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- [00:01]
Joy Reid
This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
- [00:37]
Okay. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Joy Reid Show. I got my I'm her shirt on. Hopefully you guys can see that and enjoy it. I have to bring it up over the mic so you guys can see. Is good to see you all. It has been a very interesting weekend and last few days, we're going to get into a bunch of it because there's just a lot of crap going on. And what I have noticed and what I want to bring up to you guys this morning is there not this morning to today was the way that we're constantly having to navigate right between the things that are real and fascist and frightening and scary and the things that are actually just stupid and performative, just like distractions that do not actually mean anything. And it literally can get very exhausting to try to figure out which is which, which is a distraction and which is real. So I want to start with the stupid and performative Pete Hegseth. That's it, Pete Hegseth. No, seriously, I mean, he is stupid and performative, but seriously, last week, Pete Hegseth, our defense secretary, was in the Oval with Trump unveiling their latest renaming. And this comes on the heels of the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to call it Gulf of America, which is meaningless because no one else in the world is required to call it the Gulf of America. It is still the Gulf of Mexico, which is why the AP is like, we're not doing that. But Hanks's latest brain move is the Department of War. He's calling it the Department of War. I mean, for the president who was supposed to end all the stupid wars and who fantasizes in his head that he already ended civilization seven wars and need the Nobel Peace Prize. But anyway, here is Pete Hegseth's announcement. Jason. Fire away, Pete Hegset.
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It's going to fight to win, not not to lose. We're going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.
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Maximum lethality. Not maximum legality. Violent effect, not violent. Incorrect. What is it? Vanilla Ice. I've started calling him Vanilla Vice because I have no idea why he felt the need to do a rhyme. Or he's busting a rhyme in the Oval. Even Trump is looking at him like, why are you doing a rhyme? Because maximum lethality. Non. Maximum legality. What are you doing? For somebody that despises the idea of black people being in the military, you sure are trying to pretend that you're into hip hop. Dude, that is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed. I'm officially embarrassed. We're calling him Vanilla Vice. That is his official new name from now on. Vanilla Vice. Embarrassing. Now Hankseth is even more famous beyond that for firing anybody black, gay, or female in high military offices and deleting anybody black, gay, indigenous, or female from all of military history while restoring Confederate names to U.S. military bases and Robert E. Lee's portrait wearing his Confederate grays to a privileged place at West Point, despite, or maybe because there's also a black enslaved person in the picture. Now here's Hagseth trying to justify renaming those bases. This is Senator ANGUS KING Questioning.
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Mr. Secretary, I'm somewhat puzzled.
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Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
I grew up in Virginia, where Robert.
- [04:04]
Joy Reid
E. Lee was revered. I think when I was a kid, his birthday was a school holiday. But as I grew older and learned more about American history, I learned that he fit the classic definition of a traitor. He took up arms against his country. He broke his oath as a member of the United States army, which he took upon entering his career at West Point. Why are you going through these incredible gymnastics finding current soldiers or other soldiers to rename? And you slipped a minute ago.
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Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
You said, we're returning these bases to their original names.
- [04:42]
Joy Reid
Robert E. Lee, leading general of the Confederacy, Pickett. The other names. Why are you doing this? I don't understand what the motivation is to rename bases for people who took up arms against their country or on behalf of slavery. What possible motivation can there be for this? Who is telling you to do this? Who is urging you to do this? Senator? The veterans and service members across the country who have deployed from Fort Bragg or Fort Benning or Fort Hood or Fort Pickett. There's a legacy. There's a connection to those bases and to those places, to what they trained for there, what they did for and what they came home back to that matters to them. Ask enough of them, as I do all the time before and later, and we Recognize the service of those who were put into the replacement. No one's disputing that. I would never dispute that. What we're looking at is erasing history, erasing names, erasing base names that service members are tied to. Talk to people that serve at Bragg. Ask people that serve at Fort Bragg or Fort Benning if they like the fact that the names have been returned. And to a man and to a woman, they will tell you, thank God we're back to Fort Bragg and thank God we're back. And thankfully, because so many men and women in this country have served, there's a Benning and a Bragg and a Picket and a Hood for that has a Silver Star or a Medal of Honor that we could rename the base to because of the limits of what Congress allowed us to do. So this is something we've been proud to do, something that's important for the morale of the army and those communities. Appreciate that we've returned it back to what it was instead of trying to play this game of erasing names. We're not erasing history, Mr. Secretary. We're recognizing history and recognizing that mistakes have been made in this country. The greatest of all was the Civil War, where people took up arms against their country on behalf of the institution of slavery. And to continue the practice of recognizing those people and honoring them by the naming of these bases is, I believe, an insult to the people of the United States.
- [07:00]
Here, here. Senator Angus King. Here, here. And I promise you, no soldiers are running up to that, you know, Vanilla Vice and think, please, please, we do the Confederate names back. I promise you, no one's doing that. That's something he wants to do. Okay? He's doing it. Wants to. And Trump wants to. And by the way, here's the thing. After the murder of George Floyd and America fired Donald Trump as president, Congress passed. And actually they passed it before they fired Donald Trump. Well, he actually. After he was fired, but before he was sworn in. This was In January of 2021, Congress passed. And then Joe Biden, once he was finally sworn in, signed a law making it literally illegal to rename, to name US Military bases after our sworn enemies, including treasonous slavery loving demons of the Confederacy. So what is Vanilla Vice doing to get around that literal law, as you heard him indicate in that testimony? I'm going to read this Guardian story, just a little bit of it. Quote, since Donald Trump returned to office this year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ripped the new names off of a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican controlled Congress. Last Tuesday. The GOP House of Representatives Armed Services committee voted on July 15th to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon's budget bill. Quote, what this administration is doing, in particular this Secretary of Defense is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress speaking, said Republican from Nebraska, Don Bacon, who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth's move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law. Congress passed legislation, as I said, in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases that were named for Confederates and mandated that the recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration. The law is still on the books, so in order to return the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes, reports the Guardian. The Secretary claims that he's renamed and this is the part where it becomes performative. This is the performative piece that you guys have to understand, okay? The secretary claims that he's renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout U.S. history who were not Confederates, note, not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named after Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in World War II. Fort Benning is not renamed after the Confederate Benning. It's now supposedly named for Fred Benning. Fred, a soldier who served in the army in the First World War for like a year and a half. So they've renamed. They're performatively pretending to rename these bases after Confederates. So all you Confederate sympathizers take note. The names aren't even your old treasonous forefathers. They're random other soldiers from various other wars who just happen to have the same last names. So not the original Benning. Fred. Fred Benning. It's his base now. And they've taken off the names of some very heroic people whose families are still alive and had to watch themselves get these names from the Biden administration, then have them taken away by Trump administration 2.0 so they could pretend to put the Confederate names back on, but they're really not doing that it's fake, it's performative, but it still allows them to cosplay as the new Confederacy. So that's the performative stuff. And then there are the very real, really dangerous things that these people are doing, like deploying the US Military onto the streets of American cities in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus act, which bars the military from operating on domestic soil. And to get around that, the regime declared an emergency, saying they needed to stop a transnational gang from Venezuela called Trend. Except they used an 18th century law called the Alien Enemies act and combined it with the George W. Bush style Endless War on Terror bs. They use that rationale to say that anybody and everybody is Tren de Aragua. So they can arrest anybody they want, deport them to foreign gulags, hold them in a definite detention, whatever they want. You're Trend. I can do whatever I want to you. And as of this morning, the Supreme Court has once again ruled in the favor of King Donald, declaring that they can do that and use racial profiling and that that is okay, that they can now racially profile people in order to pretend that everyone is Tren de Aragua. Let me read a little bit of this Supreme Court story. Let me go into that real quick. It says here. In a decision that rubber stamps racial profiling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles and could accelerate deportations across America, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that federal agents do not. Do not only need reasonable suspicion, do not only need reasonable suspicion to target someone for immigration detention, leaving the door open for any rationale immigration agents choose to use unless including racial profiling. The ruling comes after the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block an order from a lower court that prohibited agents from using four racially loaded categories to justify arrests, apparent ethnicity, language spoken or accent, presence at a location where immigrants were believed to gather, or working in a particular kind of job. The order had snaked through the high court's emergency or shadow docket since Oct. 7. The decision overturns, for now, an order by U.S. district Judge Mamie Ewusi Finprong, which had temporarily halted ICE agents in Los Angeles from making arrests or stops without reasonable suspicion. U.S. citizens and immigrants had been detained under the Trump administration's directive to the Department of Homeland Security, often by masked and sometimes armed men. Pherom Pong found those raids to be done illegally and specifically in violation of the Fourth Amendment. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, no, no, no. It's all fine. In a 6, 3 decision. You will not be surprised? It's 6. Three immigration officers, under an Immigration and Nationality act, are allowed to interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States. And that includes brief detention for questioning, as well as if there are reasonable suspicions that a crime has been committed. In this case, the crime would be being an illegal alien in the United States. Kavanaugh wrote. Whether an official has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances. He writes here. Those circumstances include that there is an extremely high number of people and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area, that those immigrants tend to gather in certain locations or seek daily work that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture and construction that they do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal to illegal immigrants and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America, so do not speak much English. To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion or under this court's case law regarding immigration stops. However, it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other factors. So basically, he has said that you can use language where somebody is standing, their color, their accent, and the fact that they don't speak much English. You will not be surprised that it is the three liberal women who wrote who voted in dissent. And this is what Sonia Sortimaro wrote. She said one Latino US Citizen feels like he needs to carry his passport for protection in case federal agents stop him again. Another Latino US Citizen similarly worries that as a visibly Latino man, he could be detained if he does not carry his passport, but decided against doing so because he believes that as an American, he should not have to live like that in his own country. So according to the Supreme Court of the United States, we now effectively have apartheid in America. People who are brown or who have an accent or who speak with an accent or who do not speak sufficient English have to now carry their papers everywhere they go, according to the United States Supreme Court. Otherwise, they can be racially profiled. That is what the United States Supreme Court has now ruled. Welcome to apartheid America. If you're brown or black, you're gonna have to carry your papers everywhere you go. If you're white, you're fine. You can go anywhere you please. And that likely works for Trump, who called every black and brown person a natural born criminal. Don't believe me? Here he is.
- [15:59]
Criminals. These are hardcore criminals. You know, we took many people off the streets of Washington, D.C. they're hardcore. They're not going to be good in 10 years, in 20 years, in two years. They're going to be criminals. They're going to be. They were born to be criminals, frankly. They were born to be criminals and they're tough and mean and they'll cut your throat and they won't even think about it the next day. They won't even remember that they did it. And we're not going to have those people. Washington, D.C. is now a safe zone. It's a safe place.
