Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The REAL Life & Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. with Jonathan Eig

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Anthony sits down with award-winning journalist and biographer Jonathan Eig. Jonathan’s latest book King: A Life, is the first major biography of Dr. King in decades and the only to include recently declassified FBI files. He paints an intimate portrait of the real Martin Luther King Jr., casting new light his origins; revealing his complex marital relationship; and why he was rarely ever at peace, even with himself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we

can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. One of the most crucial figures in American history is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King's life is well documented in our textbooks, but my guest today, Jonathan Iig, shows a wholly different side to him in his new book, King, a life. It's a brilliant piece of work and one that will become essential reading for all of us in years to come. So joining us now on Open Book is Jonathan Ige, award-winning journalist and biographer. His new book, Al King, is a bestseller, King, a Life. I also enjoyed the audio version of it. I thought you had a great narrator on the Audible.com. I read portions of it there. But what I was saying to Jonathan before we started the podcast, my introduction to you, sir,

was with Opening Day, the story of Jackie Robinson in 1947, who's one of my heroes. Before we get into King, was 42 based on that book? No, it was not. The movie. They followed a lot of the same pattern in my book. I suspect they read it, but it was not based on my book. Okay, yeah, I just thought I'd throw that out there. So I'll embarrass myself to you. I met with Rachel Robinson, and we made a pitch to her, Ed Pressman, who had done Conan the Babbarian and the two Wall Street movies.

Him and I had teamed up on the Paterno movie that starred Al Pacino for HBO. We went to Mrs. Robinson, Rachel Robinson, right after your book came out, it inspired me. I asked her to consider us to produce the story, but she didn't bite. You know, she had a certain vision for what was going to happen. And so it was quite a successful movie, but your book was tremendous. And so I applaud you for that. Thank you. I also read your book on Ali, which was incredible.

I think you can see behind me the Ali picture. Yeah, I love that. Unfortunately, that is a very young version of me that's about 20 years ago. It's me and the champ. I used to work on his charity, the Parkinson's charity. That's great. But you told an amazing story. And I do think, sir, that this is your opus. And I don't think that those lives are disconnected. I think Ali, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

And in some ways, Barack Obama are all connected. Am I right about that, sir? No question about it. They're all fighting for dignity, for pride, for equal rights. They're all making really big advances in civil rights in their own way. Different, of course. But, yeah, there's a thread. Certainly there's a direct line between all four of those. Well, your book, your book was phenomenal. I want to start with why you call Dr. King a founding father. I thought that was a very interesting take. And I agree with you. And you say that the moment he became one was the 5th of December, 1955. Tell us why. Well, I think, first of all, the Constitution is a living document. And the founding fathers include those who began the country who got us started. But it's also those who help fulfill the words of that declaration, which were, empty for many people at the time. They did not include black Americans who were accounted as only three-fifths of a person. So on December 5th, 1955, Martin Luther King, only 26 years old,

stood in front of a crowd of thousands at a church in Montgomery, Alabama, and said that it was time for black people to show that the American democracy could be fulfilled, the promise of American democracy could be fulfilled, that we could live up to the words in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. We could treat everyone equally. We could guarantee life, liberty, and justice for all, and that black people were going to have to show Americans the way to make that happen. And that's the moment when I think he really found his voice and his vision. So, you know, it's interesting. You know, he's born Mike King or little Mike. This is stuff about him, frankly, I did not know. And he didn't choose to be called Martin Luther King, Jr. So tell us a little about this origination story. By the way, he did a beautiful job in your first and your book about Ali, too, about how he got started in boxing. But tell us about this origination story with Dr. King. Yeah, both men, Ali and King had different. names at birth. Holly was Cassius, Marcellus Clay Jr. And, you know, choosing a name is part of choosing an identity, right? Immigrants do it all the time. They change their names. But in the case of Martin Luther King, Jr., he was born Mike King. His father was Mike King also. No middle name for either of them

