Morning Joe - Morning Joe 11/11/24

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Trump taps former immigration official Thomas Homan as border czar

Donald Trump, who tried to forcibly overturn the results of the last election, was returned to office by an overwhelming majority. This is the same Donald Trump who openly called for vengeance against his political enemies. Now thanks to the Supreme Court, there are no guardrails. Nothing to protect the people who are brave enough to speak out against him. That is why we at SNL would like to say to Donald Trump, we have been with you all along. We have never wavered in our support of you, even when others doubted you.

Every single person on this stage believed in you. Every single person on this stage voted for you. Because we see ourselves in you. We look at you and think, that's me. That's the man I want my future children to look up to. And Mr. Trump, your honor, we know that you say things that are controversial sometimes, but really you're just speaking the truth. And I hate how the lame stream media, Michael Che,

tries to spin it to make you look foolish. So if you're keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list. And it's C-H-E, Che. Going after his weekend. It is so funny. Good morning and welcome to Morning Joe. It is Monday, November 11th, Veterans Day. Happy Veterans Day.

With us we have the host of Way Too Early, White House Barrow Chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, the president of the National Action Network and host of MSNBC's Politics Nation, Reverend Al Sharpton and editor-in-chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton-Bettos, joins us. A lot to talk about this morning. A lot to talk about, Jonathan O'Meara. I mean, come on, we're going to have to start with the Patriots. The Patriots win. The Jets lose.

Could you do that? It's just like old times. And the Lions come back for the ages. An unexpected New England Patriots reference at 6 o 2 a.m. on a Monday morning but hey yeah they won Drake made us pretty good. They now have three wins on the season. They have their quarterback of the future. Meanwhile the Jets just got crushed in Arizona. We should put it into... What's going on there with Aaron Rodgers especially? I mean is he going

to quit halfway through the season? I can't imagine he's having a good time out there. There are moments where he looks like he's already quit on the field frankly. He doesn't want to get hit. Look he's a 40 year old quarterback. We all sort of got spoiled by seeing Tom Brady still excel into his 40s. Aaron Rogers simply simply not doing that, coming off of a major injury. The team has given him everything he wants in terms of weapons. He's hand-picked his roster and wide receivers, but they are just getting beaten week in, week out.

Their playoff hope's gone. And you mentioned it, Joe, the two takeaways yesterday. There are two teams that seem to be above the rest of the league right now. That's the Kansas State Chiefs and the Detroit Lions. In both finding ways to win when they don't play that well. Jared Goff for the Lions last night throws five interceptions, one, two, three, four, five,

and yet they still win by that kick that squeaked in the uprights there. Lions beat a pretty good Texans team on the road in Houston to move to, I believe, eight and one, while the Chiefs, nine and oh, they still have not lost and they find the most improbable ways to win. They've now had, I believe four games that have come down in the last play.

They've won all four, including this one, which should have been a gimme 35 yard field goal blocked. The Chiefs defense just overwhelms the Brocknose offensive line and they find a way to win again. And great teams find a way to win when they're playing terribly. That's why no one this year is confusing the Dallas Cowboys as a great team. They're playing terribly and they just keep losing.

All right, Mia. OK. So we will move on now. We're learning much more this morning about Donald Trump's transition efforts and how the process could be playing out. The Wall Street Journal reports Trump's transition team has put together digital presentations for the president-elect that feature headshots of potential contenders for key cabinet positions. Now, people familiar with the process tell the paper that aides are reviewing candidates' television interviews to gauge whether they are adept at selling Trump's agenda.

The efforts reflect the priorities of the incoming commander-in-chief, who expects that his cabinet secretaries look the part and keep track of what allies and adversaries say about him on cable news. The paper continues, the digital presentations on a screen instead of in-briefing books will feature details of candidates' resumes and are intended to give the president-elect

an easy way to pour over his options, the people said. The Trump, his advisors said, relishes the process of picking his staff and the attention it brings. And for some of the picks taking shape, president-elect Trump announced Tom Homan, the former acting director of immigration and customs enforcement, who backed his zero tolerance policy, will be his administration's border czar. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that Holman's areas of control will include the southern and northern borders, all maritime and aviation security. Trump added border czar Holman will be in charge of the deportation of

illegal immigrants. Homan touts hardline immigration views and previously vowed to run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. So Zanny obviously this is going to be a big part of what Donald Trump likely does at the beginning of his administration. He promised mass deportations, historic deportations. The American people heard it every day for about a year and a half and voted for him. So this is going to be one of the first things. And I would guess one of the great challenges would be politically

for this possible director to avoid the sort of chaos we saw at the beginning of his first term where those first three, four days were just pictures of airports and other places just absolutely jammed with people, with protests, with chaos. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. with people, with protests, with chaos. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. This is clearly a top priority, and President-elect Trump will want to make a big show very early on of people being deported.

