The Bulwark Podcast - Abby Phillip: Governing by Troll

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

From the jump, the administration has been all about the memes, owning the libs, and pissing people off. But Abby says she wants Trump’s supporters to have a chance to share their points of view on her show—and be challenged in real time. Meanwhile, during the weirdest shutdown ever, Republicans are at risk on SNAP and Obamacare subsidies. And policing the Caribbean and the Pacific to commit summary executions is not America First. Plus, the roots of Bernie Sanders’s populist campaigns were planted by Jesse Jackson’s runs for the presidency in ‘84 and ‘88. But Trump too also echoes Jackson as a political figure—through their use of celebrity, personality, and similar outsider populist messaging. Abby Phillip joins Tim Miller. show notes Abby's book, "A Dream Deferred: Jesse Jackson and the Fight for Black Political Power" CNN's NewsNight with Abby Phillip Tim and Bill on Trump creepiest propaganda yet

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Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome to the show, the anchor of CNN News Night. She's the author of a new book, A Dream Deferred Jesse Jackson, and the Fight for Black Political Power. It's Abby Phillip. What's happening? Hey, Tim. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on. Good to see you. Congrats on the book. We've come along. way since you were an embed or whatever. And I was the flack for the last place candidate in the Republican primary in 2012, John Huntsman. I was trying to remember how we had met, but it had something to do with that. Yeah. I have an image in my head of a sad, half-empty town hall somewhere in New Hampshire where I was trying to convince you things were going well. I think, you know,

that's, I can't remember the details. I knew then that you had a really bright future, Tim. So that was not the end, neither of us. I want to talk about the book, obviously, and I've been kind of ruminating myself on the value of doing debate shows and stuff. So I want to talk to you about your show. But first, if we can do a little news, you're covering the shutdown every night, hearing arguments from both sides. It's a weird shutdown. It's hard to see an off-ramp. Trump is in Asia right now, the president.

The GOP Congress hasn't been in session for like five weeks, basically. basically. What's your sense of who's winning the argument? If there's an off ramp, where things stand? Yeah, I'm with you. I think this has been the weirdest shutdown ever. And I've, I covered all the Trump shutdowns. And I think that this is the one where, I don't know, I mean, there is not a great off ramp. But the thing that I keep asking my conservative friends is, you know, if at the end of the day, what they want is to be able to say that they reopen the government without making a deal and then turn around and make a deal, I don't know that that works for the American people.

So do I think this is some kind of slam dunk for Democrats? No, I don't think shutdowns are ever a slam dunk, period. I think Americans don't like things like that. And come Saturday when people are not getting their food stamps, it's going to be terrible. But I also think, you know, having the unions coming out and saying you need to reopen the government because our members are suffering all so bad.

There's probably going to need to be, and I think there's some indication that this is happening, some conversation with Republican leaders and moderate Democrats that get them to an agreement about a real solid commitment to addressing this issue. What that looks like, I don't know, but it feels to me like they're going to have to get some private and public assurances that they're going to address the health care issue, that they're going to have a vote on it, whatever it is. that satisfies the moderates. I don't think they're going to satisfy the Democratic leaders and the liberals. But that's how these things always end. It's always going to have to be the moderates coming to some kind of agreement and then voting with Republicans to reopen the government. And maybe that just has in the Senate. I'm with you.

I mean, you can imagine a path in the Senate. I mean, there are a couple of Republicans who want to vote on this stuff. Josh Hawley is out saying basically like, look, they're like a handful of. of the populist MAGA Republicans and Marjorie Taylor Green in the House who are like, these are our constituents that are losing SNAP next week that are that are paying more in health care, so we should be responsive. The problem is that like the main body of the Republican party, I don't think wants to extend Obamacare subsidies again. And the House, it's kind of hard to imagine Mike Johnson bringing that up in the House. You know, you can imagine a deal in the Senate,

but it's kind of hard to imagine them. And maybe who the hell knows, maybe that's just where things die and they fight over this in the midterms. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, to be honest, I think that they're going to have to deal with this. I think this is actually a really politically. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a really politically toxic issue for Republicans. Because when you look at the chart of where Obamacare enrollment has dramatically increased, it is a huge swath of Republican territory. And that is very significant. That explains, people are wondering, why is Marjorie Taylor Green saying this? Because her state is one of the places where millions more people are enrolled in Obamacare today than they were

four years ago. And that fact is going to mean that it's not just Democrats that are affected by the increases that people are going to experience. It's Republicans, too. They're going to call it whatever they want to call it. But I do think that there's going to be some coming to the table on the numbers here because these are their voters too. I mean, I think the raw politics is that these are Democrats somehow. But that's very much not the case. A couple of the random news items I just wanted to pick your brain on. I was doing my due diligence and kind of reminding myself your backstory. And I did not realize that you, like, lived in Trinidad and Tobago for a little while as a kid, and that was your family. I did not know that. Yes, I did. The Caribbean boat bombing

story is so strange in a lot of ways, right? Because like the stated reason for it is just like obviously fake, right? Like this idea that there are drug, that there's fentanyl. coming from Venezuela through Colombia all the way out to America. Which there is not. Like, that's just not happening. And these votes are actually, a lot of them, going from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago. And so I was just, I don't know, I just wondering if you had any kind of perspective on that, if there's any buzz about that.

