The 100th Black History Month In Nightmare America | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

The Joy Reid Show

Episode: The 100th Black History Month in Nightmare America | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!
Date: February 3, 2026
Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Special Guests: Pastor Jamal Bryant, Glenn Kirschner (federal prosecutor & analyst), Paola Ramos (journalist), Raul Rodriguez (former DHS/INS/Border Patrol), Kira Butler (Mother Jones), Bishop William Barber

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Episode Overview

This lively, passionate episode commemorates the 100th anniversary of Black History Month against the backdrop of a politically and culturally turbulent America: Black history is threatened, civil liberties are under assault, and authoritarian Christian nationalism is surging. Joy Reid and her guests dissect the regime’s crackdown on protest and journalism (the “Minneapolis Nine”), shading of Black contributions from the public narrative, and the increasingly dangerous merger of white Christian nationalism with state power and policy. Featuring frontline voices—including activists, legal experts, journalists, and faith leaders—the episode weaves together protest, history, faith, and the urgent fight for democracy and civil rights.

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Key Topics & Segments

1. 100th Black History Month: Centenary Reflections & Ongoing Erasure

[01:32–08:00]

• Joy celebrates the milestone (“Black History Month is officially 100 years old. It is a centenarian…”) and recounts its origin (Carter G. Woodson & Jesse E. Moreland, 1915; 1926’s first "Negro History Week").
• Observes that, paradoxically, as America marks 250 years, Black history is being deliberately erased by the current regime:
  • Museums are hiding exhibits; official events and White House commemorations are canceled.
  • Black contributions to military, resistance, and civil rights are omitted from new narratives.
  • The anti-DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) order is characterized as an effort to "make American history extremely white."
• Quote:

  “The current regime’s primary interest—beyond enriching Donald Trump and his billionaire pals—is erasing black history, making sure black people do not show up in the heroic story of America.” – Joy Reid [03:25]

2. The "Minneapolis Nine": Criminalizing Protest and Journalism

[08:59–13:10]

• Context: Nine journalists/activists dubbed the "Minneapolis Nine" (Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, others) have been indicted/arrested by authorities for covering or supporting church protests about ICE and Border Patrol occupations.
• Their “crime” is exposing injustices, paralleling civil rights-era hostilities.
• Played: Video statement from Jerome D'Angelo Richardson, a 21-year-old Temple University student, prior to his anticipated arrest.
  • Quote:

    “This is the price of being unapologetic about humanity and love of Christ… Please support my legal defense fund as I am in dire need of your financial support.” – Jerome Richardson [11:05]

• Pam Bondi (DOJ) is presented as pursuing “Trump’s revenge agenda,” privileging white Christian nationalist spaces and persecuting Black activists.

3. Selective Policing: Church Protests, the Double Standard, and the “Ku Klux Klan Act”

With: Pastor Jamal Bryant, Glenn Kirschner
[15:10–35:40]

• Pastor Bryant recounts a coordinated white nationalist disruption at his Atlanta megachurch, New Birth, and the federal government’s failure to prosecute—contrasting harsh action against Black-led protests.
  • Quote:

    “The government has this level of intolerance for protection of white churches, but don’t have that same regard for black churches.” – Pastor Jamal Bryant [16:19]

• Raises security at Black houses of worship due to repeated intimidation.
• Federal Prosecutor Glenn Kirschner: The charges against Don Lemon et al. (“conspiracy against rights”) are described as “absurd,” “satirical,” and a “selective prosecution.”
  • Quote:

    “All they do is continue to throw buzzwords into the indictment sans evidence… If you are Donald Trump’s enemy, you’re going to get prosecuted regardless of whether you committed a crime.” – Glenn Kirschner [19:58]

• Further discussion of protests at Target, the ongoing Target boycott (Target Fast), and disparities in police response and corporate engagement (“The outgoing CEO met with the white clergy within 48 hours. We have been waiting for months.” – Pastor Bryant [27:46]).

Four Demands of the Target Boycott (Target Fast) [31:22]

• $2B reinvestment pledge to Black communities.
• Equal HBCU partnerships.
• Transparent DEI development.
• Genuine community-centered initiatives.

4. The Regime’s Militarized Enforcement and the Face of Border Patrol

With: Paola Ramos, Raul Rodriguez
[36:17–53:12]

• ProPublica identifies two Latino Border Patrol agents involved in the shooting of Minneapolis protester Alex Preddy, highlighting internal fractures in Latino identity under a regime fanning xenophobia.
• Paola Ramos examines how marginalized people sometimes become enforcers (“The uniform gives you a complex identity… It's a machine unleashed.” [42:39]).
• Raul Rodriguez, former agent, describes how agents are trained, the impunity culture, and his eventual disillusionment after being cast out by the government despite years of loyal service.
  • Quote:

    “They think they’re above the law. And being from that community, I thought the same thing… When I found out I was not a US citizen, they turned their back on me.” – Raul Rodriguez [47:03]

5. Christian Nationalism, the “Sin of Empathy,” and the Network of Power

With: Kira Butler (Mother Jones), Bishop Barber
[57:56–83:50]

• Joy explains how a radical network (Doug Wilson, Joe Rigney, et al.) is using theological arguments (“sin of empathy”) to justify exclusion, discrimination, and “white Christian nationalist” dominion.
• Doug Wilson’s anti-suffrage, anti-individual rights ideology is exposed as the intellectual engine behind new policies.
• Kira Butler systematically breaks down how these networks operate:
  • Connections between Doug Wilson, New Founding, J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, the Project 2025 agenda, and more.
  • “Techno-feudalism” and the intent to create exclusive Christian nationalist communities, while aspiring to take control of the state.
  • The SAVE Act: Legislation designed to raise barriers to voter registration, particularly targeted at women, Black Americans, immigrants, trans people, and the elderly.
  • “They want to make white Christian churches sacrosanct… but would arrest anyone who enters Black churches.” – Joy Reid [83:52]

6. Bishop Barber’s Moral Critique, History, and Mobilization

[91:33–122:44]

• Bishop William Barber powerfully rebuts Christian nationalist misuse of scripture and history, reminding listeners that authentic Christianity centers empathy, justice, and care for “the least of these.”
  • Quote:

    “Any religion that teaches against empathy and love… that’s heretical. A tree is known by the kind of fruit that comes off it.” [92:21]

  • “The struggle of faith has always been about fighting greed, injustice, and heretical theology.” [93:00]
• Raises concerns about deportations (end of Haitian TPS), comparisons to hiding people in the Anne Frank era, and the urgency of defending democracy and “civilization itself.”
• Announces a major mobilization—"Forward Together: Moral March on Raleigh" (Feb 11–14)—to reclaim democracy and voting rights in North Carolina.
• Castigates those impeding protest permits, stresses the importance of bringing silos together for collective action, and highlights the immense power of the “unvoted” masses.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Be a little more stereotypical, blacks. Be a little bit more stereotypical.”
  – Joy Reid, critiquing performative Black presence at the White House under Trump [06:03]

• “What Don did was right and well within his constitutional right. But when it comes to those who actually stand on the side of right, they are considered the ones who are domestic terrorists.”
  – Pastor Jamal Bryant [25:04]

• “It’s all about who’s doing the trespassing. With this federal government and this DOJ… I’ve given up hope of changing behavior there. But we got a whole lot of economic power. That’s what we need to leverage.”
  – Glenn Kirschner [30:07]

• “How do you untrain people to look at Haitians as human beings?... That scares me.”
  – Paola Ramos [44:07]

• “The net effect of women’s suffrage was not an advance in women’s rights, but part of a push to replace covenanted entities like families with raw individualism.”
  – Doug Wilson (clip) [60:09]

• “The outgoing CEO [of Target] met with the white clergy within 48 hours. We have been waiting for months to get some response.”
  – Pastor Jamal Bryant [27:46]

• “Every desperate, every authoritarian, every neo-fascist has to create a religion to try to make their evil good… They use the name, but the character is far, far away from it.”
  – Bishop William Barber [92:21]

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Timeline & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Discussion | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:32 | Joy on the 100th Black History Month and Black history erasure | | 05:24 | Clip: Performance of Blackness under Trump White House | | 08:59 | Introduction to the Minneapolis Nine/Overview of selective prosecution | | 11:05 | Jerome Richardson video statement | | 15:10 | Attack on New Birth Church; Interview w/ Pastor Jamal Bryant | | 18:53 | Pastor Bryant on increased security at Black churches | | 19:34 | Glenn Kirschner on the absurdity of Don Lemon prosecution | | 22:31 | Clip: Don Lemon’s livestream shows peaceful coverage | | 27:46 | Pastor Bryant: Target CEO disparity between white clergy/Black clergy | | 31:22 | Pastor Bryant lists the four demands for Target | | 36:17 | ProPublica IDs Border Patrol shooters; Start of segment on border enforcement| | 42:39 | Paola Ramos: Identity, uniform, and Latino complicity/complexity | | 47:03 | Raul Rodriguez: Border Patrol impunity and eventual betrayal | | 57:56 | Christian Nationalism ideology: The “Sin of Empathy,” Doug Wilson | | 66:07 | Intro of Kira Butler, exposé on Christian nationalist networks | | 72:35 | Russ Vought (Project 2025) on “sentimentalism” and immigration – Clip | | 75:52 | Kira Butler connects Vought, J.D. Vance, Doug Wilson on “rightly ordered love”| | 83:47 | Joy and Kira: SAVE Act implications for voting rights | | 91:33 | Moral Monday segment with Bishop Barber; Christianity, activism, voting | | 114:43 | Bishop Barber: Love Forward Together March, organizing information | | 125:05 | Moment of Joy: Don Lemon and little Liam’s release; closing celebration |

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Tone & Style

The episode's tone is fiery, urgent, sometimes sardonic, deeply analytical, yet always suffused with Joy Reid’s trademark humor, historical depth, and righteous indignation. Dialogue includes heavy use of irony, pointed analogies ("Handmaid’s Tale," "bar Jesus"), and sharp, accessible legal and theological critique.

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Noteworthy Takeaways

• Regime’s playbook is both old and new: It recycles Civil War and Jim Crow legal levers (e.g. “Ku Klux Klan Act”) against Black activists and journalists—with elite theological justifications.
• Christian nationalist agenda is highly organized: Well-funded, networked, and techno-savvy, it fuses hard-right theology, libertarian tech donors, and Trump-Orban style statecraft.
• Voting rights under threat: The SAVE Act could disenfranchise countless Americans, especially women, Black voters, the elderly, trans citizens, and immigrants.
• Erasure of Black history is deliberate policy: Official commemorations have eroded; public memory is contested on every front as anti-DEI measures take effect.
• Moral leadership endures: Figures like Bishop William Barber and Pastor Jamal Bryant powerfully reassert the authentic Christian ethic of justice, empathy, and universal human dignity.
• Organizing continues: Boycotts (Target), legal defense funds (Minneapolis Nine), and mass marchs (NC’s "Love Forward Together") are direct responses to authoritarian clampdowns.
• Moments of joy and hope: The release of a 5-year-old immigrant child, Don Lemon’s standing ovations—reminders of resilience and solidarity amidst darkness.

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Further Reading, Links & Calls to Action

• Support the Minneapolis Nine: Contribute to legal defense funds for activists and journalists.
• Join the Target Fast: Boycott until Target meets the four outlined demands.
• March in North Carolina: Participate in Forward Together/Love Forward events.
• Monitor the SAVE Act: Contact representatives, educate your community.
• Support Independent Media: Like, subscribe, and share content from independent journalists.

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“It’s not just a battle for democracy—it’s a battle for civilization itself. You can’t be lukewarm, you can’t straddle the fence.”
— Bishop William Barber [109:18]

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Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

Gremlin Monday. What's going on? Hey, guys. Happy Monday, everybody. Welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Yeah, the Gremlins, you know, the devil be trying to mess with us, but we cannot be messed with. We are unstoppable. I thank you everybody who was so patient in the chat. Thank you to everybody that jumped in and all the Lemon heads who popped on over from the Don Lemon Show. That was so much fun jumping on over there to hang out with my buddy Don Lemon. He's got a big day today, a big night tonight, I should say. He's on the west coast, so he'll be on Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight. So if you. This is ever a night you were gonna support Jimmy Kimmel, Don Lemon will be. He has the special guest on Jimmy Kimmel. He's wrapping up a very big weekend in which after the regime decided to arrest him and now and eight other people, it's now nine people. We're going to start calling them the Minneapolis Nine. The Minneapolis Nine. Number one being Don Lemon. Georgia Ford, a local Minneapolis journalist, also arrested. So, you know, we're going to be following up on that. That is a big part of what we're going to be talking about tonight, but also the hypocrisies of the regime in that regard. But I want to start before anything else by see, by saying, please do hit that like and subscribe button. We celebrated hitting 400,000 subscribers over the weekend and we've already blown past that. We're now into the 406,000 family. Thank you. Thank you.

[Kira Butler]

Amen.

