#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Harris-Walz GA Bus Tour, VP Harris' Capital Gains Tax Proposal

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

8.29.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Harris-Walz GA Bus Tour, VP Harris' Capital Gains Tax Proposal Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, are continuing their bus tour through southeast Georgia before sitting for their first television interview. Vice President Kamala Harris' policy around capital gains is under scrutiny.  The plan, initially proposed by President Joe Biden, would tax unrealized gains, primarily impacting the wealthiest Americans. Our resident economist, Morgan Harper is here to explain how this would impact most Americans These MAGA-controlled states are working hard to keep folks from the polls in November. Louisiana is the latest state to promote the idea of noncitizens voting. We'll also explain how Pennsylvania lawmakers are breaking voting laws.   Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voiced her concerns about the Supreme Court's decision in the presidential immunity case. https://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (link) and Risks (link) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is news reporting platforms 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You dig? Today's Thursday, August 29th, 2024, coming up on Rolling Button Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network, coming to you live from Houston, Texas. Vice President Kamala Harris was in Savannah, Georgia today, as she and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz went to rural parts of Georgia, focusing on galvanizing black voters. We'll tell you why that is so critical. One of the vice president's policy proposals is to increase the capital gains tax and the corporate tax. Why are some folks confused about this? You got some folks saying,

oh, this is going to hurt middle class voters. Well, economist Morgan Hunter is going to be with us, and she and I are going to talk about this so we can dispel a lot of the misinformation and the myths about her proposal. Also, Donald Trump shows us how shameful and despicable he is as they literally use Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign commercial. And the U.S. Army does something remarkable where they literally rebuke Trump and his campaign for getting physical with one of the workers there at Arlington National Cemetery.

Also, Judge Katonji Brown Jackson sits down for an exclusive interview with Norah O'Donnell with CBS. And we'll also talk about, again, this election and how critical it is for us to get out and vote. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered. On the Black Star Network, let's go. up He's rollin' Yeah, yeah It's Uncle Roro, yo Yeah, yeah It's Rollin' Martin Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now

Yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's Rollin' Martin Now He's rolling Martel. Martel. All right, folks. Vice President Kamala Harris is in Savannah today with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. They've been there the last two days as they really begin their road trip.

They've been to Michigan, Nevada, Arizona. They have been to North Carolina. And so they continue their focus really looking at expanding the map. And Georgia is a critical state for them to pick up. We're going to get to that a little bit later. I want to start this way because I tell you, I posted something on Instagram and social media with regards to an economic proposal of Vice President Kamala Harris. What she wants to do is increase the capital gains tax. In addition, raised the corporate tax, as well as the tax rate for high-income households. Now, when I talked about the capital gains tax, all of a sudden, a bunch of different people started commenting and started saying, oh, my God, this is going to be

awful for middle-class voters. And I'm like, what are y'all talking about? Her proposal is only going to affect people who have $100 million or more. Literally, if you've got $99 million, you're not impacted. $90 million, you're not impacted. So I reached out to economist Morgan Harper. Morgan, of course, she is with the American Economic Liberties Project, and she joins us from Columbus, Ohio. So, Morgan, let's walk through this because, again, these folks were just commenting and saying all sorts of stuff, and I was like, what are y'all talking about? So, let's deal with these three particular things we're talking about here. They want to raise the corporate tax rate.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Donald Trump lowered it. President Biden, they actually increased it. What does that mean when we say they want to raise the corporate tax rate? The proposal on the table is that corporations will have to pay more of the money that they are earning, the revenue that they generate. And so Trump lowered it, as you said, to 21 percent. The proposal from the Biden administration and now Harris, Vice President Harris has said that she's endorsing a lot of Biden's tax proposals is to be to move it back up to 20. People 20%. And this is not refuted information that the lowering of the corporate tax rate has cost America, the United States government, billions of dollars.

And so bringing that level back up to 27% is going to provide a lot more resources for the government to invest in critical infrastructure and other projects that we've seen already over the last couple of years. Now, Morgan, here's what's interesting. When I talked to the Black Futures Lab, when they did their survey of 211,000 people, a significant number of African-Americans did not want the corporate tax rate raised. And when I asked them the question, they said, because many of those workers, their employers have been telling them, oh, if the corporate tax rate is raised, it's bad for business and you might be out of a job. That's literally what they're saying.

And for the people who don't know, give folks a historical understanding of what the corporate tax rate and even the personal income tax rate used to be in the United States. Yeah, I mean, this is this is what's crazy is, yeah, we're at we're at historic low levels. And so when companies are telling us that they won't be able to pay their workers or they're telling their workers directly that that's just kind of nonsense. And we're starting to see, you know, a lot of the roosters kind of come home to roost here with some of this misinformation. Because, you know, from 1909, 2024, like the corporate tax rate was averaging in the 30s percent. It hit a high in the 60s of over 50 percent. So we're not even in the range of something as close to that. But I will note, I mean, I think this is important to know with the 1960s rate, that was generally

considered to be one of the most innovative and productive periods economically in American history. And so this idea that somehow it's either we make everybody pay their fair share of taxes or we have an economy that actually lifts up the middle class, you know, that these are somehow in contradiction of each other is just nonsense and not accurate based on history. Oh, I lost the sound again. Sorry, that's on me. That's on me.

Let's now deal with the capital gains tax. Okay. So the capital gains tax is 20%. She wants to raise it to 44.6%. All the crypto boys and everybody are all freaking out. And as I said, all these people on my Instagram page were talking about, oh, this is going to hurt middle income tax people. This impacts people when they sell their home. So can you please explain to folks exactly what

this means? This is another one where the threshold matters. And in some ways, Roland, I have some empathy, sympathy, maybe more so and more accurate for the folks that were commenting to you on Instagram, because a lot of the news stories, especially out of a lot of conservative outlets, do not include the threshold. So on the capital gains proposal, that is only going to apply if you have more than a million dollars in investment income in a year. That is less than one percent of the population. So for most people, the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans, this is not relevant to us. I don't I don't know. And I can't. I don't know.

Oh, now I can hear you. Now I can hear you. OK. All right. So I want you to start that over again. So what exactly is the threshold, again, that Vice President Kamala Harris is talking about? For capital gains tax proposal, this increase that would, for the highest of the earners of capital gains, would get them to about 37 percent. This only applies if you are earning over a million dollars in investment income. One million dollars. Less than one percent of the U.S. population is in that category. So, again, for the vast majority of us, myself included, that you show up, you work a job, you're getting some income. This has nothing to do with us. I don't have a million dollars in investment income. I don't know about you. And if you do, well, that is fantastic

for you. But that does mean that you are a very wealthy person in the United States of America compared to 99% of the population. Okay. And so what about, I keep seeing this $100 million threshold as well. Explain, what is that? So the $100 million threshold applies to unrealized gains. And so we just talked about capital gains. That's when you have an asset, you've actually now sold it, and you've collected the gains or the income from having sold that asset. Another important piece there, actually, that I should clarify too, is we're talking about tradable assets. So these proposals don't have anything to do actually with real estate. There are some proposals that are specific to real estate, but those also don't really kick in unless you've got like a $37 million estate or something like that, right? So we're not really talking about like the person that owns a couple of properties and then, you know,

but on the unrealized gains, so you haven't sold it. And this is one that this is a very new kind of proposal. You haven't sold the asset. You're just holding on to some of these tradable assets. If you have over $100 million in value there, then you are now going to be subject to this 25% tax. And it's unusual because typically you don't get taxed until you've actually gotten the gains from selling that kind of asset. But why is Vice President Harris making this proposal? I think it's really important. So one, a couple of things. Like we just said, unless you have $100 million in value, this isn't relevant for you. So if we just said a million dollars investment income is only getting to under 1% of the population,

you can imagine 100 million. We're getting into like 0.0 something percent of the population at $100 million level. Actually, I think some of the estimates put it at like maybe between 10 and 60,000 people in our over 300-million-person country that the unrealized gains proposal is relevant for. But anyway, but why are they doing this? Because what now happens is if you have that vast wealth, you can just sit on it, sit on it for your entire life and

borrow against it. So you're able to then say or go to a bank or a lender. Go ahead. So, Morgan, let's unpack that. So let's unpack that. So perfect example, Elon Musk, richest man, richest man in the world, in the country, whatever you want to say. So what does Elon Musk do to buy Twitter?

He takes he basically borrows against his stock, buys Twitter for forty four billion dollars. He's not using his actual money. And so what this says is, in layman's terms, what the rich have done in America is they go, oh, I'm not going to sit here and actually divest these assets because I now got to pay the higher tax rate. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to live off of my capital gains. So their whole deal about lowering their tax rate. And so, in fact, the other day, Robert Rice was talking about the effective tax rate. A lot of these corporations pay some of them as little as five, four, three, two, one percent. But same thing, what the rich are doing and what we're talking about here is a rich folks conversation. Because what's very rich. Go ahead, go ahead. I would just say not even rich.

Right, I mean, so this is not. So, actually, Linda Sarsour, because this is why I want to have you on. She tweeted, so she posted. I know to have you on, she tweeted, I saw she posted. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

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for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to ascensivehome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. I posted on my Instagram page, she said that capital gains is when you sell your house, they tax the amount over the purchase price. That impacts ordinary homeowners and middle class folks.

That's not what we're talking about here, correct? Correct. That's not what we're talking about. Capital gains, like we just said, in this proposal, so correct that that's the gain from that transaction, but this specific proposal is talking about if you're in that category, having over a million dollars of investment income. And it's talking about tradable assets like stocks, like crypto potentially. You know, I mean, we're still figuring out how exactly we're regulating crypto, but, you know, definitely stock.

