#RolandMartinUnfiltered - MS FedEX Driver Shooting Mistrial, NC GOP Restrictive Elex Bill, BET Failed Sale Deconstruction

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

8.17.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: MS FedEX Driver Shooting Mistrial, NC GOP Restrictive Elex Bill, BET Failed Sale Deconstruction  The trial of two white men accused of shooting at a Black FedEx driver who was making a delivery ends in a mistrial because of a police error.  The victim's attorney will join us to explain how that happened. A Texas woman faces charges for threatening to kill a judge and Texas U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee over Donald Trump. And the Georgia grand jurors are facing threats after their names are released on the Trump indictment. North Carolina's controversial elections bill is awaiting the governor's signature.  We'll tell you about the significant changes to the state's election practices. I told y'all not to believe everything you read.  Tyler Perry did not buy BET, and tonight I  will do a complete deconstruction of the failed BET sale to understand why it will never happen. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.  Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. self. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I 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. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. 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. Today is Thursday, August 17,

2023. Coming up, a Roland Martin unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network from Los Angeles. A Texas Trump supporter, a white woman, guess what? Arrested for threatening the life of the black judge in Washington, D.C. We'll tell you about those details. In Mississippi, two white men on trial for firing shots at a black FedEx worker is a mistrial. What the heck is going on? We'll talk with Carlos Moore, the attorney for that young man to figure out what is going on.

BET will not be black owned. Paramount pulls the offer off the table. I will walk y'all through why it was smart for the black bidders not to give Paramount the $3 billion they were asking for because it simply didn't make any sense. Also, North Carolina Republicans, they now have a veto-approved majority in the legislature. Guess what the first thing they do? They pass a voter suppression bill. That's what they do. And so we'll talk about that. Plus, Georgia, authorities there are not happy at all with threat from Donald Trump supporters against the grand jurors. They say, we're coming after y'all. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. believe he's knowing putting it down from sports to news to politics with entertainment just for

gigs he's rolling yeah it's rolling yeah yeah it's rolling yeah rolling with rolling now He's broke, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know, he's rolling, Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel.

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Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. Martel. A judge in Mississippi said he had no choice but to declare a mistrial in the case of two white men who were on trial for shooting at a black fed ex-worker. Those two white men, Brandon Case and Gregory Charles Case, are charged with attempted first degree murder, conspiracy and shooting into Gibson's into the vehicle of DeMontario Gibson while he was making deliveries. The judge made the decision because the detective in the case admitted to errors. Brookhaven Police Department Detective Vincent Fernando admitted under oath while the jury was out of the courtroom that he did not give prosecutors or defense attorneys a videotaped statement the police had taken from Gibson. This is what the judge said.

You know, during Detective Fernando's testimony, and it's been the subject of motions, he's a very important witness in this case, the court ruled preliminarily that the shell casings found, I believe, in the home were not admissible. And furthermore, that, and everybody agreed on this, both parties, that Mr. Bates, in fact, the defense gave Mr. Bates the ability to essentially ask a leading question, and that is, did you find any handguns in the house? They agreed not to object. The question was asked, and once again, Detective Fernando blurted out, no, but we did find long guns,

which was also excluded in a preliminary hearing. And then we get to his testimony, and wherein there's a disc of the victim, Mr. Gibson, writing a statement. And I haven't watched it. I don't know what was on it. And candidly, that really doesn't matter. We don't get to say, oh, well, the rule got violated, but it wasn't that big a deal. That's a decision. It's got to be turned over.

In pretrial discovery, it was not turned over. I have no idea whether there were other things that weren't turned over. And I can assure you, no one hates a mistrial more than the court, because once again, we are in the position of coming back here, doing the same thing. And we've essentially spent three days that end up being wasted time and effort. But under the circumstances, and I'll quote the totality of the circumstances, between the limiting matters that were testified to, I had to twice admonish the jury to ignore, or once, Mr. Kitchens didn't want me to do it once. Now, folks, the judge, he was not happy at all with the detective.

He had some strong words for him. Since I started practicing law in 1993, the policy of the 14th Circuit Court District Attorney's Office has always been an open file policy, which works great, except for the fact that the state of Mississippi can only turn over evidentiary items to defense counsel if they are provided with those items. This I don't know when this case was indicted I don't have it in front of me I can't remember it it really doesn't matter the bottom line is this file should have been turned over to the DA's office prior to the indictment. And by file, I mean the entire file, including a video recorded statement of the victim, which was also requested by defense

to the DA's office. Mr. Bates acknowledges that. He acknowledges that he was told that it didn't exist and lo and behold here we are on the second day of trial and we find out something that these attorneys have been looking for for at least a week and potentially months is actually in your file. Mr. Fernando you understand you've got to turn your entire file over to Mr. Bates office for him to be able to prosecute these cases. Do you understand that? Yes, sir. So you come out with a video of a statement that nobody's ever seen before.

Now, it's about a four-and-a-half-minute video there. The judge was not happy. Carlos Moore joins us now from Martha's Vineyard. He is the attorney for Mr. Gibson there. Carlos, I saw a report where the mother of your client just stormed out of the courtroom. She was not happy at all with this mistrial. That's true. Rightfully so.

She is very much disturbed by today's developments. Her son has waited long enough for justice. This happened in January of 2022. The indictment was not to November of 2022. And here we are in August of 2023, two and a half days of trial, and then the judge declares a mistrial. And so it is very disturbing to not only her, but her son and to everyone involved. This is not hard. If you're a cop, you turn over everything that you have to both sides. Correct. So we believe this was very deliberate and intentional on the part of the Brookhaven Police Department.

From the very beginning, we have said that they have played favorites with the cases. We do know that the assistant police chief at the time of this incident was Chris Case, who I've been told is related to Gregory Case and Brandon Case. And so they have done everything they can to delay, delay, delay, and to try to help the cases beat this case. So the folks who don't know what this means, walk folks through it, because this is just now more delays. What are we talking about here? A month, three months, six months, a year? We don't know. The best case scenario from speaking with the prosecutor

is that this could be retried in October of this year. That's the judge's next term of court. However, he already has cases on his docket for October, and he may not be able to fit this trial in October. Adding insult to injury, compounding things, is the fact that the prosecutor retires in December. So if he retires in December and a new prosecutor comes in in January, it has to come up to speed.

Who knows when this case will go back to trial? Just absolutely gross police misconduct. This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Have you talked to your client? How's he doing? My client is trying to keep the faith. He is discouraged. He is despondent in a way, but he's still undergoing counseling since and has been undergoing counseling since this incident occurred back in 2022.

But he is not going to give up. He does know that justice delay does not equate to justice denied each time. And he believes that at the end of the day, once a fair and impartial jury is seated, that he will get justice. And he's willing to fight for however long he has to fight until that day comes. And of course, new trial means having to go through a new jury selection, all of those different things. Carlos Moore, we appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot.

No problem. Thank you. Well, it's going to go to a break. We come back more on Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Don't forget to support us in what we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Your check and money orders are critically important for us to be able to do what we do. So send a check and money orders to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, Dallas, R.M. Unfiltered, PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered, Venmo is R.M. Unfiltered, Zale, Roland at RolandSMartin.com,

Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You can also, of course, download our Blackstar Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. And be sure to get a copy of my book, White Fear, The Browning of America, Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, available at bookstores nationwide. Also, you can get from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Books A Million. Download the audio version on Audible. We'll be right back. equal brilliance, but bad culture, they're talking about other people. Go to a winner's barbershop, here's what I'm doing. You go to the barbershop

where people feel defeated, they're talking about other people, either celebrities or people they admire, but also often, I don't like Joe. I don't like Roland Martin. Let me tell you something. I don't understand people. How could you not like anything here you see?

You should just be like, this is amazing. It's cool. You may not even like how he does it or how I do it, but it's like, you know what? They're succeeding. They're killing it. All you should be is, that's fantastic. But if I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you.

If I don't feel good about me, it's hard for me to feel good about you. If I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me, I'm not gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me, it's hard for me to feel good about you. If I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you. If I don't love me, I don't have a clue how to love you. And here's the big one. If I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm gonna make your, live from LA. And this is The Culture.

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Weekdays at 3, only on the Black Star Network. Hi, everybody. I'm Kim Coles. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Yo, it's your man, Deon Cole from Blackish, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Folks, how many times have I told y'all Donald Trump is going to cause all of these crazy, deranged white supporters of his to go to prison themselves. Check this out. A white woman in Texas has been arrested for making dangerous threats to the judge in one, the federal, the black federal judge in one of Donald Trump's cases. This is absolutely crazy. You know,

this particular story here. And so again, of course, Trump is facing charges in all kind of jurisdictions. And one of them, of course, is there in D.C. But this woman in Alvin, Texas, OK, heard. First of all, she faces charges of threatening to kill the judge overseeing the case of Trump, the 2020 election case and Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. A federal judge ordered Abigail Jo Schreier to be arrested and imprisoned pending trial for calling Judge Tonya Chutkin's chambers at the federal courthouse in D.C. threatening to kill her. Schreier left a voicemail for Judge Chutkin calling her a stupid black slave before saying you are in our sights.

We want to kill you. She also threatened to kill all Democrats, members of the LGBTQ community, and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Shry warned investigators to be concerned that Representative Lee came to her hometown of Alvin. As a result of the threats, a protective order has been put in place limiting the disclosure of evidence provided by prosecutors and Trump's legal team. Now, in addition to this, in Georgia, Fulton County, MAGA supporters of Trump, they literally are doxing and threatening the grand jurors who indicted him there. The sheriff at Fulton County has made it clear that they're investigating any and all of these threats as well.

I want to bring in my panel right now, talk about this here. Dr. Greg Carr, Department of African American Studies, Howard University, glad to have him with us back in his familiar place with all the books behind us. He's been in Egypt the last couple of weeks. Candace Kelly, legal analyst, South Orange, New Jersey, glad to have Candace back on the show. Lauren Vittoria Burt, Black Press USA, out of Allentown, Virginia. Candace, I want to start with you. Do these idiots not understand you threaten a federal judge and you threaten a congresswoman? Yo ass going to jail.

They don't understand that. And the reason they do. 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. 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 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 Glod. 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 man. 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.

We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov.

Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Don't roll in is because their leader is doing the exact same thing. And that's what they're following. They're following the leader. They don't even understand the implications. You know, the one woman that we're referring to that threatened the judge and threatened the representative, she said, listen, I really wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to go to D.C. But she did add, but if they do come down here, if I do see Lee down here, well, then I will get her. She didn't even have the wherewithal to understand what she was saying in the midst of potentially being arrested. And again, that is because what we see Donald Trump doing to the grand jury,

doxing people, making sure that people know everybody's information, setting it up, saying that, hey, everybody's fair game and no one has gotten him yet. And that's why he is going to continue to do this until he is actually stopped. I think what's most interesting about this is if you look at other cases in New York, for example, you can't dock somebody on the grand jury because they don't show the names in the rape case that he was involved in. Um, and he was found guilty of assault. Uh, there were no names that were revealed on that grand jury. And that is because of the simple reason that you want to keep these jurors safe so that they can carry out the law in a way where they won't feel threatened. So I'm not sure why in this particular case, which was so sensitive and racially charged

that they didn't just request the grand jury members names not to be revealed, which they could have done, but for some reason they didn't. And here we are. Well, it's interesting because Lauren, you actually sent me a text about this. I immediately looked into it and that's actually the law in Georgia. When an indictment comes down, I was shocked by that because normally grand jurors are private. You don't know who they are, but in Georgia, when they indict, they literally, their names are listed. Yeah, I was shocked by that. I actually thought when I sent you the text, I actually thought that was a mistake. I thought they'd made a mistake and revealed the names. And then, of course, you went and researched and found that that was the law in Georgia. I was really surprised to see

that. And as Candace just said, I mean, you know, the idea that you would put these people's names out and think that they weren't going to get threatened, you've got to be living in another world, an alternative universe to be thinking that. Donald Trump is intentionally trying to incite his supporters to violence. That is what he's doing. I give you January 6, 2021. That's what he's doing. He wants to get people riled up. He's putting out lies about Fannie Willis.

He's been doing this the entire time. And at some point, someone's got to sanction him. It's a question of who is going to do it. I put my money on Judge Chunkin, but who knows? I just think that this idea that we're sitting here acting like we're dealing with a normal person, he knows exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's trying to incite. He is going to continue to do it until someone stops him. This is the game that he always plays. And for some reason Merrick Garland and all these

people can never find the guts to do anything. I think it was Nicole Hannah-Jones the other day that put out on Twitter a pretty good question. And somebody put out that, you know, if this was some gang leader in some drug case and they did this, there is absolutely no way that that would go for more than 48 hours without some sort of court order coming out. I have absolutely no idea why everybody's waiting for something to happen to do something. I mean, we already have a huge precedent for violence at the United States Capitol. So I'm not sure what big clue has to be sent or what has to happen to wake people up that this is what Donald Trump does. And he'll

continue to do it. Well, and Greg, here's the deal. These far right wing websites, you got a racial slurs. They're putting the address of the grand jurors out there. This is a statement from the Fulton County Sheriff's Office. Quote, the Fulton County Sheriff's Office is aware that personal information of members of the Fulton County Grand Jury is being shared on various platforms. As the lead agency, our investigators are working closely with local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to track down the origin of threats in Fulton County and other jurisdictions. We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty.

If anyone becomes aware of a threat, please call 911 immediately or contact your local police department. Look, the thing here, Greg, look, these MAGA people, they really are deplorables and they are dumb, but are they not paying attention to all the January 6th folks? They will throw your ass in prison. And some of these people are in prison for three, five, ten, or more years. So keep playing around and then watch what happens because Fulton County, they are not going to be nice to these folks. I'm not sure, Roland.

If you try to call them at 911 right now, you should get a busy signal. Why? Because they've already made the threats. I mean, come on. What are you going to do? These folks have talked about a hit list. They've talked about sending death warrants. They're doxing them with the,

that's a very nice car you have. Shame if something happened to it. Photos, home addresses. Forget 911. That's after the fact. These people have already done it. You know the difference between the Red Scare, the 1950s and 60s,

and mass hysteria with people pointing fingers at each other, or the palmarades of the 1920s with 60s and mass hysteria with people pointing fingers at each other or the Palmer raids in the 1920s with yet the red scare stuff. Or for that matter, the 1850s leading up to the Civil War and jumping on the abolitionists. You know the difference between every time this has happened and now? Technology. You now have a virtual claver. You've got a virtual claver. Every one of these white nationalists is deputized. The cops can't stop somebody from rolling up on somebody

in a Publix or at the QT because they got their names, they got their addresses, they're in their social media. I mean, you know, forgive me if I'm underwhelmed by the idea that the Fulton County anything can save anybody from this. And correct me if I'm wrong, Candace, but the feds don't

allow you to name the grand jurors. Now, you know, that's how you protect grand jurors. The state of Georgia, and I'm wrong, Candace, but the feds don't allow you to name the grand jurors. Now, you know, and then that's how you protect grand jurors. The state of Georgia, and I'm sure if we do a little digging, and I'm going to try to do a little digging to find out about this, there's got to be some Jim and Jane Crow reason why they allow you to name grand jurors at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't go back that far. But the point is this, once you have put somebody's name in the street on social media, they are not safe. And so the other thing I would say is in the federal indictment, Donald Trump may have already violated the terms of his release by threatening witnesses.

So if they wanted to lock him up now, there's probably a case to be made that he could already be locked up. But, you know, again, as you say, Lauren, they just don't seem to want to push the envelope, even when they have every legal right to do so. Well, Kenneth, look, here's the deal. Georgia is a little bit different. Remember, for the longest in Georgia, if a police officer was being investigated by the grand jury, they had the right to sit in on all grand jury proceedings, including if witnesses were on the stand. That law was only changed a few years ago when people discovered it, when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening.

And people were like, what the hell? This is crazy. And so this is the kind of nonsense we do see in a lot of these states. Yeah. And it is on a state by state basis. And that's why we are here specifically in the state, because of the particular penalties that go along with it. There is more of a chance, obviously, for Trump to to go down. But when we look at this and you talk about the law that used to be on the book with the police officers, this is all intimidation. And what this does in the future is other people who are in Fulton County, who are in Georgia, once they see this happening and a lack of anything happening, they're going to say to themselves, I don't want to be on the Grand Parade anymore.

I'm not going to respond to anything that comes in the mail. And that interrupts the whole process so that people who look like you and me are stopped because of things like this that people are not taking care of. Greg is correct. And that is that Trump has already done things that are offenses that are worth people going after, that the police should be getting involved in at this point. But there's this whole thing about, you know, making sure that they keep him in kind of his own lane, keep him away from the fray so that he doesn't use this as some type of a campaigning tactic. And they're really trying to balance things. I think that's what's going on right now. But he definitely has done things just like this woman, nonetheless, that are wrong and are offenses that he could be and should be penalized or arrested for. Well, keep in mind, you have several people who are indicted

with him who literally tried to intimidate those black poll workers in Georgia and went to their homes. This is what they do. Hold on one second. We come back because there are other members of the deplorable maggots who literally are threatening political violence and call for a civil war. But they've been calling for that. Again, the civil war never ended, y'all. It just had a long impasse. Yeah, we'll break it down further. You're watching Rolling Mark Unfiltered, right? 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 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 two of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 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 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Here on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not replace us!

White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash.

This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white people. Bye bye, Papa.

Up next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes. The shooting of Megan Thee Stallion and the subsequent trial of Tory Lanez. Megan has been treated like the villain. The experience that Megan went through is something that all black women face when we are affected by violence. This is something that's called massage noir. There's a long history of characterizing black women

as inherently bad in order to justify our place in this society. Next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes. Hey, what's up, GeekTutorial, the place where we got kicked out your mama's university, creator and executive producer of Fat Tuesdays, an air hip-hop comedy. But right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin.

Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? A state rep in Michigan, Matt Maddett, sparked a lot of controversy on social media with his remarks, free the 16 electors poolside party at his home. And in an audio recording obtained by the messenger, Maddett warned supporters that a civil war could erupt or that people would get shot if the government continued targeting conservatives. Listen. Love you all. And thank you for being here tonight and supporting us.

It's been difficult for Sean and I. And, you know, I talked to Wes and I said, Wes, you know, if the government continues to weaponize these departments against conservatives and the citizens that are the taxpayers. You know, what's going to happen to this country? Does anyone have any idea if this doesn't stop? No, what's going to happen? No, what's going to happen before that? Yeah, the goal is communism, right, or Marxism, the Democrats' dream, right?

But what's going to happen before that? Someone's going to get so pissed off they're going shoot someone that's what's gonna happen or they're ready we're gonna have a civil war or some sort of revolution that that's where this is what's up with this is going up and when that happens we're gonna get squashed the people here are gonna be the first one okay come on in come on in You're ready for your close-up, Michonne. You're being honored for being an elector. So give her a round of applause. Michonne rules. All right. Thank you, Michonne. I have two other electors here, but I didn't want to out them. They're just among the crowd,

and I didn't know if they wanted to say anything. But it's really better for none of us to say anything, which is hard, because I like to say shit. They're dismantling the Trump campaign, one person at a time. Michonne's the person in Michigan. She's a target. Number two, they're going to cheat again. You guys know that, right? They're never going to stop cheating. And who agrees with me that they did cheat their ass off? And what they're doing here, the things that the electors did were things that had been done before.

That's all I'm going to say. And they're trying to take away our right to appeal an election or to the election in 2024 is threatened by what they're doing to our electors and other people throughout this nation, that you will not say anything. You are going to shut the F up and you are going to walk into that gas chamber. That's what they want. Okay, because that's what's coming first, though.

And so what we're going to do, speaking of dividing and conquering, my goal is to get a resolution up to impeach Dana Nessel. She has obviously committed corruption with this corrupt prosecution. The law is there. Now we need to get the Republicans on paper to sign the resolution to impeach Dana Nessel. We're 56-54, guys, but we have two state reps running for mayor. Westland and Warren, Weiss, and Coleman. And both of them

have a good chance. I don't want to candy cap it for him. So we want you to vote for him. And anyway, so if both of those go, for six months we're 54-54. And we have recalls that are going on in our state. If a few of these Democrats are recalled, it's even less than that. So don't lose heart. Don't think that all is lost. We're very close in the House of Representatives. We do have some work to do with trying to buck up some

Republicans and trying to inject backbones up into them, but Matt and I will work on that if you just keep supporting us and keep praying for us and keep spreading the word and don't buy into the narrative. So why is Matt Maddox so upset? Well, it's because the Attorney General Dana Nessel actually charged Maddox's wife,

the former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, with falsely claiming they were duly elected electors for Donald Trump. That's why they're upset, y'all. And so understand the thing here, Lauren, that people have to understand. These people have always threatened violence. They've always tried to attack people. That's what January 6th was about.

They were saying it before that. They're angry and all this, oh, no, no, these people are wrong and we should, they're taking away our rights. No, y'all are just mad because y'all actually broke the law. And that's the deal. They don't believe in being held accountable, again, because their dear leader has never been held accountable. All of these people are taking their marching orders from him.

And I'm going to tell you who I'm also going to blame here, Lauren. I'm going to blame the Mitch McConnells of the world who were gutless and afraid to impeach him because had they had the guts to do it, they would have sent a signal to the rest of these yahoos that he is evil and has no place in our political society. Yeah, Mitch McConnell had an opportunity to impeach him. Not only that, had they passed that impeachment vote, had he gone into his caucus and told them to vote for impeachment at that crucial moment, he would have been ineligible to run for president again. So the question of that would have been decided in that moment.

