#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Potter Guilty, Omicron Covid Surge, Biden Supports killing the filibuster

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

12.23.2021 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Potter Guilty, Omicron Covid Surge, Biden Supports killing the filibusterIt's Thursday, December 23, 2021. Here's what's coming Up on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network..Guilty on all counts! Former Minnesota police officer Kimberly Potter is now a convicted felon for killing black motorist Daunte Wright. We'll have a live report from Georgia Fort, and we have a special legal panel joining us to break all of this down.Plus, President Biden says he's on board with changing the Senate filibuster rules to get voting legislation passed.The CDC says there have been more than 670-thousand covid new cases in the past three days.We have another doctor on tonight's show to talk about the spikes.Gubernatorial candidate John King he's the best candidate to become Maryland's first black governor. He'll be here to explain.And a former president of the Ford Foundation, Franklin A. Thomas, has died.#RolandMartinUnfiltered partners: Verizon | Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband, now available in 50+ cities, is the fastest 5G in the world.* That means that downloads that used to take minutes now take seconds. 👉🏾https://bit.ly/30j6z9INissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPAmazon | Get 2-hour grocery delivery, set up you Amazon Day deliveries, watch Amazon Originals with Prime Video and save up to 80% on meds with Amazon Prime 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3ArwxEh+ Don’t miss Epic Daily Deals that rival Black Friday blockbuster sales 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3iP9zkv👀 Manage your calendar, follow along with recipes, catch up on news and more with Alexa smart displays + Stream music, order a pizza, control your smart home and more with Alexa smart speakers 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3ked4liBuick | It's ALL about you! The 2022 Envision has more than enough style, power and technology to make every day an occasion. 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3iJ6ouPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com#RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Guilty, guilty. Those were the two words that came out in the Kim Potter trial for the death of Dante Wright. We'll break down what happened in this case. And not only with Georgia Fort, the lawyer, excuse me, the reporter who covered this trial, but also with our Stiller legal panel. President Joe Biden finally says that if the only way to pass voting reform is carving out a filibuster exception, then he supports it. It's about time. Also, the CDC says there have been more than 670,000 COVID new cases in the past three days.

Man, we'll have a doctor on talk about the spikes in COVID in the country. Also, John King is running for governor of Maryland. The former education secretary will join us on the show. Also, in memoriam, we'll remember Franklin Thomas, the first black president of the Ford Foundation, who passed away. It is time to bring the funk on Roland, unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got it.

Whatever the mess, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the super fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling.

It's a go-go-go-go, y'all. It's rolling, Martin. Rolling with rolling now. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best you know he's rolling when kim potter shot dante right she said i'm she said, I'm going to prison, I'm going to prison. Well, she is almost headed to prison today. The jury delivered their verdict guilty on two counts of manslaughter charges. This is what happened in the courtroom today in Minnesota.

I'm now going to read your verdicts as it will appear in the permanent court records committing a misdemeanor on or about April 11, 2021 in Hennepin by the jury person on 12-23-21. The verdict on count two is we the jury on the charge of manslaughter in the second degree culpable negligence on or about April 11, 2021 in Hennepin County state of Minnesota find the defendant guilty and that verdict was agreed to at 1030 a.m. on 12 21 21 members of the jury is this your true and correct verdict? So say you one, and so say you all. Yes.

Okay, you may be seated. All right, I am now going to poll the jury. Juror number two, is this your true and correct verdict? It is. Juror number six, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number six, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number seven, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 13, is this your true and correct verdict? Oh, it's juror, excuse me, juror 11. And juror 17, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes.

Juror number 19, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 21, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 21 is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 22 is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 26 is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 40 is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. Juror number 48 is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. And jur number 48, is this your true and correct verdict? Yes. And jury number 55, is this your true and correct verdict?

Yes, it is. Members of the jury, when you first came into the courtroom, I told you that jurors are the heroes of our judicial system. Well, the 12 of you are our heroes in this case. You might remember that there was a question on the questionnaire that asked whether you wanted to be on this jury. You were to check yes, no, or maybe. A number of you checked no or not sure and a few of you checked all three. But when I asked each of you if you would be willing to serve if the party selected you as a juror, you all said yes. You said yes, even though we are in a pandemic

with Omicron spreading in our community. You said yes, even though you had concerns about serving, given the nature of the case. You said yes, even though you knew you would be sequestered during deliberations and away from your loved ones. And you said yes, even though there was a chance that this case could have lasted past Christmas. You were willing to sacrifice much

because you believed in our justice system. And then you went into deliberations and each of you brought with you. All right, Kenan, we can bail out of that. That was the judge again speaking to the jury after they rendered their verdict. I want to go to my panel, Matt Manning. He is a trial attorney. He joins us right now, civil rights attorney. Also joining us, Bernarda Villalona.

She's going to be with us in a moment, senior trial counsel of the George Jackson Law Firm. Also joining us right now is Angie Porter, research fellow and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. She also was a prosecutor there in Minnesota. Glad to have all of you on the show. Georgetown University Law Center. She also was a prosecutor there in Minnesota. Glad to have all of you on the show. First and foremost, let's start. Let's start here. Initially, initially, first of all, all three of you were any of you surprised with this verdict that you believe that this jury, after initially sending out their comment to the judge, that they were going to, at least one person was going to allow her to walk? So I'll tell you this. I was surprised by the verdict in the sense of, so let's just be clear. So Roland, what happened is that Monday, of course, they closed. Jury instructions was given.

They were allowed to deliberate for a couple hours. Then they returned on Tuesday. Tuesday morning, they actually, we know now that they had a verdict as to manslaughter in the second degree as a culpable negligence, because that verdict was reached at 1030 in the morning on Tuesday. And then they sent out a hum note. I would call it a hum note in terms of they wouldn't be able to reach a decision, but they never made it clear or gave us any leeway in terms of learning what their split was. But we now know what they were stuck on was the reckless homicide, the manslaughter in the first degree. And that's what they were stuck on. And eventually they were able to go over the hurdle and find her guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. But despite for us, it doesn't matter how much

evidence exists. Anytime there's an officer that is on trial, we always have that pause and those butterflies when we hear there's a verdict because there is no guarantee that there will be a conviction. Matt? I am kind of surprised if I'm honest, Roland. I'm surprised because I thought, as she just spoke to, I thought the intent would really be the difficult thing for them to get over. And I thought because of how police officers are frankly given so much the benefit of the doubt, I thought that the jury might come back on the side of it was just a mistake and therefore the intentionality that's required of the statute was not met. It sounds like Mr. Frank and his team and Mr. Ellison really and his team did a bang up job of really proving their indictment. So I'm not surprised by the caliber of their work. But when you get down to thorny issues as it relates to a police officer and intent, it's always a difficult issue. And I was surprised that it came down

as forcefully as it did on both counts. Angie? Thanks, Roland. I, you know, Juries are unpredictable, so I entertained every possibility. I thought it would be either a hung jury or a guilty verdict based on my close review of the trial and sort of reading the tea leaves of their jury questions. I know they seem like they might have been close to deadlocked, but they also asked a question about whether they could hold the gun, which showed me they were really carefully deliberating about the distinctions between the Glock and the Taser. So I was sort of leaning that they might find guilty on at least one of the charges and sort of predicted that after we knew it wasn't a hung jury one of the things that we have to look at here is that again we got to give some credit uh to attorney general keith ellison uh initially uh the uh the prosecutors were only going to pursue manslaughter two when the state stepped in they added

manslaughter one you a prosecutor uh in that state angie. I mean, I think we cannot over is really matters. And I think initially, we were worried about whether they would charge this case and how they would charge it. We had Pete Orplitt, I believe, was the attorney on the case, and they pushed to get Keith Ellison on. And he really pulled it together, exactly how he pulled together that team in the Chauvin trial. So it is so helpful that he is there. We might not have seen this result without his presence. The thing that I think really stands out here, Joey, is that you look at this conviction, Derek Chauvin, you look at Jason Van Dyke in jail as well the protest that we have seen over the last decade is having a mark it is changing the public's perception of how we hold police Joy, did you hear me? Joy, did you hear me?

Matt, did you hear me? I did. I did, yes. I do think you're right. Go right ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say I think you're right. The political pressure and the social pressure that's on is really requiring prosecutors to not only be nuanced, but to do their absolute best to make sure that they put forth a true case and not sweeping things under the rug. So I do think that that pressure is having a demonstrable effect on what we're seeing.

But I also think that it's still extremely difficult to prosecute a police officer who commits a crime in the line of duty. I've prosecuted hundreds of cases, and this would be among the most difficult I prosecute a police officer who commits a crime in the line of duty. I've prosecuted hundreds of cases and this would be among the most difficult I prosecuted. So I don't want to undersell really the acumen of Mr. Ellison and his team because I really think they've done a bang up job in both cases, which are difficult by the very nature that they have occurred while a police officer was on duty. Bernardo, what should other DAs be learning from this trial and from the Chauvin trial with the work of the Minnesota Attorney General's office? So, Roland, aside from learning is that what these other prosecutors have to have is the courage. Have the courage to actually bring charges if you see that charges are fit in a certain case. Because that's the first step right there, the problem that we have.

In terms of prosecutors, we know that prosecutors have an enormous amount of power if it's the prosecutor can determine whether someone's arrested a prosecutor can determine what charges if any someone should face so in terms of the prosecutor who represents the people of any given county they're supposed to be the word and the face for the people, is that if there's an issue, there's a crime that is committed, you put it before the jury or a grand jury for them to make a decision as to what actually happened, as opposed to taking it away and not giving the people the opportunity to make a decision. And that's why it's even more important that these cases are televised is because for there to be any kind of confidence in our criminal justice system, there has to be transparency. And

that's what we were able to see by having this trial televised and for us to see how the criminal justice system actually works. But in terms of prosecutors, you need to have courage and you need to be able to step step forward when there's an issue that arises so there can be trust in the community uh uh one of the things that uh we saw we saw a whole lot of histrionics no tears coming off off of that uh that stand uh from kim potter uh she came to court today with her Mr. Rogers sweater on again. And, you know, anybody surprised that this was her reaction, which was pretty much no reaction at all once she heard guilty? Roland, we saw her true demeanor today when that verdict came out. When that

verdict came out, there were no tears. There was no crying. If anything, you saw her face turn a little bit red. But also what I noticed different from when she testified, remember when she testified, she actually had a chain with a crucifix on. She didn't have that on today. Aside from, I'm just going to show you the performance that she put on for that jury when she actually testified. But we also saw a Jekyll Hyde effect because doing direct, she was a completely different person that she was doing cross-examination. And I think that was so telling for that jury because her true emotions that you saw

was on that video and body worn camera when she was actually distraught. But her terms of being distraught, I think it's because it actually happened, not because she actually took someone's life. She's like, oh, my God, I'm going to jail. Angie, it was also very good to see the judge say no. She was not going to depart from what normally happens.

