#RolandMartinUnfiltered - FL voting limits bill; Deputies in Brown shooting on active duty; Biden's edu plan; TYT simulcast

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

4.30.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Florida voting limits bill; Deputies in Andrew Brown Jr. shooting back on active duty; WTH?!? Deputy planned to charge Black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting; Biden's edu plan dissected; Ma'Khia Bryant laid to rest; Nooses found at an Amazon construction site; Racist fire chief gets canned + RMU/TYT simulcastSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#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.

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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. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. Thank you. Thank you. Martin! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Today is Friday, April 30th, 2021. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, Republicans in Florida passed two bills that followed Georgia's blueprint

and rose back access to mail-in voting. In Georgia, a former deputy bragged about charging black people with felonies to keep them from voting. We Georgia, a former deputy bragged about charging black people with felonies to keep them from voting. We also have a couple of updates on the murder of Andrew Brown Jr. in North Carolina. The four deputies who didn't fire at him are back on duty. And Judge Jeffrey Foster, the one who blocked the release of the body cam footage, well, guess what? He has some previous Facebook posts supporting the George Zimmerman decision and the death of Trayvon Martin.

In our Education Matters segment, we'll look at President Joe Biden's education plan and what it means for public schools. And in South Carolina, a fire chief is now apologizing for his racist Facebook post. He's today's craziest white person. I wonder if Senator Tim Scott still thinks that there's racism.

Plus, we got a special, folks. 7 p.m. hour of the show will be a simulcast, a simulcast between us and the Young Turks. Oh, yeah. That's going to be real interesting. Folks, it is time to bring the funk on Rolling Martin Unfiltered. Let's go. He's got it.

Whatever the 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

It's on go-go-royal 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 Martin How many times have I told y'all, watch Florida? Watch the Republicans in Florida. Well, guess what?

They are doing the exact same thing that took place in Georgia. They are moving very quickly to pass a voter suppression bill, all of it about kissing the ass of Donald Trump. That's right. Senate Bill 90 passed in the Statehouse last night. It will become law once signed by Governor Ron DeSantis. With the signature, the bill will, of course, limit the availability of drop boxes to early voting hours

and limit who can collect and drop off ballots, ban outside groups from giving water to voters near polling places, and more voter ID requirements for absentee ballots. It requires voters to request an absentee ballot every election. It also empowers partisan observers during the ballot counting process. Yeah, Senate Bill 90 is opposed by 66 of Florida. Listen, this is the difference here. Senate Bill 90. Let me repeat this very slowly. Senate Bill 90 is opposed by 66 of Florida's 67 county election supervisors, religious leaders, voting rights advocates, and a number of corporations. Yet Republican

lawmakers across the country have introduced more than 350 bills with restricted voting provisions in 47 states. Joining me, Dr. Jason Nichols, Senior Lecturer, African American Studies Department, University of Maryland College Park, Teresa Lundy, Principal Founder of TML Communications, Michael Imhotep, host of the African History Network. Jason, I'm going to start with you. Look, Republicans need to cheat to win. They are so desperate to kiss Donald Trump's ass, they bought into this whole nonsense of, oh my God, voter integrity. You've got these clueless black Republicans out here, Alveda King, the niece of Dr. King. You've got even K. Cole James, formerly head of the Heritage Foundation, saying, oh, no, this is not voter suppression.

Then you got Senator Tim Scott saying the exact same thing. No, that's BS. That's exactly what this is. And so for Florida to now say, yeah, now you can't drop your absentee ballot off to the drop box after 7 p.m. It's just like in Georgia. It's only going to allow you to drop it off when the voting booth, when the early voting location is open. All BS, man, all BS.

Absolutely. There's no question about it that this is voter suppression. And they try to say that it's voter integrity. But as we've seen that this was the, 2020 was the most secure election our country has ever had. They went and spent millions of

dollars in Texas trying to find all this voter fraud. They found 17 people, none of which was serious enough to go to jail. This is all a made-up crisis by Republicans who are angry about losing. So what are they going to do? They're going to try and cook the books. That's what they've done in Georgia by eliminating basically three quarters of the drop boxes in majority black Georgia. They're trying to do it in Florida. They're trying to make sure that they secure wins for generations because they know they can't compete on ideas. They can't compete with our changing demographics and actually sell to black and brown people that they are the better party. So what are they going to do? They're going to make it so that many of us can't vote. And that's, you know, the problem with the Republican Party. And as you mentioned,

with people like Tim Scott, who, you know, I'm not sure what he was doing. No, I mean, not exactly what he was doing. He was sitting here. He was sitting here kissing the butt of Donald Trump. That's exactly what he was doing because it's all about pleasing the white Republicans in South Carolina, trying to curry favor with them. In fact, if you want to understand why he did it, all you got to do is understand how he was sitting here just talking about how, ooh, Donald Trump called him and praised him. This, of course, is Senator Tim Scott on Sean Hannity's show. This is why, Teresa, Senator Tim Scott said what he said and did not condemn the Georgia voter bill. And what did Donald Trump say to you today

number one I'll start with good news and go to bad news good news is President Trump called me that's just tell me that he thought I did a spectacular job you know President Trump he's a few seen his phrase at times and he said it was fantastic it was spectacular he really enjoyed listening to it I'm glad that he listened to it period number one and he wants to make sure that we keep working to get more things done for the country. Believe it or not, one of the things that we talked about for a very short period of time was how do we make progress for the most vulnerable? He is still focusing on getting things done from a policy standpoint by encouraging us to continue down the path that leads to American progress. And what did Donald Trump say to you today?

We know damn well that's a lie, Teresa. You know, I would totally hold that call with Donald Trump was not about anything policy related to the United States of America. We all know what this was in terms of how to keep Donald Trump relevant in the conversations of how to govern America, because when he was in office, there was no governing. There was a lot of appeal where people scratched each other's backs and decided, you know, when they lost the election, that they would try to put out additional policies and lawsuits and cover some of the things that they were doing inside of the office. So to see Senator Scott, and really is almost like the poster child for the Republican Party,

as they are, of course, I'm hearing that they're running him for president. It's not going to work. And I think people are really starting to really understand why Senator Tim Scott is there, but also why they're trying to rebuild almost, you know, the Republican Party to some of these interesting ways that some Republicans are just not used to. So here, Ron Brownstein tweeted this out, Michael, and I think this really, I believe, explains exactly why Republicans are doing what they are doing. Let me pull this tweet up because I think it's important. This is what, let me zoom this in right here. This is what he said. Overlooked, even with huge increase in turnout last November, showing again Trump's appeal for them,

non-college whites fall below 40% of actual 2020 voters in new U.S. census data for the first time per William Fry of the Brookings Metro. He then said, even Trump's pool can't change the long-term arc. Since 2008, non-college whites have fallen from 51 to 41 percent of eligible voters and from 48 to 39 percent of actual college plus whites have grown from 20 to 20 to the 25.5 percent of early voters 28 percent to 31 percent of 31 percent of actual voters people of color up from 27 to 33 percent of eligible 24 to 29 percent of voters that right there is why republicans are doing what they're doing michael because they live off of those non-college whites that number is dramatically falling and the other numbers are going up benefiting Democrats. Yeah, you know, Roland, this all ties into the fear of the browning of America. This ties into also the white people having a negative birth rate in 26 states out of 50,

as the U.S. Census Bureau announced in June 2018. And they're looking at the trajectory for the next 20, 30 years. They see they're declining in population, so they want to make it harder for people to vote. They want to suppress the votes as well. And, you know, you would expect something like this from Florida, because, see, when you talked about,

when we look at felony disenfranchisement, Florida was one of the few states where you lost your right to vote if you had a felony for life. OK. And, you know, you know, the work that Brother Desmond Meade has been doing down in Florida, you've been covering that, has been fighting against this. But, you know, this is this is all part of this plan. It's part of this backlash from the 2022 presidential election that was consequential. And African-Americans and Hispanics and others realized the power of the vote, and they realized that Trump had to be stopped. So, you know, they always come with this backlash in the courts and the state legislatures. Okay? It's just like 2013, Shelby County versus Holder, U.S. Supreme Court case.

Backlash, the 2012 presidential election where President Barack Obama won a second term. That's what we're dealing with here. So we have to fight against this, and we have to keep up the pressure on the corporations to put pressure on the state legislatures as well. The work that LaTosha Brown

and others are doing, we have to keep this up, brother. But this is all-out war. We're going to have to engage in economic guerrilla warfare, as I've been saying. Well, there's no doubt. And again, you're going to see more of this, Jason. You have folks like Mark Elias, Large Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP, Legal Defense and Education Fund, and others saying we're going to battle this out in the courts, which is why it was so important, which is why Republicans held up more than 100 seats under President Obama

and then gave the opportunity for Donald Trump, him appointing all those federal judges, more than 280. This is why, because they want them ruling in their favor once the lawsuits are filed. Absolutely. You know, the judicial system is a backstop for everything. And so they knew, you know, it's not just the Supreme Court, it's district judges, all of that. They knew that a lot of their policies and ideas are going to go before judges. It's funny, though, with Donald Trump, when he was president, he couldn't even win in front of his own judges because a lot of times, you know, it was just no merit. There was no merit to a lot of their legal claims and lawsuits. And they would go in front of courts and lose in front of people that they put up there because they couldn't even fake it.

And we saw that with the last election. I agree with the last brother. You know, these changing demographics scare them. This is why a friend of ours, a mutual friend, Roland, he shall remain nameless, is talking about, you know, replacement and bringing this replacement theory out there.

Oh, I'm sorry. You mean the white supremacist Tucker Carlson? You know, I'm not going to say anybody's name. I will. White Supremacist Tucker Carlson is leading the white nationalist network, Fox News, which is why. That's right. So they called Jason. They ain't going to call me.

But I'm going to go ahead and call him. They're not going to call me anymore either. Oh, they're going to call me. I criticized Tim Scott, and it went crazy. They're not going to call me anymore. Go ahead. But, look, I'm glad to be here on black-owned media, on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

But yeah, I mean, that whole thing, this fear of being replaced or this fear, and we heard that in Charlottesville, that's going to continue to drive even some of the policy that they have before them. They pretended to be for criminal justice reform, but we know in reality they want to stop us from voting, stop immigration, do anything they can to maintain the current demographics, and they're not even trying to

hide it anymore. So I think the brother was correct. We need to continue to keep the pressure on economically and in any other means. And hopefully there will be some judges that can be appointed under this current administration. Well, look, I have a book coming out in next year that's called White Fear. And in fact, it's so funny. Let me go ahead. I'm going to give you all a sneak peek. All right, y'all. Nobody else has this. We actually have finalized what the title is going to be. And it's real simple. It's going to the book is going to be called White Fear. How the Browning of America is making white folks lose their minds.

