Making America White Again

Summary

Runaway Country with Alex Wagner

Episode Title: Making America White Again
Release Date: December 4, 2025
Host: Alex Wagner
Featured Guest: Joy Reid
Podcast Network: Crooked Media

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Episode Overview

This episode of Runaway Country addresses the Trump administration’s sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration policy in the wake of a high-profile shooting involving an Afghan asylum seeker in Washington D.C. Alex Wagner investigates how the tragedy is being wielded as political justification for a radical, ethnonationalist agenda aiming to redefine who counts as "American." Wagner’s reporting is grounded in conversation with an Afghan immigrant (pseudonym: Nassim) directly affected by the new rules, as well as an in-depth, candid discussion with veteran journalist and commentator Joy Reid. The episode illuminates how race, history, and politics intersect in America’s ongoing immigration debate and what the Trump administration’s explicit targeting of immigrants of color means for the nation’s future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Catalyst: D.C. National Guard Shooting

• [02:06–04:46]
  • Wagner recounts the events: Two National Guard members were shot, one fatally, in D.C. by Ramanullah Lochinwal, an Afghan refugee and former CIA-backed paramilitary.
  • The Trump administration instantly moves to halt immigration from 19 countries—primarily nations with Black/Brown populations—and initiates a “massive retrenchment” of immigration policy, pausing applications, green card processing, and citizenship for millions.
  • Wagner’s framing: “The shooting last week was a terrible tragedy, but… the Trump administration is using it for a very specific political purpose.”
    (Wagner, 04:46)

2. Personal Testimony: Nassim, Afghan Aid Worker

• [05:04–08:56]
  • Wagner interviews Nassim, an Afghan who worked on “over 80 projects” with U.S. agencies in Afghanistan, promoting democracy, women’s rights, and education.
  • After Kabul’s fall, Nassim and his family fled to the U.S., granted asylum after “extensive” security checks. Now, his legal status and safety are again threatened.
  • Nassim’s fear:

    “Although I'm a green card holder, I'm scared. Well, if we go back to the country, we are just victim. They will punish us because why we work with the United States...” (Nassim, 06:39)

  • His empathy for National Guard victims:

    “I feel sympathy with these two National Guards… I can feel the pain that family… have… particularly in this Thanksgiving Day… It's horrible and we all condemn that.” (Nassim, 07:39)

  • On hope:

    “We came here to be part of the American community and serve this country as well serve humanity… I came with the hope that I will live here in peace and I will work here and be responsible…” (Nassim, 08:13/08:32)

3. White Nationalism and the New American Identity

• [12:22–28:35] Conversation with Joy Reid
  • The Trump administration’s reaction is not about safety or rules but “the color of your skin.” (Wagner, 09:27)
  • Joy Reid contextualizes the current immigration sweep within a dark American legacy:

    “Taking it back to the 1920s. Right. The era when, ironically, Stephen Miller's family barely escaped the exclusion act that would have kept them trapped in Germany…” (Reid, 13:49)

  • The new policy disproportionately targets people from non-European backgrounds, echoing a desire for "ethnic cleansing," not mere security.
  • The public’s reaction is divided, but a core Trump base, according to Reid, “love[s] it… they want it.” (Reid, 20:41)
  • Wagner and Reid dissect the political calculus: radical policy seems to motivate a base rather than seek broader support.

4. Explicit Embrace of Ethnic Cleansing and ‘Reverse Migration’

• [22:56–28:35]
  • Wagner highlights official language:
    • Department of Homeland Security on “reverse migration” and Kristi Noem’s call to ban all immigration from “countries that have been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.”
      (Wagner quoting DHS/Noem, 22:56)
  • Stephen Miller touts plans to review and possibly expel anyone admitted in the last 20 years:

    “If you're not someone who loves this country, if you're not adding benefit to this country, then we're going to send you out of this country…” (Miller, as quoted by Wagner, 24:23)

  • Joy Reid calls this “the natural outgrowth” of the far right’s demographic panic—a frank move to try and make the country whiter. (Reid, 25:33)

5. ‘Blood and Soil’ vs. Creedal America

• [29:36–34:27]
  • JD Vance (Vice President) argues America is about “blood and soil” rather than shared ideas, rejecting inclusion of people who merely "believe" in American principles.
  • Wagner: “Setting aside the timeframe and whatever, just the argument that America is a concept has been rejected wholesale by the right and in favor of blood and soil nationalism… that’s literally what he’s saying there.” (Wagner, 30:11)
  • Reid draws out implications:
    • Those fighting for the Confederacy are lauded as more American than any immigrant—reinforcing exclusion by race and ancestry.
    • MAGA means “white people own the country. White Christians specifically... own the country…”
    • The Department of Labor’s ad campaigns portray a monolithic white America.

