use now until he gets his fur bunker done. And Pete Hague says TV Pete from Fox is now threatening to deploy hundreds more National Guard into DC and increase the occupation of DC Due to this shooting. But we have no information on what the motive was. We don't know anything about it. You know, I can tell you internally, we've saying, you know, that, you know, our assumption right now is that this is not somebody Muslim or black because they probably would have said it already. We would know already if it was a Muslim who'd done it. They'd be papering it all over and threatening to invade the entire Middle east by now. So we'll see what happens. There's a general sort of, you know, there's a general depth, you know, sort of demographic reality about these mass shootings and we'll see if it fits the normal demographics. But this is, this is a big deal. Somebody in the chat mentioning the fact that, yes, Donald Trump has already hit the golf courses or left the, the, the district to go and do a, yet another golf weekend with Melania. A lot of people saying the video of him getting on the plane was him and fake Melania. We don't know who, which Melania was on the plane. Was it her decoy or was it her? We don't know. Well, we know that he's left town already, but he's still fulminating. And I'm sure his, you know, his social media, his discount teemu Twitter will be on fire shortly. And if it does, we'll let you know. Now, before Donald Trump skated town in order to, you know, go in golf for the 110th or whatever time this year at your expense, he tried to do some like normal president stuff, you know, but because of Trump, you know, it got weird.

[Lara Trump]

The burning, they burned the woman to be talking about that now. They burned this beautiful woman riding in a train. A man was arrested 72 times. 72 times. Think of that.

[Joy Reid]

I don't know why that's happened. I will note that children were in the audience listening to that, apparently including J.D. vance's three year old. So, so there's that. And then here's a little more of what he had said before.

[Lara Trump]

Going any further, I want to make an important announcement because you remember last year, after a thorough and very rigorous investigation by Pam Bondi and all of the people at Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the White House Counsel's office and the Department of Everything, we have a department of everything. You know what that is? I think that's called the White House into a terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an auto pen last year for the turkey's pardon. So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined that last year's turkey pardons are totally invalid, as are the pardons of about every other person that was pardoned. Other than Where's Hunter? No, Hunter's was good. That was the one pardon, Pam. That was good, right? The rest of them are all invalid. I don't know what the hell you're going to do about that, but that's. Now, we're going to take a little of the joking. That is a mess. But they're hereby null and void. The turkeys known as Peach and Blossom last year have been located and they were on their way to be processed. In other words, to be killed. But I have stopped that journey and I am officially pardoning them. And they will not be served for Thanksgiving dinner. We saved them in the nick of time. This one has plenty of time. But they were saved in the nick of time. The turkeys being pardoned today go by the names of Goble and Waddle. When I first saw their pictures, I thought we should send them. Well, I was going to. I shouldn't say this. I was going to call them Chuck and Nancy. But then I realized I wouldn't be pardoning them. I would never pardon those two people. I wouldn't pardon them. I wouldn't care what Melania told me. Darling. I think it would be a nice thing to do. I won't do it, darling.

[Joy Reid]

I highly doubt Donald Trump calls his wife darling. And also, what the hell, Beyonce. As somebody noted in our chat, what the helly? What is going on? There were children in that audience listening to that ramble. I mean, you know, we did have the discussion about his potential frontal lobe dementia. Every time he talks, I believe it. There's something definitely wrong. Definitely wrong. So that's what happened. But, you know, you want to talk problematic pardons, you say Donald Trump. Well, how about these? I want you guys to listen to this post on the social media of a woman named Liz Royer, who was a former White House pardon lawyer.

[Liz Royer]

During normal times, everybody, Donald Trump's latest pardon is going to blow your mind. I'm Liz Oyer, the former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice. This is Joseph Schwartz. He owned a nursing home empire called Skyline, with facilities in 11 states. Schwartz stole $38 million from the paychecks of his employees, money that was supposed to cover their health care and retirement benefits. Schwartz pleaded guilty to tax fraud and. And in April of this year, he was sentenced to three years in prison. But last week, Donald Trump granted him a full pardon after he served just three months of his sentence. This is a strange pardon, even for Trump, because back in April, Trump's handpicked U.S. attorney, Alina Haba, issued a press release publicly thanking all of the agents and investigators who helped put Schwartz in prison. So why did Swartz get a pardon? Trump hasn't told us, but here's what we know. Earlier this year, Schwartz paid two lobbyists $960,000 to seek a pardon for him. We know that because the lobbyists filed this disclosure form, which is required by law. So who are these lobbyists? Their names are Jack Berkman and Jacob Wohl. They are far right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons. They're known for elaborate secret scams, including several failed attempts to frame public figures for phony sexual assaults. During the 2020 presidential election, Berkman and Wall ran a voter intimidation campaign targeting black communities. They made tens of thousands of robocalls, spreading disinformation intended to scare people out of voting. They were convicted of felony election fraud charges in Michigan and Ohio. They were also fined over $6 million by federal and state authorities. But now things are looking up for these two con artists. Trump's pardon of Joseph Schwartz has put nearly a million dollars into their pockets. Is this a quid pro quo for their efforts to help Trump win the 2020 election? I don't know. But what I do know is that we now have convicted fraudsters lobbying for pardons on behalf of other other convicted fraudsters. And it seems to be working. This incredible corruption of the pardon power is flying under the radar. You can help raise awareness by sharing this post and by asking your elected reps to demand accountability for presidential pardons.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, Liz. We appreciate that. And I did just that. Shared that post. So, complete corruption. Surprise, surprise. That's what Donald Trump is doing with his pardon power. I want to note, just reading this, that a judge in Georgia has now dismissed the historic racketeering case brought against Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the loss in Georgia to Joe Biden. Remember what? He said he won 11,000 some odd votes. Well, they've thrown that case out. After Fani Willis got pushed out by a bunch of incredibly gross machinations regarding her social life, the new prosecutor came in, moved for dismissal, dismissal granted. And so the corruption just keeps on ticking. Let me tell you some of the other horrendous people that Donald Trump has pardoned. The turkeys are the good guys. But per ABC News, out of Trump's 60 pardons or commutations unrelated to the 1600 criminals he pardoned on January 6, the ones who invaded the Capitol, including more than 100 who've already been, who have already reoffended. About 1 in 5 of these pardons unrelated to January 6 have gone to those who have some sort of financial or political connection to Donald Trump. A short list. The founder of Nikola Electric Vehicle Company, whose name is Trevor Milton, was pardoned by Trump on March 27. He donated nearly 2 million doll dollars toward the president's reelection efforts last year, including $920,000 to the Trump 47 political action committee. According to Federal Election Committee filings, Trump pardoned Milton for his 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors about the potential of his technology. There's a guy named imad Zuberi. On March 28, Trump commuted his sentence. He's a venture capitalist and major political donor who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for violating campaign finance and tax laws and obstructing an investigation into Trump's 2017 inaugural committee. Zuberi has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, but following the 2016 election, he donated at least $800,000 to committees associated with Trump and the Republican Party. A Nevada Republican who was pardoned on April 23, Michael Fiore was awaiting sentencing on federal charges that she. Or, sorry, Michelle Fiore. Sorry about that. She was awaiting charges. Sentencing on charges that she took money earmarked for a statue to honor a slain police officer and instead use the money for personal expenses, including plastic surgery. A longtime Trump supporter, Fiore, during her run for governor of Nevada, ran an ad touting that she was one of the first elected officials to announce that she was endorsing Trump in the lead up to the 2016 election. Of course, there's Rod Blagojevich, who was on the Celebrity Apprentice. Trump pardoned him in February. The former Illinois governor had been sentenced to 14 years in prison before Trump commuted his sentence in 2020. In 2011, Blagojevich was convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including an attempt to sell then senator, then President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat after he won in 2008. Of course, Blagojevich supported Trump in 2020 and in 2024. And of course there was that appearance on Celebrity Appren. There's Michael Grimm, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2015, who pleaded guilty in December 2014 to aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return. He served seven months in jail, a month of house arrest and 200 hours of community service. He was publicly a public supporter of Trump and has served as an on ear personality for the conservative news channel Newsmax. Last September, Grimm was paralyzed after being thrown off a horse during a polo tournament. There's a guy named Devin Archer and a guy named Jason Galanis. They are two former business partners of Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, and both accused Joe Biden's son of improperly leveraging his father's political power to broker overseas business relationships, which wasn't true, but it was something Trump constantly said. Archer, who was granted a full pardon, was sentenced to more than a year in prison for defrauding a Native American tribal entity. In 2022, Trump commuted the 189month sentence of Jason Galanis, who was serving time for his role in multiple fraudulent schemes. Let's go to Todd and Julie Chrisley. He pardoned them on May 28. The couple became famous for their show Chrisley Knows Best and who were sentenced in November 2022 to a combined 19 years in prison on charges including fraud and tax evasion. Todd Chrisley was sentenced to 12 years in prison, 16 months of probation. Well, Julie was ordered to serve seven years in prison and 16 months of probation. Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, appeared to the Trump, appealed to the Trump administration for pardons for her parents, and spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Paul Walak, the president of the president, In April pardoned Mr. Walak, a Florida businessman and nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes last year. Prosecutors argued that Walak withheld more than $10 million from his employees paychecks and use that money to buy luxury items, of course, for himself, including a $2 million yacht. He was sentenced to pay $4 million in restitution and serve 18 months in prison before Trump pardoned him. I could go on. Wolseck's pardon application stated that his mother, Elizabeth Fago, had donated and raised millions of dollars to Trump's presidential campaign. The Times also reported she recently attended a major fundraiser at Mar a Lago, though it was unclear if the donation happened there. Scott Howard Jenkins pardoned him on May 28, one day before he was set to report to federal prison. The former Virginia sheriff had been convicted of federal bribery charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Jenkins lobbied the administration for a pardon, and after he was pardoned, Ed Martin, who is the U.S. attorney in D.C. tweeted, no MAGA left behind, and there's also a GoFundMe for him. Not going to tell you what it is. Brian Kelsey, a former Republican Tennessee state senator, pleaded guilty to an illegal campaign finance fraud scheme. Kelsey repeatedly accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Justice Department. A favorite line of Trump's God used Donald Trump to save me from the weaponized Biden doj, Kelsey wrote on X Twitter, announcing he too had received a pardon. Kelsey told the New York Times in an interview that three Republican members of Tennessee's congressional delegation, Mark Green, who seat is up right now. That's Tennessee 7, where we had the gently the young lady on Ms. Bain, Chuck Fleischman and Andy Ogles all wrote letters in support of a petition for that pardon, and they claimed that he was victim number one of political persecution. Kelsey also donated $15,000 to the Trump 47 committee last year. And that's before he gets to the Diddler and Ghislaine Maxwell. Now Trump also might need to think about some pardons that look forward to the future. Let's talk Cash Patel. Kash Patel, the guy who, you know, he took this very awkward photo. There he is trying to show his support by taking one of those awkward th up photos that all the pardonees have to take. It's like being in a Mafia. You have to take the photo. But this is the guy, Cash Patel, who has not released the Epstein files, even though he said that it's the FBI director who could do it. But he's prosecuting like 19 people in the NBA, all black men, of course, claiming that they're the real Mafia. Meanwhile, he's using federal SWAT teams as personal security for his girlfriend, aspiring country singer Alexis Wilkins, and apparently getting heated when they won't do it. He's partying in Las Vegas with Kristi Noem. Here she is. She is the one who the Justice Department, the injustice department, I should say, has confirmed, authorized that rapid removal of 100 Venezuelan men to send them to that nightmare prison in El Salvador, even though a federal judge explicitly ordered her to keep them in the United States States. That acknowledgement, per ABC News, was revealed in a new filing, and it responds to U.S. district Judge James Boasberg's demand for clarity about who it is that directed the March operation, an effort he has indicated may amount to criminal contempt. The deportations took place shortly after Trump invoked war powers to classify the men as members of a transnational gang, a move that allowed them to be expelled with almost no legal review. So there it is. Trump pardons turkeys who rightly should be able to go free and live their lives. Jokes about naming the turkeys after two Democrats he doesn't like implying, otherwise they'd be slaughtered, I guess, on the same day the two National Guardsmen were shot. And then he's claiming that Biden's pardons were bad while he's pardoning a bunch of people who pay money to his friends, maybe to himself, and who are fraudsters. Got it. Meanwhile, MAGA continues falling apart. White Lives Matter activist Candace Owens and crazy person Alex Jones are now wigging out at the regime. Candace, who's been a little weird lately, you know, she's being sued by the president of France and his wife for lying and claim, or for claiming that the woman is a man. But she's also having, like, a full mental. A full mental breakdown over what she seems to believe is a conspiracy to replace her beloved Charlie Kirk with an imposter. Plus an international conspiracy that she claims to assassinate Charlie Kirk, which is making her look more and more like she thinks she's the real widow, which is weird. And Alex Jones is mad at Trump for dumping Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now, usually I wouldn't play either of them because they're super odd ducks, but I'm going to play them for you. Now. Here's a little bit of them.

