The Chris Cuomo Project - Cynthia Bailey, Jackson Water Crisis, Manti Te’o, Ginni Thomas

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

In this episode of The Chris Cuomo Project, Chris explores a common link between the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Manti Te’o catfishing saga. Chris also takes a critical look at a recent Washington Post article about Ginni Thomas.  Cynthia Bailey, model, entrepreneur, and eleven-year cast member of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” joins Chris for a wide-ranging conversation about the challenges Black women face when starting a business, pitfalls of fame and social media, and the importance of therapy. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I have to say I'm a little surprised. Why did you think that if you sent in your comments and that you called the phone number 516-412-6307, 516-412-6307, why are you surprised that you actually were able to leave a message or send a message and that we actually did a bonus episode where I was answering them? The project is about us collaborating and working together. Why are you surprised that if you sent in pictures that I found especially interesting of you in free agent gear, that I'd make good on the promise and pick some of you and send you whatever you want from free agent gear? That's what the project is about.

It's transparency. It's getting you to be involved and it's getting us to be able to do things together. Now, yes, we're talking politics here, but I really believe it's small p politics. It's not about just parties and it's not just about D.C. or elections or controversies. It's about everything in our culture. See, that's what I mean when I say the game. I'm here to try to open our collective eyes to what is happening around us in many different iterations of our lives, how we have gotten caught up in this cultural catac point it out in a couple of different areas today. And we have a guest who shows we're not just about traditional politics. Our guest today, sure, she's plenty relevant, but she's going to speak to the Black experience in this country and stardom and what matters in terms of how people move up in society in ways that we're not used to hearing, certainly not from politicians. So I'll begin with a question in our pursuit.

What does Jackson, Mississippi and Manti-Teo have in common? Hmm, almost lost it. No, no, no. I have found it. The connection is both are examples of mistakes we knew we were making and made anyway. How so? Jackson, Mississippi, I'm referring to the water crisis that's going on there. This has been in the making for many, many years. Can you believe in America? In 2022, we have a major city in a state, Jackson, Mississippi, center of that state in terms

of population and importance. No water. Well, really, it's just water pressure. No water. Can't drink it. Can't flush. Can't cook. Can't wash. No water. Not something to play games about. Years and years in the making. Why? Infrastructure ignored. Why? Because money was not sent there. Why? Because 50% of the population is black and poor, many of them. 80% of the population affected by this crisis, black, many of them poor. Who's in charge? Now, this is another example of the game. Well, Democrats, right? Democrats, they're in charge of all the cities. They are usually the mayors. A lot of them are city councils. It's all their fault.

They failed these communities. Really? Who sends the money in a crisis like this? Who keeps money consistent? Who keeps programs up? State. Governor of Mississippi, Republican. Reportedly, not crazy about working with the Democrat governor.

Now, water crisis, governor's got a big water truck in front of where he is. Jackson, Mississippi suffers. We knew it would suffer. We didn't spend money on the infrastructure because we didn't care. And we didn't care because we didn't dare to care about a population that politically wasn't advantageous. And Jackson, Mississippi is just a placeholder. Could be Flint, Michigan. Flint is not as relevant a population or a dynamic in Michigan as Jackson is in Mississippi. I'm not to belittle it. It's the same dynamics. A community ignored. This is why infrastructure matters. But more importantly, it's why interdependence matters. It's why we can't be stuck in this binary bullshit of if

they're not with us and they're against us and let's watch them live in squalor. Literally, this is the game. It's not just party politics. It's about people. We should not have what's happening in Jackson, Mississippi. We shouldn't have had Flint, Michigan. But I'll tell you what, it took about five years for Flint, Michigan to get better. Why? Again, once the cameras leave, it's still Flint, Michigan. It's still a population and a place that doesn't get the attention. So what do we see now? Well, if infrastructure matters so much, if we care so much about the environment, if we care so much about the needy, where is the progressive movement down in Jackson? Took the media to push them up into Flint,

but then they went there and everybody started to use it as an example about why they wanted to lead. Where are they now? Did Flint, Michigan make Jackson, Mississippi not so interesting? Because it just happened, even though it was in what, 2015? Where are they? Why aren't they making a stand that this is what has to change, that we have to be better? Why aren't the Republicans making a stand, fixing Jackson and say, look, we do it better than the Democrats? Because that's the game. If neither one is being really blamed for it,

then it just hangs out there. It's just another 25 seconds on some news thread somewhere. God, that must suck. And then on, that's the game. Why do I show it to you? Not cynicism, but pragmatism. And yes, optimism. Because I believe if you see it, you'll be sick of it being played once you see it for what it is.

