#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 4.8 RMU: Dr. Freddy Haynes talks #EasterAtHome; Sanders out of prez race; Detroit COVID-19 hot spot

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

4.8.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Dr. Freddy Haynes talks #EasterAtHome and why churches need to shut down for Easter; Bernie Sanders out of 2020 prez race; Wisconsin went to the polls despite pandemic; Detroit is the next COVID-19 hot spot; Men tossed out of a Walmart for wearing PPE; R. Kelly's request to be released from jail is denied. #RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's

dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, folks, today is Wednesday, April 8, 2020, and here's what's coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered,

the latest on COVID-19, and we'll talk about why African Americans are impacted the most all across the country. Black pastors, y'all need to stay at home. We'll talk to Reverend Frederick Douglas Haynes III about hashtag Easter at home, hashtag Resurrection Sunday at home. Senator Bernie Sanders is out of the presidential race

and says he will do all that he needs to do to help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Wisconsin, one of the polls yesterday, in spite of the pandemic, turnout appeared to be low. No shock. We'll talk about what could happen going towards November. Detroit is a hotspot for COVID-19 cases. We'll explain.

Also, two men following directions to wear protective masks are escorted out of a Walmart for doing that by a cop. Uh, really? R. Kelly, he actually tried to use coronavirus to get out of jail. Ain't happening. Pied Piper, still sitting in jail.

And also, the fiancecé and longtime worker, Berita Franklin, Will Wilkerson, dies due to coronavirus. Folks, this is impacting us. And Marlon Wayans has something to say to black people. Keep your ass at home. It's time to bring the funk and roll the mark on the filter.

Let's go. He's got it Whatever the piss, he's on it Whatever it is, he's got the spook, the fact, the fine And when it piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling, best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics, with entertainment just for kicks.

He's rolling. Yeah, yeah. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. Yeah, yeah. It's rolling Roro, y'all It's Rollin' Martin Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martin Now

Martin The White House Coronavirus Task Force is holding their daily update. Donald Trump, he is speaking at the podium. We will not take him live because he lies too much. Once Dr. Fauci or Dr. Birx steps to the microphone, then we'll go to the news conference. We will not be showing you somebody who consistently lies. Now let's talk about the latest details when it comes to COVID-19. 422,369 cases of COVID-19 in the United States as of today. In its three territories, 14,463 people have died due to coronavirus. That's 1,905 more than yesterday.

22,187 people have recovered from the virus. Tragically, a large number of those impacted are African-American. The Congressional Black Caucus is calling racial data reporting in these cases critical. Joining me right now is Congressman Al Green of Texas. Congressman Green, glad to have you back on Rolling Mountain Unfiltered. My honor to be back with you, and I look forward to the interview. Very simple. When you look at what's happening across this country, when you finally saw yesterday during the briefing where this issue came up, folks, if y'all have the video, Dr. Fauci talked about this yesterday, please roll it right now. A brief comment to get back to the discussion about the health disparities in the African-American community, because it really is very important.

And the reason I want to bring it up, because I couldn't help sitting there reflecting, about sometimes when you're in the middle of a crisis, like we are now with the coronavirus, it really does have, ultimately, shined a very bright light on some of the real weaknesses and foibles in our society. And as some of you know, the greater proportion of my professional career has been defined by HIV-AIDS.

And if you go back then, during that period of time when there was extraordinary stigma, particularly against the gay community, and it was only when the world realized how the gay community responded to this outbreak with incredible courage and dignity and strength and activism that I think that really changed some of the stigma against the gay community, very much so. I see a similarity here because health disparities have always existed for the African-American community. But here again with the crisis, how it's shining a bright light on how it's unacceptable that is, because yet again, when you have a situation like the coronavirus, they are suffering disproportionately, as Dr. Berg said correctly. It's not that they're getting infected more often, it's that when they do get infected, their underlying medical conditions, the diabetes, the hypertension, the obesity, the asthma, those are the kind of things that wind them up in the ICU and ultimately give them a higher

death rate. So when all this is over and as we said it will end, we will get over coronavirus, but there will still be health disparities which we really do need to address in the African-American community. Thanks. Congressman Green, it's amazing how mainstream media, after Dr. Fauci made his comments yesterday, decided to focus on the racial disparity in these deaths.

Look, we've been focusing on this since day one, knowing full well this was going to impact black people in a great way. Yes, sir. It does impact black people in a great way. Yes, sir. It does impact black people in a great way because we've known for some time that whenever we have circumstances such as this, black people are always impacted in a great way. Why would this be an exception? The interview was garbled, so I didn't get a chance to hear it in its entirety, but I would say that the statistical information is overbearing. Empirical evidence is indicating that in Michigan, 14 percent of the population of African-Americans

are 41 percent of the deaths being African-American. That is totally unacceptable. And then you look at Milwaukee, 26 percent population African-American, 73 percent of the deaths. And the numbers are all disproportionate. I would add right here in Houston, Texas, we had 11 deaths, and seven of them are African-American. We have to make our issues surface, not only such that people will talk about the statistical information, but we have to do something about it. And one of the things that we have to do is demand health care for all. We have to have it because we have these pre-existing conditions, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, and that health care has to cover the pre-existing conditions.

If we cover the pre-existing conditions, we'll have a better opportunity to survive. We understand now that there really is a connectivity within humanity. We've always said that if I am, I cannot be all that I can be until you all you can be. Well, we now understand that there's a reality associated with this. And regardless of how you got in this country, you ought to get health care because my health depends on the health of other people within the country. We have to demand it. And I would add one more thing. People who say that African Americans should be especially careful, I heard an electrician say this, well, we should be. But it's difficult to be careful when you are the person who works in the sanitation department.

It's difficult to be careful when you're the person who drives the truck, the delivery truck, and you're the person in the grocery store bagging the food. We have hands-on jobs, and these hands-on jobs do not allow us the luxury of being careful to the extent that other people are careful. And we don't get the level of appreciation for what we do for this country, given the circumstances and conditions that we have to suffer. Well, and one of the things that we are also seeing is that, frankly, this coronavirus, and I've been saying this, is exposing the underbelly of the reality that's happening in America. We're seeing it when it comes to health care. We're seeing it when it comes to education.

We're seeing it when it comes to the pay of nurses. We're seeing it when it comes to how vital teachers are. We're seeing it in so many different ways. And so I would hope political and economic leaders are using this moment to say, hey, we've talked about inequality for a long time. Now you're seeing it front and center. And a lot of people, Congressman, who have ignored this inequality,

they're now having to confront it because they, too, are sitting at home without money coming in. Absolutely. We understand that the wealth of a nation is dependent upon the health of a nation. We, for too long, have allowed ourselves, many African Americans, by the way, to believe that we are a problem. We're not a problem. Racism is the problem. And what we've had to occur in this country is allow it to become a race problem, which means you can blame the people. The victims become the problem. But if we say racism, now we're getting to the root can blame the people. The victims become the problem. But if we say racism,

now we're getting to the root cause of the problem. We deal with the symptoms of the problem. It's time for us to ignore the fact that other people want to deal with symptoms. Let them do so. But we have to deal with the problem, which is racism. It is a systemic racism. And if we avoid saying that, we do ourselves a disservice. This has exposed the issues within society. But if we don't talk about them and do something about them, we will just have another episode, another incident, another circumstance where they were exposed, but we didn't take proper action. We've got to talk about the racism, and the racism produces all of these disparities that we're talking about. You can trace them right back to a racist society that has allowed these things to foster and fester, and we have to have solutions that include dealing

with the racism, not the symptoms. The racism itself has to be dealt with. One of the things that also I want to talk to you about that we're seeing, you have Mitch McConnell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnookin, they're both now saying more money is going to have to be put in when it comes to helping these small businesses. $350 billion. Look, they already realize it's going to run out.

I mean, the demand through banks and other places has been tremendous, you know, and they're talking about another $250 billion. I'm telling you right now, you even have folks like Sirina Josh Hawley, who is saying that the federal government maybe should be sending payments directly to small business owners because the SBA is also saying that they simply are overwhelmed and aren't set up for the number of claims that are coming in. And so just your thoughts on what's going to happen there, because I'm hearing from black small business owners who are saying that, look, they're being shut out. The banks that do SBA lending are saying

that if you don't have a previous relationship with them, they're not going to work with you. And so what do small Black-owned businesses do? I'm glad you brought it up. Very important subject. The Black-owned businesses, many of them are mom-and-pop businesses. Black-owned businesses don't have 500 employees. A good many businesses do, but most of the Black-owned businesses do not. So they are trying as best as they can to get into this delivery system, and they're having difficulties because a good many of them don't even have bank accounts that relate to the business. A lot of Black-owned businesses are people who just write checks on their personal accounts to get things done. They're small, but they're functioning, and they're part of our economic order within our community. So I do agree that we have to have a better delivery system,

because you have big banks that are not interested in dealing with them because they haven't been customers. Many of them have been trying to get into the system. They go to community banks. But our community banks are having problems because they don't have the technology to access the system as quickly as the big banks. The day that this system went into place, on that tri-day, by noon, $1 billion plus had already been accessed from this pool of money. $1 billion. Black-owned banks were not a part of that pool because of the technology and other things associated with their smallness. So we've got to do more to help these banks because they're in the LMI community, the communities where people are low to moderate income. We've got to help them. They're part of

our delivery system. But we still have to focus on those businesses. And just as we've sent direct payments to people, and we need to do more of that, they need to be recurring. The Audible Maxine Waters has legislation pending for us to send more money and send it more often. One time is not enough. But the direct funding should also take place with our businesses, those that can be properly identified. Let's get the money to them as directly as possible. The delivery system we have is not functioning properly. I would hope that we can correct it, but if we can't,

we've then got to circumvent that system and go directly to the business owners themselves. All right then, Congressman Al Green. We certainly appreciate it, sir. Thanks a lot. I thank you very much. You are a strong voice. God bless you. Be strong. Carry on. I appreciate it, sir. Thank you so very much. All right, folks, the numbers in major cities are eye opening in Chicago. As of Saturday, 70 percent of the recorded deaths were African-American. In Detroit, as of Friday, African-Americans made up 35 percent of cases and 40 percent of those deaths. And in Philadelphia, 46 percent of COVID-19 patients were black. To understand just how this is going, folks, these health disparities are real. And is Dr. George's C. Benjamin,

Executive Director for the American Public Health Association. Dr. Benjamin, glad to have you back at Roland Martin Unfiltered. Roland, good to see you. So this really should be a wake-up call. It should be, frankly, an opportunity for mainstream media to apologize to black folks for pretty much ignoring these issues. Like I have been saying, the coronavirus has exposed America. It has laid bare this nation as to exactly how it is treating its citizens. And so what we're seeing are people who now are having to confront what actually has happened with this health care system. Dr. Fauci yesterday, again, spoke from the podium. All of a sudden,

all these media outlets are doing stories about it. Actually, hold tight one second. Looks like Dr. Birx is now actually speaking live. We just want to go hear what she has to say live, so go right to the news conference. And we are doing much better in many cases than several other countries, and we're trying to understand that.