[Bari Weiss]

Those of you who think that you are going to replace Charlie Kirk. Okay?

[Joy Reid]

Kings are born.

[Bari Weiss]

You don't just get to depose and tell us that we're going to follow this individual.

[Joy Reid]

Okay?

[Bari Weiss]

I'm one of the Masons of Turning Point usa.

[Joy Reid]

She's amazing.

[Bari Weiss]

You put a shill in Charlie Kirk's chair, in Charlie Kirk's company, and you try to tell us to follow that.

[Joy Reid]

Individual, I will be an enemy of you.

[Bari Weiss]

I don't.

[Joy Reid]

There will.

[Bari Weiss]

There will be nothing that can stop me.

[Lara Trump]

I mean, if God tells me tonight.

[Joy Reid]

I'll make my decision, but I am seriously inches away from.

[Peter Thiel]

Not supporting Trump anymore.

[Joy Reid]

Oh. Because I am not going to watch.

[Lara Trump]

Him commit political suicide.

[Joy Reid]

I don't know. What was it that Carolyn Levitt said? Carolyn?

[Bari Weiss]

They asked Carol Levitt about this at.

[Joy Reid]

The White House, and she said, and I quote, the White House was not aware of that meeting, but the president stands by our ambassador. Well said, Caroline. I mean, what I just seen, I didn't know he was gonna meet with a traitor. But we stand by him anyway if he's meeting for a traitor. And the reason we stand by him is because we're all traders. We are all treasonous. I hate everyone. I hate that this is allowed. I think it's, it's fair for us to hate that it's allowed. And we do have a bunch of treasonous spies. Yeah, we have a bunch of treasonous spies. She, she's, she, she's a weird one, but she's pretty mad. She's fighting for Charlie's memory. Very weird. I maybe get her and Erica in a room, they can just hash that whole thing out. Now, the Inter Maga fighting is definitely wild. You've got Tucker turning on Nick Fuentes again after and calling him anti Semitic. After hosting him on his show and seeming super friendly, Fuentes firing back at him. It's like all a big mess. And the new Smartmatic lawsuit is meanwhile reminding everybody how much Tucker actually hates Donald Trump. According to released text messages, he called Trump a big old piece of shit. Here's the text. An unidentified individual told Tucker Carlson on 9 November 2020 during just after the election that Trump should concede Trump. Carlson. Tucker Carlson replied, oh, I'm finally aware, and referred to Trump as a total piece of shit. But he added, we can't control him, obviously got to do the responsible thing regardless of how he behaves. And I think it's important to remind yourself that Tucker, when he was still at Fox, called Trump a demonic force. A demonic force and said that he hated Trump passionately after the insurrection. So that's moving ahead to January of 2021. He now claims he loves Trump and hates the Republican Party, so he's even fighting with himself. Which brings me to the question of who exactly these various magas are actually serving. Right, because none of them seem to particularly like Trump, but they are serving a bigger cause and a bigger master. Despite all of their many differences, these various parts of the Maga universe, from the pro Israel Ben Shapiro side of the MAGA world, to the anti Israel Tucker, Marjorie Candace side, to the nutso Alex Jones side, and all the conspiracy theories from the neo fascists, the outright Nazi curious types, the Marco Rubios who are basically just neocons who want to invade every country on earth. Like they all collectively desire to put the United States under the control of a white Christian nationalist authoritarian hierarchy led by a CEO King. And if that needs to be Donald Trump, so be it. Because they realize he's the only one who can sell that to the vast majority of Republican voters, so they're willing to take him as their decrepit king because it's by necessity, not because they genuinely like him. Right? And if it means his family gets to grift and get super rich through corruption and crypto sales and crypto scams in the process, all good, fine. Pardon criminals, fine. Deport lawful immigrants who are just minding their business at Home Depot to enrich private prison profiteers and satisfy the emotional needs of white supremacists who vote Republican. Fine, fine, fine. But it is worth thinking about who is actually engineering our autocracy behind the scenes. Right? And what do they believe? What do they want? We've talked a lot on this podcast, and lots of people have talked on their shows about Elon Musk, the white South African. Very weird. Former undocumented immigrant, per his brother. He denies it. Who has hit trillionaire status thanks to a compliant Tesla board, despite cratering sales. But the PayPal mafia doesn't just include Elon. They're like more than a dozen people in it. David Sacks, the White House crypto czar, and also Peter Thiel, who has been spending a lot of time lately talking about, lecturing about, and apparently thinking about the Antichrist. I want you to listen to one of the interviews that he did about a month ago. Take a listen. This. My, my, my very specific question for you, right? Is that. Well, it's. You are you. You're. You're an investor in AI. You're, you know, you're deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on, right? And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to sort of impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would be. Maybe be using the tools that you. That you were. That you were building, right? Like, wouldn't the Antichrist be, like, great? You know, we're not going to have any more technological progress. But I really like what Palantir has done so far. Right. I mean, isn't that, isn't that a concern? Wouldn't that be the, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival? They're all.

[Peter Thiel]

Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, to be clear, I don't think that's what you're doing either. I'm just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.

[Peter Thiel]

Well, but, but again, there, there are these different gradations of, of this we can describe.

[Joy Reid]

But.

[Peter Thiel]

Is, is this so preposterous, what I've just told you, as a broad account of the stagnation that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to Peace and Safetyism? This is 1 Thessalonians 5:3. The slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety. And we've submitted.

[Joy Reid]

That's the guy who made and heavily advises J.D. vance, the Vice president. Here he is pooh, poohing the idea of Good Samaritanism because apparently it will bring on the Antichrist.

[Peter Thiel]

We have the mechanisms that would make world government a gigantic global surveillance state is plausible. That seems plausible too. And then I think again, to come back to the soloviev Benson plot hole, on its own, they both seem not that desirable. Why would we have a crazy surveillance state? Why would we, you know, why would we do this? But if you're scared enough, if you're scared enough of these things, that's the weapon. And this is sort of where, you know, my speculative thesis is that if the Antichrist were to come to power, it would be by talking about Armageddon all the time. Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, would talk about Armageddon all the time.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

He'd scare people and then offer to save them.

[Peter Thiel]

Yes, it's the first Thessalonians 5:3. The slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety. And so. Which is nothing wrong with peace and safety, but you have to sort of imagine that it resonates very differently in a world where the stakes are so absolute, where the stakes are so extreme, where the, you know, the alternative to peace and safety is, you know, Armageddon and the destruction of all things. And then that's where.

[Joy Reid]

And so who talks about Armageddon and peace and safety all the time? Well, you're talking about Armageddon all the time. Peter Thiel and Donald Trump is talking about peace and safety all the time. But let's move on to A11. This is him giving his. One of his suspects for who the Antichrist might be.

[Peter Thiel]

There's a question, how do we articulate some of these existential risks, some of the challenges we have? And they're all framed as sort of runaway dystopian science text. There's a risk of nuclear war, there's a risk of environmental disaster. But I always think that if we're going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one world totalitarian state. I've been wondering whether that's a going from the frying pan into the fire. And so the atheist philosophical framing is one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question is Antichrist or Armageddon? I think we have an answer to this plot hole the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon non stop. You talk about existential risk nonstop. And this is what you need to regulate. It's the opposite of the picture of in science from the 17th, 18th century where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that. The thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is we need to stop science in our world. It's far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.

[Joy Reid]

Very quickly, Jason, we're going to skip. Can we, can we show a 14 really quick? I just want to show a 14. This is a still bit might be devil him deserve there. I just want to just note that Donald Trump calls himself the president of Peace. Let's take a quick ad break. When we come back, we have a really great guest on the other side, but we want to acquaint you with one of our really cool new sponsors. So we're gonna take a quick ad break. The Joy Reid show is brought to you by Quince. As the air turns crisp and the holidays draw near, comfort becomes the greatest gift of all. Quince delivers layers that last. Sweaters, outerwear, and everyday essentials that feel luxurious, look timeless and make holiday dressing and gifting effortless. Quince has it all. $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters made for everyday wear. Denim that never goes out of style. Silk tops and skirts that add polish and down underwear. Built to take on the season. Perfect for gifting or upgrading your own wardrobe. Honestly, Quint's Italian wool coats are at the top of my list. The cuts feel designer and the quality feels high end, just like the highest end brands, but without the high end markup. By working directly with ethical top tier factories, Quince skips the middlemen and offers prices 50% less than similar brands. And you know, in this season where we're really guarding where we spend our money, it's so important to do business with companies that care. So which quince pieces have become your Go to Layers for the holiday season. Quince has something for everyone on your list. What pieces are you loving most right now, whether for gifting or for yourself? Be sure to tag me in your comments and let me know what you love. So step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished and last from Quints perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to quints.com joyread for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too, because we Love Canada. That's Q-U I N C E.com joyread to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com joyread Joining me now is independent documentary producer and YouTube creator Philip D'. Amico. He runs a really great YouTube channel called Volksgeist, where recently the feature story was Peter Thiel. Philip, welcome. I watched your Peter Thiel piece and immediately emailed you. It was so good. Congratulations.

[Philip D'Amico]

It's true. I think it was Saturday at 8pm and I was thinking, wow, Joy Reid's watching YouTube right now and I'm on my email. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here.

[Joy Reid]

I'm a nerd, my friend. I'm literally watching news related content all the time. Yeah, and your piece was excellent. So I kind of went through and played some of the excerpts of interviews that he's done in the midst of this sort of rolling set of talks that he's giving on the Antichrist. You went into a lot of Peter Thiel's family history that maybe can help us understand him more. Talk about the movement of his family from Germany to the US To South Africa, how that happened.

[Philip D'Amico]

Yeah, so in West Germany in the late 60s, there was a big student movement around getting former Nazis out of West German government, and it was a pretty bloody moment. Some college kids died. There was a lot of military action against them, but it was ultimately pretty successful in my understanding. They did route out a lot of people who were involved in the Nazi party 20 years earlier. And this was right around the same time that Peter Thiel's family left and they went to Ohio for a year. But after that they went to South Africa. They went to what was it called back then? Southwest Africa, which is Namibia now. And they lived in a town called Swakopmond, which is pretty well documented as being a huge Nazi outpost. If you go and Google Swakopman, the first result is a New York Times article Where I think the journalist went to a gas station outside of town and was greeted by the employee with Heil Hitler. And that was where Peter Thiel grew up. That was where his parents lived for the first 13 years of his life. I believe his father was working there on a uranium mine that sold enriched uranium to China and Iran or something like that. It's a pretty interesting backstory, and I think that's probably where he got a lot of his understanding of power and authority and probably right and wrong in general. Probably the idea that right or that might makes right, I believe that's where he got that, and that's kind of what directs him to this day.

[Joy Reid]

How did he meet up with Elon Musk and tell us the origins of the PayPal mafia?

[Philip D'Amico]

So the PayPal mafia is how Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, as well as a lot of other people, first made money back during the dot com boom. There were a lot of crappy companies that really didn't have good products, but PayPal was one that was actually like quite good and quite innovative. And they kind of combined Elon Musk's bank website with Peter Thiel's, what was it called, the pen, the little handheld devices from the late 90s. So they combined these two things that they had and made PayPal. They ended up selling it for $2 billion. So Elon Musk got a bunch of money. Peter Thiel got a bunch of money. They then had some of their other co founders, founded LinkedIn, YouTube, I believe, Reddit as well. So a lot of the modern Internet and tools that we still use 25 years later were an offshoot of PayPal, which they worked on together in the early 2000s.

