The Bulwark Podcast - Ta-Nehisi Coates: This Is Armed Identity Politics

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

Trump has decidedly built a white supremacist army within the government. And this was always the risk when the Department of Homeland Security was created after 9-11. Influential people warned at the time that our norms would not protect us against someone who was determined to violate them using DHS. At the same time, white people are putting themselves on the line in a way that is reminiscent of the abolitionists. Plus, some often overlooked elements of the Civil Rights Movement, Jared Kushner’s offensive and absurd vision for a “New Gaza,” and the destruction of a jewel of journalism that was CBS.Snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life, the American Giant Classic Full Zip. Go to https://www.american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order with promo code BULWARK. Thanks to American Giant for sponsoring the show! show notes Ta-Nehisi's most recent piece in Vanity Fair The CBS interview with Ta-Nehisi referenced in the show Tickets for the live show in Minnesota go on sale Friday

Hello, welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back to the show. A journalist and author and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, which just published his newest column. The Homeland is a war on America, the blood and soil nationalism that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretty. It's Tom Ossie Coates. How you doing, man? I'm doing good. How about you, Tim? Well, you know, we're here.

All right, we're living. So that's the best we can do. It was a great piece, man. I'm so appreciative of you coming back on. And the word homeland's been bugging me. lot. So you scratched a niche that I've had. And I guess let's just start away. I'm so sorry. Can I actually, can I actually why has been bugging you? Sure. Well, here's why. It was funny. I was reading the article. And you quoted Peggy Noonan. I did. Who I kind of hate now,

but who I loved in 2002. And this was an article of hers from 2002 where she said, Homeland isn't really an American word. It's not something we used to say or say now. It has a vaguely teutonic ring. V-Mas-Helbs the Fuhr, protects the homeland. And that's like how I felt about it. And I didn't feel that way about the Department of Homeland Security during the 20 aughts. I probably should have in retrospect. But I didn't.

But like the way they use it has drawn out that kind of German-tutonic sense for me in a way that's made me feel very uncomfortable. It's the blood and soil element of it. So that'd be my answer. What about you? No, I only ask you because, I can't say I was either. I mean, I was in my 20s when they, you know, founded the Department of Homeland Security. But I certainly was not saying, well, this sounds really, this sounds a little off, you know.

And I probably did not have enough political awareness to understand that some of the problems that, you know, we're seeing today. I actually had their roots back then. But what was interesting to me is that some people did. And some of them were people that, you know, that you would suspect. And some of them were people that, you know, you would not, you know, necessarily suspect either. Yeah. I thought that was the interesting thing about the Peggy column that you referenced it is to me it speaks to something that I think basically everyone would have agreed about in 2002 that the Trump supporters would disagree with now because they have to out of convenience which is that like words matter framing their k carry with them some type of definition you know whether you want to or not they carry with them implications you know whether you want them to or not necessarily and and it feels like The fact that they gave it that name, the Department of Homeland Security, had these implications. You could kind of see some of it in the Bush and Obama years. I don't want to say you couldn't.

The sort of rhetorical implications that it really fully bloomed in this past few years. Yeah, definitely. And there are people like Russ Feingold who I interviewed for the article. And Spencer Ackerman, who wrote this great, great history of the war on terror called Rain of Terror, which very much influenced this article, by the way, who would say that even then, like the pivot to merging border security with anti-terrorism. Actually, there's a lot of roots of what's happening now in that.

That it's not a mistake that you ended up in a black Muslim immigrant, sometimes not immigrant community, that that became the flashpoint. Yeah. Yeah, the other thing that Russ that you referenced in the story that I think was super prescient you look at now was that a lot of those who were responding to his concerns were saying, well, like, we're better than that. Like, you know, you're worried that this might happen, but the norms will protect us.

And he was saying at the time, well, we can't just rely on, like, norms protecting us. And like, here we are today. And literally, DHS is signing warrants for themselves to beat down the door of people's houses. And the vice president is out there saying, well, we got a warrant. Because they're just checking their own boxes. And it's like, man, we're, really pressure to listen to Russ Feingold.

That interview was so good. And there were aspects of it that I actually, just because of the boundaries of the column, I couldn't get in there. And in this sense, I mean, I think he was of, you know, two minds. He was sincere, but he was of two minds in the sense that on the one hand, you know, he was suspicious of this notion that the norms will protect us. But at the same time, same time, one thing he said that I didn't get in the article was that against somebody who is just determined, you know, to become a tyrant or determined.

and to just violate, you know what I mean, and who's elected, you can't really design a system that, you know, is for proof. You know, because he was saying, you know, he had come from this space of thinking of the Constitution as this, you know, great genius document, you know, emanating out of the American people and all of this. But what he had taken over his years was that really is actually quite hard to design a system that is invulnerable to the kind of things that Trump is doing. Now, the harbomland security made it easier, I would say. But to make it completely, it's extremely hard to do. Some of this is not about rules, man.

What else was worth saying? What's he up to right now? I just Googled it. He's 72. At our current status, he could be the Democratic-Romanie next time. He'd be the youngest to the last three presidents if he won in 2020. I don't know why more people don't talk to him? I mean, he was just so wise.