It is interesting. I mean, because, first of all, yeah, I mean, my parents are from Trinidad and Tobago. So I do hear the scuttle butt. And this is very heavily discussed down there right now because the leaders of Trinidad and Tobago have been actually largely supportive of. these bombings because these boats are actually headed for them. And so if they're carrying drugs, they're carrying drugs into Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the Caribbean. And so I think if you can substantiate that there are drugs on these boats, that there's a reason to take them out,

whatever it is, maybe there's an argument there. But I also think that as an American, you also have to ask the question, is that what we're doing now? Just serving as the police force for the Caribbean and the Pacific. I just, I mean, I just think it defies the America First logic that we would engage in military activity for that reason. And I also would say that there are a lot of people in the region who do believe that what this is really about is regime change in Venezuela and about having a regime that is friendlier that gives the United States

more access to Venezuela's rich oil reserves, all that stuff. I think where we are right now from a what do we know factual perspective, I don't think we have enough information to substantiate any of those theories, but I'm just saying that's what people there think that this is about. And you're right, like the drug excuse, it doesn't make a lot of sense. There is virtually no fentanyl coming from Venezuela. Most of that is coming from Mexico, nearly all of it. You also should be able to say, hey, what kind of drugs are they carrying? Anything? I've not seen any reports that have said, is it cocaine? Is it fentanyl? Is it marijuana? Are we blowing people out of the water

over marijuana? I don't know. We might be. Is it human trafficking? Is it just human trafficking? Yeah, is it just human smuggling? Because that's another thing. I mean, Venezuela's instability has meant a lot of flow of people out of Venezuela and into the Caribbean, as well, as into the United States. So, you know, all these are legitimate issues. But as Americans, I think it's fair to ask, what are we doing as it pertains to that issue? Yeah. I mean, as a former neocon, you could maybe sell me. There was like, I guess, a covert deal on the pilots. We're trying to bribe the pilot to Maduro's pilot to turn them over. You can maybe sell me on that. I mean, you did lose the election. That seems different than just gadding boats out of the

Caribbean that are headed for Trinidad and Tobago. I mean, it's interesting that they don't want drugs in their country, but that just doesn't really, like, doing summary executions on the sea doesn't really seem to be an America priority. And also, you know, what are the organizations that these people are allegedly a part of? If the, if the argument here is that there's some kind of organized cartel, gang, whatever, that we're trying to take out, what is the organized cartel, gang, drug? What is it? I just think these are basic questions that there are no answers to, at least publicly, and that there should be, just on a very very. very basic level. You ought to be able to tell me. Are these people part of a drug cartel? If not,

why are we bombing them? One other thing I was curious your take on. I did a little bonus video with Bill Crystal last night because I was just dying to hear what Bill Crystal thought about Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. We're going to get to them in a second too, but also what he thought about these like, have you seen these memes that like the Department of Labor is putting out and DHS is putting out with like, it's like the 1950s memes and it's like a white family like in a church or like in a in a bucolic part of new england and uh maybe kind of by where we used to meet in new hampshire and it's always white people and they've got like muscles and it's like bring back america america is for americans i mean obviously it's a troll but it's i don't know

and also kind of in the context of jesse jackson the rainbow coalition it's not a rainbow coalition on the uh on these memes it's all white people and and i think it's pretty clear what they're doing i'm just wondering what you think about that i actually kind of I'm on the fence about what percentage of this is troll versus anything that really signals something real. But there's no question that there's a nostalgia for some time in the past, maybe the 30s, the 40s, when the representations, the visual representations of America are only the heartland or white people or blondes, whatever it is. Fine. I mean, I think that Some of that is really-

And it's fine, I guess. It's crazy, though. And it's crazy that the government is doing that. It's designed to piss people off. It is. Should the government be doing things that are designed to piss people off? It's different if it's like a campaign, if it's a Fox News or if it's the campaign or if it's whatever.

If you want to be a racist senator, like, okay, but like the Department of Labor is representing everybody. And we are paying for that. I agree with you in totally in the sense that this government, has been sort of governing by troll from the very beginning, where it's all about memes, it's all about the internet, it's all about owning the libs. And no, I mean, I think that the government ought to be above and beyond that

representing this entire country and also recognizing that even for many of these very people who are pushing these memes, their ancestors came from somewhere else and came to America. And the people that actually were here in America, many of them look like me. And, you know, people who are black and brown have been here longer than many people who are white have been here. That's a fact. And do I think they should be governing that way? Absolutely not.

But look, I mean, I do think that the symbolism for this administration is part of the strategy. They do want to reshape how America is viewed and talked about. They do not like this idea of a multi-racial democracy. It's been explicit that they believe that that is a sign of our national decline. I mean, when you look at the comments of many of the most prominent voices in conservatism, they're like, look at Europe. They have Muslims and they have Africans and brown people, and that's why they're in decline. And that's a pretty explicit message.