[Joy Reid]

And to be clear, I mean, the thing is, I think people think of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk and those guys as all being like these really genius coders and investors. They're really not. I mean, Peter Thiel is an investor. Like, you know, he was a philosophy major. He. He was the guy who would provide funding. He didn't invent any of these things. And to your point, this original, I think, was in the Palm Pilot. It was a way to just send money between Palm Pilots. And they realized they could max this out and make it a payment system for everything. What was interesting in your documentary is you talk about the ways that that and Palantir after 9 11, they take kind of a sinister turn, right?

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Yeah.

[Philip D'Amico]

I mean, so with PayPal, I think we all know that people get phishing emails and PayPal was on the front lines of that 20. So they had a lot of algorithms to help get ahead of their users getting scammed. And I guess probably a lot of that was matching patterns of how people use the computer, where they use the computer. And they basically built a tracking system to tell when their users were using the product and how they were using it and where. And after 9 11, it seems to be the case that Peter Thiel had the idea that he could just apply those algorithms to anyone on any device and track people everywhere, all over the world. And so they founded Palantir with the intention of doing that. They started pretty small. They started in. They started deploying it in local municipal police departments around the US but within five or six years they had sold the software to military agencies in all sorts of countries around the western world.

[Joy Reid]

And so one of their biggest, if not their biggest client is the CIA. Right. The FBI, I mean like law enforcement and also the sort of spy agencies. The US are using this to track people.

[Philip D'Amico]

Yeah. I think there's a lot of anti surveillance sentiment right now. And the root of that is Palantir. And pretty much every three letter agency in the world is using it. They're probably using it to watch you and I and probably a lot of people who are watching this right now. I even have some content creator friends who have been visited by Homeland Security just to make sure that their content is on the up and up. And I'm sure that they're being tracked by Palantir every day.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And so we get from there to this obsession with the Antichrist, like in the little thumbnail for this we use the, the, the kind of sort of hilarious version of it, the sort of cartoon version of Peter Thiel, which is probably the only way a lot of people even really kind of know who he is. Right. But he seems to be obsessed with this idea that the Antichrist would not be anyone like him. Like it would definitely not be a tech creator. Like. Right. Like in the Terminator, he's really seems to be scared of that notion, by the way. Sidebar. It is weird that in the Terminator it's like a black guy that turns out to be the inventor of the Terminator hand. And the guy who's the CEO of Palantir is a black guy. It just, it's too much for me. But he seems to really want to chase people away from the idea that mass surveillance is what the Antichrist would be and toward it being, you know, Greta Thunberg, people who are pro environmental, people who are Pro immigration, basically any kindness toward minorities or taxation of the rich, that's the Antichrist, right?

[Philip D'Amico]

I mean, in a lot of my research about Peter Thiel, I kept getting this feeling that I was just thinking, wow, he's not very smart. There are so many contradictions in his ideology. And it was a tough thing to approach because a lot of his discussions with the Antichrist are come from a basis of him identifying a lot of the problems that we have today in society, a lot of the existential threats. And I found myself agreeing on what the existential threats were. We have a lot of problems. There are a lot of things we need to solve in this world to keep civilization strong. But he always comes back to this idea that he's the one who should be given unlimited power to fix it. But it's very contradictory. I remember posting, hey guys, I'm going to make a video about a gay Nazi. And people said, hey, why are you saying gauge pejoratively? And I said, I'm not saying it pejoratively. I'm saying it ironically because he's a gay Nazi. Well, what did the Nazi party do to gay people? Uh, we're not, we're not, you know, he's not a, an intellectual strongman here on that basis alone. And I think that his Antichrist obsession is very similar. Um, it seems to be that he's just really trying to find a strange way of justifying his own desire for just more money, more power, more control. I think when you have that much money, there's really no way to spend it all. And so it becomes this pathological need to just accumulate more and more, even if you're willing to shake the basis of our civilization for everybody just to get it done.

[Joy Reid]

And he seems terrified of being taxed and regulated like he feel. He seems to think that taxation and, you know, him not being able to hoard unlimited wealth, that is the key to bringing on the Antichrist to the point where. Let me play this for you. This is a 15. This is him. A very brief comment that he made about the previous pope.

[Peter Thiel]

Pope Francis, I'm not Catholic like you. And I always have a two word rebuttal of Roman Catholicism to all my conservative Catholic friends. It's just Pope Francis and Pope Francis.

[Joy Reid]

That is his rebuttal about Roman Catholicism. And I will note that J.D. vance, who he created, is a Roman Catholic. He's a converted Catholic. And I was reading today on a substack called Letters From Leo that J.D. vance is at it again with the current Pope Pope Leo, and at least according to letters from Leo, telling J.D. vance he shouldn't listen to Pope Leo, who, like Pope Francis, is very, very out front on pro immigrant respecting the dignity of immigrants and on believing in climate change. And he's basically telling J.D. vance, don't listen to him talk about his influence over J.D. vance. And would J.D. vance listen to this? It's tough.

[Philip D'Amico]

It's interesting. I was raised Catholic, and I've seen that in the last couple of years, a lot of people have started to try and weaponize Catholicism for their own political means, especially ultra far right people have tried to really influence the Catholic community. And I think that J.D. vance in general is. It's interesting that he's doing that because it's emblematic of his career at large. He seems to be someone who wants power by any means necessary, judging by how many times he's switched positions and the influence that Peter Thiel had over him as well. It was reading what J.D. vance said about Trump before running for senator in Ohio and then seeing how quickly he changed in the span of a year is incredible. And as someone who wasn't necessarily paying that much attention, I would have thought that it happened on a much larger timescale. But he only. He only served half a term a senator in Ohio, isn't that correct?

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Philip D'Amico]

So he's really just the definition of a complete and total sellout. I mean, I admire it because I'm not that good of an actor. I wouldn't be able to do that if I wanted to.

[Joy Reid]

But it is.

[Philip D'Amico]

It's pretty disgusting to watch.

[Joy Reid]

And the thing about it is that J.D. vance, as you point out in this documentary, which I'm gonna. I'm gonna link to it, by the way y', all, in the chat, so that you guys can watch the whole thing after this show, is that you make it very clear. I mean, J.D. vance would not exist as a public figure were it not for Peter Thiel. He essentially created the JD Vance that we know now. He took this guy who was like, I'm Mr. Appalachian, turned him into whatever he is now.

[Philip D'Amico]

Yeah, he was Mr. Appalachia. He wrote the book, sympathizing with people, explaining the Trump phenomenon from the working class perspective. But right after that, Peter Thiel gets him a job working in Silicon Valley, he does a whole bunch of nothing, makes millions of dollars, and then mysteriously pops up as a Trump supporter when he was anything but that for five or six years beforehand. It's pretty fascinating to see, and I'm wondering how that's going to affect if he goes for the presidential seat in a couple years.

[Joy Reid]

It is a question I'm going to come back to in a minute, but I want to just read one other thing and see if this surprises you. You didn't get into this aspect of it in your documentary, but maybe if you do a part two, it might be worth exploring. There's an email from between Ehud Barak, the former prime Minister of Israel, and Jeffrey Epstein, the late Jeffrey Epstein, that's dated April 28, 2014, in which he says, jeff, this is Ehud Barak talking to Epstein. Jeff, thanks. Peter Thiel could be very interesting, but I'm flying to Europe next time. He's responding to Jeffrey Epstein saying, I have Peter thiel on the 19th in New York, if you like, as well as the former president of the Maldives. And this is essentially a dinner invitation, I guess, that he's including Ehud Barak in where he seems to be connected to Peter Thiel. Would it surprise you if Peter Thiel had been connected in some way to Jeffrey Epstein? And I'm not accusing him of doing anything illegal, but that they were connected?

[Philip D'Amico]

No, I'm sure they were. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein, from all the reports I've read, made it his business to know everyone he could, even though he put a lot of people off by also being not that smart and not that interesting and not having too much to contribute. And I'd love to be a fly on the wall in these conversations, so I wouldn't be surprised at all.

[Joy Reid]

Let's talk about sort of what Peter Thiel seems to want. When you did doing all this research, did you get a sense of what it is at the end of the day that he wants America to look like?

[Philip D'Amico]

Well, I think I got an interesting perspective after I put out the video. I got a lot of comments and emails from people threatening me. And I got the sense that he has a lot of fans. I think he has a lot of people who are projecting their own gripes with reality onto whatever he's saying. I think probably what he wants is very little regulation, very little taxation. But it was more interesting to me how people applied their own struggles to what he's saying, because clearly your average YouTube commenter isn't super concerned with the progressive tax rate on the top 1% of people in America. That doesn't really affect them and it never will. But it's interesting how someone like Thiel is able to frame his greed in a way that makes other people feel like it somehow applies to them. And I really do Wonder how far we'll go with this. Are we truly willing to sell out the democratic foundation of our country for a couple of guys who seem ultimately antisocial and rather stupid? It's hard to tell what he wants, but I think that's probably just because he doesn't really know. I'm guessing he's mainly interested in making more money and maybe buying a couple more senators. I don't think it really goes much deeper than that, because if it did, he probably would have invented something really cool by now. Although even in his early career or the last 30 years he's had of investing in founding companies, he hasn't. I meant to say this earlier, but the more research I did on his early work with PayPal, the more it kind of reminded me of the bitcoin craze, where I think that time in tech, there were a lot of people founding companies that had no real product and didn't make money. And Peter Thiel was one of those guys who got super lucky because it was a good enough concept, although he didn't do any of the work on it. The same as you hear about bitcoin billionaires who live on a yacht in Miami despite doing, what, mining a couple of coins on their computer five years ago. I think it's a similar thing where he's just found himself in this position and he's in the grips of. Of greed. And it's a. It's a really crazy cautionary tale that hopefully doesn't go far enough where we all suffer from it.

[Joy Reid]

I. I look forward to the day when Eric Trump is styling himself as some sort of a super genius as well, because they've got now like a bitcoin farm in Texas where I guess he's going to start to believe suddenly that he's a tech genius as well as a, as a Catholic, yourself and myself as a former Catholic, switch Methodist when I was a kid. But this set, this obsession with the Antichrist. Do you think it's genuine or do you think that Thiel is simply trying to manipulate religious people and throw them off his own scent?

[Philip D'Amico]

It's definitely manipulative. I'm worried if it isn't. I really, I do fear the weaponization of the Catholic Church by conservatives in the last couple of years. I am seeing a lot of friends being affected by that and it's pretty scary.

[Joy Reid]

Philip d', Amico, your piece is excellent. The site is called Volksgeist. We're going to link everyone to it so people can follow you and follow all the stuff you're doing. Thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations. You did an excellent job. What's the next thing you're going to work on?

[Philip D'Amico]

Right now I'm working on a very long and very difficult video about the history of OpenAI. Hopefully it lives up to the stuff I've done in the past. Past.

[Joy Reid]

Well, when you're done, when you're done with it, holler at me. We'd love for you to come back and talk about it.

