#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Trump's taxes; Who is Amy Coney Barrett The Rock backs Biden-Harris; Black docs test COVID vaccines

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

9.28.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Trump's taxes reveal he is a sham; Who is #45's SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett? Early votes show signs that Black voters are shifting to mail in voting; The Rock backs Biden/Harris; South Carolina voters no longer have to have a witness for their absentee ballots; Black women are encouraged to participate in a general strike for Breonna Taylor; Black docs test COVID vaccines; Stripper PSA get your booty to the polls; Bishop Michael Curry joins us to talk about his new book, 'Love Is The Way'Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered #RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Thank you. We'll be right back. Today is Monday, September 28th, 2020. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, explosive new details on Donald Trump's taxes. He paid very little money. The report in the New York Times has conservatives concerned Donald Trump hollers fake news, but he has not shown his actual taxes. Hmm.

Also, over the weekend, they announced Amy Coney Barrett as the choice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Of course, conservatives are geared up for the fight, and they will start the proceedings on October 12th. We'll discuss that. Early voting show, early votes show signs that black voters

are shifting to mail-in voting. We'll talk about the reasons for that. Also way duane the rock johnson has come out strongly in support of joe biden and kamala harris we'll show you his announcement the south carolina voters no longer have to have a witness for their absentee ballots after a court ruling black doctors are doing independent testing on covid1919 vaccines. We'll talk with the president of the National Medical Association to explain. Also, have you seen the PSA announcement put out by strippers encouraging people to get their booties to the polls? I actually thought it was fake,

but the director, the woman who conceived it, would join us to explain. Plus, a new action for Breonna Taylor, the coordinators of A Day Without Black Women, will join us with the details. And Bishop Michael Curry joins us to discuss his new book, Love Is the Way. It's time to bring the funk. Roll the mark, unfiltered. Let's go.

He's got it. Whatever the miss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. Mark unfiltered. Let's go. Just for kicks he's rolling It's Uncle Roro, yo It's Rolling Martin, yeah Rolling with rolling now He's punk, he's fresh, he's real The best you know he's Rolling Martin now Folks, the New York Times obtained Donald Trump's tax information covering more than two decades. The revelations they dropped Sunday afternoon are stunning. It shows that he paid $750.

Yes, 750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. And he has paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years because he reported losing much more money than he made. Also hanging over him is a decades-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed and received after declaring huge losses. This shocking and stunning report has upped into the campaign. Donald Trump yesterday came out with a news conference saying, fake news, fake news. And, of course, his supporters have been scurrying, trying to say that the report isn't real.

But you notice he hasn't actually released his taxes. Joining us right now is financial services and regulatory attorney James Davis. James, glad to have you on Roller Martin Unfiltered. So here's a thing that jumps out here. Donald Trump can yell fake news all he wants to. He keeps saying that he's under audit. The IRS commissioner has already said he's not under audit. He does not want to release his taxes.

He's been fighting Congress all the way to the Supreme Court to get his taxes. He's fighting the Manhattan district attorney. He's fighting the attorney general of New York state. No one fights that vigorously to keep their taxes hidden unless there's something they don't want folks to know. I think there are a couple of things at play here. First of all, you have the public opinion about how rich he is. But the brass tacks of it all is the potential criminal implications of what he's been telling the government for over a decade. Now, if you look at what's happened to his compatriots, Mr. Manfort and Mr. Cohen, you can start to get a glimpse of how these individuals treated their tax returns.

Not to say that Trump's doing the same thing, but the indicia of him doing the same thing are definitely present in that article. For example, Michael Cohen did not declare roughly $4 million of income on his tax returns. So we don't even know what Trump has not actually declared. Number two, Paul Manafort would, I think he actually characterized some income as loans that he had to pay back, which he didn't have to pay back. So who knows how many of those loans that are on Trump's tax returns are actually of the same type. Well, not only that, a New York Times report also says that Donald Trump paid his daughter, Ivanka, as a consultant on deals when she was already working for the company. And some experts say this is a way to get around the gift tax. Yeah, so I'm not a tax expert, but from what was described in the article, that seems like something you should not be doing.

And again, the implications of criminal violations for him and his family potentially is actually great, which kind of tells you why he really wants to be reelected at this point. And so what we have to start to realize is that these types of cases are like those thousand piece puzzles that we had when we were kids. I'm telling my age right now. But you would spread them out on the table and start to piece by piece put things together. The tax returns that the New York Times has gotten the handle of, and I think they actually got abstracts, not the actual returns, but it still has the same, roughly the same information. Prosecutors have to take pieces of this information along with bank statements, along with transaction documents to try to put this puzzle together. It's not an easy task. And we're talking a lot of years, roughly a decade

here, possibly. And what also jumps out is, again, what you're dealing with here is him personally guaranteeing money. Those loans are coming due very soon, upwards of $400 million. And this report also showed how he is still doing business with other countries that impacts foreign policy. The thing that also I thought was very interesting, he pays $750 in taxes to the United States, but pays several thousand and more than $100,000 to other governments like India and the Philippines and Turkey. He's literally paying more taxes to other countries than the United States. Yeah, and you know, I'm glad you touched on this because the emoluments clause is not something that people like to talk about because it's very complicated and very abstract. But what we're seeing here is the foreign influence not only on U.S. policy, but possibly the self-promotion and self-income inducing ventures overseas through his role as a president. So you're seeing both sides play to the middle here. And again, the people losing are the American people.

And of course, one of the things that they uncovered is that there are some 500 entities, how he used shell company after shell company after shell company, an extremely complex structure under the Trump organization where all of this stuff has been taking place. If you actually read through the Manafort indictment, I think there are roughly 30 shell companies that Paul Manafort had created to conduct his transactions. And so, again, you're seeing the indicia of what happened with Paul Manafort had created to conduct his transactions. And so, again, you're seeing the indicia of what happened with Paul Manafort in these news stories about Trump's tax returns.

And so it kind of tells me that you could have the same result if there was a desire to actually bring a case against him. Absolutely. That's the other equation. Absolutely. All right, then. James Davis, I certainly appreciate it, man. The other equation. Absolutely. All right, then, James Davis, I certainly appreciate it, man. Thank you so very much.

There will certainly be more that we're going to be seeing on this particular story. So thank you very much. Thanks, Roland. All right, let's go to my panel. Dr. Abus Jones-DeWeaver, political analyst.

Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, former senior advisor, environmental justice EPA. Rena Shaw, the Lincoln Project Women's Coalition. Rena, I want to start with you. Again, Donald Trump wants to deny as much as possible this report. This is just very clear. It's undeniable. Donald Trump is a fraud.

He's a liar. He's a cheat. Things we already knew. And all of those stupid-ass MAGA people who says, oh, he's looking out for me. No, what he's saying is you're losers for paying taxes. I am not going to pay taxes. It's all on you. You know, Roland, there's so much to unpack here. I've been coming on your show and this is my second time back in a really long time. So I just it's I must say, I rarely come on this show having written so much down before to share with you all, because I just have so much to say on this. I made my career on the right during a time of the financial collapse in 2009 and 2008. I was I was there on Capitol Hill during that with members

of Congress listening to the people that were part of the Tea Party movement, the whole people who said, don't tread on me and we are taxed to death and we need people who will stand up and simplify this tax code, all this stuff. Look, Donald Trump gaslit them. As I love to say, this guy's a gaslighter in chief. He does it to us on the regular. He says, I'm one of you and all of us need to have skin in the game. He said that years ago. He said, lower income Americans need to have skin in the game. He said that years ago. He said, lower-income Americans need to have skin in the game. So pay your taxes because you need to have skin in the game. Meanwhile, this guy's a big, fat liar. And I think where we really ought to look is that figure, $750.

I can't get that figure out of my head. All day today, I just think to myself, this is what I warned of. I was one of the earliest, as you know, critics against Donald Trump when he was a presumptive nominee for the Republicans. And I said to myself, we need to know where these guys and this guy's entanglements are. Who does he owe money to on a foreign, like other countries? Now we know. This is stuff we wanted to know way back then. And Roland, this is going to be ugly. I think today it's hitting the American consciousness that he really is somebody that just does not deserve respect. When you do not pay your taxes, you've done more than disrespect sort of the social pact we have here.

You've committed some fraud. But the problem is the Republicans have been enabling these frauds so long. These high-income Americans, they've been doing these kinds of things, jumping through loopholes, creating shell companies, finding ways to give to their own daughters' consulting companies so they can deduct tax or whatever they want to do. Show a law, show a law, show a law so they can hang on to more of their money. And I know this sounds really funny coming from me, given that I love capitalism, but this is all about the rich getting richer and our tax code being a complete mess. But moreover, showing us who this man really, really is. And he's a loser who doesn't pay his taxes. And it's time that people in the heartland know. I remember in 2016, I used this hashtag. We tried to tell you, Avis, and for all all these people out here who run in their mouth,

who was saying Hillary is the same as Donald Trump. Oh, we shouldn't support her. Hillary tried to tell folks, but folks didn't want to listen. Let's go back to 2016 and one of those debates. Folks, watch this. Another example of bait and switch here. For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you're under audit. So you've got to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First,

maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax. So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are

because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statement, they don't give you the tax rate. They don't give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he's ever going to release his tax returns because there's something he's hiding. And we'll guess, we'll keep guessing at what it might be that he's hiding. But I think the question is, were he ever to get near the White House,

what would be those conflicts? Who does he owe money to? Well, he owes you the answers to that, and he should provide. Sound like somebody was right. Absolutely. And, you know, I've been keeping a running calculation. That must be the 457 millionth time that Hillary was absolutely right about everything that she warned this nation about back in 2016 as it relates to Donald Trump. She hit the nail on the head. And I kind of want to sort of continue along the path that she was going with that last statement that she made. This is a national security threat to have this man in the White House with the nuclear codes owing somebody and owing people, entities, countries that we don't even know all of the entanglements that he has to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

You know, I'm sure that may be one of many reasons why he does everything that Papa Putin tells him to do. He's probably one of the creditors. But the fact of the matter is him knowing that he owes this money and knowing that he's keeping that information from us puts him in a position in which he is incentivized to make money any way he can, hand over fence, because according to the New York Times, the bill is due in 2022. So if he were to win re-election, he would have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in two years after this man has been broke for God knows how long. He's driven numerous companies into the ground previously.

So what is he willing to sell? Who is he willing to sell out? What is he willing to do in order to not offend those people who he owes money to? I think this might tell us a lot about why, for example, he hadn't said anything about our troops having bounties on their heads. I think this might tell us a lot around why he's going around protecting governments and individuals who murder journalists. You know, I think this might tell us a lot about his behavior outside of the fact that he completely is a psychopath and he cares about nobody but himself. But he also owes money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And the bottom line is that is a national security threat to this nation each and every day. Mustafa, conservatives can try to run their mouths all they want to call it a fake news if they want.

But the reality is he's been lying. He's not going to release his taxes. And again, if he wants to say it's not true, fine. Release your taxes and let us see what is true. Trump has been pimping America for decades. And the pimping should have stopped when he came into the White House, but it didn't. You know, it's interesting that Trump said that he would release his taxes before the election, and people waited, and people waited, and they continue to wait. And the reality is, for folks in Appalachia

who are getting up every day and going to work just so they can put food on the table, and this man is able to get millions of dollars back in return. For the folks in Detroit who get up every day and work hard just so they can keep the water turned on, but yet he's able to have millions and millions of dollars returned back to him. And for the folks on the Gulf Coast, you know, who are working hard just to pay the mortgage or pay the rent.