And that is part of it. I think it's a troll, but I also think that it's part of a, an attempt to reshape culture and using imagery to do that. And it shouldn't be ignored, but I also think that there are lots of real things that are happening that are just as important, if not more important, in terms of what they're doing policy-wise. And it does tend to the, I mean, just directly into the refugee policy, for example. Yes.

And it seems like we're taking white South Africans now and, you know, not black and brown people, basically. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro?

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From tires are auto repair, and we're always there. Treadexperts. We're always there. the government by troll. On your show, you've got some of them that come on to troll you. And I think that's kind of their strategy, right? Or to troll the other panelists, maybe not to troll you. Like I said, in the lead-in. I mean, I've been going back and forth, like, should I do this Pierce Morgan show? I have another debate thing that might be coming out in a few weeks. Like, is there value in the

debate stuff because we've gotten so siloed? On the other hand, it's kind of like, what is the point of all this? So I guess that's my question for you. What's the point of having a debate show? What's the point? Yeah. Let me tell you my point of view on this. And I do see that you go on Pierce Morgan all the time. And there are a lot of characters who show up there. And look, I think that our goal is not to create those moments. But I don't control people's minds, nor do I want to. And I do think that we allow people to exercise their free speech, to have their points of view. And the more important goal that we have is actually to say that we don't get brownie points for pretending like half the country isn't around and doesn't have viewpoints and doesn't vote. And I think that goes for Democrats and Republicans. So we bring people on to the table who have different points of view, who have real differences of opinion, not fake differences of opinion, that are palatable to a television audiences,

the real ones, that actually reflect the country. And guess what? Some of those things are outlandish or might be offensive to people. But just like we were talking about this governing by troll kind of situation, this is our actual government right now. Some of these viewpoints are shared inside the government. My argument is just simply, don't you think you ought to know that? Shouldn't we know what the point of view is as opposed to pretending that it doesn't, doesn't exist. And so, I don't know, I think there's a misconception that the idea is to

have people come on and say crazy things. And it's not. Viral clips, I guess, because the point of it is to get clips. Because I do think a lot of people engage with your show mostly through clips. Because guess what? We don't create those clips. None of them. We don't create any of them. Like the CNN account doesn't put out the video? Yeah. Yeah. And I also think, look, if you only consume the show through viral clips, which a lot of people do, CNN is streaming now. So you can actually watch the show. Even if you don't want to have cable, okay, that's my shameless plug. But if you only consume the show that way, you might think that that is the only thing that happens. But it's clearly not. There is a lot of conversation that happens that is reasonable. that is interesting, that is, that is provocative where people are on unexpected sides of issues. And that happens more often than not on a daily basis.

And I just think that it's sort of, you know, I can't stop people from saying things that might be out there. And that's okay. It happens from time to time, but I don't think that's, I know that's not the objective because I'm there. I'm doing it. You feel like what you're saying is that it's a useful purpose for everybody to understand. understand better what the other side is arguing. I guess that's the point of having a debate show. Absolutely.

And I also think that having ideas tested is also super important. I agree with this. Because it's one thing for people to just say things out into the ether, but then to have them actually challenged in real time is also the thing that I think has value as well. I agree with that. And I think that's especially true for the left, actually. This is one argument, a rare one these days that I agree with my former friends on the write on. But they say that a lot of times they feel better capable in debates because they're

used to having their arguments challenge more. And I think that that is true. I think that there's a lot of people on the left of like kind of in the Trump era just basically blocked out de-platformed like that, just said, I'm not even going to engage with this because it's too wrong. And I understand that impulse. It's a skill that has atrophied. Yeah, yeah. I understand that impulse. But if you aren't challenged, then you can't, you can't assess your own weaknesses. Here's my issue, watching your show and how I think about it with mine. here too. You said earlier you want to like see the real arguments, not the fake arguments back and forth. And it's like it's kind of hard to find Trump supporters that don't at least make fake

arguments sometimes, right, that aren't saying something different on at the table or on a podcast and they would say if you are in private, like almost all of them like have major disagreements with him, whether it be on policy about tariffs or whether it be about his behavior or whatever that they won't express because they don't want to get in trouble. And I don't, so for me, it's kind of like, I don't want to have somebody on that's going to lie, like on the show. And I feel like it's not, this isn't just a maga thing. Like, I felt this way after the Biden debate.

Like, I had to cut a couple people from this podcast because they were saying different things to me on text than they were on the show. You know, and I'm just like, I don't want that. Like, if you're going to come on and have a real argument, you should tell me what you really think. And I wonder how you think about that. We're in agreement.

