Pod Save America - “Hold for Lou Dobbs.”

Episode Date: April 3, 2018

Trump has a Twitter meltdown over immigration after a MAGA revolt over the wall, Sinclair Broadcast Group forces local news anchors to read their propaganda, and White House corruption becomes a campaign issue for Democrats. Then Sacramento activist Berry Accius talks to Tommy about the protests over the shooting of Stephon Clark, and Ana Marie Cox joins the pod to talk about the 2nd season of With Friends Like These.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the pod today, we'll have Tommy's interview with community activist Barry Axias about the protest in Sacramento over the shooting of Stephon Clark. Then later, we'll be talking to Annamarie Cox about the brand new season of With Friends Like These. We'll be in Florida later this week. There are still some tickets available. One or two.

Just one or two for Clearwater, for Miami. Miami. And for Orlando. Listen, you're on the fence about coming to Love It or Leave It in Miami. I want you to know that if you're worried about being able to get good seats, put that worry out of your mind. What's in the news, John? Anyway, the news.

We're recording this, by the way. I should just talk about the elephant in the room. We're recording this on Monday evening. It's an experiment to see what it would be like to discover we don't like recording on Monday evenings. I'm having a great time. So far, yeah, I love it has been in a fit today. I don't know about this evening recording.

It's been hanging over my head. It cast a pall over the whole day. Anyway, let's talk about the news. So we haven't had a full-blown Trump Twitter meltdown in a while. But we were treated to one on Easter Sunday that has basically lasted through right before we started this podcast. He was still fucking tweeting about immigration a couple minutes ago. Hey, John. Yes, John.

And nominations. Hey, John, have you heard the good news? That's an Easter thing? Trump is tweeting. Chris, can you insert a crickets after that joke? Thank you. So in this tweet storm that started on Easter, Trump attacked some of his old favorites. He got Amazon, the FBI, the Department of Justice, CNN, MSNBC.

But the real focus was immigration. It seems as if the President of the United States was triggered by a Fox and Friends segment about hundreds of people from Central America who were traveling through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States. Trump said they're coming

to take advantage of DACA, which is extra stupid because A, he canceled DACA, and B, DACA only applies to the children of immigrants who've been here since 2007. He was confronted with this conundrum today during the Easter egg roll when CNN's Jim Acosta yelled to him, but Mr. President, didn't you kill DACA? And then Trump just stared at him and didn't you kill daca and then trump just stared at him and didn't say anything so why is trump suddenly so upset about immigration i mean there's lots of fox and friends segments usually they lead him to tweet something and then he moves on but this has really stuck with him now for 48 hours yeah i mean what we should the piece in question was about a caravan of folks from central

america most of them from honduras with a group called People Without Borders going north through Central America. It's an annual journey. This happens every year. It's raising awareness about people who are seeking asylum from government oppression or horrible crime, mostly from organized crime. mostly from organized crime. And so Fox and Friends, rather than calling these people asylum seekers, called them a small army of migrants marching towards the United States. So that starts with just horrific racist framing.

They accuse the Mexican government of being complicit in this. What this stems from, though, is seemingly a concerted effort from the high priestess on down of the MAGA movement, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Gene Pirro, Lou Dobbs, to attack him on immigration because he has not yet built a wall because he's an idiot and doesn't know how to legislate and get anything out of Congress. And they rolled him in the omnibus bill. I mean, yeah, let's unpack that. Let's start with the high priestess of the MAGA movement because she is not too happy. Ann Coulter sat down with Frank Bruni of the New

York Times for an interview where she basically said that Trump not building the wall would be more of a betrayal than implementing the principles of the communist manifesto. She said that there's a new category of voters now called former trumpers and this should be terrifying to the president she's now counting herself almost as a former trumper unless he surprises her and builds the wall the conundrum of course is that he probably will not be able to build the wall love it what do you think it's interesting though so first of all it's always surprising to see what like so when ann coulter turns her sort of evil mechanical mind towards attacking someone we disagree with it's interesting to see because oh she is good at this right she is good at this like

even just saying there's a new category of people former trump it's it's a persuasive interesting way of framing things i you know trump to me i think there's two things going on i think one all this news about people being angry about him, that immigration has clearly gone to him, it got to him before. It's why he threatened to veto the omnibus was in part because, you know, the Huckabees of the world were angry at him about the wall funding. So he was definitely looking for something to latch on to. He also is very good about attaching himself to kind of bite sizedsized versions of giant controversies in part because he knows it's effective and partly also that's the biggest amount of information he

can process so this is one of those great perfectly built trump things right it's easily understandable here are these people they're coming towards him i'm trying to stop him scary image and so it's a place for him to reassert himself with these hardliners and remind them that he's on their side and so he sees no downside to it so he's enjoying it and by the way it's not like it's not like he's this is not an example where it's like he just passed a corporate tax bill and now he's screwing up his message or he just gave a state of the union where he didn't shit himself so now he's stepping out his message it's been basically two weeks of muller and stormy daniel so whatever let it rip you know rage away you know it's interesting though it's been basically two weeks of muller and stormy daniel so whatever let it rip

you know rage away you know it's interesting though it's this would have been the perfect story for trump the 2011 leader of the birther movement as he is outside of government outside of politics and just someone tweeting and yelling about everything yeah you can see the frustration where now he's president of the united states and all he can do is he can talk about the story and then he's like congress act build wall daca canceled like he doesn't have any levers to pull because he is not very good at this job i mean he he had a chance to build the wall at one point chuck schumer put the fucking wall on the table if all trump was willing to do was to offer the dreamers a path to citizenship and he didn't take it because stephen miller told

him no no no that deal's not good enough we need cuts to legal immigration in addition to getting the wall you can't have the wall and because he scuttled that deal because trump said no now he's come to realize he's never getting the wall because he doesn't have the votes in Congress to get the wall. And he thinks that the military is going to do it on their own. And so you've got Defense Secretary Jim Mattis drawing up all kinds of options for him, basically just to placate him because the Pentagon can't do this on their own. Right. I don't even accept that excuse that, oh, he didn't want to do the deal because Stephen Miller talked him out of it. The thing that you't too happy about it. And it's the only time I've ever seen Donald Trump acknowledge the fact that Barack Obama has an interior life. But also, but even putting that

aside, it's a reminder of the fact that he's facing these presidential decisions and deciding to say, just screw Stephen Miller, go against Paul Ryan, go to Chuck Schumer and say, I'll give you DACA, you give me 25 billion. It's the decision only a president can make. There's no one who's going to tell him yes or no. It's a final moment where it comes to him. And I don't think he's up for it. I don't think in that moment he can make that kind of a deal. Just real quick on the high priestess. Trump's immigration plans were basically plagiarized from her book, which was called Adios America, The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. Catchy title.