And for this man who is supposed to lead our country, who is supposed to be, and we all know that he's not, he's supposed to be the example of fairness, the example of equality, example of leadership. For him not to handle his business and to make sure that he's paying his fair share says a lot about the character that we already know about. And we, as Avis said, you know, we also know a lot of this is tied to the fact that he has gotten money from places that he probably shouldn't have, that he probably will have a number of legal ramifications

for once the fullness of where his resources have come from. So the reality is that he shared with folks that poor people pay taxes. He doesn't pay taxes. He's telling you exactly how he sees you. And as Abe said, he also is telling you that you don't have a lot of value in the paradigm that he operates from. I'm not calling the president a pimp. What I am saying is that he has some pimpish ways. Well, and the other thing is, is here is real simple. That is, this is how the rich play the game. This is how they write the tax code. This is how they get over. This is how they force lower class and middle class people

to flip the bills so they can grow their riches. That's how they can live off their tax cuts. That's how they can live off their capital gains. See, that's the game. So when you hear the Jamie Diamonds of the world saying, oh, I don't think an Elizabeth Warren wealth tax will work because they don't want to have to pay taxes on anything. That's how they stay rich. They want to finance a lifestyle. That's what they're doing here. Pure and simple. And here's the deal. Not a single Republican has said a word. That. Roland, on that point, I have something to say right there, because this is really important to differentiate here. My friend Josh Barrow, who's a business columnist with New York Mag, put it really well today in a tweet.

He just summed it up real nicely because a number of my liberal friends who are political commentators have been saying Trump is broke. As evidence to say, look, this guy is so broke, he can't handle anything. He drives everything into the ground. But the reality is this, and Josh put it best. He said, does a broke guy have a private 757? He said, Trump isn't broke. He can't handle anything. He drives everything into the ground. But the reality is this, and Josh put it best. He said, does a broke guy have a private 757? He said, Trump isn't broke. He's a rich guy with a high income who doesn't pay nearly as much income tax as he should. Now, I'll take this up and say, yeah, there are tons of those. That's why Republicans will not criticize. But this is more than just a rich guy with a high income

who doesn't pay as much as he should. This is a guy who's evaded the system, does not believe in his social responsibility and therefore doesn't believe in the very fabric of this country and what holds us together. Right. They use the tax code to their benefit and say the hell with everybody else and screw them. One of the other reasons why he is so hell bent on getting Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, because Donald Trump also knows that they have been ruling in his tax cases. He is hoping that this is a close election and it goes to the Supreme Court on Saturday. He announced that she is going to be replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, it's a chance to move the high court in a far more aggressively conservative direction for generations to come. In political terms, Barrett is the dream candidate for conservative Republicans and the worst possible candidate for progressives. She has criticized the Supreme Court's 5, 4, and 6-3 decisions upholding key sections of the Affordable Care Act.

Both were written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts. After hearing of her nomination, Kristen Clark, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, she tweeted, Erja Elston and his friends were playing basketball when confronted by a sheriff's deputy who flashed his badge gun, grabbed Elston by the neck, threw him to the ground and climbed on him. Elston sued and won. Amy Coney Barrett said the officer was just acting as a private citizen. It was a lot of people obviously talking about, you know, all these people. Some people are bringing up, OK, she's adopted two kids from Haiti. She's got seven kids. She's in this. Some say this cult Catholic group. Look, all that all that anti-Catholic crap is stupid when the Democrats have their nominee is a strong Catholic.

That's just idiotic. The thing here is you look at her rulings and how she has spoken on the issues. And the reality is being a 48 year old white woman, she is perfect for them because they want her on the Supreme Court for at least the next 40 to 50 years. And yes, she is. She is hard right in the same wing as, frankly, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Absolutely. It does remind me exactly of a Clarence Thomas taking Thurgood Marshall's seat, the sort of whiplash associated with that, the disrespect to the legacy of what Thurgood Marshall accomplished to have a Clarence Thomas sit in his seat. This is disrespectful to that level, to have her sit in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seats. Because what she is in favor of, looking at her rulings, looking at what she's sort of ruled on

in the past and opined on in the past, is counter to not only women's rights, but to rights that we need as African-Americans. So, for example, she's not only anti-choice, she's anti-contraception. She is not only anti-women's rights, she's anti-voting rights, for example. And as you saw right there, if you think that we're catching hell right now when it comes to the criminal justice system. You wait until some more cases make its way up into the Supreme Court and have a 6-3 right-wing majority voting on it. There won't be anything they won't tell the police can't do. And so, you know, this is a very dire moment for us. And the sad thing is it took so long for a lot of people on the left to wake up to the importance of judicial appointments. Now that we're awake, the only thing that we can do to help mitigate the damage, because the reality is she's going to get on the court. OK, we just cannot stop it. only thing that we can do to help mitigate the damage and have some sort of chance of stopping the bleeding, per se, is to ensure that we have a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president

sitting in Congress and in the White House come November, because that's the only way that potentially we can bring some balance to the court by adding a couple of seats, perhaps making D.C. a state, adding a couple of senators, because we cannot afford to have 40 years of a 6-3 far-right conservative judicial system. That will be the most abusive type of minority rule that we would have seen in this nation for decades. Bottom line is this here, Mustafa, and that is this here. If you're Democrats, this is why you have to understand the power of the courts. We're going to talk in a minute about some voting issues where federal judges ruled. This is where the courts matter. Republicans have been extremely focused on that.

Democrats, frankly, look, during the Democrat National Convention, they got one mention. That's by Senator Chuck Schumer. And I'm going, hello. This is how you actually control laws. You could talk all day about who you elect as president or in Congress. But if the rule of the laws are declared unconstitutional by the courts, they're the ones with the final arbiter. Amy Coleman Barrett is just another example of the stacking of court. We continue to try and educate people when they watch your show. You know, 200, 200 federal judges have now been moved,

you know, through this administration and approved. Less than 5% of those are African-American. Less than, I believe, 5 percent of those are also on the appeals side, are also Latinx. So folks need to understand that in the interpretation, also policy that comes through many of these cases, whether you're talking about the environment or climate change or health care, those judges are really playing a very strong role in whether you will be protected or not. So for those who say they don't want to vote, we continue to tell folks, you know, these judges all the way from the Supreme Court all the way down are tied to your vote. These district attorneys are tied to

your vote. These sheriffs are tied to your vote. You need to get up off your butts, make sure you're registered, get in the game, do your research and understand how each of these appointments that are happening can have adverse effects. Or if you get out and you vote in strong numbers, you can make sure that the right people are in there to balance this out and to make sure there's actually, you know, fair application of the law in the courts. Look, Raina, look, you, a longtime Republican, conservatives understand the power of the courts. And this has been their focus for 40 years. And this is why they were so hell bent. The Federalist Society was created.

It was to put the type of judges that Barrett represents on the federal bench for life. No doubt. No doubt. I mean, there's no bit of that I could disagree with. Having made my career on Capitol Hill in the office of two pretty far-right Republicans, I can tell you that when I joined Capitol Hill in 2008, I was aghast when I learned that the member of Congress I was working for was the only member of Congress that year that still was anti-abortion in cases of incest and rape. It is shocking to me that in the year 2020 here, abortion is on the ballot again. I fear that conservatives have actually been energized by the passing of RBG and, you know, this judge. She she's look, it's hard for me because I definitely look at women not as a monolith. I think women are very complex and I try to look at each woman for her individual merit.

She's a working mother. I think it's fantastic that she's adopted so many children and wants to be a mother to so many children while working on her judicial career. However, I know what's at heart here. I know what's at stake for her. And it's the issue of abortion. I grew up in a pro-life home. And I don't like to say pro-life because I'm still pro-life. I am just now pro-choice. And that doesn't mean I don't value the sanctity of life. It doesn't mean that I am, you know, for abortion all the way around. But I want women to have the freedom and the liberty to do what they want to do with their bodies. And if Republicans are the freedom and liberty loving party, I've never been able to understand why they don't believe in the freedom to marry and the freedom to do what you want to do with your own body. Because at the end of the day, every woman who makes a choice to abort is doing so for her own personal reasons and will answer to her own God.

And maybe she doesn't believe in God, and that's okay, because there's a separation of church and state in this country. And what shocked me in recent times, even more so as I've gone along in Republican politics, is that people like Mike Pence, Vice President Pence, does not respect the separation of church and state. And I know this justice, as wonderful as the right wants to say she is as a woman. I don't want to attack her for the choices she's made as a mother, as a woman, but I know what she wants to do. I want, I know she wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. I know she wants to take away the choice for other women to do what they want to do with their bodies. And that fundamentally

bothers me. And so we're at a moment where I think suburban women like me, who've been lifelong Republicans, we are looking at this for what this is and saying something doesn't smell right. And guess what? We have to figure it out. I love what Mustafa said. Our choices judicially are tied to our votes at the ballot box. And it's about making sure every woman in my demographic understands that and older as well, because older voters, as I've talked about here last time, they are the ones that go and vote for in far greater numbers than my demographic and younger folks. I've talked a lot on this show about the importance of judges and what it means. This video has been circulating. Reverend Dr. Howard John Wesley.

He, of course, is pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church here in the nation's capital, Alexandria, Virginia. And so, folks, get the video ready, please. And so I saw this video and it was important because, again, y'all been hearing me yell this for years, not just on this show, but previously on News 1 Now, previously on Washington Watch. I've been trying to tell y'all, focus on the courts. Focus on the courts. Dr. Wesley laid it out. Here you go. And, beloved, voting is not simply about what president will sit for the next four years. When you fail to vote, you do not understand the judicial legacy

that a president leaves long after he is in office. This vote in November is not about the next four years. It's about the next 40 years. Let me take you back to constitution and governance. The president of the United States has the authority to place men and women as judges all across the district courts, the appellate court, and the Supreme court. This current president in his four years has appointed more judges than every other president except Jimmy Carter. In four years, President Donald Trump has appointed 198 judges to the bench, two to

the Supreme Court, some 50 plus to appellate court, and the rest to district court. And many of those appointees will sit as justices of judgment for the rest of their lives. One hundred and ninety-eight judges have been appointed by this president. Do you know how many of those 198 appointees are black? Do you know how many of the 198 appointees of this president are of color? Of the 198 judges that this president are of color. Of the 198 judges that this president

has placed on the bench, not one of them is black. Not a single black face sitting as a judge under this president. 198 judges and not one of them is black. Man, stop filming. 198 judges.

198 judges. And not one is black. So when you don't vote, you don't determine who stands at trial. When you don't vote, you don't get to sit in the jury and determine the fate of those in trial. When you don't vote, you don't get to help determine the judge that sits on the bench. So don't tell me you out here hollering, black lives matter if you don't vote.

Black lives don't matter to you if you don't vote. Don't tell me you're mad that Daniel Cameron has not indicted the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor if you don't vote because you ain't got nothing part of leveling the playing field of justice in the United States of America. 198 judges. And not one is black. Hope y'all paying attention. Got to go to a break when we come back. We're going to talk about voting, 39 days.

And also, we're going to talk about a report from the UK showing how Donald Trump in his campaign in 2016 specifically targeted black voters to deter them from voting. Also, y'all seen that ad, Get Your Booties to the Pole? I want to talk with a sister who is the director of that ad. Why does she do it? What is her intention? Some critics have said it's shameful and despicable.

She disagrees. That's next on Roland Martin Unfiltered. You want to check out Roland Martin Unfiltered? YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there?

Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it. All right, so a lot of y'all are always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't, and Robert don't have one on.

