Joy Reid (2:29)

I see moments where black people just refused, right. I think about all of the times.

Mark Thompson (2:36)

When black people have decided not going to go anywhere. We're not riding your bus no more.

Joy Reid (2:40)

We don't have a demand, actually just won't vote for you. We'll create a new party and vote for that party. We can kind of take these small steps to progress and liberation. But actually, no, we should abolish our. Actually, like, like, we can't, you know, like, we can't just like slightly reframe like these things.

Mark Thompson (2:55)

We have to demand that these things happen. And there needs to be freedom in, in Gaza.

Joy Reid (3:00)

And so all of this stuff comes.

Mark Thompson (3:02)

To my mind in this moment that.

Joy Reid (3:03)

We'Ve been kind of pacified and given these small steps when in real reality we, we need to make our, our.

Mark Thompson (3:08)

Demands known and make the big demands.

Joy Reid (3:11)

It was such a great conversation. Two hours of amazing conversation. First hour was with Michael her. The second hour you can see, was with Garrison Hayes and Ashley D. Bareness. It's so good, you guys. I promise you, you're gonna love it. And the chats will be open. We're gonna do open chats so everybody can yap away. You guys can talk about what you're seeing. It's really, really good. So I just wanna make sure I promo that and thank everybody who sent in questions. Now, of course, it is Black History Month, and as we know, an icon of black history passed away on this week. The Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jesse Lewis Jackson passed away at age 84 following a long battle with Parkinson's disease. I want to play you all part of the press conference that his family held. Children paid honor to his memory.

Bishop William Barber (3:52)

Our leader, our hero.

Joy Reid (3:54)

But you must remember that he was first a seminarian. He turned down an opportunity to be a law student at Duke University Law School.

Georgia Fort (4:03)

And he came here and became a seminarian.

Joy Reid (4:06)

And Dr. King saw something special in him because he was organizing with Reverend James Bethel.

Jelani Cobb (4:12)

My father's lived a long life and the words that he shared with me constantly in this latter part of his life is to remind people that he was a long distance runner. He ran the full measure of the race and now, this mantle of standing up for freedom, standing up for dignity, standing up for those that have been marginalized, is now passed on not to be inherited by a person, but to be taken over and taken up by another generation. It's. It's a continuous fight as we see the rollbacks of our rights that he's fought so hard for are now being challenged. He will continue to fight. And in that spirit, I can hear the ancestors of old saying, before I'd be a slave, I would be buried in my grave and go on to be with my Lord. My father comes up from the Jim Crow south in his lifetime. He was arrested trying to visit a public library. My father grew up in a part of the country where there were segregated water fountains and segregated graveyards. So let's not measure the man by where he ended, but think about where he had to start.

Joy Reid (5:26)

I'm going to get to Jason, that second element in a little bit, but before I do that, I want to bring in our good friend, historian, New Yorker columnist and dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, the great Jelani Cobb, author of multiple books, including his latest, Three Or More Is a Riot Notes on How we got here, 2012 to 2025. I want to note we are creating a black history starter kit. Lots of people ask me, what kind of books should I be reading if I want to get conversant on black history. We are including this book. Three or More Is a riot in that starter kit. So when that comes out, know that you will be able to avail yourself of getting that book as well. And you can also get it in our store because we believe in books around here. Jelani Cobb, great to see you, my friend.

Jelani Cobb (6:06)

Thank you. Thank you.

Joy Reid (6:07)

Happy Black History Month.

Jelani Cobb (6:08)

You, too.

Joy Reid (6:09)

So let's talk about, in your view, what, what is the overall legacy, in your view, just as a thinker, as a writer, as an historian of Reverend Jackson, and how, in your view, has the media, which is something that you, you are in the, in the, in the, in the job of trying to train young journalists for, how do you think the media has handled him?

Jelani Cobb (6:32)

So, I mean, Jesse Jackson's legacy as Titanic is very difficult to summarize. The best thing that I can say, the easiest way to summarize it would be to look at the human rights struggles of the past 60 years and see where his name does not come up. He's there as we're dealing with apartheid, you know, he's there as we're dealing with the marginalization and the US Imperialist policies toward Haiti. Toward Latin America. He's there as we see the ongoing battles for voting rights. He's there as we. Every single one of these struggles, you know, he is present. If you scan the crowds and you look at the press coverage, you find Reverend Jackson, you know that. That tall, massive man looming above the crowd somewhere and leading the charge against injustice. And so one of the, one of the best tributes I think I can, I can pay to him was something entirely accidental, which is that there was one morning where I had to be at the airport super early and it's about 4 o' clock in the morning and I'm in an Uber and the Uber driver is listening to a podcast. And I don't know what is, you know, I don't know what the podcast is. I don't know who's talking. And I hear this person and they're talking about U.S. foreign policy in Africa and then they jump over into shifts in the US economy and then they're talking about political prognostication and so on. And this person just has a tremendous amount of knowledge. And I was like, who is this? This person is brilliant. And, you know, they said, okay, we'll be right back with more Reverend Jackson. And it occurred to me I didn't recognize his voice. As distinct and distinguished as that voice was, I didn't recognize it perhaps because it was the middle of the night, but his grasp of information in such a wide array of subjects was just incredible. If you ever got to interact with him, which I know you did, you ever talked with him, you know, one of the things that people, you know, know about him is the charisma and the magnetism and the great oratorical abilities. And of course at some point became kind of a kind of source of parody with like his rhymes and all that other stuff. I think people began to take him for granted. But if you ever interacted with him, one of the things that you came away with was that you were in the presence of a first rate intellect. Like, he was brilliant and he understood so many of the angles that were there that were not apparent to other.

Joy Reid (9:20)

People, you know, and he also understood the medium of television, you know, because, you know, part of, I think people undersell what helped the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, you know, move beyond the post World War II movement is television. The fact that these young men who were in their 20s, who were young, they actually understood TV. Dr. King did, and really Jesse Jackson did. He was sort of parody for it, as you said, as running to the TV cameras. But he understood the power of the TV cameras.

Jelani Cobb (9:51)

He did. And I didn't actually grapple with the other part of your question, which is that the media coverage of his passing, you know, in some ways it's been as ambivalent and complicated as his relationship to the media in his life. There's been some work that I've seen already that's been exemplary and has kind of captured the complexity and importance of his legacy. And then there's been another couple of different instances where I've seen things shot through with a kind of snide ambivalence or a kind of smug commentary or criticism, almost kind of backhanded acknowledgement of him. And so both of those things, you know, have been. Have been present in the way that he has been memorialized thus far, but he absolutely did understand that medium of television in terms of running toward the cameras. One of the things that I think has to be said about Reverend Jackson is that he was penalized or heavily criticized for things that his white peers just was a given. Since when do political figures not run to cameras?

Joy Reid (11:08)

They all do.

Jelani Cobb (11:09)

They all do. It's part and parcel of the profession, of the trade. And so. And if we're being honest, we work in media. We bank on that. We need politicians who are interested in articulating, and there's even a Democratic case to be made for that, your willingness to articulate what's going on and explain what's happening in this sector and so on. And so, you know, one of the things I thought was really interesting about him, and I think Amiri Baraka, the late poet and activist, you know, kind of pointed this out about Jesse Jackson, was that his real sin was one of ambition that, you know, he didn't quite know his place. Like, how dare you actually believe that you can be President of the United States and run a credible campaign and a consequential campaign at that. Two of them. And so that is, I think, part of what you see in the theme of how he has been memorialized.

Joy Reid (12:06)

Yeah, indeed. And probably no one has been more TV savvy other than Dr. King himself than Reverend Jesse Jackson. And to great effect, you said, I mean, rescuing an airman from overseas, quite a daring and dramatic thing that the Reagan administration had to acknowledge. He did, you know, all the way to really being in on the joke and reading Green Eggs and Ham on Saturday Night Live, like he got it.

Jelani Cobb (12:28)

Can I add. Can I add that thing about the Robert Goodman situation where he went to Syria and negotiated the release of this African American pilot whom, you know, as he said in his words, you know, the Reagan administration, quote, had forgotten about that boy. And he went over an act of independent diplomacy and negotiated Goodman's release and brought him back. Now, on the matter of television, going back to our point, if you remember, and this has been kind of written about. I wrote about this in my book on Barack Obama. And if you remember that press conference when Robert Goodman came back and the Reagan administration was forced to hold that press conference, they didn't want to correct. So the various figures from the State Department come out and talk. Ronald Reagan talks. They grudgingly acknowledge what Jackson had done. And then they tried to shut down the program without letting Jesse speak. And Jesse slips between Reagan and the microphone. And, you know, I jokingly, I would tell my students, he grabbed the mic like a rapper and then he went in and explained what all went into negotiating that release.

Joy Reid (13:45)

Amen. He was. He knew what he was doing and did it to great effect for the liberation of. Of our people and of this country. Jelani Cobb, thank you so much, my friend. I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Jason, if you could now roll them with a two. Just a little retrospective of Jesse Jackson from Sesame street to the 1988 convention. Okay, here we go. I am, I am somebody. I am, I am somebody. I may be poor, I may be poor, but I am somebody. Somebody. I may be young, but I am somebody. I may be on welfare, but I am somebody.

Georgia Fort (14:35)

Somebody.

Joy Reid (14:36)

I may be small, but I am somebody. I may make a mistake, but I am somebody. My clothes are different, my face is different, my hair is different, but I am somebody. I am black. I am black, brown, brown, white. I speak a different language, but I must be respected, protected, never rejected. I am God's child. I am somebody. Give yourself a big hand.

Bishop William Barber (15:28)

Our mission, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race. We are gathered here this week to nominate a candidate and adopt the platform which will expand, unify, direct and inspire our party and the nation to fulfill this mission. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They are voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope and trust that they have in us.

Joy Reid (16:26)

The Democratic Party must send them a.

Mark Thompson (16:28)

Signal that we care.

Joy Reid (16:32)

You don't understand my situation.

Bishop William Barber (16:35)

You'll be on television.

Robert P. Jones (16:38)

You don't understand.

Mark Thompson (16:41)

I See you with the big people.

Robert P. Jones (16:45)

You don't understand my situation. I understand.

Joy Reid (16:52)

You see me on tv, but you don't know the me that makes me me. They wonder, why does Jesse run? Because they see me running for the White House.

Bishop William Barber (17:03)

They don't see the house I'm running from. I have a story.

Joy Reid (17:11)

And this is bull. The second clip was actually 1984, but if you go to the Jury show channel, we've got a lengthy clip with all of those, with all the labels on correctly. We did a quick edit to try to get a shorter version on for tonight, but that second One was in 1984. He ran two times, two incredibly consequential game changing runs for president. Joining the conversation now is Reverend Mark Thompson, host of the make it Plain Podcast and Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairs of the Breach, also professor of practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and founding director and of the center for Public Theology at Yale University, Yale Divinity School and co chair of the Poor People's Campaign, a national call for moral revival. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. He's also our every first Monday host of our Moral Mondays. I want to start with you, Mark, and we've got some, we've got some images and clips that you sent to us. This is a four, Jason, and I just want you to talk over them, your memories, which are long, they go all the way back with Reverend Jackson, your thoughts on his passing and on his life.