And then you will be open to doing what you can do to help change the game. Jackson, Mississippi is an embarrassment to us. We must be better than that. There is no reason to have multi-layer pumps failing and not being able to get enough water pressure in America in 2022. It's crazy. But it's happening because it's about who we care about, when, and why. And the fact that we are not in it together often enough the way we should be in America. And that's why I bring it up. Now, what in Hades does that have to do with a Manti Teo? What is that anyway?

Some endangered sea species? No. Manti Teo was a phenomenal linebacker. Polynesian descent. Hawaiian. Notre Dame. Great kid, great story, captured America. His grandmother and his girlfriend died on the same day. Then the story becomes that he was catfished, but that was not the story for me. Have you seen the Netflix

documentary? It's two episodes on Manti Tale. You must. One, well done. Storytelling, well done. Second, to me, it's not about Manti Teo and these questions. Well, how could he have been so dumb? He's a kid. Nobody knew about catfishing back then, like 2005 or whatever it was, 13. I don't know. Whenever it was, catfishing was not a thing. The point is, this isn't about blaming Manti Teo, though he did blame himself. I think his family blamed him a little bit. He certainly shouldered the burden. For me, it's a media story. Now, very interestingly, the outlet that I believe deserves stink, not shine, who broke the story. Let me tell you something. You don't break a story if you don't have any comment or recognition of the story or any sense of where the main character of the story

is coming from on your story and you publish anyway. Why? Well, we didn't want to get beat. Oh, you didn't want to get beat. So you published a story that didn't have anything of perspective. Well, we reached out to him. Oh yeah, I'm sure you spent days and weeks, right?

No, no, no, we didn't. Why? Well, we didn't want to get beat. That's because it's a business and because that's the game. All right. And I've never been in the be first business. Sure. It's a commodity, the new in news, but I've always preferred depth. I don't need to be the first at the fire. I want to understand why there was a fire. How can we avoid the next fire? That's the part of journalism that I have always found very engaging. It's the part of being able to help that I've always found most resonant in myself and hopefully with you. So shame on them for not even getting his side. Oh, well, he didn't answer his back. The responsibility is to get it right. How can

you get it right? And then you see all the ugly suggestions that came out after it. And all of these media people who are in the documentary talking about the media as if they had no role or responsibility in the coverage. I don't think Manti Teo understood just how quickly the media will build you up and how quickly it will tear you down. What did you do? will build you up and how quickly it will tear you down. What did you do? That's what you did. See, there is a pack mentality in media sometimes that can absent the individual from a sense of responsibility and what they see going on in the collective. You see what I'm saying? And I've struggled with this. And that's okay. It's natural. Not cynicism, skepticism, but with a dash of optimism because it can be better if it's called out.

But that's why I think you should watch it. Manti Teo, his story and how it was handled, like Jackson, Mississippi, is a function of mistakes we knew we were making in our discussion of the same and recognition of the same and saying what matters and what doesn't about the same, making mistakes and just going forward anyway, because that's what we do. That's the game. Manti-Teo, well, it was about tearing them down. You build them up,

you tear them down. And I do believe, perversely, I don't know it with certainty, but I feel it, and that's good enough for us these days, right? It feels like the answer should be seven. What I'm saying is it would take a better mind and more time to figure out how right this is. But it does seem to me that there is a coincidence between how much somebody is built up and how much they'll be torn down. Manti Teo built up, so he had to be very torn down. And the fact that it was a hoax, there was no girlfriend. He got duped. He got catfished by some guy who is transitioning now and a woman or has already. I don't know the timing of the documentary, but let me tell you what they haven't transitioned. It's from somebody who wouldn't own their responsibility to owning it because it was

just a terrible thing. It was a repeatedly terrible action. But what I don't like is how the media is okay with all of these ugly suggestions that came out about Manti Teo's complicity in it, that he was part of it. It suggested that he was gay. I don't see that as an ugly suggestion. I don't think being gay is an ugly thing. But it's not accurate either, and it wasn't fair in the situation. So for you to put out a piece where you don't get his perspective, because you couldn't get beat on the story, and then all of these insinuations come out that are derivative of your piece. And then you laugh at it. Those

are mistakes that you know you're making and you go forward anyway. And that's what happened with Manti Teo. Now, the suggestion is that it ruined his pro career. It certainly ruined his draft. But, you know, at 6'1", 240, even though he ran around like a sports car and hit like a freight train, you know, it was a tough size for him. I think that there were going to be issues in the NFL anyway, but that's not the story. The kid was a beautiful player and a beautiful kid, by all accounts. But he was made complicit. He was torn down. His character was savaged for a long time for bad reasons.