It is. It is. And this ties into the in 2016, going into 2017, there was a big article from the Atlantic, Atlantic dot com, that did an analysis of the 2016 presidential election. And it talked about how it was. They used the term cultural anxiety. OK, they say white supremacy or fear of a brown of America. They said it was cultural anxiety that drove the non-white college educated voters to vote for Donald Trump. He hit those cultural issues. And this is exactly what we're seeing. Teresa, people need to understand what's going on here. White conservatives are freaking out. In fact, last night, it was so funny, on Fox News, they had a special Laura Ingraham, and she had DeSantis, she had the governor of Texas.

And so here's the new thing. All these white Republicans, their new thing is trying to say systemic racism doesn't exist. Listen to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the person who they're proclaiming to be the front runner for the Republicans in 2024, going on and on and on with white nationalist Laura Ingraham whining about systemic racism. This proposition that we are a systemically racist country, your reaction? Well, it's a bunch of horse manure. I mean, give me a break. This country has had more opportunity for more people than any country in the history of the world. And it doesn't matter where you trace your ancestry from. We've had people that have been able to succeed and all.

And here's the problem with things like critical race theory that they're peddling. They're basically saying all our institutions are bankrupt and they're illegitimate. Okay, so how do you have a society if everything in your society is illegitimate? So it's a very harmful ideology. And I would say really a race-based version of a Marxist type ideology. So we've banned it in our schools here in Florida. We're not going to put any taxpayer dollars to critical race theory. And we want to treat people as individuals, not as members of groups. I find that to be laughable, Teresa,

because they damn sure don't mind treating black folks as groups when they're trying to add voter suppression. Yeah, that entire, you know, I watched it as well. And so that entire roundtable discussion, you know, with the conservative leadership of the party is really disturbing because not knowing, you know, the impact of that conversation and those in the audience, you know, I actually had a friend who was doing production on that side. And I'm like, how many African-Americans were there? There are probably like three people in there on staff. So when we talk about systemic racism and how, you know, and Governor DeSantis said

he eliminated that education inside the school system, he's really doing a disservice not only to the individuals that's in his state, but also to the culture, because you have to understand, and Roland, you talk about this all the time, when we really start to dig into what systematic racism is and what it looks like in the various forms thereof. And so when we have, you know, elected leaders saying this type of ideology and people are essentially, you know, okay with this and okay with not knowing where our history and not knowing, you know, how we came out of it, but then got on earth to say that opportunities are just at the horizon when really African-Americans

and immigrants actually built this country. It's a hard shocker, again, for those who are being elected and teaching this type of doctrine. Who knows what the generation is going to be? It's just really harmful to the public. I think to

Jason's point, let me channel Dr. Greg Carr, who would say right now, I'm glad to see the white nationalists speaking publicly what they've always said and believed privately. Because see, because it's now become real, now they got no choice. There's no such thing as dog whistle anymore.

No, they're hollering. They're screaming. They're yelling. They're saying exactly what the whole deal is. Donald Trump was the embodiment of white supremacy. And Donald Trump said stuff not giving a damn, and the rest of the party was like,

oh, well, we don't have to listen to Lee Atwater and use other phrases. We can just go ahead and say it. We don't want y'all asses here. The travel ban, that's all that was about. We do not want people of color.

What did Trump say? Why can't we get more people from Denmark? What was he saying? Hey, we need more white people. Game, recognize game. So, Jason, what our response has to be is to say, thank you. I appreciate you showing your sheets without the hoods.

No, I agree. Number one, people from Denmark don't want to come here because they've got universal health care and a lot of things that we need here in this country. But I think you gave where he talked about, you know, a wolf and a sheep, excuse me, a wolf and a fox. You know, a wolf lets you know who they are and you can see them coming. A fox pretends to be with you while he's sizing you up the entire time. And so I'm actually glad that people like Donald Trump have exposed a lot of these members of Congress, a lot of people who are celebrities, a lot of others. We know who they are and what they represent now. And I think that's actually a good thing. Like, you know, I don't, you know, I'm not shocked anymore when these people expose themselves and show exactly who

they are, what they stand for, the policy that they stand for. And I think one of the scary things, though, and I see what Miss Tiffany is saying, is, you know, the fact that it's been so mainstreamed to be hostile to people of color, whether it's Muslims or whether it's immigrants from Central America. It's become so mainstream to speak so openly about being hostile to those groups that it's going to be uncomfortable. But I think, again, like the brother was saying earlier, we just have to continue to fight against that and to make end roads that way. Bottom line is, folks, we got to know exactly what

we're dealing against and we got to prepare folks for it. Let's go to Georgia, where an FBI investigation uncovered text messages from a former Middle George sheriff's deputy bragging about how he had beaten a black person he arrested and planned to charge black Georgians with felonies to keep them from voting. Cody Richard Griggers was fired by the Wilkinson County Sheriff's Department for affiliating with an extremist chat group called Shadow Moses. He wrote he felt sweet stress relief after he beat the shit out of a black suspect in those chats. Earlier this week, Griggers pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of possession of an unregistered firearm. He faces up to 10 years in prison for the firearm charge. I wonder what the people are going to say. It's only a few bad apples,

Teresa. Yeah, it's just very interesting. I mean, it's also draining. But charging black people with felonies to prevent them from voting is, again, it goes to prior marriage to our last segment where we're talking about they are out front. Conservatives are out front. They're pushing every narrative they can. They're being bold about it. But I don't foresee black advocacy groups and organizations really taking this on the chin and allowing this to happen because people are understanding where their vote matters. They're understanding that it is their time to allow their voice to be heard. So I think there is probably going to be more to this than really meets the eye that this deputy is doing. But it's not a surprise. We've seen other chat groups released, information released, Michael,

showing what these cops are saying and thinking in them and their being who they are. That's why I support the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security weeding out extremists and going through this. Exactly what should be happening. That should be happening on the state level, the county level, the city level,

school police as well. We should be ridding all of these institutions, systemic racism, Laura Ingram, as well as all of you crazy Republicans. This is what systemic racism is. Absolutely. And, you know, hopefully Tim Scott is taking notes. Hopefully he doesn't get caught one day and they don't know, they don't recognize him. Maybe they think he's a much mouth from Fat Albert and the Cosby kids because if you do a side by side, he does kind of resemble him. But anyway, so what you know, when they have these conversations like on Fox News about racism and Ron DeSantis, right, they never define what racism is. You ever notice that he wants to talk about individuals. Racism is a group-to-group relationship.

Racism is a system of advantage and privilege distributed based upon race, which comes out of the ideology of European white supremacy. When you look at something like this, there's a history of felony disenfranchisement. And we see this going back to right after

1870, when the 15th Amendment is ratified, okay? And it's designed to help keep African Americans from being able to vote, okay? So after the 15th Amendment gave African American men the right to vote, then you start seeing these laws put in place in various states, especially southern states, where you lose your voting rights if you have a felony. Okay, so the question, all the people who say it doesn't, you lose your voting rights if you have a felony.

Okay, so the question, all the people who say it doesn't... you know, voting doesn't matter, they should ask the question, why is this officer, uh, Cody Griggers, former officer, why is he trying to keep African Americans from voting? So, yeah, but this is... this is deep. And this is in Georgia. And Georgia is the same state where, uh,

uh, Ahmaud Arbery was killed. And Georgia's the same state where you have SB202, which in the state legislature is trying to keep African Americans from voting. I'm real clear what we're facing, folks. We just have to understand that. Let's go to North Carolina, where a sheriff has put four officers involved in the shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr. back on active duty. Sheriff Tommy Wooten announced he reinstated four out of seven in a press release, stating, after reviewing the preliminary conclusions of the independent

investigators conducting the internal review, and after carefully examining the body camera footage of the incident with my own staff, it's obvious that four of the deputies never fired their weapons and deserve to be reinstated to active duty. The other three deputies will remain on leave until investigations are completed. Now, recently discovered Facebook posts. Now, first of all, before I go talk about the judge, I want you to go back to that statement, please. Pull it up. Here's what's a trip here, Jason. He says, after reviewing the preliminary conclusions of the independent investigators conducting the internal review, first of all, the sheriff has never announced who these

independent investigators are. So how do we know they're independent? Like, seriously. I mean, like, we don't know. I have, I don't, who the hell are the independent people? Right, right. I mean, and that's the thing with this whole situation is the fact that there's no transparency.

You know, they show a little small, what is it, a 30-second clip to the family. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. 20 seconds. They don't show them the larger context. The family is not allowed to do. They're saying they did a careful review. Why can't the family or at least their attorneys go in there and also

do a careful review? Transparency is key. And particularly if you're trying to gain the trust of your community as a police executive, one of the first things you should be concerned with is transparency. And it's completely lacking here. He's like, yeah, we had some folks look at it and I looked at it. So I'm just going to absolve, you know, more than half of the officers involved. And that's not gaining any confidence from anybody in his community, particularly the African-American people, that justice is going to be done either now or in the future. So I think this is a terrible, terrible way that this sheriff is handling this.

And hopefully people will take note in other parts of the country and see how important transparency is. That's why you have the body camera is so that the rest of us can feel safe. And if only a select few people are able to review it, then it's like it's not even there. Well, how about this here, folks? I recently discovered a Facebook post from the account of the judge who blocked the release of that footage. I suggest he is extremely pro-law enforcement. Shocker.

In 2013, Judge Jeffrey Foster posted his support of George Zimmerman, saying George Zimmerman was found not guilty of all charges. He should have never been charged. The jury did the right thing. Fox News got it right again, and Nancy Grace has proven once again what an idiot she is. I'm now watching a bitter prosecutor rail and then deny it was about race. Shameful to the end. In 2016, he expressed his feelings against kneeling during the national anthem, and just last year he posted this pro-police image, which is said to represent the thin line between life and death of police officers' face. Hmm. No shock.