Mark Thompson (18:11)

Well, first of all, thank you for doing this, Joy, and thank you for having me And Bishop Barber. Yeah, I first met him watching Sesame street as a kid. And then about 10 years later, at the age of 16, I was involved in the run up to his presidential campaign because in 83 it was run, Jesse Run. And that changed our lives, all of us, really. And so, and what he said to us then, which was a direct line from I am somebody, it was a direct continuum. You know, he said to us that even if we don't win, we will have won our self respect. So you go from I am a man in Memphis to I am somebody in the early 70s to we won our self respect when he ran for president. And that made all the difference. Now the other thing is, you know, he was a close mentor and elder of mine. You know, he always used to say to me, Bishop Barber, you know, because he went to Chicago Seminary and then the movement got caught up and Diane Nash didn't finish school. They got caught up and he's always stayed on me. He would even be in Public speeches and say, y' all help me encourage Mark to finish school, go back to school. And he would say, mark, don't let the movement use you. Use the movement. And so I. I heard that. And for somebody of his stature to take that much of an interest in my life, I say to young people today, you know, some people can love you and take care of you, but when somebody believes in you, that's a whole nother thing. And. And Reverend Jackson believed in me. And. And I'm grateful.

Bishop William Barber (20:03)

We had a.

Mark Thompson (20:04)

A wonderful, what, 40. 40 years together.

Joy Reid (20:09)

And I know that you went to see him not long before he passed. And so we thank you for, you know, always standing with the Reverend. And he had dear friends and so many people that he mentored. Bishop Barber, you, as somebody who is directly in the legacy of Dr. King, you know, the poor people's campaign is a revival of what he was doing. And so you stand as does Mark, as, you know, did Reverend Jackson in that legacy. And there's an image of you with him, your thoughts on his passing and his legacy.

Bishop William Barber (20:39)

Well, it's interesting, Joy, and thank you for having me with Mark. I got a call the other morning as he had just died from his son Jesse Jr. And asking to pray. And. And then later we talked and he said, his mother said, a mighty lion has fallen. I thought about the fact that. That how have the mighty fallen is used three times in scripture. And the fact that Jesse's name, Jesse means a gift. It means a gift to kind of teaches you that there is a God in the real sense. Jesse couldn't have done with the things he did. Reverend Jackson, without being God, helped God inspire. God empowered. I met him when I was. I knew him through my father, but I met him when I was 20 at North Carolina Central. He was running for president in 84. And he said they had some political person was going to introduce him to the students. He said, no, I want him now. I wasn't prepared or anything. He said, I want him student president. I went up and introduced him. He asked me, will you volunteer? You didn't have a lot of money. Will you volunteer, help me organize students? Then we left Central, went to Duke. We went to A and T. We went to UNC that night. We stayed up all night with him, teaching us and talking to us about policy. I was listening to Brother Cobb that night. He walked us through international policy, civil rights policy, talked about why we need to move from civil rights battleground to economic common ground, to moral higher ground. He even challenged us and Chastised us. I was like, Mark, I said, I think I was graduating, doing the movement. He said, no, no, no, I'm. Call everybody I know, tell them not to hire you. Go to school, because there will be a time when the movement will need you. But you need to be prepared deeply for the movement. And it wasn't out of jealousy or intimidation. It was about him seriously looking at the long term. And then finally, Joy, I've been thinking all day, what if our politicians talk like he just did? You know, we got the greatest potential for expanding this boat in this country. 90 million people staying home, 87 million poor, low wage people, 30 million people not voting. The number one reason they're not voting is nobody talks to them. Jesse talked to them. That clip you just read, when he said my constituency, he said, he's saying this on national TV at a convention. My constituency is the damn, the disinherited, the disrespected. They are restless and seek relief. They voted in record number. We must send them a signal that we care, that we care. Everything he did would cancel out religious nationalism. He says, our agenda is, when I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me? I mean, in reality, what everybody ought to do is stop right there and read those two speeches and formulate them. There was a clip, I'll do this quickly, I can't find it. Where a guy said, if he was only white in 88, they were interviewing him and he said if he was only white, which is a sad commentary on us, but. And even I am somebody. While he was saying that on Sesame street, you know, Williams, was it Waters out of Atlanta who actually came up with that. That was, that was prophetic to say to people who've been beat down through 400 years of slavery. And then he could say that though in Iowa and people farmers in Iowa. He could say it on the reservation with the Cherokee. He could say it in Harlem, he could say it in the Delta, he could say it in North Carolina. And I got upset today watching one of the news reports just trying to limit him. He had a race critique, but he expanded the race critique to cover all of those areas and had an uncanny ability to bring people in this rainbow where every color is distinct, but the rainbow doesn't work if they're not. Because all colors are necessary. They're bound together but distinct. That's all moral fusion is that I talk about all the time. It is recognizing that the greatest fear of the greedy oligarchs of this country have always been the masses of black people, poor whites and others, brown, indigenous, coming together, forming a powerful voting bloc that could fundamentally shift the economic architect of this nation. And Jesse knew it. And he ran and ran and ran and ran. Mark, real quickly, George, we were in Texas, walking. Mark was down there, and Jesse shows up at 79. We're walking and I'm like grand giants. You don't have to do this. He says, let me tell you something. Champions run all the way through the tape. They don't run to the tape. They run all the way through the tape.

Joy Reid (25:06)

That's right.

Bishop William Barber (25:06)

And during COVID he put on a mask and got arrested with us fighting because we were arguing that there ought to be a Covid bill and a voting rights fixed voting rights at the same time while we had the leverage. Other folk didn't get that. Jesse got it.

Joy Reid (25:20)

Yeah, he did. Absolutely.

Bishop William Barber (25:21)

He got it.

Joy Reid (25:22)

Absolutely.

Bishop William Barber (25:23)

He was right there getting arrested. I mean, his life right now doesn't need to just be celebrated. It needs to be interpreted. It needs to be for right now if we're going to beat back this authoritarianism, neo fascism. He laid the plan out for us in 84 and 88. The question is, will we grab it?

Joy Reid (25:42)

Indeed. And I mean, people forget that Fred Hampton is the first person, I do believe, who coined the term Rainbow Coalition because he was going out to racist white people and saying, hey, you might have more in common with us and these Chicanos than you do with those rich oligarch white folks. And then Jesse, he was a master of interpretation and taking what was out there already and shaping it. And then he picks up the Rainbow Coalition. But that was originally a Fred Hampton joint. I want to talk. We talk all the time, Mark, about independent media. And so the difference between kind of the way we frame things and the way they frame things on mainstream media and those who are shouting out my sore. Abby Phillip. I was texting with her earlier today. We were trying to work it out with CNN for her to be on, but unfortunately that did not happen. She has to work with our bosses and stay within, you know, and I did reach out to Reverend Sharpton as well. They both work for network, so we're not necessarily. And he's actually at the event with Mamdani that they're actually doing right now. They're doing a live event for that. So just want to let y' all know those in the chats who are asking about those two friends. The way that Mark, the mainstream media has interpreted the current President of the United States is really disgraceful response. Calling Jesse someone with street smarts, making it about himself and all that he did for Jesse Jackson. Alleging that Jesse Jackson couldn't stand Barack Obama. Not true. The two of them came together in the end. It was odd that many in the media wiped away the truth of that and just said he praised him. And his actual post, meanwhile was a vile attack on Jesse Jackson and just a reframing of everything about himself, which I will not read. But interesting, right, that the mainstream media couldn't figure out a way to even talk about Donald Trump being a disgrace in this moment.

Mark Thompson (27:19)

Well, it's consistent. Remember when Aretha Franklin passed, Donald Trump posted a post saying, well, you know, she worked for me at one time. You know, it always has to infantilize us. She was just somebody working for him. She sang for him at an event. Reverend Jackson was street smart. That, that's his minimalization. You go, he's, he's bringing you back down from I am a man and I am somebody.

Bishop William Barber (27:44)

That's right.

Mark Thompson (27:44)

He's bringing you down when he does that. One historical fact. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were in Chicago and Reverend Jackson was in Chicago.

Joy Reid (27:52)

That's right.

Mark Thompson (27:53)

How, that's how he understood Rainbow Coalition.

Joy Reid (27:56)

That's right.

Mark Thompson (27:57)

And, and, and he learned from that. But look, I really enjoy.

Joy Reid (28:01)

Fred used to go to. Did he show up at any of the Saturday meetings? Because there was a. There, there used to be. You know, the thing everybody knows sharpen does. They did these Saturday morning meetings.

Mark Thompson (28:09)

I don't, I'm not certain of that. But I have seen photos of all of his. Them together.

Joy Reid (28:13)

Yeah.

Mark Thompson (28:15)

So, so there was that coming together. And, and, and Rainbow Coalition was an outgrowth of beloved community.

Joy Reid (28:22)

Yes.

Mark Thompson (28:23)

So, so if Dr. King was our modern day Christ, Jesse Jackson was one of his outmost outspoken gospelizers.

Joy Reid (28:31)

He was John the Baptist.

Mark Thompson (28:34)

And let's deal with the elephant in the room. We know that Even some of Dr. King's disciples didn't agree just like in the Bible. But Jesse was prolific and he always was reminding us of what Dr. King said and then. And that was one of the things that really, really, really moved me about him. As far as media too. Joy, I enjoyed your conversation with Jelani. And yes, people would say, Reverend Jackson always in front of the camera. Reverend Jackson always seeking the camera in.

Bishop William Barber (29:03)

Front of the camera. They would say that.

Mark Thompson (29:04)

Yeah. And don't we wish we had that now the corporate and legacy media is completely flipped and is ignoring us.

Joy Reid (29:14)

Come on.

Mark Thompson (29:16)

At this very moment we don't have anyone because they're going to ignore us. But Reverend Jackson could fit, like July said, he could figure out a way to weave and do certain things. And I saw him do that very artfully on. On many, many occasions. You know, he. He showed us how to get in the picture and also avoid being in the pitch at the same time. So for that, you know, we're thankful. And let me just say this. If we're going to uphold his memory, we've got to continue the work. He's no. 1 registered more voters.

Joy Reid (29:53)

That's right. History.

Mark Thompson (29:55)

Than Reverend Jesse Jackson. And so even when the Democratic Party and the white consultant class that gives us all advice, minimizes voter suppression, minimizes us going out and not just depending upon voters in past elections, but registering new voters, that was money that was invested because of Bo Jackson campaigns well into the Clinton years. And then it stopped.

Joy Reid (30:22)

So.

Mark Thompson (30:22)

So if we really gonna remember him and continue the work he started, that's what we. That's what we have to get back to.

Joy Reid (30:32)

And by the way, we have to remember that that 84 and 88 campaign produced most of the black leaders within the Democratic Party thereafter. Mignon Moore comes from that. Donna Brazile comes from that. The colored girls, those literally were his employees as staffers in his 88 and 84 campaigns.

Mark Thompson (30:48)

Doug Wilder.

Joy Reid (30:49)

Doug Wilder produced a generation all over the country. Yes, a generation of black power.

Bishop William Barber (30:54)

Go ahead and think about this, Joy. Jesse won in South Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia came in Michigan, but in the south came in second, North Carolina, Tennessee, before we had same day registration earlier.

Joy Reid (31:08)

That's right.

Bishop William Barber (31:08)

He broke through. Right. With this message. He broke through with not all rising tides lift all boats. That's kind of left the middle class up. But no, we have to lift from the bottom and everybody lives. He broke through. And that's why later on, you heard, heard, stop, Jesse, stop. You know, he didn't just benefit, he benefited black folk. But every white candidate that ended up winning after him in some way or another found a way to articulate, if not all, even if they didn't fulfill it in their policies, they learned how to do it on the stump. You know, even Biden and Kamala, you remember when Biden ran, he was down in Georgia talking about living wages.

Joy Reid (31:49)

That's right.

Bishop William Barber (31:50)

Voting rights.