And you know what I mean? He was so free. I mean, if we started one place and because I didn't expect to talk about this whole thing about Constitution. and, you know, how he himself had changed, which was very, very interesting because he didn't go into the interview and say, ha, ha, ha, I was right. You know, all these other people were wrong.

I mean, you know, he told the truth about what happened. But then he said, listen, I'm just going to tell you, even I did not foresee it going this fall. Like, you don't, like, paint it like I knew, like Trump was going to happen. I did not. I did not. And, you know, one of the stories that we did get in that article was that he talked about how, and I just,

It's just so sad to me, but it's true. He said, you know, as part of his, you know, duties as a senator every year, he would go to every county in Wisconsin and he would, you know, hold these town meetings. And he said, you know, sometimes people would come out. They would disagree. And, you know, sometimes those people would, you know, get booed by his supporters. And he would tell his supporters, no, let them talk. And, you know, but it never really got nasty. And he said as soon as Obama won, before he was even sworn it, it immediately, immediately degraded.

And I think it was very, very depressing about that. And this is, I think, hard for a lot of us to say. But those eight years really broke something in some portion of this country. And I think we're still under it. We've got to track him down. He might be on the podcast next. I think you should. I think you should.

No, I think you should. He was great, man. He was great. He was replaced, as you mentioned, the article by Ron Johnson, who, like, one of the biggest fucking buffoons in the entire. Senate, which is a competitive category. At the time you wrote the article, he said he hadn't commented on Preddy yet.

He has since. I want to play it for you. You know, this is jinned up by the radical left. They've now got a couple martyrs. This is the predictable results of inciting people toward violence and obstruction of justice. It's just tragic.

Martyrs predictable. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know how to take that seriously. I think one of the problems of American politics is that Bill into the system is this notion that both parties will have some if at times tenuous connection to the truth and i don't know what you do when half the has there's no commitment whatsoever right you know what i mean to the truth like i think um it's a tough system then you know yeah i think

about the other day just about the vice president there's just the one who's under my crawl the most these days. He doesn't tell the truth about anything, and he takes glee in it. You know, it's like, Trump is a liar. But, like, Trump lies about, like, a consistent basket of things. Like, like, he wants to always look good. And so he lies

to always make himself look good. And so sometimes he's telling the truth. Sometimes he's lying. It depends on what he thinks it makes himself look good. You know, it's a narcissism thing. Like, J.D., in his engagement about what has happened to Minneapolis, has said that the police are lying.

You know, when they say that they've been racially targeted, he said that the victims are lying. He's lied about the victims. He's lied about the community. There's no basis in fact at all. He's created a story, basically. He's created an imaginary world of what is happening in Minneapolis and arguing on those grounds. And that's very challenging to counter in a political space, I think. It is, man.

And I will say I'm completely sympathetic to people who, who because they have bills to pay, because they have children to raise, because they have grandparents to take care of, like they can't hunt down every fact. The system depends on some amount of leadership with, and I can't believe I'm going to use this term, but some amount of political virtue of some sort,

if you have a party entirely captured, effectively by reality TV stars, and with the ethics of the form, with the ethics of the form also, that's tough. That's just really, really, really tough. And, you know, I don't, you know, obviously I make no excuse and no, you know, court for anybody's, you know, racism, bigotry, sexism, transphobia, etc. But I also don't think it had to be this way, you know?

Yeah, I mean, you've written a lot about kind of like the way that the narratives and storytelling, like have power in these situations in political context. I just was thinking about the stories that they've been telling about Minneapolis. And I do think, like, in some ways, part of the reason why the opposition to that, whether that be the Democrats or resistance or America, however you want to frame that, is on the front foot over the last two weeks, because these tragedies have given them a hero story to tell or, you know, a story about these two folks who have been murdered.

But, like, in a broader context of the conversation, it is challenging to have to fight somebody that's creating a convenient story and telling that all the time with being on the other side having to be the people that are like using facts and trying to massage them a little bit to make them sound a little bit better for you and you end up in this kind of like white paper

versus reality TV construct that's hard to get out of. I wonder what you think about that. I mean, I agree with you. I think one of successes of Minneapolis is that they found a way to do that. Like they found a way to counter it just comes off its basic American decency.

and if my friend Adam Serwell, I should say basic human decency, that's what I should say. He was on yesterday. We got you back to back. So we'll talk about Adam's article. Did he talk about how this goes back to abolition and how like there's always been this spirit here? No, he didn't. So you do it for him. Okay. All right. This is Adam's point. But what Adam would tell you like, you know, me and him, we talk from time to time. And when he was first beginning working on his, you know, incredible, incredible piece for the Atlantic, the first thing he said looking at this was it reminded him of abolitionism. And one of the things that people forget, because like the story of slavery, you know, becomes kind of compressed is we forget in the run up to the Civil War, how many white people were willing to put their bodies on the line to keep their neighbors, as my friend Jolani Cobb says.

I'm just name-checking now. As my friend Jolani Cobb says, to keep them from being dragged, you know, back into, I mean, they were pitched battles. You know, in the streets of Boston and Syracuse, sometimes these battles, a lot of times these battles were not nonviolent. And so what I want to say is there is, I think, in the hearts of most people, like just this kind of basic goodness that makes it hard to watch like a five-year-old. You know what I mean? Get snatched or to watch like somebody's grandfather, you know, dragged out the house. And people tend to respond to that, which, by the way, makes the need for what you were talking about at the beginning. That's kind of why you need the other story.