All right, folks, this is really bothering lots of HBCU graduates. Students and faculty are upset at Elizabeth State University because of their decision to house out-of-town officers responding to protest. Students feel betrayed after learning officers are moving into dorms they were ordered to evacuate due to safety concerns. After receiving a lot of backlash on social media, the university release said this, quote, we are doing the best we can to support our community during this difficult time, working to ensure that citizens can exercise their First Amendment right to protest safely and peacefully. As a public university, ECSU has an obligation to support other public agencies in times of need,

just as we count on their help when the campus makes a request. None of the rooms being used were previously occupied by students. The decision to close Residence Hall made on Sunday was made in anticipation of the city of Elizabeth City declaring a state of emergency on Monday morning. OK, so we were there on Monday, Michael. They declared the state of emergency. The school system said, oh, no classes. We're going to be all virtual.

I'm sorry. There's no riot. Folks aren't losing their mind. We were there Monday and Tuesday. There was no need for that. Elizabeth City State University, y'all screwed up. Let those students back in their dorms. It really sounds like they screwed up.

One, two, this causes a hardship for the students and their families hopefully hopefully all the students were able to find somewhere to stay i mean it's not you know when you have to go home unexpectedly like that all right it's not guaranteed that you know especially with covid going on right now okay uh and you know they made that when their family members or parents or what have you may have to quarantine because they have COVID or something like this, you know, this is a hardship. But to then have to house police officers there, I mean, why didn't they put police officers at hotels? Why didn't, you know, this doesn't make any sense whatsoever, you know, so they should get backlash. But I want to know, like, who made this decision? Like, what was your thought process, okay, in this era where you have African Americans fighting

to hold police accountable, okay? And at the same time, we're about to have a massive number of foreclosures and evictions because of COVID. What was your thought process to send students home, staying in the dorms at an HBCU, and let police officers stay there? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Teresa? Yeah, it's a smack in the face to the entire movement. Honestly, if I was a student at that school, I'd probably pull my tuition or ask them to give me a scholarship because it entirely disrespects the entire movement. And essentially, it looks like leadership isn't paying attention. So to do the opposite, it really is troubling. And I think those students really need answers to some of the decisions that's being made at that university. Yeah, I would think so as well.

Jason, your comment on this, please. Yeah, I'll just say that I'm sure some donors to Elizabeth's City State University are watching. And I think a lot of being a university employee myself, I know that universities think a lot about donors. So I think that some donors need to maybe make some phone calls to some of the high ranking of administrators and officials there at the university. And there need to be some conversations had on behalf of these students and maybe even get in touch with some of the student leadership there. And they both talk to these people. phase B where there will be protests, people coming on, media programs, and talking about the failures of the administration at Elizabeth City State University. All right, then, folks. The family of Makia Bryant gathered today to say their final goodbyes. While Columbus Police Officer Nicholas Reardon and family shot the black teen,

16-year-old teen, on April 20th, body camera footage from the incident, showed the Bryant with a knife. Now, of course, folks, the funeral took place on today. We can show the video of that. It was certainly a solemn for the family to have to bury the 16 year old. They still are demanding justice in the case of, in her particular case. It was, again, a case that that that that that shot lots of people. And in fact, this is some video here. I'm going to pull it up, y'all, that there was a COVID. There were a lot of COVID protocols taking place at the funeral. And this is some of that video footage of the folks giving a standing ovation to the mother of McKea Bryant during the funeral. And so certainly a very, very sad story having to bear the 16-year-old. A lot of people,

a lot of people have been talking about the aftermath of this particular case. And one of the things that we also are hearing, which I do think is important that folks have to deal with is how we deal with our anger or frustration. Michael, what I'm talking about is what we have been hearing is this clash between Makia and other foster kids. I think about the Isaiah Brown story in Virginia, Spotsylvania, where he and his brother were arguing. Isaiah Brown's story in Virginia, Spotsylvania,

where he and his brother were arguing. Isaiah says, man, I'm gonna take this gun and kill you, calls the cops. Isaiah ends up being shot 10 times by the cops. It really is also important that folk resolve their family differences before calling the cops. Yes. And because that's significant.

That calling the cops as a bailout, we see has led to black deaths. Yeah, you're right about that, brother. You know, we're dealing with the need for conflict resolution skills. It's so much, man. It's dealing with, you know, and not blaming anybody,

but just trying to understand. I mean, because there are details dealing with Makia Bryant that we don't have. But you're just trying to understand, okay, why was she in foster care? What happened? Not blaming anybody, not blaming her family, anything like that.

But how did she end up in foster care? Why didn't any of the adults... It appeared, looking at the video, it appeared that there were some adults standing around. Why didn't they jump in and break this stuff up? You know, why are they still fighting and the police are already on the scene? It's just a number of different things.

Uh, but yeah, you know, it's a tragedy, and then they have to bury their sister, 16 years old, man. And I think we all going to need some mental counseling, man, between the George Floyd, between the Derek Chauvin trial and hearing George Floyd beg for his life day after day and seeing that video. But behind a Makia Bryant, behind Andrew Brown. And you and I, you know, I do radio six days a week. So a lot of this stuff, man, I consume more than, like, maybe the average person does.

And, you know, I probably cried more probably this past month, man, than maybe about the past two years. So, you know, this is deep. Absolutely, it is. And so that, Jason, I think, again, we have to deal with that. Again, we can have a conversation separate from the shooting with a conflict resolution because we've seen too many cases where African-Americans have called the cops for family disputes and somebody black has ended up dead. Yeah, I think, you know, family disputes, mental health crises, we have to find another way other than turn into law enforcement.

I think they're also with the with the case of Makia Bryant. I think there needs to be some reforms to the foster care system as well. But I definitely think that you and Michael Imhotep are absolutely right in that we, and I know emotionally, you know, there's a thing, there's something that's being researched right now. A couple articles have been written about it. It's called linked fate. And that is that when black people see another black person die, particularly in circumstances that could have been avoided,

you start to put yourself in that circumstance or you put your loved ones in that circumstance, and it can be harmful to your own mental health. And so there's been, you know, a lot of debate over whether we should share those videos that show Black death in that way. And I think the Makia Bryant case where you saw, you know, I watched TikTok videos of her doing little cute dances. She was just a child. And somewhere, you know, so many things went wrong. And we need to find another way, absolutely, for conflict resolution and for mental health crises, because we could be saving a lot of our own lives, saving a lot of lives of our brothers and sisters if we can figure those things out.

And maybe we need to have some separate number in our communities that we can call where people can come and resolve those kinds of conflicts and resolve mental health crises without having to involve people with, you know, with deadly force and with guns showing up. Absolutely. Folks, I go to a quick break. We come back. Our Education Matters segment, President Joe Biden's education plan, what will it mean for black students and families? That is next on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

What still impacts and what creates change is when we mobilize. When we say we're not powerless and if I get with you and you and you and all of a sudden it's ten to twenty to a hundred and five hundred and two thousand five thousand all of a sudden you have mobilized people that creates that voting power and then when you throw somebody out it catches their attention real quick but not only just that they have to know what it is that they're

standing for. Because if you have friends that talks politics, then of course we're having a decent conversation and I'm being educated at the same time. But if my group of people are not talking about that, then I still don't know. So I can unite with you and then I'm making sure that you have the voice. But what if you don't have the courage to speak? So you're still getting a group of people together that don't know how to do nothing. Carl Payne pretended to be Roland Martin. Holla!

Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. president joe biden is proposing expanding free education for by four years the american family plan adds two years of pre-kindergarten and two years of post-high school to the existing education system at no cost. Shavar Jeffries is president for Democrats for Education Reform, who joins us right now.

Shavar, glad to have you on the show. How critical is this? This is a great thing if we can get it through Congress, Roland, and of course, great to be here with you. You know, the investments that President Biden seeks to make both in preschool as well as in post-secondary education is really essential. We know that a high school diploma, frankly, isn't enough for what we're going to need, particularly for folks in our community and the black community to be able to access the labor market

and make the type of money where they can put food on the table and take care of their families. So this investment in resources is really powerful. Part of what we push though is we got to be able to marry resources with accountability and also innovation in public education. But the resources are a critical foundation. And so if we can get this through Congress, it'd be really a powerful first step. Also, the focus on pre-kindergarten is vital because what we're talking about here is really trying to get students engaged much earlier than usual so they're not falling behind, especially black and brown children. Amen. Amen. You know, we know so many of our children, when they hit kindergarten, they're already a year or two behind. And we know that, frankly, third grade literacy rates is a significant early indicator of whether kids are going to be on track for college and

competitive careers. So making sure that our kids don't start kindergarten already behind is a critical step. Too many parts of the country, folks simply don't have access to preschool opportunities. And so this investment, again, if we can get it through college, really be powerful and transformational. We're gonna have to continue push for accountability because sometimes the checks get written and then our kids don't always get what they're supposed to get,

but the resources are the critical foundation. So then we can hold our state's account and make sure that there's quality programs available for kids in our community. Jason, how big is this idea of pre-kindergarten education? Jason? Oh, yes. No, I think that that's incredibly important.

When kids fall behind, and I visited some schools where I've talked to some kindergarten teachers, and they're like, the difficulty is that some kids come in not knowing their letters or not knowing their numbers. And then you have other kids who can read. And so you're either going to leave those kids who are not who haven't learned prior to kindergarten, haven't been into a school setting prior to kindergarten behind, or the other kids are going to get bored. And a lot of times you find a happy medium, but that often still leaves those other kids behind. And so making sure that every child gets universal pre-K is incredibly important to the future of our country and particularly for our community, for Black kids. For them to have access to education earlier is going to put them on track, as Brother Shaver said,

put them on track to do well later on in life. So I think that that's so important, and hopefully we'll actually tackle it with this administration. But, Shavar, what also has to happen is our community has to be mobilized and organized to ensure and demand that those resources be allocated properly on the local level. Amen. That's critical. We see this in K-12 already.

So it's a beautiful thing to get these additional resources for universal pre-K. As you said, Roland, equity is essential in allocation. We got to get these resources allocated to the highest poverty schools, the schools with the highest percentages of black and brown students. And then again, we got to hold the system accountable because we have seen in many of our school districts where checks get written,

but our children don't always get the education that they deserve. We need the resources. That's critical. Thank goodness for President Biden to take this step. Then we got to make sure our local advocates, our local families, our local leaders are holding the system accountable to make sure our kids get the type of education that they deserve.