I think for me the question is not, will that happen? It definitely will. The question is whether they're really serious about trying to deport millions of people, because the effort cost involved in deporting millions of people you have to create a huge infrastructure whether or not you have to use the military you have it would be months and months of

really absolute focus and one thing I've realized in the last few days talking to a lot of people about how you know this administration will set its priorities is that will come at a price if If you focus overwhelmingly on the border, it takes bandwidth and so there will be other things that he won't be doing. So I'm expecting a very big show on this, a lot of stuff at the very beginning, but the real question will be are they serious

about the millions and millions of people? Right. Well, you're so right, the bandwidth to do this, the way you said he was gonna do this, it's gonna take up a lot of the attention for the first two or three months and whoever's going to be running that agency, it's going to have to be dealing with the situation, the huge logistical challenges of it.

And of course, there's going to be a lot of reporting on it. And if it's chaotic like it was the last time, then it gets the administration off on a bad foot. Yeah. President-elect Trump also announced the names of two former cabinet members who will not be rejoining him at the White House. Trump posted that he would not invite former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

to join his new administration. Both Pompeo and Haley had fallen out of favor with the former president, but had endorsed his presidential run. And I wonder what that portends. I don't know, Jonathan O'Neill, obviously loyalty is going to be at the top of Donald Trump's priorities.

You also have both of these people, different times being critical of Donald Trump's priorities. You also have both of these people, different times being critical of Donald Trump. And as we've said all along, as you've said and reported, this next administration, he's not gonna just hire a lot of people and wonder how it's gonna shake out. He's looked at what they said. He's looking at actually how they appear on TV,

whether they're going to embarrass him when they're out there. He's again lining actually how they appear on TV, whether they're going to embarrass him when they're out there. He's again lining this up far differently than he did in 2016. Yeah, in 2016 he was willing to let the establishment figures make suggestions. That's why he ended up with some grownups in the room like James Mattis, Rex Tillerson and the like. This time around, that's not the case. It's just going to be loyalists.

And I'm sure we'll talk more later in the show about his push for recess deployments. That's to fill out the federal government with pure loyalists who are going to do what he wants right away. We should mention, obviously deportations. I mean, that is going to be the signature move early on, at least that's what's promised.

But that's gonna, as Zanny's point earlier, I mean, just a massive undertaking that's gonna be met with a lot of resistance. Like some state governors, democratic governors, like Massachusetts Governor Maraheeley have already said they won't allow their state's National Guard to be part of this. If millions of Americans or millions of people who are living in America are going to be taken out of their country, the destruction of the fabric of society, the disruption to the economy, there'll be business leaders speaking out. There could indeed, Joe, to your point, be real chaos.

There are some who think that chaos might dissuade Trump from going through with it, at least fully. But Zan, let's talk a little bit about some of these figures here who are not going to be part of the Trump administration going forward. No real surprise on Nikki Haley. She ran against Trump. She was very critical of Trump.

The two never spoke during the campaign. It's not a surprise she's not part of it. But Mike Pompeo, yes, he was briefly critical of Trump in a CPAC appearance, but otherwise was seen as a pretty loyal and sort of productive member of his administration. What does it tell you that Pompeo and someone with Pompeo's worldview isn't going to be part of this next administration? I think it's a very, very important sign. You know, for most of the campaign, a shorthand way of asking in the rest of the world, asking what this administration would be like, was to say, would it be a JD Vance administration, or would it be a Mike Pompeo foreign policy? And this public humiliation, in a sense, of Secretary Pompeo, I mean, how often do you

say—issue statements saying you're not going to hire people? This was done very, very clearly to make a point. And the point was the internationalist, kind of Reagan strong foreign policy approach, which Secretary Pompeo epitomized is not coming. I last saw Secretary Pompeo in Kiev, actually, about a month ago. And he was very, very clear that he said,

it was important that the good guys are seen to win. And that view that it was important for American interests and American strength that Ukraine be seen to win was very much one side of the debate. And I think that side looks like it's now lost. And if I were in Kiev right now, I would be really worried, because it looks as though it's very much the kind of let Putin have more of what he wants, push Ukraine to be demilitarized. It's going to be much harder to persuade Donald Trump to get Ukraine into NATO.

