The Constitution Under Fire - The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

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The Joy Reid Show – Episode Summary

Episode Title: The Constitution Under Fire – The Joy Reid Show LIVE!
Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Date: January 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this dynamic live episode, Joy Reid tackles the increasingly precarious state of American democracy, focusing on the global and domestic fallout from President Donald Trump’s administration, the rise of white Christian nationalism, efforts to replace foundational international institutions, and the role of voters, politicians, and faith leaders in current American politics. The show also features passionate conversations with Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell) and Reverend Frederick Douglass Haynes, both considering congressional runs, and ends with a monthly check-in on combating white Christian nationalism with Robert P. Jones.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Trump in Davos and International Embarrassment

• Joy Reid opens with a critical examination of President Trump’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, mocking his lack of diplomatic welcome and portraying his foreign policy as serving Kremlin interests.
  • “He’s wrecked it, which is really what the Kremlin wants.” – Joy Reid [03:18]
• Joy lampoons Trump's repeated geographical gaffes, like confusing Iceland and Greenland, and lambasts the Trump family’s accumulation of personal wealth through the presidency.
  • “He now is shopping for Greenland apparently to hand it off to his billionaire AI weirdo bosses…” – Joy Reid [06:39]
• The possibility of global consequences due to Trump’s foreign policy, including threatened sanctions that could impact critical medical imports like insulin and Ozempic from Denmark.
  • “If you do sanctions against Denmark, just know that's where y' all glmps come from […]. So that'll just destroy the American people, because, you know, that's what he does.” – Joy Reid [09:08]
• Introduction of the so-called "Board of Peace," a Trump-initiated alternative to the UN Security Council, described by Joy and guests as a “League of Villains.” European and Muslim-majority countries’ reactions highlight new fractures in global alliances.

2. American Image and the Blame Game

• Ongoing discussion on whether Trump is more of a personal embarrassment or a national one.
  • “He's embarrassing the United States of America on the world stage.” – Joy Reid [16:39]
• Jason notes the collective national shame from Trump’s re-election: “Only like a third of the country believes in all that crap that Trump talks about, and the rest of us are going to get blamed for that.” – Jason [25:09]
• Joy strongly asserts it's time to hold voters accountable, not just political elites:
  • “If you were stupid enough to vote for Trump—and I’m sorry to use that term...I’m not sure that I’m supposed to venerate you as a voter.” – Joy Reid [30:10]
• The erosion of international trust, with Joy explaining how America is now seen as erratic and less reliable, with potential economic repercussions.
  • “Why would you trust a country that keeps electing this idiot?” – Joy Reid [25:22]

3. Project 2025, Immigration, and Domestic Fallout

• Joy and Luther Campbell dissect the Republican-led “Project 2025,” warning it spells disaster for public education, civil rights, and marginalized communities.
  • Uncle Luke: “Project 2025 allows police full immunity to kill innocent black men…Y' all don't understand…” [38:07]
• The team discusses broad, violent immigration raids and the dangerous empowerment of ICE, drawing parallels to historical fascism.
  • “What did y' all think that was gonna look like? …Did you think it was gonna be like they were going to knock on people's door and ask them nicely to leave?” – Joy Reid [32:52]
• Conversation with Uncle Luke underscores political apathy, the targeted nature of voter suppression, and the real-world impacts of policy on underserved communities.
  • “If Luther Campbell goes to Congress, you know, they gonna...throw every rule and everything in the world at me…” – Luther Campbell [43:24]

4. Power, Corruption, and Accountability

• The corruption of Trump’s White House is a frequently referenced theme, including details from NYT reporting about hundreds of millions in profit for the Trump family and administration cronyism.
  • “If Donald Trump was such a great businessman, why wasn't he able to become a billionaire off of real estate development, which is supposed to be his core skill?” – Joy Reid [36:57]
• Uncle Luke reflects on Trump’s cognitive and ethical decline:
  • “The guy you see right now is a lot slower than, than what I knew him to be.” [46:37]

5. Faith, White Christian Nationalism, and the Meaning of “Christian Values”

• Extended segment with Pastor Freddie Haynes and Robert P. Jones about the struggle to reclaim Christianity from white Christian nationalism.
  • “Not only are white Christian nationalists so busy being white and nationalist that they don't get around to being Christian…” – Freddie Haynes [66:37]
• Highlight of stark theological differences: White Christian nationalism as uniquely invested in power hierarchies, the subjugation of women and minorities, and a historical linkage to American racism and violence.
  • “It's really plain that what we're seeing today is a battle for the soul of white Christianity in this country.” – Robert P. Jones [92:20]
  • “The Jesus of the text of the Bible was executed by a violent state … That is not a vision of Jesus you're going to hear celebrated in those kinds of churches….” – Robert P. Jones [99:13]
• Calls for Christian churches to publicly repudiate this distortion and to foster “martyrdom moments” where standing up for the oppressed is put above institutional comfort.

6. Politics, Representation, and Black Leadership

• Interviews with both Luther Campbell and Pastor Haynes (both considering congressional bids) highlight:
  • The necessity and challenge of running “for the people” in marginalized communities.
  • Doubts and counter-narratives around Black women’s political leadership, particularly regarding Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate run and the broader Democratic prospects in Texas.
  • Voter suppression tactics in Texas, and the untapped power of Black and Latino voters.
    • “Texas is not a red state. It's a disorganized state. It's a voter suppressed state.” – Pastor Haynes [64:02]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "He's wrecked it, which is really what the Kremlin wants." – Joy Reid [03:18]
• “Project 2025 allows police full immunity to kill innocent black men. Y'all don't understand that this man sat up on the stage and said, I'm going to give police officers full immunity.” – Luther Campbell [38:07]
• “If you were stupid enough to vote for Trump…I'm not sure that I'm supposed to venerate you as a voter.” – Joy Reid [30:10]
• “It is only 3 in 10 Americans overall who agree with this worldview… It is twice as many of us who believe in democracy, who believe in pluralism...” – Robert P. Jones [114:26]
• “Texas is not a red state. It's a disorganized state. It's a voter suppressed state.” – Pastor Haynes [64:02]
• “We've never fully had even most white Christians standing up and saying, no, no, no, that's not the Jesus of the Bible.” – Robert P. Jones [101:03]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:18] – Trump in Davos, global order and embarrassment
• [06:39] – Trump’s financial dealings and Greenland speculation
• [13:23 – 18:23] – “Is he embarrassing us or himself?” (Reid/Jason debate and poll)
• [30:10 – 35:55] – Blame for Trump’s election: voters, politicians, or both?
• [38:07] – Uncle Luke on Project 2025 and warning the Black community
• [40:00] – Uncle Luke and Joy discuss Black political apathy and representation
• [54:33] – Pastor Haynes on being called to public office
• [64:02] – Electoral math and “disorganized” Texas
• [65:41] – White Christian Nationalism: Faith, Race, and Power
• [92:20 – 101:35] – Robert P. Jones on the battle for the soul of Christianity
• [114:26] – Numbers give hope: fighting back against Christian nationalism
• [116:34] – Moment of Joy: Branston the bad dog (lighthearted closing)

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Additional Highlights

• Uncle Luke on double standards in politics: “If Luther Campbell goes to Congress, you know, they're gonna...throw every rule and everything in the world at me…” [43:24]
• Pastor Haynes on running for Congress: “...when you're called to the work, best thing to do is answer the phone.” [54:33]
• Joy’s sharp rebuke of “white Christian nationalist theology” versus actual biblical teachings around refugees, poverty, and justice.
• Ongoing theme: The U.S. is at risk—not just politically or legally, but culturally and morally—by normalizing anti-democratic and anti-Christian tendencies under the guise of “saving” America.

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Tone and Language

Joy’s signature wit, biting critique, and moments of self-reflection drive the conversation, mixing sharp sarcasm with righteous indignation. Her guests match her candor—Uncle Luke and Pastor Haynes provide raw, unfiltered community and spiritual perspectives. Robert P. Jones gives data-informed urgency to the show’s warnings on Christian nationalism and the imperative of multiracial, interfaith resistance.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is a crash course in American political anxiety, lampooning the latest absurdities while offering sober, deeply informed warnings about democracy’s fragility. It connects global embarrassments to local consequences, and traces present crises to their historical roots. It calls listeners not just to resist at the ballot box, but to reflect on personal responsibility, to organize at the community level, and to reclaim the heart of American faith and justice.

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Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Hey.

Okay, One. And welcome to the Joy Reach show. Thank you all for tuning in. Big up to everybody that is in the YouTube chat. Y' all already get there so early and y' all already started chatting, shouting out where you are. North Carolina in the house. We have a happy hump day. Everyone from Karen Stooks. Oh, we love Karen. Karen is always in the house. We got a hello from Lorena Taylor, also one of our team TJRS regulars. Good evening to everybody. Also good evening to everybody in the sub stack chat. We always like to shout out both of the chats. So thank you all for tuning in, whether you're on the stack, whether you're on YouTube, wherever you're tuning in. Love to everybody, especially including.

[Jason]

Good evening, everybody. Sorry, did we tell everybody where they watching from? Could you put that in the chat, please? Where you guys are watching us from?

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely. See, Jason didn't tell what he's watching for. Oh, okay. I was gonna say you're not showing where you're watching from.

[Jason]

I'm watching. But if you guys can put that in the chat, that'd be awesome.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely fabulous and fantabulous. Thank you guys very much. I want to remind you guys, if you have not already voted in the NAACP Image Awards, we are up in the best news and information podcast category. And for those of you who are stressed out because Don Lemon is in there too, he's nominated in, like, four other categories.

[Jason]

Yeah, you know, it's so true. Don is a good guy, but we love Don. Here goes another request.

[Joy Reid]

And Native Land Pod is also nominated.

[Jason]

But here goes another request. If you guys can take your phone out, scan that QR code, and then once you do that, just look down the list. We're at the bottom. Just go ahead and vote for the Joy Reach show. That'll be greatly appreciated.

[Joy Reid]

We would so very much appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yes, we appreciate it. See, Jason is actually showing his face online. He's giving you guys the gift of face. And so we're hoping that you guys can vote for us. And also if you love Native Land Pod and Don and everybody else, you can. You can actually vote every day. You can vote different people every day. So you can. You can share the love with everybody. But we really appreciate a vote. We're super proud of being nominated. It's a fan. It's an audience choice category. So that's why we're encouraging everyone to please jump in and vote for us if you can. We have a big show tonight. Uncle Luke will be here. Luther Campbell coming live from the mia, Reverend Freddie Haynes. Frederick Douglass Haynes from Friendship West Baptist Church in the great state of Texas will also be here. They're both running for Congress, which is pretty exciting. You're going to have a pretty interesting election in November, assuming we have elections in November, and they also have to get through primary. So they're going to be talking about that. Robbie Jones is here. It is the third Wednesday of the month, and so that, of course, is the day that we talk about fighting white Christian nationalism with our good friend Robert Robbie Jones. I get to call him Robbie because he's my friend and we're going to talk with him in the 7 o' clock hour. So those are the things that we have coming up. But I've got to start with your president, y' all president. Don't put him on me. Somebody don't put them on me. That's y' all president. Y' all president. You guys. President was in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, having essentially done the work of the Kremlin by destroying the post World War II order. It's as if he kind of almost works for them. He's been so efficient with his friends at destroying the whole order that was built by FDR and Harry Truman and Eisenhower and Reagan and the rest. He's. He's wrecked it, which is really what the Kremlin wants. So let's take a look at him arriving to no fanfare. His plane, Air Force One, had to briefly turn back following a minor electrical glitch. There he is arriving no fanfare. What? Like, did no one have a crown or a gold bar or a golf.

[Jason]

Ball around on a red carpet again?

[Joy Reid]

There he is.

[Jason]

Yeah, he's wandering around on a carpet.

[Joy Reid]

He's doing the Trump wander. There's no, you know, remember when he landed in Asia, a lot of the countries were giving him gifts. One country, I think it was Vietnam, gave him a crown, an actual crown. When he went to Saudi Arabia the first time as president, he got an orb. So this time he didn't get nothing. No golf course. Like what? Where's his stuff? So once in place in Davos, Trump wasted no time humiliating both himself and us.

I'm helping Europe, I'm helping NATO. And until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me Daddy, right? Last time, very smart man, said, he's our daddy. He's running it. I was like, running it. I went from running it to being.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

A terrible human being.

[Joy Reid]

And then after the war, which we Won. We won it big. Without us right now, you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese perhaps.