But you need something to overcome that, that basic, you know, human sympathy. I just say one other thing, even after I get an elongated. Dude, you just roll, man. We're pre-taping this in the evening. It's usually a morning thing, so I got nothing but time. You're saving me from bed-toe, doing bedtime with my kids. So we can go as long as you want. And I don't want to valorize anybody's death or anybody's, you know,

killing, you know, certainly. And I don't want to valorize martyredom. But I will tell you, man, to see models of what I can only call good white folk has been really, really, really, really, really beautiful. I think sometimes. sometimes people who I agree with people who are on my side of politics sometimes and I understand why we get exhausted we don't want to explain things to people we don't want to you know have to sit people down and and have conversations well it's pretty clear some of those conversations you

know have taken place and it's pretty clear that you have a population of people a diverse population of people who have become woke in the best, best, best possible sense and modeling that, modeling that for other white people so that it takes us away from telling, you know, me telling you what you're not doing. Like the negativity of that, the anger where I'm always like wagging my finger at you.

You know, like white man, listen. Like it's kind of been beautiful to have another conversation. Nobody in that exchange likes it, you know? The finger wagger or the finger wagging. Well, some people like it. Somebody, let me be honest. Somebody want to take a pleasure.

That's fair. You're right. Most people, but some people are taking pleasure in that. I'm the first person that's going to tell the truth, right? I'll tell you the second. You know what I mean? What's going on? But as you said, when you start, I do think there is a human element sometimes

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That's where you go if you come to town. Just tell folks that just a little bit of that story and what we learned from it. I mean, Viola Louisa was a race trader, man. She was a race trader. What that term means is somebody who did. decided that the privileges that were given to them because of racism and white supremacy was so offensive to their person that they would put their body on the line to be, you know, to be against this. And we have a history of this. Me as a journalist, I would shout out Elijah Lovejoy, you know, for instance, you know, people who died, you know, for this way.

It was just too, you know, so offensive. I mean, Abraham Lincoln ultimately was judged to raise straighter, quite frankly. And Viola Luiso is this white woman who's grown up in poverty. Dad is a coal miner. Marries this dude who's like a teamster, union activist. I mean, they're just straight, you know, working class, you know, white people with, you know, no ostensible reason to be conscious, save this. She saw poverty.

And she saw what poverty did to her family. And she saw what it did to black families around her. And that allowed for a big. level of recognition and humanity. And she's inspired by a march on Selma, drove 800 miles from her home, left her five kids behind to go, you know, join this march, was giving two marchers a ride on the way back when she was murdered by a group of white supremacists. And here's where the story gets dark. In that car also of the murderers was an FBI agent under the direction or FBI informant under the direction of J. Hoover and Hoover in order to hide the fact that the Bureau actually had an asset in the car

when Viola Luiso was killed spread this rumor about her very similar to the kind of rumors that you or the kind of stuff you hear about Renee Good that in fact she was a heroin addict and she was down there doing heroin with black men and she had only gone south to sleep with black men and they put this stuff out there and they traumatized her family. This is the federal government right. This isn't just like white supremacism. This is Jayahouple. This is Jayahoula. over doing this. And that was the price that, you know, she paid with her life. And then her family continued to pay the price after. And I guess one thing I have never understood is why we don't hear her name more. I just don't get it. You know what I mean? She's such an important,

important figure and an important activist. That leads me something else I wanted to ask you about, and I talked about this with Adam a little bit, so we get to compare your answers. See what we think. That's what you better. Something about this, what we've seen from ICE and CBP, particularly this month, but even over the past year, has felt meaningfully different from stuff that I've seen in my life, right? And just not as if there hasn't been state violence against people, you know, there has, right? Like, police violence, and it's not as if people haven't, they haven't lied about it and covered it up. But like the fact that it's so structural and that it's so top down, you know,

that it's the president and the head of DHS and FBI and that everybody's on board with it. and that it's funded by Congress. And to me, that does make it a little different. But, you know, when I talk about it like that, then you get the pushback. It's like, no, you know, this is like, we have a long history of this, and this is like the latest chapter.

You know, it can be the latest chapter and be different too. Like, it can have precedent and also, like, both can be true, you know? In what ways is this unique for you, then, would you say? I would struggle to tell you a time in my lifetime. We're at the federal level. We're at the federal level. So many resources have been more.