So I think this is a bad sign if you're Ukraine. So Sandy, let me ask you about the Washington Post article. We have Richard Haass coming up. We're going to be talking a little bit about this. I'm just curious what your sources have been telling you overnight. The Washington Post ran a story yesterday that Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin over the weekend and very clearly said, don't expand the war.

Russia is pushing back on that, maybe because Russia doesn't like how the story was framed. No, I don't think the Washington Post is backing off of their reporting. Do you have any reporting on that? Or if that, in fact, is what he said, how significant would that be? So I would definitely trust the Washington Post over the Russian state statements. So I'm not too concerned about that reporting.

I think it's not at all surprising. What I think is interesting is that I do think President Trump is going to want to try and avoid a view that Ukraine is completely defeated. But what he's want to try and avoid a view that Ukraine is completely defeated. But what he's got to try and figure out now—he's promised to end the war in a day. That's clearly not going to happen. But he's going to try and orchestrate a deal which, you know, Ukraine will lose the

territory the Russians currently have. Everybody knows that. The question is, what kind of security guarantee does Ukraine get to prevent Vladimir Putin later on just marching in further? And that's where I think the announcement of Secretary Pompeo not being part of the administration is bad news. And what I think President-elect Trump is trying to do is to give a sense that he's going to talk tough and he's going to say, don't expand the wall.

Well, you know, Vladimir Putin has just launched an enormous drone attack on Ukraine. It's going to be going through the winter. He's going to smash up the infrastructure. It's clear that the Russians are on the offensive in the east. They're gaining ground. So, I'm not sure I would, if I were Vladimir Putin, I would pay too much attention just on those words. I think right now it looks as though Putin has the upper hand.

It will be interesting, Mika. Obviously, you've got the North Koreans now that are going to be fighting and trying to push further with the Russians into Ukraine. But the question is, again, we've talked about this a good bit over the past few years. You have Donald Trump, what he says to Vladimir Putin, and then you have the actual policies that have been fairly tough in the first administration

because the Senate was pushing really tough restrictions. I think the last thing he would want, wanting to be seen as a strong man, would be to have be forever remembered as the guy who lost Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. So it's going to be interesting. Yeah. See what, if there is any settlement, what the settlement looks like. Leaders of political organizations who have been against Donald Trump are grappling with the president-elect's return to the White House and looking to create a new playbook

to combat the policies of a second Trump administration. In January of 2017, millions of Americans across the country took to the streets for the Women's March in opposition of Donald Trump. They were organized, beginning of the broad coalition that successfully swept Trump out of power and gave Democrats a governing trifecta in the 2020 election. But now, some of the most ardent Trump detractors say they need to shift their focus. For example, the executive director of the Women's March, Rachel O'Leary Carmona, said,

quote, It's not enough just for people to hit the streets. We need to build political power compared to 2016. We have connections to people that are building policy. And that I remember you saying during that march before it even, but there is an extent of building a coalition, building energy, but also keeping the data and then working with it. Right. Exactly. Marches don't get you elected.

They just don't. They work well. Reverend Al, as you know, they worked well in the civil rights movement. But just being the resistance, just going out there. The resistance did not work against Donald Trump this time. It really seemed more like Democrats talking to Democrats. Independence weren't swept along. Republicans were fueled to go vote more. Yeah. But this is actually, I would think, a very positive viewpoint.

I'd just say maybe we focus less on these big events and organizations and do more like, well, what Republicans have been doing for a generation, and that is going to school boards, electing school board members, electing county commissioners, electing people on the local level and building them up and actually starting a movement. Because if you look at the map of this election, I mean, you have to go from California, the border of California all the way over to Virginia to find states that voted for Kamala Harris.

Everything else between the two coasts, a deep dark red. And if you just look at that, you say, there's no way Democrats are ever going to take control of the Senate again, unless they start figuring out how to win grassroots campaigns in the middle of the country. There's no doubt about the fact that you must have real organizing on the ground if you're going to affect policy and if you're going to make change happen.