She is vile. She peddles hate for a living. But you have to admit, she's playing Trump brilliantly here. She knows what leverage is. She knows how to play him. She knows how to play the New York Times. The article was a little chummy for my taste. And when she comes out and says, well, we love Trump because he doesn't care about

the opinions of Manhattan's sophisticates as a new Canaan High School and Cornell University grad currently living in New York. I nearly threw up onto the keyboard of my laptop. But to your point, like these people are coming at him hard, and he is now in charge, and he is no more leverage anywhere legislatively. And Paul Ryan ignored him. Everyone ignored him. But it is true that he has kind of refused to do the things. He does seem to be kind of captured by the Paul Ryans that tell him the things he cannot

do in a way that Ann Coulter thought he might be the one person who wouldn't be captured by that group. I think she said Trump could sell Trump products from the Oval Office if he got the wall built. Like they literally care about nothing else. And because he's failed to do that central promise, they're losing these guys. And he's getting that. The Washington Post said he was privately grousing that his supporters are going to start getting

pissed that he didn't build the wall. A bunch of his guests at Mar-a-Lago brought it up over the weekend. Like you said, Tommy Jeanine Pirro, Sean Hannity, former Fox executive Bill Shine was there. Let's just pause for a moment and just recognize that what you just said is very terrible. I do not.

What a horrible cocktail party. Those are the people that are giving him advice now. Standing in the corner with a drink being like, there is no one here I want to talk to. The Mata movement is so lame. Oh, my God. I don't want to leave this person off, though. The movement is so lame. Oh my God.

I don't want to leave this person off though. The Daily Beast has a fantastic story about Lou Dobbs and how he's been on speakerphone in the Oval Office during meetings because this is a great line. What sets Dobbs apart is the degree to which the president views him as a political and populism godfather. The Maga Socrates to Trump's Plato. Let's just be clear for a second. No one in history has ever looked up to lou dobbs i mean he was like an also ran cnn idiot he was a birther didn't he leave he left cnn he left the doc during he during the dot com bubble he ran space.com that was like one of the things he did And then now he's relegated to Fox Business, which is like the AAA ball of Fox. Right, where he floats trial balloons like the U.S. Marshal should arrest Obama if he criticizes Trump because that's not appropriate.

Like he's just some crazy old lunatic who gets patched into Oval Office phone calls. Yeah. It does seem pretty clear, though, that we are going to, because this is what the base, this is what gets the base up in the morning, at least the MAGA base and Ann Coulter and those people that all of these candidates Republican candidates are going to run on immigration and be talking about immigration and trying to find not talk about the policy but trying to find these stories you know these vivid stories of caravans or MS-13 or gangs and they want to run on this from now until November. And I guess the question is, what do Democrats do? What happens with DACA?

There's a Bloomberg story today. Jackie Rosen in Nevada said she's discussing it in her race every day. Obviously, there's a big population of Dreamers in Nevada. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, in Texas, is also discussing it in his race every day, thinking that it will energize his base to talk about how he stood against it. So what do you guys think? Proposing that we use military funds, take away military funds to build the wall, that add rights itself. Like imagine images of guns in body armor and tanks being literally ripped out of the hands of U.S. service members. The fact that they think that immigration is a more salient issue for their racist base is instructive. I would like to see Democrats use that to fight on. The other thing

their anecdote is the AP reported that some people close to Trump suggested creating a GoFundMe for the wall, which is just so perfectly stupid. I wish Dan were here today to talk more about it. Go for it, guys. But like, you know, I think this is an issue where like DACA is a great thing for Democrats to talk about because it is such a wildly popular issue. But I do think there is some risk more broadly for Democrats on immigration. You know, I think we shouldn't be afraid to talk about it when we're talking about immigration. I don't know that I would make that the heart of what we're talking about right now.

I'm much more interested, you know, Jonathan Chait wrote this piece about corruption. I don't know if I'd make corruption the centerpiece of'm much more interested, you know, Jonathan Chait wrote this piece about corruption. I don't know if I'd make corruption the centerpiece of it versus healthcare, the economy, whatever. But I certainly don't think we should be afraid of saying that Donald Trump made a whole bunch of promises on immigration, couldn't keep a single one of them,

refused to help these kids, didn't get as well, didn't get anything done, didn't solve a compromise, didn't address the problem, and that's it. I mean, I don't know how much more complicated it needs to be than that. There's a whole bunch of things Democratic candidates are going to talk about

i think that there is a reason that helping the dreamers polls at 70 80 90 percent and democrats can feel confident going out there even if you are running in a state that doesn't have a big dreamer population saying young people who are here who are brought here through no fault of their own who are working who are in college who are brought here through no fault of their own, who are working, who are in college, who are studying, they deserve to have a chance to become U.S. citizens and they deserve not to be deported back to countries that they've never lived in before. I think that is a fairly popular message and I don't think anyone should feel afraid of it. Yeah, I agree with that. Should you run on health care? Should you run on corruption? Yeah, of course. You should emphasize all those things. I mean, I think the corruption

issue is interesting because I just think it leaves something off i think we should talk about trump's corruption and the administration's corruption all day long but we need to make sure every time we talk about it we connect it to those policies that are actually affecting people's lives so if you're if you're taught you connect it to health care you connect it to tax cuts you connect it to all these things that are happening you know he's yeah he's doing this for him here's how it's hurting him. Right. Like Scott Pruitt is in a house for $50 a month or whatever.