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This coming from a natural born criminal, a person who is an actual felon. Was it 38 count? Somebody who was civilly found liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll and has about two dozen other accusers. The guy who was best friends with our most notorious pedophile sex trafficker who trafficked children, his bestie for decades. For a decade at least, according to the late Jeffrey Epstein. That guy calling other people natural born criminals. Or how about Eric Schmidt, United States Senator from Missouri? He took it even more blatantly racist during a speech in which he said, get this, America belongs to white people and white people alone. Here he is.
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The Continental army soldiers dying of frostbite at Valley Forge. The pilgrims struggling to survive in the hard winter soil of Plymouth. The pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier. The outnumbered Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks from beyond the stockade walls. All of them will be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a proposition. They believed they were fighting for a nation, a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America in all its glory is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It's our birthright. It's our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history and insult our traditions, they're attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America with the new myths, new people. But America doesn't belong to them. It belongs to us. It's our home. It's a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It's a way of life that is ours and only ours. If we disappear, then America too will cease to exist.
- [18:54]
All that's missing from that is you will not replace us. I mean, that speech would have been quite at home in 1980s South Africa. That speech would have been quite at home, I would believe in 1930s Germany or in any of the fascist countries in this moment that are trying to kick out immigrants. Note that he also placed Native Americans, the people who had this country first, the people who were already here. He cast them as standing in the way of the white settlers, right to steal their land. They also are not a part of this America because the settlers wanted it. And according to him, it belongs to their descendants and only them. White Anglo Saxon Protestants, it belongs to them and only them. Make it clear, Schmidt. At least you're being honest and being open. We know who you are. We got you, we hear you. I mean, it's wild. It's like the US has morphed directly into a white Christian ethno state. An ethno state, by the way, similar to Israel. Right wing Israel, which has attempted to make itself a Jewish ethnic ethno state, where the government can designate anyone or anything to be Hamas and just start killing them, right? They can start bombing them, they can start starving them. No different from how the Trump regime can designate anyone as illegal or turned strip them of their rights, detain them, jail them, ship them overseas, or even outright kill them. Like, by the way, our military just did last week to 11 people on a random boat in the Caribbean in a probable act of war. Take a look at this video. It's silent, but you can see it. Donald Trump made a very dramatic announcement in the Oval Office. You can see this boat. It's going along. We don't know who's in it. We don't know where they're going. We don't know what they're doing. But the United States military obliterated this boat and killed the 11 people on it. You can see that happen right there. Wild, right? A war crime on tape. Now, of course, Peter Thiel's little friend JD Bragged about it on Twitter, prompting a fellow Twitterson, Brian Krassenstein, to remind the Yale Law School grad that killing 11 people in a boat with no legal justification is probably a war crime. To which Vance replied, I don't give a shit what you call it. I don't give a shit what you call it. At which point libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul jumped in saying, JD, I don't give a shit. Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the highest and best use of the military. Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation? What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment. It is to glorify killing someone without a trial. I mean, when Rand Paul is a voice of reason, I mean, the US Literally had no justification or legal backup to just kill people Israeli style, with no evidence even of who these people were or who the boat was or who owned it or whatever. And to make it even worse, the media is reporting on this likely war crime as if it's perfectly mundane. And not to pick on cbs, but also let's pick on cbs. Here is how CBS reported on this.
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The President and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also announced today that the US Military conducted what they call a lethal strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by what they called a designated narco terrorist organization. They provided a few other details. Meantime, just yesterday, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro called Rubio a warlord and says Rubio seeks to stain Donald Trump's hands with blood. He says the President is being manipulated by Rubio. This as tensions continue to rise between the US And Venezuela. Trump has already sent the national guard into Washington D.C. and has threatened to do the same. Here in New York in the newsroom, Dick Brennan, CBS News.
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They just kind of, just kind of moved on. Now we're going to talk about the other thing. I mean, by the way, Nicolas Maduro is also a horrendous human being and a dictator, but now this regime is acting just like a dictator as well. They're, you know, Maduro is a, is a dictator. I would argue Bibi Netanyahu is pretty much an autocrat and they're acting like him. Any hospital that Bibi and friends bomb, they're Hamas. The cameras are Hamas. The buildings and schools are Hamas. The toddlers, definitely Hamas. The food aid, Hamas. The hospitals and doctors and the reporters, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. Kill them all, no repercussions. And now we're doing the same thing in the Caribbean Sea. They're like me too. Everyone's friend. We kill who we want, deport who we want, put the military in American streets, whatever we want. Go to war against Chicago and the media is reporting on it. And the media that's reporting on it just better be nice. Be nice or Trump will get in your face and call you names or punish your company or not let you do mergers or the FCC will come after you and Trump will sue you. Whatever he wants, he gets. Whatever Israel wants, they get. No negative coverage allowed. Please check out the Sky News report.
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The President left the White House mid morning for a day in New York at the tennis. But his post from 24 hours earlier was still echoing.
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Department of Defense.
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Listen.
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Be quiet.
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Listen. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second grade. We're not going to war, going to clean up our cities. We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend.
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Kara Swisher
That's not war.
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Joy Reid
That's common sense. It was lunchtime on Saturday when the Post dropped from the President's social media account, intentionally provocative, a play on the wartime film Apocalypse now repurposed for an American city, and an expansion of his deportation policy. A nod too, to the Department of War, because that is what his Defense Department has now been renamed. At the Pentagon late on Friday, workers chiseled away defense became war. After an Oval Office executive order. Chicago was one of a number of American cities where the streets were full through the weekend. In the shadow of Trump Tower, they protested his presidency.
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Chicago is not the narrative that people try and paint it as.
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Hind Ayub
He wants everyone to be afraid. He loves to see, see that people are afraid.
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Joy Reid
Now, I just want to note a few things there. Yamiche Alcindor is the reporter, African American reporter, Haitian American reporter that Donald Trump was screaming at and insulting. And by the way, the way that he has treated Yamiche over the years earns him this. And I say it, this is me saying it, not Yamiche Fu. Donald Trump, you don't speak to her that way. You have no respect and no one respects you. So for you to speak to Yamiche Alcindor that way when she was actually correct, your White House is the one that put up the funny we're going to war in Chicago meme. Your White House is the one who renamed the Defense Department the Department of War. You all did that. She was asking a question about what you did and she was absolutely correct. So they can joke about going to war with Chicago, Right. But reporters can't ask about them going to war with Chicago. And by the way, have you noticed the whole rationale for the military deployments that started off as being about immigration and the so called invasion of the southern border by the transnational gang that they use the Alien Enemies act to justify suddenly is now about just regular, ordinary crime. The whole immigration thing is gone. Now it's about crime, but still the same solution, the military. And by the way, I love Mayor Brandon Thompson's response. Chicago Mayor Brandon Thompson's response. Take a look at this. Oh, well, salt trucks. Their solution is salt trucks. They're putting salt trucks on the streets in order to get in the way of the military trying to come to their city. The mayor of D.C. should take notes. Meanwhile, we continue to watch the media jump. The Shark Trump attended the US Open over the weekend, prompting the US Tennis association to issue an edict. Check this out. Telling broadcasters not to hurt Trump's little fifis by showing him getting booed, which is what always happens when he attends anything in New York City or any other normal city where everybody hates him. It is pretty chilling, right? But it's also designed to produce media that is state approved and false, their order said. An internal email sent by the U.S. tennis association leadership to U.S. open broadcasters obtained by Bounces, requested that broadcasters censor any possible protest or other reactions to President Trump's presence. They said censor it, please don't show it. But here's what actually happened when Trump showed up at Arthur Ash Stadium, which, no, you cannot rename Vanilla Vice. Here's the video. It's from Midas Touch. So Trump was booed lustily at the US Open. They literally held most of the crowd, by the way, in endlessly long TSA lines, at security lines, so that he could wave to a mostly empty stadium and the booze could be reduced in scale. And this is not Trump's first rodeo. Waving to nobody. And people online often wonder why he does that. Why does he wave to nobody? Well, it's because the one thing Trump does know very well is TV and the media, and he knows exactly what they will do with footage like that. For example, you're watching Newsmax here. How, here's how you experience the exact same footage from the US Open. He was met there with cheers as well as booze. And meanwhile, CNN president also reported this way, this match from the Rolex, and.
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That networks might try to be, you know, falling in line or capitulating, as we've seen in some cases earlier this year. Bottom line, though abc, ESPN have been able, they have chosen to show that the President is there. You could hear a mix of cheers and boos and, and I think what's going on here, whether you're a broadcaster or you're the tennis association, you want to keep the action on the court. You want to keep the focus on the athletes and not on who is in the stands.
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Okay? And so he is there.
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Kara Swisher
Play is underway.
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Joy Reid
Do we know who has accompanied the President?
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Well, I think that's probably the more important part of the Trump attendance at the US Open. He's been photographed there with the CEO of Rolex, and he's in the Rolex suite. In fact, the tennis tournament, the trophy is put up in the suite is right next to the president. So it is notable that the president accepted a corporate client's invitation, apparently in this case Rolex, the Swiss watchmaker, just a few weeks after the Trump administration imposed a 39% tariff on products from Switzerland. We don't know what the discussions are like in that suite, in that box, but you can imagine that the executives at Rolex Rolex have a lot to say to President Trump about the tariffs. So amid the sports celebration, amid the US Open, I think it's worth asking if the president's having his ear bent by the executives at Rolex about the tariffs. He is also there with Attorney General Pam Bondi, a number of their other Trump administration officials this afternoon.
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Fred? Yeah, it's also worth asking, will he get a Rolex? Will he be gifted while he's in that box?
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Kara Swisher
Stranger things have happened.