Okay, this is the point where I inform you if you didn't know or remind you if you already did that in Switzerland, they already speak German. It's the main language they speak in Switzerland. You're in Switzerland, you moron. That is the language they speak. And here's a map for you, Donald, assuming you can read a map. The little red one is, is Switzerland. And the one at the top with the green at the top is. They're different countries is what I'm trying to say. Iceland.

[Jason]

That's an orange one. Switzerland is orange.

[Joy Reid]

Well, yeah. Colorblind. There are different countries. Greenland. I think he meant Greenland. I don't know what he meant, but he said Iceland and I think he meant Greenland. I think he just. I think he's just an idiot. I'm sorry he meant Greenland, but he said Iceland and he meant Greenland. So we just wanna make sure that he understood that. So the most corrupt president in U.S. history who has raked in $1.4 billion, by the way, per the New York Times, he's raked in $1.4 billion as president. His kids have also raked in like in huge amounts of money in personal wealth off of his second term in office. The New York Times has said that his greed, his personal greed is so breathtaking, there really is no comparison and no way to really even compare it to any other president. They've just raked in money from the plane he got from Qatar to golf courses that they're signing deals for all over the world to the sun. Signing on what? $700 million loan deal from the Pentagon. Like it's just breathtaking how much money the Trumps have earned, I only say earned on the 40 billion. 40 million dollar bribe to Melania to do her life story. Like it's been just absolutely breathtaking. Let's thank. Oh, Lawrence. It says Lawrence. Erica. $50 in the till. Thank you so much.

[Jason]

Did it big.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Wow.

[Joy Reid]

We got a hello from Karen. Karen Stoops is a soror. Good to know. We appreciate you very much. So, yeah, now that he has raked in all of that money and finally achieved the goal of being a billionaire, which he could not do through his own abilities, he now is shopping for Greenland apparently to hand it off to his billionaire AI weirdo bosses to use as their CEOs without taxation kingdom. One of the new theories we've heard about why they want Greenland, that these CEO types of the tech Bros Wanted the. Because they Want to create, like, an island with no taxes and no laws, where they can live free of authority and launch space rockets shaped like penises and things without anybody getting in their way. Or they just want to steal the mineral wealth of the 80 plus percent indigenous population of Greenland. We just don't know. Or just because Trump's brain don't work it. Here's the response from, of course, an Irish politician. They're always keeping it real. A former journalist turned leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party SDLP in Northern Ireland, and he is the leader of the opposition since 2022 in the Northern Ireland Assembly. His name is Matthew O'.

[Robert P. Jones]

Toole.

[Joy Reid]

Mistake. When we talk about Donald Trump as if he were some kind of normal US President, this man is a madman. It's scary that it has taken up until now for European leaders and indeed Prime Minister Starmer, to stand up to this individual, to say clearly to him, no, this is completely unacceptable. We've seen grotesque actions, including, of course, what's happened in Gaza, but we've seen ever more grotesque, preposterous things. His humiliation of President Zelensky in the Oval Office. His actions in Venezuela. Leaders across the world, including the EU and the uk, need to be clear with Trump that there will be consequences, economic and trade consequences, to be clear, Mr. Speaker, for threatening an independent sovereign state in this way. He cannot and must not get away with it. And Danish MP Anders Vinson, I think his name is Vitisen, was even more succinct on yesterday. Let me put this in words you.

[Robert P. Jones]

Might understand, Mr. President.

[Joy Reid]

Off. He got in trouble for that. He was cautioned that he'd broken the rules. But you know what? I think he actually deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. And a reminder once again that we don't get a whole lot from Denmark, which is the country which is in sort of a weird sort of sovereignty partnership with Greenland. But we do get Ozempic from them and insulin. So if Donald Trump succeeds in triggering huge sanctions, which he's trying to do, he wants to drop big sanctions on all the EU countries. But if you do sanctions against Denmark, just know that's where y' all glmps come from. That's where Ozempic comes from, and that's where a lot of our insulin comes from. So that'll just destroy the American people, because, you know, that's what he does. So Trump is now so globally lawless that he's looking to replace the UN with an injustice. League of global villains, AKA his Board of Peace, led by Trump himself and including the latest recruit, Bibi the Butcher. Bibi the Butcher is now on the Board of Peace, which is headed by Donald Trump. It does seem like an SNL skit for those in the chat who said so. From the Associated Press Divisions emerged Wednesday over US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace as its ambitions have grown beyond Gaza, with some Western European countries declining to join, others remaining non committal, and a group of Muslim countries agreeing to sign on. The developments underscored European concerns over the expanded and divisive scope of the project, which some say may seek to rival the UN Security Council's role in mediating global conflicts. Trump is looking to form this board officially this week on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. Switzerland, Norway and Sweden said they will not accept their invitations after France also said no, while a bloc of Muslim majority nations, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, of course, Saudi Arabia, of course, and the United Arab Emirates, all of them do business with the Trump family said in a joint statement that their leaders would join. So the new Board of Peace will be those countries and Bibi the Butcher seems like that should go really well. The Joy Reed show by the way, let me let you know that it is supported by the Defending Our Neighbors Fund. Across the country, immigrants are facing family separation, wrongful detention and deportation without due process or access to legal support. In 2024 alone, there were more than 2.5 million immigration court cases without legal representation. That means millions of people were denied the most basic protections that we expect from our justice system, the right to a fair process powered by people like you. The Defending Our Neighbors Fund is providing access to life saving legal aid to to families in crisis. But they urgently need your help to meet their unprecedented demand. The government is pouring billions and billions of your taxpayer dollars into enforcement while slashing the funding for legal aid. That makes your support more urgent than ever. So please help defend your neighbors and keep families together. You can donate now@defendingour neighbors.org fund. It could not be more important than to do that. One final note on what's happening in Davos. It wasn't really a confrontation between Donald Trump and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who was actually there. And Donald Trump decided to try to dress him down over not welcoming ICE agents, ICE goons, ICE Gestapo, whatever we want to call them at this point into his state. He basically just looked away and laughed and kind of brushed it off. But interestingly enough that he attended Davos, I guess it makes sense. He's the governor of the state where Silicon Valley is. There's lots to discuss, but interesting kind of precursor to what we could see in terms of the MAGA. Right, versus Gavin Newsom. Thank you so much. Is that a 99.$99 contribution? Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. This is from Megan Underwood. 5,000, 920. God bless you. Thank you so much. We really, truly appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your support. We love our team TJRS folks, but, you know, why don't we. I don't know if we can throw a poll up. Donald Trump, is he embarrassing himself more or is he embarrassing us more? Is it more personally embarrassing?

[Jason]

I could answer that right now. He's embarrassing himself more. He damn sure ain't embarrassing me. So country wise. Yes. But you know what? He'll be all right.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And I mean, the fact that, you know, that this was seemingly the Decepticons, that's what they want to call the Board of Peace, maybe should be called the Decepticons. Yeah, it does feel like that. It absolutely does feel like that. Because Donald Trump is going around the world and if he's not a Russian agent, I do sometimes wonder how would he behave differently if he was like, how would he be different if he was a Russian agent? He has destroyed the intersectional relationships between Americans. He's pitted Americans. Every time he's president, he pits Americans against each other. He's created a very 1930s Germany, demonization against immigrants, non white immigrants. He's increased racism, hatred, violence. Every single time he's president, those things get more pronounced. And social discohesion has always been a goal of the Kremlin. They've wanted that since, you know, 1917. They've tried to sow racial discord or push the racial discord that's already there. And he's essentially ended NATO. Like NATO, for all intents and purposes, it exists on paper. But the biggest country in it, the United States, is now a non participant and an opponent. And now he's attempting to set up a competitor to the United nations that includes the most violent, some of the more violent countries on Earth, and an expansionist, nuclear armed Israel that is even now continuing its genocide and land confiscation and apartheid against Palestinians. But they're gonna be on the Board of Peace. And Donald Trump explained this. I'm trying to play less Trump sound because we don't need to really hear him talk as much. He tried to explain this, saying that the people he wants on the Board of Peace are people with power, the people who Exercise power. That's who can really make peace. And so I say again, if he's not a Russian agent, if he's not doing this because his goal is to destroy the United States and lift up Russia as the new big dog in town, or China, which is also hugely benefited from everything he's doing, if he's not an agent of a foreign power, how would he act differently if he was? How would we tell if he was an agent of a foreign power? How would we know the difference between what he'd be doing if he were such a thing and the way he's behaving now? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that I personally would be able to tell the difference personally. So what we can look forward to while Donald Trump is in Davos. Yeah, he wants dictators on his. Absolutely. Donald Trump. If you read a lot of his biographies or even the people I interviewed to talk to him or to about him when I wrote my Trump book, he believes that he wants to have a sort of global world of strongmen and all the strongmen carve up their own spheres of influence and each of them controls their little sphere of influence. This is an interesting comment out of many. We are 16429 to Joy. He is representing the United States of America regardless if we voted for him or not. Therefore, he is embarrassing the United States of America on the world stage. I feel like that would be my vote as well. Thank you.

[Jason]

He's a little bit of agreement with that with me also because he is the American president. But is he embarrassing me personally? Absolutely not. I don't know about you. Is he embarrassing you?

[Joy Reid]

He's embarrassing me as an American because unfortunately. And what Americans are going to have to reckon with as our Ozempic prices go through the roof and our insulin prices maybe become unsustainable for people who could literally have their lives jeopardized by it because of his. Oh, Jason is a. Jason is a ramble. Is a, is a legend. Jason is a legend. Trump be rambling. So we got two, two things in the chat. Jason is a legend. He loves his pop ins. Everybody loves your pop ins advantage. GE Evans says she loves her pop ins and Trump is rambling. Yeah, I think he is embarrassed to me. I would vote embarrassing us as a nation because now the rest of the world knows that this country is capable of, of electing someone like that twice. Believe you believe it or not. I mean the rest of the world knows that there are lots of people resisting this because our resistance is on their TV. They can see it on their own TVs every day. So they know people are resisting. But unfortunately, they also know that Americans, Americans have a proclivity to elect this kind of lunatic and that we could do it again.

[Jason]

Well, Troy, let me ask you this question. Do you think Donald Trump himself, himself feels embarrassed about what he's doing?

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely. He thinks that he is doing great because number one, his brain is addled. He's not in full faculties because his brain don't work good. So in addition to people around him being complete suck ups and telling him he's doing great and telling him that he's a living legend, telling him that he's the most successful president ever in American history, telling him that he's doing a phenomenal job, that America is the hottest country in the world. Like people are telling him that because they have to tell him that in order to keep their jobs. So between the sycophants around him who are lying to him and his own dementia addled brain, no, I think he thinks he's doing a phenomenal job.

[Jason]

I think he thinks he's lying to himself.