Marshalled across so many streets. We did have a period after 9-11, by the way. We definitely had a period after 9-11. But I think the scope of this dwarfs what we saw after 9-11. After 9-1, we had the FBI, you know, essentially, you know, grabbing people off the streets for the smallest immigration violations, which is something that we really didn't do before. You got to see this as the whole thing. It's not just Minneapolis, right? It's Minneapolis. It's Chicago. You know, it's L.A. It's national. I don't think we've had. had that and also had the construction of concentration camps, you know, in places like Florida and had effectively the rendition, you know, of people into the judge. We know for well that they're

going to be tortured against the judge's orders, by the way, against the judge's orders. I don't think, you know, we've had a situation where we looked at, say, the speech or the rhetoric of pro-Palestine activists or activists of whatever stripe and decided that would be grounds for us to detain them. And I think it's an important distinction to make that this is only kind of about deportation. It's really about punishment. Like that's real like the infliction of pain. I don't think we've had ahead of the Department of Homeland Security turning that into effectively a reality show, cosplaying, doing makeup, posing. You put all that together and it's different. It's different. And saying that it's different doesn't mean it doesn't have precedent. It does.

it does, it does. But it's also different. But that's meaningful, though. Meaningful. Like, you know, we've done a lot of bad stuff and this is uniquely bad. I think that's important for people to sit with as they think of what the appropriate reaction is to it. Right.

Just on that, the DHS reality show. To me, the thing that has struck me the most about it, and they've just done so much gross shit. And I guess probably the worst is Christy Nome standing in front of that actual concentration camp in El Salvador with those men behind her. I mean, that's probably the worst. But taken altogether, like the propaganda stuff, the ASMR, you know, people in chains,

where, like, the chains are making the sound, you know, the memes. The activists in Minneapolis where they altered her. See, that's all of that is like, like, some of that just wasn't possible, by the way. Like, it's new because it wasn't possible. You know what I mean? And a lot of the, like, memes they're putting out are just, like, kind of old 1950s posters re-ups. You could have done that. in Photoshop.

And I don't know. Like that isn't like acutely harming someone in the way that taking their body and putting it into a detention center is. But the perniciousness of it like has unbelievable like long ramifications. It is an armed identity politics. That's what it is. Like it's the worst, you know, you know, somewhat arguing I probably would agree to all politics is identity politics. But all politics isn't this particular. identity politics, you know?

Yeah. And I think as you, you know, pointed out, like the memes, the 1950 stuff, the white supremacist stuff where I, you know, it was a New York Times article where the Times reporter calls up and says, hey, this is clearly a white supremacist anthem. They deny it. The guy goes and checks it.

You know, and then they act like he's lying and then they, you know, secretly take it down. This is something new. You know, and I'm, you know, I've said some pretty harsh things in my time, but I don't know that I've seen before. the president of the United States attempt to build what I can only call

a white supremacist army within the government, one that will outlast him. That is new. And I don't know what else to call it given the propaganda and the recruiting that like I don't know what anybody else would want me to say.

You know, there's a little bit of a, what is it, Boy Who Cries Wolf element sometimes to like when people throw out white supremacists sometimes loses his power. And so sometimes I get a little bit frustrated, sometimes with activists. It's like, well, maybe you might technically be true, but we should still keep that word as powerful as possible.

And that's like, what else do you call it? I mean, they're the ones doing white nationalist anthems. They're banging down people's doors with guns. They're doing racial profiling of other cops. They're racially profiling other cops. So I don't know what else to call it. I want to ask you about the identity politics thing, though, too, because one of the other things that struck me about talking with Adam yesterday

and like how inspiring, you know, it was to be there. He was really talking about how, you know, all these elements of Western civilization were on display, like the classically liberal Western civilization. And before I ask this question, since this is a little awkward question to ask, it's a white guy. So I'm just going to, I'm just verbalizing that before I get there.

It's your show, man. Yeah, I know. I'm just saying it's a little awkward, but I'm trying to frame it the right way. Because of its nature in that. that sense, that it is this, you know, this entire community coming together in a multicultural sense and saying, we are all standing united as one against this outside threat. There feels like some kind of power in that that was, you know, absent from the more, the more identitarian, you know,

kind of progressive stuff that we saw the last time that Minnesota was exploding, you know, with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. And, you know, that, had this big power in the moment and end up dissipating. And I wonder if I'm over interpreting that or if you think there are any lessons there, or if you think that I'm an asshole for bringing that up or I don't know. What do you think? No, I think there are always lessons. And I think, you know, a movement has to interrogate itself.

I think that is always true. I do think that people, that the stark line that maybe people want to draw between 2020 and 2026 is not as stark as they think it is, you know. I mean, I'm about to see the whole shoulder at him. but one of the points that Adam makes, you know, in the art. I should have done it together, probably. Kind of a point, point of a Haiti agreement.

No, but one of the great points he makes is that, like, a lot of those, you know, messaging and signal groups, like, they started in 2020. When I was, you know, going out and doing the reporting for the message, like, I mean, I couldn't believe this happened. But when I went down to South Carolina to see them, like, they were fighting against, like, book bands and everything, right? And I remember I was talking to this older, a white woman.

And, you know, she was saying, yeah, you know, at the George Floyd, man. We formed like a reading group, you know, at our white church. And, you know, she said at first they tried to have black folks in, black folks got fed up because of their questions. But they kept going. But they kept going. And it was still going.