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Joy Reid
All right, Brian Stelzer. Oh really? I mean really get a Rolex. This is called normalization, folks. Very Russian. But normalizing what we just saw there and writing off the fact that the US Tennis association said do not show him getting booed, that is not normal and it is not funny. And him haha, maybe getting a Rolex and sitting in the Rolex box like the presidency is literally for sale and can be swapped for Rolexes. Please don't normalize that. And it just keeps coming. We are now seeing the fallout from Skydance taking ownership of cbs. Now at this point, the only good thing about it and about this new company, South Park. And by the way, the latest episode in their latest gag in this season is the question of whether Trump is effing Satan. Which of course has a double meaning because in the show he's literally getting it on with Satan. But he also might be effing Satan. I kind of go back and forth between whether he is a devil or did he sell his soul to the devil to become an all powerful billionaire? I don't know. Just kidding. But besides south park, all that we are getting from CBS is the sellout after Kristen Noem complained about, you guessed it, the editing of an interview that she did on cbs. CBS News has now agreed to stop editing its interviews at all. They've effectively put themselves under government control. Per media, CBS is changing its Face the Nation interview policy after complaints from Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem. Noem accused CBS of shamefully editing her responses to a question about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the migrant man who was deported and jailed in El Salvador by the Trump administration, then finally brought back to the United States. The Trump administration initially admitted Garcia was deported as the result of an administrative error, but has continued to seek his deportation, accuse him of gang affiliations. In the release, DHS said more than 23% of Nome's interview ended up on the cutting room floor. They published a comparison of Gnome's statement to the edited version. Initially, CBS defended its actions that the interview was edited for time and met all of CBS's news standards. CBS News added that the entire interview is publicly available on YouTube, which is how they probably compared it, and the full transcript was posted early Sunday morning on cbsnews.com, which is again how they probably compared it. CBS edited out an unsubstantiated charge that no made against Garcia and his treatment of small children, something the government has never charged him with. But on Friday, the network said that he had a change of heart after listening to audience feedback over the past week and announced its new policy for greater transparency in our interviews. Face the Nation will now only broadcast live or live to tape interviews subject to national security or legal restrictions, TBS News said in a statement. This extra measure means the television audience will see the full unedited interview on cbs, and we will continue our practice of posting full transcripts in the UNEDITED video online. CBS's parent company, Paramount, recently agreed to pay President Donald Trump $16 million after he complained about the editing of a Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview that he claimed purposely made her look good. The settlement came as Trump administration considered approving the $8 billion sale of Paramount to Skydance. So what's next? They're going to allow Kristi Noem and other administration officials to lie on their air without editing or cutting it out? And what's next? Are they also going to, like, send flowers after every interview with a member of the regime? Oh wait, there's more. More capitulation from the Tiffany Network. The network where Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather used to work, is now going to be run basically by a substacker named Barry Weiss. You heard me right. According to Dylan Byers of Puck News, David Ellison, son of billionaire Larry Ellison, who runs Skydance, the company that now owns CBS, is going to purchase Ms. Weiss's substack channel, the Free Press, for a whopping 100 to 200 million dollars and put her in charge of CBS News. Or to put it more bluntly, as the nation did, Vile grifters are taking over establishment media. Let me read from this article by Jack Merkinson. Twenty years ago, as a student at Columbia, she led a racist smear campaign against Arab professors who had the audacity to criticize Israel. As a New York Times columnist, she constantly hawked right wing dial while posing as a liberal who was just tired of all the extremism and censorship on the left. A tedious bait and switch that nonetheless gained her media made her media profile soar. And as founder and editor of the Free Press, she has pushed genocide, denial, transphobia and the freedom to make Nazi salutes. If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild. That prize CBS News, CBS News the person handing this gift to Weiss is David Ellison, the billionaire Nepo baby who just merged CBS News parent company Paramount with his company Skydance. Ellison Puck's Dylan Byers reported on Wednesday is paying somewhere between 100 million and $200 million to buy the Free Press and install Weiss somewhere at the top of the network. And here are the grim details from Byers as part of the deal, I'm told, David plans to give Barry a role at CBS News that would, among other things, task his fellow millennial with guiding the editorial direction of the division. Barry's avowedly pro Israel and anti woke worldview, not to mention her broadly shit kicking anti establishment disposition, would inevitably inspire blowback from various corners of the newsroom and could dramatically change the editorial posture and reputation of one of the most storied and certainly self important institutions in American journalism. For David, that's likely part of the point. And by the way, this is me still quoting Merkinson. Two things here. First, calling them David and Barry like they're your friends who hang out with you all the time is annoying. We get it, Dylan. You're in the know. Nobody cares. Second, the laughable line about Weiss's broadly shit kicking anti establishment disposition is fundamental to understanding why her particular brand of bullshit has been so successful for credulous hacks like buyers. This is quoting him, not me. The fact that Weiss tosses around banalities about wokeness and free speech makes her an anti establishment figure. But people who actually oppose the establishment don't get paid hundreds of millions of dollars by that same establishment. Instead, what Weiss pedals is pro establishment build that flatters the need of our richest and most cosseted dimwits to pretend they are actually besieged outsiders. Boom. So to review, the Washington Post is now the shit kicking right wing free market plaything of Jeff Bezos, which is why all the journalists are quitting. The LA Times is now the shit kicking pro MAGA plaything of some South African billionaire, which is why the journalists are quitting. CBS News is the shit kicking home of pro Israel propaganda and some other various pro Trump shit kicking. There's no MSNBC because it's Ms. Now now. And the billionaires aren't just playing Trump games, they're giving Trump prizes. Here's a bunch of them glazing Trump in person in the Oval last week.
- [36:40]
Bill, would you like to say a few words? Thank you for incredible leadership, including getting this group together. Thank you, Bill, that's very nice. I want to thank you for including me this evening. It's incredible to be among everyone here, particularly you and the First Lady. I've always enjoyed having dinner and interacting.
- [37:01]
AI is going to change everything. You hear all of us saying that, but the fact that you are our.
- [37:07]
Kara Swisher
President and you recognize this right away.
- [37:10]
Joy Reid
And you've unleashed American innovation and creativity.
- [37:15]
Echo the comments of Tim and others. Thank you so much for getting us.
- [37:18]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
All together and thank you for being.
- [37:19]
Joy Reid
Such a pro business, pro innovation president. It's a very refreshing change. I think it's a real incredible inflection point right now in AI, the fact that your administration is supporting our companies.
- [37:34]
Kara Swisher
Instead of fighting with them.
- [37:35]
Joy Reid
We look forward to working together and thanks for your leadership. Great job. You're doing incredible, really. Jeff, would anybody like to say anything, anything else? A lot of geniuses on my right. Well, thanks for hosting us and this is quite a group to get together.
- [37:46]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
And you know, I think, you know.
- [37:48]
Joy Reid
All of the companies here are building.
- [37:51]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Just making huge investments in the country.
- [37:53]
Joy Reid
In order to build out data centers.
- [37:56]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
And infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation. So it's, you know, we don't often get together as the, the CEOs of.
- [38:04]
Joy Reid
The different companies, but it's, it's good to see everyone.
- [38:08]
Yeah. And Zuck can't be buyers like and just call him Zuck. He got even more shit kicking MAGA when his Lord asked him to show him the money. Here he is.
- [38:17]
How much are you spending, would you say over the next few years?
- [38:20]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Oh, gosh, I mean, I think it's.
- [38:22]
Joy Reid
Probably going to be something like, I don't know, at least $600 billion through.
- [38:29]
28 in the U.S. yeah, it's a lot.
- [38:33]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
No, it's.
- [38:34]
Joy Reid
It's significant. That's a lot. Thank you, Mark. It's great to have you.
- [38:44]
B. How much money? Did you want me to say? B. How much money? Don't worry, don't worry. We won't. We won't post you getting booed at the US Open on Meta. We'll protect you, B. We love you, baby. Lord have mercy. Jimmy Kimmel had the best send up. Check it out.
- [38:58]
Thank you very much, Mr. President. I want you to know, sometimes when I watch you striding across the White House lawn so confidently, with so much masculinity, I'll admit it, I get sexually aroused.
- [39:13]
Thank you for breathing life back into.
- [39:16]
My once slumbering penis. That was very well saved.
- [39:26]
It's the accuracy. The accuracy. Now I will know that this table full of bootlickers was one Ketamine themed short. This time, no. Elon, what happened? What gives? And joining me now is the great Kara Swisher of the eponymous Kara Swisher Show. It's a reversal. You had me on your show and now you're on my show. See how we love it?
- [39:45]
Kara Swisher
That's how we do it in the podcast business, my friend.
- [39:48]
Joy Reid
And we do whatever we freaking want.
- [39:50]
Kara Swisher
We fucking want.
- [39:51]
Joy Reid
Hello. This is it. We love this new life. Well, first of all, welcome, Kara. It is great to have you over. And listen, one day we have to do this in person with cocktails.
- [40:00]
Kara Swisher
Yes. Okay.
- [40:00]
Joy Reid
All right.
- [40:01]
Kara Swisher
Your number after this. And we're having dinner.
- [40:03]
Joy Reid
Perfect. Done, done and dusted. I want to start by talking about this very, very weird, very, very, very weird moment of all of these CEOs around the table. Jimmy Kimmel did a great send up of it all, praising Trump, Tim Cook of Apple. All of them doing what? As somebody who has covered this tech world for a long time, what did you make of it?
- [40:22]
Kara Swisher
Well, back in 2016, I actually broke a story of them all going to Trump Tower. Nobody had known they were gonna do that. And they did the similar thing where they praised Trump right after he won, before he came to office in January, he was president elect. And they wandered up to Trump, they marched up to Trump Tower. They didn't do any press releases cuz they were embarrassed, right? Cuz Trump was controversial and he was also anti immigrant. And they insist in that one Elon Musk was present. But they were all there, similar people, almost lots of the same people. They went up to Trump Tower, they did the whole praising thing and they said not a word about immigration. And I kept telling Them he's gonna ban Muslims. And they were like, no, he's not. We're just gonna convince him otherwise. And I was like, you're not. He's a racist. He's absolutely not gonna do it. And so they went up and they didn't release press releases. They just wanted tax repatriation at the time and a bunch of other things. No regulation. And they got on all his business councils, and then he started misbehaving, including at Charlottesville, and then other behaviors, and they all came off as business councils. Right. And so this time they went right back to. And then of course, they all decried him after, after the insurrection. And then they went back to it because they want things including advantages in AI and cyber, in cryptocurrency regulations, tax advantages, everything else. And so this is a. The get while the getting's good. So they showed up at the White House, they were supposed to be on the Rose Garden Club patio, whatever. You know, the Marriott as I like the new Marriott in the D.C. and not the good Marriotts. No, the medium Marriotts. Yeah, I wouldn't say the worst Marriotts, but the medium Marriotts. And so they went and they did exactly what you saw, which was become ever more escalating series of toady behavior in order to get what they want, including complimenting him. Including him, including everything. It was like going to the inaugural. Same thing is that they just have to give up very little to get a lot from him. And my only question. So it's the same behavior. It has not changed despite what happened in that interim period. And to me, I asked myself, why be a billionaire if you have to be a toady? I just don't understand that there are bigger stakes here and that I don't think it helps shareholders. They're doing it for shareholder advantage. Like, okay, my shareholders need less tariffs if I'm. Or something like that. And so I think, I think they have a higher social duty, but they feel like their shareholders are. Are better served by doing this. To me, anyone who's upending the rule of law is not good for shareholders. Anyone that's making people doubt in the government, in the stock market and whatever it happens to be is a danger to corporations because then you become like hungry or turkey and not exactly centers for innovation and growth in this world.