And clearly, I think that what happens with some of the marches is that they became big events, but they were not connected to a movement on the ground that would change policy. You referred to the Civil Rights Movement. There was a direct connection between Dr. King and others that were marching and those that were trying to legislate, for example, Civil Rights Act of 64, Voting Rights Act of 65. There will be gatherings on the inauguration day in Washington next year when Trump is

inaugurated, but they will be done by groups that are going to be using them to organize and highlight policy, because it happens to be Martin Luther King Day. So they'll be there, but they're connected. I think some of these organic marches were good to raise an issue, but they were not connected where they changed policy and elect people. And in fact, many of them were attacked by those that became overnight activists, I call them microwave activists, that get hot for a minute and cool off,

and then you're left to organize, and the people organizing are not the people with the flash marches. That's why I think you'll see some gatherings, but I think it will not be those that are not understanding they must be connected to policies and electing people, county, state, city, as well as federal. We've got a lot more on this ahead,

but let's take a look now at some of the other stories making headlines this morning. There is yet more instability in Haiti. After the country's ruling council fired the Prime Minister, Gary Keneal, a former UN official, was just hired in May in hopes of tamping down a political power struggle amid a wave of kidnappings and killings. Haiti's last president was murdered in July of 2021 and no elections have been held since. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has no plans to step aside before president-elect Donald Trump takes office. That news follows suggestions

from liberal circles that the 70 year old should retire to give President Biden the chance to fill the seat with a younger appointment. Senator Bernie Sanders was asked about it over the weekend. Senator, quickly before I let you go, I do want to ask you about the Supreme Court. Some Democrats behind the scenes quietly talking about the possibility. Should Justice Sotomayor step down to allow President Biden to appoint someone who's younger? She's only 70 years old. Is that something that you would support? Do you think she should step down?

No, I don't. Have you heard any talk of this? A little bit, yes. I don't think it's a sensible approach. And you don't think it's a sensible approach? Correct. Huh. Well, man, a few words there. I will say, Roe is overturned because Donald Trump was able to fill the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who did not retire. It's just, it And it changed 50 years of precedent. Changed everything for women.

Changed everything for women. I don't think you can just say no, no, that doesn't make any sense. I think it probably makes sense to talk about it. And if you don't talk about it, that's fine. Why don't Democrats keep doing what Democrats have been doing? They're leaders in Washington, D.C. and just pretending, pretending that if they're polite, never offend anybody, everything will just go away. It doesn't. That's a big. It keeps coming up to your doorstep.

And yeah, that is a bigger conversation, which we're going to be talking about. I had our must read opinion pages. This this Maureen Dowd op-ed yesterday. It's so many people talking about this all day yesterday. And yeah, Maureen Dowd talked in this article about the things that Democrats were afraid to talk about during the campaign. We're going to do that. Also, finally, PBS Kids is rolling out a new animated series for younger children that

features main characters with autism. According to the network, Carl the Collector is aimed at 48-year-olds and was designed to highlight the potential of neurodivergent kids to expand the perspectives on autism. The show's creator says Carl and his friends will encourage empathy and understanding and celebrate the entire spectrum of humanity. You know, this is so important. I've got a son that's got Asperger's.

And I will tell you, I look back now to when we were in middle school and high school, and you would see kids that didn't quite fit in and you never really knew why. And they were on the spectrum, maybe not dramatically on the spectrum, but on the spectrum. So this is obviously great for kids to see. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Democrats and the case of mistaken identity politics.

We're gonna read from that Maureen Dowd post-mortem of the election and why Donald Trump won. Plus we're learning more about the anti-Semitic violence that took place in Amsterdam last week. It was calculated, it was frightening, and it confirms everything we've been saying about anti-Semitism across Europe and the globe. What city officials are saying

about how the attacks were organized? You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. Police have arrested more than 60 people following anti-Semitic attacks in Amsterdam. The violence erupted on Thursday during a soccer match between a Dutch and an Israeli team. Authorities say there were confrontations before and after the game. In some instances fans were chased through the streets and pelted with fireworks. According to the Wall Street Journal,

Israeli soccer fans say the violence came to a boil after two days of being stalked and harassed in Amsterdam. The city's mayor says the messaging app Telegram was used to talk about going on Jew hunts. One Israeli soccer fan told the Journal the attacks were well organized, saying, quote, they knew exactly where we stayed, they knew exactly which hotels, which streets we were going to take. We'll be following that. And Qatar.

It's so frightening. Qatar has stopped mediating the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas. A diplomatic source tells NBC News Qatari officials halted their efforts because both sides have failed to make any progress. Officials say they're willing to resume mediating discussions if Israel and Hamas show a genuine intent to negotiate. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia kicks off a summit today aimed at addressing the conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon.

