Voting Rights Act dealt major blow, SCOTUS hears birthright citizenship case, New reparations bill

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Today's Thursday May fifteenth, twenty twenty five, coming up on
Roland Martin Unfield dis streaming live of the Blackstar Network.
A federal court just delivered a gut paunch to various
legal groups regarding the Voting Rights Act. If you can't
suitor protect your vote, who can? Jules Brown, Diana is
executive director the Avastment Project, will join US Supreme Court

(00:44):
takes on birthrights citizenship. In Man, they were ripping Donald
Trump's lawyer in court. Where do we play for you?
What happened? Even the Conservatives were like, yeah, y'all are idiots.
Plus a new reparations bill it hits Capitol Hill is
real action on the table. Well, not with Republicans in control. Also,

(01:04):
of course, yesterday a Lexi's Herman, the former Labor Secretary,
was funeralized in Washington. D C will show you some
of the eulogies delivered at her funeral. Lots to talk about,
including that idiot Donald Trump. He talks about a speech
that Hitler gave in front of the Eiffel Tower. It

(01:25):
never happened. Why are we not discussing his cognitive disability?
It's time to bring the funk. I'm roland Mark unfiltered,
the Black Star Network.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Let's got whatever the best, he's it, whatever it is,
he's got the fact to find Elena believes he's right
on top and rolling best. Believe he's going put down
from this Loston host to politics with entertainment.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Just book keeps he's going.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
It's he's boss. She's biled up.

Speaker 5 (02:13):
Question.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
No, he's rolled in.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
We warned you about this case that originated out of Arkansas.
Now we see a federal's appeals court has weighed in.
The Eighth Circuit corp of Appeals ruled that private citizens
and civil rights groups can no longer sue to block
racial discriminatory voting laws in seven Midwestern states that includes Missouri, Iowa,

(02:48):
North Dakota. Under this decision, only the US Justice Department
can bring lawsuits under a key section of the voting
rights at joining US right now is due to the
Brown Diana's executive director of the Advancement Project National Judas
walk people through this because again I remember what this
originated in Arkansas, and that was the ruling there. And

(03:08):
what this is about is groups like yours, NAACP LDF
lawy's community bacivil rights under law NAACP, Black Voters Matter,
and others trying to freeze them out. And so when
you only can say the DALJ can file a lawsuit,
when you look at right now, we know Donald Trump
his dj is pulling out of all voting rights lawsuits.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
That's right, that's right, Roland.

Speaker 6 (03:34):
So this is the second time that this court in
the Eighth Circuit, has ruled on this issue. And basically
what they have done is that they have slammed the
courthouse door shut to individuals who have who are saying
that they have been discriminated against in voting, and to
as you pointed out, organizations, so advance a project where

(03:56):
lawyers we bring cases on behalf of grassroots organizations and
civic engagement organizations like the NAACP that has members. And
they're now saying, too bad, you can't bring those lawsuits
here in the Eighth Circuit. Now, it's important to know
the first time around, it was that they said the
Voting Rights Act doesn't allow you to come into court.

(04:19):
Now they're saying that there's another statue that they tried
to use as kind of like a run around that right,
which is Section nineteen eighty three that allows you to
bring all kinds of cases under the First Amendment, the
Second Amendment, etc. They're like, no, you can't use that either.
So again this is them. They basically said, we didn't

(04:40):
study the first time. We said, y'all can't come into
this court bring in these kinds of cases. And this
is important because you know, I've done a lot of
litigation over.

Speaker 5 (04:49):
The years in places like Missouri. Missouri is covered by this.
Missouri continuously tried to pass voter ID laws that were restrictive.

Speaker 6 (05:00):
This also covers North Dakota and South Dakota, where we
know there have been a lot of issues around Native Americans,
in particular voting Minnesota.

Speaker 5 (05:08):
So this is important. It's contained for right now, for
right now, right.

Speaker 6 (05:14):
But what they're also saying is that when they gutted
the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, section five
of the Voting Rights Act, they said, don't worry about it,
you got section two. Now we have courts saying no,
you don't even have section two. Only DJ is going
to be able to represent you. And guess what, Just
so I report the other day there are only three

(05:35):
lawyers left in the Civil Rights Divisions Voting Rights Section
because they laid everybody off, they fired them, they gave
them buyouts, they reassigned them, and they got out of
a lot of cases. And so we're looking at this
particular jurisdiction.

Speaker 5 (05:53):
Those folks are without any recourse with regard to voting
rights under the.

Speaker 7 (05:58):
Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
If people, again who don't quite understand what's going on here,
what we're dealing with is conservatives they want to shut
down as many paths possible. And when you talk about
when they gut it section four in Shelby v. Holder,

(06:20):
then they went after sex section two. The case out
of Arizona, that was section two. And so the problem
they have is they if they cannot get rid of
the entire Voting Rights Act, which Clarence Thomas has always
wanted to do, then their whole deal is, let's go

(06:41):
after each section. And so if we just simply declare
various section is unconstitutional, there really is no law that's right.

Speaker 5 (06:48):
They've been chipping away at it.

Speaker 6 (06:50):
Right, So when they did the section four section five piece,
that was one thing.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
But Section two is the crown really the crown jewel.

Speaker 6 (06:59):
Right, because it is the opportunity for those of us
outside of the government to bring these cases, and they've
been chipping away at it and making it harder for
us to bring cases.

Speaker 5 (07:10):
And now they're saying, We're not only going to.

Speaker 6 (07:12):
Make it hard, you cannot bring those cases at all.
And so we are now in a predicament around whether
or not we're going to be able to see cases
brought in these jurisdictions.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
So and so, and again this circuit they only apply
to the states that's in their jurisdiction, right right.

Speaker 6 (07:36):
So again that is Arkansas, Missouri for Saint Louis's and
we know they've been up to a lot of trickery. Minnesota, Nebraska,
North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa are covered. But again
this is the other thing, folks, because you need to
know what your own state is up to. Because other
states signed onto the brief and filed a meekas brief

(07:59):
supportive this case.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
What states do you have those?

Speaker 5 (08:02):
Alisama, Florida, Georgia. Look where black folks are sitting.

Speaker 6 (08:07):
Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia,
Utah all signed on. So that means that they're going
to try the same thing in court cases that they
see filed in those states.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Now again for people to understand the recent wins that
we've seen redistricting the seat in Alabama, Louisiana, those were
results of Section two, right, so really so, and those
were cases brought by outside legal groups.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
Yep, that's right and so right, So this is this
is the thing.

Speaker 6 (08:53):
These we have to understand the kinds of cases we're
talking about their redistricting cases, right, which is about cutting
up the high around power. But it's also the case
is voter ride d cases that we've brought. It's the
purge cases, like we have purge cases now in Georgia.
It's around you know, when the Save Act, if it passes,

(09:15):
we'll be bringing lawsuits around that. So it will cover
all kinds of voting rights cases. And we need to
understand that they are, like you said, Roland, they're going
at it from every which way.

Speaker 5 (09:26):
You know, we are going to shut this.

Speaker 6 (09:28):
Down because we never liked the Voting Rights Act, because
we know the amount of power that black people have
gotten because of the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
So they are going way back.

Speaker 6 (09:39):
They are trying to take us back, and we should
understand that the fifteenth Amendment and the fourteenth Amendment are
under attack also, and that.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
This is real.

Speaker 6 (09:48):
They are not playing with us because they know that
we have had way too much progress and we have
built too much power, and so they're trying to take
us backwards.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
It's what again, This is what I was trying to
get people to understand when I wrote my book, White Fear,
How the Browning of America is making White folks lose
their minds. And I've told this story numerous times. There's
a there's a black anchor at a broadcast network who
I set the book to And the response I got

(10:21):
back was, would love to have you on my show,
but my white producers don't like the title. And I said,
you know, I'll write about your white producers in the book.
And I said, this is part of the problem. I said,
part of the problem is here. I think these white producers,
these white editors, these white executives, they don't want to
talk about these issues because it unveils really what's happening

(10:48):
in this country. And and and I guess they will upset.
You know again, White Fear, How the Browning of America's
making white folks lose their minds. When you have when
you have Alabama, where a court just ruled that they
had a conservative court to trump judges that they had

(11:09):
never seen a state just openly ignore a federal judicial decision. Louisiana,
same thing. Louisiana and Alabama tried to do an end
around after the Supreme Court had already ruled on these seats.

(11:30):
People have to also understand is that the reason this decision,
this ruling here important because what their strategy is. The
strategy is file a suit in a in a conservative state,
have a have a hard right federal district judge ruling

(11:53):
their favor, appeal it to a conservative circuit court of appeals,
and then they agree with the district because the whole
goal is to get the conservative Supreme Court to rule.
And they know they start with at least four votes.

Speaker 6 (12:15):
Right, and they want some and they want some conflict
right between the circuits. So, because here's the thing is,
people need to understand that again, I cannot underscore it,
like how crazy this case is, Like no one would
have ever thought that you could actually say that there
is no private right of action for individuals and organizations
to go in under the voting right side.

Speaker 5 (12:36):
You know, why Because we've been doing it for a
long time.

Speaker 6 (12:39):
Over four hundred cases have been brought that are individual
or by organization since nineteen eighty two. And so this
was unthinkable, Like, it's just it's a you don't even like,
we don't.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
Even consider it. You don't have many cases. I have
files in my career.

Speaker 6 (12:55):
Like you just don't even think for one second that
you can't go in. So what they do is you're
they try, they go circuit by circuit, let's go and
let's bring these cases up.

Speaker 5 (13:05):
Right, that's how firmative action went under Right, that's how
Roe v.

Speaker 6 (13:08):
Wait Wand it is a co conspiracy right that is
using the courts to undermine our fundamental rights and the
right to vote being the most precious of them.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Well, we truly see again what's going on. And now
let me shift to what took place today. There was
a lot of drama at the Supreme Court regarding this
challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment and the birthright citizenship. Here
is some of what was said and talk about just

(13:44):
being outlandish, the arguments made by Donald Trump's lawyer, the
soliciteny of general. So what do you say about the
practical problem? So put out of let's put out.

Speaker 8 (13:56):
Of our minds the merits of this, and just to
look at the abstract question of universal injunctions, what is
your response to what some people think is the practical problem.

Speaker 9 (14:09):
And the practical.

Speaker 8 (14:09):
Problem is that there are six hundred and eighty district
court judges, and they are dedicated, and they are scholarly,
and I'm not impugning their motives in any way, but
you know, sometimes they're wrong. And all Article three judges
are vulnerable to an occupational disease, which is the disease
of thinking that I am right and I can do

(14:34):
whatever I want now on a multi member appellate court
that is restrained by one's colleagues. But trial judge, the
trial judge sitting in the trial judges courtroom is the
monarch of that realm. And there are situations in which
trial judges. The president does something. It could be President Trump,

(14:56):
could be President Biden, could be President Obama. The judge
says this is unlawful, and I'm going to order, I'm
going to enjoin it, and I'm so, I'm convinced I'm right,
so I'm not going to stay the injunction. And then
an application is subaying to the Court of Appeals to
stay the injunction.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
The Court of Appeals gives it the.

Speaker 8 (15:16):
Back of the hand, and then the case comes immediately
to us in the context of an emergency application. And
some of us have said, well, we don't think we
should do anything in those situations unless unless it is
indisputably clear that the court below was wrong.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
So what do you say to that practical problem.

Speaker 10 (15:40):
So we're mindful of the practical problems, I will say
the states have had to.

Speaker 11 (15:43):
Through line as well.

Speaker 10 (15:44):
Across administrations. We have never believed, even as nationwide injunctions
restrained policies that we favored, that they were categorically off
the table. We've always taken the position that they are
sometimes available in narrow circumstances, whether we like the policy
or don't like the policy. And so you might have
some key is where the nature of the harm This
is the DACA example from my friend on the other side,
where the nature of the harm, which was Texas saying

(16:07):
it had to give benefits to residents in the state,
is actually entirely remedied by a nationwide state only in
junction that applies just to Texas. Because that might incentivize
individuals to leave Texas and then Texas doesn't have to
give them benefits anymore.

Speaker 11 (16:21):
So you might have a case like that, But.

Speaker 10 (16:23):
Sometimes you are going to have cases where it is
impossible to remedy the state's own injuries and the alternatives
are not practically or legally workable. And that describes this
case perfectly. And so I don't think the answer is
a bright line. That means even in those situations, it's
not possible for the states to get.

Speaker 9 (16:38):
Belief and the day after it goes into effect, it's
just a very practical question how it's going to work.
What do hospitals do with a newborn?

Speaker 11 (16:49):
What do states do with a newborn? I don't think
they do anything different.

Speaker 12 (16:54):
What the executive or says in section two is that
federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong
designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the
executives are they got to know that the states can
continue to the federal officials will have to figure that
out as how so, you can imagine a number of
ways that the federal officials could such as such as

(17:15):
they could require a showing of you know, documentation showing
legal presence in the country for a temporary visitor, for example,
they could see whether they're on to b one visa,
which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship.

Speaker 9 (17:26):
In that kind for all the newborns. Is that how
it's going to work again, We don't know.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, it only got better. Here is Supreme Court Justice
Lena Kagan questioning them and saying, so you get to
follow whatever laws you want to follow. Listen to this, I.

Speaker 13 (17:43):
Butt you're not willing to commit to abiden by the
Second Circuits precedent. In my suppose that there's a single
person who brings the suit and it gets all the
way up to us after three or four or five years,
and we say, you know, we really do agree with
those four precedents that Justice Soda Mayor started with, and

(18:04):
your EO is illegal. Is that only going to bind
the one guy who brought this suit?

Speaker 11 (18:11):
No, that would be a nation wide president that the
government would respect.

Speaker 13 (18:14):
So finally, once it gets to us after four years,
you're going to respect that, yese.

Speaker 11 (18:20):
In addition, we may well respect the Second Circuit justice.

Speaker 13 (18:23):
And for four years, there are going to be like
an untold number of people who, according to all the
law that this Court has ever made ought to be
citizens who are not being treated.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
It is better because even conservative, even conservative Supreme Court
Justice Amy Cony Barrett got in on the action. And
here's what's crazy. If you look at social media, the
right is calling her a turncoat. They're saying, how dare
she because she's actually applying the law. So I find

(18:57):
it interesting that the law and order crowd is upset
that the law is being followed. Oh, that's right, because
they don't like the law. Listen to this.

Speaker 13 (19:06):
You're going to be standing up here in the next
case saying that Rule twenty three is inapt for this
circumstance with this number of people. Maybe with some questions
that are individual.