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

And so I tracked down the... It took me a year to find a company that did it and so they basically about 47 different colors and so I love them because again as men we don't have many accessories to wear so we don't have many options and so this is really a pretty cool pocket screen and what I love about this here is you saw when it's in the pocket, you know, it gives you that flower effect like that. But if I wanted to also, unlike other, because if I flip it and turn it over, it actually gives me a different type of texture. And so therefore, it gives me a different look. So there you go. So if you actually want to get one of these shibori pocket squares, we have them in 47 different colors.

All you got to do is go to rollingthismartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So it's rollingthismartin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you who are members of our Bring the Funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we for you to get our pocket squares that's why you also got to be a part of our bring the funk fan club and so that's what we want you to do and so it's pretty cool so if you want to jazz your look up you can do that in addition y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares my sister

was a designer she actually makes these they're all custom-made so when you also go to the website you can also order one of the customized Feather Pocket Squares right there at RolandSMartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So please do so. And, of course, that goes to support the show. And, again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. Hi, I'm Kim Burrell. Hi, I'm Carl Painting.

Hey, everybody. This is Sherri Shepherd. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. And while he's doing Unfiltered, I'm Kim Burrell. Hi, I'm Carl Painting. Hey, everybody. This is Sherri Shepherd. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. And while he's doing Unfiltered, I'm practicing the wobble. So I am. Because Roland Martin is the one, he will do it backwards. He will do it on the side. He messes everybody up when he gets into the wobble.

Because he doesn't know how to do it, so he does it backwards. And it just messes me up every single time. So I'm working on it. I got it. You got really hard. Both don't mean anything. What's going to happen if you don't give me give me the next step was replacing it where's your

voice be heard it how do you put your your grievances out in front, how do you put forth your ideas if you don't vote on it? Tell me. Now, I want to know if it don't work, then tell me what will work. You have nothing? You have nothing? I think you should vote. Historically, a lot of blood on that vote.

You should vote. Nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all. We warned you, Donald. Warned you. But you didn't listen. It's over.

And now you're losing. Not just the election. You're losing everything. Everything. Kaylee and Meadows know you can't handle real interviews. And they laugh that you don't get it. So it's person, woman, man, camera, TV. They know it's over. Everyone does.

Smaller crowds. Lower polls. Embarrassing ratings. Mitch McConnell already told his senators it's time to dump you. Republicans are abandoning ship. You think these people care what happens to you? You think the leaks are done? Everything you've screwed up is going to come out.

Every secret is going to be told. Change of stories, a lack of preparation, the lying, the holy. They've got a party to salvage and careers to rescue. We told you they were whispering about you. Well, they don't have to whisper anymore because everyone knows. Everyone except you. The Lincoln Project is responsible for the content of this advertising. And let me begin by wishing you a beautiful look.

There's one thing people who've known Donald Trump for a long time all say. He's not the same person he was. And then they announced there was no buys. Now, Democrats decided to shield, add shelter, criminal medical. Look, look, the worry that I have that maybe he's having small strokes sometimes he simply can't speak really had an ominous what must be going on in his mind I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges or the oranges of the investigation.

The oranges, how it started. No one wishes ill health on the president, but a country needs a leader to be there. God bless the United States. A leader who's all there. I think Donald Trump is a political car wreck. A race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. No, I don't think he's a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot. I think he's a kook.

I think he's crazy. I think he's unfit for office. What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook, not fit to be president. If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump's term, we'll wait till the next election. We're on the record. Yeah. All right. Hold the tape.

We've got the votes to confirm Justice Ginsburg's replacement before the election. You don't agree with what I'm doing? You think I'm in Trump's pocket? I'd get all of that. My opponent will raise almost $100 million. I'm being? You think I'm in Trump's pocket? I'd get all of that. My opponent will raise almost $100 million. I'm being killed financially. I'm getting overwhelmed. This money is because they hate my guts. Midas Touch is responsible for the content of this advertising.

This is the big house, the stadium at the University of Michigan. Its official capacity is 107,601 people. Look around. Can you believe how many people are here? Listen to this. This is two stadiums. This is over 200,000 people. Now imagine every man, woman, and child here dead.

Because this is how many people have died because Donald Trump didn't tell the American people in February what he told journalist Bob Woodward. Instead, he told us it would disappear. It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle. It will disappear. He told us it was a hoax from the Democrats.

This is their new hoax. He told us he was not going to wear a mask because he just didn't feel like it. He told his followers they did not need to wear a mask. He pushed to open schools when every respected doctor in the country told him it would be a disaster. Over 200,000 are dead. That's not just a number. It's people. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, your parents, your friends,

your neighbors, your co-workers, your grandparents. 28 states are currently trending in the wrong direction and Donald Trump just forced the CDC to change their guidelines for the fifth time to say that it is not an airborne virus. But it is a very deadly airborne virus and Donald Trump knows it. Just listen to him tell Bob Woodward it was airborne. It goes through air, Bob. You just breathe the air and that Woodward it was airborne.

You're being lied to. You're being fed constant misinformation by Trump, the White House, and the CDC. Your life is being put at risk because of an election. When did any of this become acceptable? When did over 200,000 people dying become a victory? Stop the madness. Stop Trump. Why haven't you said anything about the U.S. hitting 200,000 deaths?

Go ahead. Anybody else? Matt Damon is not really a secret government assassin with amnesia. He just plays one in the movies. Tom Cruise is not really an ace fighter pilot at the Navy's elite top gun school. He just plays one in the movies. Tom Cruise is not really an ace fighter pilot at the Navy's elite top gun school. He just plays one in the movies. And Donald Trump is not a billionaire. He just played one on television. In 2016, Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes. How much did you pay? All right, folks, the election is in full swing. Thirty nine days, thirty nine days, folks, until Election Day. But that's just not the issue there. Of course, people are already voting all across the country. Don't forget, we encourage you every start. Thirty five days. Pull a graphic up, please. Come on, 35 days. I keep, we encourage people every single day. We need you to check your

registration. Check your registration. Go to vote.org. Go to iwillvote.com. Check your registration. Make sure you have not been purged. Register to vote. Now, upcoming deadlines. Folks, deadlines coming up very soon when it comes to registered. If you're in Alaska and Rhode Island, you've got until October 4th. That is next week. If you're in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, you have until October 5th to get registered. Illinois, Nevada and New Mexico, you have until October 6th. Missouri until October 5th to get registered. Illinois, Nevada, and New Mexico, you have until October 6th. Missouri, until October 7th.

Now, folks, nationally, black voters are the least likely to vote by mail historically. However, there are early signs that shows it's changing. The evidence is clearest in North Carolina, the first state to send out mail-in ballots. In North Carolina, black voters cast 16.7% of the more than 173,000 ballots returned so far.

That is a jump from the 9% of mail votes cast by black voters in 2016. Now, while the rise in black votes, black voting by mail is a good sign. It can also be a warning sign. North Carolina's black voters are four times more than likely, more likely than whites to have their ballots not yet accepted due to missing witness information. Now, just under 5% of absentee ballots returned by black voters either still have missing witness information or are in the process of having ballot requirements corrected. Only 1.3% of ballots returned by white voters.

Folks, that is critically important for you to understand. Also, folks in South Carolina, the South Carolina State Election Commission said those wanting to vote absentee via mail for the 2020 general election will no longer need witnesses. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that voters sending in ballots do not need to have their signatures on the ballot return, on the ballot return envelopes witnessed. Now, this reinstates the lower U.S. district court's September 19th order, suspending the witness requirement. OK, the South Carolina Election Commission said the court case is ongoing and is subject to change. We just want you to understand

what's going on there. Speaking of that, there was a big endorsement over the weekend where the actor of The Rock came out in support, shocking a lot of his MAGA supporters of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Happy Sunday, everybody. We are approximately five weeks away from Election Day, arguably the most critical election our country has seen in decades. Now, that said, I'm going to be pushing this political conversation just a little bit more. Now, you know, look, I've got friends in all parties, but the one thing that we can always

agree on is the conversation and the dialogue and where that conversation lands is always the most critical part. Now, this is something that I've certainly not done in the past. So I'm going to go big. You guys know me. If I go, I go big. So guys, I had the opportunity to sit down with Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris to talk about a number of important issues that we're facing as a country. I thought it was a great and extremely productive conversation that we had. And as a registered independent for years now with centrist ideologies, I do feel that Vice President Biden and Senator Harris are the best choice to lead our country, and I am endorsing them to become president and vice president of our United States. You know, this past January, approximately nine months ago, my old man died,

and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to him, but he always said that respect is given when it's earned. So you got to get out there and you got to earn it with your own two hands. And that was my very first question to Vice President Biden and Senator Harris. And that question is, how will you earn the respect of the American people once you're inside the White House? Here's that conversation. Hey, CJ. Hey. Hi. Hey, guys.

I got to tell you, well, it is so good seeing you guys. Senator Harris, it's a pleasure to finally see you and finally meet you. Thank you. It is a pleasure to see you. I'm a huge fan of everything from Fast and Furious, all of them, to Jumanji. So thank you for your work. Thank you so much. Well, thank you.

Thank you for your work. Let me start off by saying, guys, I've been a lucky guy over the years in my life and my career to have been part of and participated in some real defining moments. And I have never publicly endorsed a presidential candidate or a vice presidential candidate in my life over my career. So I figured let's kick this conversation off this way by me officially publicly endorsing you both to become president and vice president of our great country. That's fantastic. Thank you. That's incredible. It means a great deal to us, for real. Thank you. Really. Thank you. You guys are both obviously experienced to lead. You've done great things. Joe,

you've had such an incredible career. You've led, in my opinion, with great compassion and heart and drive, but also soul. And you and I talked about that in the past and how important soul is. And Kamala, I'm gonna embarrass you just for a little bit because I'm gonna talk a little bit about your amazing experience.

And you have been an attorney, a district attorney, a state attorney, a U.S. senator. Smart, tough. I've seen you in those hearings. And in my opinion, you are a certified badass. I'm honored and thank you for that. That's a huge compliment from you. You're welcome. Joe, you and I have talked about it.

Mustafa, some people might say, ah, look, who cares? First of all, his endorsement has gotten nearly 12 million views on Twitter alone. Also, a significant number of young folks follow The Rock. I keep telling people, don't act like these things don't matter. Oh, without a doubt. So first, let's say Rocky Johnson will be proud, the Rock's father, of the endorsement that he gave. You hit it right on the head. Folks need to realize, so Rock has 13 million Twitter followers. He has 180 million plus on IG.

And then he's one of the biggest action stars in the world. So he has a platform. And he's intelligent in the way that he breaks the issues down so that folks understand that there's some depth to what he's sharing with folks when he makes that decision. So that's a powerful platform to be able to at least get people who may be undecided to give some strong consideration to Vice President Biden and Senator Harris. And it also pushes some folks maybe who haven't yet registered to vote to say, yo, I appreciate the rock. I appreciate the work that he does. And if he says this is a good move, then I need to get engaged. Again, we talk about endorsements, Avis. People say, man, I don't really care what a celebrity has to say. But here's the deal. Look, this election, people are pretty much locked in. If you can pick up

a few thousand here, a few thousand there. And again, by him using his social media platform to elevate a message, it could make a difference. Absolutely. I think every bit counts. This is not an election that we need to take anything for granted. The fact of the matter is, you know, I frankly expect a lot of shenanigans to go on in this election. And I also believe that if it's even close, then we're going to have all sorts of drama and all sorts of things will happen that would involve courts that right now are being stacked in favor of Trump. And so it can't be close. It must be a runaway. I've said it before and I'll say it again, that Trump needs to suffer a humiliating defeat. And anytime that we have

someone with a platform such as his, not only just give an endorsement, which I think is appreciative, but I really especially respected the fact that he sat down and he had a conversation with them so people could take the time to really listen to them and really hear why they earned his support. And so to me, that was just a wonderful move. And, you know, I'm certainly, I certainly am in favor of him doing it. And I really believe that it may, in fact, if not change some minds,

at least energize some people and awaken some people to say, this is important. I need to pay attention and I need to make sure I go out there and vote. Rina, Black voters do indeed matter. Channel 4 from the UK dropped an explosive story today that showed the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 specifically targeting and having the data to keep 3.5 million black people

from voting. This is some of their report. Because it disproportionately affected the poorest places. What nobody realized at the time was that by using the database, the Trump campaign could actually identify individuals on these streets who might be deterred from voting. Like other states, black voters in Wisconsin were disproportionately marked for deterrence.