Teresa. Yeah, I'm looking forward to President Biden actually, you know, coming through with this. And again, you're right. It's not about just checks written. It's about real resources. Not only, you know, I'm in Philadelphia, so obviously we are probably on the scale of, you know, 100 when it comes to knowing what real reforms will look like when these resources come, but being allocated effectively is also another thing. So essentially, you know, also hopefully this plan, and I didn't look at it thoroughly,

but it also includes charter schools, because, um, here in Philadelphia, there is a need where most families, African-American families, that they, um, are having a hard time in public schools, they did take their child to, um, charter schools. So hopefully there could be some sort of balance in there as well.

Shavar? Well, that's a critical issue. You know, there is a federal charter school program appropriation that will be coming up for a vote as part of the federal budget. President Biden, during his campaign, said he supports non-profit public charter schools, and he believes that parents should have a right to select that school. We have to keep our eyes open and make sure that those dollars actually get into the federal budget. But this is a critical time. It's important for folks to know black students, we have been disproportionately hurt by the school closures, the lack of the internet infrastructure to even access remote learning. Even if you had that internet access, it was oftentimes black students who were learning in

what's called an asynchronous way, which meant that rather than a teacher teaching live on the platform, the parent and the student had to go online into the cloud and find the lesson. When you put all of this together, early reports are showing that because of the pandemic, Black students may lose up to one year of learning because of the pandemic. And we already only had about 25, 30 percent of Black students on grade level anyway. So this could be a generational set of consequences for our families and our communities. We're going to need all of our advocates

to push for these dollars, to raise our voices and hold these local systems accountable to make sure they're actually working for our kids. The President. Mr. Hello, Brother Shavar. Question for you here. So there's $109 billion to offer two years of free community college to all Americans. Explain, why is that significant? I think it is, but I've heard some people say, well, people can already go to community college for free and get Pell Grants. Everybody doesn't qualify for a Pell Grant, but this is the argument some people are making. So explain why this change here is so significant,

and how will it benefit African Americans? It's an important step because we still have some states, so there are certain states that have already, as you point out, made community first two years of community college free to get an associate's degree. There are many other states, particularly in the Southeast, Southwest, that aren't there yet. So to make those resources available, that is very significant. We should be very clear, however, that community colleges have very low graduation rates for Black students. You're talking oftentimes less than 10, 15 percent in community colleges. Our children are generally better off to get to a four-year college out of high school. Community colleges ought to be reimagined, in my view, as a workforce

development space for those folks who, for whatever reason, college may not make sense for them. But we got to be very clear. We got to hold these systems accountable to produce. Sometimes folks write the check, have a nice press conference, and walk away. But then it's our kids, where it's only 15 out of 100 who are graduating from these community colleges. And so it's a nice step. It's important. There's many states that don't have free community colleges, so that's significant. But actually holding these systems accountable to produce for our community is the step that we have to hold folks accountable for.

All right. Sherrod Jeffries, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thanks for having for. All right. Sherrod Jeffries, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right, folks. In Connecticut, five nooses were found on different floors throughout an Amazon construction site. Police say there are no surveillance cameras and the facility is

accessible to hundreds of employees from various companies. Authorities have collected the ropes for investigation. There are no suspects at this time. All right. Y'all know what time it is. South Carolina Fire Chief is apologizing for making racially insensitive comments on his Facebook page. Francis Butch Gent posted this to Facebook. Dear police, stop responding to these black neighborhoods. They will eventually kill each other and the fake news won't have a story.

After receiving heavy black backlash from city leaders and community members, Jent said he guessed, quote, guesses it was racially insensitive and he didn't mean it that way. Once word of the post got back to Lancaster County officials, Jent deleted the post and released the following statement. I would like to apologize to the black community of Lancaster and throughout the country. The post I made on Facebook was not meant to be an attack, not meant to attack you, but rather a jab at the news media. My father instilled in me that the police were to be respected and honored no matter what. The media has done everything they can to demonize them to get a story in the ratings.

After the police shot and killed a teenage girl trying to kill another girl, the media said he went too far, but if he had let her kill the other girl, then they would have said he should have done more. The police can't win in these violent confrontations. I lost it and made that post. The wording was very inappropriate,

but anger blinded my judgment. I would also like to apologize to my family, the fire department, Lancaster County Fire Service, and to the leaders of Lancaster County, I hope that my actions haven't put you in harm's way. I have served the residents of Lancaster County for over 40 years. I don't see color in the residents that I serve.

I help whomever calls with dignity and respect. I have many black friends and neighbors that I more than likely have offended. I am truly sorry. I made a mistake, and I'm very sorry for it. I again ask for your forgiveness. Maybe Teresa, he's a diabetic and maybe his sugar levels caused him to express a level of outrage like the white man in Oklahoma. You know what? It's so interesting because I looked at the time stamp on that post and it was at 1040 at night, so likely he was watching

Laura's show on Fox. Like Fox News! So, you know, and just felt the courage. So, again, feel the courage, you know, when they say they don't see color, I think that's a subliminal racist statement in itself. I think, you know,

when we say we don't see the people that is next to us, that we are different and that we come from different places. But we only hear their voice and we only hear their stories. But they do know when officers and others that are sent to us to protect and serve, they are looking at the situation and they are seeing color and they are reacting differently. The whole I don't see color thing. Oh, yeah. Very interesting. Michael, I don't see color,

but I specifically pointed out black people in my post. Well, yeah. Usually when people say they don't see color, they usually say that to the people whose color they see. It's usually, oftentimes after they get caught saying something stupid like this.

So, you know, brother, there's this whole climate where people feel comfortable with their white supremacy. There's this whole climate. Okay? And we have to expose this and let people OK, and we have to expose this and and that people know this.

We're not going to tolerate this. This is not acceptable. But at the same time, you know, this is an example of what happens when about 10 seconds, about 10 seconds when you have people who are ignorant of history. I'll leave it there. I know you think about 30 seconds before I got to go to break. Then we go to our summer cast of the Young Turks. Your final comment. Yeah, I'll just say that it wasn't racially insensitive. It was racist. And, you know, I'm glad that he showed himself for who he is.

So those people, those black people who knew him for 40 years, that he is now calling friends. I bet you they probably never seen the inside of his house, never done anything with him. I hope that, you know, now they know who he is and he's exposed himself for who he is. So I think that's a good thing. All right, then. Jason, Teresa, Michael, I certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot for joining us in the first hour of Roller Martin Unfiltered.

All right, y'all, for the second hour, a simulcast. Never done this before. A simulcast with the folks at the Young Turks. That is next, folks. No, we're not playing that, y'all. That's too long. So again, so in about 30 seconds or so, we're going to be going with the folks with the Young Turks at the top of the hour. So looking forward to that. Let's do this here, folks. Let's go ahead and roll our, let's do this here. We're going to first roll our, first of all, airing right now on Facebook.

Let's go to your Facebook page. It's pinned at the top. The conversation, the intergenerational conversation between Tiffany Lofton and Dr. Janetta B. Cole. Here's a preview of that conversation. You go to our Facebook page right now, you can actually see the full 15 minutes. Watch this. Have lost the ability to focus the discipline on the art of organizing. It takes all of y'all to represent your generation. The African proverb says, the young go fast.

The elders know the way. That is so freaking dope. What a powerful combination. The challenges, there's so many of them, and they're complex. And we need to be moving to address them. But I'm able to say, watch out, Tiffany. I know this one. Like you said, giving folks the wisdom and we can go fast together.

It happens in a lot of spaces. I don't think it happens enough. All right, so if you go to our Facebook page right now, you will see that conversation with Dr. Janetta B. Cole and Tiffany Lofton. Monday at 11 a.m. Eastern, we're going to drop this intergenerational conversation. Ambassador Andrew Young and Cliff Albright, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter. George Floyd's death hopefully put another nail in the coffin of racism. You talk about awakening America, it led to a historic summer of protest.

I hope our younger generation don't ever forget that nonviolence is soul force. Right. All right, folks. Again, that conversation is going to debut at 11 a.m. on Monday. Trust me, you want to see that discussion. All right, folks. let me thank all the people who have given to our Bring the Funk fan club. Everybody who gives $50 or more, it's a personal

shout-out, so let me shout-out Sharon Ewing, Cheryl Dugan, Michael Goodman, John Baycott, Juan Bivens, Dora Severin, Joyce Neely, Pastor Dwight McKissick Sr., Wendell Fells, Linda Mitchell, also Eric Koontz, Elizabeth Randall, Regina Hubbard, Jarius Finney, Dee August, Preston Henry Terry, Chanson Taylor, and Lisa Jenkins.

Folks, if y'all want to support what we do here at Roland Martin Unfiltered, all you got to do is go to our, you can give to us a variety of ways. Cash app, dollar sign, RMUnfiltered, paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered. You can also support us at Venmo, please, graphic please, venmo.com forward slash rm unfiltered. You can also Zelle, Roland at Roland S. Martin.com. Control Room, graphic, thank you. Again, for our Bring the Funk fan club, again, you can support us, Cash App, dollar sign,

rm unfiltered, paypal.me forward slash rm unfiltered, venmo.com forward slash rm unfiltered.pal.me forward slash r martin unfiltered venmo.com forward slash rm unfiltered zale is rolling at rolling this martin.com or rolling at rolling martin unfiltered.com all right folks just a few seconds we're going to be joining this time with the young turks um young turks can y'all hear and see me? Yes. I can hear you. Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, all right. They can hear me? Can they see me?

I had a break. I'll get my waters in the fridge. Yes, we can see you. All right, y'all can see me? You can hear me. Guys, can I see them in the preview, please? He's asking his people. All right.

We're about to come back live on the show right now. Cool. All right. So Cenk's going to take control of it. And you're going to see in program, one of your feeds is the Young Turks. And Cenk's going to count in. You're going to see him introduce the segment. Cool.

Last rules on this, getting to go fly, take off, then it's no cursing. And we're going to have Cenk count us in. Damn. All right. Let's do it. Get it's no cursing, and we're going to have a drink. Damn. Count us in. All right, let's do it. Get it all out. Is damn OK? All right, let's go. I'm going to start with the story with that fire chief.

It's the media. Coming in. It's the media. It was the media. You're just an idiot, idiot. You're just an idiot, dude. That's what you are. And he should lose his job. He should lose his job.

Drop it. Y'all, what the... All right. We got a new power panel. Look at this. Jay Guger, J.R. Jackson, Roland Martin, everybody. What's going on? Roland, how you doing?