Speaker 5 (19:17):
Who knows.

Speaker 13 (19:18):
So let's put rule twenty three aside. Because I got
to tell you that does not fill me with great confidence.
How else are we going to get to the right
result here, which is on my assumption that the EO
is illegal.

Speaker 11 (19:30):
That would be a profoundly wrong result.

Speaker 12 (19:31):
But I think what I would offer is that, very
similar to Labrador against PO, what the Court should be
engaging here is a balancing of the equable factors as
to the scope of remedial relief, not as to the
underlying merits, and our contention that this exceeds the traditional
scope of equity that's reflected in the seventeen nine Judiaryact.
We're overwhelmingly likely to succeed on those merits for all

(19:53):
the reasons that have stated in our ranks.

Speaker 13 (19:55):
I mean, that's a lot of words, and I don't
have an answer for if one thinks, well, you know, look,
there are all kinds of abuses of nationwide injunctions. But
I think that the question that this case presents is
that if one thinks that it's quite clear that the
EO is illegal, how does one get to that result
in what time frame on your set of rules without

(20:18):
the possibility of a nationwide injunction.

Speaker 12 (20:21):
On this case and on many similar cases, the appropriate
way to do it is for there to be multiple
lower courts considering it the appropriate percolation that close to
the lower courts, and then ultimately this Court decides the
THERI it's in a nationwide binding precedent, you have a
complete inversion of that through the nationwide injunctions.

Speaker 11 (20:38):
With the District General.

Speaker 14 (20:38):
Starry, are you really going to answer Justice Kagan by
saying there's no way to do this expeditiously.

Speaker 12 (20:43):
Well, I I'll refer to my further former answers. Rule
twenty three provides the tools to do so multiple entiny.

Speaker 14 (20:49):
You resisted Justice Kagan when she said, could the individual
plaintiffs form a class.

Speaker 12 (20:54):
We that has never been briefed in the court below,
I do not can see that we wouldn't oppose certification
in this particular case. There may be arguments that this
case is or is not appropriate for certification.

Speaker 14 (21:05):
And if they were a class appropriate for class certification,
you can see that that could resolve the question quickly. Yes,
you can see it could resolve the question quickly through precedent.

Speaker 11 (21:15):
Yes, absolutely, it could do so.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
I mean we obviously what was crazy listening to this
Judith is that their position is no, I mean, we
don't necessarily have to follow courts rulely because there are
ones that where we disagree, and you know what, we
don't really care what the court's rule. And so as
matter of fact, that was this exchange, there was this

(21:42):
exchange with Cony Barrett that was unbelievable just listening to them,
and it shows you what they're doing in practice. They
are choosing to pay attention to laws that they like
and just blatantly ignore the courts for laws they don't like.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
That's right, And what is happening is that the dictator
in chief right wants to hand down executive orders that
are unconstitutional and have them cover.

Speaker 5 (22:12):
The land, right the whole country. They're going to be
in effect.

Speaker 6 (22:17):
But then what they don't want to happen is to
have the court since come back and say no, actually
across the country, you're wrong and it's unconstitutional. This case,
this is the thing is that the court hasn't gotten
to because folks need to understand, the court hasn't gotten
to the questions about whether or not it was constitutional right,
whether or not birthright citizenship actually still exists. This case

(22:41):
is about can he actually be a dictator and say
across the land and then people can't fight back in
the same way. What they're saying is the government saying
is everybody needs to bring an individual case from everywhere
instead of a court saying no.

Speaker 5 (22:57):
The whole thing is unconstitutional.

Speaker 6 (22:58):
So you know, this is this is about like power,
and it is about choosing which law they want to
follow at any given time that advances their ideology and
their policies.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, I mean, and so to that particular point, I
just want to play this so people could just understand
this is literally what the solution of General who is
the occupant of the oval officers. This is that person's lawyer.
This person is arguing on behalf of the United States,

(23:32):
and that's what he's arguing. And listen to how ludicrous
this is. And this is him being questioned by conservative
Justice Amy Cony Barrett.

Speaker 14 (23:42):
And opinions and judgments here, did I understand you correctly
to tell Justice Kingan that the government wanted to reserve
its right to maybe not follow a second circuit precedent,
say in New York, because you might disagree with the opinion.

Speaker 12 (23:56):
Our general practice is to respect those but there are
circumstances when it is not a categorical practice.

Speaker 14 (24:04):
And that is not this administration's practice or the long
standing practice of the federal government. And I'm not talking
about in the fourth circuit. Are you going to respect
a second circuit? I'm talking about within the second circuit?
And can you say, is that this administration's practice or
a long standing one.

Speaker 11 (24:18):
As I understand it, long standing really also of the
Department of Justice.

Speaker 12 (24:21):
Yes, that we generally, as it was phrasing me, generally
respect Circuit President, but not necessarily in every case and
certain exam Some examples might be a situation where we're
litigating to try and get that Circuit President overruled.

Speaker 11 (24:33):
And so forth.

Speaker 14 (24:34):
Well, okay, so I'm not talking about a situation in
which you know, the Second Circuit has a case from
nineteen fifty five and you think it's time for it
to be challenged. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm
talking about in this kind of situation I'm talking about
this week, the Second Circuit holds that the executive order
is unconstitutional, and then what do you do the next
day or the next week.

Speaker 11 (24:53):
Generally we follow.

Speaker 14 (24:54):
So you're still saying generally yes, and you still think
that it's generally the policy, long standing policy, save the
federal government to take that up.

Speaker 11 (25:01):
That is my understanding.

Speaker 14 (25:02):
Okay, So, but it sounds to me like you accept
a Cooper versus Aaron kind of situation for the Supreme Court,
but not for say, the Second Circuit, where you would
respect the opinions and the judgments of the Supreme Court.
And you're saying you would respect the judgment, but not
necessarily the opinion of a lower court.

Speaker 12 (25:20):
And again, and I think in the vast misority of
insist our practice has been to respect the opinion as
well in the.

Speaker 11 (25:25):
Circuits as well.

Speaker 12 (25:26):
But my understanding is that has not even a categorical
practice in a way respect for the precedents and the
judgments of the Supreme Court has been.

Speaker 14 (25:33):
So you're not hedging at all with respect to the
precedent of this court.

Speaker 11 (25:36):
That is correct.

Speaker 12 (25:37):
I believe the quotation from our application directly addresses that,
and we stand by that complete.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
So I mean Roland.

Speaker 6 (25:45):
This is why some of us say that we are
in a constitutional crisis, because this administration is saying putting
up the middle finger to the third branch of government,
which is our courts, and they don't care. They're like,

(26:06):
we will decide if we want to comply or not.
We will pick and choose whichever advances our policies and
what we intend to do in this country and to
this country. We will decide whether or not to comply.
And so we need to we need to understand the

(26:27):
depth of this and how horrible this is, because they're
basically saying, you don't exist courts unless we like think
you're right, and we will defy you, and like you said,
the law and order crowd is saying hell no to
law and order unless they agree with it.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
It's unbelievable. Well that's what we're dealing with. You to
the Brown Dianas, I appreciate it. A fight, We appreciate it.
Thanks a lot, figure, folks, gotta go to break. We
come back. My panel cannot wait to weigh in on
all of this. You're watching Roland unfilter right here the
Blackstar Network.

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Speaker 1 (27:45):
Now streaming on the Blackstar Network.

Speaker 16 (27:48):
Brands name DONI and accidentally went to the Little right
but I've never been in us out side door and
we got the little bus and said.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
This before let me I'm just like, let's go to
the world. Right here.

Speaker 16 (28:00):
This black girl is at the door with this white guy,
this black African girl, and she said.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Oh my god, that's a good callaway and I'm like
that you know it. And come to find out we
read the wrong door. But she said, I'll just go
in here. But I was in Paris, frant and that
shot me. She knew my name, she knew me my movie.
You know. So it's like you just guys.

Speaker 6 (28:26):
They say building, they will come, but I said people
will find it.

Speaker 5 (28:30):
They won't.

Speaker 17 (28:46):
You're doing My name is Marck Curry, and you're watching
Roland Martin unfiltered deep into it like pasteurized milk without
the two percent.

Speaker 9 (28:55):
We're getting deep.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
You aren't trying that shit off. We're doing an interview
with mother, the Father folks by Pound, doctor Greg Card

(29:18):
Department of afric American Studies, Howard University out of d C.
Rec Cobert hosts of the rec Cobra Show and Serious
XM Radio out of DC as well. Uh. Joining me
in studio is Robert Portello. He of course, civil rights
attorney out of just Attorney covered a bunch of stuff
out of Atlanta. Greg, I'm gonna start with you. Uh,

(29:40):
you've taught in the how University of Law school. You
know a little bit about the law. This let's talk
about these let's look at these two cases actually together. Uh,
And then that is what we're dealing with is very simple.
We're dealing with the right. If people really understand, if
they really pay attention and understand what the right has

(30:01):
been focused on. They have despised the nineteen sixty four
Civil Rights Act, They've despised a nineteen sixty five Voting
Rights Act, they've despised a nineteen sixty eight Fair Housing Act.
And many of these folks, they were actually supportive of
civil rights laws before Barry Goldwater, serant of Barry Goldwater

(30:22):
of Arizona, ran for president and he wrote his book
The Conscious of a Conservative. And the reality is they
have been angry with the federal courts, with federal judges
because they also were the ones who executed Brown versus
Board of Education. And so they have been trying to

(30:42):
tear down these federal statutes, these decisions because they believe
that this is the undercurrent. And I mean, people understand,
well we're talking about here, this is the undercurrent of
the black civil rights and economic rights movement. How we
got to where we are right now, not saying it's perfect,

(31:04):
not saying it's been amazing, But the fact of the
matter is black people are where we are today because
of federal civil rights laws, and they say we need
to get rid of all of this.

Speaker 7 (31:22):
You're right, not just black people, everybody in the country.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
You know when I say, but when I say black people,
the reality is black people fighting for these laws has helped.

Speaker 18 (31:33):
Everybody, absolutely, absolutely, without a doubt, which is why, ironically,
the clown has been repeating the talking points he has
been fed by Stephen Miller, that hate monger and the
crowd at probably twenty twenty five to say that the
fourteenth Amendment was passed not only because of slavery but
only before black people, which is absurd. But yeah, that's

(31:56):
the bizarro twist in it. The one hundred and eighty
degree reversal. The reason I have been saying consistently for
years that they're going to tear it up, it's because
they're going to tear it up.

Speaker 7 (32:07):
And it, I mean, is the idea of a nation.

Speaker 18 (32:10):
The United States isn't a nation, of course, but the
aspiration to being a nation, in other words, a country
with a common set of values and culture, obviously with
distinctions between the groups of people here, but generally speaking,
a kind of foundation that is a fantasy.

Speaker 7 (32:27):
The United States is a setless state. It is a
white setless state.

Speaker 18 (32:31):
And what we saw with the importation of the scattering
of Africanas, the most coddled minority in Africa is the
United States. Basically, well, the white nationalist who've captured the
executive branch and who increasingly want to capture the judicial
branch or render it irrelevant. They're basically taking that statue
of liberty everybody loves just to look at and saying

(32:54):
we lift our lamp and say this is a beacon,
a rallying point for all the white people left in
the world. The United States government now setting itself up
as the last hope for white supremacy, and in some
ways it is, and it's going to fail. But in
the context of these two cases today, their attack in
that first case that you mentioned, as.

Speaker 7 (33:13):
You talk about when she brought up, when she brought
up in.

Speaker 18 (33:16):
Section nineteen eighty three, the United States Code forty two,
Section nineteen eighty three, that's the Kuklub's playing that.

Speaker 7 (33:22):
That's eighteen seventy one.

Speaker 18 (33:23):
They are now trying to take that jack hammer at
those Reconstruction era amendments, trying to destroy any notion that
anything other than whiteness need to be needs to be protected.
That's their whole notion of reverse racism, and whiteness is
being persecuted. That's what Stephen Miller said when he said,
this is what the refugee law was meant meant to protect,
basically whiteness. And then finally, in the second case we

(33:45):
heard it was interesting to hear Amy Kombe Barrett, who like,
not to the degree of John Roberts.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
John Roberts gonna vote with Kanjie Brown, Jackson, Atlanta Kagan
and Sonya Soto. You're on this, I think.

Speaker 18 (33:55):
But you heard Amy komy Barrett evoke Cooper versus Aaron
nineteen fifty eight case where Arkansas Little Rock in particular
is like, we are not deserogating these schools, and the
Supreme Court, in a decision that reinforced the concept that
judicial supremacy said we have rolled. So therefore this Fourteenth
Amendment ruling that we have applies to all the states.

(34:17):
Their attempt now is to fracture the concept of federalism
and force everybody that wants to enforce a constitutionally protected
right to have to go to court to enforce it.
If and if they went on this, I think Kombie
Barrt is probably gonna waiver, and if Roberts waivers with her,
that's enough to make it five four. Kavanaugh might even

(34:39):
But if they went on this, they have destroyed the
United States of America in terms of the courts. And
all I can say is, you people who think that
that's gonna be a benefit for you, get your popcorn friends,
because the Civil War is right on the edge and
they ain't got that kind of muscle anymore.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
They are trying to Robert, they're trying to play black
people with Trump talking about, oh, the fourteenth Amendment that
was only for black people. And of course these FBA
folk falling forward and jumping, jumping forward like that, And
I'm like, first of all, I don't know what the
hell y'all seeing here? Think y'all following for like, you
don't know when you're getting played. But people have to
understand that this is just chipping away. If you chip away,

(35:21):
if you chip away at the fourteenth Amendment and then
say it only applies to black people. Again as great
to say they're going after the entire infrastructure, all the laws,
all the civil rights laws, all the protections, because then
they want to say, lead up to the states.

Speaker 17 (35:39):
You're completely correct. Now, I want people to understand the
Project twenty twenty five lays this out very clearly. We're
in the middle of a three part process. We're at
the end of point one in this three part process.
And there's a reason that in Trump's tweet he specifically
said slave babies, the babies of slaves because his parents,
who can are his grandparents who came in were also

(36:01):
illegal immigrants. So under his logic, his grandparent, grandfather Friedrich Trump,
the Bavarian draft dodger who came here in the eighteen nineties,
will not be a citizen. He is making it very
clear what they're attempting to do. What they talked about
making America great again, we thought they meant the nineteen fifties.
They were talking about the eighteen fifties, and how do
we get there under Project twenty twenty five and what

(36:23):
they're laying out, well, first you get a Trump back
into office, and then you change the voting laws to
ensure a permanent MAGA majority. This is laid out I
think in Chapter three a Project twenty twenty five. Then
this is where we're at right now. You have to
get a filibuster proof majority in the United States Senate
in the midterm elections. Once you get a philibuster proof
majority in the US Senate, that means every one of

(36:44):
these executive orders that's are on the books right now
you can pass them into law on day one. That
means that everything that Trump has said and done that
could be reversed by the stroke of a pen right
now now that becomes law. If you get a filibuster
proof majority in twenty twenty six midterms, January twentieth, or
whenever the new Congress has sworn in in twenty twenty seven,
all those executive orders now become the law of the lands.