Yeah. Don't you feel like we shouldn't pick on Scott? did a show. I used to work with him, but I feel like sometimes Scott's making arguments he doesn't really believe on your show, for example. Here's what I would say, is that Scott gets challenged a lot. He gets challenged by me. He gets challenged by other people to say what he really believes. And I can't force anybody to bear their soul on television, but I can point out, and I do, because if you watch, you've seen me do it, you don't really believe that. do you? You know, or, you know, just to drill down on it because I think then it becomes very

apparent when there's a desire to kind of like squirrel around the issue. Am I saying that it's 100% the case that we have everybody on truth serum every night on television? No. You know, everybody in politics is to some degree or not left and right, frankly, saying things that in private they really wouldn't go so hard on. But part of the thing that we do that I think makes it valuable to still talk to them anyway, is that there is an opportunity to drill down on what people really believe, to test the logic of the thing that they're saying,

to say that, you know, if you are so worried about Burisma and Hunter Biden, why aren't you worried about President Trump's family literally making money off of crypto schemes that he is developing policy around? Why aren't you worried about them making, deals in the Middle East while Trump is making diplomatic deals with those very same countries. We have a chance to actually ask that question and get people further away from

bad faith arguments. I don't think it's perfect, Tim. There's nothing perfect about this time that we're in. You know, we do have people on sometimes that we're trying out. We're searching for new voices all the time. We are always trying to bring new people into the conversation that you might not normally hear from. And sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes they don't have the depth. Sometimes they can't handle the conversation. Sometimes they don't want to act in good faith. All that's fine. But we don't stop trying to find those voices because I do genuinely think that we need to know what is happening on all sides of this. And then we also have people who don't fall into those neat little buckets of left and right or liberal or conservative. And we bring those

people on too because they also add a lot of clarity. You know, people like Anna Kasparian, they come on and they, they blow past some of these rigid boxes that people want to put themselves in, and they change the conversation because of that. God bless you. Having to talk to Anna Kasparian, you know, you're doing something. It's something. Somebody has to.

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Find a Toyota Treadexperts dealer near you at Treadexperts.ca.com slash locations. From tires are auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.com. You're on Charlem and you said you can draw the lines when you need to draw the lines and you've control over who shows up and who doesn't. I wonder what the lines are. And I have a couple specific thoughts on that, but I just, I'm curious if you have some definition in your head or it's kind of like the Supreme Court ruling with porn where you kind of know it when you see it. Yeah, I think it's kind of like you know it when you see it, you know, I mean, and I'm curious about what your examples are because I don't, you know, I don't, look, we don't have rules written down in stone. Let's put it that way. Yeah, let's just start with Tucker.

Like, so on the one hand, I think this is a tough call. So Tucker has Nick Fuentes on his show. Yeah. Would you have Nick Fuentes on? That seems like an easy one. No, I would not have Nick Fantasana. No. And he's been explicitly anti-woman, anti-Semitic.

It's never been contemplated, but no. White nationals, right. Tucker's a tougher call. And he has, you know, depending on what rankings you're looking at, number one news podcast in the country, maybe it's three or four. If you kind of come by, it's hard to, like, judge all the different platforms. But he is one of the most watched podcasts in the country. So on the one hand, to your point of, like, you should hear what the other side's saying.

You should engage with them. like he would seem like an obvious person. He has influence. He may be influenced who the vice president was. It was according to reporting. On the other hand, you know, and he's having people on his pod these days that are like, that are white nationalists that are saying that Churchill was the villain in World War II. And so on the other hand, it's like this, do I want to do anything to give this person more attention?

How would you think about that? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's less about that for this particular show and more about, can this person sit at a table and have a conversation? And I think on that very basic level, I'm not sure that the answer would be yes for someone like Tucker. I think he's the type of person who wants to be in control of the conversation and may not be willing to sit down and talk to four other people about a topic

and have his ideas tested and so on and so forth. So I think that's a big part of it for me. You know, but I think it's a hard question. I mean, I'm not a hard no on people who are controversial because I just think one of the problems with doing that is that you miss what is influencing our government. And I don't think we want to be in a position where we don't understand what is driving decision making in the White House or in the halls of Congress or what happens. So I think it would have to be in that vein. But also, I think a lot of what happens right now with Tucker is he's kind of often a lot of cul-de-sacs right now about conspiracies around Israel, around just things, you know, Epstein. I mean, they're just things that I'm not sure that are speaking to the heart of what's happening in government and what affects people's lives, at least for the average American. And so, you know, I don't know. Candace. Would you have Candice on to talk about Brigitte McCrone's penis? That's a no. No?

Allegedly not. No. I mean, look, no, obviously. I mean, this is, this is cookey stuff. But again, she's right above me in the podcast, Frankie. So I actually think that's this legitimate question. She's being sued by the government, you know, by the leader of France over alleged slander. And I mean, I just think, no. No. No. But I mean, you. you know, someone like Steve Bannon is actually a very important figure in terms of like the sort of intellectual underpinnings of MAGA. And I think he's he's somebody who is important to talk to just in general because I think what comes out of his mouth is often a reflection of what is being contemplated in the halls of the White House. Do you have a favorite among your children? You only have

one child in real life. So you don't have to worry about this. Yes, she's my favorite. But your panelist, children. Do you have a favorite? No, I'm not going to say that I have a favorite. Oh, come on. When Nicole was on the show, she admitted that I was her favorite, so that's okay. Well, Tim, if you would come on our show, you would very quickly become a favorite.

I think we've invited you, but if we have not, you are invited. I know. It's those stupid rules, MS now rules. Yeah, I know. That's right. That's right. Yeah. But look, I mean, there are definitely people that.

that I think add a special sauce to our show. I'm not going to embarrass them by naming them. Van Lathan. But there are people who do that. And it's not who you think. I think it's usually the people who are not from New York or D.C. who are outside of the Beltway, who are different, who are collegial, but have clear points of view that are not necessarily predictable.