[Joy Reid]

I think he thinks he's the greatest president in history. But he, because he has dementia, how would he know? He has no self awareness. He's never been told. No. And I love the fact that you're starting to see European leaders really against the wishes of some of their leadership, like what we have here, speaking up against him and saying that there has to be strong, there have to be stronger invocations against him. It can't just be mild criticism and trying to see if you can calm him down and trying to see if you can work with him and trying to see if you can cut a deal, trying to see if you can cut a deal to reduce the tariffs. This is not effective. You're going to have to start treating him the way the rest of the world treated the leadership of the apartheid, the white apartheid government, the white apartheid government back in the 80s. Or treating him the way most of the world treats Vladimir Putin, who was kicked out of the Group of Eight. It became the Group of Seven because he became unacceptable to even talk to. Right. I mean, there's countries he can't travel to. Putin because he's considered a war criminal. He's a war criminal and he's considered so shameful. But no one is used to treating the United States States like that. What's shocking and I think destabilizing the world is that people aren't accustomed to the Americans being the villain. And so that. That is. That is where we are. It's sad, but I think that, unfortunately, that that is indeed where we are. We're a country that now the whole world knows has the proclivity to put someone like that in office and has the proclivity to. Even after he causes a million deaths from COVID and after he tanks the economy because of his mismanagement of COVID after he does a Muslim ban, After he persecutes LGBTQ troops and runs them out of the military, that after that, in the first term, the whole world now knows that the American people put him back in there. At least a majority of the Americans who bothered to vote, and a lot of Americans didn't vote at all. The whole world is watching us. And unfortunately, as much as we'd like to ignore Trump and pretend it doesn't matter, the whole rest of the world does look at that as an American problem, and it changes the way that they view us. The supply chains that Donald Trump has disrupted, they're not coming back. The rest of the world is now looking at China like, hey, girl, they're looking at China, and they're saying, you might be the more stable country for us to deal with. We may want to turn our eyes towards you, because that is what South America is doing. That is what Canada is doing. We are literally in a world in which the United States may become. We may be sidelined and isolated, with our only friends being countries that are generally considered on the rogue side of nations. And Donald Trump seems to be trying to create his own bricks. Right. I think he's jealous of the fact that BRICS created itself as an alternative to the west, and he hates NATO because NATO doesn't want to let him do what he wants. And so now he's decided that since NATO won't get together and agree to hand over or sell him Greenland or Iceland, I guess he now considers Greenland to be. He now has decided that NATO is past its prime. And also, by the way, just to be clear, NATO's purpose was to rein in the old Soviet Union. And Donald Trump seems to be more in favor of Russia, which was the main part of the former Soviet Union. So he does seem to believe, like Vladimir Putin believes, that NATO needs to go away as a protector of Europe and that there need to be individual spheres of influence. This is literally what Vladimir Putin believes, that there should not be a NATO that's trying to back him into a corner, but that each strongman leader should have their own spheres of influence. Donald Trump seems to agree with him. And he's now trying to create an alternative to NATO and to the un, which is his Board of Peace, which is just a bunch of strong men and a war criminal named Bibi Netanyahu. Emmanuel Macron said, no thanks. Most of Europe said, we don't want nothing to do with this. We don't want to be in it. And he's also out here whining that part of the reason he's doing this is that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. And so to punish the world for not giving him a Nobel Peace Prize, I guess. And also because he's serving the interests of a small number of billionaires who also want these lawless enclaves in the world where they can operate free of taxation and regulation. He's now seeming to want to acquire those lands for them. So he just seems to be beholden to whatever strong man, whether it's the tech bro, strongman or Vladimir Putin is in front of him. And also whoever's willing to give him money and drop some money on him, he's willing. He's beholden to them completely. This is a strange situation, I think, for the world to be in, because I think the world is accustomed to having these kinds of leaders in North Korea, in Russia, now in Hungary for a while in Poland before they got rid of theirs in parts of Central and South America. In Venezuela, Maduro was one of those. Brazil had one. Bolsonaro. People are accustomed to some of these other countries who, which, by the way, many of which were broken either by the British Empire or by the United States empires. So people are accustomed to some of those more broken seeming countries having this kind of leader. They're just not accustomed to that country being the United States and the United States being the country that you have to protect yourself from, because the United States may be the country that might hurt you and harm you, that the United States is the danger to world peace. But that's where we are.

[Jason]

And the sad thing is only like a third of the country who believes in all that crap that Trump talks about, and the rest of us are going to get blamed for that. But honestly, I couldn't disagree. The rest of the world needs to look at us sideways for a little while till we get our act together.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And I think what Americans need to understand is what that means for you. If countries around the world just look at us funny, that could mean some discomfort. When you travel with a blue passport, it could mean people looking askance at you the way they did when I was traveling, you know, as a junior high school student, when Reagan, you know, was. Was president, where people looked at us like, oh, y' all were elected that guy, right? So it could be just that discomfort, or it could be much worse. It could be foreign countries dumping our treasury bonds and saying, you know what? We don't want to be invested in U.S. treasuries because they're not a safe investment. Because you all are erratic. One minute, you know, you. Then you. You're going to elect Gavin Newsome, and then you're going to elect Baron Trump or some, you know, you're going to swing back and forth between Barack Obama and Trump and then swing back to Biden and Trump. We look erratic. And so for me, the question that we're putting in our poll of whether he's embarrassing himself or us, unfortunately, the rest of the world sees him as us and they associate him with us. And it's not like the supply chains are just going to Whip back if J.B. pritzker is president or that people are going to suddenly look at us as normal again and trust us. Why would you trust the country that keeps electing this idiot? Why would you trust a country where, even if the election wasn't free and fair, this idiot could get around the system and get in? Whether you believe that election was legit or not, he's in. Which means there's something either fundamentally flawed about our system or something fundamentally flawed about us. And the rest of the world can see that. And when the American president goes to Davos, Switzerland, and that used to be a person who was held in high esteem, no more. When Donald Trump went the first during his first term, he was someone people were looking a little nervously at, but were trying to figure out a way to appease. We're now getting to the point where Americans. Where the world looks at the American president and laughs at him or gets enraged that he's there or is enraged by the things he said. And that doesn't change because we get a more normal president. The rest of the world now has every right to treat that president as abnormal and Trump as normal. That what we generally elect in this country is a Trump, and that when we elect something that isn't Trump, that's the abnormal thing. That is what I am very, very concerned about. I'm very concerned about it because I.612$50 tip.

[Jason]

Thank you very much.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you very much. I mean, this is a president who, while he was there, said that China is pushing wind energy. But, you know, he has a. He has a thing about windmills. He hates windmills. And he said China has wind energy, but I don't see any windmills there. I'm like, you moron, they produce the majority of the. What are you talking about? They are like one of the biggest producers of those windmills. But he's so. He says brain is so gone. But again, he's embarrassing. Yes, but we are the ones being embarrassed. He's the one being embarrassed. Let me read a comment from the substack friends. This is Rex Jarrell saying, I'm not accustomed to Donald Trump's America either, and I'm grateful for the folks paying attention and acting accordingly in preservation and advancement of democracy. And he thanks me and company. Well, thank you very much, Rex, for that great comment. We've got another comment from Izzy on substack saying it's both the system and us. That it's both the system and us. But. But the problem is we are the ones utilizing the system and not using it intelligently. We're using it in a way that we're putting ourselves in a position for it to have even been close enough. If those of the. And there are lots of people I know who do not believe that the 2024 election was free and fair. But you can only steal a close election. If you're going to steal an election, it has to be really, really close. And there are only a few ways to. I mean, I don't know, the technology, if there are crazy things that could be done. But a lot of people don't really buy that. The election. But if it was stolen, let's say you believe that. And I'm not saying I believe it. I'm saying if you. The election would have had to be close enough for Kamala Harris not to be able to blow this guy out of the water. How did he even get close to being president again? How do we have a Supreme Court that would allow him to run for president again after he did an insurrection, which it literally says in the Constitution, you can't do. You had the state of Colorado adjudicate him as insurrectionist and the Supreme Court ignored that, threw the Constitution aside, stomped on the Constitution. That's one of the reasons our, our, our. The image of the show today is that stomped on Constitution. They said that Section 3 of Article of the 14th Amendment. Article 3 is inoperative when it comes to Trump.

[Jason]

Well, could I just correct. Make one correction. I don't think we could blame the Supreme Court for this one. You know who we should be blaming who? Mitch McConnell.

[Joy Reid]

Well, he built.

[Jason]

McConnell is the one that basically let him get away. If he would have let people voted in their contest, we wouldn't have Trump right now, period. So let's spread the.

[Joy Reid]

You know, because you could also blame the weak Republican Party for not impeaching and convicting him the first time they could have had the votes. If the Republicans in the United States Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, who begged people not to vote to convict, if they convicted him, he couldn't run for president again. That's in the Constitution. He would be ineligible. If he had been convicted, he could not run for president again. So there's a lot of blame to go around. There's a lot of blame, but I have this thing where I'm getting exhausted by the idea that we're supposed to venerate the voters and that we have to blame everyone but them. Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court, where we. We don't blame the voters. We try to act like the voters are sacrosanct, they're sacred. But if you were stupid enough to vote for Trump, and I'm sorry to use that term, when Project 2025 was in your face, when, when you. And forget if you didn't even know about Project 2025, you lived through him the first time. And if you put him back in. I'm not sure that I'm supposed to venerate you as a voter. I know it's a whole. It's a media. It's a mainstream media thing where we're supposed to respect the voter. I'm sorry, why? I don't respect Mitch McConnell. I don't respect Donald Trump, but I'm supposed to respect people who knew what it was like to live under a Trump recession. The first time, who knew they had family members who died because of COVID the first time, who knew that he was saying out of his mouth that he was going to have the biggest mass deportation in history. What did y' all think that was gonna look like? What do you think the biggest mass deportation would look like? Did you think it was going to be like they were going to knock on people's door and ask them nicely to leave the country? Didn't you know it was going to be the Gestapo? Because I did. I did. How come you didn't? And so my whole thing is, if I'm Europe, I'm looking funny at all of us. I'm looking at the American people who be, having been warned over and over again and having experienced Trump the first time, put him right back in. And then I shocked that he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do. So to me, the rest of the world looking at us crazy and saying, y' all sent this bobblehead over here again. We got to deal with him again. You got to deal with him again. Because of you, because of the American people. Because, you know, Even if Mitch McConnell is the most evil man in the world, someone has to listen to him and do what he says. People kept reelecting Mitch McConnell. He's 170 years old and can barely get through a sentence without falling on the ground. But y' all still putting it back in Kentucky. You got other choices, but you keep reelecting Mitch McConnell. So now even Mitch McConnell is your fault. What has he done for you? Nothing. This is the most powerful Senate majority leader maybe in history, and his state is the second or third poorest state in the union. If you live in Kentucky and you're voting for Mitch McConnell and your ass is still poor, something's wrong with you. I can blame him, I guess, but you keep putting him in there to give you nothing. Just because you're mad about the woke and some random trans girl playing soccer that you're never gonna meet. But you keep voting. So you're still responsible for McConnell. You know, if you're voting for Marjorie Taylor Greene, don't get mad that Marjorie Taylor Greene is Marjorie Taylor Greene and you voted for her. So, right. There you go. First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me. They knew better. Thank you very much. Because the reality is that, Melissa, because the rest of the world is not trying to hear the excuses from the American people that take this embarrassment and humiliation of Donald Trump's existence and blaming it. Simply his brain don't work good. This man has dementia. He's got, like, early onset dementia. He's running around the world thinking he's the greatest president on earth because every Mitch Rubio, all the liars around him, everybody with no souls, they're just telling him he's great. He just believes it. But the American people did make this decision, one way or another, either by not voting, by voting for Trump, right? Or by at least letting it get so close that something nefarious could happen, if something nefarious did happen. But either way, Donald Trump was able to get back in the presidency because of the American people. And that is just something in the media we're not supposed to do. You're supposed to venerate the voter. But I'm done with that. We have to stop babying the American people. The American people are treated like children. Like bad things happen to us, and it's not our fault that bad things happen to us and we're just victims of circumstance. But the American people, at least the voting age ones, are grown adults. And the rest of the world is not going to baby us. They don't baby their own populations. You should see how politics works in Britain. It's vicious. Jason. Right, Jason. He originally lived there. It's vicious. And so the reality is, the only population that gets treated like children are the American people who get treated like there's nothing they can do that's wrong. That they just got taken to the cleaners. They was had. They were lied to. No one ever says, you know what? You all made a stupid decision to put a fool and a crook and a thief and a literal adjudicated criminal and a civilly adjudicated sexual abuser. Who told you himself that he could grab women by the P U S S Y? You heard him say it. It was played on social media. Even if you don't watch cable news, you all heard him say it. That should have been the end of his political career. But y' all said, oh, that's just man talk. What did he have to do to get you to see that he was a crook? And now he's in here. $1.4 billion. Think in your mind, if Donald Trump was such a great businessman, why wasn't he able to become a billionaire off of real estate development, which is supposed to be his core skill? Think about this.

[Jason]

Because it's easier to steal.