We believe that our healthcare delivery system in the United States is quite extraordinary. I know many of you are watching the Act Now model and the IHME model from – and they have consistently decreased the number – the mortality from over almost 90,000 or 86,000 down to 81,000 and now down to 61,000. That is modeled on what America is doing. That's what's happening. And I think what has been so remarkable, I think,

to those of us who have been in the science fields for so long is how important behavioral change is and how amazing Americans are in adapting to and following through on these behavioral changes and that's what's changing the rate of new cases and that's what will change the mortality going forward because now we're into the time period of full mitigation that should be reflected within the coming weeks of decreasing mortality I mean that's what we really hope to see.

We are impressed by the American people. And I think models are models. I've always worked on validating. I've spent my life validating models all over the world, and that's why we do surveys and surveillance, and we make sure that what we think is right is right. I think this will change how people look at

respiratory diseases because it will change what is possible when the globe, and particularly the American people, do this level of mitigation. And I think, as I talked about yesterday, we are still in awe, really, of the American people's strength in this and following through. Yeah, I'm going to do that. I'm going to ask Bob to come up just for a second. Come on. All right. So, Dr. Benjamin, I don't take Donald Trump live because he lies too much, so this one going back to you. And again, these people are finally waking up

and realizing what the hell's going on. Well, you know, Roland, let me remind everyone that in 1865, the Freedmen's Bureau was established to deal with former slaves and people of color. In those years, they understood that we had health disparities. So this is not a secret. The Congress of the United States actually passed legislation to create a bureau to try to adjust with these issues, not only with health, but a whole range of societal issues as well. Now, as you know, they took that apart. And so we've been dealing with that since, I don't know, before then, but 1865, you know, Frederick Douglass argued for

it. W.E.B. Du Bois studied it. So we understand these disparities exist. And none of us are surprised when this happened. In fact, you remember, I was on your show. Myself and the other colleague that you had, other physician you had on the show, talked about these disparities and the risk to communities of color. And again, what is interesting here is that you're talking about the underlying, and this is the thing. I think when you talk about that,

I think when we talk about all of a sudden people realizing, oh my goodness, what, 40% of these kids in a lot of these areas don't have access to the internet, okay? And so we can use the word underlying for a whole lot of stuff that coronavirus is now revealing. This right here is a moment

where this White House, this Congress, and this federal apparatus needs to say, all right, you're dealing with a pandemic. You're showing who the most vulnerable. We better figure out how to deal with the underlying when we're not dealing with a pandemic. Oh, absolutely. Dr. Fauci talked about the HIV AIDS epidemic, and I've worked with him during those times. And I got to tell you, what did we do? We got out into the churches. We talked on radio. We made sure the messages got out to the community about what the HIV AIDS epidemic was. You know, we didn't really do that as effectively to the communities of color this time. We needed to do that, but we didn't. And so we now

need to continue to double up and do that. In addition, you're right. When this is all done, we're going to have to make sure we deal with the societal issues. And I've been arguing for a new social compact for our society so that we can deal with the underserved. We can deal with the folks that have been just left out in our society, and in many places, of course, that incuse communities of color. And I think that for the people out there, when we talk about what this is revealing,

it also begins to reveal itself in terms of, obviously, actions, in terms of how serious we take it uh but also resources still come to bear on that when you talked about uh the response when it came to hivas the reality is you still had people who were fighting the shifting of resources away from white gay men to african americans and, I remember there was a sister, she was in HHS under President George W. Bush. Pat.

I can't remember Pat's last name right now, I'm sorry. But she talked about that and she was targeted by a lot of these white gay men organizations and so she went to LA and she said, y'all want to meet? Let's meet. She said, the money should go where the need is. And when that need began to switch from white gay men to

heterosexual black women, and then gay black men, people, oh my goodness, what are you doing? And that's always been the case. I remember when I was in Chicago, same thing. Loads of HIV AIDS money going to the north side of Chicago, but ignoring the south side of Chicago. And so this is also where black interest groups have to be even more vigorous when it comes to fighting because, again, we are seeing numerous folks. We are seeing African-Americans in so many of these different cities dying. Latinos are slightly ahead of African-Americans in New York City.

But the people who are dying in New York City are black and brown. That's right. And, you know, we don't understand all the reasons. You know, we said that if you get this, people who had chronic diseases would do worse. But, you know, we hadn't thought a lot about, which we, you know, I think all of us failed to do this, quite frankly, the number of people of color who are public facing. So when we tell folks that they got to stay in their homes and then we say there are essential businesses, those essential businesses fall on us.

Right. Bus drivers, grocery clerks, all those kinds of folks are out here every day, and they're an extraordinary risk. And what you're not seeing again, again, essential businesses. But then you have, let's just go there, you've got Republicans who fight paying $15 an hour, who fight a fair wage. But it's like, oh, my God, right now, it was not for those people stocking grocery sales. It was not for those people on the front lines when it comes medical workers. If it's not the people on the front line, I mean, it's a whole bunch of so-called essential services that we are not having access to if those people were not there.

And so this thing, this whole thing should cause, I believe, should cause a dramatic shift in thinking in terms of how we approach essential workers. Because, as you say, for African-Americans, the black and brown folks, they're the ones who are working in public transportation. They're the ones who are working in restaurants, these customer service jobs, and we cannot deny that reality. I thank them every day I see them when I have to go out and do some essential work in an essential business. I thank them for being there. And, you know, when this is all done, we're going to have an enormous discussion about a living wage. We're going to have to have another continued discussion about paid sick leave. We're going to have to talk about income inequality. And for me, we're going to absolutely have to talk about having a system with everyone in and nobody out

so that everybody has quality, affordable health care and access to health insurance. I do want you to speak to this here. Uh, there was a gentleman who was arrest... who was arrested in Cincinnati, uh, because, uh, he did a video where he and others were out, uh, celebrating. They said they didn't get damned by coronavirus. And unfortunately, when you see this video, it's a whole bunch of black people.

If y'all got it, roll it. Hey. Hey. Oh, my... Um... Yeah, that is how we doing in my city, man. We don't give a fuck about the coronavirus. This is how we celebrate our coronavirus, bitch. We got 1,400 people watching you right now. Yeah, man.

You're here with it. What the fuck's going on, man? I'm talking about 1,400. Why are you right now? Come on. Dr. Benjamin, here's a guy. I mean, you see those black folks out there. He says we don't care about coronavirus. Young black folks. I. He says we don't care about coronavirus. Young black folks. I still believe one of the mistakes that was made early on with this whole notion that if you were young, you can't get it. And so that gave a whole bunch of folks license.

Then all of a sudden we start seeing 20 and 30 year old people dying because of coronavirus. But this is where black folks have got to be yelling from the rooftops. I don't care what sector of black America you're in. Stay the hell at home. I think the message is that we're not immune. And, yeah, we always talked about older Americans and sicker Americans getting sicker. But I think we always had that caveat that if you are young, you can still get it. Now, we didn't think you could get this sick and die.

It was not that a lot of evidence. But, you know, that was. Now, we didn't think you could get this sick and die. There was not that lot of evidence, but, you know, that was in a different culture in a different country. And the fact of the matter is, when you see stuff like that, because we see that on the Internet all the time, middle finger, bad language, stupid thoughts, people should recognize them for what they are.

Now, when they get sick, we're going to take care of them. Unfortunately, you know, they will when they get sick, we're going to take care of them. Unfortunately, you know, they will very well get sick if they're out there and they get exposed. And of course, we're going to take care of them. But I got to tell you, this is stupid and nobody should be taking this attitude and running with it. Well, and again, he's touting 14, 1500 people who are on his Instagram live. And I'm sitting there going, yeah, but those 1,400, 1,500 could very well be talking about your death. That's right. That's right. And when he gets sick, ain't one of them going to pay his health care bills.

Right. And I doubt that too many of them are going to say, you know, some nice things about him. And what I'm hoping is those 14, 1500 people don't listen to him and recognize the foolishness that he's expressing. Because I'm going to tell you what he's expressing is foolish. You know, I am sitting in my house. My whole company is remotely working. And I remember the last time on my show, on your show, we talked about the next time I saw you, you would be remotely working, and I can see that you are. Well, actually, I'm in the office.

So what we did was we don't have any panelists. But your guests aren't there, right? Right. We don't have any panelists. We don't have any guests. You know, the people where we co-lease with, they haven't been in the office since the end of February. We have at most five staffers, at most. We absolutely practice safe distance in terms of being able to do work.

Everything gets wiped down, Lysoled, folks got gloves and masks on. I mean, all sorts of stuff along those lines, because those of us in media are deemed essential workers. And because because and part of the thing that I have made clear to us, this is also about we've got we we've got frankly, we got to be on the air every day because black people are not getting the information. All of a sudden you're seeing black experts pop up on mainstream media. But the reality is it's not happening the way it should. And we know how black folks are. We prefer it coming from one of us. And that's one of the reasons why we do what we do every single day.

I'm not. Thank you. And I'm, you know, I'm glad to be here. And I understand that there's got to be people that people trust. It's about trusted messengers. Indeed. Dr. Benjamin, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Roland. Good to talk to you. Thank you, sir.

I want to go to my panel right now. Robert Petillo is Executive Director of Rainbow Push Coalition, Peachtree Street Project. Dr. Wilmer Leon is host of Inside the Issues on Sirius XM Radio. And also, A. Scott Bolden is the former chair of National Bar Association Political Action Committee.

Before I go to y'all, I want y'all to comment on this. Actor Marlon Wayans dropped a video on Instagram having a few words for black people when it comes to coronavirus. Here's Marlon Wayans. Hey, what's up? I hope everybody out there is being safe. I hope you're staying in your ass in the house, dodging this coronavirus. I want to say to all my people, especially like in New York and all the big cities, man,

where it's running wild right now. Chicago, Mississippi, Louisiana, y'all about to get hit hard too. And I just want to say y'all stay inside and respect social distancing. Wash your hands. Like I'm saying this to my people, like black people. Y'all, don't be hard-headed. Stay inside.

Don't hang out with nobody. Just know. Can't wait. Know. I just got by myself. And don't be dabbing people. Fuck dab. Give them one of these.

That's all. Social distance from six feet. You ain't got to be all intimate. You ain't got to hug him up and dabble. No, no, no. Just a... And wash your hands. Even after you...