And that is usually what a lot of very, very wealthy people, like you just said, like Elon Musk, are using to finance not only their lifestyles, but their whole financial existence. And it's a total rigged system. And so this is trying to bring some equity and some fairness into the tax code and make sure that everybody's paying their fair share, so we don't have more working-class folks that are paying in the double digits of an effective tax rate and corporations and the wealthy that are in the single low digits, which is what we currently have relatively. And again, the people who are scared to death of this are really, really, really, really rich

people. So I need all these, I need all these brokeass people, these black folks and others, to stop this nonsense pining for, oh, my God, that's going to hurt us tremendously. Oh, my goodness. You know, the capital gains. No. The uber-rich are the folks who are freaking out by this because they have been getting over like a fat rat, Morgan. So the wealth gap has been increasing, and they have the ability to be able to say, oh, I'm sitting on one, two, three, four, 500 million, a billion, multiple billions in assets. And so I can just borrow against that, and I'm not paying any taxes on that. And they can live a lavish lifestyle where the rest of us are paying that 25, 28, 30, 32, 35 percent tax because we don't have that ability.

Even if some of us who are African-American are making one hundred, two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars, we can't play the game that they're playing. And it's it is actually even worse than that because you can live your whole life. So let's stick with this example of Elon Musk. Live your whole life borrowing against these unrealized gains. And then you die. And then you pass them on to your next generation, not a collective next generation, your children. And it's not taxed then either. So this is just like the biggest boondoggle of

all time. And again, this isn't about punishing people for being successful. It's about making sure that everybody is paying their fair share into an economy, into the United States that has facilitated this wealth generation for them by having something like the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, that makes sure that we have a stock market that is one that people trust investing in, that generates these types of returns for very wealthy people. That doesn't just happen. That is an institution that needs to be funded, that needs to pay people to have oversight

in order to create this type of opportunity for people to build their wealth and to make this kind of money. The reason I wanted to have this conversation, because what happens is, folks, you watch these shows, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and they start going crazy. Those shows are not for us, okay? They're for rich people. And that's what's going on here. I want to bring my panel here, business and they started going crazy, those shows are not for us. Okay? They're for rich people. And that's what's going on here. I want to bring my panel here.

Recy Colbert hosts the Recy Colbert Show, Sirius XM Radio, Dr. Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University out of D.C., Long Victoria, Burt, Black Press USA, joining us from Arlington, Virginia. Because I need, and again, there were so many people who were commenting on the post, and it was so much bad misinformation, Reesey. It was driving me crazy. And Tamika Mallory actually posted something that I thought was pretty interesting. I'm trying to pull it up here. And where she was like, yo, we fighting not fighting. We fighting for regular, ordinary folk.

We about to fight for a whole bunch of rich folks who don't give a damn about us. I want to know where all these black-ass, hunted millionaires are. Because I ain't seeing one. I don't have any black friends that have yachts. I would like to be acquainted with them. I would like to be acquainted with more black folks

that have a million dollars in investment income. I don't know where people can't figure out, do Black people not have any money at all? We are poor under Joe Biden and we can't barely buy groceries. Or are we all going to lose our shirt under Kamala Harris administration when they text unrealized capital gains for people who make over $100 million? Figure it out, because the math is not mapping. But the reality is, to Morgan's point, when they see the headlines, when they see the memes and they see the images, they're leaving out the context. They're leaving out the thresholds.

If you have to worry about Kamala Harris's tax proposals, I want your kind of problems. That's the kind of problems I want to have, because that means that a whole lot of other shit I ain't got to really worry about. But the reality is what's really going to impact the middle-class is what vice president Kamala Harris is proposing. Things like $25,000 for first-time homebuyers, homeowner assistance. I know y'all pulling up every little program around the country where y'all think illegal immigrants are getting something. Kamala Harris is saying, if you're an American citizen, you're going to get $25,000 homeowner's assistance for your down payment. you're a first-time homebuyer,

$6,000 child tax credit. What they've done with this administration, they gave y'all STEMIs. They had the child tax credit. And so let's just come back down to planet Earth, mind your bank account, mind your tax returns, and have tax tax return tax bracket problems that are in your in your lane don't worry about what what what bezos and and and uh bill gates and all them got going on they'll figure out a way to get around the loophole in the meantime vote for the candidate that's going to benefit your pocketbooks and i'm sure that that's vice President Kamala Harris. Lauren. Yeah, certainly the earned income tax credit was a huge success, and that's something that should be duplicated. Also, you know, Trump did give a multi-trillion dollar tax break to the highest earners. I wanted a little bit of a clarification

on something that Morgan said when she said that the wealthiest were living off of their capital gains. Did you mean their dividends or their unrealized or realized capital gains? So kind of both. I mean, right now where we're operating that capital gains aren't really taxed in the way that Vice President Harris is proposing, the very wealthy are able to kind of escape having the same level of tax rate for those gains. a lender, they can go to an institution and say, look, I'm worth hundreds and millions of dollars based on my stock holdings. I'm not saying I'm going to sell them to you, but you know I'm good for it, so give me the money to finance this transaction that I, like Roland was saying, to buy Twitter, to buy this mansion. You know that I'm good for it if push comes to shove.

And they never have to touch that $100 million or whatever it is that they have in the stock holdings, those unrealized gains. And so you can kind of go through your life if you're operating at that level and getting more and more financing to pay your day-to-day needs and then continue to acquire different assets that have value in their own right. And like I said, and then pass that on to your heirs and not really ever pay some kind of tax. And so this is all about trying to make rich people live the same way that we all do, which is we have to pay our taxes. A lot of people do not ever realize the gains. What they do is they reinvest the dividends into their portfolio and never actually pay taxes on that capital gain.

That's typically, I think, what the uber-wealthy do. And quite frankly, I think we're talking about such a small group of people as this is almost on the cusp of being irrelevant, because when we get into the earners that are in the $1 million and $2 million portfolio range. It is a very small group of people, which you actually already said. But I actually think I was wondering, Morgan, what your opinion was on the non-taxing of the tips, the not taxing tips. What did you think of that proposal? Yeah, I mean, I haven't looked into that as much, but I do know that folks who are, you know, if you're working and living off of tipped wages, then that is a hustle. And so it's not clear that that should all be

taxed. But, you know, I don't want to go too far on that one because I just haven't looked at it as much. Thank you. The other thing I would say is in terms of,oh, just real fast. I'm sorry. Morgan, go ahead. Yeah, just another— Morgan, go ahead, and we'll go to Greg. Okay. Another proposal that's relevant to this, you know, the whole idea of taking the dividends, reinvesting, is Vice President Harris is proposing to increase the tax on stock buybacks. That's another tactic by, you know, large corporations to inflate the worth—the value

of their stock holdings for all of the executives that tend to hold the most stock or the original founders, they're proposing to raise that from 1% to 4%. So that would be another way to just inject some equity that regardless of how wealthy you are, more of that is coming back into the overall pot of money that we, the people, have control over, which is that which the government is administering and deciding on our priorities, whether that's to give tax credit for child care or to support higher education for people all over the country. Greg?

Thank you, Roland, and thank you, Ms. Morgan. It's good to see you. A couple of things. We know, of course, that everybody in America will eventually be a billionaire. That's the dream. They sell everybody. So that's probably why people are, you know, imagining that one day they'll have this problem, which, of course, they won't. But I did hear her this evening at Savannah State—or, instead, Savannah—I'm thinking about the president. The student body president at Savannah State did a great job introducing

her, by the way, the young sister. But she said—I heard her talk about the middle class and the working class. I hope some of Reverend Barber's logic is seeping into her stump speech. But as it relates to that working class, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about the fact that, like President Biden, Vice President Harris hadn't said anything about the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions. And realizing that many of the tax cuts that were passed in 2017 will probably stay in place. The Democrats voted, you know, although they voted against that tax bill, maybe some of that stuff will stay in place. But any thoughts about SALT and whether or not state and local tax and capping that exemption at $10,000 will affect the working class and the middle class?

Yeah, you know, I know a lot of people that have very strong feelings about the SALT deductions. I do think that that is a policy area that gets us out of the realm of the hyper-wealthy, and that is more, you know, in folks that are middle class, maybe getting into upper middle class and beyond. But I do think it's getting a little bit deeper into the middle class. So that's one where there's a lot of strong opinions about it. I think that's something that we should have discussion about. But that gets into another point here in this talk of the tax code.

I mean, right now, what we have is a system where we have very wealthy that are hoarding their money and they're deciding on how they're going to spend it. And injecting these kinds of ideas, having a whole discussion that hopefully we will be having in 2025 under hopefully the Biden-Harris, or sorry, the Harris-Walls administration, will allow us as a country to decide on how the tax code can better reflect our priorities and make sure that it's supporting people at every income level, but especially the middle class. As long as we keep the status quo, it's billionaires that are getting to do whatever they want with the money that we are helping them generate by being taxpayers in this country.

And we need to flip that script as quickly as we can. And, Morgan, final point here. I need people to understand the tax code ain't written for regular, ordinary people. Please, folks, go to ProPublica and look at how folks like Kenneth Griffin, billionaire, how he spent more than $11 million to keep the IRS from being able to do more. When you look at how these folks have used their lobbyists to weigh in and how the Republican Party does their bidding because they have way more billionaires, frankly, than Democrats do. Folks just need to understand what's going on here. And so regular, ordinary folks should not be doing the bidding of these rich folk because, again, when you look at the wage gap, when you look at the fact that three people,

three individuals have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent. That is beyond I've seen and enough of the rich being able to control the economic policies of this country. Yeah, I think it's such an important point. And getting back to something Rishi was saying, too. I mean, that is the game. The game is to divide us against each other and also what Greg was saying, and make us—that's why these taxes don't include thresholds. That's why they want people to think that they should care about unrealized gains and capital gains. No, most people in this country are working class and desperately need the types of changes to the tax code that Vice President Harris is proposing.