God bless them. God bless them. And it was still going. And that was the network that she had activated for them to protest bookbans. And so I think there are things that happen loud. And I think there are things that happen online. And I think like because of the way our media. media space works right now. Anger and outrage, particularly draw attention. But there

things that happen really, really quietly out of 2020 that are tremendous, that are really, tremendous. And I guess the other thing I would push back on is, I don't know how identitarian it was. You know, I mean, there were like white people in small towns. You know what I mean? Protests. And there were people all around the world, you know, a protest and of all sorts of, you know, 2020 was the first time I really, really saw white people in this modern time put their bodies on the line. Like it was crazy. You know what I mean? Again, any movement has to question itself. You know, any, I don't think that's wrong. I mean, you did have the white fragility, you know, come out of that. You know, you did have, like, some of that stuff is

pretty, it's pretty identitarian. Okay, so here's my problem with that. Here's my problem with that. Here's my problem with that. You can't make an entire movement answer for one book. You can't even make me as an author answer. I don't know. I get, I get made the answer for everything that Jeff ever said. I don't know. Sometimes.

It's like everybody always brings that up. And I haven't read white fragility. So I'm not here. Everybody picks on that one. That's the avatar. Why does that always come up? Because it's horrible. Have you ever spoken to a reading group that just read white fragility and listened to

their questions? It's concerning. I feel like I need to deradicalize them sometimes. What are you here? Your head is in the right place. What are you here? Like, what are the sort of questions? I don't know.

There was that viral video going around that was, I think, representative of this. I don't mean to denigrate this person because, like, her heart is such in the right place and, like, give me a million of this lady over one J.D. Vance, right? But, you know, she's out in the street protesting in Minnesota. And after Renee Good died, an interview goes out to her and asks her how she's feeling. And she's like, I feel kind of bad even being here because I have my privilege. and, you know, and Renee Good was a white victim, right? And we should be, like, lifting up our brothers and sisters.

And, like, it came from a good place, but, like, in her heart, it came from, like, a little bit of a bad place in that book, White Fertility, probably is probably what that came from. Wait, but what don't you like about what she said? Just so I can, and I don't love what she said either. That's probably not what I would ask her to say, but I'm interested in what you don't love about Woodson. If you feel bad about somebody that just got shot down by the state,

like your first thought shouldn't be what their skin color is, right? But you feel bad in solidarity with anybody that got shut down by the state. I guess would be my answer to why that makes me feel uncomfortable. Okay, so I'll say two things. I will say that when Renee got killed, the first thing I noticed was her skin color and her gender. And I noticed it because so much of the way white supremacy constructs itself is in alleged protection of white women. And I do think it matters. I do think, I really do think it matters.

She's a lesbian, though. So that doesn't count. Right. That's right. That's how they push out of it. That's how they push it out of it. But nonetheless, I do think it matters that white people are putting their bodies on the line. I guess what I'm detecting from you, and I have heard some of this before.

You don't have to detect. You can ask. I'll just tell you. Yeah. But I think what I'm, let me say, what I'm hearing, I think, is like maybe discomfort, maybe even an annoyance with some of the vocabulary that came out of that period of time. Yeah. Would that sound right?

Some of the ways of talking. Yeah. Annoyance for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about discomfort. But annoyance. And I think like a counterproductive nature of it sometimes, you know.

And it's something that like take something that was good about visibility and make sure everybody's protected and like turn it into something about like, you know, guilt and right speech. So Tim, I have a request of you. Okay, great, man. I love getting homework and guess. One of the thing that I think is worth thinking about is, look, I'm a writer. and what that means to me is I try to write and speak as clearly as possible. And so I don't really want you making apologies for your privilege to me either. You know, I want to get down to business.

You know, like, I don't need to hear that. I don't need to hear how guilty you feel. Like that is sort of beside the point for me. Like, I don't have a desire to get that out of you, you know. But I do think that in mass, white people in this country do not have a very, very long history in trying to formulate a vote. vocabulary for how to talk about these things. And I think in the course of formulating that vocabulary, people will make mistakes.

People will make mistakes. And there will be language that, you know, we used, you know, three or four years ago that we decide, you know, hey, it don't work. You know what I mean? Like that probably is not the approach we should take. And maybe what you're feeling now is even like the movement has kind of advanced over where it was five years ago. Maybe that's some of, you know, what is heartening to you.

But I just think we put so much. pressure. You know what I mean? Meanwhile, the other side is out here talking crazy. Like talking crazy. You know what I'm saying? Like just out there minds like talking, you know what I mean? You know, we're strong enough to do it. Seasons Greenland. You know what I'm saying?

Like because we can. You know, just out here talking crazy and yet, you know, we get one book. And, you know, we all like to beat them though. Yeah, I kind of want to beat them though. You know what I mean? I want to just empower them as much as fine. rather than empower them, you know? Yes.

So I honestly, I just, I want to revise and say by marks. I don't really love the guilt. This could probably be my mother because I had to deal with the Catholic guilt enough, you know, so I don't need any additional layers. Like I'm already ridden with it. But honestly, less than the annoyance, it's more like, I don't like handing them free wins, you know? And I do think that in some ways there have been things that have happened that are not that

offensive to me. Right. My feelings aren't hurt that, you know, that woman felt guilty or that there's a a, you know, whatever some weird newspeak thing at the beginning of a meeting. None of that stuff offends me, but I worry, I'm like, man, are we, like, are we handed the stick to these people to, like, let them beat us with it? And, like, for what end? To what end, right?

