The Bulwark Podcast - S2 Ep1060: Ta-Nehisi Coates: A Natural Human Reaction

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Trump and Stephen Miller wanted a backlash against the immigration raids, because even they know that humans will respond when the federal government is snatching people off the street. But the tenor of modern protests is not going to be like the Civil Rights Movement, because activists back then were trained to suppress their natural inclination to defend themselves. Plus, the key role of culture in politics, Dems have to show that the state does good things, and it's the 10th anniversary of Ta-Nehisi's landmark book, “Between the World and Me.” And in a special bonus segment from our live show last Friday, Tim interviews Andry's lawyer and explains why he's been so moved by the case to free Andry from CECOT. Ta-Nehisi Coates and attorney Lindsay Toczylowski join Tim Miller. show notes "Between the World and Me," out in paperback next week Ta-Nehisi's interview with Obama in Oct. 2016 Last Friday's full "Free Andry" live show * Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, and save more than fifty percent at selectquote.com/bulwark

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. A little change from Bill Crystal Mondays today. You can get your crystal fix in written form. His newsletter is out this morning arguing that we're not alarmed enough about what Trump is doing in LA. But instead we got a special guest today, author and journalist, is Between the World and Me, will be released in paperback next week.

An observation of the 10th anniversary of its publication, it's Ta-Nehisi Coates. How you doing, man? I'm good. I'm good. A little sick, but I'm okay. I'll be all right. What a strange world it is for you to be the stand in for Bill Kristol. Yeah, we're practically indistinguishable.

Who the hell knows how the world will turn. But I want to get into the book stuff and some other bigger picture stuff. But obviously we had some news over the weekend. I want to pick your brain about with the National Guard being deployed to Los Angeles in reaction to the anti-ice protests. I guess just open-ended first, I want to hear what you make of what we're seeing out there.

Yeah, I think it's tough because I think there are people who probably try to be strategic and understand politics, who probably don't love this and don't love the visuals that they're seeing. And I think it is certainly true that Trump wants to bait a confrontation. He certainly did that in 2020 with George Floyd and everything. And so it's pretty clear that he's trying to create a spectacle that helps him. I know that there probably is, again, a tendency or maybe a knee-jerk reaction to dismiss what looks like the disorder of protest, to deal with the very real thing of having to convince people of your position and not feeling like these visuals are the best.

The problem is, I think there are a number of us who have been watching ineffective, and probably maybe more importantly than ineffective, feeble, resistant, and down to outright cowardice. And so it's like when people come into your community and they're snatching folks out of graduations or they're snatching folks when they're going to report and file the letter of the law. When you have a situation in which people are being taken out of this country and thrown into gulags and folks are laughing about it and laughing about defying judges and somehow politicians say, well, we shouldn't talk about this. You know what I mean?

Or some people who, I guess, are political punters say, well, you shouldn't focus on this. That the guy who was actually his senator, Van Hollen, who represents him, should not advocate for him. People feel the very human need to do something. You can't just come into people's community and inflict violence and expect that there will be no reaction. These are human beings.

These are human beings. And so these questions that necessarily arise, and I understand them, of strategy and tactics, et cetera, it's very hard to ask people to not be human beings, to not have human reactions. You know? Yeah. On the kind of instigation side of it, it's funny, of all places, the Wall Street Journal editorial board this morning wrote this sentence, which is, I think, half insightful about the

situation. They wrote, it's fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch bus boys or home depots to grab stock clerks won't inspire a backlash. The correct part was the second half of the sentence. They're correct that that would inspire a backlash. I think maybe their incorrect part was that there are people around Trump that desire for that not to be the case. I think that's actually the point of what they're doing. And if even the folks sitting over there at News Corp can see that this is a natural human reaction, I hear you. It is hard to begrudge that reaction.

On the other hand, burning up Waymo's and waving Mexican flags, I don't understand what really what that is achieving either. And so it's tough to navigate how to balance those questions. I don't know that it's strategic though. You know what I mean? I don't know that it is the fact that some people sat back and said, this is going to get us to this place. In this period, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. One of the things people don't talk about is enough with the civil rights movement.

They look at the nonviolence and they look at what appears to be the discipline of it and the suits and the hats and say, well, why can't we do that? But if you read the history, first of all, what they were doing was tremendously inhuman in the sense of they were training themselves to not defend themselves. This is not, again, a very, very natural human reaction. Somebody hits you, you try to stop them from hitting you. That's a pretty natural thing. And so they were disciplining themselves to A, not do that. And then they were constantly dealing with people who, you know what I mean, didn't feel like that was how they wanted to live, that somehow that assaulted their dignity, that assaulted the sanctity of their body.

This was a constant, constant, constant, constant tension, right up to the point where Martin Luther King gets killed, right? And we end up with riots. And is it the case that you could make maybe more political progress if folks dressed in suits and all waved American flags and carried copies of the cars? I mean, possibly, possibly. You know what I mean? I will say that not necessarily. I don't know that that would work given where we are right now, but I understand the argument for it. But I just think we have to build into our politics a tolerance for the idea that people will have human reactions and then we have to calculate accordingly.

You know what I mean? That doesn't mean that folks don't try to strategize, but kind of looking at these people and saying, why don't you do X, Y, and Z? Because this always happens. You know what I mean? It always happens. I think it would happen with any community. Yeah. Well, I guess, I mean, obviously, there's some limits to any parallel, particularly civil rights parallel. But maybe the missing ingredient here is, to your point, about kind of the limp resistance coming from the more, whatever you want to call it, establishment, normal sect.

If that is missing, then there's a void that is filled. You know what I mean? You needed... This is really reductive, but you needed Malcolm and Martin. You know what I mean? You needed both. Right. I know what you mean. Yeah. And I think what that means is when you have this kind of limp resistance, it's like the established channels completely lose legitimacy. So what am I left with? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just let these people just come in here and do this to my community and not do anything? And I don't think that's a position anybody would want to be in.

What is your sense of alarm just as far as, and I think it seems like things had died down a little bit overnight, but just how quick to the trigger these guys were in the Trump administration with a National Guard deployment. They put out a press release, 500 Marines from the 2nd Battalion in 29 Palms, California are prepared to deploy. I just feel like they want to do that. Oh, they definitely do. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't surprised. Again, if you go back and look at 2020, maybe they were a little slower in 2020 because they had this visual of George Floyd to contend with. But they were sending people with masks in and with the badges covered up. This was not ICE.

This was not a matter of people who weren't citizens. This was deployed in general against citizens. So I'm not surprised by that. They want to portray an image of this country being at war and Trump is the defender of order while he loots the country, by the way. Yeah. I mean, to me, the difference between 2020 is obviously not Trump because his impulse is the same, but it's like instead of having Mark Esper or whatever in charge of the military, you

know, some guy who's not perfect, has got his own flaws, but like, you know, doesn't want to be, you know, doesn't want his kids to see him as the guy in the history book that sent the military in after, you know, Black Lives Matter protesters in the streets, he's got a weekend talk show host running the military now. Right. And so I got to me, I think that is what makes that's what makes my concern level higher now than about about the potential for state violence, then then maybe looking back. I don't know if you feel the same way.