- [43:15]
Joy Reid
Yeah, or Russia. Right. Where when the, when the dictator is mad at you, they just seize your business. I mean, this is a world in which Donald Trump is having the United States take interest, you know, financial interest in businesses. He's upended what we thought was capitalism. Right. It's not free market capitalism.
- [43:31]
Kara Swisher
It's basically a Maoist state during it. It's capitalism when other people are. Can you. I just interviewed John Malone, who was a big investor. I like John. I think heard that interview.
- [43:41]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [43:42]
Kara Swisher
And the fact of the matter is, he would have lost his mind if a Democrat took 10% of intel or demanded a 15% vig from Nvidia. Lost his mind. But here, it's genius. Or the terrorists are genius. Like, I don't. That I don't agree. Like, you just, you can't have. When the Biden or right now, taking credit for the infrastructure stuff, putting his name all over it. It's not capitalism if the government is making industrial policy. It's something else. It's socialism is what it is. And so here you accuse Zoran Mamdani, whatever you think of him, of three or four grocery stores to help poor people eat vegetables, and then you take a big stake in Intel. I'm sorry, you can't do that at the same time. And so to me, I can't believe these. I can believe they're doing it. I can't believe that it's good for their companies in the long run. But these are the companies that aren't getting affected by tariffs. The tech companies do not get affected by tariffs. Why isn't the head of. I mean, to me, why isn't the head of Caterpillar there? Why isn't the head of Procter and Gamble there? Those are the countries that are really suffering, companies that are suffering under these tariffs and economic policies.
- [44:49]
Joy Reid
Oh, they'll get there. I'm sure they'll have their time. I admit it.
- [44:52]
Kara Swisher
But there's hundreds and hundreds of companies suffering. And these seven companies keep getting invited back and being toadies. And that to me is.
- [45:00]
Joy Reid
Well, the thing is, it's money that's going both ways, Right? These are all companies that also doled out money for the inauguration. And it's very clear that what Trump needs is to feel happy. Right? He needs everyone to praise him. He's needy. You know, he's childish. He's got to have everybody tell him he's great, he's the best. So that's what he requires.
- [45:17]
Kara Swisher
That's the problem here. I think they are right. Like, he's. We already know this about him. This is not new news. That he's. That he needs sycophants and he needs people to praise him, that we have to tell him he's smart. Whoever we happen to be. I would not do that. But, you know, this is not new. Donald Trump is who he is. It's these CEOs that are pretzeling themselves.
- [45:36]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [45:37]
Kara Swisher
In order to do so. And they, by the way, they might act a different way for the. If the Democrats.
- [45:42]
Joy Reid
Oh, it'll be completely different. They would never do that with a Democratic president. They would also not get whatever they want in exchange for cash. Because it feels like what we're seeing is this billionaire class exchange cash with Donald Trump, make him a billionaire. He's now, what, $5 billion in Bitcoin value. They know what he wants and it's a bribe. Right. But it feels almost like 1930s Germany, but worse. Right. In Germany, the CEOs thought they could control Hitler. In this case, they're like, we can buy him.
- [46:08]
Kara Swisher
I don't think they think they can control him. I think they think the get well, the getting's good. This guy is handing out gimmes and depending on where you sit in that thing you hand. And then though, we're going to invest the United States. Let me just tell you, if, if, if Apple wanted to invest in the United States, they could have. Ten years ago they didn't, so now they want to. Why? Why do they want to now? Because China's a threat. China was a threat 10 years ago. They instead, they facilitated the growth of technology in China, by the way, funded it. There's a great book about this out. So if they wanted to do manufacture in the US they could have done it at any one time, but here they're doing it now. They're, oh, we're going to invest 500 billion, we're going to invest 600 billion. Like, you know, and they are doing that, and they would do that regardless for these AI data, because they need them in the United States, these data centers. But if they had, if that had mattered to them and the US had mattered to them, they would have done it before. Yeah, that was their goal.
- [47:06]
Joy Reid
Why do you think Zuckerberg straight out lied? I mean, he said, you know, Mr. President, what, what, what? How much would you like us to say we're investing? He gives a number and then afterwards on a hot mic, he's like, is that the number you wanted, boss?
- [47:17]
Kara Swisher
Like, I think he was, didn't. In that case, I'm going to give him the benefit of doubt because I think Trump just pulled it on him. And they were, they, you know, everyone's competing to do another press release of how much money they're investing in the United States because they know if they, you know, these companies have grown because of other countries, especially Apple, by the way, China or wherever they happen to locate. And now the pressure is on to do stuff here in this country, which is very difficult because we don't have the educational background. Some of the stuff we shouldn't manufacture here. But most of these companies don't make anything here. Just the chip manufacturers could, but they're in Taiwan for the most part. And so, you know, there's lots of arguments to be made that we should have our chips here in this country. Sure, but why weren't they made in the first Trump administration? Why weren't they made in the Bush administration? Again, these companies do what's good for them and that's it. And today what's good for them is to kiss up to Donald Trump. That is just them. It's just the facts. And so sad, but true.
- [48:18]
Joy Reid
Sad, but why do you think that Elon Musk wasn't there? It was a very glaring absence. He wasn't there doing anything weird or on ketamine or whatever. He just wasn't there.
- [48:25]
Kara Swisher
He's got his hands full with his companies right now. There's all kinds of troubles at Tesla and other places. But he says he was invited. Other people at the White House said he wasn't. I don't really care. I think he's having problems with the President. And the president did say, and I think quite accurately that Elon doesn't have really anywhere to go. He's kind of homeless and so he has to come back to the Republican Party unless a debt, unless the Democrats decide to just take advantage of him. But what's interesting, it had. If he wasn't invited, then it has a real matchup to the Biden. The stupidity of the Biden administration not inviting him to the car summit. Now, I know there are arguments for it and everything else, but it really did start his descent into anti Democrats. Is that when he wasn't invited to that summit?
- [49:12]
Joy Reid
How childish is that? You're a billionaire and you're butthurt because you didn't get invited to one thing and all of a sudden you're like, I'm going to destroy America and steal everyone's data. Like he has all our data. He doesn't have to go to a meeting anymore, allegedly.
- [49:24]
Kara Swisher
So, you know, I, I don't know. He probably should have been there. That was kind of a, that was stupid politically from a point of view. And I did talk to him, not just for that thing with the Democrats. And I think there should be guardrails on these companies. And I've talked about it a lot and that. And. But the Democrats, you could argue, they went too far on cryptocurrency. They didn't work with the cryptocurrency industry, and they could have done it in a way that was a little less hostile. Right. And you can't celebrate American tech companies, which are the finest in the world, and also always call them. You have to find a way to work with them and put guardrails in place. And I think what we're doing is careening from one totally like 1920s, anything goes to no, you may not kind of thing like, we're gonna put every rule on you. And then they're contending with Europe at the same time, which is putting all kinds of fines on these companies.
- [50:15]
Joy Reid
Well, speaking of that, I mean, I feel like we've careened to a point now where, you know, Donald Trump, as long as they're willing to pay him, is willing to give them complete control over the country. There is this idea of a techno feudalist economy, a yarvinist. You know, they're going to be the overlords, and the rest of us are meat. And of course they love it. But where does this end? Peter Thiel scares the hell out of me. I'm going to be honest. He seems to me to be one of the most. Probably the most frightening out of the whole bunch. What does he want?
- [50:41]
Kara Swisher
I think he's very smart. Like, let me just tell you, he's been around. These guys are kind of Johnny. Come lately to this stuff because it's like. It's mostly money, really, and they can sort of cosplay that. They now understood the light. And they used to be Democrats, and now it's whatever.
- [50:55]
Joy Reid
Yeah, they'll say whatever.
- [50:56]
Kara Swisher
Literally. I. I told. I think I told you this jokes.
- [50:58]
Joy Reid
If they.
- [50:59]
Kara Swisher
I tell this joke a lot. If Kamala Harris was president, they would be.
- [51:02]
Joy Reid
They. Them.
- [51:02]
Kara Swisher
If she wanted, like, you know, like, whatever. You know, they would dance with her. They would do whatever.
- [51:08]
Joy Reid
Whatever.
- [51:09]
Kara Swisher
Kids. I don't know, whatever it happened to be. They give her kids or whatever. Whoever's in power is who they're interested in. Right? And so.
- [51:16]
Joy Reid
And hey, by the way, those were Chucks, by the way. Let's just. Let's disrespect the shoes.
- [51:20]
Kara Swisher
I have a pair myself.
- [51:21]
Joy Reid
I should not need to have, like, four.
- [51:24]
Kara Swisher
So one of the things that is really important to understand is that they live in a world where they control everything. Like, the unified executive theory is not something tech people don't know about. Mark Zuckerberg can't be fired from Facebook ever for anything. Same thing with a couple other companies. And so they like that. They like full control of things. And the ones that don't have it have more of a problem. Like Elon has full control over the companies and so they operate in that way. And sometimes it works for a company. By the way, company is not a. Is not a collective. Right. It's. It's one. It's usually an executive and then on down. And so they kind of back that idea and they do think it. And I think Peter is one of the many people J.D. vance was influenced by. Peter, you know, this idea that there should be one single executive to do whatever they want because Daddy knows best. White Daddy knows best for the rest of us, essentially.
- [52:19]
Joy Reid
Sorry, White Daddy. Yeah.
- [52:21]
Kara Swisher
And it's not the trained daddy from the Gilded Age. And I'd let him run anything, but. And I'm a lesbian. He's very adorable. But that's a. Well, even then, those daddies weren't good at the time.
- [52:32]
Joy Reid
Right? I mean, that's the guilt. Literally. We're back in the Gilded Age. Except the daddies are all bad. The daddies are all pretty bad. They think women shouldn't vote and that, you know, people should be robotic automaton that just go to work for 12 hours a day. Yeah, that's.
- [52:44]
Kara Swisher
That's the same daddies. It's the same, Same situation. Um, but they, you know, they're comfortable in that. In that where they get to decide everything. And then what's really interesting about them, they do share with Trump is this victimization idea. Oh, God, the press is so mean to me. I'm not like what they think, you know this. They're very angry. And so that's why they buy media companies. That's why they, they just feel like so put upon. And again, if you're a billionaire, you should be happy as fuck. I don't know. And you shouldn't have to kiss up to the president. And I don't mind if they laid low. Like, laid low, fine. I guess it's kind of wimpy. But I'd like some of them to speak up. But if they're not going to speak up, they don't need to do this because it's really, you know, it's really, you know, I wrote one of them and I said, you're soiling yourself. I just don't know what else to say. You're soiling yourself in public.