Yeah, he's paying for his room with a Subway Club card. And meanwhile, the lobbyist whose house that he's in, that he's renting from, got their project approved at the EPA. And that's screwing people over. You have to finish drawing the line. I know it's like a 12th order political issue. But again and again and again, Mexico is like our biggest trading partner. They're a close ally in security and economic and cultural ways. He's

just rupturing the relationship day after day, tweet after tweet. I mean, I thought Jared fixed it. The foreign minister had to respond that like this inaccurate news report should not serve to question the cooperation between the two countries. It's a big deal to keep kicking allies in the teeth for no reason when you're wrong and for naked political purposes i think that's a big i mean save the

world point no i think it's a big it's a it's a big issue because someday down the line we are going to need allies to work with us on something that has to do with the security of the american people the safety of the american people and at some point they're going to say fuck off because we have been treated so badly by your president you're starting to see in the political system because they they're running against him now and that's not just like a foreign policy nerd point that's gonna hit people at home sort of point and also we're just so sort of enmeshed in the sort of the trump drama daca is incredibly important immigration is a huge and growing problem that needs to be addressed the fact that we have millions and millions of people who have to live in the shadows in this country because we haven't given them any kind of path to legalization is a huge problem.

Right. There are huge immigration problems we need to address that we've been trying to address for basically 30 years. And now this debate has been reduced to border wall versus DACA kids. And we can't even get that piece of it done. Yeah. And that's a good point, is that it is, that is way too small of a debate. Every Democrat should also not be afraid of saying our immigration system is badly broken, and it has been for a long time, and we need to fix it somehow. And that includes DACA, that includes legal immigration, that includes border security, it includes like all kinds, interior enforcement and what the fuck ICE is doing, which is awful. There's a whole bunch

of things. And by the way, figuring out a way to talk about border security confidently in a way that doesn't abandon the core compassion and principles of Democrats. Right. I think right now Democrats are skittish to even talk about border security at all because it's become a Trump issue. But border security is going to be part of any answer to this. And so finding a new way has to be and finding a new way to talk about this, where we are extremely critical of ICE, we're extremely critical of policies that rip family apart. And by the way, recognize that there's an argument about American workers who feel as though immigration doesn't help them. Like finding ways at that to talk about immigration as a way of talking about how to help American workers, undocumented people, securing the border, getting all of that into a language that doesn't alienate Democrats who are afraid of people capitulating to Trump, I think is a really hard problem.

And good luck to the 2020 Democrats figuring it out. Did you see that they floated Don King to run Customs and Border Patrol? Honestly. You believe me for a second. I know. I was about to say, I don't know. I swear I didn't know. Tommy's face seemed very serious.

I almost. Why is that? I mean, I really think I was joking over the weekend about lou dobbs becoming the next treasury secretary and that seems very plausible stop stop steve mnookin does not seem like he's a good fit okay well so thank you to fox and friends for uh spinning up the president on that that's great let's talk about another propaganda outlet sin Sinclair Broadcasting. Over the weekend, an editor at Deadspin put together a supercut where dozens of local anchors at news stations owned by Sinclair gave the exact same speech that warned viewers about fake news and the danger of certain journalists using their platforms to push their own personal bias. The anchors were ordered to read the speech by Sinclair. And apparently a lot of Sinclair employees were pretty upset. How worrisome is this, guys? It looks pretty scary.

Very worrisome. I mean, look, this is a perfect segue. Propaganda works even on our own presidents. You know what I mean? Like Fox News is generating these massive controversies. When you have Sinclair, which has either 173, 193 television stations, depending on which outlet you're reading, that is a big deal. And so when you have Sinclair forcing its anchors to read a script that undercuts trust in news generally, I think that's enormously problematic. Yeah, it's sort of like a third phase of what's happened. So there's the rise of Fox News. And that happened in plain sight, it grew during the Clinton administration and became a kind of bulwark against the, you know, the mainstream media, it was a right wing alternative. And then you have this second

phase of it now becoming something that is sort of weaponized on Facebook. Sinclair, what National Enquirer is doing, they are buying up local stations, they are putting things on supermarket shelves. And it all is the kind of thing that flies under the radar of journalists under the radar of major publications under the radar of the national conversation. So thank God for deadspin, right? I didn't expect them to call a foul on this one. And the other part of this is, I think, it's also extremely dangerous in how it's hidden. Like, you turn on Fox News, Fox News viewers know it's conservative.

Liberals know. We all know what it is. You listen to Pod Save America, you know what you're getting. You know exactly what you're getting. You know exactly what you're getting. You're getting this. But these things, they're stuck between weather and sports. It's very insidious. And the other thing is, too, local news has a conservative bias in that the medium of

conservative news, it leans towards covering local crime. It leans towards a conservative narrative. You never turn on local news and it's like systemic poverty in our city. No, it's much more like this is the crime that happened. Here's who did the crime. Here's who fought the crime. Here's what happened with the fire. It's very much based on individual acts and individual crimes.

You should be scared of this new disease that we can't figure out. You should be scared of this. You should be scared of that, which plays right into the Trump worldview. is wedged up against a must-run segment by former Trump aide Boris Epstein, who is too stupid to work in Trump's White House surrogate operation. So he got booted out and then got hired by Sinclair to essentially produce propaganda. So they're taking over the whole broadcast. The Boris Epstein ones are really, you should check one out. Go Google one.

Don't watch more than the whole, you don't have to watch the whole thing. It's fascinating too, because he is marble is marble mouth and non-charismatic he could not be on television but for the favoritism and corporatism and the need to get a trump acolyte into this role which is very banana republic it's very very developing like it's very much like like a crony getting a guy in who shouldn't be on television because they just needed that guy in that spot. The other thing that's scary is that they did a study of Sinclair stations versus other stations, and Sinclair stations are starting to cover national politics

more and more and less local news. And that's how you sort of know. And the national politics they're covering, of course, the stories they're choosing are stories that have a conservative bent to them. So it is. The history of this. Again, in some ways it is more insidious than what Fox is doing because by now everyone knows Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and all these people. They know what they're all about.