[Philip D'Amico]

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you very much. Philip d', Amico, everybody. That was fascinating. And the reality is the Antichrist as described in the Bible is somebody who will fool the world, believing that he's their savior and will instead lead them to destruction. That could describe a lot of things. I don't think it describes Greta Thunberg. It could describe Donald Trump. It could describe Elon Musk. It could describe Peter Thiel. I don't think that this narrative is going to go where Peter Thiel thinks it is. I mean, the idea that we have mass surveillance that is going to be able to know how much money's in your pocket by flying a drone over your head. To be able to read the amount of dollars literally in your wallet inside your home. The idea that they can know every transaction that you do financially, every time you shop, everything you've bought, what color sneakers you bought so that they can micro target you and serve you up to corporations so that you simply become the product and not the customer. The idea that you can be tracked 247 and that the people in charge of it. You heard those clips of Peter Thiel. He doesn't sound like he's all there. He certainly doesn't sound that bright. And when you hear Elon Musk talk, he doesn't sound that bright either. These are people who style themselves as geniuses. And we're supposed to agree that they're geniuses because of what their demographics, because they're rich. Is there rich white guys who are supposed to just assume they're geniuses? Geniuses based on what? Neither of them invented anything. They just had a lot of money. Elon Musk bought into Tesla. He didn't invent Teslas. It was two other guys, two other actual engineers. But he had the money to be able to take the company over. Remember, one of the first early things that Elon Musk created was something. It was actually called X. Didn't work. So now he's just relabeled something someone else created, namely Twitter and called that X. And he just slapped the label that he wanted for his failed original invention onto a more successful thing and then of course ruined it and run it into the ground. These people don't like, create incredible things that make the world better. They take things that already exist and make them worse. Teslas are worse now than when Elon Musk took them over. The original Teslas were actually great cars. A lot of liberals bought them. Then he drove the company into the ground and still managed to get the board to promise him a trillion dollars if they sold more. How's he going to sell more? Well, because he's probably going to get federal contracts to buy Teslas to use as federal vehicles. He's also promising this robot that they haven't even sold any of yet that's supposed to make the company profitable. And on that promise, he gets a trillion dollars. Well, who's gonna buy these robots? Probably the federal government, cuz they're all fooled up with Elon Musk. Let's look at A18 if we can throw that up. Jason, the Trump administration is buying private firms. They're actually taking your money and pumping it into private firms. Well, how Xi Jinping communist China of you. That isn't normal capitalism. That is the federal government becoming a part owner of companies that they say are companies that act in our somehow national security interest. So the administration, the regime is going to own parts of those companies. I'm sorry, why? That doesn't sound like even capitalism. That is a sort of crony gangster capitalism that's more at home in China or Russia than here. They're warping what our country is and then using this idea that they have to do it to stop the Antichrist, that they have to do it. They have to do this to you. They have to do mass immigration and mass detention. No, not, not because private prison companies paid them campaign money and now want their money back by being able to detain a lot of brown people and that they can't do it to anyone but brown and black people because white people wouldn't accept it. So they've got to detain a lot of black and brown people and put them in as sort of the food for these private prisoners. It's not because of that. It's because you have to stop the Antichrist. You have to stop the evils of mass migration, the evils of, of an open border. An open border is the thing. You have to stop it. So we have to do these cruelties. We have to bust into people's Homes and drag the lady who sells arepas on the corner out and throw them into. Into a doomed detention or ship them off to el Salvador for 25,000 pop. We have to do that because they make this religious argument that we must do it, because if we don't do it, you're going to get got by the Antichrist. If the Antichrist is empathy, the Antichrist is kindness. The Antichrist is empathy toward trans people. That's Antichrist behavior. Anything that is, anything that opposes the idea of billionaires reaping unlimited wealth with zero taxation and no regulation, anything that stops that, that's the Antichrist. That's what Peter Thiel is selling. That's what they're all selling. They're all selling it under the guise of this new weird religion that worships tech overlords. And they all agree. They don't agree on a lot. They don't agree on Israel. They don't agree on certain. Except for they love the Israel part. That's colonization, right? Religious based ethno nationalistic colonization. They definitely like that. They like that about Israel. That it's an ethno state, a religious ethno state, and that it's, you know, they like that part and they like the colonization part. That part's cool. But they don't like foreign. They don't like giving money to foreign countries. That. So they differ on that. But they don't disagree on the colonization piece. You have to really pay attention to what these people are doing and saying. Because while they disagree with each other and they fight with each other on the small things, on the big thing, they agree. They want the country to be run by a white Christian nationalist autocracy because that means a small number of people get really, really rich and become trillionaires. And everyone else is fodder and food. Everyone else is meat. They all agree on that. They all agree on this dark enlightenment bullshit. That this small group of elite technocrats should run the country because somehow they're smarter than everyone else. Sorry. If you all are so superior, why does Twitter keep going down? How come all of your grand tech creations half the time don't even work? Why do they have outages? They're not perfect. If you guys are so smart, why did you create stuff with so many glitches? Why did Elon Musk get busted with foreigners pretending to be Americans on his platform? They're really not that smart. They're just really, really rich. And really, could it be that they are human like everybody else? Exactly. They're just people, but they want us to believe that they are Superman. But Superman was not human. Superman was from another planet. Superman, when he dressed as a human, was weak and cowardly, as they point out in Kill Bill. Superman wasn't a person, certainly wasn't an American. He was from Krypton. None of these people are Superman. They're just regular humans from the Earth. And so they're not superior. He's not even real anyway. And he's not even real. Even if he was real, he wouldn't be from here and he would be an alien who'd probably get detained by ice. So that's where we are. We are being run by a group of people who are warping and using religion as a crutch in order to get you to go along with the idea that we're simply going to have overlords, lords and serfs. That's what they all agree on. Trump wants to be a lord. You're a serf. The Trump family, Lara Trump cackling and laughing and doing all her, you know, she's cackling her way to the bank and doing a weird music career. They get to do that. They're just playing around. She's like the son of the leader of Equatorial guinea who thinks he's a rapper. That's Lara Trump. I'm waiting for her to come out with a hip hop album that's probably imminent. And they'll all, you know, all the billionaires and all the billionaire celebrities will all go to parties and pat her on the back and tell her she's brilliant and a genius, and then she'll start thinking she's a genius. I'm sure Eric Trump was like the dumbest person in the Trump family. Probably thinks he's a genius because now he's got a, you know, he's got his crypto farm in Texas. So he probably is now styling himself as the next genius that we're all supposed to agree is super smart. And we know he's stupid. We've seen Donald Trump Jr. Talk. Are we supposed to now think he's smart, too? Are they all. No, none of them are smart. None of them are intelligent. And to the point where they have to remove all of the smart women, gays, blacks and brown people out of the places where they are because they're all. Pete Hegseth. They're all. They're not superior. They're the opposite of that. These are substandard minds and substandard intellect to. The only way that they can claim superiority is to get rid of the superior people and put all mediocre people all in place so that they're all basically equal. Someone in the chat asking, did anyone see Laura on Bill Maher? Oh, I've got a clip of that coming up in hour two, and that's coming up in two minutes. We've got. Oh, we've got a little clip. I didn't want to do too much because, you know, I've already played a lot of Trump for you guys and it hurts my head. It gives me a headache. Your head? Everyone's head and can't spell apartheid, said somebody in the chat. Yeah, because in apartheid, mediocre people who were European could lord it over even the most brilliant African, black, African, because they had the guns. And so they could all pretend that they were all super superior. They weren't superior. They just had guns. The same way the indigenous Americans, they weren't inferior to the Europeans. They just didn't have any guns. And so since they didn't have any guns, they lost and they lost the country. Same with Palestinians. Nothing wrong with their intellects or their ability or their sense of civilization. They just don't have Western European weaponry, whereas the immigrants from Europe had them. It was just like a natural thing of people who were Jewish in that region to dominate the other side. The Mizrahi would have done it, but they didn't because they didn't have the guns either. It was when the Europeans came over and they were like, we got this. That's how that happens. And colonialism always does it. Claiming they're doing it in the name of God. That isn't new. That's why that doesn't move me at all. I've got a quote from the chat. Joseph Chamberlain, 3681, throws five in the till. Thank you very much for that. And says Maga's popularity is AstroTurf. When Elon showed where all the accounts were located, it became incredibly clear. Amen. Amen. Amen. They have to pretend that they're popular because what they do is hated by everyone. There's a Pew poll out right now showing a majority of Latinos really dislike Donald Trump. He's super unpopular with Latinos. That Latino was paper thin. It was literally based on money and finance. And they thought he was going to get him some coins. He didn't. They hate him. Again, young men turning on Trump big time because they can't afford anything. Welcome to hour two of the Joy Reid show. I want to remind you guys, again, we will not have a show on Friday, we are joining the Black Friday boycotts. Taking the whole day off, going to the movies, throw in the chat. What movie you think we should see? I feel like we should see. What is the movie about? The wizard of Oz. What's the name of the movie about Dorothy and the Wizard? I want to see that. The pre, the prequel to wizard of Oz. I want to see that. Wicked. I want to see that. I think that should be the what we see. But you guys could throw in the, in the chat. What movies you think we should see? Support a local theater. They're having a really hard time.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

I think I might stay home because.

[Joy Reid]

I don't want to support the movie theaters either. Well, the movie theaters aren't involved in the boycotts, so the movie. Well, that's true. That's true. I think you got to think about it. Everybody has to do it their own way. But one thing I won't be doing is shopping on Black Friday. That is not something I'm going to be doing. And on Saturday we're going to do a Small Business Saturday timed and themed subathon. We're calling it. Our son who's coming from California said don't call it a subscribe a thon mom sound like auntie say subathon. We're going to say Subathon. And I'm going to be jumping on all my different social media so keep your phone handy. I'm going to be on my TikTok. I'm going to be on Instagram. We're going to do sub stack. We're going to even. I'm going to try Twitch. I'm going to see but you know, I'm scared a little bit of Twitch. But we're going to do these at various times throughout the day. I'm going to take a lot of breaks also on Saturday because we're just hanging out with the fam doing fun stuff. But I want to also do two hours here from noon to 2pm and on that one we're going to have on some really great folks that can talk about small business. Saturday, we want you guys to think of some alternative to spending your money with the big boys. Forget Target, we're already boycotting them. Forget Home Depot. They're really hurting financially by the way, because the boycotts are starting to bite. Because the only thing these billionaires understand is money. They do not understand morality. You can't quote morality to them. They have no empathy. You can't quote real Christianity to them. You can't quote real religion to them. Real Judaism, real Christianity, real Buddhism. You name the religion. They don't believe in that. They believe in money. They worship money. And so the only way you can talk to them and speak to them is in terms of money. So if you really want to impact maga, you've got to hit them in the pocketbook. Look at what ABC did when people took away those ESPN subscriptions. They were like, oh, put Jimmy Kimmel back on. They do not respond to moral arguments. They only respond to cash money. That's what Dr. King understood. In the end, it's why they killed him. Because he was finally saying, you know what? I'm not going to try to give you all morality anymore. We put the young kids in their Sunday best and you fire hosed them. Now you need to talk cash to us. Speak to me. Nice. Talk to me nice. Talk to me with money. Give us jobs, give us money. And if you don't, we won't spend money with you. That's the only thing they understand. Somebody said why y' all are scared of Twitch? We don't know because Twitch, I've heard, is a little bit. It's spice. It's spice, but it might not be the spice I like. I like. I like spice. Like, I like the spicy whites. I like spicy. I like a certain kind of spice or like the spice in the food. We like that. Now, if you're interested in bonding around holding the mega economy accountable, you definitely want to come chat with me. We're going to just make it an ama. We're going to talk to you, talk to a couple friends. So it's going to be great because we're going to recruit everyone over to Team tjrs. So we're still trying to climb. Thank you for our 360 plus thousand subscribers. We appreciate it. Big ups, by the way to Don Lemon, who hit his million. Don Lemon hit his million. Big up to the Don Lemon Show. I know we have a lot of Lemon heads who hang out here in the chat. So big up to the Lemonheads. Y' all hit 1 million. We're super, super proud. Let's go on to hour two of the show. Let me play you guys. This is Bari Weiss, the woman who's now in charge of CBS News, which is terrifying to me. Here she is talking about the kind of voices she wants to elevate in her new role.

[Bari Weiss]

All of us see the moment that we're in and all of us see that, the choices that it feels like we have sometimes, which is Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson. Or Nick Fuentes and, you know, Andrew Tate. The kind of people that are rising in the podcast chart. Those don't actually represent our values. And I don't think that they represent the values and the worldview of the vast majority of Americans. And so this is an opportunity to speak for the 75%, for the people that are on the center left and the center right that still believe in equality of opportunity, that still believe passionately in the American project, that still believe in all of the things that everyone in this room believes in, which is liberty and freedom and individual responsibility. And in the most basic level, the right to know what is actually going on in the world. Not the world as propagandists and ideologues imagine it to be, but what's actually going on in the world and in your community so you can make decisions about where to send your kids to school, about where to live and about how to vote. That used to just be normal. And the goal of what we're trying to do at CBS is to get back to that normalcy. And I feel incredibly energized and enthusiastic because I think that is where the vast majority of Americans actually are.

[Philip D'Amico]

Well.

[Peter Thiel]

So that articulation of that set.

[Philip D'Amico]

Of goals to speak into the lives.

[Joy Reid]

Of the 75%, how are you going to do that? What's your strategy for success?