[Joy Reid]

He doesn't. He never was good at real estate development. Think about this for a second. Just like when y' all watch the Housewives. If those people in Housewives were really independently wealthy housewives, would they really be on a television show earning a salary from a TV station? No. A TV network? No. The real rich, extremely wealthy Housewives of Georgia and of Beverly Hills, they're not on a TV show. It is acting. Right? So when y' all saw Donald Trump being on the Apprentice, did you ever ask yourself why Warren Buffett never hosted the Apprentice? You ever think about that? We know Warren Buffett is a legit business genius billionaire, but if he had been offered the Apprentice, do you think Warren Buffett would have said, sure, I'll do that? No. Donald Trump, who you knew because Barbara Walters interviewed him and talked about the fact that his casinos were failing. Right. How do you lose money operating a casino? Not one, but two. So this guy who loses money operating casinos, who was kind of like a joke to other businessmen in New York, who cheated everyone he worked with in New York. This was not private information. It was public information. And you all thought, well, but he's on the Apprentice, so he has to be good at business. Why do you think that? I'm sorry to be mean. We're going to really quickly. We're running a little bit behind because our guest is a little bit late. But I want to play you guys something. I want to play you this video from October 28, 2024. Jason, roll them.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Yo, what's up? This your boy, Uncle Luke? I gotta say this about this election. This election is very important, people. I know some of you all are thinking about not voting. I know some of y' all are not thinking, why should I gotta go out there and vote? Because my vote does not count. Yes, yes, your vote counts. Your vote counts. You gotta get your ass out there and vote. This serious. We're voting against the orange head man and a lot of other things that's on the ballot. Ladies and gentlemen, you got to get your ass out there and vote. And for you Negroes who are out there talking that dumb about, don't vote for this black woman because of this and that and all these other things, you are the stupidest on earth. Stop playing yourself. Project 2025. What the is this man gonna do? Close the Department of Education? Who does that affect? Dummies. If you close the Department of Education, that money goes toward schools that are in blighted areas. I work at one, and you sitting up here worrying about a skin color. Unbelievable. Project 2025 allows police full immunity to kill innocent black men. Y' all don't understand that this man sat up on the stage and said, I'm going to give police officers full immunity. He might as well go ahead and say, kill innocent black men and women. And they want to ban books. Like his homeboy here in Florida. He wants to ban books. So you give it a Department of Education, plus you ban books, and then you allow Elon Musk to then put the robots in your house for $20,000. Let's see how that go.

[Joy Reid]

And joining me now is the man who tried to tell you. He. It's not like he didn't try to tell you in the most colorful terms possible, none of them. Legendary Miami rapper Luther Campbell, AKA Uncle Luke.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Why would I. I need to wash my mouth out with soap again.

[Joy Reid]

You know how long it took me to bleep that? It was a lot of Work I could for you, but I do it for you.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I can imagine.

[Joy Reid]

Good, brother. Thank you for being here. Let's talk about this, because the reason I wanted that particular clip is that you mentioned two things that actually were prophetic that happened. Project 2025. Check. Destroying the Department of Education. Check. The one thing you left out were these immigration raids. How does it feel to have been right? And are you with me on whether we blame the people or whether we blame Trump?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

You have to blame. And I did. I left that out because I really, you know. Yeah. At the time he was talking about, you know, Haitians and him and J.D. vance, you know, and they were saying some real bad things about Haiti. He had already said some things previously that Haiti was a s hole. I didn't, I didn't. I was trying to hit the points of what was that cause for black people, you know what I'm saying? I looked at it and I, I probably missed it because when you saw a lot of Latinos, Cubans, Venezuelans, and everybody caping for him down here, we kind of knew that they were, you know, Trump. I didn't never think he was going to start deporting Venezuelans and, and Cubans. I never thought that I knew he was going to go after the Mexicans, you know what I'm saying? Kamala Harris, you know, worked hard to try to get the Mexican vote. I don't know the actual numbers, but at the same time, she shouldn't have had to work that hard. So I'm a person who really believe in fighting for my people and let my people know, you know, these are, this is what's at stake in this election.

[Joy Reid]

By the way, I forgot to give you condolences on your canes losing to the Hoosiers. I, I, oh, God. I wasn't gonna mention it, but I figured, I said, please give things.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Hey, don't, don't, don't do. I mean, that's not good. I came on him for joy.

[Joy Reid]

I'm sorry. So talk to me about your run. Apparent run for Congress, what seat? And are you absolutely, for sure, 100% running?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I'm 90% there. I'm 90% there. I put some things in order because I was thinking about it before in the last, in the last election. I was thinking about it, but I didn't have everything in order. And I ran up to the deadline and I was like, nah, I'm not ready to do this. And one thing about me, you know, if anybody know anything about me, when I get into something, I I go into it 1000%, and all my ducks have to be in order, and everything has to be accordingly. I mean, I. I didn't. I, you know, I was just thinking so heavy about doing it, but then I didn't know the logistics of the Ethics Committee, you know, in Congress that you can, you know, you got to put everything in a trust, which I already had.

[Joy Reid]

People are not following those. People are getting rich as members of. I mean, the. The trust thing. It feels like these rules aren't really being applied.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

But. But if Luther Campbell goes to Congress, you know, they gonna. They're gonna put down on me, you know, they're gonna throw every rule and everything in the world at me because, again, you know, it's going to be a person, a person who you wouldn't normally think that would be in Congress. Get in Congress. I mean, in the District, you know, is CD20, you know, and it covers Bell Glades, Pohokee area, it covers Lauder Hill, Sunrise, and it also covers area that needs some real help, which is. Which is a large part of. It covers a large part of Palm Beach County. And so those are, you know, it's, you know, Riviera Beach. I mean. I mean, those people in Riviera beach, for years, they have been balling their water. And the federal. Being that the federal government can't. Can't help them get out of that. No assistance from the federal government of the elected official. Those are things that I look at. I don't go. I mean, I don't get into races if somebody's doing a great job, if they're doing the work. You know, there's tons of. I could get in a race at any given time around here just to run. Just to run. But if I see that there's an area that's. That's suffering. I mean, the Glades are suffering. I mean, when they automated the sugar cane plants and you know, you know how the glaze was, you know, where. That was a big part of the economics of. Of that area, and now it's a heavily crime area, and they're just trying to find their way. Those are places and things that you need governmental assistance. And so when I look at those kind of areas and things that are happening, you got to boil your water and that flows into the district. That's a problem when it comes to me. And, and if it don't get fixed, you know, then that mean I got to get off the couch and. And get in the game.

[Joy Reid]

Talk to me about Donald Trump. I mean, we've had, we've talked about this before. You and I have talked about. I wrote an article about it interviewing you, and you, you at least know him somewhat or at least knew him back in the day. The person that you're seeing now, do you think of him, do you see him as cognitively impaired?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

It's close, because I looked at the, I looked at his, his press conference. I looked at him speaking before the Economic Committee today, and he kept repeating things over and over, the same thing over and over. And I was like, he, he's stuck. He got a glitch. Is it, is it all there? You look, you get old, you kind of get slow. You're not as sharp as he used to be, and he's not as sharp as he was. To answer the question. When I knew him, when I knew him, he was shocked. He was running beauty pageants, he was running hotels and all these things. He was a Democrat, and he, you know, he hung out with the boxers and all the celebrities, and he was in every rap record you can imagine. Not none of my records, but at the end of the day, he was sharp then. The guy you see right now is a lot slower than, than what I knew him to be.

[Joy Reid]

Are you surprised by the corruption? I mean, the New York Times pointing out that he has raked in $1.4 billion so far, and that's just in one year of being back in the White House.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I'm not surprised because we know he was surprised that he won the first time, and so he wasn't prepared to go into the White House, you know what I'm saying? Everything he did at that time, he, it was like on the, I mean, I got to have my daughter in here. I got my son in here. I got to give all these clearances to these people who are not qualified to be in the White House running, running the country, you know, and he had to do those things this time. I think Elon Musk told him, you're going to win because I'm gonna do what I need to do to make sure you win. And you need to get your ducks in order and have your, have the transition crew ready to go in right when you win. And I think, you know, when you look at Trump Cabinet then with Bannon and all them in Trump Cabinet now, you know, it was funny that one. No black people in the Cabinet. And there was a lot of black people in the last Cabinet, a bunch.

[Joy Reid]

Of pastors, Byron Donalds. Where are all of the, his black house pets? We might want to say that have been running around, you know, caping for him. They've disappeared, I guess. Wants to be your governor now.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

That's the new name. House pets.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, they do get petted on the head when, you know, Byron Donald literally got patted on the head in Congress. Literally.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

That's my good African American.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I mean, I mean, I'm. Listen, you know, I'm blue. It ain't blue no matter who, but I'm not.

[Joy Reid]

I'm.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I'm not a dot. I'm not a Byron Donald guy. I can't. I can't. Look, my. My parents taught me better than that. My parents taught me, hey, look here. Birds of a feather flock together. And if you going to cape for him in that way, if you're going to push people to vote for, for something that is so, so anti black and so against everything that we're all about and you're trying to stop us on every corner and then you're going to run for, for a governor of the state of Florida. I'm supposed to just support you because you a black guy? No, that ain't happening. I mean, I, I can't do it under no circumstances.

[Joy Reid]

And let's talk before I leave. Before we, we can't. We started a little bit late, but I want to try to make sure that I get. I'm sorry.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I was doing my crazy show.

[Joy Reid]

That's all good. It's all good. And look, your crazy show, you've had Kamala Harris on, you've had Vice President Harris on. You get a lot of good guests on the show. I'm gonna invite myself on one day. I'm just gonna.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

No, I gotta. You gotta. Come on. I gotta have a great joy read. I was gonna do something on you today anyway.

[Joy Reid]

I love it. Well, I definitely want to come on. Absolutely. Oh, my God. Don't. Why do we. Why is she and I share a birthday? This makes me so sad. I was a fan. Look, I'm a big hip hop fan, as you know, and I think she is an incredible talent. I think as a rapper, as a. As an artist, incredibly talented. But she should never talk about anything. This lady is Caribbean and had nothing to say about her fellow Trinidadians being shot in boats off of Venezuela. She's Trinidadian. You don't have anything to say about these Trinidadian fishermen. Nada. But you're going to run out there and praise Trump for bombing Nigeria and, and run out there with Erica Kirk, you know, caping for Trump and Vance, who you used to criticize Trump what is she doing? And then she got the pedo. The pedos in the family. She's trying to. Is she trying to help them out? What is she doing? And then going after. After Don Lemon, too. What are we doing, lady?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I mean, I'm saying go ahead. It's. It's. That's crazy. I mean, it is absolutely crazy. And you know. You know how man you are. We all.

[Joy Reid]

You.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

You're my sister. You, Jamel and everybody. And when they come after you, I have a problem with that. And I have a problem with Nikki getting slick out of my. With you. But it. But you've been. Since you've been off the air, you've been in a lot of entanglements.

[Joy Reid]

I know, but I didn't get. If I'm gonna have rap beef, at least put me in a song.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I know, right? You got Stephen a. You got. You got everybody. Oh, you just. What the hell is going on?

[Joy Reid]

Look, my name is Joy. I should be. Everybody should be my friend. Be cool with me. Be friends with me. My name is Joy. I'm nice.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

No, no, no.

[Joy Reid]

Hey.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Your theme song should be Joy and Pain, because if you come out to Joy, you will receive the pain.

[Joy Reid]

With the gamble. If you. As soon as you officially announce. Wait, hold on a second. Before we do that, I want to give you one more inspiration before we let you go to try to. I want to see if we can inspire you to go ahead and make the decision to go ahead and run. So let me go ahead and bring in my next guest. He is the great Frederick Douglas Haynes, Freddie Haynes of the great state of Texas.

[Jason]

I want to bring him in stage.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Hang on one second.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, we're going to bring him up because he might be able to fully inspire you to. To do what this is. But before we bring him on. Before we bring him on, Jason, can we just play C2? Can we grab C2 real quick? Because this might inspire you.

Supremacy won. Patriarchy won. Sexism won. Greed won. All of that won this past Tuesday. And we live in a nation calling itself the United States of America, espousing values of liberty and justice. And yet we have elected someone that is going to propel us into a Project 2025 world. A Project 2025 world that is going to dismantle public education. A Project 2025 world that while dismantling public education, is going to feed private schools for rich people and their children. And so they have gots get left get more, and they have nots get less, and they gonna try to make US Pay passed the same standardized test. I'm simply saying, my sisters and brothers, we're moving into a Project 2025 world. A world where the Civil Rights Bill of 64 is going to be destroyed. A world where they are going to have King Donald reigning because of the Supreme Court saying he can reign with restraints, he can rain without any guard rails whatsoever. And his cult following is now so emboldened that they had the nerve to scare our young people this week, sending messages that targeted our young people, telling them to report to slave plantations.

That is the great Frederick Douglass, AKA Freddie Haynes, coming from Friendship West Baptist Church in the great city of Dallas, Tex. Pastor. Pastor Freddie Haynes, welcome.

Thank you so much. And to be on with Uncle Luke, I felt like I got a bar in when I talked about passing the same test. So, hey, Uncle Luke, sign me up. Sign me up. I'm rooting for you. And then to be on with Joy Reed. I. I love Uncle Luke. Uncle Luke said when Joy brought up the whole Miami piece. Uncle Luke, right on point. Hey, I came for Joy today. I came for Joy. I love it.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

You like that? You like that? Yeah, I came for Joy. Did she want to talk about Indiana?