- [53:36]
Joy Reid
And you want to tell us which one?
- [53:38]
Kara Swisher
No, the only one I'm going to give an out to a tiny bit of an out is Bill Gates, who was sitting there. I think he wants to get that money back for, at usaid. I don't think it was for Microsoft that he was there. Cassaca Nadella was there for Microsoft.
- [53:52]
Joy Reid
Or do you think he's afraid they'll put, they'll, they'll release his name on the Epstein list?
- [53:55]
Kara Swisher
No, I don't. I think he, I think he's quite, has been devoting himself to a lot of, you know, whether it's AIDS or malaria and stuff like that. And I think the cutting of USAID has been very devastating to what he's been doing from a philanthropy perspective. And so I think in that case, I. You might bend the knee for that, I guess. I don't think it's the Epstein list.
- [54:18]
Joy Reid
I don't think it is. Yeah, well, what about, I mean, what would, what are we looking at? Because eventually, you know, the, the, the, the, what do you call the tables say that eventually J.D. vance could theoretically be president. Donald Trump is not well. He's, he's very elderly. He doesn't seem to be well. But if, for whatever reason he wasn't president, we'd be talking about Peter Thiel's employee being the president. What would that mean for us?
- [54:38]
Kara Swisher
Called him that. He called him Peter T's failed intern. I think that's.
- [54:42]
Joy Reid
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, that's accurate.
- [54:44]
Kara Swisher
I call him the butler of the rich guys. He's kind of the butler.
- [54:47]
Joy Reid
Well, on south park, he. The guy who says the plane buzz. That guy.
- [54:51]
Kara Swisher
I don't think, by the way, I think he's quite smart.
- [54:52]
Joy Reid
I like.
- [54:53]
Kara Swisher
As much as we want to discount him.
- [54:54]
Joy Reid
Well, he's smart enough to say Trump is Hitler and then become Hitler's vp. So. Yeah, right.
- [55:01]
Kara Swisher
I mean, I think he's a complex person. When he was, I was at an event where he was insulting Trump, so much so that I was like, just a second. He has some interesting attributes. This is me. Lesbian presenters. Like, wait a minute. He is charming like. Or charismatic is what I was trying to point out. But he was, you know, he's a complex person. I find him to be a problematic candidate because I think he's charmless. And I think Americans don't like charmlessness. I just, Any way you slice it, minute Trump keels over or is out of the picture, it's going to be very, they're going to have a civil war going.
- [55:37]
Joy Reid
Oh, it's going to be civil war.
- [55:38]
Kara Swisher
That's the real civil war. That's in between and among those people. And then you have people like, you know, Glenn Youngkin or a David McCormick, you know, who might be able to wrest control. The problem is when you have this sort of cult like figure at the top, it devolves. It just absolutely devolves into something else. And is JD Vance a deft enough politician, even with money from Elon Musk, even with money from Peter Thiel to overcome his charmlessness? And I don't know what else to say. He's charmless. He's, you know, he's like Ron DeSantis.
- [56:13]
Joy Reid
Without the white boots.
- [56:13]
Kara Swisher
Oh, well, no, he's more charming than Ron DeSantis.
- [56:16]
Joy Reid
Well, I mean, you know, a bottle of water is more charming than Ron DeSantis.
- [56:20]
Kara Swisher
No, imagine him against a Gavin Newsom.
- [56:22]
Joy Reid
It's just like, Don, not even close.
- [56:25]
Kara Swisher
I don't see it. I think Gavin is a shape shifter in terms of being appealing to some people. Right. He's very good at, like, moving through spaces, right. Through openings. And I think the Democrats often, you know, a lot of the Democrats are sort of, I think someone was describing as peacetime. Like, remember in the Godfather, he's a peacetime consigliere.
- [56:45]
Joy Reid
I need a war.
- [56:48]
Kara Swisher
They need a wartime consigliere. And they've got PeaceTime consigliery.
- [56:52]
Joy Reid
And two more questions. One, on this whole, you saw the raid, the Trump raid of the Hyundai plant, which seems like a signal that they are now going big. Tom Homan said they're going to do more of this, but this is one of those companies that. But the United States has worked really hard to try to bring foreign investment into the United States. Right. And, and I, it's hard for me to imagine, number one, if they were making electric cars. I'm wondering if Elon is like, yo, are we trying to, like, destroy that industry entirely with the windmills?
- [57:18]
Kara Swisher
Elon said that explicitly, that they're trying, that they're, that he's, that he's hurting the very. He's, he's advantaged the fossil fuel companies for sure, for the EV companies. And Elon's correct in that.
- [57:29]
Joy Reid
And they want to, I mean, what we've seen now is, you know, a Trump administration official agree that windmills are the reason that electric prices are going up and saying, well, wind doesn't work when it's not. Windmills don't work when it's not windy. And Electric doesn't work or solar doesn't work when the sun's not out, is it, they don't understand how batteries work. Like these people are just saying, no, we just want to drill for oil. Right.
- [57:50]
Kara Swisher
They're just making it up. I mean, I think it's, it's to advantage fossil fuel companies and delay the inevitable, which is electric vehicles, which is not just electric vehicles. There's all sorts of interesting innovations going on. Fusion energy, hydrogen energy. These are, if we perfect them and if our government was smart, we'd be really investing in these things because it's the future, it's the actual future in which we could really dominate. And you know, it's, it's energy that never dies. Like we, that doesn't pollute the environment and just a big ice shelf just broke off like, like the biggest ice shelf just broke into pieces or something. And you're sort of like, it's, I know a lot of this is sort of science fiction and some of the movies, but you're like, wow, that's really problematic. Like that's the thing. And so you don't have to be a big climate change person to see that we need to shift in what we're doing. And many of these tech people by the way, know this. They do know this. And that's why Sam Altman's investing in fusion energy or Gates or Musk. They're all investing in this stuff because they do know it's the future.
- [58:54]
Joy Reid
But in their future and their version of this future, there essentially is no federal government. You've got like a very well pampered king president that just gets shoveled money the way Sam Alito is and they get nice vacations and they control the country. Right?
- [59:08]
Kara Swisher
Correct. Right. You know, look, we've had people, business people controlling a lot of stuff behind the scenes. This is explicit and that's why it's so distasteful. It seems such a paper play. And Trump is the coin operated president, put a coin in and he, you know, like, you know, if there was, if there was a very liberal person doing this to him, I suspect he'd be very liberal. Like I don't think he has any hardened true values. So you know, if the billionaire wasn't Elon Musk, but was, you know me, if I was a multi billionaire, he'd be like, everybody gets a hug. Like, you know, whatever it happens to be like, I wouldn't have people hugged.
- [59:43]
Joy Reid
That's it. And my last question here, because Speaker Mike Johnson is an especially to Me puzzling character. He claims to be an evangelical Christian, a Bible believing Christian, yet he's willing to shill for literally anything evil Donald Trump want anything he wants to do. But he came out and he said something really, really interesting. And that is effectively naming Donald Trump as not just an FBI informant, but as the informant who turned in Jeffrey Epstein, who now has said he misspoke. But that was weird. Your thoughts?
- [60:16]
Kara Swisher
I don't understand that, man. I think there's a whole internal. I would really know. I'd like to see the thought bubble over that guy's head in like, what's really happened? If I could read mine. So I'd want to read his. Right? There is something going on with that guy that is just like, what is the motivation? What is he, what is his end game? There's, he's, you know, he's almost like, like a character in a fictional, like in Knives, Knives out is about to come out with Knives out. He's like one of those people, like, what is he? Is he the killer? Is he the toady? Is he the. Like, you don't know what he's doing, but whatever it takes, he's just sucking up to Donald Trump now. I think again, people like that. What happens after post Trump? There is going to be a post Trump at some point, you know, actuarial table.
- [61:01]
Joy Reid
Do you think that, I mean, do you think that this MAGA movement ends at some point or are we trapped in this Vortex for like 20 years?
- [61:08]
Kara Swisher
If he puts things in place, certainly if he could, like if he could game the system for 20 years, sure. But it still requires the personality. It requires him. Now, they could keep a memory of him alive or whatever. But look, as Scott Galloway, my co host on Pivot, says, biology is undefeated. I'm sorry, the actuarial tablers are what they are. He has a 50% chance of being given his age. And I'm not young either. He has a 50% chance. I'm not as old as he is, obviously. But by a lot, I mean who.
- [61:39]
Joy Reid
Yeah, he's gonna say who is?
- [61:41]
Kara Swisher
No, by a lot. He's older and he's an older president. And by the way, same thing with all these other representatives, whether it's Eleanor Holmes Norton, whether it's Gary Nadler. They're too old to be deciding the future. Like, I honestly, I don't understand why old people are deciding the future of my son, who's 23. I don't get it. I don't know why my son isn't part of that right?
- [62:00]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Well, I mean, and there's, there's the. Feels like in Trump's case, it's this sort of hurry up to get all of his dreams to come true because he doesn't have time, right? His dream of being a king, his dream of being a billionaire, his dream of being beloved, being at the Kennedy center, getting a Kennedy center honor. He's trying to, like, fulfill all his wish list, his bucket list, like, all at the same time.
- [62:19]
Kara Swisher
I mean, we can't. Like, one of the things I always did with the tech guys sometimes, a lot of them, not all of them, but some of them are really terrific. Mark Cuban being one, for example, is. I used to think, wow, their parents didn't hug them enough as children. I know it sounds crazy. It's so reductive to think that way, but you're like, I'm sorry your parents didn't love you, but you need to go get therapy and stop subjecting yourself to us, to you. And so I think Donald Trump has an empty, empty hole. I'm not a therapist, but it's just clear that there was something happened and we're paying the price. And it's never going to be enough for this guy. But after he goes, there will be like a reckoning. There will be a reckoning with some of these people. What's interesting to see is someone like, who I find loathsome, Marjorie Taylor Greene. But a little bit of a backbone you see there, right?
- [63:08]
Joy Reid
A little bit.
- [63:09]
Kara Swisher
Just a tiny bit. So you're starting to see bits of and flashes of which way it's going. And that's going to be tremendously interesting. And it's a real opportunity for Democrats, as Newsom said, to get a little muscular here. And that's not a gender specific thing. It's like, stop acting like it's normal. And finally, as her client, finally is like, oh, this might be a problem. Joy, you've been talking about. I was like, really? Oh, thank you for the penny to fucking drop now. I mean, you've been talking about this and it's not, you know, you're hysterical. Joy's hysterical. The men are very measured. They now realize we may have a problem here.