Joy Reid (31:51)

That's what he said, by the way. But when he ran for president, you know, people loved Bernie Sanders when he ran. But all of the things Bernie Sanders was running on.

Bishop William Barber (32:00)

Exactly.

Joy Reid (32:01)

He was running on and adding reparations on top of that. Free Palestine, women's equality LGBTQ rights. He was doing that in the 80s. Yeah.

Bishop William Barber (32:11)

And when I heard him as a student, one of the things that inspired us, we didn't hear a politician. I was from the eastern North Carolina pool. I heard somebody talking about a movement. He didn't. It wasn't about. He did Democrat, Republican. He never spent time that I remember just castigating his adversaries. He was constantly giving us a hope wrapped in serious policy. And the reason he could do those rhymes is because he had such a depth of the handle of the truth. And then he could figure out how to say it in a way that you didn't remember it. Like, if a black person doesn't make enough and they can't pay their light bill and a white person doesn't make enough and they can't pay their light bill, since they're all black in the dark, they ought to find a way to hold themselves together and come to the light. People got that right. And so we got it as students and we watched him. I think that day he spoke 30 minutes, but he stayed in BN Duke auditorium two hours registering voters. Two hours. We talking about 7 million to 10 million new voters brought in between 84 and 88. And the shift that that made, not only in terms of personnel, but in terms of the policies of the convention that allow people to be able to have input. And just finally with that joy, when we talk about, you know, moral fusion, moral leadership and the way in which Reverend Jackson was able to frame. He talked about being like David and picking up little rocks. You know, he didn't mind quoting the scripture and the Constitution. He puts for us a hope, though, that wasn't just daydreaming. It was a hope that grows when you face despair and you go to work against it and the hope grows. The more you keep hope alive, the more you keep working on it. And I say he didn't lose. I mean, he didn't win the nomination, but he won so much that others could win. And one of the great tragedies is. One of the great tragedies is. And you know that I got. I was crying today around about 2 o' clock because it dawned on me that Jesus is right again. When Jesus says in Matthew 23, oh, you who love the tombs of the prophets. I mean, you know, really, we wish if America had done a study session with him before the Parkinson, before he couldn't talk in America right now. And all of us trying to figure this out, we want to have this convention, that convention, what we might want to do is to excavate right here.

Joy Reid (34:49)

Yeah. Amen.

Bishop William Barber (34:50)

I'm not saying it's exact. I'm not perfect, but there's so much right here. If you want to know how to take on Christian religious nationalism, he showed us. If you want to know how to build a movement when you're running for office and you register voters and you ship right here. If you want to know how to overwhelm gerrymandering, right here. If you want to know how to bridge and connect international affairs with domestic affairs, this is a schoolhouse. And I would say let's don't just celebrate his life, and let's not just have a commemoration for his funeral. Let's have a claiming, an authentic claiming of. Of the truths he taught. Because I think he was a little bit more than John the Baptist. Joy. I think Jesse represented the kind of Pentecost. And the reason I say that is because in Pentecost, the spirit doesn't just rest on one. At Pentecost, Rainbow is born. At Pentecost, many people grabbed the spirit. And in some ways, Jesse poured a lot of spirit out. Maybe that's why God gave him 84 years. Poured it out on Mark, poured it out on me, poured it out on Shopton. Pour, pour, pour, pour, pour. Poor all over the place. And if we ever need anything right now in America, we need a political Pentecost indeed.

Joy Reid (36:06)

And Mark, there is also, you know, the other piece of what he would do, which is to challenge corporate America. And people got mad at him for that, too. But he was very insistent, Mark, that corporate America had to act in a moral way toward black people.

Mark Thompson (36:18)

One of the things that happened in the corporate legacy media always got to take a knock at someone. And they.

Bishop William Barber (36:24)

When.

Mark Thompson (36:24)

When the story first broke. Oh, well, you know, he and Dr. King had some disagreements. But the fact of the matter is, in the mountaintop speech, if you listen closely, Dr. King acknowledges Reverend Jackson.

Bishop William Barber (36:36)

That's right.

Mark Thompson (36:37)

For the economic campaign, boycott campaign, when I think it was A and P at the time. And he continued that.

Bishop William Barber (36:46)

He.

Mark Thompson (36:47)

He continued that legacy once he got to Chicago. So the economic piece was important. He made all the difference in the anti apartheid struggle. We won three major victories with Ronald Reagan before we had the Internet and Instagram and social media. We reversed Reagan's decision on a Martin Luther King holiday. We stopped Robert Bork, his Supreme Court nominee, and we overrode his veto of sanctions for South Africa. And Reverend Jackson was in the middle of. Of all of that and. And making a difference. So Bishop Barber is right. We, we have a duty to, to, to pick up the mantle. You know, I, I, I, I thought I was prepared for this, y'. All. I've been crying for the past, Barbara, talking about. He been crying because this, this his impact on the significant and, and we ought to be, we ought to be, you know, we really ought to be thankful that, you know, somebody said to me, mark, all your friends, Dick Gregory and Walter Fyroy and John Thompson and Jesse Jackson are all old men, and when they pass away, you're not gonna have any friends left. And I, I pray that's not true, but to some extent it is, because I've not felt lonelier than I felt the last 24 hours. I was in the hospital with him and he was being himself. He tried to get me to break him out of the hospital and, and Mrs. J, you know, caught us and said, you know, you know, y' all sit down and be quiet, cut it out. But he was still being that kind of playful Reverend Jesse Jackson. And I'm glad we had those moments together. I, I'll, I'll miss him terribly. But what he said, though, Bishop, what he always said. Yeah, he talked about when morning comes morning time, so it's our duty to live out his legacy so that the morning he saw yesterday, one fine morning, we will see him.

Joy Reid (38:54)

Amen. Before I let you all go ahead, Bishop, because I wanted to ask you.

Bishop William Barber (38:58)

Go ahead, go ahead and ask it and I'll answer.

Joy Reid (39:00)

Well, I wanted to play this and you can talk over it because you, you know, talking about living the legacy, I just wanted, Jason, if you could throw up a nine while Bishop is making his closing comment. Just because we want to see the work that you're doing in real time and we can pull the sound down so that you can go ahead and speak over it, because I know that you were rallying just last week we broadcast it live here on this channel. And so please go ahead and give us your closing comments, sir.

Bishop William Barber (39:25)

Well, that was what I learned with Reverend Jackson. When they don't pay attention to you, you know they're wrong. Take over the media, walk three days, 51 miles, but walk with an agenda and let everybody be on the same page so it's not all over the place. Make sure the music, the speeches and everything, and then have a plan. So now we've got a seven point plan to mobilize black and white and brown voters in the districts that they thought they had gerrymandered, that we have the potential to make their gerrymandering a Dummy mandering. And Reverend Jackson taught that don't just sit back. You know, Mark said about him that was. And he always tells name it something other than the adversary. So we called it this time to love forward together. And we spent a whole three days, plus Saturday focusing on our agenda. I hope not just recanting. There's a place for resistance. There's a place that you need to say the grievances, but there's also a place where you have to lift people's spirit. Because if everything they go to is a constant reiteration of Trumpism and what he's done, it can be a depressing thing. There is a way to get at that, but it lifts people. And people can get their fight back and their fire back and their hope back and their love back. And, you know, he would often call and even when his voice was. And he would say, you know, we need to be doing this, we need to be doing that in the voice that he had. But I want to say this one final thing about Jackson. You know, two things. The day that, that same day that he asked me to work as a college student on the campaign that they. We ended up the next week marching 2000 students to the polls to demand our own precinct on campus and wanted. But on that also on that day, we went in a restaurant and the lady said, oh, it's Reverend Jackson. We're going to feed everybody free. He said, no. And he went outside and got the folk off the street and said, if you want to feed folk free, feed these folk. I can pay. I can pay. He just wouldn't allow, in that moment, even with us, somebody just to feed into him. And people, obviously folk have egos. You have to have an ego to stand up for what's right because it will beat you down. The last thing I want to say is I used to love Mark. And you remember this when he used to send out Jack's Facts. Yeah. You remember that, everybody. And what I liked about that, Joy, is he didn't just want us to hear him, he wanted to empower us, that we could take those Jack Facts and be the smartest person on our corner. We could take those Jack Facts. He knew that being loud and wrong was a terrible way to run a movement. He didn't want just bump a sticker off the wall. So you got a Jack's Facts and Entity. It gave you a synopsis of what was really going on, but it also gave you answers, it gave you facts and, and, and, and, and that's something that we even need today something that we're trying to find a way to redo today. Because in a time of lies, the most radical thing you can do first and foremost is tell the truth.

Joy Reid (42:36)

Amen.

Bishop William Barber (42:36)

You got to tell the truth and you have to have, have mechanism of truth telling because the goal of the lies of authoritarianism, neo fascism, is to keep lying so much till you even start believing their lies.

Joy Reid (42:50)

Yeah. Amen. Indeed. Indeed. Well, I thank both of you brothers for coming in here and sharing your personal remembrances of a great man, the Reverend Mark Thompson. You're going to want to subscribe to his podcast. It's called Make It Plain. And of course, Bishop William Barber. And that is Repairs of the Breach. We're going to put the links to both of those in the show description. Thank you, brothers. We appreciate you both.

Bishop William Barber (43:13)

Thank you so much.

Mark Thompson (43:14)

Live the spirit of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Bishop William Barber (43:16)

Amen.

Joy Reid (43:17)

Amen. Amen. Amen. And we will remind you that of course, we cannot do what we're doing here. And by the way, Reverend Jackson used to have a TV show. I don't know if you guys remember that. He used to have a show on cnn. So he's done all aspects, including being a member of the media himself. So he was not an independent media, but he was, he was a media maelstrom in his own right. And tonight, we are so grateful that this show is being brought to you by our friends at Mosh, which is becoming like my favorite snackity snack. Now, remember, we do love it when you lean in to health. When health is wealth, that means that you're doing everything that you can to be healthy, whether you're doing exercise, whether you're trying to stretch in the morning, do a little Tai chi, which is my new thing, but also watching what you eat, and you know what they say, you are what you eat. It is actually kind of true in this modern day. So I'm always looking for things, whether it's trying a new exercise routine or whatever, to try to get myself together. And Mosh bars are now really a big part of that. We do know that it's one of Oprah's favorite things. It was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger, with a very simple mission to create a conversation about brain health through food, education and research. Maria's father suffered from Alzheimer's, and so since then, she and Patrick have dedicated themselves to finding ways to help other families who are dealing with this debilitating disease. So what MOSH did is they joined forces with the world's top scientists and functional nutritionists to go beyond your average protein bar. Each mash bar is made with ingredients that support brain health like ashwagandha and lion's mane and collagen and omega 3s. It's a really game changing brain boosting way for you to get something great to snack on that actually makes you feel good and actually also tastes great. Some of the great flavors chocolate chip cookies, hazelnut chocolate chip and even peanut chocolate chip. If you're a peanut butter person, here's the best part to make you feel good, Mosh donates a portion of all proceeds from your order to fund gender based brain health research through the Women's Alzheimer's movement. Why gender based? Because 2/3 of all Alzheimer's patients happen to be women. Mosh is working closely to close the gap between women and men's health research. So if you want to be a part of doing something great for yourself but also doing great for Alzheimer's research and have a snack that actually gives back, here's a way to do it. Just head over to moshlife.com joy that's M O S H-L-I-F-E.com joy to save 20% off plus get free shipping on the best sellers Trial Pack on the new plant based Trial or the new plant based Trial pack. So that's 20% off plus free shipping on either one of their best sellers, either the bestsellers Trial Pack or the plant based Trial Pack at M O S H l I f e.com joy and thank you Mosh for sponsoring this episode. All right, let me play you a clip from one of the people that you have come to know very well. Independent Journalist, Georgia Fort Afternoon the attack.