when they were born. But Martin Luther King, Sr., discovered the German theologian and protester on a trip to Europe, actually, in the late 30s. And when he came back, he decided to start calling himself, First, he started calling himself ML King, and then he added Martin L. King, and then eventually Martin Luther, and he informed his son one day, guess what? Mike, little Mike, you've got a new name, too. So Martin Luther King didn't have to embrace it, but eventually he did. And I think they liked the name A because it was more dignified, but it also spoke to their values, their values as religious men, but also as people who saw religion as a force that had a requirement to change the world, not just to change lives and change souls. So, you know, I find that fascinating. I just want to test,

this on you. I think names do matter. And I think that the name and tracing it back to the Reformation, and here is a family that's trying to reform the country, do you think the name had a big impact on his life? I think it definitely did. And everything his father did really told him that great things were expected of him. But when you assign a kid this kind of a name, it is assigned to the reform movement. And when you tell him that, you know, it's not just enough to preach the gospel, we have a different kind of gospel. The black social gospel is about remaking society, not just saving yourself, not just being a good person. That sets high standards for a kid. And I think, to his credit, young ML embraced that. You know, his brother didn't. His brother couldn't handle that pressure.

But ML did. He stepped up. But I'm going to, again, test more theories on you, but it was a reluctant embrace, right? I mean, you're writing about his early years. The grandfather's burnt by racism. He turns to drink. Martin Luther King's senior, he leaves. home early. But the young man, Martin Luther King, Jr., doesn't really start out wanting to be a leader. And then something happens to him during the Montgomery bus boycott years at Turn him around. Tell us what you think was the turning point for him, the epiphany, where he decides, okay, I have to do this with my life. This is my calling. I think like a lot of people, he was torn.

You know, he wanted to fight for justice, but he also had ambitions professionally. He thought he would be a great college professor or even a college president. And maybe he would preach for a while and then start teaching. So he wanted to fight Jim Crow. He wanted to fight discrimination, but he also had ambitions, you know, professionally and personally. And it wasn't until Montgomery, as you suggested, that he felt like he had no choice but to follow this calling. And he really thought of it as a calling. He thought he heard the voice of God speaking to him one night after his home had been bombed.

After members of the KKK were doing everything they could to try to get him out of business, to try to knock him out of this position of leadership. He hadn't sought, you know, he had it thrust upon them. the people of Montgomery asked him to lead, in part because he was new in town and he hadn't made any enemies yet. So King wasn't sure this was what he wanted. At first, he said no when they asked him if he would lead the Montgomery Improvement Association. But he felt, especially after he heard God speaking to him in his kitchen one night after he couldn't sleep. And God said, this is what you've been chosen to do. And he followed that and really believed that this was a holy calling. But a complex figure, I think one of the great jobs that you do as a author and

biographer is that you present the person. And what do we both know about people, ourselves included, we're frail. We have our shortcomings. We have our strengths and weaknesses. And you're presenting Dr. King as a way more complex figure than we learned about in school, certainly. He has these very ordinary flaws. He smoked. He slept poorly. He attempted suicide. I think it was twice. If I read it correctly in the book. And he has this faith that you're talking about. It keeps him going. But he also was an adulterer. Yeah, he was, and he suffered anxiety. He suffered depression. He was hospitalized numerous times for what, you know, the doctors at this time called exhaustion. So I thought it was very important to make King more human and to make, create a more intimate portrait because we've, unfortunately, in the course of celebrating him and the course of making him a national holiday and a monument on the mall in Washington, we've turned him into sort of this two-dimensional, almost mythological figure. So I wanted to write a book that would remind people that he was human because, you know, if you have to be perfect to step up and to try. to lead. No one's ever going to do it. One of the more poignant points of this story is his relationship with other activists, his relationship with Malcolm X, who thought, you know, it's interesting,

the whites, the Bull Conners of the era thought he was this radical. Malcolm X thought he was, you know, a sympathizer to the white. I mean, it was just an interesting situation that Dr. King found himself in. He's trying to strike this balance. He knows he can't get the reform done without gravitating many members of the white population, frankly, to his movement. But if he's overly radical, he's going to turn them off. I mean, how did he manage all of that? It was incredibly stressful. You can imagine. And it's true for so many leaders in any walk of life, but certainly in politics or in a grassroots movement. As you become more successful and more powerful as your following grows, it's hard to please everybody, right? You can't be radical enough for some people and you can't