And when you just see these anchors that you've known and trusted for a long time and you don't pay a ton of attention to politics and you just hear them talking about stuff you're more likely to trust them and believe what they're saying thanks rick what a great weather report now for an update put on the hat put that fucking hat on your goddamn head or we will come to your fucking house put on that mat get it on we're all wearing it uh with just one other point about this that's the anchor anchor. That's the final stage. Uh, that's phase four. And the, uh, no, but one other piece of this is it's part of a larger story of consolidation. You know, Sinclair has been able to scoop up, uh, stations in part because of AgitPi and what's been going on at the FCC. We've also seen hedge funds picking off local newspapers and then

shrinking down their newsrooms. So Sinclair covering more national news is actually something a lot of local papers are doing. We're seeing local coverage getting worse and worse, which means state houses, governors are under much less scrutiny, and much more corruption is going to go unchecked. So I feel like all of this is part of consolidation in the media. Some of the problem is that it's consolidated for ideological purposes, but there's a larger problem of just consolidation leading to cost cutting and nationalization of news and just a lack of coverage of important things in local places. That is true. That is 100% true. But Sinclair is particularly brazen and insidious. In 2004, they were trying to force

62 TV stations to run basically a hit job documentary on John Kerry and his anti-war activities that because it was exposed, I don't believe ever ran, but it was like agit prop. Yeah. So these guys don't give a shit about the attention that's being paid to them yet. Hopefully we can hurt them financially. Yeah. So what can we do? Number one, obviously we are going to buy up a ton of local news stations here at Crooked

Media. So that should fix that. I just got one on the way to work did i miss a meeting i thought um so here's a few things congressional candidate amy mcgrath in kentucky is no longer running ads on the sinclair owned television station in her district you know like the principal there but i'm not sure that's that effective this makes me nervous in the same way um i just think she's not getting her message out as well this makes me nervous in the same way it makes me nervous when people when a bunch of liberals talk about deleting facebook yeah it's like if a bunch of liberals delete facebook there's still a billion people on facebook and then they're not getting anything from us so i worry about this a little bit but i don't know if boycotts have been effective

look at there's three local news stations in her district in kentucky or four she's just getting like a third or a quarter of less ads you know she's so that's tough but yeah i guess that i would say i'm less interested in democrats deciding to not reach sinclair viewers than i am about maybe a larger campaign to make sure companies don't advertise yeah on sinclair that to me makes more sense i mean and also some pressure on the local stations themselves i i read right before we started that uh the madison wisconsin station sinclair station tweeted that we did not run the piece we would not read the script and i wonder how many and now it's not a position that i think a lot of individual journalists and anchors at

these stations can take on their own because they have contracts and, you know, they could be fired. But together as an entire station banding together, you might be able to do that. Yeah. And so I do think unions would be helpful here. I was going to say, exactly. And I do think, you know, viewers, like you said, viewers can put pressure on advertisers. They can call their local station. So there are, you know, there are avenues there.

Speaking of boycotts, advertisers are fleeing from esteemed journalist Laura Ingraham's show. She takes a week-long break from the network. Advertisers have been pulling out ever since she mocked David Hogg, a 17-year-old school shooting survivor for not getting into his top college. Very classy. What do you guys think about this boycott?

Brian Stelter at CNN this weekend said, I'm personally pretty wary of this. I think it's dangerous. My view is let's not shut down anyone's right to speak. Let's meet their comments with more speech. Come on, Brian. The First Amendment does not protect your ability to host a TV show. The government can't abridge your right

to free speech. I think consumers should absolutely vote with their wallet. Companies should have a conscience. My view on this is, if we lost a bunch of advertisers on pod save america i wouldn't think who are these angry mobs that are shutting down our right to free speech i'd say damn what did we say that was so bad that we lost these advertisers maybe we should figure out how to apologize and get them back right like that would be my first thought i don't know if i agree i think we just take the hit. I agree in this case.

I think that's right. I think it's ridiculous to say that a group of people coming together to say Laura Ingraham's comments are beyond the panel and we think companies shouldn't support that and getting those companies to withdraw. That is free speech at work. That's how it all works.

Obviously, this is not a First Amendment issue. It is a free speech issue. That is true. Boycotts are about saying we don't want to hear your kind of speech. That being said, that's a is true. Boycotts are about saying we don't want to hear your kind of speech. That being said, that's a good thing, right? That's part of speech, right? It's a it's speech fighting speech. But could there be examples where boycotts where, you know, you end up with a situation where liberals are saying we can't support any of this and then

conservatives saying we can't support any of this and then you end up with a situation where companies just say, you know what, we don't advertise on anything political because we don't want that kind of heat and then all of a sudden there's you know less support for political conversation but here's the problem our political half-life in remembering news is like eight seconds like someone pointed this out on twitter before the iraq war republicans were encouraging us all to boycott the country of france because they didn't support the worst war in our fucking history. So like, I'm totally fine with the tit for tat nature of boycotts. I also think this is like capitalism at work here. At some point, if companies all decided to do a blanket, like we're

not going to advertise on political shows anymore. Some company is going to be like, you know what, there's a whole audience out there that's listening to those political shows that probably fits with the audience that would actually buy our product as well or our service. So we're going to break that rule and go do it. I just always think that when people make the argument that Brian Stelter makes, it is inappropriate because the thing they're worrying about is not happening. What we do have are heinous people going on television attacking children, and we have consumers saying, please don't support this. That seems pretty good to me. They're worried about what if this leads down a path where there's so many boycotts and it's a but that's not what's happening where the system the system of boycott seems to be quite i don't know cool i mean like

alex jones makes what i read somewhere 50 million dollars a year what peddling the most heinous most crazy conspiracy theories don't go there with that joke. Say more about that. What do you think? What are some of his techniques? God damn it. He says like the most, like, you know, he's someone who's talked about Sandy Hook as a hoax. He's talked about, you know, the Parkland students being crisis actors. I mean, there are truly vile, horrific people out there.