They made up just 5.4% of voters, but 17% of the deterrence group. More than a third of black voters in Wisconsin were classified as deterrence. Contrast that with the voters the Trump campaign thought he could win over. 75% of them were white, but less than 2% were black. We've come here because we've identified exactly how many people were marked for deterrence by the Trump campaign, and using the public voter roll, we've been able to match them and work out how many of them stayed at home.

Take Ward 116. The Trump campaign was aware of 1,440 potential voters here. 80% were black. Almost half, 44%, of the ward was marked for deterrence. That's 636 people. So how many of those black deterrence voters actually turned out on election day? We went through the records.

It was just 36%. Overall turnout in the precinct fell from 75% in 2012 to just 56% in 2016. And this wasn't restricted to one ward. Take these two back-to-back... Digital voter suppression specialist Shereen Mitchell joins us right now. Shereen, this report shows how data is used to hyper target people to keep them from voting and how the Trump administration, when he was saying, what the hell do you have to lose? And then when he thanked black people for not voting, this was one of the reasons why right here. Exactly. You know that again, you know, we did this report, our report before the 2018 elections.

But we have been tracking this in 2016. And let's be clear that not only were they targeting black voters, so was Russia. And honestly, in 2020, we've seen even Democratic presidential candidates target Black voters. The key is, why are Black voters being targeted? And why is that not only a domestic issue, but also a foreign issue that they believe that in order to win an election, you have to target Black voters. The data here that is very specific, where he actually went on the ground and actually looked at the types of places that were focused on Black voters. So again, you and I have had this conversation.

90K in Michigan, right, did not vote top of the ticket because they believe the disinformation of they are both the same. The key piece now that we've learned some more additional information is 70K of those people were Detroit alone. So when we talk about these cities, we're talking about places like Philadelphia, Milwaukee. And so the fact that we now have this information, we now know that the data that we were providing now has an impact where they went out to the ground to say,

here are the Black people who were impacted, and here's the information about you that was collected. I always get people telling me that when I say that Black people were targeted, that I'm basically saying that my community doesn't understand or get what digital suppression is or disinformation in general. What I've always been saying is that we are the ultimate target. And if we don't understand that,

we do not know how to combat that. And this report basically says, not only did the Trump campaign do this, but also Russia. Well, first of all, those two are linked. And the great thing, what they did is with this report, they literally went to those doors, knocked on those doors. And people were absolutely shocked to discover how they were targeted, the kind of messaging they were targeting. And then that's also what happens in campaigns when robocalls are targeted to certain houses, trying to get them to tell them the election's on a different day.

Also, the targeting that took place to Black people, specifically saying you could vote by text, you can vote by email, which are all lies. Absolutely. Not only just lies, but that's literally digital vote suppression. So anything that tells you where you can vote when it's a lie, where you can text your vote is a lie. All those things are a part of digital vote suppression.

And so they were specific targets. And I just want to make sure that we're being clear about the language that they use. They're using deterrence, and we're talking about voter suppression, i.e., in addition, digital voter suppression. They had a campaign where they had three targeted groups, and those targeted groups included white women who were college-bound white liberals to some extent, but the number one was also African-American. And I've seen different iterations of this, but that campaign actually talked about Project Alamo, and there's videos out about what the team did. And so this isn't just about what Russia did.

It was that Facebook participated. Why did Facebook participate? Because they had an embed in the Trump campaign in Project Alamo alongside Cambridge Analytica. Again, Cambridge Analytica was checked and shut down by European and UK stance because that's where they came from. That does not change the stuff that they did in America. And we're still sort of getting our hands wrapped around that. While we were keep telling people that all of this was happening, not just Russia, but also domestic.

Absolutely. Sheree Mitchell, we certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thank you for having me. Marina, this is the stuff that we have to look out for. And again, the Trump campaign, they wanted, they knew that if black voter turnout dropped, that helped their campaign. Trump was open about it.

Oh, yeah. Well, look, this is a really big problem because there's a lot of people in communities of color who believe that algorithms and artificial intelligence, these are just phrases of the future. These are digital tools that are, you know, far ahead say the future is here now, my friends. And these are tools Cambridge Analytica used to, and particularly algorithms, to keep black voters from showing up. To the tune of 3.5 million black Americans were deterred from voting in 2016. This is the most egregious, I believe, violation of the public trust. I mean, a president, a now president, his campaign engaged in this kind of ridiculousness. He was welcoming that kind of stuff. Now, look, I just want to put a full stop right there for a second and say I've been having a lot of conversations

with white American women who voted for Trump in 2016. I've been having a lot of conversations with them over the past year, trying to figure out where their heads are at for this fall, and also just trying to figure out what do they think of people like Joe Biden. And over and over I hear, Joe Biden's just like everybody else. He's a lifelong politician. Trump tells it to us like it is. He's blunt. He's not for everyone.

But guess what? He's saying it in plain speak. He's open about his intentions because he speaks them so bluntly and boldly and openly. And I just say to that, well, don't we think there's something else at play there? And now we know there are nefarious acts at play. He wanted these people to stay home not only because the bigger picture is here. He thinks of black and brown Americans as lesser than him, lesser than white Americans. So deter them from showing up and expressing their will through their vote. And this is what this is all about, keeping black voters home because he believes they're lesser and do not have a place in society at the place at which white Americans do. And so that's what this is all about. I've always believed him to be a white supremacist underneath it all.

And now we just know that he engaged in, you know, things like this. This is so huge. Just data leak is just so bombastic and it's not being covered the way it should be rolling. I'm really frustrated by that. This should make major headlines in the U.S. and it isn't. Well, and Avis, bottom line is this here. It's called deterrence for a reason. Absolutely. I mean, you know, how many times do we have to say on this program, and, you know, your viewers are wise enough to know this, and I'm hoping that this will just really, you know, extrapolate beyond as we sort of share your show. But here's the thing that we need to realize as Black people. If your vote didn't

matter, they would not go through all of these different, very expensive and targeted efforts that they invested in to stop you from voting. And it hasn't stopped. You know, this is just one of many ways in which they attempt to suppress the Black vote year after year after year, and they're doing it right now in front of our face. Some of them are doing it, I would believe, by engaging and recruiting Black faces to tell you not to vote, too. If they're telling you not to vote, you know, that should tell you something about what their intentions might be and who they might be beholden to. Folks. Also, Roland, real quick. I mean, our elections are not secure. Mitch McConnell made sure our elections are not secure. And we need people to know that, that since 2016, nothing's

changed. The federal government has not invested in making our elections secure. So people need to understand that the same kind of nefarious activity, it's still at play. It can still happen. It is up to us to protect our votes, to figure out how to show up and show up right and make sure our votes are counted. So, you know, I want to tell you, we all need a voting plan. My plan is I applied for absentee a long time ago. I'm walking my ballot to my Fairfax County Center, my municipal center, and I'm going to put it in the hands of government officials myself. All right, folks, one of the issues that we're going to see in this campaign is COVID-19. Right now, there are 7.15 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. 205,000 people have died from the virus. Now, the search for a vaccine continues, but a lot of Black folks

are skeptical about using it, even if one is found. The oldest professional society of Black physicians have decided to independently test the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. Several infectious disease and immunization experts make up the National Medical Association's task force. They will be reviewing the data in hopes to address some of the concerns around the vaccine for COVID-19. Joining me now is Dr. Leon Madugal, president of the National Medical Association. Dr. Madugo, glad to have you on the show. Good evening, Roland. I had the president of Dillard University on, and him and the president, he and the president of Xavier University

are participating in a COVID-19 trial. Why your doctors, what is the most important thing your doctors want people to know when it comes to them taking an independent look at these vaccines? Well, Roland, excellent question. So we, first of all, would like for the African-American community to participate in the clinical trials because once they are properly completed, we want to have enough data to be able to generalize

and speak to the safety and efficacy of the vaccine for the African-American community and the community at whole. And with our task force, with the National Medical Association, we really want to bring clarity to this situation, to these clinical trials, because as you've seen, we've had a cloud of political influence going back to hydroxychloroquine that was later found to cause adverse cardiac events to the convalescent plasma that received emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration on August 23rd, one day before the Republican National Convention. And then not too long afterward, a panel of scientists from the National Institutes of Health declared that there were insufficient data to advise for or against the use of convalescent plasma

and went on to say that convalescent plasma should not be considered a standard of care. And then furthermore, stated that prospective randomized clinical trials needed to be completed in order to make a determination. So we want to be that nonpartisan, independent lens to be able to provide some information for our community as the trusted messengers. And again, part of this is because Black people are more likely to trust African-American doctors when it comes to their health. Yes. And on top of that, this is important to our community. So when you look at the data, and it's really hard to find some of the relevant data. So African-Americans have an age-adjusted death rate 3.4 times that of European-Americans.

So this is real to us. So we would like to be able to endorse a safe and effective vaccine, not clouded by politics. providing information for our patients and the physicians in the National Medical Association and physicians across the United States. All right then, Dr. Leon Maduga, we certainly appreciate what the NMA is doing and the role that they're playing. And of course, y'all let us know what information you find. We'll certainly have you back on the show. Well, Roland, you do a wonderful job of educating the community, and I love your show and I watch your show. So keep up the wonderful work. I appreciate it, sir. Thank you so very much. All right, folks. When I first saw this video on social media, I actually thought it was a joke. I really did. I thought it was a joke. And then I was then I saw the link and I was like, OK, it's a parody.

And then a lot of people out there, they were saying, oh, this is white Democrats coming up with ways to target black people. And then I saw a tweet from the sister who said, no, I am the one who was behind this actual video. The videos of seven Georgia strippers. They released an important message about getting out the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Yeah. Do we get your attention? Good.

So you're really not going to vote? You know it's more than just the president on the ballot, right? Check it. A district attorney decides who to prosecute. Including whether or not to go after dirty cops. Do you know who elects the DA? We do. But you don't wanna vote.

Can't make it rain if you locked up on some bullshit. Want trades and coding taught in our schools? Then vote for the school boards that will prepare us for the job market. Wanna end cash bail? Well then vote for the sheriffs and county officials that feel the same way you do. But you talking about,

oh, they gonna pick who they gonna pick, shawty. Ferguson just elected their first black mayor. You know how that happened? It's clear black lives don't matter to some of our current elected officials. If they matter to you, then don't let other people decide who's gonna run your community. Get your booty to the poll. Get your booty to the poll. Get your booty to the pole. Get your booty to the pole. Get your vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote,

For information on how and where to vote, as well as resources to find out who's running where you live, go to getyourbootytothepole.com. Now, folks, Get Your Booty to the Pole is a project started by two Atlanta-based filmmakers, Paul Fox and Angela Gomes. They organized a GoFundMe in July called Angela and Paul Want Black People to Vote. They promised to those who donated to use the money to shoot and distribute a public service announcement featuring dancers from some of Atlanta's finest gentlemen clubs. And again, so I was online. I was seeing folks who were critical of it. And then I saw a tweet from Angela Gomes and realized she followed me on Twitter.