She was going to remand her into custody with no bail and not allowing her to go home for Christmas. Absolutely. Absolutely. I really thought that Judge Chu did a great job throughout this trial. And, you know, it's gracious to call me a Minnesota prosecutor. I prosecuted for a very short time for the city of Minneapolis. But the majority of my career was spent as a commercial attorney appearing before various judges in different courts. So I've seen a range, but I thought that Judge Chu represented a really even keel, deliberate and careful judge. And I think that it's funny that female judges get the reputation or female leaders in general

get the reputation of being emotional, but she's the judge who has been the most cool as a cucumber of all these judges we've seen, all these male judges we've seen in these high profile cases for the Black community. So I think that really raises the question about who these judges are and what they can bring from their identity and really sort of suggest that we should be more attentive to judicial appointments and judicial elections across the country. Matt, final comment. I think both of those sisters are exactly right. And again, I just echo my sentiments that I've prosecuted and defended hundreds of cases. I think it's very hard to prosecute a police officer who

was in the line of his or her duty. And I think that Attorney General Ellison and his team should really be commended because they did a stand-up job. All right. I want to thank all three of you for joining us to talk about your reaction to the Kim Potter guilty verdicts. The family of Daunte Wright spoke outside of the courtroom after today's court proceedings and the verdicts were read. Here's what they had to say. When you heard the word guilty and what are you feeling now? Have you processed it? What's going through your head and heart right now? Oh my gosh. The moment that we heard guilty on the manslaughter one, emotions, every single emotion that you could imagine just running through your body at that moment. I kind of let out a yelp because it was built up in the anticipation of what was to come while we were waiting for the last few days.

And now we've been able to process it. We want to thank the entire prosecution team. We want to thank the entire prosecution team we want to thank community support everybody who's been out there that has supported us in this this long fight for accountability I'd rather not answer that question. Well, the truth be told, what do I think? I want to thank her.

I'm going to keep it short. Mr. Elton. All right, folks. So let's bring in Recy Colbert, Black Women's Views, Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University for Raji Muhammad, radio and TV host as well. It you know, a lot of people were very surprised when they saw this verdict. And look, frankly, we're surprised each time a police officer is found guilty because frankly, it just simply doesn't happen a lot in this country, Recy, but the tide is turning. Absolutely. And as it turns out, being an incompetent dumbass isn't a very good defense. She almost would have been better off saying that she intended to shoot him and that she feared for her life. So I'm glad to see that she's being held accountable. I'm glad that hopefully this sends a message to the police

officer that stupidity, incompetence, and making a quote unquote mistake is not a good enough reason to execute a black person who the traffic stop started over air freshener. That's what it started out. I don't know how you escalate from air freshener to full-on murder, but I think that accountability was served. I think we're always careful to call it justice. I think that her team was incredibly arrogant, and I was really appalled watching their response to the verdict saying what Kim Potter was amenable to. She's amenable to parole and she's remorseful and still calling it an accident and still diminishing the severity over it. So I definitely applaud the judge for keeping a cool head, as Professor Porter pointed out, and sticking with the facts of the case, sticking with the fact that there was a conviction and not showing her favoritism. She belongs in jail. She does not deserve a Christmas with her family.

Daunte Wright's family does not have a Christmas with him. And so I think that accountability was served. And I think that the jury did the right thing, which is always a surprise when it comes to the police officers. But I think it shows that we don't just have an issue as simple as the laws and and the prosecution. It's all of how all these factors come into play. But in this case, it worked out the way that it was supposed to. The thing here, Faraji, is that, you know, she you know, she made clear that she thought it was a racial stop. The thing here is that at some point she could have actually said this stop makes no sense. Look in this, but that didn't happen. And she was a senior. She was a senior officer on the scene. Absolutely. And I mean, those are the type of judgment calls, brother Roland, that we,

that we have always been talking about for officers to make. You know, those are the type of decisions that the officers should take into account if they're going to have these, you know, type of interactions. And I'm with Recy on this. I mean, at this point, you know, when you look back at what she was trying to do while she was on the stand, from the crying to the way she was dressed and all of the whole not, it's insulting. It's absolutely insulting. You're trying to make yourself a separate person, a different person than what we saw on that video. I'm like my man, Matt. At first, I was like, Matt, I don't know if this thing is going to happen, but to see this happen on two counts,

to see her being guilty on all charges, for me, I'm just excited. I'm happy. I feel like this is definitely a victory for the Dante Wright family. But I know that we're still a long way to go. And big shout out to Keith Ellison, man, for, I mean, he hit two home runs in one year on two major cases that affect our community. And I'm just wondering, you know, can we get some more of that type of prosecutorial skill in other cities across this country? Because at this point, if one prosecutor can do that, then we're stopping others from doing it. Well, this is the difference when you have folks who run for attorney general in district attorney and that's why we always say greg on the show elections matter greg i think you're on mute sorry about that brother are you uh yes sir They absolutely do. On a day when we saw the Biden

administration announce the nomination of T. Michelle Childs to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and Nancy Butu to the 11th Circuit, if confirmed to be the first Black woman to serve on that circuit, we are reminded that Judge Regina Chu, as we just heard Professor Porter say, was appointed by Governor Jesse Ventura. We remember the controversial election of Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota, but he was she was appointed in 2002. I think she ran for and was elected in 2004, reelected again in 2010 and reelected in 2016. And as we heard, very even tempered, ran that trial about as clinically as you could, and elections matter. And as we also heard, Keith Ellison, there was a push to put him there,

but he wouldn't have been there to push had it not been for elections. And let us not forget, finally, in the state of Minnesota, there's no country, meaning there are no national lessons to learn from this. Minnesota is not Texas. Minnesota is not Mississippi. Minnesota is not Tennessee or the District of Columbia. Minnesota is a perfect, it was a perfect storm as close as you could get. You had a jury in a city and county, Hennepin County, of a million, almost a million three people. That's about 74% white and about 14% black. You had a jury of six white men, three white women, two Asian women, and one black woman, and no black men anywhere, even though a black man's execution was at trial. So you heard Keith Ellison walk the razor's edge today where he comforted the family of Daunte Wright. And you

heard Daunte Wright's mother say, yeah, I don't even want to comment on that. But then he turned around and said that this killer cop was part of a noble profession. Yeah. No, let us never forget that the police in this country kill about a thousand people a year. And so far in 2020, there have been 21 police total charged with murder or manslaughter, including off-duty cops. And that is up from 16 last year. But it still means that you got to have some heart to prosecute people. And if people don't think elections don't matter, put somebody in the seat who will hold these killers responsible or at least put us in the arena so that we can begin to try to do that. But this is incremental work. The fight is far from over. Indeed. Indeed. Indeed. All right, folks, got to go to do that. But this is incremental work. The fight is far from over.

Indeed, indeed, indeed. All right, folks, got to go to a break. We come back. We're going to talk Maryland politics. 2022 election is taking place next year. Not just U.S. Senate races, congressional races, but gubernatorial races. One of the folks who's running for governor of Maryland

is John King. And we'll talk with the former education secretary next on Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. so We'll be right back. folks black star network a real uh revolutionary right now support this Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. 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 This is DeOlla Riddle. What's up, y'all? I'm Will Packer. I'm Chrisette Michelle. Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, folks, 36-year-old Wilford Kenerson, the third, has been missing from Opelousas, Louisiana since October

5th, 2021. The 5-foot, 10-inch, 200-pound man was supposed to have returned from a trip to Bastrop, but police discovered his empty vehicle on October 8th he has black hair brown eyes and both of Wilford's ears are pierced anyone with information related to the whereabouts of Kinderson should contact the Opelousas Police Department at 337-948-2500 that's uh 337-948-2500. Folks, when we talk about the importance of elections, gubernatorial elections matter. In Maryland, Republican Governor Larry Hogan currently holds that position. We told you yesterday how he's been in a back and forth battle with Maryland State's Attorney, excuse me, with

Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby. One of the folks who is running for office to replace Hogan, who is term limited, is John King, the former Education Secretary. He joins us right now. First of all, John, glad to have you back on the show. One of the issues that Hogan keeps raising is crime. We're hearing this in other races as well. And so how much of that is a major part of your campaign? You know, Governor Hogan has used crime really as a dog whistle issue to try to stir up his base. He had this initiative a few weeks ago called Refund the Police, even though there's no community in Maryland that has defunded the police. And in fact,

in the city of Baltimore, the police budget has gone up. So it's really just a political tactic. My argument is, yes, there's a role for police in stopping the flow of illegal guns and investigating murders. But what we really need to do is reimagine public safety. We need to invest much more in addiction treatment and mental health services, in violence prevention programs. We can have civil rights protection and public safety. Those aren't intention. We actually need to achieve both. And that obviously is just one of the tactics the right uses where they label any Democrat with defund, defund, defund. That's exactly right. And look, it's part of a pattern with Governor Hogan. You know, he gets a lot of credit for being anti-Trump and pro-vaccine. That is a very,

very low bar. One of the first things he did when he took office was he canceled a transportation project that would have connected poor neighborhoods in Baltimore with where the jobs are. He sent almost a billion dollars back to the Obama administration. And again, it was dog whistle politics. It was saying, oh, well, why are we going to spend money on those people? In terms of priorities, education obviously is an area of interest for you. And we know that that's been a major, major concern for folks who are in Baltimore. And so what will you do different if elected governor? Yeah, we need to invest much more in our K-12 schools.

Actually, the General Assembly just passed a major school funding reform package over Governor Hogan's veto. Some of my Democratic opponents are reluctant about it, but I believe it's very important to follow through on that additional investment in raising teacher pay and making all of our high poverty schools, community schools with wraparound services to support families, investing in career and technical education so young people are prepared for good 21st century jobs. And I think we need to build on that reform. I've called for universal affordable child care, birth through five. We can afford to do that in Maryland. It's a question of political will. And we have to invest much more in our community colleges and our historically Black colleges and universities in the state. Those are institutions that have

been engines of social mobility for generations. My grandmother graduated from University of Maryland Eastern Shore in 1894, changed the whole trajectory of our family. Those are the kinds of institutions we've got to prioritize going forward. Questions from my panel. Faraji, you're there. You're based there in Baltimore. Your question for John King. Good evening, Mr. King. My big question is, as a citizen of Baltimore and one who has, you know, keeps up with the politics of everything, what do you think your administration, what would be your administration's relationship to the city of Baltimore? Because as it currently stands, you know, when it comes to Baltimore City and Annapolis, it can be a contentious relationship, whether you're talking about funding for education or, most importantly, crime and violence issues.