[Joy Reid]

We can get a round of applause, Jason, for the 406,000 friends that have jumped in and become a part of the family. Also, we crossed the 200,000 subscriber mark on substack. How about a round of applause for our friends on substack, please, Mr. Reid, because we love and appreciate everybody and also everyone who has subscribed on the audio podcast. If you listen on Apple itunes or on Spotify, we love you guys, too. Want to make sure that you guys are also included in the thanks and appreciation. Please continue to smash that like button. Also share. Also do the little bell thingy so that you always know we go live. As you can see, we're, you know, we're frozen in. So I'm in. I'm in my light makeup, so don't say enough. Don't judge me. Self done makeup is not the same as my normal glam. So don't say nothing about it. But we appreciate each and every one of you. But I want to start by wishing everybody a happy Black History Month. As you know, this is the 100th birthday of Black History Month. Black History month is officially 100 years old. It is a centenarian. Black History Month was formed in. It began in 1915, a half a century after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. I'm reading from history.com the story begins when a Harvard trained historian named Carter G. Woodson and a prominent minister named Jesse E. Moreland founded the association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization dedicated to researching and promoting achievements by black Americans and other peoples of African descent. And it is known today as the association for the Study of African American Life and History. The group sponsored a national Negro history week in 1926, choosing the second week of February to coincide with the birthday the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The event inspired schools and communities nationwide to organize local celebrations, establish history clubs and host performances and lectures. We know that in the year of our Lord 2026, the current regime's primary interest among enriching Donald Trump. I mean their primary interest is enriching Donald Trump and his greedy crimey family and his friends and his billionaire pals. But beyond enriching the Trumps personally, since the Supreme Court said bribery is not illegal all over the world, money, money, money in their pockets. The other big thing that they've tried to do on the 250th birthday of the United States Declaration of Independence. So it's America's birthday as well as Black History Month is having a birthday this year, is erasing black history, is making sure that black people do not show up to in the heroic story of America anywhere. Erased out of the military history, erased out of the history of heroism in any of our world wars. Erased as far as they can from all of the history of the country. Museums, hiding exhibits, putting exhibits on pause, getting rid of them. But I wanted to show you guys. I'm sorry, Sorry. I'm sorry. We have a. I have my phone deciding it wants to talk with me and it's trying to preview the element that I'm going to show you guys in a minute. But they're doing everything they can to try to make American history extremely white. The anti DEI order. The whole purpose of it was to say we don't want any history other than white history. Right? But I have to show you guys this because last year, last year, just to show you how quickly things can change in a year, let me show you heard it a little bit in My phone, but now I'm going to show it to you so you can hear it fully. A scene from last January's first Black History Month celebration of Donald Trump's second presidency. Jason, this is a one, a zero. Please play. We at the White House. We back in here.

[Bishop William Barber]

We waiting on President Donald J. Trump up.

[Joy Reid]

Let's go. Yeah, big time. I look so good in the red. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. First of all, where are any of those people now? Did any of those people get jobs? Did any of those people get positions in the administration? Are. Are any of those people currently working?

[Bishop William Barber]

We back in here. We back in here.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, be a little more stereotypical, blacks. Be a little bit more stereotypical. I promise you. Right now, Nicki Minaj is studying that tape on how to conform herself to the kind of black that MAGA likes. She's probably studying that tape right now, figuring how to go ha ha in a Caribbean in a. In a Trinidadian accent, nor behavior. She's pro. She's got to be studying that right now, being like, oh, is that what I have to do? So, you know, she was at a wedding at Mar a Lago, Jason, over the weekend. Instead of at the Grammys, she was hanging out with them. And then she went to the big Melania debut in D.C. so we're going to talk about that later in the show. We're going to talk about.

[Bishop William Barber]

I wouldn't know. I wasn't paying any attention.

[Joy Reid]

I know.

[Bishop William Barber]

Shame to say that, you know, what's on going.

[Joy Reid]

She's like, instantly. She's become instantly irrelevant, yet so comically relevant. Like, now I feel like Nicki Minaj has passed over from like hip hop royalty to pure comedy. Like, she's a sitcom at this point. I mean, it was funny enough when she said that the COVID vaccine made her cousins chicharrones as well. That was bad enough. And now she's just all the way down. She's gone. But let me show you all the way that you can sort of find Black History Month commemorated this year, at least in the official world. This is A1. This is the Black History Month page at the Smithsonian, which is black history month.gov it's still up, so enjoy it while you still can. You can still see images and, you know, commemorations of black history. This is the only way you can see it. The White House did not do a Black History Month ceremony this year. There was, as far as we could tell, the producers went out and tried to see if there was a post or any kind of commemoration. The FBI actually kind of did more this. This year to celebrate black people than the White House. So that. That's where we are right now. So that's where we are. We have declined that much. But, of course, you know, they wouldn't want to upset. You know, they wouldn't want to upset Stephen Miller. You know, he might get mad.

[Russ Vogt]

Would say or do.

[Glenn Kirschner]

Am I the only one who is.

[Bishop William Barber]

Sick and tired of being told no.

[Joy Reid]

To pick up my trash? We have plenty of janitors.

[Kira Butler]

Next up.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, Steven. To the issue of the Iraqi civilians.

[Bishop William Barber]

I think that as many of them.

[Russ Vogt]

Should survive as possible because the goal of any military conflict is to kill.

[Joy Reid]

As few people as possible. But as for Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, I think the ideal solution would be to cut off their fingers.

[Paola Ramos]

I don't think it's necessary to kill them entirely.

[Joy Reid]

We're not a barbaric people.

[Glenn Kirschner]

We respect life.

[Joy Reid]

Therefore, torture is the way to go, because tortured people can live. Torture.

[Bishop William Barber]

I'm starting to throw up in my mouth. Can I turn it off now, please?

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, just. Just to let y' all know who. That's. Who's running the White House. You. You can feel free. If you don't want to continue, that is who's running your White House. That was him at 17, believe it or not. So our present hill, 100 years after the establishment of Black History Month, includes the occupation of major American cities, including Chicago, which had its turn with the violence you saw play out there against men, women and children. Our Nation's capital, Washington, D.C. los Angeles. We've seen them in Maryland and Baltimore, all over the country. They are invading American cities and. And effectively putting them under what you could only describe as martial law. So today, in that effort to essentially put this country under martial law ahead of the 2026 elections, which they'd very much like to steal and also to terrorize and terrify Americans all over this country. Today, the eighth member of this list, the eighth and previously redacted target. If you see this indictment here, there was a redacted name on here. The eighth target of Pam Bondi's Black bad list was arrested following his indictment alongside journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and activist Nikima Levy, Armstrong Chantill Louisa Allen, William Scott Kelly, and Minnesotans Jamel Lydell Lindy and Trehearn Jean Cruz, all African American. There's still one more name we do not know, but they are effectively the Minneapolis Nine at this point. Well, regime police have now arrested Jerome D' Angelo Richardson he's a 21 year old temple University student and activist who was helping Don Lemon on the ground when he went to Minneapolis to report on the occupation. You meet someone locally, this is how journalism works. You find a local person who can tell you where things are, where you should go. Don Lemon is not from Minneapolis, so he found someone who's a student at Temple University who was there to give him some logistics on the ground. This kid, he's 21 years old. Here's a video that he posted over the weekend anticipating getting arrested.

Joan richardson I'm a 21 year old college senior. I've maintained my silence up until now about my connection to the recent protests at city's church in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is my hometown, simply because I'm focusing on finishing my degree and graduating in May. However, with an indictment looming, I fear for my safety and the threat of public doxing. Having overcome many obstacles to reach this point, I really hope to be able to complete this semester and graduate and earn my degree. On January 18, I assisted Don Linman during his visit to the Twin Cities by helping with logistics and connecting him with local contacts. Don was reporting on the situation on the ground during the occupation by DHS and ICE and Border Patrol agents, and at that time I was proud to support his work in exposing the everyday injustices resulted from the federal government's agenda. As a consequence of this support, I am now being targeted by Trump and the federal administration. I say this to say I'm incredibly proud of those who have already faced their indictment and detention and I know this fight is far from over. Their courage has certainly inspired me. Yet this is the price of being an unapologetic about humanity and love of Christ. I support the activists who felt compelled to highlight the hypocrisy of how Pastor David Easterwood could simultaneously be pastor at the church and the local leader of ICE operations. What people are experiencing goes against human and civil rights as well as the teachings of Jesus, who indeed flipped over tables. So while I've been active youth leader since the murder of George Floyd, I'm speaking out now because I anticipate being in federal custody sometime in the coming days. I want to share my love and gratitude and ask that you all support through three actions. Pray for my safety and my peace of mind. Do not stop fighting against this oppressive system and please support my liquid defense fund as I am in dire need of you all's financial support and emotional support as well as prayers.

So we will put up the link to that legal Defense fund. He is 21 years old, one year older than James Cheney, who was with Goodman and Schwerner doing the exact same thing, leading Goodman and Schwerner, who are actually activists, not journalists, into Mississippi to show them where to go because they were local and he was not. He's the age of Fred Hampton, 21 year old young guy. He has now been arrested. And per Pam Bondi's threats, she posted about the arrest of this young man, a warning quote, if you riot in a place of worship, we will come find you, despite nobody actually rioting in that place of worship. Now, we can presume that that person, the ninth person of the Minneapolis nine, who I presume is also African American, since this is their theme, will also soon be under arrest as well. Now, Pamela Jo, Pam Bondi has made it very clear that she sees her job not as pursuing justice without fear of favor, but rather as pursuing Donald Trump's revenge agenda. And Stephen Miller, that's why I bothered to show you that in sane video of him, his racial agenda, his agenda that is about ethnic cleansing, clearly about reducing the number of non white people in the United States, but Also the Project 2025 agenda of privileging white Christian nationalists and their churches over the rest of us in America. You know, the kinds of churches that disparage black churches as unbiblical due to their supposedly heretical focus on care for the poor and the immigrant. Here is Pamela Jo putting her threats into words, not just tweets. Make no mistake, under President Trump's leadership and this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely. And if I haven't been clear already, if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you. Are you now? Because it's funny that that did not seem to apply when this happened. What I'm just going to show you just this past weekend at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, Georgia. Jesus Christ is gonna destroy this church.

[Kira Butler]

He's gonna destroy this church.

[Joy Reid]

And if you're in it when he does, he'll destroy you with it. It's time to repent of your wicked way race Bailey stirring hatred among the children of God. People that know come to Christ and walk because you make your audio down. I'm going to go ahead and bring in our guest. You can leave the video up while I bring in our great guest. The pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Pastor Jamal Bryant, co founder of the Target Fast alongside Nina Turner and Tamika Mallory, as well as former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirsch, is Going to join us in a minute, but I'm going to start first with you, Pastor Bryant. Did you report that incident to the Justice Department? And by the way, happy Black History Month. Oh, your mic is muted, Pastor. There we go. We got you. Thank you so much. And thank you for your patience. We were having some technical difficulties at the top, so thank you for waiting.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

No, you're worth the wait. Thank you so very much. You so. No. We sent notification asking for the same level of accountability that they had in Minneapolis. Even did a video showing his picture and where he could be located to assist the DOJ in case they were directionally challenged. They drove all the way, Joy, from Alabama just to stage this disruption and film themselves from the moment they got out of the car. I am really just thrown off that the government has this level of intolerance around the protection of white churches, but don't have that same regard for black churches.

[Joy Reid]

And how many people showed up to your church? That video that we're showing, was that shot by a church member or by the people themselves that were infiltrating your church?

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

That was film, Joy, if you can believe it, by his wife. They uploaded that video. It's the audacity for me. So that wasn't even film, but we got that off of his page.

[Joy Reid]

Right. And so what you have are people who are going in yelling. That was during. I saw people walking around. Service was happening, right?

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Yeah, no, they're in prayer. It's five minutes before service starts. So they were well staged. It was really, I feel a plan out to feel where were the chinks in the arm of our security and timed it out. And so when they're coming out, they're doing it in real time. It took our security three minutes to apprehend. And here's what's crazy, Joe, you're not going to believe it. They looped it to make it look like it was a nine minute interaction. They were patting themselves on the back. I hope that Bondi and Department of justice will operate with the same kind of precision to apprehend them for disrupting a house of worship.

[Joy Reid]

And before I bring in our prosecutorial guest, did you have to take different steps in terms of security because of the presence of those people in your church?

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Oh, no, absolutely. As a matter of fact, this is not our first disruption. We had some outside after the killing of the blogger Charlie Kirk, when I made a statement saying, you can't compare him to Martin Luther King. So they came outside the church waving MAGA flags and we had to have them removed. So we've had to raise up our security on every level.

[Joy Reid]

Let's bring in Glenn Kirschner, former federal prosecutor and also a very prolific voice in these YouTube streets. Glenn Kirchner, can you please react to this? Because what we've had Pam Bondi say, and I've been reading through this as a layperson. I'm a lawyer. You are. And trying to make sense of it just as a. As a regular person. And it makes no sense to me, this case, that they're making, that going inside the church, filming the interactions between protesters and people in the church, that. That is a crime. But in the case of Pastor Bryant's church, there's been no. Not even. No action, but no response from Pam Bondi.

[Glenn Kirschner]

Yeah. And I think what Pastor Bryant experienced in his church will actually become evidence of selective prosecution of the Minneapolis Nine. You know, when I read the indictment against Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and the others, I swear, Joy, it's like I was reading something from the Onion, right?

[Joy Reid]

The.

[Glenn Kirschner]

The satirical magazine, because I drafted more indictments over my 30 years than I could ever remember. And it's. It's absurd, because all they do is they continue to throw buzzwords into the indictment sans evidence. There's no evidence supporting it. They keep calling it a takeover style attack. But here's the thing. We see Don Lemon live streaming precisely what's going on, and nobody can reach the conclusion it is a takeover style attack. It's a protest. And do we really think that Don Lemon live streamed his own crimes? I mean, the whole thing is absurd. Not to mention, if he were there to intimidate and injure and threaten the parishioners, he was asking them for their take on what was happening, their reaction. He is a journalist. He's documenting what's going on there. It is the farthest thing from a conspiracy against rights that you can imagine. And listen, and I don't want to focus only on the journalists, Don and Georgia, but there's a reason that multiple federal judges would not approve a criminal complaint for Don Lemon. They couldn't even make out bare probable cause. But then Pam Bondi's dirty DOJ leadership fumbled forward. Maybe they found some Lindsey Halligan clone, sent her into a grand jury and came out with an indictment on evidence that the judge said doesn't even satisfy the probable cause standard. Look, it's clear if you are Donald Trump's enemy, you're going to get prosecuted regardless of whether you committed a crime.