[Joy Reid]

I was giving you some bonuses. You know, you. You gotta give the.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

That's why, that's why your theme shows theme song should be Joy and Pain.

[Joy Reid]

That's right. Before I let Ogalu go, Pastor Haynes, can you give him a word that will inspire him to do as you are planning to do? You are running for Jasmine Cross Crockett seat in the United States. Representatives were inspired by that. Give a word to Uncle Luke on what could inspire him to go ahead and make the decision to run.

Well, for me, Uncle Luke has always been about the people, always about the community. He has used his platform in order to bless those who don't always have a voice. And so you've always done that. That's just what you do. One of the things that helped propel me into this race was hearing from Raphael Warnock, Senator Warnock, and he said to me, I feel called to this work. Uncle Luke, as I look at your trajectory and how God is using you in a powerful way, I just feel you're called to the work. And when you're called to the work, best thing to do is answer the phone.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Yeah. Hey. Hey. Thank you, Pastor. Enjoy that. It is amazing that he. That. That the pastor said it like that. Because anything I do in the community, all the work that I do is always driven by the man upstairs. You know, I go into certain places. I went and coached at a high school, predominantly Haitian high school, that had not won a football game in two or three years. Wow. I left a prominent school in. And it was like, well, why would you go here? And I was like, it's a calling. God directs me in the direction that I need to go in, and I don't question it, because. And I tell people, you got faith, that you don't have faith, you know, And I just go move into those directions that the man sends me to, and then we have a conversation about it. I'd be like, well, why you sent me over here and why you got me doing this? He said, be patient. Be patient. You'll see why you're over here doing what you're doing, and. And the fruit of the label is there.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Amen. Thank you.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Thank you, Pastor.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you.

Oh, thank you, my brother. And when you decide to run, you know who to text.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Oh, yeah, you already know my sister when I'm coming to pop, when I'm coming to Dallas. I got to go to Papados. I gotta come see you, Pastor.

[Joy Reid]

You gotta go. You gotta go. I'll take you. I'll treat you.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I appreciate it. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. Well, let me focus on you, sir, because you're running for a seat that is obviously now world renowned, because it's in that seat right now. Jasmine Crockett is a fighter. She's a baller for the people, and she's a tough act to follow.

Oh, my God.

Right? What inspired you to run? You are her pastor. How did you make that transition from pastoring Representative Crockett to deciding that you were going to try to succeed her in Congress?

Right. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for allowing me to come on your amazing show. I am a fan, so I got a fan out for just a second and say that if I had a conversation with the amazing Ida Bell, well, she would say, I am so proud of Joy Reid. So thank you so much for what you do and for what you mean to so many of us. Yes. Jasmine Crockett, what she has done and continues to do as a fierce fighter for what's right and a fierce fighter for justice. Her fight and her eloquence that combines what the language of the streets with the brilliance of law and order and with a view toward justice is something that has inspired us all. And without question, when we talk about who's fighting in Congress for us, the first name that we discuss around the country is the incomparable Next, senator from the state of Texas, Jasmine Crockett. She's a friend. She is a sister, beloved. She's also a member of Friendship West Baptist Church. And Joy, what's interesting is that last year, especially in the summer, she and I were talking and praying about her next move. And never during our conversation did I even think about, let alone have a discussion with her about me running in her district. I didn't think about it. It was not something I wanted to do. As we say in the church, that ain't my ministry. And so the closer we got to the time where we had to file, that's when there was a lot of pressure being put on me from wonderful young people who had heard me speak during the hearings, the gerrymandered, pushed hearings that were put in place by Governor Abbott Brown nosing with Trump and what should have been a series of discussions about the tragedy that took place in the Hill Country. Instead, Abbott, yielding to what Trump wanted him to do, decided that mid decade was we were going to have redistricting that was racist but also blatant by way of gerrymandering. And so during that time, some young people said, hey, we need you to run. And so I said, no, thank you. That's not my ministry. And then as the year, as we came closer and closer to the filing deadline, the push was on. They said one person said, pastor, we've given you every argument for why you should run. You've given us every argument for why you should, you shouldn't run. But you never committed to praying. And so that was a trip. Joy to hear some young political saying to the pastor, would you at least pray about it? And so I did pray about it. Had a conversation with Senator Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer as well as a senator. And the main thing he said was, I feel called to this work. And that became my prayer, God, and my call to this work. And as I looked at the justice work I've tried to be about and the need to bring justice to Congress, justice to politics, I did feel indeed called to this work.

Yeah. You know, and Pastor Warren, I'm glad you mentioned him because, you know, first of all, would you continue to pastor Friendship West Baptist Church if you were elected?

Yes. In the tradition of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Floyd Flake and Senator Warnock, who both pastored and served in public office, especially with the church serving as almost a base for the work that is being done.

I want to talk just a minute. I'm going to come back to that race in A moment. But I am holding here Hit Strategies data that they've put out about the race, because I hear a lot of doubt about Congresswoman Crockett's run for Senate. There are a lot of people saying, yeah, I don't. I don't know that it's possible for her to even win the primary. James Talarico, who I believe is a youth pastor, you know, he's a man of the church as well, but people are saying it might be safer because he is a white gentleman, because he's, you know, sort of beloved by a lot of liberals in Washington and nationally and that kind of thing. But, you know, the numbers I'm looking at here suggest that Jasmine Crockett actually has an advantage, particularly comes to motivating people who don't vote frequently.

Exactly.

The doubts. And what do you make of that sort of treatise that it could be more the people who don't normally vote who could help her win?

Well, I'll just be honest with you. I think that when it comes to black women in this country, there's always going to be a skewed narrative that says what black women cannot do, which is always a trip to me, because black women have always shown us what they can do against the odds. So I think you have that dynamic in place that is trying to spin a narrative of doubt in our communities as well as in the communities of others who may love her, who may appreciate her politics. But then you have this narrative that is being said that again, as far as I'm concerned, at the root of it, you're going to find racism and toxic masculinity and sexism. And unfortunately for them, it ain't true. Every poll I have checked, Jasmine Crockett is not only ahead, but she's going to energize those who have nothing to do with politics. And at the same time, when you look at what's happening on the Republican side and the fact that they are fighting, the last time Texas turned, the same kind of scenario was going on both in the Senate and in the gubernatorial race. And so I'm just saying, keep on doubting black women and you go find out. I won't say the first part.

And by the way, look, they didn't go the way I want. I would have loved if James Talarika was running for governor because the two of them on the same slate would have been phenomenal if he'd run for governor. I think it would. It would have been an amazing enjoy.

Behind the scenes, there were those of us who Were saying if we have the right team and ticket, we can turn Texas. And so a number of us reached out to him and said, hey, the governorship is yours, let's go for it. And unfortunately, that didn't pan out.

Yeah. But we will see what happens. There are a lot of people who doubt, no matter which one of them wins, that any Democrat can win the state of Texas. You live in Texas, you pastor in Texas. Are the doubters about just either Democrat being able to win in the end, are they right or wrong?

Well, I mean, the reality is that, and this is not known, but Texas has more black people and black voters than any state in this country. Texas, not Georgia, Texas, not Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas. And so that alone lets you know that white we can tilt this in the favor of the blue party. But not only that, when you think about the fact that the Hispanic population in Texas outnumbers Hispanic populations in most states in the union. And so you have the combination of the black Democrats along with Hispanic Democrats and progressive Democrats, that is not a minority in this state. And so as our dear brother Roland Martin said this past weekend, Texas is not a red state. It's a disorganized state. It's a voter suppressed state. That's the other piece that we often forget, and that is that Abbott and Trump and the right, they've done everything they could to make sure that our communities are voter suppressed. And so if we break through the suppression and mobilize and organize Texas terms, and I think that's what they're afraid of, which is why so much energy was invested last summer in making sure that we gerrymander Texas so that we discourage Texans from getting out and voting according to our numbers.

In our next segment, Robert Jones is going to be here. We do a thing once a month. We try to push back against white Christian nationalism. I have a whole montage of white Christian nationalists, what they call, they think of themselves as pastors. And their belief system is so opposite of what I grew up with in church, of what you preach in the pulpit, because it's about really loathing immigrants, really hating immigrants, really hating the poor and lifting up the rich. How do you deal with an electorate, including a lot of Latinos who are of that faith, which is a white Christian nationalist faith. And therefore they are okay with the violence that we're seeing against immigrants. They're okay with the kidnapping of immigrants by masked agents. They're okay with it. And I'm including a lot of Latinos even in Texas.

Yeah. And it's heartbreaking because not only are white Christian nationalists so busy being white and nationalist that they don't get around to being Christian. And on top of that, not only do they loathe creations of God, you know, because that's what all of us are. We are creations of God. But they want to Lord their power over others. And so they really are preoccupied with power and they are passionately hateful when it comes to other human beings. And so the question becomes, how do you marry that kind of hatred with the fact that the Savior they claim to follow said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as you love yourself. And then Jesus had the nerve to lift up a parable where an outsider, where a refugee in that day would have been considered othered and, and hated. And yet Jesus made the Samaritan the hero of the story. And so I just want to know what Bible they're reading. I want to know if it's an edited Bible that perhaps was a slave Bible, a Bible that. That ignores the fact that Jesus was about life, love and liberation for all and not just for a few. And so unfortunately, a toxic theology that basically come is rooted and has in its DNA the same theology that justified slavery. The most brutal expression of enslavement in the history of humanity, sadly, was fueled by that kind of quote, unquote Christianity. And so that's why, you know, they could use the cross and as their symbol at lynchings when they burnt bodies and when they threaten and engage in acts of terrorism. And so I would just say to my Latino brothers and sisters, you know, be careful about worshiping the God with a small G, who is the same God that they worship that promoted slavery. And most of the most hateful acts in history have been done in the name of God, God with a small G. And again, it has been hateful and totally opposite of the Lord of love, life and liberation. And so I just say, go back and read your Bible one more time and let's, let's do Bible study. And when you do Bible study, you'll discover that Jesus was about those who were hurting, those who did not have and used his ministry for those who were on the margins. As a matter of fact, how. How do you celebrate Christmas without recognizing he was a refugee? And I'm so glad that the Egyptians did not have ICE agents who ran the holy family out of Egypt when under Herod's reign of terror, a whole generation got wiped out. I think it was a generation one would call it genocide. And if. If the holy family had not escaped to Egypt and Egypt did not have ice age running around terrorizing that, we never would have had Jesus.

Well, that's a mic drop. Frederick Douglass Haynes, the very appropriately named pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in the great city of Dallas, Texas. Wow. Okay, that mic has been dropped, sir. Please tell folks if they want to support your candidacy, there is a primary. First of all, when is the primary?

The primary is March 3rd and the early voting begins February 17th. And Joy, you know, they're playing games in Texas with early voting and the day of voting. And so we're trying to encourage everyone to vote early. You can check out my website, hanes4congress.com we need your prayers. We need your support. Because this is a fight to save what little democracy we have left as all as well as it's a fight to make sure that America is America for all Americans and that we have moral consistency when it comes to our domestic and our foreign policies.

Amen. You get another amen. Thank you so much. Pastor Freddy Haynes. What a blessing. Thank you for being here. Please come back anytime. Anything that this family can do to support your efforts, we got you. Thank you.

Thank you. Ida B. Wells is proud of you. Thank you.