So, you know, we've seen that from Governor Larry Hogan. We've seen that from previous governors of the state. What will be your administration's tone and relationship to city leaders, especially when it comes to funding of education and other initiatives? Yeah, I'm so glad you framed the question that way. Look, I think the future of the state depends on the success of the city of Baltimore. And so the governor and Mayor Brandon Scott need to be partners. And I will be a partner to the city on economic development, on public safety, on investment in schools. And I think we need the state to be a partner in a neighborhood-based

economic development strategy. As you know, for the last 20, 30 years, a lot of the economic development strategy in the city has focused on building up fancy apartments at the waterfront and hoping that that would benefit the rest of the city. So you have middle class, working class, black folks actually subsidizing with their tax dollars, wealthy white folks living in waterfront, beautiful apartments. That is not the right way to think about economic development. In the city, we need to do much more around neighborhood-based economic development. That will create a healthier city that's investing in small businesses, that's making sure every neighborhood has a supermarket, that there's good transportation between neighborhoods so folks can get to where the jobs are. Thank you. Recy Colbert, your question for John King. Hi, Mr. King. My question

is actually about Prince George's County. What is your lens towards Prince George's County and the economic development there? I've noticed there's a lot of new construction, as you pointed out, but the last thing PG County needs is another chicken shack. I mean, there's a Popeye's that popped up across from Bojangles. There's a huge new development in the Capitol Heights area where the first things in there is a liquor store and a nail shop. So I'm just curious in terms of the economic plan. You know, Prince George's County is one of the most successful predominantly Black counties in the country. And I think that the county executive, Angela Alsterbrooks, does an amazing job. But I'm curious to see as the governor what the state contribution or state plan would be for PG County. Yeah. I think county executive Alsterbrooks needs a partner

in the governor who's focused on economic development. And part of that is improving retail. I hear from a lot of folks in Prince George's County how they have to drive to Montgomery County or Anne Arundel County to find the stores that they want. We can do something about that. The metro stops in Prince George's County, for example, are a great opportunity for mixed-use development, housing, commercial, attracting better retail to the city. We also have a lot of small business owners in Prince George's County, folks of color who are building businesses. I think we should have a state bank in Maryland, which would allow us to provide loans more easily to small businesses

who often struggle to get the capital they need to grow. We also have a lot of businesses in Prince George's County that do business with the state, and the state has a terrible history around following the law around the participation of businesses owned by women and people of color in state contracts. We need really to reform procurement in the state to make sure that small businesses owned by folks of color have a legit shot at state contracts. Great, Carr. Thank you. Thank you, Roland. And thank you, Secretary King. In looking at the field so far, I see at least two other brothers, Richard Baker and Wes Moore, and a few Obama cabinet folk and appointments like they have in an Obama

reunion. Tom Perez wants another Bible Lab. But I guess my question has to do with how you break out beyond the attempt that they will make to label you as the Black candidate or a Black candidate. I saw your remarks on critical race theory earlier this month, where you stood up strongly in terms of the truth. And as an educator who's deeply concerned about curriculum, African-American history and curriculum, I was I was really happy to see that. But how do you distinguish yourself from a idea that you're a Black candidate to reach beyond that and get above that ceiling that folks like Ben Jellison and others may have encountered when we know that CRT and all those labels are going to be used as a tar brush to try to confine you to a racial kind of characterization?

Yeah, that's exactly the right question. Look, we've only had two elected African-American governors ever as a country. So we've got to make sure that we build a strong multiracial coalition. I think I'm the right candidate to do that. Education is certainly top of mind for voters in every part of the state. I've been the first candidate to do in-person campaign events in every county. I'm going to parts of the state. I've been the first candidate to do in-person campaign events in every county. I'm going to parts of the state that don't usually vote for Democrats because I want them to know I want to be their governor too. I want to hear their challenges, the challenges faced by small farmers in southern Maryland, the challenges faced by small business owners in western Maryland

near the West Virginia border. I want to help them too and make sure the government's on their side. I also think we can't leave some of these dog whistle attacks unanswered. I mean, that's why I took on the critical race theory issue. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland, about 25 miles from where my great-grandfather was enslaved in Gaithersburg, Maryland. We need to tell the truth about that. That happened. That's real. And, you know, folks want to have that fight. Let's have it. Let's be clear that what is important is that our kids understand both the hard parts of our history and the progress that we've made. Thank you. All right. John King, we sure appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Good luck

in the election. Thanks so much. Great to see you. All right, folks, gotta go to a break. We come back. President Joe Biden finally speaks out on filibuster reform in an interview with ABC. We'll show you what he said, and we'll talk with the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, Cliff Albright, about that. Could this be the thing to finally move the voting bills that have been held up in the United States Senate? Well, we'll see. You're watching Roller Barton Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. so Thank you. white supremacists ain't just about hurting black folks.

Right. We've got to deal with it. It's injustice. It's wrong. I do feel like in this generation, we've got to do more around being intentional and resolving conflict. You and I have always agreed. Yeah.

But we agree on the big piece. Yeah. Our conflict is not about destruction. Conflict's going to happen. Hey, everybody. This is your man Fred Hammond. I'm Deion Cole. You're watching.

Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Stay woke. 2021 has been a constant fight, constant battle over voting rights. Republicans have stood in the way, obstructing every chance they can, they could, including some Democrats doing the exact same thing. And so with Democrats, Republicans tie 50-50 in the United States Senate requires a breaking of the filibuster or even a carve out. You had Democrats, Christian Sinema, Joe Manchin saying they don't support that carve out. Some other Democrats as well. Now an increasing number say they do. Finally, during the interview with David Mirra of ABC, President Joe Biden weighs in. You know, many of your supporters believe in order to protect democracy in this country,

you've gotta protect voters rights. Yes. As we near the end of year one, nothing's been done. It's been blocked by the filibuster. Are you prepared to support fundamental changes in the Senate rules to get this done? Yes. What does that mean? That means whatever it takes, change the Senate rules to accommodate major piece of

legislation without requiring 60 votes. So you support a carve out of the filibuster for voting rights? The only thing standing between getting voting rights legislation passed and not getting passed as a filibuster, I support making an exception of voting rights for the filibuster. Well, is that enough? Is that going to move Democrats on this issue? Cliff Albright is co-founder of Black Voters Matter. He joins us right now. Cliff, y'all have been pushing the president for quite some time. You're finally glad to hear him say this?

Yeah, hey, good evening, Roland, and happy holidays. Merry Christmas to you. Hey, you know, it's certainly a step forward, right? It's not quite the, you know, the buck stops here kind of, you bill, he didn't go there saying, I support this infrastructure bill. He went there saying, I want this infrastructure bill. I need y'all to get this done, and I need y'all to get it done now, right? Strong language on the filibuster would be something like that, right? It's good that he said specifically and explicitly that he supports the carve-out. But I'm looking for that advocacy role, that bully pulpit role of President Biden saying, not only do I support this, but I am calling on my colleagues, many of whom I served with in the Senate for years, I am calling on them to modify

these rules immediately. In fact, I would have loved to see him say that he wanted them to come back, break the recess and come on back and get it done in 21 before the year is out. So it's a step in the right direction. We've been pushing on this. But, you know, I think he can get even stronger with this language. He's done it before on other issues. He needs to do it right now on voting rights. Well, time is of the essence here, because, frankly, if this doesn't get done very soon, it's going to be too late because the primary season will be starting in a lot of these states. Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. The primary season will be starting. Candidates are already

declaring themselves based on some of these gerrymandered maps. Ballots are going to start to be printed in just a matter of weeks, if not in days, for some of those primaries, right? It reaches a point where even the courts, if they find that some of these laws are discriminatory or that they were too gerrymandered, or if the legislation passes and they can do a look back, even if we get to that point, courts are very hesitant to start undoing electoral processes once they're in motion, once people have declared, once ballots have been printed. Right. And so we are getting dangerously close. We're really past the point of where we need to get this done. But we're getting dangerously close to the point of no return.

So what is next? Yeah, I mean, we're still pushing. You know, we got some phone banking going on even this week, right? We've been saying, even though they went on vacation, that our movement's not necessarily on vacation. So there are folks all around the country that have been phone banking, calling the White House, calling senators. Even this week, folks can go to our social media to get more information about that. Black Voters MTR, on different social media platforms. But the big thing that we're building up to is January 6th. There's going to be some types of commemorations around, of course, the anniversary of that takeover, and really pointing out the hypocrisy that a year later, a year later from this attack on democracy, this one-day coup attempt, that there's been this ongoing slow coup attempt taking place. And yet here we are a year later and we still don't have voting rights. Right. And so we're going to be having some actions in D.C. as well as in states across the country,

along with our partner organizations, our coalition on voting rights, to really point out that hypocrisy, to make this push, to make sure that Senator Schumer keeps his word. He said that voting rights will be the first thing that they deal with when they get back. And so we're going to be active during the break and on January 6th to make sure that happens. And then finally, as you know, Roland, there's been a call put out by Dr. King's family himself, by Martin Luther King III and his family, along with other organizations that we make sure, and the King Center and Bernice has agreed with it, that making sure that in this anniversary of Dr. King's birthday and his holiday,

that, you know, while community service is important, I never want to, you know, dismiss community service, but that this is a year that, especially when we've got to remind folks that Dr. King wasn't just about community service, he was about civil rights, he was about advocacy. He was about, you know, pushing the envelope in order to get us the rights that we deserved. And so on this anniversary, on this holiday, we want to make sure that the holiday is used as an organizing point to make a final push for voting rights if it has not already been passed by that point. Recy, this, of course, finally, Biden saying this is important, but saying stuff is one thing. He's got to use the power of his office to also push and get it done. Perhaps that's one theory about it. I still maintain where the hell is Chuck Schumer at? I mean,

Biden doesn't have a magic wand over the Senate. The Senate and Congress House of Representatives are a co-equal branch of government. Sure, I think that Biden could be more forceful on the issue, but I still don't understand how the hell Chuck Schumer gets a free pass in all this. I mean, he's the one who adjourned the Senate without getting voting rights passed. He spent a whole 24 hours promising that he was going to get something done before the end of the year and still failed to do that. So I'm not a Biden apologist, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, I still believe fully that this is a responsibility that falls under Chuck Schumer. If he can tweet all day, every day about canceling student debt, then he can get in there

and do his damn job as majority leader and try to figure out a way to a path forward on these the voting rights just the same way he did on the debt ceiling and the carve out for that so this is a senate process and i still think that chuck schumer should be getting way more heat exponentially more heat than what he's getting at this point. Faraji. Faraji? Yup, I got you. I think this is even more interesting, especially considering the fact that you have 19 states this year who have enacted laws making it harder for Americans to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. And I mean, when you're looking at the uphill challenge of this situation, you got to bring that fire. You have to, and I'm with

Cliff on this, Brother Cliff, and I appreciate you and the work that you do. You got to bring that bully pulpit. You got to get that momentum going. 19 states, that is more than enough to shift the 22 election and 24 election and and right now the democrats aren't doing so well in terms of the in in the larger you know conversation among the public so you have to put this if this is the number one bill domestically then this has to happen this can't go any longer and i'm like cliff it has to happen like in january it's gotta happen in february i mean something has to happen because i know biden has tried to push this uh bill back butter uh bill to come through and that's not that's not really working out so well so this has to happen

that bully paul i mean i want to see some fire under somebody's ass at this point to make this bill happen i made this point cliff you also got got to have non-Black groups also saying something and doing something. This is the moment. I mean, this is, look, you got to get it done. It doesn't get done now. We're talking about guaranteed losing in 2022 midterms. No, you're absolutely right, Roland. You know, we got to have some other groups. And

to be clear, you know, there's been a pretty wide coalition of folks that have been involved in this. You know, there's some indivisible groups and some other aspects of the coalition, but it has not been enough. It has not been enough, you know, coming from some of our other allies within the communities of Latinx communities or even, you know, the Asian Pacific Islander community. This affects everybody. Right. And so, you know, there's been a coalition, but there have not been enough voices involved in this. At the end of the day, you know, a lot of times and this is this is kind of, you know,, been part of the history that I'm sure you're very much aware of, you know, that we are often the conscious of movement, right? That we push movement forward, right? That other folks oftentimes, you know, when Black folks start putting it down, then other folks get involved on the bandwagon because we bring that fire a lot of times to these coalitions. And so, you know,

we've got to be in this leading role that we've historically always been in, but we can't just be out there out front. And again, there has been a coalition. I don't want to dismiss the folks that we've been in the streets with legal women's voters, people for the American way. We're leading some of those White House protests where I've gotten arrested three, four times outside the White House at some of those events. So there has been a coalition, but we got to have more voices involved in this. And when we get that, and when we get this pressure being put on these senators, because I agree with Risi, it can't just be the White House. It's got to be on senators all across this country, even not just Chuck Schumer. We need some more of them to be vocal.