[Kira Butler]

And.

[Glenn Kirschner]

And if you're a friend of Donald Trump's. You're going to get let off even if you did commit a crime. So am I surprised that the disparate treatment between Pastor Bryant's church and what happened in Minneapolis, I'm not surprised. This is Donald Trump's dirty DOJ leadership at work.

[Joy Reid]

Jason, I'm going to go. I'm going to go 8, 7, 6. If you don't mind. I want to. I want to show just so that our audience, that we've played a lot of Don Lemon's actual coverage, but I just want to. Just for just once again, I want to play another little piece of it. This is actually how his live stream started. This is a. Just so that you guys can just get a level set here. This was the beginning of his coverage, or at least close to the beginning.

[Bishop William Barber]

Going to walk in, see what's happening. Okay.

[Joy Reid]

You can turn down this now, Jason. So. So what you see there is the cameraman who was with Don, follows him in. You can see Don is not starting the events, creating the events. He's literally walking in as the events are already going underway. Glenn. I mean, he was told there was going to be a protest here. He walked. He went to where it was. He reported at it. I don't see what the crime. He and Georgia Ford did the same thing.

[Glenn Kirschner]

No. And actually, I. I've watched some of that live stream, and Don said, I believe multiple times. I'm not with the group. I'm not with the protesters. I'm covering the protest. And to conclude that he conspired to commit crimes in the church, they're not just claiming that he went in there and while he was in there, he committed crimes. They charged him with a conspiracy against rights. That means they have to prove joy that in advance of ever going to the church, he got together with one or more individual and agreed to commit crimes, which is just. It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd.

[Joy Reid]

And, Pastor, you know, one of the things that they're trying to allege is that when that protest took place, the people inside that church felt afraid and felt intimidated and felt fear. I watched much of that coverage. The people were maybe annoyed. Some of them seemed angry. No one seemed fearful, certainly not fearful of Don or Georgia. And Georgia was also talking with people. When those people came to your church, because they were saying some pretty repulsive things that I did not hear inside the Minneapolis church. Did members of your pastorate, did the people inside of your church, your members, did any of them feel fear?

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

I think it was the unknown. I think it was a shock and awe because our church is 99% black first. And so you see a white person. Enjoy. I want to a it that the gentleman who is a disruptor is clergy and is a pastor.

[Joy Reid]

Wow.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Left his church to come protest at ours. So I need that as a footnote. But the president is creating a culture of intimidation for anybody who doesn't agree with them. So at the beginning of your show, you played a clip from the White House of those who were just so glad to be there that had that video gone just 30 seconds further, you would have seen joy that they pulled out posters with pictures of me in it in the White House. Channing, hold him accountable. The backdrop is this is 10 minutes after they confirmed Cash Patel as head of the FBI. And so they are selective about what is righteous indignation and what is out of order. But I believe that what Don did was right and well within his constitutional right. But when it comes to those who actually stand on the side of right, they are considered the ones who are domestic terrorists.

[Joy Reid]

And the reason you're right that they were holding pictures, cardboard pictures of you, Pastor Bryant, is because you were the most visible leader of the Target fast. What you call the Target fast. And that Tameka and Anina and yourself pulled together this national drive to walk away from Target, not because of ice. And they do let ICE hang around and Target and take people. But at that time, they weren't. It was because of pulling out of dei. I want to show you, Pastor, just for a moment, this is a protest. This is a six, Jason, that there was a protest by clergy inside of the. Of one of the Minneapolis targets. Just to remind both of the chats here that Target is based in Minneapolis. Their headquarters is in Minneapolis. It's the reason that they originally did DEI work and DEI commitments after George. George Floyd was killed. So here's just a little bit of the protest that took place inside of Target last week. Well, you left. You let ICE in. You let Greg Bovino in. This is a public space.

[Kira Butler]

You said it was a public space.

[Joy Reid]

And, Jason, you can pull that audio down, if you don't mind. And so a question to both of you. First to you, Pastor Bryant, talk. Talk me through the kind of thinking about where Target stands. Have they responded to your calls to change what they're doing? Because now you have local clergy and Internet and national clergy coming in demanding that they stop allowing ICE to operate in Target before they even get to that list. I believe they still have a list with the Target fast.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Oh, no, absolutely. Let me also say what a difference a day makes. A year ago, people were protesting and demonstrating, as you both would remember, against Tesla. And the President made the announcement. It would be a felony to touch a Tesla. I had been reticent about public demonstrations outside of Target because I was afraid of enduring arrest that would have no bounds. You're seeing this Caucasian group, and I'm grateful that they're walking alongside us. But I didn't want to send in mass black congregants to protest and Target because the video you would be showing tonight would look a whole lot different than what it is you're showing. Today is the first day of the new CEO of Target. The old one had to step down because of public criticism on the downward spiral of the stock of Target. And so what, we've sent out a smoke signal to this new CEO that we're ready to meet, and we're excited and expectant that they're going to have to meet. This is the very first time in 24 years that target has not been lauded by Forbes because of what has happened for all of this year. The stock has gone down, foot traffic has gone down, stock has gone down, online spending has gone down, and God knows the brand has tarnished. And so this is the most sustained, sustained boycott since the Montgomery bus boycott 70 years ago. So I believe that Target is now going to have to respond. Let me say, Joy, as an aside, I was taken aback that the outgoing CEO met with the white clergy within 48 hours. We have been waiting for months to get some response. So the inequity and the hypocrisy is glaring on every level.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, indeed. And, Glenn, if, though the police were called on that set of clergy, which is pretty remarkable, that they got a meeting in 48 hours, that's stunning. That's new information that we've gotten here tonight on the show. But let's say they were arrested. All those people were arrested, Glenn, that would be for trespass, right? And that would be no different than if you trespassed in the church and the police came, they would be arrested. If they were for trespass, at what point would that ever, ever, ever become a felony?

[Glenn Kirschner]

It's not, it's not a conspiracy against rights. It's, you know, and, you know, especially when it comes to a church, Joy, usually churches are pretty welcoming. So, you know, I have to question whether even a trespass charge would lie, recognizing every state has its own version of trespass laws. Unlawful entry, we call it in Washington, D.C. but, you know, I think it's all about who's doing the trespassing. And with this federal government and this Department of Justice, which was. You know, I always say that was my beloved professional home for nearly a quarter of a century, but it's fallen so far, so fast that, you know, I'll never stop trying to call out the corruption of the dirty DOJ leadership. But I have given up hope that that is a place we can have an impact and change behavior. But I think where we can have an impact and change behavior is don't set foot in Target. If you want to protest, that's great, but I'm not. I don't. I don't go to Target anymore. I go to Costco. I don't go to Home Depot anymore. I go to Lowe's. And I'm just one person. My family is just a handful of folk. But I'll tell you, we got a whole lot of economic power, and that's what we need to leverage against the targets of the world.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed. Pastor.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

No, I'm. Let me first say thank you, sir. I'm grateful. Every little bit counts. And I'm hoping that the community realizes that it's not over. I don't want there to be any question whether we are still boycotting. We are boycotting until those four demands. Joy, if you'll loan me just 30 seconds, please. Four things that we have asked Target of so that every person is clear. They made a pledge to Minneapolis and to the Black community of $2 billion reinvested into our community. We've not seen it. We're waiting on the receipts. We've asked them to partner with HBCUs, just as they have partnered with PWIs. And we've not seen it. We've asked them to. With a blank canvas right in finger paint. What is the path for development for dei? And we've not seen it. We've asked them to really be committed to not just word or lip service, but really showing us a path forward. Target is in a unique position. They're the only Fortune 500 company that's got a black nickname. We just called them Target. Nobody else got a nickname. And so the betrayal was really felt internally because we really believe that they were for the people and for the community. And to our shock and dismay, they proved otherwise.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed. Exit question for you, Glenn Harmeet Dhillon. I won't play the sound because we're running a little bit behind. She has pledged to try to enhance this prosecution of these journalists and activists. And it is on the. What is it? The Faces act, that's supposed to be about entering houses of worship, but also abortion clinics. She wants to enhance it. And this is. I wish I were making this up with the Ku Klux Klan act. To use the Ku Klux Klan act against nine black people. Your thoughts?

[Glenn Kirschner]

You know, she has so perverted the mission of the Civil Rights Division. Kristen Clark, the former head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, said they had a solemn obligation to uphold the civil rights of the citizenry. And she was talking most directly about the non negotiable need for investigations, civil rights investigations into unlawful killings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy. And to hear, you know, Harmeet Dhillon, it's like George Orwell garbage that comes tumbling out of her mouth. How she is turning this into a whole, you know, ministry of truth kind of thing where everything they say is a lie and is propaganda and is hateful and is bigoted. And, you know, Joy, that's why we're always saying the next elections are the most important. The next elections may be the last elections if we don't get it right come the midterms.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Indeed. An exit question to you, Pastor Bryant. And saying this knowledgeable of the fact that, you know, the difference between that man going in your church and protesting and Don Lemon and those protesters going into that Minneapolis church is there's no black Dylann roof. You know, there's a history in Southern churches of somebody coming in, being welcomed into the church, and then massacring everyone in the church. And so there's just a bit of a difference there. But I want to give you the last word here to talk about how people can continue to support the target fast.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Yeah. Ask that you not go encourage your friends not to. And I want to remind people because here, history is being erased under this administration. The assault against sacred spaces did not start in Minneapolis. Let's not forget that they were burning crosses here in America. And so we've got to make sacred spaces sacred again, whether it is a white church or a black church. Even for those who claim that there's no such thing as a black church. Look at the churches that are targeted.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed. And we have to have you come back on and talk about that because I clipped that clip of Mr. Joel Webbin, who. Who is one of the most ungodly, unbiblical, un Christian, so called Christians. Please do that.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Bring me back.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, we're gonna make an appointment for that because we. I think you have time. There we go. Thank you so much, Pastor Jamal Bryant. We're gonna put the target fast link in as well. Glenn, tell us where we can find you. Where can we find more content from.

[Glenn Kirschner]

You so you can find me on my YouTube channel, Justice Matters with Glenn Kirschner. I put up a legal analysis video every day and then come on over to Substack. We do community meetings almost every night at 8:30pm It's a great community that's growing. We talk about the legal issue of the day every night at 8:30.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you both. Happy Black History Month to you both. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it. All right, y'.

[Kira Butler]

All.

[Joy Reid]

So we now know the identities of the two ICE agents. Or I'm sorry, Border Patrol agents. Border Patrol agents. People are slipping up and saying ICE agents, but in this case, they were members of the Border Patrol who were involved in the shooting death of Alex Preddy. And as it turns out, both are Latino men. Two Latino men have now been identified through the good work of ProPublica. The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Preddy are identified on government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. The records viewed by ProPublica LIST Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Preddy dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations. Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city, 3,000 of them to just 600 local police. TPB, who employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester. 37 year old mother of three, Renee Good. Joining me now is journalist Paolo Ramos, author of the bestselling book Defectors, and Raul Rodriguez, whose bio reads as follows. Quote. I was raised in the US since the age of five. All my education is in the US Served five years in the US Navy, was employed after military with formerly known after the military formerly known as with the agency formerly known as INS and later became DHS. But after almost 25 years of federal service, found out I was not a US Citizen and was terminated. My whole life I've lived in the US and now I'm harassed and live in fear, looking over my shoulder. Thank you both for being here.

[Paola Ramos]

Thank you, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you.

[Paola Ramos]

Hi.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you. Hi. Hello. Thank you for your patience. I do want to go ahead and start first with you, Paola, because you were the first person I texted you. When I discovered the identities through ProPublica's work of these two men, I was only semi surprised. Were you surprised? No.

[Paola Ramos]

No, I'm not surprised. And I think Raul will really paint a picture of what it means to enter border patrol. But then the difference between that and ending up and culminating in the death of Alex Freddie. I wasn't surprised, Joy, because I've met with Enrique Dario, I've met with insurrectionists that have told me that just because your last name is Rodriguez Ramos Gutierrez, in their words, because my name is Rodriguez, that means that I myself cannot be someone that subscribes to right wing extremism. And we know that that's not true. And so I think in the case that we saw in Minneapolis and I just got back, Joy, I think it's a combination of many different things, but I think it comes down to Even the last 10 years of a president of the United States that continues to dehumanize Latinos and immigrants and using a type of vocabulary to a type of imagery, a type of disgust, which disgust is something that is more powerful than fear and resentment. And all of that then means that for some Latinos, of course you believe it. Not just because you're Latino does not make you immune to those feelings. And I think on top of that, what I have found in my own reporting, talking to many folks, is that then there is this very added and complicated layer of proving no to some folks in the manga world that you belong in that world, that you two are one of them. And I think when you combine all of those factors with a Bovino, that is essentially telling their officer that they're immune, that they have the okay and the green light to do whatever they want, that creates the perfect storm.

[Joy Reid]

Raul Rodriguez, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being willing to talk about this. And I think when people see these incidences, particularly when we see somebody translating in Spanish so we know that they are Latino, so we're like, wait a minute, this is somebody going after their own. I guess people ask, how could you do it? How could you do it?