Oh, thank you to made my day. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Wow, that's. That's a big one. That's a very big compliment. Freddie Hayes, everyone. Jason, can we get a round of applause? I think that is deserving of a round of applause. So never say that there are not good people to vote for because there really are great candidates available to vote for. You just have to vote for them in the primary so that in the general, you don't just have to vote for who you get. Now, if you are in the great state of Texas, I will say that in his primary, in Freddie Hanes primary, there are a couple of other people in the primary. They are not as well known as he is. So he is considered the front runner to succeed Jasmine Crockett. So there it is. And if he is successful in the primary, he would be the person who succeeds Jasmine Crockett as she attempts to to be the person who succeeds John Cornyn in the United States Senate. So please vote. March is the primary. All right. So important to do. That was pretty good. But let me let you all know that the Joy Reid show is brought to you by our friends at Mosh. Here we go. Are you feeling a little snacky? Especially seeing our cute little snacks here. Look, if menopause could talk, it would say, hey, eat better. Well, that body gets it. So being intentional about food is kind of a thing. And the old adage you are what you eat is looking real literal for me these days. And I have found that one of the snackages that does help me live intentionally are these cute little Mosh bars. Now you may have heard about Mosh on Oprah's Favorite Things. It was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger with a simple mission to create a conversation about brain health through food education and research. Maria's dad suffered from Alzheimer's and since then she and Patrick have dedicated themselves to finding ways to help other families who are dealing with this debilitating disease. With food as part of the solution. To get there, MASH joined forces with the world's top scientists and functional nutritionists to go beyond your average protein bar. Every Mach bar is filled with ingredients that support brain health like Ashwagandha, lion's mane, collagen and omega 3s, plus a game changing brain boosting ingredient that you won't find in any other bar. Mosh is the first and only food brand boosted with Cognizant. It's a premium nootropic that supplies the brain with a patented form of something called cytokholine that is science talk for brain food. And the best part is that Mosh bars actually taste good. And they come in nine yummy flavors including three new plant based choices. Jackie Reed Chocolate Chip Cookie, Hazelnut Chocolate chip and Peanut chocolate chip. But here's the best part. Actually these are the peanutty ones right here. Yum. But here's the best part. To make you feel good, Mosh donates a portion of all of their sales from your order to fund gender based brain health research through the women's Alzheimer's movement. And to all you dei haters, why gender based women? Well, because 2/3 of all Alzheimer patients are women, Mosh is working closely to close the gap between women and men's health research. I'm loving my Mosh bars as part of my 2026 get your body together self care routine. And if you'd like to get in on the brain goodness and give back to others, just head to moshlife.com joy to save 20% off plus free shipping on the Bestsellers trial pack or the new plant based trial pack that is 20% off plus free shipping on either the Bestsellers trial pack or the plant based trial pack at M O S H L I F e dot com Joy so thank you Mosh for sponsoring this episode. So I want to play for you guys one of my favorite little clips. And I had to text him today when I saw this. This was Representative Justin Jones, you know from the great state of Tennessee. He was one of the Tennessee 3. He went on Hannity and baby. He went in for grants in your state.

Can you. You never picked up a phone and got off your ass to talk to.

[Robert P. Jones]

One constituent to talk to them and.

[Joy Reid]

Give them condolences because you are making them less pay attention secure to the.

[Robert P. Jones]

CEOs taking their health care. Letting their farms close. You don't care about the American people.

[Joy Reid]

People.

You're distracting from the relationship.

Afraid of immigrants.

[Robert P. Jones]

Because all you have is fear, Sean.

[Joy Reid]

You want people to be fearful immigrants. It's the corporate CEOs who are screwing.

Them over and make it so that.

[Robert P. Jones]

They cannot afford groceries in their health care.

[Joy Reid]

That's who we need to go after. This is not.

[Robert P. Jones]

Let me tell you.

[Joy Reid]

Let me tell you what you're running like this. The America I believe in does not.

[Robert P. Jones]

Look like masked men targeting people.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Shameful.

[Joy Reid]

Okay. Let me tell you what you're doing. When you compare our ICE agents that are taking all those criminal illegal immigrants off your street. Although you can't name a single person because you're not in touch with your constituents and you're too lazy to find out who they are. You are putting their lives in jeopardy. You are putting your reckless rhetoric is putting their lives in jeopardy. You are making your city and your state less safe and secure. You should be ashamed on yourself. And I'm going to pray for you.

Burden in these lies.

[Robert P. Jones]

You are.

[Joy Reid]

Shame on you, my brother.

[Robert P. Jones]

God have mercy on.

[Joy Reid]

Shame on you.

[Robert P. Jones]

Because what you're doing is wrong.

[Joy Reid]

You are that thousand dollars but the.

[Robert P. Jones]

One that needs you to light up.

[Joy Reid]

The threat to the American people in the White House.

It's not these immigrants who are trying.

[Robert P. Jones]

70% of them have been convicted of no crimes and yet these. These goons are kidnapping the them from their homes.

[Joy Reid]

Shame on you. God have mercy on you. And anybody who believes it's right and your children will be ashamed of where.

You stand at this time. Sean. That came real close to being my moment of joy because that gave me joy. He said shame on you. You get $45 million a year to lie to these people and to try to demonize these people who going to work every day and you goons kidnap them off the streets and show the pictures and that little crime scroll. Shameful. Fox. Where was the fact that check on that Crime scroll. What were those crimes? Who were those people? Name what master criminals are being arrested by ice. You can't. You haven't. Because we'd have seen that coverage on fox. I want to play another clip here. And this is courtesy of Winnie on our team, because this is an interesting thing. This young woman, young creator named Ali sxn, she asked what I think is a really great question. I'm just gonna start asking this question to every conservative I talk to, because this is really the best it gets.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I'm a hardcore MAGA.

[Joy Reid]

If you were to envision life in 15 years under conservatism, you know, like the best it can be. How does life look different?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I think what we're doing right now is perfect.

[Joy Reid]

So life is just good right now.

[Robert P. Jones]

We don't got to change nothing as.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Long as we keep on this same track. And Donald Trump's. I think Donald Trump needs to be president.

[Joy Reid]

Again, a very specific question of, like, if you could name like an ideal world for me in 15 years, you.

[Robert P. Jones]

Know, like, what changes?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

And I. What would change from today? Yeah, we, we would close our borders completely. Not allow anyone in our country. That's not.

[Joy Reid]

No, say we support everybody. Say we get everybody out. We actually do what you guys want to do or whatever. What change of it. What then? What next?

[Jason]

We.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

We. We have jobs open up for people.

[Joy Reid]

What next? That's. That's happening right now.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

What do you mean?

[Joy Reid]

What next is you just can't see life getting better than it is now. Like, this is the best it can get other than deporting people.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

I mean, I think, I think Trump's doing a good job right now.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, so you really just like, don't think life can get better than it is right now? Are conservatives just lacking imagination?

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

It could, it could get. I mean, I, it could. I mean, I think, I think we're on the right track, though.

[Joy Reid]

To do what?

[Robert P. Jones]

Do lower prices.

[Joy Reid]

Okay. He had no answer. Because it's a good question, like how you all are saying that life will get better if you mass deport millions of undocumented immigrants, let's say they're all in the country illegally, and let's say it was really a felony to be in the country, and it's not. But if you deported all of them, and she even said if you deported, let's say, 3 million people, 10 million people, how would your life get better? She asked multiple people. We sat and watched more than one of these. No one could answer how life would get better because they don't Think it could possibly get better than watching video like this? This is D3.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Oh, my God.

[Joy Reid]

I took my employee video shows federal agents chasing and wrestling a man to the ground. He works next door at the Valvoline Oil Change and his boss says his name is Gustavo. I started chasing my maintenance guy right.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Down here on this, the side street.

[Joy Reid]

I'll wait till here.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

But he's a US citizen, so they're.

[Joy Reid]

Basically just racially profiling people. Christina, we'll call your mom.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Christina, we got.

[Joy Reid]

We'll call your mom. This has all been documented. Christina. Why?

Why?

They broke her window, that's why. Pulled her out of her car. They have tear gas around children.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

That's because she ran my vehicle.

[Joy Reid]

No, I was right in front of her.

You rammed her vehicle?

Her vehicle. It's all documented. The record will show. That last one was Minnesotans. That. That's. That's the latest video from occupied Minnesota from various social media sources. That is what they think is the best it could possibly get. Watching those people. People get detained, harmed, incarcerated, thrown out of the country. Most of them are just being thrown into detention and then ultimately released. But watching them get hurt, that is how it gets better. That is what they want.

[Jason]

Could you imagine having such a miserable life? Like watching people get hurt is what you get your rocks off on.

[Joy Reid]

That's what that is. I cannot come up with it. They have not answered the question, how would things get better if all these people were deported? The two answers I can come up with are, number one, they don't want it to ever end. They like seeing the Gestapo in action because it gives them a visceral charge to watch people they don't think should be here get hurt. And the other answer that I come up with is that to them, life gets better if there are literally fewer black or brown people and fewer indigenous people, believe it or not, in the.

[Jason]

Country, which is wild, I get you. But their lives are still going to be shit because they are. And they have nothing else to do.

[Joy Reid]

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

[Jason]

Have a crappy life. But hey, what do I know?

[Joy Reid]

It doesn't matter. It may. They want there to be fewer non white people in America, which is wild, right? Because right now, believe it or not, after all of the theft of their land, do you know that this country is all is less than 2% indigenous. They're only like 1.7% of the population. You throw up the map there, the chart there. Hispanic people are about 20% of the population.

[Jason]

Which one?

[Joy Reid]

White, non, Hispanic, this is D4. This. There it is. So if you look at the census, what they think makes life better is that those numbers shift. Right? Right now, if you combine white people and Hispanics together, you still get a white population that's at 76%, which is like 1980s Reagan era. But if you take Hispanics out of the picture and you don't count them with white Americans, Hispanics are now 20% of the population. They used to be about 15%, like a few years ago. It's now 20%. And white non Hispanic people are 57% of the population. African Americans, it really hasn't changed about 13%. But it is that Hispanic number that's freaking them out. The Asian number also rising, right, about 3%. And literally indigenous people who used to be 100% of the population of this land that we live on are only 1.4% of the whole population because it killed most of them. But they, that is it. What makes life better for them. Jason and chats is fewer non white people. Just fewer them. Fewer of them getting jobs that they want, fewer of them getting into colleges they want to go to, fewer of them competing with them, meaning they can get more things they want without seeing visually non white people, and get it without competition. That is what they call meritocracy.

[Jason]

When they get it all, they will realize that their lives are still crap.

[Joy Reid]

Nothing has changed.

[Jason]

There just be no other immigrants that could play that. Then you really probably have to look.

[Joy Reid]

At yourself and say, damn, it'll be the same. I am what I am a piece of and say, it'll be absolutely the same. Before we bring in our guest, I have one more clip to play. I'm Gonna probably skip D5. Jason, let's go to D6 because this, what we just described, this desire to simply D6.

[Jason]

Let me get together, okay?

[Joy Reid]

We'll get. Well, we have D6 or E1. Give D6 and E1. E1. Okay. Yeah, we're gonna go to E1. So don't. You don't worry about D6. We'll leave D6 off for now. We'll come back to D6. This has become the foundational, the foundational base of white Christianity, of white Christian nationalism, I should say, because white Christians are alone in the belief, what I just told you, that there should simply be fewer non white people in America, that the non white population must be reduced to as low as possible so that white Christians prevail. This has become their theology. And they're alone in that theology. In all the different sects of white Christians. They're alone believing this. Let's play E1 and listen to some of them versus non Christian nationalists speak.

[Robert P. Jones]

David Easterwood is a pastor here.

[Joy Reid]

He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul. So someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in the this church about.

God, is out there overseeing ICE agents.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

What do you think of it?

[Robert P. Jones]

I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to, to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship.

[Joy Reid]

But there were folks who said I.

[Robert P. Jones]

Have to take care of my flock.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, but listen, we live in a.

There's a constitution in the First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest.

[Robert P. Jones]

We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus because that's.

[Joy Reid]

The hope of these cities, that's the.

[Robert P. Jones]

Hope of the world, is Jesus Christ.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

We are now engaged in a horrible battle that is eternal that has gone on for millennia.

[Robert P. Jones]

As soon as the Christian church became linked to the empire by Constantine in.

[Joy Reid]

The year 325 or so, the church immediately became corrupt.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

And the message of Jesus's love, compassion and commitment to the poor, the outcast, was immediately compromised.

[Joy Reid]

And we have lost that voice.

[Robert P. Jones]

And we are now, I believe, entering a time, a new era of martyrdom.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Renee Good being the last of note of those martyrs.

[Joy Reid]

Yep. You can't be a vigilante, but you literally can join ICE and be God's appointed avenger. Right, Right. Who seeks to, to carry out God's vengeance on the evildoer. Immigration is evil. So to join the proper mechanism through ICE and to become in that sense, God's appointed deacon to carry out vengeance on the evildoer who is devouring the inheritance of the children, that is a righteous thing. You can, you can join ICE today and, and make Jesus smile as you with a gun pack, foreigners into the back of a van to be kicked out of the country.

Well, it was the result of having.

[Robert P. Jones]

Multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the.

[Joy Reid]

Mount parenthetically in their preaching.

[Robert P. Jones]

Turn the other cheek.

[Joy Reid]

To have someone come up after and say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And what was alarming to me is.

[Robert P. Jones]

That in most of these scenarios, when.

[Joy Reid]

The pastor would say, I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn't work anymore.

That's weak.