I mean, everybody knows that the entire Trump mega movement is built on identity politics and anger and with an underlying of if you don't do it our way, we're going to be violent. I mean, you know, they are they are basically the other part of this, though, is what Greg brought up, this virtual clavern concept, which is, of course, extremely accurate. Until we get these social media companies regulated and Section 230 dealt with, this is going to go on again and again and again, because as it stands now, these social media companies are not legally responsible for anything on the platform. And whether it's lying, whether it's disinformation, misinformation, defamation, they're responsible for absolutely nothing. And at this point in the game, we're now far down the line. We know what the connection is. We know why things are different. There are only two things that are different between this moment and, say, 20 years ago. One, we had a black president of the United States get elected in 2008.

And the second thing is social media. So it allows these people to get this misinfo and disinfo out. And as you can hear on that on that audio by Dan Merica, you know, that audio is showing the people in the background believing that the election was stolen. Where did they get that from? Well, they got that from Trump. 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 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 Glod. 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 man. 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Trump lying over and over again, social media, putting out that disinfo and misinfo, and absolutely nobody regulating that. So that is a disastrous combination.

And that continues. And as you can hear, nobody's really doing anything about that. Nobody's even really talking about it at this point. But see, here's the thing I think that people really need to grasp. And the bottom line is this here, Greg, and we've talked about this ad nauseum. White nationalists and white supremacists, they are the backbone of the Republican Party. The reason they were afraid to, they were afraid to impeach Trump is because they were afraid of his followers who are their voters. And so they were like, oh, he's going to go away. Remember when Susan Collins say after the first impeachment, I think he's learned his lesson. No, I keep telling people there is no bottom for this man. It doesn't exist.

And so the Republican Party chose to be in bed with him. They had no problem with him being in power. Privately, they trash the man. They think he's an idiot. They think he's dumb, but they love power. And they, like I said on ABC this week, this was, I think it was February 2017. I said, they have allowed evil into their house and evil has now consumed them. Yeah. I mean, that's the bottom line, Roland. I mean, there are a number of—I guess it's a fundamental conundrum we're faced with here. We keep talking about the rule of law. But the rule of law at critical moments, because, you know, African people have fought for our own liberation in this country, has helped us, but we perhaps need to understand that we're

playing by two different sets of rules here. Fannie Willis, of course, has used RICO masterfully in this indictment of Trump with the grand jury. But let's not forget that she kind of likes RICO. I was in class last night with my law students, and one of them brought up the fact that, you know, she went after Young Thug down there on a RICO case. And to echo what Lauren said, whether it was Nicole Hannah-Jones or whoever said that they were black, it'd be different. Does anybody doubt that if Young Thug fans had been threatening grand jurors that somebody would have been locked up by now?

But the whole idea, though, is that we think about the law as an absolute, and it is absolutely not an absolute. The political calculus that Candace is talking about, you know, in terms of what to do or not to do with Trump in a kind of delicate situation, is at play here. There was an article in today's Financial Times that talks about this $400 billion in investments in clean tech because of the legislation that, of course, the Biden administration was able to pass through, 80 percent, 80 percent of the clean tech and semiconductor investments announced so far this year are in Republican districts. Now, what does that mean? That means that this white nationalist party gets the benefit of a federal government that's working for everybody.

So when you say and when we understand them to be power hungry, it's not just power hungry for benefits. They're getting the benefits. It's power hungry for little niggling reasons. Race is at play here. If the Democrats were in charge of all three branches of government, the Republicans would benefit. But it's not enough to benefit. It's not enough to be a citizen. They are white nationalists. And we have to understand that the rule of law is not going to save us. We keep saying, oh, well, they got to do this about a law. They got to do this about... Set the law aside. I'm very happy, for example, that this guy is talking like this. Matt Maddox, who, by the way, owns 8-1 bail bonds in Michigan, Michigan's largest bail agency.

So, you know, he ain't never going to be against no cash bail. Let them talk. They're using the First Amendment and trying to hide behind the First Amendment. What they're also doing finally is this. They are identifying the enemies of our common humanity. And you got to pick a side. It's just as simple as that. They're playing by a set of rules that we don't understand. Well, the thing here, Ken, is that I think people need to really

lock and load on is that these people have supporters who are in positions of power. There are sheriffs. There are police departments. There are lawmakers. They are allowing these things to happen. And so this isn't just, oh, something small. No, no, no, no, no. They have people who are state senators, state representatives, governors who stand with them.

These people, look, you have conspirators, co-conspirators of Donald Trump who are in Congress as we speak, who are chairing committees, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar. The list goes on and on and on. These people are still there. They have not been held accountable, even by Jack Smith. Not yet. But if you listen to that audio that you just played a little bit earlier,

there was a point where that fake elector was given an opportunity to speak, and she said, you know what, as much as I always like to open my mouth, I'm not going to do it right now. Now now that gives me a little bit of hope because of the fact that she knows the harm and knows the trouble that she is in right now now that's not to say that that carries on to everything and is a cure all but she got the message that what she was doing and did is wrong or else she would have been running her mouth just like everybody else on the audio clip.

It is coming, and that's one thing about the law. It may not be kind of carried out in a way that we all look at as fair and just, but you do have to be patient to see. For those people who haven't read the indictment, to look at all the people that you're talking about, the 16 people that were the fake electors and then the 19 people who were part of what Fannie indicted, those 19 people. It is very,

very clear. And it tells a very, very specific story that involves not just Donald Trump, but this is why she is prosecuting them all at one time under the RICO Act. She wants to make sure that people understand the big picture. It's not about Donald Trump. And in order to see the big picture, you have to look at all of the people involved. And that's why she kind of conjoined everybody together. And one of those electors, like we heard in the audio, she got the message that her time might be up. Otherwise, I think, Roland, she would have been running her mouth just like everybody else on that audio tape. 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 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. 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 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. 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget

yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. It's coming.

It takes time. Yep, absolutely. Hold tight one second. We come back. We're going to talk about a couple of voter suppression bills. Some breaking news out of Texas regarding their voter suppression bill. But in North Carolina, you know, those Republicans, once they got a veto proof majority in the legislature, when that turncoat Democrat became a Republican.

Oh, that's the first thing they did. Focus on trying to keep black people and others from voting. We'll explain. Plus, I'm going to give you a full breakdown, deconstruction on BET. By a paramount deciding not to sell a majority stake in BET. I'm explaining to y'all why. And also explaining to y'all why y'all need to stop listening to these non-journalists, no due diligence, no source blogs who don't know shit and all they do is report other BS that other people post that makes no sense whatsoever.

Yeah, I'm going to break it all down for you. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Cox. The United States is the most dangerous place for a woman to give birth among all industrialized nations on the planet. Think about that for a second. That's not all. Black women are three times more likely to die in this country

during childbirth than white women. These health care systems are inherently racist. There are a lot of white supremacist ideas and mythologies around black women, black women's bodies, even black people that we experience painless, right? Activist, organizer, and fearless freedom fighter, Monifa Akinwole-Vandele from Moms Rising

joins us and tells us this shocking phenomenon, like so much else, is rooted in unadulterated racism. And that's just one of her fights. Monifa Bandele on the next Black Table here on the Black Star Network. Question for you. Are you stuck? Do you feel like you're hitting a wall and it's keeping you from achieving prosperity? Well, you're not alone. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, you're going to learn what you need to do to become unstuck and unstoppable. The fabulous author, Janine K. Brown, will be with us sharing with you

exactly what you need to do to finally achieve the level of financial success you desire through your career. Because when I talk about being bold in the workplaces, I'm talking about that inner boldness that you have to take a risk, to go after what you want, to speak up when others are not. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Hello, I'm Paula J. Parker. Trudy Proud on The Proud Family. I am Tommy Davidson.

I play Oscar on Proud Family, Louder and Proud. Hi, I'm Jo Marie Payton, voice of Sugar Mama on Disney's Louder and Prouder Disney Plus. And I'm with Roland Martin

on Unfiltered. All right, folks. This is breaking news from MarketLive's Democracy Docket. Federal court strikes down a portion of the Texas voter suppression law, SB1, that enacted new ID requirements for mail-in ballots for violating the materiality provision of the Civil Rights Act. More to come. So that was the case out of Texas. Now, in North Carolina, the Republicans there, they now control the legislature. Remember when that Democrat, that turncoat flipped to the Republicans, giving them a veto-proof majority.

You've got a Democratic governor, but they now can overrule any decision that he makes. Well, guess what they've done? One of the first things that they've done, they passed a voter suppression bill. So this particular bill in North Carolina just shows you just how utterly ridiculous they are. And remember, these are the same Republicans, a federal court rule had a laser light targeting of black voters. Okay? The courts previously have struck down their voter ID bills, struck down racial gerrymandering, struck down their racist policies. But now Republicans now control the state Supreme Court four to three. That makes it easier for Day to 730 p.m. on Election Day,

transferring election crime investigations to the State Bureau of Investigation, excluding any missing witness information from the categories of curable deficiencies, meaning they don't want to be able to fix problems with your ballot. Allowing poll observers to freely move around polling locations, listen to conversations between voters and election officials, and take photographs. Extending the deadline for challenging mail-in ballots from Election Day to five business days after Election Day, requiring same-day registrants during the early voting period to vote on a retrievable ballot after providing required documentation at the polls.

These votes will only be counted if the U.S. Postal Service can verify the voter's address via a deliverable notice before the county canvas, which begins 10 business days after Election Day. The bill will launch a pilot program during the primary held in 2024 for signature verification on mail-in ballots. The State Board of Elections will select 10 counties of varying sizes, regional locations, and demographics as part of the pilot program. Ballots that fail the signature verification won't be rejected. Bottom line here, Greg, these white supremacists, they know they cannot appeal to a broad section of voters. Their strategy is very simple. Shrink the number of voters,

and they say then they will be able to actually compete and win. Absolutely. They're dying. They know it. They're desperate. I welcome it. Because we're finally going to have it out in this funky settler colony enterprise. It's going to have to come to this. It was going to have

to come to this, Roland. This has been on track since the first settlers came here and displaced the indigenous people and drug us here in chains. This, I mean, you know, it was going to have to come to this, because if you're going to hold on to white supremacy, you're going to ultimately have to confront the fact that those of us who believe more in our common humanity than any notion of white supremacy are just going to fight y'all i mean can you imagine if you're in line and you are now talking to a voting official about whatever you need to do to cast your ballot and somebody comes over there not even ear hustling they now they're just going to sit there and listen to you somebody going to mess to mess around and get their ass whooped in North Carolina.

And the Tricia Cotham legislature. Congratulations, Tricia Cotham. You who are of the short-lived appointment coming out of Charlotte, you will be voted out of office soon. This seems to be the new strategy, whether it be Cotham in North Carolina or the sister down in Georgia, just run one-in-one party

and then flip over to the white nationalists. Well, you're setting your folks up for a confrontation. You're taking away all of the niceties. Now, as it relates to Texas, as you said there, that case with SB1 where the judge says, you know, you violated the materiality provision of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that you can't use these ticky-tack errors, these trivial errors, as a pretense to stop people from voting. In that case, it was voter I.D., Social Security numbers, and I guess I think the report was

it's scheduled to go to trial on the 11th of September for a lot of folks who have complained about this. It's a very similar strategy. If you can just shave off a few people, intimidate a few other people, get a few other people to say, I'm not even going to go through it. You might be able to steal a few more elections and a few more cycles. In a country where there's some more census data that's just come out to show that basically everybody 12 years old and under in this country is majority non-white. So they know what's coming. But here's the final thing.