[Raul Rodriguez]

Well, when I. When I first started, I didn't think of it as going against the Latino race or Latino people. I saw it as a job. I saw it as a way to sustain my family, to provide for my family. I didn't think of them and me or being Mexican or being American. I thought about it as providing for my family. And a lot of the Hispanics that I came across or that I processed while doing my job. That was one of the things that they always said, how can you do this to your people? And I was not doing it. It was not my intent to do it with my people. I am Hispanic. I'm Mexican. My family is Mexican. My parents were from Mexico. They still lived in Mexico. But my dad, he was proud. He knew what I did. He says, if I ever break the law, you do what you have to do. You're not there to look at race or look at who they are, where they come from. You have a job to do. There are laws that you have to abide by. You have to process people that are. But a lot of the people think that you're. You're against them because they're taking. Just because you're Mexican or you. Because you come from Mexican parents, they think that. That you. You won't. You. You have to pick sides.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I know. I'm losing Paola in two minutes, and I'm sorry we started everything late tonight, so thank you so much for coming in. So I'm going to give you the last one before I want. I have another question of if Raul can say for five more minutes, but, Paola, where do we go from here? Do you see a change in people's attitude? Whereas they may have looked at this as just great law enforcement, and I'm for the law, the rule of law. Do you see a shift as the cruelty becomes more intense and it becomes more and more directed specifically at Latinos?

[Paola Ramos]

No, I don't think so. But if I can say very quickly, Joy, just about Raul, right, Because. So I met Raul when I was researching my book, Defectors. And I think one of the things that I learned from Raul is.

[Joy Reid]

The.

[Paola Ramos]

Very complex identity that those uniforms give you. I think that's something I learned from you, Raul. Right. And I think when you took off that Border patrol vest, you then start to find out who you are. And I think that's. I just want to stress that because I think about that constantly. I think about that constantly because I think that's something that many of us Latinos are figuring out right now. What it means to be us. And how do you define what it means to be a Latino and an immigrant without anyone telling you what that means? And I think that's why I was always so. So struck by his testimony, that journey of finding your identity. So I think, to answer your question, Joy, I worry. I worry right now because I see an agency that has turned into something that I think someone like Raul would find Unrecognizable, because it is this monster that has been completely unleashed. Because I think, how do you untrain, imagine if they're now going to Ohio, how do you untrain people to look at Haitians as human beings and as decent human beings and not as those folks that since September 2024, Trump has been training people to look at Haitians as people that, quote, unquote, see pets the same way that he's trained people to look at folks from the Somali community as garbage. No, that you can't just undo that. And I saw that damage from up close when I was in Minneapolis. The damage is so.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Prof.

[Paola Ramos]

The idea of repairing that really scares me. How do you untrained people who have been told that they are immune, how do you tell them to now sort of respect the rule of law more than anything? What do you do with a budget of over $70 billion that is now obviously reflecting a military sized budget? And so all of these different factors, to me, it's almost like this machine that is just completely unleashed and stopping. That scares me. And I don't, I don't see, I don't see them really. I see a change in the tone, a change in the uniforms. I see, you know, that that's it. But the damage and the cruelty, I've seen it in every corner of Minneapolis every time.

[Joy Reid]

Paola Ramos, she is one of the best journalists out here doing incredible work. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate you. I'm going to let you go. I'm going to try to hold on to Raul Rodriguez for just a few more minutes. The book Defectors. You should read it. It is in the, in the toilet shop. If you guys want to read it. It is in the, it's one of actually the best selling things in the store. So please check it out if you can. A couple more minutes with you, please. Raul, when you. Let me show you a video. Let me just quickly show you this. This is B2. This is a woman being arrested by Border Patrol, by your former agency. Take a look for having skates. No, you're not arrested.

[Kira Butler]

What the, what is happening? Wait, why are y.

[Joy Reid]

What is happening?

[Bishop William Barber]

What is happening?

[Joy Reid]

You can pull the sound down if. Jason, when that is happening, what is the sort of emotion that people, that the arresting officers, agents are feeling? What?

[Raul Rodriguez]

The thing, the thing that I see is that they're, they're all these law enforcement officers that I, that I've seen several videos now. They go based on emotion. They're not, they're not doing what they're the, the law says they're not, they're not supposed to be doing that. They're supposed to be treating people with dignity and respect instead of just going out there and just going rogue and not, not doing exact or what their training says. They're throwing all their training out the window. They're not, they're in training. They tell you to treat people with dignity and respect. You have to, you can't just go in there and, and, and, and harass people. That's all it is. They're harassing all these innocent people. They're just protesters. And, and the thing is, it's coming from the up, the higher ups, which is, you know, the Secretary, the dhs, which, who know nothing about law enforcement. They have no clue of what goes out there in the field. And they're letting these people go and tell them it's okay to do this and they're immune from the, they're above the law pretty much.

[Joy Reid]

Do you think that most of those agents really believe that the higher ups will have their back if they end up getting prosecuted, let's say by the state? Do they know deep down that they will go to prison?

[Raul Rodriguez]

No. Right now they're thinking that they're not, they're thinking that they're above the law. And being from that community that I did that for a living for almost 25 years, I thought the same thing, that the government had my back. When I found out I was not a US citizen within days, they turned their back on me. They didn't back me up. They said, you're on your own. And they even made it harder for me to fix my situation. They offer me things that didn't, didn't. They didn't. They made me sign documents that, that they weren't really. They, they promised things that they didn't, they didn't come through. They so don't trust the government. The government's not. Not to be trusted.

[Joy Reid]

Do you. When, when you were now on the outside looking in, did it, some. Did it dawn on you that. Wait a minute, it's, it's my identity they hate. They, it's not. They hate lawbreakers. They hate people like me.

[Raul Rodriguez]

Yes, yes, I, I saw that. And, and, and, and it's, it's, it's unfortunate that, that this happens to, to, to these people and, and it's going to happen even more. It's. As long as the government has control, we're not, we're, we're not going to win.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. When you think about the ones who not on the, the border patrol agents seem mostly to be unmasked. But the ICE agent elite wear masks. Why do you think they do that?

[Raul Rodriguez]

Well, because they, they handle more of a high risk situations with dangerous people, cartels, people that can go after them. Even us at the border were people knew who we were, they knew who we lived when they knew who they, they did their, their homework. That's why them. I still have friends with ICE that I hang out with, that I talk to and, and I know the situation and, and I know the dangers. I know that people are going to go after them.

[Joy Reid]

If they do, they do they feel that they're in danger. I mean the women and like the little boy, the little five year old, when they took that five year old, he wasn't dangerous. Are they thinking every sort of screaming, terrified woman that they're picking up is in a cartel?

[Raul Rodriguez]

No, no, no. But it's, it's, it's not that, that only that one, one single thing that they do. It's sort of like people will recognize them out in the street. Once they take off that uniform, people are gonna, are gonna, are gonna react differently towards him because he doesn't have that, that uniform or he doesn't have that gun or that, that armored armor on him. So there's going to be people who are going to be looking out for that and their lives run are in danger.

[Joy Reid]

Pretty much a question to you, sir. Do you think that this idea of not allowing these, these federal agents to eat in your restaurant, not allowing them to sleep in your hotel, like sort of shunning them, do you think that works?

[Raul Rodriguez]

No, it doesn't, it doesn't. There's always other, other ways, other, other, other means of, of getting boarding somewhere. I, I was, I went to several areas around, around the US and we weren't like in some areas like not like now but, but still it's been, it's been a, it's, it's been for a while.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. You think that it's essentially pretty lawless. Like these people walk around feeling like they're above the law. They don't feel constrained by the law at all.

[Raul Rodriguez]

I think the thing that's going on here is that they're not receiving the same kind of training. A lot of the new people are younger people fresh out of college, fresh have not served in the military. Mostly military people have that discipline to how to handle scenarios like that.

[Joy Reid]

But I'm not to interrupt you because I have a very little time with you, but the reputation, I mean I lived in Colorado, and Colorado's not a border state, but you had a lot of that kind of the vibe of what happens in places like Texas. A lot of people were from Texas living in Denver. And the reputation has always been that Border Patrol was pretty brutal and pretty racist.

[Raul Rodriguez]

Yes. Yes, it has. Border Patrol's always had their reputation because they have a different kind of militarized kind of training. I received a different training. It was more geared towards, towards service because I was at the board at the port of entry.

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

[Raul Rodriguez]

So we dealt more with, with not, not so many criminals because once you cry, you're trying to come in illegally, it. You're pretty much breaking the law. So. So you deal with more with other groups of people. I'm not saying they're bad people.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Raul Rodriguez]

But they're just violating the law.

[Joy Reid]

Last question, actually, when you were still on the other side, were you. Did you consider yourself a conservative or Republican? Would you have been a Trump supporter?

[Raul Rodriguez]

I did vote for Trump. When I, when I, When I voted on his first. First go around, it was not because I like Trump. It was because I knew that the, the government was getting out of hand and Trump was going to put. Put him out in the, in out there, and he was going to do stuff that people are going to notice that the government is getting big and we need checks and balances.

[Joy Reid]

What do you think of him now?

[Raul Rodriguez]

Oh, man, he's going crazy. He's doing too much, too many things that are hurting the country financially and just by breaking every rule or law in the US and the Constitution, and he just doesn't care.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Raul Rodriguez, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming. I hope you will come back. I have so much, so many more questions to ask you. So thank you, sir. I appreciate you being here. Be well. Thank you very much. All right, we're going to take a quick break because we got to pay for this stuff, y', all, because our sponsors are the reason that we're able to bring you this independent media. We are running a bit behind, but I want to make sure that we get in this. Know that the Joy Reach show is brought to you by our friends at Helix. Now, it is cold, cold where we are. I know it's warm where Don Lemon is because he's out there in California. But where we are, it's like six degrees. So spending time indoors means you need to get cozy. Cozy and also cozy. And having a comfortable sleep is a great way to start. And you don't want to be doing that with back Pain and night sweats and heat transfer and all that stuff. Your arms, your legs all sore. Not a good way to start your year, particularly on this Black history month. So here's an idea. Take the Helix Sleep quiz. Now what that quiz does is it matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences, your needs, your sleep needs. So it makes buying a mattress super, super easy. Helix is the most award winning mattress brand. It's been tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. They also offer great things like free shipping and seamless delivery right to your door in the United States. And also they're happy with Helix guarantee rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. And that guarantee gives you a risk free customer first experience experience designed to make sure that you are completely happy with your warm and cozy new mattress. 120 night sleep trial and a limited lifetime warranty all comes with it that helps you sleep better financially as well as physically. A study found that over 82% of those who were involved in sleeping on this mattress on increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a Helix. So if you are ready to give it a try, just go to helixsleep.com join for 27% off site wide. This offer is exclusive to the Joy Re show audience. So that's helixsleep.com joy for 27% off site wide. Make sure that you enter our show name after checkout so that they know that we sent you helix sleep.com so thank you very much. I think we're going to skip too much talking about the Melania movie. We're going to do that, but we are running out of time. We're going to push that off to tomorrow. Jason, we'll, we'll come back to it. It didn't do great. It wasn't a really great film but apparently Nicki Minaj enjoyed it. I also want to note to you that we do have a second sponsor on this show. This show is also brought to you. In addition to the wonderful folks at Helix, we're also brought to you by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. And this actually is relevant to today's show, which is a moral Monday show, right? Because separation of church and state, it matters even more when you've got a state wherein the project 2025 people want to do a religious takeover of the government. And when they do a religious takeover of the government, who suffers? It's women, it's black folks, it's LGBTQ folks, it's religious minorities. Anybody who's not a white Christian, this white Christian Nationalism is dangerous, y'. All. It's dangerous to the First Amendment. We see these indictments. These are violations of the First Amendment. So we really count on organizations like the Freedom From Religion foundation to fight back to fighting court, to fight in communities, to keep public institutions secular. Look, I'm a God girl. I grew up in the church. But I am adamant as a religious person that I do not want any religion, even my religion, to be anywhere near the state, whether it's mine or someone else's theology. It has nothing to do with the state because when it gets together, y' all know it gets dangerous. This is a civil rights issue. So if you want to support the Freedom From Religion foundation, you can head on over to FFRF US NewYear and just text my first name, Joy J O Y to 511511 and you can learn more about the organization and join up. So two ways to do it. Go to FFRF US New Year or text JOY to 511-511 and just let's try to protect this country that belongs to all of us. FFRF us/ New Year. Do that today if you can. Message and data rates apply. So I want to play you guys.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Keeping the entire 6C blog.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I think we're going to skip it for now. Unless you guys are super interested in the Melania doc.

[Bishop William Barber]

No, we're definitely not. So we can go into that.

[Joy Reid]

Let me suffice it to say, it made $7 million. And Brian Stetler, Ryan Statler, shelter Statler from CNN, nice guy. Declared that it was a crashing success when if you look at the actual metrics on documentaries that have made a lot of money, it made 7 million. Like Fahrenheit 911 made like 73 million. You know, documentaries don't normally open in theaters. They normally open just on Amazon or online. Nowadays, they don't really open them in theaters. But the way that the mainstream media is bending over backwards to try to make this thing sound like a huge success is actually embarrassing. So we're going to go into it, but we don't have to.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Okay, sounds good to me.

[Joy Reid]

So let's go into the details. I mean, it did I. But really. And the last piece I'll add here is that what the right were doing is they were buying out entire theaters to make sure that they sold enough tickets so that Melania wouldn't be embarrassed. So it made $7 million. You know, again, to compare, you know, like Fahrenheit 9 11. What it made like 23 million or 20, you know, 35 May 73. I mean these documentaries normally make a lot more money than that, but they're, they're trying to make it look like I'm gonna look at the all time box office. Just. No, I can't even do it right now.

[Bishop William Barber]

I tell you what, let's just move on past.