I think you're right. I totally agree. I thought this when Trump won. I mean, I just like it's anything can happen. Never anything can happen. If one more thing on the Trump or on this part of it. So this is happening now in LA with the specter of we're, you know, coming up this weekend. We've got our birthday parade. The birthday boy gets a tank parade through the city in DC. So you spent some time there.

I went to Howard. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that visual, the inverse visual, I guess, from the way most on fire. It's bad. It's bad. I do think it's one of these things that we have to reckon with, which is someday Trump will not be president. Are you sure?

Yeah, I am sure that. I'm not sure that, how that's going to happen, but at some point it will. You know what I mean? At some point. I don't know. The AI is happening really fast. Is it possible they could put like Futurama, they could put his brain in a thing like Richard Nixon and make him permanent president?

Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so. But barring some grand AI innovation, I think what is happening is there is significant damage being done to expectations, norms, legitimacy, et cetera. I actually think that damage started when people, well, when we as a country began to believe our own hype, which is to say, if we say the Senate is the greatest deliberative body in the world, then it must be. And we

don't have to do anything to kind of make that true, make that the case. When folks really began to believe that this wasn't a country run by fallible human beings, that there were ghosts in the machines that could guide it, and thus the institutions did not have to be protected. It didn't have to be an amount of caretaking done there. That really left it vulnerable. And what is happening now is the next guy, whoever that is, after Trump, can say, I want a military parade too. I can loot the country too.

I can have my own crypto coins and crypto business too, because that's what it is now. And so I think as frightening as Trump is and as frightening as he is right now, I think he probably will go down, certainly it's the case so far, as the most impactful president of my lifetime. And that is scary. Yeah. It's an interesting question, right? Like this, how much of this is irreparable? I think that's another thing that kind of goes back to stuff that you've written about in the past.

I mean, we've had dark times that then things got a little better and then backslid. And we could go through all the historical examples of that. But there's certain things that something changes, the country makes a choice, they go down a path and the other path is then becomes closed. There's certain things that are not fixable. Trump won't always be president. Maybe the next president can come in and put in some reforms to prevent future presidents from having crypto griffs like we did after Watergate or whatever.

But tell me, how does that happen though? How do those reforms happen given what the Senate is, given what the political parties are? How does that even happen? I'm going to answer the question with a question, which is, what do you think? I don't know. I guess that's fine. That was the point of bringing it up is that it's hard to see along some of these vectors,

things getting better, at least in the short to medium term, you know, because of putting them back in again, right? I do think it was potentially rep, reprable, at least some of the damage from the first term, but now it is hard to like kind of envision a way, you know, back to a politics that looks more like what it was like before. But then I guess there's a question of like, is that, do you want that? Right? Like maybe something else emerges out of it. I don't know. Yeah.

I will hope something else emerges out of it because I don't think, again, I don't think Trump just magically appears. I think there were currents and I think there were things that were already happening that made impossible. So that probably has to be dealt with to begin with. I also think, and I don't know where you are on this, because I know you're maybe even at this very moment going through your own political evolution, as all good citizens and thinking people should be by the way.

Yeah. Nothing wrong changing your mind, man. That's what I always say to people. People never change their mind that I'm much more suspect of. I always said to people, I was like, if the stupidest game show host in the country got like a racist buffoon who has no redeemable qualities gets made the president. And your reaction to that was, you know, my views on everything, the nature of the country pretty much changed or unchanged.

That I was like, we had a different view of the country. You know what I mean? So anyway, So I just say that to say that I do think people have to have some positive vision of the state. Like that has to happen. Like at some point people will have to feel like the state itself, the government, not America as an abstract concept, but the government is itself good for something. Yeah. And it would be helpful if that something was not just violence. So for instance, if it was not just the cops or the military.

There has to be some positive articulation of the state. And I think that that is important, because when you are asking people to go out to vote for something, when you're asking people to go out and support something, or when you're in a situation like we are right now where something is being taken apart. I've heard a number of people say, look, most Americans don't care about what happens to USAID. Most people don't care about this. That's our failing that they don't care. That's not just a fait accompli. The fact that a matter

is, there have been certain political decisions to talk about the state in a certain way, to talk about the government in a certain way, to portray it in a certain way that has made it easier to believe that taking it apart can somehow be a good thing or a positive thing. What I'm trying to say is there are narratives that happen before this great action happens that we all deplore. And so I think if we are trying to get either back to something or probably in my preference forward to something, there has to be some sort of positive articulation of what you're

defending. Because if your position is just, I am just slightly less skeptical At a state than this guy. I don't think that that works, you know and I guess this gets to a conundrum that the Democrats have in particular in the Trump era, which is that At some level a positive articulation of the state is a defense of the status quo, right? It doesn't have to be a full- state is a defense of the status quo, right? It doesn't have to be a full-throated defense of it, but it has to be a defense of like, what is good about America, right? Whether it be the institutions or, you know, liberal democracy or pluralism,

right? Like it has to be the rule of law, right? Like, okay, these are things that America has done that is good, but Democrats find themselves being defenders of a status quo that people don't like. And that takes us back to the first thing you mentioned, which is you end up kind of having a limp pushback. So how would you navigate that? Somebody called you and said that they wanna be the standard bearer of this,

and they want you to help them find some words for it. Like, what would you even say? So, let me just say up front that I'm somewhat in tension with the advice I'm about to give, right? And this is why I'm not in electoral politics. There is a long history of African American leaders, both asserting... I can't believe I'm going to say this. Both asserting the greatness of America and the flaws at the same time.

You know what I mean? So when Martin Luther King goes to the Marshall White, he says, the check has come back. You said X, Y, and Z is true. I think that's great. I think those things you were standing for are great. You're not doing them. You know what I mean? And so it doubles as kind of a defense of the country.

You know what I mean? It was a statement, a positive affirmation of the idea of what it should be. And then at the same time, a real articulation of what is actually happening. If you've sent me grimacing at that idea a little bit, it's probably because as I have myself changed over the past five to 10 years particularly, my politics are probably becoming a little bit more international. And so I am now always just concerned about making sure this country is just in terms of its treatment of its citizens, but that it really is a just actor on the world stage. Maybe you're getting this from me, but I feel that oftentimes we are not.

And maybe, I don't know, I mean, maybe there is somewhat of an answer in that to like this political conundrum that the Democrats have themselves in. Like maybe there is a way to to talk about like the flaws and the mistakes and the things that we need to change while like uplifting maybe not the state but the people the nature of the American people you know the nature of the American people and the experiment or maybe that's

Yeah, see I'm scared. I think that's how we get here though I think that's bullshit. Or maybe that's bullshit. See, I'm skeptical of that. Because it's like, I think that's how we get here though. I think that's exactly how we get here because I don't want to personalize this, but the thing I think about all the time, I wrote a piece on Barack Obama at the end of his presidency, right? And he's very kind and granted me a lot of time to interview and talk with him. And I wrote this, so it's not like I'm breaking any news, but the thing I remember him saying most out of that interview, out of everything he said and all the articulate

things he said was, Trump can't win. And he can't win because there just isn't a history in this country of, I guess what he actually said was normally, with a couple of exceptions, the American people respond to people with a positive vision. Yeah. And not a negative vision. And he was, that wasn't a lie. He really did at that point in time, believe that he may not now, but he really did believe that. And I think about that a lot because I think it is a manifestation of how some of this conversation about the experiment and about the people deludes us allows

us to ignore the fact that we are still human beings. And we are still subject to all of the flaws and all of the impulses and all of the darkness and all of the things that are in the soul of human beings. And so it is certainly possible to build, as Trump has proven, a political movement off of the darkest parts of us. And that is unfortunate, you know what I mean? But I think if we can face that,

my worry is that we feel that there is something in us, in our bones that makes us invulnerable to this sort of rhetoric. And I think we would do well to dispense with that. Right. Time for some life talk. Life insurance talk, that is. You probably have it, but do you know how much you're paying for it or how much is being covered? Odds are you're paying too much for too little. And did you know if you receive life insurance through your job and you're unexpectedly laid off, you can suddenly be covered for nothing. It's scary to think about, but it's simple to get it right.