All right, Dan. Morgan Harper, we appreciate. Thank you for clearing all of that up. And hopefully all the folks who were commenting on my Instagram now understand we're not talking about capital gains when you sell a house. No, it's for them folk who got a hell of a lot more money than you do. Morgan, thanks a lot. Good to see you.

All right, folks, got to go to break. We come back. Vice President Kamala Harris in Savannah, Georgia today with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. We'll talk about that, show you some of what she had to say. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Next, on The Black Table, with me, Greg Carr. We featured the brand new work of Professor Angie Porter, which, simply put, is a revolutionary reframing of the African experience in this country. It's the one legal article everyone, and I mean everyone, should read.

Professor Porter and Dr. Valetia Watkins, our legal roundtable team, join us to explore the paper that I guarantee is going to prompt a major aha moment in our culture. You crystallize it by saying, who are we to other people? Who are African people to others? Governance is our thing. Who are we to each other? The structures we create for ourselves, how we order the universe as African people. That's next on The Black Table, here on The Black Star Network. Next on Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, women of color are

starting 90% of the businesses in this country. That's the good news. The bad news, as a rule, we're not making nearly as much as everyone else. But joining us on the next Get Wealthy episode is Betty Hines. She's a business strategist and she's showing women how to elevate other women. I don't like to say this openly, but we're getting better at it. Women struggle with collaborating with each other. And for that reason, one of the things that I demonstrate in the sessions that I have is that you can go further together if you collaborate. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network.

What's up, everybody? It's your girl Latasha from the A. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks, that idiot Donald Trump the other day was at Arlington National Cemetery and he was all performance, all for show related to the anniversary of the Afghanistan pullout where 13 Americans were lost, who died. And what ends up happening, him and his folks, they literally just blew past and just blew off, frankly, one of the staffers there on National Cemetery. And then what they then did was attack her, suggesting that, oh, she had a mental health episode. Well, in a sharp rebuke, the U.S. Army actually issued a statement today, which is something unheard of in terms of defending the professionalism of this woman and making it clear what happened, making it clear that they frankly broke the rules. Welcome to my panel here.

Lauren, I have seen a lot of videos in the past 24 hours of veterans who are livid with what took place and not all progressive veterans. We also know that House Speaker Mike Johnson weighed in to give Donald Trump access to Alton National Cemetery. We now know exactly what their agenda was. They've already dropped their video. And what they wanted were the images of him sitting with families laying a wreath.

There was one family that was incensed because their family member actually committed suicide and that tombstone was in one of the photos they put out. Then they put the photos out. They're literally in Arlington National Cemetery, you know, thumbs up and smiling and stuff along those lines. And it goes to show you this man, we all know, no morals, no values, no principles, no ethics, doesn't care, run a rough shot over people. And then for his campaign manager to say this woman was having a mental health episode, these people are beyond despicable. Yeah, and I'm not sure why we don't know who that was. By the way, the campaign staffer who did this, I'm not sure why the New York Times is not investigating that, why we don't have a name.

Donald Trump, who's never served in the military, he thinks everybody's a prop. He thinks the entire world is for him to have a backdrop of for some photo op nonsense. And the fact that he gets away with it and the fact that it doesn't play in the news as big as it should, because, of course, nobody could imagine what would be going on right now if Vice President Harris did anything close to this, right? But somehow or another, when Donald Trump does things, it's never quite getting the level of scandalous attention as it should. And this type of thing is like on another level of disrespect. I'm a little surprised that a little bit higher-up leader in the U.S. Army did not comment on this, somebody in a uniform, but it was an extremely rare statement for them to make.

But they had to make it because, of course, Chris LaCivita thinks that he can just put out some idiot statement that somebody is somehow mentally ill for trying to stop them and, you know, and have the rules be conducted properly at Arlington National Cemetery. Donald Trump is an idiot. He was standing in the middle of a bunch of graves with his thumbs up, which makes no sense. He looked crazy and he looked stupid. And this needs to be called out a lot louder than it is. It would seem to me that everybody who is a member of the military in the U.S. Congress should be talking about this.

Certainly the media should be talking about this. Certainly, the media should be talking about this. And we should be knowing who it was that had some sort of physical contact with an employee, allegedly, at Arlington National Cemetery, a place where nobody has ever done this before. And we've got this clown running for president, and he pulls this thing off. And we don't even really know the details who the staffer was. Can you imagine if this was a Harris-Walls staffer and we would not know the name of that staffer, you know, days later? Impossible. Impossible. That could not happen. That would have been reported already. So the entire thing is disgusting and ridiculous. Donald Trump should be called out for this again and again and again.

And it's just outrageous. I mean, it is just completely outrageous. What is crazy to me, what is crazy to me, Recy, is that NPR did the reporting. Pretty much the other media just, oh, that was an incident. First of all, it's Arlington National Cemetery. It is hollow ground. You don't just say, well, that was just sort of an incident that took place. These people have no respect for anything.

And it shows you the no integrity of these so-called military-loving Republicans, and they've all been silent. This man wanted a campaign photo op. That's what this was all about. And they are silent and saying nothing. They, just like him, are pathetic. Absolutely. I mean, let's just be clear.

Donald Trump is an indecent degenerate. This is a person who has been found civilly liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a department store and then defaming her when she truthfully told her story. This is a person who has 34 felony fraud convictions because he's a fraud. He's a liar. He's broken the law time and time again. He's facing another 50-something or 60-something counts for his criminal behavior, twice impeached for being a person who has broken the laws, who has no regard for the laws, for the Constitution, or any sense of decency that guides him. He has no moral fabric beyond what benefits him. That's

the only thing that animates him. That's the only thing that motivates him. Now, for the media to not make this a scandal the same way they did Obama's tan suit or the same way they've done Vice President Kamala Harris not sitting with enough of them kissing their ass just shows how much these folks want this to be a horse race. They don't want to do anything to damage Donald Trump. So I don't want to do anything to damage Donald Trump. So I don't want to hear shit about accountability and the fourth estate and their responsibility and their duty to ask the hard questions and to be impartial when this kind of story is a nothing burger and anything that anybody on the Democratic side does is the biggest scandal. And so this is

disgraceful conduct, but it is completely on. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1,

Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug

thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to ascensivehome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help

our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. Brand and predictable for the way that Donald Trump has conducted himself, not just in the past eight years before his entire shitty life. It's all right. Greg. Yes. I mean, I agree. I agree with everything you said,

Reesey and everything you said, Lauren, you know, white maleness is the ultimate affirmative action. You can do whatever the hell you want. J.D. Vance is corny. That's his problem. His problem isn't what he's saying, however. This isn't a nation.

Let's be very clear about this. This is a country with a lot of different kind of people in it. The prospect of a United States of America was difficult at very best and maybe doomed at its worst from the start. This is the litmus test. I've gone to Arlington National Cemetery, as we all have, many times. Sometimes I'll go out there around Charles Young's birthday, Colonel Charles Young, who he and his wife were buried not too far from Major Walter Reed on that row of generals on the hill. Of course, Thurgood Marshall, the great Joe Lewis.

I was at the grave of Megawali Evers when his brother Charles' children were coming by summer before last as they were bringing the ashes of their father, Charles Evers, for internment there in the Cremains area. You can't disrespect something that was made for you. So the idea that Donald Trump could disrespect at Arlington is only valid if the people in this country believe that there is something beyond the pale of white maleness to disrespect. You know, I was thinking about Lenny Reifenstahl's 1933 film, Triumph of the Will, 1935 film, Triumph of the Will, that caught Hitler when he was

chancellor of Germany and these thousands of Nazis at Nuremberg, an elected official engaged in this fascist display. There are a lot of people in this country who are fascists. They would say that Donald Trump and his people can do whatever they want in Arlington because they are the only real heroes. So finally, for the military, for the Army to make a statement, there are people who I'm sure are much more livid and would go beyond even the statement that was made, but they are making a choice.

What we saw at the Democratic National Convention last week, with Democrats chanting USA, USA means that we are on the cusp of a potential attempt to take back, to take back the concept of what it means to be an American. But one thing is crystal clear. Everybody now is going to have to make a choice because this man is making it impossible for you not to. All right, then. So, look, I just want people to understand these people have no regard for normalcy. They don't care about any of this. They are truly, absolutely, positively uncouth. That word

I think, that word absolutely defines Donald Trump and all of his supporters. They are uncouth. Alright folks, we come back. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks in Savannah, Georgia. I'm going to show you some of what she had to say. Don't forget, support the work that we do. Join the Bring the Funk fan club. Your dollars make it possible for us to travel across this country, do the work that's important. So please, if you're taking money, order the P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash App, Dallas Sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal, or Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered.

Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartin unfiltered.com all right folks go on your break we'll be right back now streaming on the black star network nfl is what 80 black i say yeah 87 80 black if the nfl was 80 white y'all would have a good health care and y'all would have a proper pension. I say, well, I know that. He say, I know it too. He say, and everybody else knows it.

That's the thing I think that really burns a lot of us up because we know. When I look at when they talk to disability, you saw the guys that sued for disability. You've got 29 players that apply for disability, black. All 29 are denied. I mean, then all of a sudden they go get these doctors that they have that they're doctors, but if you pass a guy, oh now we can't use you, we gotta free you, we can't use you. I mean, it's just so much that is,

I can say it's just not fair. Hello, I'm Jameah Pugh. I am from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, just an hour right outside of Philadelphia. My name is Jasmine Pugh. I'm also from Coatesville, Pennsylvania. You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay right here. Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. We're in Savannah, Georgia today on the campaign trail.

We, of course, live streamed it right here on the Black Star Network. And if you missed what she had to say, here it is. So let's not pay too much attention to the polls because we are running as the underdog. Okay. And we have some hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is good work. And with your help, we are going to win this November. We are going to win this November. Yes, we will. So, look, Georgia, let me say, I'm no stranger to tough fights.