If you just a little study of our history, and you talk about this all-time role in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, the white primary challenges in Texas, the work in Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama and North Carolina, those voting rights cases, Virginia, shows us this. You can put all the mother effer may I rules and roadblocks in place. We will learn those rules better than you. And you know who's going to get their throat cut? The hillbilly whore who shows up with the wrong numbers on election day. They might mess around and shrink their own electorate if we will get serious enough and remember what our ancestors did and fought these rules to a T while we overwhelmed them. Before I go to Candace, this end.

Donald Trump's lawyers have responded to the federal prosecutors. They want to start his trial January 2024. These dumbasses are with Trump's lawyers. They are suggesting to start his trial in 2026? April of 2026. Which one? That's the federal case in D.C.? Yeah, the federal case. Yeah.

April of 2026. Yeah, okay. Gotcha. All right. So, get back to this North Carolina. Again, what I need our people to understand is their whole strategy is all about black people, Latinos, and young white voters. And what they're banking on,

they're banking on this hardcore right-wing Supreme Court with 63 conservative majority to back them up. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And as Greg was saying, we're talking about just different ways to shave off votes, right? When we talk about the third indictment that we just saw come down, he was disenfranchising voters. That's what it was about, defrauding the United States government in the name of democracy. So it all is connected, just little by little trying to shave off here

and shave off there. All I see in these voter suppression laws is a bunch of lawsuits waiting to happen, violation of civil rights, violation of privacy with poll workers walking around listening to your conversation. But these are kind of the little needles that Donald Trump and seeds that he has been planting all along that people are following suit. As you said, he stacked this up a long time ago with the Supreme Court, which is why he's banking on different things along the way. Remember, along the way, he was banking on the electors. Along the way, he was banking on maybe Pence would do it. Along the way, he was banking on the dozens of lawsuits in order to overturn the vote. And now he's banking

on these voter suppression laws that are going through, and he's going to ultimately bank on the Supreme Court, as you said. It is little by little, which is why little by little, people on the other side, those who are voting for it, those fighting in the name of it. 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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers.

But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Voting rights have to keep on at it because they're not going to stop. They're just like a little kid who's asking for the ice cream from one parent that says no and goes to the other parent and hopes that they say that they say yes. That's what we're looking at. They will never, ever quit. And that's why people who are fighting for the rights, who are voters, can't quit either. And Lauren, this is where, and I keep saying, I need black folks to be playing chess. Let's take Virginia. All office holders in Virginia are up on the ballot this year in terms of the legislature. Democrats are three seats away from controlling the House. They have a narrow lead in the Senate. If three seats, there's a black majority leader in the House in Virginia, there's a black Senate leader. Guess what? Glenn Youngkin,

he can't do a damn thing without the legislature. And so people need to understand that if you want and then what they can do, they can pass their own voting laws and dare him to veto them. We have to understand what the power is to change the dynamics. We're talking about all these issues and I need everybody watching and listening to understand that all of these things are happening because they are a result of people not voting. They are a result. North Carolina, Democrats could have had a 6-1 majority on the state Supreme Court. Chair Beasley loses by 400 votes. It goes to four or three Democrats. They lose a seat in 2022. It flips four or three Republican.

We can't just be mad at what they're doing. We have to recognize that what they're doing is the result of them winning at the ballot box. No, absolutely. And, you know, what you said about Virginia is for real. There's really a realignment in Virginia, in my view, that I think is going to be reflected in the rest of the nation, even though Virginia is 20 percent black and the nation's 14 percent black. But you could end up with a black a black speaker of the House from Portsmouth, Virginia, Leader Don Scott, as speaker of the House in Virginia. You could end up with a black majority leader in the Senate, which would be Mamie Locke from Hampton.

And you could end up with a black chair of the Finance Committee in Louise Lucas. All that happening, by the way, is you have Bobby Scott, who is the ranking member of a major committee as well. All this happening in one of the blackest sections of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And you're already going to have a record number of Virginia state senators who are going to be black and a record number of Virginia state members of the House who are going to be black. So there's a major sort of coming of age in Virginia, just as there is in the rest of the nation. We going to be black. So there's a major sort of coming of age in Virginia, just as there is in the rest of the nation. We see it in Congress with the biggest

black, congressional black caucus at 58 members. So all of that, of course, is being seen by these Republicans who refuse to change their policies to broaden the tent. And it really is a shame because if you think about the history of the Republican Party, it was Richard Nixon in the 1950s who actually made a speech to that segregation, that the segregated country that we knew of should end. He abandoned that entire thing in 1968. And of course, Barry Goldwater came on in 1968. And by the way, you know, Roger Ailes was... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, flipped because of beer and gold water, and that's what led to the present-day Republican Party. That's what I was going to say. So at any rate, 68, Nixon abandons the entire idea of going back. They tried it again with the Bush, with the Bushes, right? So George H.W., but really George W., was trying to broaden the tent in the Republican Party. He was trying to get Latinos in the Republican Party, trying to get minorities. Then they abandoned that. What ends up happening, of course, is we have the election of

the first black president of the United States. Then the Republican Party then decides at that moment, in my view, to go backwards, to go all the way back, really, to the 1800s. That's a shame because there were moments in there where the Republican Party could have led in another direction. And, you know, by the way, Roger Ailes was an advisor to Richard Nixon. He was the one that married crime and race. And that's why, you know, we still are in this era, the Southern strategy era of marrying crime and race. Always trying to marry black people and crime.

That comes from directly from Roger Ailes, who, of course, invents Fox News. And, you know, you see what you see from Fox News and the New York Post and this entire group of right-wing media always trying to put, of course, black people in the most negative light possible. But now they've just gone full on. Now you see DeSantis, and now they're attacking black history. They're trying to effectively erase black history. And it is going to, as Greg Carr, as Professor Carr just said, it is going to come to a collision because this party has decided not to broaden the tent and not to even make any sort of attempt to try to get anybody into that party that would broaden the tent and realize the two parties are very close. These elections, these national elections are extremely close, even though Biden won by 8 million of votes. The Republicans haven't won a

majority in now, what, 20 years on the national level? So it is going to come to a head. There's no doubt about it. But this is the thing, though, that I need our people to understand, Greg, is that us, first of all, several things happen. Yes, they're making it difficult. But a number of us are voluntarily checking out. Now, I get

people who say, hey, I haven't seen substantive change. Get it. I was watching a video, the guys who did the song F Donald Trump, he said, hey, Winnerhood and a bunch of these brothers

are saying, oh man, you know, we got all those, we got money, we got those checks when Donald Trump was there, we ain't got checks from Biden. First of all, your ass didn't get no checks from Donald Trump is there. We ain't got checks from Biden. First of all, your ass didn't get no checks from Donald Trump. OK, it was passed in a Democrat controlled house.

It was passed in the Senate signed by him. So this notion that Donald Trump alone was sitting in for a check is stupid. OK, it's just stupid and dumb. All right. And if you go back and check the record, look at how many Democrats voted for it versus how many Republicans voted for it. And so we have got, our people have got to understand that, again, here we are complaining after the fact, but if we check the hell out of elections, yo, they gonna keep running the table. And I just keep trying to explain to people, please, by all means, show me, show me

subsequently. And I saw that fool Larry Elder was on The Breakfast Club today, just lying his dumb ass off. They were out there just show me subsequently what Republicans are putting on the table that is beneficial to black people. And I'm sorry, it is porous and it is a joke and there is no way in hell. If you are a Republican and you are down with Donald Trump and MAGA, there is no way in hell I will remotely consider voting for you. Right. I mean, Roland, again, I mean, it's the importance of this platform. It's the importance of the work that you're doing. We can't, we have to use every tool in the toolbox. This is a full spectrum fight.

We have to vote. We have to organize. We have to pool our resources. It's difficult for people to grasp, I think, for some of us to grasp anyway, the fact that facts don't matter. As I said, $400 billion in this tech stuff and new jobs and 80 percent of that money going to Republican districts. And yet Ron Johnson, a ghoul, can stand up in Wisconsin and claim credit for something that he voted against. All of these districts getting this infusion of resources. And when you tell them that everybody in the white NASA's party voted against these resources you're getting, it doesn't change a thing. We're faced with the fact

that these folks have decided that they're going to throw caution to the wind because people are simply in this country not going to study. Facts don't matter. Today, another member of the hillbilly horde in Georgia, this Colton Moore, state senator in the 53rd district in Georgia, wrote to the governor saying that three-fifths of the legislature in Georgia want Fannie Willis investigated. They're going to try to take her out using legislation that passed through the Georgia legislature. And it's making the point you're making, Roland. When you do not register to vote and you do not exercise your franchise, you leave these hillbillies in a position to push through this kind of thing.

And what they're doing, again, to reinforce what Lauren has been saying, they're creating a series of fail-safes. And what you've been saying, if they can't get you through the legislature, they'll get you through the courts. Or they'll get you through the statehouse, the governor's mansion. And as Candace has laid out, what you see is then they will go full menu and take whatever tactic they need to stop you. We have to take that same approach. And part of that approach is making sure you're right. 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. 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Registered to vote. If for no other reason, if you don't vote, you can serve on a jury. We have to be more intelligent than this, but we have to recognize that facts don't matter.

This is not a question of persuading people through logic. This is a blood sport that is speaking to the visceral, most lowest common denominator reptilian brain element of human identity. And I'll give this here, Ken, as this, again, goes to show you how blatant these folks are as liars. This idiot, Greg Abbott, put out a tweet announcing a record $142 billion in total investment

for Texas transportation infrastructure. Thanks to our booming economy, Texas is improving our roadways to meet the growing needs of our state. No, you lying ass. That's because of the Biden-Harris infrastructure bill that your party voted against. This is why what Biden should do is every damn announcement taking place there, show up and slap your name on everything.

This project is courtesy of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Same thing. See, this is the thing that there was a story that came out today, and they were talking about Terrence Woodbury's information where there was a brother in the focus group who said, you know, Trump got stuff done. No, he didn't. He lied. He's just some dumb ass that's believed it. But he kept talking about how great things he did, but it was an absolute lie.