Somebody, wash your hands, man. Y'all be safe. I love y'all, all right? Robert Petillo, some people... We played the Sam Jackson video just the other day. You have that one. I mean, these videos are important because still there are too many people

who are ignoring these directives, who are ignoring what the experts are saying. And the reason this is critically important is because when we talk about the flattening and I hear these people who are whining and complaining, saying, oh, this has been too onerous. The reality is the numbers are changing and shifting because more people are listening

and they are doing safe distancing and then they are sheltering in place. This stuff matters. And if we're dying more than anybody else, we got even more incentive not to be acting a fool. You're absolutely correct. But I think also we have to take into consideration both the social, economic, the societal and the systemic issues that result in many people in the African-American community being more at risk, as we said previously. Many people in the African-American community do not have the possibility of teleworking. They cannot work at home. Most people cannot take 14 days off of work to self-quarantine if they think they're coming down with symptoms. We live in, we're more urban than in many other populations. There are not that many Black folks in Nebraska and North Dakota where you have space.

So we live in confined areas, particularly if you live in public housing or in many of the low-income areas in the country where it makes transmission a lot faster. So we do have to, in addition to changing our own behavior, look at the socioeconomic and systemic and the societal issues that force us into some of those situations. It's like we saw the socioeconomic, the systemic, and the societal issues that force us into some of those situations. It's like we saw the brother who was the bus driver in Detroit. In regards to what he's trying to do, he's placed with a socioeconomic position that puts him more at risk. And we're seeing nursing home workers, grocery store workers dying, and many of them are African-American because of the falls in our society. And much like a car that needs repair,

you'll drive along with your bumper rattling on for months and months and maybe years, but when it finally falls off, you have bigger problems. We've had these issues rattling along in our community for years and decades, but it's finally time for us to take it seriously and do something to fix those problems. Look, I absolutely understand, Wilma, in terms of what those jobs are, but what I'm talking about are the decisions that a lot of us are making. And I'm not meaning just the people, the video there, a guy in Cincinnati. There were people in D.C. at the wharf getting food. There were people going to parks as well.

But the same thing, I keep talking about these churches. We've got to implore black preachers and black churches not to be convening for Easter. Trust me, Jesus is fine. God is fine with you staying at home because they can easily become incubators. Now, as one of these six black preachers have died in the past week who were all at one particular conference, and what's crazy is one of those preachers preached a funeral where more than 300 people were there. This is the body possibly could have infected 300 people.

I mean, that's real. There's not much I can add to that, Roland, so I'm not really going to. I want to shift it just a little bit and focus more on the social conditioning that many of us have fallen victim to in terms of understanding, appreciating, and valuing black life. There are too many of us have fallen victim to in terms of understanding, appreciating, and valuing black life. There are too many of us in our community that don't understand that they may actually live

past the age of 21. They may actually live beyond the age of 35 because death for them is too real and they don't really understand that their lives have value. So you're absolutely right about the churches, and that's just ignorance. That's just foolishness. That is stupidity. And not a whole lot else I can say about that. But Scott, go ahead.

But I just want to say again, we have to start dealing with being sure that we are communicating to those in the community that the reason that you have to physically distance is because your life matters and the people that you impact, their lives matter. And that's an important element that I think is getting missed in a lot of this discussion. Scott, the thing that, again, why this is so important is it's not just the people who are out late at night in the streets, hanging out, listening to music. No, I mean, it really is.

And look, for a lot of our, for a lot of elderly African-Americans, look, the only thing that they have, frankly, is their church and their church family. And I've had more people who said they've never yelled or cussed out their parents more in the past three or four weeks than since this whole coronavirus thing started. Because it's trying to get somebody to understand that, look, you've been doing this thing for 30, 40, 50 years, but literally you are putting your life on the line the moment you step out of that door to actually go to a church service. And you have these preachers who are also saying, hey, hey, you know, the blood of Jesus covers you. Well, it's going to be a body bag covering you because that's the danger you're playing with here. We can't hear Scott.

Okay, we can't hear Scott. All right, Scott, we can't keep talking, Scott. We can't hear you. All right, Scott, we can't keep talking. Scott, we can't hear you. All right, Scott, that's your microphone. We need to get the microphone there straight. And so hold on. I'm going to have them work that out. Folks, can y'all pull up the...

I was going to do this later in the show. You there, Scott? I had you. Forgive me. You know I can't do it without you. Just like a Kappa. Just like a Kappa. All right, go ahead. I knew you were me you know I can't do it without you just like a Kappa I was trying to be respectful to your guests but you know the churches are really interesting Roland

because the majority of them are honoring this virus and not gathering and what have you but at the same time black people as a community are reluctant to change. And so, for example, there are all kinds of alternatives that you can do to attend church on Sunday,

obviously the video, but a lot of our elderly folks just aren't used to that. They're uncomfortable with that change. I got a four-minute message from my pastor in anticipation of Easter and Palm Sunday and what have you. There are men's groups that are meeting on Zoom. All these alternatives that are not the same as being there, but they're alternatives. But our communities just aren't necessarily comfortable with them. And so the messaging on all of this has got to be,

you've got to get comfortable with this new reality or whatever normalcy is going to be like now, as well as after the virus runs its course. Robert, I'm looking at some information that's coming right now. I mean, of the 12 people in St. Louis who have died, all of them African-American. We're seeing 70%, like I say, in Detroit. We're seeing numbers as high as 70, 80% in Chicago. I mean, then also, let's not even talk about New Orleans, where the numbers are huge there as well. And so, and we talked, we had, of course, the coroner last week from Albany, Georgia on, talking about exactly what happened down there as well, where 90% of the 30 people who had died in that county were African-American. Go ahead, Robert.

Well, I think also one thing we have to look at is the financial realities of the black church. There are many churches that exist week to week on the collection plate, and that's why it's difficult for these pastors to simply say we're going to be canceling church service because they don't know about many of the resources that are available to them through the federal government. What we've been doing with Rainbow Push is holding conference calls with the SBA and with other organizations throughout the last two weeks to talk to pastors directly about the programs which are available, part of the PPP program and also the EIDL programs. They're waiving the federal requirements of religious non-discrimination,

allowing churches to apply for those programs, which are normally only available to small businesses, to get either a $10,000 bridge loan through the EIDL program or 250 percent of their operating expenses through the PPP program. So I'm thinking more pastors who are aware of the federal programs that were available that can keep them afloat at least for the next eight weeks until we get to stimulus program number four, then many of them will be more welcome to close in the church for Easter Sunday and Mother's Day, which is often when they get much of their revenue for the entire year. At the end of the day, bills still have to get paid. So if there are pastors who need more information on this, go to rainbowpush.org or they can email me directly to get information on how they can find out how to apply for these programs.

One of the things, though, we're seeing, Wilmer, is that the bottom line is it's not enough money. The number of people who are calling, the number of small businesses that are applying, these banks are completely overwhelmed. They're saying they're not taking more applications. We're hearing that from Chase. The federal government is actually loosening the sanctions against Wells Fargo to allow them to be able to process these applications. And so what we are seeing, and then, of course, as I said earlier, the Congressman Al Green, the Small Business Administration administrator, admits that they simply do not have the

infrastructure to process this. I'm talking directly to small business owners who are also saying that they are seeing that these banks are favoring larger businesses as opposed to the small businesses that really desperately need these funds. It was very interesting reading this story on Politico where this Republican senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, who has been saying that, and he's actually, you know, a lot of the Republicans are being go slow, go slow, go slow. He's been saying point blank, no, we got to go faster. And he's been making the argument that money should be going directly to these businesses at a faster rate.

And I just think that what's going to happen, what we're seeing right now, you're going to see, if you think the unemployment numbers are already high, if you look up and see these small businesses go under, that number is going to explode. The number is going to explode. And also what is important, I think, for people to understand is the way that this so-called bailout or stimulus package is structured, it's really structured following the same old foolish logic that we got from Ronald Reagan, the same old foolish logic that we've been getting for a very long time, the trickle-down economic theory, or what then-vice president or candidate

George Bush called voodoo economics. They don't want to do bottom-up stimulus. They always want to do top-down. So really, when you look at the money that's set aside for small business and when you look at the money that's set aside for individuals and compare that to the money that's set aside for small business and when you look at the money that's set aside for individuals and compare that to the money that's being provided to the banks and the money that's being provided to the large businesses small businesses are getting a pittance compared to the uh the bailout of the of the of the airlines and the cruise line industry and so many of these other entities that were given money the last time, and all they did with the money that they got the last time was buy back stock, artificially inflate the value of their companies, and pay their executives

based upon those inflated rates. So the people are going to continue to suffer because they're the ones that need that money that's going to the airlines, not the pittance that's being given to small businesses and individuals. Scott, first and foremost, when you talk about the resources, at the end of the day, what I'm hearing, again, I mean, I literally just got an email from a woman who is out of, let's see here, Orlando, Florida. And she's also talking about how the rules are being changed and how those different things are happening as well.

And it is extremely frustrating. And these are people who, you know, you talk about they actually can't survive the next four weeks. Yeah, right. They're not sitting on cash reserves to survive. Well, you're trying to distribute, and this is no defense to the government, you're trying to distribute in a hurry $2 trillion. The federal government and the Small Business Administration specifically has never had that amount of money to distribute, to approve, or to get out in any effective or efficient manner, let alone at any

time. So let's start with that. Secondly, what we're not talking about is whenever we've had these large bailouts, whether it's Afghanistan, TARP, whether it was the housing crisis, right, fraud, waste, and abuse is rampant. We're not talking enough about that. What are the safeguards in ensuring that these dollars are getting to small businesses? If the big businesses get some of it, okay, they're in that $2 trillion budget. But the reality is, right, who's going to steal them blind? Because historically, whatever circumstances been, there's been a ton, a ton of groups, individuals, and businesses walking off with tons of money

with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. So once all this money is out and the formula for who gets what, whether it's big money or smaller money, what is the accountability on not only how it was spent, was there a measure that made a difference or not, but more importantly, was it spent appropriately, whatever the goals of the money is or were or will be? That's what we've got to be talking about, and I don't think we're talking enough about that.

We're talking about getting the money out. But you watch. Well, look, I mean... Fraud, waste, and abuse is going to be historical. But you know what, though? The reality is this here. When you're operating in a crisis like this here, you factor that in.

Frankly, I don't think fraud and abuse is at the top of the food chain. I think that if you see, if you... No, no, no, no, no. If you have that, then roll it. No, no, no, no. Allow me to finish. Allow me to finish.

Allow me to finish. What I'm saying is this here. What I'm saying is you do have a real apparatus. Yes, you do have the SBA. Yes, you do have minority supply development agencies. They never dispensed a $2 trillion.