[Bari Weiss]

So I think one of the problems is a lot of people have tried to do something centrist news. I know this because I am like the target audience for those things. And the reason that they have all failed is it's like trying to force feed spinach down someone's throat. Right. It's felt very like tofu oatmeal. It's like centrist news is choosing the midpoint between every single topic. It's felt like an absence of charisma and identity. And I, you know, as nostalgic as people might be for an era in which 30 million Americans every night watch Walter Cronkite and saw him as the voice of truth. And I understand why they're nostalgic for that. We're never, we're not going back to that. So how do you build trust in a moment of unbelievably low trust in all of our public institutions, especially the mainstream press? I don't think it's by pretending like we can go back to having a view from nowhere. I think it's about who's in the room. Right. I think it's about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40 yard lines of Acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture. I don't mean that in like a censorious, gatekeeping way. I mean having people that are ex, that are clearly, identifiably on the center left and on the center right in conversation with each other. And we've been doing so much of this at the Free Press. I was in, where was I? Chicago last week. I think I've lost all track of time where Dana Lash, former spokeswoman from the nra, was debating Alan Dershowitz on guns. Now, these are people that have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment and yet showing that they can have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other. At the end of the day, we think it's important. And so it's, for me, it's always about the curation, like who's in the room. How are you showing centrist news not as the absence of disagreement and the absence of charisma, but explain explicitly charismatic and disagreeable and yet doing it in good faith. And the other, the other way you do it, you do it is, you know, by, by being really honest with your audience. Like.

[Joy Reid]

I, I. Okay, let me, let me just unpack here a little bit. She says she wants to redraw the 40 yard lines of what acceptable debate is. Dana Lash and Alan Dershowitz are the scintillating, riveting voices she thinks are what is needed. Seriously? You mean Alan Dershowitz, the guy who repped Jeffrey Epstein and wrote a piece about lowering the age of sexual consent? That guy? And Dana Lesh, the former NRA spokesperson? That's the center left and center right. Are you serious? What do all these people have in common? I'm just going to guess. What they have in common is that they are ardently pro Israel. And that is what she believes is acceptable. That's what's in the 40 yard lines of acceptable debate. What's not in the 40 yard lines of acceptable debate is saying that Palestine should be a state and that Palestinians deserve to not be bombed into smithereens using American bombs weighing 2,000 pounds. That's not acceptable because CBS is morphing into a place where you can't get real news about the fact that Israel's actually still bombing Gaza. That's not going to be in her 40 yard lines of acceptable debate because what they're doing is there is this concerted effort of conservatives. She calls herself a centrist. Seriously, ma', am, you're not a centrist. You booted out of the New York Times because people Couldn't stand you over there, but you were definitely not a centrist. She's talking about people who care about equality of opportunity. She's vehemently anti diversity. This is not, this is sort of sane washing a policy that essentially says we will not tolerate criticism of Israel in American media anymore. It is doing the work of Benjamin Netanyahu who does not want American news programs to honestly cover what he and his far right insane coalition are doing in Israel, Palestine. They do not want that covered. They think American TV has been taken over by Wokeism because people are too empathetic toward Palestinians. The polls show even MAGA people are more sympathetic toward Palestinians than toward their persecutors and they want it gone. They want the protests to stop. They want the young people of all races and religions to stop protesting Israel. They want to silence dissent against that colonial enterprise, against that clearly ethnostate religious ethno state enterprise. And they want it dead. And they have taken over systematically, company by company by company, the places where those voices existed and they're shutting them down. That's what she's doing. And so her lines of acceptable debate. Yeah, go ahead and debate on guns. Go ahead and debate, you know, the NRA lady debating with the lower consent guy, that's acceptable to me. But talking about Palestinians as humans, not acceptable. Unacceptable. Let's get another headline in here. It turns out that Donald Trump is still calling reporters ugly. He called another reporter ugly yet again and the White House is standing up for it. This reporter wrote a story Donald Trump didn't like and he called her ugly on the inside and out. And so apparently the White House says, oh, he's just, he's just not politically correct. There's nothing wrong with calling this reporter ugly. Let me read a little bit of the story. The White House is doubling down on support for Donald Trump after he attacked a female reporter's appearance because she co wrote a story about signs of fatigue in the 79 year old president. On Wednesday, November 26, Donald Trump, who's 79, took to his social media truth social to rant about a story written by New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers that she worked on about how his age is playing into his second presidential term. He didn't like that. So he called her ugly inside and out after calling, after telling a reporter, shut up piggy. Maybe Lara Trump can help. This is B3. Here's Lara Trump attempting to play down the whole shut up piggy thing when she did this interview on Bill Maher. Jason, let me know when you have it, it is B things like call a woman piggy. Do we know that happened?

[Lara Trump]

I saw it on tape.

[Joy Reid]

Or did he say McGee? What is the evil laugh about Lara? What is wrong with you? What a weird, weird. Also her singing, I won't even play it on here because it's probably a copyright issue. But horrible, horrible. She also in that same interview tried to justify the Trump family enriching themselves off of the presidency and crypto, saying they have to do it. They were unbanked, they were debanked. You know why y' all were debanked when banks wouldn't do business with you? Number one, you don't pay back your loans. And number two, Letitia James busted your so called charity for defrauding it's investors and the people in New York. So the fraud thing is why no Trump can have a charitable organization in the state of New York. They're calling that debanking and say, well, now we're going to have crypto. And Trump used to call crypto a scam, but it's not a scam anymore, apparently. Another headline, the FBI apparently spied on a Signal group, a group chat of immigration activists. Now this one is alarming a lot of people who have signal, but it appears that the way that they did it is that they might have had a spy in the group chat because they would have had to have someone in the group chat who could screenshot what the folks in this group chat were doing who were trying to protect people from immigration raids. So be careful with your group chats because the government is attempting very aggressively to get into those group chats. That's a scary story. Meanwhile, Carolyn Levitt, mean older man loving Barbie, her own family has been caught up in the madness of ice. Her brother is married to a Latina who has now been taken into ICE custody. Apparently she and Caroline's brother have a very young child and she was taken into custody. And Caroline Levitt, to my knowledge, has not yet commented on this. But let's see if when it's your own people, your own family member, there's a little bit more empathy because it appears now that the ICE raids have hit inside the house. Let me read a little bit of this story on msn.com that kind of described a little bit of what is going on. The mother of White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt's nephew has reportedly been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the Daily Beast, Bruna Ferreira, the mother of Levitt's 11 year old nephew, is currently in ICE custody in Louisiana and faces deportation to Brazil. Ferrero was previously engaged to Michael Levitt, Caroline's brother, who resides in New Hampshire. The couple reportedly had a son together before their separation. According to a GoFundMe page set up for by Ferreira's sister, Graciela dos Santos Rodriguez, their son is named Michael Levitt Jr. So let's see if there's a little bit more compassion when it's actually your own people. Let's take another quick ad break. The Joy Reid show is brought to you by MSI Reproductive Choices. They are a nonprofit that provides reproductive health care in 36 countries. Now, I've been learning a lot about their work, and you know what really hit me? In sub Saharan Africa, 4 million teenage girls drop out of school every year because they get pregnant. Now, let's just keep it real. Teens everywhere are going to have sex. It's human nature. But in too many places, these young girls do not have access to birth control. No options, no information once they get pregnant. Most never go back to school. Only 5% do. In fact, a lot of them risk their lives trying to end a pregnancy, and a tragic number of young women and girls die as a result. But there is hope. MSI Reproductive Choices is out there doing the work, traveling to remote places to bring young women and girls contraception, healthcare and control over their futures. And this group, they're the real deal. Charity navigator and candid. Both rate MSI highly for quality, efficiency and impact. So here's how you can help. For just $26, you can give one girl contraception for four whole years. That is four years to stay in school, follow her dreams, and build her Future in the U.S. go to MSIUnitedStates.org for tax deductible giving. That's M for modern, S for Safe. I for Informed. MSI United States.org you can also text my last name, Reid. That's R e I D to 511-511. Just text Reid to 5 11. 511. Go to MSI United States.org today. Let's give these young girls a chance. Text fees may apply. I also want to note that this episode is also sponsored by Cards Against Humanity, the company that brought that bought land in the US Mexican border to stop Trump's wall, sued elon Musk for $15 million for trespassing on that land, used profits from red states and to fund abortion access, and paid people to give a shit about the 2024 elections. Cards against Humanity is one of the only companies just silly enough to Stand up to Donald Trump. They do not profit from their political stunts. And if you want them to be able to afford a good lawyer, please consider buying one of their new games. There's one game called Cards Against Humanity Tales, which is a book of fill in the blank stories of horrible people. There's also a show, a game called Shitless, which is a new way to play the game where you have to write the answers. There's also a game called Party Mouth, a new party game about shouting obscenities as a coping mechanism for the hellscape that we all now live in. You listen to the Joy Reid show, so of course, you're probably smart enough to figure out how to buy their stuff. Anyway, Cards Against Humanity apologizes for interrupting your podcast with their bullshit. I love that. Thank you very much. Bought two Cards Against Humanity. Okay. So yesterday we delivered the sad news that the oldest and one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, mother Viola Fletcher, passed away at age 111. We're going to talk tonight about the next steps for this family who are still searching for justice. And let's bring in Demario Solomon Simmons. He is the attorney for the three Tulsa survivors. Demario, good to see you.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Joy is always good to see you. How are you doing this evening?

[Joy Reid]

I'm wonderful, thank you. We were so sad. Tiffany and I were texting about this yesterday to hear about the deaths of this brilliant and wonderful woman, Mother Fletcher. Talk about the fact, I mean, there's now only one because Uncle Red also passed. Is there any hope still of getting any sort of reparations or justice for the sole survivor and also for the descendants of all the people of Tulsa, of Greenwood?

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Well, first, you know, as you know, and we exchange text messages, a devastating loss, not only for us who have a very close personal relationship, but, I mean, people all over the world, really, because of what she represented. You know, Mother reflected being born in 1914. Not only did she suffer the massacre when she was seven years old, she was a sharecropper. She worked as a domestic in the homes of rich white folks till she was 85 years old. She didn't get the education she deserved, and she suffered this harm of the massacre for almost 100 years without really being able to express it, get help for it, et cetera. And for her to pass away at 111 is a travesty because she never received any meaningful reparations or reparatory justice from the actual perpetrators of the massacre, like the city of Tulsa, Tulsa Chamber, etc. And so that's something that we're very saddened about. But I was with her Friday night in the hospital, spent the evening with her, and she was in a lot of pain, but she was in good spirits. She was very engaged and she was still focused on justice, not just for herself, but for the entire descendant community.

[Joy Reid]

And can you talk about that? I mean, they were such amazing people. You know, they were north of 100 when they went to Ghana to get their dual citizenship, which is actually very epic that they did that. Can you talk about what that meant to them and why they wanted to do it?

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Oh, man, you bringing up some good memories there. I remember when I, you know, in 2021, I was with her and I, I asked, I said, mother Fletcher, is anything that you just always wanted to do, you know, what can we do for you? And she told me, you know, I've always wanted to go to Africa. I said, oh my God. And so we made that announcement and said, hey, we're looking for partners. And, and that was able to happen. And her, she went to Africa. She went to Ghana at 107, 108 years old with her little brother, Hughes van Ellis was 101. And they went to Ghana for over two and a half weeks and they had such a fantastic time and they came back and then the Ghanaians Embassy, Ghana decided to grant them dual citizenship. And so then In February of 2023, we flew to D.C. went to the Ghanaian embassy and it meant the world for them. You know, for her again to suffer in silence for so long and struggle so, so, so much during her life, you know, when I, when I met her, she was living in a one bedroom apartment by herself in a low income apartment. And for her just a few years later to go to Ghana and for her to go all over the nation talking about reparatory justice and wanting to see right and being an inspiration, you know, I really felt like we gave her these last five years of her life. We gave her more joy than she probably had in the first 106 years of her life.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I was so blessed when you all brought her, when the family brought her. Actually it was her grandson that came with her to the readout and we got a chance to meet her and she was there with Uncle Red, who was a, he was a character, he was a spicy character. I just absolutely loved Uncle Red. He was so funny and we had such a great time and they were so full of life. And to your point, you know, she said, you know, I Asked her what justice looked like, and she said, you know, getting back what they had. Because she still remembers being a little girl and being in this safe, wonderful, warm, successful, prosperous neighborhood. And that is so painful to hear that Even at over 100 years old, that's what she's still hanging on to, is having back the greenwood that she knew as a little kid.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Yeah. You know, again, you're bringing up a great memory when we came out to D.C. to your show. And the crazy thing about that is that we, as you know, we've been pushing for the Department of Justice to open an investigation, and we've been pushing on that for years. And they. They called me one day, I was in Vegas with my wife for her birthday, and they call me, said, hey, we want to meet with you guys. Can you get to dc? And I called Mother Fletcher and Uncle Red and said, hey, y'. All, you guys up to go to D.C. this is May of 2023. And she said, yeah, absolutely. And not only do we come to D.C. you know, just basically in a few days, we spend all day with the doj, and then we come over.