Georgia Fort (46:04)

On the press did not start or end with my arrest. Mario Guevara, an independent journalist covering ICE arrests in Atlanta, was held in jail for more than 100 days, then deported despite the fact that his attorneys say he has a legal work visa to be here in America. Just a few weeks ago, all of our colleagues Janice Shortle, an anchor with an NBC affiliate here in Minneapolis, was sprayed with chemical agents while covering the protest following the fatal shooting of Alex Preddy. The attack on the press did not start with my arrest. Three journalists were attacked by St. Paul police officers during an ICE arrest in November. And even on a city level, right here in St. Paul, no one has been held accountable for violating their First Amendment rights. CNN reporter Omar was arrested live on television right here in Minnesota back in 2020.

Joy Reid (47:06)

And you know what?

Georgia Fort (47:07)

It was in that Moment while he was live on television, holding a microphone that had a CNN mic flag on it, that I knew if they'll arrest him live on television, on cnn, they will arrest me, an independent journalist. And this isn't just a US Problem. This is a global crisis. According to Al Jazeera, more than 250 journalists and members of the media have been killed in Gaza, and most people don't even know about it. We live in a time when AI images and AI videos are shaping our world's reality, with a portion of our society living in delusion. So if you stand for truth, I need you to stand up today.

Joy Reid (47:58)

Let's go ahead and bring in. Let's go ahead and bring Georgia Ford into the conversation. Georgia, first of all, thank you so much for being here. It is great to see you.

Georgia Fort (48:10)

Thank you so much for having me.

Joy Reid (48:13)

First of all, how are you? How are you doing?

Georgia Fort (48:15)

I'm doing okay. I'm just taking it one day at a time. I got a little emotional there watching that.

Joy Reid (48:21)

That clip back.

Georgia Fort (48:21)

That's my first time watching it.

Joy Reid (48:24)

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. I think it was emotional for any of us that are either followers of what you've been doing. You know, again, I found you just on social media and was just blessed to watch your coverage, which is so authentic, coming from your hometown where you live and telling your stories, and then to see what happened to you. And all of us have watched, I think are all emotional about it, but you actually told me some things that I actually didn't know. Jason, if you could pull this up. I somehow had forgotten. This is B2, that this gentleman named Omar Jimenez, who was a journalist that worked for cnn, you can see him during the George Floyd protests five years ago, was literally arrested on camera. And it was shocking to know this was during the first Trump regime, the first Trump administration. He's covering the protests, and eventually, not only himself, but his producers are also arrested, not by the feds, but by Minneapolis police.

Georgia Fort (49:23)

Yeah, I. I will. I will never forget it. I was just so shocked. And, you know, I think this is right at the very early stages of when I decided to go independent and to see them not recognize the press credentials of a member who worked at cnn. I knew that they wouldn't recognize my credentials as an independent journalist. And so that, I think, was the first moment where I started thinking extremely critically about how I show up when I'm covering stories, what I feel comfortable doing and what I don't feel comfortable doing. I mean, really, for me, it was the beginning of repression in a lot of ways. Because if a CNN journalist who's credentialed, right, he's showing his credentials right there, if that's not even honored, then what hope do we have as independent journalists? That we will be treated with humanity, that our First Amendment will be recognized. And so it just, to me, was just so shocking. I'll just never forget that. And not only was he out there, I mean, he was broadcasting live. And I. I don't remember, Joy, and maybe I'm wrong, but I don't ever really remember there being a consequence for this. I remember the governor, you know, he issued some type of apology, and that was it. And so I think that we, as a society, especially as a country, we have allowed a tolerance to grow for our rights to be violated. And there's no consequence, there's no entity that will enforce our rights. And so here we are, where our rights are, up for negotiation. And so I have been speaking as a journalist against attacks on the press, honestly, for the last year, very extensively. And to now be in the situation that I'm in, you know, in some ways, I feel targeted, to be honest.

Joy Reid (51:43)

And you should. I mean, the reality is watching Omar Jimenez being taken away in handcuffs, and then later in the video, you see his producer also taken away. And then the cameraman gets taken away. You can see him put the camera down on the ground. And eventually the camera is just laying there. And then the people on CNN are still live. They're still trying to talk to their correspondents who are all being walked off. And then someone picks up the camera, presumably one of the law enforcement officers, and. And starts walking with the camera. And we're now not even sure who's holding the camera. It could be law enforcement, it could be. Who knows? Because they arrested the whole crew. Again, they were live. And this is all happening as CNN is broadcasting this nationwide. The thing about that, that strikes me as so poignant to what's happening with you is that in order for Omar Jimenez and that crew to be there, they had to find out there was going to be a protest. They had to then go to the location that they, through their journalistic work, had found out the protest was going to be at. They filmed what was happening at the protest, and then they got arrested at the protest because they were there. The same thing happened to you, except for the part they didn't try to arrest you at the protest. They did it later. When you see the fact that this precedent was set during the first Trump administration and Then in the second one, they come back and then they do the thing with an indictment. That kind of an escalation, I think should frighten everyone. You are also an officer in the local nabj. I think you're the leader of the NABJ chapter there in Minneapolis, your vice president. What signal does this send to journalists writ large about the profession and whether it is still legal to discover where a protest is and cover it?

Georgia Fort (53:24)

Journalism is on trial. And I think for me, I am very grateful that there was an outpouring of support, especially from journalistic institutions and media outlets across the country. But I think what everybody is waiting and watching right now is to see how is this all going to play out? How far is it actually going to go? Are our First Amendment rights going to be upheld? And so I think that in Omar's case, I don't believe he was charged and the governor did issue an apology, but that's not the case here for me or Don. And so we are going through the process, the judicial process now. And you know, in a lot of ways, I do feel like the entire journalism community is watching what is happening to us to see how it's all going to play out.

Joy Reid (54:35)

Don Lemon, when he was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel show, you know, he said the process is the punishment and that the process of a group of seven federal agents surrounding him in his posh hotel where they were doing the Grammys and he's still holding his swag bag, but they wanted to arrest him. You know, we're all assuming it's all on camera somewhere that Kristi Noem will eventually use in a propaganda video. In your case, you live streamed these masked federal agents outside of your door. Your children are in the house. People are terrified inside of your house. So that is also documented and we were able to see it. In your case, do you believe that having federal agents show up your door, arrest you, and then having yourself charged with being a journalist at a, at a, at a protest, do you think in your case the process is the punishment?

Georgia Fort (55:27)

Absolutely. And I mean, I'm still living with that today. You know, I have three daughters, 7, 8 and 17. My 17 year old, she heard everything. It woke her up out of her sleep. There was lights flashed into her room and so she was terrified. She didn't want to stand up. She didn't want them to see her through her window because her blinds were open. And so my 17 year old daughter crawled out of her room and she was doing this as I was live streaming and she's the one that, you know, you could hear in the background crying. And so as soon as I ended the live stream, I looked over and she was curled up in a fetal position crying. And so as you know, a mother, I took the time to console her and we are still processing all of that, that trauma from her having to experience that. My 8 year old, she woke up from all of the commotion, but she was so terrified, she just laid there and, you know, cried. My seven year old, she didn't, she didn't. So the way that she's processed this has, has been very different. But we talk about is the process, the punishment. I mean even to think about nearly two dozen agents showing up to my home, many of them being DEA agents. It's humiliating to have your neighbors kind of come around after all of this and ask about why DEA was there. I mean people will have a different assumption if they see DEA versus if they see ICE versus if they see FBI. And so even that hasn't even been made clear to us as why would DEA agents, two dozen of them, be used to arrest one woman, a journalist at that. And so the process is the process, the punishment. I mean, I even think about other details like the fact that I had cuffs put on me by about 6, 26 30. Why were Asians still outside of my home at 8:34 harassing my children, harassing my husband, my 17 year old daughter. After that, you know, seeing them out there for two hours, decided that she was going to go to her aunt's house and she can drive. So she put her sisters in the vehicle with her and she was attempting to leave and these agents stopped her and started questioning her. They, my husband drove, you know, shortly drove out shortly after them. They stopped him, they started questioning him. And at this point, you're talking about two hours after you've arrested me. Why would you sit outside of my home and harass my family? And so it wasn't until my mother came out and asked them for their warrant did they leave my husband and my children alone. And so, you know, it, I mean, all of this was really uncalled for. I had legal representation at the time when the arrest warrant was issued. And there's so many other examples of when law enforcement will coordinate with attorneys for people to turn themselves in. And so it just seems like a tremendous waste of resources to have that many agents come and arrest one woman, a journalist at that.

Joy Reid (58:58)

That is jarring. That is jarring. Thank you for being willing to share that. Have you considered, have you had time to even think about countervailing legal action against these agencies.

Georgia Fort (59:10)

The focus right now is to get through the accusations that, you know, I'm, I'm faced with. So that is, that is our priority at this time.

Joy Reid (59:21)

Gotcha. You talked about, you know, the number of journalists who've been killed around the world, and we, you know, you can just look at the heat map of where that happens. Of course, Gaza being the sort of central point of where many of these deaths have taken place. But you look at the nations which we tend to think of as authoritarian places and autocracies, and those are journalists who've been killed. And that's just. In 2025 alone. It's more than 300. If you go with since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, do you fear that the United States is descending into such an autocratic place that not just the arrest of journalists, that the regime won't be satisfied with that, that actually harming journalists becomes the next step?

Georgia Fort (60:06)

My concern, Joy, at this point is if we have a constitution and we have constitutional rights, who is responsible for enforcing them? What is the consequence when our rights are violated? I think we can think about that on a city, state, and a national level. But when you zoom out even further and you think about the global stage and what's happening internationally, and at one point we had institutions, maybe like the United nations or other similarly situated institutions that postured themselves of being a moral authority nationwide or, I'm sorry, globally. They postured themselves as upholding human rights for people internationally, and to just not see an intervention, to not see enforcement of some of these social contracts that we've agreed to internationally. To me, I think that's my biggest concern is that we've normalized the violation of our rights nationally, we've normalized the violation of our rights globally, and no one seems to have the courage to exert the power that they say that they have to uphold our rights. And so what does that mean for our society if people are not protected under, under the law, if the law can be trampled over and not upheld? What does that say about our society? What does that say about alleged law and order, even, you know, and so I'm, I'm actually a deeply spiritual person. And so I just have really tried to walk in my faith through all of this because it, it really doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that our, our rights can be trampled over and there's no consequence and, and even locally, I mean, that is, that was what I was reporting on since January 7th since the. A fatal shooting of Renee Good. You just heard people here in Minnesota who were grappling with this lack of leadership from local officials, knowing what was happening, the way that the federal government was coming in and not honoring people's rights. And these aren't baseless accusations. These aren't opinions. The ACLU has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of US Citizens here in Minnesota who have had their rights violated. We're hearing from immigration attorneys who are saying that there has been countless amount of due process violations for people who are not American citizens. In fact, we saw a judge subpoena the ICE chief to come here and talk about more than 100 due process violations and more than two dozen prosecutors who have court quit the Department of Justice, not just after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, but after the fatal shooting of Alex Preddy. And so I, I think one of the most telling things, Joy, was when the Republican candidate here, who was running for governor, who had said that he would represent Jonathan Ross, the agent who fatally shot Renee Good after Alex Preddy was killed, that man dropped out of the race, you know, and so, you know, yes, I think we should be concerned because we are seeing our rights be trampled. And there's a lot of leaders who don't have the courage to stand up for our rights. But there's a lot of people who are stepping down, who are saying that they don't agree with what's happening, not just in Minnesota, but across the country. And people do have a moral line.