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get started at selectquote.com slash bulwark today to get started that's selectquote.com slash bulwark. Let's talk about that. It's a little bit kind of what I want to get into in the book too in a minute, but like what does facing that look like? It's interesting you say that about about President Obama because I, I agree with you. I think that he believed that. Like I think that he believed that of all the flaws of the American people, that the American spirit was stronger and that there

was something about the country's aspirations that made them reject the most dark elements of Trumpism. And there are a lot of us that woke up a couple months ago. And we're like, fuck. Like we had this realization, right? That was like, we went from thinking, we made a mistake. Hillary actually got more votes. We weren't prepared. You know, we didn't do the right things. We didn't make the right arguments. We didn't really have the right standard bear. And like it was excusable and it's fixable to thinking, Oh, no, like, yeah, this is bad.

Like things are the country is bad, maybe like at its core. Like, so when you say, okay, to make things better, you have to face that. Like what does that look like? Because there's a part of you that says, well, maybe I should just relent into despair then and just say, fuck this and kind of become like them, right? I don't know become a mirror image of them is maybe the right I think that's a rational reaction So, I don't know. How do you process that? That challenge because you're even processing it long before I reread the book last night and you were talking about all this stuff

10 years ago I mean, but that's the political tradition, right? I mean, I say this all the time, but African-Americans in this country as a community have been enslaved in this country longer than they have been free. So what that means is that, or on these shores, I guess, if you predate it before the country, but what that means is that to the extent that people cared about human rights or anything like that, the idea that people's children shouldn't be sold off because of the color of their skin, that people shouldn't be worked against because of the color of their skin, that women should not be subjects to industrialized rape and sexual assault.

For most of us, we were just kind of like, eh. I don't love it, but eh. You know what I mean? Obviously, I was talking about founding fathers. They owed their existence to that, and it took a war that killed 20% of the military-age white male population in the South to get rid of it. I mean, that's a high price. That's a really, really high price.

What that means is not that America is, as a state or as a country, is somehow worse than all other countries or states in the world. What it means is that we have just as much capacity for looking away from evil as everybody else. And yet, if you look at the political tradition that comes out of that, it's not really a despairing tradition. You know what I mean? These are people who are kind of facing the worst of it in terms of America.

I think for complicated reasons, sometimes good, sometimes bad, the answer rarely is this thing is totally and completely corrupt. We need to abandon it. Sometimes that's the answer. And some of that I very much identify with. But certainly the mainstream position of the politics is not that. You know what I mean? And so I think on one level, the Black tradition really

does grapple with the dark heart of humanity that is here and is very much present in America and has always been present, while at the same time trying to advance it. And again, I don't think that's because there's anything bone deep about black people in this country. It's just the nature of our experience here and what we've had to... Despair isn't really an option. You know what I mean? Because it's like despair is like,

they sold my son, you know, from Virginia down to Mississippi. And so am I going to completely abandon all efforts to find him? That's what despair is. So I can't betray him by doing that, right? Like we have people at stake. You know what I mean? It's very intimate with us. And so to despair is to like, you know, abandon people, you know, which I think is a bit much for us. Pete Yeah. And this is the thing that kind of pisses me off sometimes in thinking about the conversation around Trump voters, thinking about how to process all this is, like, there's a lot of this excuse making, right? It's like, there's a lot, there's economic pain, there's

resentment, like the factory towns got hollowed out and, you know, that believe, you know, there was fentanyl and, and I got, there's, there's some truth to all that, like, you hear all that and you think, well, okay, but, you know, I mean, black folks went through way worse, worse than all this. And in the last, in the last generations, I know one of the things I was reading from you recently, I forget which article it was in, was, well, you're like, if anybody should be angered about the devastation wrecked by the financial sector and a government that declined to prosecute the perpetrators, it's the African-Americans, the housing crisis was one of the primary drivers in the past 20 years of the wealth

gap, right? And you didn't see this radicalization, right, like at a community level, right, individual level, but like at a community level, you didn't see this radicalization, right, like at a community level, right, individual level, but like at a community level, you didn't see this. Okay, what we really need to do is put in charge our most comically evil, you know, standard-bearer and punish the perpetrators. But that's what has been what you've seen from, you know, a lot of folks on the mega side. And I just don't like, okay, so what is the lesson there? Sometimes it takes you

to a bad place when you think about that the lesson is that they were successful in putting Donald Trump in. I think it is hard to accept that culture is an extremely important part of politics that there's not going to be a politics that doesn't have a cultural component to it. You know that that just isn't you know I was talking to be a politics that doesn't have a cultural component to it. You know, that just isn't. I was talking to somebody a couple months ago, who I actually was, I think, further to the left, and they were making the point. I think it was an astute political point.

That, hey, I won't go out and talk about, say, trans rights or immigrant rights to this person over here. I will focus on the things that we have in common economically, and try to build the coalition there. It's not that I'm anti-trans or anti-immigrant, but I'm trying to build a coalition, and coalitions have to be built on the things that are shared. I said, yeah, that makes sense, But what happens when your opposition starts attacking those people?

That really is, I get it. Hey, you don't want to highlight it and talk about it. I understand that. I mean, that's not the point of how you get elected. But when people decide that they want to talk about it, what do you do then? And I probably am one that feels that it's immoral to see bullying and to look away from it and not to mention, as some people are now pitching, jump in on it. And it's tough, man, like to accept that a group of people or that someone would turn over the entire state

because somewhere in the country, there's a high school track athlete who is transitioning and maybe one first place, like that would be enough. I mean, that's scary. Like that's really scary, you know? I also struggle with the premise of the argument because like the economics of the Trump voter is better than most people throughout the world. You know, like the French haven't turned to a Trump. We did better than the European. It doesn't work for me as a unifying theory that

it's just the economics. The cultural part, the cultural battle is a much clearer to me rationale for him. Let me also just advance that a little bit too. I mean, there are people I think whose politics I probably share in terms of what they want to see in terms of what the social safety net should be in this country. But when you look to Europe where the social safety net is a lot stronger and you talk to black people over there and you talk to Arabs, Arab people over there, they do not feel that the social safety net has necessarily been an anti-racist endeavor. In other words, it has not expunged those feelings.

It really hasn't, which is to say that you can deal with all of that economic stuff in the way that a lot of people suggest they should be dealt with, and yet. Now, that's kind of liberalization in Qatar and the UAE. Right. There's a lot of economic prosperity that's passed along. That's true. I mean, that is exactly right. That is exactly right.