Before I was elected vice president, before I was elected a United States senator, I was an elected attorney general and, before that, an elected district attorney. And before that I was a courtroom prosecutor. So every day in the courtroom I stood proudly before a judge and I spoke five words. Kamala Harris for the people. My entire career, I've only had one client, the people. I stood for women and children against predators who abused them. I took on the big banks and delivered $20 billion from middle-class families who faced foreclosure. I fought against cartels who traffic in guns, drugs, and human beings.

And I stood up for veterans and students being scammed by big for-profit colleges, for workers who were being cheated out of the wages they were due, and for seniors facing elder abuse. And I will tell you, those fights were not easy. And neither were the elections that put me in those offices. But we never gave up because the future is always worth fighting for. Always. And that is the fight we are in right now, a fight for America's future. We, we fight for a future with affordable childcare, paid leave, and affordable health care. And on that last subject, let's finally expand Medicaid in Georgia

so people can take their child to a doctor or go to an emergency room without going into medical debt. We fight for a future where we build what I call an opportunity economy so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, to start a business, and to build wealth and intergenerational wealth. And a future where we lower the cost of living for America's families. So when I was Attorney General, I went after price-fixing schemes. And love you back, love you back. And I will tell you when we get this done together my friend and when I am president I will take on the bad actors who exploit a crisis to rip off consumers on everyday items.

Who rip off consumers on everyday items like groceries. I will take on Big Pharma and cap the cost of prescription drugs and insulin for all Americans. I will take on the high cost of housing and work with developers to cut the red tape and build millions of new homes. And I will give 100 million Americans a tax cut including $6,000 to families during the first year of their child's life. Understanding folks just need a little help from time to time. And it's not about just getting by, it's about getting ahead. $6,000 in the first year of a child's life to help pay for that car seat, or the crib, or the baby clothes. And unlike Donald Trump, I will always put the middle class and working class families first.

Always. I come from the middle class. I know what I'm talking about. And, Savannah, so — but we got some work to do, OK? We got some work to do, because we know Donald Trump has a very different plan. He has a very different plan. Just look at his Project 2025 agenda. Right. If he is elected, Donald Trump intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. He intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. And he wants to impose what, in effect, is a national sales tax on everyday products

and basic necessities. And it will cost — the economists will tell you — it will cost a typical American family nearly $4,000 a year. So Georgia, on top of all of this, if Donald Trump wins in November, he intends to end the Affordable Care Act to take us back to a time when insurance companies We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back.

We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back.

We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back.

We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. Remember what that was like before we had the Affordable Care Act? Remember when insurance companies had the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions? Remember what that was like? Children with asthma? Breast cancer survivors, grandparents with diabetes? So yeah, we're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. We're not going back. And we will move forward. Ours is a fight for the future. And it is a fight for freedom, like the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do. And understand how we got here.

When he was president, Donald Trump handpicked three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did just as he intended. And now more than 20 states have a Trump abortion ban, including Georgia. In fact, every state in the South, except for Virginia, has a Trump abortion ban. And think about that. Many, with no exceptions even for rape and incest. That is immoral.

Immoral. And let us all agree, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do. Come on. Come on. Come on. And if he wins, Donald Trump will go further. He will sign a national abortion ban, you best believe. And he would create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women's miscarriages and abortions. It's right there in Project 2025. I've said it before and I'll say it again, simply put, they are out of

their minds. Why don't they trust women? Well, we trust women? Yes! And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law. Proudly. proudly. And across our nation, in addition to that, we are witnessing a full-on assault on other hard-fought, hard-won fundamental freedoms of the world. Thank you. Let me just say something. Hold on. Hold up. Hold up for a second. Hold up for a second.

Let me just say something. Let me just say something. We are fighting for a democracy. Everyone has a right and should We are fighting for a democracy. Everyone has a right and should have their voices heard. I am speaking now. But on the subject, I will say this. The president and I are working around the clock.

We've got to get a hostage deal done and get a ceasefire done now. So back to this election and Donald Trump. So in addition to the fight on the fundamental freedom to make decisions about one's own body, I have been traveling our country and the people of Georgia know what I know. There is a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights, including the freedom to vote, the freedom to be safe from gun violence, and an attack on the freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. And we will fight against all of that, including the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. Here's the thing. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. Now, Savannah, the baton is in our hands. So we who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will finally pass the John Lewis Voting

Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. We who believe in the freedom to live safe from gun violence will finally pass universal background checks and red flag laws. So much is on the line in this election. So much is on the line. And understand, this is not 2016 or 2020. Things are different. A lot is the same when we think about the issues, and then there is significant differences. The stakes in 2024 are even higher. Because consider that the United States Supreme Court recently just basically told the former president

that going forward, he will be effectively immune no matter what he does in the White House. Now, just imagine. Well, the courts are going to take care of that. We're going to get him out of it. We're going to elect ourselves and everybody here in November. But I mention the Supreme Court ruling because understand what this means. Just imagine.

Before there was at least the threat of consequence, understand what it now means and imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. Imagine what that means when you consider he has openly vowed that if re-elected on day one he will be a dictator. That he would end the independence of the Department of Justice so he could have unchecked power and seek vengeance against people who disagree with him. He even called for termination of the United States Supreme—the Supreme Land of our nation, the United States Constitution. Think about what that means. And let us be very clear. Someone who suggests we should terminate the Constitution of the United States should never

again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America. Never again. So it all comes down to this. We are all here together, spending this time together because we love our country. We love our country. We love our country. And we know the privilege and pride — the privilege and pride that comes with being American. And I do believe it is the highest form of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our

country. That is how we realize the promise of America. Georgia, for the past two election cycles, voters in this very state, you who are here have delivered. You sent two extraordinary senators to Washington, D.C. You sent President Biden and me to the White House. You showed up. You knocked on doors. You registered folks to vote. And you made it happen.

You did that. You did that. And so now we are asking you to do it again. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. So, Savannah, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Yes! Do we believe in opportunity?

Yes! Do we believe in the promise of America? Yes! And are we ready to fight for it? Yes! And when we fight, we win. God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

All right, folks. That was Vice President Kamala Harris earlier today in Savannah. Going to go to a break. We come back with a panel about her speech. You're watching the Blackstreet Network back in a moment. We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture. We're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a

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We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Your money makes this possible. Check some money orders. Go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered.

Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how to live the dream without it turning into a royal nightmare. We'll meet an entrepreneurial couple who've been living the dream for nearly 30 years and they're still going strong, speed bumps and all. I was all one trying to hold back, but he thinks he can do anything. He's like, no, we're going to do it. You know, let's do it. Let's just jump into it.

And it has worked. It's a thing of beauty, literally. That's all next on A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. Hello, I'm Marissa Mitchell, a news anchor at Fox 5 DC. Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman, and you are watching Roland Martin

Unfiltered. All right, folks, welcome back. Let's get to it with our panel, Recy, Greg, and Lauren. Greg, I want to start with you. A couple times there, Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by protesters with regards to the issue of Israel and Gaza. And I've heard a lot of folks say they understand protesting and let their voices be known when she's speaking. But they also said, but... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar

company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne

from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the LA fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. I've heard people say, but they don't show up

when Donald Trump is speaking. They don't push Republicans. They don't challenge them on this. Just your thoughts on that. Yeah, I have a lot of friends who are very critical of Democrats, and they're supposed to be critical of them. They don't have that same base in their voice, however, when they're dealing with the open white nationalists and the fascists. And some of these people are just very doctrinaire and very rigid and ideologically kind of straightjacketed. And then some of them are—you know, have health care and benefits and decent enough jobs so that a Trump presidency wouldn't affect them, so they can kind of sit in their suburban enclaves and kind of talk smack on YouTube. But then there is the question of really confronting power.

The fascists would probably put a lot of people in harm's way if they tried to do that. So I kind of understand why you see those kind of protests in Democratic spaces, primarily because that has been the party in the duopoly where we have clustered in order to advance our interests. None of us are Democrats or Republicans. I shouldn't say none of us, but most of us are not Democrats or Republicans, naturally. We're looking for what's in the interests of Black people. And the Democratic Party, because we forced it to, has become the place where that's more likely than not to be able to manifest. I think the vice president has kind of perfected, in addition to being very strong on the stump

and getting stronger, she's perfected integrating that protest into her stump speech. We saw what happened in Detroit. We saw then very shortly later in Arizona, she kind of said, no, no, no, I'm with the ceasefire. I'm—you know, I am for the return of hostages and the ceasefire. And then tonight you saw an extension of what she did at the Democratic National Convention. She started with, I am speaking now, but—she goes to conjunction. And so, you know, everybody has the right to speak.

And on the subject, you know where she addressed it quickly? She hit the three keys that now become part of the stump speech. Number one, we are working around the clock. Number two, we want the hostages released. Number three, she ends with ceasefire. And then you see it continue. We're back to school now. You're going to see those protests emerge again on college campuses.

The killers, the indefensible killers of the Israeli Defense Force have opened up a third front. They went to a mosque today on the West Bank and killed some people after an incursion yesterday. So now they're fighting in Lebanon, they're fighting in the West Bank, and they're fighting in Gaza. They are international pariahs. So this issue is not going away. However, I will end with this.

The vice president seems to have struck a note by confronting the protesters, by absorbing that protest into the rhythm of the presentation that allows her to face the issue, not ignore the issue, and demonstrate that it's the Democratic Party, not the white nationalist party or the fascists, who are not only open to this, but are perhaps committed to being moved by the folks who see this for what it is, which is a real problem in American politics today. To that particular point, Lauren, I'm trying to pull it up right now. There were a group of Muslim women for Kamala Harris. They had released a statement at the Democratic National Convention, very angry, if you will, that you did not have any any speakers. In fact, let me go and just pull this up. Let's see here. See if I can pull this up. So you see here when we started this group, we did so with the intent to highlight clear policy differences between Vice President Harris, Vice President Harris's campaign, the actions, the Biden administration, and most significantly, the impending danger of a second Trump administration.