6. Consequences: Cultural & Economic Impacts

• [37:55–45:55]
  • Reid predicts that explicit exclusion will “erase” nonwhite contributions from American history, rendering the nation a “white baby Europe”—demographically old, economically stagnant.
  • “Without immigrants, Europe is essentially economically dead. And without immigrants, we will be, too.” (Reid, 41:34)
  • On the far right’s self-delusion:

    “Stephen Miller, who technically isn’t really in the club. I don’t think he knows that. I think he thinks he’s an Aryan.” (Wagner, 41:48) “I say do the experiment. Our economy will be trash. There will be no one to do…” (Reid, 42:18)

  • The concern: America will become a culturally barren, economically threadbare nation, “a withered, dead, but very white country.” (Reid, 46:03)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nassim (asylum seeker):

  • “Although I'm a green card holder, I'm scared. Well, if we go back to the country, we are just victim... We will be punished for that for sure.”
    (06:39)
  • “We came here to be part of the American community and serve this country as well serve humanity.” (08:13)

• Alex Wagner:

  • “The Trump administration is using [the shooting] for a very specific political purpose.” (04:46)
  • “It’s not about where you were born or whether you followed the rules. It’s clearly about the color of your skin.” (09:27)
  • (On policy rhetoric) “Only reverse migration can fully cure this situation.” (24:23, quoting Trump)

• Joy Reid:

  • “Taking it back to the 1920s. Right… the past is prologue because we are right back there again.” (13:49)
  • “What those people wanted and what Donald Trump is delivering is ethnic cleansing.” (18:17)
  • “They want to ethnically cleanse the country and make it whiter… They’re kind of being open about it.” (26:48–28:35)
  • "White Christians specifically, sorry, own the country. ...That's the country they want. It's what Project 2025 basically says." (33:44)
  • “Without immigrants, Europe is essentially economically dead. And without immigrants, we will be, too.” (41:34)
  • “A withered, dead, but very white country. And I think that, you know, some of them, they'll bleach… Yeah, but they're shredded.” (46:03)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:06] – Overview of the D.C. shooting and Trump’s take-no-prisoners immigration response.
• [05:04–08:56] – “Nassim” shares fears as an Afghan green card holder.
• [12:22–28:35] – Joy Reid digs into history, MAGA ideology, and ethnic cleansing rhetoric.
• [22:56–24:23] – Official adoption of “reverse migration”; radical language from Trump world, DHS, Miller, and Noem.
• [29:36–34:27] – JD Vance and the new “blood and soil” standard for citizenship; exclusionary vision for America.
• [37:55–46:03] – Economic and cultural consequences of a “white only” policy future; Europe as cautionary tale.
• [46:17–47:55] – Wagner and Reid’s personal reflections; metaphor of the “bleached” America.

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Tone & Atmosphere

The discussion is urgent, unvarnished, and unapologetically direct—mixing grave analysis with moments of biting humor and dark irony. Alex Wagner and Joy Reid’s rapport brings intellectual rigor and warmth, underscoring the episode’s serious warning with relatable dialogue.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode lays bare the explicit shift toward policies of ethnonationalism under the Trump administration, connecting the dots between contemporary headlines and America’s history of exclusion and racial panic. Through first-hand accounts and sharp political commentary, Wagner and Reid warn of the profound consequences—moral, cultural, and economic—of a nation retreating from its promise of inclusion in favor of a “bleached” future. Despite personal stories of hope and aspiration from immigrants like Nassim, the episode concludes with a clear-eyed call to recognize—and resist—the erosion of American ideals.

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For more stories from the frontlines of America’s fraught crossroads, subscribe to Runaway Country with Alex Wagner.

Transcript

[Alex Wagner]

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[Alex Wagner]

Hi everyone. It has been a pretty extraordinary week. Last Wednesday two members of the National Guard, Sarah Beckstrom and Andrew Wolf, were shot while patrolling the streets of Washington D.C. beckstrom was killed and Wolf remains in critical condition. The alleged shooter is a 29 year old afghan national named Ramanullah Lochinwal, who was once part of the CIA backed zero squads operating in Afghanistan. Those were highly controversial paramilitary units and they were unofficially known as death squads. When Afghanistan fell back into the hands of the Taliban in 2021, Lockenwall evacuated to the US after many rounds of vetting. He was admitted into the country under the Biden administration.

[Joy Reid]

And.

[Alex Wagner]

And then he was granted asylum under the Trump administration. And now that same administration is using Wednesday's deadly event as a pretense for essentially overhauling American immigration as we know it.

[Stephen Miller (referenced) / DHS Official (possibly Kristi Noem or Tom Homan)]

What do you mean by reverse migration?

[Alex Wagner]

It means get people out that are in our country.

[Stephen Miller (referenced) / DHS Official (possibly Kristi Noem or Tom Homan)]

Get them out of here.

[Joy Reid]

I want to get them out.

[Alex Wagner]

As of this recording, President Trump has now indefinitely paused all immigration applications, frozen the green card process, and stopped processing citizenship applications for people from 19 countries. That list includes Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Venezuela, Haiti, and Burma, some of the poorest and most unstable places in the world. And they also happen to be countries with predominantly black and brown populations.