I'm actually live on my show as well. So we're simulcasting Roland Martin, Unfiltered, and the Young Turks. No, I love it. I love it. It's our first simulcast ever. Proud to do it with you. Everybody check it out. And, of course, he's the host and managing editor of the hashtag Roland Martin Unfiltered.

Okay, and get a load of this. Fun new announcement for you guys. Roland has joined our Facebook channel partner program. So now part of the TYT network as well role Martin Great to have you brother glad to have you as well, and I noticed somebody's wearing a Knicks hat They've sucked for the last 30 years, but it's amazing how all of a sudden they're cracking out all their fresh gear So and as a Houston Rockets fan, you know, we did beat them in the finals, but I give it to them Y'all finally have a team. Congratulations. Well, I mean, there's a thing. You have to go back to 94 or something before you talk about.

Y'all got to go back to the original shaft when it came out. Which you have to also realize, too, I have a plethora of hats. I'm actually a Clippers fan. So those will be the ones. So why are you wearing a Knicks hat then? Why are you fronting? What are you talking about, Roll? You know black folks wear hats that go with an outfit rather than a team.

What's the matter with you? I only rock the city that I cheer for. Stop sitting here wearing somebody else's stuff. No, that's done. That's weak. Come on. I'm going to send you a TY t-shirt and see if you rock that for us. No, no.

I'll wear a TY t-shirt, but I'm saying if that's not your team, don't rock the gear. It is now. All right. So, by the way, for members, more of this. Roland's going to join us in the postgame. Roland and JR have been known to hustle before. Oh, he's not.

Oh, he's got the sidewalk hat. All right. Well, then JR and I will do it. No, I'm here. I'm going to talk to him about it, Roland, in the postgame. No, I'm here. I thought we were here for the next hour. Yeah, yeah, we are.

The postgame's afterwards. Oh, okay. Gotcha. All right. I'll post them up later. Okay, all right. Sounds good. All right, guys, we got a lot of news,

and JR's gonna take us through it. So, JR, go ahead. Let's do it. So, a day-long panel discussion about President Biden's plan to raise taxes on the rich and corporations in order to pay for some of his agenda,

it devolved into a discussion about raising taxes on the poorest of the poor. Try and figure that out. So this all started when Ben Shapiro, who was on the panel, was sick and tired of the richest in the country getting fleeced by the government. So when he heard that Joe Biden was pushing something to raise taxes to make sure these things happen, he was screaming at his TV. So I'll let him do the talking. I was screaming at the television when he was talking about taxes. Because what he is saying is so obviously asinine.

When he says that rich people don't pay their fair share in this country, that is just an abject, disgusting lie. It is a lie. The top 10% of income earners in this country pay all net taxes. Not some of the net taxes, all of the net taxes, because net taxes are defined as what you pay into the government minus what you get back from the government. When he says they're not paying their fair share, the only thing he means by they're not paying their fair share is it should be nearly all of your income goes to the federal government. And when he says things like, I'm not going to tax

anybody who's making under $400,000 a year, he is lying to you through his teeth. When he says I'm going to tax corporations, corporations are not human beings for purposes of taxes. The money that would have been passed on to you via income is being taxed up here. Corporations are going to have to raise prices in order to deal with the taxation effects. When he says that I'm going to tax all of these rich people on their capital gains taxes, what do you think those rich people are going to do rather than put their money in the stock market where they get taxed on capital gains? They're not going to put their money in the stock market. So what happens to your 401k? And what happens to the businesses that hire you when Joe Biden decides that your boss needs to be taxed out of existence in order so that he can determine where

the dollars go? This jackass who's never created a single job in his entire life. Oh, my God. So there's a lot there. I hope you guys took notes for what you're going to respond to. But first, I want to get to some of the points about what he was talking about with the rich and the corporations paying too much in taxes. And maybe they're going to be taxed out of existence. So from the Los Angeles Times, Laura Davidson did point out the head of the IRS calculated that tax evasion in the U.S. may total one trillion dollars a year, a figure that's multiples higher than previous estimates from the federal government. She went on to say a study released last month, which included two IRS officials as authors, found that the richest 1% of Americans don't report about 20% of their income to the IRS. Those individuals are able to use pass-through businesses and offshore structures to shield

their income from the IRS's view. The study also said that. So collecting that money would boost tax collections by $175 billion a year is what this study found. Now let's move on to the largest corporations and what they had to do last year. We've heard about a little bit of this, especially the fact that we went through that COVID year when a lot of people's entire lives were destroyed economically. So let's look at what some of the corporations did last year. 55% of the nation's largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in did last year. 55% of the nation's largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in profits last year. That's according to an analysis

by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy. It's a progressive think tank. In fact, they received a combined federal rebate of more than $3 billion, billion dollars, for an effective tax rate of about negative 9%. Last I checked, negative 9% was less than zero. One more part. By all appearances, the companies described in this report

appear to be using entirely legal means to reduce their tax bills. Many of the tax provisions these companies are using exist because they themselves have lobbied heavily for their creation. Again, their money has gone to lobbying politicians to make sure that the law is a certain way that they can have these tax havens, openings, loopholes, whatever you want to call them, from the richest and the corporations. But Ben Shapiro is still upset because they're paying way too much in taxes. In fact, they're paying all of it. So you at home who is not a corporation

or the richest 1%, you're not paying anything. You're doing nothing for this country. So I'm going to get to the taxes that the poor are paying in a minute because they're going to attack the poor in a minute. We'll show you that too. But first on the poor, poor corporations. First, you've got these five seemingly rich guys sitting around smoking cigars in a nice room with nice whiskey, et cetera, going, oh, yeah, the real problem is poor people, man.

Oh, the rich have it real tough. And then they turn around, and he does a spirited defense of corporations. I mean, he just has the temerity to do it. That's not a popular position even in the right wing now. Tucker Carlson's hitting big corporations because the right wing is getting crushed by big business too. And he's like, oh, my poor friends in corporate America. So I want to show you one more chart here to illustrate the points that JR was

making about how little they pay in taxes. So let's show you this from 2018 corporate taxes in millions. So Amazon made $10 billion. And oh, they have a negative one percent effective tax rate that's weird now look at all these companies uh combined it's billions upon billions of dollars that they're making but delta airlines negative four percent chevron why is this giant profitable oil company paying negative four percent okay and it goes on and on. You see the rest, okay? But, guys, when they pay negative 4%, you know what that means? We are giving them money. So you pay taxes as a regular average American, and it goes to Chevron, and it goes to Amazon. It's outrageous, and they pay nothing on the billions of dollars that they make.

And Ben Shapiro thinks those poor, poor corporations, they're not getting enough of a break. Roll. Here's what Republicans have done very effectively. They have convinced broke-as-hell white people to rally in support of rich people. Mississippi, how much of their money is from the federal government? South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas.

I can go on and on and on. The brokest states in America are red states. But all these broke white people keep supporting Republican policies, and they actually think it's benefiting them. And I'm sitting there going, are y'all nuts? They are not helping you at all. And so part of this deal is, and if you want to really understand how to play, when Dr. King gave a speech in Montgomery after the Selma to Montgomery march, he remarked about a particular book, I can't think of right now, but he mentioned it in his book. He said where poor white folks had aligned with freed slaves and they began to make political changes. The bourbon class, that's what it was called, because it's great that you remarked the cat sitting there drinking, smoking cigars.

The bourbon class said, oh, we can't have this. So what did they do? King said they used the media to drive a wedge between poor whites and freed blacks. That's how they were effectively able to use white supremacy. And that's what led to Jim Crow. So what you have is you're the likes of white supremacists, white nationalists like Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire, The Daily Call Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, Breitbart, Fox News, all the right wing,

they've got all these broke white people saying, that's bad against you. And it's kind of like, no, no, no, no. Y'all are broke. So Biden is actually trying to help all of you broke white conservatives. But y'all instead would rather stand and support trying to help all of you broke white conservatives, but y'all instead would rather stand and support all of these rich folks

who don't give a damn about any of y'all. So, you know, I often talk about if you want to see who is causing the problems in this country, don't look down, look up. It's the people with the power that set the rules. So if you don't like the rules, people with the power that set the rules. So if you don't like the rules, it's the folks that made those rules. And guess who made the rules? Rich people. Of course, of course. And campaign contributions and the lobbyists, et cetera. You know how many lobbyists poor white folks have? None. Poor black folks, none.

Poor Latinos or poor immigrants, none. Okay. Rich folks and corporations have tons and tons of lobbyists. And yes, Roland is right. They finance these propaganda outlets like the Daily Wire and Ben Shapiro and all those guys. They literally have billionaires, right-wing billionaires, giving them money to do their shows, not an investment, just cold cash. You keep it as long as you say what we tell you to say. What do they tell them to say? What you just saw. Rich people are awesome. Corporations are awesome. Only the problem is the poor. J.R., we got the clip on that? Yes. Well, the only problem now is you guys haven't been listening to Jeremy Boring spit some

facts. So let's listen to him talking about who the real problem, who the real beneficiaries are of our tax system in America. The people who don't pay their fair share in this country are the poor. We need to raise taxes on the poor. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. The poor in this country pay zero. The lower middle class in this country pay net zero. So we have a group of people who pay no taxes, a group of people who pay no net taxes, a group of people who pay all the net taxes. And his argument is that it's category three who don't pay their fair share. Fair share means your percentage of taxes. We've determined that there are some people who shouldn't pay any percent of taxes. Reality on its head. They've determined, he said, who the they is. They've determined that there's a certain group that should pay

zero in taxes. You're right. It's just not the group that you're talking about. So in what way would you raise taxes on the poor? What part of a $10,000 income a year would you raise? To what percentage of that $10,000 a year income would you raise, Mr. Boring? I'm not sure.

But watch this. Go ahead, man. Watch this here. This is what you have to understand. The shell game. A few years ago, Alabama, Riley, I think, guy's the governor.

He says, I'm going to use Jesus as the example for why we should change our tax policy in Alabama. Literally, it was what would Jesus do? He said, in Alabama, I believe, they start taxing the poor at $5,600.

So he said, look, we need to raise it. This makes no sense. In law 6535, guess who were the folks who opposed it more than anybody else? The Chamber of Commerce supported it. Guess who opposed it? White conservative evangelicals. Why am I saying that?