These folks don't talk about it enough. They don't actually brag enough. They think that's unseemly. No, that's what you have to do because a bunch of simple assignments don't know anything else. Well, I think one of the things that they're trying to balance once again, just like the legal system is, is is how much weight are we going to give these stories so that you can give more fodder for Trump to kind of latch his paws onto and make something about it in the media. And there's such a very fine line that you play when you play everything out and what ultimately becomes Trump's world. But what we're seeing right now is Trump's whole defense. I believe it, right? I believe that the infrastructure monies came from something that happened within the

Republican Party, not the infrastructure bill that we know Biden has been working on and has been moving along. But if I believe it and if I say it enough, well, then it was true to me. And if it's true to me, then that's OK. That's going to be my defense for everything. That's going to be my narrative for everything. That's going to be my reason to be. And that is ultimately going to be Trump's defense in this court of law. I thought it was true that I lost the election. And so when we see these types of people acting in the way that they do, it's all echoing what Donald Trump has been laying out for years. Just say it enough and people will believe. That's what we're seeing his defense being played

out yes all right folks hold tight one second we come back i'm gonna talk about uh paramount pulling the bet auction i'm gonna walk y'all through what really went on here and why it was stupid for anybody to give paramount the amount of money they were asking for you're watching roland martin unfiltered right here on the Blackstar Network. They're talking about how they're going to move on those things. You go to a barbershop and a 500 credit score, equal brilliance, but bad culture, they're talking about other people. Go to a winner's barbershop, here's what I'm doing. You go to the barbershop where people feel defeated, they're talking about other people, either celebrities or people they admire.

But also often, I don't like Joe. I don't like Roland Martin. Let me tell you something. I don't understand people. How could you not like anything here you see? You should just be like, this is amazing. It's cool. You may not even like how he does it or how I do it,

but it's like, you know what? They're succeeding. They're killing it. All you should be is, that's fantastic. But if I don't like me, I'm not gonna like you. If I don't feel good about me, it's hard for me to feel good about you. If I don't respect me, don't expect me to respect you.

If I don't love me, I don't have a clue how to love you. And here's the big one. If I don't have a purpose in my life, I'm gonna make your life a living hell. On a next A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie, we're talking all things mental health and how helping others can help you. We all have moments where we have struggles and on this week's show, our guests demonstrate how helping others can also help you. Why you should never stop giving and it's keeping you from

achieving prosperity? Well, you're not alone. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, you're going to learn what you need to do to become unstuck and unstoppable. The fabulous author, Janine K. Brown, will be with us sharing with you exactly what you need to do to finally achieve the level of financial success you desire through your career. Because when I talk about being bold in the workplaces, I'm talking about that inner boldness that you have to take a risk, to go after what you want, to speak up when others are not. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. Farquhar, executive producer of Proud Family. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered.

All right, folks. Late last night, the Wall Street Journal dropped this story on their website, this exclusive story saying that Paramount was pulling the deal, was pulling the guys. Come on, get the right graphic. OK, the Wall Street Journal article. OK, thank you. Paramount was pulling the auction of BET. And so what the article laid out, it mentioned that Tyler Perry, Byron Allen, Diddy and others were bidding on the network and that the sale of BET was not going to, frankly, help their balance sheet.

Now, Paramount, based upon all available reports, they were looking to fetch some $3 billion for majority stake BET. Okay, that was idiotic, okay? Control room, pull the story up from the New York Times when BET was sold, okay? Now, remember, y'all, Bob Johnson and Sheila Johnson, co-founders of BET, they make the announcement, the selling of BET, all right? BET was sold for less than $3 billion.

Okay. It was $2.34 billion and the assumption about $500 million in debt. So BET sold for slightly less than $3 billion. So think about that. BET sold years ago for less than $3 billion and your Paramount, you actually thought somebody was going to bid on BET in 2023 dollars for majority stake and all of it. What appreciating asset is stupid. And that's just a dumb deal.

So I need people to understand what's going on here. They actually thought that black folks were going to overpay for the asset. Now, here's the whole deal. When you're selling these companies, you hope somebody overpays. You really hope somebody is dumb like Elon Musk, who completely overpaid by about, oh, $20 billion for Twitter. We see how that's gone. The reality is no cable network is worth any of that. Who told us that? Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney. This is what he said last month on CNBC when it came to the linear assets that Disney owns.

Are you staying? Well, let me start with the fact that I did like retirement. I highly recommend it, by the way. You're never going to get to it, Bob. It was a good 11 months. And I came back to the company at the request of the board as a company that I started working at in 1974, 49 years ago when it was ABC and we became part of Disney. And I obviously have deep passion for the company and in the business. I care a lot about the people. And after coming back, realized that the company was facing a number of challenges, some self inflicted, some caused by changes in the business, large-scale disruption of certain parts of the business. And while a lot of work has been accomplished in the seven or so months that I've been back, the board believed, and I agreed with them, that there was a lot more work to do. we initially established, which was two years, you know, seemed like it was putting undue pressure on us, even though we're getting at the work really quickly, but to accomplish everything we want to accomplish. So part of it was designed for continued stability and continuity and also to give a team of very talented executives who work with me, you know, time not only to help me

through what is a challenging period, but to develop themselves. Yeah. You know, we sat down in February. You've been back a couple of months. And I did ask you if two years was too short a time. And you said, quote, you can get things done very quickly. Setting the company up for success is what you were talking about. So I wonder, did something change in your calculation of how quickly you can get things done? Well, we've gotten a lot done very quickly. Significant cost reductions, a complete realignment. 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 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. B one two and three on may 21st and episodes four five and six on june 4th ad free at lava for good plus on apple podcasts i'm clayton english i'm greg glad and this is season two of the war on drugs podcast sir we

are back in a big way in a very big way real people real And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves.

We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

...of the company in terms of its structure... Right there. Significant cost reductions. In the interview, Bob Iger says that his linear networks, ABC News, ESPN, others could be put up for sale. Why? He said because those networks do not have growth potential. Folks, understand what is happening in the media landscape. OK, cable news used to be here. It's now here. It's going down to here. So perfect example. When ESPN, ESPN used to be in 100 million homes. ESPN is now in 74 million homes. Now, by the end of the year, they're going to be in less than 70 million homes. Why? Because of cord cutting. Pull the story up. This year, it's estimated that 9.3 million people are going to cut the cord, meaning they're going to drop cable.

9.3 million. What that means is if you have a cable network, you have a depreciating asset. So whatever, if you buy a cable network today, the moment you buy it, the value of it is going to go down because you're losing customers. BET, when it was sold by Bob Johnson, was in 72 million homes. They're now down, folks, in the 60s and the 50s. The game is being changed in the cable. So it would be crazy to buy an asset today for more money than what it's actually

worth. It makes no sense whatsoever. If you actually run the numbers, BET at best, if you're going to purchase a majority stake in BET, it's probably anywhere from a billion to a billion two at best. Now, why was Paramount interested in selling BET? Because they've been losing money on their streaming service. Like all the networks, Disney has lost $11 billion since 2019 on Disney+. Comcast last year lost nearly $4 billion on Paramount. Warner Discovery, they've been losing money. Paramount is in an

even more perilous position compared to all the other networks because their market cap is small. You might say, wait a minute, it's Paramount, Vodcom, it's CBS. Oh, they got the hit show Yellowstone. All that stuff means nothing.

Pull up Netflix market cap. Netflix, y'all, pull up Netflix market cap. Netflix market cap is the highest of any media company, all right? Netflix, okay? It's $178 billion market cap. Now pull up Disney. Disney's market cap, okay, at the close of today, is $157 billion. Pull up Comcast.

Comcast is third. Their market cap is $190. So actually it was Netflix, Comcast, and then Disney in terms of market cap. Now pull up Warner Discovery. Warner Discovery, that merger, their market cap is $31 billion. Now show Paramount's market cap. Their market cap, y'all, is less than $10 billion. They are the smallest major media company out of all of them. So they were hoping to sucker somebody black into overspending to buy BET, BET Plus, and VH1. That literally made no sense whatsoever. Now, a bunch of people out there have been commenting all day because they were like, oh my God, I thought Tyler Perry had bought the network. No, that's because a ridiculous website called The Streamer, which I've never

heard of, put out this bogus report a couple months ago saying Tyler Perry buys BET. Y'all, the moment I read the story, literally, I knew it was a lie. Okay? Now, this is not the actual report right here. This is a website that what you just saw was a website remarking on the streamer. Well, guess what? If you go to the streamer's website right now, you're going to see a 404 error because they took down the story. Everything in the story was a lie.

I literally read it and I said, this is all a lie. But guess what happened? All these dumbass blogs and all these black bloggers, they all put it out there. So it was flying all across the Internet. Hollywood Unlocked and all these people, B. Scott and The Source, everybody named Mama was posting. I'm like, y'all, stop posting lies. They were all lies. The first line of the story said Tyler Perry buys BET from Paramount Viacom.

Price wasn't disclosed. Y'all, Paramount's a publicly traded company. They had to disclose the price. Then the fool's putting a story, Paramount is hemorrhaging money. They lost $400 million last year. Now that was stupid. They lost $500 million in the last quarter. It's like, where do y'all even get this from?

And this is one of the biggest mistakes that we're seeing in black-owned media and black-targeted media, that we got a bunch of non-journalists who have no sources, who do no due diligence, who do no fact checking, who put this stuff out to the public and they know nothing about what the hell they're talking about. And that's what I keep telling y'all. Stop listening to people who are not credible, who all they do is repeat what other people say. I can't stand all of those Instagram black media companies who all they do is just, hey, so-and-so is reporting. They can't, they don't even pick the phone up to double check anything. And so that's what you were dealing with right here. And so you had Byron Allen in the process.

You heard possibly group blacks, Shaquille O'Neal, Kenya Barrett, 50 Cent. So that's what you were dealing with right here. And so you had Byron Allen in the process. You heard possibly group blacks, Shaquille O'Neal, Kenya Barrett, 50 Cent. You had a whole bunch of people who name were thrown out there. Most of those people were not actually involved in this particular deal. And so Paramount now pulls it off of the table. BET is not going to be black owned. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to do it a little bit later, but here's the whole deal here. Anybody who tried to buy that network would have been crazy to spend that amount of money.

It's smarter, frankly, if you're Diddy, why would you bid a billion and a half, two billion dollars on BET when you already own Revolt. It's smarter for you to take a tenth of that, $100 million, $200 million, and invest it in Revolt and build Revolt out to be a digital operation. Folks, understand what's happening in the cable business. It is dying. The numbers are going down, and those customers are not coming back. The best thing you can do

is try to hope you switch them over to BET Plus because people are no longer watching linear television, broadcasting cable like they used to. The costs are also a lot higher. And so that's what you're sitting here dealing with. And so I see all this stuff. I saw some idiot, what's that, dumbass black millionaires and I've dealt with them before. And again, and I'm calling names out because names need to be called. They posted some stupid tweet, the speculation.

Anytime you see somebody throw out the speculation, stop following them because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. So that was this. So let me see if I can pull it up, because I smacked them upside their head with it as soon as I saw the tweet. Oh, here it is. Paramount Global owns BET announced that they're no longer interested in selling a majority-stinking BET after a bidding war of black billionaires to make BET black-owned again. Quote, many are speculating that it was a publicity stunt to get black people

back watching BET. Black millionaires, y'all are idiots. Y'all are idiots. And you know what? No one should be following y'all. That wasn't a speculation. People were like, oh, they were doing this to get us to watch the BET Awards. Uh, you were already watching. That wasn't it. It was an actual deal. It was an actual offer to try to get the bids.