In addition to that, the State Department has halted all visas for Afghan citizens. U.S. citizenship and Immigration, also known as USCIS, announced that it is pausing all asylum related decisions until they ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible. And the Trump administration is now planning to review all asylum cases approved by the Biden White House, which includes people already living here in the United States. All of this a massive retrenchment of the American immigration system because of the actions of one violent man. These new rules could affect over 1.5 million people who have pending asylum applications and 50,000 more who received asylum under President Biden. The shooting last week was a terrible tragedy, but make no mistake, the Trump administration is using it for a very specific political purpose.

I'm Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway country, we're talking about the ways in which the Trump administration is using that violent Thanksgiving attack to push an agenda of ethnonationalism to redefine who is American and who isn't.

On today's episode, I spoke to a former aid worker from Afghanistan who is now living in the US As a green card holder. He is exactly the kind of person that the Trump White House is now targeting. And he spoke to me under the condition that we not use his full name because he's afraid of being deported. So we're calling him Nassim. Nassim worked with US government agencies beginning in 2005 on over 80 projects in Afghanistan.

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

95% of those projects supported by US funded by US government and USAID. Very sensitive projects on countering, voice of extremism, projects on education, elimination of violence against women, women, access to justice, a lot of projects on counter narcotics, and projects on youth empowerment, girls empowerment, education projects, and civil rights, women rights, human rights.

[Alex Wagner]

When Kabul fell in 2021, Nassim and his family went into hiding. The projects he had been working on, had been leading for the US Government were seen as treasonous in the eyes of the Taliban. After several months of vetting and extensive security checks, Nassim and his family were granted asylum in the United States, where they lived in relative safety and freedom until last week. Now, with Trump's new immigration agenda and his targeting of both Afghans and asylum seekers, Nassim is very worried about what happens next.

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

Although I'm a green cold holder, I'm scared. Well, if we go back to the country, we are just victim, they will punish us because why we work with the United States state and, and supported the same values. We will be punished for that for sure. Sometimes even my son says that if, if, if, let's say ICE come to the school, what should I do?

[Alex Wagner]

What do you tell him?

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

He has a telephone. Say that I said that. Call me. Call me directly.

[Alex Wagner]

And then what will you do?

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

Tell. Tell your. Tell your. I do not have anything else. Otherwise I just go and talk with attorneys or people that they helped us in the past for the green card or for my siv.

I do not have any other choice.

[Alex Wagner]

So I asked Nassim about the shooting last week, and he told me that what unites Afghans like him and National Guards people like them is the suffering. And in that shared experience, there is extraordinary empathy.

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

I feel sympathy with these two National Guards who can feel better than us. We were the victim of the violence extremism pact in our country. Every day there was people losing their lives. I can feel.

The pain that family, particularly in this Thanksgiving Day, that they have the family of the victim of these two National Guards. It's horrible and we all condemn that.

[Alex Wagner]

But as terrifying as this moment is for Nassim, he has not given up on America, nor has he given up on its promise.

[Nassim (Afghan asylum seeker)]

We came here to be part of the American community and serve this country as well serve humanity. My understanding is that back the values that we discussed and we were together, that was democracy, peaceful.

Freedom from the violence. So I came with the hope that I will live here in peace and I will work here and be responsible as every responsible American person who are living here and finally become a citizen and play my role in the society in the best positive manner.

[Alex Wagner]

When we come back, I'll be joined by my friend and former colleague at Ms. Now nay msnbc, Joy Reid. Joy was of course the host of the readout and she has written a book about Trump called the man who Sold America. And now she hosts the Joy Reid show. Which everybody should and must check out on YouTube. Joy weighs in on Trump's not so secret plan to make America white again.

[Joy Reid]

They'll distribute the bleach to us all and you can apply it daily if you want to survive. Totally, totally.

[Alex Wagner]

I got her thoughts on what's happening to immigrants, green card holders and asylum seekers, given the fact that over 50 million US residents were born in another country and nearly three quarters of that population is here legally. Not that the Trump administration seems to care, because it's not about where you were born or whether you followed the rules. It's clearly about the color of your skin. Our conversation in just a minute.

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[Alex Wagner]

I mean, I don't know. America's been waiting for this reunion. I've certainly been waiting for this reunion. My friend and former colleague, one of the lights of my life as a journalist, my old friend, Joy Reid. Not old. Like we're not. You're not old. But our friendship, you are young and fresh. Our friendship is aged. It's old and gold is what it is.

[Joy Reid]

Old and gold. Baby, I miss you so much.

[Alex Wagner]

I miss you too. This is like, I'm so happy to see you and thank you for doing this and God, there's a lot to talk about.