That's a lot of things. But we do have those people, and when they come on, they add something. Well, that's a real person, actually. That's a real human. Most people live outside the Beltway and have opinions on issues that are not predictable. You know, that's humanity. And that gets kind of, it does get sanded down on TV. Everyone's got a pro.

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One last thing though I have to ask you because it was just out there yesterday. Medi Asan was on your show I guess a year ago and there's this horrible moment with Ryan Jaderski this is Maga troll guy that I haven't liked since I met him around the first time I met you

back around the Huntsman campaign he was a dick back then but he made this joke about about he hopes many doesn't have a pager who was right around the time that Israel had done the pager attack on Hezbollah or bombs inside the pager and Medi tweeted yesterday

that a year ago racist tried to make a joke about me that night CNN said they'd ban him but in the year since I haven't been invited back on CNN so was I banned too. No, he was not banned. Here's all what I'll say about this, because I don't, I don't want to make this a bigger thing than it is. I have talked to Medi about this. If you watched that episode,

first of all, we just talked about lines that are being drawn. That was a line. Calling someone a terrorist and wishing that they were killed in an attack is a line. And Gurdeski was kicked off the show, and despite his claims that he was just fine afterwards, he was actually pretty upset when it happened. And even the Republican other panelists who we had at the table was actually absolutely stunned that he had said it. And, you know, everybody was stunned that he had said it. So it wasn't like one of those things where it's like, you can't take a joke. Okay. So that was a year ago. That's done and dusted. I addressed it publicly. That night, Medi left the show too, and we wanted him to stay, especially because we did not want

people to think that we were dismissing both Gerdesky and Medi, who was the subject of the verbal attack. So he chose to leave, understandably, because he was upset, and that's okay. And we have given him his space since then. And, you know, many and I have texted before. We're on friendly terms. We invited him onto the show that night and had been working with him for a long time to try to get him on. And so my feeling was something crazy happened on television. I'm going to wait for that person to be ready to come back on. And I did not get that sense over the last year. There were other reasons, too, that I'm not going to say because I just think in terms of like, does Medi want to be on a debate show on CNN? I don't know. You could look in his public statements, and you might get the sense that maybe he doesn't. But it was not, he was not banned from our show. And in fact, if he would like to come on our show, I would like to have him on the show. Do you have a band list?

Do you want to release right now? No. Do you have a little tick list right there underneath your desk? No, absolutely not. It is not a thing. I do want to get to your book. I lied, though. I have one more question about a different.

book, before I get to your book, because Corrine Jean-Pierre is doing the rounds. She did my show, as well as she did her book. One of the main arguments in her book that she was trying to make is that, is that the Democratic Party is not being appreciative enough to black women and to black queer women and that she felt ostracized and that that's why she's going independent. And I give her a chance to kind of explain that on this show. And she has continued to do the rounds. it's hard to kind of pin that down on what exactly she's talking about. I'm just wondering if you had any reaction to what we've seen from Corrine on her book tour. I mean, I think that all of that has nothing to do with Joe Biden's fitness to serve as president for four years.

And I think that maybe you can make an argument that the Democratic Party doesn't fully respect the value of black women. or queer people or whatever. I mean, maybe that's the case as an internal democratic matter, but I don't think that that is related to the central premise of the book or the central premise of what happened to Joe Biden. You know, I think that is, that's a separate issue. Was Biden fit to serve for another four years?

Most people would say no. And I don't know. I don't think it's a betrayal to say that. And I think plenty of people in the Democratic Party, black and white and gay and straight or whatever, have been willing to say that, not just because, you know, for the good of the Democratic Party, but if you believe that you want to protect those very people, then wouldn't it behoove you to put up a candidate who is, you know, fit to serve and can beat the opponent? And I think that is, that fundamentally is what is what we are talking about here. Now, in terms of Kareen and her, how she was treated as press secretary or what have you, I think that's her perspective on her own experience. And she's entitled, she's allowed to have that viewpoint.

But I also think that the book is predicated on this idea that Biden was betrayed. And I'm not sure that that really checks out when you consider that even to this day, when you ask the question to many of these people, do you think he could have served out of another four years, many of them won't answer that question. Won't answer. Yeah. I've tried it with several of them on this show. And that's not one that they like to answer. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at tread experts. From Toyos Observe Winterline to Celsius and open country, Toyo tires can handle it all. Get up to $100 on a prepaid visa card when you purchase a set of four

eligible toyo tires find a toyotexperts dealer near you at treadexperts.cair slash locations from tires are auto repair we're always there trade experts dot CA all right the book why jesse jackson i got i'll throw a hand up in the airside bikari on a couple weeks ago and he was mentioning and i was just kind of asking like what who the democrats could learn from you know like what they could learn from messaging wise what are some things that could take And he mentioned, and he met some Jesse Jackson in the 84 speech. And I'm going to play some of that in a minute. When he said that, I was like, I'd put my hand up and like, I had a very, you know, kind of one-dimensional view of Jesse Jackson's campaigns.