That's got to take a really wide coalition because in some of these states where we need folks to speak up, to be honest, we're just not that deep, right? We need folks in Maine speaking up. We need folks in New Hampshire putting pressure on senators like Hassan, right? And so in some of these places, it's got to come from some other folks. So you're absolutely right, Roland, that we need more voices involved in this battle, especially during this final stretch that we're doing phone calls to Senator Schumer now. But at the end of the day, we got to be clear. Nobody really remembers. Maybe some people do who are inside inside the politics. Who the speaker of the House was when Obama got Obamacare passed or who or who the Senate majority leader was when when Lyndon B. Johnson got the Voting Rights Act passed. Right. That's all of that is legislation. Who was the Senate majority leader when Roosevelt got the New Deal stuff passed, right? At the

end of the day, the president has got to use the bully pulpit if he's going to get movement and action on something that he calls the biggest attack on voting rights ever since the Civil War. Yep. Greg Carr. Let's cut to the chase. The 50 members of the White Nationalist Party are in lockstep.

Paul Manchin is a member of the White Nationalist Party for all intents and purposes. Mitch McConnell now trolling with that ghoul laugh. We're going to invite him into the GOP. He's with them. How much of this is really about bare knuckle brawling with these white nationalists? I mean, Cliff, what's this? What is the plan? I mean, we move in other words, we moved from Bill back better to voting rights because Joe Manchin got orders to kill Bill back better. There's nothing you can do to do for him. He is he is he is serving the function he has to serve. And again, with all due respect, we talk about Franklin Roosevelt. No, we were talking about going into

World War II and A. Philip Randolph and them came up and said, we're not going to participate unless we get some jobs. That's what moved Frank Roosevelt. We talk about Lyndon Johnson. It was people in the streets, but it was also those lobbyists in the Hall of Congress. And we can talk about Obamacare, but the context is different now. They are playing, as you know, better than I do, for all the marbles. This will determine the next generation and whether or not

there will be a United States of America. And as someone who really doesn't have a dog in whether or not the country survives in its current form, my question to you is, what is the plan to deal with the thing that we have known since election night 2020? What is the plan to deal with this white nationalist Joe Manchin? I mean, and how do we get our people to think beyond this showbiz soap opera, reality television,

month-by-month exercise in Panama theater theater as if this really isn't about increasing voting majorities, probably by getting people back to the polls who haven't been in years rather than continue to act like we don't see what's right in front of our face. I need to hear a plan, brother. Come on. Yeah, no, that's a great point, and there's two ways I would answer that, right? One is that, you know, we use the expression all the time, we got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Even as we've been fighting groups in West Virginia, including Black-led groups in West Virginia, even as we've been doing things like supporting the students in Arizona and their hunger strikes and targeting cinema and phone calls, focusing on the voting rights issue, be clear that we have still been

in these streets, organizing our communities, not just even just organizing electorally, right, and getting victories, electories, like we saw in Georgia, electorally, right, and getting victories, electories, like we saw in Georgia, you know, quite as it was kept, there were 41 seats flipped in the state of Georgia during this recent election. Now, I'm not just about, you know, just flipping seats for Democrats. I don't mention that because that's a sign of the progress of the Democratic Party. I mention that because that's a sign of our people's organizing and winning seats in their communities, right? And so we've been doing that organizing work electorally. We've still been dealing with issues of police violence. We've still been supporting issues like in Minneapolis, the referendum that they had trying to have a historic change in

their policing, right? And creating a department of public safety. We've still been dealing with issues of food insecurity and environmental justice. So all of that work has still been going on. I'm just speaking about us and our organization. I'm just giving, you know, from my perspective, an answer to your question. All of that work is still going on. And part of that work is also about being very clear about the nature of our relationship to this democracy. So even as we're pushing for voting rights, we always tell people our liberation is not rooted in electoral politics. That's not where our liberation is ultimately going to come from. It's important, and we do a lot of work on it, right? The organization is kind of named after that,

but we are very clear that we have got to deal with these deeper issues that you're pointing out, Dr. Carr, in regards to white supremacy and whether that's Joe Manchin's white supremacy. You know, Congressman Bowman caught some flack because he told some truth the other day in an interview talking about Joe Manchin doesn't care about black people, brown people, poor people, women. Right. And where's the lie? And so, you know, so we got to do that work of calling out white supremacy, Joe Manchin, as well as the wider white supremacy in this society. But we're trying to find a balance and we'll always open the suggestions. We're trying to find that balance between dealing with these legislative issues, even as that ongoing longer term work is taking

place in the streets. We stay in these streets, y'all. And again, Cliff, one of the things people have to understand is that a lot of the focus, obviously, has been on Manchin and Sinema, but there are other Democrats who have been hiding behind those two who have been protective of the filibuster. Yeah, I mean, definitely. That's been part of what we were trying to do a week or so, maybe two weeks ago, on the day when the White House was doing its Democracy Summit. We had actions going on in 10 different states targeting centers, including New York, where we targeted

Schumer, right, including West Virginia, including Maine, including Georgia right here, where one of our centers, Center Ossoff, has not been as vocal as I'd like to see, as many of us would like to see. So a lot of these senators, people like Warner and Kane and Virginia, right, and Angus King, we've been trying to call them out over the past couple of months because, again, you're absolutely right. There's other senators that have been hiding behind Manchin and Sinema. The good news is that over the past couple of weeks, some of them have even been coming out saying that they are now finally supporting filibuster reform and changing the rules. And so the tide has been turning for the past couple of weeks. Even, like I said, Senator Hassan from New Hampshire, who never does interviews, came out and did a floor speech and

then did an interview on another network. And so they've been coming out the woodwork, but we still got to finish the deal. We still got to get Manchin over the top. And I believe and a lot of other people believe that once we get Manchin, that Senua won't be far behind because she doesn't want to be the only one caught out there. So you're right. We still got to keep the pressure on even the ones that have been coming out the past couple of weeks. Now is not the time to ease up. Now is the time to lean in and put our foot put our foot on the pedal all right then cliff albright co-founder black voters matter we're so appreciative thanks a lot thank you all right folks gotta go to break we come back uh initially the texas pardon parole board said that george florida deserved a posthumous pardon. Now they're rescinding that citing procedural errors.

I'll explain next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Thank you. Hi, I'm Israel Houghton with Israel and New Breed. Hi, I'm Carl Painting. We'll be right back. when he gets into the wobble because he doesn't know how to do it. So he does it backwards. And it messes me up every single time. So I'm working on it. I got it. You got rolling, Mark. Well, I know how to do the wobble. Just you're not as creative as I am, Sherry. All right, folks. Let's talk about what's happening in Texas. The Texas Pardon Parole Board back in October voted to voted to extend a posthumous pardon to George Floyd.

Now they are rescinding that, citing, oh, some procedural errors. Hmm. Normally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces around this time his pardons and paroles. Well, this is what. So the Abbott office released a letter showing that the board had found, quote, unexplained departures from its process and needed to reconsider more than a third of its 67 clemency recommendations this year, including the one for Floyd. Now, they gave no details on what these errors were. People were very quite upset by this. Allison Mathis, who is a lawyer out of Houston, a public defender, she was the one who made the request. She called this a ridiculous farce. She said the governor is playing politics ahead of the March primary.

It really strains credibility for them to say now that it's not and it's out of compliance after the board has already voted on it. And remember, it was also a unanimous vote. This is what we can easily expect from folks like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is frankly one of the worst people I've ever seen in political office. Absolutely. I mean, he had no problems grandstanding and showing up at George Floyd's funeral memorial services, but he's gone back on his word. I mean, the charge that George Floyd was convicted of and actually spent 10 months in jail was over selling $10 worth of crack, which I'm not saying it's okay to be selling crack, but for fuck's sakes,

I mean, it was $10. It should be a no brainer to pardon him regardless of paperwork. I mean, I'm sure he's pardoned some lobbyists or some white collar criminals without without much of a thought. So this is where you have to always look at the actions beyond the gestures, beyond the showing up to shake hands and kiss babies and pay lip service to black people and issues that they care about. So he needs to be a man of his word. He's not much of a man, but you could at least do that much. Look, this is, I mean, these are the little games that we always see played for Raji, especially from folks like Greg Abbott. He is facing a March primary and look, he's playing to the cheap seats. Oh, no doubt. No doubt at all. And the sad part about it is, I bet you there are a bunch of folks in Texas that are still going to vote for this dude, even though they know that he plays these political games get into a space as we get into these 22 elections that we get into a space that we impose our hopes

and dreams on candidates when the reality shows that they are not even qualified to fulfill those hopes and dreams. My thinking is that, look, what does it hurt to give a man who has already died a pardon? How does that become a political maneuvering? Oh, I got to figure it all out to see how I get my votes, you know, my voters will feel it. The man is already dead. May God be pleased with him. But the man is gone. At this point, he can't even gain the benefit of a pardon at this point. So I'm just saying that we make in situations every human life when it comes into the space doesn't have to be political. And that is the sad part about this whole thing is that every time a discussion about a reality, which is a man died, now it becomes political

because we don't even want to honor him or kind of just let him rest in peace because what? Oh, I don't want to upset my voters. I mean, it's just absolute insanity to me. And this is part of the reason why as much as we talk about politics, this is part of the reason why I just have a disdain for politics, because politics takes the common sense out of people's heads. Right. Thank you, Roland. This is a white man's country. That was the words spoken by Andrew Johnson, president of the United States after Abraham Lincoln. I think that shovel mouth bastard, the governor of Texas is a man of his word. His word is this is a white man's country. George Floyd is a criminal. George Floyd is a drug addict. George Floyd is a hustler. George

Floyd tried to pass a bill and it's why he died in the street. And anybody else who tries to do that should die in the street. This is the mentality of many of the equally shovel mouth bastards, white nationalists who are in the state of Texas. And what we saw today, the parole board, he has appointed the vast majority. I think at this point he may have, he may have appointed or reappointed everybody on that six or seven member Texas board of parole. You would know the numbers, Ben. I would Ron, of course. And what you said, you said it not in

passing, but you just said it kind of, of course, you nailed it. Of course, the man is being primary. He's up for reelection. George Floyd is a criminal in the minds of his voters. So he is not, and whether it be, and let us not forget, as you said, Recy, you know, this isn't just about the George Floyd conviction. This is about Gerald Goins, the officer who arrested him, who is all kind of crazy, facing two murder charges, been accused of lying in all kind of cases to justify warrants in his drug raids. And so there are any number of convictions that would be overturned because of Gerald Goins, the guy who arrested him. And so this shovel mouth trying to run reelection, they have an agenda they have to complete. And whether it be Greg Abbott saying, I'm not going to pardon George Floyd.