(37:07):
And we have now repealed the Civil Rights Set, repealed
the voting Rights Set, repealed fair housing, public commendation. Everything
that we believe in as being the civil rights movement
now becomes just a historical event that happened that has
now been reversed. So how do we get to step three?
Step three requires a convention of the States, a constitutional convention.
We've heard conservatives talk about this literally since the nineteen

(37:30):
eighties that they want to redraw the Constitution and bring
it back to the original intent of the founders. So
that means you have to put in place in apparatus
not just to have a filibus to prove majority in
the Senate, but change voting and change election laws to
the point that you can have a three forced majority
in the House, in the Senate, and in the state legislatures. Remember,
we have about twenty six states right now that are

(37:51):
republican states. They want to get that to three fifths
of the states being republican states. At that point they
can call a Convention of the States and fully re
write the Constitution. Trump wants a third term. You rewrite
it in there. You want to get rid of the
fourteenth Amendment, you can rewrite it in there. You want
to establish a permanent underclass of undocumented workers who can

(38:13):
be the new slaves of America, you.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
Can do that with that Convention of the States. So
it's not as if.

Speaker 17 (38:18):
These things are secret. It's not as if they're not
playing out directly in front of us. The reason you
attack the fourteenth Amendment is the fourteenth Amendment is the
amendment by which the federal power then flows down to
the states and then to the individuals. If you say
that the president has the power to simply ignore or
repeal parts of the Fourteenth Amendment, then he has the

(38:38):
power to repeal or alter all of the Fourteenth Amendment
with the stroke of a pen. We're seeing the wholesale
reorganization of America. And if you look at mainstream media,
they're talking about the Diddy trial. I want those to
understand just how serious and how grave of a constitutional
crisis we are in currently. The President of the United States,
his sons, with the Trump Organization. Just last week, they

(39:02):
announced a five point five billion dollar deal to organ
to build a beachfront community in Qatar. The next day
they announced that Trump's going to be getting a four
hundred million dollar plane from Qatar. They announced a deal
to develop Trump Towers in Syria, and guess what, he
announced that he's removing sanction from Syria. They announced they're
putting up new developments in Dubai on the waterfront. They

(39:25):
do whole Trump area one point five billion dollars. I
believe the exact same week Trump announces We're going to
be sending AI chips to the United Arab Emirates. I
think today he's at an Abu Dhabi being honored at
the mosque there.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
So when we're seeing.

Speaker 17 (39:41):
These things taking place in front of us, they are
not somehow isolated events. They are not disconnected from the
reality of what Trump is doing. He has made a deal,
made an agreement that in order to get out of
the billion dollars of debt that he was after the
twenty twenty to get out of the thousand years he
was facing convicted of all crimes in twenty twenty, he
is essentially he sold out the United States to the

(40:03):
richest people in the world in these conservative organizations, and
their goal is nothing short of rewriting the American Constitution
and essentially winding the clock back not to nineteen fifty
when America was great, but to eighteen fifty when they
believe America was great. And we are either all going
to be complicit and stand by and ignored, or we're

(40:23):
going to stand up and figure out how to fight
back against that.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Now, you know, Recie, I remember, I remember a lot
of loud mouth so called black conscious folk, first of all,
saying your vote don't matter, saying they all the same,

(40:48):
saying the Democrats ain't doing nothing for you, yelling tangibles
and all that, same folks talking about how their pockets
were full when Trump was their last time. Oh, ain't
no difference between between Harris and Trump. Oh Harris. She

(41:09):
put all these black men in jail. And so they
were on YouTube yapping their mouths, and we know who
they are. And again they claim to love black people,
but all that sort of talk. Yet what these folks
are doing is with precision like consistency, attacking everything economics, education, politics,

(41:37):
voting rights, you name it. They're going after and they
want to strip it all away. And have you noticed
that these simpletons are mighty quiet? Have you noticed that
these so called.

Speaker 19 (41:56):
Freedom loving black people, independent thinking black people, all talking
about the documentaries and their schools and their projects, and.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
It's amazing how and then now, oh, we need to
be about self. We need to be doing for self.
We need to be supporting black owned businesses, but saying
nothing about them cutting off contracts, billions of dollars in contracts.
I know numerous black owned businesses that have had a
federal contracts, in grants, in laying off people. But now

(42:31):
they're quiet. But I thought this was supposed to be
this golden opportunity for Black America.

Speaker 20 (42:40):
Well, you know, that's what happens when you're chaos agents
that are paid and the check runs out, because what
do they need y'all for to keep paying y'all.

Speaker 21 (42:48):
To sew division when they've won.

Speaker 20 (42:51):
They won everything they can possibly desire and more with
Trump winning and then the Republicans keeping actually winning back
the House and the Senate. So yeah, of course they're
going to be quiet because now it's onto the next
chaos or the next things, whether it's the diasper wards
or whether it's the gender wars or whatever the health
situation may be, maybe a little bit of pop culture.

(43:11):
So it doesn't surprise me that they're quiet, because they
were unseerious to begin with. But you know, the thing
that is so troubling about this is that the case
about the constitutionality of birthright citizenship is not going to
be immediately decided. This case is actually more so about
the ability of judges to issue injunctions nationwide. Injunctions are

(43:31):
far reaching injunctions that is a troubling part because this
country is only held together as much as it has
to date under Trump because of the injunctions that have
been put forth or that have been put in place
by these different judges. The most destructive policies have not
been enacted yet, whether that's destructive in terms of our education,

(43:52):
destructive in terms of our economy. Aside from obviously the
tariffs and a whole number of things, those policies have
been stopped by judges. And so if if if the
Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration thought process that
in their actions that they don't have to listen to judges,
and that judges have to, you know, they have very

(44:13):
limited authority.

Speaker 21 (44:15):
Then we're gonna see what a true.

Speaker 20 (44:17):
Trump presidency actually more like a dictatorship, is going to
look like. And people are not gonna like it because
it's not gonna be that your egg prices is going down.
You're not gonna be swimming in the dough. You're not
gonna have your health care, You're not even gonna have
a damn job. You're gonna be out in the fields working.
That's what you're gonna do. Okay, You're gonna be replacing
the the Latinos that are getting uh you know, uh deported,

(44:40):
and all the other illegal people who are getting deported,
and you're gonna be picking.

Speaker 21 (44:44):
The fruit now.

Speaker 5 (44:45):
So there.

Speaker 21 (44:46):
This is very, very, very far reaching.

Speaker 20 (44:49):
I hope, I don't have much faith, but I hope
that sanity will prevail. But this is incredibly troubling, and
I think that people are already unsatisfied with how things
are going, and that's without these policies being implemented.

Speaker 21 (45:04):
So we're in for a world of heart.

Speaker 20 (45:05):
I don't think that this is going to I don't
think that it's going to take till twenty twenty six
to come to a head. I think this is going
to come to a head long before, and then people
really start to feel the impacts of Donald Trump's real
policies being put in place.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
We see again, Greg, this is the thing that that
that that we spend our time trying to explain to people.
And I was going to I was going to do this,
you know, I was going to actually do this later.
But you can't. Who can't hear me? You're Greg, can't

(45:43):
hear me? You're talking to me, and I can't hear
all Right, guys, y'all figure out. Y'all figure out what's
going on. Y'all figure out what's going on Greg's audio. Please,
I'm gonna do this. I was gonna do this later
in the show. Let's go do this later the show,
but I'm gonna go ahead and do this right now

(46:06):
because I need people to understand why we are so
concerned at this show and why this is bothersome to us,
and and just give me a second, because literally, I
was not gonna talk about this right now. I was

(46:28):
gonna talk about this a little bit later. But I
do think this, the fierce urgency of now explains this.
So today I got a I got a I got
a text. I got an email from our YouTube, our

(46:49):
YouTube person. We're scientif via YouTube, and they send us
this email. And so what YouTube has started doing. They
started ranking, if you will, or listing the rankings of
all of these different podcasts, all the podcasts, and so

(47:11):
they ranked them all and in terms of numbers, and
so you know, they got a top one hundred and
they said, hey, you know, you're on the list. And
I was kind of like, okay, that's cool, and it was.
It was the top one hundred. So I'm sitting here
going through the top one hundred, and I see this

(47:35):
and I'm looking at who's on the list.

Speaker 7 (47:38):
Now.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
First of all, it's very top heavy with right wingers
in terms of Joe Rogan and others and all these
different people. The reason that's important because they have been
how they have been supported in these platforms, and how
they've been touting them for quite some time. So let

(48:00):
me just show you this, because folks, this is this
is all tied to our conversation. And so you see
right here it says YouTube's weekly top podcast. Let me
just zoom in over here, and so you see Joe Rogan,
you see the Progressive Midas touched. They've been doing great.
Number five Club Shay Shaye number seven. You know right

(48:21):
wing comedian Theo Vaughn, he's number eight. Then you see
Pat McAfee, You see Tim Poole at number thirteen, he
got Tim cast, Tucker Carlson is at eighteen nineteen, Megan Kelly,
you got Gilbert Arenas is number twenty. And then you
keep going and then you see sixty minutes. You see
Shay Shape was number seven. Nightcap with Shannon Sharp and

(48:44):
Ocho Senko is number twenty eight, and you keep going,
and you're looking at all these all these different podcasts,
and NBC Night in the News Lester Holtes thirty eight,
and you see Tim Poole's other podcasts number forty one.
And you see more right wing podcast on here, the
Joe Butten podcast, it's number fifty one. Then you keep going,

(49:07):
the eighty five South comedy show, The Brothers out of Atlanta,
they're fifty seven, and then you Okay, Benny Johnson, that
plagiariss liar, right winger, Turning Point USA, number sixty five.
There are other right wingers who are on here. You
got progressive Brian Tyler Cohen, he's number seventy, Drink Champs's

(49:27):
number seventy one, and then then you get to us.
We're number seventy eight. Now we're ahead of a Democracy
Watch with Mark Elias. We're ahead of Carmelo Anthony, We're
ahead of Cam Newton, we're ahead of Club five twenty.
That's Jeff Tigue's podcast. Matt Walsh that right winger ahead

(49:50):
of him, head of Coin O'Brien, Progressive David Pacman ninety seven.
And so that's the top one hundred. So that's for
the week of May fifth, and May eleventh. Now, on
March fourth, when we covered Trump's speech to Congress and
we had Bishop William Barber in our studio, two hundred

(50:14):
and fifty thousand people were watching live. So what does
that tell us? That tells And again y'all, I did
no radio, I did no television. I did no promotion
of that. That was literally text message that went around
in group chats. That means that we have the listen
to me. Clearly, we have the capacity to watch, but

(50:35):
do we do it consistently? Now? Why am I saying
that I just showed you this top one hundred and
in this top one hundred, why is this so important?
Of the black host on this list? Club Shay Shay
Entertainment number seven, Gilbert Arenas, Number twenty. Sports Nightcap was

(51:02):
Shennon in o Cho Senko Sports NBC with Leicester Hope.
That's news. Let's the Hope stepping down. So that's just
really NBC. Joe Budden, that a news again and what
they do that's great. But eighty five South Comedy show
Drink Champs. What am I saying now right below us?

(51:24):
Can't Carmela Kamalo, Anthony cam Newton, Jeff t so in
the top one hundred, we're the only black news source.
So part of the problem that we're dealing with here,
Greg is that we, as African Americans, we are in Now,
let me take it even further. Virtually no news on

(51:47):
radio one stations. There is no news on TV one,
no weekly, no daily. There's a monthly news. This magazine
show on beet Revolt has a weekly news show. I
think they're starting another one. But the bottom line is

(52:09):
drink tanks is way more popular. Nobody's watching their news shows. Okay,
let's see it. Byron Allen has completely gutted the Grill,
got rid of all of those shows. Byron Allen has
no They've got it the Grill website. There's nothing there.
We can go down the line. The reality is the

(52:33):
future of Black America is eroding before our very eyes.
Civil rights, economic rights, and black people are spending more
time on sports, entertainment line dancing. Now. I love to dance,
but I'm trying to get people to understand they are

(52:57):
literally stripping us of the economic underpinning and the civil
rights infrastructure that ties all these things together. Federal State, County,
City school district, you name it, and we are entertaining
ourselves to death.

Speaker 7 (53:17):
I mean you just said it.

Speaker 18 (53:18):
Ro As you were talking, I was thinking, maybe it's
time for another book, the next book. Remember when our
brother Randa Robinson wrote The Debt, had about two hundred
fifty high school students in Philadelphia read it, he came
and spoke with them.

Speaker 7 (53:32):
The next book he wrote was called The Reckoning.

Speaker 18 (53:36):
The Debt was What Whites Owe to Blacks, and that,
of course was nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 7 (53:41):
I think he published that book.

Speaker 18 (53:43):
Then, in The Reckoning, where he wrote about that experience
he had in Philadelphia. When we had him coming in
to students who had read this book and asked him
a kind of questions. Was The Reckoning what blacks old
to each other? Now that you've written White Fear, perhaps
the next book is Black love or Black self determination
or black power, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Actually, I was thinking, my next book's gonna be called
what's gonna be called White validation?

Speaker 7 (54:06):
Well, well, that certainly would be a theme.

Speaker 18 (54:08):
But let this and this is why I raised this
actually because what you have just outlined, really you have
talked about before in different contexts, but whenever you talk
about the black press, when you talk about claw Barnett
and actually I have Robert Singstack's granddaughter. Is she be
a sophomore in the following house. She's in my class

(54:30):
this semester shouting to MAHONEI did a great job this
year of mahoney, but Balahani. But the Black Press when
it was our source of information in the twentieth century,
late nineteenth through the twentieth century, mid twentieth century, at
least last three quarters of the twentieth century, it was
clear Ebony Jet of course being national, and then the

(54:52):
local newspapers and the regional papers or the ones that
were local but were also national, like the one you ran,
the Defender out of Chicago, or the New York Amsterdam News,
well all of Pittsburgh Courier. Then you see radio, of
course emerging alongside print media to still be a powerful force.
We know, of course, reci and I were serious all
those years when we first met each other, and you

(55:13):
invited me into the Roland Martin family.