She joins us right now. Angela, welcome to Roller Martin Unfiltered. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. So folks have been saying this is shameful. It is despicable. How dare you? This is degrading to black people to put out a PSA featuring strippers. Your response? Black lives matter. That means all black lives matter. So the respectability, it's not only respectable lives matter. To me, all black lives matter. And like, I don't know, Atlanta has a culture that there's a lot of different parts of our culture. There's people that are into the whole black nerd thing. There's people that like the cigar bars. There's people that go to church Wednesdays and Sundays. And there's people that go to the strip clubs. And Atlanta is famous for Coca-Cola and strip clubs.

So I wanted to do something that was absolutely undeniably Atlanta that would get people's attention. And, you know, you said you thought it was a parody at first. In a way, it kind of is, because if I had wrote a song called Get Your Booty to the P-O-L-E and had the same graphics and just not talked about the presidential election, I don't think anybody would have blinked an eye. And on that particular note, I was, again, I was looking at some of the other responses and initially a lot of folks were saying that, oh, white Democrats came up with this in order to reach black people. And that you took offense to that.

Well, I understand there is a lot of pandering from both sides, so I understand where that idea may have come from. What bothered me is that after I corrected somebody who has a large following whose name I won't repeat, and I corrected them, they doubled down and said that both me and Paul were white Democrats and that we were back. This is all unsubstantiated stuff because this is literally an idea that came out of my head. And Paul and I decided to work together to make it happen. And it was, you know, we started a GoFundMe because in the beginning, people who couldn't, I had so many people wanted to help. They're like, well, can I at least donate money? So we started a GoFundMe to donate money, to get donations,

and fortunately made enough to pay for the whole spot. So originally, Paul and I were going to just pay for it ourselves. Again, I've seen women. I've seen even some men say, black people, this degrades African Americans. Yet I've seen others who say, wait a minute, we act as if strippers don't also have a vote as well. And why can't they do an ad? Have you been surprised by the reaction from African-Americans to this ad? I mean, I knew it wasn't going to be for everybody. This ad was never intended to

get all black people to vote or all black men to vote. Because not all black men like strip clubs or strippers or think that it's okay. There's a whole separate conversation we could have about respectability politics, I'm sure. But this ad was for the people in Atlanta that I know like strip clubs. I am just Angela. Me and Paul were just Angela and Paul, two friends who decided to do something together. And it was not any kind of backing. We didn't have sponsors.

We didn't have a big budget or any budget. We just had our credit cards, everything. Paul and I charged everything. And so it's not like there was this big, I don't have this budget to push a message that I could get out to get to everybody. So I had to be as specific as possible. And I had to do something I knew it had to be shareable. It had to be informative. It had to be something people would want to share. And it had to be quintessentially, unapologetically ACL. That's what I wanted. And I think that's what I got. And I'm very proud of it.

Avis Jones DeWeaver, I saw you and Jason Johnson going back and forth on this. That's actually one of the places where I first saw it. You were not you did not immense words. Oh, your thoughts about this ad. Yeah. So, you know, I was here's the thing. I obviously understand the argument around respectability politics. I understand the argument about Atlanta culture.

What we were going back and forth about was the fact that speaking broader than ATL, I personally cannot imagine an ad like that with women who weren't black. And I think there is a certain way in which Black women are depicted in this culture in a more broadly speaking that other women are not subjected to. There is a level in which we have become numb to seeing Black women's body

and Googling Black women's bodies. And we wouldn't, I can't imagine a commercial like that with all white women, for example. And as a black woman who navigates the world as a black woman, and you know, there are implications of that on black women who don't choose to strip. Now, if you choose to strip, that is your right. I am not castigating you. You're grown. You can do whatever you want to do. But I think it is not honest if we were to argue that this is something that all women, um, would have the same sort of, um, experience.

We-we just would not see this. I don't see us seeing something like this in this culture, uh, in a way that would objectify other women to the same degree that we continuously see black women objectified, not just with this, but across hip hop, across many other areas of American culture. We seem to be so familiar with exposing Black women's bodies. I do appreciate the fact that at least this has a good message. You're trying to get women to vote and men to vote and not just exposing Black women's bodies to line other people's pockets, which is usually what it's done for. But, you know, that was my challenge with it. I just felt like I could not imagine this type of thing being exposed to the world with other women. Angela? I just couldn't see it.

I totally see her point of view. I mean, GoDaddy used to do things, ads that had sexy women, and people had a problem with that. I understand the problem with the objectification of women, which is why, for my spot, I didn't do, like, a bunch of naked dancers or half-naked dancers and voiceover. I gave them a voice. For me personally, I, you know, I don't—I believe sex work is work. And if you want to be an exotic dancer, then that's a job. And that's using your body the same as if you're a construction worker or a coal miner. And it's about people getting over the fact that they consider that something that's disrespectful in the first place. We have been, as people, as Black people, as all people, have been shaking their butts since before Jesus Christ. So like,

we've been, that's something that people do. People dance. And to somehow say that certain kinds of dance are acceptable and respectable and certain kinds of dances aren't, to me, I personally see it as part of the Atlanta culture. And to pretend like it doesn't exist would be lying about my culture. Rena Shaw, the point that Angela made about sex workers, I've seen a number of folks who are on OnlyFans.com clap back at folks who say, you know, how dare you criticize folks there? It's it's it's it's actual. It's a job. You also see elected officials who are also putting protections in place for sex workers. And so is this, you know, take into account what Avis had to say. Your thoughts, again, about how we as a broader society perceive this type of PSA compared to other PSAs done by entertainers or people who are in other

professions. Your thoughts. Well, you know, look, I completely understand the intention behind it. And I'm all about having a little fun. It feels like a really dark time in politics. And I've been working in politics for a long time. And as a all about having a little fun. It feels like a really dark time in politics. And I've been working in politics for a long time. And as a conservative, a lifelong one where, you know, look, I mean, I wore certain things when I was growing up and I was sent right back upstairs. But I was also in the mindset when I got to college that this is my body. I can do what I want with it. And my independently formed thoughts about all of it were really independent of my folks at that point. And I just said, I do not believe that using my body for sex work is

work. And that's just where I differ on this entire thing. So I really hear Avis when she says that black women's bodies being objectified the way they are. It's like we as a society, I being a brown woman, not a black woman. And, you know, on the one hand, surprise, mortified to see the, you know, the backside of a black woman just so plainly exposed in a thong. Whereas I know we wouldn't see a white woman's backside like that or an Asian woman. It's just not typical. And I feel that there's an element that in doing, in seeing these visuals, it sets other black women who choose not to do this as work. It sets them behind professionally because that trickles into how black women are also talked

about. They're, they're talking about like these sassy beings. Oh, you're sassy because you put your body out there. You put your voice out there. And I feel like that's really difficult. So I get it. This was good fun. The message is positive. Everybody should vote. If it changes some hearts and minds about voting, look, I'm all for it. I just worry about this for younger women thinking it's okay to use our bodies to send messages like this. When there are other ways we can do it, we can use our hands, what we can write, we can talk, we can, we can use a lot of different things. But I'm all mixed up about it.

And I agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I totally understand what you're saying. But to me, if that's what they choose to do, then that's what they choose to do. It's work. And I understand from you, you're seeing it as a shameful thing. So you're losing the message. The message is politicians are not paying attention to the needs of black people and specifically black men. And if we can get more of our voting power to say, look, you have to pay attention, politicians will be afraid for their jobs and they'll have to pay attention. Because black lives matter, not just black respectable lives.

Black lives matter. And when you start parsing it out and going, oh, we don't want to see this part of who we are. When Magic City is like that, people think Coca-Cola and Magic City when they think about Atlanta. So for me to pretend that that doesn't exist is a lie. And it's not saying if it's good or bad or otherwise. If you don't like it, then fine. The ad's not for you. Then don't watch it.

The ad wasn't for you. The ad was for the brothers that liked it. Well, here's the thing. In my wildest dreams, I never thought this was going to leave him. I thought this was going to be something people passed around. I'm in my 40s. I'm not about viral videos. On my personal Instagram, it's not even on my personal Instagram because I couldn't figure out how to repost the video.

I am not a social media person. I'm trying to figure all this stuff out. I thought this was going to be something that was going to be big in Atlanta because we have, you know, ATL, we have a bunch of little inside jokes that might get out to some other cities, but you know, some traffic population. And that was it. I never in a million years thought I was going to do this thing. I'll be honest. If I knew, if I knew that in the beginning, I, I would probably.

You broke up there. You said, if I knew this in the beginning, hold on one second, your video broke up. You said, if I knew this in the beginning. Hold on one second. Your video broke up. You said, if I knew this in the beginning. I would still do it because people are talking about cash bail. People are talking about people are talking about the respectability politics, which is a whole nother conversation. But people are talking about cash bail and talking about, you know, criminal justice reform and talking about trade in school. These are things people are talking about because our spot brought it up. What other national voter, any kind of elected official is talking about those things and they're not. And these are issues that plague that can help black

people, that can help our community. So if I got your attention. All right. Angela Gomes, we certainly appreciate you joining us on Roller Mart Unfiltered. Thanks a lot. All right. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. All right, folks. Got to go to break. We come back. Black women taking the day off tomorrow in honor of Breonna Taylor. We'll explain.

Also, we will talk next as well with Bishop Michael Curry. His new book is out. Of course, y'all, many people saw him when he married Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. He, of course, also has been a leader in the Episcopalian Church. We will chat with him on Roland Martin Unfiltered next as well. Go to break. Back in a moment. You want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered? Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club.

Every dollar that you give to us supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real as Roland Martin Unfiltered support the Roland Martin Unfiltered daily digital show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year. You

can make this possible. RolandMartinUnfiltered.com You have to develop a conscience in which you can make this possible. Roland Martin on filtered.com. You have to develop a conscience in which you know that voting and participating is a part of the price you pay for the gift of life that you have received from the universe.

That's part of the gift. All right, folks, tomorrow, all black women are encouraged to participate in a general strike for Breonna Taylor. It's called a day without black women. No work, no school and no dollars spent. This is the graphic. I got dropped a little third there so we can see the full graphic, please. Thank you very much. Breonna Taylor's life mattered and she was essential. Black women are essential as well. That's what they say. This is something that was put together by a number of people, but Caris Levile and Nia Adams. They're activists with Justice League New York City. They'll be joining us in a moment. Even though Mustafa, here we are, Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky Attorney General,

has made his decision, we also now see the story saying that the ballistic reports did not match when he said the gunfire by Breonna Taylor's boyfriend struck one of the police officers. The ballistic report does not show that. Even though one officer, charters will file against him, this story is not over. Activists, like in what they're doing here, they want to keep the pressure going in Louisville. Yeah, you know, the narrative hasn't been completely written, as you said. So we just got to, you know, let folks know that no one is going to forget, Breonna, that we are going to, you know, let folks know that no one is going to forget Brianna, that we are going to continue to stay engaged in the fight.