Now, if he wins the primary and he, as you said, he's not being primary from the left. Imagine that this whole ass racist who this time last year was willing to let people freeze your family, my family in Texas. This man is being primaried from the right. There's nothing to the right of him. There are people even more racist than him in Texas who are like you show some. So if he gets past the primary, maybe he pardons George Floyd. But these people have shown us that they have no respect for anything that you can reduce to a three-letter word, L-A-W. Whether it be those members of Congress like, we ain't testifying, Benny Thompson, you go to hell. Or Greg Abbott saying, I see y'all, George Floyd

really is a criminal, so I ain't going to say nothing. So we got to make them pay. We got to quit acting like these are our friends or fellow citizens or members of the same country. This is a whore. And until we start acting like that, we're just going to keep taking these ass whippings. You know, speaking of ass whippings, I always enjoy watching the sheer stupidity of two people, Donald Trump and Candace Owens, together. But it was quite hilarious to watch this idiot Candace Owens interview Donald Trump, and even he have to smack down her stupidity when it comes to the vaccine. Y'all know I never, I don't give a damn about Candace Owens.

I think she's one of the dumbest people you've ever seen in the world. She's a grifter. And matter of fact, her stupidity is only matched by the stupidity of Donald Trump. And so let's just call this segment the stuck on stupid segment. And so we got to get a kick out of watching these two idiots talk to each other. Y'all listen to this exchange in terms of big pharma which is a huge topic on the minds of mothers especially you're seeing what's happening at these school board meetings where do you stand on these vaccine mandates and obviously i know that you are you are pro vaccine obviously we did everything we could to get this vaccine now i know it was

one of the worst achievements we did in less than nine months to be able to do that but now it's taking a twist right it's gotten now we went from this is a good thing and people should have this option to military men you're going to have to resign because you're not getting this vaccine where do you stand on that where i stand and forget about the mandates that people have to have their freedom but at the same time the vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind we would have had a 1917 remember the Spanish flu, killed perhaps 100 million people. Actually, it ended the First World War because the soldiers, a lot of people don't know that the soldiers got so sick. It was a terrible thing. There were no vaccines, they would know

anything. I came up with a vaccine, with three vaccines. All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years. And yet more people have died under COVID this year, by the way, under Joe Biden than under you. And more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how. Oh, no, the vaccine worked, but some people aren't taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take the vaccine. But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you're protected. But the results of the vaccine are

very good. And if you do get it, it's a very minor form. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine. What about the masking of children? That's a big one for moms right now. I think it's a terrible thing. I think it's a terrible thing. That flies in the face of science. The kids have a virtual 0% chance of dying of COVID. And yet they're insisting on these vaccine mandates. I mean, I'm sorry, on these masking mandates. And now even the vaccine mandates for small children. And what's going on there? I think what's happening is you look at the masks where Fauci and a lot of other people said masks don't mean anything. All of a sudden it becomes a radical masker. I don't like to see the kids with the masks on. They're sitting in school. They have a hard enough time

sitting in school. It's like China. I've been to China. Well, and yet China's education system is a hell of a lot better than ours. You know what? They're rated number two or three and we're rated number 44. But masking children, I mean, the way it looks, right? It doesn't look like a free country.

I'm against it. Reese, you got to draw that done, that idiot. Well, let me say, because, you know, she gets dragged for her, you know, non-trimmed burnt edges all the time. Her hair is looking better. Her makeup is looking better. She's not sounding any more intelligent. You know it's bad when Trump is the one who make a little bit more

damn sense. He was talking about how China has a better education system. How the vaccine is the greatest thing. It's like glitching the matrix. What is happening? And so it wasn't going according to plan. I don't know who initiated this, but the interview

definitely did not go according to plan. And I loathe to give Donald Trump credit for anything because he is, people forget so quickly, he is the most destructive politician who has, who has led to the degradation that we see today in terms of having a fact-based, science-based discourse in our society. But in this case, it just so happened to keep it somewhat real. So yeah, it's actually really laughable that somebody of her low stature and caliber and intelligence level was given the platform, even though I don't hold Trump in high regard, he is still a former president, as opposed to journalists, particularly Black journalists,

who are much more informed. And maybe some of them wouldn't want to sit down with Trump, but it just goes to show when you buck dance and you grift for, you know, white supremacists, then you get doors open that really shouldn't be open because you're not equipped and she's not equipped. And at least, at least Trump somewhat had his wits about him in that interview for a change. This fool Greg trying to say, oh, the vaccine is killing people and more of them are dying under Biden. And he's like, Max is the unvaccinated. Well, that was quite a clip. I mean, I guess, first of all, in terms of Donald John Trump, he's looking at her and we all know what he's saying.

Kandarosa, I mean, I'm a what? In other words, all black women the same Donald Trump. And, you know, and so I can't even imagine what was going through his head as he's trying to check her. But I don't know where her web based talk show is. But the theme music should be, although he'd probably charge him out the nose for the license and fee to use it, it should be from Sean Carter and his sample, I'm a hustler, baby, and I want you to know. This is two hustlers trying to figure out a way to game each other. It's almost like when you were watching, you know, you watch babies talk to one another and can't nobody else understand what they're saying.

But the two babies seem to be understanding what each other is saying perfectly well. That was an exercise in I am the one. No, I am the one. This fool talking about he created the vaccine. A hundred million people that Donald Trump can't let anybody displace his sense that he is at the center of his universe. Candace Owens is looking for the same thing and a point of entry. So basically what you end up with is a couple of babble. And when you, as you say, you put race and sex over it, Donald Trump ain't never met a black woman he didn't hate.

And then probably deep, deep, deep in his little tiny essence desire. So, I mean, that was an exercise in all the pathologies in the United States of America. And it was quite entertaining. Faraji? I would only laugh if people didn't follow both of them. The fact that people follow the President Trump, the fact that people follow Candace Owens, the fact that we are legitimately talking about this man being running for president in 2024 in spite of all of the cluster Fs of his presidency and his life up to this point. If people didn't follow him, this would be funny.

This would be like, oh, OK, this is just something to laugh about. But the fact that people follow him, the fact that January 6th happened, the fact that we are, he's starting his own cable network show, his neighbor network. The fact that Candace Owens has some influence and power, all of these things is, it shows us that we are in a different America. And this is what we're talking about when we say the breakdown of democracy. This is what we're talking about when we're saying how serious the time is. We can't let our foot up off the gas when it comes to figuring out how we're going to carve out for ourselves as a people something for ourselves from this American apple pie. Because we can't put our faith in this situation. We can't even put the faith fully in the system because the system is not even taking a man like Donald Trump and penalizing him and punishing him for all that he has done.

We're all waiting for the shoe to drop on Donald Trump. And guess what? Every time news about his associates come out and people getting arrested, people getting charged, and all of these things, we're on like bated breath, like, oh, it's Donald Trump next. And guess what? It never gets back to him. And this is the same system that we're supposed to believe has our best interest. This is the same system that that we want to put our faith in.

And then, you know, when we're talking about the vaccines, we're talking about all of this. Now we're seeing the CDC came out and said that 79 percent of the Omicron that the Omicron cases are with vaccinated people. So now the narrative change again. Oh, it's now it's not the pandemic of the unvaccinated. It's a pandemic that we all think, come on, this is a bunch of bullshit. And it's sad because why the human lives are being politicized. We are like, you said the matrix, and I saw the matrix yesterday. We are in that matrix. We are being used. We are being bamboozled, as Michael next said. around and we got to wake up to the fact that this is the modern day America that we're currently living in. This is a very, very serious and dangerous time that we're living in. And as much as we want to laugh and much, I want to say this man is an idiot. And much of us don't have a love or really, you know, anything for Candace Owens. The fact is people are following and listening to them and more importantly, believe in their vision of America.

Well, the issue that we're facing right now is is, I mean, one, we talk about the issue of vaccinated versus unvaccinated. It's really right now what's happened to our hospital system. We're going to be having Dr. Peltz joining us shortly. And that is the people who currently are in ICUs and the people who currently are passing away. Four out of the five people who are dying of COVID are those who are unvaccinated. So the problem that we're facing right now is,

again, as somebody who's sitting here uh who got diagnosed with covid uh positive tests on saturday not having to go to the hospital uh having uh having the mild symptoms that's now that's also now where we are the stresses that are still being put on our health system the concern and once dr Jones, the concern that we have now over this Christmas season coming up, the people traveling, folks going home, is who are the people who are going to be rushing into the hospitals? That's really where we are right now. And that's a great concern. That's true, Roland. I mean, first of all, brother, when you let us all know that, you know, you had taken and contracted the virus, I think it's in a shockwave. But I'm going to tell you, man, as you say, you're not in the hospital,

thank God. And that's because you've been vaccinated and had scheduled your booster. I've been vaccinated. I got the booster a couple of weeks ago, several weeks ago now. And I went and got tested around the corner, which is as a matter of course. And I'm going to tell you, and I know we've all seen the same things. The lines outside the testing places are stretching everywhere. People are terrified. And I'm sure we're all getting, you know, Recy, Faraji, Roland, I'm sure we're all getting message after message every day from friends and families and acquaintances who are finding that they've contracted the coronavirus or they know people who have. wildfire. Harvard has said they're going to go online for the first part of 2022. I expect Howard and everybody else is going to do the same thing. And finally, we're faced with, it's not, as you say, Faraji, it's not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated. However, for every person who is

out there unvaccinated, and I'm sure we've all heard these stories. I've heard a lot from my doctor friends of people who are desperate, desperate because they have contracted the coronavirus. They were unvaccinated. Some of them have passed away. But for every person who walks into an ER in a hospital in that situation, there's somebody else with all of the other procedures, all the other emergencies that we have who can't get in the hospital. And this healthcare system has never been robust. It is going to be overwhelmed. And I don't know about y'all, but I'm sensing there's a real panic

that's spreading in this country just over the last couple of weeks. And you know what, let me just say- Can I say something though too? Yeah, Rishi, then Faraji, go. Yeah, and Faraji, I take issue with, with, with the, the, the narrative, the pandemic of the unvaccinated, because I have an unvaccinated eight month old. And the fact that you have children under five, eight, five years of age who don't have the ability to get vaccinated

is very distressing. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of movement there. I don't think that it's okay. The way that the testing has not been scaled up. I mean, the CVSs around my house have stopped doing COVID testing. I went to get a rapid test on Friday from the CVS. There were plenty of kits by Monday. There were no kits available to take from home. So there are so many things that we need to be doing. It can't all fall under the federal government. There are Republican governors, for instance, that are obstructing the COVID pandemic response. But the bottom line is that we all have a shared vested interest. And that's why it's called public health and seeing to the end of this pandemic.

But the reason why so many people are getting that getting COVID despite being vaccinated is because so much most of the country is fully vaccinated. And the efficacy wanes after about six months, which is why we need boosters. And the messaging behind that has been disastrous. So I agree with you, Faraji, about this whole pandemic of the unvaccinated. I don't think it's constructive or helpful. But I think that it's one of the vaccine is a very major tool in our toolkit. And boosters is a very major tool. And people who are willing to get it, I'm not going to get into all this stuff about people that don't want to get it. But people who are willing to get it, get your booster shot and, you know, make sure you're doing more testing to protect you and your family.

I mean, I have I had covid. I had covid. My family and I had covid back in August of this year and we're unvaccinated. I'm just saying we're unvaccinated. And, you know, I thank God that we were blessed to get through it and that we weren't hospitalized or anything like that. And so, you know, I think that that we have to look at what what alternative means, what other things are going to be done. I don't like the fact that, you know, we can go back and forth and say vaccinated versus unvaccinated. But what I'm seeing out of this family is that, you know, you got a country that is going at odds and at war with one another over drugs, over drugs. Now they have just approved the FDA, just approved the pills from Pfizer.