[Joy Reid]

So much, girl. I mean, dude.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, dude, period. We're done. Okay, so there's so, I mean, the focus of this week. There were many things to choose from, but we're talking about this. There was a shooting last week, which I know you're well aware of, National Guard troop. And Trump has effectively used that as an excuse to further terrorize black and brown communities and wholeheartedly embrace white nationalism at the topmost echelons of the federal government. So, you know, one of the things he's done, he's really basically ending the asylum process. He's not making America a home for refugees. The whole Statue of Liberty thing is like, whatever that was. And I just want to get your kind of top line reaction to the President of the United States official effectively ending the American immigration system as we have known it for the last 50 years.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And taking it back to the 1920s. Right. Yeah. The era when, ironically, Stephen Miller's family barely escaped the exclusion act that would have kept them trapped in Germany, where they all would have died. And when, you know, it was not our finest hour, the 1930s, when we didn't want to take in Jewish refugees, we were excluding Asian.

Immigrants. And the past is prologue because we are right back there again because this is the era that a lot of Donald Trump's minions, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan. I'm not sure Kristi Noem thinks things. I think she just does whatever.

[Alex Wagner]

I don't know that she's like a cat. I was told that cats don't understand the passage of time or it's flat like a dimension to them. I think that's sort of how Kristi Noem, she doesn't understand history or time.

[Joy Reid]

Cats also don't like dogs. They would probably shoot them if they could.

[Alex Wagner]

That is true.

[Joy Reid]

As would Kristi Noem.

[Alex Wagner]

Yeah, I mean, I have a cat, so I don't wanna malign cats too much.

[Joy Reid]

I have a great cat. Yeah. And my. Cause he liked my dog in the.

[Alex Wagner]

Way that a house pet doesn't fully grapple with the implications of the real world much. I think the same could be said for the Secretary of Homeland Security.

[Joy Reid]

I would agree with that. I think Tom Homan does grapple with it and he has a deep hatred of all mankind and he's getting to exercise that. He and Stephen Miller, they're sort of the two kind of horses of the apocalypse. And I also don't think Donald Trump thinks things. I think Donald Trump is just a knee jerk, racist old person who is, if you tell him the Somalians, as he calls the Somalis, are taking over Minnesota, he says, yeah, let's get him out, get him out. So I think he's just having it.

[Alex Wagner]

And you're referring to the raids that were announced on Tuesday in Minnesota, which is exactly part and parcel of like this suite of actions designed to remove people of color from this country, regardless of what their legal status is, whether they've been here for generations, whether they're American citizens. And really.

We'Re going to get into this, but. But bleach the country. I want to first talk about the political implications of some of this because, you know, Trump's promise. And I remember, you know, you and I were on set at msc, formerly NBC, Ms. Now, their name is Ms. Now. And we, you know, I remember seeing these signs at the Republican National Convention that said mass deportations now. And I guess if we're giving the people at that convention the benefit of the doubt, the expectation, as Trump promised, would be that he would deport the, quote, worst of the worst. Like, I don't know, the 19 year old college student who was trying to return home to her family for Thanksgiving, Annie Lucia Lopez Belloza, who was then detained at Boston Airport and has now been deported to Honduras. The worst of the worst. Joy, My thinking is like, you look at the polling and this stuff is not popular with the American public, Right? The ICE raids, the dragnets, what it's doing to the economy. And to say Nothing. The moral stain on America's hands. But he keeps doing it. They keep going full steam ahead. You referred to the Somali raids and the raids in the Somali community in Minnesota.

[Joy Reid]

What do you.

[Alex Wagner]

What do you. I mean, is it them just trying to reach the quotas? It doesn't seem politically expeditious. And I wonder if you think he even considers the politics at this point or kind of like what the motivating factor is.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I actually think he is considering the politics of it. And, you know, I can remember sitting there with you, as you know, Jacob Soboroff was on the floor of the Republican convention with these senior citizen women with huge smiles on their face, waving their mass Deportation now signs. And Jacob would ask them, I think, incredulously, you're so joyful about this idea of mass deportation. Do you really mean it? And they go, oh, yes, they really meant it. And, you know, having been inside of a Republican National Convention and had that vibe from a senior citizen, someone's grandma, but whose glee was directed towards some of the most heinous ideas you could imagine. Right. You know, sort of gleeful towards sort of returning to 1930s Germany, not even the United States. Like, I know that it's real. I actually think that what those people wanted and what Donald Trump is delivering is ethnic cleansing.

[Alex Wagner]

Right?

[Joy Reid]