And because of the nature of the Internet these days, people are more likely to find and believe these types of conspiracies. So I'd like to see a whole lot of voting with your pocketbook if possible. Well, now a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back with Tommy's interview with community activist Barry Axias. With me today is Barry Axias. He is a Sacramento-based community activist and the founder of Voice of the Youth, which is a mentorship program for young people in Sacramento. Barry, thank you so much for talking with us today. You got my name right. Thank you. Well, we're very grateful to you. So, Stephon Clark was killed by police last month. He was 22 years old. He's a father of two. A recent autopsy showed that he was shot eight times,

mostly in his back. Police said he was armed. He was not. You are one of many people in Sacramento demanding justice. What does getting justice for Stefan and his family mean for you? That's huge. I mean, getting justice actually, it sets a real, I feel, move that can kind of have a ripple effect nationally. If there's this big high profile case and we have this young man that gets justice. I mean, I think that it will actually stop a lot of the police killing because I think what happens with these police killings, the reason why we have so many so often is because no one is held accountable. No one is challenged.

No one has ever been convicted. I think you only have pretty much one conviction with the Walter Scott case. And in that situation with Walter Scott, the officer, I mean, I want to believe there was a mistrial and they had to kind of do some other stuff. And finally, he pleaded guilty or something to that nature. But the process of getting conviction is almost impossible. And there have been some high profile cases where you look at the evidence from my standpoint or anyone else who watches this. There's no way that this officer is getting away with it.

But shoot, nine times out of 10, I mean, they always get away with it. So what this is going to do, I think, is going to show a commitment to the community of Sacramento that we're not going to tolerate racist police. We're not going to tolerate police corruption. We're not going to tolerate folks that are supposed to protect and serve abusing their power and using excessive force when it's unnecessary. So I look at this as a national moment that all eyes are looking at Sacramento and we have an opportunity to show the world this is how it's supposed to be done. Barry, you were at a town hall meeting in Sacramento at Sacramento City Hall, and you encouraged folks there to point their cell phones at the mayor and the city council

and ask a pretty simple question. Does this look like a gun to you? You're echoing the claim by police that Stephon Clark was armed when he was not. He was holding a cell phone. Has anyone, the police, the politicians actually answered that question? How does a cell phone look like a gun in this situation? I think no one's answered some foolish rhetoric that police made up to cover up. The bottom line is this. Police have so far often said things to us that have been lies and we just kind of agree with it because they're the police, right? And that whole theory of I feared for my life, he had a gun or he had something that looked like a gun or whatever

else they like to do. It kind of creates that cover up. Just think about it. Listen to the video. It says, hands up, gun, gun, gun. Automatically, that creates that narrative that, whoa, this guy had a gun. That's why he got killed. And then when you find out the reality was he didn't have anything.

When you find out the reality was he didn't have anything. And so when I said that moment, I just wanted to clearly have the council look at what we are saying. Stop pretending that we're idiots. There's no way that this cell phone looks like a gun. That's a lie. And I don't know what kind of state of mind. I'm really kind of confused what those officers was thinking at that moment. If they were just amped up and they just decided that they say they wanted to kill a moving target, which was a black man. It's still kind of, to me, baffles me because everyone wants to make this argument that he was doing something wrong.

And let's say if he wasn't content to to not create another argument. So you're telling me now that a misdemeanor is due for an execution. So it almost tells me the value of black lives is almost minimum to nothing you should not be executed for a misdemeanor defense if that's what he did and from all likeliness he probably didn't do anything from the video what i saw is a young man going to his home and knocking on his grandparents' door and getting killed with a beret of bullets, got executed at his own parents' house. So, I mean, this wasn't the first time you've talked about these issues. In 2014, after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, you said that

Sacramento is one national moment away from being Ferguson. What did you mean by that? You are doing your homework. I like that. I appreciate that. Well, because I think that so many times we try to pretend that what is now is something that just happened. Like for some, some instance, people will be like the racial incidents that we're having. We're looking at Donald Trump. It's like, oh my goodness, Donald Trump recreated racism. No, America has a lineage of racism. That's why when guys or things like this happens in our communities, we were up in arms because we don't want to look at face the reality of what we live in. And what black people live in and exist in is this reality of police have

hunted us down for several years, excuse me, centuries. Historically, think about it. The origin of police are slave catchers, right? It wasn't that they came from a community need. They were catching slaves. So when you're in doctrine in that type of hatred, it only kind of parallels through all of the other scopes of history. When you look at police and how they've treated a black community, it's never been a cohesive relationship. I don't know where anyone can kind of line that up. It's always been a cohesive relationship. I don't know where anyone can kind of line that up. It's always been us against them. So in 2014, when I sat there and I just kind of gave some insight to our folks in the city hall so we could be, because Sacramento likes to play this idea of

progression and we want to be this progressive city, I said, well, we have the opportunity to do something to prevent a tragic incident and moment that we're having currently with Stephon Clark. But it fell on deaf ears. 2016, Joseph Mann came. And now here we are in 2018, a bigger story than the Joseph Mann story. So it was like, Harry Sacramento, we have a problem. I know that you don't want to deal with the problem, but this is going to blow over. There's corruption in our police departments. There's racism in our police department. There's total bias in our police departments. And I think that folks don't want to buy into that reality because we want to assume that these police are above the law, that they can make right decisions. But with all of the constant mistakes that they make, and I don't even think they're mistakes.

I think that they feel like since I am protected by the police bill of rights, since I'm protected by the union, and since I have a DA that could care two lesses of prosecuting us or bringing up charges, we'll be okay. Yeah. I mean, you make the point that this is not new and it's systemic. I mean, when you think Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark, the list goes on and on and on and on. And so my thing was, you think that we are going to be exempt from this moment. We've got every major city,

a rural city in America going through this trial and tribulation. So we're going to pretend that Sacramento has no issue. I think that was pompous. It was very arrogant for individuals in the city council to believe that they did some things but they didn't do a maximum amount of things to protect people because if you think

about it after i had said that in 2014 2015 we've had literally i want to believe 22 shootings of unarmed folk by the police and we've had not one conviction no prosecution prosecution. So you're trying to tell me that all these people that got killed, they were all justified. That to me is kind of weird. Yeah. What changes do you want the government to make at the federal or state level to stop the police from killing unarmed African-Americans mostly? Well, first of all, the unfortunate thing is a lot of the KKK members who hung up their hoods, they took badges. That's facts. Not only did they take badges, they're in office. So, you know, the lineage of systemic racism and institutional racism is so