You know? And if it's to a good end, great. If it's to no end except making people, you know, feel good in their, like, little, little social media circles, like, then I'd like to stop doing it. I mean, probably, yeah. I've probably said this a lot in public. If you can extend the temporality out just a little bit of the struggle, I think it makes the mistakes not better, but understandable.

It's very, very hard to get any movement of humans to always act right, speak right, talk right. I really, really wish people read more about the civil rights movement deeply because they were fucking up all the time. And people were doing crazy things. the time and some of the people that came out of that, you know, who led some of the most noble, you know, struggles in the world, like, became like Lyndon LaRouche conspiracy theories. Like, it's some crazy people there. You know what I mean?

I literally read The Souls of Blackfolds for the first time, like, I don't know, when I was 40, probably. I got like when I was old. Then I end up on deep dive. Like, I knew nothing about, like, the internal fighting, right? You know, because it all gets glossed over. The factions and the factionalizing. And, like, in the history books, like, that's one sentence, you know? Yes. I hear that for sure. And then we compare ourselves against this perfect image of what activism was. And in fact, it was messy.

It was like really, really. And there were a lot of uncomfortable things. You know what I mean? That were going on. I mean, Fannie Lou Hamer, who is like lionized, you know, by the movement. And it should be. And it should be. But I'll never forget this quote that she, you know, she, that, you know, they had her

is when she's talking about organizing. And she says, we have to get the damn terms out of the movement. And it's like, we don't want people calling people. Uncle Tom's now. Right? Like, we don't want to hear that. But they were saying that back then. Like, that was part of like the vocabulary, you know, of things.

And look, I honor them like anybody else. But these were human beings. And I don't know that we're any worse today. I think this is what it looks like. Which does not mean you should not critique it. That's not what I'm saying. So your homework for me is just give it more grace. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, grace, man. Give white people some grace, man. What was my homework? I got lost, though. What was the homework? What were you asking of me? That's it. Okay.

That's it. Just take, next time you hear that, just take a breath. Just be like, all right, whatever. Okay. That's good. I should do that. I'll say, like, last thing I'll say on this, it is kind of frustrating to people like me in the sense that,

and I don't expect everybody to agree with everything I say. But, like, for that article I just wrote, dude, it took me three days sitting there trying to define what, the homeland was. I felt what it was, but I couldn't. I was just writing over and over again the same three paragraphs until I got to the thing to what it was. I'm telling you that to tell you, some of us are working really, really hard, really, really hard and investing a lot of energy. And we don't want to have to answer for other people's books. You know what I mean? Who, you know, maybe. I don't know, I'm a white fertility. Was that line the, I shouldn't have brought

up Robin DeAngeli. I'd throw myself on the mercy of the court. We have news. I know. And that's what makes you feel even worse now. I don't know. I'm just spitballed. She wasn't in my notes, you know? We're way off the script. I got news to get to. This is a daily podcast.

Was the Homeland is skeptical of aliens, the line that you was up in the three paragraphs short of? Yeah, that was good. Immigrants are skeptical of aliens, which is a different construct. Yeah. I agree with that. Can we talk about the news real quick? Because we do have a couple of news things.

Yeah, sure. I guess we should just say just really quick about Minnesota, the actual. updates since I last spoke. They're putting a new face on this with Homan. Star Tribune is reporting that the exact same number of ICE patrol vehicles left the Whipple building where they're based, didn't they had any other day, right? So, like, now there's no evidence anything's changed.

And they're putting out this video, which I've not confirmed yet, but which appears to be legit of Alex Prattie, like, kicking a, kicking a car from like two weeks prior. So he should have got shot, right? So I guess he should have got killed. So you should have got shot, right? So that's it. My take, which I assume is to be the same issue. sure is, but I think we've had to get it on the record, is that it seems like, you know, new boss,

same as the old boss, a little bit for now, at least in Minnesota. Look, the one thing I will say about this administration, and the one good thing I can say is, look, they're true believers. They believe this stuff. You know, some of this is, you know, content, yes, some of this is, you know, spectacle. They really believe it. I mean, with the exception of maybe J.D. Vanton, you know, maybe there's other opportunists, you know, like him who have no core beliefs.

But, you know, somebody like, you know, Stephen Miller. I mean, these people, like, they believe in this glorious past or this homeland that they want restored. Trump believes that. You know, and so, like, you have to take them seriously, you know, I think as true believes, this is not a distraction. You know, like, this is the world they want. To that point, there's another news item I got for you. The DOJ rated, FBI, rather, rated Fulton County's Election Operations Center on Wednesday. They wanted to get the 2020 ballots.

The Fulton County clerk, Che Alexander said a large number of agents were retrieving the boxes of ballots from the warehouse where they're being stored. I think that is about as ominous as what we're seeing out of DHS at this point, like looking ahead to the midterms. Yeah, I think it's pretty bad.

I think it's pretty bad. And let's say look, like I say, the worst thing that we think is going to happen or we suspect might happen in the midterms doesn't happen. And it's bad to groundlessly so skepticism of like the electoral system in people's minds. You know, again, like people who are just kind of, you know, going through their day, it's bad to feed them this stuff. It is not, there's a great book that I really want to write about this book,

but it's by Chris Hage called Twilight of the Elites. And it's about how in various sectors, you know, people who, you know, are in an elite class have kind of given up their authority. And we are kind of living in that right now. You know, but it's just this complete decline. And for lack of a better turn, I hate that I keep using these words. But for lack of a better term, you know, expertise, authority, you know, those sorts of words. And so if massive people really come to feeling, maybe they have already have that their elections are not real, I mean, I mean, that's bad.