It's such a blessing to see all of the sisters who, you know, are going to do everything. And hopefully a whole bunch of brothers and others will also join in to really make sure that folks understand there's going to be accountability in this process. Yes, there may have been this one, you know, moment where we did not get what we knew we deserved in honoring her life. But folks are going to keep up the pressure and hopefully folks will also keep up the pressure after we vote and we have a new administration who then will have a Department of Justice who can do the right thing and circle back around. This is something here, again, flexing, utilizing the power, Avis, to show folks what matters. We've seen similar efforts as well. Your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, it is it's an important to make a statement to show the various ways in which the labor of black women impacts all our lives. And it's a way to show that our lives truly do matter. Breonna Taylor's life matter. And we're not going to forget the injustice that has occurred in Kentucky. And this, I'm sure, will just be one of many actions that will take place until we get some manner of justice in that case. It is absolutely egregious with the new information that you mentioned just came out. And I believe that if we were to dig further, if the attorney general were to release the transcripts of what actually happened when he went before the grand jury, we will see

that he never positioned this as a way to really fight on behalf of the victim in this case, which actually was Breonna Taylor. It seems like to me what who he was fighting for was to protect the policeman. And so we're not going to forget that. And we won't let her death be in vain. We will continue to fight for justice for her and her family. This is, again, the kind of protest important. It continues to shine light on the case and making sure it stays in the media's attention and top of mind for folks, Rena. This is really big, Roland, because, yeah, the Justice for Breonna Brigade needs to keep pounding the drum. I mean, this is any of us that care about that, care about her life and those of countless other Black women that were taken so unjustly, so unfairly.

I mean, we just need to continue. This is a new chapter of that. But why this protest is more poignant than I think others is because of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us about how black women are in our U.S. workforce at a higher rate than women altogether. And so we know from 2018 that black women made up 53% of the black labor force in 2018. That's what we know. And that's really big. Between 1972 and 2000, this was a really striking statistic.

I learned that the share of black women in the black labor force rose from 45% to 53%. These are big numbers. These are big numbers. Black women matter because they're a part of this country's economy. They're a labor force. And when we feel the absence, people know you don't know what you got until it's gone. And when they speak out, when they'll unify their voices, as I've been hearing my black sisters do for four months and years on end.

I just think these kinds of things, the more provocative the protests like this one, the closer we are to getting people to really understand and to seep into the consciousness of our nation, how much black women matter. Let's go to the line, Nia Adams. She's one of the activists with Justice League New York involved in this. Nia, glad to have you on Roll About Unfiltered. Absolutely. Hello. How are you? First of all, how are people engaged in this? How are they signing up? How are you sort of coordinating this to sort of get a sense of who's participating? So, I mean, we collectively started organizing the black women within Justice League and putting out on social media. So really, we can't determine how many people may or may not show up. Gotcha. And how and so in what ways do you want sisters to be engaged in this day of activism tomorrow?

I want tomorrow to be a space where black women in particular can be in community with one another, because many of us are mourning. We're collectively mourning. We're constantly mourning. And I feel like we need a space to unpack that. We also need a space to celebrate our blackness. And we need a space where we stand up, particularly for black women who are often erased in a variety of justice-oriented issues? There's still a lot of people who are still angry and upset by this particular case. And then, of course, with the ballistics report that also came out as well. How else do you want

to, how else do you plan on keeping the attention focused on this so the case does not fade out of the public limelight? So it is our aim and focus to keep light on Breonna Taylor's case in particular, because the message coming out of Louisville is a precedent for the rest of the nation that it is OK to disregard black women. And that's unacceptable. We are not going to have that. Many of us are angry. We're hurt. But we are in solidarity with one another and we will move forward regardless. I want to bring on Karis LaValle, who's on right now.

Karis, how you doing? Hi, Roland. How are you? Doing great. Again, just want to get your thoughts as well about this day of activism for tomorrow. Yeah. You know, the world, not just here in the United States, but the world would not be able to move without Black women. And so tomorrow is a day for Breonna. It is a day for Black women. And we also understand

that because Black women are so essential, there are many that will not be able to either leave their jobs and actually strike. Black women tend to be the head of households and they can't. And so that's why we have other ways that you can stand in solidarity if you can't actually strike. And it's just a message to the country that you need to start respecting Black women. You know, we come out, I'm talking about from electoral politics, I'm talking about from the community, I'm talking about in your family, all over the place. Black women show up

strong all the time, and it's time that this country starts respecting us. I want to ask the both of you about something. This is breaking news here. Go to my iPad, please. Columns with the Washington Post is just reporting this. I put this out.

A member of the Breonna Taylor grand jury just filed a remarkable motion asking a judge to release the entire proceedings of the grand jury. The motion strongly suggests that Attorney General Cameron's public comments contradict what was presented to the grand jury. The next tweet, it essentially accuses Cameron of hiding behind grand jury secrecy requirements while misleading the public about evidence the grand jury actually saw. It asked the court to release the record in the interest of justice, transparency and accountability. This is a scanned copy, folks, of this. I've never actually seen this before, where this member of the grand jury wants information released.

What are your thoughts about that? I think it's great. You know, he really did, the attorney general, he sat up there and great you know he really did the Attorney General he stood up there and you know the media asked that question right away because folks wanted to know there seemed to be inconsistencies

and to have a member on the grand jury say yeah please release it we want to have full transparency it's leading me to believe what else is A.G. Cameron hiding behind, you know, to have somebody on the grand jury to say it. And we do need full transparency. We need full transparency because from what I took from his statement is the grand jury came to a decision and the law is the law, which also made me upset

because it's basically, are you saying that the law in Kentucky says that you can murder? You can murder people in their home. So we do need full transparency. I want to know what was presented. Did he do his job properly? I'd love to see those. I'd love to see the transcripts. This is what others would. Nia, this is what they said in here. Go back to my iPad. The attorney general publicly made many statements that referenced what the grand jury heard and decisions that were made based on what certain witnesses said.

He further laid those decisions at the feet of the grand jury while failing to answer specific questions regarding the charges presented. There's a compelling public interest for these proceedings to be released of a magnitude the city and Commonwealth have never seen before that could could not be confined weaving its way across the country. The citizens of this commonwealth have demonstrated their lack of faith in the process and proceedings in this matter and the justice system itself. Nia. So I'm piggybacking off of what Karis said in which in order for us to have justice, we need transparency. And it's been clear by A.G. Cameron's actions throughout this entire case from March, his lack of urgency, that he

has no interest in the protection of Black women or injustice in this case. And so I fully support what the community is calling for, which is transparency. Then this is, first of all, for your day of action tomorrow, where can people get more information? So folks can follow Justice League, the Gather for Justice on Instagram, Facebook. You can go to gatheringforjustice.org. You can follow NY Justice League on all platforms. That's where you can find what you can do if you cannot strike, the colors that we're wearing in solidarity, where we're meeting up, a list of our partners. are partners from across the country, actually, not just here in New York State and in New York City. So you can go to NY Justice League on all platforms, gatheringforjustice.org, find out how you can participate in tomorrow's action. All right, then. Karis and Nia, I certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thank you so much, Roland. Thank you very much. Reena Shah, this is a shocking statement that's been dropped by a grand juror. I can't recall the last time seeing a grand juror seek a motion for their transcripts, recordings, and reports to be released to the public. This is absolutely unreal. I think a lot of us who follow this so closely know that this very thing had every chance of not happening. But what I know is that the political will is changing because the pressure has been so great from the public. And that's how these things, you know, change happens not overnight, right? We have to have small steps like this

take place. But I still wouldn't be too sure that literally we have political officials sitting in Kentucky right now devising schemes of how to end this. And this is really big. So, you know, look, anybody who has felt that it's been such a long road for Breonna Taylor know that the fight is still alive. We have to keep raising our voices for her. We have to keep saying her name. We have to pressure public officials to do the right thing so that the political will changes. This is a perfect example of that role. And I could not, I just could not be more surprised, but feeling really, really encouraged about the future. I just, I really have no more words. I'm so in shock.

This is a huge, huge development here, Mustafa. Yeah, everyone knew something wasn't quite right. And now you have the opportunity to see the additional information that so many people were curious about. And we also know that there was some window dressing that was done when they roll out certain folks to give us the message that they know is going to be so impactful. So I'm looking forward to diving into what's going to be shared in this transcript. Public interest spreads across the entire Commonwealth. Back to my iPad. When the highest law enforcement official fails to answer questions and instead refers to the grand jury making the decisions, the interest of the individual grand jurors is parallel to the public,

but also manifests as fear of persecution, condemnation, retribution and torment. Unfortunately, they do not get to hide behind any entity, person or office. Wow. I mean, basically, they're blasting cameras saying, oh, you're making public statements saying, oh, the grand jury, the grand jury. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's no, no, no. We that's not what happened. But by law, they can't say what happened because grand jury testimony is secret. Let me just say, I have never seen anything like this. where a grand juror is, in essence, suing in order to release the proceedings so that they can prove to the public the inconsistencies with what, in this case, the attorney general or the prosecutor,

the case that they laid out behind closed doors. This, as far as I know, at least in my lifetime, this is unprecedented. I've never seen anything like that. Secondly, it shows me, once again, how important it is to be a registered voter. Because if you're not a registered voter, you can't sit on any juries, including a grand jury. And so what this shows us is there was someone on that jury who sat there and went through the proceedings and then saw the inconsistencies, in other words, the lies that this attorney general showed the public and said, hold up, wait a minute, that's not right. Let's do something about this. We need to make this right. That doesn't happen

unless you are empowered to be one of those people in that position. The reality is, lastly, really quickly, is that attorney grand juries can only make decisions based upon the specific evidence and the specific tilt of the argument that the prosecutor brings before it. And so if they were given information in a very sort of tilted and very prejudiced way, it's not surprising to me that they came out with the outcomes that they did. What this person is doing is calling and questions the motivations and the veracity of this attorney general,

which to me definitely needs to be called out because we know that this was a police department that lied on the police report, claiming that there was no one injured in terms of that raid, that also tried to get Breonna's ex-boyfriend to lie about her in death by trying to bribe him with being able to agree to let him get out of prison and not serve 10 years if we were to sign a plea deal saying

that Breonna was involved with his criminal activity in which he refused to do. They have been lying throughout this case. And I am shocked, but I am certainly heartened to see one of those grand jury members stand up for Breonna, call out this attorney general and say, you are lying. You need to be honest with the public. Release those transcripts now. All right, then. Avis, Mustafa, and Reena, I certainly appreciate all of you being on today's show. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks, got to go to a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk with Bishop Curry about his new book right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered, youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here

that keeps it black and keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there? Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And don't forget to turn on your notifications, so when we go live, you'll know it.

Martin! Michael Hancock, Mayor of the City and County of Denver. And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it. Michael Hancock, mayor of the city and county of Denver. You've got just one vote. Use it. All right, folks, there are lots of people who are just totally freaked out by what has transpired in this nation the last four years. They are on edge when it comes to this election. You have progressives seeing the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and now seeing a far right wing person replace her on the Supreme Court. Folks are saying what's going to happen in November? Will Biden beat Trump?