[Joy Reid]

So move on. It did I. But it did. It was not, it was not exactly. I mean, I think the, the documentary about, you know, Taylor swift made like 10 times that. And that was also a documentary. Jason said, I'm speaking for the group.

[Bishop William Barber]

Let's move on.

[Joy Reid]

Who they said, Jason said I'm speaking for the group. Yeah, it's a money laundering scheme. That's what it is. Let's move on. Let me play you because the really what we wanted to focus on today and the reason I'm actually glad this was a Freedom from Religion foundation focused, supported show is because what we've seen from the top to the bottom from what you're seeing in that Minneapolis church where people went in and protested because there's an ICE agent on the lay, you know, among the lay pastors in that Minneapolis church, what people are not understanding is that that church. We've said it on the show. I'm going to say it again. That church in Minneapolis is the fulcrum in many ways for white Christian nationalism in America. Because that church was founded by a guy called Joe Rigney. Joe Rigney is the guy who wrote the book the Sin of Empathy, the book that has become the textbook for religious white Christian nationalists to argue against empathy, to say empathy is actually a sin. Joe Rigney is kind of an underboss to a guy named Doug Wilson. And if you don't remember who Doug Wilson is, we've played sound of it. He's the guy who said women are people that babies come out of. And that's about it. Let me play you one more clip of Doug Wilson just so that you level set on who he is. Here's Doug Wilson. D1.

[J]

Talk about women voting, shall we? Back in the bad old days before the 19th amendment, the men were considered to be the heads of their households and represented their families at the ballot box. So what happened when their wives were granted suffrage? Let us take a typical presidential election to illustrate it, using the first one. In 1920, after women suffrage, suffrage was accomplished. The election between Warren Harding and James Cox. If both the husband and wife vote for Harding, say, then what you have done is simply multiply the number of total votes cast for him by two. And if the husband Votes for Harding, say, and the wife votes for Cox. Then what you've done is cancel out the voice of that particular household. Upon discovering how they were each going to vote. What would be the harm if the two of them just stayed home for a quiet dinner together in order to cancel out one another's vote that way? Where was the great progress supposed to be located? The net effect of women's suffrage was not an advance in women's rights, but rather part of a push to replace covenanted entities like families with raw individualism. An overweening state greatly prefers governing an atomistic populace where each individual is like a BB thrown into an electoral sack. There's no structural rigidity to it, especially after laxity in the law concerning porn, pot and poker has now greased all the BBs. Nothing coheres anymore. In the older system, the people were grouped in molecules. Burke's little platoons, some of them quite complex and molecular societies are much more capable of resisting the demands of statism. So the suffrage movement was actually not taking up the cause of women, but rather was part of a long, sustained war on the family. The nadir of this kind of thinking says that a decision to abort a child is a decision between a woman and her doctor. The father of the child is stripped of any legal ability to protect the life of his own legitimate child. We need to retrace all of our steps in order to discover how travesty like that could ever happen. And when we do, we discover that a lot of it started at Seneca Falls.

[Joy Reid]

Listen, marble mouth Doug. By the way, Doug Wilson, he also spawned a church. He's based in Idaho. The church he spawned in Washington D.C. is where Pete Hegseth and his wife have showed up. His what, fifth wife with his. Of his seventh kids, Whatever. So Doug Wilson is like, kind of the top of this pyramid. Joe Rigney is next down. Pyramid. Before I get to playing a little bit of Joe Rigney, just to correct Doug Wilson's history knowledge. The suffrage movement was originally tied to the movement around Prohibition. That the suffragettes were on the side initially of Prohibition. And those who wanted to make alcohol illegal believed that women voting would allow prohibition to go through because women would be concerned. White women would be so concerned that their husbands were off at the bar getting drunk, and that if they could just get them to stop drinking and carousing, then maybe they'd be home by dinner time and take care of their families. So it's kind of the opposite of what you said. Initially, the suffrage movement was pushed by Those who wanted to make alcohol illegal. So it's kind of the opposite of what you said. Now let's play his kind of underboss. Joe Rigby.

[Russ Vogt]

Be interested in the culture war. The culture war is interested in you. City's church is just a normal evangelical Baptist church. It's not political. We want to worship Jesus. We want to love our neighbors. We want to share the gospel. It's that kind of normal church. If you allow it, if you don't have the fortitude and the courage to go, you know what? This is unacceptable and it needs to be checked to call for that, to demand that on behalf of your elected officials to vote accordingly. When elections come up, then it is a tipping point. There's a reason that this sort of lawlessness is occurring in places like Minnesota, California and Illinois because it's in the places where the left gets power. They encourage and foster this kind of environment. ICE is carrying out deportations in Texas and Florida and places like that. And you're not seeing this sort of action. Why? Because local law enforcement assists them.

[Glenn Kirschner]

It helps them.

[Russ Vogt]

Local law enforcement knows how to do that job, arrest people and then they can hand off the violent criminal legal aliens to ICE and they can be deported. But the governor of Minnesota and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul are refusing to cooperate. And so it gets tense and the passions get raging. And now we're in the middle of mobs and riots. And this is the environment the left wants. It's what they're aiming for. It's part of their strategy and their tactics. Christians really need to own that. Like to be clear eyed about it and not to shrink back from the moment, but to lean in and to preach the word with boldness and be willing to take action.

[Joy Reid]

A couple of things there. The reason this is not happening in places like Texas and Florida is they're not sanctuary states and they don't have sanctuary cities. Therefore, law enforcement is helping ICE take the exact same kinds of people. Construction workers, restaurant workers, the lady who sells on the corner. They're still taking the same kind of people. It's just there's no resistance to it. These are sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. So law enforcement, no, they don't help them kidnap people. These people don't even have the sort of raw intelligence to really do the job, but they're still in charge of our country. Joining me now, and by the way, just really quickly before I bring in our guests, Joe, to Doug Wilson's other point, that the wives are canceling out their husband's votes. You could literally say the same thing about two neighbors who live next to each other. If neighbor number one votes for Trump and neighbor number two votes for Kamala Harris, they also canceled out each other's votes. Everybody who votes opposite cancels at each other's votes. That's called elections.

[Bishop William Barber]

Joining me now, it's actually called math.

[Joy Reid]

It's called math. And when you're in elections, you're trying to make your math number larger than the other side's math number. So you need to get more people to vote for you, Doug.

[Bishop William Barber]

That's why the popular vote should take over and get rid of the Electoral college. But let's get to our guest.

[Joy Reid]

Joining me now is one of the most read in journalists on this matrix of white Christian nationalists who are apparently running our country. Joining me now is Kira Butler. She's a national correspondent at Mother Jones, our friendly neighborhood Mother Jones magazine covering how extremist movements gain broad political and cultural influence. Kira, thank you so much for being here.

[Kira Butler]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Joy Reid]

Talk to me about that church in Minneapolis, because it seems that the activists who chose that church kind of poked the hornet's nest in Minneapolis. Yeah.

[Kira Butler]

So, I mean, you pretty much said it in your intro. Joe Rigney was a founder of that church, and he now actually serves as the kind of second in command at Doug Wilson's kind of flagship church in Moscow, Idaho. And I think it's worth pointing out that what Doug Wilson has built in Moscow, Idaho, and now across the country is pretty impressive. This is kind of a, a Christian nationalist fiefdom. He has this church in Idaho. He has a college called New St. Andrews College that he founded there. He has a printing press, Canon Press, that publishes a lot of his very popular homeschool curriculum. He has founded, by the way, I'm.

[Joy Reid]

Sorry, didn't Canon Press also publish the sin of empathy?

[Kira Butler]

Yes, you have done your homework. Yes. They published Joe Rigney's book. That's right. In addition to the printing press, there's also a classical school there. And then there's this network of churches that have all been sort of made in Doug Wilson's image. There are dozens and dozens all across the country, including the new one in.

[Joy Reid]

Washington, D.C. and how tied in are they to the Trump regime beyond just our former Fox TV host who's now defense secretary?

[Kira Butler]

So, I mean, there's definitely that, that Hegseth connection, and that's, that goes pretty deep. He's in pretty deep with the Doug Wilson crew. But Doug Wilson has been kind of rubbing elbows with Trump administration people for a long time now. One key moment, I think, was the National Conservatism Conference that happened in 2024. He spoke alongside J.D. vance there. The other connection to be aware of is kind of a Silicon Valley tech connection, and that's sort of where JD Vance fits into all of this. So there is a. A firm, a venture firm called New Founding, and there are a bunch of alums of Doug Wilson's college that he founded that work there. And they have been to many different events with JD Vance there. There are photographs of them with JD Vance floating around online. And they kind of share some of the same intellectual influences as J.D. vance. You know, folks like Curtis Yarvin that you might have heard about, people who have these kind of the kind of dystopian tech ideas that are kind of recombining with Christian nationalist ideas within this crew.

[Joy Reid]

So techno feudalism, basically. Because that was going to be my next question. You've kind of answered it. That the. The kind of techno feudalists and the Christian nationalists, they basically merged.

[Kira Butler]

Yeah. And I think, you know, I wrote about last year, New Founding has this project where they're buying up land in Appalachia and they're trying to make their own kind of Christian nationalist community, their. In Appalachia. And that this is a community, if you read the literature about it on their website, it's going to be, you know, very crypto forward. You know, these are guys who are interested in this, in this Christian nationalist, very kind of traditional values kind of a community. But it's also very dialed into Silicon Valley and to some of those, those kind of tech utopia projects that people are talking about there.

[Joy Reid]

So I have no problem with them doing that, to be honest with you. If they want to go off and form, you know, a little Gilead somewhere in Appalachia, I genuinely don't care. But I do, I do think there'll be a robust business for people trying to help people escape from there, women who want to escape and get out of there. Because I'm sure it will be hell to be a woman there, let alone to be lgbtq. So they're probably a robust business in rescue services. But it seems to me that they don't just want to make their own little communities out in Appalachia and wreak hell upon their own women. It seems like they want control of the government of the United States. They want us all to live in that hell.

[Kira Butler]

Yeah, I mean, you know, they're the connections between the Trump administration and this crew, like we were discussing before. They're definitely there. And, you know, there's another connection that I've learned about more recently has to do with Russ Vote, who I'm sure that of your followers know Russ Vote as one of the main architects of Project 2025. In 2023, he appeared at a panel and a conference called American Moment with Doug Wilson. And they were both talking about their kind of very extreme views on immigration. And this, of course, was, you know, three years, two and a half years before what's going down in Minneapolis now began happening.

[Joy Reid]

And, Jason, this is E1. We actually happen to have a clip of that. This is Russ Vogt, who, just to remind you, was the Office of Management and Budget Director in the first Trump administration. He has that job. Again, that's basically almost like the, you know, they're like the HR Department. They run, they kind of run the functions of government. And he had that job before. He talks about some of his frustrations during the first Trump administration where there still were some normies around in his way, and how different it is now. And he talks specifically about immigration in this clip. Jason, tee it up whenever you can. E1. Okay, no, we'll, we'll, we'll let you pull it up. And while Jason is pulling that up, what is American Moment?

[Kira Butler]

American Moment is a group that, that grew out of the Claremont a little.

[Russ Vogt]

Bit to be a reflection of these questions from my perch within the executive branch, because I had a front row seat on many of these issues. And importantly, how bad thinking would end up preventing what we were trying to accomplish from less than vigorous political appointees who refused to occupy the moral high ground, particularly in the first two years of the President's administration. But before we get to that, those important days of service, I think it's important to consider the problem that exists within the intellectual community of Christian leaders and that thankfully has been mitigated by the vast majority of people who are actually in the pews. And that is, we are overrun with sentimentalism and a category confusion. A verse like Matthew 25:35, we all know it for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in has become a meta ethnic starting point for compassion, that is to a disembodied neighbor above all other considerations such as justice. And we assume that such an unbalanced compassion must extend to every role in situation. As much as a father has a much different duty to provide for his family than he does every homeless individual in the city, a Christian and political office and those participating in the political process have much different duties to the political community they either represent or they are participating in? So let me give you an example where I think better discernment is needed, to say the least. Ligon Duncan, chancellor of Reformed Theologic Seminary, made the misguided argument about legal and immigration perhaps being part of God's plan to re Christianize the United States during a speech in Atlanta. And he said, I quote, what if that is God's plan to reverse secularization in the United States? All of us here, because we're Bible believing Christians, are concerned about a culture that's growing farther away from God, more opposed to the Bible, more opposed to Jesus, more opposed to the Gospel. What if immigration is part of God's strategy to reverse that incident? United States and the people that don't look like me actually because they believe like me, are much closer to me than people who do like me and who don't believe the Bible and don't believe in Jesus and don't believe in the Gospel. End of quote. Can you spot the immediate problem here? So the reality of God's sovereignty and the fact that he directs all things good and bad towards his purpose is being used to frame out a disposition that welcomes endless immigration instead of thinking about the effects of political community in which we live.

[Joy Reid]

Kyra and I had to play that long chunk because I needed to jump in. I know I needed him to get to the immigration piece of it because this person has huge power in our government and he just basically spelled out what's in the sin of empathy, that we can't feel too sorry for these immigrants. And just because they may be Christians, they don't look like us. They're not from where we from. We can't have them here.

[Kira Butler]

Yeah. And actually, you know what, what he's saying is sort of a version of what JD Vance has said before too. You probably remember last year when J.D. vance was talking about this idea of ordo amoris, which is this kind of ancient Christian concept of, you know, rightly ordered love. And you know, I mean, I think different Christians interpret it in different ways, but the way that J.D. vance was using it was that you should love your family most and then your community the next most, and then it kind of expands out and out geographically from there. And he was using that idea to kind of promote this idea that immigration was really against God and that, you know, ordo amoris would really prohibit Christians from loving their neighbors. In that particular way would have been.