I mean, in our own country, post-war period, I mean, you have this boom in terms of, we see that as the golden age. I don't think anybody would describe post-war America as a particularly tolerant, not racist place? I want to get into a couple more of the elements from your book we've been touched on. But first, there's this other book out there that has people kind of aflame, Abundance. I'm sure you've been hearing the chatter about this. I have. Ezra wrote this yesterday about the theory of power. and I was like, man, I have to get

Tanasi's reaction to this because I don't really know where you'll take it. But he wrote this because I guess to set this up, some on the left have been criticizing him saying that the book does not have a clear view of power and that the right way for the left to gain power is to create enemies, particularly in the billionaires and the corporate leaders. And this was his pushback to that. My view of power is more classically liberal. In his book, Liberalism, the Life of an Idea, Edmund Fawcett describes it neatly. Human power was implacable.

It could never be relied on to behave well. Whether political, economic, or social, superior power of some people over others tended inevitably to arbitrariness and domination unless resisted and checked. To take this view means power will be ill-used by your friends as well as your enemies, by your opponents as well as by your neighbors. From this perspective, there are no safe reservoirs of power. Corporations sometimes serve the national interests, sometimes betray it, the same is true of governments, unions, churches, et cetera.

What do you make of that? I mean, that seems right to me. I mean, I quote. There's some people that are very mad about that online. Some that are like, no, that's not accurate actually. And it's a false equivalence between these groups. I haven't read the column. So maybe it's like something that I'm missing. You know what I mean?

Let me just say that. And while I followed the debate, I haven't had the chance to read Ezra's book. I actually am still a little confused in terms of what the lines of the debate actually are to be frank with you. Well, here's why I asked you about it. I saw her to put you on the spot. I asked you about it because I saw the Ezra tweet when I was reading your, an Atlantic article you wrote about Tony Jute.

Yeah, Tony Jute. There was a bit in that where you were talking about power and you're right. Like you're writing about how there's this view that like there's this arc of you know, more arc of history that was bending towards justice, the Obama view. And shoot was was basically saying, no, the like, no, people are do not pay the price for their, you know, ills, and that the only way to make things better is to gain power. And so anyway, that's why I was curious kind of whether you had thought through that kind of question about the right way to view gaming power. Yeah, I love that quote.

That's actually from his book, Post War. And one of the things that that book is very, very clear-eyed about is the means by which what we call Europe today was established. Our rosy-eyed view of how the West greeted the survivors of the Holocaust and dealt with the implications of the Holocaust and the implications of World War II. And what he's talking about at that point is, actually ethnic cleansing and how like this, some journalists who believing in the divine justice of the world believes that people will pay for that.

And Tony is just like, no, there's no evidence that anybody ever paid. Sometimes the bad guys just get away with it. I read that, so I think Between the World and Me was published in 15, because we're 10 years, so we were 115. But really Between the World and Me comes out a case for reparations. And so I read that in 13, before I went into the case for reparations actually. And one of the things that conditioned me for it was just a view of the world and a

view of history. Because I do think certainly within the African American tradition, and I think this is because of perhaps our relationship with Christianity and the force with which Christianity has exerted itself in our politics and among our greatest leaders, in fact, that there is some sort of at the end of the day, this will work out. You know, the arc of, you know, the arc of the universe is long, but bends towards justice. And I guess Tony was probably one of the first people

I read that was like, no, the arc is bent. People have to bend it. Does not bend, there's no gravity, there's no anything. And, you know, in fact, to the contrary of anything, the inertia is on the side of evil, not good. And so that was just a revelatory moment. And probably all of my writing proceeds from that. Let's take it to the Between the World and Me then.

You wrote just earlier that, I think you said something like in the five, 10 years since your views on it have evolved in some ways. How so? Well, I mean, a big one is, and I've talked about this quite a bit, it's probably case for reparation. So I should explain the relationship between those two things. I was at the Atlantic for 10 years, and somewhere around 2012, 2013, I was, I mean, it grades, that job was so cool, man.

And coolest thing was like, I was blogging, and I would write like maybe twice a year, or once a year, like these big pieces for the magazine. And what that meant was I just had so much time to read. You know what I mean? I just had just tons of time to just read and absorb. And because of what the blogosphere was then, I would often write about what I was reading. And then I would have this feedback with the people that were commenting, and they would

say, well, you should read this, you should check out that. And I would go check out that. And so I was in this, I think, this hyper period of growth. And I don't know that I knew it then, but much of my political journey at that point was really just to answer the question of why was it that in every single socioeconomic indicator, you looked at black people were typically

somewhere at the bottom. And I only say somewhere to include indigenous Americans in that calculus. Why was that so consistent? And at the time, you still hear this sometimes, but less so now. There was a huge argument for culture, et cetera, which never passed my smell test. Yeah. Right, baggy jeans.

Yes, yes, yes. Baggy jeans. Both your pants. Right? Yeah, both your pants and that'll solve it. That's enough. I mean, you should pull up your pants, but I don't think that's why. I don't know.

I was at World Pride this past week. Right, right. People seemed to be doing well economically and had their pants down. It was fine. It was fine as it turns out. I feel like I started to get answers to that question, and that really led me to a case for reparations. And the real breakthrough for me was that I was able to articulate it for my editors

in such a way that they understood it and not just understood it, got excited about it and backed it and did everything. And so that was a remarkable thing for me. And Between the World and Me came out of a need to express emotionally, which really an empirical case in case for reparations. So those two things happened. And two really big things came out of that. The first was that I don't even feel comfortable articulating

this, but a level of fame accrued to me that I did not expect. It was not George Clooney fame, but it was make Ta-Nehisi uncomfortable fame, which maybe doesn't take much. People are looking at you at the airport. Yeah. And you're just maybe doesn't take much. Yeah. People are looking at you at the airport. Yeah. And you're just trying to get beautiful.

Yeah. Like yesterday. I just got off a plane from Denver yesterday. And you would think I'd be happy about this. I mean, I guess I should be, but just doing this is like, man, I knew I recognized you and then I saw your name and I love seeing you on Democracy Now and I love your books. Thank you, da da da da da. And while I appreciate her, I really, really do.

There's a part of me that just kind of wants to put on some glasses and go like this, right? And go on. Not that she did anything wrong, but I'm saying that I was uncomfortable with the amount of that. And what it did was it meant that a number of critiques began to come in, which is fair and what should happen. And part of that is linked to the second thing, which is that one of those critiques was the case for reparations and how I wrote about Israeli reparations and that.

And it was said to me in a way that forced me to take it seriously. And I spent some time taking it seriously. And my book, it just came out, the message that came out of that, in some ways is an attempt to reconcile myself to Palestinians, to the impact of my work in that community, to Israel, to Zionism. But I have to tell you, it is also one of those moments where I guess I realized, I, you know, like how naive I was about the country

I lived in, you know, and where it had its fingerprints on it and what we did. And so that goes beyond Israel. Like then you start looking at everything. Kim Burns has this documentary, which he put out years ago on the Vietnam War, but I just happened to watch it, you know, recently. And you see things, it's a great documentary, but you just happened to watch it recently. And you see things, it's a great documentary, but you see things like that and you say, well, okay, if this was true of us in this moment, what is our basic nature then? What else have we done?