Bringing together top officials from Arab and Islamic countries, the summit will also serve as an indicator for what might be expected from the United States once Trump takes over in January? Joining us now from the summit in Saudi Arabia's capital, NBC News chief international correspondent Kier Simmons. Kier, what are you learning? Well, this is an extraordinary Arab-Islamic summit here in Riyadh. It's a gathering of 80 countries in the Middle East and in Central Asia and beyond in Asia. And it is a gathering to show support for Gaza

and Lebanon. Now, there are going to be critics who are going to say that there's going to be a lot of talk here. It's a one-day summit. But I think what it does underscore is the way that Arab and Islamic countries have been driven together over the past year. We are seeing here, for example, the first vice president of Iran, President Bashar Assad of Syria is here. So a united front being demonstrated, hosted, as you say, by Saudi Arabia. And of course, a high level delegation of the Palestinians is here to President Erdogan of Turkey. I mean, the list goes on. There are 80 countries. I think one of the challenges that you really see here for President-elect Trump is that the world has really changed.

There is a different Middle East. What we have seen from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just in the past few months is that it has shifted more towards insisting that there has to be a two-state solution. There has to be a Palestinian state before it would agree to normalization with Israel or to a treaty alliance with the United States, which is that mega deal that people have been talking about through the Biden administration, but also a kind of a child of the Abraham Accords, if you like, that was birthed with the first Trump administration. That's one example of the way that things have really changed since 2016. Just another example to think about is that during the first Trump presidency, there was,

of course, that war in Yemen between the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and the Emiratis. That isn't happening anymore. So as well as speaking to President-elect Trump, Mohammed bin Salman yesterday had a telephone call with the president of Iran, Peshach Kian. In fact, as I mentioned, the vice president of Iran is here. What you're seeing from Gulf states, and particularly Saudi Arabia, for example, is that they are trying to lean

into diplomacy with Iran, even while Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu is talking about confrontation with Iran. A stark difference. I should just say, you know, President-elect Trump is friends with Hamid bin Salman and friends with Netanyahu. So I guess one question is, who's he going to listen to? All right. That is one of many questions that we're going to be learning in the coming months.

NBC's Kier Simmons. Thank you, Kier. Reporting live from Saudi Arabia, thanks so much. Let's bring in right now President of the United States Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass. He's the author of the weekly newsletter, Home and Away, available on Substack. Of course, Qatar throwing their arms in the air, saying no more. Of course, Richard, it's been a process

that's been frustrating from the very beginning. You, of course, on one side have Hamas, the terrorist who started on this on October 7th of last year. But with Netanyahu, you also have somebody who, it was never in his political advantage domestically to find reasons to have a ceasefire, to bring the hostages home. And in fact, it was in his best political interest to continue expanding the war, first

from Gaza into Lebanon, now regionally provoking a possible war with Iran. And so here we are. The question is, how hard is it going to be to put this all back together when you had the Saudis, the Emiratis, and a lot of other countries, Jordan, across the region, that were willing to come in and help rebuild Gaza. Well, Kier has it right, Joe. The idea that you could somehow put on the side the Palestinian issue has been shown not to be true. In some ways, that's what led to October 7th.

It was station identification for Hamas. And the question now is where you can't make peace more than, well, outsiders can't try to make peace more than the protagon, outsiders can't try to make peace more than the protagonists themselves want it. Hamas doesn't want it. The Israeli government hasn't wanted it. So I think Gaza is essentially on a trajectory probably for a long-term grind

for want of a more elegant word. It takes two to make peace. I don't think that you have it. And meanwhile, the Israelis have focused their attention to the north. And again, they're continuing the war there against Hezbollah. I think they're waiting to see what Iran does. If Iran is foolish enough to again use military force against Israel, I think Israel will come down on them with a ton of bricks this time.

Israelis have responded with restraint twice, not on the third time. I think they're actually gonna see that as an opportunity to come down hard. And the United States is probably gonna be pressed hard to join with them in order to make it more effective. And meanwhile, what no one's talking about is what's going on in the West Bank,

which is where the majority of Palestinians live. Increasingly, their life is getting more and more militarized between these various militias that are to some extent model themselves on Hamas and Israeli settlers and the Israeli defense forces. So the Middle East right now has few, if any, of the prerequisites of peace, and the incoming American administration isn't going to want that. Last time around, they largely ignored the Palestinian issue, if you remember, with the Abraham Accords.

I don't think they're going to have that luxury this time. Yeah, Rich, I'm curious. I was thinking this weekend about the peace and prosperity. You know, we're talking about all the different reasons why the Democrats lost over the this past week and lost the way they did. And I'm just wondering, you know, somebody wrote this weekend, it always comes back to peace and prosperity. I think it was David French, and there wasn't peace, there was prosperity. But you look at the price of gas and groceries over the past several years, housing prices,

those went up. And on the peace side, I'm just wondering, I just started really thinking, with two Trump allies in both Israel and in Russia, I'm just curious, was there ever any chance for, if this had been at the first year or the second year of the Biden administration, and there wasn't a possible Trump administration to look forward to.