be conservative enough for others. Everybody's taking shots at you. So King is getting attacked from the left and the right all the time. And yet he's trying to, you know, he recognizes that, that staying somewhat in the middle gives him his power. He can reach the most people. He also has access to the levers of power. He can talk to the president. He can talk to members of Congress. He can fight for legislation in a way that Malcolm X cannot. Malcolm X has really very limited impact on public policy on legislation. So King has to, you know, walk this middle ground. And frankly, he takes it personally. He doesn't like being attacked, but he's willing to listen and he doesn't ever really respond angrily when Malcolm X or Stokely Carmichael comes after it. No, it's phenomenal. He's showing all this restraint yet

inside. He's tumultuous. He's got all this anxiety as a result of this. He's trying to make sure he's striking the right balance to advance the movement. I mean, you have such vivid detail in the book. I can still remember the serving of the ham sandwiches by President Kennedy. When King shows up at the White House. Tell us about the relationship with Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King. It's a really complicated relationship. King was deeply frustrated with the Kennedys, and that was even before he knew that RFK had authorized wiretaps on his phones. You know, he was disappointed that the Kennedies weren't moving fast enough to do anything on civil rights, that they really owed, Kennedy owed his election to black voters, and yet he was waffling when it came to introducing civil rights legislation

because he was afraid of losing white votes in the South. So King felt like he had to constantly keep the pressure on Kennedy. And if it hadn't been for the protests in Birmingham and the police dogs and Bull Connor and his water cannons, it's possible that Kennedy never would have acted. In fact, Kennedy made a joke that day when King showed up at the White House after his speech at the March on Washington. Kennedy said, well, don't forget, you owe all of this to Bull Connor. And like, you know, someone else might have, you know, responded angrily to that. Like, no, we've been suffering for hundreds of years, Mr. President. We fought for this. Bull Connor didn't do us any favors. But that's what King was up against.

It's fascinating. Of course, there's the famous call from candidate, Senator John Kennedy, to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the jail during the campaign. I just want to ask you this as a historian and a biographer. This is a general observation. When a political figure is jailed, in some ways it makes them more powerful, right? We have examples, Dr. King, Nelson Mandela. We have bad examples, of course. That would be Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, jailed in the 1920s after the Munich beer putsch. What do you think it is about jail and political figures that exacerbates their power, or at least for their supporters, they become more ardent? Well, it shows their willingness to suffer, clearly. And King was really clear about it. Every time he was jailed, he would send messages out saying, we have to take advantage at this time. Everybody pays attention when I'm in jail.

They may not pay attention to me once I get out. And that's why his letter from the Birmingham jail was so effective because he's clearly suffering for what he believes in. He's proving it. And I should point out, you know, for a black man in the South to allow himself to be jail, It's a different story than, you know, a white man might experience. He really had to fear for his life every time he was put behind bars because people could, you know, Rand did routinely kill black prisoners, you know, without worrying about oversight,

without worrying about anybody catching them. So King, you know, was legitimately scared every time he had to get into the back of a police wagon or spend a night in solitary. It's truly an amazing story. You know, years ago, I read Taylor Branch's works on the Civil Rights Movement. I was coming out of college, or I think law school, the time. This is like the late 80s. This book is chock full of additional new information. So can you describe some of the sourcing, how you've got all of this? I mean, it's 30 years since those

books were written. How'd you get all this new information, sir? Where did you obtain it? Well, time definitely helped. You know, over time, a lot more documents have accrued and the FBI has released a lot more material. But also, folks have donated their papers to archives. And some of it was just a matter of following leads. So, for example, you know, King had a biographer back in 1957, L.D. Reddick, the first biography of King came out while the Montgomery Bus Boycotts were still going on. And I just looked up L.D. Reddick's archives to see where they were, and they had just been donated to the Schaumburg Library in Harlem. And there were thousands and thousands of pages because L.D. Reddick stayed on as King's official archivist, basically. He was keeping track of