What else have I missed? What else am I not seeing? And so that's kind of the path I've been on. I don't know where you're going to take that. I think that the personal reflection is important. Obviously, it's something I've been going through. I'm curious about the external though. This whole sort of world evolves not out of your book alone per se, but kind of out of

a lot of things that are happening around that time, particularly kind of with Black Lives Matter and racial justice. And when I was reading the book last night, one thing that struck me is like a couple of times you write critically about like accepting the invention of racecraft in the book. And like you write about this sort of, and there's this tension, right, between making racial identity and like the racial prioritization like a prime focus versus like rejecting the false construct a bit. And you know, again, it was 10 years ago, so I didn't really rereading it now that struck me because like a lot of the folks, you know, in the ensuing

decade have leaned in way more to like the kind of racial hierarchy argument side of this which obviously is there in your work as well and so I don't know I just I'm wondering did you watch all of that with any did it evolve your view at all or did you think that was cool or I don't know like what did you make of kind of all the conversation that around that in the ensuing decade? That's a great question. And I'll say two things. The first thing is there's a very subtle shift that's being made in this president between

the world and the man. I really had to do it when I was doing case for reparations because the argument in case for reparations is not that black people should get reparations. It is that victims of enslavement, Jim Crow should get reparations. It is that victims of enslavement, Jim Crow should get reparations. There's a very subtle difference there. The point is not the color of your skin. The point is I can prove that somebody injured you.

And you should be paid for that. Just like if you're walking down the street and the cops jump on you and beat the hell out of you and you sue the city. The city should, you know what I mean, repair you. It is connected deeply to the injury, not to your skin color. And that's a subtle thing. And so what you're talking about, that is present in between the world and me also. And it's present whenever I think the line in between the world and me is race is the child of racism, not the father. In other words, it's the racism that's

real. It's a thing. Somebody wants to do something to you. They call you the thing, and then you become the thing in their eyes. Now you have a decision about whether you accept that or not. You know what I'm saying? And so it was always important to me not to accept it. I think the problem comes in in the second part. So that's a very nuanced thing that I have to go through and complicated to go through. I think during that same period, some of us, some of us decided that social media was an effective place to convey nuanced ideas. I think that was a mistake. Okay. I actually think that was the mistake. In what way? When I write, I am ridiculously careful.

I don't just throw things out. I don't just lie up things because I recognize that many of the things that I am saying are things that people are not really going to want to hear. Even people who are sympathetic to me. There's a part of me that's like, really Ta-Nehisi, you're going to make me question this again. It's really, really important that I be as thorough as I possibly can. I be as nuanced as I possibly can. I be as direct and articulate as I possibly can.

You know, there's a phrase in that book, the people who think themselves white, that I actually adopted from James Baldwin, that I repeat over and over again. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say that. I am saying that this is an invention. That we really aren't different. Like there really is no bone, there's nothing bone, there's nothing.

There's nothing. You know what I mean? There is a fiction and a narrative and things that have come out of that that have made us different, but it's not a real thing. It took forever for me to figure out how to say that in a way that I felt true to me. You know what I mean? It took multiple drafts and going and looking over sentences again and again.

Somebody who is trying to take that level of care, because I believe that's the level of care that we have to take, if we want people to take our ideas seriously, that person probably should not have the ability to immediately try to articulate that press a button and send it out to a million people. Like those two things are in tension with each other. I would argue to actually contrary to each other. You know, and so I know that there are, well, I'll just speak for me. It takes so much work and so much effort to say the thing in a way that is true to what I actually feel that I'm seeing.

And I am not capable of doing that in a tweet, Instagram, blue sky, whatever. The medium is not suited for that. And so what happens is then there are either people who, fair-mindedly, you know what I mean, don't get the nuance of what you're saying. And so that becomes a problem. There are other people who are completely unfair, you know what I mean, and are not legitimate.

And then they use this butchered version of you, you know what I mean, and that becomes who you are. I think when you're coming with narratives and ideas and themes and theories that are outside of what people are used to and what the mainstream is, you got to be patient. You got to be patient with yourself and you got to be patient with them. That doesn't mean that you got to be less radical or not aggressive or not say what you think, but you need to make damn sure that you're saying what you think in the best way you possibly can. It's interesting to put social media on that because like, and there's, there clearly has been a backlash.

I don't, you know, I don't like what you ascribe it to and like what, you know, how, what, how much of it was already there versus how much of the backlash. Right. But at some level, you know, the Trump movement and other, you know, this sort of rise of like more explicitly racist young folks like the Gropers and stuff like this. Like, it's not as if those people did not exist in 1996. They just weren't talking about it in quite as an upfront way, right?

So it's something, there's some backlash that, and so to point to social media is the, is that what you're saying that you think that just the nature of the discourse, the social media was the driver of that, you're saying? You think that just the nature of the discourse, the social media was the driver of that, do you think? Or was there going to be a necessary backlash no matter what, anytime? There was more- It hasn't been a backlash. There's never been a moment.

Look, when Obama got pro- We should have known. Look, there's never been moments of racial progress in this country where there was no backlash. So that was going to happen. I guess the thing I'm more referring to is probably some of the writers and maybe even activists who are of accord with me in terms of my politics, in terms of where I would like to see the world, who I think maybe articulate themselves too much over social media. It became their main way. And actually what they were saying was quite complicated

and important and significant, but I don't know that a tweet is the best way to do it. I guess one more thought about that evolution over the last 10 years, because I look at it, and I want you to go ahead and tell me that this is moderate Tim being misguided about the nature of these things. Please feel free to say that. But I look back at the 10 years and look, my daughter's like, I've adopted a daughter. And like the one of the coolest things about- How old is she? She's seven.

Okay. Congratulations. Yeah, she's amazing. You've made it seven years. Yeah, she's amazing. And we have made it seven years. And here's the cool thing about it is that she grew up in this moment is that, you know, my parents, you know, and my husband's parents, who are from the suburbs and from rural America, respectively, and have, you know, like a combined eight black people in the counties where they lived, right, growing up, like they now, I think, in a large part to the change that we've seen over the last 10 years, can go buy her kids books that have little black girls

as the main character and you know dolls and like it's easy it's easy for them right like rather than having to go out and do it and they kind of get why it's important in a way that they I don't think maybe would have 20 years ago right like so there's been progress in this kind of area of of recognition and platforming or whatever, identity, that has been positive. And then there's been this other element that's like, well, you know, we're going to have at schools now, we're going to re-separate people and have groups of black kids and white kids in different classes. Or we're going to have these things where we rank, you know, the intersectionality and

the different levels of oppression if you're this and that group combined versus that and that group combined. And to me, it kind of feels like there was some really positive elements and then there were some elements that like lended itself to a more potent backlash. And I don't know if you look at that, at the period and feel that at all, or I think I'm totally off base about it. No, I, or think I'm totally off base about it? No, I don't think you're totally off base. I think all movements have their excesses. And I think all movements have their fools who are part of those movements. And sometimes those

fools have power. And sometimes those excessive people have power and they do things that are not smart and are not in service of the ideals that they claim to be serving. I think that the difference is... So I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I feel like, again, like what I was saying before is that when you are the person that's seeking to revolutionize something, when you are telling a group of people, you want to go in front of a group of people and say, everything you have, all of your material progress in the world and all your mother's material progress, grandmother, all generated, is rooted in the destruction of somebody else's stuff and the theft of that.