Scott, I understand. Scott, first of all, I know they haven't distributed $2 trillion, but guess what? When you're in a crisis, you better figure that shit out. And the bottom line is this here. No, and the bottom line is this here. The greatest concern that I really have here, Wilmer and Robert

and Scott, is that we're going to look up in 30 days, and we're going to see a number of people who are barbers, who are hairstylists, who are salon owners, who are restaurant owners, who are hairstylists, who are salon owners, who are restaurant owners, who have

numerous types of small businesses. They themselves are going to be filing for unemployment claims, and then that already will exacerbate the problems in black America. A couple of things. One second, one at a time. One at a time.

Wilmer, Robert, Scott, go. There is an organization, there is a government entity that has been distributing funds of this nature for a very long time. It's called the IRS. So there are ways to get the money to the people faster. Steve Mnuchin tried to write the fraud, waste, and abuse into the legislation by not having how the money to the large corporations is distributed by not having that money accounted for.

Exactly. Steve Mnuchin tried to write that foolishness into the legislation. Exactly. So it's not the small business that's stealing us blind. It's the airlines. It's the cruise industry. It's the large corporations that are getting the billions of dollars that they're not reinvesting into this country that they are using to buy back their own stock, sit on cash, and not create jobs in this country. Robert, William has a point there.

The IRS, they do know the addresses of these small businesses, they know the tax returns, and they have an infrastructure that actually delivers checks. Well, and let's just look at the traditional Keynesian economic model which says that full employment will stabilize the market during panics, which will prevent recessions, which will prevent depressions. CANCING ECONOMIC MODEL WHICH SAYS FULL EMPLOYMENT WILL STABILIZE THE MARKET DURING PANICS WHICH WILL PREVENT RECESSIONS WHICH WILL PREVENT DEPRESSIONS. WHAT WE SAW WAS WHEN THEY WERE WRITING THIS STIMULUS BILL NUMBER THREE, A RUN BY LARGE CORPORATIONS AND LOBBIES TO MAKE SURE THEY COULD GET THEIR PIECE OF THE PIE. THIS ENTIRE LEGISLATION COULD HAVE BEEN ABOUT 15 WORDS LONG. YOU GO INTO THE IRS DATABASE, YOU FIND OUT WHO HAS DIRECT DEPOSIT ON THEIR ACCOUNT, 15 words long. You go into the IRS database, you find out who has a direct deposit already on their

account, you type $1,000, you hit enter, and the money's there. That's all they have to do. The other 880 pages of this bill are just pork and red tape, which are put in there to specifically delay the implementation of this and to ensure that you can get political favors out there. If you directly stimulate the bottom of the economy, if you keep the American workers afloat, they're not going to go buy a bunch of stock and gold and jewels. They're going to spend the money in small businesses and that goes up through the economy. So because we have this top-down model, which is very capitalistic until things go bad and then all the capitalists become socialist because they want government money, as long as you have that structure in place, it's going to be impossible

to stabilize the market. Scott, final point before I go to my next guest. If the big companies, and I was talking about the big companies, if they don't do what they're supposed to do, if they act like the Kennedy Center, where the Kennedy Center got $25 million, you all read

about this, and then furloughed their employees. The money is not effectuating the economy. If these companies don't do what they're supposed to do, watch the economy be delayed in either coming back or not coming back in the way it should come back, which is why fraud, waste, and abuse matters most. It's got to be effectively used.

And that's why what I'm saying is the difference between true small businesses and institutions like that, those folks are trying to protect their bottom line. But if you've got four or five or six employees, and then, again, and it says in the law that if you're able to accept this loan, keep them on the payroll through the end of July, and then there's loan forgiveness.

Trust me, you ain't gonna play that game when it comes to trying to pocket the money yourself. Bottom line, though, is we need to have those small businesses actually help. And $350 billion, it sounds a lot, that money is going, running out real quick. All right, folks, we talked about, again, African-Americans and testing and how we're being impacted.

And when it comes to the access to care or the lack thereof, joining us right now is Patrick Johnson. He is Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Meharry Medical College. Patrick, glad to have you on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Welcome. Thank you. We have already seen some of the stories and we keep hearing them of African-Americans who are sick, who have the symptoms, but they can't get tested. They're going to hospitals. They're being turned away until they show even more serious symptoms. That to me is also, I think, a big problem here.

This whole idea of I got to show more serious symptoms to get help. Yeah. I can't speak for all the testing centers across the United States. I know we've heard a lot about exactly what you just spoke about, Roland, in different pockets around the United States. But here in Nashville, Tennessee, Meharry Medical College and the city of Nashville have been on the forefront of this for about five and a half weeks now. And we've been able to successfully build multiple testing sites,

especially in underserved communities, with great public-private partnerships that allow for adequate assessment, testing, and eventually treatment. I do believe that many of the sites that were over-assessing people across the nation was the main driver was lack of PPE and lack of basically test kits.

So a lot of the over-assessing to only test those who were as close to being visible with COVID-19 as possible was the reason why, because test kits were limited and PPE were limited. We also know that the understanding of this virus over the last month and a half has changed every single day. Until this stage now where we realize the most important thing to do is to test as many people as possible. And that and that still, to me, I think is a problem. As you hear it right now, Dr. Birx is actually speaking from the White House podium.

Let's go quickly go there. I'm going to come back to Patrick. Okay. Let's see here. I'm going to set it up. Patrick, that whole point about testing. First of all, you talked about the testing centers, testing locations set up there. How many locations have y'all set up and worked with there in Nashville?

In Nashville, we initially started with 13 centers. They were small centers scattered across the entire city. We condensed them to three large centers and underserved areas. And then we used our private partnerships with Vanderbilt University, HCA, and Ascension Healthcare to have smaller testing centers in other parts of the city. So a total of about 12 are being utilized throughout the city. The larger ones with the most supplies and access and healthcare providers are in the immigrant sides of town, the black and brown sides of town, and the lower income sides of town. We're a very unique model right now.

I know that is not the same across the United States. I'm very clear about that. And how many folks have been tested? In the city of Nashville, over the last five weeks, we've tested over 6,000 people. In the last three weeks, we've tested over 6,000 people. In the last three weeks, in the centers that I'm talking about, the larger ones, there have just been under 2,000 people actually tested, closer to 4,000 people assessed. And treatment follows after those who test positive. And to answer your next follow-up question,

a huge number of them are black and brown who have been tested. Do you believe that that has been the fundamental problem that we have had to deal with has been the failure of the federal government to really take control of the testing apparatus and really supply enough to states and to cities? Yes, if I'm honest.

Yes, be honest. Don't lie. Be honest. Yeah, the reason that Nashville has been successful, obviously we're a health care town. If you don't know much about Nashville, our main core is healthcare, right? And as there was a delay at the federal government level to provide supplies and materials in order to set up adequate testing sites, we were able to procure through many other healthcare organizations

that volunteered their supplies and their equipment. And we were able to really expand our network to stockpile our own testing and supplies ahead of the federal government's assistance so that we can open and get a head start on everyone else. So we had to do it ourselves, basically, Roland. And that's what I'm telling you. Guys, I just wanna quickly go to the White House. I'm going to come right back

to Patrick. Go to the White House. Every day are the pediatricians fielding those phone calls from every concerned mother and, of course, grandmothers like myself, and protecting our children every day to ensure that they have access to the medical care that they need while this is happening. And to every pregnant woman out there, I was very reassured hearing from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. They have put amazing things in place to protect every pregnant woman. They have been social distancing in their

offices. They have increased all of the disinfecting. They have lengthened the time between clients. To every pregnant woman, don't miss your appointments. If your OB thinks you need to be there, you should go. And please know that on the labor and delivery wards, they are doing everything to protect you and their babies. They are committed to you. They are absolutely committed to you having a good experience. Make sure if your physician believes you should be in the hospital for your delivery,

make sure you're following their guidance. We don't want any pregnant women to suffer a bad outcome during this time. So, again, I just want to conclude by thanking the American people and recognizing the number of people we're losing per day is serious to all of us. And it could be so much worse. But our frontline healthcare providers and the way they're talking to each other about how to

improve care for every individual that they serve, you see them on the TV, you see them in the emergency room, you see what they're up against. This is how we can honor them, is to make sure we continue to put, as Dr. Fauci always says, put your foot on the gas and make sure that we continue to strongly mitigate and really protect those with pre-existing conditions. And finally, those pre-existing conditions we know now include asthma. So asthma, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, any of these conditions, renal disease, no matter what age, please make sure you're following the guidelines to protect those individuals in your household. We know they're more susceptible to a worse outcome. We don't think that anyone's more susceptible to getting infected.

I want to make sure that everyone understands everybody is susceptible to getting infected. This virus is very transmittable, as we well know. But we need to protect those that need our protection the most. So thank you all for what you're doing to get the message out, to ensure that we continue to protect each other in this very difficult time. The President Thank you, Mr. Vice President. And just to follow up and underscore what Dr. Birx has said,

as I've said many times from this podium, the spectrum of going from infection to getting ill, to requiring hospitalization, to intensive care, to death. And what is the most striking thing that obviously is so sobering to us is when we see the number of deaths. We know now for sure that the mitigation that we have been doing is having a positive effect, but you don't see it until weeks later.

Remember this past weekend when all of us got up in front of this podium and mentioned that this was going to be a really bad week. At the same time, we were saying that we would hope we would start to see a little bit of a change in the daily hospitalizations, intensive care, and intubations. And New York is starting to see that. So I say that, but I drop back a bit.

Don't get complacent about that, because what's going to happen two and a half weeks from now is really what's going to happen with regard to the people who are getting new infection. As Dr. Birx said, everybody is almost certainly as susceptible as anybody else to getting infected. It's what happens to you after you get infected. And again, to just keep

emphasizing, we need to keep mitigating. We know that this is something that is a strain on the American public, but it's just something that we have, not only the only tool, it's the best tool. And to just shift a bit to what we said yesterday regarding the African-American community, it is very painful to see, and I've seen it throughout my entire medical career, that the health disparities in the minority community, but particularly the African-American community, puts them at risk, apart from coronavirus issues, puts them at risk for diseases much more so than the general population. The double whammy that you suffer now is when you have this terrible virus, which essentially preys in its ultimate deleterious effects on people with those underlying conditions. And since that is more predominant in the African American population, we want to double down and say to the young people, to the elderly people in that community, to please try as best as you can to protect yourself if you're a younger person, and to

please protect the people who are susceptible, your grandmother, your grandfather, your elder uncle, the people who have these underlying conditions, because we are not going to solve the issues of health disparities this month or next month. This is something we should commit ourselves for years to do. But what we can do now, today, is to prevent people who are put at higher risk because of their demographic group from getting into a situation which is much, much more deleterious than the general population. So I plead with all of us in the population, but particularly for those of us, our brothers and sisters in the African American community, because we know that mitigation does work. The reason we know it works is the question that was asked about the numbers, that why

they came down with the projections. Because remember, what you do with data will always outstrip a model. You redo your models depending upon your data. And our data is telling us that mitigation is working. So again, as Dr. Berg said, keep your foot on the accelerator because that's what's going to get us through this. Dr. Redfield. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I just wanted to follow up.