Joy Reid (64:23)

Indeed. And it is, I think that is one of the few pieces of good news, is that people are drawing a moral line, Georgia, for it. Where can people support your journalism and support you if they want to support you? Obviously, it costs a lot of money to defend yourself in court. So I want to let you give your website that people can use to support you and also to follow your journalism.

Georgia Fort (64:43)

Thank you so much. You can head to my website, georgiafort.com there is a page to support there. Also, all of my social media links are there as well. And Joy, I would, I would just encourage people who are watching to continue to support you. Supporting you. Supporting your show is also supporting me as independent journalists. I think what we're going to see in the coming year or two is dire need for the work that you're. You're doing. The dire need for the work that I'm doing because of all the layoffs, because of the buyouts, all of these things that are happening with corporate media. We need, we need you to exist and to continue doing what you're doing. So thank you, thank you for your platform and thank you for having me on.

Joy Reid (65:32)

Thank you so much. You were very kind to say that, Georgia, but I am counting on bothering you a lot as you are on the ground, you doing the great work that you're doing. We want to make sure that you're great and fine journalism has an outlet and you always have a place here. Good sister. You are welcome anytime. And anything that's popping, I just follow you on Instagram. So I know that you're covering it and I will, I will reach out and, and ask you to come back. Thank you so much.

Georgia Fort (65:53)

Thank you.

Joy Reid (65:54)

Thank you. And everybody, please support Georgia. She is really one of the best journalists in the business. An independent, not corporate sponsored, not. She doesn't have a big behemoth corporation behind her. She's just out here. She has an independent media company just like Jason and I have and she's doing the darn thing. So please support her. And if you, if you can, if you can sow a little seed into helping her in terms of her legal defense, that would be very kind of you to do too. And also in terms of supporting us, we just thank all of our sponsors. We are so blessed that sponsors have stepped forward to say they believe in this independent media journey. And one of our good friends that's been riding with us for quite a while now is our friends at 120Life. And you know, we know that with all of the stressors that are happening right now, all the stressors, we know that a lot of people are carrying high blood pressure right now. We know it's the number one risk factor for mortality in this country. And look, the truth is, half of all adults have it. High blood pressure is not uncommon. And most people don't even know about it or don't feel it until it becomes a real problem. February, in addition to being Black History Month, which, yes, we still celebrate here in the United States of America, is also American Heart Month. And if you've fallen off on your New Year's resolution, that's fine. But here's a simple, measurable way you can get back on track and do something meaningful for your heart. 120 Life is a once a day functional drink made with ingredients that help support healthy blood pressure. It's not a pill, it's not a stimulant. It's not some weird thing RFK Jr. Is going to tell you to try. Nope. It's not even a trendy sort of thing. It is made from a blend of superfut super fruit juices. It's refreshing, it's not chalky or weird tasting. It's not medicinal. You can just make it part of your daily routine, which really matters because consistency is everything. Hundreds of Doctors already recommend 120 life to their patients. More than a thousand health professionals have supported or endorsed its use. And it's increasingly becoming a go to natural tool in clinical settings, not just in wellness circles. Not guesswork. Just grab a home blood pressure monitor, drink 120 life daily and check your numbers. Many people have seen improvement in as little as two weeks, which is exactly why this product has become so popular. When your numbers move, your motivation follows. So if you'd like to try it, go to 120life.com that is 120-life-com and just use our code here at the show. Use joy or read our Eid for 20% off. You can try it risk free for two weeks. If your blood pressure does not come down, they will give you a full refund. So go to 120life.com, use the code joy or read to save 20% percent today. There's nothing to lose except your high blood pressure. You don't want those high numbers. You want them to go down. So this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. But do try it and let us know what it does for you. All right, let's grab a couple New headlines today in Albany, Ohio, Les Wexner, 88 year old billionaire, founder of Victoria's Secret and Abercrombie and Fitch. The guy who handed Jeffrey Epstein a free house and all of his wealth to invest in, gave testimony to Democratic members of Congress. Only Democrats showed up to depose him. So I want to play for you Representative Robert Garcia, who is the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee along with Representative Jasmine Crockett. And they came out and stepped out and they talked about that interview today. Billion dollars that was either transferred, provided in stocks or given directly to Mr. Epstein by Wexner. We should be very clear that the.

Robert P. Jones (69:26)

Two were very close. Per reporting, they spent a lot of time together.

Joy Reid (69:32)

He Mr. Wexner admitted that he traveled to both Epstein's island as well as his other properties. Mr. Wexler also admitted that Jeffrey Epstein.

Robert P. Jones (69:44)

Had access to a lot of Mr. Wexler's wealth.

Mark Thompson (69:49)

And when asked even simple questions, even.

Robert P. Jones (69:51)

As it relates to Mr. Epstein being.

Mark Thompson (69:53)

The co president of the foundation that.

Robert P. Jones (69:57)

Established the area that we're in today, Mr. Wexler had little to say in fact, it's clear that Mr. Wexler is trying to downplay how close Jeffrey Epstein.

Joy Reid (70:09)

And Mr. And Mr. Wexer actually were.

Robert P. Jones (70:13)

And we should be very clear that.

Joy Reid (70:15)

There would be no Epstein island, there'd be no Epstein plane, there'd be no money to traffic women and girls. Mr. Epstein would not be the wealthy.

Robert P. Jones (70:26)

Man he was without the support of.

Joy Reid (70:30)

Les Wexner is that there were always.

Georgia Fort (70:32)

Young girls seemingly looking for an opportunity.

Joy Reid (70:36)

To model, and there were always rich and powerful people on the other side dangling a carrot, saying, I will give.

Georgia Fort (70:45)

You the life that you're seeking.

Joy Reid (70:48)

Yet ultimately the stories are the same. They're stories of abuse, they're stories of.

Georgia Fort (70:54)

Trafficking at the highest level.

Joy Reid (70:56)

And I will tell you one thing.

Georgia Fort (70:58)

That was remembered for sure was when.

Joy Reid (71:01)

Asked about Donald Trump.

Georgia Fort (71:03)

Donald Trump, Trump and Epstein and whether.

Joy Reid (71:06)

Or not they had been in the same room and what that looked like, he didn't quite remember, but he imagined.

Georgia Fort (71:12)

That, yes, that possibly happened because he.

Joy Reid (71:15)

Did remember that Donald Trump also would like to show up to the Victoria's Secret Runway shows. Now that was a little odd to.

Georgia Fort (71:25)

Him, he said, because Donald Trump was.

Joy Reid (71:27)

Not engaged in fashion whatsoever. Not engaged in fashion, but showing up to Runway shows, also running a teen beauty pageant. In a statement released after the deposition, Wexner claims that he was duped by world class, world class con man in his close financial advisor, Jeffrey Epstein. He also denied knowing about the late sex offenders crimes or participating in Epstein's abuse of girls and young women. Here's a little more from his statement. Quote, I was naive, foolish and gullible to put any trust in Jeffrey Epstein. He was a con man and while I was conned, I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, said the 88 year old retired founder of L Brands in a statement that he submitted to the House Oversight Committee before the interview was conducted at his vast central Ohio estate. Now, the Democrats are the ones who subpoenaed him because they want details about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, to whom he handed over his entire fortune to invest. It is Jeff. It is Les Wexner's wealth that formed the basis of Jeffrey Epstein's wealth. So it's kind of weird that he seems like he doesn't know anything about the guy, barely knew him and said he was conned by him for what, decades. They also shared an interest in the cause of Zionism. Jeffrey Epstein was a huge and prolific philanthropist when it came to Zionist causes, something Jeffrey, Les Wexner is also very, very big on a source familiar With Wednesday's deposition told the right wing site News Nation that Wexner stated that his relationship with Epstein was strictly professional, that he never considered the convicted pedophile a friend. He added that Epstein never presented him with women or girls, and he was not aware of Epstein arranging sexual encounters with prominent figures. Again, this guy ran Victoria's Secret. He was surrounded by models all the time. But he claims that he had no knowledge of any connection between young women and Jeffrey Epstein. In the deposition, Wexner allegedly told lawmakers that he visited Epstein's Florida home one time in all the time they knew each other and that he never saw Donald Trump or any prominent figures there, according to the source. He added, he visited Repstein's New Mexico ranch and island one time each and never saw any girls or women at either location, which seems incredible. In his prepared statement, he also said this, quote, I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly 20 years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook and a liar. Oh, so you did learn he was an abuser, huh? And let me be crystal clear, he adds, I never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein's criminal activity. I was never a participant or a co conspirator in any of his illegal activities. Okay. Problem with that lesson is that through the so far released Epstein files, we now know that you, Les Wexner, were one of nine people, you can count them on two hands, that the FBI planned to approach an interview after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested. The second time related to Wexner. The FBI wrote, we are interested in knowing about his relationship with Epstein and his knowledge and observations of Epstein with redacted girls. But we expect the likely will just be a. This will likely be just a subpoena drop. The documents show that Wexner was willing to be interviewed at the time, but was working on securing a criminal defense attorney. Criminal defense attorney in New York days after the subpoena was issued, adding that the subpoena was not necessary because he was willing to talk. So that's weird, right? Meanwhile, while Les Wexner is trying to pretend that he had no idea what was going on with the guy who literally invested all his money. They're saying in the chat this was Victoria's Secret. Apparently, the shoes are beginning to drop for some of the other men that are in the Epstein files. A guy named Thomas Pritzker, who happens to be the 75 year old cousin of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and a member of the billionaire hotel family, announced this week that he is stepping down as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels company after details of his affiliation with Jeffrey Epstein were revealed in the latest document Dump Pritzker, in a prepared statement, says he deeply regrets his association with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, longtime associate of Epstein. Here's a quote. I exercise terrible judgment in maintaining contact with them and there's no excuse for failing to distance myself sooner. I condemn the actions and the harm caused by Epstein and Maxwell and I feel deep sorrow for the pain they inflicted on the victims. Oh really? But you were still chilling with them, right? Ties to Epstein have brought down a few other high profile individuals. The country of Dubai announced last week that it was replacing the chairman of one of the world's largest logistics companies, DP World. The name is Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayam because of his ties to Epstein. He's the guy in the I love the torture video email. Also last week, a woman named Kathy Rummeler, the top lawyer at the stored investment bank Goldman Sachs and former White House counsel to President Obama, announced she was resigning from that position at Goldman after emails between her and Jeffrey Epstein showed a very chummy relationship where she described him as her, quote, older brother and downplayed his sex crimes. A guy named Brad Karp has resigned as chairman of one of the most prestigious US Law firms, Paul Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison, earlier this month after saying news coverage of his emails with Epstein had created a distraction. And then of course There's King Charles III's brother, formerly Prince Andrew, now stripped of his titles and honors for his relationship with Epstein and that picture of him with Ms. Jiuffrey, Virginia Giuffre, which he claims isn't him. There's a lot of Epstein fallout and we will just see if it ever gets to any of the political figures who are all in the Donald Trump administration. Let's do another A couple headlines. There's a new ICE casualty, this time a beloved teacher, according to local news outlet WTCO in Savannah, Georgia. Let's read a little bit of this. According to Chatham County Police, the Chatham County Police Department, a fatal car crash on Monday morning was the result of a chase between ICE agents and a man they were chasing down. Local police. In a press release, department said that the department responded to a crash around 6 7:45am which happened right outside of its precincts. The crash killed a Hessy K through 8 teacher named Linda Davis. Ms. Davis was a beloved teacher who was killed when the car of the man who was being chased by ICE hit her basically ICE agents began chasing him and then Lopez crashed into Davis's car and she was taken to the hospital and declared dead. Another casualty of ice. People want to try to blame the undocumented immigrant, but ICE violated what local officials have, which is a do not chase order. You're not allowed. Local police are not allowed to chase people, but they come into this town and they chase this man and his car hit Ms. Davis's car. Rest in peace to her. Now let's get to the drama in Texas. The great state of Texas early voting began yesterday. Some of you in the chat are already saying that you voted, you went out and voted for Mysore Jasmine Crockett in that state where the primary on March 3rd in both parties is really causing a lot of high drama. On the Republican side, there's the old guard Republican turned MAGA culture warrior four term, four term Senator John Cornyn who is facing Texas scandal plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton on that side. On the Democratic side you have liberal Presbyterian pastor and Austin based state Senator James Talarico, who grounds his sort of Bernie Sanders style populism in biblical teachings versus the anti MAGA warrior, civil rights attorney and media savvy congresswoman who you saw a clip of earlier, Jasmine Crockett, who's also known as the Queen of the Clapback. So this race is kind of now broken into the national news cycle which is dragging both of the two Democratic rising stars into a Colbert, Skydance, CBS, Bari Weiss, sort of cluster fl even as Skydance enters back into talks with Warner Brothers to try to take them over and co op CNN in the process. That's a whole separate mess we'll talk about on another night. But what's happening right now is the news. I'm sure that you all have heard about Stephen Colbert announcing on his show on Monday night that his bosses had nixed his interview with Talarico for fear of retaliation from the regime. And then since I'm unable to play any clips from CBS because they would immediately flag any such clips and demonetize our channel, I'm just going to quote Colbert from his Monday show and here's the quote. He said, you know who's not one of my guests tonight? That would be Texas State Representative James Talarico. He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers who called us directly that we could not have him on the broadcast. Then I was told in some uncertain terms that in no way could I not have him on that I could not mention not Having him on. And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this. Let's talk about this. And there was a lot of cheering you probably heard. And then he said so you, you might have heard of this thing called the equal time rule. Okay? It's an old FCC rule that applies only to radio and broadcast television, not cable or streaming. The, that says if a show has a candidate on during an election, they have to have on that candidate's opponents as well. It's the FCC's most time honored rule. Right after no nipples at the super bowl, lots of laughter. Then there's a long been, there's long been an exception for this rule. An exception for news interviews and talk show interviews with politicians. Now that's crucial. How else would voters, how else were voters supposed to know back in 92 that Bill Clinton sucked that saxophone? Ahaha, more laughs. But on January 21st of this year, a letter was released by FCC chairman and smug bowling pin Brendan Carr. In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated bipartisan purposes. Well sir, you're chairman of the fcc, so fccu, because I, lots of cheering. Think you are motivated by partisan purposes yourself. And he says basically does it, you smelled it, you dealt it joke. So he says, let's call this what it is. Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch tv. He's like a toddler with no, with too much screen time. He gets cranky and then drops a load in his diapers. So it's no surprise, no surprise that two of the people most affected by this threat are me and my friend Jimmy Kimmel. So that is what he said at the time, that effectively CBS told his show that they could not air the interview. So it's only going to air on their YouTube channel. And as of about four or five o' clock when I checked it, they had about like 6.1 million views of that interview that aired over there. So actually basically more people watched it because of what they did. Now for Talarico, this has been a huge fundraising bonanza. He's raised like about $3 million per this controversy. CBS put out a statement on Tuesday afternoon denying Colbert's main allegation, saying it had not barred him from airing the interview. So here's what they said in their statement. The Late show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Representative James Talarico. The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could could trigger the FCC equal time rule for two other candidates, including Representative Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled, unquote. Meaning they could avoid Carr's potential wrath if they had Jasmine Crockett on too. Because the equal time rule, if it was going to be applied, would be for the primary, not for the general. Because right now Talarico's opponent is Jasmine Crockett. Right. So hopefully you follow that. And then Jasmine Crockett stepped forward to give her take on what happened. Here's what Jasmine Crockett said. Bill, that's okay. Information suggesting that the federal government did not shut down this segment. Number one, that is my understanding that the federal government did not didn't shut this down. And we will do an official statement once we get another official statement that we anticipate is going to be coming from Paramount.