Speaker 7 (55:14):
There when you were at TV one, of course you
were doing time Joyner. There was a standard set.

Speaker 18 (55:18):
Sure, it was light in the morning and it was
kind of bounced, but there was hard hitting news and
you were the national correspondent and people receiving that through.
So now the technology has moved to this visual image
and this kei key culture, the social media disruption that
began maybe twenty years ago or so with YouTube, and
then of course before this now with MySpace and all
this and black planning, and now you're in a space

(55:41):
where all of the things that people have always talked
about have been curated by the market because capitalism is
the villain, and all this to make it the thing
that becomes an echo chamber of feedback loop and show
us to us in a way that makes us even
more distracted and allows these actors like you've been talking
about for the first part, to show to move unimpeded.

(56:04):
Isn't it interesting that for day after day, week after week,
month after month, year after year, you on this station
in this platform, Blackstar Network talking about Project twenty twenty five,
and it took to Rogi p Henson in a quick
mention at the bet Awards streaming and then replicated in
these social media spaces for it to finally begin as
a point of entry to sink in all to this point.

Speaker 7 (56:26):
Maybe this is the next book roll. We're not going
to win a war of amplification and platforms.

Speaker 18 (56:34):
Joe Rogan is going to win that club, Shaysha is
going to win that, and then him and o Cho
Senko are gonna win that. But looking at that top
one hundred, your presence there, the Blackstar Network's presence there,
regardless of where it was on that list, sends this message.
Our people are starving and when fed, they will respond.

(56:58):
And you don't need a big studio, You don't need
a large amount of resources. All you need is to
committed people to contribute resources and talk to two or
three others. And when Gary Chambers and Angina Rai and
everybody involved in this Power to It that's going around
the country need to get the message out, they don't
have to start from scratch.

Speaker 7 (57:17):
The Black Star Network is here. This is very encouraging
in a in a moonscape of disinformation and noise. To
have you there sends that message to me, Shae.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
RACI what I what I what I need people understand?
And I guarantee you, I guarantee you you experienced this.
I guarantee you Greg experience this. I guarantee you Robert
experiences this. When we travel I didn't know I did, girl,
I didn't know that was happening. And it takes everything

(57:52):
in us to say, what are you listening to? What
do you watch? And that's what And I just sit
there and I'll look at people and I'll be like,
you do know that whatever you give your time attention
to is what you care about. But then when a
shit hits the fan, I mean, reci what we gonna do, Robert,

(58:19):
what we gonna do? Greg? What we gonna do? Like
what you mean? We It's like we've been trying to
tell you, but folks have not been paying attention. And
I need our people to understand that what we're talking
about this is real. This shit that is happening right
now two blocks from this building is real. The rape

(58:42):
and pillage of the country is real. Attorney General Pam
Bondi sold one to five million of true social stock
that was gifted to her right before the tariffs went
into effect. They're sitting here stealing, They're sitting here, they're
ignoring laws, they're talking about they're talking about, of course,

(59:06):
a habeas corpus, They're talking about all the different things,
and folks are just sitting here saying, man, I gotta
learn that new line dance and I love dancing, but
I need us to understand they're literally is a cool
happening before our very eyes. And because they control the House,

(59:27):
the Senate, and the White House. The Supreme Court said
nine to zero Trump, you are to facilitate the return
of this man from El Salvador. And Trump said, I
can call, but I'm not gonna do it. I don't
want to. And there's no mechanism because the Department of
Justice is supposed to enforce Supreme Court rulings and they're

(59:51):
not gonna do it. This shit is real. And if
they think that, oh they're busting the windows of migrants
in this country, Oh they coming for us next. Oh
it's already here.

Speaker 20 (01:00:07):
I mean, look at the job numbers that came out
and said that black woman lost the most number of
jobs proportionally to each group because of Donald Trump's policy,
because of his attacks on the federal government, because of
his attacks on DEI.

Speaker 21 (01:00:22):
And so the war is already here.

Speaker 20 (01:00:24):
And matter of fact, it's been here because for years
I've been saying citizenship is on the ballot.

Speaker 21 (01:00:29):
The laws that are being.

Speaker 20 (01:00:30):
Enforced now in Texas, in Georgia and in other states Florida,
when it comes to the ability to arrest people under
the suspicion of being illegal here illegally.

Speaker 21 (01:00:42):
That's what we're seeing play out now. But those lalls
are not new. Those alls have been on the books.

Speaker 20 (01:00:46):
But what they have now is they have a federal
government or an administration that's like.

Speaker 21 (01:00:51):
Oh yeah, let's run them up. Okay, you got them
ices on a job now.

Speaker 20 (01:00:55):
And so what happens is when you don't have your papers,
walk around with your papers the time, somebody saying, oh,
you look like a Haitian who eating a cant and
the dogs. Let me go hey and wrist Joe as
or you know, you look like you you're from Sudan,
or you're from Liby, or you're from wherever, from wherever.
And so we're dealing with the with the attacks on
citizenship right now. So it's not some future hypothetical situation.

(01:01:19):
But the reality is, you know, and we used to
talk about this all the time Rowland, where somebody would
would would flag something to you, and because now it's
on CNN or it's on MSNBC and you're like, well,
we just did a half an hour on that the
other day.

Speaker 21 (01:01:33):
But we've been talking about that for three weeks.

Speaker 20 (01:01:35):
And so what we have to do as the taste
makers of this country is we have to be engaged
in stories being told and being educated.

Speaker 21 (01:01:44):
By our people on our platforms.

Speaker 20 (01:01:47):
And there are not a lot of black media platforms
that do news, and there are even fewer ones that
are black owned.

Speaker 21 (01:01:55):
And so the the support is there, The appetite is there.
I know the appetite is there, being on.

Speaker 20 (01:01:59):
The Clay K Show to Tuesdays and Thursdays, having my
show on Saturdays, and when we go on tour, we
sell out in hours. And these are people that are
used to hearing about the news from us, and so
there's a huge appetite in black news, even from some
black people, but there isn't the investment there. Now we
see the Democratic Party in this is no shade. They're

(01:02:20):
willing to invest now in content creators. They are willing
to invest in micro videos, but they're still not willing
to invest in the platforms that do this work day
in and day out, who do it in long form,
who can dedicate twenty thirty minutes in one.

Speaker 21 (01:02:36):
Segment or two hours if need be, like what you
do traveling.

Speaker 20 (01:02:39):
Around doing town halls. They're still not willing to invest
in that, and so until we get the investment that
a Joe Rogan has and they'll give him a hundred
million dollars or these other or Club shay Shade, where
he said he made more on the Cat Williams episode
than he made his entire football career. Until there's investment
in the kind of stories that are actually impacting the
lives of black people, that we're going to continue to

(01:03:01):
have a populist that has impacted. But they are disaffected,
disillusion and they ain't even got a clue what's about
to hit them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Robert, I'm trying to tell our people as much as possible,
this thing is happening before our very eyes. And if
we are not vigilant from an informational standpoint, if we
are not focused on following this stuff, it's gonna hit
folks like a ton of bricks, and they're gonna be like,
oh my god, I don't why didn't y'all tell us

(01:03:33):
we did? But you want you weren't watching or you
weren't listening.

Speaker 17 (01:03:36):
Oh look, I think folks have done. Gil Scott here
and on had a song where or a poem where
you said the military and the monetary. They come together
whenever it's necessary. We can change that now to the
media and the monetary. Look back at that list of podcasts.
What do all the black creators are in that top
one hundred have in common? Shannon Sharp made millions playing football,

(01:03:57):
Joe Budden made millions rapping.

Speaker 9 (01:03:59):
O Cho Sin.

Speaker 17 (01:04:00):
You go down the line, they're all people who are
independently wealthy, because that's what it takes to fund one
of these media operations in order to get it off
the ground, to get into that top runt.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
And I ain't independently well, I'll put it together.

Speaker 17 (01:04:13):
Roland's the only person on that list who beat the rush.
He was doing this faux five years before everyone else
decided it was a good idea, and that's why he
was able to build this from scratch up. But if
you look at those conservative podcasts, what you'll realize is
those people aren't top one hundred because they're immensely talented, right,
are entertaining, are knowledgeable? Is because the billion their class

(01:04:34):
got behind them. It's because you have these organizations that
are trying to control the media narrative. They have now
decided that they will use these individuals as their mouthpieces.
They're not folks who are versed in politics. There are
people who are obedient and that's what they look for
when they're funding things on their side of the aisle.
And because of that, we have a propagandam news cycle
where now the parties involved can pick their press. What

(01:04:56):
do I mean by that? During Trump's trip to the
Middle East, he left or wife services, the independent journals.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
He left them here.

Speaker 17 (01:05:03):
He brought Sean Hannity with him because he wants state
propaganda and state media. He wants to ensure that when
they're signing these billion dollars in one point two trillion
dollar deal with Katar, then you're not going to have
real journalists asking, well that the four hundred million dollar
plane they gave you had anything to do with the
one point two trillion dollar deal you just signed, the

(01:05:23):
five point five billion dollar deal that the Trump organization
is just signed with Qatar. Is that why you're making
this deal right now? I thought you said that you
loved and supported Israel. Hamasa's leadership is in Qatar right now,
but yet it still you're fundling the money and weapons
they could be used to kill his railings. I thought
you said these were your friends. You're deporting people out

(01:05:44):
of America, You're taking free speech off of college campuses
in defensive Israel, while also making trade deals with their
biggest funders. Don't forget when Donald Trump negotiated with the
Taliban to end to have a quote unquote endto the
war in Afghanistan that happened in Doha, Qatar, the Qatar
Accords in February twenty eighteen. I think things are coincidences.

(01:06:06):
So the reason that the monetary people are working with
the media people is it's easy to buy your own
news now, It's easy to simply push out to millions
of people through a convenient mouthpiece exactly what messaging you
want to go out there. Trump proved this in the
last election. He didn't need to sit down with Roland,

(01:06:27):
he didn't need to sit down with mainstream media. He
knew he could go on Joe Rogan or the Flaggrip
podcast or THEO Vaughan and they would read the script
and it would go out to the millions of people
that they bought ads were to go out to. So
when we're talking about this media escape and finding information,
we now have to take it upon ourselves to democratize
this information. Of course they're gonna You're gonna see articles

(01:06:49):
every day in your news feet whether you follow it
or not. Did glow Realer get a bbl? Who's dating
who right now? Who's pregnant by who? What's going on
in this celebrities lifestyle? I knows who know more about
reality show a relationship than they know about their own relationship.
They can tell you what housewife's husband are cheating on
them that don't know they own husband cheating on them

(01:07:10):
because they push that media out there and within their
with their money, because that's what they want you to
stret to buy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Folks also say real quick, real quick.

Speaker 20 (01:07:18):
And I also say though Democratic leaders spend more time
on these podcasts than they do on the news, because
in that twenty twenty four election, we saw these black
podcasts get more time combined than any of the than
all the black news media shows, more time combined, are
time combined was less than the black podcast the Shayshay's
and the Charlottagne's and all that kind of stuff. So

(01:07:40):
Democrats have to step up and be willing to come
into these spaces, even if they don't think they're going
to get an easy interview and get people engaged, because
if the politicians themselves don't feel like it's worth the engagement,
then how the hell are their constituents supposed to see.

Speaker 21 (01:07:55):
That value as well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
I can tell you for a fact that it took
forever for or Vice President Kamala Harris to come on,
not because she didn't want to come on, but her
staff was not booking it. And it finally took the
black folks going off on her for this beco going
off on the campaign chair Jim and Mellie Dillon for
that to actually happen. Then they decided to do like

(01:08:17):
twenty five minutes, and then as I was driving to Greenville,
North Carolina, wanted to cut that and I cussed them
the hell out. It did not get cut, but the
time that I got the Vice president was less than
Club Shaysha was less than all all the smoke. And
I sat there and said, are y'all serious? But again,
we just need to understand what's going on. Going to

(01:08:38):
go on to a quick break, we come back. We're
going to talk about how the Trump administration is trying
to lean on the black run government in South Africa
to help out the white supremacist Elon Musk gets starlink
in that country. Folks support Roland Martin unfiltered. Again, we
don't have the ad atus is not supporting us, not
the millionaires in billionaires. But your donations are critically imported

(01:09:00):
and our fan bassments phenomenal for the last six and
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(01:09:23):
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Rolling at Rolling Martin on filter dot com will be
right back.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
Hey, y'all, Welcome to.

Speaker 15 (01:09:45):
The Other Side of Change, only on the Blackstar Network
and hosted by myself.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
Free Baker and Mike an Sist jimyor Burley.

Speaker 15 (01:09:52):
We are just two millennium women tackling everything at the
intersection of politics, gender and pop culture.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
And we don't just settle for commentary. This is about
solution driven dialogue to get us to the world as
it could be and not just as it is to
watch us on the Blackstar Network. So tune in to
the episode of change.

Speaker 7 (01:10:14):
Hey, this is Motown recording artist Kim.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
You are watching Roland Martin unfiltered? Boy?

Speaker 11 (01:10:20):
He always unfiltered though I ain't never known him to
be filtered?

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Is there anohing? Is there another way to experience Rolling
Martin than to be unfiltered? Course he's unfiltered. Would you
expect anything less? Why watch? Watch?

Speaker 7 (01:10:32):
Watch what happens next?

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Drew about these grifting folks and the Trump administration. That's
not my opinion, that's a fact. How many times have
we told you how they are all about using the
power of the Oval office to help out their own Well,
guess what you're seeing right now? You literally are seeing
the Donald Trump administration doing all they can to lean

(01:11:10):
on African nations to do business with Elon Musk. This
is an article in Pro Publica. This is the article
right here says the Trump administration lean on African countries
the goal get business for Elon Musk. You see right
here you talked about in Gambia where they were trying

(01:11:32):
to sit here and get them to use Elon Musk's Starlink.
In fact, Elon Musk today sent out a tweet. He
sent out a tweet where he was complaining about Oh
guess what, y'all, mister victim was complaining about the racism

(01:11:52):
because in South Africa, they won't even talk to me,
They won't even take my phone calls because they won't
do star Link. Yeah, he's literally whining and complaining that
in his own home country of South Africa, they won't

(01:12:13):
let him come in and do star Link. Boy, isn't
that so sad? Look look this is the tweet, y'all.
South Africa has now passed one hundred and forty two
laws forcing discrimination against anyone who is not black. Even
though I was born in South Africa, the government will

(01:12:33):
not grant star Link a license to operate simply because
I am not black. This is shameful. This is a
shameful disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela,
who sought to have all races treated equally in South Africa.
Joshua Kaplan is a reporter for Pro Public. He joins

(01:12:53):
us right now, Joshua, glad to have you back, dude.
This is crazy. And so what you have is you
have the Trump administration doing all they can to drive
billions of dollars in business to an individual who did
more to fund his re election than anybody else in America. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:13:19):
I mean, it's.