One of the most important things we can do is keep our critical workforce working. And I think you heard it said that we have many different critical workforce industries in this country. Obviously, first responders, health care workers, but as you heard, it's also individuals who help maintain our food supply, et cetera. And so what CDC has done is that we've really looked at the essential workforce and how to maintain that workforce, particularly at this time, as we begin to get ready to reopen and have confidence in bringing our workforces back to work.

And so we've put out a new guidance for essential health care workers who've been exposed to the coronavirus. These are individuals that have been within six feet of a confirmed case or a suspected case. And so that they can, under certain circumstances, they can go back to work if they're asymptomatic, as the Vice President said. They could go back to work if they do several things, as we say here, take their temperature before they back to work if they do several things, as we say here. Take their temperature before they go to work, wear a face mask at all times, and practice social distancing when they're at work.

What we'd ask them not to do where they're at work is we want them to stay at home if they're sick. We want them not to share objects that would be touching their face, and we would like them not to congregate in break rooms, lunch rooms, and crowded places. And in the second slide, if we talk into the employers of these critical industries, we would ask those employers to take the employee's temperature and assess their symptoms before starting them back to work. If the employee does become sick, we want them to be sent home immediately.

We'd like them to increase air exchange in the buildings and increase the frequency of how they clean common surfaces and really begin to get these workers back into the critical workforce so that we won't have worker shortage in these critical industries. So that's the new guidelines that CDC will be posting today. And those will be available at CDC.org. I want to go back to Patrick Johnson with Meharry. Patrick, as we were talking, you're listening to them talk about mitigating. The issue still is the fact, like, for instance, where in the hell are these drive-through testing? I mean, you get this whole big old Rose Garden news conference, supposed to be at Walgreens, CVS, Walmart.

We've seen other countries do it. And so, is the issue testing or is the issue processing the test? Actually, it's both, Roland. And we could talk about this for 10 more minutes about a lot of things that I just heard on that

clip that are a little bit disturbing to me. But the issue is testing, right? Are you assessing and having people who really need to be tested tested? And we're not, we're not Nashville, but other places, they're turning a lot of people away because they're not symptomatic or they're asymptomatic or they're like, well, I shouldn't test you because you don't have any of the conditions that we see now. But you told me you work next to someone who tested positive earlier this week. Well, that person should be tested immediately because there's an incubation period. There's also the

supplies that are missing, and that slowed things down. But I want to caution your viewers on something that was a little disturbing of what I just heard in this press conference is this disease still knows no color. And I heard a sigh of relief that the possibility that you might not die if you don't have these underlying conditions and if you're in a population that does not have these underlying comorbidities, you can breathe a sigh of relief that you might just have a very difficult bout with this disease, but you might not die. That's pretty reckless. I think the caution should be whether you have asthma. We've been knowing this forever. I mean, places like Meharry and Morehouse School of Medicine and Howard and Drew have been studying underserved communities forever.

And we knew the makeup of this virus would wreak havoc on communities that had underlying health care, I mean, underlying comorbidities. But that doesn't mean you take a novel virus like this lightly. And this is the first time that I've heard a press briefing from the White House that was as, how do I put it, not as serious as it should have been. And almost in passing of, hey, we want to address the issues in the minority community and we'll get around to that. I'll say this in this next two trillion dollar bill there needs to be a lot of resources allocated to the institutions that can address these issues in our own communities.

I was just on a call with members of Congress yesterday me and Dr. Hildreth who is is the infectious disease expert and epidemiologist here at Meharry. He spent his whole life doing this, 40 years of his life doing this. He's our version of Dr. Fauci. And out of that next $2 trillion, there needs to be several billion dollars invested in a larger consortium of the academic health science centers. That's the four that I just named. And some of our larger HBCUs that have resources to do material science and manufacturing,

like Florida A&M, North Carolina A&T, et cetera. Where as a consortium, we can do on parallel with what Duke and Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt is doing for their community as far as research, drug development, and hopefully eventually a vaccine. Because the shortest time a vaccine has ever been created has been six years. So if anyone tells you we're gonna create a vaccine

in 18 months, the shortest time a vaccine has been created known to man right now has been six years. Wow. Yeah, I know. It just takes a long time to create a vaccine. I'm not an epidemiologist. I do work in health care, but that has been a pattern. Many of them take multiple decades. Now we have new science, new technology, but for example, we don't have a vaccine for HIV right now, and we've been working on that for 40 years. So it is difficult to come up with vaccines.

Drug treatments are easier to do, and we need to do that. But we need our Black institutions that have the expertise, but they need the resources to go to scale and to go to scale immediately to be on parallel with Duke, Hopkins, UCLA, NYU systems that are gonna attack COVID-19 at every angle possible to get their arms around this over the next several years. So how about this here? We're spending $6 trillion over the next several years. Some billions, lots of billions need to be invested

in our own consortium. And that's what I talked to Congressional Black Caucus members about yesterday. So you said Meharry, FAMU, North Carolina A&T, and who else? No, here's how it works. There are four academic health science centers in the nation that are African-American. Meharry Medical College, Howard University,

Charles Drew Medical School, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Okay. They are the health care hub and the research hub, but they need to be able to scale to have material science and drug development or anything else in that level of development outside of just healthcare. And that's when you partner with the FAMUs,

the North Carolina A&Ts, the Jackson States, the Tennessee State Universities. And collectively, we become a healthcare hub that is the equivalent of Duke. We collectively have all the resources that Duke would have. But in order to scale that quickly, dealing with a global pandemic,

you need five, 10, maybe $15 billion. And Roland, beat this drum as long as you can. $10 billion in a $2 trillion stimulus package is 0.05% of that money spent. It's not even a drop in the bucket, not even close. But it would bring us to scale with the people who understand underserved communities. When I heard Dr. Fauci said, we just now found out that asthma is an underlying condition that could cause you to die if you get COVID-19, every Black healthcare worker in America knows that.

Every... Meharry has been saying this for five and a half weeks in Nashville, and that's why we're ahead of the curve here in Nashville on underserved communities. This isn't new science to us, but in order to scale and deal with this on a global pandemic level we need money that can help us scale immediately well this is first of all this is why this show exists um we're largely ignored in the mainstream uh i don't know uh if any of the cable networks have called me Harry or in the broadcast networks. We know y'all exist We've had we've had professors from North Carolina a and T on we've had we've had

Morehouse School of Medicine on how a university on and you're absolutely right We've got to be making those points. So what I would do I've already text my booker Jackie Well, what I would love is to have, I would love to have a conversation to have you back or someone else from Meharry, have someone from Charles Drew, from Morehouse, from Howard, and have all of you on together to talk about what this will look like, what it means, so we can begin to begin to advocate that and push that as well. We appreciate your advocacy, Brolin. We really do. All right. Patrick Johnson, Meharry Medical College. We appreciate it. We'll have

you back. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right. I want to bring back my panel. Is Scott, Robert, and Wilmer there? Still here. Yeah, we're still here. Scott, I'm going to go. Yeah, thank goodness. I'm going to go. Scott, I'm going to go. Since you're off mute, I'm going to go to you first. I mean, you heard what he just said there. And I mean, here's a black doctor. Dr. Fauci is like the preeminent person, and he's going, y'all just realized asthma is an underlying condition? And while Dr. Fauci was talking, this is exactly what I was saying as I was watching it. I was like, I said,

this is precisely why we do this show. You've got to have black people who are in healthcare, who are able to talk about these things because we factor in black people in the whole equation. And those four institutions have been doing this for as long as they have been in existence, for hundreds of years.

And they have leading experts that nobody's talking to. Health disparities is not new to Morehouse School of Medicine or Meharry or Howard. It's what they do every day, and nobody's talking to them. I have no offense to Dr. Fauci and the other experts that are on these press conferences and stuff, or the Surgeon General, but that data is there. That work is there. And by the way, the brother you had on was just as sharp as any doctor, scientist,

researcher you could have at the White House or leading this effort. But the health disparity piece, this isn't new either. Democrats, Republicans, it's been around for years. And none of your guests, by the way, when you asked them about it, they defined the problem of health disparities, right? They can tell you all about that. But I challenge you, if you really think about it, none of them had any specific points to fix that health disparity. Like three different points. These are the three things we need to do to fix health disparities in communities of color. Not one of them, expert or politician,

could really answer that question. But they could define the problem. We got to start answering those questions. Wilmer, again, I mean, to sit there and to go to this White House news conference, Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, the head of the CDC, to have these experts, and then to have Patrick Johnson on from Harry listening to that and going, wow, y'all just figured out asthma is the underlying problem. Again. That is just funny. That's just crazy.

I mean, Wilmer, but this is the point I'm making as to why when you watch these shows, you're not seeing black experts. You're not seeing... Because, look, let's just cut to the chase. Black people, we got to learn their shit and our shit. They don't have to learn our shit. And so that's the point.

We bring a whole different vibe to this thing. Go ahead. Well, that's not only unique to this circumstance. We see this happen time and time and time again. It's kind of like one of the jokes about talking about people from Harvard is they tend to think they're the smartest people in the room because they're the only people in the room and they talk to themselves. It's an echo chamber. So you're also dealing with an administration that just a month ago, the president was telling

us that there were 12 cases that were going to go away and you could go back to work. We have, I think, three, at least three living former surgeon generals. No, no, no, no. You got more than that. In fact, I looked at it. Because what we also remember, when elders stepped down, there was an interim who was a sister. Three of whom are African-American. Remember, when elders stepped down, there was an interim who was a sister. Okay. So three of whom are African-American?

No, there are six. Okay. There are six. Go ahead. And I'm trying to get all six on, but go ahead. Three of whom are African-American. Where are they on the podium? No, no, no.

There are six black former Surgeon General still living. Six. Oh, okay, okay. That makes my case even stronger. Right. You nailed it. I mean, you nailed it. When Fauci's talking, I'm like, hey, where are the black people?

They're not really, well, Mike Pence, last I checked, has no background in public health. Trump's son-in-law, Kushner, has no background in public health.