far stretched into so many different areas. But because we do have an opportunity, since we know the hat is out of the bag, I feel like, one, the police bill of rights needs to be dismantled, and we need to conditionally, as a community, look into some of those things to kind of process how much power these police do have. The police is such a militarized force. Nowadays, these protests that we've been having, it's literally an army against civilians with nothing except their voices, their hearts, and their courage. So I definitely feel that we don't need

militarized peace, police officers moving and roaming our streets, as well as I think there should be mandatory drug testing when a firearm is let go, long lethal or lethal. I believe that when we hear about these incidents, we need to know what the state of mind our police officers are in. There is so much abuse our police officers deal with as far as their own self and kind of

implementing the abuse that they've done with their spouse. I mean, if you do the research, there's a lot of police officers in rehabs. There's a lot of police officers that have been charged with domestic violence. There's a lot of police officers that have actually done drugs, namely one steroid. So I can't just sit there and say, oh, well, these guys that work these long hours, some underpaid, right? And they deal with these traumatic, not going to sit there and say these folks don't deal with trauma, but they deal with traumatic incidents on a daily that you're trying to tell me that they don't need to be drug tested. They don't need to get checked or as well as a psych eval. I think that it needs to be annual. Find out what their mindset is at.

So there's so many different components. But I definitely believe state regulations with the Bill of Rights, as well as looking into the police union, it's going to have to happen at a state level, the local level. We can do so much. I understand that they want to try to process this thing as, hey, you guys have a black police chief, but he's a black face and a white institution. And he's just come on and he's been there for about seven months. So the corruption that he's and racism that he's just indoctrinated himself in is something that's going to take longer than a few months to kind of clean out. And with the police union being so strong, you got these police officers that literally

can do so much and they will be supported what is it like for the kids you work with who grew up in sacramento who after an incident like this look at the police not as protectors but someone that is a threat to them what is it like growing up fearing the people who are supposed to protect you i mean it gives you an attitude that i don't like you i hate you i mean even if i don't know you you have a badge i just don't like you it's funny because what happens is I think police have a great relationship with a lot of black youth when it's easy, when it's time to come on, bring a bicycle, when it's time to come and shoot basketball, when it's time to kind of play that role because that young person isn't

the aggressor yet. But it seems like something is lost in the equation when that young person isn't the aggressor yet, but it seems like something is lost in the equation when that young person gets of age. Now there's no longer those moments where you see that police officer taking the time to kind of discuss or talk or just, you know what I'm saying, understanding where this young person is. It's almost like shoot to kill. And I think that's defining on how the stereotypes and the bias that they have, it creates this complication in a relationship where these police officers are saying to themselves that we want to have this strong relationship with a community. But then at every time where a moment gets aggressive or a moment becomes intense, you barely have police officers not falling back and doing things the

right way. You constantly have this aggression that the police officers take as far as with that aggressor. So when you have two aggressive folks going at each other, it's a recipe for disaster. So I look at policing. Of course, there has to be a whole change of training that has to go involved. But I don't even think training is enough because I think that these guys, they come from different places. I mean, you got a guy that comes from Tennessee to work in Sacramento. You don't know the culture of Sacramento. You know what I'm saying?

You know the culture of Tennessee. And however they treat or deem black people in Tennessee, how y'all do stuff may not be the way Sacramento does stuff. So you got that attitude coming to Sacramento. And it kind of creates that unfair and toxic atmosphere that kind of creates moments like Stephon Clark. Yeah. So after the Parkland shooting, there's been this intense focus on the national epidemic of gun violence. There have been marches. They've been very active in the media. How do activists make sure that the issue of police shootings are part of this conversation and that we're being honest about the role that race plays in the killing of these African-American men. We don't ever want to be honest about race, man.

We don't. Come on. This whole thing is documented by white privilege and white privilege matters in America. Black lives don't. I mean, I salute those young warriors. Hey, salute. But we have been talking about gun violence, whether it's community gun violence, whether it's, you know, police gun violence in the black communities for decades. And we still have kind of gotten that. You guys will be all right. This is what we've gotten. We've got a black on black crime. That's the narrative. We've got. Well, what about black on black crime? There's no such thing. I will clear that out. There's no such thing as black on black crime because we never say white on white crime we never say asian on asian crime the only thing about it is creates a narrative an unfair narrative that black people are the only people killing each other right but everybody does that you could do the records and you could do the data on that

that folks feel more comfortable taking each other out that they know so this thing that these young people are doing as as great as it may be nationally well why aren't we getting that support when it comes to black people getting killed by police and why is it the simple fact when people go out there and protest now they're thugs they're rioters and they're anti-american and they're everything else under the sun why don't we get that kind of press to show our plight of trying to make change? Why is it always that it's us evil, uncharacteristic, un-American and uncivil people roaming the streets trying to disrespect police? We would not be in the streets if police didn't kill black people. We would not be in the streets if police who killed

black people got convicted. I mean, this has been an American problem. And if you want to sit there and kind of minimize the fact that we're living in this this era where in 2018, we're still talking about race, we're still talking about police brutality, all these things that my ancestors lived through and had fought and where it was like pretty much legal at one particular time to kill black people. And now it's deemed illegal, but it's still legally happening. It frustrates me because you can have a white male kill 17 people, come out and get handcuffed and even officers be afraid, be afraid to go and arrest him. And he's in jail. He's going to get his due process. He's going to

get his day in court. And a black person can wear a hoodie. A black person can have Skittles. A black person can have a fake gun. A black person can drink in Arizona, right, and be in the wrong neighborhood, go for their license, sell CDs, whatever, be with their family, whatever, knock on the door to ask for help. And they still get executed by police. That to me, my friend, is absolute craziness. That to me, my friend, is absolute craziness. And if anybody who, because I'm on Twitter and I constantly get these racist rogues coming in and trying to put a spin on the Stephon Clark case. And when people sit there and tell me that he was breaking the law, it just tells me how demonic and how sick and how insane and how uncompassionate folks are with black lives when it pertains to a young man who got killed if he was doing a crime. It would have been a

misdemeanor. So the volume of us having to change the idea of how people look at black folks is we need a conviction. That's the only way. Police need to start being charged and they need to be held accountable. That's the only way. Police need to start being charged and they need to be held accountable.