everything King and the SCLC did for a decade and keeping really detailed notes. So that kind of stuff was available to me and wasn't available to Taylor Branch and David Garrow when they did their books. other things like, you know, Karetta Scott King's archives, her tapes that she made when she was working on her memoir. I found an autobiography that Martin Luther King Sr. wrote that was never published. So just a lot of digging. And it helped that, you know, it had been a long time since the last King biography. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, you have great insight into what actually happened opposed to the Hageo graphic version of what happened. You know, when I finished reading the book, I was taking some notes to myself about some of the issues of our time. I'd like you to respond to some of the issues of our time. How do you think Dr. King would have felt about wokeness and the whole cancel culture

and the wokeness position that we're facing today? King said over and over again that we needed to stay awake to change. So if that's how you define wokeness, wokeness to me is a term that's been loaded and politicized. You know, at its origins, staying awake is a good thing. And staying alert to change is a good thing. So I think King would like, I hate to ever predict what King would say because, unfortunately he left us a long time ago and it's hard to know how he would respond to some of these

attempts to misuse his language but i think what he was saying was that we need to be open-minded and we needed to stay alert to change and we need to challenge ourselves to think differently and not get stuck in old orthodoxies okay so that's a really interesting thing because king is used often by the left and the right they invoke dr king's words uh so the right says that dr king would not want reparations. And the left says that Dr. King would want reparations. Where does Jonathan I feel that Dr. King would stand on that? Once again, you don't have to ask me, all he has to do is open one of King's books. And we don't read his books. You know, we don't read his own writing. But in his own books, he talks about reparations. He doesn't call it reparations. But he says there's no reason that black people can't be

financially compensated for their contributions to the American economy. And anybody who says that you can't put a dollar figure on it is missing the point that you take your best shot. putting a dollar figure on it in an attempt to do the morally right thing, which is to atone for your sins and to pay for the sins of the past. And it can be done, just as we do every time someone files a civil suit for being wrong. So King spoke to that directly. Same thing with affirmative action. People like to say that King would be opposed to affirmative action because he said we should be judged by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin. But in fact, he celebrated the kind of affirmative action he saw taking place in India to

try to erase the caste systems there. So, you know, unfortunately, there's a quote that everybody can find ways to use King for whatever their purposes are. I mean, you enlighten me on that. I mean, it's very clear from your book that Dr. King was for reparations. I've tried to enlighten some of my conservative friends on that. And I've cited your book now. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the women in Dr. King's life, Dorothy Cotton, obviously Corrida Scott King. I mean, he was surrounded by strong figures. Most of these people were. women, frankly. I mean, yes, there was Ralph Abernathy, of course. But tell us about this relationship with women because at one side, he has enormous respect in many ways they're mentoring and guiding him.

And there's another side of him where he's womanizing, right? So there's a little bit of a dichotomy there, right? Tell us about that. There is a dichotomy. King clearly falls in love with Curtis Scott King because she's brilliant, because she's a committed activist. When they meet, she has more experience as an activist than he does. And I think that's really what attracts him in the first place. is where the mentoring comes in, you know. Absolutely. And she's telling him what books he should be reading. And she's pushing him to get more involved on issues beyond race all throughout their marriage, really. And the same thing with Dorothy Cotton, who becomes, you know, his lifelong, well, not lifelong, but, you know, a longtime lover and

confidant. And again, she's not just a beautiful, intelligent woman. She's an activist. She's working for the SCLC is probably the highest ranking woman in the organization. So King is not perfect. He's flawed. He's not faithful to his wife. He picks smart women to be surrounded by, but he also fails to recognize their potential as leaders. He never really embraces equality for women in the same way he does the equality for the races. And he over and over again misses opportunities to promote women into positions of power within his organization because he's in part, you know, biased. He's got this blind spot. Some of it is cultural. Some of it is a product of the times in which he's raised. But it doesn't always excuse it. You know, he was he was not perfect. Discover cool nights with a new mattress from Ashley. We've got the best mattress brands under one roof like Seeley, Serta, Purple, Beauty Rest, Temporated, and Ashley's sleep. Plus, get up to 60 months special financing on select in-store purchases made with your Ashley Advantage, synchrony credit card, with tons of styles and options to choose from. We've got you and your sleep covered.