What you see is a political solution to a public health pandemic. Never the twain shall meet. It's just that simple. They're not interested, not really, really, really interested in solving the health care crisis. They're trying to mitigate a political problem. And here's the other deal, Robert.

All right, so now all of a sudden they realize, oops, there's a black problem. I can tell you point blank, the White House has made no effort to get the current black Surgeon General on this show. We've tried, I wonder if they've thought to get the black Surgeon General, oh, on Ricky Smiley's show, Steve Harvey's show,

D.L. Hughley's show, Erica Campbell's show, Wilmer's show, Joe Madison's show. No, because guess what? They are afraid that they're going to get actually criticized. Well, I don I think the administration... So go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I think the administration has been very responsive when it comes to African-American issues.

We've had people from the SBA, from small business, from the HBCU initiative on many of the conference calls we've done with PUSH. But also, just to address something that Fauci said... Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Before you go to that point, they have been responsive to phone calls with groups.

Robert. Yes. But here's the piece. That's only a handful of people. For instance, I know for a fact, I talked to John Hope Bryant. There were 4,000 people who were on that phone call the White House did on Friday with various African-Americans

talking about the small business bill. That's 4,000. I can tell you right now, there are going to be 40,000 who watches just this 6 p.m. show. When we restream this show for the next eight times, the next 24 hours, it'll be 300,000. What I'm saying is what this White House has not done.

This White House does not communicate with black people and black media. So you got to go beyond the conference call and you got to get the message out to the people. But if you have no relationship with black people and media, you ain't getting getting information out. Now, go ahead with your point. I agree with you on that completely. But just on the point of what Fauci was saying about not knowing asthma was a contributing condition, that is absolutely 100% false. Let's understand that when you're dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, it is literally the sudden acute respiratory syndrome. That is the underlying virus family that is built off of.

So, of course, asthma, bronchitis, emphysema are all going to be contributing factors. And then the way that the COV-19 virus works is by attacking the alveoli in the lungs, depleting the air volume, which can be taken in. And the difference between this and the previous SARS infection from 2002 to 2004 is that it attacks both the upper and lower part of the lung, concurrently causing fluid buildups, which then creates a sciatic storm, where the immune system attacks the virus, overloading the ability of the immune system to work, and then causing lung failure. And thereafter, other infections will be able to take the person out. So the idea that

asthma would not be one of the underlying conditions is something that's been well known for since January. This was in literature coming out of China the first week of January, if you have been keeping up with it. So I think we have to keep our officials honest and make sure that they understand that, one, this is well-known information, and two, I believe it was yesterday when Fauci said there's nothing the federal government can do to address the issues of the African-American community. That's absolutely not true. You can surge testing to Black communities to find out exactly where the virus exists at. You can make sure that you surge aid and small business loans and unemployment benefits to people

so they don't have to be out there doing essential work so they can stay home and recover from the virus. So we have to hold all of them accountable, not simply any one group. All right, hold tight one second, folks. Got to go to a break. When you come back, we'll talk to Reverend Frederick Douglas Haynes

about black churches, the role they should be playing in informing our people regarding coronavirus and they should not be having church services on Resurrection Sunday. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Back in a moment. You wanna check out Roland Martin Unfiltered?

YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there? Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, name right there? Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

That's youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it. Artel! All right, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't, and Robby don't have one wear. Now, I don't know. Rob, I don't have one on. Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares.

I don't like even the silk ones. And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago, and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here, and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square. This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect. So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down. It took me a year to find a company that did it.

And so they make these about 47 different colors. And so I love them because, again, as men, we don't have many accessories to wear. So we don't have many options. And so this is really a pretty cool pocket screen and what I love about this here is you saw when it's in the pocket you know it gives you that flower effect like that but if I wanted to also unlike other because if I flip it and turn it over it actually gives me a different type of texture and so therefore it gives me a different look so there. And so, therefore, it gives me a different look.

So, there you go. So, if you actually want to get one of these Shibori pocket squares, we have them in 47 different colors. All you got to do is go to rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So, it's rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this now for those of you who are members of our bring the funk fan club there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares that's why you also got to be a part of our bring the funk fan club and so that's what we want you to do and so it's pretty cool so if you want to jazz your look up you can do that in addition

y'all see me with some of the featherather Pocket Squares. My sister was a designer. She actually makes these. They're all custom made. So when you also go to the website, you can also order one of the customized Feather Pocket Squares right there at RolandSMartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So please do so. And of course, it goes to support the show. And again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount discount this is why you should join the fan club all right folks two black men went to walmart in illinois wearing protective masks as we've all been advised to do and of course here's what happened walmart and what's this wood river and wood river illinois this officer right here behind us just told just followed us in the store.

You just video. He said that he said we can't video, but he just told us we're on body cam. He just followed us from outside, told us that we cannot wear masks. There's a presidential order. There is a state order. And he's just and he's following us right now to store. We're being asked to leave for being safe. And this is what we're doing right now.

I'm going to upload this as soon as we leave the store. This is the officer following us out of the store for absolutely no reason. If anybody knows, anybody's watching, the coronavirus is real. This guy is following us. There's more people, but he, we, he followed us from outside. From outside. He followed us all the way in the freaking store just to follow us out of the store. That's him.

There he is. Hey, so coronavirus is real. This police officer just put us out for wearing masks. Are you serious? Hey, so coronavirus is real. This police officer just put us out for wearing masks and trying to stay safe. Hell no. Fucking piece of shit. Yeah, piece of shit. Yeah, that's fucked up, right? That is.

That's fucked up. He say it's a city law. We can't wear masks because of the virus. I am putting this on. It's going viral right now. I'm going to put this on every social media platform. Lord have mercy, Scott. Can we...

I mean, black people are scared. Hell, we can't wear a mask. Scott? Mute. Mute button. All right. Okay, first of all, let me go to Robert. Robert, we can't...

No, you got these jokes to spare. No, stop putting your damn microphone on mute. Robert, go. I think one of the things that we have to understand is that we have to hold our police officers accountable. Yes, there is an increased risk, but we cannot make corona safety while black become a thing. We have to make sure we are educating law enforcement about the public health emergency and also that we're working for our state and local officials to hold people accountable if they are violating the civil rights of individuals,

particularly African-American men who are just unfortunately stopped and harassed by police officers. Wilmer? Protecting yourself from coronavirus while black, that's the new criminal act that we have to be subjected to. And let Scott know, putting yourself on mute makes you moot. Oh, you're going to talk trash to me? It ain't even got to go. Stop putting the damn microphone on mute.

Hey, Scott, let me explain to you how this works. Scott, let me explain to you how this works. When we go to a break, you put it on mute. When you come back, turn the damn microphone on so when I come to you, we ready. Well, you don't want to miss my commentary. Okay, all right, I'm going to go ahead and skip it. I'm going to go ahead and skip it right now then.

Oh, are you really? I'm going to give you my point anyway. You have health disparities. You have law enforcement. What is wrong with white people? What is wrong with white people, period? It makes no sense. Now, you can go to the next point

or go to the next piece on the show. That's what you had to contribute? Oh, hell, we could have skipped that. We could have skipped that out. You ain't tell us nothing we already know. A federal judge denied R. Kelly's request to be released from a Chicago federal prison due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kelly's attorney asked that his client be released on bail arguing that he is at risk for contracting coronavirus. Because the Bureau of Prisons has suspended legal and social visits as part of its efforts to prevent coronavirus outbreaks at its facilities, the senior hasn't been able to meet with his attorneys. District Judge Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York, who is presiding over one of his two federal cases against Kelly, wasn't convinced he remains in jail. Hey, hey, hey, Robert, he tried it.

Look, when you see Tekashi 6'9 get released from prison early, you might as well give it a shot. I do think that because Mr. Kelly is a flight risk, clearly, because he doesn't have either the resources or, of course, the worldwide network to try to escape, and also he does have either the resources or, of course, the worldwide

network to try to escape. And also because of the nature of the crimes which he's been accused of, he does pose a risk to the community and also a risk of trying to silence witnesses who may testify against him. So I think they just made the right decision. Hey, Scott, he tried it. I'll tell you right now, if that prison

got a thousand people and 998 get coronavirus, ain't nowhere in hell they're going to let R. Kelly walk out. Well, listen, here's the deal. He tried it, but it's never a good try. Most of these motions, because they want to meet with their attorney because they're in a better position and they've got to prepare for their defense, most of these motions, wherever you are, federal or state, just simply aren't going to work. The COVID-19 piece, that adds a little element to it. But the reality is the judge decided or ruled that there were alternative means for him

to continue to talk to his lawyers and prepare the defense of his case. Remember, he's got two. He's got one in New York or he's got a couple in New York, the Mann Act, and then he's got the child pornography's got one in New York. He's got a couple in New York, the Mann Act. And then he's got, um, the child pornography charges in Chicago and New York. And so it's a good try, but it wasn't much of a try. They'll give him extra telephone time. But a defense counsel always wants to sit

and prepare his defense with his client rather than having to go through the, uh, court system. I'm sorry, the jail system. It's just... It's just a different reality. Like I said, Wilma, R. Kelly ain't got no shot. I think one of them World Trade Center bombers might get a better shot

getting out of jail than R. Kelly. As Richard Pryor said, the brilliant philosopher, as long as Folgers is making coffee, that boy gonna be in jail. But what if he's innocent, though? What if he's innocent? As he sits in jail. What if he's innocent, though? What if he's innocent? As he sits in jail right now, he's innocent. No offense,

but that's just the system. You can disagree. He may be guilty, he may be innocent, but I wouldn't just presume he's guilty, notwithstanding what the public and the media has said about his case. I didn't say he was guilty or innocent. All I said was as long as Folgers

is making coffee, he's going to be in jail. That's all I said. Yeah, that may be. Well, yeah, but Folgers will make coffee. If he's acquitted, he'll be out of jail.

All I'm saying is, let's not presume everything. I'll tell you what, I don't need to presume ain't nobody listening to your ass right now, Scott. Oh, yes, they are. I ain't got to presume that.

So we know that ain't happening. All right, y'all, Easter Sunday is upon us. This is Holy Week for Christians. And you got Ignatius Donald Trump up there. Oh my God, it's Easter. We want to go to church. We got to watch it on the computer. This is just so sad.

Dude, first of all, you're a fake Christian, okay? Just stop fronting. But the reality is this here, people. Churches are being impacted in a huge way. Obviously, not being able to have Bible study, not being able to have church is hurting churches economically for fellowship. But here is the real deal.

We'll get to the story. Churches are incubators. I told you about the story in South Korea. They had 30 people. They had the issue. Under coronavirus, they had it contained. There was a woman

in South Korea who the doctor said, we need to get you tested. She declined. She then went to a nearby church. Then she left the church and went to a buffet.