[Latasha Brown]

Hang out with you.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

And as you stated, they were full of energy, full of life. And it was just, you know, real sad thing, because not too long after that, obviously, Uncle Red passed away in October of 2023. But, you know, after we left your show, and just for the audience, I know you would probably remember this, after we left your show, that next few days. Mother Fletcher turned 109 years old on May 10, 2023. And we were in court on her birthday, and she was there. You know, this lady was an inspiration. This was. This was talking.

[Liz Royer]

This is.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

This is grace and integrity and regalness and resilience. Everything that our black folks have been through in this country was embodied in this wonderful woman.

[Joy Reid]

Is there any hope of the case being reopened? I know the federal government turned down, which is shocking, because this involved federal troops, it involved military troops bombing Greenwood. And, of course, the governor was of no help whatsoever. And at the time, the mayor was horrific. Tiffany Cross did a special out there and interviewed the mayor, who was in La La Land. Now there is an African American mayor of Tulsa, much better man. Is there hope of reviving the case at all?

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Well, we think so. I mean, our new mayor, Monroe Nichols, who was elected last year based upon the work that we've been doing. And, you know, with Just for Greenwood, and Dr. Tiffany Crutcher with Terrence Crutcher foundation. You know, one of the things that he. He was able to do or he did. He took a lot of our recommendations from our Project Greenwood plan and he established a 105 million dollar trust called the Greenwood Trust and a plan he has called Road to Repair. And we're very excited about that. We're looking forward to work on him. And that's going to provide some preparatory justice to the community and, and some of the descendants. But it did not include direct payments to people like Mother Fletcher.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Not include direct payments for the homes and the businesses that we know for a fact were destroyed. And so we're still pushing upon that, we're still going to push Mayor Nichols. You know, I believe very strongly that politicians are delivery systems. And so while Monroe Nichols is a friend of mine, Mayor Nichols is a political delivery system. And so we're going to push him to do the right thing. So absolutely, we think there's still a pathway to get this done and we're going to explore everything we can. And as we speak, Joy, they're still pulling bodies out of the mass graves. Yeah, identifying bodies for the first time. So that's also on the table. We're saying, listen, it's not good enough to say, oh, look, we found these people that's been buried unmarked graves for over 100 years. No, you have to have some reparatory justice. So we're looking at all our options.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I can remember when Watchmen came out, that brilliant Regina King series that should have got a second season, by the way. People thought that that opening scene when Greenwood was being bombed by military air flights, they thought that was fiction. It's like, no, that's what happened. I had to talk some folks down into thinking that's not fiction. Like that was actually a pretty decent representation of what really happened. What is Greenwood like now?

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Well, you know, Greenwood. To say what it's like now, I have to start and say when Greenwood is heyday was bigger than Harlem. It was 40 blocks. It was over 15, 50 homes and businesses, about 12, 000 individuals living in Greenwood. And anytime during green any day, it could be 20, 000 people there, people from all around. Greenwood was like the city to all. You know, in New York, they call Manhattan the city. Greenwood was like the city to all these black towns that were surrounding Greenwood. Well, we, for my 40, roughly 40 blocks, we're down to half a block, you know. And so Greenwood is a shell of itself at the moment. And the things that are going down and going on in Greenwood are mostly owned by the city, owned by state government, owned by universities, owned by private white businesses. And so we're still fighting that fight. We want to make sure that Greenwood can be redeveloped, but not just redeveloped for development's sake and for tourism, but for those who actually built Greenwood and those who suffered not only the massacre, but, you know, Greenwood had real. For resilience and rebuilt itself many, in many ways. And then it was destroyed again through urban. Urban renewal, which we call Negro removal.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, there's one more survival left. Mother Lessie Randall. Yeah, she's 109. I believe she's also 111. No, she's 111. You're okay. She's 111. How is she doing? Have you had a chance to speak with her since Mother Fletcher? Path.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

I have not personally had a chance to speak to her, but I did speak to someone today. I actually spoke to Mother Fletcher's grandson, who I was. Was with mother Randall because they was in the same retirement facility that we got them into four years ago. And he told me, he did talk to her, and she did shed a tear for. For her good friend Mother Fletcher. And he said. He told her, you know, mother Fletcher will be waiting for you in heaven. She said, well, take a.

[Joy Reid]

Tell her.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Take. Take her time.

[Peter Thiel]

Because.

[Joy Reid]

He said. She said, I'm not trying to rush to go meet her. Hang out by herself for a little. Just hang out.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Just relax. Let me relax.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, all right, don't be rushing me out here. Stop. I love it. This is why I love old people. Old people are the best because they don't have. They can say whatever they want.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

They say whatever they want. We actually did a birthday party because mother Randall turned 111 on November 10th. And we had a big birthday party, and it was kind of in the evening and all this stuff is going on. And she just said it. I'm ready to go. I'm tired.

[Joy Reid]

She's like, this party is over. You say you want to, but I'm leaving. I love it. Well, what can people do to support this effort? If people want to get involved and they want to, you know, donate or, you know, tell us what. What we should do.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Absolutely. You know, if you want to connect with us that we continue in this journey towards reparatory justice here in Greenwood and throughout the Nation, go to justiceforgreenwood.org that's justiceforgreenwood.org I tell people all the time, do three things. Go to justiceforgreenwood.org Sign up for our newsletter so you can have activations that we're having to get involved that's number one. Number two, make a donation. If it's $5, 50, 500, do that and then tell three of your friends or family to do the same thing. And that's how we continue to get this movement moving forward because we're focused on making sure we honor this woman to get her justice in her name. But also mother Lexi Benefield Randle, who's still here and the thousands of descendants that are all around this country, we're still fighting for them.

[Joy Reid]

Well, so those, if you guys want to put a little thing in the tail here, we're going to send whatever you guys put in tonight, we're going to send that over to the organization. So any little thing you put in the tail tonight is going to go right to this organization to try to serve these folks that are trying to do good work. It's going to go to justice for Greenwood. So if you want to go on your own and donate, please do that. But rather than put in our tail, please do that. Bless justice for Greenwood. We would really truly appreciate it. Demario Solomon Simmons, thank you for always fighting for justice and we gonna keep our little text thread going. So let me know what I can do to be helpful.

[Demario Solomon Simmons]

Sounds good. Joy, good to see you and thank you so much for having me on tonight.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yep, that's it. Fighting for the real. Okay, so there goes Ugox. Ugox, I believe, put $10 in the till. That's going to go into the tiller. That's going to go to justice. Greenwood.org we're going to add it all up at the end of the night and whatever came in on tonight, we're going to make sure that we drop that into the Till for justiceforgreenwood.org it is so shameful to have people grow old without ever getting justice. People say, well you can't, you shouldn't get reparations because you weren't alive during slavery. Well, guess what? These people were literally alive during the massacre in Greenwood. This isn't theoretical. This isn't their great great grandparents. This was a person who was literally a 7 year old kid stepping over bodies to race into their vehicle to try to get away. Because a gang, a mob, including sheriffs, law enforcement, and eventually the military of the United States was bombing their town. Because there's one black man who was accused of accidentally brushing up against a white woman in an elevator and he was the elevator operator. But the paranoia was so intense at that time that black people would stand up and be men and be manly. That a black elevator operator who's letting a white woman into the elevator gets falsely accused of accidentally brushing the arm of a white woman and a mob of hundreds of men come and burn the entire town to the ground, shoot and massacre people. If you don't know the story, the black men in Greenwood got rifles because remember the Civil War, if it did nothing else, it put rifles into the hands of more than 100,000 black men, some of whom went west with their rifles that they used in the Civil War to shoot their former enslavers. So the Civil War was the first civil rights movement because it empowered these black men. They had guns. They went west with their guns. They went and armed up in the biggest hotel in Greenwood and prepared to stand off against these hundreds of white angry men who came to burn their town down. And it was a firefight. And then the newspapers at the time accused the black men of being violent when they were the victims, trying to defend their women and children. It was an absolutely insane instance in which the men, the white men who marauded the town, then claimed to be the victims and the federal government backed them up by literally sending military planes to firebomb the town. Imagine being a six year old with your baby brother who's like three and you're seven and he's three, and you're having to figure out what to do in that moment. And your mom is saying, we have to get out of here. Your mom and dad are like, we gotta go. And you never see your home again. You never see her. That's the. That is your last memory. And it's so. It was so clear in her mind that when I interviewed her at 109, she still remembered it like it was yesterday. And the state of Oklahoma buried that history and never taught it to the kids there. They didn't learn it. And even to this day, the guy who was the director of education, who was later caught looking at nudie pictures on his laptop and trying to put a Bible in every classroom. And they put a Bible in every classroom, but not the information about the Greenwood massacre. You can't have that, but you get to have a Bible. And they tried to bury it. To this day, they never really taught that in Oklahoma schools. People pointing out, this is Jules 1149, $10 in the till. That's going to go to the justice for Greenwood organization noted that the US Also bombed. They are piling up in this thing. They give a lot of justice to Greenwood. This is great. Whatever you guys put in, we're going to count it up and whatever goes to justice for whatever you guys have, we're gonna pop that into the till. We'll give you an update on the next show about how much we raised tonight. Thank you very much. Shantay. 21, 22, $2 in the till. Every little bit helps. 19.99 in the till from Gail Coleman. Thank you very much. LA Forest 10 $30. Thank you very much for all of that. You guys are super generous. I we love our team tj. Let me scroll up. Let me scroll up and see it. Let me scroll up and see what we've got going in for justice for Greenwood. You go, wow, you guys are so generous. We've got T Tanyad 2873 through $3 in the till. We've got $10 from UQX saying supporting the essential business that is Joy Reed. Thank you very much. We appreciate that, too. We are a small business, so we appreciate that too. But everything that comes in tonight is going to justice for Greenwood. And I know we didn't announce that at the top, so if you gave for the Joy Reacher, we appreciate it. We're going to donate what you're giving to us to justice for Greenwood. We want to make sure that they get a nice, healthy donation on tonight. Janine Da Silva 7148-999Wonder Doggy. Wonder Doggy is always active in the thread. Wonder Doggy is like A Team. TJRS All Star 9.99 from Wonder Doggy. Thank you very much. All right, let's move on to the D block on tonight. Let me play Excited Harry into. Harry Hinton is the most excited person on television and I love his energy. I call him Excited Kornacki. Here he is.

[Harry Enten]

Your Costs are up versus a year ago. Groceries, 85%. Utilities, 78%. Health care 67%. Housing, 66%. Gasoline, 54%. The bottom line is this. Americans feel like prices are rising in each and every single part of their lives. Rising ever climber. And they just don't feel like Kate Baldwin that they can catch a break.

[Joy Reid]

The treasury secretary in new comments kind of dismissed the impact tariffs is having on inflation. Also saying that prices are going to be coming down in weeks. Some other prices are going to be coming down in months. What do Americans think about that?

[Harry Enten]

Yeah, they think he's full of it. That's exactly what they think. I mean, just take a look here. Tariffs rise. Raising prices. Are raising prices right now. I'm going to cover Kate's side of screen 71%. How dare I do that? 84% of Democrats, 74% of independents and even a majority of Republicans when you can get a majority of Republicans to agree with majority of Democrats. You know that the pain is being felt by the American public right now. The Treasury Secretary can try and tell the people something, but they can feel in their pocketbooks, they simply put don't buy what he and this administration is selling when it comes to tariffs.