The Pavlov, I think it's Paxlovid, the new pill that's going to be out, the FDA just approved Merck's pill. Now we have from vaccines and booster shots, now we're getting pills now. And I mean, it's just a very, very, the conversation around medication and the efficacy of this whole process is still very shoddy you know we're hearing some stories about people are still you know are starting to experience some some side effects and some some very severe consequences but my point is is that we're all you said we're here we're hearing that people are experiencing some serious side effects what that's

that's a general statement so from side side effects from boosters, you know, like people are, you know, my wife's friend mother had just gotten her booster shot and she had a like a breathing problem. You know, she was saying like, I got vaccinated, I got my booster shot and I had a breathing problem. And look, I'm not going to go back and forth about vaccine and unvaccinated. I think that's all comes down to your personal choice. But I do want to say that if we're looking at where this country is going and how this thing is moving, it's like we we are all being just like they said, a major sheeple. You know what I mean? We're just being shuffled along, shuffled along, and being told, hey, we need to do it this way,

we need to do it that way. And then what? Then you have a variant like Omicron that they're saying, hey, the vaccine may not be quite as effective dealing with this new variant. But the issue, when you talk about being shuffled, the issue, the greatest

issue that people are concerned about is being shuffled to graveyards. When you have 827,000 you have right now, the number of people who are in hospitals, who are in ICUs, who are requiring hospitalization. And then when you look at who are the individuals that are there, first of all, out of the five, one out of five people who has passed away, they've actually been vaccinated. That means four out of five. In 2021, four out of the five people out of five who have passed away as a result of COVID have not been vaccinated. Then you also put on top of that, persistent conditions, things along those lines. There's some people who have autoimmune deficiencies. They might have kidney issues and other things as well. And so you're dealing with that. But what we are dealing with though, it is reality. And the reality that I keep saying is ain't no flip side to death. And so where people are right now, and so here are

some basic questions that people got to be asking themselves. If a person chooses not to get vaccinated, should they be should they be first in line at a hospital? That's if they go have to go. No, no, no, no, no. But but but but if they do, if they chose not to get vaccinated, then to Greg's point when they're no one once one second one second to Greg's point because of where we are with ICUs there are people who need other who need those beds that's right people who need surgeries who are unable to do so as a result of individuals with COVID taking up ICU beds. That's a real issue. We've had doctors on our show talk about they are facing that. How do we deal with that?

You know, when you're talking about who has access, I mean, are we living in a country now that we determine, OK, you come into the hospital, what's your status? No, no, no, no, no, no. I asked a very specific question. For instance, for instance, that was a, that was a, that was a man who had pancreatitis in Texas. Okay. He had pancreatitis in Texas, easily should have survived because of the step, because of the lack of ICU beds, there was not an ICU bed in a 100 mile radius of where he lived. He eventually passed away. Many of those people who were in ICUs were people who were unvaccinated who had COVID. And so I'm asking a question, and that is, how do we deal with that if individuals

have chosen not to get vaccinated, but are so sick, they're taking up ICU beds, what decisions should we make? I mean, I think it comes down to what you're saying, Brother Roland. That man had pancreatic cancer. I don't know the condition. No, no, no, no. He did not have. No, no. He did not have pancreatic cancer. He had pancreatitis.

That's different. OK. Yes, sir. My point is, if his condition is is as severe that he needed to be hospitalized. We don't know. And I don't know the condition of the unvaccinated who had used up those beds in that case. I don't know. Maybe their condition was more severe. I can't and I'm not saying that he deserved to die because I don't think anybody deserves to die.

If you have access to if you can get the care that you need. But I do know that we have to just take it. I think, by a case-by-case basis. We can't just paint a broad stroke and make a general assessment about the situation like this as if people want to put other people's lives at risk. It's not that. And I mean, I know we say public health, but people do have the choice to make the decisions that they need to make. If we're saying public health, isn't that a personal choice? But a person's choice, but a individual's choice is having an impact on other individuals.

Greg, you were trying to get in. Absolutely, same thing. We can say the same thing about smoking. We can say the same thing about smoking. We can say the same thing about other... Yeah, but people still smoke. You know, Recy, you know, people smoke wherever they want to go. Yeah, but people still smoke, you know, Recy. You know, people smoke wherever they want to go.

Well, yeah, but there's been a massive, there's been a massive shift in public policy, public health policy over the issue of smoking. Greg, go ahead. Yeah, I'll just keep this very quick, Roland. And again, and this is again, and we say this every, every night in this space. This is why the Black Star Network is so important.

I'm not a medical doctor. I don't even pretend to be one. I have had over the last almost 30 years now of teaching a number of students who've gone out to medical school who practice. I have a number of friends like we all do who are medical doctors, who are researchers. But when I watch night after night on this show, you bring in black doctors, researchers. But when I watch night after night on this show, you bring in black doctors, researchers, our man at North Carolina A&T, the brother out of Mississippi, Ebony J, over and over and over again. It confirms what I think probably all of us are hearing from our friends and comrades who are medical doctors. I'm all the time from Atlanta, from Baltimore, from Dallas, from New York City, story after story after story that the ERs are

being overwhelmed. I'm talking about doctors. See, I'm not a doctor. So the best I can do, I'm not about to try to go replicate the research of doctors. There's a story out now, of course, about the scientists at Walter Reed, who apparently are saying they've invented a super vaccine that's going to protect against that. But I'm not, to the point you always make, Recy, I'm not going to accept that. I don't know if I can vet that. I'm looking at the news outlets it's coming from, but I know one thing for sure. I can tune into this channel and look and listen to doctors who look like me, who sound like me, who have been through the same experiences I have been. And I can weigh what they say against what I'm hearing from all kind of people who are medical professionals. And I would rather base

my informed opinion on what they are saying than attempt to wade into a field that it takes people literally decades of study just to be able to walk in the door to have an opinion. It just doesn't make sense to me. Can I say something? Now we do have folks who don't look like us who I appreciate coming on the show. Dr. Peter Hotez is co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, my hometown. Always glad to have him here. And, Doc, give us a sense of where we are. Look, we keep hearing Omicron versus Delta.

We've seen cases explode. As I said, I'm sitting here in quarantine right now, testing positive for COVID on Saturday. But pretty much, you know, a little stuffy nose, still occasional cough, but that's it. No fever, nothing else, no shortness of breath, none of that. And just getting better by the day feels like I, you know, I feel like I, when I had allergies. But we are still in an international pandemic, pandemic facing a crisis because hospitals are being overwhelmed and many of those people are unvaccinated. Yeah. Let me give you a points and let's take it from there. First of all, this Omicron wave is like nothing we've seen before in the sense that it is accelerating at a rate we've never seen before.

It is the most transmissible of all of the COVID variants by quite a lot, almost as transmissible as measles, maybe as transmissibles, which is the most transmissible virus agent we know. And so that's why you're seeing the steep rise, especially in New York and Washington. And now the hospitalizations are picking up in New York and Washington. And now the hospitalizations are picking up in New York and Washington. There's a buzz out there that's saying Omicron may not be as serious as the previous lineages like Delta, et cetera. I don't think that's the case. I think it's probably going to be as serious among the unvaccinated for reasons that we can go into, but we are starting to see hospitalizations in New York and Washington, and it's going to be across the country. That's point one. Almost all of those hospitalizations are going to be among people who've not been vaccinated. The number

that's about out there is about 85, 87 percent of the severe illness and deaths are among the unvaccinated. the others mostly among the partially vaccinated. So we'll see that same pattern again. But here's the second hit we're going to face right now, because this is so transmissible, and we are seeing that the booster shot is not quite as effective as the other boosters, as was pointed out. It's as effective at preventing death or serious illness, but it's not as effective at preventing symptomatic infection. So the problem that we face, this very unique wave, is that in addition to unvaccinated piling into the hospitals and ICUs, the healthcare workers, a lot of them are going to get breakthrough symptomatic infection,

even after their booster, which is not going to land them in the hospital, but it's going to keep them at home and out of the workforce. So you're going to see, we've already had a depletion of our healthcare workforce over the last two years for a lot of reasons for attrition and burnout and all the other factors that we've been hearing about. But on top of that, we're going to knock out an additional big segment of the workforce. And we know that mortality, death rates really climb when hospitals are going to get overwhelmed. And so that's what I'm worried about. It's going to be the unvaccinated piling into hospitals, and there's not going to be enough doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists

to take care of them. And you're going to see mortality really start to climb. And two other things, and then I'll stop, which is the other thing we're finding is with this highly mutated virus, two of the three monoclonal antibodies that we have are not working. So we're not going to have as many treatment options. That Paxlovid medicine from Pfizer, forget it. It's not going to be ready in time for this wave. It's going to take months before we have enough of it. So we've got a lot of vulnerabilities. And our only real hope is that we persuade the unvaccinated to start getting vaccinated now, get that vaccination series. Otherwise, we're going to repeat what

we've already just experienced. And what we've just experienced, Roland, and you alluded to it, is that since June 1 of this year, over the last six months, 200,000 unvaccinated Americans have needlessly lost their lives because they refused COVID vaccines, including the first death that we've had from Omicron last night in Houston, an individual who was infected and recovered, but decided not to get vaccinated on top of it because Omicron can cause reinfections very easily. So that 200,000 number of people who threw their lives away because they refused to get vaccinated over the last six months. That number is scheduled to double now between now and the first quarter of of 2022 to 400,000 Americans whose lives could have been saved, but they chose not to get vaccinated. And so that's why I'm here late on a on a Thursday evening before Christmas

to work with you, Roland, to do whatever we can to get people to get vaccinated. So, Doc, explain this. Explain this. Why? Again, you know, Faraji brought up an example of someone who he knows or he heard example of someone who had a side effect as a result of getting the booster. There are people who are afraid to take the vaccines. There are others that people who have been mocking me doing videos saying, oh, look, here he is out here touting the vaccine and he got COVID himself. And I keep explaining to people, the vaccine was never designed to prevent someone

from actually getting COVID. And so if there's somebody who's sitting here who's saying I'm unvaccinated, I'm not doing it, my family's not doing it, just lay out the risk that are involved. Well, the risk is, as I say, overwhelmingly, the people who are dying in this pandemic right now are those who are unvaccinated. So you would take a huge chance to joining your 200,000 fellow Americans who also refused to get vaccinated and lost their lives since June 1. Because I say that number is now projected to double. Here's what happens if you get vaccinated. If you get vaccinated, this Omicron variant has got a lot of escape mutations, which means that the vaccines, it's true, are not as effective against Omicron as they were against Delta and Alpha and other previous variants. So what that means

is the vaccines now are still saving your life and still keeping you out of the hospital, but they are not always preventing symptomatic infection. It's about 75% protection against symptomatic infection versus Omicron versus 95% versus the previous lineages. So it's still pretty good, not as good. And that's why, Roland, you had a breakthrough symptomatic infection, but you're talking on a radio, a national radio broadcast with a cold rather than intubated in an intensive care unit. That's the effect of the vaccine. And so that's the message. You've got to get vaccinated. And we have to stop this business of saying you've been infected and recovered. You don't need to get vaccinated. That's just one of the phony anti-vaccine talking points.