- [63:46]
Joy Reid
Maybe just a little bit. Just a little bit.
- [63:48]
Kara Swisher
And so that's that. To me, no one survives a cult, doesn't survive past the cult leader. It just doesn't.
- [63:57]
Joy Reid
There's never going to be a Jones Jr. You know what I mean? Like Jim Jones. That's it. Jim Jones Jr. Can't run the cult.
- [64:04]
Kara Swisher
Like it's just also dead, but he's actually.
- [64:07]
Joy Reid
Actually.
- [64:09]
Firm but fair. You did Clara Swisher. It is always so much fun. Thank you very much. Next time with cocktails. I appreciate.
- [64:14]
Kara Swisher
Make an AI version of Trump and that'll lead us.
- [64:17]
Joy Reid
See, first of all, the fact that that was ever done with Prince. I'm already so offended that there was an AI Prince that was doing a concert. I'm like, please don't do that. Please do not make the hologram of Michael Jackson, Prince, or Donald Trump. And not for the same reasons.
- [64:29]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, someday, but not today.
- [64:32]
Joy Reid
Not today.
- [64:33]
Kara Swisher
He's not going to make it into the future in another. They're not going to take Donald Trump's brain and put it in another box. And by the way, even with Xi and Putin, we're talking about Oregon. I'm doing a show about longevity right now. A lot of stuff around My next book is about that. And while it's really intriguing and really interesting where we're headed, not today. It's going to be too late for Trump.
- [64:55]
Joy Reid
None of these people. And I think Peter Thiel also wants to live forever. It's like the people who no one actually likes now are like, I'm just going to live in perpetuity and people will not like me forever.
- [65:06]
Kara Swisher
Exactly.
- [65:07]
Joy Reid
Okay. Like, I don't think people are begging for Elon Musk for eternity or Peter Thiel forever. Actually.
- [65:12]
Kara Swisher
I don't think he wants to live forever.
- [65:13]
Joy Reid
He doesn't. I don't know.
- [65:15]
Kara Swisher
I don't know. I never asked him.
- [65:16]
Joy Reid
I probably wouldn't ask him because I wouldn't speak to him because he, again, frightens me. Kara Swisher, thank you.
- [65:20]
Kara Swisher
Nobody frightens you. Joy. Give me.
- [65:23]
Joy Reid
You're right. That's fair. Thank you so much.
- [65:28]
Kara Swisher
The dark is afraid of you.
- [65:30]
Joy Reid
That's it. And it should be. Damn it.
- [65:32]
Kara Swisher
My daughter was, like, scared of the dark. And I said, you know what you have to say? The dark is afraid of me.
- [65:36]
Joy Reid
The dark is afraid of me. That's right. And obviously the fascists are as well. They are afraid because you know what scares them? Women. Women freaks them out because they can't control. They can't control the women.
- [65:48]
Kara Swisher
Right?
- [65:49]
Joy Reid
So, all right. Thank you, Kara Swisher.
- [65:52]
Kara Swisher
Thank you so much.
- [65:53]
Joy Reid
All right, y'. All, that. That was great. Kara Swisher in the house. You can join her on the Kara Swisher podcast. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. You can get them on Spotify, you can get her on YouTube. You're definitely going to want to listen because she's a smart lady and she knows a lot of things. All right, y'. All. So you will recall that we heavily covered the Trump ordered anti black, anti Hispanic, non census year gerrymandering of Texas, which unfortunately was made possible in part by Democrats returning to the state and allowing Trump lackey Republicans to get their precious quorum so that they could take away black districts and in their mind, give themselves an even larger majority in the United States House of Representatives in next year's midterms. Well, now the same battle is playing out in the state of Missouri. Take a look at this video.
- [66:44]
Republicans are moving forward with the new.
- [66:45]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Map to approve a newly drawn congressional map. And Democrats are displaying their disapproval.
- [66:52]
Joy Reid
The new map would likely send one more Republican to Washington, D.C. by curving up the Kansas City area.
- [66:57]
One Democratic lawmaker is refusing to, refusing to back down, staging a sit in on the floor of the House chamber.
- [67:05]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
I feel like what we're doing right now is defending the integrity of democracy and the things that the people of Missouri truly believe in and value.
- [67:11]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
The government is actively silencing our voices by breaking their own rules.
- [67:16]
Joy Reid
The House has come to order the house standard until 5:30 or September 7th. This isn't really just about a bill or a map.
- [67:23]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
It's about saving our democracy and stand up for it.
- [67:26]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Regardless of what side of the aisle you're on, this is impacting all of us. And all of us deserve representation.
- [67:33]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
No matter which way you vote, no matter who you are, no matter what part of the state you live in, you deserve to have a voice that's equal to every other person.
- [67:41]
Joy Reid
This is wrong. It's insidious, and frankly, gentlemen, it's sickening.
- [67:45]
Kara Swisher
We deserve to have that information.
- [67:47]
Joy Reid
If you are not willing to provide it. What are you hiding?
- [67:49]
This type of policy is more morally corrupt and inexcusable.
- [67:53]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
When one of us is silenced, we're all silenced.
- [67:58]
Joy Reid
And joining me now are those three fighting Democrats of Missouri State Representatives Ray Reed, no relation, Jeremy Dean and Lily Fuchs. Thank you all so much. They're all there together. Thank you all for being here. And I want to note for everyone that the seat they're trying to remove is the seat held by Representative Manuel Cleaver. Thank you all for being here.
- [68:20]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Absolutely. Thank you for having us.
- [68:22]
Joy Reid
Of course. I'm going to go right down the line. We'll go ladies first. Representative Fuchs, tell us how this started and what is happening now.
- [68:30]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. Joy. It is a real honor to be.
- [68:33]
Joy Reid
Here with you today.
- [68:34]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
And hello to everyone watching. Thank you for highlighting what's happening in Missouri. You know, this started with the president mandating or tweeting out to our governor to call for an extraordinary session to redistrict our maps. We have a constitutional provision that says that we will redraw district maps every 10 years after the census. We are mid cycle and we are currently in the process of redistricting. We are in the lounge and there's debate happening as we speak. You know, listening. This is a pretty contentious battle. It's not just the battle for redistricting. It's also the initiative petition, which is our citizenship petition process that's currently being sabotaged. So we can talk about that a little bit more. But when we came back for session on last Wednesday, that's when the obstruction really started to happen. And so we, we really want to make sure that all Missourians and all people are being heard and represented. And so when we got to a point where we weren't being heard on the floor, we tried to do different procedural motions. And that happened on Wednesday and I wasn't heard or recognized. And so then when we came back on Thursday, that's when Representative Dean and I'll let you go ahead and take what happened then.
- [69:49]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Yeah, so we came in on Thursday. We tried to do an additional motion to bring to the fact that we don't have a quorum here. That gets kind of in the weeds of things. But ultimately the, the, the topic here is that everything that we're doing right now is unconstitutional. And that's what Democrats are standing up for, is the Missouri Constitution. We truly believe that everybody deserves a voice in the state, whether it's our, whether we agree with them or not. Everybody should have a voice at that ballot box and people should be able to choose their leaders, not their leaders choosing them.
- [70:20]
Joy Reid
And Ray Reid, right now, there's a super majority. Republicans have a super majority in the state House, I believe in the state Senate as well. So this is one of those situations that's very similar to Texas in which you all don't have the numbers. So how do you stop them? And are you still denying them a quorum?
- [70:37]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Yes, ma'. Am. We stopped them by fighting better. You know, they got a super majority of cowards right now. And the way we hold them accountable is by drawing attention to an issue like this. And then we mobilize in the streets. We're kind of demobilizing. Wednesday at noon here in the state of Missouri, at our state capitol, we're bringing we're flooding the building with tons of rally goers and supporters and really just citizen state of Missouri to make the report deter as the blog moves.
- [71:05]
Joy Reid
On this listing and Representative Fuchs, I mean this, if it's you've made the point about the Constitution in the state, is there a court challenge coming? Because it does seem to be pretty blatantly illegal.
- [71:18]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Yes. And in fact, we heard last night from the president of the NAACP here, President Chappell, Nimrod Chappell, who sent us a message because the NAACP is suing everybody as they put out the information. So yes, there are legal challenges that are pending. And you know, I think it's important to recognize that our very first constitution here in Missouri, the very first law that we ever wrote was to outlaw free blacks. And the Confederacy is still reigning high here in this state. And we're really trying to hold them back as much as we can. And that's why we decided if you aren't going to listen, then I guess we'll just kind of wait here until we get the answers for Missourians. And so that's why we decided to not leave the floor. You know, and yeah.
- [72:03]
Joy Reid
And when you said the Confederacy is back, it is literal. You know, Ray Reid, I definitely have to get your thoughts on this. I mean, one of your United States senators, Senator Schmidt, and we played the sound earlier in the show, literally said that America was made for white people. It was made for white pilgrims and the ones who fought off the natives. He literally brought indigenous people into it and said that how dare they try to stand in the way of what he called himself, these settlers taking this land and said the country was built by those settlers and those pilgrims for themselves and nobody else. He said it pretty clearly. As an African American who is a state law, he was a lawmaker in the state of Missouri. Your thoughts on him saying this country's not yours, it's only for people like him.
- [72:48]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
I would like to remind him who built this country. And it's it's people who look like me and people will be representatives who frankly aren't going to have, you know, state of Missouri, largely from the time of our founding, from Dred Scott to Michael Brown, has had moments in our history where the race relations here, our race relations across the entire United States of America and what we're seeing right now with this redistricting effort that they're cutting up in Kansas City, the Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver's district, that's a heavily minority district, they are silencing Black voters to keep their king, Donald Trump, in heart in Falcon.
- [73:33]
Joy Reid
And by the way, they're taking a big chunk of your district and putting it into that district. Right. In order to basically make that district wider.
- [73:40]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Well, to make. To make other districts more redder. They're taking the blue part of my district and putting into the first congressional district in the St. Louis region.
- [73:50]
Joy Reid
And Jeremy Dean, the other piece of it is that they are also trying to go after the citizen initiative process. Talk a little bit about that, because Missouri really kind of shocked me and I think a lot of other people when the voters of Missouri said, no, we actually want to enshrine a woman's right to choose in our Constitution. And we actually wouldn't mind having a decent, livable wage. They're trying to undo that.