Would there have been a better chance of peace then, or was there just never a better chance of peace with the possibility of Donald Trump coming in within a year and giving both sides a better settlement than they would get from Biden? It's one of those waters. Joe, I think in the Middle East, after October 7th, there much chance of a cheap piece given what this Israeli government wanted and what BB Netanyahu is political and personal calculations I Think you know earlier on had the Biden administration or Trump administration Press the Ukrainians harder to moderate their definition of winning to accept something more more modest And then had made clear we would support them

so long as they adopted that, but then really press the Russians hard. I think that might have moved the war maybe away from the battlefield to the negotiating table. I think that's the sort of thing that is likely to happen a year from now. Though again, I heard what Zani said, the real fear is that the Ukrainians

are gonna be thrown under the bus right now, which would be a disaster for them and arguably for Europe and for Taiwan and others. But I think one of the lessons of all this, let me give you a different argument, is that we've reached a point in history where the ability of the United States to dictate has much diminished. People use words like hegemony. This is not a world of American hegemony. This is a world in which all sorts of military capacities

have spread, they've proliferated, and where, as a result, decision-making has spread, autonomy has spread. Donald Trump is gonna find this a far more difficult world to corral than the one of, say, eight years ago. Thoughts? Sandy, your thoughts? As always, I agree with Richard almost completely.

I actually am a little bit more upbeat about what might happen in the Middle East because I think that everyone is gonna want to try and give Donald Trump something. And so I'm not kind of ruling out the possibility that there may be some kind of ceasefire, you know, just after President Trump gets into his office. But that ceasefire, because, you know, Bibi Netanyahu will want to give him something. Everyone wants to be in his good books.

And then, you know, there'll be a great photo app, hostages, the remaining, the living hostages coming back. But that does not mean peace in the Middle East, because I don't think he has the interest or willingness to do the hard graft of what's needed. And what is needed, as your reporter made very clear, is a path to a Palestinian state. And Donald Trump would need to persuade Bibi Netanyahu and indeed the majority of Israelis that there has to be a path to a Palestinian state. And I just don't think that's the kind of thing he really focuses on.

And I'm not really sure that the Trump administration is going to be supportive of the Palestinian state, a two-state solution. It's going to be so interesting to see what happens. We want to get to the Maureen Dowd piece. We're going to do something a little different this morning because we're going to read the entire piece, but it's worth it. I think a lot of people have already been talking about this. We got a lot of calls about this piece, but it's worth it. I think a lot of people have already been talking about this. We got a lot of calls about this piece and it's an interesting message for Democrats. Maureen Dowd's piece for The New York Times entitled Democrats and the case of mistaken identity politics. It really

crystallized how some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke. And Maureen writes this. Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of black and Latino voters and young men. Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris even if they didn't like her to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn't like her to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn't like him because they liked the Democratic Party less. I've often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited.

And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working class voters over the decades and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base. Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism. Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and second term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctiveness, condescension, and cancellation.

And it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like Latinx and black indigenous people of color. This alienated half of the country or more. And the chaos and anti-semitism at many college campuses certainly didn't help. When the woke police came at you, Rahm Emanuel told me, you don't even get your Miranda rights read to you. There were a lot of Democrats barking, people don't who don't represent anybody, he said, and the leadership of the party was intimidated. Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted

at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they'd always talked. At rallies he referred to women as beautiful and then pretended to admonish himself saying he'd get in trouble for using that word. Those strong and I would say beautiful but I'm not allowed to use that term anymore with women because if you say beautiful, it means the end of your career in politics. You're not allowed to say a woman's beautiful, so I will not tell you how beautiful they are, but they are beautiful. But those strong, beautiful, intelligent women, they won.

They won. They won. Continuing with Maureen Dowd, one thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party. Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care, and this is a key line in this piece, that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field. Keep that in mind. And keep this in mind.

A revealing chart that ran in the Financial Times showed that white progressives, and this is how it has been for too long, white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that, quote, racism is built into our society. And get this, many more black and Hispanic Americans surveyed compared with white progressives responded that, quote, America is the greatest country in the world.