Will we see the exact same thing happen all across this country? Then, of course, you have folks who are white conservative evangelicals who are driving their agenda in terms of being anti-LGBT, anti-abortion as well. Then you've got folks like Repairs of the Breach leading the Poor People's Campaign. This moment that we're living in, do we actually have love going on? My next guest, the title of his book is called Love is the Way, Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. Guys, you should have the book cover up. Please show it, please. Again, the book is called Love is the Way. Come on. Thank you very much. Love is the Way, Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times, Bishop Michael Curry, presiding bishop

of the Episcopal church, the book written with Sarah Grace Bishop, glad to have you in Roland Martin unfiltered. It's good to be with you. It's good to be with you, brother. Um, let's, let's get right to it. First and foremost, you say love is the way holding on to hope in troubling times. Look, there are a lot of people, Bishop, uh, who would matter. In fact, if, if, if I played a clip from actress Erica Alexander when I interviewed her, she said, F. Hope, fight. She said, we in a fighting position. You say folks got to hold on to hope. Explain that. Well, let me unpack it a little bit, because one of the things that I'm very aware of, and I wrote this book in part a year and a half ago, almost, I started writing. and has the capacity to enable us to work for justice, to work for equity, work for equality,

to work for the kind of changes that we need in the world in ways that are productive and not counterproductive to us. As a friend of mine often says, we must never become instruments of our own oppression by becoming that which we seek to change. And so I would suggest that, as Booker T. Washington said a long time ago, never let any man drag you so low as to hate him. That the love that I'm talking about is a commitment to the good, the well-being, and the welfare of others as well as the self. That is what the Bible calls agape in the Greek language of the New Testament, what Jesus of Nazareth was talking about. It's a way of seeking change and transforming change that's both inner and outer,

but it's a way of doing it in a way that you stay sane and don't become what you're trying to change. Bishop, there are folks, there's no way in the world they can love Donald Trump supporters. There's no way in the world they could stand next to folks who vote for this man. There are arguments and debates that have taken place at dining room tables. I look at Ambassador Susan Rice, her son is a huge MAGA supporter. Yet she was a prominent official in Obama's cabinet. And so what do you say to folks who say, look, I can't get along with anybody on the left. I can't get along with anybody on the right.

Well, that's the reality. Once you eliminate those, you've eliminated a lot of folk right there. Let me suggest something. A place to begin is to understand what love is. Now, I'm not talking about romantic love. I'm not talking about a feeling. I'm not talking about an emotion. I'm talking about a commitment, a commitment to seek the good, the welfare, and the well-being of others as well as yourself. And that is a commitment that can help you begin to learn to love those who you find it very difficult to love. But you start with the commitment,

the commitment to seek the kind of change. This ought to be a country where every child has an opportunity for education. This ought to be a country where every man, woman, and child, no matter who they are, they are equal in the eyes of God. The Bible says everybody's created in the image of God, and nobody has any more of that image than anybody else. We have been created equal by God, and if we are equal in the eyes of God, then we must be equal in the eyes of the law and equal in our relationships with each other. I'm talking about a kind of love that is committed to creating a world and a context,

relationships in which all of us are treated with the dignity that every child of God ought to have. Start there and then work toward individuals. You see what I'm saying? Sometimes it is hard to start with individuals. Some folk are hard to love. Now, I'm going to be clear. You don't need to be kidding about this. Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself.

He didn't say like them. Love and like are not the same thing. You. Love and liking are not the same thing. You said love and liking are not the same thing? No, no, no, no. Liking is a reaction. Loving is a decision. It's a commitment. You see what I'm saying? To seek the good that you can seek.

To do the best you can. And nobody's going to be perfect. Even the Apostle Paul in the New Testament said not that I have attained the goal, but I press on toward the mark of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So we must press on toward the goal, knowing that we may not be there right now. But if you don't strive, you will never attain. But if you strive, you'll be moving in the right direction. There's a chapter here called When the Spirit Reworks You. And it's interesting because last night I was watching part one of the Showtime series,

The Comey Rule. And his wife was pleading with him not to publicly reveal that second investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. And I tweeted out, I said, man, y'all been learning how to listen to your wife because they know best. I thought about a conversation that I had with Ambassador Andrew Young, and he said he said the credit for the civil rights movement really goes to the wise because they're the ones who made the men do what they do. He told the story when they were watching. They were in New York. They had just gotten their apartment and some new drapes and they were watching. They were in New York. They had just gotten their apartment and some new drapes. And they were watching the civil rights, what was unfolding in the South. And his wife said, it's time to go back. And he was like, what are you talking about? I got a new job. I got this place. She said, it's time to go back.

Your wife told you the same thing when you didn't think you would get elected as a bishop in North Carolina. She had to sit you down. She did. In fact, when the letter came, I had thrown it out figuring, well, you know, that's never going to happen. You know, here I am. I'm clearly an African-American man. And I didn't expect that the Episcopal Diocese,

the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, was going to elect a Black man whose grandmother was a sharecropper in North Carolina was going to elect a black man whose grandmother was a sharecropper in East Carolina and ancestors before her were slaves who worked the fields in North Carolina. I didn't see that happening in the year 1999 and 2000. And so I had put it in the trash can. My assistant, Ms. Lenora Savage, who was my secretary,

I was serving in St. James Church right there in the middle of Baltimore in the Harlem Park, Lafayette Square neighborhood. Ms. Savage knew that I had received the letter. She took it out, put it in my little briefcase. When I got home, my wife said, yo, you got any mail today? And I said, no, nothing of significance.

She said, you get anything from North Carolina? See, my wife is from North Carolina. Girlfriend wanted to go home. And she finally made me take it out. She said, you're not going to lose anything by trying, and you never know. So I applied. Next thing I knew, I got elected bishop of North Carolina. When we talk about—

Listen to your wife. Yeah, listen to your wife. When we talk about struggling with internal issues, you talked about that in your book, when how you had to confront that struggle view about homosexuality. And there are those who have a hard and fast rule. There are others who say, how dare can a person be a member of the cloth and accept that. I've actually had some preachers say there's a difference between me accepting it and me condoning it. They say, I've had some who say sin is sin, but it does not mean that I cannot love someone, work with someone, pray with someone, and that as well. And so talk about how you and how others have to confront the internal struggle with their

particular view of religion and what it says about homosexuality, what it says about living with somebody and you're not married, what it says about premarital sex, what it says about pornography, any number of things. How do you confront that internal battle? I tell you, and it's an internal battle. One of the things that helped me was asking myself the question, what are LGBTQ folk asking of the rest of us or what are they asking of the rest of us, or what are they asking of the church? And in the Episcopal church, gay and lesbian people were asking to be allowed to be married, to make a lifelong commitment to each other. Now, I had never thought of that before it came up, but I had to ask myself the

question, did the Bible prohibit that? And when I went back and looked carefully at Scripture, I discovered something. I discovered that the kind of same-sex behavior that Moses in Leviticus talks about, or that even Paul talks about in Romans and in the Timothy, in the pastoral epistles, that they weren't talking about what we're talking about. They were talking about wanton and promiscuous sexual behavior that was dehumanizing, that was not built in any relationship, that had nothing to do with love, affection, care, and commitment for anyone. They never were asked about the possibility of same-sex marriage where two people are making a lifelong commitment to each other. I had to confront the fact that I knew gay and lesbian people

who were in partner, at that time, in partnered relationships, who had been in partnered relationships for 30 years, and they had been faithful to each other. And something, there was a discontinuity for me. I had to say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Something else is going on here. And something, there was a discontinuity for me. I had to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, something else is going on here. And I finally realized that the Bible wasn't talking about that. That question never came up in the first century. It was talking about promiscuous misuse of other

people, using other people just for the sake of pleasure, not about relationships that really matter and nurture people as children of God. That was something that I came up, that I began to realize. Then I started to realize something else. I started to ask myself, what was the ultimate law of God? And I went back to the scriptures, went back to Matthew chapter 22, where Jesus has this conversation with the lawyer. And this lawyer comes up to him and says, Jesus, what is the greatest law in the entire legal edifice of Moses? And Jesus reaches back to Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

Deuteronomy 6, Leviticus 19. And he reaches back and he says, quotes the Shema, which is found in Deuteronomy. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then Jesus says, this is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it, just like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Then Jesus added these words, on these two, love of God and

love of neighbor as yourself, hang all the law and the prophets. What Jesus was saying when he said that, this law of love for God and for neighbor, as you love yourself, that is the supreme law of God. If you want to know the will of God, it's going to look like love. I like to say it's like Duke Ellington used to say, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. If it's not about love, it is not about God. It must be about love, first of all. And if that is the case, then maybe, maybe the love of God is broader than the measure of our minds. Maybe the love of God has the capacity to embrace us all where true love is found. There's no medieval poem that said where true love is found, God himself is there. And so I started on it. All of these things were part of a journey. People that I met,

going back and looking at scripture carefully, looking at it deeply, and then going back, Roland, going back to how I was raised. I was raised by a father who told me that he labored in civil rights in Buffalo, New York, because he was bound and determined that every child in this country, that every person, that no one in this country would be treated as a second-class citizen. And I was raised to believe that equality is a divine decree, that that is a divine decree. It is not a matter of what Congress or parliament or any human government does. It's a divine decree that in the Acts of the Apostles,

it says the Lord God made of one blood all the peoples of the earth for to dwell upon the face of the earth. That principle of equality, human rights and civil rights, that is a God-given reality for me. And it finally occurred to me, if that's true for Michael Curry as a black man, that's got to be true for other people as well. It's what folk call intersectionality. That we are, Dr. King said,

we are tied up in networks of mutuality, that we are interrelated and interconnected. And if that is the case, then my equality is tied to your equality and is tied to other folks' equality, to that of gay and lesbian folk, to that of Latino, Latinx folk, to that of the indigenous folk of the land,

to that of women, that either we all get free or none of us are free. And so I finally had to say, Michael Curry, you need to shift your position slightly. And I found myself evolving. And I really do believe that this way of love, unselfish, sacrificial, that truly seeks the good and the welfare and the well-being of others, that this attitude of life, this way of being has the capacity to lead us, as the old slave said, to discover that balm in Gilead that can heal the sin-sick soul. You talk in the book several times about Dr. King. And I think for too many people,

they've actually spent the only time they looking at two speeches or hearing two speeches. That is the, I have a dream speech and they're really only the bottom part. And then the last two minutes of his mountaintop speech, I actually have read his books, have actually spent time looking over and listening to many of his other speeches.

And the reality is he talked in a significant way about love in the midst of the black freedom movement, in the midst of fighting Jim Crow. He talked about love. And there were a lot of people who would like, OK, look, Doc, I'm not understanding you talking about loving these white folks who are hating us. But he maintained, even in the midst of Stokely Carmichael and Black Power and others, his belief that love was the only way to overcome the level of hatred that was targeting black folks. Yes, he was right. And I know it's not easy. Please. I know it's not easy, but he was right because the truth is love. The attitude of love is ubiquitous, which is to say it it spreads around and the attitude of hostility can be ubiquitous as well. It can spread around that hatred, animosity, and even anger.

The Bible says, do not let the sun set on your wrath. It understands that you're going to be angry. There's nothing wrong with that. We get that. That's a feeling. That's an emotion. And there's a time and a place for righteous anger. But the Bible says, warns us, do not let the sun set down on your wrath.

Do not let your wrath become your way of life. Because when it does, when it does, it will consume you and it will eat you up. And what will happen is we become instruments of our own oppression. I mean, we've all known folk who are angry. And they're angry. They're not able to just contain that anger just for some. That anger spills out in a whole host of relationships. Now, I know, I've been around, I've been a pastor a long time.

I know nobody's angry for no reason. There's a story behind that anger. It may be a story of hurt and pain from their past, but there's a story there. But that anger, It may be a story of hurt and pain from their past, but there's a story there. But that anger, it is cancerous. The anger and hatred will consume you, and it may not even touch the other person you're angry about or you don't like or whatever it happens to be. No, this way of love, and I like to say that when Jesus said, love the Lord your God, love your neighbor, and love yourself, he was talking about a trinity of love. And I like to say that when Jesus said, love the Lord your God, love your neighbor and love yourself, he was talking about a trinity of love that included healthy love of self.