[Joy Reid]

You know, and Harry, one thing we've heard over and over again is the President and many of those around him blaming the Biden administration for where inflation is right now. Do people agree with that?

[Harry Enten]

No, no, no, no. You know what? I want to quote Judge Judy, but I'm not going to. I'm merely going to try and say it's like they're trying to sell ice up at the North Pole when it comes to this. More responsible for the current economy. 62% of Americans say it's Donald Trump. Just 32% say it's Joe Biden. Look, Donald Trump did in fact inherit an economy from Joe Biden. But now we are nearly a year into the Donald Trump administration. If the Trump administration is trying to push, push the book over there, simply put, the American folks aren't buying it. They say at this point, it is Donald Trump's economy. And what is happening in terms of inflation is his responsibility.

[Joy Reid]

That's what happens when you become president. Who knew you inherit the economy.

[Harry Enten]

That's exactly right. If you want the power, you get the power. But with great power comes great responsibility.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, Harry Anton in the quotes. Thank you so much, my dear. Is a lot of fun, but that information ain't fun. Bad, bad, bad. Look, going into this Thanksgiving holiday weekend, people are incredibly stressed economically and just incredibly stressed, period. In addition to having to worry about the skyrocketing prices of food. Turkey prices way up, gas prices way up, food prices way up. As you just heard from Harry Enton, this is a tough Thanksgiving for a lot of people. Everything is up. The airlines are jumping up their prices for tickets. Everyone is jacking up their prices. No one's giving folks a break. But then, in addition to that, you have to worry about the moral quandary of spending money with some of these businesses and these companies who are throwing away dei, making it clear they're not interested in diversity in hiring, but still begging for your dollars, using advertising that marginalizes people of color, or donating huge amounts of money to Trump to his ballroom, to his packs and cozying up to him or firing People seemingly to please him doing all the things. Well, there are some folks who are saying, you know what? We've had enough. We've had enough and we ain't buying it. One of the people who has said we ain't buying it. We don't want to hear any more of the bs. We only want to spend money with people who actually respect us is our friend Latasha Brown of Black Voters Matter Fund. She's made a bunch of these videos which are actually really, really cute and adorable and fun and they're all on my social media. I just, as she posts them, I just repost them because it's easier than making my own content. Hers is so good. But let me play you. This is D2. This is one of the pieces that Latasha posted.

[Latasha Brown]

Have a holly Charlie.

[Joy Reid]

Christmas.

[Latasha Brown]

Christmas is the best time of the year. Listen, it is Christmas season and hopefully by now you've heard of the we ain't buying it campaign. What we want you to do is this season to stay away from big box stores, but to spend your money and your time into local businesses to small business, minority owned and black owned businesses. And this is an opportunity for us to redirect our money where it really matters. Go shop local. Make sure that you support supporting a women owned, black owned and minority owned business. Yes. Cause we ain't buying it.

[Joy Reid]

And she's also got a really great op ed called about we ain't buying it that's running right now in USA Today. Joining us now, there it is. We are not buying what Trump enablers sell this Black Friday. Joining us now is our pal, Latasha Brown, content creator extraordinaire. Got the backdrop. Look at this.

[Latasha Brown]

This is having so much fun with it too.

[Joy Reid]

Isn't it fun? I made one little video and then like yours just completely surpassed mine. I was like, mine's so cute, but yours was like effects and everything like that. So much fun. Latasha, talk about this because what I love about what you're doing, it's not a boycott because people get a little funny when you say boycott, right? So tell me what it is.

[Latasha Brown]

So it's an economic action. What we're saying is we're doing an economic action campaign. Now there's a spectrum of activ. We want people to be more conscientious around their spending, how we use our money, and to do something in this moment. This ain't the moment to sit to the side and just say what folks gonna do. No, you gotta do something. And so part of what we've done is built this campaign that really there are some people that are part of the campaign that they're boycotting, like the Target boycott. There are folks that are doing actions at Home Depot which are really creative and been doing, having long lines of folks showing up. There's some people who have just decided, you know, I don't really wann I want to hold my money, I'm gonna hold my cash. In this moment, there are folks who've been doing all kinds of work, but ultimately there are three kind of core goals. The first goal is to reclaim our power, that we have power as consumers, not just as, as our, when we're voting, but ultimately we have power in the purse that can't nobody make you spend your money, right? At the end of the day, this is your money. You worked hard for this money. And why are we so supporting companies that don't stand with us? If they got all this extra money to give Trump $300 million to go build the golden gilded party room for he and his billionaire friends, then they don't need my money. That's what I see. I don't think that they need my money. They don't need y' all money either. Right. And so ultimately what we want people to do is to reclaim your power. We've gotten so caught up in consumerism, most of us don't even have enough space for our lives. My stuff, right? I like don't have enough space for my clothes. I don't have enough space for a whole lot of my stuff. And so we've got to really show some discipline in this moment, some economic discipline in terms of how we spend our money and who we spend it with. The second part is we got to redirect some of those resources that small businesses, as you were talking, the tariffs have had a tremendous impact on not only economy, but particularly those small mom and pop shops and those businesses like they cannot sustain, right. What we're seeing, and we've also seen these big box stores that for over the last few years have real, I mean, for the last two decades have many, many of them have had to shut down because of the Amazons and the Targets and the Walmarts of the world. And so the second part we're asking folks to do is to redirect your resources to small local businesses, community owned businesses, black owned, minority owned, women owned business, support our own community. That as we're doing our work. When if you're gonna spend something, you're gonna do some Christmas shopping, go through a Little extra. A little extra. And find those companies, those businesses that are in our community, are embedded in our community. And the third thing is resist that. What is gonna happen in this moment, we cannot normalize any of these things that are happening in this moment. Like, this is just. Oh, that's just how politics. No, it's not. We're in a whole different ball game. We're in fascism right now. Like, they are straight up stealing, right? We're watching them steal. Like they're stealing. They're abusing power here. Two of the most powerful people who are legal folks in this country really just came under attack. A completely illegal woman didn't even have the rights to be able to charge attorney Leticia James. And come the bottom line is that's the kind of corruption. There's chaos, corruption, and just straight up thievery. So in this moment, what we want to do is put like the love back in the holidays. Love yourself, love your family, love your community enough that you will reclaim your power, you will redock your redirect your resources, and you will resist. And so what we're asking on tomorrow, on Thursday, spend time. Don't spend a dime. Spend time and don't spend a dime. Do not spend money. I remember at one point on Thanksgiving, y', all, we just be home with your family. If you forgot something at the store, you were kind of messed up because everybody was closed.

[Joy Reid]

That's correct, yes. It used to be that you. If you didn't have that little cranberry sauce, you was gonna have to just live without it or make a salad because there was nobody except the 7 11s, because, you know, the immigrants don't play. The immigrants that own the 711 is like, we staying open. We godless. We don't care. We don't. We ain't. Well, you know, but other than them, that was it. Unless it was at 7:11 and you weren't getting nothing.

[Latasha Brown]

You weren't getting nothing. And so what we want is, we want people to really get re. Centered this.

[Joy Reid]

This.

[Latasha Brown]

This holiday season. Spend time with your family and our loved ones. One of the interesting things about America is that we know that one of the biggest epidemics in America, people are lonely. Like, they're saying that people here, it is the wealthiest country in the world, and it is a rise of people being lonely. Check on your people, check on your folks, on your loved one, on your neighbors, your co workers. Don't assume in this moment, instead of us getting so caught up in humorism, because every single holiday now, holiday is just really another buying season. It has nothing to do really what. What in this space. So we're asking, spend time and don't spend a dime. Take time with your family on tomorrow on Friday, which is Black Friday. Part of the reason why, you know, Joy, that is called Black Friday, is because throughout the year, if companies were in the red, right, and their sales were down, Black Friday was the day that they could make it up. Because 20 to 40% of retail sales for the year happening that weekend alone, which is. Which means we can do a one, two punch, y'.

[Philip D'Amico]

All.

[Latasha Brown]

If we stay out of those stores, they'll get the message. So. But we've got to have the discipline to stay out of those stores. And then what we're going to do, we're not gonna have it a black Friday. We're gonna make it a blackout Friday. It's gonna be the blackest Friday ever. We're gonna take our black money and invest it in folks that care about us that literally are. Are aligned with the values that we have have. And so Saturday and Sunday, though, that is small, small business. Saturday and Sunday, what we're asking, folks, is to find a small and a local business that you can invest, that you can buy some of your Christmas gifts. Have fun, take your families. We got to create this culture of how do we support small and local businesses. There's a brother that got an app. I'm gonna give him a shout out. It's called Black.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Latasha Brown]

Yes. I haven't seen it, first of all.

[Joy Reid]

Not only have I seen it, Latasha Brown, I just heard about it. I think you might have told me about it. I literally had my assistants track him down. I had a zoom with him yesterday. I'm gonna. On Saturday, we're gonna do, like, a little bit of a we. You know, we're, like, gonna go along on all my different social medias. I'm gonna come on. I'm gonna do a few lives. One of the lives you have done the preview is going to be with him. I'm gonna have the brother from black on. Why is he from Denver? From my rival high school girl. I had to forgive him. He from East High, like, all of a sudden. Why? He's a comedian. He is brilliant. And you, you are absolutely right. I was going to promote the heck out of Blab on Saturday, but thank you for allowing me to do it tonight.

[Latasha Brown]

That's right. So y' all need to, you know what? Delete that Amazon app you got on your phone and put black. Right. That's what you mean delete.

[Joy Reid]

That is. It literally allows you to locate a black owned business anywhere you are by typing in a zip code. So let's say you are in Cleveland. You can type in where you are at that very moment. And what you want to buy when I tell you can buy everything from toilet paper to you know of a new. Whatever you can get everything, electronics, whatever it is, you will find a black owned small business wherever you are in. It's genius.

[Latasha Brown]

It is genius. I love. And there's some other. Buy black. You can go and buy black and find some. There's a. The little blue. What is it? The little blue buggy. I always keep forgetting it. The little blue. I'm gonna find it in a few minutes. I can't find it. And is it the little blue. I'll find it. I'll find it in a minute. But there are people that have these, these, these apps that we really need to lean into. We're asking on Monday, which is supposed to be cyber Monday. It's cyber shut down. The word on the street is it's cyber shutdown. We are not going to continue to support these companies, particularly these tech companies, because I don't know, Joy, I remember seeing all of them boot licking over at the White House a few weeks ago.

[Joy Reid]

Come on.

[Latasha Brown]

Right here is we can't do that. And yes, I see on there we have 1.7. It's between 1.7 and 1.9. There's some discrepancy in terms of what exactly it is, but. Trillion dollars, y', all, y'.

[Joy Reid]

All.

[Latasha Brown]

And consumer spending money alone. Let's redirect those resources. If every adult just redirect $40 just, just spent $40 with small businesses that could bring billions of. Of resources into those businesses. And right now with the tariffs and all that's going on, we need that help. So join the campaign. We ain't buying it because we ain't buying it.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Latasha Brown]

What we are doing is this. We are funding our freedom. And what that looks like is we're funding the independent freedom of black people to speak the way we want to speak and hear what we want to speak. Hear what we want to hear. Which is why I'm also going to ask them to. I'm glad tonight you're doing your fundraiser, but people need to support your platform. I'm so glad you are here where we can get unfiltered news that is relevant to us. We are so. I'm so proud of you and your courage, sister. You have had so Much courage. And so we are lifting you up when you are pregnant, are protecting you. You are ours and you are so you are also a small black business. So we need to make sure we're giving you some love and do reoccurring donations to keep this moving.

[Joy Reid]

I love and appreciate you. I appreciate, love you, Latasha Brown, because you do all the things, always supporting our people, supporting the community, supporting all the communities who are in need and who are struggling. Black voters Matter Fund is a, is a revelation and a blessing to the world. And you are a blessing to me, my friend. Thank you so much. We ain't buying it. Tell them where to get on. We ain't buying it says, where do they go?