Cool nights started Ashley. North Charleston and Mount Pleasant. Subject to credit approval. Minimum monthly payments required. Minimum purchase required. See store for details. It's fascinating because you don't, with your, you're giving us a three-dimensional version of him and not, as you said, the two-dimensional version. Richard Nixon was once asked about FDR. It was the centennial of Franklin Roosevelt's birth. It was 1982. Roosevelt, of course, was born in January of 1882.

And they said, well, give us your rendition of Roosevelt. And Nixon said, well, he was a great man in the right moment. There was a moment of time of crisis, the depression, and the war. made good decisions, but you could also be in a time of peace and prosperity, and you'd be in the presidency and even be the same person, but you don't have that greatness because you didn't hit the world in that way. And so was Dr. King the man in the moment, sir, like Franklin Roosevelt? And then I guess the second question, after you ask that one, how would he fit into today's society? I think King was absolutely the right man at the time, and he was exactly what we needed at that moment. If you think about it, when he emerges in the late 50s. Religious figures in particular have enormous respect in this country.

So a lot of white people in the north hear this beautifully brilliant orator coming out of the South talking about racial discrimination, talking about segregation. He's been educated in the finest schools in the Northeast. And he's able to speak to the whole nation because he brings the, you know, the moral, the morality of his religion combined with the patriotism of the Constitution, And he's not asking his followers to fight to break down the American society. He's asking the American society to welcome this group that wants to join. So it's this very positive patriotic message that comes along at just the right time in the late 50s and into the early 60s.

You know, had he come along in the late 60s by the time things are getting wilder and black power movement, the Black Panthers are making so much noise. It's not clear King would have attracted as big a following. So who knows, had he lived longer and run for office? in the 70s when we started electing a lot of black figures in particular to municipal offices, you know, would King have made it? Would he have been cut down by the controversies or the scandals around his, around his love life? Who knows? I do think that regardless of when he lived or how long he lived, were he around today, he would be 96 now. Yeah. He would be, I like to think he would have the same moral clarity that he would continue to fight for the things he believed in,

which were, you know, rooted in his religious beliefs. What do you think? think we are now. Are we a less racist nation? Are we the same nation? Have we hidden our racism? Or have we made things really better? You know, it's hard for me to say I'm a white man who has not been exposed to this kind of racism that is still endemic and systemic in this country. But I do think we've made enormous progress and we still have enormous problems. We see it every day in the newspaper. We see that there's still enormous race-based police brutality. There's still enormous disparity in incarceration rates, there's still this anger, this hostility around things like affirmative action. So we still have a lot of problems. And King called out most of these in his lifetime. And he began

to feel like in his last days that his dream of equality and justice and brotherhood was turning into a nightmare. He felt like we were blowing our opportunity. Before I end these podcasts, I come up with five words or five people. And then I ask the author to just give me, you need to give me a one sentence, a one word or a paragraph. And I'm going to read you these names. I want to get your reaction to these names. Okay, you're ready? Okay. I want to start with Jackie Robinson. One of America's great heroes and someone I deeply admire and someone who changed, not just baseball, but the whole country. And does Dr. King's life happen without Jackie? I don't think it does. I think Robinson had to prove to a lot of white Americans in particular that black people could compete on

equal footing if we just gave them that chance. And it was King who said, you know, before there were sit-ins, before there were lunch counter protests, Jackie Robinson was paving the way. Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things I learned from your book, Opening Day, in the Robinson's story, was that commitment. And the whole very famous scene with Branch Ricky, where he's saying, well, you want me to fight back? And Ricky says, no, I want you to be strong enough not to fight back. And he paves the way. And he's obviously turning the fan base. And I do think a lot of things, a lot of change happens in our society through sports first, don't you think?