[Joy Reid]

Very difficult for Joe, for Joseph to get where he was going, to Bethlehem, if that was always true. Let me ask you how this culminates as we kind of wind down here, because all of that, what I've shown everyone, the way that this could affect all of you is that they have a piece of legislation that is now making the rounds among Christian nationalists. It's in their minds, their biggest priority, and it already has a lot of co sponsors in the United States Senate. It's called the SAVE Act. Can you explain what that is and how would that impact women voters?

[Kira Butler]

Well, I'm not an expert on the SAVE Act.

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

[Kira Butler]

I'm not, I'm not going to attempt to do, to do that one. But, you know, I can tell you about, more about Joe Rigney if you want.

[Joy Reid]

Please. No, please, please.

[Kira Butler]

Well, I guess the main thing about Joe Rigney to know is that he is very, very, very close to the locus of power. Right? So the locus of power is Doug Wilson and his network. And Joe Rigney is very, very keyed into that. I would say going forward, something for your viewers to know is to watch what's happening at this, this new church plant in Washington, D.C. there's a new pastor there, a guy named Brooks Pottinger, who used to be the pastor at Pete Hegseth's church in Tennessee. So these folks are, you know, it's, it's kind of, you think that maybe not that much happens in a church. Like, you know, you talk about Jesus and, you know, read the gospel, but politics happen in church. And these folks are kind of getting closer and closer to the Trump administration. And now that they have this church plant in D.C. now that Joe Rigney has a much higher profile, both because of his book the Sin of Empathy and because of this recent stuff in Minneapolis. You know, he's been interviewed on Fox News a bunch of times that there are politics that are playing out in, in these churches. And it's worth, it's worth following what's going on there.

[Joy Reid]

And how much is the network around them behind pushing for these prosecutions because those activists went in that particular church.

[Kira Butler]

I mean, I think that, that the crack network broadly is very powerful and only becoming more, more so. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if when we start seeing ice activity in other places, you know, this is a church that is very, very well networked, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of the same.

[Joy Reid]

And do you have a sense, just in your reporting of what they ultimately want, other than, as you said, to build small enclaves of hyper, their kind of right wing Christian, you know, communities. Do you have a sense of their overall plan regarding things like abortion access nationwide, gay rights nationwide, or Burgerfell?

[Kira Butler]

Well, they're, you know, there are a lot of MAGA people of conservatives who, you know, they're anti abortion and they're anti gay marriage. But these, these folks really take it a step further. You know, you heard Doug Wilson talking about women voting. He doesn't believe that women should have the right to vote. And he also is not a fan of the Civil Rights act. So shocker. Yeah, so there's that. You hear these folks talking a lot about prison reform, which sounds really good when you hear the phrase prison reform. But actually what, what they're talking about when they say prison reform is bringing back public flogging. So, yeah, I mean, you know, and it varies. Right. Like some of these folks, Doug Wilson is actually one of the more kind of careful of these folks. Some of them are much more extreme. Some of them talk about executing gay people. Some of them talk about, you know, deeply anti Semitic ideas that they have. There's a lot. There's a lot in there.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And being anti Semitic and being pro Jesus is really super ironic. Thank you so much. Kira. Is there anything that I've missed that you think people need to know about this? There's some in the chat who are asking about Peter Thiel. What is his connection to it? He has been on this new Antichrist kick. Is he connected to this same network?

[Kira Butler]

So Peter, Peter Thiel is. Is connected to some of these guys. I wrote a piece, it's now about a year and a half ago, about this, this network of Doug Wilson's guys and folks who are aligned with them so broadly, I refer to them as the Theobros. They're kind of a loose network of mostly millennial Christian nationalist guys. They're on podcasts all the time, they're tweeting all the time, extremely online. The New Founding guys are among that set. They're part of that network. They are part of this kind of ultra powerful donor network, Republican donor network called the Rockbridge Network, that was founded by a guy named Chris Buskirk who was formerly on the board of American Reformer. Sorry, this is like drawing my diagram. American Reformer is closely connected to New Founding, which is the venture firm that I mentioned before for. So J.D. vance, Peter Thiel, new founding guys, Chris Buskirk, they're kind of all in these same circles together. Claremont Institute is kind of another, I guess, node on the network, and that's.

[Joy Reid]

Christopher Rufo, for those of you who are keeping track of all of the players on the playing cards. Christopher Rufo, who is the guy who invented his own version of critical race theory and then got it banned all over the country. Go on.

[Kira Butler]

Yeah. So Peter Teal is definitely, he's plugged into this. He himself is not, he's not like part of Doug Wilson's network or anything. His, his version of Christianity is. It's also special, but it's, it's a slightly different kind. But, you know, they're all. And again, you know, Curtis Yarvin, this guy who kind of has these dystopian ideas about Silicon Valley, you know, Peter Thiel is a fan. So there's, there's a lot of kind of intellectual, shared heritage, shall we say.

[Joy Reid]

Indeed. Kira, where can we read more of your reporting it? As you said, I feel like I need a diagram. I think next time you come back on, I will, I will have a diagram made so that we can keep track of all of the people and where they fit in. But I will say we all, y' all watch this space. Watch that church in Minneapolis. It's an important hub of it. But where can we hear more? Read more of your reporting.

[Kira Butler]

Motherjones.com thank you, Kira.

[Joy Reid]

Much appreciated.

[Kira Butler]

Thank you so much.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. And just to let you all know, the SAVE act, which I was sort of teeing up to here, is the attempt to take a lot of these. There are a couple of different laws that these people want to put on the books. They want to take one of these laws, the FACES act, which is what they are trying to prosecute. Don Lemon and the other members of the Minneapolis 9, on which is this idea that they went into a facility that is supposed to be a faith facility, and they want to take that, and they want to strip the abortion clinics out and leave only places of worship in. And they don't mean mosques, and they don't really care about, you know, synagogues, which have been the location of massacres. They don't care about that. What they care about is that Christian churches, specifically white Christian churches, because this movement believes that black Christian churches are actually heretical. And they've said it. Joel Webbin, who was another one of these more loud and proud versions of it, have said that there's not almost a single black church in the country that is legitimate theologically, because in his mind, they teach apostasy because they teach kindness toward the poor and caring for your neighbor and caring for the immigrant. And they think that is apostatic. They think that is actually apostasy and unbiblical. And literally. Joel Webbin has said every black church needs to go out and find themselves a rightly divined white man, make that person the pastor so they can learn the true Bible. I promise you he said it. We're going to definitely bring Pastor Jamal Bryant back on to discuss that because they had a little debate over the course of the Internets about that. But they want to make these white Christian churches sacrosanct space so that no one can enter them without getting arrested or. But they want to be able to freely enter churches like New Birth and have their masked militia, not just other right wing pastors, but militia go in their churches. ICE has hung around outside of churches to take people. They don't believe churches are sacred. They just think their churches are because that's where they're organizing. They're doing an almost upside down inverse version of the civil rights movement. But in their civil rights movement and with their person at the in charge of the civil rights division. I say this in scare courts of the Justice Department, Harmeet Dillon. She has said people all interpreted these civil rights era rules going all the way back to the 14th Amendment as being there to protect black people. But in fact now we're realizing that those rules can protect white people. She has said some version of that. And they've decided to take everything that's ever been created. This is why we need a black history month. Go back and look up anything that's been done to protect formerly enslaved people. Find the law that's being used, that was used at that time to try to protect formerly enslaved black people. And I promise you that law is being used in some way to shield only white Christian conservative men from the law and to allow them to live as kings and everyone else to be subordinate. This is called the Handmaid's Tale. And the next plan in that is something called the SAVE Act. And the SAVE act could silence millions of voters by creating new barriers to voter registration to make it harder for Americans to make their voices heard when registering to vote. Americans are already required to verify their eligibility. The SAVE act imposes more barriers to registering to vote, including requiring that you can that you have to have your birth certificate in order to register to vote. And your birth certificate has to match your voter registration. So if you have married and your current surname is not the surname you were born with, you could be instantly disenfranchised. If You've changed your name, you could be instantly disenfranchised. Effectively, every trans person in America who has transitioned and changed their name would be instantly disenfranchised. For many people who are elderly and no longer have access to their birth certificate, or they were born before there were birth certificates because there weren't always proper birth certificates, and they live in a rural part of the country where there just aren't any, they would be instantly disenfranchised. This is designed to be especially injurious to elderly people, black people, immigrants and women. It would effectively disenfranchise all, all married women who took their husband's name because their name would no longer match their birthday. It would automatically remove American citizens from the voter rolls, just as voter purges across the country have done in the past. That's one of the things that they would do because the goal would be to ensure that only citizens can vote. But it would be done through the SAVE act by mandating that states conduct frequent voter purges, a practice that removes registered voters from the rolls, often based on faulty data. Meaning you didn't vote in the last two elections. You get bumped off the rolls, you come back to try to vote, you turn to, it turns out you're not. You're not on the rolls at all.

[Bishop William Barber]

Are they going to do that automatically?

[Joy Reid]

If the SAVE act passes, and I believe it has 50 sponsors, this bill would make it very difficult, particularly for women to vote, because you have to understand that Doug Wilson said it. We played the tape, happy to play it again. He said that when America was originally founded, and this is true, there wasn't an individual right to vote. There's actually no individual right to vote in the Constitution. Y' all know that, right? The way that votes happen in America is that landed white men voted on behalf of their households and women were essentially in loco parentis to their husbands or their brothers or their fathers. And that man in the House had the vote when doing that. When women got separated into their own separate enfranchisement through the 19th Amendment, remember, they enfranchised black men whom they hated before they enfranchised their own wives. It took 50 additional years between enfranchising formerly enslaved men, at least on paper, and white women, white women had to wait 50 extra years, and yet they still stayed on side up until about, like, 2018. So white women were considered property in the original America that they're trying to go back to, and they were simply a part of their husband's household. After being A part of their father's household. It's why they couldn't inherit property. It's why when a woman's husband died, she would need to look for another husband because only that husband is who could transfer property. You couldn't transfer property to a woman. And it is low key why a lot of women were burned as witches in the 17th century because women who refused to remarry after becoming widowed and who insisted on being property owners, that is acting like a man, sometimes they would just say they were a witch and then take their property. So what you need to understand about the SAVE act is that the purpose of it, ostensibly on paper, is to make sure that only citizens are voting now, know that the same right wing networks that were braying for the arrest of Don Lemon, and I'm telling you that the network we've just described that Kira Butler was talking about, they were on fire. You may not follow far right wing social media. Unfortunately I do, so you don't have to. They were on fire for Don Lemon's head. They got it.

[Bishop William Barber]

Just to let you know, Reverend Barber is back, but he's having a little bit of camera issues.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, he is back. Okay. Well, we were trying to get Bishop Barber on because today is Moral Monday. There were some issues with weather and apparently his camera was not working. But we're gonna have him try to. Come on, let's see if we can get our Moral Monday in. Bishop Barber, are you there?

[Bishop William Barber]

I am.

[Joy Reid]

Aha. There we go. Look at God.

[Bishop William Barber]

Won't he do it? And if I can get these. Look, if I can get these old knees up, he sure is gonna do it.

[Joy Reid]

And. And you can't get the old knees up because guess what? God is in the knees. He's in the car puzzles. He's in the. He's in the muscles.

[Bishop William Barber]

But you know, I've been over here trying to scream at you about that, Chris, that nationalism stuff. I got a couple of real comments. I probably gonna get hit on social media, but that's all right.

[Joy Reid]

Get them. Get them, please.

[Bishop William Barber]

First of all, the very people calling black churches heretical are heretical themselves.

[Joy Reid]

Correct?