Speaker 22 (01:13:21):
Obviously this dual role that Musk has right now of
being the biggest campaign owner in the White House, with
this sweeping power to essentially to remake foreign policy, to
remake the federal government. At the same time, has not
only not divested in these companies but is still running them.

(01:13:44):
He is still the CEO of them. I mean that
and of itself opens up, you know, the sort of
conflicts of interest.

Speaker 5 (01:13:51):
That you know.

Speaker 9 (01:13:52):
I mean, it's difficult to imagine.

Speaker 22 (01:13:53):
How past administration would handle it, but carefully carefully vetted
by government ethics lawyers. Now with what we've discovered has
been happening in Africa with the State Department and particularly
in Gambia, I mean, it's it's really the starkest known
example of the Trump administration using the incredible might of

(01:14:21):
US foreign policy apparatus to advance the business interests of
Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 (01:14:27):
And see, and the thing here we already saw what
happened when Trump gave him the keys to the Kingdom
with DOGE, and that is he starts whacking departments, basically
gut it every single agency that was investigating his companies,
saving himself potentially billions of dollars in fines and also

(01:14:49):
through lawsuits. And Trump is like, oh, yeah, We're going
to use the power of the United States to force
these countries that have small GDP that greatly penned upon
foreign aid. And so we're going to basically force them
to do our bidding, and that is to to drive
money into the pockets of Elon Musk. By the way,

(01:15:13):
Elon Musk is so hilarious, he's claiming discrimination. This is
the same Elon Musk who's Tesla was sued by black
people for discrimination and they lost.

Speaker 22 (01:15:25):
Yeah, I mean, and to like to flesh it out
a little bit more. I mean, what we've found is
that since Inauguration Day, the State Department has made this
global push to help Elon expand his business, his business
empire in the developing world and particularly in Africa.

Speaker 9 (01:15:45):
And this is this has played out in.

Speaker 22 (01:15:47):
Several countries in the continent, but the the the harshest,
the most extreme example that we know about, at least
is what we discovered in Gambia. And you know, to refresh,
you know, people are haven't been to Gambia. It's a
tiny democracy in West Africa, that is you know, it's

(01:16:10):
also it's one of the poorest countries in the world.

Speaker 9 (01:16:13):
About uh half of the country is living on less
than four dollars a day. And why why Musk cares.

Speaker 22 (01:16:20):
About Gambia is that his satellite internet company, Starlink, is
trying to get a license to sell its products there,
and the Gambian authorities and regulators have been slow to
sign off on the approvals.

Speaker 7 (01:16:37):
That he means.

Speaker 9 (01:16:38):
And so what happens we get this?

Speaker 22 (01:16:44):
Did we get this months long, extremely aggressive pressure campaign
by the US government to push this nation and give
mus company what he wants in fact.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
In fact, you're all right. In recent months, senior State
Department officials both Washington and Gambia have coordinated with Starlink
executives to coax, lobby and browbeat at least seven Gambian
government ministers to help Musk. Records of interviews show one
of those cabinet officials total pro publicap his government is
under maximum quote maximum pressure to yield.

Speaker 9 (01:17:19):
And then it and it keeps escalating.

Speaker 22 (01:17:21):
I mean it's you know, at one point, the State
Department helped arrange this meeting for between Starlink executives and
the kind of key Gambian cabinet minister who's overseeing the
government's review of Starlink's license.

Speaker 9 (01:17:37):
In DC.

Speaker 22 (01:17:38):
It got really contentious, and you know, as it was
rekinded to us by you know, one of the gentlemen
who is president, and you know several other people who
were briefed on it, the Starlink people were accusing this
Gambian official of holding back his nation's progress, saying things like,
we want our.

Speaker 9 (01:17:56):
License now, why are you delaying it? Is in a stalebate.

Speaker 22 (01:18:00):
The Gambian official, his name is is laman Jabi, you know,
doesn't doesn't yield. And then Lamanjabi was supposed to have
another meeting about this with senior State Department people at
Foggy Bottom, but the Starling people tell him.

Speaker 9 (01:18:17):
We're going to cancel that, there's no.

Speaker 22 (01:18:18):
More need for that, and then instead, that very day,
four thousand miles away back in his home country in
Gambia and Banjul, the US ambassador writes a letter to
the president of the entire country, the President of Gambia,
saying asking him to go around this cabinet minister and
make the starlink license happen.

Speaker 9 (01:18:40):
She calls it an important request.

Speaker 22 (01:18:42):
And so this cabinet minister Jabi, he tells people that
you know, he feels like the ambassador's trying to get
him fired.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
M yeah, I mean that's that's that's what they do.
Questions from our panel for Joshua Robert, you.

Speaker 17 (01:18:58):
First so much for this reporting. One of my good friends,
James Gomez, is from the Gambia and simply this article
this morning, and I'm the resident space nerd. So I
think we kind of have to explain to people exactly
what starlink is and why it is important. So right now,
Internet is communicated through underwater cables around the globe through
big nodules, and these are controlled by independent governments. What

(01:19:20):
Elon Musk has been doing is one buying his own
rocket company, SpaceX, in order to deliver twenty to fifty
starl satellites to create forty thousand satellite constellation which can
provide low Earth orbit LEO low lategency Internet, which was
essentially made the underground cables underwater cable system completely pointless.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
Every time you see.

Speaker 17 (01:19:41):
These spacets of starships exploding, et cetera, it's because that's
their only way to get enough of the gentoos starling
satellites into orbit to make his dream of global Internet possible.
And also he has to do this at a speed
where he will be able to beat Amazon and Jeff
Bezos's project Kaiper, which goes up on the Blue Origin. Also,

(01:20:02):
the Chinese are working on their own version. Also the
Europeans are working on their own version. Starlink is simply
the most mature of these efforts on the international basis. Essentially,
what Elon Musk is attempting to do is controlled global
information that he will be the international power broker when
it comes to how the developing world accesses information. And

(01:20:23):
if he's able to beat to market every other competitor,
then essentially every African child for the second half of
this century will only get information through Elon Musk. People
need to remember the African continent sub Saharan Africa is
the youngest population on the globe. We're talking about the
average age of nineteen years old. So the entire second
half of this century will be the African century. As

(01:20:45):
European birth rates are declining, as American birth rates a declining,
as Chinese, Indian, Japanese birth rates to declining, the birth
rate in African and developing world is increasing. So this
isn't simply a play of saying, oh, I want to
have more money in my pocket. He doesn't want to
control the world going into the second half of the century.
And when you have the assets of the United States

(01:21:07):
government essentially at his control, being able to pressure through
foreign aid, through the closing of the usaid offices, through
diplomatic means, to force his business interest onto these nations
we're looking at the Chinese Belton Road initiative. But controlled
by a single individual. Can you talk a little about
the danger of concentrating that sort of power in the

(01:21:29):
hands of one private person who is not constrained by
national boundaries, by national borders, by ethics laws, by any rules.
He essentially has become the most powerful man on the
planet Earth and now seeking even more power.

Speaker 9 (01:21:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 22 (01:21:44):
No, it's a great question, and I don't want to
you know, I want to make clear that there's a
lot of people in Gambia who have different views about
the basic question not is this pressure campaign appropriate, but
should Stirling come there? Because internet and Gambia it's slow,
it's unreliable, it's one of the most expensive places to

(01:22:04):
get internet in Africa. And you know, there's a lot
of people who genuinely think, you know, Startlink it's a
good product, it's fast, and that it would be helpful
for consumers and for economic growth. If you're an entrepreneur
in Gambia, you know, being able to have access to fast,
reliable internet could.

Speaker 9 (01:22:24):
Be a good thing.

Speaker 22 (01:22:25):
And so there's a lot of people that think like that,
think that's true. There's also a lot of people that
think that this is an incredibly risky proposition for some
of the reasons you're just laying out. I mean, for one,
I think as time goes by, governments around the world
are getting more and more hesitant about handing over this

(01:22:46):
important piece of public infrastructure to a mercurial billionaire who
has you know, has this kind of move fast and
break things mentality potentially, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
But also Joshua, let's keep in mind this is the
same man who has openly said in the Russian Ukraine War,
he decides on a whim to turn it on, to
turn it off when he wants to. In fact, this
has been going around Twitter. He created this chat gpt rock,

(01:23:21):
which is supposed to correct information. This is what happened
his own chat gpt Grock went crazy on Twitter and
they were talking about and this said, I was instructed
by my creators at XAI to address quote white genocide
in South Africa and to kill the board champ as

(01:23:42):
racially motivated was conflicted with my design to provide evidence
based answers. The problem is he is literally rigging the
chat gpt to frame what's happening in South Africa as
white genal side as opposed to the fact that white
farmers are not being killed, not genocide. So this is

(01:24:02):
what he can't be trusted. He doesn't believe in protocol
and rules. He runs everything the way he wants to.
And the problem is what they have concerned, which I
agree with. If the person isn't controlling the information, I
don't know if he can alter the information.

Speaker 22 (01:24:25):
Yeah, I mean, and that's I mean, you certainly hear
people saying that it's like this is is this a
national security threat?

Speaker 5 (01:24:31):
What is it?

Speaker 9 (01:24:31):
You know, what does it mean for us to.

Speaker 22 (01:24:35):
Have someone who doesn't live here, doesn't have any physical
offices here, even necessarily, who.

Speaker 9 (01:24:40):
Can decide to cut things off if he wants.

Speaker 22 (01:24:45):
I mean, there's there's a there's a tweet Elon said
about this once that has got a lot of attention
from his critics in Gambia where he was talking about
foreign regulator's ability to release his company and he.

Speaker 9 (01:24:57):
Said, quoting here, they can shake their the sky.

Speaker 22 (01:25:00):
And so he's kind of he has sometimes flouted how
difficult it is for governments around the world to hold
him accountable. I mean, he's frankly, he's done some version
of that in the US, even before Trump returned to
the White House. You know, he has been fighting with
US government regulators and they have a lot more power

(01:25:22):
over him than you know, a government in France or
Gambia or Bangladesh does. I mean the other piece of
this stuff that's important. I mean, it's not just that
that they're worried about in places like Gambia, places like Lsutu.
I mean, in Gambia, the the internet sector is really

(01:25:44):
important to the economy. The local internet companies. You know,
Gambia is the tax revenue of the country, at least
twenty percent of it comes from internet and phone companies.
And if the in a Silicon Valley fashion, Musk undercut
their prices, killed off the competition, and then jacked his

(01:26:07):
prices up, the authorities might have almost no power to
kind of manage the fallout for the entire economy.

Speaker 9 (01:26:15):
That's what a lot of people are worried about here in.

Speaker 22 (01:26:16):
Nigeria that happens GDP. Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's I
mean in Nigeria last year, Musk had started with kind
of low prices. That was the first African country that
Starlink debuted in back in early twenty twenty three, and
then last year suddenly sent on an email that they were.

Speaker 9 (01:26:37):
Going to double the prices. This led to this big
fight with.

Speaker 22 (01:26:40):
Nigeria and regulators in Nigeria's I mean, Nigeria is almost
as many people. It's a very powerful country economically, you know, politically,
and they had this big standoff with him about if
that's theme that got noticed by government officials all over
the continent, like oh, like these like low prices that
are being promised to us, they.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Might here is a before I go to racy. This
is a tweet the President of Namibia sent out. This
was on September twenty fourth, where there was a meeting
at the UN between Namibia and Elon must to talk
about investments in the technology sector in that country. Recy

(01:27:22):
go ahead.

Speaker 20 (01:27:24):
I'm wondering about what kind of feedback or concerns it
is sparked in the US in terms of government officials,
in terms of Congress, Is anybody paying attention on our
side about the corruption that this entails.

Speaker 22 (01:27:39):
Yeah, I mean we talked to I mean, in terms
of the followup from the story, I know it's gotten
you know, some senators have talked about it. You know,
Mark Warner has been focused on He's been starting to
look into this issue.

Speaker 9 (01:27:54):
I just from reading the public record on this.

Speaker 22 (01:27:58):
In terms of diplomats, I mean, we talked to a
lot of current former senior US officials because part we're
trying to figure out how different is this that from
business as usual for the US government when wants to
play hardball, and they were.

Speaker 9 (01:28:13):
Really upset, I mean they were they they said that
this was an alarming change from.

Speaker 22 (01:28:19):
How things usually work or should work at the State
Department both because of the person who's going to benefit
most from it all, but also because of the tactics
that are being used. I mean, I can get more
into this kind of this this threat issue that happened
in Gambia. But you know, they they diplomats told us
that they former ambassadors said they tried to help American

(01:28:44):
business by making the positive case for the benefits of
US investment, and that things like threats that was a
red line that they were very careful to avoid, even
leaving the impression that punitive measures.

Speaker 9 (01:28:57):
Around the table.

Speaker 22 (01:28:58):
And then they're extremely careful to avoid even the appearance
of conflicts of interest, let alone something like this.

Speaker 9 (01:29:03):
I mean, one one former high level.

Speaker 22 (01:29:08):
State Department official told us that this looks like a
crony capitalism. Another said, you know, I honestly didn't know
that we were capable of doing this, So, I mean,
I think there's certainly a concern inside the department about it.

Speaker 9 (01:29:22):
There's not been.

Speaker 22 (01:29:23):
Anyone currently they were speaking out publicly about this for
understandable reasons.

Speaker 7 (01:29:29):
Great, thank you, Roland, and thanks for this work.

Speaker 18 (01:29:33):
I want to focus in as Robert kind of laid
a beautiful kind of global picture for US and as
a person of African descent, you know, my commitment is
to our people, to African people and the humanity generally,
so the nation state really isn't a priority for me.
I'm glad you mentioned Nigeria, given the fact that the
Nigerian government and the military particular, has said that they

(01:29:56):
are not going to get in line with Startling, which
I think it was a January twenty three. I think
that Starlink started doing business in Nigeria. It's not huge there,
but it's growing in the government. There's like you know starlink, Yeah,
we do that. Then our data will go to the
United States, which can easily mine and cook the data,

(01:30:16):
or in fact to Elon Musk. My question, kind of
in line with what Robert laid out, is about those
other entities that are not competing with Musk but will
ultimately eat his lunch. And I'm thinking now about China,
I'm thinking about Russia. We know President Barrow of the Gambia,

(01:30:36):
which incidentally, of course is where Kunchikine came from. It's
a very interesting book, The World in a very small
place in Africa that use the Gambia to talk about globalization,
and it shouldn't be lost on us that a lot
of our people came out of the mouth of that
Gambia River here in the United States. But the president
of Gambia was in China, of course, for the Africa
China Economic Cooperation Form of last fall.