Well, I think, you know, I think it. And I. And I don't. And I don't think that they see it as ethnic cleansing. I don't think they see it as something bad. I think that they looked at the actual, factual, the true fact that the number of immigrants who are non European has risen over time rose after 1965, when the other thing LBJ did, Lyndon Johnson did, in addition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act, he also signed this landmark immigration bill that ended the Asian Exclusion Act. And that really fundamentally changed the complexion, literally, of our immigrant communities from being very, very European, very Italian, very Irish, very, you know, even Scandinavia and all of that, to being very brown, to being largely from Central America, largely from south and Central America. That's a fact. It's a thing that happened from the 60s on. And then you had another surge during COVID when you had this two factors. Covid, which was driving people out of work and into desperation, and Covid on this end of the border, that was pulling brown people into the jobs we needed done. The meat packing plants, the farms, the places where you needed labor that couldn't go home and hide from the pandemic. And they were drawn here by the millions. I mean, something like 11 million people. And that surge of brown migration caused our latest demographic panic. There was a demographic panic when Barack Obama was elected, and there was the demographic panic post the pandemic. And the rage that you can detect if you talk to enough MAGA type people or experience them is real. They really hate the fact that there are so many brown people here. And I'm not trying to be ungenerous. I think they would agree with me that they are really angry about that border opening up during the pandemic and the years during the Biden administration when so many brown people came here that they don't want just the worst of the worst to be gone. They want them all gone. And Donald Trump is implementing the ethnic cleansing he knows his core base wants. And the ones who are alarmed by it are the more mild Trump supporters, the sort of more, you know, the maybe economic Trump supporters, the people who wanted tax cuts, the people who maybe wanted the border closed but maybe didn't want to see their neighbor get dragged off. Those people don't like it, but there's still a core of people who love it. They love it and they want it.

[Alex Wagner]

More of my conversation with Joy Reid right after this quick break.

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[Alex Wagner]

For people who have not paid attention to the ways in which this administration has explicitly embraced ethnic cleansing, right there is the dhs, the Department of Homeland Security, which on X officially called for remigration to bus policy. The quote is the stakes have never been higher and the goal has never been more clear re migration now, which is a term used by the far right in Europe. It's embraced by white nationalists. Kristi Noem, the department of that federal agency, posted this to Twitter. I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches and entitlement junkies. First of all, that's just leeches, killers and entitlement junkies are our forefathers and that's an exclusionary hour, not an inclusionary hour. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat and the unyielding love of freedom. Not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to all caps Americans. All caps. We don't want them all caps. Not one. And then of course there's Trump himself, the President of the United States, who said only reverse migration can fully cure this situation. And Stephen Miller, whose own family came to this country fleeing religious persecution in the early 1900s. That guy Stephen Miller had this to.

[Stephen Miller (referenced) / DHS Official (possibly Kristi Noem or Tom Homan)]

Say what you heard tonight from President Trump. The breaking news here tonight is saying that his government is going to accelerate efforts to review every person added to this country over the last 20 years, the last four years, all 20 million. Now obviously if you're illegal, you're out automatically. But everybody else who is brought here, refugee, asylum status, whatever status, as he said, if you're not someone who loves this country, if you're not adding benefit to this country, then we're going to send you out of this country because it's enough already. No one else has to die. No one else has to be murdered. No one else has to be shot. No more empty seats are needed at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas table because of what Democrats have done to this country.

[Alex Wagner]

I mean, just like a bastardized Charles Dickens reference in there, as he, you know, does the most unchristmas like thing you can do, the most uncharitable thing you can do, which has shut America's doors to the, you know, the. Those in need and the huddled masses yearning for free. Exactly. I was trying to think of the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Do you think this was always the natural endpoint to maga, or do you think Trump himself has become more radicalized while in office?

[Joy Reid]

I think Donald Trump is a youthful idiot. And I think MAGA is the natural outgrowth of a far right that has kind of catapulted itself into power despite literally being a far right. You know, what would have been a politically untenable movement even a generation ago. There has been a demographic panic that's been ongoing in this country from the very beginning. Right. You wanna talk about what is it? Leeches, killers and.

Junkies for but free money?

[Alex Wagner]

It is killers, leeches and entitlement junkies.

[Joy Reid]

Right. So, you know, this nation was founded by killers who slaughtered 90% of the indigenous people.

Leeches who glommed off of the indigenous, who taught them how to survive in the wilderness and then murdered them as their thanks and then took all their land. And you wanna talk about entitlement, they felt entitled to own other people and they didn't even wanna pay taxes on it, so they decided to have a whole war with Britain. So I'm not really 100% sure where that's coming from. And then you.

[Alex Wagner]

Oh, I have a sense of where it's coming from.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, oh, yeah. But I mean, then what you have is people like Stephen Miller, whose people came here in the 20th century, so they are not related in any way to the forefathers. And the forefathers wouldn't have wanted them here. They wouldn't have wanted them here. They wouldn't have wanted Tom Homan's family here. They wouldn't have wanted any of these people here. They come from the people who at one time were considered excluded, but now they have a full sense of entitlement to decide who is a proper and fitting American and to vet them ideologically. But really what they're doing is vetting them in terms of color, because as the Supreme Court has allowed, they're essentially saying we get to be here because even if we are not descended from the forefathers, we're white. You don't get to be here because you're brown, you're Asian or you're black. And therefore whether you're a citizen not, he said, whether you have TPS status, whether you've got refugee status, we don't care unless you vet ideologically. And even if you do, there've been some hardcore Trump supporters who've been deported. They want to ethnically cleanse the country and make it whiter. They're not really being that coy about it. They're not being too cute about it, they're kind of being open about it. Cuz they keep saying everyone who came into the country in their mind during the Biden years, and they really kind of also mean before that they want them out. And the quota is just a means to an end. It's to motivate his goons, or I guess Kristi Noem's goons, to get out there and stop any brown person apartheid style, throw them in a van and get them the hell out of here, or put them in a private prison where at least somebody can make a profit off of their presence. So the way you can be a benefit to this country if you're brown is go to a private prison so that, that the core civic or whatever they call themselves can get rich.