- [74:13]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Yeah, this is just a continued pattern that we continue to see from the Republican Party. They will do absolutely anything they can to try and silence voters and continue to have their rule over the people of this state. They obviously don't represent the priorities of what Missourians are doing here. We go out and we talk to constituents. When this started happening, we went out and did town halls. We knocked doors for these seats in the state of Missouri. We quirk to be in this building. And the way that we do that is by listening to them and understanding what they need. And what that is, is health care that's affordable and accessible. What they need is fully funded public schools, teachers that don't have to work as a bartender on the weekends in order to be able to pay their rent, groceries that they can afford, gas that they can afford. I mean, you name it. The state of Missouri has many priorities. The people of Missouri have priorities. And Republicans continuously and continuously ignore that. And so what we have to do as citizens is go out and collect signatures to get these things on our ballots, to do it ourselves. And whenever we do that, it makes them mad because we are essentially overruling what they think the priorities of our state are, because they don't know what the priorities of our state are. And so what they're doing right now is trying to raise the threshold of what it takes to pass a citizen initiative petition to the point to where it's almost impossible, to the point to where less than 5% of the voters in this state could kill any initiative petition that they do. And so it's completely unfair. It's a gutting of direct democracy at its finest. And people should be looking to the state of Missouri about how great the initiative petition process is rather than what Republicans are doing, which is attacking it and telling us that it's wrong.
- [75:44]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And brain reed. I mean, they're using. I mean, the tactics are pretty. It's the same. There's nothing new under the sun. These people aren't that innovative. They're just doing the regular thing. How should people understand the initiative that they're putting on the ballot to try to trick Missourians into undoing the constitutional amendments they already passed?
- [76:01]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Yeah, we call that ballot candy. They're essentially going to say, hey, we're going to give you reproductive freedom. But what they're really doing is taking away their. Your right to choose what you do with your own body, which government has no right to tell you what to do in your doctor's offices.
- [76:16]
Joy Reid
And so, Lily, should people, when that initiative, I guess it's going to be on the ballot next year, what are you instructing them to do? Because it sounds like if people vote yes, they meet, they're really voting no. Right.
- [76:28]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
We're going to have to work really hard on messaging. And that's why, you know, Missouri, because we've had this Republican held super majority for so long. Missourians have gotten pretty good at collecting signatures and building coalition and working collaboratively across the state. And because of that, that's also why we see the attack on this petition process, because we have gotten pretty good at getting at the people getting what they need when their legislature fails them, when their policymakers are failing them. They have the ability to get what they need from their government. And that's what this process is. And so it's pretty unnerving to see it dismantled in this capacity.
- [77:07]
Joy Reid
Yeah. I'm going to give Angie a final word here. Ray, tell us what we can do to support you. How can we help you guys to win this?
- [77:13]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Please, please, please continue to spread the word about us. If you're in the state of Missouri, we expect to see you here Wednesday at noon. We're busing people in from all across the state and from around the state of Missouri. If you're not in the state of Missouri, please, please, please, in your community, if it's not happening now, this kind of fight is coming to a state near you. So please get involved in your local civics, civics organizations, Democratic Party. Talk to your legislators, your state legislators, state senators. Let them know how you feel about redistricting. And please, please, please show up to vote in August, November of 2026.
- [77:49]
Joy Reid
Yeah, indeed. And, and Jeremy Dean, your protest. How does it go? Where does it go from here?
- [77:54]
Missouri State Representative Jeremy Dean
Yeah, we don't see any point in stopping now at this point, what we are doing, we don't have the numbers in the state of Missouri to be able to stop this in the House. We are going to lose this battle. But what we are doing is making this as painful as absolutely possible for these Republicans who continue to ignore their constituents and continue to do the bidding of Donald Trump. Trump in Washington, D.C. it's clear that Missouri values are not the same as Donald Trump's values, but they feel that they have to completely and totally impose those on the people of the state of Missouri at any cost possible. And so we're going to continue fighting. We're not going to stop. And they definitely should not expect us to stop because at the end of the day, 2026 is coming around this corner and they're going to pay for what they're doing this year.
- [78:38]
Joy Reid
Lilly Fugues, last word to you. I'm assuming you guys have been in touch with you all, have been in touch with Representative Cleaver, have you has the national Democratic Party been in touch with you all and are they giving you the support that you need?
- [78:50]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Yes, ma'.
- [78:50]
Joy Reid
Am.
- [78:50]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Indeed, we have heard from the Democratic Party. You know, the Chairman Martin has been incredibly supportive and helping, you know, from from the beginning when, you know, when this started on Thursday, we didn't really anticipate that we were going to be at our 102 and a half at this point of our sit in. And so right away we had support and offerings to, you know, help, help in the ways that they can and to elevate this story because we know we've seen this in Texas, we've now it's in Missouri. We know Ohio and Indiana are our next. And, and also we see our cities, our blue cities, D.C. new Orleans, these places that are coming under federal attack. So we know that whether you're in a red state and a red state and you're being attacked, you're also could be in a blue city in a blue state and being attacked. So we just really need people to pay be paying attention to how this folds out across the country.
- [79:44]
Joy Reid
We're calling them The Missouri Fighting 3. Lily Fuchs, Jeremy Dean and Ray Reed. Again, no relation, but we're gonna say that he's a cousin, you all are cousins. We're gonna all make you guys members of the family. Thank you all very much. Keep the fight going and please keep in touch. Let us know how we can be of service to you.
- [80:01]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Thank you so much, Joy.
- [80:02]
Joy Reid
Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, there it is you all. You have your orders. If you're marching orders. If you're in the state of Missouri, you need to be there on Wednesday at noon. Missouri time to be a part of that attempt to stand up to Republicans who once again, you know, it's. Maybe it's completely coincidental they just keep going after the seats held by black, by black Democrats. I mean, it's just a total coincidence. They're just happening to maybe, you know, for whatever reason, going after the seats held by African Americans. Probably just totally coincidental that that's what they're doing in every state. They're talking about going after Jim Clyburn seat in the state of South Carolina. Weird. You know, they're going after seats held by African Americans in Texas. I mean, maybe it's just a coincidence. I don't know. We could be completely wrong. Maybe we should. Maybe we're thinking, we're thinking too deeply into it. Maybe we're making it too complicated. I actually don't think that we are. I think it's pretty clear. And the only thing that these Republicans understand is mutually assured destruction. I think what Gavin Newsom and the Democrats in California are doing is exactly right. And it needs to be done in every single state. Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, you name it. If there's a Republican that has a seat in the United States House of Representatives in your state, you need to be eliminating that seat ASAP so that next year that person is out of a job. Take them all out of their seats. Even if Democrats can't win the numbers game, make it hurt for them, make it costly for them, make them have to pay as well. Make a bunch of them have to collect unemployment or go join ICE or whatever it is that Donald Trump will have them do when they don't have a job anymore. Sorry, that's just the way I feel about it. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, so not only is the United States morphing into an Israel slash old South Africa style religious ethnostate, we're also seeing the regime push to eradicate any resistance to the literal obliteration of Palestinians existence in their homeland. Not to mention our rights to have any say about it. Which brings me to Marco Rubio. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the guy with no soul, it's just evaporated from his body. He's now denying visas to the Palestinian delegation to come to the United nations in New York. And his explanation for this unprecedented denial of the literal heads of the Palestinian entity to come to this country. Here's his explanation for The New York Times Rubio is denying their visas, saying that the Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli occupied West bank, must end its appeals to legal institutions, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and stop pushing countries to recognize a conjectural Palestinian state. The action by Mr. Rubio raises doubts about whether Mahmoud Abbas, who's the leader of the Palestinian Authority and the plo, will be able to attend the General assembly in September, an annual conclave where world leaders discuss the most pressing global issues from from wars to famines to environmental clashes. Mr. Abbas has called for the establishment of a Palestinian state and denounced Israel's decades owed military occupation in past speeches at the UN So there you go. He now cannot come. He and his delegation can't come to the unless they renounce their actual claims before the ICC and the ICJ and stop talking about a Palestinian state altogether completely. Can you imagine them doing that to Ukrainians? I can't either. So now it's not just Project Esther, which we've talked about on the show and which is a push to end all campus and any other protests against the Israeli government, basically making such protests illegal, defunding colleges on the basis of this new revised definition of anti Semitism that basically says protesting against any action by the Israeli government or by Israeli settlers is definitional anti Semitism, even though this is a state taking these actions. But according to the US Government, it's illegal to protest that and meanwhile denying Palestinian officials the right to even be at the UN if they dare to demand a state that in addition to arming the physical obliteration of these people as they literally are being starved to death and bombed to death, so Israeli settlers can take all the rest of their land and Trump and his friends and his family can build a massive resort on the dead bones of Gaza. With all of that, Palestinian people are actually refusing to be silent and they're refusing to be silenced in that country or this one, including one very dynamic young woman who has written a really great one woman show that tells her own story and speaks her own truth. Take a look at this.
- [84:24]
Republicans are moving forward with the new.
- [84:26]
Missouri State Representative Lily Fuchs
Map to approve a newly drawn congressional map.
- [84:29]
Hind Ayub
And Democrats are so many different Palestinians, everyone with its own perspective and where they come from. And for me, I'm just writing my personal story and my perspective. Home is something that most people I think take for granted. If we're talking specifically about people like us Palestinian Israelis. Home is taken away from you. Even if you want to claim it. You must be Arab, Israeli. Then you know what we call Ue Khawar Olat Kalb.
- [85:01]
Kara Swisher
Traitors.
- [85:03]
Hind Ayub
You're reminded every time that you're not one of us. You're a second class citizen. I'm not Israeli. The Israelis keep making that very clear. I can't work at their restaurants. I can't fly out of their airports without being harassed.
- [85:20]
Joy Reid
Go home.
- [85:23]
Hind Ayub
Will someone please tell me where home is for people like me?
- [85:30]
Joy Reid
The play is called A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness. And joining me now is the writer and star of this really incredible play, which I've had the pleasure and privilege of being able to see, is Hind Ayub. Hello, Hind.
- [85:44]
Hind Ayub
Hi, Joey. How are you?
- [85:46]
Joy Reid
I am wonderful. I am. Well, first of all, congratulations. I got a chance to see your play. I believe it was in its sort of earlier phases, early stages, but it's now fully formed and is on tour. Tell me where the play is going to be seen next.
- [86:01]
Hind Ayub
59E59 Theater for tickets 59E59.org it's in New York City on 59th street between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue.
- [86:12]
Joy Reid
Well, I'm excited about it. I saw it in D.C. and you know, the story is so heartbreaking and I think for a lot of people is unknown. I think that so many Americans don't really know much about the Palestinian people other than the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Most people don't even know what's happening in the occupied West Bank. So tell me your story of your family and where you come from.