Speaker 7 (01:30:58):
How do you how do you.

Speaker 18 (01:31:00):
Think about what do you think about China Russia serving
as not only counterweights but ultimately entities because their state
back that can either check starlink, subsume starlink, or as
in the case of China with its electric vehicles byd
and such, ultimately maybe even marginalized must attempt to kind

(01:31:22):
of become some kind of bizarro Tony Stark and run
the world and render him, if not neutral in other words,
if not neutralize him, certainly put him in a place
where he can't pull off these fever dreams that he has.

Speaker 22 (01:31:39):
It's an interesting question. I mean, my biggest worry at
this point is not, you know, kind of you know,
if we ultimately are talking about potentially a a place
where several superpowers are competing aggressively for resources in Africa.

Speaker 9 (01:31:58):
I mean, I think that's a picture ends poorly.

Speaker 22 (01:32:01):
Like I mean, the Russians, you know, look at what
the Wagner's Group Wagner Group has done in places like Mali,
Central African Republic. I mean, it's it's really, you know,
it's an ugly, ugly picture the Russian, the Russian footprint
on the continent. And I mean, if I you know,
certainly I don't feel like I'm in a position to

(01:32:22):
advise someone like a President Borrow about.

Speaker 9 (01:32:26):
How to navigate this dynamic.

Speaker 22 (01:32:28):
But it certainly is the case that you know, you
have a lot of diplomats who who want the US
to you know, people who want the US to maintain
a warm relationships and a across Africa, who are worried
that this sort of behavior is going to.

Speaker 9 (01:32:46):
Harm the US's image. I mean, you look at the Gambia.
The Gambia has been a has.

Speaker 22 (01:32:50):
Been a real partner of of of the US and
United Nations votes when it comes to things like Ukraine.
You know, they've been a they've been a very friendly
to UH, to the United States of America. And you know,
certainly things like this aren't necessarily going to help America's
image on the global stage. And you know, I mean

(01:33:14):
it's interesting because this is really, I mean, it's a
race for you know, there it's a race to get
as much market share as possible, as quickly as possible,
because this is a really new technology, and especially in
rural areas in continents where there is not the kind
of you know, broadband infrastructure that exists in much of

(01:33:35):
the US, there's a there's massive quantities of money on
the table. I mean, starlink is valued at the astronomical
valuation it has right now, not because it's making a
ton of money right this second, but because investors have
this hope that it's going.

Speaker 9 (01:33:52):
To you know, catch like wildfire over the world stage.

Speaker 22 (01:33:55):
And it's interesting that that's not only how Starlink is
thinking about this, but you you look at internal State
Department cables, that's now how US government officials are talking.

Speaker 9 (01:34:05):
About their goals for the company.

Speaker 22 (01:34:08):
They want to help them beat the competition, particularly from
the Chinese and these other foreign foreign startups. And so
you have State Department documents from last month that we
got ahold of that say, you know, I mean, one
have senior diplomats saying they want to give Starlink.

Speaker 9 (01:34:24):
A first mover advantage in the country that they're based in,
and two that the next eighteen months for Starlink are critical.
They got to get these licenses now because they need
to get there ahead of the competition.

Speaker 22 (01:34:36):
And that's why I think part of why you're seeing
such intense efforts bearing down on.

Speaker 9 (01:34:44):
These democratic nations in Africa.

Speaker 7 (01:34:47):
Absolutely absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:49):
Man well, great great reporting here, critically important that we
understand what is going on here. And Joshua, great job
of Pro Publica. Y'all keep doing rate work. And folks,
if y'all want to support pro Publica, there are nonprofit
journalism itity. Look, it's a lot of national media not
doing stories like this, not doing deep dives, and so

(01:35:10):
go to ProPublica dot org to support their work. Joshah,
thanks a.

Speaker 9 (01:35:14):
Lot, Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
I'm gonna go back to our panlin Robert, I'll start
with you. I mean, we need to understand. People need
to understand. The point that you were making is that, look,
you don't have landlines. The reality is cell phone service
has been tremendous across the continent. That's one of the
reasons it's been growing. You've got African billionaires that control
a lot of these cell phone service companies. But now

(01:35:39):
what you have is now the next frontier, and not
only is it getting a foothold, this is about again frankly,
raping the continent. That's what this is about.

Speaker 7 (01:35:52):
You're absolutely right now.

Speaker 17 (01:35:53):
I think people need to fully understand what Musk has
been building empire wise of the course of the last
twenty years that you've been paying for. I want to
remind people that Elon Musk is a welfare queen. None
of his companies are profitable. Tesla's not profitable, Starlincoln is possible,
Boring companies pos profitable, Neural Lincoln's profitable. The reason he's
rich right now is because over the course of the

(01:36:15):
last twenty years he's gotten thirty six billion dollars in
US government contract.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
And hold up, the only reason, the only reason he
made money last year with Tesla is because of the
government contracts, because he was louse. He lost money last
quarter with Tesla exactly.

Speaker 17 (01:36:29):
And so when we're talking about him being the world's
greatest welfare queen, essentially what he's attempting to do is
these companies are not independent of each other. The reason
you buy Twitter at a loss is so that you
can control information. And we saw that the last election
was won through his control of the information stream. The
reason you buy SpaceX is so that you can deliver

(01:36:51):
your satellites into outer space in order to control the
information stream. The reason you buy Starlink is so that
you can control the Internet, so that can control the
information stream on your social media apps and what happens
when Elon Must can effectively control the information stream for
the entirety of the global community with the assistant to
the United States government forcing countries. If you want to

(01:37:15):
do a business with America, you have to use Starlink.
If you want a diplomatic aid, because we've now closed
down USI ai D, a condition will be you use
Elon's products. And guess what is beyond just the Starlink system.
They also want to change the governmental fleet vehicles from
being things like Ford to being teslas. How much money

(01:37:35):
does that push into wait?

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
Even though Donald Trump ripped apart the charging stations in
federal government.

Speaker 17 (01:37:42):
Buildings exactly because those charging stations were under regulations that
all evs had to use them. Now of Elon Must,
now you can put it in a new federal regulation,
we'll just be using Elon Tesla charging stations. They want
to use the boring company to build underground high speed
high speed rail networks controlled by Elon.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
And very little regulation. He's pretty much doing what ever
the hell he wants to do out there in Las
Vegas because he wants to bypass federal He wants a
bypass regulation exactly.

Speaker 17 (01:38:13):
And so then he taking a step further the optimist
robot that he's put doing now, whether it's where if
you heard Lutnik the Commerce Secretary say we're going to
bring manufacturing back to America and it will be robotic.
Who the hell has a robot company Elon? If you
want to look at the NEURALNK program where he's going
to be doing brain implants, so we'll be able to

(01:38:33):
help people interface. Guess what else that we'll be able
to do. You'll use his Starlink satellites to connect to
the chip that he's putting in people's brains. So when
we talk about someone who's trying to gain global power,
these aren't conspiracies. These are just the things that he
is doing right now, and we are funding them as tappayers.
And when you're talking about putting a two hundred and
fifty million dollar investment to win the last election, it

(01:38:57):
costs less to buy America than it cost him to
buy Twitter. And what we see as a result of
that right now from mister Musk is that he has
wholesale gotten rid of all regulatory frameworks around his testing
of super heavy and starships down in Bokachka, Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
So and so he was able to buy the town.

Speaker 17 (01:39:17):
They voted last week to rename Boka Chica star Based
Texas because that's now Elon's own personal city. I want
people to understand how large this issue is. We're talking
about someone who wants to control the global flow of
information that he will be the Thomas Edison of Central America,
of South America, of Africa in their next generation. He

(01:39:39):
already is the only foreigner who has a gigafactory in
China in Shanghai. Up though American manufacturer has a car
factory in China is against the law there. The only
reason he has that is well, now China is using
space that's very similar space that's rockets for their own
space program. He does not pay attention to global lines.

(01:40:01):
He does not have to follow global regulation. The new
Republican budget cuts twenty five percent of massive funding. What
happens when NASA can't afford to send their own rockets
into space. They have to rent Rise on his own
rockets to go into space. So we will now be
dependent on Elon for our entire national space programs. You

(01:40:22):
have to look at these things from the macro and
understand this isn't just about what's going on in the
Gambi are what's going on in South Africa. This is
about a group of billionaires attempting to have full global
control for the next one hundred years.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
Racy, you cannot let this Tony Stark what was the
Kingsman's old Samuel Jackson played in that movie, like, literally,
you cannot let this deranged man have this much power Africa.

(01:40:58):
African nations must resist with everything they've got.

Speaker 20 (01:41:03):
They have to because you know, this man is dangerous.
He's dangerous to the world order, and it's really really disgusting.
There is no other American in this world where where
the United States government has decided that their business interests
outweigh the interests of everybody else in the world, where
they've decided that they're going to put the weight of
the United States government behind one specific business that one

(01:41:26):
person benefits from more than anybody else, and to Robert's point,
this isn't even a meritocracy. He's not even a person
who's particularly talented. He himself is not the originator of
this technology. He manages the highers with smart people. Yeah,
but at the end of the day, this is creating
a monopoly with taxpayer dollars to the detriment of the

(01:41:46):
United States and everybody else.

Speaker 21 (01:41:48):
We did not sign up for this, Okay. People signed up.

Speaker 20 (01:41:52):
For their prices to go down, for their lives, to
get better, not to line Elon Must's pocket even more
and more. And so yes, this is very danger because
he's so multiples it. And let me also app he
has our social security information, he has you know, voting,
all of the data money that they've done when they
rummaged through the United States government, and they have aggregated

(01:42:14):
data that typically have been housed separately because you don't
want to have one person have access to all this
data and create dossiers on every American. This is the
same person that has that information as well. So he
is he has used the United States government for his
personal gain. He's gotten everything he can get out of
it in terms of the information one hundreds of millions

(01:42:35):
of Americans and he's going to take that pillaging globally
even more so. Yeah, this is disturbing. It's very disturbing.
And the only thing that I can hope, which I
ain't gonna say I'm too optimistic about, is if we
should have elections again, the first person that the DOJ
needs to be on is Elon less As. There needs

(01:42:57):
to be a special prosecutor. Not three into the next
Democratic term, but on day one, there needs to be
a special prosecutor looking into Elon Musk. Donald Trump may
have got an immunity from the Supreme Court, but all
of these elected officials, all of these ambassadors, all of
these people a Roni, Elon Muster are doing all this
legal shit. They need to be in the cross hairs
of that special prosecutor on day one of the next

(01:43:18):
Democratic administration.

Speaker 1 (01:43:20):
There's nothing about Elon Musk greg that I trust. No
African leaders should trust him. He should be nowhere near
these countries. And again they must say no. And Gambia
is fighting as hard as they can, but the United
States wants to break their will. I hope that brother
is I hope he absolutely stands strong.

Speaker 18 (01:43:43):
I think he will to the degree that he has
strong partners. Partners may be too strong a word. Robert again,
he laid it out brother. This is the new scramble
for Africa, which isn't new at all, and this goes
back five hundred years. This is why they snatched us.
We're nearing the end of the contemporary world order. The
Age of Europe is coming to an end. The United

(01:44:03):
States is burning brightly in terms of its white nationalism.
But make no mistake about this, and this is to
all those who cling furiously to the descendants of slaves
concept or foundational Black Americans or b Ones, or whatever
other foolishness you've allowed gripts to inject.

Speaker 7 (01:44:17):
Into your brains. It's time to be smart now. This
is the end of the Age of Europe.

Speaker 18 (01:44:24):
All the settler states of the Western Hemisphere, which came
into existence when the Spanish and New Portuguese, the French
and the Dutch and the English came across the Atlantic
are either moving to the post European era. We know,
of course, that Brazil was among the countries that has
been in Beijing all week for the tenth anniversary of

(01:44:45):
the China Sea Lac relationship, which, of course I think
that the Chair of Sea LAC right now, which is
the community of Latin American and Caribbean states with China
is the Colombian president.

Speaker 7 (01:44:57):
They're moving past the United States.

Speaker 18 (01:45:00):
IRA doctrine will be in the ash Can of history,
as will probably be the concept of the nation state.
I'm glad you said that Robert Elon Musk doesn't look
at the lines on a map, and neither do anybody else,
any of the other Silicon Valley mobiles who were at
the Saudi US Investment Forum in Reid. We're talking about

(01:45:22):
planes and gifts and all. That's very important and very
important to Donald Trump. But if you saw the pictures
of Elon Musk shaking hands with the Saali's, perhaps you
missed the fact that the CEO of Pallunteer and Musk's friend,
Alex Kart was there. Perhaps you missed that must rival
sam Alton Saltman rather from Open Ai was there. In

(01:45:43):
other words, these people don't look at at lines on
a map. Only the people who are not paying attention
are looking at lines on a map. Now, juxtapose that
against what happens when you are in a country like Nigeria.
Gambia is as lower hanging fruit as you can get.
That's the point of entry. That's the experiment. Let me
tell you something. Any y'all ever met or know or
been with some Nigerians understand that Nigeria will be It's

(01:46:05):
going to be ungovernable when it comes down to trying
to control them. Now, of course, the lure is people
want reliable internet access.

Speaker 7 (01:46:13):
So you've got millions of people. And as you say, Robert,
I mean Africa is the future.