They went on, began to talk about this whole idea of a big tent, but this is less than 70 days to the November election. We have to be honest with ourselves about what is at stake here for Muslim women. Reproductive rights, access to health care, climate change, immigration reform, access to quality public education, economic opportunity and the clear danger a Trump presidency could pose for our black and brown communities. This is why we urge the Muslim community to vote for Vice President Harris and Governor Walz this November. With the stated caveat that we will continue to both pressure

the Biden administration for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and for real policy change from the Harris-Walz campaign. As a result of the November elections, we will either have Kamala Harris or Donald Trump as our next president. And we pray for the sake of all of us here and abroad that it is Kamala Harris.

And then they say in the immediate future, we invite the Harris-Walls campaign to invite State Representative Rua Rahman, as a Palestinian-American, to join Vice President Harris and Governor Walz during their bus tour in Georgia to address voters. She's a Georgia-elected official. Meet with Muslim women for Harris-Walls and ensure that our communities have a seat at the table. Make abundantly clear that even our allies are not above international law. A change in language is the first step, but a policy change is imperative. And we look forward to seeing these changes on day one, the Harris walls administration in order to see progress on Gaza, other foreign policy issues and domestic issues here at home must join together to help elect VP Kamala Harris. We seek progress.

The reason that's important, Lauren, because the reality is this here. You have some folks who have been out and they've been saying, I'd rather vote for the devil, Satan, than support Vice President Kamala Harris. Well, here's the reality. You can support Donald Trump, but he's made it perfectly clear that he will turn Gaza into a parking lot and they vice president Kamala Harris. Well, here's the reality. You can support Donald Trump, but he's made it perfectly clear that he will turn Gaza into a parking lot and they will be, and Jared is more than happy to sell condos on top of it because it's right next to the water. And, and so that's what, that's what you're dealing with here. And so I think with this statement, you're seeing what practical politics is about because you can continue to interrupt. You can continue to call her names, but there's a binary choice here.

It's either her or Trump, and you've got to make a decision. And if you don't vote for her, in essence, you're voting for him. Yeah, sure. There's a binary choice. There's also the fact that the maximum point, the greatest point of political leverage on a politician, no matter who they are, is right before an election. And for this issue, everyone knows, as Greg just made the point, that, you know, appealing to Donald Trump and protesting Donald Trump will get you absolutely nothing.

So the only rational person to appeal to is Vice President Harris, which is why she's getting the protesting. The other thing I'm sure that we can absolutely sell the farm on is that Benjamin Netanyahu is bound to do something to make life difficult for Vice President Harris between now and 68 days from now. And I'm surprised he hasn't done it, actually. But you can bet that there'll be something that will just happen to happen in his strategy to try and, you know, force the issue even further.

But one of the things, though, I think is problematic for the vice president is her brand right at this moment is to really sort of break forth wall on certain things that have been going on. Like I think her communications team, for example, has done a really good job at stating what we've all known since 2016, which is that Donald Trump is a lunatic. And they actually put that in their messaging, in their statements, one way or the other. But one of the fourth walls that have to be broken here is, of course, the power of money in politics, the fact that we just saw the convention last, you know, week in Chicago,

and nobody mentions AIPAC, nobody has anybody on that stage that would represent the citizens in Michigan that voted uncommitted. Everybody's scared to have that conversation. They can't be scared to have that conversation, because in this moment, Vice President Harris is the only candidate in this two-person race that can really speak truth to power in a forthright way, in a blunt way, in a clear way. That is what people are looking for, particularly when you are a lightning-in-the-bottle type candidate, a black candidate. They are expecting that from you. They're expecting clear talk, real talk, and no BS and no nonsense, even in disagreement, even in disagreement.

Everybody understands it's a binary choice, but people also understand that when you want something in politics, this is the time to ask, not after somebody gets elected when you have no leverage. So I get why she's being protested. She's certainly handling it a lot better. I think they should have put somebody on stage that represented the views of the citizens of Michigan, whose votes that she'll be asking for and will need to win in 68 days. And shorter than that, in some states, in Virginia, they start voting

in 22 days. So, early voting is September 20. But at any rate, you know, it's an issue that needs to be confronted. We have billions of dollars going over there and there's going to have to be some detailed policy answers. I know it's not fair because, yes, Trump does get off the hook, but Trump's been getting off the hook for this entire time. That shouldn't surprise us. And she is going to have to deal with this challenge. But see, for me, Recy, it's not a question of Trump getting off the hook. It's also not challenging Republicans. They still control the House.

They still have, you know, votes in the United States Senate. The second thing is, you're absolutely right. You do have to use maximum leverage. But you also have to realize when you actually have gotten to as far as you could possibly go. Because as they say in the statement, at the end of the day, you got to win. And so if you reach a point where you are continuing to push and push and push and push and push, which I totally understand, there are some folks out there who are like, yo, I don't care. I would rather her lose than we back down. Okay. You're going to lose a hell of a more,

you're going to lose a hell of a lot more than just her losing if Donald Trump is the winner. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that protesting for the humanity of people who are being slaughtered, who are helpless, is a noble thing. I will never diminish the nobility behind crying out for the humanity of those who can't cry out for themselves. There is a difference, though, between the human aspect of it and then the political aspect of it. I think in terms of moving the needle and people recognizing the human toll and how it's unconscionable has been accomplished. The political side is giving performance because the reality is when you had an opportunity, when they had multiple opportunities now to demonstrate their political power, not just the performance of protest, they lost multiple times in areas that

were very diverse and areas that were still demographically close to what you need to get a coalition. Jamal Bowman defeated. I'm not going, I was going to say something rude, but I'm not going to say, I'm not going to characterize the guy, but I'm going to say Jamal Bowman was defeated. Cori Bush defeated, you know? And so when you've raked up losses, and this has been the, the, the animating issue that you've tried to say is going to make or break the Democrats and get the Democrats who are completely in lockstep with you, lost, that just doesn't really add up in terms of really moving the needle politically. Now, the fortunate part about it is in Vice President Kamala Harris, she wants to see the people of Gaza get the help that they should absolutely help.

She wants to see a two-state solution. She wants to see them be able to be self-reliant. We live in an imperialist nation that's still going to send bombs and military fight. And it's fucked up to Israel, but that's not changing under anybody's administration. That's not on the table. So do you want the person who wants you to be able to exist as a human being and to be able to have self-reliance and autonomy? Or do you want the person that is of the party where people are signing bombs saying, finish them, where they want to not only get rid of Gaza, but they want to get rid of Iran and Muslims around the world?

That's not the position of Vice President Kamala Harris. And so we have to confront the political, and we have to confront the performance, and we have to confront the political and we have to confront the performance and we have to confront the human side. They don't always match up line and line up perfectly. But the last thing I will say is every single congressional seat is up for an election. There are toss up lean Republican or even lean Democrat seats where Republicans look mighty comfortable right now because you're not at their rallies protesting. And so if the only thing you're doing is you're showing up to Vice President Kamala Harris's rallies, I get, okay, you don't want to go to Trump. You don't want to get your head knocked off. But what about the 20-something legitimately

toss-up seats that we're talking about for the House? What about the close races for the Senate where you're in Florida, you're in Texas, and those Republicans are not being protested? What about in Michigan where it's a close race as well? What about those areas, Wisconsin? Don't just protest the vice president because then it just looks like performance. And when you just perform,

you're not going to move the needle. Greg, as Rissy was talking, I could not help Moses, others traveled to Atlantic City, New Jersey, wanting to fully integrate the Mississippi delegation. She testifies, riveting testimony. LBJ is like, this may mess up my whole deal. He wanted to crush the opposition. So he interrupted what she had to say with a useless news conference. He then calls Walter Ruther and tells him, you tell King, I'm going to pull labor money if he doesn't get in line. King accepts a compromise. He goes to them. Hamer devastated. Bob Moses devastated.

They're angry. They say, we didn't come here to compromise. King says, I would rather take a win in a battle, then lose the actual war. He says to them, 68 will be fully integrated. That was the case in 1968. And so I think part of the thing here, Greg, when you are an activist, you have to make a decision, not when do you give up, not when do you give up, not when do you give out, but when do you recognize that your protest has been known, you've made the point, but you also got to have some people who are in positions of power who will at least talk to you, listen to you, reason with

you, may be able to influence than a crazy, deranged person who will say all of you can go to hell. This to me is the toughest part about activist leadership, knowing when you say we've gone as far as we could, let's recalibrate for the next battle your thoughts wholeheartedly

the difficulty right in the theme of what you've laid out is being able to zoom back and see the long arc we're not talking about election cycles at this point we're talking about decades and generations if Fannie Lou Hamer if Miss Annie Devine if a young Eleanor Holmes Norton and Bob Moses

and others, if they had not gone to Atlantic City and stood their ground—because you're absolutely right, when Martin King came back to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats with that compromise, they sent him packing. He said, no, bruh, I'm sorry. That's your friend, not our friend. People voted for us in the primary we held in Mississippi, the integrated primary. Had they not held the line, then there isn't a change in rules for 68. And ultimately it probably led to the defeat of Hubert Humphrey in part.

There's a brand-new book out by Luke Nichter called The Year That Broke Politics, Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Elections of 1968, that talks about the fact that Johnson wanted to get back in the process, but was talked out of it. And of all people, Billy Graham goes to LBJ and says, look, Nixon has told me that if he wins, he's going to continue some of your policies. And that was enough for LBJ not to go hard to the wall for Hubert Humphrey in 68. There's a possibility Humphrey could have won that election, but he didn't win it. A civil rights champion who, too, was challenged by Ella Baker and by Fannie Lou Hamer, Specimus

Hamer in that 64 convention. So what happens in 72, Nixon wins in a landslide, and only his hubris stops him from the continuing the march. So there's a loss. There's a series of losses that come in the wake of the civil rights movement. And only Watergate stops that, and that only temporarily. James Earl Carter, nearing his 100th birthday in Plains, Georgia, according to his grandson, still following what's going on on this campaign trail.