They believe that woman was responsible for infecting more church. Then she left the church and went to a buffet. They believe that woman was responsible for infecting more than 1,000 people with coronavirus. Y'all, this thing is real. Joining us right now is Reverend Dr. Frederick Douglas Haynes, the third senior pastor, Friendship West Baptist Church in

Dallas, member of the Coldest Boldest Fraternity. Scott, you couldn't get in. We understand. Grades were not high enough, but it's all good. He's an Omega? He's an Omega man? No way.

Wilmer, why don't you... I didn't even try to get into Omega. Wilmer, why don't you handle my small work over there while I talk to Freddie here? Welcome, brother. Absolutely. Absolutely, because Wilmer also knows about that black and gold, right, Wilmer? All the time.

All right. Oh, my goodness gracious. Freddie, listen. Did you have some campers on the show? No. Just sometimes? Not even you. No, because y'all...

You're not even a camper. Because y'all are bearing out of you, Skype. You're bearing out of you, Skype. Freddie, let me go to you. What are you hearing from your fellow pastors when it comes to Easter service? Are they going to follow the edict not to have church? Because I'm hearing from some others that, man, some of these people are hard-headed. Right.

Right. No question. As far as I'm concerned, the crew that I run with, our whole thing is it's not about having church so much as it is being the church during this time. And it's going to be really sick. I declare if on Resurrection Sunday, in the name of Jesus who came that we might have life, we use that as an excuse to basically kill people. And so again, the crowd I'm running with, our thing is to use this time to creatively look at ways for being the church so that the church, what, sanctuary,

won't end up being someone, won't be a pipeline to the mortuary. So we are looking at creative ways to minister to people, to connect with people, using, what, social media as well as technology, because it's a different day. And as far as I'm concerned, there is no way in the name of Jesus, especially as we call ourselves celebrating resurrection, that we can end up being a pipeline to death for so many. And let me quickly say, Roland, especially the black church, because we've heard it finally make the airwaves now. You've been trying to warn

us all along. And that is the bottom line is this Corona virus crisis, like a heat seeking missile is aiming its deadly. It's aiming its death nail at what? Black communities, at vulnerable communities. And so for the black church to be in bed with any kind of political ideology that says we're going to go to church anyhow is to side with the forces of death. And so right now it's about being the church more so than it is gathering as a church. Anthony, go to my iPad. You see this story here, beloved Harlem pastor dies of coronavirus. Harlem's Macedonia Baptist Church, Reverend Isaac Graham passed away from this. Also, I'm going to pull this other story up here. I did this story just the other day. It was in Christian Post. Coronavirus claims three more pastors,

even all three black pastors. Bishop Timothy Titus Scott of St. James Temple Church of God in Christ in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Another pastor, I'm sorry, these pop-ups. Pastor Alvin Charles McElroy of Friendship Baptist Church in Riverhead, New York. Father Giochino Basil, priest of Archdiocese of Newark. And again, I mean, this is real. Then of course you had the brother in Shreveport, a pastor who said this thing wasn't real. And then, of course, he died of coronavirus. Then you had this pastor in Virginia, this white pastor who called coronavirus media mass hysteria.

Well, guess what? He died from coronavirus as well. When you hear these people say, but the blood of Jesus will protect me, how do you respond? I mean, it's simple. Jesus, when he was tempted in Matthew chapter four by Satan, Satan said, OK, you son of God, why don't you throw yourself off of this cliff? Because the Bible says that God's angels will rescue you. Jesus clapped back and said, it is written, you don't tempt the Lord your God. And so, yeah, I believe God's blood will heal and cover and protect. But I'm also convinced if I follow Jesus, Jesus says, do not tempt God. If you have received notice that this coronavirus

crisis is killing people, why are you going to tempt God in the name of Jesus, in the name of acting like you have faith? And so again, it's like they like to pick and choose, cherry pick parts of the Bible to justify whatever that is they think they have to do in order to, what, have church as opposed to being the church. Roland, again, I'll just repeat, especially in the black community, the black church has to make up its mind. Are we going to be agents of life or are we going to tempt God and end up conspiring with our own death?

Well, one of the things that I was talking with my wife, Reverend Dr. Jackie Hood Martin, she got papers. I'm just bootlegged. And she had to remind people about Exodus 12 7. When she made clear, she said, yo, when they had the 10th plague, God said, put the blood above your door so it passes

over your house. But it says stay inside. It says stay inside, period. It says stay inside and close the door. I told it says stay inside. It says stay inside, period. It says stay inside and close the door. I told them to stay inside. So let's go with the whole Bible and not just parts you want to pick and choose. Well, we hopefully, we've been using the hashtag

Easter at home or hashtag Resurrection Sunday at home. And I keep saying, if y'all got mamas and daddies and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and they want to insist on going, you got my permission for the first time to cuss your parents out to get their attention. Because, you know, I had to... Let me tell y'all something. I had to do that.

The first time I cussed my daddy out, straight up, it was one of them hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, but people forget that was a second hurricane that was going to come towards Houston people forget that was a second hurricane that was going to come towards Houston. And that was a mass exodus of people going out from Houston to Dallas.

And I still own a home in the Dallas area. And I remember calling home. And I'm talking about that hurricane is like, it's on the way. Mama, she freaking all out. She worried. And I call. I'm like, hey, what y'all doing?

I'm just sitting watching TV. I'm like, so are you packing? He's like, no, we're going to ride it out. I was like, so you're just going to ride it out? I said, you know what? This is what's going to happen. I said, I'm just going to have my brother come by the house, pick mama up, and your ingot ass could stay in the house and go ahead and if something happens in an apartment and get demolished.

I said, it's stupid. I did. I said, that is stupid as hell. You're going to sit in the house in Austin. When I got a house in Dallas, just get in the damn car and go on down there and be safe as opposed to sitting here, well, I don't know about money. I've already sent some damn money to Dallas. Now get your ass out the house, pack your stuff, and go.

Right. See, Fred, I had to go there. Hey, I'm with you. I'm with you. That book legend is working. Had to do it. Freddie Haynes, I appreciate it,. I'm with you. That book legend is working. Had to do it. Frederick Haynes, I appreciate it, Fred. Thanks a lot.

All right, bro. Take care. Thanks a bunch. All right, Robert, have you had to cuss out any relatives about not going to church so they don't die from coronavirus? Yeah, my mom a Haitian, so I ain't cussing nobody out. But we have strongly advised her to do such, and my sister is taking good care of her. So our family is lucky we have people who are less hard-headed than me

and the rest of my family. Wilma, you had to have a few words with some of your people? No, no, no. We're intelligent people, and we know what we're doing. We're good. Yeah, okay. You know what that means? That means he had to cuss some people out.

He just don't want to sit here, and he don't want that man. Scott, I know some ignorant people in your family you had to have some words with. You don't know my family. You know what? Hold up. Scott, you're right. Y'all heathens. Don't nobody in your family go to church. You're right. I don't know what I was thinking. No, no, no. We ain't heathens. We certainly

go to church. I have to stop my daughters from bringing her friends over to our house. Oh, hell yes. That's why I had to curse my daughter out of my house. Really? Really? What happened? Well, because she said, I need a break. I need to go to the beach house, and I want to bring a couple friends. And she wants to bring, like, four or five of her friends.

This is the youngest twin, McKay. And I'm like, well, baby, you can come. You know, I'm going to always be here for you and feed you. But your three or four friends, I mean, that ain't ten people. But I don't know where they've been and who they've been with or what they've been doing, so you can't bring your friends. She said, if they don't come, I don't come. I said, well, we can video

conference. I love you to death. Bye. Boom! Boom! Hey, I'm with that a thousand percent. All right, folks, let's talk about what happened yesterday in Wisconsin. They went forward with their election despite, you know, common sense. All these crazy-ass Republicans, of course, wouldn't do it.

We're not going to know the results until April 13th. Madison, Wisconsin, Mayor Sadia Rose Conway says her office is hearing reports that voter turnout seems low, but even though they had record absentee ballot. Now, it's no surprise, considering Republicans demanded the primary be held during a pandemic. Donald Trump expressed his concern about mail-in voting in a press briefing yesterday. Y'all, watch this ignorant fool.

So you were highly critical of mail-in voting, mail-in ballots for voting. I think mail-in voting is horrible. You voted by mail in Florida's election last month, didn't you? Sure, I could vote by mail for the — How do you reconcile that? Because I'm allowed to. Well, that's called out of state.

You know why I voted? Because I happen to be in the White House, and I won't be able to go to Florida and vote. What's the difference between mailing within the state or mailing outside the state? Well, there's a big difference between somebody that's out of state and does a ballot and everything's sealed, certified, and everything else. You see what you have to do with the certifications. And you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody's living room signing ballots all over the place. No, I think that mail-in voting is a terrible thing. I think if you vote, you should go. And even the concept of early voting is not the greatest because a lot

of things happen. But it's OK. But you should go and you should vote. I think you should go and you should vote. You look at what they do where they grab thousands of mail in ballots and they dump it. I'll tell you what. And I don't have to, you can look at the statistics. There's a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting. Mail-in ballot. Last I checked, the people who really did that were Republicans in North Carolina. Joining me right now is Cliff Albright. He's co-founder of Black Voters Matter. Cliff, welcome back to Roller Mart Unfiltered.

You heard that fool talk. And so here's the thing that all the people talking about, we need to go to a mail mail-in voting system. Here's the reality. We have a current system. It's an absentee ballot system. Uh, and so look, we don't know what's going to happen in November. We don't know if we're going to get past this coronavirus deal. But you have to be planning or expecting that this thing is going to continue. And you may have to go to that system. But you're hearing this stuff and to say, well, yeah, I voted because I'm in the White House. I couldn't vote in Florida.

It's no different, fool. You're exactly right. And that's literally what we're facing right now in Georgia, where they have actually shifted the regular absentee voting process to become a vote-by-mail. They've opened it up to everybody. You don't need an excuse. And they've mailed

the applications for the absentee ballot to all active voters. So on first glance, some people say, oh, Georgia's ahead of the curve, but the problem is this. We have a secretary of state here who literally, you know, with one hand they give, and then with four or five other hands,

they're taking it away, right? And so, you know, the challenge is, okay, so you're mailing these ballots, but what they're not doing is they're not including pre-postage paid envelopes with that, and so that creates an extra burden on the voters where they now have to go out and get a stamp or something to send back the actual applications.

I don't know about y'all. I haven't had a stamp in my house in years. And we're talking about some places where... I have no... I don't know where a stamp is. Exactly, exactly. And we're talking about folks in communities where, you know, it's hard for them to go get a stamp, especially since we're in the middle of a pandemic. We actually have some shelter and stay at home rules that says they shouldn't even be out going to the post office.