Gob smacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Kamala did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel. Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself. Marie Glusenkamp-Horez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The Times, Annie Carney, that democratic condescension has to go. There's not one weird trick that's going to

fix the Democratic Party, she said. It's going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office, and being taken seriously. On CNN, the democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans. Take a look. We are not the party of common sense, which is what the message that voters sent to us. For a number of reasons, for a number of reasons, we don't know how to speak to voters. When we address Latina and language, listen, language has meaning. When we address Latino voters as Latinx, for instance, because that's the politically correct thing to do.

It makes them think that we don't even live on the same planet as they do. When we are too afraid to say that, hey, college kids, if you're trashing a campus at Columbia University because you're unhappy about some sort of policy and you're taking over a university and you're trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable. But we're so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don't know what to say when normal people look at that and say, wait a second, I send my kids to college so they can learn, not so that they can burn buildings and trash lawns, right? More endowed

continues. Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker, told me, made the colossal mistake of running a billion dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyonce when many of the struggling working class voters she wanted couldn't even afford a ticket to a Beyonce concert, much less a down payment on a home. I don't think the average person, said Kamala Harris, gets what I'm going through, this Democrat said. Kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she'd shoot an intruder with her Glock.

But it sounded tinny. The Trump campaign's most successful ad showed Kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it. James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity, but he said the party had become enamored of identitarianism, a word he uses because he won't say woke, radiating the repellent idea that identity is more important than humanity. We could never

wash off the stench of it, he said, calling defund the police, the three stupidest words in the English language. It's like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water. Yeah.

What do you think? Well, I think we could talk about this for four hours. I mean, I'm just looking at this and it's stuff that we've all talked on the show about. The trans ad, which of course we've talked about time and again, Rick Wilson came on and showed an opposing ad. Yeah.

30,000 times on the NFL, they showed Kamala Harris saying that she would support the funding of transition surgeries in prison and taxpayers would pay for it. And it of course was the law at the time during the Trump administration. But they refused. That despite Bill Clinton and everybody else saying, you've got to respond to this ad, it's impacting black men, Hispanic men, white working class men. You got to respond to this ad. It's impacting black men, Hispanic men, white working class men. You need to respond to this ad.

They just didn't do it. Willie said after the election, even his mother said, what? Wait, this is weird. What's up with the Democrats? And so they didn't respond to that. There are so many other things. We talked about it all last spring. I mean, maybe it makes you feel

good when you see people trash college campuses. I know it doesn't, but maybe it makes progressives go, oh it's like the 60s all over again. Well guess what? Most Americans didn't like the trashing of college campuses in the 60s. That's why Richard Nixon got elected twice. He got elected out of 49 states in 1972. But yeah, trashing of college campuses, can't even send your kids to campus safely. Defunding the police. Back in 2020, we were talking here,

Reverend Al, let me bring you in here, on defunding the police. You and I were talking about how representatives in the toughest parts of New York City, in real time, were saying, defund the police, no, no. We need more police on the street protecting our children as we walk to school. We need more children in the classroom.

You know, in the classrooms, more police officers, safety officers, so our children can go to and from class, so our businesses can be saved, so we can live a safe life. And it's something, again, you have a great line about wokeness and limousine liberals and everything, but I just wanted to say this is what we've known since 2017 and what you and I have talked about, that white elitists that run the Democratic Party are far to the left of many black and Hispanic voters

in the Democratic Party. And I remember a pollster for Barack Obama, I think David, I think his name was David Saxe, forgive me, it came out and it had that poll in 2017 and he got absolutely hammered on Twitter, absolutely hammered by the far left. How dare you say this? How dare you? But he was right. And it was true in 17 and it was doubly true in 2024, that these white progressives on the far, far left said, we're going to save you, black and Hispanic people of America.

A lot of black and Hispanic people in America say, no thanks, you're kind of wild, you're too far left. We believe in the American dream. We want to be part of the American dream. Thanks, but no thanks. Keep that in your college classes. Rev. Absolutely. The whole goal of the civil rights movement and the movement now is to correct the system, not to overthrow the system, and to make things work equally for everyone, not to just upturn everything and change everything, to some undefined utopia.

And these Latte liberals that speak for people that they don't speak to, that want to lead people that they don't even like, are running around trying to represent things that was never part of what we were saying. All of us that were on the forefront and still are, police reform never said defund the police. We were trying to get police of color and of other circumstances up in these departments to deal with stop and frisk and deal with other things.