- [86:36]
Hind Ayub
So I am a Palestinian who was born and raised in Israel. And like you said, most people don't know. They just have a general idea about Palestinians. This is a very specific perspective of someone who was born and raised inside Israel. I am a citizen, Israeli citizen. And what's it like to be, you know, to be living in a place where doesn't want you and you're trying to belong and you really belong nowhere. I think it's a perspective that is not heard in the States. Most people that I meet here in America, they just know in general Palestinians. Oh, we hear about you in the news like this statistics or horrible things that are happening over there. Nothing. And especially in Gaza and the West Bank.
- [87:28]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [87:29]
Hind Ayub
Most people don't know that 20% of the Israeli population are actually Palestinians who were born and raised there and born there and before Israel even existed.
- [87:42]
Joy Reid
Right. I mean Israel came to the Palestinians, not the other way around. Right. And it's, it's similar to the way I think that people don't Realize that if you are Mexican American in California, America came to. To where you lived, you didn't come to there. Right. And so they just assume all the Mexicans, you know, came here. But no, they were already there, you know, and. And Israel is a very similar thing. There were already Palestinian people there. How about. How far back does your family go? How far. How far back do you trace your lineage?
- [88:07]
Hind Ayub
We were always there. Like all my ancestors, my grandmother, my great grandmother. Like, everyone was there, like most Palestinians who were, you know, born there and most Palestinians that I know. But this. This story is a very personal story. It's not written to lecture you or tell you what to think. It's just me, him sharing my personal story, living, born in Haifa and what it was like. And it's a very funny story. I know when you hear Palestinian, you think it's going to be very depressing and you don't want to go see it. But no, come to 59E59, because it has a lot of heart and humor and people are very surprised when they leave the show.
- [88:55]
Joy Reid
Yeah. No, when you happen, your fiance happens to be a very dear friend of mine, Dean Ovidala, and he invited me to come to the show, and I didn't know what to expect. And I will let you all know. It is hilarious. Like, you will actually laugh. You will cry too, but you will laugh. It is funny. And why did you choose to make it comedic? Because you really could have gone the other way and made it really serious, but you decided to throw some comedy in. Why?
- [89:17]
Hind Ayub
I think people need humor in their lives. Life is too depressing as is. That's one that's. For me, I'm always looking for something to, you know, to feel better about my life. And it's also. It opens hearts and minds. You know, when you're laughing, you're not judging and you're not. You don't have that immediate, no, I, you know, I don't like Palestinians or I don't agree with this, or I don't agree with that. You are more accepting and can listen and hear this story. And.
- [89:48]
Joy Reid
Yeah, well, Dean wrote a piece for his substack, which you all should be following at Dean Obedala's substack. And I believe It's@dinobadallah.com There it is. And if you. About the erasure of Palestinians, you know, there is this sort of theory, and you see a lot of Christian Zionists say, oh, there's no such thing as a Palestinian. They're not. They're Just Arabs who came and invaded Israel. They're not really from there, and they just don't believe that Palestinians existed ever at all. And what you're seeing is even in the reaction to your show, particularly from the sort of Christian Zionist crowd who are really angry, or even just the regular Zionist crowd who are really angry that you're doing this show at all. And this idea that you shouldn't be allowed to speak as an artist, how do you respond to that? Because there are things in this play that are truths that make people uncomfortable. The fact that Palestinians can't be an airline pilot comes out in this. In this play, you talk about the places that Palestinians are essentially not allowed to go. It feels like Jim Crow. And I think the fact that you include those truths has made people mad. How do you react to that?
- [90:48]
Hind Ayub
I just want to remind. To mention that this is a personal story and the things that are mentioned there were right for that specific time of hand's life. You meet me at age 5 until today, so everything is accurate. When it was happening there, you mentioned two things people don't want. There were no Palestinians. I'm not there to argue with that. Like, I was there. My grandmother was there. If you don't want to call us Palestinians, fine. Call us whatever you want. My grandmother had the deeds and she was trying to get her land back and going from lawyer to lawyer. So that's about Palestinian. I don't care what they really call us as long as you acknowledge that our story. And those people who attack, you know, they're attacking, not me and my show. They're just attacking the idea they never saw this show. And I think they might change their mind if they are willing to hear another perspective and another narrative. And they just want to silence the Palestinian narrative. And I don't know why they're threatened by that. Why don't we. Because I grew up in Israel and all you, all you learn is the Jewish Israeli narrative. So I know that. We all know that. Can you hear also mine? So we can have a dialogue and get somewhere with this mess that we're in. But anyway, I didn't write this story. It's not political. I didn't write it with an agenda. I was truly trying to tell my true story and share my family and, you know, and, and it's, it's, it's entertaining and it's not there to lecture or to tell you what to think and not to fight with those who hate and want to silence.
- [92:47]
Joy Reid
Has, has anyone come to the showcase for the show and, and come up to you afterwards and said, you know what? I, I learned something. I changed my mind.
- [92:55]
Hind Ayub
I had, we just had a run in San Francisco. We just closed in August like a few weeks ago. And we had like really great reviews and sold out runs. And someone who was actually arguing with me like in the talk back and said, exactly what you said, well, they weren't Palestinians, they were Arabs and whatever. And I said, well, but you heard the story of my grandmother. I mean, she had the deed, you don't have to call her Palestinian and all that. And he said how much he enjoyed the show. And then his son came to me and he said, thank you for telling this story. Like, you're not a w. Yeah, you might not realize this, but you just move the needle a little. So it is, it is changing something in some people because you can't argue with, with someone personal story and what really happens to them.
- [93:49]
Joy Reid
And I think that's why you don't really see a lot of, I mean, I think the only, you know, Palestinian journalists, a lot of people have seen as Ayman Mohideen throughout my career in journalism. He's one of the few who's ever gotten to be on tv. Dean is a prominent Palestinian American. There's not that many DJ Khaled, but I don't even know if DJ Khaled is really trying to rock with y' all right this moment. But Khaled, Khaled is his actual name. He may be mad at me for saying that. I mean, but people think they've never even met a Palestinian, you know what I mean? So they think that they can write you all off. But have you experienced, you're young, but have you felt and experienced this change? Because there has been a change in my lifetime for sure. I've never seen more empathy among more people, even if they have no ties to the region, to the Palestinian people.
- [94:43]
Hind Ayub
Have you felt that, the change in the way people.
- [94:47]
Joy Reid
Yeah, more empathy. The fact that people, for the first time in my lifetime actually are seeing Palestinians and empathizing with Palestinians.
- [94:56]
Hind Ayub
Yeah, I have, I've noticed that it wasn't there before. Sad that we have to lose thousands and thousands of lives in Gaza and see horrific images to make people see what's happening. But yeah, yeah, I've seen that.
- [95:15]
Joy Reid
I, I, I'm going to let you promote your show one more time. But before we go, I do want to ask, you know, your family who are back in, in Palestine, because I don't care what people want to say. There is A Palestine and there are Palestinians. It is just the truth. How is your family?
- [95:30]
Hind Ayub
My family is still there, so I'm the only one who left. It's very challenging. It's very challenging to be Palestinian in Gaza, for sure. I'm not talking about the horrific things that are happening there, but inside Israel, we live with Jewish Israelis, and it's not comfortable. So when I go to visit and when my family calls, it's not comfortable. And things have changed. Even liberal Jewish Israelis, who I wouldn't say loved us, accepted us, and were for us, some of them changed their mind after October 7th and just don't want us there, as if we had anything to do with it. And. But the hate that you see in the comments and the feedback of articles and online, it's just sad because, you know, we live together. You have to go in the street and lower your voice and whisper your language because you are not comfortable speaking Arabic because they look at you in certain ways. And yeah, some of my brothers are looking into leaving the country. There are a lot of people, I should say Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis who are now leaving the country. It's difficult times.
- [96:53]
Joy Reid
It is very difficult times. But I appreciate the fact that you are trying to give people a moment to smile, to laugh and to learn. That is what I did when I went to the show. It is so good. I hope that people will support it. The show is called home. A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness. We're going to put the link below so that you guys can go ahead and get tickets at that 59 East 59 theaters, which makes it easy because it's literally on 59 East 59th. You see how they did that? They made it real simple for y'. All. Hand Ayub, thank you so much. I so appreciate you.
- [97:23]
Hind Ayub
Thank you.
- [97:24]
Joy Reid
And congratulations, by the way. Congratulations. It's a fabulous play.
- [97:27]
Hind Ayub
Thank you very much.
- [97:28]
Joy Reid
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that's it, y'. All. You need to. You need to get out there and see it. If you're in New York, the play is. It's taking a tour. So I think after this, it may go other places. But you want to get your tickets now for this one. If you're in the New York area, We're going to put the link below so you can support Hand. She's a great person. And listen, anybody that's. That's hanging with Dean Obedala is a friend of mine and a friend of this show. Well, thank you all very much for tuning into that. And before we go, I want to share something that we've been wanting to roll out on this podcast. Big up to Cameron Nelson, who is the booster behind making this happen. We call it a moment of joy. Now, last week was Labor Day and on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, that means there's a whole parade and a whole party. And I want to show you guys for this moment of joy, the Democratic nominee for New York Mayor, Zoran Mamdani, who you know from watching this show and this podcast, is a rapper back from back in the day. Here he is taking part in the parade. Here it is. Take a look. New York one, he go right NBC, he go wide. Fox News. There you go. One, two, three. So everybody say, who are we? Everybody say, who are we? Everybody say, jump back. And Ryan jump. And Ryan jump on Ryan. And they were saying, wfp. That's the Working Families party, which has also endorsed mom Danny for mayor. That is pretty gross. That's a good moment of joy. Jason, do you. Do you like the moment of joy? Do you endorse? I don't know if Jason's going to endorse it, but I endorse it. I endorse you endorse it. Okay. Jason has also endorsed the moment of joy. Thank you all very much for tuning in. Be sure to hit like and subscribe. Jump up on wine while you're doing it. Jump wine, hit like and subscribe. Do it all at the same time. Big up to everybody listening on substack and on YouTube and on Spotify. Special love to our team TJRS members. We appreciate y'. All. We got lots more stuff coming. By the way, I. I'm very excited that we are working on our merch. We're going to definitely have the merch out way, way, way, way, way in time for you guys to be able to order some stuff for the holidays because, you know, Christmas starts in August and it's September. So we're getting that all together. We've got so much more and so many more good things coming, but we just appreciate y' all for being here. Thank you for tuning in wherever you're tuning in. Thank you to everybody in the chat. We appreciate y' all and we will see you on the next the Joy Reach out. Goodbye. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5 only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may want the same.
- [100:18]
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