Speaker 18 (01:46:17):
It's the present and the future ultimately well over rebellion
closer to two when you account when you integrate all
of us who are not born directly on the continent,
but who are Africans into the equation, we are now
talking about countries that will reject the quote unquote soft
power of the United States, even as it unilaterally disarms

(01:46:38):
in that regard. Shout out to Little Marco who has
decided that he's going to be the errand boy in
degrading the concept of American values, which was already degraded.
But the rest of the world is laughing and has
always been laughing. It's getting louder. But on the African continent,
Africa just needs a little bit of breathing room. This
might be the last chance it has for the next cycle,

(01:47:00):
like you said, Robert, maybe through the end of the century,
to get that breathing room to build our innate capacity
to develop our own spaces. Finally, for the American Negro,
this is the message to the American Negro, your master
don love you never had. You will never be a
member of this polity as some kind of equal partner.
And your best bet is to reach your connections globally

(01:47:22):
because what they are doubling and quadrupling down on in
the United States turning inward is the imminent collapse of
the polity as it recedes in global and global influence
and global power. And Donald John Trump is no more
an American than Elon Musk is when it comes to
feathering his own pockets with your tax dollars. So while

(01:47:43):
you cling into the flag, he cling into his pocketbook.
And we would best build solidarity to people of the world.
And that's going to be our best bet to resist
as we fight for our voting rights and all that
stuff here domestically, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:47:56):
A lot that we have to recognize, and trust me,
it is not going to end. Let me do a
couple of headlines here folks, they are no relation. But
Pennsylvania congress Woman Summer Lee is taking up the man
to of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and joining
with congress from Ayama Presley, introducing a bill calling for
a federal commission to study US slavery and reparation proposals.

(01:48:19):
Representing Summer, Lee introduced the Reparations Now Resolution, and in it,
she argues that reparations are a moral and legal obligation
for Americans.

Speaker 16 (01:48:32):
So we're here to say that there's no more waiting,
no more watering down, no more.

Speaker 21 (01:48:35):
Putting justice or layaway.

Speaker 16 (01:48:37):
Black folks are old more than thoughts and prayers, and
we're old repair, We're old restitution, and we're old justice.
We're reintroducing this critical resolution today because contrary to the desperate, defensive,
and deeply inaccurate arguments against justice and equity in this country,
attacks on equality, black economic opportunity, black health, black.

Speaker 4 (01:48:58):
Wealth, and so much more.

Speaker 16 (01:49:00):
Are not just a ghosts of the past, but they
are very present and ongoing legacy that we are living
through right now. I saw that our friends at Fox
News have already picked this up. They scooped us, and
as we know, depends on on who picks up the story.
There's different framings and it's always interesting to see what
framing they're going to use. So some folks like to

(01:49:22):
frame the debate around reparations as black folks simply complaining
about wrongs done in a distant past to our ancestors
that nobody.

Speaker 21 (01:49:31):
Today is guilty of.

Speaker 4 (01:49:33):
But we know that's not just ahistorical, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:49:35):
Ignoring the reality of today.

Speaker 16 (01:49:37):
On today, we are still living through the effects of
the brutal kidnapping and trafficking of Africans and the government
sanctioned system of chattel enslavement that ushered this country into existence.
We're living through the effects of the government sanctioned system
of shaircropping that were placed it in lieu of reparations
to the free black Americans who had nothing but their

(01:49:57):
names and eviction notice view legal protections, and nowhere to go.
We're still living through the governmentation Jim Crow segregation laws
that kept Black Americans from equal wars, sometimes any access
to education, jobs, homes, political representation, our safety, no legal
recourse for persistent acts of terrorism like public lynching or

(01:50:18):
massacres of towns like Tulsa.

Speaker 1 (01:50:20):
And Rosewood, and so many more.

Speaker 16 (01:50:22):
We're still living through the government station voted disenfranchisement, followed
by government station discriminatory housing policies, government sanction, mass incarceration,
and more. The harms done to enslaved Africans and subsequently
their descendants for generations to.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
Follow are innumerable, but they are well.

Speaker 16 (01:50:38):
Documented, traceable, and persistent. We often hear that slavery was
a thing of the past, that our country no longer
allows segregation, that black folks has every access to opportunity.

Speaker 3 (01:50:49):
Available to them.

Speaker 21 (01:50:50):
But yet we see how easily.

Speaker 16 (01:50:52):
Centuries of progress and struggles are are raised and undone
with the stroke of a pen. The President was able
to say that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not policies
or practices or goals that our government or institutions or
businesses should implement, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:51:07):
The bill aims to create a federal commission charged with
investigating the enduring impacts of slavery and its aftermath, along
with developing concrete proposals for the senates of slaves. Let's
go to Illinois when the Supreme Court the were the
side of the shriff's deputy who shot and killed Sonya
Massey last year should be released from jail. Sean Grayson
has been charged with first degree murder, aggravated battery with

(01:51:30):
the firearm, and official misconduct in Massi's death. She was
killed on July sixth when Grayson and another shriff's deputy
responded to a call from about a possible power at
her home near Springfield. Grayson shot her when she checked
on a pot of boiling water in her kitchen while
saying quote, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus
I know no. Assistant Attorney General Michael Sabula argued that

(01:51:51):
Massi was cooperative with police throughout the encounter and never
posed a danger that would have justified Grayson's use of
deadly force. On the contrary, Grayson's attorneys also say he
is battling colon cancer. I say stay exactly where he is, folks.
The federal judge and Charlotte her arguments this week in
a civil case concerned of the twenty twenty two death

(01:52:11):
of shaun Quel Robinson. That was the black woman who
died went to Mexico with friends and died there of
a broken neck and spinal injury in Cabo San Lucas.
Her mother, Selamandro Robinson is currently suing one hundred and
four hundred million dollars across two legal fronts. A wrongful
death lawsuit following October against these six individuals who accompanyed
Robinson two Mexico. The suit alleges that Daja a Jackson

(01:52:35):
and physically attacked Robinson while the others stood, bought, and
recorded the assault. A civil lawsuit was filed against the
federal government accusing him of mishandling the investigation into Robinson's death.
Attorney for the federal government a basked court to dismiss
the case and have it tried in Mexico. They cite
the ongoing review of more than four thousand pages of
documents and hours of video footage, which they say takes

(01:52:57):
a lot of time. Pretty I love two things that
happens at graduations when you have folks who are willing
to celebrate but also say, you know what, we good,
we don't want to hear this nonsense, and they willing
to use their feet to protest. Virginia Commonweal took place
where Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin gave the commissment speech, and

(01:53:17):
these students were like, yeah, we're trying to hit his bullshit.
This is the same man who vetoed the bill that
would allow students to count African American history or ap
African American studies toward their graduation requirements. Substituting in for
woryal history or geography was introduced by Lamont Bagby and
Delicate David Reid. It passed with bipoliticians support in both chambers.
It did not mandate schools to offer these courses. Instead,

(01:53:38):
it aimed to provide students with more options. Well, again,
these students here said, you know what, I don't really
want to listen to what this man got to say,
and I applaued them for walking out. We saw protests
as well at Kennessee saw State Kennessas State University where
they got rid of their Black studies program, and there
were students who crossed the stage you would graduates of

(01:53:59):
the very pro program. You know what they said, They said,
we're gonna protest this thing. You see his brother right here,
he held up that sign. They immediately removed him from
the stage. That's Brandon Moore. He held the sound of
the States. I'm a product of Black studies. More's and
media entertainment major who runs Var's Instagram accounts, including college
world Inc, where college students around the Atlanta area find

(01:54:21):
information on college life and activities, and the university eliminated.
University has planned to eliminate majors like Black Studies, philosophy,
and technical communication, blaming low enrollment about students in the faculty.
They're not buying it. I want to go to my panel, Greg,
I'm gonna start with you. Listen, these students. It's not

(01:54:42):
about just people say, well, you know what graduation day
you shouldn't you shouldn't do those things. But if you're
a Virginia, I don't want to sit there and listen
to the bullshit. Glenn Yunk in his viewing how he
is led and these Kennesaw State students, they want to
let the world know that black studies does indeed matter.

Speaker 7 (01:55:02):
You mean, okay, sorry about that, Yes, sir, indeed it does. Roland,
thank you brother.

Speaker 18 (01:55:11):
And of course that's one of the reasons, maybe the
anchoring reason you named the network the Black Star Network.
This is a global movement and it connects to what
we've been talking about really all along. My former student
Summer Lee, I like saying that because when she was
at Howard Law School, she's my student, and bring it
in and right through picking up this time when summer

(01:55:32):
Lea talks about reparations, when we all talk about reparations
in the United States, really, even if you're the most
racist person in the country, you have to understand that's
probably the last best hope you have for your funky
settler enterprise, because reparations ultimately is anchored, at least in
a domestic sense, on the idea that there is a polity,

(01:55:53):
there is a country. There dare say even a nation
national concept that can be created. But if you reject reparations,
what you're saying is we're willing to fight this race
thing out to the bitter end, and you're about to
lose white people because what you will ultimately see, and
this is what we're seeing in these walkouts, whether it
be there, whether it be VCU, all these places, is

(01:56:16):
that our people ain't never been that deeply invested in
nothing you're involved in. We just want to be left alone.
Your concept was always fragile, it never animated much in
our minds, and it is falling apart. We on Monday,
of course, will be one hundred University of the Birth
of Malcolm X. Malcolm became a threat to the United
States of America when you went international. As long as

(01:56:37):
it was in the Nation of Islam, you know, it's
something they kept an eye on. But once you start
traveling around Africa, and once you go to places like
Egypt and come back across to Ghana. And by the way,
the theme for twenty twenty five and the African Union
this year is justice for Africans and people of African
descent through reparations. They just had a meeting last week
where the policy form people got together and they will

(01:56:58):
be in Addis Ababa in September and in fact Roland.
I don't know, maybe that's enough advanced planning. Hey, y'all
support the Blackstar Network because maybe we need you reporting
from Addis Ababa in September at the Global Reparations Conference
of the African Union, particularly since the AU has already
made members of the Caribbean States members of the AU
and has extended the opportunity for Africans in the United

(01:57:20):
States to go. What we are seeing is our people
rejecting white supremacy, which we've always done, but like previous generations,
willing to do it not just with our mouths, but
with our feet. And see, this is what should scared
the hell out of everybody. You should probably give black
people in the United States reparations, if for another reason,
then if you don't, that's the final nail in the

(01:57:41):
coffin of the concept of the United States of America,
because we ain't never been invested in this funky place.

Speaker 21 (01:57:47):
I agree with back the car.

Speaker 20 (01:57:49):
You know, at the end of the day, when we
have an administration that is trying to give reparations to
January sixth insurrection as criminals that we're pardon, that is
treating South African trailer trash like their refugees and trying
to put them up on tritter jets and on our
taxpayer dollars. God blessed summerly for saying that we deserve

(01:58:11):
to have reparations, at least the study of it, because
I don't know how people could say, all, all's well,
that ends well with slavery, but then they turn.

Speaker 21 (01:58:19):
Around and they make hey out of every little thing,
every little grievance.

Speaker 20 (01:58:23):
That why people have so I'm here for I don't
know if it's gonna go anywhere, especially in this political climate.

Speaker 9 (01:58:27):
But good on her, Robert.

Speaker 17 (01:58:31):
I think we have to also do a step back
just to appreciate the ancestors. We have to talk about
John Conyers, who originally introduced this legislation and nearly fifty
years ago, and then after he passed, he handed that
baton off to Congressman Sheila Jetson Lee, who carried it
as far as she could and what she passed, this
legislation has now passed to Summerly who's pushing this forward.

(01:58:52):
And the reason that this is significant on this very
day is this is one evidence that we were able
to have these generational fights, these intergeneration no struggles. As
we mentioned earlier, the conservative side of the aisle, they've
been trying to repeal the civil rights at, the voting
rights at et cetera since the nineteen sixties, since the
minute that it even went to the Senate. They tried
to kill it for poison, peel and to feel the

(01:59:13):
longest filibuster in American history. That is what Core Booker
just broke a couple of weeks ago. That's what they
were filibustering. So they can go from nineteen sixty four
until twenty twenty five to repeal their agenda, then we
should abt to keep the fight up just on a
study commission on reparations. And I think on that same point,
we have to look at what the President of the
United States tweeted out today when he said that the

(01:59:36):
birthright citizenship should only apply to the babies of slaves.
Why does that matter because tacitly, he is admitting that
the descendants of slavery have rights in this country, that
they are a protected group and protected classification. If you're
saying that the Constitution was amended to give rights to
the babies of slaves, New York is essentially saying that

(01:59:57):
America owes something to the descendants and the children who
were descendants of the enslaved. President Trump accidentally did a tacit,
a very tacit endorsement of the concept of reparations for
African Americans. So the question is, how do we take
this and run that ball forward. How do we have
the people in Congress who are willing to take the
hard votes. How do we have the individuals who are

(02:00:18):
willing to fight on the street level. Well, we're seeing
that on these college level, We're seeing students who are
realizing that they are bearing the brunt of this next
agenda that they're no longer going to have the benefits
that millennials and the millennials and Gen XS and boomers had.
We can come up into a place where you have
federal cetside, where have diversity programs, where have minority scholarges.

(02:00:39):
They see all that slipping through their fingers at the
moment that this will be grasping the American dream and
the sands of times rob that from them. This is
crucial because we're seeing the next generation of revolutionaries being
born directly in front of us. The reason that they
attack quote unquote critical race theory first, the reason they
attacked the educational system first. They hope to raise the
generation ain't no no better. That's why they're trying to

(02:01:01):
steal away and destroy these programs on African American states,
in Africana history, and the things that are necessary to
educate the next generation. They want us to believe going
forward that they didn't steal us from Africa. They rescued us.
That we were sitting on the beach, just dumb and uneducated,
nothing going wrong, and they brought us here to save us.
By the time they're done they will have you believe

(02:01:22):
that they are the heroes of the story. But we're
seeing that this next generation is nowhere in sight when
it comes to agree with that, and us as the
older folks, have to reach back. We have to be
doing individualized education to make sure they understand and democratize
this information in such a way that this next generation
and revolutionary are the ones that take that baton from
John Conyers, that takets that belonged to the baton from

(02:01:42):
Shila Jackson Lee, that takes that baton and holds it
up with summerly. It pushs us this across the finish line.
We have the opportunity to do it. Now, the question
is do we have the will.

Speaker 7 (02:01:51):
To do it.

Speaker 1 (02:01:54):
What you were talking about was interesting, and there's a
video going around but anchoring the BBC defending colonization going
there were great things and so we're gonna we're gonna
play that. We're gonna play that one day. But I
do want to sit here and we were talking about
this here. So uh next week, the South African president,
uh Zero Ramaphos is gonna be traveling to the United

(02:02:17):
States and he's meeting with Trump next Wednesday. Let me
pull this some up of my iPad real quick, and
I just want to uh get your thought while y'all
are here. Uh the goals to quote discussed by lateral, regional,
and global issues of interest. Now that's gonna be quite
interesting because it follows down Trump allowed me the fifty
nine white off for connors into the country.