[Alex Wagner]

You know, I think the, the, the violence directed at a National Guards person, two National Guards, National Guardsmen and National Guardswoman have provided Trump an excuse to enact some of the more draconian policies that have ever been enacted in this country. But, you know, you point out that he's been relatively explicit about his desires, or like the administration writ large has been relatively explicit about their motivations and their end game for a while. And I just, I think we, some people paid attention to remarks that J.D. vance, our Vice president, gave at the Claremont Institute, a conservative institution this summer. But he kind of explained, like, where this was all headed. And I want to just play a little bit of sound from his remarks to call to attention the sort of, well, the way in which the roadmap was made public, at least if you were listening to what JD Was saying, Vance was saying at the Claremont Institute this summer. Let's take a listen.

[J.D. Vance]

If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence, that's a definition that is way over inclusive and under inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the Principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you.

[Alex Wagner]

Okay, like setting aside the timeframe and whatever, just the argument that America is a concept has been rejected wholesale by the right and in favor of blood and soil nationalism. That's right, right. That's literally what he's saying there. He's like, you know, what if it's not just a set of principles? It's literally like, were you born here and are you white? I mean, he's not saying that, but that's, that's effectively what the, the, the, the, the criteria is as laid out by the Vice President of the United States. And I kind of just wonder, Joy, like, where does that leave us? Because, you know, Trump is not gonna, though he would like to be in office forever, probably for the next 12 years or whatever. 18. I can't even do the math anymore. But he's supposed to leave office in 2028. Maybe J.D. vance inherits the throne, maybe little Marco does. It's unclear, but I don't understand what the implications of all of this are for the American project. And I don't mean to sound hyperbolic, but how do you begin to sort of put the toothpaste in the tube when one side, as explicitly says, said we reject.

The very idea that is sort of foundational in your idea of your notions of governance? I guess, like, where do we go from here?

[Joy Reid]

I mean, not in a good place. I mean, Mehdi Hasan has made this point in interviews that he's done that. He, as somebody who is a naturalized American, first of all, probably knows more facts about American history than most Americans, cuz you had to take a test and tell those facts in order to get your citizenship. And he has a wholesale belief in the entire American experiment. He chose the country on purpose. And one could argue that he is a more faithful American than Donald Trump who doesn't believe in any of the principles of the Constitution. He doesn't even pretend to go along with the strictures on the Article 2 power. He doesn't care. He's just doing whatever he wants and thinks the article one power works for him. And yet, according to J.D. vance, Donald Trump is more of an American simply because his family, as a white, as white Bavarians, immigrated here in the 1840s. And you know, the father and his, you know, though his grandparents are immigrants, doesn't matter. And his mother, I believe, is also an immigrant from Scotland they're white, and so they're obviously American. And he goes on, in that speech that you played, to say the people who fought in the Civil War, meaning on the Southern side against us, our enemies in the Civil War, are more fundamentally American than any immigrant who believes in the Constitution because they put their blood in the soil. So he literally did the blood and soil thing, almost literally. Take it even further. Senator Schmidt of. What is he. I guess he's from Missouri. He was even more.

[Alex Wagner]

Eric Schmidt?

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, Eric Schmidt. He said it even more clear. He said, this country belongs to the pilgrims who defeated. And this is not my word, but he essentially referred to the indigenous as savages who would not, who tried to stand in the way of the Pilgrim's Progress. This country belongs to those white people who defeated them. And also he omitted the idea that enslaved people built the country. He, I guess laughs at that idea. It just belongs to white people. He kind of said it a little more bluntly. And I think that's what MAGA is. MAGA ism. When they say make America great again, they mean white people own the country. White Christians specifically, sorry, own the country. And they inherited from all of the browns, all of the Asians, all of the people who are white but don't go along with the project. They don't get to have the country. They're here at the permission and by the grace of white Christians. And that's the country they want. It's what Project 2025 basically says. Women will be obedient and make more babies.

Men will be straight and not gay. There will be no trans. There will be nothing that gets in the way of reproducing a white uniform society. And if it seems like I'm being hyperbolic, just look at the Department of Labor's own ad campaign. It's all over their Twitter. They haven't taken any of them down. It just shows white sort of European idyllic cartoon person after white European idyllic cartoon person saying, this is America, this is the homeland. Defend the homeland, defend this white looking family. And. And it's all white people who. It literally looks like the old Communist Party ads from the 20s or the old Nazi ads from the 30s. That's our department of Labor.

[Alex Wagner]

Also, the Vice President of the United States, for all of his lust and fervor for white Americans, is married to an Indian woman.

[Joy Reid]

Correct. But she's gonna find God and go to Christianity anyway.