Jimmy Carter sneaks in in 76 because of Watergate. And then the gladiator invader of Grenada rides out of the West, that John Rain bastard, Ronald Wagon. And it has basically been, since that point, the Democratic Party, because remember, in 84 Jackson runs, in 88 Jackson runs, and the Democratic Leadership Council emerges, as you've explained many times, because Bill Clinton, Al Gore, for that matter, Joe Biden, who's a different Joe Biden now in some ways than he was when they started the DLC, say we can't let this populist rebellion in the Democratic Party drag us, what they would say, to the left. And ultimately, the Democratic Party of today looks closer to the Republican Party of perhaps 68 and 72 than any other time, except perhaps on race. I went through all that to get to this point. 2024 isn't 1964.

However, as you said, activists have to decide how far will you go to try to get what you want or to disrupt business as usual. Unlike 1964, not only is the threat of nuclear war greater now than it was in 64. The world is very different now. The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia is still here. China has reemerged. China and Turkey are all over Africa now, and the United States can't get in there to do what it wants to do. Mali just put them out last week. The United States ain't got that kind of muscle no more. The whites in the United States who are white nationalists are afraid now, and they should be terrified, because the world, which is majority nonwhite, is going to overwhelm you. Even in Mexico, the Mexico just kicked out the American ambassador. They said, stay out of our conversation about making all the judges elected.

The world ain't scared of America anymore like it used to be. The Democratic Party is now faced with another populist insurgency. It is not Jackson of 84 and 88. It isn't Ms. Hamer of 64. But it is a type of insurgency that is now calling to question what kind of country is this going to be as it faces the end of American dominance in the world. These activists, emboldened by the possibility of a multipolar world, are not backing up like Ms. Hamer.

Now, they ain't waving American flags. And I must say, as I end with this, that it can embolden intellectual politics, those politicians who are willing to take a chance. Jamal Bowman didn't lose in New York. Cori Bush didn't lose in Missouri. The goddamn American—the American Israel Political Action Committee put more money than God into those districts because they have one issue and one issue only. It ain't the American flag.

It ain't you and me. It is the state of Israel as an ethnostate. Those racists don't give a damn about the United States. The question is, do those who do give a damn about the experiment, can they listen enough to other people to taking a page from AIPAC, will say, we, too, don't give a damn about the United States. Our issue is front and center. Will they listen enough to that coalition to try to assemble enough of that coalition

that Jackson had, that Ms. Hamer didn't represent it, so that they can make the Democratic Party a home for people who choose our common humanity over white nationalism, over ethnostates? And that is an open question. I don't have an answer to it, and I don't know anybody who does. You and I were communicating earlier, and I think if we expand this, we can talk about the same thing when folks talk about a black agenda. Somebody just posted on our YouTube chat. They said, no talk of the poor, reparations for blacks, police murders of black people, wage disparities, John Lewis Voting Act.

I will still vote for Harris. This is from a Carol Williams. Here's the problem. You see, that's wrong. I mean, it's simply wrong. There are other people running around saying, oh, you know, she's not doing this and she's not doing that. And we got to have this. And your response was, but those things have happened. And so this is also part of this battle, this struggle.

There are people who literally are saying things aren't happening. Listen, comedian Lil Duvall posted something about, you know, oh, they're pandering everybody except except black men. And the people, their brothers responded, oh, you mean these these pictures and these meetings she did with black entrepreneurs and black men? I mean, when you look at Vice President Harris, a press corps that was has been with her for the last three and a half years, the sheer amount of things that she's done that they never reported on. They never talked about. So what you have right now, you have a lot of folks, Reese, a lot of black people who are out here saying, man, we ain't hurt. Merce ain't done nothing. And it's like, but you haven't been paying attention. That's really what it is. It's an attention

deficit disorder. And I don't mean in terms of the clinical side. I mean, in terms of what you pay attention to, what your appetite is for, because the reality is, and I always say this, if you care about these things and you're not just being contrarian, if you're not just being a motherfucker who want to sit up there and complain, then you would already know what's happening. When you, it blows my mind when people say stuff like, well, nobody is talking about homeownership, really? Because two years ago, I was at the White House

personally reporting on the PAVE task force plan where Vice President Kamala Harris, and you can pull up the clip, got up there and talked about how the appraisal bias that black people are subject to is robbing us of our quickest or our most effective way of closing the racial wealth gap, which is home ownership. It is impacting our ability to get better interest rates. It's impacting our ability to pass along generational

wealth. And so you say, people say that she's not talking about these things, that she's on tape. She's on tape in HD. This isn't back in the day where, oh, you had to catch her on TV because we didn't have DVR. We didn't have YouTube and shit. She's literally on tape doing these things for years. And so when you tell me, I don't know what she's for, why hasn't she done all these things? It tells me that you're an unserious person, but even if you're an unserious person, you can do one very key thing. Listen, because if you listen, you will get the answers that you need. If you just want to talk and you talking and spewing shit and you don't have the answers, that's the problem right there. That

you're doing too much talking and you ain't doing enough listening. If you're not watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, if you're not listening to my show, hell, go to risacarver.com slash receipts. I got all the receipts for your ass and it's free. I'm not even gatekeeping. Then you really should not be the person leading the conversation. But this happens every four years. Four years ago, bless his heart, Ice Cube parachuted his ass into the political sphere. And like he was Christopher Columbus planting a flag on a black agenda. Like he had the answers to all the things that nobody had been fighting for. Nobody had any idea about doing any of this stuff.

It was him and him alone who was going to save the black race with his black plan. And he endorsed the Trump platinum scam. Every four years we have this cycle of people who parachute in, who don't pay attention to any of the black civic organizations, any of the black political organizations and claim that they're going to fix everything and they're going to unify us. And they don't know jack shit about anything that's not just happened for the past four years, but that's happened for the past damn four decades. Listen, and you will find the answers that you seek. Not on the YouTube, Scott, or fake people, the chaos agents,

but listen to people who actually have the answers or look it up yourself. Lauren, it does drive me. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future

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for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the LA fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. Crazy, Lauren. When I turn on social media, when I see some of these people commenting on some of my posts,

and they start going on about what's not happening, what's not being talked about, and I'm literally going, we discussed it yesterday. We talked about that last week. We discussed it two weeks ago. We discussed it a month ago. We discussed that six times. And it just drives me nuts. And you got people out here who yell, holler and scream. Nothing is being done for black people. And then when you do cite some things being done, then they say, well, that's not good.

It's not enough. Things along those lines. And so I have made it clear. Should there be a black agenda? Yes. But here's the deal. You've always I told Ice Cube and others, you coming up with a black agenda ain't new. I said, multiple black organizations do this every single. Oh, you know, get something for our vote. And I said, you can't be out here as in a silo demanding these things. You need to mobilize 10, 20, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people to be by your side. So when you speak, they know that votes come with that as opposed to your entertainment personality. Yeah, I mean, we we certainly have had agendas. What we haven't had is a threat that has come with the agenda. I mean, I think we could learn a lot from our folks over at APAC.

What they have is an agenda and then they have a threat. If this does not happen this way, we are going to do X, Y, and Z. They have a threat, but they, yeah, but yeah, but they have money, but also let's be, let's be real honest, money talks. And when you can drop eight or $10 million, it changes the game. That's been one of our issues. We, we, we can make the threat. When you don't have the finances to back it up, it's a different conversation. Yeah. I would argue we have something more important. That's called folks.

And when you gave that example, the historic example that you had, you got to remember our Arab brothers and sisters are a really, really small group of people, as I'm sure you know, Roland, in this country. I think they're less than 1 percent of the population. I actually think there's probably more black folks in Texas, just in Texas, than Muslims in the entire United States. So when they protest and people, you know, 30,000, 40,000 Muslim people are getting killed in Gaza, their only hope is that somebody might listen. And their metrics are just—they're tiny. So I get—I kind of get the sort of thing that might look irrational in terms of their protests, because it is a life-and-death issue.

People are getting killed. People are dying. So, when you do that and you know that Vice President Harris is sympathetic to what they're saying, but yet the policy is unlikely to change, it almost feels like the smaller the group is, the more allowed you kind of try to have to be. For us, for African Americans, when it comes to agendas and policy, we have the power to change the game in several states. And there's no doubt about that. We have the power to change the game, to win and lose elections for people.

So when we meet agenda with some sort of ultimatum, that is when it gets real. We have yet to really do that in most electoral cases. Certainly, we don't have the money, but we have the votes. People are very aware that we have the votes. But there's no leadership that points in the direction of saying, look, if we don't get this policy this way, I'm going to tell these people not to show up and stay on the couch. We've never tried to do that. It would be kind of interesting to see if we did on some major policy issue. And to the commenter in our chat on YouTube, I think that there's kind of a—you know, there's always a tension—and Recy just brought it up, you know—there's sort of this tension

between the performative politics and the real things that are happening in the halls of Washington. Like, so we're aware of the detailed policy discussions that go on that cover a lot of the territory that people want to hear about. But we're also aware of the fact that it's going to be the same struggle that President Obama had. He's going to get into this thing of, I can't appear too black because I need a certain amount of white voters. So if I talk and message to black people specific to their issues, I may piss off white folks.