Because white conservative evangelicals love talking about Jesus when it comes to abortion, when it comes to same-sex marriage, but they love skipping the part when Jesus talked about the poor. See, they don't want to deal with that. They don't want to deal with the Bible on that. But they love talking about rich folk. The Bible was clear what Jesus had to say about rich being able to get into heaven and poor folks. But no, they want to pimp God. They want to pimp Jesus. And all of these right wing white conservative evangelicals don't give a flip about the poor. All they care about are rich donors. And that's why they are all evangelical Christian frauds. And I'm talking to you, Dr. Robert Jeffers, Ralph Reed, Franklin Graham and I can and Paula White.

And I can go on and on and on. Y'all don't care about the poor in this country because if you did, you would be supporting Biden's tax plan. So, now, let me also correct them on the record. So, look, just watching those five guys sipping their bourbon or whiskey or whatever it is. By the way, nice charcuterie board. I'll give them that, okay, if you notice on the table. And go, ah, the real problem is the poor.

It's not an SNL sketch. Right. Yeah, it's like a self-parody, right? But here, let me correct him. They all say, oh, the poor don't pay anything. That's not true. So they're only talking about the income tax because that's convenient. But there's actually tons of taxes all over the place.

One that you'll all know is the sales tax. So let me walk you through a little bit of an exercise, OK? The effect of the sales tax and what it does to the poor and the rich. So let's take a sales tax of about 8%, which is in some of the states. All the states vary on it, OK? And let's see what it does to an average minimum wage worker. Federal minimum wage in this country is $7.25. That is a yearly salary of $15,080. That's $15,000 if you work every single day, Monday through Friday, 52 days, 52 weeks a year. You don't take a single day off. Okay, $15,000.

And if you pay, now the problem is, if you got $15,000, you got to spend the whole $15,000. You got to spend it on food, clothes, et cetera. You can't save any money. You only have $15,000 for the whole year. So you pay an 8% sales tax. Well, what does that equal? Let's take a look at it again. It equals $1,206.40.

And that's 8% of your entire income. Okay. Now, how much do you think it hurts to pay $1,200 in taxes when you only have $15,000? I know. I've been there. I've had years where I made that amount or less,

and it's brutal. Right. Okay? Right. Now, Roland, let me show you how that same sales tax affects average corporate media CEO because that's a different story

we're going to do in the show today. And it turns out they make over $28 million. It's actually nearly 29, but we gave them the benefit of the doubt and set a $28 million salary for those CEOs. Now, if they went nuts and spent 10% of their salary, $2.8 million on things that you'd get charged sales tax for, I don't know how you spend $2.8 million a year, right? But let's say they did it. We give them the benefit of the doubt. They just spent like nuts, right?

And you put a sale, 8% sales tax on that. That's $224,000. Wow. But on a $28,000 salary, that's less than 1% of your income. So the poor are paying 8% of their income, and it's killing them on a sales tax, let alone a gas tax, this tax, that tax. Okay? Whereas for the rich, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny

percentage of their income. And then they go, oh yeah, the problem is the poor aren't paying enough taxes. Now you know the reality. This is the reason why people like back in the day when Rush Limbaugh said, hey, you know what? When we're discussing Obamacare, more than ever, we're going to have health care for anyone in the country. And I want to remind everyone, now that we have this general sense of health care in our country, people are acting like that's been the norm.

Before, that argument was, hey, go to the emergency room, that's your health care. But anyway, upon that argument, Rush Limbaugh was one of the people who said, what's the matter? If something happens, it's like $15,000. It's OK. Just go and take care of it. Because they're so far detached from the regular human being that they think the amounts of money that they have is just what people are too lazy to accumulate because they're too busy flipping burgers because they just enjoy that rather than living the high life that they're on. Or maybe they have a microwave or a cell phone or a television.

And I can't believe they're living on these high on the hog expense things like this, which by the way, have been stacked up on credit cards, which we're not even going to get into the amount of things that people have to owe on and their purchasing power, because that's how people actually survive from one week to the next a lot of times, is these credit cards that then end up with high interest rates, and they have to pay back that. Then the credit goes down, and they're really screwed for every year of their existence, trying to come out of that hole. We're not talking about school loans or any of that stuff yet. All those other things that go into an expense of people who actually have to think about their

money. And I've been there as well, too, when you talk about, Jake. When I went to the grocery store and had to say, wait, no, the tax, if you have to factor in how much tax is going to go into what you're buying on necessities before you buy it, because you got to make sure your bank account's going to cover it, that's the type of life that Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring have no clue about.

But keep in mind also, we just went through the last year, and who were the people who were the frontline workers? Who were the people? Oh my God, what are we gonna do if the grocery stores are not open? The people they're talking about are the folks who are sitting here working in grocery stores, the folks at working at gas stations, and these same arrogant, arrogant white Republicans. They're the same folk who oppose a living wage. So let me, so let me get this straight. You oppose a living wage. You can't stay at $15 an hour. Then you get mad at certain food items that people buy if they actually are using government assistance. Donald Trump wanted to change the food that they received.

And so all of a sudden, so you want to strip all of that. And then you want to be so arrogant to sit there and say they're not paying their fair share biden said something and it was if you have the video it's great to show it when he made the remark that 650 of the richest people in this country earned a trillion dollars during the pandemic and he said it's time to tax them, the entire Republican side sat there on their hands because that is who their constituents are. They are liars saying they are the party of the working class. They are liars when they're saying

they're standing for the blue-collar worker. No, what the Republican Party has done is exactly what Howard Dean said in 2004. They focus on God, gays, and guns, and that gets broke white people not to be concerned about their economic condition and their pocketbook. And so what President Biden is doing is a smart strategy. He's focusing on the pocketbook and what he's challenging Republicans saying, what y'all going to do? You going to stand with the rich people? Are you going to stand with the folks who are poor and the middle class? Democrats should be driving messaging. They should be having videos, flooding, putting it out there. They should be having billboards. They should be doing local radio saying now who is standing with

the richest of the rich and who's standing with those most in need. Yeah. And look, I wish Biden would push way harder. That corporate tax rate used to be 35%. And now we're talking about 28% or 25%. But he is good on capital gains. He's got to get those passed. If he gets those passed, then we have the money to actually create more jobs in this country, which would help everyone across the board. So the Republicans that are so wrong fight so hard. I wish we can get the Democrats that talk a good game to actually walk that walk and pass these bills. So let's see how it turns out. But the one thing we all know is that everything you saw from that Shapiro broadcast was total nonsense. All right, we've got to take a quick break here.

When we come back, that story about how much the media moguls are making, there's so many more details there, how many jobs did they cut, et cetera, while making all that money. We'll be right back. All right, folks,

and we're going to go to a commercial break as well right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Don't you change. We got more in terms of bringing the funk. I believe that it's movement time again. In America today, the economy is not working for working people. The poor and the needy are being abused. You are the victims of power. And this is the abuse of economic power.

I'm 23 years old. I work three jobs. Work seven days a week. No days off. They're paying people pennies on the dollar compared to what they profit. And it is time for this to end. Essential workers have been showing up to work, feeding us, caring for us, delivering goods to us throughout this entire pandemic, and they've been doing it on a measly $7.25 minimum wage. The highest check I ever got was literally $291.

I can't take it no more. You know, the fight for 15 is a lot more than about $15 an hour. This is about a fight for your dignity. We have got to recognize that working people deserve livable wages. And it's long past time for this nation to go to 15 so that moms and dads don't have to choose between asthma inhalers and rent. I'm halfway homeless. The main reason that people end up in their cars is because income does not match housing cost.

If I could just only work one job, I can have more time with them. It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and other large corporations to get off welfare and pay their workers a living wage. And if you really want to tackle racial equity, you have to raise the minimum wage. We're not just fighting for our families, we're fighting for yours too. We need this. I'm going to fight for it until we get it. I'm not going to give up.

We just need all workers to stand up as one nation and just fight together. Families are relying on these salaries and they must be paid at a minimum $15 an hour. $15 a minimum anyone should be making to stay out of poverty. I can't take it no more. I'm doing this for not only me, but for everybody. We need 15 right now.

See what's happening. It's not just in Georgia. It's here in Florida and in 43 states across the country. Last year, I had my voting rights restored with an assist from the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. I did it for myself, but also for my future. Having children, I realized I could make a difference. So I got my voting rights restored, got registered to vote,

and I got my vote in through the postal service since I was working out in California during the football season. Now they're trying to undo that, and the hard work of so many others. They're taking away drop boxes, making it hard to vote by mail. And they're still trying to make returning citizens

pay for a poll tax just to vote. Now that we know what they're trying to do, let's stop them. Here's how. Call your legislators. Call your members of Congress. And start by signing our petition at morethanavote.org slash protect. The fight is not over. We're just

getting started. Help us help you and protect our power. George Floyd's death hopefully put another nail in the coffin of racism. You talk about awakening America, it led to a historic summer of protest. I hope our younger generation don't ever forget that nonviolence is soul force. Right. Oh, all right.

I'll tell you during the next. Here we go. Yeah, let's just bring it up so we can hear everybody. All right. Let us all ready. Yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it. So, everybody, of course, we're here in the simulcast with the Young Turks. And so in just a moment, we'll be back with the simulcast. First time they've done it. First time we've done it with them. Of course, we've done it with others.

So here we go. Let's keep the conversation going. All right. Back on the Young Church, Cenk J.R. and Role Martin with you guys today. I'm just gonna read one YouTube super chat here because it relates to the last story we did and then we'll move on to the next one. Dr. Zippy McScoots wrote in, Amazon made billions last year and paid no federal taxes. Because of Trump's tax cuts to the wealthy, I had to pay $8,000 to the IRS this year on a $65,000 salary. So this is all nonsense about, oh, no, no, no, only the rich are paying taxes. You're all, it ranged from poor to rich, and most of you are middle class. Did you pay taxes last year? Of course you did! Of course you did! So they're just, their propaganda knows no bounds.

All right, JR. Before we move on to the next one, I just want to point out, at least Roland is not a fair weather fan because his Houston Rockets are definitely not competing. Okay, moving on. We'll talk about that later, Roland. We'll talk about that later.

Y'all have sucked so long, you do not really want to have this conversation. When the best player y'all have had in the last decade has been Jeremy Lin, yeah, you might just want to move on. You might want to move on. We'll talk soon. Experts have been pointing out that the COVID issue last year was going to decimate corporate media.