Georgia Fort (83:58)

All right.

Joy Reid (83:59)

So we will read what they say and then we'll go from there.

Georgia Fort (84:02)

It is our understanding that Colbert, either.

Joy Reid (84:06)

Mr. Colbert or CBS decided that they just did one appearance and this was because of a fear that the FCC may say something to them and that there may have been advice to just have me on and then they could clear the issue.

Georgia Fort (84:26)

It was my understanding that someone somewhere.

Joy Reid (84:30)

Decided we just don't want to do that and instead we're going to just do it this way. So you heard a plane go over in the middle. And what she was saying, I couldn't really hear that part of the plane either. But what she is saying there is that there was the potential threat that the fcc, which by the way, is investigating the View for having James Talarico on. So there is reason for CBS to presume that Brendan Carr, who wrote the part of Project 2025 about breaking the FCC and who's been very aggressive, he went after ABC or Jimmy Kimmel making Trump's ad and then shut him down and tried to silence him. They've gone after Colbert. So this is a thing that the FCC is doing. So there's good reason to believe that this is something they might have done. But now there's a back and forth as to whether or not they did it. So Colbert came out and gave a statement saying that the statement by CBS that they were not pressured to take his the segment off was bs he said, in fact, between the monologue I did last night and before I did the second act talking about the issue, I had to go backstage. I got called backstage to get more notes from these lawyers. Something that had never ever happened before. And they told us the language they wanted me to use to describe the equal time exception. And I used that language. So I don't know what this is about. He went on to say that he wasn't mad at the network and does not want an adversarial relationship. I'm just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies. And he adds, come on, you're paramount. No, no, no, you're more than that, you're paramount. Plus. And for the lawyers to release this statement without even talking to me is really surprising. He said. We looked and we can't find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview. Not for my entire late night career, not only for my entire late night career, but for anyone's late night career going back to the 1960s. So he adds, but CBS generally did it for I'm sorry, they're saying that Colbert says that Brendan Carr has not gotten rid of that exception for talk show host, but CBS generously did it for him and told me unilaterally that I had to abide by the equal time rules, something I have never been asked to do for an interview in the last 20 years of this job. So that is where this stands. It is becoming a question of whether it really was the government or whether it was sort of compliant in advance. And that is where this stands. But why I'm talking about this tonight, and we're about to introduce our guest, is that this is now threatening to create what amounts to kind of a racial rift that was already kind of bubbling up in this race in Texas, where you're now having people claiming that Jasmine Crockett is effectively calling Colbert a liar. Let me see if we have this one, Jason. This is D3, if you could. Keith Edwards, who's a very popular liberal podcaster, posted this, which has gotten lots of traction on threads. You don't see the total amount of people who have retweeted and posted it, but you have people now going after Jasmine Crockett and saying she's siding with Trump, which she's not. It's a mess, and I can think of no one better to try to break it down because Texas is a very important state and a hub of white Christian nationalism, as it turns out. So joining me now for our monthly segment on combating white Christian nationalism is our friend Robert P. Jones. Robbie Jones to me, founder and chief demographer of the Public Religion Research Institute. His excellent substack has a brand new name, but the Same important mission. It is now called Redeeming Democracy, which we're going to link to in the show description so you guys can subscribe to it. There's a new book coming out. It's called Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian turn against Democracy. And you're going to get to get that book in our shop. Robby, thank you so much for being here.

Robert P. Jones (88:35)

Oh, glad to be here. Wow. What amazing run up to the segment.

Joy Reid (88:39)

Yeah, I know this is, it's not your normal run up, my friend, but the reason that I wanted to go through all of that in some detail is that to me there is a risk here that you're now having. Whereas before it was Paxton Cornyn food fight, that was kind of the story of the Texas race. And you did have one little dust up when Talarico said something about the mediocrity of the, of a now former campaign by a former black, you know, you know, NFL star that was running who's not running anymore, which he has said he did not ever mean to say that brother was mediocre. That was a little bit of a racial dust up. This could make it bigger because now people on the puellarico side are attacking Jasmine Crockett and vice versa.

Robert P. Jones (89:25)

Yeah. Well, I think the big picture thing to me is that the FCC and the Trump administration is paying attention to a Senate race in Texas.

Joy Reid (89:33)

Yes.

Robert P. Jones (89:34)

What's that about? Right. Because if you remember, I mean, Trump won Texas the last time around by 414 points. So, you know, it tells you something's up, that they are worried about what's going on. And so you, you weaponize the FCC to start weighing in. And then the other thing I, I'd say in big picture, beyond all the nitty gritty here is, you know, we've had scholars of authoritarianism like Timothy Snyder warning us about the kind of chilling effect and that what this makes people do and even big, large super corporations is obey in advance. Right. And one of his big advice points to dictators is do not obey in advance. And that's exactly what we're seeing, you know, happening here. So even if the government didn't reach in and say you have to do this right, you've got CBS kind of cowering and kind of anticipating that and then, you know, essentially negotiating with themselves, you know, even if that's the way it went down, but the chilling effect is there nonetheless. But the big point about, yeah, this is state that Trump won by 14 points. And yet, you know, it's one that they're looking to kind of meddle in all the way up into the primaries.

Joy Reid (90:45)

And by the way, just so that you guys know what the sort of where the field is standing right now, the two candidates who are leading in the polls, if you believe the polls, are Ken Paxton and Jasmine Crockett up until now. And the last poll that we have is late January. January 31st was the last sort of polling. And it's not a big sample poll like what Prri does, but John Cornyn was down by 7 points to Paxton, and Jasmine Crockett was running about 8 percentage points ahead of Talarico. About 12% were undecided. And so that is the sort of way the race kind of stood at that time. It was 47% for Jasmine Crockett to 39% for Talarico before all of this happened. Now, James Talarico, who, you know, if you're a liberal, very liberal person that cares about Texas, sort of minutiae of Texas politics, you probably know who he is. But he wasn't as famous, sort of nationally known as Jasmine Crockett going in. And so she had the advantage going in. And now votes have actually started. And now you have this rancor inside of the sort of Democratic world in Texas, which is not good for the Democratic Party. I want to get into some of the bigger pictures. Let's zoom out, and then we'll zoom back in. Because I want to. I want to. Because Talarico does a really interesting thing in that he talks about Christianity in a way that really challenges white Christian nationalism. And so he's an interesting candidate in that sense. And then Jasmine Crockett is a black, you know, Christian. You know, they're sort of on the other. They're on the two sides of sort of that coin. Right. So let's talk first about white Christian nationalism. Big picture. So this is D6, Jason. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. What'd you say there, Jason? I think it's D. No, no. D5. Yeah. D5. Let's play that D5, please. Secret Police. No more disappearing people. This is the United States of America. We're not supposed to fear our government.

Robert P. Jones (92:46)

Our government is supposed to fear us.

Joy Reid (92:51)

The most common commandment in the Bible is welcome the stranger. Scripture says we welcome the stranger because we were once strangers. All of us have that immigrant story in our family history somewhere. All of us come from somewhere else. That's the beauty of America. E pluribus unum. Out of many one America. America is not mass deportation. America is not Masked government agents. America is not arresting journalists and executing.

Mark Thompson (93:31)

People in the street.