That's bad. Right. Yeah, because self-fulfilling. Yes, it does. Homeland. Yes, yes, exactly. So we'll keep my mindering that. I couldn't let you go without asking about the Board of Peace. Jared Kushner did a PowerPoint in front of the Board of Peace on his plans for Gaza. I want to play folks a little bit of that. We've developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza. We've developed into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone. And then we have a Hamas zone. And then we said, you know what? Let's just plan for catastrophic success. We have a deal demilitarized.

That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work. There's a master plan. We'll be doing it in phasing.

In the Middle East, they build cities like this in, you know, two, three million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable. Once this starts going, we think there should be 100% full employment and opportunity for everybody there. They have a master plan with zones for Gaza within. in three years. I believe people have the right to determine how they governed. I strongly, strongly believe that.

I also believe that even when we object to things that their leadership does, what that their government does, that we don't have the right to then subject them to genocide. This country, in a lifetime of many people, over through the government of Iran because it didn't like it, then went over through the government of Iraq because it didn't like it. And we would be very, very angry if any group of people cited that as cause to do harm to civilians in this country.

The degradation of Palestinian life that we have seen particularly over the past, I don't even know how long it's been now. But since the onset of this war, since October 7th, is horrifying. And we will not get away with it. I just strongly believe it. I don't believe that you get to degrade life in one place. And then, you know, escape from it untouched. I just don't think that's how the world works.

And so to hear him talking like that, you know, about these people who, you know, to be ruled over. I mean, I'm at a point. And I'm sorry to rant about this at that, but like you're talking to somebody who is, you know, talk to people and who knows people who, you know, gotten out of Gaza. And to hear these people talked about with no will, with no decision-making power, with no ability to determine like, like, like how they live and how to, you know, be ruled is just, I don't know. I feel like I'm not fully getting to the horror of it.

It's bad. The whole picture is dystopian, like all sounds. It's just like his visage, like how he looks, and it's like a, it's a McKinsey PowerPoint. And it's like we have these buildings and people, everyone's going to have a job or not have work. It's like the folks, you mean, the folks you've been bombing, you know, whose family members have been killed, they're going to work in your hotel and casino and golf club. That's your, that's the plan. You're the boss?

It's just, come on, come on. If I were to take it on the terms of everything I know, with no proof of this necessarily at all, nothing to cite, nothing to report. I would say they probably plan to ethnically cleanse those people. Like those people won't be there. Or at least there will be a significant minority of them who will probably live on what we would call a reservation and maybe work in places like that

without any real empowerment in terms of deciding any politics. It is gross. And what is most gross for me, again, is that the people themselves, the Palestinians themselves, are completely off-screen. like imagine you know like somebody's going to have a conversation you know about how like your city your country is going to be governed your people are going to be governed and you're not you're not even going to be there like you're not going to be there Belarus is going to be there

Kazakhstan Putin Turkey you know right yeah it's um it's sickening I think part of the reasons why it's hard to put into words how sickening is it is because it's so fucking preposterous and absurd you know like you want to mock it and laugh about it almost, you know, if it was not for like the consequence. Kind of related, I'd be remiss. I'd be not a good podcast host

if I didn't ask you about this. There was a lot of hubbub online about your interview with the host of, new host, of CBS Evening News. Ah, yeah. Back when you did it for your book about Israel and Palestine. And it was interesting. I was listening to another pod you did. I think it was the Guardian.

That might be wrong. But it was a British podcast. And you were so gracious. You were talking about how you thought that interview was great. It was fine. Perfectly fine. And you're not great. I think you said it was fine. And you're happy to take hard questions. That's why you wrote the book. You expected hard

questions. And so, you know, the other guy that wanted you to be mad at at Tony for asking you those questions and you weren't. Since then now, though, like a lot has changed with the kind of takeover of CBS. And I'm just wondering if you look at it at all differently now.

You know, I don't. I know that a lot of other people were mad. You know, I actually had a friend of mine who's who was one of those people who were, like a lot of people were mad. I mean, my own publicist was mad. I think particularly the part about, you know, take away to cover, take away this, take away that, you know, there people to have things invested in you as a public figure. And so when you say that, like, you're kind of not just talking about, you know, the person in front of you.

Like, you're making a bigger, you know, sort of global statement. And I think that probably was a root of a lot of the anger. But I don't know, man, like I came back. and I understood that I had views that were going to be contrary to a lot of people. And I was perfectly fine. I'm here. I'm here. You know what I mean?

And I'm not here to be feted. You know what I mean? I'm not here to be told how great. Like I felt when he said that, okay, take it. Now let's talk. Now let's talk. Let's just say, I'm just dude, Tanaasi from West Baltimore. Okay, now let's have this conversation.