So, of course, CEOs of these companies that represent things like movie theaters all the way to concert venues said that they were going to tighten their belts and help out a little bit. Take some cuts to salaries to help out. So the question now becomes, what is the grade on that? What is the results? Have they really been doing it? And for how long did they do it? Well, Variety has they pointed out Comcast said last year that CEO Brian Roberts and other executives would donate their entire salaries to COVID relief efforts from April 20 through the 2020 through the duration of this situation, quote unquote.

The duration of the situation. I'm not sure they knew how long that situation would go. But they started keeping their salaries after just six months. They go on to say some people took salary cuts, but it hasn't affected overall compensation. Most of what they lost in salary will be made up for in long-term incentives, the way you can always see. The way most folks, as they point out, people who work for these corporations, I'm not sure if they have long-term incentives with value within the company to pay for any cuts that they made last year or maybe loss of job that they had last year.

So even with the cuts, so the media industry still screws over many of its employees. A typical employee in this industry would have to work 306 years to match what the CEOs averaged in 2020 alone, just last year alone, based on each company's calculation of median worker pay. That's an improvement from 416 years in 2019

that someone would have to work, down to 306 years. Nice. They'd have to work. But it's a far higher ratio than you would see at most top U.S. corporations. So before we get some of the details of what these corporations and these CEOs made versus what their employees make, jump in, Cenk. Let me know what you think about what's going on here. Yeah. So look, I think there's an interesting story because it's not black and white issue. So if you're a company that's making a ton of money and you want to pay your CEO a lot because you think they did incredible work in building up your company. In fact, I have a perfect example of that. Hey, it's a free country.

God bless. OK, so I think the good example of that is Netflix. So they pay their executives a tremendous amount of money. Reed Hastings, co-CEO, gets forty three million dollars. Ted Sarandos, also co-CEO, gets thirty nine million dollars. OK, but look at their average employee compensation. Two hundred and nineteen thousand dollars. Holy cow. Must be good to work at Netflix. And so at least they're paying their employees a lot of money. Now, of course, little apples and oranges here. Don't get me wrong. If you're at Disney, the average employee salary is way lower. Why? Because

they've got the parks. And they've got a of other things that that's part of their network, whereas Netflix has a lot of executives that work there and they don't have parks and public facing things. So I understand it's a little apples and oranges. But also shareholder return last year was positive 67 percent. So you make a ton of money for the company, which they did. And Sarandos and Hastings have been there from the beginning, pretty much. And they built that company in essence. So you want a reward for outstanding performance and you're paying your workers? Great, great. There's nothing wrong with being rich. There's nothing wrong with being successful. That's fantastic. On the other hand, let's take AT&T as an example. Now, here's the part that drives me crazy. So you've got executives making,

Randall Stephens, he's the executive chairman, he makes $29 million. John Stankey is the CEO president, and he's making $21 million. Now, look at that. They went down negative nine, negative six and a half. So because of COVID, et cetera, it's not like they didn't feel the pain. They lost six and a half percent of a $21 million salary. Okay, now the average employee there is making $89,000. Okay, it's respectable. I don't know all the different layers and how many are executives and how many are outward facing, so it's hard to tell if that's a good number or not. But the point I wanted to make is shareholder return last year, negative 22%. Now, wait, we hear all the time, these are the smartest, the brightest, the greatest, right? And these CEOs need to be paid $20 to $40 million because they're making so much

money for their shareholders. Okay, if you're making money for the shareholders and your employees are getting paid, great, that's awesome, right? But if you lost 22%, why are you still getting the $29 million and the $21 million? Because it's rigged because they pick people that are friendly to them to put on the board. The board says, yeah, of course you should get $20 million to $40 million, whether we make money or we lose money. And that's how this game is played. Now, and I want to show you this here. We're talking about media. Anthony, show this, please. So David Zaslav, who was with Discovery, made $37.7 million last year. The previous year made

$45.8 million. OK, it was down. But here's what's interesting. And this is the key. You can come back now. This is the issue. What is the ratio? Because, you know, the public companies now must disclose the ratio. It's 565 to 1 in terms of the ratio from what he makes and the median employee, 565 to 1. Well, the reality is this, dude, the reason you can make 37 or $50 million is because of those employees. And so when Donald Trump and the Republicans pushed forward that tax cut, what, what, what were the lies being told? Oh, they're going to reinvest that. What was the lie that they sold to America?

They're going to reinvest that money in wages. They're going to reinvest that into rebuilding their infrastructure. And you know what the CEO said before it passed? No, we're not. We're going to use that money for stock buyback. And so for every one of these Republicans and the Democrats who supported it, who's running around talking about, oh yeah, it was going to spur the economy.

No, they told you, they told everybody what they were going to do with it. We're going to use the money to buy back stock to enrich the shareholders. They don't care again about those workers. They cut

to increase productivity so they can make more. I know during COVID, when I had to cut 20% of my staff, I cut my salary 75%. That's what leaders do. And trust me, I sure as hell ain't making $50 million a year. And also the way it works is they know that many of these employees, there's people around the world, not even necessarily their own employees, but employees in general are too busy worrying about, okay, how am I going to move this money around to survive? Too much to actually continue on knowing what's going on above them,

what's going on with CEO pay, what's going on with all these other things, because who has the time to track and calculate that and try to do something to push the needle in any kind of fair, equitable way for these employees? So it kind of, it generates itself. It goes back within itself because in order for the people who are working for you, who make your business,

to stop providing that for you while you screw them over, they need to not have the time to really invest in doing something about it. So it all works out just to really invest in doing something about it. So it all works out just to keep this same process going within itself. And Roland, you talked about how last year they said, oh, we're going to reinvest that money back into the salaries and then the business and infrastructure, whatever else they said. You could have had that exact same line in 1990 because they've been saying it since forever. Oh, hurry up, give us the money, and we're going to reinvest it into you

because you can only get it from us. It's like they're godlike figures or something. You can't do anything until you give it to us and we pay it back to you. Why is that the situation? But we continue to buy it, quote unquote, buying this line of garbage about how there are the overseers of whether or not anyone else can survive in the country.

Yeah, and look, guys, sometimes you got to make cuts. And COVID was a tough time. So again, I'll use Disney's example there. You got theme parks. People aren't going to theme parks. We get it, right? So you can't say, oh, they should never let go of anybody. It's sometimes not realistic. But when you tell us you're going to not get paid through the duration, COVID is the worst in November, December, January, et cetera. And you start IT IS INTERESTING. BUT WHEN YOU TELL US YOU ARE GOING TO NOT GET PAID THROUGH THE DURATION, COVID IS THE WORST IN NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, JANUARY, ETC., AND YOU START PAYING YOURSELF AGAIN IN SEPTEMBER, AND THEN YOU TELL US, NO, I TOOK A 6% PAY CUT,

I AM STILL MAKING $21 MILLION, OKAY, WELL, IT IS A DIFFERENT SITUATION. NOW, TO GIVE YOU JUST A SENSE Now, to give you just a sense of how extreme it is, it's similar to the numbers that Rowan gave you. The average employee at these companies that we're talking about, these media companies we're talking about, in order to make this, how many years do they have to work to make the same amount as the CEO makes in one year? They have to work 306 years to make the same amount. But that's actually down from 2019, the same amount. But that's actually down. From 2019, the year before, they had to work 416 years to make the same amount of money as the CEO makes in one year, right?

And so if you're a company that has trouble in making your margins and being sustainable, that's one thing, okay? If you're a mega corporation like Amazon, Comcast, et cetera, and you brag on your shareholder calls, which, by the way, we go on. Our managing editor, Jonathan Larson, is great at that. He gets on the calls, and he hears them bragging, and then he'll write stories about it.

Oh, we had a great year. We had a spectacular year. Our margins were awesome. And then they go on TV and go, oh, my God, you've got to give all the money to us so we can trickle it on you. Right? But we had to get rid of these people and we couldn't pay them wages and don't do $15 minimum wage. Oh, poor us. No, no, no.

We see your margins. If you have a super healthy, mature, giant corporation and you're not even willing to pay your employees, that's the heart of the issue. We don't have a problem with people doing great business. We don't have a problem with people making a profit or getting a big salary. But you have to actually perform, and you have to actually take care of your employees as well when you do. But, Jake, this is also why when you actually study,

when you actually look at the analysis and the stories that are being done on these network broadcasts, then people now have to understand why certain things are not talked about. Why is it that you don't have real conversations about public education on these networks because the people who literally are on the air, kids don't go to public school. They go to private school. Why is it that you don't have real conversations about the impact of bankruptcy and health care? Because they're not having those problems. I remember when I was at CNN in 2009, and we were in the middle of this whole health care discussion. President Obama was trying to push it through.

And I remember going to one of the executives at CNN saying, and I was asked, I was asked, what's your assessment of our health care coverage? I said, it's trash. They said, why? I said, because you're talking process. The person said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, in 2000, my appendix ruptured covering the Democratic National Convention. I didn't have any health insurance. I said, while I was there,

my car got repossessed from the airport because I actually couldn't afford to pay the miles on it and the lease was up. It happened while I was in the hospital. I said, I bailed them for four years. I said, almost $100,000 in bills. I said, eventually they filed for bankruptcy because they tried to foreclose on my home. I said, so let me ask you a question. Who do you think could have a real discussion about healthcare on the air? Me or somebody who doesn't have that story? See, that's also part of the issue. That's why we don't have real conversations on these major networks, because you're not dealing with people who truly can talk about their lives and how these issues have affected them and convey that to the audience. Yeah, I mean, it's a murderer's row of terrible media, honestly. I mean, you've got the mainstream media who these guys are the CEOs of. They have the problem that Roland just outlined. In the right-wing media, Rush Limbaugh had an

emergency operation when he was vacationing in Hawaii back in the day. And he came back on his air in right-wing media and said, well, it was no big deal. I don't know why anybody has insurance. It only cost me the amount of a small car. That's all. That's all. Oh, I see. Okay, because we all got that lying around. Right. Just in case something goes wrong. And that's how callous a lot of these folks are. That's just the reality.

Okay. All right, we've got to take a quick break here, guys. Let's take that break. When we come back, more exciting news for you guys. We'll be right back. All right, folks. While they're taking that break, what we want to do is we want to thank the people who support Roller Martin Unfiltered. So go ahead and enroll members of our Bring the Funk fan club.