And I was a kid during that time that I'd grow up and I'm a Republican operative. So I'm only hearing slander about just. So I did not have a three-dimensional view, really, of Jesse Jackson. So I was pretty intrigued to read what you've been writing about. I'm curious, was that kind of why you wanted to talk about Jesse Jackson, just because, like, he sort of was this figure that, that, like, memories have started to fade, and so folks started to not have a full view of him, or were there other elements that made you decide to take on the project? I think it was a lot of that. You know, I think some of it is about how he is remembered or what we actually know about what happened in those campaigns, which is actually not that much from his side of things. I mean, I think we know about. what transpired in the general election and sort of the end, right, especially for Democrats because they lost spectacularly both times.

But we don't really know much about how he ran in particular because he lost. And because in the intervening time, there was another man who became the first black president. But one of the reasons that I thought this was worth exploring is that, I mean, I covered 2016 and 2020 in which Bernie Sanders seemingly came out of nowhere with this populist message. He was a socialist candidate and got thousands and thousands of people into arenas to support him. And what I was hearing from a lot of Democrats who came through the Jesse Jackson era was that you can't really understand a Bernie Sanders and how he ended up campaigning without understanding Jesse Jackson. And in fact, Bernie told me when I spoke to him for this book, he said, my campaigns were. were essentially picking up where Jesse Jackson left off.

And I think that's a really important question for us right now, because guess what? That type of politics isn't going away. In fact, that's where all the energy is in the Democratic Party right now. And I do think understanding it seemed to be something that was worth doing. And by the way, even as a Republican, I mean, if you want to understand the Trump of it all, there is so much of Jesse Jackson's candidacy that is reminiscent of what Trump is doing right now, except from the other side of the political spectrum,

both the celebrity nature, the personality, and the populism. And I think that that's also worth really understanding is that there is a lot of resonance for Americans in a candidate that says to them, the system is broken, and you need an outsider to fix it. The system is rigged against you. You know, there's a line in Jesse Jackson's 1888 campaign speech that where he says, the battle of today is economic violence.

And that language reminded me of, you know, American carnage and sort of that picture of the rusted out, you know, towns of the Midwest. And he was literally painting that very same picture. And that is what has worked so well for Donald Trump. So you've got to understand that stuff to really understand where the future of populism on the left and the right is going. Yeah. Another thing I didn't really realize was just, and obviously I knew that, you know, his campaign had juice and that he won some states in the South. In 88, after the Michigan caucus, he was actually in the lead and pledged delegates. Yes. You can really imagine, I think you mentioned this on Charlemagne, you could really imagine if 1988 was 2008 was 2000.

or whatever, I guess, would have been Obama, 2016, and there would have been more chances for him to go outside the mainstream media. You know, I mean, who the hell knows? Like, it might have, it could have been Jesse Jackson winning in 1988. Totally. Yeah. That was one of the biggest things to me. I mean, you know, I think there's, you know, I'm loath to sort of put 20, 2025 eyes on the 80s, right? But you just, you can't help but imagine.

Here you have this candidate who's incredibly charismatic. who is an incredibly famous person in the sense that people just know who he is, whether you like him or not, he has sort of like 100% name ID, you know, which is kind of what Trump had when he was running. And he wins the Michigan caucus and doubles the lead Democratic candidate in the race and suddenly is in the lead. Had he been able to sort of utilize the power of controlling media narrative or even bypassing media narrative,

I really do think it would have been a different story. But in the 80s, that's not the kind of media environment that they were in. And the narrative that came out of that campaign was, what does he really want? What does Jesse want was the title of the Time Magazine article that he was on the cover of? Because people weren't asking, can he win? They were asking, what can we give him to get him out of here? And I think those are very different questions. And also just kind of back in how those primaries were when there were factional.

And he's obviously like the inverse of, you know, kind of like, Southern racist candidate that they would have and a lot of those, you know, democratic primaries going back then. So there were that factional element to it. It's interesting. So I watched the whole, I asked Bakari which speech to watch,

and he suggested the 84 convention speech. So I watched it all last night. It's a barn burner. He's sweating. Oh, yeah. It's like an hour long. People are crying. It's a whole thing.

Yeah. I want to play one little bit for you because I think it's instructive to where we are now. If we lift up a program to feed the hungry, They'll come running. If we lift up a program to start the war no more, our youth will come running. If we lift up a program to put America back to work as an alternative to the welfare and the spare,

they will come working. If we cut that military budget without cutting out of the fence and use that money to rebuild bridges and put steel workers back to work and use that money. jobs for our cities and use that money to build schools and pay teachers and educate our children and build hospitals and train doctors and train nurses. The whole nation will come running to us. It's hard not to notice just the stark nature comparing that to kind of the type of message you heard at the 24 DNC convention, right, on a variety of events.

issues and you listen to him and a few things that just caught my air we're going to get america back to work but an alternative to welfare right so he's even playing into like i don't it's not it's not about safety yeah it's not about safety now use the military money we're to keep the defense we're to use the military money for schools getting steel workers back to work you know paying nurses paying teachers uh feeding the hungry it's pretty noteworthy like and i think there's certainly some lessons that the Democrats who are trying to capture some economic populism now could learn from kind of how he framed all that. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, you hear in that message just some slight differences that can be really important in terms of how these things are

communicated. You know, at that time, I mean, I think that you had the sort of Reagan-esque sort of pull yourself up from your bootstraps type of thing. And he's clearly engaging with that idea by also saying we don't want people on welfare. We actually want people to be able to work. And being unafraid to say that while also saying that, you know, we don't want to fight foreign wars. We want to take that money and use it at home. We want to bring back jobs to America. I mean, he's saying all of those messages and is not. afraid to kind of get just close enough to maybe the center right that he offends the far left in the party. And maybe this, you know, and I think in a way this was a different time, right?