That's the only way ideas and folks will stop using the law on their side and creating these heinous acts. So since this horrific shooting, you and Black Lives Matter and a whole bunch of protesters in Sacramento have done a really incredible job of of keeping this story in the news, raising awareness, including by stopping traffic or preventing an NBA game from happening. What else should we expect to see out of Sacramento to keep awareness up? And how can people listening help you guys push to get the justice you're looking for? Well, I think the NBA one was the best one. I think that was an epic historical moment that I feel that somebody will copycat eventually. And I think that folks are going to pay attention. And I think we'll be talking about this from years to come because what we

did as we inconvenienced not only the fans, but what we did is we took money from an infrastructure, right? And I say it's all connected to white supremacy. I mean, you know, the owner is cool, but I'm not saying that he has ties to white supremacy, but it's a system, right? We're all in this system that all realize if it's not white supremacy it's the one percenters right

so that moment that we did and it was so organic how we shut down sacramento it was about creating this lens for the people to see if we just take back, right, take back what is ours, which is the power, we could shut down their systems. So that was just kind of like a preview, to be honest with you. When you have a place that seats 17,000 plus and there was less than a thousand concession stands, merchandise, restaurants, right? You still got to pay those people working. You still have to refund. If that wasn't an economic punch in the face, I don't know what was. And I think that right there, it spoke volumes to what the people will do to say there is

a problem with this system. The system is not for everyone. This system has been oppressing people. So I think when you talk about what's next, there's so many different things because we're just not coming from an aspect of, OK, we're just going to protest and we're just going to annoy folks or we just want to protest. We just want to yell. We want to protest and be a cop's face. That's not it. It's the fact that we know that there's going to be systematic changes that need to happen

ASAP, as well as policies changed in the policing. So by raising this awareness, by me even talking to you, if we didn't pull a move like that, if we didn't go 10 days straight, yesterday was probably the only day that we didn't protest. Some folks were celebrating, chasing down the white bunny. I wasn't. I was just kind of like, good, let me chill out. But I think it opens up the idea of what really change can be. And change isn't comfortable, but change is necessary. So I feel like what is to

come, it depends on what is actually the police going to say? What's Zach PD going to say? Because there's so much more to this story that has yet to come out. You see the autopsy and how we move from with the autopsy. We just buried the young man. So now it's waiting for the DA. What you going to do? You going to press them? You going to put some charges out there? What are you going to do? What are you going to sit there and say now? What story are you going to flip? April 10th, I know the chief of police has to give a report and the city council members, especially the mayor, have some questions. So a lot of this stuff evolves around what is going to be their next move. I do know that we're going to continue to pressure on the DA. I'll let you know if she's listening to it

or anybody or her correspondents are listening to it. We are making it known that she will not be reelected. If there's a mission that we are all taking on as community organizers and folks that are on the ground,

we are making sure that she does not get reelected. You know, that's on the top of our Christmas list. She has to pay. Barry Axios, thank you for doing what you're doing, fighting for change here and talking to us today. I just want to say one more thing just to the folks that are listening

that do want to support. I say continue to share the story. Continue to check the white privilege that some of these folks have. Continue to be compassionate because I don't think anybody deserves to lose a child like that. This young man was 22 years old. Regardless of what he's done in the past or what he might have been involved with, he had an opportunity to change. He deserved more life than just 22.

His babies deserve to have their father. You got two kids that no longer have their father. And you can never come back from that. So let's have a little bit more compassion and understanding that if you're pro-police, I get it. But no life should be taken over thinking that they had a cell phone. Right. And at the same time, if we're training these police officers and we want to feel protected, everyone should feel protected, not just one side of people. It should be everyone's protected. So continue to share the story, continue to have the tough conversations and continue to check racism and punch it right in the face. I like that. It's good advice. thank you again for talking with us today my pleasure i

appreciate it and hope you guys have me again on the pod today we have the host of crooked medias with friends like these anna marie cox anna welcome back to the program it is good to be back Today we have the host of Crooked Media's With Friends Like These, Anna Marie Cox. Anna, welcome back to the program. It is good to be back. I've missed you guys. I mean, I see you every day in Slack, but it's not the same. It's not the same at all. I missed you too.

We didn't know you'd been at CPAC this whole time. You just got home today. Last we spoke to you, you were at CPAC. What do you think of Slack? I think it's okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I i mean as someone who works from home like slack is like the closest thing i have to a water cooler so it sort of makes me feel not invisible

which is nice but you know it is also probably bad to like look at the computer for interaction uh cpac yeah i have not been at cpac this entire time i've been thinking about cpac almost this entire time which is kind of sad and scary but i think that uh the whole team put a lot of that to good use i'm really really happy with how um the documentary is shaped up so you are just kicking off the second season of with friends like these which is very exciting yeah so tell us about what you are trying to achieve with the second season what's different what's trying to achieve with the second season. What's different?

What's new? Well, I think the second season, well, we're kicking off with something that I hope we're going to do more of, which is this radio documentary, which I did a little bit of in the first season. Went to go talk to people standing in line for a Hillary book event.

And I also went to a Trump rally, as you guys might recall. That episode was also pretty intense. I do want to talk to people across the ideological spectrum, but it seems like what I'm really good at is talking to people that I disagree with. So I probably will do some more of that. I was thinking about going to maybe one of the evangelical conventions where actually, I agree on a lot of stuff with those folks, but probably not politics. And I'm very curious about them as well. And I

think that this season, we're going to really do more with the audience, actually. We have throughout the last season featured listener questions, people submitting questions about relationships and politics via audio or email. And I think we're going to do more of that because I think, I mean, just to judge by the response I get on Twitter, the response I get on the street, the responses I get via email, people are really hungry for, I'm not going to say answers because I don't have answers, but I think they're hungry for conversation about conversation, maybe, or how to have conversations. They're seeking guidance on how to kind of stumble through the world we live in now, which has a lot of places to stumble,

whether it's talking about policy differences and politics differences with someone who you know you disagree with, or the more subtle stuff that comes up around, you know, privilege and intersectionality and whiteness and what to do and say in situations where you don't feel comfortable. And you took that first spin at CPAC. The first episode is about CPAC and you talked to Dave Weigel as well, right? Yep. And the second episode is about CPAC, and you talked to Dave Weigel as well, right? Yep. And the second episode is about CPAC as well. Hopefully, we're still putting it together. It's a little bit more looking forward about what might come from CPAC. This was a real kind of postcard from it as it is today, which was a real surprise to me. I mean,