And then when you come and disregard and disrespect common people that are trying to get their kids in college and pay the tuition and student debt loan forgiveness and all, and you're going to disrupt the campus. It was very interesting to me that they were very selective in the causes they wanted to fight and the causes on the ground that everyday people had to deal with. They were absent, which is why many, I text you on that last week, which is why many people when they raised the problem

came back to us and the woke people, I don't know what they were woke from because we would never sleep. They were the ones up in the ivory tower taking a nap while we were dealing with people on the ground that have everyday problems. Yeah, Zanny, it is something that I've been saying on the show for a couple of years now that when I would have dinner with Democrats, with Democrats, we'd all be sitting there

having dinner. And I don't know if your experiences are the same. And about halfway in, somebody would say, ugh, my daughter's at Pick the School. And my daughter's at University of Virginia. She can't even raise her hand and speak in class because if she says the wrong thing she's immediately canceled. The professors don't back her up, the administrators don't back her up. If you're at Columbia, good luck. If you're at a lot of these other elite institutions, good luck. I will say even

when I was at University of Alabama, you know, 800 years ago, it was, you know, you say something conservative in class and you still, even in that environment, sometimes you get pushback. But the professors and the administrators would say, no, no, no, we want to have a fair and open debate. There are a lot of students and their parents, and again I'm talking about Democrats, who complained more and more about this over the past four, five, six, seven years. Absolutely. I mean I feel this very viscerally and strongly. As

you know I spent 20 years living in the United States until 2014 and I then went back to England. I've been back in England for the last 10 years and I've been really struck when I come over in the last 10 years and I meet my friends. I lived in D.C., so many Democrat friends. And I didn't think that I'd changed, but I felt myself having increasing numbers of arguments with people on cultural issues, because I think the whole party, the whole elite milieu moved to the left in a very weird way. I mean, the whole issue, the trans issue, for example,

where we, the economist, very loudly, very clearly, all along took a view that was anti-woke, if you will. We were very skeptical about medical interventions, very skeptical about men on women's sports and so forth. And I got so much uphill for this from people, from sort of elite liberal types. You know, what was the economist doing? What was this? And what strikes me now is, yes, people have realized that elites on

the left were way different from where ordinary people are. And, you know, as exactly as you say, lots of people saying, what is happening in our schools? What is happening in our colleges? But the question for me now is, how does that change? I mean, everyone seems to have at last had a wake-up call, but just how does that change? And how do the kind of, you know, the elites of this party actually turn things around? It's not obvious to me that that's going to happen fast enough. And I'm struck that even in the last few days, there are people on the cultural left doubling down on the cultural left's position. So I don't know it's your country not my country but when you live in London you do sometimes come to the U.S. and you think what on earth is going on here? This place has culturally gone off

the reservation on the left. Well and so isolated too and I said on this show before really we heard a whole lot I'm sure the economist was writing about this, but we were very critical about a man who is a swimmer in the Ivy League who transitioned and swam against women. And suddenly he went from like the 386th best swimmer against men to like the first against women. And I remember saying something about it at the time and people going, oh my God, how dare you say that? Why, you're a radical ex-swimmer.

I said, no, actually there's a Pew poll out that shows 85% of Americans agree with me. And it's so fascinating, Xanny, it's so fascinating that all of these people who have been championing women all of these years sort of abandoned girls who had been waking up and their parents had been driving them to go swimming or running track and field from the time they were five years old at five o'clock in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays

and suddenly they abandoned them and won't say a word because they're afraid they're going to be canceled. It's insanity. I think that fear of being canceled was what drove it. I mean, there was a sense amongst many, many in the sort of liberal elite, to use that name, I guess you're all part of it here, to be worried about saying anything

for fear of being excommunicated, for fear of being canceled. And so people would go along with things that they knew were nuts. I mean, Latinx, what on earth is Latinx? No, as you've said on this show, no Latino person uses the word Latinx. But people sort of spouted this because they felt they had to and their DE&I officer told them they had to and there was this kind of mini industry that built up around it. And don't get me wrong, there are important real civil rights issues that still need to

be dealt with in this country. And I'm not in any sense saying there is nothing to be done, there's nothing that anyone needs that the U.S. is completely perfect, but I do think it went completely over the board. And this is the result. Well, it actually did. And again, you look at surveys for white elitists who write books about white fragility and talk about how horrible the United States of America is. You look at the surveys, and it shows

that more black Americans and Hispanic Americans believe in the American dream than those people spouting those extreme positions. Yeah, we say every day, we have a long way to go to be a more perfect union, but being an extremist and setting one party up to lose year after year, every four years, that's no way to do it. Zannie Manbetos, thank you so much. Thank you, Zannie.

Greatly appreciate it.