[Robert P. Jones]

Is it good that women can vote in America? I don't think so. And here's why. Nearly every legalized moral atrocity of the last hundred years was made possible by the female vote. Abortion and homosexuality would likely still be illegal if not for the female vote. Mass immigration is the welfare state rode on the backs of the female vote. Nearly every modern Democrat, including Obama and Biden, were elected because of the female vote. Even last night, the new Muslim New York City mayor, Mondame won specifically because of the female vote.

[Joy Reid]

Women are the kind of people that people come out of. So you just think they're meant to have babies. They're just a vessel. No, it doesn't take any talent to simply reproduce by biologically.

[Uncle Luke (Luther Campbell)]

Don't you understand that those who supposed to be Christians voted for someone who has 34 felonies? Don't you know those who are supposed to be Christians are voted for someone who believes in separating families and children and deporting people to countries where they've never been in their life? Don't you know those who are supposed to be Christians voted for someone who cuts programs for the poor while giving tax breaks to the wealthy? Don't you know that those who are supposed to be Christians are voting for someone who demonizes immigrants when he himself is married to an immigrant?

[Joy Reid]

And what you see in this moment.

[Robert P. Jones]

This week in American history is you see the twisting of the truth. And this isn't new. Colonizers who came to America said they were Christians. The KKK said they were Christians. There have been mass shooters whose profile said they were Christians. There were insurrectionists on January 6th who flew Christian paraphernalia. They claimed to be Christians.

[Joy Reid]

There were.

[Robert P. Jones]

Check this out. Some of you know this, slave owners who claim to be Christian.

[Joy Reid]

And there you have it, the difference between normal sort of regular Christianity and white Christian nationalism. Joining me now is Robert P. Jones, the founder and chief demographer and genius behind the Public Religion Research Institute, our friend joining us for our once monthly battle hymn against white Christian nationalism. I just want to let you respond to that. I'm going to note for those who are wondering who those three right wing pastors were after the pastor who was pastoring the church in Minnesota where one of the other pastors is an ICE agent or an ICE director. Joel Webbin was the one who said, take up a gun and get rid of the evils of immigration as immigration is evil. Pastor Doug Wilson is the one who said basically women have no talent and no purpose other than childbirth. And the person in the small box, that was Russell Moore, who was the former editor of Christianity Today, who reported that pastors are being told by their Parishioners in white churches do not use the words of Jesus. It's too woke your thoughts, Robbie.

[Robert P. Jones]

Well, thanks for having me on, for handing me that look, it's really plain that what we're seeing today is a battle for the soul of white Christianity in this country. I can just not say it any plainer than that. It's not actually new, but it has come to a head under Trump. Trump has really brought it back to the fore, what it's reminding me of. And we're here, you know, just on the other side of Martin Luther King's birthday, right? And it's reminding me of what he said about white churches in Letter from Birmingham Jail, right? He said, like, what I see among most white churches is they're sitting safely behind the anesthetizing power of stained glass windows, right? When you look at that church in Minnesota, expecting that they can just, you know, sit there and have an ICE agent who's a lay pastor in the organization, who goes, by the way, on public television, on cnn, to kind of defend. It's not like he's, you know, not having a public profile. So he wants to do that and stand in the pulpit, you know, and, and, and supposedly preach the gospel and then want to say, oh, we're just here to worship Jesus. Right. But King was like, King had a few words to say about that kind of Jesus and that kind of worship and those kinds of Christians. And, you know, I think we're hearing that as well. But this real battle over, you know, what does it really mean? Does it really mean that white people can support, you know, ICE agents murdering someone in cold blood? Can they support shooting another person was shot in, in Minneapolis standby? Has that church said anything about those events? Like, no. Right. And that they could expect. Oh, well, what we do is we just come here and we feel good about ourselves and us and white Jesus, you know, and it has nothing to do. It literally has nothing to do with what's on the outside of that church. And that's one kind of Christianity for sure. But it's the kind that these other Christians are calling to account. I, you know, I, for one, am. I'm actually happy to see this conflict coming because it's been one that white Christianity has just pushed down and never fully dealt with. And that's why it's back for us, because we never really exercise this demon of white supremacy from within our midst.

[Joy Reid]

And, you know, I can't get away from the fact, you know, when that young lady asked what would be better, you Know, if you got everything you wanted and all the things happened to your ideal, you know, to your, you know, to your satisfaction, people have a hard time explaining what would be better. And so I can't get away from the answer being what would be better for these white Christians is that there would just be fewer non white people here and that they just are offended by the presence of non white people and of non Christians or at least of non Christians of their ilk because they aren't too fond of white religion, of white liberal Christians either.

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah, that's, you know, and I think behind all of this, you know, behind the women. Should women vote? No. You know, should, should there be anybody other than white Christian people in this country? No. Is a whole worldview, right? That's, that's back there. And it is this worldview of white Christian nationalism. And it's a hierarchical worldview that has, it has very clear hierarchies. And who's at the top of the pyramid are white straight men. Like that's who's at the top of the pyramid. And everybody else is supposed to find their God given place somewhere down the hierarchy from there. And if you get out of your place, right, you suffer the, you suffer the righteous wrath. And that's the way this worldview goes. So yeah, people should really understand this is not a thin like assertion. It's a very thick and robust worldview that these people are working out of. These are not kind of random disconnected statements. They're all part of a whole and a very scary, very undemocratic, illiberal vision of a future where only those very few people are going to reap the benefits right of the country and everybody else falls down the chain of being, the great chain of being somewhere.

[Joy Reid]

And Russell Vogt, who is the head of the Office of Management and Budget and if you don't understand, that means basically the guys who run all the money in the United States move the money around. He is one of them and as a self proclaimed Christian nationalist, is quite proud of it. Do, do these people, you've done the data, you've dug in the research, you've interviewed these people, do they not believe that Jesus was a refugee?

[Robert P. Jones]

I don't think they think about that very much. I mean, you'll hear, you know, we're here to worship Jesus. You'll hear these kind of triumphant hymns about Christ. You hear a lot more about Christ than you do Jesus the man in these. And so you hear Christ the King, these kind of triumphant. And they are Constantinian, Christian Empire Christian views. But if you think about, like, again, kind of, I've been thinking a lot about King. And so the vision that King had, right, of Jesus came from Howard Thurman, one of his mentors. And he carried around this book and his briefcase, often carried in his pocket, even on marches. And it was Howard Thurman's book, Jesus and the Disinherited. Right. And the Jesus that he describes in that book is what he literally says is like, Jesus is with the people who have their backs against the wall. That's who Jesus is with. Right. In solidarity with. That is not a vision of Jesus you're going to hear celebrated in those kinds of churches that we just saw that, that, that clip on. And just to connect a few dots here, it should say, like, it's a Southern Baptist church. Right? That, that, that. And, and so this is the denomination I grew up in. I know a little bit about this. It's no coincidence, I think, that the church is staking out. The hardest lines are churches that were set up. And their DNA story, the beginning story of the Southern Baptist convention is in 1845, it split from its northern brethren because it wanted to declare that enslaving others on the basis of the color of their skin was compatible with, with their vision of Jesus and the gospel. That's the Genesis story of that denomination. And if you don't know why we're in such trouble right now. That denomination went on to become the biggest denomination of any kind in the country and still is. Right. And so it has a tremendous power and that is like a tremendous version of white American Christianity and Christian nationalism that we're really dealing with today. So for people who are inside that world and blinded by that vision, you know, I think they really do think, oh, well, we're just here to worship white Jesus. And the stuff that happens out there, boy, that's not really our concern.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I wonder, I've always wondered how people get to white Jesus, because Jesus is literally living in the Roman Empire. The Romans are the white people, and the people they're oppressing are the Palestinian brown people. So he, in their vision is a Roman.

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah, it's really bizarre because. Right. So, you know, the real Jesus of the text of the Bible was executed by a violent state. That's the Jesus in the Bible. Right. Because he could became a threat to their power structures. Right. The vision of the world that he was kind of painting didn't fit this Roman hierarchical government. But yeah, it's, it's just the Bible flipped upside down on its head. But, but like, lest we think that's too bizarre, right. That vision that's been, been with us throughout American history. And like I said, that has been the vision that's been baked into the largest Protestant domination in the country. It has never been exercised, exorcised, right, from, from within white Christianity. And it's, it's haunting us today and it's, it's killing us.

[Joy Reid]

How do we fight it?

[Robert P. Jones]

Well, you know, I think we saw some examples that we saw one white pastor standing up and saying, you know what? We may be back where those who have this other vision of the church where we stand with people who have their backs against the wall, we stand with, you know, not the power structure, but we stand with those who are being oppressed and persecuted. We really may have to be willing to be martyrs. That's the word he used, right? People who are literally willing to put their lives on the line for the sake of others. I mean, that's the Jesus saying, you know, greater love that is no man than he lay down his life for his friends. Right? And, and that, that vision, not the conquering hero, not the over, you know, hyped, masculine, testosterone driven guy with a gun and all those beards. That's not the Jesus of the New Testament. Right? So I think we've got, I think the way we have to fight it is we have, we have to have white Christian churches stand up, which, which some of them have in the past, but we've never really had, I will say this clearly, we have never really had. King was disappointed in this. James Baldwin was disappointed in this. Frederick Douglass was disappointed in this. We've never fully had even most white Christians standing up and saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the Jesus of the Bible. That's not the Jesus we represent. So we got to have more Christians willing to stand up and say, this is the vision. And I think we're going to call it out when we see it. And we're not going to pretend that we're in the same fellowship with those who are on the side of the empire.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, you know, Minnesota is a very, very white state. There's a lot of black people there. It has really one of the smallest immigrant populations percentage wise in the country, which is why it's so ironic it's being fixated on. There are some other. We're going to get more into it in the show as we do a little more research on it. They have some natural resources in the northern part of the state. That may be one of the things that's catching Trump and the right wing's interest. It may not just be about immigrants, but.

[Robert P. Jones]

And of course, it's Black Lives Matter where that George Floyd happened. Right. It's where Tim Waltz, his former president. So there's all kinds of personal kind of gripes, I think, that are probably part of this as well.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. But what you've seen then, and partly because of the last election being such a huge disappointment to African Americans, you really are seeing black folks pull back in a lot of ways from public protest. And so what we've seen visually is a lot of white people, a lot of. A lot of what I call our spicy whites that are out there. The white people are really out front, leaning in. I saw a video today of some guys who are waiting outside of these detention centers to give the people who are being released, because most of them are US Citizens or they didn't do anything. So they end up having to release them. And so when they release them, they take their phones from them. They don't have any money. In a lot of cases, they've been stripped of whatever possessions they came in there with. And so they're waiting out there with food, warm clothes, jackets. So you're actually seeing this kind of like what I grew up with, that kind of Christians, white Christians stepping forward. You think it's important that that visual is there, that it's mainly white people who are interceding for these immigrants?

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah, I think that that's absolutely right. And I think that's what we're going to have to see. And I do think, even among more, let's say, progressive mainline Christians who do not agree with this, and I should say that, too, that it really is white evangelicals standing alone in much of their support for ice. Right. This is not something that translates well across even to white Catholics or white mainline Protestants. For the most part, it is white evangelicals, I mean, they are the one. They're two thirds of them favor, have favorable views of ice. I was just looking at some of the numbers. Six and ten even favor this plan that ICE has to put people in internment camps Right. In this coming year. And they have money to 50,000 beds they have already been funded to do in this coming year. And we have six and 10 white evangelicals saying, yeah, yeah, we're down, we're down with that in the country. So, I mean, they, they really do stand apart, but they have been willing to kind of be public about it. And a lot of the Other rest of white Christians have been pretty quiet, but I think, I think we're going to see more white Christians finding their voice. And we're already seeing that in Minnesota. Happening.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. I mean, and not for nothing, but you know, the Third Reich, they were Christians. Right. The Nazis were considered themselves Christians and the Ku Klux Klan considers itself and always has a Christian organization. I mean, they're burning a cross. Seems ironic, but they consider themselves Christian. And so this is not, like you said, it's not new. I want to give praise to in by name of the man who we're both now quoting the gentleman who talked about a martyrdom moment. He is Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire. And I will note that there are, as you said, denominations like the Episcopalians, the Episcopal Church, those denominations have kind of been more on the abolitionist side historically. It really truly, this is like it's a Baptist, it's a Southern white Baptist problem. But if you look at the polling that PRI has done, it has metastasized across white Christians writ large.