As I said, we just had our first Omicron death from a person who got infected and recovered and chose not to get vaccinated. So that is the reality. Recy, go right ahead. I have a comment for Faraji, but I'll save that for another time. For now, I want to ask Dr. Hotez. So I have an eight-month-old and I am scheduled for travel. And I feel like the messaging is all over the place. I feel like there's more political messaging about, well, if you're vaccinated, you can go on ahead and enjoy your time with your family. But then I have the, I see all of the doctors and epidemiologists and virologists are like, hair on fire, this is a

red alarm, you know, crisis. I'm not asking you to give me specific medical advice, but I guess for those that are potentially traveling with unvaccinated children, based on the modeling that you're seeing, what comfort level would you express with traveling with unvaccinated children over the next two weeks? Yeah, we have seen a lot of happy talk come out of Washington, D.C. this week. I was a little surprised by it. You know, when something that is this transmissible, I think there is a pretty good risk. If you're going through airports and bus terminals and Uber rides, you're going to be exposed to Omicron. And if I were traveling, you know, and with your baby, who's you said eight months old, you know, masking is not really an option.

There is risk. And we are seeing pediatric hospitalizations now with the Zomercron variant. It was a big problem in South Africa. It was true of the Delta variant here in the South and here in Houston and Texas. Texas Children's Hospitals, which I know Roland knows well, had a lot of pediatric hospital admissions. So I'm not a big fan of traveling with an unvaccinated individual, whether it's because someone's refusing to get vaccinated or because someone's too young to get vaccinated. Let me tell you my own situation at home. So I live in Houston.

My oldest daughter lives in L.A. She came to see us. And we were going to have my mother-in-law come down. We were going to fly her down from New Jersey and, you know, spend a week with us, go to the restaurants, maybe a museum. I disinvited her. And the reason I disinvited her is in her case, she is fully vaccinated and boosted. But because it's been a while since she got that boost, we know that breakthrough symptomatic illness does go up the further you're out from the boost and i didn't want to chance it with someone in their in their 80s because they won't do as well as as roland did

with his breakthrough symptomatic illness so i said let's not chance it right now let's hold off on this for a while the hope is that this big wave will go down as fast as it's going up we don't have strong evidence for it, but there is a possibility. And that would be the best possible outcome because now that the kids are out of school, they'll be out of school for a few weeks. By the time they're ready to go back through K through 12 or go back to university or college, hopefully we'll be on the downside of downslope of this big wave. No guarantees, but I think that's one possible scenario. Thank you. Faraji? Thank you so much for joining us. So, Doc, talk to us a little bit

about, you know, we're hearing all of these different, you know, I mean, you're bringing up information about the effectiveness, the efficacy of certain of this vaccine and booster compared, you know, when it comes to Omicron, but how should people look at all of this stuff? Because again, you know, I'm not into going to back and forth about vaccinated, unvaccinated. I stay masked up and I know people that have stayed masked up and, you know, we, you can still get it. So, so I'm talking about assuring people that this situation that we're dealing with can be handled. Because what I'm seeing right now, doctor, is that they're saying that the more that vaccines are being developed, that more variants, more mutations may occur. So can you give us some insight about that, sir?

Yeah. And doc, just as you, cause you may not have been on earlier where Farage said that he previously got COVID, but he and his family are not vaccinated. So go ahead. Yeah, no. So, so this is one of the kind of the fake talking points that's out there that they make the claim that vaccines are actually inducing the mutations to cause the variants. Here's the reality. The reality was that our worst pandemic threats arose out of unvaccinated populations. So the alpha variant arose out of an unvaccinated population in southern England in 2020. Delta arose out of an unvaccinated population in India at the beginning of 2021. And Omicron arose out of a mostly unvaccinated population in southern Africa, either South

Africa or Botswana, towards the end of this year. And that's why we keep getting these variants, because nobody has come up with a plan to vaccinate the southern hemisphere. The African continent has been left almost totally unvaccinated, about 6%. So that's what we do at our labs. We're making low-cost vaccines for parasitic infections and for COVID. We have a low-cost recombinant protein vaccine that we've made with no patents. We transfer the technology now to India, Botswana, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. And the one that's furthest along is the one in India with our partners there known as Biological

E. And now it'll be released for emergency use authorization. It's the least expensive of the vaccines out there. And it's the same technology as the hepatitis B vaccine. Very few side effects. Looks like the best safety profile. And the Indian government is now has ordered 300 million doses. So we're hoping now that this can come in to prevent all of these new variants from emerging. So that's the problem. The more we allow large populations to go unvaccinated, we'll continue to chase our tail with these variants. Thank you, sir. And we actually in last year, the doctor assigned us from North Carolina A&T we had on. That was one of the things that he said. He said, we've got to get as many people tested and vaccinated in order to stem these various mutations.

He said, because when it jumps from one bite to the next, it's going to start mutating left and right. Greg Carr, any question for Doc? Thank you, Roland. And thank you, Dean Otez. You've kind of given part of the answer in responding to Faraji's question about this question of a global pandemic

and where nobody is safe. And I read your comments on being against travel bans, and it makes perfect sense. Although I can't imagine that the pharmaceutical companies are very happy with you and your team as you're starting to give away proprietary patents to vaccines, but we must get everybody in the world. You know, I appreciate that point. As I say, if we had gotten even 10% of the amount of money Moderna had gotten and some of these others, we could have had the world vaccinated by now, in my opinion. Absolutely. Absolutely. But that's a different discussion, I guess, for a different day. No, no, actually. Well, it is actually leads to my question. And I'm glad that you began the

answer with answering for Raji. And my question is this, as an educator and one who, one of my best students, former students is a doctor, pediatrician in Atlanta. And it's very much what you've said there is she's confirming that what she's seeing in Atlanta. My question is, what do you see happening in the first quarter of 2022 as it relates to schools, K-12, higher ed? Are we looking at another shutdown in this country? Boy, I sure hope not, because I don't think our kids could handle it. You know, and as a parent of formerly young kids, now they're adults, I know I couldn't have handled it. You know, we've got to get our kids back in school. So I'm really, really hoping that we get this big wave way down, because I don't know that as a, as a nation, you know, we need our kids in schools.

If you remember a couple of days ago, the U S surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, I think was an excellent surgeon general came out with a report on the mental health impact of this COVID-19 pandemic on our kids. And it's just devastating. And, and it's not only because of the classroom education but remember you know you all know better this than anyone that in many of our inner city schools that school is the place where you go get breakfast or you go get lunch or or

or you get your mental health counseling and so the impact of not having kids in school is just multiplied times four or five. So we've got to we've got to make that a priority. All right. So, Doc, so here's a question that I have. And again, just trying to I'm trying to understand this. OK, so my first symptoms showed up last Wednesday. I was a scratchy throat. And then the next day I had chills, had a fever. Tested negative on Thursday, did one of the rapid tests. And then they said the next one take 36 hours after that. On Saturday, I tested positive. And so I came back. I was in Atlanta. I came back. By the way, that's a pretty common story. So this is one of the interesting things about Omicron.

There seems to be a lag between. So when you're first infected, the PCR is positive, but your antigen test is negative because there's still not enough virus there. And then it comes up after that. So that's actually not surprising. So the rapid home test was probably the antigen test. That was a false negative because you had the virus. That's not surprising, but the PCR came back positive. Right. And so I, so then I went into, I got homes to Virginia on a Sunday and went into quarantine. So the 10-day period is that at the beginning of symptoms or when you test positive and so and then um how do you know like like what what needs to happen for you to come out

so is it uh complete stuffing is gone is it no cough or so how do you i believe the recommendations are 10 days from the first onset of symptoms. Plus, you have to be at least 24 hours with no symptoms at all. Got it. Those two criteria. No cough, no, no stuff in is nothing like that. Right, right, right. Now, I mean, I can check it as well. But I mean, it's also a moving goalpost because the CDC just made a change tonight for the health care providers.

And I have to make certain it doesn't extend to other groups, which is that now they're saying because we can't afford to have their health care workers out of the workforce for 10 days. So now, so in the UK, what they did is now after seven days, if you test negative, you can go back to work. And I think they require two tests. But in the US, they're going to require a single test so you can go back to work after seven days. And that just came out literally within the last hour, I think. Now, what I was told is that even when I come out, I still might test positive for two or three weeks, but I'm no longer contagious. Yeah, that's right, because that PCR test is so sensitive, it's picking up remnants of the virus genome.

So even though you're not shedding enough virus to infect people you might still be positive and that's the recommend that's the reason why we often recommend not testing again because you could be testing positive literally for weeks so when so so when should i take a test you don't don't that's and unless you start feeling sick again and then so so the most important thing is is that all symptoms are gone meaning no there there's meaning there's no longer a cough. There's no longer slight stuffiness. All that's gone. Pretty much, yeah.

And then you should be good. You don't need to get tested again. Because if you get tested again, it creates a lot of confusion. Then you could be positive, but you're still not shedding virus. And then, yeah, I would just hold off and not test again if you're positive, you're still not shedding virus. And then, then, then, yeah, I would, I would just hold off and not test again if you're not having symptoms ever again. So, so the last point here for you is that for everybody who's watching, who's listening, the advice is that if you are unvaccinated, you're putting yourself and others at serious risk of hospitalization and death.

But, you know, Roland, there's one other thing that nobody talks about, which I want to bring up, and that is we don't talk enough about long COVID, where your symptoms linger for sometimes a year in terms of not fever and acute symptoms like a runny nose, but you feel fatigue, you have heart palpitations, you feel tightness in your chest. We're learning a lot about that. And there's a very important study that was published this year out of the United Kingdom. You know, the United Kingdom has a real health system, unlike the U.S., where we have Amazon Pharmacy. And that study, they have 40,000 MRIs on file.

Everybody who had an MRI that's registered in the U.K. system, this is pre-pandemic. And then they can bring them back now that they've had COVID to compare before and afterwards. And it's showing some pretty frightening stuff like gray matter brain degeneration. And the MRI looks, your brain scan looks like somebody who's 20 years older associated with cognitive decline. And that's the other piece we don't talk about. It's not only going into, piling into hospitals, into ICUs. This could be with you for years. And especially if you're a young person, you don't want this happening where you've got gray matter brain degeneration and cognitive decline when you're trying to

start a family or a new job or taking your SATs or trying to get a mortgage on your house. And so that's going to haunt us for a long time as well. Yet another reason to get vaccinated. Last question, Doc, the infusion. I did get that. It was the Regeneron when I was in Atlanta. Do you also recommend that if people get a positive COVID test and they're able to find a place that does it, that they get that infusion? Up until two weeks ago, I would have said yes, but now the problem is this. With this Omicron variant, that's going to be the overwhelming one. That Regeneron monoclonal antibody probably is not going to do much for you, and neither is the one from Lilly. So that's what I mean. Two of our monoclonal antibodies have been knocked out in

terms of being useful for the Somacron variant, and that only leaves the one from what's known as Veer and GlaxoSmithKline, and there's not a lot of it around so this is again why we need to get vaccinated we we kind of lost one of our major weapons monoclonal antibodies we won't have that paxlovid medicine from Pfizer um so we don't have a lot of we don't we've lost some really we've either don't have or have lost some really important tools it's just a reminder why you need to get vaccinated and even if you've been infected and recovered, like our friend that I was speaking to, we need to get that person vaccinated because that's the only way to really prevent Omicron reinfection and prevent all of the things that we're talking about. Gotcha. So this is the last question.