We're going to see a little bit of that same dance, because the reality of it is she needs 80 something million people to decide in 68 days to vote for her. And this is going to be close. And in a lot of these states that she needs, there's not a huge black population, a decisive black population like a Maryland or a 20, you know, Virginia's 20% black, you know, Wisconsin, Michigan, some of these states, it's going to be extremely close. It's going to probably come down to one or two states, you know. And so everyone is aware of that strategy. I get more annoyed at the fact that when we get these lightning in the bottle of candidates like Kamala Harris and Angela Trump, and they bring all this fun, all this excitement, all this energy, I do think that black folks should have more say in what comes up. You know,

we're the ones that bring the excitement and these candidates bring a certain excitement that Joe Biden. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but this is very simple. You cannot move on an agenda when it's fractured. That's first. Two, Greg, which we've talked about. I see you, Reesey. You also cannot have compromised leadership. And so part of the fundamental problem here is that when we start looking at again

and i'm gonna go back to my mlk example uh in 64 without labor money ain't no black civil rights movement so even in that that regard, even when it came to civil rights movement, LBJ knew what button to push when he said, Walter, you go tell King, accept this compromise, or I'm taking all labor money. King had no choice. And so this is where when we talk about all these people talk about do for self and what we

need. Every time any of those people say that you then have to ask them, are you funding black institutions? Because if you're not, you're simply all talk. Greg, then Recy, go. Very quickly.'re not, you're simply all talk. Greg Van Rese, go. Very quickly. Of course, what you said is accurate. And it's difficult. Adolph Reed wrote something in The Nation magazine last spring, why I'm voting for the enemy. He's an organizer, long term. We had him on the black table. He talked about his book, The South. And he said, I got to vote for the Democrats because I'm very clear

that political parties aren't just about electoral politics. Political parties organize all the way through, so that what you need in terms of mass movement is to understand that electoral politics is just one tool in a much broader field of struggle. And ultimately, political parties do more of what you want when you've organized enough to bring compelling power to bear on them. They are delivery systems. So the points you're raising, whether it be money or, as you say, Lauren, whether it be the sheer number of people, ultimately electoral politics is just one thing that really bends to the will of power.

And in this country, when you don't have mass movements like that, you saw it in the Sanders campaign. The Democratic Party did everything they could to stop that. And Bernie Sanders, of course, is going to shoot himself in the foot certain kind of ways. But ultimately, what you see is a situation where we are now at the election. And what Adolph Reed said in The Nation holds true for me, as far as I'm concerned, which is what? If you really care about the people who are in harm's way, you're going to exercise your vote to help diminish the harm that they will have. So that takes out all the petty bourgeois college professors, all the super radicals who won't be harmed, and puts in the square in the sights of the people who need to be thinking about these things, the people who need their prescription drugs beyond the elders, which the Democratic Party said we're going to try to lower it for

everybody, the people who are now going to have to go in there and make, as L. Joy Williams said from the Democratic Convention last week, I have to have Kamala Harris winning. And the next day, I'm out there pushing her. At the end of the day, Harris wins. If they don't take the Senate back, if it's very close, maybe she can nominate. She's going to say, apparently, at the CNN interview tonight, maybe she's going to nominate—maybe she can nominate Susan Collins and get her ass out of the Senate, and the Democrat governor of Maine can put a Democrat in the seat. At this point, it's too—we're not at the point to do the whole, we got to tear down

the duopoly. No, hell no. There are two people on the ballot, damn it. And if you care about these people, you say you care about, you're going to use the vote the way it's supposed to be used when you're thinking intelligently, which as a way to express your ability to prevent harm. But the real issue in terms of power, if you ain't got billionaires in your back pocket, then damn it, you're going to have to wear your shoe leather out like Tamika Mallory did, like Until Freedom did, like Linda Sarsour and them did, when they moved to Georgia and drug Warnock and Ossoff across the line and said, we are poor, bad radicals. But damn it, we know these two senators have to be in the Senate.

We have to be smart now. It's not a time for all that bullshit posturing, like Recy said, like you said, Recy. Recy, before you make your comment, that's why i go back to the muslim women for for harris this is this is the key line and again i absolutely understand the push and pull and leverage and influence and you and you you pound and pound and pound but this was what they said with less than seven days of the election we have to be honest with ourselves about what is state here for Muslim women. They then unpack

not just Gaza. Reproductive rights, access to health care, climate change, immigration reform, access to quality public education, economic opportunity, and the clear danger a Trump presidency could pose for our black and brown communities. That is important because I think

what happens is when some people only speak through a solo prism, they get so siloed. You have to say, I got to think beyond just my issue and I got to think about multiple issues. Go ahead and make your comment for the break. Yeah. I mean, we have data around what black voters want. Black Futures Lab. We have all kind of polling data. And what I see and this is where I take exception to sometimes to talk about the black agenda, because everything that has been data driven. Right. Every every piece of data shows us what Black voters are particularly interested in. And when you line that up with the actions and the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, of what Vice President Kamala Harris has two decades of advocacy in, they're in lockstep.

And the problem that I have is there's no recognition of that. This administration has been far superior than any other administration in terms of taking a particular racial equity towards closing the wealth gap, towards addressing things like health disparities, towards environmental justice, and so on and so forth. And so a lot of times when people communicate about, well, we need a Black agenda, and then they communicate about the things on a Black agenda, they're already being addressed, not just by this administration, but when we have the Democratic Congress. And so if we're looking at the data, if we're looking at the evidence, we don't have a fight

on our hands the way that people try to make it seem. We're not absent from the fight in the way that people try to make it seem. What we're not doing effectively is we're not voting our capacity, which is why two-thirds of the country has a Republican trifecta, which is why what Gary Chambers was doing down there, begging and pleading people to vote, not even having to get to 50 percent of the vote, but just a couple more thousand people. You don't have a Klansman, Jeff Landry in Louisiana, rewriting the damn Constitution when you have all those black people in Louisiana. And so it's not I'm I'm this is going to be controversial, but I don't think that the

Democratic Party, as it is today, is the primary problem. I think that we don't exercise our capacity. And the other way that we really move the needle is in the primaries. I think that we don't exercise our capacity. And the other way that we really move the needle is in the primaries, making sure that a Jamal Bowman, I agree with you, Dr. Carr, it's his, not his loss. It's our loss because he's a champion for us, but making sure that Jamal Bowman's win, regardless of who they're up against, stop having the mentality. It takes a white man to beat a white man. Oh, they ain't gonna vote for a black woman.

We can't have a black woman. We can't have a black man. Stop with that mentality. Vote our damn capacity. You ain't even gotta get the unregistered voters, just the people who are already registered

to get your ass out and vote. That's where we really have the biggest problem in our hands. And I've been on this show for going on almost five years, and we've been having the same conversation

of begging and pleading people to just vote. And I hope and pray that we're not having this conversation under a Trump administration next year because all of this fucking disinformation targeting our communities, making us disillusioned and disaffected has

worked once again. Hold tight one second. We come back. We're going to chat with Isaac Hayes III. He's going to give us an update on their lawsuit against Donald Trump for unauthorized use of the music of Isaac Hayes. Plus, we get an update on what's happening with fan base. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Support the work that we do, folks. Trust me, ain't nobody else doing it. Nobody. There's no black-owned media company that's giving you the kind of news that we do every single day. Not TV One, not BTS, actually, white-owned. But not Black Enterprise, not Essence, not The Griot, not Blavity, not Revolt. You can name it. It ain't happening. Only here. And so we want to continue that work. We, of course, we told you last week and I

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watching my brother Roland Martin underpilting as we go a little something like this. Hit it! It's real. All right, folks. Isaac Hayes III is the founder of Fanbase. He also is involved in this political campaign. He and his family have sued Donald Trump. Isaac, I saw a tweet earlier today where you said there is some news on that front.

What's up? Received a letter today from BMI confirming that. I used license currently and they haven't had one for quite some time. So as we've been saying, he's been playing that song. He's been playing Hold On, I'm Coming without permission and authorization. So we look forward to our day in court come September 3rd. I think it's Tuesday. Yeah. So. So wait a minute. So all of those MAGA idiots who were on Twitter and social media are saying you're going to lose.

That man had the right to do it. You don't know what you're talking about. I mean, you know, look, we talk about these YouTube doctors, these YouTube COVID specialists. Boy, it's amazing how many trademark and copyright experts popped up overnight. That tends to happen. And I think what does that mean? That tends to happen. And I think, what does that sound? Does that mean? That tends to happen overnight.

You know, that I think it's just par for the course. I think Donald Trump has people that want to side with him, that want to believe anything he says. But I want to let the facts speak for themselves. My family wants to let the facts speak for ourselves when we have our day in court. And so copyright law is very clear. I've kind of been saying this for about 20 years, so I know very much exactly what goes on with copyright law. And I kind of knew this from the very beginning. I wasn't aware of the amount of activity that was going on with the song, but we had repeatedly asked to stop.

So we had to seek legal counsel. So people are going to have their opinion. They're going to say, you know, I mean, even with what I just posted, there's still going to be people that, you know, have a difference of opinion, but not fact. So. Now, we talk about this political campaign. What have you been seeing, even on a fan base, with conversations and discussions and how people are using the app to speak to what's happening with Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz?

There's been a lot of conversation about the current campaign. I think it's energized people to have these conversations. We actually just launched a new functionality today. We put the audio rooms on the web. So if you go to fanbase.app slash audio, any audio room that's on Fanbase right now is available for you to listen to. Like a podcast, you can just click for free without having to download the app. It's a really significant update. That's fanbase.app slash audio. It's another feature, something that we filed a patent on as we continue to open up. We want people to have the freedom and the

ability to say what they want, speak how they want to speak without limits. Be You Without Limits is our motto at the company. That's our mission. I we don't... I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be

no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice

to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization.

Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. I don't want people to be suppressed in what they say and have free speech, so I'm excited to be able to launch that functionality today. So you got that, and you're also moving to some new digs, right?