But they got suckered into people throwing out crazy numbers when BET was never worth those numbers. It would be financial suicide to bid $3 billion for something that wasn't even purchased for $3 billion when it was at its highest. Who should we listen to on that one? How about Bob Johnson? This is what he told Bloomberg. You operate BET before you sold to Viacom. 20 years. You sold for roughly $3 billion, ultimately. So in hindsight, had you held on longer, would it be worth more today,

or would it be worth less today because the cable world's changed so much? It would be, in my opinion, less today because once streaming came along and the technology allowed people to have streaming wherever they could carry content, on your phone, on your laptop, in your home, wherever you go. It changed the paradigm of cable, and it allowed people to sort of pick and choose in an a la carte way what they wanted to watch. So if you only wanted to watch Netflix, you'd just get Netflix.

Cable, you were paying for a bundle, even though you didn't watch all the channels. So some people were paying for, if you weren't a sports fan, you're paying 30 cents, 30, 40 cents, whatever it is now, for ESPN. But if you never watched ESPN, you had to pay for it because it was part of a bundle. Actually, you're not paying 30 or 40 cents for ESPN. You're really paying anywhere from $8 to $10 for ESPN. See, here's what people don't understand. When you get your cable bill, you know why your cable bill is so high?

It's because most of these cable networks, they're being paid per subs, meaning that the cable companies are negotiating with the cable networks, and so they say, okay, we're going to pay for this. So all y'all people, everybody out here, you have cable and you hate Fox News. You're subsidizing Fox News. You didn't realize that, huh? Yeah, you are subsidizing Fox News.

Because if Fox News is in 80 million homes and Fox News has negotiated a $2 per sub carriage fee. That means, pull your calculator out, that means $80 million times $2. That's what Fox News gets per month for the cable companies per year for the length of the contract. Yep. BET has a carriage fee. BET's carriage fee could be 25 cents, 30 cents, 50 cents, whatever it is. But just understand in terms of the financial reality. So when cord cutting happens, meaning you say, I'm no longer, I'm cutting my cable, that means that the cable companies are losing

you as a subscriber, which means that the cable, the folks, the cable networks are losing subscribers. Pull up the Comcast story. This year alone, Comcast has shed 1.15 million subscribers to their cable systems. That's Comcast alone, $1.15 million. Folks, that's money walking out of the room. If the average cable bill is $100, do the math, $1.15 million times $100 times 12. That's how much money Comcast is losing, and then the networks are losing money. So, if you look at BET, the future of BET or any other cable network is going to really hinge on what is their digital strategy. So, BET Plus, owned by Paramount, is not a part of Paramount Plus. Why? Because first, Talapeer owns 25% of BET Plus.

That's one. Two, they actually are appealing to a different customer base. And so when you run those numbers, it makes sense to leave them as a standalone. And so what people have to understand here

is that this is all a numbers game. This is a pure numbers game. And so through all the speculation that all the white folks didn't want it to be black-owned, all the white folks, no. it to be black-owned, all the white folks, no. They would have sold that sucker to anybody had they come along

and put the big number on the table. Because you know who was trying to do the exact same thing? David Zasloff over at Warner Discovery. Oh, if somebody came to David Zasloff right now and said, I'll pay you $20 billion for CNN, he will sell that sucker in a heartbeat.

Why? Because he's got $40 billion in debt from the merger between Discovery and AT&T when they took over Time Warner, which now becomes Warner Discovery. And so what I need our people to understand is that this is called the business of the business. Business ain't emotional. Business not dealing with drama is dealing with money. And so if you're a Tyler Perry, it's smart not to raise your bid. Why? You see many of the reports out there?

They said, oh, they got somebody posted. I think the Shade Room posted this stupid post. Oh, Paramount got lowball offers. I put on the Shade Room site saying, what the hell are y'all talking about? This is a dumbass headline. They weren't lowball offers. Anybody who bid under $1.5 billion for B&T, they were smart because it ain't worth it. It ain't worth what they were asking.

And so what we have to understand is that what we're seeing in the media landscape are the major companies trying to sell for a maximum number because they know this sucker is dying. Probably by the middle of next year, late next year, you're going to see your major cable networks literally be at about 50 million subscribers. ESPN was 100 million eight years ago. There's 74 million subscribers. ESPN was 100 million eight years ago. There's 74 million today. They're going to be under 70 million and Disney is already analyzing flipping ESPN

to a streaming only service. And so television as you know it right now is going bye-bye. All y'all who keep saying oh Roland I can, I can't wait until you get back on television, this is TV. This is TV. This is TV.

The game has totally changed. And so for African Americans, from a consumer standpoint, we now have to make a choice. And that is, if we're no longer going to be spending $150 per month for a cable package, where are we now going to spend our money? So we can't keep demanding, oh, we want to see more news and more this and more that. I saw a bunch of people complaining about the commercial load on my Instagram page at BET. We only got

too many commercials. Y'all, guess what? BET makes less in ad revenue today than they did five years ago. Speaking of ad revenue, if you pull that New York Times story up when BET was sold, in that story from 2001, it said that black-owned media

was getting 1% of the advertising dollars. I need y'all to hear what I just said. In the 2001 story in the New York Times about BET being sold to Viacom, that story said black-owned media was receiving, get this, was receiving 1% of all advertising dollars. This is 2023. It is two years later. We're at, right now, between 1% of all advertising dollars. This is 2023. It is two years later. We're at, right now, between 1% and 2%. So if you want to understand also why BET is less valuable, it's because BET has gotten a short shrift

because they have black consumers. I want you all to go look at Brett Pulley's book, The Billion Dollar Bet, The Unauthorized Biography of Bob Johnson and BET. In that particular book, he writes that when Mel Carmesan, who was the CEO of Viacom, and Sumner Redstone, who owned Viacom, when they looked at BET,

they said that BET was getting $1,500 for a 30-second ad, the same ad MTV was getting for $8,000. Let me repeat what I just said. BET was getting $1,500 for a 30-second ad that MTV was getting $8,000 for an ad. Let me go to magazines. Ebony magazine was getting $20,000 for a full page ad that Esquire magazine was getting $200,000 for. So the advertising industry has said, black people, you are less than white people because we are going to spend less money on you to attract you than we

are the white consumer if and if you go back to that New York Times article in the article male carmazon was quoted as saying we we think that we now can derive more value out of BET because we can sell BET spots at a higher price than they were being sold independently. Run the numbers. They are still black and they still aren't getting the same value. So what I want us to do is to understand why the business of the business matters. I want us to understand it's not as easy. People say, well, Tyler,

should just get with Oprah and launch a network. Oprah launched a network with Discovery. It was 50-50. They spent $381 million their first year. Guess what? Oprah has now sold her equity stake in OWN, and Warner Discovery owns all of it. I think she maybe kept 5%. Bottom line is, they own 95% of it. And so, understand, oh, Magic launched a network. Nah, no he didn't. Magic don't own Aspire.

Okay, White-owned company owns Aspire. Bounce. Bounce was not Bounce was never Black-owned. You had a small percentage of Black people who owned Bounce. It was a white guy who owned it and he sold them to Scripps. And so really, we talk about who's black out there who owns a network. Yeah, you got TV one. OK. Or a publicly traded company. You got dealing with Revolt. The reality is you do not have you got the Africa Channel.

Of course, you got Byron Allen on his companies. But you do not have as many people think. So I need our people to understand when we're out here just throwing stuff out and just saying, do this and do that. And we need this. But every black person who says we need this. My question to you is, will you support it? Because here's what I find to be interesting. It's a whole it's a whole bunch of black people. Matter of fact, let me pull it up. If I look at right now, if I go to my Instagram page and I see 6,516 people

who liked my Instagram post about Paramount not selling BET and I see 495 comments I guarantee you if I ran a check on the

names of the people liking this I could probably guarantee less than 5% a check on the names of the people liking this, I could probably guarantee less than 5% of the people who follow me who liked this post actually contribute to this show. So when I go down the line and people say, we need this and we need that and we need this and we need that and we need this and we need that.

Are you going to support those who are providing what you say we need? I'm going to go to the break, come back with my panel and discuss this further. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture, you're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues. 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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 man.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. 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. Shell enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

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Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Black Star Network. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherry Shepard Talk Show. You're watching Roland Martin, unfiltered. All right, welcome back to Roland Martin, unfiltered here on the Black Star Network. Greg Carr, I want to start with you. People get very emotional about these things when things that are black-owned and then people sell. To this day, there are people who trash Bob Johnson and Sheila Johnson selling BET.

And I have to remind people that, first of all, the sale of BET created more black millionaires than any other company in American history. Because BET was private, it went public, and then it became private again. But when it went public, a lot of people kept their equity. And so when it got sold, they became rich. And so right now, Bob and Sheila Johnson

actually own more stuff, have more black employees than when they had BET because they've been able to buy hotels and dealerships and all kinds of stuff along those lines. And so, and I'm always trying to explain to people also that I get the emotional investment, but when you weren't the one who was there trying to make payroll or keep the lights on. It's a little hard to try to say what somebody else should do, what they shouldn't sell.

But I think what I want, why I'm walking this through, and I remember when I broke down the whole deal with Black News Channel, I needed our people to understand that it's not so simple just to say, well, do this and do that and partner with so-and-so without understanding really where this business is going and the mechanics of this business. There are people who have come to me and they've said, man, why aren't you doing this and why aren't you doing that? And I'm like, where's your check? Because it's real easy to say what should be done unless you're the one who has to finance it, because I know for a fact that in the first year of this show, it was negative three hundred and ninety one thousand dollars. I use my speaking fees to keep the show going.

I know what I personally gave. I know exactly what that number was because that was my money. And so when we talk about even this, if you are a Tyler Perry and New York Post had a story in June saying he wasn't going to increase his bid. It was a great story and it was a smart deal because his whole deal is I'm not going to pay for your mistake. It's smart business. I need more of us to understand the business of the business and not the emotion of the business. I'm rolling, of course. I don't think there's anybody. And certainly if anyone could say that they understand

the ins and outs of media business as well as you do, that's the best they could aspire to. Nobody's going to understand it better. Black, white, or polka dot. And you consistently walk us through these things, and it helps us understand this. I will confess that I have no investment in black millionaires at all. I think I agree with Kwame Nkrumah here on Marcus Garvey's birthday, interestingly enough. And Nkrumah, influenced by Garvey, but he said, you know, the presence of millionaires in a society is no evidence of progress. In fact, it might be evidence of structural inequality. So, but that having been said, you know, listening to you and understanding, you know, how you have moved through the world at great sacrifice and deep investment. My question to you really is about how we penetrate the hearts and minds

of our people so that we can have a little bit easier time to organize. We know that the civil rights movement, the long black freedom struggle was undergirded by the black press, by black radio, by trained black journalists, and the platforms, for lack of a better term, in that period, the Pittsburgh Courier, the black radios, the Chicago Defender, you know, black people look to them for news and for information, for guidance, for opinion. And here we are in a media platform where I was just reading, you know, as interesting Bob Johnson mentioned sports, you know, just reading about the disintegration of the Pac-12 and how this is all a bidding war over content because people will watch sports and they have turned a little

bit from professional sports. You know, the NBA has a contract coming up and they're looking at these college leagues for content they can mine for profit. But we saw what happened with you at TV One, not an investment in news at TV One. We remember the days of Bev Smith and Ed Gordon at BET and the turn away from that. So now we got Tyler Perry with the same show with different names, whether it be the Oval or whatever, Brothers and Sisters, you know, the Dumbing Down of Black America parallels the Dumbing Down of America. That's why these hillbillies will go out there and claim that Donald Trump won the election. My question to you is, how do, what do you see

as the future and the strategy for news and information in a moment in American and world history when we need it now more than ever? What role, how does the Black Star Network, how does it fit in this landscape? So I'll unpack it this way, because you called it the dumbing down, but it's actually not. It's actually the demand for that type of content. Here's what I mean by that and i'll ask lauren and candace this uh because they are two black women how many of you candace and lauren how many of you know highly educated highly compensated black women who love the Real Housewives shows and love and hip-hop.