So you just said that so first of all i i i haven't i'm taking the pcr so i don't know if i got omicron or what is it it's just simply a something yeah the pcr won't tell you it's a specialty kind of genomic testing that they're not doing it on everybody so so now that i've had this or can you get omicron again probably won't get omicron again but um but you may want to get another booster down the line depending on how things go they haven't come out with that recommendation yet well i can't well because i got the infusion i can't do a booster for 90 days for 90 days so i have to wait until march right but trust but trust me when mark hits i will be getting a booster so so let's just go through a couple of a few brief scenarios if

you're unvaccinated at all you're asking for trouble get your vaccine series if you've gotten two doses of either the pfizer or moderna vaccine get that booster because that booster can make the difference between going to the hospital or not. If you are infected and recovered and you've not gotten vaccinated, get vaccinated. If I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, it's deliberate. It's get vaccinated, get vaccinated, get vaccinated. And by the way, if your kids are five and up, get them vaccinated, too. So we're doing a terrible job vaccinating our kids. All right.

Well, Doc, we certainly appreciate you coming on again. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the Great Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Roland. You know, I know you come to Houston a lot and you're not visiting me so once this apocalypse is over i want to show you around our labs how we're making vaccines for covet and show you all the changes that have happened over our great time that'll absolutely happen i was home for uh i was in houston for thanksgiving uh and i was planning to go home to Houston, Dallas.

My parents live in my home there for Christmas, but I got diagnosed and then my sister did who lives there. So I said, well, heck, if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to go back home. We'll go home anyway. So. Right. Well, the other the other reason is I want to give you a big hug, because, you know, you've been one of the really strong voices in the african-american community that has really you know pushed for science-driven evidence-based covet prevention measures and you're worth your weight in gold you're just a great man i appreciate it and trust me i will be coming back home to h-town uh uh real soon doc i appreciate it thanks a lot thank you bye-bye all right thanks a bunch uh that is it for us uh any final comment Faraji Reesey Greg I do I have a final comment go right ahead I just wanted to respond Faraji I know we always on your case but you made a comment about sheeple and

shuffling and let me tell you Faraji I will cupid shuffle I will cha-cha slide I will electric slide for my booster every six months. And if they say three months, whatever it is, because I am able to protect my baby or partially protect her through breastfeeding. And it's important to me to keep her as safe as possible because she ain't nowhere near unfortunately getting the vaccine. But I also want to comment on the sheeple part too, because 65% of the disinformation and misinformation out there about the vaccines is from what they call the disinformation dozens. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with his so-called Children's Health Defense, is the main purveyor of disinformation. And it targets the Black

community. I did an article about this and wrote about it in The Griot. And his own wife, now this is a staunch anti-vaxxer. His wife is Cheryl Hines, who's on Curb Your Enthusiasm. When they had a party at their home, she requested that people be vaccinated or testing. So I think it's really strange that the biggest anti-vaxxer purveyor in the Black community or towards the Black community is married to a person who wants people to be vaccinated that come through their home. So I will throw my lot in with world-renowned scientists and virologists and epidemiologists and experts throughout the entire world, the global medical community, before I throw my lot in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his BS. So I'm not, you know, everybody do what they're going to do. But when you talk about shuffle, shuffling, Cupid shuffle, I will do all of that when it comes to doing my part and staying the hell out the hospital and staying the hell out the grave. Respectfully. I still love you, Faraji, but I just thought, because you said sheeple, I was like, okay, where's the sheeple part coming in?

I had to say that respectfully. Hey, I hate you, and that's certainly your choice, and I'm going to respect your choice just as much as you respect my choice. I hate you. Hey, I hate you. And that's certainly your choice. And I'm going to respect your choice just as much as you respect my choice. So, you know, I really, for me, you know, God willing, we'll be able to get through this and then, you know, learn, learn the lessons from it. You know, I don't want to see anybody die. I certainly don't want to die. But I don't want to put anybody's lives at risk. That's why my children, I mask up and my family, we mask up everywhere we go. We keep our distance. We don't go to put anybody's lives at risk. That's why my children, I mask up and my family, we mask up everywhere we go. We keep our distance. We don't go out to a lot of places.

So, you know, we're still doing our part to make sure that we're being responsible about taking care of other people's lives. But, you know, in this whole, as I was listening to Dr. Hortez, in this whole situation, you know, I'm really hoping and pray that we can get through this, not just our bodies, but also our minds, because a lot of people are being, you know, misguided. And like you said, disinformation is so rampant right now. So, you know, I have my faith and hope that we're going to get through this, but I hope that we get through this with the right mindset and to walk out of this with sanity and great substance, as the scriptures say, because that's what we're going to need to get through. I agree. Greg Carr, final comment. Yeah, I just say, Roland, I agree.

We have to be together on this. And for all of all the folk out there who are teachers, substitute teachers, kindergarten teachers. We know we heard Dean Hotez say this, the emotional impact of coming into spaces where these children have been under a two-year assault in many ways, it's taken its emotional toll on all of us. So those of you out there in the next couple of days who are delivering UPS packages and working for the mail service, be as careful as you can and know that not only are you in our thoughts and prayers, we must protect each other. And I'd only say a couple of other things, you know, we're three days away from the first day of Kwanzaa, so Habari Ghani, the 26th will be Umoja. So it's happy holidays to everybody. And I'm looking forward, Roland, to your thoughts and commentary on Franklin Thomas. I know we

didn't get to that tonight. If we heard the name Vernon Jordan and haven't heard the name Franklin Thomas, understand that this brother, who was the first black person to run the Ford Foundation, had a great impact. The son of Barbados immigrants who came here, who was born here, bed, sty, do or die. Look up Franklin A. Thomas, and I'm looking forward to hearing some comments on that, that brother and please well get well brother see I ain't never got to see nobody again I will stay here I got watching you

last week at the celebration bowl that beautiful moment and then you and then you and then you have to face this thing brother all I'm saying is you not only in our thoughts and prayers we got to wrap around each other man because that's no joke. And thank you for being very public and sharing. And hopefully that's going to change somebody's mind about getting this vaccine. Well, look, it was a lot of people. I can tell you there are a number of people who I know who called me,

who have tested positive, who are very public individuals who chose not to go public. And they were commending me. And look, I had no problem doing it. You got some loud mouths out there who decided to make videos and mocking me for getting it. This is why I called them hashtag never will be's because they will, they will never be anything. And that's what they are. They are people who are desperate for credibility and they have none. They will never get any. And you heard what they are. They are people who are desperate for credibility and they have none. They will never get any. And you heard what Dr. Hotez said there. And that was always my, our goal here. And that is, I was not going to put a conspiracy theorist on the air.

I was not going to put people who are so-called educated, but have no scientific or medical expertise on this subject matter. There are people, and I see some of the comments, people like, Roland, do your own research. Y'all, this ain't what I do. Okay? This ain't what I do. I'm sitting here in my home studio, and I'm surrounded by multiple lights. I've got a nine-foot green screen.

I've got a Sony camera in front of me. I've got an ATM mini switcher sitting right here. I've got an iPad. I've got a computer. I've got a lavab front of me. I got an ATM mini switcher sitting right here. I've got an iPad and got a computer. I got a lavablet microphone. I got an IFB. That's what I do. That's what I do. Okay. And so just because somebody can read a medical journal doesn't mean they're actually an expert on these issues. We purposely put on experts. We started this show off with legal experts talking about the Kim Potter trial. Y'all notice I did not have non-lawyers breaking down the legal ramifications of Kim Potter being found guilty. There's a reason why. You notice we had Cliff Albright, an expert on the issue of voting, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

And so it's amazing to me how we love to have love to listen to folks. And let me let me just go in and say this. And I got no problem saying it. If there is one troubling thing among black people is we love people with rhetorical flourishes. We love people who can spin yarn. We love people with alliteration. We love people who have the ability to talk and speak. And oh my God, so what we do is we base our, oh my man, that brother is dropping some knowledge. That sister is dropping some knowledge.

No, they're actually saying a whole bunch of stuff, but it sounds good. We love folk to, as a tickle your fancy, let me ignite your soul as the song goes. But this is too serious for us to play games with. When we hear Congressman Jim Clyburn announced last night that he tested positive for COVID, he's 81 years old. When Professor Eddie Glaude at Princeton announced six hours ago on social media that he tested positive as well. When you see doctors and others and medical professionals, I mean, this is real. And if there is one moment. For us to trust our trusted voices, it is it. This is it. That's right. And so we're going to have more and more of our black doctors and our experts on everything that you heard tonight about these variants. Listen, the brother North Carolina A&ant told us this may of last year that's right that's

right and so we're going to continue talking to the folks at meharry and the folks at xavier and the folks at other hbcus because uh this is why it is important last night we had that expert uh on uh on covet uh COVID and sickle cell. OK, you ain't hearing that elsewhere. So I need you all to understand why this show matters, why these voices matter. You know, and so some of you hit me that Ebony Hilton, because she now is a signed contributor for MSNBC, NBC. That's why you haven't seen her on the show, because they have her exclusively. And so we

certainly miss her voice, but there are other doctors out there that we're going to continue to have on to amplify the voices. We're going to continue talking about not only the quality of mask, what kind of mask to wear, things along those lines. And so folks expect more of that. And that's why these shows matter. And we cannot simply see any ground and I will not see any ground, any territory. I'll be like shame. I want to Davis mighty men fighting of a field of lentils when it comes to correct information, uh, and swinging against some of these crazy fools out here who do not have your best interest at heart, who are nothing but grifters. They are TikTok doctors. They are YouTube scientists. They know nothing. And all they

do, the best thing they have for you are bad lace fronts and loud mouth rhetorical flourishes. And they dress clean and they sit here and use all the right words and they say my brother and my sister as if they actually care about you, but nobody can dare say they care about you if they are feeding you false information. Too many people are dying and I don't want to have to do another story on a brother and sister who has died as a result of faulty information and so that's why we're going to do what we do all day, every day. And so to Greg, Recy, and Thrajee, I appreciate it.

To all of our guests, thank you so very much. Folks, we do not have a show tomorrow. It's Christmas Eve. We're never going to have a show tomorrow anyway. So I'll see you guys on Monday. Hopefully, I will be out of COVID protocol. I can then go upstairs and then actually see my wife versus

FaceTimeing her and then, of course, her leaving stuff for me at the top of the stairs. It's all good. Y'all got to understand I am a self-sufficient brother. I was taught how to bake when I was seven years old and cook. No, cook when I was how to bake when I was seven years old and cook. No cook when I was said bake when I was seven cook when I was eight.

So it's all good being down here. So I ain't got no problem being by myself the first time. So I know how to cook for myself, wash for myself and do for myself. Reginald and Melvin Martin knew how to raise their kids. So just let y'all know. Yeah, know how to do the stuff. Just letting y'all know. Letting y'all know. And I am working on my golf game down here.

My putting green's over here as well. So don't think for a second my golf game is going to go to pop because of COVID. Y'all, I'll see y'all tomorrow. Y'all take care. Oh! Oh!

Oh, man. You're up to the stars I'll fly Alexa, play our favorite song again. Okay. I only have eyes for you. I'm Master. Hey, yo, peace, world. What's going on? It's the Love King of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered. Thank you. this is an iHeart podcast