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah. I mean, the tricky thing about the Episcopalians is if you go in the South, I mean, there were most of the big plantation owners and slavers were actually Episcopalian in the south pre. Pre Civil War. But I think what was happened though is that they actually reunited and they've gone on a long journey, I think, and have been a denomination that really has reckoned with that history more than most white denominations have. And they are now, they're one of the places, for example, that when Trump said, oh, you know what we're going to do? We're going to cut down all the refugee status and we're only going to accept white Africaners. Right. From South Africa. It was the Episcopal Church that said, oh, actually we're not going to help you with that. And they in fact shut down their entire refugee resettlement program that had been in place for nearly four decades and settled tens of thousands of people with the support of the government and basically said, rather than be complicit in that racism and evil and propping up of a vision of apartheid, we're just going to shut the whole thing down. So I think it's going to take more courageous. And they did that loudly, like the bishop Sean Rowe wrote a letter saying exactly why they were doing it. So I think that's important too, that they didn't just quietly do it. They actually stood up and said, yeah, we can't be a part of this. It's going to take more denominational movements like that.

[Joy Reid]

And I will bring up the Methodist too. I grew up in a Methodist church and Methodist, as far as just my personal experience, other than maybe some Catholic churches are one of the more integrated churches. We had a very, very integrated church. We had white, black, we had every, you know, type of person. And that's just not usual. Normally, you know, the Sunday service is very segregated, you know, and as an when I, you know, got older and went Baptist, then the church that I was in were just very, very black. I mean it's, you know, Methodists are a little bit, I guess we'll give them a little bit of a big up as well. Is there something that you would say that you can hang on, that you're seeing in our politics that indicate that maybe we can pull a halt to this before we have full on concentration camps? We did have a concentration camp in Florida. They did try to do that with Alligator Alcatraz, so called. So they do want concentration camps. They had a concentration camp in Texas, which I'm not sure if it's still running, but we are going toward concentration camps. That's where this is going. Is there anything we can do to pull up and stop before we get there?

[Robert P. Jones]

Well, you know, I hope, I mean, for one thing we, we're doing it right now, we're naming it. I think that's what we have to do. It has been funded. I think people just really need to be clear about this, that that big beautiful bill funded concentration camps, right? Like there's 50,000 beds waiting to be filled and money to fill them. Right? So we got to be really clear about that. And I think when we start seeing these things set up, I'm a big believer in like if you look historically, what happens when, when some change happens, people are able to identify bright lines because one of the problems with authoritarianism, it is little things everywhere and then a few big things and there's several of them happening at one time. So there's a kind of feeling of getting overwhelmed. But I think we, I'm, I'm hoping that we can sort of all agree like, boy, it is un American, it is unchristian, it is immoral, it is evil. For our government to be setting up whatever they want to call them, their concentration camps on American soil. And if we see that happening, we are going to have to stand up and say a collective no.

[Joy Reid]

What do you make of the rights vilification of Renee Nicole Good, the deceased young woman who her last words were, I'm not mad at you, man. To the ICE agent that killed her, the ICE goon who killed her and the vilification of her wife as well, her widow.

[Robert P. Jones]

Well, I could say, you know, I, I certainly see a lot of homophobia built into that. I don't think that'd be going on in the same way were she married to a man. So I think there's, that, that's one piece of it. I, I also think that, you know, it's just a cover up. You know, it's just, it's. And, and we see we should, we should kind of know this kind of propaganda is going to happen. And I think that's the thing. The other word we're really going to have to become very comfortable, comfortable with is propaganda that we just have full on lies and propaganda coming from official government sources, whether that's the CDC, whether it's WhiteHouse.gov we're just not going to be able to trust those lines. And they're going to do these smear campaigns, right? Because when they, when they know, I mean everybody watched that video, that's a murder. Right. We saw it in just plainly. And so even when you've got something like that in front of you, there's a smear campaign to sort of say is what you saw is not what you saw. Right. And there's other, other things going to change what you think about what you saw. Right. And it's just, it's power really trying to cover it up. So I, it's appalling really to me to see a victim, you know, being turned around like that and just a smear campaign and with the power of the US Government and our tax money doing that. Right. It's just appalling.

[Joy Reid]

Well, Donald Trump said that the only reason he feels bad about it is that her father is a Trump supporter. So he said the one thing he takes from this murder on tape is that the father is a Trump supporter. So he feels really bad about it because of that. I mean, that's how depraved that person is. But there seems to be among this supposed right to life crowd, really no respect for life. We're not going to play it. But tape of the, of a police chief in Minnesota who's talking about the fact that his own officers and even fellow police chiefs are getting pulled over in Minnesota and having ICE demand their papers even though they are law enforcement officers. He talks about one woman who had a gun pulled on her by ICE agents and she's a cop and she had to identify herself as a police officer to Stop violence from happening to her. And then the ICE agent just walks away. No apologies, no nothing. So there isn't even a respect. They're saying this is about rule of law. They don't respect police because if they're brown or black or Asian, they just ask you for your papers, too. It is almost like they're trying to rebuild white South Africa.

[Robert P. Jones]

Well, I mean, we. Like I said, we. That's the only people who are settling as refugees are white Africans from South Africa. I mean, it's. It's not even, you know, a stretch to say that. I mean, that that's the signal that they're sending very strongly. The other thing I would say, I watched that news conference you were talking about, and it's a white police chief giving the news conference and he explicitly says, oh, and by the way, the officers that were pulled over were not white. They were not the white officers off duty. It was people of color who were off duty who were being targeted by ice. And our Supreme Court has explicitly given ICE permission to racially profile.

[Joy Reid]

That's right, people.

[Robert P. Jones]

And so we're seeing that happening just right out. And they're not even pretending. Speak with a Spanish accent. If your skin is brown, you know you can. Papers, please. And that seems to be just fine.

[Joy Reid]

And I think that we've now gotten to the question of how would things be better, in their view, if they got what they want? That is how things would be better. They want to live in a world where anyone who isn't white can be stopped in the street by masked men, by Gestapo and demanded to sew their papers. They want them subordinated. They do want white South Africa. And I think they're maybe embarrassed to say it when they're asked directly, but I haven't been able to come up with some way things will be better. The economy is worse without these immigrants. It's destroying businesses, restaurants, farms. It's destroying the economy. They don't care about that. They love it because they just want the subordination of non white people. For them, that is enough. Even if they don't, their own personal economic situation doesn't improve.

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah. And you know, I think we should remember too that the one reason it has power behind it is because they've been, you know, the Christian nationalist dream. It is like a kind of. I mean, it's in fact a nightmare. But for them, like, I think it is this kind of fever dream of a world where God has told them they're the special people. Right. If you're white and You're Christian, you're of European descent.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Robert P. Jones]

You're the special people that I've laid out all of these lands for. Right. And you were trying to take them from the indigenous people. You were. Fine. To enslave other people to ensure all the capital accrued to you. All of that is just fine and part of the big divine plan, you know, and if you really believe that, I mean, there's a way. I mean, there's. It's pretty heady, right, that if. If the God of the universe has told you that you're supposed to be at the top of the pyramid and everybody else is supposed to serve you, it's a pretty powerful dream now. It's, in fact, a nightmare. And as we know, it's a. It distorts the soul even of people who think they're going to be benefit, benefiting from it at the end of the day.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, you've just also described the settlers in the Palestinian lands who think the exact same thing for the same reason and are taking land for the same reason. Robbie Jones, your new piece on White Too Long, which is the substack we want everyone to subscribe to. It's called Trump's Lies Are Killing Us. The Deadly Consequences of Big and Little Lies Everywhere. We're going to put a link in the chat, but final thoughts from you, Robby, before we let you go until our next edition of Fighting White Christian Nationalism.

[Robert P. Jones]

Yeah, well, speaking of Fighting white Christian nationalism, I'm going to give you a little bit of hope here from the numbers on the way out. Here's the thing. It is only 3 in 10Americans overall who agree with this worldview that we've been describing, this nightmarish worldview. Right. It is twice as many of us who believe in democracy, who believe in pluralism, who believe in kind of fair treatment of people, who believe in due process, all of that stuff. So we just got to find a way to kind of get ourselves together and stand up. But we're going to have to do it this year. There's no waiting to 20, 28. Here it is this year. We're going to have to find a way to do that. And. But I think if we remember, like, there's strength in numbers, there are more of us supporting democracy than not. But we're going to have to all find our feet and find our voice.

[Joy Reid]

Amen to that. Look, we believe in separation of church and state, but I'm not afraid to say Amen. I'm a church girl, so I'm not afraid to say it. Robbie Jones. Robert P. Jones A public religion Research institute Thank you, my friend. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. All right, y'. All. So I think we have now earned a moment of joy. And this moment of joy. We decided to go completely off topic for this moment of joy because sometimes when you are facing the nightmares that we are facing in this moment, what you really need is just a cute puppy, a cute little dog. A cute little dog can make you feel happy. And so we've decided that our moment of joy is going to be cute and fuzzy. Branston, we have arrived today. When we go in pets at home, I don't want you to swagger in like you think you're king of the jungle. We will follow these three rules today. No fighting, no biting. And the third and the most important. You don't need to tell all the dogs in there, you didn't choose Thug Life. Thug Life chose you. Be a good boy today, Branston. Branston, you know, went right in that store and thugged all the way.

[Jason]

He acted a complete fool inside that store. I'm sure he did.

[Joy Reid]

You know, he acted a whole fool. Branson is. He said he's doing what he wants to do. And if you think that he's gonna behave in that store, lady.

[Jason]

Absolutely.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely not, you've got another thing coming. Because Branson said about that life, he said, I am about that life. And if you think that I'm about to go in here and behave myself, then you don't know me. The name of her Instagram is Branson Pickle Gizmo. Branston Pickle Gizmo. If you want to follow her on Instagram and she does. She. She portrays all of the adventures of little Branston, who's just a bad doggie, but he's he bad in a good way, like Michael Jackson said, bad. Cause I'm bad. I'm bad. You know it.

[Jason]

And I'm gonna do another shameless plug again, please, because there is a QR code on your right side of your screen. Could you please take out your cameras and. And scan said QR code and vote for the Joy Reach show so we can get our image award from the naacp.

[Joy Reid]

Yes, please. The doors of the church are open. I want you to scan. Take out your phones, scan the lines. If you have not tithed and done your offerings on Today, we're going to go ahead and lock the doors to make sure that you don't go home unsaved. We want to make sure you don't go Home unsaved. So the doors of the church are open that. No, the doors of church are not open. They're actually locked. Please scan your screen and put your tithes and offerings in the form of a vote for the NAACP Image Award for the Joy Reed show. Go ahead and do it. I'm wearing Christian Louboutins because I'm a Christian and I walk in the blood of Jesus. I'm gonna leave this up a little.

[Jason]

Longer so y' all can walk up to your screens. I'm gonna listen. I have no shame in my game. Guys, please click on that QR code and vote for the Joy Reacher. We do a lot of hard work over here to make you guys happy and give you all the truth that we can. Independent media is hard to work, and we need to keep it going because without Joy Reid's smile. You see that smile, y'?

[Joy Reid]

All?

[Jason]

Look at those dimples. That's what we need. So let's go ahead and vote for our show so we can continue. Guys bring you this great work.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. Hallelujah. Jason's showing face in 2026, everybody. He's giving you face. How can you not give a vote for face? Thank you all who are listening and watching in the YouTube chat. We see you. We appreciate you. Thank you all for voting in the poll. Can we get the poll result? Can I get the poll result before I go? How do I get up here and get that? Hold on. Let me go up here. Let me get that poll result. Hold on, hold on, hold on. We got to get that poll result and we'll see. Let's see. Oh, I don't know how to get the poll result, but I do believe probably the majority of people were saying Trump is embarrassing everybody. Course I believe that. He was saying, everybody, thank you for the $20 to. What is this? This is ya669. Thank you for the $20. Thank you. Y wish that we could get the poll. I don't know how to see the poll. You see, I got to learn the technology.

[Jason]

How do you get to the poll?

[Joy Reid]

How do you get the poll? Tell me the. Just tell me.

[Jason]

The poll said it's long gone. What was the results?

[Joy Reid]

What was the result? She doesn't remember, but we're gonna go ahead and say I won. Vote for me. I'll set you free. Trump is embarrassing the world. World. Not just himself. Thank you to everybody in the substack chat as well. Appreciate everybody there, y'. All. We'll see you on the next Joy Reach show. Good night. Good luck. We love ya.

Getting back to the basics grassroom level Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel Plenty can't tell the force from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in a dog Injustice anywhere, it's a threat to justice everywhere Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap the party so I'm a real talk about it for sure.