[Alex Wagner]

But I mean.

This is the thing, the self interest.

Here. I mean, I understand. J.D. vance, on one hand, yes, this is a white person, but the children he's making are brown children.

[Joy Reid]

One of the kids, his name's Yvek.

[Alex Wagner]

Exactly.

[Joy Reid]

And you know what's so interesting? You showed the Claremont Institute. That is where Christopher Ruffo made his bones at being Mr. Anti Critical Race Theory. His wife Ty and was undocumented. Make that make sense.

[Alex Wagner]

We'll be back with more of my talk with Joy Reid after this break.

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[Alex Wagner]

I do kind of want to like, you know, walk with me through this uncertain future, right, which is the great bleaching of America, where I guess the only people let into the country are white Afrikaners who are fleeing some kind of political situation in South Africa.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Alex Wagner]

What does that do to our country? I mean, in the near term, I guess, because I. I don't know. Wildly, wildly unhinged, like, you know, optimism I have that this could maybe not be our destiny, but that someone with more empathy and thought will take the reins. But in the near term, what does it mean for America to be saying, we're closed to people of color and if you're here, you might be kicked out. We are a place for white people and we champion white heritage, white history, and the white future. Like, what is that? What does that mean for us culturally and economically, do you think?

[Joy Reid]

I think culturally, to start with, that you've already seen what they're doing, right? They're erasing the existence of anybody black from the sort of arc of heroes in the United States. There can't be any black ones. Women, indigenous people, also erased from our military history. Even in Europe, in art installations, you can't have any blacks, you can't have that. You can't have any. You definitely can't have any queer people. They've gotta go. You can't name ships after blacks or women or gays or brown people. All of that's gone. So now we have a history that looks like an Aryan history as opposed to the real history of the United States. You know, the enslaved hands that built the country vanish and disappear and it becomes this sort of, you know, ode to Europeanness. So we're sort of wanna be little Europe and pretend that the brown, the black, the Asians, you know, the Chinese didn't build the railroad, none of that happened. It's all just white standing astride the continent, building a civilization all by themselves, you know, and moving aside that the savage, you know, people who were sacrificing babies over a flame and thank God they came and Christianized them and took their children to, you know, schools where they could teach them to be little Europeans. And that's it. That's our future. We are the white baby Europe. Well, here's how the real Europe is Faring. They are an aging, slowing economy. Their median population age is the oldest on Earth. Their GDP is probably what, half of ours. Their one kind of viable country. Germany, ironically, is struggling with its own crisis of migration because their economy is fueled by migrants from the East. And so if we wanna be Europe, then we will inherit their economy. We will inherit their situation. And their situation is that they are wholly dependent on Africa for resources. They're wholly dependent on Asia and the near east for workers. They don't have nurses in Britain because of Brexit. Their economy is a sluggish mess. Europe isn't exactly thriving. Meanwhile, the youngest population on Earth is Africa, where there will soon be a billion people. It's the biggest emerging market on Earth. We don't want them. You look at Asia, where they're producing more scientists, more people who understand the new technology that's coming out of people. Places like India and Pakistan, we don't want them. They're a large part of our H2B visa population for no reason. China, which is essentially going to dominate the Earth economically, it is dominating Africa, dominating the Caribbean. And we're leaving the world to themselves while we're gonna retreat into becoming baby Europe. But by baby, I mean elderly person.

[Alex Wagner]

Baby, like Benjamin Button, Europe.

[Joy Reid]

Benjamin Button Europe.

[Alex Wagner]

Like the really old baby.

[Joy Reid]

Correct. And without immigrants, Europe is essentially economically dead. And without immigrants, we will be, too. So I just. I wish Tom Holman and Stephen Miller, who technically isn't really in the club. I don't think he knows that. I think he thinks he's an Aryan.

[Alex Wagner]

Right. That is the irony, isn't it? Someone don't. Don't tell Stephen. He's not part of the club.

[Joy Reid]

He's not. Well, I mean, even Kash Patel thinks he's going to be in Valhalla. And the white people are like, baby, no.

You'Re not invited. You're not even. I mean, poor Ramaswamy's like, Valhalla. They're like, val, get out. You're not in. You are in our club. You're not. You're a Hindu. Get out. And so they think they're in. I just. I say do the experiment. Our economy will be trash. There will be no one to do.

[Alex Wagner]

I say, don't do the experiment.

[Joy Reid]

Don't do the experiment. You're not going to make it. You're not gonna make it. It's not gonna work. It will just crush our economy. So culturally, we'll be a dry seasonless chicken with no Lawry's, no seasonings whatsoever.

[Alex Wagner]

No Garlic.

[Joy Reid]

And then culturally will be also that chicken, but really expensive.

[Alex Wagner]

Chicken keeps coming up. Chicken keeps coming up. I talked about chicken this week with Stacey Abrams. Cause George Packer was telling Tim Miller that he was making a capon for Thanksgiving, which is a castrated male chicken. And we were talking about. It's like. We weren't talking about. I was listening to this. It's a chicken. Chicken. It's like a chicken with no balls. And who in politics is most like a capon?