I think that right now Democrats are just way more, they police the boundaries of the left so much more now than they did then. And that allowed someone like Jesse Jackson to borrow from the center right and still have credibility in progressive circles. And I think it allowed him to speak to a broader audience of people. And that's the goal. I mean, what he was basically saying there was this is a universal message that if you're white or black or yellow or green, I mean, he used to say, we're all precious in God's sight.

This is a message that can work for everybody. And I feel like Democrats just have such a hard time articulate. that right now, because there is this fear that if you say something just the wrong way, you might offend the people who are policing your language on the left that don't really want you to talk about reducing the number of people on welfare, which actually might very well need to be the goal because the alternative is people actually working and making enough money to feed their families. A few other things that jumped out to me, and you can jump on any of these that, you know, you felt reflected your observations, but really comfortable talking about God,

obviously, Reverend Jesse Jackson, but, like, more than the Democrats do now, like a lot woven through his times and kind of challenging the Republican frame of religion a lot. You know, Jesus should, uh, said we should not be judged by the bark we wear, but the fruit we bear. You know, we measure greatness by how we treat the least of these. Jamal Bowie wrote about this in the context of your book, you know, very much, um, it's a call for like, collective recognition of helping everybody and you know there's certainly unique challenges that face each group but he wasn't siloing the groups really like it was about unifying all the different groups and one of the thing i just felt like i should mention called out gays and lesbians twice

in his 1984 conventions he was the first candidate to do that yeah he was the first candidate to do that and he also spoke at an AIDS march also the first you know a presidential candidate to do something like that. I mean, so yeah, he explicitly, not just gays and lesbians, Asian-Americans, he brought them into the political process. Arab-Americans brought them into the political process. But you're so right. I think the way that you put it is exactly right.

He spoke to the identities of these people without siloing them, without sort of putting them in a box, but really saying there's a kind of a thread that weaves us together. That's why he used the analogy of the quilt so often in his speeches. Do you see anybody out there that's channeling Jesse Jackson at all? At a national level? Yeah, or local. And you think about Trump is very much an inheritor of Buchanan. So this is the same era.

Yeah. And so, I mean, I guess maybe Bernie was the answer. But I don't know if there's somebody else on a national level, it would be an inheritor of Jesse Jackson. I think that there are people who are inheritors of different parts of Jesse Jackson. But I think that there's still kind of not really a person who has the full. the full picture of it. And, you know, I mean, even Bernie, I mean, I think Bernie is the easiest example in the sense that he ran for president and used a very similar model, which is, you know,

rallying college students and all of that and these massive stadium rallies and then the populism of the message. But he clearly struggled with the diversity piece. And you can't really be a successful Democratic candidate unless you are able to really tap into the diversity of the party itself. And so that was his weakness in both 2016 and in 2020. TBD on someone like AOC is sort of a protege. I mean, I think we have to see her. Can she appeal at a national level?

But I also think, you know, look at what's happening in New York City. I mean, as controversial as it is, Mom Donnie is kind of running a double-barreled campaign. And that double-barreled campaign is, working really well in a very urban environment. And so maybe that's something that works for New York right now. But I don't know that there's been any politician that's really tried what Jackson tried to do at a national level. And certainly not with the addition of the kind of moral element of it, the faith-based appeal, the people that I think also helped him reach across to, especially

rural white Americans. I think that really helped his message in those places too. Maybe a weird person to mention, because who knows, but I was thinking about Tala Rico. I kind of does have the religious element, and can you layer in the economic populism on top of that and kind of do it from a little bit of a different and an inverted perspective, obviously a white guy. But I don't know. One of the thing on Jesse I had to ask you about was that is relevant to what's happening now. He did in his, I guess it was the 84 campaign, he gets in trouble for some private anti-Semitic remarks. And so that's another thing now that I think that the Democrats are having to deal with,

part of this broad coalition, which is, you know, there are some within the coalition who have said some things about, you know, Israel or Jews that, you know, go outside the lines, right? And make, I think, Jews feel maybe like they're not part of the patchwork. And I'm wondering what, I noticed how he managed that in his speeches, but I'm wondering what you thought about how he kind of navigated that, if there are any lessons. Yeah. And it's important not to sugarcoat this because this was the scandal of the 1984 campaign. This was largely the reason that he flamed out in that campaign. He didn't address it well at first. I mean, he tried to deny that he said it. Then he acknowledged that he said it. And then he delivered a speech. But then

he had Lewis Farrakhan sort of out there talking, threatening the reporter who revealed these remarks. And Jesse Jackson didn't really want to cut Farrakhan loose, partly because of their long ties in Chicago. And also from what I gathered in talking to people around him and reporting about this was he just thought that cutting people off because of their mistakes or flaws was not something that he wanted to do as a faith leader. As a politician, you would think, well, obviously, that would be the first thing that you would do. But he didn't really see himself as a politician for a lot of the 1984 race. And perhaps 1988, too. He saw himself as this sort of person who was outside of politics, this outsider religious figure who was coming in to force the political system to operate better. So he made, frankly, a lot of mistakes in dealing with that scandal and failed to recognize the extent to which it's more than just words.