Joy Reid (93:33)

America is the immigrant. America is the protester. America is the huddled masses yearning to be free. Alex Preddy is America. Renee Goode is America. Liam Ramos is America. These brave Americans have been stolen from us at this moment of crisis. America needs patriots now more than ever. So his campaign has that sort of interesting twist, but what he's also saying, and he said on the Colbert on the one that aired on YouTube, is that when he goes out into Texas, he's talking to Republicans who don't whose whisper, I'm a Republican. So he's running a conversion campaign where I can convert some white Christian Republicans. Jasmine Crockett is running a base campaign where base Democrats, she's leading among Latinos, non college voters, the kind of voters who tend to be on the couch. And it feels like maybe the Trump people maybe fear her more because he's a slightly more conventional kind of conversion candidate. That's how I kind of read it. But if he's trying to convert white Christians in the state of Texas, what is your read of the data about Texas and about white Christian nationalism says about whether he can do that?

Robert P. Jones (95:00)

Yeah, well, you know, it wouldn't have been on my bingo card, you know, a year ago that would have been possible. But you know, with the extremism that we're seeing from this administration and the blowback that we're seeing, you know, a 14 point lead might not be enough. And I think they're reading some of this, especially if you end up with a flawed candidate like Paxton right on the other side running. I think that's really what they're worried about, that they end up with this headwind with the Trump administration and ice a flawed candidate and two really good possibilities on the Democratic side. So, but you know what's interesting is that Texas, so we just released a big, big study at PRRI this week on, on the prevalence of Christian nationalism in all 50 states. So we have national data, but we also have data that is very Texas specific. And Texas, as you might imagine, is a little more Christian nationalist than your average state and as the country as a whole.

Joy Reid (95:56)

Can I just pause you, can we just go through these in order? Okay, so we've got a bunch of slides for you. So I'm going to put them, Jason's going to grab them and then I want to let you sort of go through them. So Jason, when you had them, just holler at me, wave at me, that when you have D6, we're going to go through D6789. We're just going to go through each of them. Let me know whenever you have them because we've got a bunch. And I'm going to let you talk there. We. Okay, so this is the headline. Republicans, Southerners and Trump backers are mostly like, are more likely to support Christian nationalist ideas. That's the first slide, but now we'll get to the first number slide, and there it is. Okay, explain who are more likely to support Christian nationalism by party affiliation.

Robert P. Jones (96:31)

Yeah, so again, this is from a very large national sample. We interviewed over 22,000Americans for this poll across all of last year. So you'll see the numbers here. We have four categories here of how likely you are to support Christian nationalism. And these are built from a whole bunch of statements, like five different statements like US Law should be based on the Bible. Christians should exercise dominion over all other Americas. Like questions like that. So these are not softball questions. And from your answers of five questions, we sort people into these four categories. Adherents are those that no matter what question we throw at them, they like, completely agree with these Christian nationalist sentiments. The sympathizers are those who agree but just don't completely agree. And then kind of skeptics are those who disagree but don't completely disagree. The rejectors, those who completely disagree. So the national landscape looks like this. It's about a little less than a third of Americans who are either adherents or are sympathizers. And typically kind of think of those two groups together that lean into that worldview. The good news on the national level is that by a margin of 2 to 1, Americans reject this worldview, even though it's getting so much traction because it's the heart of the MAGA world. And you can see that in this Republican breakdown here. You know, it is a solid majority, 56% of Republicans that are either Christian nationalism inherits or sympathizers. And I want to point out here that we hear a lot about the country being polarized, but what you see here is, yes, we're divided, yes, we're polarized, but it is not in any way even. What you have here is what sociologists love to call in our wonky language, asymmetric polarization. Right. Which means it's not even. And what it really means is that Republicans are increasingly outliers from the rest of the country, from the rest of us here. So we have 56% of Republicans. But look at that jump down to independence. It's only a quarter of independents Right. It's half as many of even of independents that adhere to this worldview and only 17% of Democrats. So I think that really tells us how far outliers Republicans have become from mainstream and even independent Americans.

Joy Reid (98:45)

So let's now go to the next slide, Jason. And this is now by religion, this is a little bit smaller. So you're going to have to do more explanation. Explain more, more explanation.

Robert P. Jones (98:52)

I won't go through all of it. I mean, but let me just kind of hit the top, the top marks here. There's only two groups, two religious groups in the country that are majority Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers. They're right at the top. And it is white evangelical Protestants, which make up more than a third of the MAGA base. And right behind them are Latino Protestants. That group tends to also be evangelical and charismatic, both of those groups. But like white evangelicals, it is like two thirds of that group that is Christian. They are all in pretty much for this, for this worldview. And that is really the engine of this movement in the US and again, it's more than a third of the Republican base here. And that's why this movement has so much power in one of our two political parties, even though it's nowhere near even half of the country. And it drops off pretty quickly after that. And you'll see kind of all the way, all the way down. But really it's those top two groups that are really fueling the strength inside the religious world.

Joy Reid (99:52)

And a religious nationalist Muslims is like a tiny fraction. So people are afraid that Muslims want to have Sharia law. It's like none of them, they're none. I'm looking at white Catholics and white and Hispanic Catholics. Where do they fall? Because, you know, my understanding you is typically, at least as a political practitioner has been that the, the Latino world is, is more Catholic than evangelical. Maybe that's changing.

Robert P. Jones (100:16)

Yeah, it is true. There's still more. It is, it is changing. And they're becoming more Protestant, actually, and more unaffiliated Latinos are in this country and a little bit less Catholic over time. It is still majority Catholic. But, you know, here we see what's interesting though is that white Catholics and this is, I think, notable that white Catholics have voted almost 6 in 10 for Trump every time he's been on the ticket. But they're not as animated by Christian nationalism as white evangelicals are. And so that's also true for non evangelical Protestants. And so if you're the MAGA movement and you're seeing this headwind, you may actually lose some votes among white Catholics and white non evangelical Protestants in a state like Texas. That's a significant proportion of voters that voted Republican last time. So that may be one of the things that they're kind of worried about in this new environment.

Joy Reid (101:09)

Let's talk Texas then. This is D9. Jason, this is. Okay, this is the specific Texas chart here. What are we seeing?

Robert P. Jones (101:16)

So you basically take the national numbers and you move them all up a click is what you really see in Texas, right? So instead of less than a Third, you've got 38% of all Texans in that Christian nationalism inherent or sympathizer category. You know, instead of 56, it goes to 59% of Republicans. So jumps up there. But again, you still see this big gap, right, between Republicans and everybody else. And even in Texas. So independents are only a third in this category of Christian nationalism, adherence and sympathizers. Democrats below a quarter, you can still see the white Christian numbers here, much more likely. But again, if I break out, that's all white Christians. If I break out just the white evangelicals, which are not on that chart, 70% of white evangelicals in Texas.

Jelani Cobb (102:05)

You.

Robert P. Jones (102:05)

Know, say that they are qualified as Christian nationalism adherents are sympathizers. So it's a little bit supercharged in Texas compared to the national averages.

Joy Reid (102:14)

And this is. I'm so glad that we have these numbers specifically for Texas because I'm. I'm not a big believer in conversion, particularly after the 2024 election when Liz Cheney herself was able to deliver exactly no Republicans to almost none too, other than the ones who literally worked for msnbc, the artist formerly known as msnbc. And so it turned out there really just was no traction. And so whenever I see a candidate whose sort of main calling card is that I can get white Republicans to convert, I'm quite skeptical of it. And then there's the other piece in the Democratic Party is that the black Christians, the black, even evangelicals, tend to be super voters. They tend to be hypervoters. And then the black voters who you can't usually get to participate, and it's very hard to get them to participate participate are non college sort of disinclined to watch the news. The folks who are on the couch who just don't stop caring. And my question, when I look at that basis, I think they're both great candidates. I think James Talarico seems like a very decent human being and a good man, and Jasmine Crockett is obviously a dynamo politically. Which of them can get people off the couch that will actually vote to get rid of either Ken Paxton or Cornyn. And I look at that, and it's hard for me to imagine Talarico being the one who could get more. I almost feel like he'd maybe fare like Beto. Right. A really, really great candidate, but who can't get the people who are on the couch off it and who maybe can't convert enough of the other side. I don't know. I could be wrong. I don't know.

Robert P. Jones (103:46)

I think off the couch thing is right. I mean, converting Republicans in Texas is a fool's errand, I think. You know, but. And particularly in a midterm, which is a lower turnout election, it's even harder for. To do those kind of conversion things in a midterm election. However, you know, I will say it's just worth remembering we had more people nationwide that sat out the election.

Joy Reid (104:09)

Yes.

Robert P. Jones (104:10)

Than voted for either candidate.

Joy Reid (104:12)

That's right.

Robert P. Jones (104:12)

In the last election. So there are. There are a number of people who weren't committed one way or the other. Need a reason to vote. And what I think is going to be interesting here, and I think you're right, these are two really strong up and coming candidates that the nation is watching, and we're going to see a lot more of both of them, no matter what happens this year. But what. One thing that kind of occurred to me because, you know, Crockett really is very deeply embedded in the black church in Texas and in those networks. So there's a way in which, even though she's not like a seminary student and going to be a pastor, she's deeply rooted right. In that. In that tradition. And when I thought about their style and kind of the one. One thing that came to me from kind of religious studies circles is the prophet versus the priest as one way of thinking about this, you know, and you basically have Crockett, who's. She's the fiery prophet, man. She's bringing the fire. And Tellarico is, you know, he's kind of holding out the olive branch in some ways. Right. And kind of saying, you know, we can kind of mend the bridges and we'll have kind of a. An experiment in real time, I think, to see, you know, is it the prophet, the priest? We probably need both, you know, but how's this going to run in a place like Texas?

Joy Reid (105:27)

Yeah.

Robert P. Jones (105:27)

But I think it is interesting. Both of them actually are kind of rooted in a heavily religious state, but both of them are rooted in different ways right into the Christian tradition in their local area.

Joy Reid (105:39)

So much so that Jasmine Crockett's pastor, the Reverend Frederick Douglass Haynes, AKA Freddie Haynes, is literally running for her congressional seat that she's vacating in order to run for the United States Senate. So her pastor would literally then follow her into Congress. That is how serious she is in the church. So, yes, the prophet versus the priest. I love it. See, that's why I love Robbie Jones. He'll come on here and drop a little nugget here that we can then run with, and it's going to be the prophet versus the priest. By the way, if you're in Texas, early voting has started. The official date of this election is March 3rd. So you're going to want to definitely participate. Let's zoom out just a little bit more. The Epstein files have produced a lot of unpleasant surprises. One of them is how close Steve Bannon was to Jeffrey Epstein. They were producing this weird documentary to try to rehabilitate him. But another thing that's been uncovered is this kind of seeming plot between Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon to undermine Pope Francis, the late, great, previous Pontifex before Pope Leo. That is interesting to me because Catholics feel like they're on the bubble of being maybe the convertible. Right. Because Catholics are very pro immigration, tend. They tend to be. And they tend to care about these things, like, I don't know, caring for the poor like they care about those canon. Where is Prri finding that Catholics stand and why would they be dangerous to Bannon's worldview?