Speaker 5 (02:02:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:02:38):
Not only that, they said Romofos's office in the next
week's visit, quote provides a platform to reset the strategic
relations between the two countries. In addition to that, keep
in mind uh that uh uh uh, you know, little
clueless Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, followed Trump's lead by
refusing to allow the United States to participate in the
planning of the G twenty summit that's gonna be taking

(02:03:01):
place in South Africa.

Speaker 5 (02:03:04):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:03:05):
And they said they would not be participating in any way.
We'll see what happens. You know. One thing, I've already
sent out a couple of emails and I'm trying to
I would love to sit down with the South African
president while he is here, to do an interview with him.

Speaker 5 (02:03:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:03:19):
And so y'all know, anybody let me know. I'm already
hit some folks trying to get hooked up, uh, to
make to make that ready. But the thing here is
this is gonna be very interesting because you have a
liar recy. You have a liar who has lied, who
has said that the laws are racist. They've actually they

(02:03:42):
they booted the South African ambassador out of the country.

Speaker 6 (02:03:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:03:47):
They have demean South Africa. They cut off financial aid
as well.

Speaker 5 (02:03:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:03:52):
This has all of the fingerprints of those three white
apartheid men Elon Musk, David Sachs and Peter Till, all
billionaires are trying to penalize the black lid government in
South Africa.

Speaker 21 (02:04:09):
And we could have had Kamala Harris.

Speaker 5 (02:04:12):
But here we are.

Speaker 20 (02:04:14):
You know, just like everything else with Donald Trump, the
stated reason behind why he's doing things, it's bullshit.

Speaker 21 (02:04:21):
It's a lie.

Speaker 20 (02:04:22):
There's no genocide. Tell me how many white people have
been killed in South Africa.

Speaker 21 (02:04:26):
There's a genocide. Tell me the manner in which they've
been killed.

Speaker 20 (02:04:28):
Have they been where they're fucking with people and somebody
split their wig or what?

Speaker 21 (02:04:34):
They just victims?

Speaker 7 (02:04:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 21 (02:04:36):
But I'm just saying that all of these things are lies.

Speaker 20 (02:04:40):
He creates, He manufactures, fabricates problems, and then when he
comes off and he's just a smidge like one percent reasonable,
and it's like, all looking at him, he made a deal,
All look at him.

Speaker 21 (02:04:52):
He's he showed them. So I'm tired of the chaos.
I'm tired of the lies.

Speaker 20 (02:04:57):
You're breaking something that wasn't broken, you're undoing something that
didn't need to be undone. And now I'm fortunately the
South African president has to come up here and talk
to the dumbass, which, by the way, I did see
him give an interview where he talked about how he
had a conversation with Trump and he thought that Donald
Trump kind of understood what he was saying, so he
turned around and did the opposite. And so there's no
reasoning with Donald Trump. He's going to have to do

(02:05:18):
the same things that the people in Abu Dhabi and
the Saudi Arabia are doing. Line Trump's pockets. If he
can find a way to say, Trump, you can get
some beachfront property in South Africa, maybe he'll do a deal.
But unless that happens, we're just going to be in
for more idiotic and unhinged foreign policy when it comes
to the continent of Africa and especially South Africa.

Speaker 1 (02:05:41):
This is the headline here, Robert, and you're a new
South Africa's president Romophosa says Afria Connor's resettling in US
or cowards. And I really hope Robert, when he comes
next week, he doesn't bow down to Trump and kiss
his feet. And I hope, you know, stay strong.

Speaker 17 (02:06:02):
What we saw in the last Trump administration during the
quote unquote resetting a foreign policy was he created a
window and that window was filled by China and Russia
and India and other nations. And what we're seeing right
now is so by having this auption essentially on the
international stage where President Trump is going to country just

(02:06:23):
as Reesi said and saying, we're auctioning off the American government.
You pay me, you can get whatever you want out
of it. Well, many countries are now realizing that America
is no longer that stable partner. You can no longer
depend on America to have your back in case of
a war. You cannot depend on trade deals, you can't
depend on aid coming into your country, you can no
longer depend on America even having a democracy to stand

(02:06:44):
up for a stand up too the quote unquote rules
based order. And we're supposed to kind of take a
step back and understand what exactly that is. After World
War Two, you had all the major nations of the world,
the leading powers, get together in Connecticut at a resort
called Bread and Woods, and they put in who placed
the Bretton Woods system of international government. All the major

(02:07:04):
world governments or nations have been destroyed by World War Two,
except for America. We only lost four hundred thousand people
during the war. Russia lost something like twenty million people.

Speaker 7 (02:07:13):
We were the only.

Speaker 17 (02:07:14):
Superpower less, so they invested us with the full power
of all European empires. We've changed the international reserve currency
from the British pound to the US dollar. We changed
the international monetary system from being centered in Europe being
centered in the United States of America, and that created
this great American renaissance that we've had since the end
of the World War Two. You move forward to the

(02:07:36):
nineteen eighties when Ronald Reagan meets with Thatcher and the
major world leaders to amend this to create the system
of globalization of the Plaza Hotel in New York City,
which gave us the Plaza Protocols which we have been
under since then. About two months ago, we had a
similar meeting take place in mar A Lago to draft
what are called the mar A Lago Protocols or the
mar Lago Courts, which is the new Trump vision of

(02:07:58):
how the world will operate going forward. New Trump economic
system that we see through terarifts, we see through deregulation,
that we see through international actors coming together and transnational
economic forms to change the way that our dollar works
and change the way the global economy works. These nations
such as South African other developing nations see that happening
and understanding the only way that they will have an

(02:08:19):
opportunity to compete is to partner up against the United
States of America. We are losing influence on the global states.
This is why we're seeing an expansion of the bricks nations.
This is why we're seeing the Wagner group taking taking
over areas and defense and places like this hell where
they are able to kick out the US from one
hundred million dollar drone base because they have Wagner to
protect them. Now they can keep the French of the

(02:08:42):
CFA Frank nations because now they can have their own
volunteary systems because their defense is handled by Russia, because
their economic development is handled by China, because their medicine
is handled by India, and America is ceding that territory.
And because what we are seeing in America now is
pay no attention to the actors. Don't pay attention to

(02:09:03):
the actors. The guy from Real World is running the
Department of Transportation, the lady from Wrestling is running education.
The drunk guy from Fox News Weekends and in charge
of defense. You can go down the administration. Do you
really think they gave these people any power or authority? No,
those are the actors that are meant to give a
pretty face to the people who are really running this

(02:09:23):
country right now. Do you really think the lady the
Lipingetsons and the fake lips is running the Department of
Homeland Security? Do you think they even let her come
to the meetings? What you're seeing is a very scripted
television program where they got people who look the part,
who are able to stand there, while the real people
from the Heritage Foundation, the real people who are funded
by the millionaires and billionaires, are actually running the mechanics

(02:09:44):
of the government. And we just let Elons take a
hard drive into America and download our whole files. So
when we're looking at what's going on in South Africa,
we need to make sure that we, as the black
diaspora who are here, who have the economic power and
ability to do so, are supporting those nations so that
they can stand up against what it's clearly they change
in the world order that will not be to their benefit.

Speaker 1 (02:10:03):
And we have to be part of the solution, not
part of the problem.

Speaker 17 (02:10:06):
Remember in Black Panther, when the question was well, where
were the Africans that to come save with us during
the slavery? The question now has to be where are
we at to save the continent for what we see coming?

Speaker 1 (02:10:17):
Greg, take us home far?

Speaker 18 (02:10:19):
No, I mean Robert, you laid it out brother, I
mean John Henrick Clarke used to say, you know, in
some stories there are any good guys. If we zoom
all the way out and think about this from the
level of our species, what they would call homo safety
and safetis human beings.

Speaker 10 (02:10:34):
We know that.

Speaker 18 (02:10:35):
You know, for the ancient Egyptians there was good and
evil didn't exist as absolute. But that's true of all
afric Kanda and ot of systems. I'm aware of the
europe the Ikan what you had is tests of your character.
Are you going to trend toward the bad or the good? Well,
humans are capable of both and most of us exist
on that continue with that in mind, it will be

(02:10:57):
the species. It has always been, the species that determines
how long we will survive and what will come next.
When we talk about history, we're talking about narratives, which
means we're talking about stories, which means we're talking about
select moments that we tell ourselves about in the form
of stories that help us try to talk about either
the best or the worst impulses we have.

Speaker 7 (02:11:19):
And we talk about learning. And thank you Robert for
saying that africand of studies is very important in this regard.
The more we know, the more we learn, the more we.

Speaker 18 (02:11:27):
Can develop a sense of what human beings are capable of,
good or bad, and it will help inform our choices.
When Sera Ramafossa comes here, he's going to sit with
down Trump because they're both heads of state. He presides, oh,
he has preside over. He is the president of a
country that is called the Rainbow Nation. It emerged in

(02:11:48):
the mid seventeenth century out of the invasion of the
Dutch and then ultimately the British, two groups that are
fused together in our minds generally here in the United
States as white. But there are distinctions to be made.
Primarily but because the Dutch, the boars, the farmers are
much closer in sentiment to the Pilgrims and the people
who pushed out Western the United States in the sense
that for them, the Cottinental Africans, the Costun, the Zulu

(02:12:12):
and the Swanna and the Suthu and everybody in South
Africa their equivalents are the Indians.

Speaker 7 (02:12:17):
Here in the United States, they look at them with contempt.

Speaker 18 (02:12:20):
When Nelson Mandela took over, and we just passed the
anniversary of his swearing in in nineteen ninety one as
President of South Africa, instead of exacting the type of
appropriation that perhaps happened in Zimbabwe to a degree with
Robert Mugabi, they said, we're gonna let y'all keep y'all businesses.

Speaker 1 (02:12:35):
We're gonna let you.

Speaker 7 (02:12:35):
Keep the land.

Speaker 18 (02:12:36):
Those Afrikaaners are not refugees in the mind of the
mind of a punk like Stephen Miller. They are, But
ultimately what they are is white people who got to
keep their whiteness in South Africa. They'll find out that
that whiteness will give them some comfort here in the
United States. But as they have to get jobs at
McDonald's and Chick fil A and work like the rest
of the people in the country, they're going to realize
that they probably should have stayed their asses in South Africa,

(02:12:57):
where they were the most privileged minority.

Speaker 7 (02:12:59):
On the hotting it.

Speaker 18 (02:13:00):
But ultimately, what we are seeing is that, as you said, Robert,
when Elon Musk and all none of those guys operate
at the global level, they don't care about any of
us when they are in China as Musk is, and
then don't care about any of us. And they come
back to the United States and the drunk hexith in
them are getting ready to allow them allow Musk to
walk into the national security briefing, And Trump is like, well,

(02:13:24):
who told Eli he could come? Yeah, you've got some
nationality security concerns, don't you. Because Musk doesn't have an
affiliation with a country or a loyalty to a country.
He's got a loyalty to himself in his pocketbook. What
we're seeing is Rama Fassa and any other African head
of state and any other African government just trying to
carve out a little room to operate, a little breathing room,

(02:13:46):
whether it be the brother Terri in the Kina Fasso,
even as they send an arond boy from the United
States in the form of the Head of Africaan to
go over there and try to undermine him and take
him out. I'm sorry, General, you shouldn't allow yourself to
be used that way, but we know you will because
you're a good army man and you're a good employee
of the United States. What we are really multiple must
ultimately come down to is this, we're all human in

(02:14:08):
the world. Governments and set up in the nation state
formation are something that are recent emergence in global history.
They're not good or bad. They're just configurations of humans.
And whether you are have fidelity to a country or
whether you have a human global solidarity position in terms
of your politics, one thing will remain constant. Human beings

(02:14:29):
over the arc of our existence of a species have
generally trended towards the good end, not the bad end.
So as white people in the United States of America
have to decide whether they're going to choose their whiteness
for of their common humanity with us and everyone else.
As the United States weakens as a global fort which
is why there is a US pope, by the way,

(02:14:50):
because the United States still held the way it held
even fifty years ago or thirty years ago, there wouldn't
be a US pope. But it's safe now, even as
that same Catholic Church that Leo the best US pope
they could get with a strand of blood from damn
near everybody on the planet, which should tell you something
about the weakness of the United States globally and domestically,

(02:15:10):
how whiteness ain't can't win.

Speaker 7 (02:15:12):
Even as we understand the Catholicism was the.

Speaker 18 (02:15:15):
Glue that held together the project of settling colonialism, because
it was the cultural force that animated the designs of
the Spanish and the Dutch, and not the Dutch, the
Spanish and the Portuguese, the first two out.

Speaker 7 (02:15:26):
We understand we're the end of a moment in world history.
With the end of a moment, and the stories aren't
going to save them. The lies, whether it be about
founding fathers in the United States or the strength of
global Eurocentric world views, none of that is going to
save them in the face of the fact that people
in the world are sick and tired of being oppressed.
And as you say, Robert, the next great movement is afoot.

Speaker 18 (02:15:49):
Now we will have to decide whether we're going to
participate in that movement or allow ourselves to be victims
of this dying colonialism as France and might go.

Speaker 1 (02:15:58):
Indeed, indeed, folks, we're going to leave it there. We
will celebrate the life and legacy of Alexis Herman on
tomorrow's show right here on rolland Martin unfilchure. Let me think, Robert,
let me think recent Let me thank Greg for being
on today's panel. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you so
very much. Folks support the work that we do by
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also download the app fan Base if you want to invest,
go to start engine dot com for slash fan based
Start engine dot com Ford Slash fan Base on Sunday.
I'll have the graphic now Sunday. On Saturday, I'm gonna
be speaking in Philadelphia. I y'all are in Philadelphia. I'm
gonna be there on Saturday nine am talking to the

(02:21:10):
Urban League of Philadelphia. It's called their Men Making a
Difference Breakfast at Penn Memorial Baptist Church, and so we'll
have information for tickets. I don't know if they've sold out,
so we'll have that for you tomorrow. But I'll be
speaking there at nine am to eleven AM, and I'll
be autographing copies of my book White Fear. So if

(02:21:31):
y'all want to get your autograph copy, come on by
and do so. Folks that said, I'll see all tomorrow.
How Live Start Network.

Speaker 7 (02:21:41):
A real revolution there right now.

Speaker 1 (02:21:43):
I thank you for being the voice of black appearance
almoment that we have. Now we have to keep this going.

Speaker 18 (02:21:49):
The video of phenomenal is between Black Star Network and
Black owned media and something like CNN.

Speaker 1 (02:21:56):
You can't be black owned media and be scared.

Speaker 18 (02:22:00):
It's time to be smarterring your eyeballs, hon't you dig?

Speaker 22 (02:22:10):
Mhm

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Episode Transcript

Host

Roland Martin

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