it has to also be actions that are that are divvied out to parts of the voting electorate in equal measure. So he wanted to bring Arab Americans into the process, but I think he felt so kind of put upon by the attacks he was receiving from some Jewish leaders that he was sort of at a loss. He was like, what am I supposed to do? Is there anything that I can do to make this better? And I don't know. I mean, I think a politician might have figured it out. But I think he didn't want to throw anybody under the bus. Not even Jesse Jackson can solve the centuries-old holy wars.

I mean, it was about that. It was a part of partly it was about, look, you couldn't say Palestinian practically in the 80s, okay? It just was not something that you could talk about. And so he got a lot of heat just for that. But I also think that there are things that politicians would do. I mean, remember the Jeremiah Wright scandal of the Obama years? And that was just such a major firestorm. But they, they quarterized that wound as quickly as they could.

And I don't think that Jackson was willing to do that in 1984 for a lot of different reasons. And that made it very difficult for him to get past this. Any other cute little anecdotes or something to surprise you or a fun little story to leave us with? One thing that I thought, you know, to the point about, you know, what would have happened if this stuff happened today? I mean, when I was sort of digging into the fact that in the middle of a campaign, he got on a plane and went to Syria and brought back a prisoner of war from Syria and then subsequently got invited to the White House by the guy he was trying to beat in the campaign, you know, some of those things, this is sort of the kind of the kind of

special nature of this campaign that I think doesn't really get relayed in history, was that he was such an unusual, unconventional, unpredictable candidate that honestly he kind of puts Trump to shame in that respect. He was the candidate that reporters would literally call up to his hotel room and ask what the schedule was tomorrow. And he would tell them. He had that kind of relationship with the press that I think is not the way candidates operate today, and he did things like go to Syria, like go to Cuba. He also went to Cuba in that campaign and brought back dozens of political prisoners to the United States and did all that while running for president. And it was a bit of a sideshow, but in today's media environment,

it would have made him the most talked about person in that campaign and would have gone a long way, I think, to helping him succeed. All right, Abby, Philip, if I get fired over at MS now, my first stop is at the table, all right? As long as I'm still invited, depending on what I get fired for, I guess. So I appreciate you coming on the show. What you got to do is we've got to write a book and then we'll have you over. That's true. I do have to write a book. I have other people on my ass with that too.

That seems hard. How did you do that during all this? I've got a daily show. The idea of writing a book is insane to me. When did you write it? In the mornings? You have a baby? It was hard.

You have to write it in the middle of the night. I have a baby. You have to write it in the middle of the night. and you have to write it on long weekends or send yourself away on a writing vacation for a week or a couple of weeks. It's hard, and it takes time, and it's not easy to do on a good day. I'm not doing that. I would like to hang out with you. I think you have a book in you, Tim.

Probably. Probably. I'm not doing it. Not any time soon. We'll see what happens. You know, the future will take care of itself, as Mitch McConnell said. Abby Phillip, the book is a dream deferred. Jesse Jackson, the fight for Black Political Power.

Thanks for coming on the board podcast, go. Thank you. Everybody else, we'll be back tomorrow for another edition. See you all then. Peace. Fresh out of school because I was a high school grad. Got to get a job because I was a high school dad. Wish I got paid by rapper to the nation, but that's not likely.

So here's my application. Passing to the man at AT&T. Because when I was in school, I got the AEE. But there's no SC for this junk stuff. I didn't have no money. So now I got a punch the clock got a slave and be half a man. But Whitey says there's no. born for the African always knew that I would crock cheese.

But welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order, please? Gotta serve your food that might give your cancer, because my son doesn't take no fault an answer. Now I pay taxes, let them ever give me back. What about diapers, bottles, and simulag? Do I have to sell me a whole lot of crack for decent shelter and clothes on my back? Or should I just wait for help from Bush? Or Jesse Jackson, an Operation Push?

If you ask me, the whole thing needs a dush. A massingale, what the hell crack a cell in the neighborhood. To the corner house bitches. Miss Parker, Little Jell, and Todd Bridges, or anybody that he'd know. So I copped me a bird better known as a kilo. Now everybody know I went from Pope to a nigga that got dope. So now you put the feds against me. Because I couldn't follow the plan of the presidency.

I'll never get love again. Blacks are too fucking broke to be Republican. Now remember, I used to be cool till I stopped filling out my W-2. Now Senators are getting high, and you plan against the ghetto backfire. So now you got a pep talk, but sorry, this is our only room to walk

because we don't want a truck push, but a bird in a hand is worth more than a book. The Bullwark, live, and let live Tell the politics The hot plug, live, and let live The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper With Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown.

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