You have to understand that's going to be hard for people to take. Yeah. Like, so yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? And so what that means is again, I really, you know, have to stress this. It doesn't mean that you don't say it though. Right. But you just have to remember how difficult that would be for you to hear. You know what I mean? And then you have to A, say it in the most truthful way you can. You know what I mean? And then you have to A, say it in the most truthful way you can. You know what I mean? And weirdly enough, I believe this, even though I write hard and write aggressive, you actually have to say it in the most compassionate way you can say it too. Now, compassion to me means something different probably than it does to a lot of other people,

but some people, compassion means you talk soft to people and you rub their back. And for me, it means that you address them like adults. You address them respectfully, but you're very direct with them about what is what. And I think all political movements don't exist under that burden, though. Certainly MAGA doesn't. You know what I mean? Like they can say, excesses are the point for them. You know what I mean? Going over the line, that's the whole point. To do that,

yet for us and for people who really seek this kind of bone deep change in the country, that's just not a luxury we have. That's not a luxury that we have had. And so, are there people out there who said and did certain things and articulated themselves in certain ways. And if there's a level of vagary that's coming into my language right now, it's because I was never able to measure what was what and how much was, what portion of this was actually true. In other words, what portion of this was real and what portion of it was being ginned up. I'm not saying no portion of it was real, but it was always...

Because I'll be honest, a lot of the people who I was hearing that from were not people real and what portion of it was being jibbed up. And I'm not saying no portion of it was real, but it was always, because I'll be honest, like a lot of the people who I was hearing that from were not people who I would say, um, You've a lot of respect for their point of view. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I would not consider them, you know what I mean?

Um, now some things I did, I was like, this is clearly some dumb shit. Like this, you know what I mean? And I would, you know, have no problem with that, but no, I don't think you're wrong, man. I don't, I don't think that is incorrect. I think... I mean, here's an example, I think. Well, let me make this...

Maybe I can make this a little bit more tangible, right? Folks are really upset about defunding the police, right? Like that was... And that became a political flashpoint. Like it became a thing that people said, this person wants to defund the police. How many actual people running for office in Congress, in Senate, whatever said, I want to defund the police? I don't think many said it.

You know what I mean? It was an activist cry. Some mayors and prosecutors. Some mayors and prosecutors. Did they use that language? I mean, and you can tell me they did. I mean what I mean? It was an activist cry. Some mayors and prosecutors. Some mayors and prosecutors. Did they use that language? I mean, and you can tell me they did. I mean, I'm just curious. Did they say, I'm running on defunding the police? Yeah. I guess I'd have to go back to the archives. I mean, like there were some functionally, you know, they were with that crowd, you know, I guess. With that crowd. See, that's what I mean though, right? Like, I could be with that crowd, you

know what I mean? Like, oh yeah, I sympathize with what you're saying, but maybe I would say it differently, you know what I mean? But see, actually even I'm not, you know, trying to go squish you on this. In fact, I think like what you're saying makes the point, right? Like, you have to worry about what crowds you're with. But your opposition really doesn't. You know what I mean? Walk around with open racist, who cares? You know what I mean? Like, it really, it really doesn't cares? You know, I mean like it really it really doesn't matter And so that's like there's a weight you labor under to be on point correct You know what? I mean at all times

I feel like as a writer this serves me because it actually forces me to re interrogate everything I write it forces me out of certain mediums, you know again at certain places I just don't go to talk and I just don't, because they don't serve that. And so it really concentrates me. But I do understand that, you know, I don't know, I guess I go back to where we started at the beginning here. You know, people are human.

Yeah. People are human, you know, and sometimes they're unwise and how they, you know, articulate things and think about things and say things. And they say things that, you know, maybe get them an applause and not necessarily about the work that they claim to be. Two other little items from the book. When I read it last night, I thought about it differently than I would have in 2015. Dr. Mabel Jones, my favorite character, God love her, lost her son, LSU grad, she shot that out. She's unbelievable. She said when you're talking to her, compared America to Rome, glory days long ago passed and those were sullied and we can't get the message.

We don't understand that we're embracing our deaths. This was you to your son later in the book. You wrote, I do not believe that we can stop them being the kind of American power structure because they just will ultimately stop themselves. Both of those things seem a lot more acute than maybe they did in 2015. Jesus. Was that not in your spirit of compassionate writing? No, it wasn't my spirit of compassionate writing. Because I think your compassion begins with honesty. I think actually people can feel that. I think people can feel when you're trying to hurt them, when you're trying to be straight

with them. Yeah. I mean, again, I think what echoed in the back of that writing was, I said earlier that I started with case for reparations. I had done, at that point, I did so much research for that work that what became clear was that the standard sort of liberal articulation of this of America as a fundamentally good country, fundamentally in its bones good, that just made some mistakes, some significant ones but some mistakes, was false.

Was false. Those things that are dismissed as mistakes are actually core to what the country is and if you take them out, you actually don't have a country. So that can't help but reformulate how you feel. And so that I can be completely, maybe a little clearer about what I mean when I say that. I think when I was writing Case for Reparations, I was writing to a reader who probably believed that slavery was the thing that happened in this country alongside everything else.

In other words, if slavery didn't happen, you could still have an America. What became clear is fundamentally that is not true. Like fundamentally, you know what I mean? Like you look at your institutions that date back from that period, it was tough in 1850 to assemble a large amount of money and not have your fingerprints somewhere on slavery. It was that big of a thing. You know what I mean?

And then that followed through into, you know, and this was the heart of that essay, you know, the GI Bill and, you know, all of the reforms then, which were only possible by excluding African Americans. They went in the past. You just wouldn't have had them. Right. You know, and so when you start accepting that about the country, you say, oh, oh, this is who, you know, If you just think about it as a person, and now you're getting an accurate biography of who that person is, and you say, oh, so where is that person probably going in 10 years? And so for that book, it just fundamentally caused me to fundamentally reassess what was possible, what was likely possible, in know what I mean? In terms of what the country could do. That was before Trump too. I wrote that before.

Yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. It's just so stark now, right? This like the element of stopping themselves. It probably felt a little overwrought, honestly, in 2015. The idea, you know what I mean? That's what everybody told me. That's what everybody told me. That was the critique of it. They were like, dude, it's hopeless. He's overjoyed. To me, this feels kind of like modest now were like, this dude is hopeless. He's overjoyed. This is like a median. No, man.