Absolutely. And you see this with entertainment, too, because our defenses are down in a way when we're listening to music, when we're cheering for our favorite sports teams. We don't think about the politics. We don't let ourselves be distracted by the angry rhetoric or the tribalism. So I think that those figures have been hugely important from Lewis Armstrong to Duke Ellington to Jackie Robinson. They have really changed the culture in a way that made it possible to change some of the politics. Al Capone. The only bad guy I've written about. My books have been mostly about good guys. But I loved Capone in a way because he was a rebel. He was challenging a law that he thought was unjust. He was also doing it to make money, which is a pretty American concept. I think Capone in some ways is a classic American dream story of his own,

just maybe with a little bit more bloodshed. Hey, listen, it's a wicked story of American capitalism based on an outsider, an outsider who couldn't get into the club. And so, no, I'm not saying you or I have any sympathy for Coppon. But I thought your book was brilliant in terms of at least exposing you to that thought and that alternative theory. Yeah, it was an immigrant kid like my grandparents, you know, who happened to get in the wrong line of work. Another one of your great books, Lou Garrick. Garrick is this soft-spoken guy. He's the only Yankee, by the way, who even Red Sox fans admire.

He's a soft-spoken guy so shy. I was so surprised to see how painfully shy and insecure he was. And he finds his greatest strength when he gets sick. And that's really what makes him, so much more than a baseball hero. Amazing. I mean, again, that one of your, one of your better, when I see your byline or I see a book from you, I buy it pretty quickly. Let's go to Muhammad, Muhammad L.A. My hero is a kid.

I grew up in the 70s and everybody loved Ali. And, you know, for a white kid in the suburbs of New York, it was hard for me to understand some of the stuff he was talking about. It wasn't until much later that I realized just how courageous he was and what he was standing up for. I certainly didn't understand the religion. You know, he's really the most, to this day, probably the most famous Muslim American. And he was challenging us in ways that my little brain as a kid couldn't understand, but he still challenges us today.

I mean, among many things in that book that you wrote, sir, the most impressive to me was you elicited how smart Al Lee was. You know, he wasn't educated, but he had a street sense and he had a verbal communication skill second to none. But he had great observation about the planet. He was almost like a closet sociologist. You know, he understood the planet in our ways about as well as anybody. He wasn't afraid to call it out. Yeah. You know, in some ways he reminded me of Donald Trump in that he had this enormous self-confidence, he was going to figure out how to do whatever he wanted, and he was going to make it right because he said it was right.

And he was going to find a way to pull people along with him. So is that narcissism? Is that self-confidence? Maybe it's both. I think as I was writing that book, I saw some common threads. I knew Muhammad for many years, and obviously I worked for Donald Trump, and people remember me from my shorts in in the White House. but I knew Trump for 15 years and I had worked on the campaign for a year. There was a difference in those two guys in the following thing. One was genuine self-confidence. That was Muhammad Ali, built from nothing. The other one was sort of a bravado or an over-masculinity, like an overbite due to some massive insecurities.

That would be Donald Trump, at least in my opinion. He was trying to live up to his dad. Muhammad was a self-made guy. He had built himself up. So there was a different level of confidence when you don't have that void that you're trying Phil, but then I'm not a psychologist, just giving you my alteration. Yeah, I see that one of them had a better sense of humor than the other, too. Well, there's no question about it.

He could take a punch literally and figuratively. The other guy's quite brittle. That has a glass jaw for verbal contact. Dr. Martin Luther King, give us your last word there, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Maybe the greatest American, period. You know, when we think about our greatest Americans, they rose to power. They accomplished what they did often with money or with political power, with the power that came with being in office, King did it with none of those things. He came from a sharecropper's family

and became maybe the man who changed American society the most in the 20th century. Yeah, and he had a peaceful process to him. You know, he was really trying to do it with love and forgiveness in his heart, and he wanted there to be some level of peace. He did want retribution. He wanted there to be economic fairness, but he certainly didn't want people to continue to go back to those sins. He wanted to clean them up and then move forward together as a nation, which I will always respect in him. Yeah, it was about love. Christian love all the way. No question. What's next for you? Do you have a dream subject that you're going to write about or what are you writing about next, Jonathan?