[Latasha Brown]

Go to we ain't Buying it dot com. We Ain't buying it dot com. Sign up. Follow us on social media. Follow me on social media. Ms. Latasha Brown. We're keeping it live all weekend. There's some amazing things that are happening. If you're in Atlanta. Dr. Jamal Bryant @ his church, he set up a black mall. They're doing a whole black mall over there there with 120 vendors. So come on, y', all, let's support our. Our people. Don't spend a dime. Spend time. Let's get the black party, the block party. There's a mass black boycott that is going on and all throughout the nation. But there are millions of people just like you and I, Joy, that are saying that this season, we ain't buying it.

[Joy Reid]

We ain't buying it. We're gonna reclaim our power, redirect our resources and resist. Latasha Brown. Thank you, my friend. I, I appreciate you.

[Latasha Brown]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Can we get a round of applause for Latasha Brown? So she's pretty great. We love her so much. And that is, that's the mission. And remember, y', all, Thanksgiving. Back in the day, people didn't have to go to work on Thanksgiving, but now people are being dragged in to go work at the grocery store. The grocery stores are open. People are having to get up and work or go work in, you know, doordash. And they shouldn't have to do that. People should be able to be home on Thanksgiving and have a paid day off. It's a holiday. And the idea that people are going to be dragged into work to have to work on a holiday just so these retailers can guap more money and then turn around and donate that money to Trump for his golden tacky ballroom. You see what he's done to the White House, it looks like what he thinks of as a Middle Eastern palace. It's so garish and gaudy. He has the word the West Wing written on the wall. Like he doesn't know where the West Wing is. Like he needs a sign to tell him where to go. And it's all in gold. And it looks like this cheap faux gold everywhere. It's so gross. And these companies, when you give Amazon your money, know that Jeff Bezos is going to turn around and put it into additional bribes for Melania. He already gave her $40 million for her life story. What's going to be in that? And to guap money to Donald Trump for his Golden Ballroom. So when you pay him, just know if you give them money, they're going to give it to Trump. You're just passing the money to Trump through them. Whereas if you go to a small business, these little small businesses aren't giving money to Trump. I'm actually going to try to see if I can find an independent theater. Very hard to find. But if there's an independent theater showing the movie, please let me know. If you guys know of any independent theaters in the country. Let's start making a list of places we can go to the movies. Because I don't know if AMC's giving money to Trump. Trump. Because that means I'm giving money to Trump and passing it through their hands. We do not want to do that. What we want to do is deny them money, starve them of resources. So whether you do the full boycotts, you should not be going to Target. If you have a. If you have a soul in your body and you can afford it and you're not in a food desert or you have to go. I would avoid Walmart too, if you can. They are big Trump donors. So what we're saying is, if you donate to Trump, go fast, lose cash. Go fast, lose cash. If you want to go, say no to Amazon. And I'm, look, I'm an Amazon junkie, but we're not going to be doing that on Cyber Monday. Over this week, we're not going to be doing any Amazon. And also, let's just be honest, lots of people are losing their jobs and standing in food lines, but still feeling the intense pressure to spend a lot of money they do not have for Christmas presents. Let's just talk about that for a moment. Not everybody is a Christian and celebrates Christmas, but even people who aren't Christians celebrate Christmas. Look at the 49.99. They that Tracy Harry El, 2273, has donated to justice for Greenwood with a beautiful emoji. Thank you so much. But that kind of generosity, I think is exactly right for the season. But you're going to have a lot of people who genuinely do not have the money because they either lost their jobs or at risk of losing their job. They could be unemployed in January, but they're going to spend to the hilt for Christmas presents they know they can't afford. This would be the season. This would be the season to scale it way back. We're gonna do that. Scale it way back and say, you know what? What? Because here's the other piece. If we all scale back together, then that person in our life and in our community does not have to feel the shame of not buying every single electronic gizmo for their kid. Because nobody's doing it. All your cousins or your nieces or your nephews, I mean, if they're at a certain age, I get it. If it's a baby. Yeah. And especially, I mean, because there's people. People will send stuff across country. You got FedEx costs. You got this course. You got. No, it's too much. It's too much. Save your money. Kitchen says for kids, if you're an adult, you don't need it. Yeah, you don't need it. And you literally, by the way, then you go into all this credit card debt, and then all those big banks in January start reaping their reward off of you. Because the pressure on us to spend all this money for Christmas for stuff the person you bought probably doesn't even want. I have Christmas presents I've gotten. It wasn't something I wanted, so I don't even know what to do with it. I'm going to wind up donating it. The perfect gamble. We tell you to spend, spend, spend, and at the end of the year, you got to pay back all these bills. And if you can't do, we're going to charge you interest. It's a win win for them. It's a win win for them. The credit card companies eat off of this. They eat because. And then even Amazon lets you finance your purchase. All these big stores that Macy's finance. So then they're putting you in debt. 29 interest on the store cards. And you're doing that to yourself. Why? Because you're being told that's what you're supposed to do. If this is supposed to be Jesus is the reason for the season. They were giving him gold, frankincense. And myrrh they weren't giving him a bunch of presents. So this time. And also, since when did Jesus birthday become a present for you? Also, Jesus was born in the spring. The Catholic Church moved it to Christmas because they wanted to have it coincide with the pagan holiday that the pagans were doing. Because, you know, whenever the Catholic Church would roll up on some pagans, they'd be like, when do you celebrate Saturnalia? That's on December 25th. Got you. Let's just put Christmas then. Jesus wasn't even born in the spring. I mean, in this, in the winter. He's born in his spring night. So you're doing this all because the Catholic Church, way back in the day wanted pagans to join up. And they were like, we'll let you do it all your pagan holidays. That's why a lot of churches do Halloween. They're doing all the things because they're like, you know what? These are pagan holidays. We just took them over with the Catholic Church. Then the Protestants went along with it. So you do not have to do it. Jesus is not watching you going, why don't you celebrate my birthday by buying your kid an iPad? Why aren't you celebrating me? People said some. Oh, I love this one. This is Wendy Dupree, 2984 said, we ain't got it. That's the T shirt we need. We ain't got it. We ain't. We ain't buying it because we ain't got it. How about that? We ain't got it. And y' all know you ain't got it. And don't try to front and front on people like you got it. Spending this money you do not have. If there was ever a year for you to exercise both your moral conscience and also your financial probity, this is the season show. Teach Trump a lesson, but also teach yourself a lesson in some discipline in your spending. Discipline with those credit cards. Don't go into debt to hand Trump money through Amazon. And then also remember that next year, all of our insurance goes up, so there goes more money out the door. All money. Save your money. Save your money. You might need it to get you some insurance. You might need that money to get you some insurance because you ain't gonna be able to afford your insurance. And so when you all dead broke next year, because you gave Amazon and all these big retailers money that they don't need, because as Latasha said, they're just going to give it to Trump. So think about it that way. And if your kid is like well, why aren't you buying me another iPad, say, because number one, you don't need it, and number two, we're spending time together. Think of some creative gifts you can do that don't cost a lot of money. People really genuinely also just want your time. If you got oldsters in your family, the best. One of the best gifts I've done is like a book of photos for people that people just want to see pictures of their friends and family and created photo books. Those were for a not expensive gift that people love because it's more personal. Think of stuff that's personal that you can give. You know, I've said it on the show before, one of the best gifts Jason ever gave me was a Louisville Slugger. Because when I was a kid, it's what I always wanted. I always wanted a Louisville Slugger and my mom wouldn't let me have it because she was Caribbean and she was like, you need to play with girl toys. And she didn't want to get it for me. So finally, one year, I finally got the Louisville Slugger, but all of my stuff was lost. Long, sad story from when I was a kid. So Jason bought me a Louisville Slugger. Great gift. Not expensive, but it was meaningful thankful because it was something that had meaning. So that's what I'm going to say. Let's leave it there. Let's get to our moment of joy. Now. My moment of joy, because we are at the end of the show is I. I got a chance to go on one of my absolute favorite podcasts. I've had it the I've had it podcast with Jennifer Welsh and Popes and the right is big mad about it, which makes me even happier. It makes me more joyful. Let me play a clip from my moment on I've had it this at my moment of joy or hit it, Bubba gate. I hit it, baby. I miss so there, baby. I wish it was Bill Clinton because this is the. This is the tea. I need. I need to know who Bubba is. I want to know. Was Trump on his knees? I want to know what's Trump with? Did he. I mean, I want to know everything. Was he a spitter? I need to know, is Melania jealous or is. Is she glad to not have to deal with it? Is she saying, go ahead, Bubba, you take it. Cause I don't want it. I hit it every day. I need it. I need to know who Bubba is. You know, Ghislaine Maxwell's horse name was Bubba. This is all I want to talk about. This is all I want to talk about. Oh my God. Jennifer and Pumps, they were so much fun. We actually did this live in New York. We did it and it was so. And listen, I'm. I am not playing y'. All. I need to. To know who Bubba is. This is literally my mission in life as a journalist. I need to know who Bubba is and what Trump did with him with his tiny little hands and his tiny little mouth. Lord Jesus, this is the scandal of the lifetime. And I love it. I love it so much. Last thing I'm gonna do before I let you go. And by the way, we're gonna put the full link the link to the full episode of I've had it. Thank you so much to Jennifer and Pumps for having me on. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. I left my makeup kit in the studio. I forgot to walk back like weed. But yeah, I'll put the link so. And I'll also put it in the sub stack. Somebody can watch it. It was a lot of fun. The ride is big man. And they're. Your tears are my beverage of choice. I drink it up when you're mad. I'm glad. Sorry if you're angry. They were all on media. I like, ah. She said bad things about the Charlie Kirk's wife. I'm like, well, you know, I don't feel sorry for Usha who, you know, what she doing? You know, she got it too. She's not helping her brown people. People support your brown sisters, Usha. And then maybe I'll have empathy for you. Last thing I'm going to throw in. Don't forget it is election time in Tennessee. If you are in Tennessee 7 remember we had on Afton Bain the bane of the existence of the right. 74,694 people voted early. Early voting is done. I believe today. It was really early today because of the holiday tomorrow. But the actual election is Tuesday, December 2nd. Congratulations to the 74,694 people who already voted. Please vote if you're in Tennessee. 7. Please, please, please vote. Let's flip a seat. Flip a seat for democracy. And then last note again, just reminding you again, no show Friday. No show Friday. But we are going to be doing a subathon a subscribe a thon. We're going to be on TikTok, Instagram, substack, Twitch and then I'll be here from 12 to 2. So. So keep your phones on and popping and I'll see you guys and we can chit chat and I've got some great guests, including, yes, the gentleman from Blap. He's going to be on our 12 to 2 episode here on this podcast here and substack. So thank you guys very much for tuning in. I hope you guys have an incredible Thanksgiving that's peaceful, loving, full of food, fun and family. This is specifically for Jackie Reed. Somebody out there have some delicious vegan food as well because there is actually delicious vegan food. She, she got me on read this, read that the other day because I made like a vegan joke. But I'm gonna tell you, she makes good, great food. Go and read this, read that. Not read this, read that. Go on vegansexycool.com go read this, read that too. But vegansexycool.com you can get some good vegan recipes if that's what you guys want to have. Eat healthy, love hard, be happy, enjoy your pet, your family. I'm excited our son is here. The middle, the middle child is visiting. I'm so excited. He surprised us today. So this is going to be a really great. And happy Thanksgiving. Surprised you today? He said. Well, yeah, Jason knew. He didn't tell me. So I, I screamed the scream. I screamed when I saw my baby, my big baby. And then the little baby will be here tomorrow and the daughter is here. So we're gonna all be together, the five of us all together with, with, with, with the Wanjira experience. And so it's gonna be the six of us, the, the COVID crew, the crew that locked down for Covid and Chris, my baby extra son, our spare son is going to be here. So it's going to be the seven seven heaven. The seven of us are going to be all here together chilling for Thanksgiving with all the cousins. We're going to be having, you know, Caribbean food plus American food. Cousin face that, she's going to do the roti and curry so I don't have to do it. Thank God because I ain't trying to cook all that. I'm gonna make my rice and peas and keep it moving. I hope you guys have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Love you, Chat. Thank you for being so generous to justice for Greenwood. We're gonna get that money over to them. We're gonna do that donation, we're gonna add it up and then we will let you guys know on the next Joy Reach show how much you guys donated for the wonderful Greenwood community. Thank you all and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Love you and thanks for watching the Joy Reach. I'll see you on the next one. Monday. Bye. Bye. Okay.