That was people were like, no, this dude's gone way too far. What is wrong with him? Two things real quick. Our culture editor, Sonny Bunch, demanded that I ask you if the black Superman movie is dead. I know nothing about this world. I guess you have a whole other life where you do comic books and movies and stuff and this is not my world. I don't care about what happens in magical creatures, but other people do. So I have to-

Oh, you should care. You should. I guess that the answer I can give is that it's still in development. Other people have said that, so with more power than me. So I don't think I'm going beyond what's been publicly said. I don't even know what the weight of that question is, to be honest. Literally, I was like, I asked some other folks, I was like, is there anything I should ask them? So he's like, you have to ask them about the black Superman movie. So anyway, I'm for black Superman. I don't know. We saw a lot of backlash to that lesbian kiss in Buzz Lightyear though, and the black little mermaid. So you never know what the ramifications of that might be. So the book is framed, right, as to your son, right, Samore? It's written to him. Was it advice to your son, would you

say, or more of an explanation for your son of your perspective? Are you reading it? You're like, obviously your backstory could not be more different than mine and your experience could not be more different than mine. So I found myself throughout thinking about it as a father, is being like, there's just a lot of history and life experience that I just do not bring to this job that you did. Right? And so I guess my question for you is if you have any advice for me or for my child. No, you know what I think? I think you're both you have any advice for me or for my child. No, you know what I think? I think you're both right and you're wrong. You're right. And if it's point of, you know, obviously just on its face, you know, our backgrounds are very different. Having said that, I do believe that anybody who's had to live a significant portion of their life

anybody who's had to live a significant portion of their life or their entire life outside of what the dominant culture and politics articulates itself as the ideal, as the archetype probably has some level of insight into that culture that people who have not don't. You know? And so that was all between the world and me was, right? insight into that culture that people who have not don't. And so that was all between the world and me was, right? It was like, okay, there's this umbrella of humanity and human rights. I am from a group of people that for their history have in general been outside of that. What are my insights on it? Well, you can give me advice without, you don't have to attack me.

No, I'm not. I'm not, no. Yeah, no, I know you're not. You don't have to be like, yeah, bro, you're right. You don't know anything. I attack me yeah I know you're not you don't have to be like yeah bro you're right you don't know anything I appreciate that I know some things I didn't think I knew nothing you know maybe there's some there's there's also some part that's black that's dark to me right that I just is just not you probably not in my field of vision and I'm learning about

it you probably know more than you think you know that's the first thing I was saying and then you have to remember remember, most of my insights actually come from taking a much harder, more skeptical look at a story that I already knew. You know what I mean? Or thought I knew. It did not come for instance, I'm going to go spend some time on some reservations and that would have been a worthwhile endeavor, but it did not come from that. Right.

I mean, it actually came from, you know, it was a deeply internal mission that allowed me to externalize. I mean, I guess I, why am I resisting this question? I don't enjoy the idea that people write books that other people perceive as insightful, like you just wrote the book, like you just wrote a book and you were insightful in that moment. You know, it doesn't mean that you're insightful about life. And not only that, that's fair. I hear that. Not only that, not only that there are people who can't write books or don't write books or haven't yet who have their own stories and their own

experiences and then there's insight that is drawn from that too. And that's equal, you know what I mean? And sometimes more, and just cause you wrote the book doesn't mean that you have it more. Like I began my professional career as a journalist and part of being a journalist is you sit down and you listen to people and you make yourself stupid, you know, and oftentimes they have insights into life

that, you know, just would never occur to you. And so I really do go back to what I was saying. I'm just saying, I think, how do you have a conversation with your daughter explaining how different the world is that she's growing up in terms of how it looks at LGBT people and how it looked at you. Like, I imagine that's going to be a little abstract to her. Yeah. And yet there are, I imagine there are also lessons and experiences from that, from having lived through that, that are probably also important. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Sure. I don't want to assume too much. No, no, no It's all good I hear that man, it's um we're all in a journey and just trying to navigate through it, you know, and and I feel Lucky that I have been able to I go through different kinds of things and experiences that opened my perspective onto different items that maybe I wouldn't have, right? Had I just been straight or had I just had a family that's mono-racial or whatever, but with that comes challenges and awakenings and all that. And so anyway-

Oh, I do have one piece of advice. This is my only piece of advice. Yeah. Okay, great. Perfect. We can leave it on that. If you have the ability and the power at any point to live for some period of time outside the country and with that to raise a kid who is not monolingual and maybe already on that,

I don't know, that's a great thing. It's a great thing. The best thing I ever did for my kid, best thing. Best thing. Outside the country. Okay. That is good advice. And who knows, I might be thrust out of the country anytime now.

So that might make it easy on me. Man, I really appreciate you. This is so fun. It's good to meet you. And let's do it again sometime. All right? All right. Thanks, brother.

All right. Thanks so much to Ta-Nehisi Coates. I really appreciate him coming on the pod. I want to have a bonus segment for you guys. On Friday, we did a live show and fundraiser, Free Andri, in support of immigrant defenders, which was the legal effort helping the Venezuelans that have then disappeared to that hellhole in El Salvador. And we had a little bit of fun. If you want to go watch the whole show, which included some pretty raunchy gay jokes, some annoyingly funny material from Sarah,

who I think was just adamant that she was going to outshine me and love it, who think we're the jokesters. So if you want to go see all that, the comedy, go to the YouTube page and you can check it all out there. But for podcast listeners, I wanted to share with you the serious parts of the show. I interviewed Lindsay Toslowski, who's the lawyer representing Andre and a handful of

other of the Venezuelans. And boy, she's just amazing. And we appreciate her work so much. It was great to finally meet her in person. We've been DMing for a while now. So I've got that segment. And then at the very end of the show, I took off my jokester hat and gave a rant about why this specific case has upset me so much and why we want to do everything that we can

to continue to draw attention to it in the hopes that we can eventually prevent these men from being disappeared for no reason except the cruelty of the folks in this White House. So I hope you enjoy both of those segments as much as possible. If I make you cry, sorry. And we will see you all back here tomorrow with our usual Bill Crystal Monday, but on Tuesday. So stick around and we'll see you all back here soon. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. Introduce yourself. Tell everybody who we're talking to. Hi everybody.

I'm Lindsay Toslowski. I'm the president and CEO of the immigrant defenders law center. Thank you. It's so great to see you in person. Finally, after all of our Twitter DMS, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. to be able to support your guys' work with this event tonight. I should say I got a text from Congressman Richie Torres' folks, they donated $1,000 to your group as well, since he couldn't be here tonight. So we're doing the best we can. But I thought that, why don't you start by just telling us about Andre and how you got to know him

and how you got to represent him. Sure, so Andre is an asylum seeker from Venezuela. He came to the US last year. When he was in Venezuela as a gay man, he faced incredible discrimination. He also was politically persecuted. He was physically hurt. He was followed home by police officers.

So he made the incredibly difficult decision to come to the US. But he had a really rich life there. He's been in a theater troupe since he was seven years old. He actually worked on the Miss Venezuela pageant. He was in pageants himself as a contestant. Now is that common in Venezuela for Tren Doragua men to be working on the Miss Venezuela pageant?

You know, I don't think that's been a cover I've seen before. Okay. Yeah, not common. He also worked professionally as a makeup artist. He, you know, had this really rich life. He's close to his mom. So for him to flee and come to the United States, things were really bad. Yeah. And it was really difficult for him to live authentically there.

So he came to the US and he did everything that we were asking people to do. He made an appointment, he waited in Tijuana for that appointment. He got into the US, he was kept in an ICE prison in San Diego from the moment he arrived here. He's never stepped free in the United States at all. During that time, he passed his credible fear interview which means

he was on his way to getting asylum. We started representing him in December of last year. We were in the process of waiting for a court hearing for him and he was disappeared by the Trump administration on March 15th. And so since you had started, you'd been talking to him that time and did you kind of expect that, or what was the situation between December and March? Yeah, so we were getting ready to move forward with his asylum case.

We had a hearing on March 13th. He was really suffering in an ICE detention center, which is one of the reasons that we worry so much about what it's like for him now in a torture prison in El Salvador. Suffering how? Suffering, he was sexually harassed. He had actually made complaints. This is a detention center in San Diego.