I haven't decided yet. I can't tell you yet. I've got a couple of ideas and I haven't decided on which one I'm going to do. Okay, good. All right. Well, hopefully I can get you back on open book. I love that. I love your work and thank you for joining us today. The title of Jonathan's new book is simple enough, King of Life. And it's just a brilliant exposition of a very complex man. And it's a worthwhile read, particularly given what's going on on the Society Today. So thank you for your contribution and thanks for joining the show today. Thanks, Anthony. Closing thoughts about Jonathan Ike's book on Dr. King, he made him so human. So when we think of these

national figures that have holidays named after them or they have monuments in their honor, we sometimes put them up in effig and their heroism becomes godlike. But here is Jonathan Iig presenting Dr. King with his entire soul, whatever his strengths and weaknesses were, the beauty of his personality, but also the indiscretions and sometimes the mistakes that he made as a human being. But here was a man that was clear-cut in understanding his love for other people and wanting to bring the country together and wanting to end things like desegregation in the society and ending things like racism. So of course, we have a long way to go. But without Dr. King, we wouldn't be where we are today. And I do think that this book not only allows us to see Dr. King in a different light,

but also if you just think about the way the world works, how difficult it is for a leader like Dr. King to get done the things that he did. So he's a heroic person, flawed, of course, like all of us, but very human. And I just applaud Jonathan Ike. The book is called King A Life. I encourage you to get out and read it. All right. You ready to go back on the air, ma? Yes.

Last week, I interviewed a biographer by the name of Jonathan Ike, and he wrote a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King. Junior. Do you remember Martin Luther King Jr.? Yeah, of course. Okay. And he had a lot of strong women in his life, Mom, so you could have been one of them, you know, because you know what you like, right? Right. Right. No, you're not even going to defend yourself, right? Right? No. Oh. Okay. So, black and white. I don't have too much gray in my personality. Yes, we are very well. That's why you're so far ahead of everyone. Okay. I think health.

Yeah, well, you taught me to do the right thing and wherever the chips fall, that's fine. But leadership, though, Ma, Franklin Roosevelt had a very strong mom. Martin Luther King had a strong mom and a strong wife and strong people around them. How do these strong women help these people? Tell me how. Okay.

You know, and they could understand them. Are you a feminist, ma'am? Am I? Are you a feminist? Are you a woman's liver? Uncertain things, yeah. Uncertain things. Okay.

Like what? Give me a couple of things that you're a woman's liver. Give me something that you would want me to say something about women's love. Women in the workplace. They should have equal rights to men. Yes or no? Aye. Even if the woman is fake.

Of course, Hillary Clinton is not going to agree with you, but that's an interesting opinion. That's why I bring you on the podcast. So let's talk about... I think Hillary Clinton, I'm not going to talk against her, but I think she's very stiff and she's like very straight. like and she's a little too she can't go

yeah savua fair she can't she can't make fun of herself she can't roll with the punches you know right right right that's right what did you think of I think the hell is she looks like a jerk because she's always laughing when there's something being said and I don't think that's right

it shows weakness to me you don't laugh at everything she should have been fired long ago but we're we're now in a country where you can't fire her because she's a black woman and so if you say she's not good at her job, well, you're a racist. It's just nonsense. You know, you know, there are, you know, Condy Rice was great at her job. You're a black woman. I mean, it's not about black or white or female. It's about honesty about somebody's ability to do a job. But we just said the, Condy Rice, yeah. And this woman laughs at things. And I think she shows a sign of weakness. You don't laugh at stuff. We agree. We agree on that. Let me ask you a question. Do you remember Martin Luther King, Jr? Yes, of course. where we're when it did the one that did the march yes of course and what do you remember when he died

he died on april 4th 1960s he was assassinated do you remember or not really do you remember or not really yes i do remember where were you i lived in there yeah go ahead i feel the african americans were mistreated so severely down south that i was very young and i i i didn't get it they had to go to the swamp where the snakes were so that they could get back i think that not Yeah, it was unfair. There's no question about that. What about Muhammad Ali? Ma, you remember the boxer? I'd like him. He had Parkinson's. My father had Parkinson's, and I had empathy for people with Parkinson's. Yeah, I've raised money for that. Parkinson's Research Foundation with him back in 2005. I liked him a lot. All right, let's leave it there, Ma. Thank you for joining Open Book. All right. I love you, ma'am. All right. Love you.

All right. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at Plus 1-917-909-29-96. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.