I went where I went. I saw what I saw. I'm going to tell you what I saw. And you tell me why that's okay. I'm good with that. You know what I mean? I'm completely, completely good. with that. To your question, though, to your question about how it's gone, it's pretty clear

there are other people who are not good with that. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty clear that there are other people, you know, who maybe, look, I don't want to put thoughts and words into people's mouths. I dare say that there are people who wanted that to go a different way. What do you mean? I think one of the things that happens is what I had was these kind of catchphrases that I would hear all the time that American politicians would say. And I didn't understand why they said them, okay? And it was a vocabulary. And, you know, that vocabulary, you know, phrases like Israel has the right to defend itself. Israel has the right to exist. You know what I mean? And it wasn't even like, what you think about that is, you know, whatever. But what I'm trying to say is

it was repeated so much and uninterrogated and so specific about Israel that I was just like, like, why is this? What I think is there's a world in which you tell yourself or you speak a kind of language to yourself and over and over and over again. And you never have to actually defend it. You never actually have to have it interrogated directly, publicly. And I think when you haven't had the practice of defending the thing, you know, when you tend to speak in slogans, you know what I mean? Which I really try hard not to do, right?

Like I try to find my own language for what I saw. And then, you know, we can have it out about, you know, what that was. But my language is not somebody else's language. You know, whatever you think about from. River to the sea. I'm not going to say it because it's not my language. I'm a writer. You know what I'm saying? And I think people get out of practice. I think you just get out of practice. And so you think, you know, you can say to me, yes, Israel has the right to exist. And I'm going to say, and I'm just going to fold. Because that's how it's already

always been. But I don't know how I was to say this. I'm not the one. Yeah. Like I just spend too much time thinking about like words, you know? And I don't mean that in any sort of arrogant way. You know, even now I don't mean any insult to Tony. But I'm, I'm just telling you, like, there's a way in which I got all of those awards. Like, they weren't just given to me. Yeah. No disrespect to anybody, you know? Not to compare ourselves to you, but there's the element that you've scratched

another itch for me. Another thing I get my backup is of people demanding that I repeat a slogan. Like, for example, I want to abolish ICE. I really do. I want to abolish ICE. But it bugs me when people are like, you have to say that. Like, why didn't you say that? And I'm like, well, I don't know.

Maybe I want to explain it a different way, you know? And I do think that there is that element where folks who really dug in on a slogan want you to either, you know, sort of pay homage to it or be opposed, you know, and complicating that is challenging for folks. I did want to ask you that just like the broader CBI media. Are you concerned just about media like consolidation, like the other element of what's happened in CBS since? Yeah.

It's really bad. And I guess I feel a little uncomfortable, especially given that, you know, I was, you know, given way that interview was, like, I don't want to comment too much on other people's media plans, but, because I think it does need to be said, when I see that you're firing journalists who do actual reporting, right, who go and talk to people and interview people and, like, you are hiring people that have takes, that's bad. That's bad. That would be bad if I agreed with all the takes. You understand what I'm saying? They were all my political compatriots, and you were firing, like, you were letting go of the reporters and bringing in, you know, people who just

kind of, like, I would say that's bad. I would say that's bad for journalism. I would say also that some of the commentary, like I read, like, we had this culture, man, where people are in love with debate, right? And so, like, I read these comments about how, like, the newsroom needs to be a place, you know, where people can, you know, vigorously disagree. Well, yeah, maybe, but newsrooms tell stories. Like that's what they do. And then sometimes people disagree. But the purpose of it isn't to debate. That's not why it exists. You understand what I say? I don't write actually to debate. You know, sometimes debates will come out of it. Sure. You know, but it's not, I'm not motivated. It's not the thing. Like in all of the beautiful places, you know, I worked at the Atlantic for 10 years.

And it was, it was like, home to me. You know, I worked at Washington City paper for five years. It was like, home to me. Did we debate sometimes? Yes. But like, the thing that made it productive was not the debate. It was a lot of other things, too. Like, you should be in pursuit of stories. You should be in pursuit of news that, you know, moves people and grabs people's attention. And when you are in pursuit of takes, I don't know. I think it's bad. I don't think that's journalism, period. Yeah. Tim, can I say one last thing about CBS? Oh, hell yeah. Let's end with that. Let's end with one more rant about CBS. That's a perfect way to end. I do want to say that one thing that really bothers me about this is there are people in this world who I guess were upset because somebody

told them that they had to add, you know, one more black person to their writer's room or somebody, you know, questioned, you know, what an intimacy coordinator was doing on the set, or they had to be pulled into some, you know, sort of debate about using the wrong pronouns. And then they decided to empower somebody who was currently. currently destroying one of the jewels of journalism. And I just think you got to do better. You got to be more discerning about people. Somebody is telling you something that is challenging.

Somebody is telling you something that is deeply informed and somebody that is bullshitting you. You know, and maybe some people wanted to be bullshitted. But now we're all going to pay for it. You know what I mean? You wanted this era of anti-woke. You got it, but a lot of others of us are going to pay for it too. you know, we're not going to go down alone.

And it's distressing. That's a much better place to leave the Bullock podcast. It's distressing. I'm distressed. I share your distress. His article is The Homeland and Vanity Fair. Go read it. And I hope to get to talk to you again soon, man.

All right. Thanks, Tim. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us. Everybody else will see you back here for another edition of the podcast. Peace. It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep them going under.

It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.