I tell the story in the episode, but I've been going to CPAC for over 10 years and I've always found the people there to be, you know, I disagree with them, but there was something kind of noble about their misguided ambitions in a way. Like they were idealists and I really identify with idealists. And while they've always been racist there as well

and sexist there as well, this past year was the first CPAC I've been to in the Trump era. And I didn't have to look for the racist and the sexist. Do you think that it's drawing different people? Or do you think it's Trump has permission for the same people to tell you more about themselves? I think it's a little of both. I do think it's different people. I think there are different kinds of young people attracted to the conservative movement right now. I think the conservative movement of the past 10 years or so, for one thing, there was a real libertarian aspect to it. The Ron Paul era of American conservatism, which didn't ever get like, you know, he never gathered much steam.

But if you went to CPAC, you would have sworn he was going to be the next president. You know, Ron Paul and Rand Paul won CPAC straw polls year after year after year. And to me, like, I've always found something kind of like, like I said, sort of misguided, but sweet about libertarians. Like they, oh man, they believe in the market it's cute right um and usually like they're kind of gamer types you know um who do speech and debate and those are the guys that i went to high school with and actually really you know were my friends in high school so i felt like i understood them and these guys might be speech debate gamer types as well but there's a cruel streak to them that I do not remember from my general sense of attendees in the past. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. Like you see that online

all the time. It's like the alt-right as their reason for being is like triggering liberals and like they're everywhere. But it's not like what was amazing about the episode to me is it's not like you sought out just people in MAGA hats with like divisive rhetoric on a sign. Like you pulled a young woman over to talk to you because she was dressed cool and seemed young and interesting. And all of a sudden she was telling you wildly racist things about how women shouldn't work. I want a white super majority. I mean, my jaw dropped listening to this. Yeah. I almost wish I could have run the entire interview with her because, so she was dressed

kind of like a riot girl, which was my jam, you know, back in the day. Like I totally had some of those same, you know, pieces of clothing in my wardrobe when I was a kid. And so I pulled her aside and before I turned on the microphone, she actually did this thing. She was like, oh, I'm not very articulate. I don't want to, I don't know if I want to do this. I always screw things up and I actually gave her

this little feminist pep talk about don't talk down about yourself. You can do this. Probably a mistake, Anna. I'm going to say that. There's only so many of those you get to give. Yeah, then Lenny Reifstahl showed up

and just let rip. Lenny Reifstahl meets the lenny letter that was her yes that's funny that's good this is some erudite stuff yeah um and she was she was a racist not just a racist she was she was a white supremacist um and then uh i talked to a young muslim woman who was like pro-lim ban. Like I wasn't pulling people aside who necessarily had MAGA hats on. I was just kind of like somewhat randomly. I wanted to make sure to get a lot of women. Right. And I still got the answers that I got.

And it was profoundly disturbing. I have not been so disturbed by a CPAC ever. And this was right up there with going to a Trump rally. It was a Trump rally. I mean, it was. That is what has happened to CPAC. Sometimes the hardest MAGA hot to find is the one that people wear on the inside. I wanted to ask you about a story in the news today, partly because you speak to so many Trump voters, Trump supporters. Jonathan Chait wrote the cover piece in the New York Magazine. And the headline is corruption, not Russia is Trump's greatest

liability. And basically says, you know, Trump's core proposition to the public was a business deal. If he became president, he would work to make them rich. Remember, we all remember his line, you know, I've been greedy my whole life, but now I'm going to be greedy for you. And, you know, Chait's argument is now that the deep corruption of this administration has been exposed and is being exposed every single day, that this might actually be a liability for him among people who voted for him. What do you think about that argument? He's still, that 35%, I don't know don't know yeah no i think that's right they're gonna they admire his grift you know even when it doesn't directly benefit them i mean there's just a shamelessness to it that is kind of appalling and then on top of that just to go back to CPAC,

there is just virulent racism at the bottom of a lot of this. I mean, just straight up white supremacy. And he can grift all he wants. As long as he is making them feel good about hating people of color and people who are different than they are, you know, LGBTQ people, they're going to, you know, LGBTQ people, they're going to, you know, chant his name. It's terrifying. I mean, this is how authoritarian regimes work, right? This is how fascism works. His corruption is a value add for some of them.

But the real thing that they admire and then they want is that permission structure to engage in their worst instincts i do think this will have an effect with some people who either stayed home or were kind of reluctant trump voters yeah i always think about like there's the 35 percent that i'm sure were represented pretty well at cpac and then there's like the from 35 to 46 percent you know where he eventually got the his popular vote margin or whatever it was in the low 40s and i wonder about those people the you know trump not the trump fans but sort of the trump voters and these might have been people who liked bernie in the primary or they might be third party voters in 2016 or like you said people who ended up staying home and i do wonder if the corruption message with them

has some pull. I think it does. But I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about actually social psychology lately and a lot about why people disagree and why people believe what they do. And there's just a ton of social science that shows that people dig in on their beliefs.

Like that's how we're wired basically yeah like we are wired you know to recognize patterns and to be fearful and when you put those three things together you get kind of conspiracy things and you get digging in and doubling down and that's what's going on you know these people who already believe him will never want to admit they were wrong and they'll just keep going further down the rabbit hole with him rather than admit they were wrong well that's something to look forward to hey happy spring guys um well we are very much looking forward to season two of with friends like These. And the first episode is up now.

It's CPAC part one then, I guess. So everyone go check it out. Gotta listen to it. It's great. It's great. Disturbing, but incredibly well done. Yeah, be ready. Have some sort of self-care ready for yourself, you know, afterwards.

You know, fluffy animal of some kind, a bath. But yeah, like definitely. It's good stuff. All right, Anna. We'll talk to you later. All right, thank you. Thanks to Anna Marie Cox and Barry Axias for joining us today. That's all we have. We'll be in Clearwater Thursday night,

and that pod will be out first thing Friday morning. Second we download it from that jet ski. Bye, everyone. you