You're trying to get us in trouble, Roland. No, no, no, no. All you gotta say is, I know some. That is a niche market that does not accompany the particular demographic you described.

Actually, it is. Let me explain to you why. Actually, it is. Let me explain to you why. It's because of these two right here. When Greg's brother says on our promo,

bring your eyeballs home. Wherever black eyeballs go, that's where the industry goes. Let me explain this. If you pull the Nielsen report, black people, I mean, everybody listen to what I'm about to say.

Black people watch more TV than any other group in America, and it ain't even close. Our television consumption exceeds an average work week. Black consumers literally watch, listen to me clearly, black consumers literally watch more TV than a 40 hour work week. That's how much, that's how much TV we consume. If you look at daytime television, If you look at daytime television, if you want a successful daytime show, all you have to do is capture

the black demo. You capture that, then you pick up a few white folks and others, you have a successful show, you make money. a few white folks and others, you have a successful show, you make money. So all of these networks, so there's a reason as a reason why you are seeing a plethora of black content, Bravo, MTV, VH1, Lifetime. We could go on because we consume it all. So what happens then is that you have black folks who are driving these shows. Our viewing habits are driving the content. So they go, that's what you want to see.

So I'll give you a perfect example. Candace, you're a lawyer. Have you noticed the explosion of true crime shows? Oh, yes. On television? Oh, yeah, and podcasts. Have you noticed how many of those shows feature black people? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Do you know why because that demo that those have black those those shows have exploded

with black viewers and so what then happens is when we watch those shows when we watch those tv one literally has now it used to be like just t nights. They got on like two nights. It's just true crime. Go down the line. Network after network after network after network. So what now then happens is we flock to those shows. We record them. We watch them live. We watch the playback.

Advertisers spend crazy money on that. And then they go, oh, yeah, they're not watching this stuff over there. So to answer Greg's point, what we do is we say, oh, we would love to see news and this and this, but when it comes to what we do with this, it's not that. And that's the problem where we are now. And then when something happens, we then go, why didn't anybody tell me about that? It's because you were watching true crime shows. You were watching Love and Hip Hop.

You were watching Real Housewives. You were watching daytime television. You were watching everything else. And so then when that suffers, and I go back to Bob Johnson when he had BET, I remember being at NABJ and he gave a keynote speech and somebody stood up, why are you not showing HBCU football game? He said, because y'all don't watch.

Well, why don't you have more news? He said, because y'all don't watch. Y'all don't watch. Rolling. I mean, the numbers are the numbers and i'm the last point i'm just going to give you this here tyree dickles when the body camp there were 4 000 people who were watching us which was actually higher than what we normally get live 15 minutes after the body cam video watch,

we hit 29,000 live viewers. The other day, what was the big story that happened a week ago? What was it, Kara? I forgot. Something happened, and everybody came to see what I had to say. I don't know what the hell just happened.

I can't remember what it was. We almost had 10. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. It was Montgomery. It was Montgomery. It was Montgomery. The Monday after the brawl, the Monday after the brawl, almost 10,000 people watching live.

So they're there. We're choosing to watch something else until we go, oh, my goodness. Let's go find a black news guy. It's our viewing habits. It's our consumption. Candace, go ahead. It is our viewing habit. 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.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. 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. I'm Greg Glod. 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 ban 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. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself.

Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. But it's also the fact that there's a lot of good TV out there, black and white. So you just have more choice. And like you said, when you're dealing with the cable network, that cable is like the car that's driven off of the lot. It's just gone down the same way that

we're home now when we're working from home. All of that has permanently changed. You are correct. I was, I worked at BET News when it was sold. I worked at BNC when it closed down. So we know that the viewership is just not there. But Roland, you're ahead of the game. And I'm not just saying this because I'm on the show. But when you are doing what you are doing, you're doing what the whole world is doing all day long. They're on their phones. They're on Instagram. They're on social media. They're looking at clips from various news organizations and people like you, which is a news organization. And they're getting their information in their hands. As you said, they are cutting the cable.

Another thing I want to say about this story is that you're right. People need to do more diligence when it comes to finding out that when you have a bid for something like a BET, there's a closing date. You can't say by law that you sold it until the closing bid date has begun. As you said, one phone call from any journalist could correct the headline in any minute, but they didn't do that. And the process closed this week, which is why they took it off the table. Everybody, even people who we haven't even heard of in the headlines, there have been so many black organizations and moguls who have bid for BET.

Tyler Perry did the right thing. I think it was a little bit of strategy. You know what he didn't do when all the headlines said that, hey, he's going to buy BET or actually he bought BET. He didn't say anything. And that was a good move on his part because he said, you know what? I'm out there. People think I'm out there. I'll probably scare a few people off and I'm going to have this whole lane to myself. So all I'm saying is that everything that you are saying... But they also couldn't say, they also couldn't talk because frankly, that's an NDA process. Bottom line is you can't be out there just talking. Remember, it's a publicly traded company.

But again, there were people, Lauren, who were saying, well, you know, why did Tyler refute these lies? I was like, because he doesn't need to. Call out the liar. I'm telling you, what drives me crazy, and I will say this, Lauren, and I got no problem, it pissed me off when I saw an NMPA writer write up a story saying Tyler Perry bought BET based off of a tweet of Rolanda Watts. And I was like, who the hell even allowed that story to even who hit send?

And, and this is the fundamental problem that we're seeing Lauren in black owned and black targeted media. We're not having real journalists. We're having people just respond to stuff. They don't make one phone call. They don't check with nobody They don't know nobody and I'm like and you slapping your name on a byline and you know what the hell you're writing I mean, and I remember I seen an article and I was in the they literally quoted Rolanda Watts as the source and didn't even quote her in the article and what Rolanda was responding to Was that story from the streamer. It was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.

And this is what is hurting us, that the problem now, Lauren, is that these black blobs, all of a sudden, people now see them as the definitive sources of information when none of them know anybody and they're not reporting. They're just repeating. Let me say it. They're not reporting. They're repeating.

Yeah. You know, you can expand that out, Roland, to like the New York Times and the Washington Post. I mean, I've seen it as an accidental crisis manager where major news organizations have not made a phone call in the scene of press release and put it in the paper in an hour's time. And the reason for that is that there's a collision, as you know, of local media, small media dying on the local level in this country. There's a collision of these bigger companies, namely Facebook and Google, controlling algorithms that are eating up, of course, all the ads, all the classifieds. So that money that was made by the small papers is gone. So now the money is made by click-through rates, clicks on ads on the left-hand, right-hand top nav. So what happens then is that truth and accuracy in journalism dies because speed to get that SEO, to get that traffic hit, to get something on there as quickly as possible of high controversy is of great value. So nobody is checking the facts. I mean, I have seen this. I have lived this. I cannot tell you how many times it has

happened where I have seen completely inaccurate information get into major media organizations because they wanted it up first and they checked absolutely nothing. Okay. So there's that. Where the money is being made is on the clicks. And when the money is being made on the clicks, nobody cares about the facts, nobody cares about the truth. And I know a lot of people try to deny that in the news industry. They are fooling themselves. They're lying to themselves. One of the reasons we got Donald Trump was because CNN kept putting him on again and again and again

because he was making them ratings, he was making them money. So, I mean, that it's just right out there. The other thing is, I mean, to your other point with regard to the future of the business, I mean, I don't know about you, but I spend most of my time now on YouTube. And the reason I spend most of my time on YouTube is usually because I'm trying to learn something about something I'm trying to figure out or because someone on YouTube is analyzing something that I care about at a deeper level than any of these corporate media companies. Of course, that includes this show.

But there's other shows that will take one topic and analyze the hell out of it. And corporate media won't even touch the questions of something a lot of times, much less actually report on it. So that's why you see cable getting cut. This is why you see this discussion by Bob Iger about selling ABC. You see the discussion at CNN about selling CNN, because nobody's going to be watching this stuff because they're not even brave enough, they don't have the courage enough to have some of the discussions that need to be had in our society that they just ignore. They just pretend they're not there. There's so many examples of that.

So, I mean, even things like the Michael Irvin case or the, who's the dude that's in Creed that got accused and now it's turning out that that whole story is starting to be- Yeah, Jonathan Majors. Jonathan Majors. Right, Jonathan Majors. That's turning out to be nonsense. You see the corporate media wants that story because it's controversy.

It gets clicks. So you see Rolling Stone and Variety trying to get the story live. And you see people on YouTube deconstructing it. And they're deconstructing it in a way that the big media outlets should be deconstructing. And they're losing. And they're going to continue to lose because the truth has a certain power people know the truth when they hear it and they see it and they will gravitate towards it the bigger problem though is these social media companies with these algorithms that are giving us nonsense and lies and allowing that

to happen and blow up and go crazy i mean that's a huge problem. So Greg, so here's where we stand. And where we stand is this and it is one that I fear. And I literally, just so people, I'm on a text chain with a number of

prominent civil rights folks, pastors and others. And literally, when I posted last night about the BET sale, what I talked about was what we were seeing. And I talked about how the billionaire right wingers stopped arguing about the New York Times and the L.A. Times and CNN and CBS. And they said, we're going to fund our own ecosystem. So this thing is not just Fox News and not just conservative talk radio. It literally is Breitbart, the Daily Caller, the Daily Signal, the Daily Wire. It's the plethora. It's PragerU. And what they've done is, and so they figure it out.

They say, wait a minute, if we focus on the news and minority side, you see a fixation with entertainment. On the right, you see a fixation with news. And so there's a so I need people, everybody to understand. I've had more brothers come to me man man i got a great idea for a sports show we're not doing one man what are you talking about i said it's a plethora of sports already out there oh man i got a great entertainment show we're not doing an entertainment show on black star network for what i said if i do one it's it's three four five years away.