But he also was doing other things while he was there, including at one point he gave us a, it was sort of like a business plan, a 19 page business plan that he had created for a non-profit that he wanted to start. And it was to help kids who were homeless and to help other gay kids. And he was planning to do that once he got out and he wanted to know if we could show it to the judge to show that he had good intentions here in the US.

Oh, now you do a lot of these cases. Bring him fucking back. That's ridiculous. You know, the Andre case has just taken up so much of, it's good, it's gotten attention, it's taken so much of my brain power, but I know you represent other folks as well. Are there any other stories you want to tell us

about the people that you represent that are in El Salvador? So we represent eight other men who are also at the same Secaut prison in El Salvador that Andres is. One of them is Arturo Suarez. He's a professional singer. He actually had a baby born since he's been there, who he's never met. Another is Miguel Rojas Mendoza. He was picked up in Louisiana while working as a horse trainer and rancher. He actually had TPS, so he had protected status here in the United States.

He has two children, and his children's names were the tattoos that he had that likely landed him there. And there are so many other stories, so many other Andes that could be part of the more than 235 men who were sent on those US government planes to El Salvador. How do you not become just consumed by rage, murderous rage? That's a personal question, I'm looking for advice. You know, I think that every single day that I'm here, I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed

to be doing, and I'm supposed to be doing. And I think all of the other... And I think all of the other, we have a huge team that's working on Antres' case, other immigrant defenders, other colleagues. We have a case that is actually the JGG versus Trump case. It's happening here right now. We got a positive decision this week.

So we are keeping Hope alive. I believe, I know in my heart that we will get him back and we're not gonna stop fighting until we do. And so I think to answer your question about rage, we're channeling our rage for good at this moment because what the hell else are we going to do? Okay. I'm just going to play that back to myself from time to time

to try to use your wisdom to help me out. Okay, we had a little news today with the Kilmour-Brega Garcia case. Other, I guess, kind of, I mean, it's good, but also fuck these people. Just from the legal perspective, what does that development say to you about all these other cases? So the news that we got in Kilmar's case

is that he's on his way back to the United States. What that says to me is they need to stop lying that it's impossible. And if they can bring him back, they can bring Ankur back. Yeah. And this is the thing about all these cases, like, the reason why they're bringing Kilmar back is because they want to make it about the details of Kilmar's life, which I don't know about one way or the other, but like, that's the fucking point here, right? Like you can't kidnap 250 people, send them to a foreign gulag, and then just be like,

well, whatever, we'll see what happens. Some of them are bad guys, some of them are... Right? Like that is the issue here. them to a foreign gulag and then just be like, well, whatever, we'll see what happens. Some of them are bad guys, some of them are... That is the issue here. And so how do you think about framing that for people so we don't get bogged down in the details of individual cases? Right. In many ways, what happened...

I mean, there's lots of legal things I could tell you about the Alien Enemies Act and all these things, and I won't. Thank you. You're welcome. But what I can say is that his case is fundamentally about due process. And due process is most important when the government is accusing you of a crime

or alleging you are a gang member. The only thing that stands between any of us ending up in a prison in El Salvador, just like Andri, is the fact that we have due process, we have constitutional rights. When those are trampled, when you are, like Andri, whisked away without getting to speak to your lawyer, without knowing where you are going,

without being given an opportunity to refute what the government is saying about you, your day in court, this is what happens. And if it can happen to him, it could happen to any one of us. And that's why this case is not just about Andri, it's not just about the 240 men, it's about the future of our democracy and whether or not we're going to fight for it. All right, last thing.

What can, obviously, folks here care about this? They showed up tonight. We really appreciate all of you. What else can people do? Well, we're so grateful for this. Donating to organizations like Immigrant Defenders Law Center and our partner organizations is so important because it helps us to do this work.

All of our work is done for free for the clients. And so being here is really important. But we're asking people to continue to shine a light on this case. Continue to lift up his story, lift up the stories of all these men. You can go to freeandri.org and you will see toolkits so you can reach out to your elected representatives.

But really the US government here, the Trump administration, they are trying to erase his existence. And so what we need people to do is keep his story alive. Don't let them erase him. And most importantly, talk to your family and friends, those that live in Republican districts. Make sure that they are going to town halls,

that they are asking the questions about when Andhri is coming back and when he's going to get his day in court. That is the best thing that people can do. I admire you so much. Thank you so much for everything you're doing. That's Lindsay. Appreciate her.

Thank you, everybody. Yeah, stand up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm about to be sad for a little bit, so I'm sorry that I have to end you on something sad, but the reason why we're doing this is because of Andre. And... Uh...

Uh... Uh... Uh... Uh... Uh... Uh... I think there are two reasons why this has affected me so much. One is because, kind of what Levitt was saying, I came out of this tradition of being pro-life and being pro-freedom and thinking that that was what was animating my political work. Jeb used to say something about how we wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to live

a life of purpose and meaning. And I believed that and thought it wasn't BS. And so the idea that we are doing that, that Republicans, that Donald Trump, that our country is taking away somebody's life, their purpose and their meaning, really pisses me off. And so that's one reason. And the other reason is just because,

I guess just because both me and André are gay, I guess, I can just imagine it. And I just want, I'm sorry to do this, but I just want everybody to imagine this with me for a second. He flees Venezuela, he flees communism. He takes a horrible journey across Central America, through Mexico,

goes through unimaginable shit, has to deal with cartels, has to find food and shelter, just to get to America, because he wants, because he thinks here he can live a life of purpose and meaning, he thinks he can be free. And he gets to the border, and he does what he's supposed to do, he signs up for the stupid CBP-1 app and explains why he had to flee a communist country and then we let him in. And he sits in a cell.

And he's sexually harassed in the cell. And he is abused and attacked. And he is hoping that it's worth it because at the end there's this thing, there's this like freedom in this country that he can get. And instead of that, one day he's in the cell and people come in there and they shackle him. And they shackle his legs and his hands

and they take him with other Venezuelans to a plane. And he's thinking, this is horrible, but at least I'm going home to Venezuela, right? At least I get to see my mother and my best friend. And instead of sending him to Venezuela, we send him to a fucking hell in El Salvador. And he gets off the plane and they beat him up and they shave his head and he screams out for his freedom

and he says, I'm gay, I'm not a gang banger, I want just, you have the wrong person and there's nothing you can do, and they put him in a fucking hole, and he's living a nightmare that you can't imagine. It is just an unimaginable nightmare. And the reason that he's living it is our country. Is that we did it to him.

Like, the US did it to him. And so it's up to us to get him the fuck out of this nightmare. You can hear their voices still calling across the years And they're all crying across the ocean And they're crying across the land And they will, too, we all come to understand None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free One of us aren't changed None of us are free And there are people still in darkness And they just can't see the light

If you don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right We've got to try to feed for each other Let our brothers know that we care We've got to get the message sendin' out loud and clear None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free None of us are free It's a single truth we all need Just to hear and to see None of us are free Oh Lord, none of us are free Now I swear

Your salvation isn't too hard to find None of us can find it on our own We've got to join together In spirit, heart and mind So that every soul who's suffering Will know that we're not alone None of us are free None of us are free, y'all. None of us are free. None of us are free.

None of us are free. The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Brown.