[Bishop William Barber]

A church is not heretical because it's black or white. It's because if it's called itself Christian and doesn't follow Jesus. And so that's why I never refer to religious nationalism as Christian. I only refer. I don't care how many times they say they are Christian, don't call them that, because I don't. Because it reinforces a lie and it's A scripture for that in Acts where God took Jesus name but he called himself Bar Jesus and he was demonic and the spirit knew it. And any religion that teaches against empathy and love and starts trying to say that only men can do this and only men can do that and to suggest that anybody that stops you from making your billions of dollars through technology is the Antichrist. You know I preached a national sermon at Riverside challenging Peter Thiels whole notion of Antichrist. Antichrist is when you refuse to feed the hungry. Antichrist is when you refuse to welcome the stranger. Antichrist is when you refuse to heal people. Jesus did anything. He healed and never charged a leper co pay. Antichrist is when you disregard the least of these. Antichrist is when you don't preach good news to the poor, deliverance to the captive. Antichrist is when you don't challenge the nation's injustice. That's Antichrist because it's anti what Christ stood for. So you're right to go after this and we got to unpack it and, and but it's not new. See they had to do this. People forget a lot of things. Undergirded slavery. But what ultimately undergirded it was heretical ontology. A lot of people forget that in the days of the industrial revolution and monopolies and in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the thing they hated most was the social gospel movement because they created a religion to justify their greed. To justify. And what happened was a group of Christians decided to really be Christian and asked this question what would Jesus do? They weren't talking about personal salvation. They were saying if you see a man dying you because there's no ventilation in the factory. What would Jesus do? If you see children walking around with three fingers cut off because there's no child labor law, what would Jesus do? If you see people who are working and making people billions but they can hardly live themselves, what would Jesus do? And the, the, the greedy hated those questions. And they always connected themselves to money. Back then it was sun Oil, it was the national manufacturing companies, it was the chamber of commerce. By the way, today is tech and it's steel oil. The more the moral majority. The so called Christian right was all oil money. Because every, every desperate, every authoritarian, every neo fascist has to create a religion to try to make their evil good. They create religion and they try to take what is existence and use the name Bar Jesus. They use the name but the character is far, far far away from it. And that's why Jesus said a tree is known. I'M preaching that by the fruited day, right? A tree is not known because it just stands up to be a tree. You know it by what kind of fruit comes off of it. And so remember, Pharaoh had his own religionists that challenged Moses, right? Caesar had his own religion. They bought off the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They were the ones always trying to challenge Jesus. The. During the Civil rights movement, you had both black ministers who turned out Dr. King and wouldn't support the Civil rights movement. And you had white ministers that were supporting the Klan. And then you had moderates. And Dr. King one time said the moderates to him were worse than all of them because they wanted order rather than transformation. So this struggle of faith, Frederick Douglass said like this since his birthday month, February, Frederick Douglass said, to love the Christianity of Jesus is to hate the religion of the slave master. And what is the religion of the slave master? Any religion that attaches itself to greed at any. By any means necessary and the destruction of other people in order to line your pockets, whether it's 1800s or 1900s or 2000 or 2021. That is heretical religion. It's not Christianity. It's. And I love your former guest, you know, on that. And we have to be careful, too, if we're going to challenge this now, we better make sure if we're going to challenge this in our own churches, we're not pushing money more than we church in Mercy. Come on, you got churches that black and white, that ain't never discernment on poverty. They're more concerned about the pastor's appreciation than they are about lifting up their people. I'm a bishop now. I really will say what I want to say. The church, you got churches where, where, where, where, where. It's just another kind of egotism. And so egotism is still wrong. And, and, and it doesn't matter how many members you got. 210, 2000, 100,000. The Pew foundation said that one of the great failures of American Christianity now is that Jesus put the poor and the least of these at the center of his. Not black folk or white people, the poor and the least of these. And they said that when you look, they looked at 50,000 sermons and the poor, and the least of these were mentioned less than 1% of all the sermons preached in the American pulpit.

[Joy Reid]

I have to play this for you. We played it already, Bishop. But, you know, and I'll say before I play it for you, Jason, I'm going to play E1 one more time, just I'm not going to play the whole thing. Not the whole thing, but just the start of it. But not yet, not yet. Hold on, give me a second. But you know, the reason that, you know, Robbie Jones and I, who are who, as you know, we're doing this series on, on white Christian nationalism. And he and I, I presented that to him and he said the reason that he calls it white Christian, first of all, he specifies it's white Christian because there's a very different black Christian Christian, a white Christian church. They're very different. And the white Baptist church, as you know, as you've said, was formed literally to defend slavery like the white, the Southern Baptist Church. That was their purpose, right. To defend slavery. But he, he doesn't want his fellow white Christians to ever walk away from their own responsibility for what these people are preaching. He feels as himself being a Southern Baptist, that they need to face it and he doesn't want them to get away from it being attached to what they call Christianity. Your thoughts?

[Bishop William Barber]

Yeah. Let me add one thing to that.

[Joy Reid]

Sure.

[Bishop William Barber]

I understand why he puts the adjective on it white Christian.

[Joy Reid]

And he put, and we always put the asterisk put that.

[Bishop William Barber]

So I get that and I understand the difficulty because they use it. You got to come. But this is my point I want to make as a theologians public theater. Just because the church is a black church doesn't mean it's preaching the right, the theology. James cone said that the black theology he preached and taught was often not promulgated in the black church. Don't Forget it was Dr. King, the National Baptist Convention that put Dr. King out. So there is a prophetic sense that there's a critique coming of the church itself. Right. And, and, and, and, and this, this when they used to have the prosperity gospel churches that heretical. What you need to remember is that in the 1800, by 1848, every church denomination split over slavery. Every one of them. You had the American Baptist, you had the Southern Baptist. So, so that's why for instance, I don't say white church. Somebody asked me, what do you think about the white church? Well, when you look at the UCC church or the Disciples of Christ and I'm part and others, there are a lot of pro justice loving, Jesus loving churches that happen to be predominantly white. The problem is we're still, you know, the most segregated hours at 10 and 11 o'.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Clock.

[Bishop William Barber]

But here's the point. The point is it's the theology, Joy. It's the, and, and, and, and, and remember and I have to bring the criticism both ways.

[Raul Rodriguez]

You.

[Bishop William Barber]

There's a book out about the real history of civil rights by Gene Theo Harris. She talks about how In Montgomery only 12 churches got involved. A lot of them didn't. It was a remnant. It's always a remnant. But the greater damage of this so called white religious nationalism or Christianity, the greater damage is the money that's behind it, right?

[Joy Reid]

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[Bishop William Barber]

There's one thing to have a church that may happen to be, quote unquote, predominantly black and all they concerned about is a praise party and a little shout and not social justice. It's another thing to have a religious nationalist so called Christian church that's got the kind of funding and backing and political power. Right. That they can just feed that lie and so that lie. So I agree with my brother that it's required of brothers and sisters in the quote unquote white church of Southern Baptist these other to challenge. In other words, what he's saying. I'll stop here. He's saying what God said to Joshua in, in the book of Joshua when they lost the battle. And God said, clean your own camp. Yes, indeed, there's mess in your camp. So I'm right with him on that. Yeah, you know, so I get that.

[Joy Reid]

I hear you and let me. And what you just said leads me right back to this clip that came. That was before you were able to get on and thank you for coming on and happy Black History Month to you, my friend. This is Russ Vogt. I want to play it again because this is one of the most powerful people in the federal government. And this was. No, not the whole thing. This is. But, but what he does in this speech that he gave before an organization called American movement back in 2023 in the interregnum between, between the two Trump regimes, is he talks about what he thinks is wrong theology on the other side. Take a listen. Let me know when you ready. Yep, I'll let you know when to come out.

[Russ Vogt]

Tweak it a little bit to be a reflection of these questions from my perch within the executive branch, because I had a front row seat on many of these issues and importantly, how bad thinking would end up preventing what we were trying to accomplish from less than vigorous political appointees who refused to occupy the moral high ground, particularly in the first two years of the president's administration. But before we get to that, those important days of service, I think it's important to consider the problem that exists within the intellectual community of Christian leaders and that thankfully has been mitigated by the vast majority of people who are actually in the pews. And that is, we are overrun with sentimentalism and a category confusion. A verse like Matthew 25:35, we all know it. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in has become a meta. Ethical starting point for compassion. That is to a disembodied neighbor above all other considerations such as justice.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, we can stop there. You can stop there. What he's, what he goes on to say is that this compassion that he puts in scarecrows. I've never seen a religious person put the word capacity in scare quotes ever. And he says that it is wrong thinking to believe that that verse in Matthew for when I was hungry, you gave me something to eat. When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. He's like, that's not supposed to mean your neighbor. That's supposed to only mean your children and your personal family and, and f. Your neighbor, basically. And also the idea that immigrants are somehow enriching the Christian community because they may be from another country, but they're still Christians. He says that's also bad theology, that you need to really prioritize sameness among the community.

[Bishop William Barber]

Yeah, and, and, and let me just exegete that and tear that all the hell, please. That's just foolishness. First of all, he ain't even exegeting the text.

[Raul Rodriguez]

Right?

[Bishop William Barber]

The text says, and Jesus will say to the nations, not to the individual family, but to the government, to the nations. When I was hungry, because he, he's on the way to the cross and he gets killed for saying that. He gets killed for saying that because he's challenging the greed of Caesar. He's challenging another orange haired person that wanted to control everything, but it was just in the first century.

[Joy Reid]

Come on.

[Bishop William Barber]

In order to undermine what he's talking about, compassion, you've got to take 2000 scriptures out of the Bible. In my class where I teach the first day of class, I cut, I cut a Bible off open with all 2000 scriptures and it falls apart right in front of the students. And I show them all the things you have to notice, preach in order to get where he just was.

[Joy Reid]

They are saying that empathy is a sin.

[Bishop William Barber]

Bishop Barber, the lack of empathy is a sin. And so I would. So since the lack, the lack of empathy is a sin. So, so let's say this. First of all, the word empathy ain't even in the Bible. So what is in The Bible is love. And it's three forms of love. When the. And the one that Jesus talks most about is agape love. That's the love. When you love somebody, they can't love you back, but they need it. And then compassion is in the Bible. It often Jesus has said that Jesus came with compassion. When he fed the 5,000, it says he looked at them with compassion because they looked like people who were without a sheep, without a shepherd. Because John the Baptist had just been killed because he dared to challenge a king who ran around with women all the time and hurt people and destroyed people's lives. That's why John the Baptist got killed, right? Because he questioned the morality of the, of the current leader of that day. And he. And he declared that the whole nation, not just individuals, had to repent. And when Jesus fed the 5,000, he said he came with them with calm, passion, Compassion, you come with the passion to transfer, use your power not to hurt people, not to beat up on people, but to lift the community. This idea of you only concerned about your family. Okay, you want to say family. Well, guess what? When you become a Christian, you recognize the whole world as your family. You recognize other Christians. So if you want to say just take care of your family, it doesn't mean just your mama, your daddy, even Jesus said. And he said, I. He said, I'm not. When they asked him who was his mama, who was his daddy, who was. He said, those who do the will of the Lord, but in another place, Jesus let us know that when it comes to the love of God, God lets the sun shine on the just and unjust. Oh, I wish I could get him in the room. We might get him saved if I could just get him in a room with a Bible. I don't even want no theological book. Just give me a Bible. I don't, I don't even want. I don't want none of the past, the alone. Just give me a Bible. Just give me the gospel. He can have it all. Rest of the Bible, he can have the other 62 books of the Bible. Give me the gospel and he might get saved.

[Joy Reid]

Lord have mercy. Okay, I want to arrange that a couple of things before, before we talk about the event that you have coming up that I think is really important. I mean, there is a story. So we should know and everyone who's watching this channel on this show and thank you all for tuning in, we really appreciate you should know that tomorrow is the end of temporary protected status for Haitians in this country. Haitian immigrants lose Their status immediately upon midnight tomorrow. And that means they're all deportable. And that revelation in places where there are significant numbers of Haitian immigrants who've been in this country, in many cases, some cases for decades, for over a decade in some cases, or since 2010, when there was a big inrush of people, a lot of them work in the home health care industry. A lot of them are taking care of elders, of elderly people. And the elderly care. The elder care profession is overrun with immigrants. It's actually, I think, almost majority immigrant. It would collapse as a business without immigrants. So Jewish seniors in Florida and in Ohio have taken to hiding or offering to hide their Haitian caregivers, like Anne Frank was hidden. This is the conversations that are happening among Jewish seniors that they see this as the Anne Frank time come again. And they're offering to hide these people, much as people who are abolitionists hid, runaway, enslaved people. How low have we sunk as a country, if that is what is happening?

[Bishop William Barber]

Quite low. And that's why this is not just a battle for democracy, It's a battle for civilization itself. And it means that this is a moment where you can't be lukewarm, you can't straddle the fence. It may very well be that's going to have to be another part of the ministry of the church, not just Christian, but Muslims and Jews and others to give sanctuary. You know, it was a time in New York, you got the riverside during the war, you got sanctuary. There was a time that. That the church doing abolition, you got sanctuary. And that's gonna happen more and more until we have a massive, massive voter turnout that shifts some of this power, you know, at least shift the Congress so that it can put some checks and balances on what's going on. Because what you see here is ultimately, and when you have religious or irreligious theology supporting this stuff, you basically end up saying, this country that we stole is only for the people who stole it and not the people who built it and the people who we've used here to in our fields. And when it comes to Haiti, you know, America was so damning toward Haiti. You know, Haiti is the only place, one of the places that we made them pay their captives. We made them pay to colonize. We made them pay the very people, the French that came in there and took when they. They had to, to pay. That's why the country's so poor today. Not the colonizers paying them. We supported them being forced to pay to colonize. It was sick then it's sick now, but Joy, I'm not surprised of any of the conversations that we may have to have in this moment because there is nothing more that will drive you more quick insane, both in your mind and in public policy, than bad religion.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, that is for. That is why we believe in the separation of church and state so strongly. And I always say that the. The two biggest slave uprisings in modern history were the Haitian Revolution and the Civil War. Because let's not. Let's be clear, it's Black History Month. The only reason that the north won the Civil war is about 100,000 blacks put them getting them guns over their shoulders and fought to kill the people who held them in bondage. And their inclusion beefed up the forces to allow them to win the war. And so therefore, in my view, the Civil War essentially is the second biggest slave uprising in modern history.

[Bishop William Barber]

People did not want black people. The slave master did not want black people to hear about the correct that the fight of Toussaint Autour and others in. Hey, that's a whole nother show.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, no, absolutely. I believe the second Fugitive Slave act was triggered by Toussaint l', Ouverture because, you know, it was already in the Constitution when they saw Toussaint l' ouverture overthrow the French government. First of all, it scared the French so much, they left the hemisphere and sold Thomas Jefferson 40% of the current United States, which would not be the United States, but for Toussaint Louverture overthrowing that Haitian government. It scared the French back to Florida, France, and they were like. Napoleon was like, take this land we out. And that's how we got Montana. That's how we got the rest of the western United States. But it also caused them to pass barbaric laws, even more barbaric laws than they already had against slaves being able to read, being allowed to learn to read. Part of those laws are because of that. And they pass an even stronger Fugitive Slave Act. The last of which, for the chat who are in Black History Month Mode, was in 1850, you know, 15 years before the Civil War. So less than 15 years before the Civil War, they were passing Fugitive Slave Acts almost up to the Civil War, because they were so terrified that when anyone even thought about doing something in this country, and so many did, there were so many slave uprisings. We gotta get Michael Harriet on here to talk about them. They would put those slave uprisings down with so much violence and brutality that the lynchings that took place after the Civil War were just reenactments of the horrors that they were already doing. They were already used to hanging black folks, men, women, children, pregnant women, burning people alive, all of it. Shooting people and burning them in the street. They were doing all. I mean, these people were terrorists, let's just be clear. Slaveholders were terrorists and claimed they were.