Right. That's not an essential trip. And so you've got all kinds of issues in terms of how you go about doing these these vote by mail programs. There's issues of do you need to include your ID? Do you need to have a signature or a witness or some type of affidavit? You know, there's all kinds of ways that you can take the vote-by-mail process and make it be extra difficult. And with every obstacle that you put in place, it's literally the same thing as what happens when you move a polling place a mile or two away or you close polling places. What we know is for every mile that voter turnout goes down, it's the same thing with vote by mail. For every obstacle, for every impediment that you put in the way, voter turnout will go

down. But let's be clear. Republicans want to stop any attempt to have mass voting because they are on record. Trump is on record. Hey, if we got mass voting, we lose. They want to shrink the voting population to benefit them, period. And I keep telling everybody, you saw it in Wisconsin. Republicans are not going to play fair. They're not going to say, let's do what's right. They're going to do what they need to do to win. You're exactly right. And not just Trump. Like, right

here in Georgia, the Republican Speaker of the House is on record saying the same thing. Like, oh, if you expand this voting, if you send these ballots out to more people, Republicans will never win something. He literally said it. He literally said it.

You do this, we're not going to win anything. That's right. That's right. And so they're shameless in their attempts to grab power, even when you look at the Wisconsin speaker. I'm sure you've seen it. Everybody who watches have seen the video of their speaker dressed up in all kinds of PPE, all kinds of wraps and masks.

Yeah, I played it yesterday. Yeah, he's got a full suit, hat, gloves, mask, saying, hey, it's safe to vote. Right, right. And so they're shameless about the way they're going about it. The answer, the response is this. We have got to be just as ruthless in our desire to protect the vote, right?

We have got to be just as ruthless in our desire to go out and expand the vote to every legal voter, right, to every legal registered voter, that we have got to be just as ruthless in that process. And what we're going to see is, in these next round of debates that we have coming up about the next round of COVID relief, will the Democrats use this opportunity to make sure that they get inserted into some of this legislation, the money and the policies to make sure that vote by mail can be done legitimately and effectively in November? They're going to have to show some courage, you know, when a key comes moment to make sure that we get this done right. Because if you don't do this right in November, then it's just going to be just all heck breaking loose. What else do you want African-Americans to be focusing on while we're sort of in this stage and trying to figure out what's going to happen? What should black voters

be doing? I mean, at the end of the day, I think we have to be we have to be we have to recognize our power. Right. We have to stay connected to one another. We have to stay hopeful. The truth is that, you know, even I mean, we're Black Voters Matter. We live this every day, but we've even been hesitant to go hard on some of the voting messages right now because what we recognize is folks are going through some stuff right now. You know, there's some folks that right now, the last thing they want to hear is about an absentee or a vote by mail because they're trying to deal with, you know, their job or, you know, or somebody who's sick and in the hospital. And so part of what we've been trying to do is just to help folks be connected, to find ways to provide mutual aid and support for one another, to find this balance between what we're demanding of those that are in elected positions, but also balancing that

with self-determination and the ways that we help ourselves and making sure that even in this moment that we're still centering Black joy and Black love and Black culture and Black hope. And so those are the things that I think we're trying to remind people of, but also reminding folks that part of that process has got to be making sure that we hold power, that we gain power. And it's not just about the presidential election. It's all about all the way down to tickets because what we're seeing in this moment is that, you know, it's governors that are making decisions around how these states are responding. It's state representatives that are making decisions around unemployment insurance and other policies, around rent moratoriums.

It's local officials at the city and county level. Even when the governors are acting a fool, it's been local elected officials that have been putting smarter policies in place. And so we want folks to stay hopeful and engage all up and down ballot. All right, Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Roland. All right, folks, Senator Bernie Sanders today dropped out of the Democratic presidential race for president. Here's what he said in a speech

from Vermont. I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth. And that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden, and the path toward victory is virtually impossible. So while we are winning the ideological battle, and while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful. And so today, I am announcing the suspension of my campaign.

Please know that I do not make this decision lightly. In fact, it has been a very difficult and painful decision. Over the past few weeks, Jane and I, in consultation with top staff and many of our prominent supporters, have made an honest assessment of the prospects for victory. If I believed that we had a feasible path to the nomination, I would certainly continue the campaign. But it's just not there. I know that there may be some in our movement who disagree with this decision, who would like us to fight on to the last ballot cast at the Democratic Convention. I understand that position. But as I see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership, and the work that needs to be done to protect people in this most desperate hour, I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us

in this difficult hour. Today, I congratulate Joe Biden, a very decent man, who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward. On a practical note, let me also say this. I will stay on the ballot in all remaining states and continue to gather delegates. While Vice President Biden will be the nominee, we must continue working to assemble as many delegates as possible at the Democratic Convention, where we will be able to exert significant influence over the party platform and other functions. Then together, standing united, we will go forward to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history. All right, Wilmer, he wants to use leverage.

Does he have any? He might. He has very little. What we really have to see is, is he going to try to operate from the inside or is he going to try to operate from the outside? Will the sheepdog become part of the flock or is he going to stay outside and continue to push? Time will tell.

Here's the reality, Robert. You got to make a decision. And what I mean by that is, you can't play an inside game from the outside. You can't say I want to have influence, but I want to be on the outside because the reality is in order to have influence, you've got to be on the inside to actually do it. And I think that for Senator Bernie Sanders, he also has to make a decision. You've seen all the stories about his own camp, how he talked about his unwillingness to compromise, things along those lines.

Dog, look, you ain't going to get your way on everything. You've got to be able to negotiate. And so that's going to be a call he has to make. And here's the deal. If you think you're going to win by attacking the very people who you need to influence to change stuff, not going to happen. Well, we have to understand that Bernie Sanders has always been an ideological purist. It's not been about the political game to him. It's about his revolution, as he's called it. I think what he should do and what I would advise him to do is work with the

party, work with pushing his progressive agenda and find out how we can get it done. More important than being, he can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I think that's what we saw would ultimately doom both of his campaigns. If you talk to the burning bros online, if you disagree with anything that was part of their platform, they describe you as a neoliberal corporate Democrat shell of the corporations. So it's very important that he learns how to bring his ideas to the party and make them part of the ultimate platform. He is still carrying the torch from the Jackson 84 campaign. I think that we should bring many of those ideas back.

After this virus, I think the argument for universal health care is overwhelming. I think the argument for universal basic income is overwhelming, given the nature of this disaster. So his ideas are ready for prime time, but they have to make sure they're put into a political space where they can actually be achieved. Scott? Yeah. If I'm Bernie Sanders, oh, and by the way, I predicted this last month, Roland. You disagreed with me, so I'm right on that. Predicted what? In any event. Predicted what?

If I'm Joe Biden, I don't like that concession speech. I don't like that withdrawal. You can't have it both ways. He's messaging the Bernie bros. The reality is either you're all in or you're all out. He wants to have it both ways. He's messaging the Bernie bros. The reality is either you're all in or you're all out. He wants to have it both ways here. And that's problematic. What's going to save the Democratic Party is that Biden is not Hillary Clinton. And I think the importance of defeating Donald Trump is going to overwhelm whatever leverage he's trying to have. But that speech today was really

problematic. It did not connote unity. He said the right thing, but then he's keeping his delegates. He's going to stay on the ballot. He needs to go all in right now. So we don't have a deal yet, and we do not have a unified party yet, at least not between those two groups. Still work to be done. That's what that messaging was uh uh how it

affected me today i i i frankly i don't think so i think bottom line is uh he's out uh and but i still think he has to make a decision here's the deal he's correct first of all he's still going to be on the ballot so bottom line is the case and so that's no surprise there at the end of the day look you give them time, you give them a month, month and a half. Come by June, you have it together and say, all right, let's focus on beating down Trump. Folks, we told you about the impact of coronavirus and how it's happening all across the country.

In Detroit, the impact there. On Monday, Detroit reported 1,804 confirmed coronavirus cases, a death toll of 50, including state representative Isaac Robinson, 44, who died from the virus on Sunday. Now, deaths in Michigan rose by 52 on Monday alone, bringing the total number of people killed by the virus in Michigan to 184, and its total number of cases to 6,498. One of those people who died from coronavirus was Willie Wilkerson. Folks, go to my iPad, please. Willie Wilkerson worked for a long time. He died 72 years old. He was a retired Detroit firefighter. Willie worked with Aretha Franklin. He also worked for her for a long time, was her former fiance you see him

on the right this is one of the wreaths birthday parties I attended anytime you saw Aretha Franklin you saw Willie Wilkerson there and so this is the birthday video you see Willie in the back you see Clive Davis over there and you'll see him come in with some plates. Willie was an absolute great guy. He was always at Aretha Franklin's side. I knew Willie well. I got a phone call, a text message this morning from Shawn Robinson stating that she had heard

that Willie had passed. I was shocked by it. He immediately sent a, it's one of those things where I sent a text message to his phone hoping he would answer. He, you know, the queen of course died in August of 2018. Willie actually got married to someone else later that year. And we were on the Tom Jordan cruise with him and his, and his bride in March of 2019. And so, so many people,

a lot of African Americans in Detroit who have died. And so it certainly was sad getting that news that Willie Wilkerson passed away, 72 years old, as a result, complications of coronavirus. Folks, the reason we do this show is to keep you informed. We certainly want to thank Robert, Scott, and Wilmer for being on our panel. You heard with the Harry doctor.

What we do here is informing our people, getting them the information they need that is vital. We need you to support us as well. You see here at the bottom of the screen our cash app, dollar sign RM unfiltered. Our PayPal is paypal.me forward slash rmartin unfiltered. Your dollars make it possible for us to do what we do. All of us, you know, look, we're not getting the information that we need on mainstream media.

Now, all of a sudden, it's involved to talk about black people and coronavirus, but we've been here for the last five weeks sounding the alarm, talking about the issues that matter to us, so we need your support. Our goal this month is very simple. It's to get, you know, our goal at the end of the year

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And it was supposed to be $10,000. What did I get? I didn't even get a T-shirt. It was supposed to be $10,000 because he lost a bet, but he think I forgot. So please, folks, go to RollerMartUnderFilter.com, join our Bring the Funk fan club, because, again, you help us make this possible for us to be able to inform our people every single day of the news that matters. And so please assist us in doing that. And, again, what we do is, of course, we run those names every Friday. You also get discounts, the products that we have on RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. And so I certainly appreciate it. All right, folks, I will see you

guys tomorrow right here. Be safe. Wear your mask. Wear your gloves. Don't go out in groups. Practice safe distancing. Six feet. Be safe. We do not want to have to be talking about your death on this show. How? I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well

as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.