[Joy Reid]

Democrats.

[Alex Wagner]

And they said. Well, they said Mike Johnson. But, you know, I mean, you could say that there's some capons in the Democratic Party, but it is. You know, people wonder why it's worth worrying about this moment and fighting against it. And then you hear when you really just pause and. And think, look at the master plan that's been laid out. Look at the ways in which the news cycle has been perverted to their ends. Look at the way in which violence is perverted to serve their own ends. And look at the, you know, the violence in turn that they are perpetrating on American citizens and undocumented citizens alike. It doesn't matter if you have your papers or not. What matters, as you say, is the color of your skin and what they're trying to do. Yeah, well, and that's ironically, I think what maybe the Afrikaners and the Americans increasingly have in common is a deep and sort of emotional and quotidian understanding of what it's like to live in a fully segregated society with the haves and the have nots.

[Joy Reid]

Well, I mean, the thing is that's so interesting is that the kind of intellectual drivers of this are white South Africans. The financial and intellectual drivers, the PayPal mafia, are, you know, a crew of South African whites who, you know, rung that country dry. Their. Their people. I shouldn't say they themselves. You know, their people rung that country dry of its resources, left it a. A cold shell. And then after they lost apartheid, their people bounced and came over here to do the same. Here they. They fundamentally do think apartheid is a better system. That, you know, slavery was probably a better system, that Jim Crow was better. And so there's this yearning backward toward a mythic past that they feel was somehow better, but it was only better because people like them were unrestrained and unconstrained and unregulated. And they just wanna be unregulated. And, you know, I think they think in their mind that they tell themselves this is best for everyone and that those of us like you and me are effectively children who need to be governed, because otherwise we're just preternaturally violent and incapable of civilization. That's what they think. And so they don't think they're doing anything wrong. In fact, they think they're fighting the Antichrist because the Antichrist is empathy and kindness toward immigrants and loving the immigrant. All things Jesus said, well, that's Antichrist. Christ is Antichrist for them. And so, you know, we're in this bizarro world where because they have so much money and because they control the president and because he's fundamentally racist, he goes along with it. And that means everybody that's rich wins. Big oil gets to have Venezuela, you know, big tech gets to own all of our media, and they get all the government contracts, and they all win. The whole rest of the country loses. But in the end, when you gut the middle class, which they think is all white people, but it's multiracial, you end up with a country where there are not enough consumers left to have a decent economy.

[Alex Wagner]

Well, you have no labor, either. You have no labor, you have no innovation. You have a declining birth rate, and you have basically a dead country. A withered country.

[Joy Reid]

A withered, dead, but very white country. And I think that, you know, some of them, they'll bleach. They're like, as long as it's. As long as it's bleached, they're like, it's good. You know, like when you over bleach your sheets and you think, but they're super white. Yeah, but they're shredded.

[Alex Wagner]

That's exactly right. There's holes in the sheets.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Alex Wagner]

And how good are they? Now? We've taken this metaphor as far as.

[Joy Reid]

We can take it.

[Alex Wagner]

Joy. Does everybody understand what we're saying here?

Um, I. I thought about this topic, and I thought, who do I want to talk to about this topic? Who is going to have brilliant thoughts and. And just incisive analysis at her fingertips? And there's one little.

[Joy Reid]

And you settled for me instead.

[Alex Wagner]

Please, Please, God. Um, it is so wonderful to have you here to talk about this terrible thing that's happening to our country. And I am so grateful for your perspective on all of this and your. Your wise mind. And I'm so happy to be reunited with you. And I'm going to keep asking you to come back on this podcast. As long as you'll say, as long as you'll answer my text messages or even when you stop answering them, I'm going to keep texting you.

[Joy Reid]

I shall never stop answering your text messages. I'm always just so happy to hear from you. I'm so proud of you. And look, I. I did some of my best journalism at Miz. Now we have to make sure we, you know, we don't want to dead name them. We're going to give them their name that they said they are. They are Miss now. So Miss now. We thank you. And you know one of my favorite, some of my favorite memories are hanging out with you my friend because we did some like badass shit, you know, like it was so much fun and I just look back at it with only joy because we really.

[Alex Wagner]

With only joy. Me too. I look at it the only joy and only joy. Thank you my friend for your time. I appreciate you.

[Joy Reid]

I love you. Thank you friend.

[Alex Wagner]

Before we go, I want to hear from you. Have you been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies? Maybe you've experienced changes to your job or to your healthcare or at your kid's school. If so, I want to hear it all. Whether these policies have impacted you for better or for worse. Send us an email or a one minute voice [e-mail] and we may be in touch to feature your story. And thank you to everyone who has written in already. Last but not least, don't forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway country with Alex Wagner.

Runaway country is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illinois Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacey Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis. Ben Hethcote is our video producer and Matt De Groat is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. Katie Long is our executive producer of development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

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