[Bishop William Barber]

Doing it in the name of God. They were literally driven insane and inhumane by bad theology and immoral exegesis. It's a sickness. Yes, it is heretical. Ontology is what we call it when you suggest that you were going to do all of this and God ordained it.

[Joy Reid]

It's the reason that what is being done to Palestinians in the west bank is the same kind of evil. They're saying, well, God said, I can have your farm. I just came from Toledo and your farm is mine. Put a gun in your face and take it. Anytime somebody says God said I could do it, be very skeptical because they're probably just trying to steal from you. Bishop, talk about the event that you have coming up, which we got. This is E3, Jason. Whenever you have it, we've got a flyer that we are also going to distribute to make sure people know you've got something coming up. Good, brother. What is it and what can we expect and how can we participate?

[Bishop William Barber]

Trump called into North Carolina and told the MAGA legislature out in public, go get the first Congressional District and take it. And the people there and all over North Carolina said no, because the first Congressional District was the last district to produce an African American in the United States Congress after Plessy versus Ferguson. They kicked him out in 1901. It took us 91 years to get a new person. Eva Clayton. It's always been a district where the people, black and white, have elected candidates, predominantly mostly black candidates who care about people, who care about health care, who care about farmers, who care about living wages. And when they did that, it did not tear the people down. It caused the people to say, stand up. So we decided in February, Frederick Douglass birthday on Valentine's Day, three days before on the 11th, right in the middle of early voting, same day registration that we won back in 2007 when we mobilized people that we're calling for the this is our Selma. It's time to love. Forward together. We're going to take over the streets and the roads for three days walking from Wilson, North Carolina, at St. James Christian Church, where my wife is the pastor, on Martin Luther King Courtway, all the way to Raleigh, 15 miles a day. And then on, on Saturday, we'll have a Massive mall people's mall march on Raleigh and mobilization that's going to launch our micro mobilization county by county by county. Joel, what we've learned since then is that they base this gerrymandering. They didn't wait to the 10 year cycle, but they base it on only 40 some percent of the vote turning out. So if the vote goes higher, it messes up their numbers. They've also, by trying to take from the east, have opened up a district in the west and several other districts. So actually a massive move movement vote. But what we are finally doing, joy, we're saying it's time to love folk together. We're saying resistance is important, but resistance gets you so far. At some point you have to say what your vision is. Not just what you're resisting, but what you're fighting for. And so we're saying before, if you love, if you love this strong, committed, courageous love, if you love voting rights, if you love abolishing poverty and living wages, if you love ICE agents not being in our streets and hurting people in them, if you love a demilitarized cities, not militarized cities, I could go on and on. If that's what you love, then join us because it's time for love to move forward together. And it's time to bring all of the various silos together. We did this in 2014. 80,000 similar, 80,000 people showed up after six months, tomorrow, Monday. But it shifted the atmosphere in North Carolina and we sent an incumbent governor home and we sent a tea party incumbent home out west. Never endorsed because we were nonpartisan, but we pushed a vision and we said because people need a vision. Write the vision, make it plain. They can't just run with resistance. You've got to at some point turn to a vision. So nearly 100 organizations have come together. We talk about churches from the Council of Churches to the ame, the ame, Zion Unitarian, everybody coming together, union labor. And we're gonna walk these three days, take over the news cycle, mobilize people. And while we're walking, we're saying to people, you go and vote because all you have to do is show up. See, we have same day registration, early voting. So you march to the poll while we're walking and then join us on Saturday. Now, I will make this on your show. We having a little problem with the folk in the Raleigh are strange to me. They supposed to be progressive. And we got this little assistant city manager trying to say that we can have the right to march, we don't have the right to assemble and name please.

[Joy Reid]

What's the name?

[Bishop William Barber]

What's his name? Nikki Jones. I believe it is.

[Joy Reid]

Okay.

[Bishop William Barber]

And we're like, what is. First of all, all they're claiming that you need to have 120 day notice in order to have a protest. You got to have some kind of esp to have your First Amendment right. And from 2007 to 2018 we were on Fayetteville street in Raleigh every year. No problem staging everything. I understand some business folk don't, you know, want us down there, but they don't get to dictate the people's first amendment rights. So if we have to go to court, we going to court. I'm announcing tomorrow in the press conference because it doesn't make sense and it surely doesn't make sense in a quote unquote progressive community. Now we know that the mayor is with us. It's an administrator and some other folk. We believe it's going to work out. If not, we're going to court. But we will be marching on the 14th and we will be having this massive rally on Valentine's Day. And, and, and Joe, if you want to call the, the city of Raleigh and ask them what the problem is because you'll be there too and others going to be there. Ask them. Why is it that you're trying to tell folk they're having a parade? This is not a parade.

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Bishop William Barber]

We don't. Why, why do you. We tried to apply for a permit weeks ago. Why are you trying to tell us we can't set up a stage? You can put thousands of people in the street, but in these times, and as crazy as people are, mean as people are, you don't want us to have the sound and the, and the robotroms up to control the crowd and let people know what's going on, it's going to happen. But it's just ridiculous that you got to waste time on this kind of foolishness.

[Joy Reid]

And yeah, the name is Mickey. Michael W. Jones. I believe Mickey Jones or Mickey Jones might be Junior.

[Bishop William Barber]

Let me, let me, let me, let me look. Come on family, let's help.

[Joy Reid]

We're going to make sure that we find out the name of that person. Person. We will be putting it out on the sub stack. We'll make sure you guys have a number where you can call, where you can encourage this person and very, and always be polite.

[Bishop William Barber]

And I think he's black. He's like us. But he got, he doesn't understand that a rule. Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't Trump. Lord have mercy. A rule doesn't nullify the Constitution.

[Joy Reid]

That is correct.

[Bishop William Barber]

Nullify the Constitution. And we've always been nonviolent, we've always been focused. But we want a space where all the people are out in front so we can see, protect the folk. We're not going to be in some back street somewhere behind some building somewhere. We're fighting for our first amendment right. It's going to work and it's going to be. And who wants to resist love, Love moving forward together. It's going to be everybody. Young, old, gay, straight, trans, black, white, Asian, native, everybody, clergy, everybody. So come on, folk family, tell folk in North Carolina and if you're not in North Carolina, come. Because what we believe lastly is that this is what we need to be doing in every state. We need to be having love for it together. Massive mobilization and then use it to do micro mobilization down to the county. Quick fact and I'm through. Joy. In that same district, Trump won by 11,000 votes. 185,000 people in that district didn't vote.

[Joy Reid]

There you go.

[Bishop William Barber]

See what I'm saying? He won by 183,000 votes. 1.2 million poor, low wage people didn't vote. 400,000 black people didn't vote. We got to take our power.

[Joy Reid]

This him?

[Bishop William Barber]

I haven't seen him. I haven't been in a meeting lately. Yeah, yeah.

[Joy Reid]

We're going to do a little to make sure that this is the right person. His name is Nikki Jones. If this is the correct person. He's an assistant city manager in the city of Raleigh. We're going to encourage him in good love on Black History Month and in love. And we're going to be loving and we're going to be polite, but we're going to ask you all to jump in and make sure you have to be polite and always polite. Look, the readers are always nice. We're always friendly, we're fun. And so that way everyone loves being around us because we're lovely and wonderful people and we're never rude, but we do, we are persistent. Bishop William Barber. Happy Black History Month, brother. It is always a pleasure and happy moral Monday.

[Bishop William Barber]

We look to see you in a few weeks. Take care.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right, you guys, we're going to get to our moment of joy. Thank you all for staying with us. A tiny bit of over time. We started a little late, so we're ending a little late. But you know what, it has been such a blessing to be with you guys. I want to let you all know that if you, like, people are loving my fit. If you love my fit. This is a super, super, super cute little thing. It's got, like, lots of writing everywhere.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

You want to stand up real quick?

[Joy Reid]

Let me stand up and see if you guys can see it off camera.

[Bishop William Barber]

But you can stand up.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I'll stand up here and then on the back if I can turn the other way so you don't turn the other way so I don't mess up my. My thing to hear. And it says fdt and it's got a little. Got a little cartoon person knee on the back.

[Bishop William Barber]

Okay. Be careful. Don't fall off that.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, I fall off. There you go. So. So that is. That is the fit. It is available at the joy shop, Joann reid.com But we're also making sure that because it's Black History Month, we save a little bit of money for y'. All. So if you all buy anything, not just this fit, but anything else that you would like or enjoy having in your collection. There you go. If you just do the code BHM100 for 100th. And for the 100th birthday of Black History Month, you put in BHM100. You get 25 off anything you buy. Anything you buy, whether it's a mug. This is my favorite one. I drink out of this one because I'm. I'm in, like, Perry menopause and I need a lot of water. So, yeah, anything you want, you can absolutely do that. We appreciate everybody, everybody for always tuning into the show. Thank you. We are so excited about our moment of joy. I actually have two of them, but my first moment of joy is the return of a sweet little five year old boy. Just an adorable, adorable child. His name is Liam Kanejo Ramos. You guys remember him, Little Liam, the little boy with the blue little hat. He had the little spider man backpack. And the bad guys came and kidnapped him and his dad. His dad, his name is Ariane Alexander Canejo rs. They have been released. They are free. Liam is home. He's back in Minneapolis. He can go back to school. He was super traumatized. But our friend Congressman Joaquin Castro, working together with other Democrats who are also helping out obviously as well. And Ilhan Omar is his congresswoman. So the congress people, both Ilhan Omar and Joaquin Castro, they won, y'.

[Raul Rodriguez]

All.

[Joy Reid]

They went and got baby Liam and his dad and he got to fly. Here it is. Let's play the video. Let's play the video. This is super cute. There he is. In his adorable little blue hat. You can see him being picked up. He's there. He's meeting at the airport with Congresswoman Castro. And there. And there you go. And with Omar. And he got to get his wings. He was. Got to sit in the front of the plane. They gave him his wings. So he's now officially a real pilot, a real life pilot. He's only five. He got treated special. He got to sit in the captain's chair and get his little wings. He's the cutest little monster in the world. He's so cute.

[Bishop William Barber]

But he's the nationality of the pilot.

[Joy Reid]

Yes, Representation matters. D, E, I. Yes. Yes. Dominant, entertaining, and individual. What do we. We love dei. But yes, there is a Latino pilot, which was perfect. He's had. He's been through a lot, but God bless you, sweet Liam. We're so excited that he is home. So that is our moment of joy number one. Moment of joy number two is where we kind of started the show. Our friend Don Lemon, who will again, as I remind you guys, be on Jimmy Kimmel's show tonight. He's still in California, where he's had a great time at the Grammys after all the trauma he's been through as well. Different trauma from Liam after being arrested by the regime. Here's what happened when Don Lemon got invited to a very exclusive pre Grammy party and got recognized. Here it is. You can see his husband Tim there holding up the phone. People have been circulating pictures, the two of them, with the bodyguard theme, because Tim is, like, right by his side, standing by him. He had a great time. I was. Was on his show earlier today, as the lemonades know, and we talked about it, and he talked about the fact that they just kept clapping, and he's like, it's that awkward thing where, oh, my God, they're still clapping. They won't stop clapping. My interview earlier today on the Dom Lemon show, we're going to post it as a short shortly on this channel. Love to all of you. Thank you all for hanging in there with us. Happy Monday. Happy Black History Month. If you want to buy anything, don't forget, put in that little code. Make sure you get your 25 off BHM100 to get your discount. We are going to talk Epstein files on Wednesday. We're bringing on maybe the most read in person who has been going through all these Epstein files. We're going to get into it. Steve Bannon's implication at it all. All of the academics that were playing ball with him from Harvard on what was Bannon doing? We're gonna dig into all of that stuff that is coming up.

[Bishop William Barber]

Can I just interject one more time.

[Joy Reid]

Guys, to put this QR code back on screen? Yes.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

For the naac.

[Glenn Kirschner]

Could you guys please take a photo.

[Pastor Jamal Bryant]

Of that picture on the bottom right.

[Bishop William Barber]

Of your screen and go ahead and vote? Please go ahead and take a vote for us. We'll be very happy if we win this award.

[Joy Reid]

We're. We're excited. The NAAC Awards is in, like, three weeks. I think it's the last. When last Friday or Saturday in February. So we're super excited about the nominations. Thank you all so much for your support. We love you guys. Thank you for supporting Social. I mean, for Social. Thank you all for supporting independent media. Independent media is where it's at. Don Lemon's case is showing us the First Amendment matters. We've got to support Georgia Ford, Don Lemon, all these independent journalists. Support the Minneapolis Nine. Support the Minneapolis Nine. If they've got GoFundMe legal defense funds, get in there, support them. Do what you can to the extent. Extent that you have the limit to do. Don't put yourself in the poor house, but do what you can to support the First Amendment, Even if all you do is just like and subscribe and share. That is more than enough. We love you guys, and we'll see you on the next show.

[Bishop William Barber]

Getting back to the basics Grassroot level.

[Joy Reid]

Let me dig a little deeper with.

[Bishop William Barber]

The shovel Plenty can't tell the force from the trees and I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in the.

[Joy Reid]

Dark Injustice anywhere, it's a threat justice.

Everywhere Let me make this clear I.

[Bishop William Barber]

Got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for show.