For me to love my naps, for me to love my beautiful skin color, for me to love my lips and my nose. I remember growing up when we as a people that internalized our oppression and hated ourselves. When we wouldn't even talk about our slave ancestors. When we were ashamed of the fact that our ancestors were slaves. When we were ashamed of the hair that God gave us. I remember when I was growing up,

you may not, you're too young. You're a youngster. But I remember when I was growing up, there was this product called Concoline. And it was on the, you may not, you're too young. You're a youngster, but I remember when I was growing up, there was this product called Concoline, and it was on the, you remember Concoline? And there was a jingle that said, if your hair is good and nappy, Concoline can make

it happy. I mean, we went through all these gyrations, manifestations of self-hate. How can you hate that which God has made in God's image and likeness? We have been made in the image and likeness of God, but it's not just us. It's others. I mean, God has made people in his image, and he has made them the rainbow people of God, as Desmond Tutu liked to

say. He has made and created us. I'm saying that this way of love is an attitude that consumes and can guide one's whole life, not to a kind of passivity that accepts things are, but for a righteous path that seeks justice for real, that seeks to do what is right for real, that stands up and speaks up when it's most difficult and whether it is popular or safe to do or not. That's the kind of love that can change the world. That's what Dr. King was really getting at. He understood it's not easy. He struggled early. When was it?

I think it was in the Montgomery bus boycott time when he was receiving firebomb threats at home, picking up the phone, and folk were just saying awful, god awful things. And he gave a speech. Right. When I bought a gun and realized that that was that was not the thing. But also he gave the speech, he gave the speech where he talked about when he had to have his real his real come to Jesus moment, where he had up until that point, it was one of those late night phone calls. He sat at his kitchen table and he talked about, well, he didn't use this phrasing, but really he

had a theoretical understanding of faith up until that point. He said, but it was at that moment that he had prayed a prayer that he had never prayed to God before that really confronted him. You talked about in the book as well, when you had to confront a moment in your life where you had, when you were facing or coming up against the abyss. And it was funny how you then related to John Coltrane's Love Supreme. I'll say that anytime I do an interview with Cornel West, there is no way he can get through any interview and not bring up John Coltrane in Love Supreme at all. In any interview at any time, he works that in.

And you talk about, again, how you had to face that thing yourself when you were in college. Yes, I had to make a decision. Was I going to party on down the road for the rest of my life, or was I going to live for something that really mattered? And I thank God Almighty that I think I made the right decision. There's nothing wrong with partying. I'm not putting that down. That's all right. That's fine. But partying in life. Like the old preachers used to say, I mean, you know that old preacher's

sermon where they used to talk about, you know, you go to the cemetery and you see the gravestones and you see, you know, the name on the gravestone and it says rest in peace and it has the date and date and year that the person was born. And then there's a little dash and then there's the date and year that the person died. And it said you didn't have anything to do with when you were born and probably didn't have anything to do with when you died, but you have everything to do with that dash. The question in his life is what did you do with when you died, but you have everything to do with that dash. The question in his life is, what did you do with your dash? And that was a moment when I was, because this is in the 1970s, when the drug world was all over the campuses. I mean, it was all over

the campus. I know Bill Clinton said he did not inhale. There's no way in the world you could have not inhaled. And yet you finally have to make a decision, how am I going to live my life? What am I going to do with that dash in my life? And when all is said and done, can I say if I have helped somebody along the way, my living has not been in vain. And that's what really matters. That's what love forces us to ask.

Dr. Dean agonized with this, because he did struggle with whether or not nonviolence, and John Lewis taught us this, whether or not nonviolence was a tactic to be used to gain our rights, or was it a way of life that transforms our lives and that of society and can lead us from the way we are to the way God has intended, to the beloved community that God intends when we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, not just in heaven, on earth as it is in heaven.

Just a couple more questions. And one of those you talked, again, you talked about Dr. King there. You make it clear he was fallible. He was someone who was a significant figure, but he had moral failings. people don't realize is that he often uh again if they go beyond what they typically read uh typically heard he often talked about that uh to his close associates he often said that in his sermons that he felt he wasn't uh he was not being the man he should have been j edgar hoover and the fbi were wiretapping him and they were putting out information about the affairs that he had, things along those lines. And there are people out there

who, and David Garrow put together a report of those audio recordings of Dr. King. They're going to be released in about eight years or so. And when those audio recordings come out, people are going to hear things on those tapes that they will be shocked by. First, I argue, I can't trust anything the FBI did with COINTELPRO. That's just first. The idea of how we look at figures, how we look at politicians, how we look at ministers, how we look at how we look at entertainers and others who we place them on this pedestal. And then all of a sudden, when they have a moral failing, we're shocked and people are casting stones. And how dare they? As if they, they too are not moral and fallible. What a... Yeah, yeah. You are... You know, I mean, the reality is, you know, where St. Paul says in Romans,

all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God. And it's true. Um, the older I get, the more I know of my own fallibility, my own sinfulness. Another word for sin is selfishness, self-centeredness, where I am the center of the universe. Everybody else is on the periphery. And that means it's all about me. It's all about my pleasure, about what I want.

And when that attitude takes over, then you're going to find yourself getting in trouble. We are all human. We are all fallible. And we are all sinful. And our leaders, we all have different sins. Your sins may not be the same as mine. But I guarantee you, we all got sin. I've been a pastor for too long.

I don't know too much of folks' business. I know everybody's a sinner, from the most righteous to the most obviously sinner. Somebody used to say, there's a little bit of bad in the best of us, a little bit of good in the worst of us. And it's true. And it's true of our leaders. We must not put, we must put no one. Let me tell you something. The only

person I know of and I believe was without sin is Jesus. Ain't nobody else. That's it. That's it. The only virgin I know had a baby is Mary. That's it. Nobody else. The reality is we are all human and fallible. And even if you read the Bible, you see these people are human and fallible. Read the stories of Moses and folk in the Hebrew scriptures. And Peter and Paul got to fussing and arguing and fighting.

And Peter got to shucking and jiving. At one point, he said one thing in Acts 15 and told Paul and all this, yeah, I'm going to stand. We're going to include the Gentiles. Next thing you know, if you look in Galatians chapter 1 and 2, which happens sometimes later, you find Peter had to call, Paul had to call Peter on the mat because Peter was backsliding, saying, well, when he got around other folks, saying, well, we don't have to include all the Gentiles. I mean, the truth is human beings are hypocrites. We're sinful.

We're selfish at our worst, but at our best, like St. Paul said, not that I have attained, but I press on toward the mark. One of the things I've learned in life, I'm learning, I don't think I've learned it yet, I'm learning it, is that there are ideals and values and principles that, as Plato said, they are eternal. They are true in and of themselves, even if the messenger who carries the message about them is fallible and tawdry and weak. I would argue that the words, the ideals behind the Declaration of Independence are true. They are eternal, immutable, if you will. But the folk who wrote them were hypocrites.

Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite. If you don't believe me, ask Sally Hemings. I mean, we know he was a hypocrite, but it is true. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That is true. That is true even if the person who wrote it didn't live into it and didn't believe in it. If you read through history, you will find some of our greatest presidents, some of our greatest leaders had all sorts of failings. They did.

They're human. I'm not excusing them. I'm just saying that just is the case. But sometimes the truth is greater than the man or the woman, the moral principle, the ideals that they stood for and lived by. And, you know, at the end of the day, I pray that God is truly just and merciful as the Bible says he is. And somehow in the scales of judgment, we are weighed by justice, to be sure, but mercy as well, and that in the end, love will win. Bishop, what would you say to the public who says when they hear

conservatives say Donald Trump was put there by God when this man did what he did in front of the Episcopal Church in D.C. using force to move these people out, who

when asked to name his favorite Bible verse, couldn't name it, has said he's never saw a need to ask God for grace. And when you hear the things that he says, but then these other people say, oh no, this is the most Christian president we've ever had. How do you respond to that? Well, you know what I do? I say, well, I evaluate my Christianity by does it look like Jesus of Nazareth? Does it look like Jesus Christ? Does it look like, whether it's President Trump or Michael Bishop Curry? Does my life resemble the life of Jesus Christ? There's an old song that says, you'll know they are Christians by their love.

Does my life emulate and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who said in Luke chapter 4, to find his ministry with these words, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. Why? Because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Does it look like that? Does it look like Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7? Blessed are the poor and the poor in spirit.

Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers. Does it look like that? Love your enemies. Bless those who... Does it look like that? Do unto others as you would have them do it. Does it look like what Jesus said in Matthew 25?

Because this is the standard of God's judgment. Now, Michael Curry, not anybody else. So this is the standard of what it is to look like a Christian. Jesus says, I was hungry and you gave me food. I was naked and you clothed me. I was alone and you visited me. And the righteous will say, Lord, when did we see you hungry? When did we see you naked? When did we see you alone and visit you? And he said, whenever you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it unto me. That is a parable of judgment, of God's judgment. So I want to say, does somebody look like Jesus? Knowing that none of us are perfect, do they look like Jesus? Does their life look like Jesus? Do they treat people the way

Jesus treated people? Do they live by the law and the way of love, the love that we see in Jesus of Nazareth, the love that we see in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Does it look like Jesus? That's my standard of understanding what who and what a Christian is. I know nobody's going to make it all the way, because we all fall short. But the question is, are they on the way? Are they following in his footsteps, even when they falter? And I have to say, if I don't see that, I have to assume, well, if it don't look like a duck and don't quack like a duck, I guess it ain't a duck. But ultimately, God's got to decide that. Last question on Jesus. Last question for you.

A lot of people around the world got to hear you preach for the first time when you did the wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. And folks said, can't no black Episcopalian preach like that. You even had some Baptist preachers who said, okay, then, I see you, Bishop Curry. Oh, they're very kind. They're very kind. You just got to be who you are.

You just got to be who you are. And I'm an Episcopalian, but I'm Michael Curry Episcopalian, and you got to be you. I figured the Lord called me the way I am. You know, to him, just as I am without one plea, this is me. Well, if you could do a preach-off, who would you love to do a preach-off against?

A preach-off against? Right. If you had to do... Like, for instance, I ask singers this all the time if they could do a sing off who would they do it with I ask the same thing to musicians but if you could do a preach off

preach off who would you love where is the two of y'all who would you love I could go old school or new school don't matter it's your call young Otis Moss would school or new school. Don't matter. It don't matter. It's your call. Yeah. Young Otis Moss would be the new school.

Old school would be Jim Forbes. Take those two. We could have a good time. I remember one time I was young and had all these preachers come in to do the seven last word. And we saved the toughest word for the oldest preacher. I have never heard a sermon like that. That brother took the word, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, and talked

about a French novel he had read and talked about this dude who was a connoisseur of evil and he had become so enraptured by evil that he became nothing. I said, Negro, I can't believe you just got up here and preached that sermon. Throw it up.

Bishop Michael Curry, it's been a pleasure chatting with you, y'all. The book is called Love is the Way, Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times. Bishop Michael Curry is presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church with Sarah Grace. We'd love to have you back on Roller Mart Unfiltered. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot, sir. Thanks a lot. I'll be happy to.

God bless you, man. All right, folks. I'm rocking Savannah State today. That's the HBCU shirt. I'm rocking today. Say hello to all of you. If y'all want to join our Bring the Funk fan club, please do so by supporting us via Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo. The information is right there.

Also, you can mail us a money order. New Vision Media, NU Vision Media, Inc., 1625 K Street, Northwest, Suite 400, Washington, D.C., 2006. Folks, tomorrow we will be previewing the debate between the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as well. We're not going to have post-debate analysis tomorrow night. We will do that next week for the debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence. All right, folks, I shall see y'all tomorrow. How? Thank you. this is an iHeart podcast