Who's doing that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And we are going to cover this NFT story. Eye block. With you guys, J.R., what's next? Let's do it. The governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, thought it'd be a good idea to join the chorus of Republican politicians who are pushing against trans girls' rights to compete on girls' sports teams. So he signed a bill into law

that West Virginia lawmakers presented to him to do just that. Now, he didn't have much of very good reasons to do so and stephanie rule of msnbc made sure to ask him about it but before we get that let me just get one aspect of this uh this new law that justice did sign so um as i mentioned jim justice wednesday signed his law a measure that prohibits transgender girls and women in the state from competing on sports teams at quote any public secondary school or state institution of higher education.

This law, which cleared the state's Republican-led legislator in recent weeks, states that such teams must be designated based on, quote, biological sex, thus prohibiting trans women and girls from participating on women's athletic teams where competitive skill or contact is involved. So we've seen a lot of these approaches and these

thought processes for it. But let's see what Stephanie Rule, who apparently was very upset about this latest law that has been signed in West Virginia. She got a chance to confront the governor and really get his idea of why he did this. Can you name one example of a transgender child trying to gain an unfair competitive advantage at a school there in West Virginia? Well, Stephanie, I don't have that experience exactly to myself right now, but I will tell you this. Not yourself, your state, sir. Can you give me one example of a transgender child trying to get an unfair advantage, just one, in your state? You signed a bill about it.

No, I can't really tell you one, but I can tell you this, Stephanie. I'm a coach, and I coach a girls' basketball team. And I can tell you that we all know what an absolute advantage boys would have playing against girls. But, sir, you have no examples of this happening. Why would you take your time to do this? Let's talk about other things that I can give you examples of in your state.

According to U.S. News & World Report, West Virginia ranks 45th in education, 47th in health care, 48th on the economy, and 50th in infrastructure. If you cannot name one single example for me of a child doing this, why would you make this a priority? I just named four things that would seem to me like a much bigger priority. Well, Stephanie, I didn't make it a priority.

It wasn't my bill. You signed it. Deflection, push it off to someone else. It wasn't me. I just signed the bill. I don't really know what's in it. Now, if you have no agenda to take care of these four things that Stephanie Ruhle pointed out are issues in West Virginia,

then you might go to things that don't really make a difference, like this bill. Maybe something that will get people that are in your state to rally to your side over something that really doesn't affect literally anyone in the state. It goes on to the constant culture war that we see happening from the Republican Party, because we know there's not much that they have there to offer to American people. All they have is the other folks, others, the others, the others. You guys talk about gays,

gods, and guns as the reason, the things they pushed. They're losing out on the gay part now, but they're pushing this next thing. Or maybe the trans folks, those trans folks, they're the scary ones. You know, we all know gay folks have a gay family now, but they're pushing this next thing. Maybe the trans folks, those trans folks, they're the gay ones. We all know gay folks have a gay family member, so that's starting to lighten up a little bit. We have to focus on trans folks, because I'm really afraid of them. So these are the type of things that they're pushing to get

somewhere in the political realm rather than actually doing something for people, because all their policies really, really don't. But it may work. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it always has don't. But it may work. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, it always has. Here's why it may work. And I need people to understand, you have to step back and look at this thing in a much

broader view. If you take the voter suppression bills that are being passed, Georgia, Florida, Texas, 350 bills nationwide, they need to shrink the electorate. What typically happens is you've got a Democrat who's in the White House. Typically, the party that wins, their folks don't turn out in the midterms. 2008, massive turnout for Obama. Folks didn't show up in 2010. What followed in 2010? Voter suppression bills in state legislatures. 16 state legislatures flipped. And then, of course, you had Shelby v.

Holder that they began to sue. That was decided by the Supreme Court in 2013. It created the existing problem. They need to whip the white evangelical base up. Now, only that. Ron Brownstein today was tweeting this, and he talked about the significant drop in non-college white voters. Why is that important? Because that's who the governor is targeting. That's who these bills are targeting. So what has to happen is while people who are disagree with them passing these bills, there must be a concerted effort among progressives or forces who are against this. These crazy right wing folks to begin to get our people to understand you can't wait on the 2022 elections come September 22. You've got to start now. This is all a part of their strategy. And I told a group two months ago, I said, this is going to become the new thing

because they got to get the white conservative evangelicals ginned up on something, and this is it. Yeah, and so it's so transparent if you actually bother to listen to any progressive show, right? So you listen to The Rolling Show, our show, we tell many other wonderful progressive shows, and we tell you all the time, look, it's so obvious. Why are we talking about Dr. Seuss? Why are we talking about a made up story about how Biden's going to ban burgers? Why are we talking about a made up story about how Kamala Harris has given her book away to undocumented immigrants?

Why are we talking about trans uh sports in high school i mean i can't think of a smaller issue if my life depended on it and 70 rule makes a great point about there might not be a single case in west virginia and they bother to pass a bill about it why it's everything that happens happens for a reason they need a distraction because they're so bad at their jobs. You saw those numbers. They're terrible on education and wages and you name it. They've crushed their own voters. And Roland talked about it earlier in the show. You go to red state after red state, just miserable failures, Mississippi, Alabama, et cetera. Not the people, but their leadership.

They keep electing Republicans, and they wind up at number 50, number 49, number 48. Every year they're jockeying for position on who's worse, right? And so when you have such a miserable record of failure because you gave everything to the richest people in the state and you robbed the poor and the middle class to do it, then you've got to try to distract them. Squirrel, trans people in the state and you rob the poor in the middle class to do it then you got to try to distract them squirrel trans people in the in the athletics etc and so and and and guys if you're a religious uh person no matter where you are on the political spectrum do you

really think this is the number one issue and you know that it isn't. And you also know that they tried to sign gays, right? They did it earlier in 2004. George W. Bush ran on, oh, gays shouldn't have the same rights as we do. They shouldn't be able to marry. They shouldn't be able to adopt, et cetera. They put those on the ballot in all those different states so that Bush could win the 2004 election. And it worked. It stopped working because everybody realized, oh, it turns out I know someone who's gay.

It turns out somebody in my family's gay, et cetera. Now they're like, oh, we gotta go smaller. Okay, eventually they'll be down to handicapped black trans people are the real problem in America. My one last thought on that also is, those four things, the things that all these states have issues with, would be solved

with more progressive policies. That's why they don't do it, because they'd have to do something that helps American people, and that's nowhere near their agenda. It'd be them not living up to their campaign promises, because those things are fixed by progressive policies. But here's what has to happen. This is real quick.

You've got to have Democrats who are willing to take the fight to them. I said directly to President Barack Obama, stop going to the suburbs of Ohio and Virginia tiling the Affordable Care Act. I said directly to President Barack Obama, stop going to the suburbs of Ohio and Virginia, tiling the Affordable Care Act. Go to the brokest, reddest, whitest, sickest county in Mississippi and Alabama and say, y'all are the brokest, reddest, whitest, sickest county in your entire state.

And I passed the Affordable Care Act for you. I want President Biden, don't just go to rural Pennsylvania. No, no, no. I want President Biden to go talk to those white conservatives in Mississippi and go to Arkansas and go to Tennessee and look them in the eye and say, you're sick. You're dying early. You need health care. And your U.S. senators are not supporting this. They're not supporting Medicaid expansion. So you're going to keep supporting them or you're going to support yourself?

See, you've got to be willing to take the fight where the fight needs to be taken and not going to safe places. And that's what Democrats should be doing in Ohio and all these places in Wisconsin. Go after Ron Johnson. Go after the Ohio seat. Go after that Pennsylvania seat. Go after that Pennsylvania seed. Go after Marco Rubio in his face. Go target Cubans and Venezuelans. But if you keep running away from the fight, you're not going to win. 100% right.

All right, guys, we're out of time. So if you're a member, we've got a great postgame for you guys coming up. TYT.com slash join or hit that join button below on YouTube to become a member. And I need everybody to check out Roland Martin on Filtered and check out Roland Martin on Now as part of the TYT Facebook network. So, Roland, thank you, brother. We appreciate it. I appreciate it. Always glad to see you all.

Go Rockets. To hell with the Knicks. We'll see you on Monday. All right, folks, that was fun. I certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much, all of you. And so we're going to do this here. Actually, let me just go ahead and do this here. I read y'all some of the names.

I got a couple of checks in. I want to do this right now and give folks, again, if you gave $50 or more, you get a shout-out. So certainly Ina Hankerson, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Ha! Yo, Nana, the weather's changing. Allergies are coming back in a huge way.

Let me put that damn mask back on. That'll protect the brother. All right, let me go ahead and give a shout-out right here, y'all, to Nicole Walker. Nicole, I appreciate you joining our fan club as well. Hey, folks, every dollar you give, go support our show. Please, every single dollar. Trust me, we put it back into the show.

We put it back into our staff. That's what we're doing. We're trying to build this thing up. Our goal is to get 20,000 of you who contribute 50 bucks at a minimum of $50. If you don't have that, we totally appreciate that. Understand it. I just saw it right here. And, you know, I just appreciate this here. And, again, you know, we know how it works.

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Roland at Roland Martin Unfiltered dot com. You can send in money or to 1625 K Street, Northwest, Suite 400, Washington D.C. 2006. Folks, we're gonna keep speaking truth to power. That's all we do. Oh, let me go ahead and show y'all this. And, oh my goodness, I never thought this would happen. And actually, it is.

We're sitting here talking about, of course, we had a first. You just saw a first right here with us with the Young Turks. And there's going to be a first tomorrow. You know, Reverend Alex Charlton has had his show on MSNBC for 10 years. I've never been on his show.

I've never been invited. Well, I got invited this week. So, yeah, I'm going to sit here. And Stephanie Stokes just sent us a donation. I appreciate that. Just popped up on PayPal. Thank you so very much. I don't know why this is not showing.

So let me just go ahead and do this right here. And so, y'all, I'm going to be on Sharpton's Politics Nation tomorrow. Indeed, that's going to be tomorrow. I said 5 p.m. That's what time this show is, 5 p.m. So I'm going to be on his show tomorrow. So that's right, y'all. Y'all going to see the homeboy tomorrow.

Go ahead. Y'all see it? Y'all see the graphic? Do you see it? Go ahead, and I'll increase it. I'll be, oh, I'm going to turn it this way. My bad. Sorry.

So, again, I'm going to be on Alex Trotter's Politics Nation tomorrow, MSNBC, 5 p.m. Eastern. So, folks, I shall see you then. Y'all know I'm going to keep it real, keep it black, keep it unapologetic, and absolutely keep it unfiltered. Y'all have an absolute great weekend. Holler at you later. Holler! A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways.

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