Yes. We just moved into our new headquarters in West Midtown in Atlanta. You know, we have a lot of work to do, but it was time for us to kind of move. We needed a little bit more space. Plus, we needed to function in a collaborative tech environment, a tech space, a tech area where we can collaborate with other startups. We did a partnership with Georgia Tech here in Atlanta, Georgia, on a podcast studio. I'm really excited about that partnership. We have a partnership with Propel, which is the nonprofit funded by Apple and the Southern Company for HBCU students.

So we're excited to be able to do that. Some of those students were actually at us with InvestFest this weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. So I'm excited to have those students. And that activation went extremely well. We're doing a lot. You know, we're moving forward. We want people to continue to be part of what we're doing. And the show and status of the latest fundraise.

This is important. Everybody that's watching, read my shirt. StartEngine.com slash Fanbase. We've been able to raise $10 million in three Rexy of Crowdfunding campaigns. We are now raising $17 million and just past the $2 million mark. And that's important because that capital helps us build more functionality, continue to build the app. But more importantly, you own a part of the company before we go public. Opportunities to invest like this do not exist very often.

This is something relatively new. We have over 15,000 investors. I want 15,000 more. The minimum to invest in Fanbase is $399. When you get to the StartEngine website, if you see a number other than $399, that is the average investment size. So if you see $900 or $1,000, that's just the average amount that people are investing. You have to manually put in $399.

I want all your viewers to go to StartEngengine.com, everybody that sees this video, and invest and own part of this, and then join the app, download the app, use the app. We're the only Black-owned social media platform out here that's really been doing this even since Black Planet. This is a Black-owned social media platform by multiple people. There's a lot of people that own this platform, that have invested in this platform. And we've got so many things that we're working on. We're working on RTMP streaming for video games, e-commerce, some new functionality that we're adding in audio, new forms of media inside of audio rooms. So I'm really excited to be able to do that. But that capital helps us build faster. So we just crossed 2 million. I want your viewers to

help us to get to 3 million. I know you guys get thousands and thousands of viewers. I want all your viewers to go to startengine.com and invest 399 or more and become part of this journey with us. Programs like these are extremely significant because it's hard for black startup founders to raise capital, but being able to go to my community and raise capital is important.

And so I have to take advantage of opportunities to speak about that and be able to do this. So I'm happy to do it. Roland, I appreciate you for always giving me the platform to be able to do this. This company has grown significantly over the last three years. We've been able to scale to $160 million valuation. And I'm going to keep going. And we have a lot of amazing things happening. I also think, I'm going to ask you about this, if we can do this rolling, I want to do an invest-a-thon. Everybody's been raising money for the campaigns. I want to do a fan-based invest-a-thon, where we gather a whole bunch of amazing people and really try to run this

up. Because I want to get the $5 million raised before the end of the month, before the end of September. And so I want to take advantage to do that, too. I think I talked to Jamal Bryant, some other people. I think we want to get together and put a Fanbase Investathon because it's time that we own these social media platforms and we use them to our benefit, that we are equity shareholders in infrastructure. And Fanbase is the place to do it. So I'm asking everybody, again, read my shirt. I don't know if you can see it. StartEngine.com slash fan base. All right, Isaac. I appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much. Thank you, sir.

Folks. Uh, that is, you know, actually I'm gonna do this real quick. Let me pull up our receipt, uh, Greg and Lauren. I got to get y'all take. So the free beacon drops this story. So let me just go ahead. I don't know how many MF Reese going to drop. So let's just go ahead and just just put it out there right now.

They literally drop a story law. I think I'm going to start with you, Reese. They drop a story. Kamala Harris didn't put down that she worked at McDonald's when she applied for a job at the Alameda County DA's office. I mean, folk mock those idiots all day. And I said, yeah, the four halls of fame I'm in, it's not in any of my bios that I worked at Wendy's in college.

These people are stupid. You bitches got nothing. This is it. You pulling a what, 30, is it 30-year-old? 30-year-old application? That's all you got? We can go back to 30-year-old application.

That's all you got. We can go back to a couple months ago when your boy just got convicted on 34 felony counts. So let's not talk about integrity. Let's not talk about shit being left off. You filled out your tax returns wrong. You couldn't find the 11,000 votes. You were stealing

classified documents. You were impeached twice. Do I need to keep going? This is so pathetic. But this is why I love having a squeaky clean candidate, Chad. I ain't got to make excuses for nothing because this is the best that they have to work with. So thank you, Joe Biden, for selecting Vice President Kamala Harris as your Vice President and passing the baton because if this is all they got, it's going to be a lot easier to get to November than any of us could have ever predicted.

Lauren, I love this here. This is a tweet here. Amy McGrath, I worked at McDonald's for two summers, not in my book, never came up in the congressional race, never came up in the Senate race either. Adam Kinzinger, I worked at Hardee's two summers. Not in my book. Never came up in the congressional race. Never came up in the Senate race either. Adam Kinzinger. I worked at Hardee's and literally never told anyone until just now. It's not in my book either.

Still work there. I mean, these people are nuts. Free Beacon is just like, you know, Fox and OAN and the Sinclair-owned station in the DMV, WJLA. It's effectively GOP TV masquerading as a news platform. They're not really trying to shield it anymore. Free Beacon is one of the most partisan right news platforms out there. And that's why they came up with this ridiculousness. Even for them, though, even for them, it was really, really weird, actually, really strange.

And so they got dragged. And they'll get dragged again. Just shows you they've got nothing. They've got nothing to say about the vice president. And they're just really just desperate. They're kind of in the same situation as the Trump campaign. There's just no strategy there to really criticize anything that she's done. They just don't have anything, so they got real desperate, real desperate on that story.

It's really embarrassing. Greg, Mark Hertling, I love this, reporting now to avoid any embarrassing FOIA requests. During my teen years, I had jobs sweeping and cleaning tools at a service station, lifeguarding at a community pool, working at McDonald's, filling potholes in the street department, the worst, and being a Boy Scout camp counselor at SF Ranch in Missouri. I also never listed any of those on a resume. My wife only has cursory knowledge of any of this.

These people, if that's the best that you can do, I'm going to have to advise President Kamala Harris, good luck. Okay. She's got the right white man, Tim Walsh, licking on ice cream with roy cooper in raleigh north carolina jumped up in front of firefighters looking like a firefighter to cheers jay junior varsity vans got booed at the fire with the firefighters everything is falling in place and this is humorous but i will say this i have to say this as an alumni uh as an alum of wendy, Arby's, and Crystal's, though you yourself

know about Crystal's, who worked at all three of them places, never put on a resume. Nothing, I don't know that anything makes me more, touches me more when I see an elder or somebody working at a McDonald's or a Wendy's or sweeping the floor in the dining room at a Jack in the Box or White Castle. You know, my brother worked at Bojangles. My sister worked at Foot Locker. Gussie worked at Foot Locker. We had those jobs not only because we were young people looking to make a little money, but we're from the working class. When I think of Reverend Barber and I think about the Poor People's Campaign and I think about the people that we saw rolling that came up to you, man, hugging you, thanking you for everything you do, thanking you for the Black Star Network just a couple of months ago in downtown D.C.

How many of those people work fast food? Let me tell you, white boy, something in the Republican Party, because you have contempt for your base. Some people work those jobs because they have to try to make ends meet. That's why you have to have a $15 minimum wage, because the people who own those places are not trying to enrich those folk. Some people work at Chick-fil-A not because they want a little extra money for after school, but because they're trying to make ends meet. When you ask her whether or not she had that on you, when you say, why don't you have this on your resume, the people who are lining up to vote for you, if you all are still too, you're still too stupid to understand that they have contempt for you. And the people who don't have contempt for you would look at something like that and say, this is what they think is the ceiling for folk like Kamala Harris and Greg Carr

and Recy Colbert and Lauren Victoria Burke and Roland Sebastian Martin. If you don't understand the contempt these people have for you, then shame on you. Because when I walk into McDonald's and I see you in there and you're anything other than a teenager or a 20-something, and I realize that you're in there not because you're just looking for something to do in the daytime, but because you need that job, then damn it, this should insult the hell out of all of y'all. This is a serious conversation. And we laugh about it. But I promise you, man, nothing makes me madder to see people in America busting their ass

past the age when they should be in retirement or have some benefits. And then this becomes the light kind of thing. I'd be proud to put Wendy's and Arby's and Crystal's on my resume if I needed to. Why? Because it's honest work. And Dr. King said honest work comes with dignity. Y'all go to hell. And that sure has helped me pay for my college.

Before I go out, y'all, this is a photo right here of the rally in Savannah, Georgia's day. A great photo. And I know that just makes a mega crowd sick because this is the kind of crowds they're turning out every single day. And so we're going to keep covering this stuff. Greg, Reesey, Lauren, I appreciate it. Thank you so very much, folks. I'm going to see you guys tomorrow.

I'm about to go have some dinner with my family. So we appreciate all of you watching the show. Please support the work that we do, folks. Again, I'm literally putting a schedule together now. The places we're going to be traveling in September and October, broadcasting live, wanting to get your perspective, get your thoughts. And so we cannot wait, but your support is critical to us to do so. I keep telling y'all we don't get I ain't got millionaires and billionaires supporting this show. They're not sending me big checks. We don't have advertisers who are really supporting us. We're fighting a

good fight every single day. So when you send your dollars, it matters. The goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average 50 bucks each a year. That raises a million dollars. Goes an absolute long way. And so send your check and money order to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal, RM Martin Unfiltered, Venmo is RM Unfiltered, Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland atcom rolling that rolling mark unfiltered.com folks that's it I'll see y'all tomorrow right here on the Black Star Network folks Black Star Network is here

a real uh revolutionary right now support this man Black Media he makes sure that our stories are told thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland. Be Black. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared.

It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing Thank you. to launch a new emergency relief program providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to ascensivehome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1,

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.