Robert P. Jones (106:59)

Yeah, well, the, the real challenge of kind of answering that question is the real complexity of Catholics in the U.S. like I said, you know, we, when we look at them, we kind of look at by race and ethnicity. Right. And also by affiliation. So there's a kind of religious divide that goes Catholic, Protestant and unaffiliated. And then there's this ethnic divide that is kind of white, non, Hispanic and Hispanic and black and other ethnicities that are. That are much smaller. But it's really notable that particularly the white Hispanic divide in the Catholic Church has been very, very big. And so you could, historically, I mean, really, as long as we've been able to track that, that divide, what we've seen is Latino Catholics voting for Democratic candidates and white Catholics voting for Republican candidates. Again, they're not to the level. White white Catholics are not voting at 8 and 10 or 85% like white evangelicals, but they are voting at about 6 in 10. Right. And so, but, but Latino Catholics are voting much more the other Way like almost three quarters Democrats. So that, that's the kind of shift that we're, that we're seeing there. I do think that there is this sense that the thing with Catholics is they, they have their own experience.

Joy Reid (108:15)

Right.

Robert P. Jones (108:15)

Many, many of them have can their grandparents were immigrants to the U.S. right. And can kind of. And they remember in the 1920s, for example, there was huge anti Catholic, anti immigrant sentiment that many of their own families had to navigate. And that's not too far back in distant memory there. So I think there's some of that there that is just not there. I think in the white evangelical world, their attachment to Trump is not quite as strong there. And we've got Pope Francis for sure was seen as someone always calling for compassionate approach to immigration, calling out these more harsh things. He even said at one point in Trump 1.0 that to build a wall is not what Christ calls for. Right. And that's, that's not the Christian faith is to kind of build a wall. We build bridges and, and love.

Joy Reid (109:04)

Right.

Robert P. Jones (109:04)

That was a different message.

Joy Reid (109:06)

Let's do one more, one more topic here while we still have you. And, and this one is big ups to Winsome on the team who came, who dug up this gem from 1988 before she existed. And it is Chuck Schumer, a young Chuck Schumer weighing in because Jesse Jackson, we are commemorating him on today. And this is when Jesse Jackson was trying, striving to be the Democratic Party's Democratic Party nominee for president. And there was a platform that he wanted about the Palestinian people having an independent state. And Chuck Schumer was very much against it. And here is this clip archival from the archive. I begin my speeches by saying I'm glad to be here. Not quite sure that's appropriate tonight.

Mark Thompson (109:49)

That when I walk up the stairs.

Joy Reid (109:50)

I was pushed, that when I came here. Now, if you don't want to hear the other side, you don't want to hear the other side, then don't stay in this room. Go wait for your candidate and listen to him and make yourself feel good. Okay? If you don't want to listen to the other side, please leave. I may not convert you to my point of view, but I will tell you something. If you believe in your argument, you.

Mark Thompson (110:31)

Can withstand very easily the argument from the other side. So if you can't, and I ask.

Joy Reid (110:41)

You to leave, let me remind you, the last time I was booed publicly, and this was the last time was something you all abhorred because I was.

Mark Thompson (110:54)

The leader in the fight against the.

Joy Reid (110:59)

Pro Palestinian Jackson Plank at the Democratic convention. And I got up on that platform and I said just what I thought. And certain other states got up and booed my speech. So that just as tonight the MC had to get up and say, give the man a chance to be heard. Well, you know what, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps it didn't surprise me that it happened there.

Mark Thompson (111:27)

It surprises me that it happened here.

Joy Reid (111:31)

Okay, we. Can you leave it there. He's getting protested. First of all, I love that New York accent. You cannot. But I mean, it just shows you how passionately he's had a very strong opinion on the Palestinian question. And it really explains why, at least for Democrats like himself, the AIPAC tie is very hard to break. But I want you to just talk a little bit about how religious nationalism, Christian nationalism, connects to Zionism, because I think people forget that there's a connection, that there's actually a Zionist connection that is not just very heartfelt Jewish Americans who care about Israel, it's Christians that are the basis of it.

Robert P. Jones (112:22)

Yeah. And I actually think that the Christian version of Zionism is the most dangerous part of it. Right. And because it actually has nothing to do with the welfare of the Jewish people.

Joy Reid (112:37)

Correct. It's the opposite. They're like they're going to burn in hell after it's over, but we're going to be with them for now.

Robert P. Jones (112:44)

Yeah. So, I mean, the Christian version of it really is this end times, you know, apocalyptic prophecy that that has this vision of the end times. And Jesus's second coming can't come until there's this restoration of the state of Israel. But still, even in that worldview, I mean, it really is still that, you know, only people who bow the knee to Jesus at the end of the day are going to be saved and go to heaven. Right. That's still the vision of this, of this worldview. So it actually has the restoration of a Jewish state in this kind of biblical apocalyptic way. But in that vision, the Jewish people are actually only playing a very minimal and instrumental part. Right. In bringing about the Christian end of the world. And that doesn't often get said out loud, of course, so much. But this is very much the vision that's driving the Christian version of this, that it has a Christian end, not a Jewish end to this story. I think that that's very, very important for people.

Joy Reid (113:46)

It's a marriage of convenience. The Ted Cruz is of the world who say that they are Zionists to the end and there to serve the state of Israel. No, they're there to get the end times to happen. And they believe that if Jews did not, as you said, bend the knee to Jesus, then they all go. They all burn in hell. And so just to know that's a very weird marriage of convenience. Thank you always. As always, Robbie Jones. We do this every third Wednesday of the month. We are fighting white Christian nationalism every way that we can. Because scaring is caring everyone. This is the reason. This is the reason that we do it. If you want to read of Robbie's work, he has a terrific book that is coming out called Reclaiming a faith and a nation after the Christian turn against democracy. But you can immediately right today, go ahead and subscribe to Redeeming Democracy on substack. We're going to put the link below so that you guys can avail yourselves of that. And of course, if you want polling and data, there's only one place to go, and that's the public religion research institute. Prri.org thank you so much, Robby. I always appreciate it.

Robert P. Jones (114:48)

Thanks, Roy.

Joy Reid (114:49)

Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, round of applause, Jason, please, for Robbie Jones. Before we let you guys go, I know that we have not been on this story about the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie's mom. We've been trying to get to it. Every single time we try to get to it, there's, like, 80 pieces of breaking news, and we never get to it. But one of the things that people have noted with all the weird stuff that's happened regarding that is this interview that Savannah Guthrie did back in September of 2019. We're just gonna play a little bit of it. This is everything. The only solace for me is that when a group of people who've experienced.

Georgia Fort (115:33)

Trauma of this kind come together united.

Joy Reid (115:37)

Against a common enemy, There's a very special bond between us all. We can leave bond shared among these. We can leave it. There it is. That is the Epstein victims. And you can see Virginia Giuffre is the one hugging the other victims there. That was in September 2019. That was, like, about a month after Epstein's purported suicide. And so people are now beginning to try to tie that Epstein connection to what's happening with her mom. We have no proof of that. But there is now new developments. You now have Savannah Guthrie demanding proof of life for her mom from the kidnappers, who are demanding, like, a fortune in bitcoin for Nancy's release. It's a request that is actually really complicated. In this era of deepfakes, There's a fear that they could just put A deep fake of Nancy. It's all super weird. We're trying to figure out who to book to talk about this. We're not ignoring it. But Nancy Guthrie is still missing. It is a super weird case.

Georgia Fort (116:34)

It's clear.

Joy Reid (116:34)

The one thing that is clear is that the idea here is to blackmail Savannah Guthrie out of money because she's famous. Everything else about it makes no sense and is super sad. We don't know if there's a connection to the Epstein mess, but there you have it. I just wanted to acknowledge that we are following this story as well. And tonight, before we end the show, we normally do a moment of joy, but tonight we're going to do a moment of weird. Because you know what? It's a weird time. And so we are going to capture this one. As I play it. We're not going to use the sound because the sound is actually the one hit Kid Rock ever had. So I'm just going to play it for you, and we'll just talk over it. What the hell is this? Oh, no, that's not it. Nope, nope. It's E2. E2. Let's see. Let's see. Here it comes. Oh, wait a minute. You'll know it when you see it. Ah, you'll know when you see it because it's this. It's weird. So RFK Jr and Kid Rock have decided to do a PSA for Make America Healthy Again, in which. And I apologize for making you see this because you won't be able to unsee it once you see it. They strip off their clothes to weird shorts and flip flops and start, like, doing weight lifting and exercising together. Weird. And they're, like, doing exercises that they put in fast motion so that you can. And then I never need to say, every time I see RFK Jr. I actually feel a little ill because he seems so ill when he talks. There's a point there where he flips off the camera. Kid Rock. That's great for the kids. And then they do a thing where he in full jeans gets into an ice bath. RFK Jr this is the guy who actually swam in the dirty rivers of D.C. then they drink whole milk. For some reason that I can't explain, it just gets weirder and weirder. They play a little wiffle ball thing. This is supposed to, like, promote health. Neither of them look healthy to me. I don't know why they're jumping into the water in jeans. I don't know why we have to see their upper bodies, because. Ew. I don't want to see it. And the whole milk is just weird. So our moment, it's just a moment of weird. They're weird. And I'm not sure how that and the news that RFK Jr. Said in a podcast that he snorted cocaine off of a dirty toilet seat because he doesn't believe in the germ theory. Not sure how any of this makes us healthier, but apparently that is going to make us healthier. Again, I apologize. You will never be able to unsee what you have just seen. They're claiming it wasn't. It wasn't milk. Let's do one last thing before we go reminding you that on Friday we need to improve. Let's do something more positive here on Friday. The stuff they lied to you about, we are going to debunk and we're going to get into Black History Month True Facts with the great Michael Harriot, Black AF history and also Ashley the Baroness and the great Garrison Hayes. Here is a promo clip. One of the biggest lies that we were told is we can't. I think that that. Oh, here we go again. Let's do it again. So limiting.

Georgia Fort (119:41)

And we.

Joy Reid (119:42)

I think one of the biggest lies that we were told is we can't.

Georgia Fort (119:47)

I think that that phrase is so limiting. And we've always been put in a box.

Joy Reid (119:52)

We've always been told what we can't do, but we've never been told what we can do.

Georgia Fort (119:56)

And that's where history comes in.

Joy Reid (119:58)

That's where research comes in.

Georgia Fort (119:59)

And that's where knowing where you come from, that's where we're being able to.

Joy Reid (120:03)

Dive deeper and figure out what we can do. It was a really great conversation. That was the second half of the conversation. First half, is Michael here answering your questions that you are Team TJRS friends sent in. It was really, really great. I hope you guys will tune in Friday, 6pm the chats will be open so you guys can chat amongst yourselves. Jason and I, as you mentioned earlier, will be at a wedding, so we won't be there, but we will come back and read all your chats. We love reading your comments. We do read them. We do check what you guys are saying. Thank you all for tuning in. I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your evening. Good night and be well. Happy Black History Month.

Mark Thompson (120:39)

Getting back to the basics.

Bishop William Barber (120:41)

Grassroots level.

Joy Reid (120:42)

Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel. Plenty.

Bishop William Barber (120:44)

Can't tell the forest from the trees and I'm hard to detect like a.

Joy Reid (120:48)

Black hole in a dark injustice anywhere. It's a threat to justice everywhere. Let me make this clear.

Bishop William Barber (120:53)

I got a bone to pick, and.

Joy Reid (120:54)

I'll never fear the threat of poverty.

Bishop William Barber (120:57)

They don't want to talk about it. They rap the party. So I'm a real talk about it for sure.

Mark Thompson (121:03)

It's tax season, and at LifeLock, we.

Joy Reid (121:06)

Know you're tired of numbers, but here's.

Mark Thompson (121:08)

A big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds.

Joy Reid (121:12)

The IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud.

Mark Thompson (121:15)

Now here's another big number.

Joy Reid (121:17)

100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it.

Mark Thompson (121:23)

Guaranteed.

Joy Reid (121:24)

One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply.