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- [00:01]
Joy Reid
Baking Hershey's Kisses peanut butter blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family with their classic, rich, creamy milk chocolate taste. There's no better way to heartwarm the holidays than by baking with Kisses chocolates. Find Hershey's Kisses holiday chocolates at your favorite retailer. Okay. Yeah. Well, we're just going to go ahead and get started because guess what? We are just in the matrix right now, everybody. Welcome to the Story beach show. Appreciate all of you who are watching on Substack as well as on YouTube. Thank you to all our friends on YouTube, also our friends that are listening on all of the podcast platforms. We appreciate each and every one of you. It's been. It's been. It's been a day. It's been an interesting day. There's a lot of news that we want to get to, but I want to start off by giving you guys, first of all, some thanks. I want to thank everybody that tuned into our specials last week. We've gotten a lot of great feedback about the Abby Phillip episode as well as our special bonus short interview with Marie Gael Dushime. That was a student from Burundi who got into Harvard only to have the regime pull the rug out from under her with their little travel ban. That story has gotten, like, huge traction. It's gotten so much engagement. We really appreciate all of you all who have engaged with her. We have posted her GoFundMe on the show description of that episode. And we're going to be sending you guys updates on her story because we do remain in touch with her. Also want to give you guys some additional good news. We love to bring you guys good news on a story that you heard first right here on the Joy Reid Show. Now, remember the Mississippi man who was convicted of a murder that he did not commit and he wound up being incarcerated in the notorious angola prison, age 47. Remember that guy? And when he was released after in while he was in lawyer, he then came, got an actual law degree, wrote a book about his experience. Come back in, let me put you on stage. Where he was not just convicted, but also denied the record that he and the Innocence Project needed in order to free himself. Well, we have a really great update on this amazing story and his run for office. I am pleased to announce that Calvin Duncan won his race for Orleans County Clerk of the Court, and he does join me now. Calvin. Calvin, welcome. Do we have Calvin? Uh, oh, we are going to believe that we have Calvin. We're going to believe on God that Calvin is coming I do not see Calvin as yet, but we're going to hope that he pops in sometime soon. Calvin did win his race and I want to really thank everybody that paid attention to this story, that talked about the story, that tweeted about the story. Aha. I believe Calvin has come. Let's put Calvin on stage. There he is. I see him. Calvin Duncan, the winner. Winner of the race, Calvin Duncan. Yes. Jason, can we get some applause for Calvin Duncan? We won. We won. We won, Calvin. I feel like we all won.
- [03:24]
Calvin Duncan
Yes. We won. That's what I keep saying.
- [03:25]
Dr. Rob Davidson
We won.
- [03:27]
Joy Reid
I'm so excited for you. I have to tell you, this was some of the best news that I got today because we do all of this stuff because we really hope that people will actually pay attention. Our friend Phil Lewis, big up to Phil Lewis, who's one of the great journalists out there. He's a great social media commentator and journalist. He is the one who posted this on X Twitter, I believe he posted on his social media. That's how we found out he won. I'm so excited for you, Calvin. Talk about how it feels, given your story, to now be the incoming clerk of the same county where you yourself were denied the records you needed. Yeah.
- [04:05]
Calvin Duncan
It's proof, first of all, that God is still in control when injustice is done. That God give us the strength and the path to do something about it as opposed to just looking the other way. So even 40 years ago, when I was having problems with that court and then getting out of prison, then going to school, preparing myself for this, you know, this journey to actually go back and then take over the same office that had deprived me and so many other people of access to the courts. Now, you know, people won't have to worry. Nobody have to experience what I experience.
- [04:43]
Joy Reid
Look at God. Amen. But also look at you, because you took the initiative, you know, you could have come out after, you know, having lost so much of your youth, your childhood, your, you know, your young adulthood, I should say your, your, you know, the age at which you were a young man. You could have come out and said, you know what? I'm just going to make this about me. I'm going to live my life, I'm going to do my thing. But you decided to give back. You know what, what was it in your spirit that said, this isn't going to be just about me. I'm gonna give back in this specific way.
- [05:08]
Calvin Duncan
Yeah.
- [05:08]
Joy Reid
So.
- [05:08]
Calvin Duncan
So, so when, when I started learning the law, I realized that the law is there to protect us sometimes they are. There are laws that is enacted by one or two individuals to cause harm but for the most part the laws are there to protect us. Like I look at the.
- [05:28]
Joy Reid
Half of.
- [05:28]
Calvin Duncan
The Bill of Rights is to protect people accused of crimes. That is a hell of a statement to make to show you what our values are. And just because there's a handful of people that don't believe that we supposed to enjoy the privilege and immunities and the rights that everybody else enjoyed, that doesn't mean that that has to be our reality in this election. Saturday was a statement that you could, you know, you, when you see an injustice, do something about it.
- [05:58]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [05:59]
Calvin Duncan
People is going to come help. It's like, you know, we, it was a grass, a grassroots campaign and we asking people to continue to get involved. They could go to CalvinForClark.com they could participate and donate because we still got a lot of bills to pay. And what is it, what is a testament that especially from New Orleans that first of all we're not going to tolerate meanness in campaigning. We want people to experience this democratic process in the easiest way possible. And trying to bully people and not to participate in it. New Orleans has sent a message that that's not going to happen, that that shouldn't happen and we're not going to tolerate it. So I'm very grateful to the people of New Orleans to send that message that in the future campaigns people should be allowed to participate in this democratic process and we shouldn't be afraid that people are going to say mean and ugly things about us. And if we, and if they do, this is the consequences that you're going to get. You're going to get slaughtered.
- [07:06]
Joy Reid
Well, listen, it sounds to me you unseated an incumbent and it sounds like he ran a negative campaign against you. I can tell you that your team was reached out to me out of the blue. Like I got a text saying you've got to know this brother, Calvin Duncan, he is going to be the future. He is incredible and literally just reached out proactively. That's how I found out about you. So you definitely had people who cared enough about you and knew that you were the right man for this job. So the campaign against you by the incumbent was an ugly negative campaign.
- [07:31]
Calvin Duncan
It was very ugly. Ugly. He weaponized my exoneration and he was saying ugly things that I'm a cold blooded murderer. But the team that we had, my team was a team that believed in the Constitution and believed that this country is for everybody. And that we all have a right to participate in this democratic process. And although this was their first time ever being a manager of a campaign, this was my first time ever being to participate. We brought the best spirit that we could possibly bring that is that, you know, we all got to do our part. And I'm hoping that the young people, no matter what their circumstances are, they still could participate, and they have to participate. And New Orleans actually show that if you do participate and if the other side get ugly, we will send them a message that is. It's going to be a landslide.
- [08:33]
Joy Reid
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. And last time you were on Calvin, you talked about the fact that. That there were all of these records that had been thrown into a landfill. And these are the records that many other incarcerated people need to try to do what you did to go to the Innocence Project or to their attorneys and to get themselves free of crimes they didn't commit. How are you going to tackle that now that you have this office?
- [08:55]
Calvin Duncan
So the first thing I'm going to do is find out what records we still have, because the records was dumped in the landfill. So. And they've been missing. They lost forever. So I'm gonna find out exactly what is.
- [09:06]
Joy Reid
What.
- [09:06]
Calvin Duncan
What we have left, make sure that. That records on the evidence and the voting evidence and the machines are properly preserved and stored. And then I'm start digitizing the record to make sure that if. If we get a hurricane, if the. If something happened, that they would be. That they'll be available and making sure that what happened to me never happened to nobody else, and that victims won't have to wonder how. Why it took so long for a wrong person, for the. The. That. Why it took so long. That evidence that would have freed a person. Why took so long for us to find that record, that. That evidence and test it.
- [09:48]
Joy Reid
Yeah. You know. Right. Because if. If somebody is a victim of a crime, you want the real person that committed the crime to pay for it, not an innocent person. And I think most, you know, everyone should be able to agree on that. And this idea that people just want anybody to be thrown into prison so that they can feel the satisfaction that someone's paying for this crime is insane. It is the kind of miscarriage of justice that cost you your young life and that has done this to so many other people, particularly black men who are disproportionately facing this kind of injustice. What's the first thing you're going to do? I mean, I want you to walk us through what your first day is going to be like, because I know this has got to be exciting. Tell me what your first day is going to look like, my brother.
- [10:33]
Calvin Duncan
Well, my first day. I can't wait to that day. I want to talk to the person that know where the records are and where the evidence. I want to go see what kind of shape they in. You know, that's. That's going to be the very first thing. But I also would like to say that Saturday was a good day for me because I've always, always kind of. And I'm not trying to. I hope I don't get emotional. I always wanted to show, not send a message to my friends that died, the people that died in prison trying to get access to their records. I wanted them to be proud of me wherever they at.
- [11:09]
Nadine Smith
Yeah.
- [11:10]
Calvin Duncan
You know. You know, if they're in heaven. Heaven. I want them to look down and say, calvin, you have vindicated us. And I'm proud of you that you never gave up. And just like I always say, I protected their rights, but I couldn't get their records. And I would. My intent is to protect everybody. Right. Just as much as I protected our rights when I was in prison. So I feel good. I feel relieved that I know now. I know that people that. That passed away, that couldn't get their records, that I couldn't get their records, that they are proud of me. And that's. That means a lot to me that they are proud. And my sister is proud of me.
- [11:49]
Joy Reid
I'm sure. I'm sure your family is so proud. Well, we're proud of you. The TJRS team, all of the chat, loving you. They're so proud of you. You are getting so many big ups in the chat. Calvin, you have a lot of love around here. So please know that we have an open door. You are family to us now. So anytime you want to come back, brother, and give us an update on those records, just holler, throw up the flag, and come on back anytime.
- [12:13]
Calvin Duncan
All right. Thank you very much. You have a blessed day. Thanks.
- [12:16]
Joy Reid
Thank you. Calvin. There he is, everybody. Calvin Duncan. Look, we love it when we succeed. Not everyone who we have on the show to talk about their elections is going to win. But win, lose, or draw, we love when people participate. That's what it's about, y'. All. Civic participation. If you see something, say something. And if you can do something, do it. And if you can run, run. We are so proud of Calvin. He literally is somebody who his supporters reached out and said, please have him on your show. This is an incredible story, and I'm so glad that they did. What a fabulous story. I consider this a victory for the Joy Reed show. We won all together. We all won. I'm gonna give us the win. Well, thank you all very much. Oh, that was so exciting. All right, let's, let's go on to to the next orders of business and some of the news of the day. Y' all notice that Marjorie and Trump are fighting, right? Crazy mom and dad are fighting with each other. Marjorie Taylor Greene is now battling it out with Donald Trump on social media. They're in these social media streets, like, having actual beef. And Marjorie started it out by posting these texts between herself and the Donald and an aide in which she's going through this sort of back and forth with him about the Epstein files. Then she posts this post. This is a one, Jason's going to put it up. And this is Marjorie Taylor Greene accusing Trump of fomenting violence against her by calling her a traitor for insisting on being one of the four Republicans who signed on with all of the Democrats, the House Democrats, to release the full Epstein files. Now, note that Republicans released about 23,000 pages worth of records, which I've been spending a lot of time going through. But it was the Democrats who started by releasing three key emails. And then all of a sudden, the Republicans did this document dump. So she's now going back and forth because Trump has essentially called herself Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, and the crazy lady from North Carolina, Nancy Mace, traitors, because they insist on trying to get these files out. And so she's like saying, calling me a traitor is now causing people to get violent against me. I'm getting threats today. She added to it saying she got these unwanted pizza deliveries, which are basically a threatening way of people telling you they know where you live. So I thought a lot of this very ironic, right, that Marjorie Taylor Greene is now accusing another member of the MAGA horde, the leader of the MAGA horde, of foaming violence against her when she's kind of a veteran of doing inflammatory stuff that foments violence against other people, which Dana Bash, the CNN anchor, pointed out when the two of them sat down, when she sat down for an interview with her. And this is a 2 here is some of that you posted on X.
- [15:00]
Nadine Smith
That President Trump is, with his comments fueling a, quote, hotbed of threats against you.
- [15:06]
Joy Reid
Obviously, any threats to your safety are completely unacceptable.
- [15:11]
Nadine Smith
But we have seen these kinds of.
- [15:13]
Joy Reid
Attacks or criticism from the president at other people.
- [15:17]
Nadine Smith
It's not new.
- [15:18]
Joy Reid
And with respect, I haven't heard you.
- [15:20]
Nadine Smith
Speak out about it until it was directed at you.
- [15:27]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Dan, I think that's fair criticism. And I would like to say humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It's very bad for our country. And it's been something I've thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, is that we. I'm only responsible for myself and my own words and actions. And I am going, I am committed, and I've been working on this a lot lately to put down the knives in politics. I really, really just want to see people be kind to one another. And we need to figure out a new path forward that is focused on the American people. Because as Americans, no matter what side of the aisle we're on, we have far more in common than we have differences. And we need to be able to respect each other with our disagreement.
- [16:22]
Nadine Smith
The Christmas holiday usually unites people and brings people together. So let's do that in the spirit of Christ. Today you're gonna give a few Christmas gifts out to some people that I'm gonna name you.
- [16:30]
Joy Reid
Ready?
- [16:31]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Okay, sure.
- [16:31]
Joy Reid
So whatever you would buy them, you.
- [16:33]
Nadine Smith
Just pick it out of your.
- [16:34]
Joy Reid
Just say whatever is it?
- [16:36]
Nadine Smith
Let's start with aoc. What would you buy AOC for Christmas?
- [16:39]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Oh, I would give her a lovely citizenship to. I don't know if I want to a communist country. So you ship her out of her choice.
- [16:49]
Nadine Smith
She wants that. So you're gonna, you know, hopefully, of.
- [16:51]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Course, her and Greta can go worship the climate somewhere. They can go together outside of America. I'm running to stop gun control.
- [17:00]
Nadine Smith
Open.
- [17:00]
Joy Reid
Borders.
- [17:04]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
The green New Deal and socialism. Democrats fight for their socialist agenda every single day. I'll fight even harder to stop them. I'm Marjorie Greene, Republican for Congress. Save America. Stop socialism now.
- [17:26]
Joy Reid
I added those extra clips because it is odd. It's a change of brand. It's a shift. Right. And I don't know if it's a permanent shift or it's a genuine shift. I don't know. Marjorie Taylor Greene, in that same interview, denied that she is attempting to run for either governor or senator from the state of Georgia. That has been some of the speculation that that is the reason that she's making this sort of very dramatic change. But it is undeniable that Marjorie Taylor Greene has been 10 toes down standing for the victims of the Epstein file. She has been very vocal about costs being out of control, about health care costs being out of control. She's put herself on the right side on the Gaza issue. She has been somebody who's been very firm about no longer sending military aid to Israel, but she's had some longer standing issues with Israel and the Jewish space laser thing. So it's not clear why she might be in the Tucker Carlson camp. You know, we're not sure what their sort of reasoning is, but she's definitely put herself on that, on that side. So there are a lot of weird things happening. And I think one of the things you have to really understand is that there is, in fact, behind the scenes, where we're not watching a kind of a civil war, not even a kind of a civil war is taking place in the MAGA movement. The MAGA world is having a kind of Game of Thrones smashdown over who is going to inherit the MAGA crown. Donald Trump may seem invincible at times, but he's not immortal. And one day the devil is going to give him his deathly reward. He's going to go on, or at least he's going to retire. He's going to be too old and decrepit to continue. Something's going to move him off stage. And the question becomes, who takes over maga? Charlie Kirk, who was thought of as somebody who could rise to that occasion, is deceased. Clearly, JD Vance is frankly weird. He's got no personality, per se, and he does have that brown wife who's, you know, a Hindu and ain't changing religions, even though he has said publicly that he thinks she should. And there is a question of who really inherits it. Who really operates the America First MAGA movement without Trump? You know, a lot of people have said Tucker Carlson could do it, but Tucker Carlson now has, like, a younger version of himself to compete with, namely Nick Fuentes, Right? And Nick Fuentes, who was the enemy of Charlie Kirk. Now he's kind of seeming like, even though he's like an open white nationalist, white supremacist and Holocaust denier, he seems like he could inherit it. So there is this question of whether maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene is thinking even higher, thinking even bigger and higher than governor or senator. Maybe she thinks she can inherit it and she can be the next commander in chief on the MAGA side. I don't know. But what I do know is that Donald Trump, under a lot of pressure, is now saying, yeah, go ahead, release the Epstein files, while still threatening Republican members who participate in doing just that. But the Epstein case isn't getting. It isn't getting better for Trump. It's getting worse. And it's Getting weirder. For example, we now know that Jeffrey Epstein eventually turned on Trump. There's this arc he goes through where he's trying to benefit from his association with Trump and then he kind of turns on him. And by 2019, he was actually helping Democrats to try to take Trump down. Including apparently live texting with US Virgin Islands Representative Stacy Plet during that infamous hearing where Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer for a decade, who months earlier had pleaded guilty to crimes that he committed for Trump that he's admitted to, where he testified ahead of serving his prison sentence. The Washington Post paired the live text with the video. This is a three. Let's take a look. That's the preamble.
- [21:20]
Eric Swalwell
Barack Obama was President of the United States. And while we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented.
- [21:29]
Joy Reid
That only black people could live that way.
- [21:34]
Eric Swalwell
Attorney client privilege.
- [21:35]
Lev Parnas
Yes, I will turn it over.
- [21:36]
Eric Swalwell
You, as my friend Mr. Meadows pointed out, misled this committee even today in a written submission that contradicts your testimony. You have suggested you are going to that. Did you review. Are you going to review it? Break to correct the record, yes or no? Yes, question.
- [21:49]
Joy Reid
You helped out the President or were.
- [21:51]
Eric Swalwell
Involved as a representative, as a spokesman, even in your words today, was your idea for the campaign dating back to 2011. Is that accurate? Yes or no.
- [22:00]
Joy Reid
That's texting at that very moment. Mr. Weissenberg and other individuals. Ms. Rona, who are those individuals? Are they with the Trump Organization? Are there other people that we should be meeting with?
- [22:12]
Eric Swalwell
So Allen Weissenberg is the chief financial officer.
- [22:15]
Joy Reid
Uh huh. You gotta quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them.
- [22:19]
Lev Parnas
Yes, MA'.
- [22:20]
Joy Reid
AM. Is Ms. Rona. What is Ms. Rona's position?
- [22:23]
Lev Parnas
Rona Graff is the Mr. Trump's executive assistant.
- [22:26]
Joy Reid
And would she be able to corroborate many of the statements that you've made here?
- [22:29]
Lev Parnas
Yes, she was.
- [22:30]
Joy Reid
Her office is directly next to his and she's two minutes later involved. Good work. A lot that went on every Epstein texts. Good work. It is very strange. Joining me now is Representative Eric Swalwell of the great state of California. Congressman Swalwell, thank you so much for being here.
- [22:49]
Eric Swalwell
Hey Joy. I'm so excited for this new journey of yours.
- [22:53]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much.
- [22:53]
Eric Swalwell
Now we can just be real. We're not in studio. It's not crowded. We don't have to worry about sensors or anything. It's just us.
- [23:00]
Joy Reid
Amen. Amen. Amen. And I know you were built for this work as well because you, you you guys put some videos out that are a lot of fun. You guys are already ready for the social media, I have to say that. But I have. And I want to note, since I did play that video, I did reach out to Representative Plasket. I'm waiting to hear back. I have not heard back as yet, but I want to get your thoughts on this, because it. I have now been going through. I have. I'm in a wormhole, Congressman, of these. Of these emails. And it feels like you can see the kind of arc of Jeffrey Epstein's obvious influence. And the people he's texting are. I mean, he's texting with Deepak Chopra, which is bizarre, and the president of Harvard, that there's a point at which he seems to really despise Donald Trump and to think he's a terrible person. And then he's clearly trying to help Representative Plasket with questions for Cohen. What do you make of that? And should we look forward to some hearings on this?
- [23:53]
Eric Swalwell
Well, I think anyone who knows anything about Jeffrey Epstein should be raising their hand and saying, call me, put me in a witness chair. Let me help you fill in the blanks. Because right now a lot of this has been put on the shoulders of the women. Right. And I know because many of my colleagues have talked. Have talked to the victims, and the victims are saying, we feel like the only way for this to come out is if we come forward. And they're terrified of that because, one, they know they'll be doxed. They know they'll be targeted by the president and his supporters, they'll be threatened, they'll be sued. And even if they're completely truthful and completely forthcoming, that doesn't mean you don't have to go to court and you don't have to spend money to defend a lawsuit. So if you're not one of these women and you have information like, please come forward, it could save us a lot of time because it's so rich, by the way, Joy, that tomorrow we're gonna vote on releasing these files. And last night, the president's saying, oh, well, this is what I wanted all along. Of course, everyone should vote for it. I mean, what a fucking journey we've gone on from him forcing us to do a discharge petition, doing everything to stop us from passing it, calling Lauren Boebert into the Situation Room. I mean, she's a situation, but she does not belong in that room where, like, the most serious national security decisions are made. And now he's the biggest champion of having them Released when? By the way, it's rich because he doesn't need Congress. He actually has the sole power to release everything. And so we can't count on him to do the right thing. We can't count on Republicans to do the right thing. But if there are people who know what Jeffrey Epstein did or what others around him did, boy, it'd be helpful right now for you to come forward.
- [25:39]
Joy Reid
Have you had a conversation with Representative Plasket about this?
- [25:41]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I haven't.
- [25:42]
Eric Swalwell
I'll say I served with her as an impeachment manager in the second impeachment of Donald Trump. She's also a former prosecutor, but no, I've not talked to her about this.
- [25:52]
Joy Reid
Okay. And I'm hoping to talk to her, too. And if you're. If you're watching Representative Plaskett, please text me back or call me back. I'm going to give a couple sort of reasons why it kind of feels like Donald Trump might have made the turn. Number one, his base is demanding it. I mean, it was Cash Patel when he was a podcaster who said the FBI director has the files and can release them. Now he's the FBI director and he's busy trying to prosecute athletes for betting. Okay. He's pretending there's everything else happening except this. But let me go to Jason, if you could pull up a four, and then I'm going to go to a five. So a four. There are emails in this document dump. There's somebody called Reed Weingarten who is emailing with Jeffrey Epstein. This is in 2018, April 9, 2018, in which he's talking about Trump's handpicked, you know, basically, New York prosecutor just authorized a search warrant of Trump's private lawyer's office looking for Trump. Communications had to justify it with the crime fraud exception. Trump has to be shitting water is what this person said. And so there was a speculation that what Cohen might have could hang Trump. And then if we go to the next element, which is A five, Donald, it appears that Cash Patel's FBI redacted the files to remove Trump's name from what's left out there. And that may be why he wants to release them, because he's deleted himself from what's there. What do you make of that?
- [27:19]
Eric Swalwell
I don't think we can trust anything that Donald Trump puts forward about Epstein at this point. We can't trust anything Cash Patel puts forward. And I don't know if your team has access to my questioning of Patel, but, boy, does it look like he lied to Congress. When I asked him, you know, had he ever told Attorney General Bondi about Trump being in the files, he refused to talk to that. But then when I asked him the amount of times that Trump was in the files, he didn't want to give a number. And then I started at a thousand. He said, no, not a thousand. And I said 500. He said, no, not 500. I said 100. And he said no. So he, he kept trying to distance and minimize the president's connection and exposure to Epstein, which now looks like just an outright lie to protect the president. So, no, we can't count on Patel. It is quite alarming to me that the Epstein estate is more reliable than Donald Trump when it comes to being forthcoming about Jeffrey Epstein.
- [28:22]
Joy Reid
And Donald Trump now, by the way, has ordered an investigation. And this is one of his little truth social posts. He wants the Democrats in the Epstein files to be investigated. So that's his new tack, is to just find the Democrats there is his post saying now that the Democrats are using the Epstein hoax, I'm not sure what he thinks is a hoax involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try to deflect from their disastrous shutdown and all of their other failures. I'll be asking AG Pambandi and the Department of Justice together with our great patriots at the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship. And then he names Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JP Morgan Chase, and many other people and institutions. He's saying it's another Russia, Russia, Russia scam. He's throwing all the greatest hits in there. And he says that it is Democrats who spent large portions of time on the island. Stay tuned. So his new thing is to try to turn this into some combined Russia scam that isn't real. But also it's Democrats. It's bit incoherent, but what do you make of it?
- [29:27]
Eric Swalwell
He is a judicial terrorist, this guy. There's probably nobody who's been more litigious in the last 40 years than Donald Trump. He knows how to delay, to get a continuance, to just drag out a fight, essentially wearing out the other side so that he either comes out on top or comes out unscathed. So the move now to put only Democrats under investigation. Let me tell you how this is going to play out. We're going to pass almost unanimously tomorrow to release the files. The Senate will do the same thing. Donald Trump will sign it into law and then we're going to get, you know, some rigmarole about. Well, of course, because the Department of Justice Policy is we don't talk about ongoing investigations. We will give this to you when we can. And again, these guys have never in the history of their administrations followed Department of Justice policy. But that's what he is setting himself up for. Now it's just a matter of like, do his supporters buy that, or are there more people who are going to side with Marjorie Taylor Greene and call on this than the people who have been willing, you know, to just shovel this for him and, and accept it.
- [30:42]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And I guess he could name Bill Clinton now that Mark Epstein has said that Bill. That Bubba is not Bill Clinton. Right. Because that's.
- [30:50]
Eric Swalwell
We know what that's about. Yeah.
- [30:52]
Joy Reid
I mean, inquiring minds want to know who Bubba is and what Trump was doing with him. It feels to me like Donald Trump's fear of the Epstein files, it may have to do with some sort of predation that he shared with Epstein or it's something else and it's something to do with what it does. Look to me as I go through it, you're the former prosecutor, not me, that Epstein was hinting that the things he knew about Trump had to do with some of the same things Cohen was testifying about. Right. That it was something to do with scamming and financial crimes that he seemed to be indicating in his emails to various people, including to. Including with Michael Wolf. Trump knew were crimes that it might be financial crimes. What do you think of that?
- [31:43]
Calvin Duncan
Yeah.
- [31:43]
Eric Swalwell
Well, first, we know that whatever it is, Donald Trump does not want you to know about it. Two, I've been around long enough and have been involved in enough investigations to know that if he's afraid about any culpability he has in connection to the most notorious child rape trafficker, then it may be he's worried about the culpability that somebody very close to him has to Jeffrey Epstein, and that that person essentially may be telling Donald Trump, if I go down, you're going down with me on all the shit I have on you. I know that that dynamic in power circles exists, and it's real. And so he may feel like he has to protect somebody, otherwise that person won't protect him. But what is most eye popping to me of everything that Jeffrey Epstein said and all the monsters that he has been around and all the atrocities he's committed is that Donald Trump is the worst person that he's ever come across. I mean, that. That, to me, validates all of our suspicions about what kind of man Donald Trump is.
- [32:50]
Joy Reid
You've sat on committees, as you mentioned. You know investigating Donald Trump, it's starting to feel like his desperation to stay in office in after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden and the theft of documents in which he sort of obsessively stole, including classified documents and secreted them in his bathroom at Mar a Lago. These stories are starting to feel very connected to me with the Epstein scandal. Meaning I wonder and my sort of journalistic mind asks what was he trying to hide from disclosure and discovery by a Democratic Department of Justice? What was he trying to take home and maybe market or sell and to whom? We know that he disclosed classified info about Israel to the Russians after a conversation in which Epstein is trying to manage the Russia relationship. Do these things start and in your prosecutorial mind to feel connected, like there's something he was trying to stay in office desperately for. And the last piece I'll add to that, you now have Steve Bannon, who was advising Jeffrey Epstein on how to manage his reputation when it was coming out that he was still doing the disgusting things he was doing. He said we got to win the next election or some of us are going to jail. And he included himself.
- [34:13]
Eric Swalwell
It's a pattern of a person who believes that they're justified in winning and coming out on top at all costs, at the cost of bearing evidence, whether it's taking national security secrets or the Epstein files and believing that you can do that and at the end justifies the mean as a person who believes that they don't have to accept the results of an election or dozens of court cases that say that you lost or a point spread of 70 plus electoral votes, which I would call an ass kicking, that he doesn't have to accept that and he's willing to push us as a country to see if we will. And then most recently, and you covered this extensively, being a part of the effort with Speaker Johnson, whether he was silently complicit or he certainly didn't speak out against it, of allowing Republicans to not swear in Adelita Grijalva. That very much concerns me a year out from the midterms because what we learned earlier this month is that we are on a pathway to victory to win the midterms based on what we just did in these off year elections. And if they were willing to to hold out nearly 50 days to not swear in a newly elected member of Congress, was this a trial run to see if people would just accept it or not make enough noise that when they lose the midterms that they can do this and not relinquish power. Those are the things that I'm thinking about, as you said with that prosecutor's cap.
- [35:40]
Joy Reid
Oh, I have no doubt that they will try to refuse to swear and I have no doubt about that whatsoever. This is how autocrats work. My exit question to you, Congressman, you have joined the actual quite illustrious list of people who the Bill Pulte who is also friends with all of these people that we're talking about in these emails. The, the Nepo baby son of the Pulte real estate development fortune. He's now put you on the list of people that he would like to with Tish James and Lisa Cook, the Fed chair, the Fed member investigate for mortgage fraud. Your comments on that.
- [36:15]
Eric Swalwell
Well, of course, Joy, it's complete nonsense. Just like what Pulte did to Adam Schiff is nonsense and what he did to Tish James is nonsense. And what he has done to Lisa Cook is nonsense. And whoever he does this to, you know, with an allegation of mortgage fraud next week will also be nonsense. But wouldn't Americans love if the guy who is, you know, in charge of America's mortgages, rather than going through the mortgages of the president's political enemies, you know, sought to make it easier for more people to become a first time homeowner? Like what a concept, you know, if that was his focus. And I say that as somebody who comes from a state where the average first time homebuyer is 40 years old. So I'm sure my constituents would appreciate the guy directing his energy and other places. But if he thinks for one second, whether it's Pulte or the president, that me, Schiff, James Cook and everyone else is going to shrink or hide under the bed because of these types of tactics. He's flat wrong. Like I will continue to speak truth to power. You will, your viewers will. And if they see me shrink or hide under the bed or you, Joy, then why would they show up to a no Kings protest? Why would they show up at the ballot box or why would they engage in the way that we need them to? So it's most important right now that we just link arms, stand strong and put this bully on his heels every day to that midterm wave.
- [37:36]
Joy Reid
Amen. And I will note what Cohen was Testifying about in 2019 was Donald Trump manipulating the value of his properties up or down, depending on whether he needed loans or insurance.
- [37:49]
Eric Swalwell
Always be projecting, right? That's kind of the mantra over there always.
- [37:53]
Joy Reid
Every accusation is a confession. Representative Eric Swalwell, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming back anytime.
- [38:00]
Eric Swalwell
Always.
- [38:01]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much. Well, there you go. And we're going to pull up that video and we'll play that on the next show of Swalwell really grilling Cash Patel because it's absolutely true. It appears that multiple members of the Trump regime were dishonest when it came to their testimony to get sworn in to achieve the offices that they did. So it is a thing. Let's take a moment and pay some bills, y', all, because we do have a wonderful sponsor on tonight. And over the last several weeks, several federal workers, well, this is during that shutdown, they went without pay. They went without pay for weeks because the government decided to shut down, because Republicans decided that that's what they wanted to do. And many of them missed multiple paychecks, meaning they missed mortgage payments. It was difficult to put food on the table. And that is why the labor force stepped up then and is stepping up today. They've been distributing grocery cards and they did that throughout the shutdown to help make sure that federal employees and their families could eat, could buy the basics, could buy peanut butter and jelly and just dinners for the week. But the demand, even though the shutdown is technically over, it remains overwhelming. Over a million federal workers were affected by that shutdown. And the labor force had to actually pause new requests for more donations because they were just so overwhelmed. Well, if you want to help, you can make a real difference today with a $10 gift that will help buy essentials, $60. We'll buy lunches for two kids for one week. And $250 fills a family's entire grocery cart. So if you want to help, go to thelaborforce.org crooked to donate and to help reopen the program for families who are still waiting. That is thelaborforce.org crooked let's just make sure that no family goes hungry. And we thank the labor force for sponsoring this show. All right, y'. All. So, you know, we in the world of public facing media people, we have gotten so used to our friend and pal Rashad Robinson being almost synonymous with color of. Basically, when you think color of change, we thought Rashad. Well, since his departure to go on to even greater and more exciting things, we have all wondered, well, who could possibly fill his shoes? Like, who could possibly do that? I want you guys to take a look at a quick video. This is B1.
- [40:28]
Nadine Smith
My name is Nadine Smith, and I'm the new president and CEO of Color of Change. I've spent 30 years on the Front line doing grassroots organizing, coalition building in some of the most hostile territory in the country. Florida became a testing ground for Purpose Project 2025 strategies long before most states saw them coming. In two sessions, we defeated 29 of 30 anti LGBTQ and racist bills in a state where the governor was bent on using black communities and queer communities as political targets. It made something clear to me. We cannot rely on institutions to save us. We must have a strong communications network and we must build power. That's how we win. And here's the thing I want people to understand. More than anything, we're up against a propaganda machine funded by billionaires who are shaping media, controlling platforms, and trying to normalize their authoritarian project. We have to defend ourselves. We have to protect our communities. But we also have to prepare for what comes next. I believe in building power at C scale, with precision, with strategy, and with the courage to challenge the forces trying to drag our country backwards. What excites me about Color of Change is simple. This is an organization with the reach, creativity, and discipline to meet this moment head on. To amplify the smartest grassroots organizing in the country, to expose corruption and authoritarian threats, to mobilize millions. We're actually building a vision of what this country, country can be if it finally lives up to its promise. I'm ready to fight beside you. The Color of Change team is fired up. Our 7 million members and the rest of the country are counting on us to reach full power and meet this moment. Let's go.
- [42:24]
Joy Reid
The song was a bop. And Nadine Smith joins me now. Hello, my friend. Thank you so much for being here. Where is Nadine? I think she is coming to the stage. There she is.
- [42:34]
Nadine Smith
Yes.
- [42:36]
Joy Reid
Hello. Hello. Well, first of all, let's go. Let's go. That. That. That song had a little bop. I think I was bopping while I was watching the video. I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it. That's how them flor. The people do it. That's how them flow rider people. That's right. Congratulations. First, my friend, talk to me about when you got the call and why you wanted to take this on.
- [43:00]
Nadine Smith
Well, you know, it's a. It's a conversation that's been unfolding over. Over at least a month. And I'm a big fan of Color of Change. Obviously, we're both big fans of my predecessor. And, you know, I come from state organizing, I come from grassroots organizing, and in the belly of the beast. Right? And. And what I know right now is we have to confront this propaganda Dome that's being, you know, sealing us in with. With a handful of ruthless billionaires gobbling up, buying. Buying everything they can, all of the social media, but even more than that, doing everything they can to really break the back of. Of the entire legacy media infrastructure as well. And. And you know very well the purges that are going on right now. And so people are looking for a trusted place to get information to counter misinformation, to counter the growing threat of AI that we've all been seeing. And so when I look at Color of Change, I look at the 7 million members, I look at the incredible online footprint, and I realize this is where I have to take everything I've learned from the frontline that is Florida and bring it to color Change. So I'm excited. I'm really fired up.
- [44:21]
Joy Reid
I'm fired up, too. I'm excited to have you in this position because it's going to be great to be able to talk to you about all of the things. And I know Color of Change really leans into holding these social media companies accountable. We really need that in this age of mass surveillance. But I want to talk just for a minute about Florida, because a lot of people think of Texas as being the laboratory for the far right's worst inclinations. But Florida, you know, is OG when it comes. This is the Anita Bryant state. This state has been doing bad things to be to marginalized people for a really long time, and that is where you live. How has Florida sort of presaged maga?
- [45:00]
Nadine Smith
You know, I'm so glad you said that. There's a. There's a great book that's out right now called American Scare, and it details Anita Bryant. And what many people forget is that Anita Bryant was bankrolled. I mean, I should say it. It documents the Johns Committee, and the similarity with Anita Bryant was they both began as pushbacks against racial Project Progress that used attacking the LGBTQ community to make it more palatable to the masses, you know, and so they always sharpen their sword on whoever they deem the most vulnerable to gain power. So the Johns Committee destroyed lives, went after civil rights advocates and. And, you know, went after especially gay men in Tallahassee. But then you saw with Anita Bryant, she was actually bankrolled, despite the fact that most. Most people think of her with the pie in the face and her anti, gay, anti adoption rhetoric. But she was bankrolled by the moral. The Moral Majority. And their number one issue was the Supreme Court decision to integrate schools. So we. So the work with Equality Florida in Florida has, I think, prepared me because it's the same playbook over and over again. They will find a scapegoat. Immigrants, the LGBTQ community. They literally said in the New York Times. There's an article in the New York Times. I'm quoted in it, but you don't even have to get that far. You can just read the first graph. And they say once marriage stop being a reliable wedge issue, we had to find something else. We threw everything against the wall. They say it. We threw everything against the wall. And to our surprise, what stuck is people did not know the transgender community, and we knew we could work with that. So they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonizing and vilifying immigrants, demonizing and vilifying the trans community, and using that division to push their own agenda forward. So, so this is about exposing the machinery, helping people to understand how they're getting played, and then reminding people that it's not billionaires who are taking care of you, it's your neighbors. And we've gotta get back to that grassroots community by community organizing that in a strange way, ICE and the overreach of government right now is creating. We've all been doom scrolling. It's time for us to start hope scrolling. We're all seeing the trauma of ICE dragging people out of. Out of their homes, out of their vehicles. But let's see the bravery of a single woman who was watching ICE harass a man. She stops her car, starts filming. Pretty soon another car shows up, then another, and suddenly ICE is getting in their cars and driving away. Or in a neighborhood where they literally encircle a school and tell ice, if you're coming for these kids, you're going to have to come through us. That's the level of bravery and hope scrolling that we've got to lift up. And I'm looking forward to doing that at Color of Change.
- [47:57]
Joy Reid
Amen. And also the places where they fail. I mean, your former co worker at Equality Florida, Brandon Wolf, was on it. We talked about the fact that, you know, Winsome Earl Sears, she threw every anti trans meme at the wall that she could think of. She went in, she said, it's not discrimination if you want to fire gay people. She tried it all and she got whooped in Virginia. So it's like, that is what I. Because people are a lot more concerned about not being able to pay their bills than about some trans kid they never met playing soccer in a town they've never been to against some kids that they don't Even know. So it's like they finally people are maybe less attention to this stuff. But I mean in Florida people are the right is very focused. In Florida they were focused on book banning. They got there early. They've been focused on bathroom bills. They got there even before Georgia did. Like Florida does some of the worst stuff. But talk specifically about the immigrant piece because in Florida it's quite ironic to have anti immigrant laws and anti immigrant pushes because Florida is so dependent on immigrant particularly brown labor.
- [48:59]
Nadine Smith
Well, you know, we've been experiencing MAGA squared. We've you know, Trump living in Mar a Lago, Ron DeSantis trying to trump Junior and having aspirations and a lot of the, when we talk who are buying up social media and you know, using Trump as their lever, so many of them call Florida home if not all year round significantly. And so, so we've been, we've been operating inside of that. But I, I try to remind people that even in Florida, for example, in the last two legislative sessions we beat back 29 out of 30 hateful bills. Right. And the closer you get to the machinery, the more you see the vulnerabilities of it, the overreach and what is being provoked even among people who may not have any opinion on some of these issues like we did, we did some research about how black voters who were getting pummeled with these anti trans messages, how they felt and what they said was, I don't know a lot about this topic but I recognize this and I don't like it. I recognize what it looks like to scapegoated and I don't like it. And so I do think they're beginning to bump into the limits of how often they've gone to this. Well and more and more people are just kind of waking up.
- [50:16]
Joy Reid
Let's talk about the media consolidation of it because this is the thing that I think is frightening and very difficult to combat because as you said, you have this small set of billionaires who are buying up everything from the Washington Post to TikTok to Twitter. Pretty soon we're going to have a half a dozen billionaires own all of the media, whether it's traditional cable or social. And then they could lock us into a North Korea style immigration, I'm sorry, information time loop where we, where it's going to be very difficult to get real information. We know, God Bless the fact YouTube for still letting us speak and Substack for still letting us speak. But it's getting really consolidated in a really frightening way. How does Color of Change how do we fight back against that?
- [51:08]
Nadine Smith
Yeah, I think we have to raise the alarm. We saw these, you know, it's not just misinformation and media control now with AI, they are generating the kind of slop, the kind of propaganda that is really dangerous. The kind of propaganda you see in other countries that has neighbors turning on each other. So I think we have to do two things. I think we don't give up any ground. No matter how toxic Twitter is. I'm still on Twitter. And we have to create new spaces, places like Blue sky. And simultaneously we have to become and burnish our image as a trusted brand. Like in the, in a sea of misinformation, where do you turn to know, okay, this is research, this is real, this is truth. Because they've been playing this game for a long time. They couldn't get doctors to agree with them, so they just create a phony doctor sounding organization and put out press releases.
- [52:07]
Joy Reid
Yeah, right.
- [52:07]
Nadine Smith
And so we, we have to create within the, the community. Well, that's low. And it's the whole premise of Fox News, right? To, to make everything unbelievable and therefore anything plausible.
- [52:22]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [52:23]
Nadine Smith
It's the purpose of conspiracy theories. So there's a lot of work to be done. But I think the more people begin to build, well, we've got to build the ecosystem of trusted voices in this wilderness that can bring people together, that can punch holes in this propaganda dome and can connect people online and in real life. But we've really got to treat this online space not as a series of tools and apps, but as a realm, as a terrain that we have to fight on. It is a battleground and it is a significant one because we're not watching the 6 o' clock news together. We're not getting the daily newspaper. And that's where I came from. I was a reporter both in print and radio. I did investigative journalism, won awards for exposing corruption. They have systematically, you know, reduced that industry that used to be such a powerful watchdog. So we're going to have to recreate it in the venues that they can't shut us down.
- [53:23]
Joy Reid
Yeah, I mean, I'm not so sure 60 Minutes will be, you know, and I grew up watching 60 Minutes. I grew up with these programs and they are dismantling them, you know, and Bari Weiss is running, is in charge of 60 minutes. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to trust that as a news source in the future. But let's talk a little bit about messaging because one of the things Color change is so good at is thinking about how we speak about things. The right is good at doing things like taking a bill whose purpose is to make permanent a tax cut for the super rich where 80% of the benefits go to the top 1% and calling that the big beautiful bill. In that same big supposedly beautiful bill, they gut Medicaid by $800 billion. So it's beautiful for the rich, horrible for the poor who need health care. But they get the media to keep repeating the big beautiful bill. Whereas Democrats, back when Republicans started calling the Affordable Care Act Obamacare, Democrats would insist on trying to call it the Affordable Care act and wouldn't lean into what was actually good messaging Obamacare. And it was only later that they adopted the term Obamacare and owned it. Democrats seem so bad at this. I know you all are not a partisan organization, but we only have one non fascist party and they don't seem really properly equipped to fight this because they don't know how to fight an information war. So set aside the party labels. How do the anti fascist, the unfascist. They've even tried to make antifa a bad thing. Antifa is just a shorthand for anti fascist. And to me, if you're anti antifascist, your ass is a fascist. You're anti antifascist because you a fascist. But people are like, I don't want to be called antifa. No, say the whole word. Don't say dei, say deaf, say, you know, inclusion, equity, diversity, equity, inclusion. And ask people, which one are you against? Diversity, equity. But why can't the anti fascist side do this?
- [55:19]
Nadine Smith
Well, you know, I, that part of the challenge is the further you get from the grassroots, the more cerebral you get. And I think that Democrats tend to want to be smart and win the argument and Republicans want to jump up and down on the fear button. You know, the fear button works until it doesn't, you know, but it burns fast and bright and hot. And so they're very good at hitting that button. But I think what we're seeing more and more are candidates who are speaking plainly. You know, we should call it kidnapping. The murders of people, you know, off the coast of the Caribbean should be called murder, not extrajudicial or you know, rendition or any of these other words. We call things what they are. And I think, you know, in Florida, one of the biggest examples is the Republicans got idea that if they called something parents rights, it was Teflon. They can get away with anything. And so they introduced a bill and we quickly Labeled it not by their pr marketing around parents rights. We called it the don't say Gave the. And I know that they hated the fact that people don't remember the name they gave the bill. They only remember us telling them what the bill does. Right. And so to me, that's an example of how you take control of the narrative. You describe what it does, who it hurts and engage people both emotionally and intellectually. But it's not about trying to sound smart people. You know, it's interesting. The last time I think you and I were in the same place was at Howard. Right. At the journalism conference. And there was a, in a, in a sea of mostly black students. There was one tall white man from Florida who got up and said, I'm, you know, I'm from Delray beach and I'm maga. Or at least I was six, six months ago. But he and I ended up in a long conversation in the hallway and it was fascinating because I, I'm pretty sure he was a Nader, Obama, Sanders, Trump voter. Right. He wasn't drawn by white supremacist ideology. What he was drawn to was disruption since the system is fundamentally broken. And I'm going to back whoever doesn't seem like they're part of the system.
- [57:44]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [57:44]
Nadine Smith
And so I think there are a lot of people that fit in that category. They, they are feeling that their anger is being mirrored and affirmed in. By the incendiary rhetoric of the Republicans while Democrats are trying to say, hey, things aren't that bad, everything's okay. Right. And so emotionally getting nourished over there. But I think right now we're seeing, and I think the elections that we just went through are demonstration that the affinity isn't necessarily to the most hateful language. It is a sense that something is really broken. And I want to know that you recognize it. You see the hurt, you see the struggle of me and my family, and you'll do something about it. Without a doubt. There are people who are absolute racists who are championing the MAGA world, but I think there are a lot more people who fit into the category of somebody like rich and we can reach them.
- [58:45]
Joy Reid
I agree. And there are a lot of people who also fit into the category or they're going to go whoever they think is going to put money in their pocket. There are just people who are just pocketbook voters. They are going to go to whoever they think is going to give them a stimmy or some coins. And there are some voters like that who voted in the last election against Kamala Harrison for Trump because they just thought he was going to, they're not paying attention to anything else. They just thought he was going to pay them. And when you tell people you're going to pay them, I mean, I remember telling an unnamed Senate candidate, stop talking about anything other than money. You need to tell people, vote for me, I'm going to put $2,000 in your pocket and that's it. Because all people care about is they're hungry and hurting and they need a stimulus check. And Democrats need to say, I'm going to give you a stimulus check because we did it the first time. So just, just don't talk all the high intellectual stuff. Just talk about the things people care about. They want to eat, they want to pay their bills, they want to be able to afford health care. Keep it simple and don't let Republicans cloud the issue with bullshit. But I think Democrats, as you said, they get so intellectual about it, they forget that you're talking to ordinary people who don't spend all day and night on politics. It's not all they do. They have other things. Last word to you. Tell me what your vision is for Color of Change and how people can get involved.
- [59:55]
Nadine Smith
Yes. So, you know, as we, we've been talking about, the main thing which is we have got to stop this propaganda. You know, it's insidious. We have to create not only a place that is trusted, but a pipeline. But the what the right does very well is they create an ecosystem of that that continues to grow and expand and amplify their messages. We've got to counter that by building a bigger pipeline. In fact, there are more people that share our values that are speaking, but they're getting throttled and we don't coordinate in the same way that the right does. So that's job one is to build that trust and create that talent pipeline so that we begin to amplify the voices of equality, democracy that will push back against this fascist machine. And then the other thing, very real, is that there are incredible solutions. There are incredible GS, there are demonstrations of courage and solidarity happening every day all over the country. And we need to be amplifying those because we need to stop doom scrolling and we've got to start hope scrolling. We've got to start seeing these moments of courage and commitment and solidarity that, that give us a roadmap for how you push back. And so we're going to spend time lifting up these great ideas that are coming up like sprouts out of the ground and what Color of Change can bring is the infrastructure to amplify it, help replicate it and make those voices heard. But I feel like we are at this tipping point. And the thing I will leave you with, Joy, is this backlash has always been a lagging indicator. By the time they come at us with everything they've got, they've already conceded that they've lost. And so while we defend communities and while we fight back, we also have to prepare for the incredible transformational power that is being built right now, community by community, in the face of this government reach. We've seen it before, and we don't want to squander that moment. They think they're pulling us backwards, but what they're doing is creating the dynamic tension in this slingshot that when we break their grip, we're not just going to come back to where we were. We're going to build from the role the things that should have been to begin with. And I'm excited about that.
- [62:20]
Joy Reid
Nadine Smith, the organization's Color of Change. You can find it@colorofchange.org, we're going to put the link in the description to the show. Nadine, I'm so proud of you. Congratulations, my friend. Come back anytime. Just wave a flag and just say, hey, we need to come on and talk about some things. And the door is always open. Thank you. Thank you. And congratulations.
- [62:38]
Nadine Smith
Absolutely. Take care.
- [62:40]
Joy Reid
We love it. Like, the Color of Change has entered the Nadine era. And we love it because he listen, Florida people can come at it. Florida people don't play. Thank you all for tuning into that. That was really great. And welcome to our hour two of the Joy Reid Show. And all of you, all who are talking about the fear and sort of panic that you're seeing on the other side, there was one person I saw that said the people who just want to burn it all down are actually the most dangerous because they're willing to burn it all down with whoever is coming along. In some cases, yes, but in some cases, they just want to disrupt her. There is a such thing as a person that voted for Obama, Obama and then Trump, because they're just like whoever they think is going to flip the tables, that's who they're going to vote for. That is a kind of a person who will flip back the other way as well. And I'm not saying you want to do all persuasion. Sometimes you actually just have to beat the other side and then you're going to take care of them anyway. We don't necessarily want to do all persuasion, but you have to at least have a message that makes sense. And in this, the start of this hour, we're going to talk about something that I think is essential to everybody because health is wealth, as they say. But also if you're not well and you don't have good health, you really can't get anywhere. Before I get to that. But I want to do a quick programming Note. Tomorrow night, 7pm we're going to air a special show length interview with our friend comedian Roy Wood Jr. Who has a fantastic and hilarious new book out. And we also have a great contest which is going to be associated with that interview. So stay tuned for that. It's going to be really great. We're also gearing up for our blackout for Black Friday. That's just a little tease. What we're going to be doing on Black Friday, we're going to have a special subscribe a thon because we want to make sure that everybody is getting in on this independent new media. We want to have everyone in this space. We want to grow our family as big as possible because as Nadine said, we are reaching a world in which we can't necessarily trust all mainstream media to give us the facts and nothing but the facts, the truth and nothing but the truth, unfiltered and unleavened by their need to do business with the administration. And this is one administration that demands that people do business with them and maybe specifically do business with Trump. I mean, he's not going all around the world to do diplomacy. He's getting money. And we don't know how much money he may be siphoning off of the businesses in this country because he basically is a mob boss. So we really want to make sure that we have independent media that can spend speak back and speak truth to power. And we appreciate everyone who has subscribed. I mentioned to y' all that we we hit350,000 subscribers. We have now cleared that, fully cleared that. And we are heading toward we're going to get to that 400, 000 soon. We're going to try to get to 500, 000 by the birthday. We're going to really try to do that. So stay tuned because we've got so much more coming. But I want to start this segment, this little C block by playing you, Donald Trump. And this was from a few days ago. Taking no responsibility, literally taking no responsibility despite being the president United States for the coming decline of and skyrocketing Cost of Obamacare. Take a listen. I don't weigh in, but we're looking at all of that right now. We're looking at all of it. There are a lot of great ideas.
- [65:43]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Out there, including for health care, because Obamacare is a disaster investor.
- [65:47]
Joy Reid
The Obamacare premium is going to go up 17 or 18%. And that's not my fault. I didn't want Obamacare. So there's a lot that he said there that I think we need to break down. He says, it's not my fault. First of all, you're the president, United States. It's like being the quarterback on a team that loses the super bowl and saying, it's not my fault. Yeah, it's your fault, buddy. You're in charge. And number two, you're the one who demanded that your party pass what you called in an act of pure Orwellian propaganda, the big beautiful bill whose purpose was to destroy Obamacare. Because as you said at the end, and that was actually Trump being honest because he's not smart enough to hide his true feelings. He said, I never wanted Obamacare. We know that you never wanted Obamacare. Your party never wanted Obamacare. When they're being honest, they will tell you that they, they all voted against it, by the way. None of them, not one of them, voted to give 20 million Americans access to healthcare. Let's remember that the Republican Party universally opposed expanding Medicaid to allow people who were not completely impoverished to get it. That's what most of Obamacare is. And they opposed the piece of Obamacare that allowed people to purchase healthcare through an exchange. There were federal exchanges and state exchange. That's what Obamacare was. It was a way to expand health care to 20 to 30 million people who had no health care at all. They also opposed a very key part of Obamacare and probably the key part of Obamacare, which was to say that insurance companies like United Healthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield, who used to deny people the ability to even purchase a plan if they had a preexisting condition. So if you had, you, you'd had, you know, cancer in the past, you couldn't get a policy. If you had had a heart attack or stroke in the past, you couldn't get a policy. Because what insurance companies are in the business of whether you're buying auto insurance, they want people who've never had an auto accident because they don't want to ever have to pay the premium. So they look at you and they rate you when you get auto insurance based on the fact that You've never had an auto accident. If you've had an auto accident, they want to charge you a whole lot of money because they say you're a bad risk. Health insurance works the same way. What health insurance want is for healthy people to sign up who are young and are not going to get sick, so they never have to actually pay out for cancer treatment. So if you had cancer in the past, they think it might come back. They don't want to insure you. They used to be able to say, yes, sorry, you can't have a policy at all. Obamacare made that illegal. Another thing, Republicans and Republicans vehemently disagreed. They said the free market should decide. Insurance companies should be able to say no if they don't want to give you insurance because they think you're a bad risk. Or they said you should go into what they called a risk pool, meaning all the sick people pull themselves together and then they try to sneak and buy insurance as a pool of a bunch of sick and old people. And insurance companies don't want to insure sick and old people. But now they have to because of Obamacare. Republicans also oppose the part of Obamacare that allowed parents to keep their children on their insurance if they had private insurance until they're 26 years old. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that's the only way her kids have insurance because her children are in their 20s and up until 26, they get to free ride on their parents. Republicans, if y', all, I don't know if y' all are old enough to remember the actual debate over Obamacare. These are the things Republicans said. Absolutely no. They vehemently opposed all of these things. Obamacare also made it mandatory for every American to be able to get free screenings, meaning you can go in and you can get a mammogram and you don't have to pay out of pocket. You go in, you get your mammogram, you walk out like they do all over Europe. You go in to get a cancer screening and you walk out without a bill and all you pay is a co pay. That is part of Obamacare. If Obamacare goes away, everything I just mentioned also goes away. Understand that Trump wants that to go away. Now, what is their alternative to Obamacare? Because they have tried nearly 70 times to fully repeal Obamacare. Republicans have tried over and over again to simply fully repeal it. What was their idea to replace it? Nothing. Trump had concepts of a plan. Remember that when Vice President Kamala Harris said he had concept? They have no plan. They have no plan. They Just want Obamacare to go away because the insurance companies and insurance industry give them a lot of money and they want to go back to being able to profit in an exponential way by not insuring sick and old people the second. And somebody pointed out young adults are sick too. That is correct. Thank you very much, Leslie Wyatt. Young, young people get sick as well. Children get cancer. Lots of people get sick. And insurance companies want nothing to do with sick people. They just want healthy people to buy the insurance and then never use it, just like auto insurance companies. Okay, let me just explain this to you. So now Obamacare passes. And recall that when Obamacare passed, the Tea Party movement, which had been founded initially to oppose cram down, which is where Democrats and the incoming Obama administration promised to allow people who were underwater in their mortgages to only pay back the value of their home and cram down the money that the bank gets. Republicans opposed that. And the Tea Party movement went to war over that. They said, you are not going to do cram. And they actually got the administration to back down. I don't think they should have backed down. Vehemently opposed it. But they also were formed with the Koch brothers funding this fake grassroots Tea Party movement to oppose Obamacare. And I want you to understand that the opposition to universal health care goes all the way back to Social Security and Medicaid. When Social Security was passed, Social Security, Medicare, I should say, when the Social Security act was passed, the national association of Physicians vehemently opposed it. So much so, and they were so vehement that they never could get universal health care into the Social Security act except for old people. That's why you have Medicare. So they were willing to do it for the elderly, but not for the poor. Because these, these doctors were like the American Medical Association. They were like, hell no. And they opposed it to the bitter end all the way up until the 1960s, which is when you got Medicare finally passed. The Social Security act was expanded to include Medicare in 1960, in the mid-1960s, and they still couldn't get the poor involved in it. The only way they got the poor to get health care was they created something called Medicaid. That rather than being the federal government directly paying you money, paying for your health care, paying into it so you could get cheaper health care as an elderly person for the poor. They were like, make it a block grant. Because then the federal government gives each state a block of money and then they pay for the, for the met, for the health care for the poor. That is a very inefficient way of doing health care. What would make much more sense is if everyone got Medicare, because Medicare is the federal government directly paying and being the main provider of resources so that that big giant pool of 350 million people, if we all had Medicare, everything would be cheaper because it would be a giant pool. A pool of people can make can get things cheaper than one person. If a bunch of you get together and you want to go on vacation and you all split it and the vacation costs $10,000 and each of you pays 1,000, you each pay $1,000 instead of one person paying 10,000. You see how that works? That's how insurance works, too. So when the opposition to Obamacare has been consistent. When Democrats passed Obamacare, they initially proposed, what if we just took Medicare, which is the Social Security act, health care for elderly people, and just expanded the age down, and we said, instead of making it a separate Medicaid for the poor, which is the block grant one, why don't we just take the federal Medicare one and make it for all? Medicare for all. That would have been simple. You wouldn't have had to change a lot and we'd all get health care. Of course, the insurance industry said, hell no, we don't want to do that. The medical community, the doctor said, hell no, we don't want to do that. That's theft of our labor. We don't want to give you that. And Joe Lieberman, who was a Democrat but switched to independent because he lost a primary to a more progressive Democrat, so he switched parties and became independent, came back, and as he said no, his wife was in the healthcare industry. We could have had Medicare for all back then instead of Medicaid, because Medicaid is too hard to play with. If you are the governor of a red state, you can be real stingy with what you give the poor people in your state. If you're a generous state like California, you give your people more. People who have Medicaid in New York get more than people who have Medicaid in Louisiana. You see what I'm saying? Because each state gets to decide the vibe. And then for Obamacare, which is just Medicaid plus for the poor, right? The part of Obamacare that poor people is just expanded Medicaid, and many states literally refuse to do it, even though the reimbursement was 100% for the first 10 years from the federal government. So this is the fight that we're having. When Trump says he's not responsible, what you have to understand is that Republicans never wanted there to be anything like universal health care at all. They did not want to have the expanded Medicaid that let poor people who are not quite as poor get Medicaid. They didn't want Medicare for all, nor do they want Medicaid, which is Obamacare plus, which is the Medicaid plus, which is Obamacare. And so now they see after 70 attempts to repeal it, that didn't work. Remember John McCain did the thumbs down the one time they got within one vote. He said no and yes. He is jealous. Tammy, who's in, in, in in the thread. Yes, he's jealous of Obama cuz Obama has Obamacare, which the Republicans called it Obamacare to make people hate it. But people love it and it's Obamacare and even red state MAGA's level Obamacare because they finally have health care. They finally have for the first time going to the dentist and stuff, right? They now see the light of where they can get rid of Obamacare. How are they going to do it? I'm about to introduce our guest in a minute. But how they're going to do it is they're going to stop paying the premium supports, which is what makes the medical care affordable for normal person, an Uber driver, a Lyft driver, an entrepreneur. The supports make it affordable for them. If you take those supports away now, people pay the real price and it'll be so unaffordable that people will turn against Obamacare. They'll hate it so much that they will demand that it be repealed. That is the goal. So Democrats who flaked out on us and allowed them to go forward and open the government without getting a deal on this, they got played. Because when this comes up in December, I promise you, Republicans will not vote to put the premium supports back on because they finally see their opportunity to end Obamacare, period. And you know what? They want to go back to the old system where Republicans, their donors can get really, really rich. Joining Me now is Dr. Rob Davidson. He's the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, a West Michigan ER physician for more than 25 years, and the host of the Paging America podcast. Dr. Davidson, please correct me if I got anything wrong there.
- [77:16]
Dr. Rob Davidson
No, I came in there the last few minutes and no, I think you're spot on. I mean, you're seeing them trying to drive a final stake into the Affordable Care act or Obamacare. They're just kind of doing an end around this time rather than taking an all out, straight up vote on it.
- [77:31]
Joy Reid
So let's Talk first about the cost of these Obamacare plans, which are about to get super, really expensive. One of the critiques that Republicans are using to justify not putting the supports back on, and I actually think it's a legit, legitimate critique, if I'm being honest. The Cato Institute put it out that when the premium supports are paid, they are paid directly to insurance companies. This is what subsidizes your care. But United Healthcare gets the check. Is that the only way that you could do premium support? Is there some way to do these premium supports in some way that the insurance companies don't get the check?
- [78:10]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Well, I mean, if they're charging premiums, I mean, that goes to them, right? So then. But it's just funny that so many Republicans now are so worried about big insurance companies profits, right? I mean, their entire tax bill was geared towards large corporations and, you know, multimillionaires and billionaires. You look at the CEOs of these health insurance companies making 20, 30 million a year profits. You know, United Healthcare profits, I think last year, you know, something like 16, $17 billion. I mean, these are hugely profitable industries. And, you know, Republicans have been carrying their water and the water of big pharma and the big hospital systems and private equity that own them and own a lot of doctors nowadays. So it's curious that all of a sudden they have this moment where they're railing on all these profits. I mean, you're right, it is a problem. And that needs to be figured out. And there needs to be whether it's a commission or some kind of deal that happens. The problem is we're now about six weeks away from the end of the year where people's health insurance premiums are going to double, triple, some of these folks. And so we need to throw people a lifeline by, by extending these, these premium subsidies, these tax credits that make health insurance more affordable. Not quite. Maybe affordable for some people, but definitely more affordable and make it so that people can actually have insurance, can actually go to the doctor. We got to do that for at least a year, Right.
- [79:36]
Joy Reid
And then I have an idea. Yeah. What if we did the same. Okay, this is going to sound crazy, right? What if we took Medicare, which everybody that is elderly that's on it loves, because it covers everybody, regardless of whether you're sick or healthy, whatever. And we just took Medicare and we just gave it to everybody. We could call it. I'm now. I'm now just. I'm literally funny with you. We just. Medicare for all. Is it Medicare? Yeah.
- [80:02]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I mean, that's one answer, right? And I know I met my former senator here, Debbie Stabenow, had a Medicare for 55 and up, right? Like, trying to. There's others that had, you know, automatic Medicare enrollees at birth. And you kind of do it that way because you're bringing in healthy people that don't cost as much. I think there's a lot of different ideas in how you actually fix this. There's ideas on, you know, doing something about why are health insurance companies making so much profit on all this. Right. There's all sorts of ideas. The problem is you can't. And you can't have these ideas come to fruition in six weeks. You know, these guys are like, well, we got a plan. And this plan was basically Trump spitballing on truth social, posting something, and then everyone else had to scramble. I mean, we heard about this in his first term. We heard about this. Now, a lot of his staff, and particularly people in Congress, they have no idea what policy preferences the president has until they see it posted on social media. And then they have to scramble to come up with something to back that up. That's what they're doing now right there. Trump had this idea, well, we won't give the subsidies to the insurance. We'll give it to the people. Just give them cash and let them go buy their health care. Like, how the hell does he think that's going to work? We're going to have a person go and just negotiate their health insurance premium with United Health Care, like, one by one. You know, the. The power of the ACA is the collective, you know, and everyone being in it together. Let's go back. I mean, Republicans started to break the ACA a while ago when they got rid of the individual mandate, right? They essentially got rid of it. And in the courts very early on, they got rid of it in law in 2017, they've undermined it. You mentioned expanded Medicaid in the 10 states that haven't expanded Medicaid, Florida and Texas being huge states, very red states. They're all red states that didn't do it. And what that does is it gets more of those folks into the Affordable Care Act. We got people in the lower end of the income stream that have a harder time getting into a doctor, maybe have higher healthcare costs overall, increasing the risk of that pool, making it, you know, less affordable for everyone. They've been breaking this thing since the beginning. This is just their attempt to get it gone for good. It's really despicable.
- [82:06]
Joy Reid
Well, I mean, I, you know, look, even I said, I'm like the Democrats, if they really wanted to play the Republicans to the left when they were in the government shutdown phase, could have just said, okay, Trump, let's give the premiums to the people and see what the Republicans did. I think it would have been a messaging win, honestly, for them, if they had said. Because then people would have been fighting for money for themselves. Right. And I feel like the Democrats didn't have any ideas whatsoever. And I agree with you that it's not workable necessarily to have people individually shop for their insurance. It's like there's no. Trump has no ideas either. It's like no one thought of a way to do this because we're not doing it the way every other civilized country does it, which is universal health care. We're just, we're agonizing over something that every other Western nation has actually solved. It's. Yeah, we pay more for it than any other country for it.
- [82:52]
Dr. Rob Davidson
We do. We pay more, you know, times two, times three for, in some cases. Of what. Of what we pay as a system overall. And it's all, I mean, affordability. Right. That was the issue in the election a couple Tuesdays ago. That's still the issue for people. It's still going to be the issue. You said you don't think they'll vote for it. I tend to agree because I don't think the Republican caucus can all get together and do this. But there's a lot of very vulnerable Republicans in districts around this country that are begging Mike Johnson to do something about this. Right. To do something to extend these. Because they know. They know groups like ours, the Committee to Protect Health Care and a lot of other groups, they're going to make sure people know about it going into next year. You know, if these guys are the reason that people have to drop their health insurance or have to pay two, three times as much.
- [83:37]
Joy Reid
Yeah, I'm wearing my Immigrants make the country better. I love my.
- [83:41]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, yeah.
- [83:42]
Joy Reid
People. Yeah. And the thing that they've used to demonize Obamacare the most is the idea that undocumented people, they use the term illegals, which, I'm sorry, that is the N word for brown people. If you want to say the N word. You mean brown people. You say illegals. That, to me, is what that means. I don't even think that is. It's not even a real word. They just use it because they hate brown people. But anyhooms, they're trying to say that these undocumented people are the ones who are really getting the premiums. Can you just explain, since you're an expert and I'm not and you're a doctor, how that is stupid and not true?
- [84:12]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's written in the law, right, that undocumented folks cannot get, Cannot use the Affordable Care Act. Right? That's written into law. I mean, they tried to talk about it in terms of Medicaid. They also can't get Medicaid through federal dollars. Some states have decided with state money they want to do that. Right. Because they have some basic sense of humanity that every person, irrespective of their status or their papers, should be able to afford health care. Right. We shouldn't just let them die. But that's, you know, no federal money.
- [84:42]
Joy Reid
I want to pause on that for a second because I, I went through a whole lengthy explanation before you got on about the difference between, you know, there's the Social Security act and Medicare and then how Medicaid is this separate thing because even, you know, conservatives have always hated the poor. Sorry. And they would not allow there to be one single program for the elderly and the poor. They had to separate the elderly from the poor because some of the elderly are. Are. Are well off. So they were like, fine, but not the poor. And they made it into this block grant, meaning that the states fully control Medicaid. Each state and their. And the. The humanity of the governor and the legislature. That is what the poor in that state have to depend on. So if you're in Louisiana, your governor is almost the devil himself. He hates poor people, black people, brown. He's just horrible, at least in his actions. I don't know him personally, but. But his actions are hateful toward these groups. So he's like, y' all can't have anything. Right. I mean, they did end up getting Obamacare because the previous Democratic governor, but because the states control it. If you are an undocumented person in California, in California, when you go to the er, they're not gonna let you die. They're gonna use their Medicaid money to care for you. That's the state's decision. That is not meaning that undocumented people get the Obamacare.
- [85:57]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Right, right, right, right. And I'll tell. Let's just be straight. I mean, if you come to an ER in Michigan and we don't ask, you know, where you're from. We don't ask if you're here, you know, with documentation, with status. We treat you because a. We're human Beings B. We have a federal law that says we do that. Emtala from Ronald Reagan, of all people.
- [86:15]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [86:15]
Dr. Rob Davidson
The great champion of the poor. So the. Yeah, so that, I mean, that happens naturally. Now what they're trying to say is, well, well, when those hospitals provide care, some of that care is uncompensated. Right. Whether it's someone who is here with documentation, someone without. Whether it's someone who's an immigrant or not an immigrant. Sometimes people with insurance can't pay all their bills because they have high deductibles or co pays and those things aren't affordable. And so those hospitals then get some relief from a fund that does come from the federal government. That's part of what they got rid of or severely dented into with their big tax bill that gave billionaires tax cuts and took a trillion dollars from Medicaid. You know, that's what they're trying to pin on Democrats. And really what that's doing is putting particularly rural hospitals and disproportionate care hospitals in urban areas, putting them at risk of actually closing. And then everybody loses. Everybody loses when that happens.
- [87:12]
Joy Reid
And let me. And since you're a doctor, I just want you to talk about this for a moment because to me, the idea that if somebody comes into the hospital bleeding, you're gonna only treat them if they're a citizen, to me sounds demonic. I'm sorry, it sounds for a minute. I was a pre med. I don't. I could never have been a doctor if it was required that I would turn away someone because of where they were born or what papers and documents. I thought that there's a Hippocratic oath that has a duty to treat. So if that person is bleeding in the. They get treated regardless. Right. Isn't that that human thing to do?
- [87:48]
Dr. Rob Davidson
That is. And if you remember, a reporter posed that question to Caroline Levitt back during all this bullshit that they were railing about before the shutdown. And she couldn't really answer the question. She said, are you suggesting they ask people's, you know, for their documentation, ask if they're, you know, here legally before they treat them, if they're bleeding out? And she said, well, that would be a question for a doctor, not for me. And it's like, oh my God, as a human, I mean, you don't have to go to med school to know the answer to that question. It isn't hard. It's really. Yeah, it's striking when I saw that as almost your jaw drops, you can't believe even Caroline Levitt, who has said some pretty outrageous things, could possibly whiff on that one.
- [88:26]
Joy Reid
Well, you know, she's a Christian. Yeah.
- [88:29]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Amen. All right.
- [88:29]
Eric Swalwell
I see.
- [88:30]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I see the cross. I know.
- [88:31]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Come on, man. This is Chris. That's how. That's how Jesus would have done. He would have said, you want some bread and you want some water? Get away from me. Poor people.
- [88:38]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
I don't.
- [88:39]
Joy Reid
I don't deal with poor. Bring me the billionaires. I want to hook up with them. That's how Jesus did.
- [88:43]
Nadine Smith
I don't know.
- [88:44]
Joy Reid
What.
- [88:45]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Yeah, I mean, they're looking at different gospels than I learned when I was a young kid. And catechism. So I don't know. I don't know. That's not how I was brought up.
- [88:51]
Joy Reid
I thought, that blows. And Frisches were free. That's what I.
- [88:56]
Dr. Rob Davidson
And all the wine you can drink, right?
- [88:57]
Joy Reid
And all the wine you can drink. Yeah. He said, look, I got you. So let me ask a question to you Have. Have doctors who are actually moral thought through what an alternative system to the one we have now, which in the Western world is the most cruel and the most awful. Do you have in your own mind what a better system would look like?
- [89:22]
Dr. Rob Davidson
I mean, I have to be honest to me, I hold a principle of what that system should be. And I do think this is what truly even people should be running on, because getting into the weeds of the policy, there are some super smart people. I know we work with folks at Georgetown working on policy in different places, bringing down drug prices in states and bringing public options to certain states. And so I don't think about it. And I honestly don't think most doctors and nurses people I work with sit and think about the actual policy. You just think about the basic principle. The basic principle should be everyone has it, everyone has access to healthcare, and it doesn't break the bank. Like it is just so simple. Now, how you get there? You mentioned Medicare for all. That's an idea, right? People mentioned Medicaid for all. There's different state programs people have tried to roll out. Those are great ideas, right? Somehow taking the profit motive out. I know in Pennsylvania, a colleague of mine there worked at Crozier Health, which was bought by private equity, and they ended up getting shut down and everyone lost their jobs and that community lost a hospital. Now in Pennsylvania, they're working on some more oversight for looking at mergers where private equity is buying up hospital hospitals and hospitals consolidating, driving up prices. Right. So all of this goes into it what the system looks like is, I think, is going to be complex because like Trump said in 2017, who knew about health care is very complicated, but the principle should just be the same. Right. Everybody gets it, and they don't go broke getting it.
- [90:48]
Joy Reid
Wouldn't that be a beautiful thing? It would make us an actually. Maybe a country that could actually say that it is a Christian. Even though we're not a Christian country. We're just like a regular country.
- [90:58]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Just. Just good people. Right? Good people. You know, be Christian, you'll be whatever. Just be a good person.
- [91:03]
Joy Reid
It would. It would be nice. Dr. Rob Davidson, please come back anytime. Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here. Please come back.
- [91:09]
Dr. Rob Davidson
Happy to. Thanks.
- [91:10]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, and somebody pointed out in the chats that. Thank you very much. Somebody pointed out in the chats that when you walk into a doctor's office, why is the first thing people ask, ask, do you have your insurance card? And how are you paying for this? Like, when you. When you get health care in the United States, it's the first two questions you're asked. Do you have your insurance card? And how are you paying for this? That's only here. Not in other countries, just here. It's sick. All right, let's. Let's. Let's jump into. Let's jump into the D block. Because there's always been, to me, something just a little weird about Donald Trump. Just a little weird, particularly when it comes to his daughter, his youngest daughter. Well, she's not his youngest daughter. One of his daughters, Ivanka. Let's play D1.
- [92:01]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
Yet, at times, his fatherly praise is downright cringeworthy. Like on The View in 2006, said.
- [92:08]
Joy Reid
That if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her, you know? Oh, it's so weird. Stop. You know what?
- [92:14]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
You are far from protecting his daughter from being talked about as a sex object. He has encouraged it multiple times on Howard Stern's radio show in 2004 and then again in 2006.
- [92:27]
Joy Reid
By the way, your daughter, she's beautiful. Can I say this? A piece of ass. Yeah.
- [92:32]
Dr. Rob Davidson
She looks more voluptuous than ever.
- [92:33]
Joy Reid
She's actually always been very voluptuous.
- [92:37]
Lev Parnas
She's almost 6ft tall.
- [92:38]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
In May, Ivanka described herself as a feminist while defending her father on CBS after a scathing New York Times article about his alleged negative treatment of women.
- [92:48]
Nadine Smith
Is there unending commentary on the female form?
- [92:51]
Marjorie Taylor Greene
No.
- [92:52]
Dr. Rob Davidson
No.
- [92:52]
Joy Reid
I've known my father, obviously, my whole life, and he has total respect for women. Please welcome the lovely Ivanka Trump.
- [93:00]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
Still, even Ivanka seemed confused when talk show host Wendy Williams asked about things the two have in common.
- [93:07]
Joy Reid
What's the favorite thing you have in.
- [93:08]
Nadine Smith
Common with your father?
- [93:10]
Joy Reid
Either real estate or golf. Donald, with your daughter? Well, I was going to say sex, but I can't relate that. I can't relate that.
- [93:21]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
Donald Trump has always been proud of his daughter.
- [93:23]
Joy Reid
I'd call collect to his office.
- [93:26]
Eloise (Young Woman)
I was probably, you know, 10 years old.
- [93:28]
Nadine Smith
He would pick up the, the phone every single time and he'd put me on speakerphone. Wouldn't be a long conversation.
- [93:34]
Joy Reid
He'd introduce me to whoever was in his office.
- [93:37]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
And he was front row when Ivanka took to the catwalk during her short lived career as a fashion model. Still, Donald Trump repeatedly points out how hot his daughter is, saying last year in a Rolling Stone article, yeah, she's really something. And what a beauty, that one. If I weren't happily married and you know, her father, my daughter Ivanka, yeah.
- [93:59]
Joy Reid
She'S six feet tall, she's got the best body.
- [94:01]
Nadine Smith
She's hot.
- [94:02]
Narrator (Documentary Clips)
Ivanka continues to defend her.
- [94:05]
Joy Reid
That's gross. Case of the IS 79. So he don't like the younger one. Firm but fair. That's gross. And by the way, when she was walking Starting at age 14, it was for John Casablancas, who owned a modeling agency, was a good friend of Trump's who later it turned out might have been, well, not might have been, was accused of messing with his model sexually. So that's weird, right? And you know, it's definitely weird. And this is D2. That Trump's spiritual advisor was arrested a few months ago for soliciting sex with a child. Let's play D2. This is him getting arrested. I'm going to read a little bit of the Guardian story while you watch that. The founder and pastor of one of the largest mega churches in the U.S. robert Morris, has pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 12 year old girl in Oklahoma in the 1980s. Morris, 64, pleaded guilty on Thursday in Osage County District Court on five criminal counts of looted indecent acts with a child. He was sentenced to 10 years in custody, but as part of a plea deal will serve just six months in county jail. Which is weird, right? Another man with Trump ties getting a really light sentence for preying on little girls. That's weird. And Trump himself, you know, he does weird things. Let's play D3. Just some weird things Trump does. You know, I mean, he commented at one point on the penis size of A dead golfer. We're gonna play here. D3, which is. He just does weird stuff like this. I mean, he was kind of giving fellatio to a microphone. That's weird, right? And the crowd goes wild. And he's known, like, a lot of weird people in his life. Like, let's look at D4. This is A. A email between Jeffrey Epstein and a guy named Jean Luc Brunel who ran an agency called Karen Models back in the day in the 90s. And he wound up. You can see in the email, he's emailing an article about Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein's hedonist hedonistic alliance. And a lot of people were emailing that article to Jeffrey Epstein, but Jean Luc Brunel is one of them. Jean Luc Brunel actually died in a very interesting way by hanging himself in prison in France after being accused of sexually preying on his models and his agents. Emergency. Which is weird. Very similar to the way Jeffrey Epstein died. And supposedly that was also a suicide. Supposedly. Also weird. An email I want to show you all. This is D5, an email between Trump's other pedo friend, his other pedo friend besides John Luke Brunel, who was, you know, whatever, and Jeffrey Epstein. His friend Jeffrey Epstein, I should say the other friend Jeffrey Epstein, and his own brother Mark Epstein. Now, this email might be the weirdest of them all. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna read it. It's. It's gross. We're gonna leave it up on screen. Let me go ahead and find it here. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Aha. Here it is. I'm gonna read it to you. It says, oh, excuse me. He calls him Donnie T. He says, oh, well, hold on a second. It says, I'd rather be in Donnie D's shoes. To which Jeffrey. Mark says, I'd rather be in Donn. To which Jeffrey Epstein says, you mean Donnie T. And then Mark Epstein says, you and your boy Donnie can make a remake of the movie Get Hard. And then there's a response again from Mark Epstein where he says, ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba. He starts by asking. Mark Epstein starts asking where he is. And Jeffrey Epstein says, all good. Bannon is with me. Mark is asking where his brother Jeffrey is. He says, all good. Ban is with me. That being Steve Bannon. Now, Mark Epstein has given a statement saying that the Bubba in that really weird email is not Bill Clinton, although the memes are everywhere of people making fun of maybe Trump doing The old person in the nursing home dance for a different reason than what, you know, we kind of thought it was. So that's also weird. Also, there's another email where Larry Summers, the former Harvard professor, speculates on whether the Russians have something on Trump. That's D6. Do they have something on Trump? And I'm thinking PB take maybe. I don't know. There's also another email in which there's speculation about how Trump and this is D7, might have gotten away with something that he got off easy when it came to the accusations that people had about sexual predation. And I'm going to read this one. It says and this is an email from a guy named Thomas Landon Jr. Who is a financial reporter for the New York Times, I believe. And he writes to Jeffrey Epstein back in 2016, 16 May 2016, he wrote, I'm kind of shocked that our reporters at the Times did not contact you. Jeffrey Epstein, Ari the Trump slash women story. Seems to me he got off rather lightly. It's weird. And then of course there is the Larry Summers email in which Jeffrey Epstein says to Larry Summers, I have met and this is the former Harvard president. I've met some very bad people. None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body. That was written on February 8, 2017, in which he also jokes about him as your man of the people. Very odd. Joining me now is somebody whose text a tweet we read the other day left Parnas, who wrote the following breaking My sources say Trump went ballistic, blowing up phones and leaning on GOP allies to keep Democrats from hitting 218 for this discharge petition aiming to block any move to release the Epstein files. Lev Parnas, welcome back.
- [100:44]
Lev Parnas
Hey Joy, thank you for having me.
- [100:46]
Joy Reid
Thank you. Are your phone's still blowing up now that Trump has said go ahead and release the files but only of the Democrats.
- [100:52]
Lev Parnas
It's even more I can't even tell you this is such a game, such a show that's being put on right now trying to really just I mean look, one of the things this is a contingency plan that they've put into place that has you know, that's why he announced investigate Pam Bondi announced the investigation into Clintons and it's a to stall because now they're going to try to come out and say okay, release the Epstein files. The reason one of the reasons why he came out and flipped so quickly is because for and his voice is hoarse today a lot of people were saying that, you know, they Tried the White House, tried to say that he was screaming at some country. Well, what my sources thought, it's because he's been on the phone for 72 hours screaming at congressmen and senators and going ballistic. And when he realized that tomorrow is going to be an avalanche. And what I'm hearing is joy that we literally, you know, keep our fingers crossed, but we might even hit 290, which would be two thirds of the House. When he started realizing it, he understood he needed to come out and really join the force because otherwise it would be a rebellion against him. His next step was he called, you know, his loyals in the Senate. What I'm hearing from some of my sources, he spoke to Thune and Thune gave him basically a go, told him that he would do whatever he could to not bring it to the floor. That gave Trump some hope. But right after that, he got another phone call. I mean, this was all day going back and forth. I can't explain to you. He gets a call saying that there's word that there's about 12 Republicans in the Senate that are going to flip. So that's when he went completely ballistic. And, and that's why you saw today at the Oval where he's basically al veto. I'll do whatever. Because the contingency plan is Pam Bondi. It's a throw her under the bus, just like they did July 6, to stop the investigation. Now it's to open it. Because now, you know, it's not. We don't hate Trump because now he could come out and say, hey, you know, release the files. But Pam, you know, she's a great Attorney General and, but she could only do. There's an open investigation and the plan is to leak certain stuff about the people like Larry Summers and others to try to take the focus away from him.
- [103:04]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And there's plenty of people in these emails. I mean, you know, that he was, I mean, Noam Chomsky emailing back and forth with Jeffrey Epstein. I mean, it just, it is pretty wild, the kind of people who are actually emailing back and forth. But this, this email between Mark Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein about Trump blowing Bubba and does Russia have that. Who's. Do you have any idea who Bubba is and what that is about?
- [103:31]
Lev Parnas
Well, that's, I'm so glad you brought that up, because this is extremely important email, but not because of who Bubba is, and I don't have any clue who Bubba is, but because of something else in this email. In this email that's between Mark Epstein and his brother, I mean, Jeffrey and Mark Epstein. So they're not lying, they're not pretending. They're having a conversation. They're literally asking each other if Steve Bannon in 2018, given over compromise to Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Think about that for a second. Steve Bannon, that means has been in touch with the Russians. So, Steve, Ben. So is Epstein the only one giving compromise to the Russians? So what might. So what I'm hearing from a lot of sources on overseas and over here, one of the real reasons Trump is extremely, extremely worried about Epstein file, besides the embarrassment about, you know, the stuff, the, you know, that's going on, besides protecting certain donors, what he's really going after is because what Bondi showed him is the compromise that they got not only from Epstein, but from others, that there's a file that the Russians had on Trump. And it's not. It wasn't the P tape, you know, like where everybody was talking about, but it was basically for maybe. And I'm working still on a lot of the stuff to. That could bring to light. But basically they've been watching him for the past 40 or some odd years and around them from, you know, giving him money, bailing him out, you know, having people like Epstein operatives around him, giving information. So when. And that is one of the main reasons why you have Steve Witkoff and not like the Marco Rubios or the others dealing with Putin. Just think about Steve Witkoff met with Putin six times. These are not coincidences, Joy. Every time he met with him was every time Trump came out and said something against Putin. Witkoff was summoned to the Kremlin. Literally summoned to the Kremlin. If you go back and take a look at what I'm telling you, your eyes are gonna be flip out. You're gonna call me back and say, holy love, I can't believe what you're. That this is. Actually. But, yeah, there's a major connection and about what they have. And also he's also worried about Melania because there's also, you know, her past is definitely, you know, has a lot to do with it. So there's a lot he's concerned. But the Russian angle and the fact that Steve Bannon in 2018, this is right before the Helsinki meeting, is in touch with, I mean, Vladimir Putin. They're literally saying that he hand over the pictures to Putin. I mean, that's compromising stuff on the President of the United States. And it's Steve Bannon, who we know is an operative and a sleazy guy. That will play every single side and deals with the Chinese and everybody else. So there's a lot more to this than just the, you know, the sex, the, the, the, the, the, the nasty stuff. But you know, the financial stuff and the world politics is a lot more scarier right now to Donald Trump.
- [106:33]
Joy Reid
I mean it seemed to me that the trajectory as I'm reading through these emails is that at first Jeffrey Epstein seems to be trying to leverage his knowledge of Donald Trump. Trump to help himself, to help, you know, his business interests, to help his friends, to help people get jobs, all sorts of things. And then there's a point at which it turns and he just becomes very anti Trump and to the point where now we know he was texting with Representative Plasket of the usvi, which of course where Epstein island was, it was in the US Virgin Islands. And there's a lot of scandal associated with the way that the U.S. virgin Islands allowed him to freely operate there and operate, operate. Basically a sex island where they were abusing children. Where he was abusing children. That's a whole nother scandal. But he's dealing with USVI people, but he's texting with her. But it's not about the sex stuff, it's about the money stuff that Cohen is testifying about. Yeah, it seems to me that the thing that Epstein may have thought he had on Trump was more financial than anything.
- [107:31]
Lev Parnas
Oh yeah, no, that's, that's exactly what I'm saying to you. I think they have a lot of financial stuff on Donald Trump. 100. Because most of all the time, if you take a look at the history of all his bailouts usually came with a source that was connected to Russian money either through the banks or through direct, what's it called? Eric Trump himself one time came out said we don't need any American money, we have all the Russian money we need by accident, you know, so, so the, so the, the link was always there and Epstein was a facilitator. The other thing is, don't forget is right before his death there was over a billion dollar transactions that were finding out that with the rush with Russian banks that were going back and forth. What was that all about? The other thing is very important that we need to take a look at is the one person that keeps skating here is Bill Barr. Bill Barr was somebody that I know very well, somebody that was involved in my own prosecution and, and somebody that was involved, involved in putting me not in prison to be able to get to the bottom of it, but to silence Me, the same thing happened to Epstein. If you take a look at literally these emails you're seeing right now are in end of around 2018, literally six, seven months later, Epstein's arrested. We never get understanding what was, you know, the indictment. You know, I'm saying to you, it was a lot of different things he was supposed to be indicted for, but then he, you know, miraculously, you know, disappeared. So there's a lot more to it. And the other crazy thing I'm hearing that I couldn't believe, because when people were saying he's gonna pardon Maxwell and knowing Trump, I also, I didn't believe it. I thought, you know, that's even something far for him. He's gonna maybe transfer her somewhere and make her. But I, I got off a call and I'm hearing that he's literally considering unpardoning her because she's also, she got the goods on them. Don't forget, she's the one that leaked the stuff to the Wall Street Journal.
- [109:23]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [109:24]
Lev Parnas
She knows. And she's right now not a happy camper because the focus is on her. She understands something happens to her, she's done. She will be transferred quicker that you could see to a maximum security. So her window of opportunity is also. And, and that whole thing you saw with Prince Andrew, getting that also don't forget about the relationship that Maxwell had with Andrew and the royal monarchy and everything. So there's so much to unfold here. Joy, that the one thing I could say, and that's why I wrote my letter and I say to all, everybody out there, we gotta do step by step right now, the number one thing we gotta do is till tomorrow morning, keep making your phone calls, keep sending your emails, keep putting pressure on every congressman, Congressman out there to make sure that tomorrow we, we come out and we, it, it's, it's a massive unified vote to show. Because that will rattle him even more. He's still hoping that it's going to come out, that there's going to be some support. So tomorrow is a big day. And then from there, you know, next step, we move on to the Senate, but one day at a time. But I truly believe that eventually, and mark my words, the straw that breaks this straw that breaks this whole thing apart is going to be Dan Bongino.
- [110:40]
Joy Reid
Tell me why.
- [110:42]
Lev Parnas
Well, first of all, I actually broke.
- [110:45]
Joy Reid
Those who don't know. He's a former podcaster who's now deputy director of the FBI. Go on.
- [110:49]
Lev Parnas
Correct me. And Wajahid Ali actually spoke about this on the left hook. Several months ago, I broke the story. I told him that the meeting that Vance, Vice President Vance was supposed to have the dinner, we, it was not just about the Epstein stuff. It was also about trying to bring Dan Bongino back into the fold. Because if you take a look, Joanne, I'd like for you to, after we get done for, have your people take a look at the records and we'll come back and discuss it more. But since July 6, when the Epstein, when they closed the file, Dan Bongino left work for three or four days. He came back. Trump had a conversation with, with him. Ever since then, Dan. But Gino and Trump have not spoken. He has not been into the Oval. You have not seen him in any press conferences. He has not commented or came out on Fox or any show about Epstein at all. Now, this is a man that made his whole career about his podcast, everything about releasing the Epstein files, My sources have been telling me there, and I've already spoken to Congressman Rokana and others and I've told them, I said, you need to put the pressure on Dan Benjino. That's one of the things that I'm telling everybody though, the media and everybody, where is Dan Benjino? Let him respond. Where does he stand? He saw the files. He was part of the one part of the group, but he's the only one. Cash Patel spoke up about it. Pam Bonnie spoke about the one person that has not come out and validated and stood up or said anything about it, bad, good or indifferent, is the Damo. And that's why what I'm hearing is that Dan Benjino is right now the loose straw that they are trying to but. And he's also in a very scared position because he understands Trump's power and understands also his platform, which has a lot of financially, you know, links him to all this Epstein stuff. So there's, that's. And, you know, I welcome you to also look into, maybe you could help me out, spread the word. And because I think the more pressure we put, you know, have some reporters ask some questions, you know, and have him come on the record and start making statements, I think you're going to start seeing even a major serious crack in there because he's one of the people that saw all of those, the Epstein files.
- [113:06]
Joy Reid
That is fascinating. I want to really quickly play the reason that I think that this is that Trump can't get away from this. This is D10. This is the victims in this case who have made it very clear that they're not going anywhere. And they put out a really powerful video. I suffered so much pain. So much pain. So much pain. I suffered so much pain.
- [113:43]
Eloise (Young Woman)
I was 14 years old.
- [113:44]
Joy Reid
I was 16 years old. I was 16, 17, 14 years old. This is me. This was me. This is me when I met Jeffrey Epstein. This is me when I met Jeffrey Epstein. There are about a thousand of us. It's time to bring the secrets out of the shadows. It's time to shine a light into the darkness. You know, Lev, the reason this is so powerful is named five administrations. They're right. I mean, this is not even a Democratic and Republican thing. These are young women. And I don't care. Megan Kelly tries to explain it away and try to say that they weren't children, but you can see them on those pictures. They were kids. And it's, this is why that Trump can't stop this, because that is the most powerful. They are the most powerful witnesses. They're the most powerful speakers on this.
- [114:55]
Lev Parnas
Joy, you are so 100% right. And I could tell you Trump's biggest fear, I could tell every single one of you out there, is to sit down and face those victims. And that's one of the reasons why he went off on Marjorie Taylor Greene so badly, because she was pushing him to have them in the Oval. And that was the one thing that she was doing 100%. Because I keep also saying that it's a simple thing, but we should be out there screaming every day, President Trump, these are your constituents and some of them are not even Democrats. They're, they're conservative and they want to sit down with you and tell you what happened to them and put the pressure, because that is going to rattle him even more. You're going to see him stop doing to taking questions because he's right now rattled. He cannot face the victims because then everything goes out the door. You know, all of the hoax and everything. So you're 100 right, that he cannot get away from that.
- [115:48]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Left Parnas, thank you very much. Come back often as you get developments. Please let me know. We want to have you back on Alfin, thank you.
- [115:55]
Lev Parnas
Thank you, Joy. Thank you for having me.
- [115:57]
Joy Reid
Thank you very much. And there, and there you have it, everyone. I mean, you can't get away from the facts of these victims. And Jason, you even have to put these on screen. I just want to read just some very quickly of some of the things that were in these emails in 2016. February 10th, Thomas R. Landon Jr. High importance says it's getting scary oh, the stories you could tell, says a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. You've got Trump's people saying that, that he is. That he could take him down. It says here Trump's hand picked. As you know, New York prosecutor has a search warrant for Trump's private lawyer. Trump has to be shitting water. I think I read that text earlier. The emails are damning. The emails, Bannon all sending him these articles about the deplorables come into battle again to try to save Jeffrey Epstein's reputation. There's an email from Michael Wolf in February of 2016 in which he says, yeah, you're the Trump bullet. And then there's one more I'm going to read you. This is from. This is from Jeffrey Epstein to someone named Kathy Rummeler, who actually worked in the Obama administration. And he says that she calls it a kind of a horror movie that he could become president. I don't know how better to describe it, but he also says that Donald Trump knew that what he was doing was illegal and they're not clear about what that is. But the bottom line being Donald Trump has got to be scared because the very people that he was friends with and trusted back in the day when he was hanging out with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, they're out here, they're talking, they're speaking, and those victims are speaking the loudest of all. I'm going to play two quick videos before we end tonight rather than do a moment of joy, because I think this is really important. First, let's start with actress Cynthia Nixon, who she had a really poignant response to Megan Kelly's disgusting defense of Jeffrey Epstein. Here's actress Megyn Kelly.
- [118:02]
Nadine Smith
I have a question for you from.
- [118:04]
Joy Reid
One mother to another. If Jeffrey Epstein were still alive, would.
- [118:10]
Nadine Smith
You be comfortable with your teenage daughter.
- [118:12]
Joy Reid
Being alone with him in his mansion.
- [118:16]
Nadine Smith
Or alone with Donald Trump?
- [118:18]
Joy Reid
I think if you're honest, you're gonna say, absolutely not. And please don't say 15 is barely legal. It is a hundred percent illegal. And you know that. Even more poignant, though, in this horror story of two powerful men who were both predatory and vile in the way that they thought of women and girls. You heard how Donald Trump talked about his own daughter. You've seen the way he's treated people in the Miss Universe pageant, calling them fat, calling them ugly. You see what he did to E. Jean Carroll, literally grabbing her by her P word in a public place in a department store dressing room. He has two dozen 26 individual accusers, including one 13 year old at the time who accused him and Jeffrey Epstein of raping her at Jeffrey Epstein's house. I, I promised you I was going to read you some from that, that lawsuit, but I promise you I'll do that on Wednesday. It's horrific and it's gross. But essentially she says that claimed in this lawsuit, which she then later withdrew as an adult, that she was raped at 13 years old at Jeffrey Epstein's home. And she named both Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein in that lawsuit, which again, she withdrew after saying she had threats. I was supposed to interview this young woman when I had my weekend show. That is the kind of two men that we're talking about here. One of them ended up dead in a prison cell, in a prison cell that was controlled by the man whose father gave him his first job as a math teacher. The other ended up being president in the United States. These two besties who, God only knows if they had the same proclivities, but they were definitely friends at a time when one of them was in a super predator against young girls. I think the best witness and the closing witness on this show tonight is going to be a young woman named Eloise who schooled me. No, Megan schooled Megyn Kelly about what it means to be a child. Here she is. Last word to her.
- [120:29]
Eloise (Young Woman)
Hey, Megyn Kelly. I'm eloise and I'm 14 years old. I wasn't even going to say anything because the topic is an adult one. My mom even made a video about it yesterday because we didn't feel as an appropriate topic for a child to speak about. But after hearing you go on camera and explain that Epstein wasn't into 8 year olds, just the barely legal type, like 15, I realized you might need an actual reality check from a literal child. So let me help you out, Megan. People in my grade are turning 15 right now. Some of us still have baby faces. Some of us still have braces. Some of us still call our parents when we're scared at night. Some of us still look like middle schoolers because we basically are. And the fact that a grown woman needs a teenager to explain that is honestly terrifying. Here's the part you seem confused about. Under federal law, anyone under 18 is a child. No asterisk, no. But they hit puberty. No. Older kids don't count. Anyone under 18 is a child. You said you were just giving facts, but here's the real fact. What you said wasn't factual. It was minimizing. It was making abuse sound like a technicality. And Megan, here's the part you really need to hear. If a 14 year old has to get on the Internet and explain to a grown adult with national platform that children are children and there's no age where abuse suddenly becomes less bad, then the problem isn't confusion, it's corruption. Because kids my age aren't supposed to be the ones correcting you. We're not supposed to be the moral compass in a room full of adults who should have known better, but here we are. If my voice makes you uncomfortable, good. It should. Because the minute adults start defending predators by debating the age of a child, you're not protecting the truth. You're protecting the predator. And you shouldn't need a freshman to tell you that.
- [122:09]
Joy Reid
Preach, little one.
- [122:10]
Nadine Smith
Preach.
- [122:10]
Joy Reid
Eloise gets the last word on tonight. Thank you all for tuning in and wish you all safety, peace, love, and hopefully some measure of justice in this world, particularly for the victims. And God bless little Eloise. We love a wise child and yes, Megan, a child. Thank you all for watching. Please hit like and subscribe. Please hit share to make sure that everyone can get in on this independent media goodness. We appreciate y'. All. Love you all so much. Thank you to everybody in the chat and we will see you on the next the Joy Reach show. Okay, it.