I said, because there's a plethora. That's a deep pool over there. I said, I'm swimming in shallow water. I'm fixated on a niche, and we're saying this is how we're going to reach them. Because, again, I go back to the Paramount deal. Everybody else forgets. Somebody offered Paramount $3 billion for Showtime. They turned them down.

You think somebody's going, you'd be crazy to offer $3 billion for BET. Because again, if you're Tyler Perry, if you're Diddy, if you're Byron Allen, if you're TV, you're anybody. If I'm going to bid that, and again, this is what we're now seeing I need people to understand where we're going

it's actually smarter to say I'm going to take 10, 25, 50, 100 million and literally create a digital property that I can build that's more economically viable than me spending and me going into debt and not having to service that debt, and I'm always going to be underwater. That's really what you're dealing with.

And so what I want our people to understand is that moving forward, and I'm telling y'all, and I'm going to throw this out here before I let Greg close this out. I need y'all to understand how deep this thing goes. Every black family and y'all thinking your son's going to be a first rounder,

y'all money's about to change. You know why? Your money's about to change because the cable networks know why? You're much about to change because the cable networks, they're losing subs. Where's the money for the rights fees are going to come from? Y'all better, you mentioned

the Pac-12 deal. That was the largest subscription deal. The free money that used to be thrown around, the game has changed. Folk had better understand this thing is way deeper than they think it is. Absolutely. I mean, Roland and Candace said this a minute ago.

And like she said, she's not just saying it because she's here. And Lauren is here. And I'm here. And Faraji is here. And Debra is here. And Jackie Hood is here. She's not just saying that because Reese is here. And, you know, the Black Star Network is doing something that is, you know,

in the teaching profession, we call it God's work. It's thankless work. People might not necessarily understand it, but as you said, when there's something that folk need some reliable information on, you see the numbers explode. They come here. And, Lauren, when you said you watch YouTube a lot, I mean, I try to stay out of the digital world

because I try to continue to be analog, as you can see, but I can't fight the future. So I look at YouTube a lot, too, for that very same reason. And I'm saying this to say that, you know, we saw what happened to Bomani Jones at HBO or ESPN. High quality analysis. He couldn't stand. And then you see them throw something out, Comedy Central, Brother Lenard or Charlemagne, whatever you call yourself.

That ain't high quality times, but always consistently high quality analytical work, what Jacob Crowley would call intellectual warfare, that's what you get with the Black Star Network. There's a lot of that stuff out on YouTube, but the difference between this, and I didn't know what the term OTT meant, over the top meant. Rowan, you've built out a platform now that's not just YouTube, not just Facebook, not just Instagram, but literally its own platform and channel. And when folks subscribe, when folks hit the likes on YouTube and help try to drive the algorithm, that's extremely important. But you're not just relying on that. You've built out the

entire network. And as Candace said, you're ahead of where these people are trying to go. Now, I said I didn't care about millionaires, but I will make an exception to that. Let me make an amendment to that. I care about millionaires and billionaires if they're going to do what the Ed Blooms of the world do, what the Mercs of the world do. In other words, I'm going to give you $100 million Heritage Foundation. I'm going to fund you, Sarah Fisher, to attack affirmative action. I'm going to create a whole-ass fake organization called SFFA and wipe out affirmative action. If we're going to have some black people line up to do that, and I'm not saying that Robert Smith hasn't invested. He gave

some money to the New York Times for the 1619 Project, and that's beautiful. But that ain't that, bruh. You need to get that money to the Black Star Network, because the New York Times is going to be fine. This is what it comes down to. When you approached me and said, you know, bruh, would you consider perhaps doing a show? Would you write a treatment? The thing that came to mind was, I said, what I don't

see is, and I'm only saying this by comparison because people know the name Charlie Rose. We don't have a black Charlie Rose. So let's do the black table. I'll put that content up against anybody doing anything anywhere. And I'm not saying that because it's me. I'm saying that because people come into the Black Star Network and they expect to be engaged. They expect to be elevated. And when authors and lawyers and doctors and critical people of any racial background come through the Black Star Network, they come away with this is the level of quality that I am glad that I got to participate in because this is the type of education that's going to help our people. You've got to support it. Why? Because our billionaires ain't writing checks like this. The white billionaires, the white nationalist billionaires are strictly just funding this

thing cold-blooded. Moms for Liberty, funding this thing cold-blooded. And when they do that, they are able to penetrate and raise this to the level that they need. I'll end with this. We don't have that kind of money, but we do have people. And if everybody do a little, nobody has to do a lot. If we would simply invest in this platform, you would see the whole thing open up. And you know how we know? Well, they might be stingy on the ad revenue. They may not want to advertise with you.

But guess what? They love money more than any other principle they have. That revenue will come to the Black Star Network, and then they'll start trying to tear it down. But by then, they'll realize the reality is, when we all support it, you can't tear it down. But this is a critical moment. We're at an inflection point. And this story tonight about BET, this story allows us again to reinforce

the fact that you've got to support this independent platform not only because it's black but because it is of the highest quality and when you need to know you can rely on this and you prove it every time you think you need to know something you come here understand and the reality is this here. You can run all of the entertainment stuff that you want. Well, you know what? When January 6th happened, people were like, what are we going to do?

When Trayvon killed, when George Floyd murdered, we can go down the line. What I need our folks to understand, I got no problem with entertainment. I watch all sorts of shows. But if you think for a second and I'm going to walk around uninformed,

you got another thing coming. And I'm telling you, and I'm going to say it again to everybody who's watching and listening. Black America, we are going to say it again to everybody who's watching and listening. Black America, we are going to rule the day when we are asking somebody else to tell our story.

As a matter of fact, you know what? I have not said this publicly, but I'm going to go ahead and say this. Uh-oh. When I was at... I'm about to give y'all something. Uh-oh. When I was at... I'm about to give y'all something. And listen, straight up.

And I would love for the current leadership of BET to prove me wrong. When we were in Atlanta covering Melanie Campbell's grassroots organizing event in Atlanta, this was, what, May?

Was it May? April or May. I ran into a sister, and she said, I'm so glad to meet you. She said, I know so much about you. And I was like, really? She says, yes.

She says, after the death of George Floyd, she said, the leaders of BET came to me and said it's time for us to do a news show and she said I ran the research and she said we did exhaustive research we studied day parts

we studied shows, we studied other networks we looked at radio we looked at newspaper, we looked at podcasting she said we studied demographics 1824, 2435, 3544 We studied other networks. We looked at radio. We looked at newspaper. We looked at podcasting. She said, we studied demographics, 18, 24, 24, 35, 35, 44, 44, 54, 55 plus. And she said, after we ran all the metrics, she said, the research came back. And the number one person they said, Black America said they wanted to see host a new show on BET was you she said it was you she said Charlamagne was on the list and she said and then when Comedy Central launched his show she said they're using my research

that's what she told me and she wasn't dissing anybody she just said but i just want you to understand you came in number one she said and it wasn't close there was no one and i said that's interesting i said that's interesting because i know scott mills the ceo of bt and he never called i know connie Orlando, who's the exec there. She never called. I said, I know the sister she was running, while escaping me right now,

was running, Amy Dubois-Barnett. She was over digital. I used to work with her when she was at Honey Magazine. Never called. She said, all the top execs

got the research i said interesting now y'all know last year bet launched a month monthly magazine show you know now i've seen it but it's a monthly y'all it's it's too much stuff happening with black folk to focus on a monthly and most of those folks you see come from actually CBS. Why am I saying all of that? Because that's the perfect example. They did all the research and Black America said, we want to see a show with Roland.

And they never called. So why did I launch this? Because I was not going to sit at home and wait for somebody to call me and give me permission to talk to y'all. The future of black America cannot hinge on somebody else deciding who should speak for us? We will not prosper as a people if 15, 20 years from now, we're having to ask non-Black-owned outlets, can you please, pretty please, cover our people? We got here today because of Frederick Douglass and the North Star,

Audie Wells Barnett, Claude Barnett, got here because of Robert Sinstat, because of Robert Abbott, John Sinstat, because of A.I. Scott, because of the Pittsburgh Courier, because of Jet and Ebony and Simeon Booker and Lerone Bennett, and we can go on and on. We got here because of the black press. That's who covered us. I'm telling

y'all right now, black America in the 21st century cannot and will not prosper if the people who we are relying on are focusing on hair and beauty and makeup

and entertainment and sports and fashion. None of that will liberate black America. And so I and I and I will say I got no problem. I do hope that Tyler Perry is the one by BET. Why? Because you can criticize Tyler's shows, you can say what you don't like, but the one thing I do know,

Tyler understood, damn a seat at somebody else's table, he understood about building his own table. If that is your state of mind, you are more likely to actually give a damn about black news

than somebody else who only cares about making another buck. Lauren, Candace, Greg, I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, I know we went over time, but I felt we need to properly unpack this. So now, y'all ain't gotta's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, I know we went over time, but I felt we need to properly unpack this. So now, y'all

ain't gotta listen to none of these blogs who know what the hell they talking about. You get a better understanding of black-owned media and the conversation we just had. Folks, do not forget, support us in what we do. First of all, on YouTube, hit that like button, y'all. We should easily be

at 2,000 likes, okay? We should easily be there. Support us in what we do. I'm telling y'all right now, I have no reason to lie. Our costs are $195,000 per month. Last year, we finally crossed the million-dollar barrier with advertising on YouTube.. Hopefully we're going to hit that again this year. Major companies are not advertising with us like they should. Do y'all know that Mercedes Benz has a sponsored segment on the five? On the five. That opinion show.

So Mercedes. Why y'all not on Blackstar Network? So here's what I'm going to start doing, y'all, and I want y'all to help me out because I can't do anything by myself. We're going to start recording Fox

News every single day. And we're going to list all the ads that run on Fox News. And we're going to start coming on this show and asking those companies, if y'all keep telling my brand safety, why do I see your ads appear on Fox News and not on black-owned media like Black Star Network? Next month, I'm going to give you my update on the advertising industry. All those folks who I called out back in May,

we're going to let you know where they stand in September. Because you know what? They're getting ready for their 2024 budgets, and let's see if black-owned media is in it. But in the meantime, we need your support. Send your checking money orders. 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 at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Download the Black Star Network app. Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. And of course, be sure to get a copy of my book, White Fear,

How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. Available at bookstores nationwide. Get your copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Books A Million. Download the audio version on Audible. Folks, that's it. I'll see you tomorrow right here. Roller Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. We gonna keep doing what we do.

Keep it real, keep it black, and keep it unfiltered. Power! Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Like wow! Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told.

Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Rollin'. Stay 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 scape. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home.

You dig? Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin. Join the conversation only on the Blackstar Network for a balanced life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not.

From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives. And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Blackstar Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's wealth coach, and my new show, Get Wealthy, focuses on the things that your financial advisor and bank isn't telling you, but you absolutely need to know.

So watch Get Wealthy on the Blackstar Network. but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you've got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I know a lot of cops.

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Listen to Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Drug war this year. A lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that in a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

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