Oh, well, but he fell for it. Do you know how many of you are falling for it right now? How often it happens? How many scams and things that happen to you and things you click on that you think are from a friend, but they're really from somebody else. It happens all the time right now. And you know it and you know all about it. We talk about it all the time. You're savvy. He was doing this on a desktop. We weren't even in the phone game yet when this was happening. He was a kid, but those covering him weren't. And letting all of these things that were just, you know, they had as much instinct to believe that they were wrong in the aftermath as they thought they were right in the run-up. But they let it go because that's the game. And you put it on him, a kid. I think you should watch it. I think you should pay attention to how the media presents itself in that. I love the media. I believe in the media. I think it is a signature blessing of our democracy. But we must see the game if we want to change the game. And too often, it is played. And not just in politics. Not just in politics. My hope is that if I point out what's happening that shouldn't

be happening, that we can do better, that we can cover better, we can test better, we can politic better, we can campaign better, we can govern better, we can do business better. I think that there is a chance that collectively the will occurs and you get to a better place. Jackson, Mississippi should have never happened. Manti Teo, forget about the fact that they should have Googled about his girlfriend and where it was. Who was to think that he got catfished? See, that's my point. There was no recognition of the norm at the time. But the way he was run down to tear him down as much as they had built him up so the media can have it both ways. And all of us vicariously feeding on it can have it both ways.

Two meals, one dish. It's wrong. We should be better than that. I say see the game, change the game. Somebody who's doing just that as one of the rarest of us in America, a black woman who is making it in business on her own. Cynthia Bailey. Lucky me. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? Because I like their sheets.

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Restrictions apply. You see the website. You'll get details and important safety information. You're going to need a subscription. It's required. Plus, price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. Cynthia Bailey, very good to have you on the project. So excited to be here.

Finally, my kids are going to like one of my guests. This is just great. I want to start family first. How's your mother doing? I had seen reported that she was going in for some surgery. Yes. Is she okay? My mom is doing fine, Chris. Thank you so much for asking. She is a breast cancer survivor. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer about a month ago.

Breast cancer does not run in our family. Lucky for us and for my mother, we caught it early. Luckily for us and for my mother, we caught it early. She did not feel any lumps or any masses, you know, from doing any self-examinations. The only way they knew about it was getting her yearly mammogram. I decided to post about it and share it with my followers because most of my followers are actually women. women. And with that said, I just wanted to use this situation to just remind and educate my female followers about the importance of yearly mammograms. It's nice of you to use pain and put it to purpose because I know that's a very scary time. It doesn't matter how early it is. You never know which way it's going to go. And you're right. Even though we've been saying it, it feels like my

whole life. Women have to know to self-examine. They have to get mammograms. And that important part about running in the family is important to know also. So that's good news. I'm happy to hear it. How does your mother feel about the success that you have chased after and won in the business world? What does that matter to your mom as a former factory worker, as was your father? Yes. It means a lot to my mom to watch her oldest child have the success that I've been able to have coming from such humble beginnings. I would like to actually talk about my grandmother, my mom's mom a little bit. Her name is Frankie Mayford. She grew up as pretty much a sharecropper in a very small town called Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was the first entrepreneur that I had access to

that I was actually under the same roof with. What'd she do? My grandmother had probably 10 jobs. She was full-time at the factory, the sewing factory, which is where she got my mom a job and all of my other aunts a job. She also sold hamburgers and hot dogs. She had a little farm, so she actually picked collard greens as well. And she actually used the plastic bags that bread comes in, you know, sandwich bread. She would wash that out, wash the greens, season them, so package them up, tie them back up, and she would actually take those to work as well. So all you have to do is put them in the pot. She always was ahead of the curve. I mean, we have whole fools now for that, but she was doing it a hundred years ago. Also, you know, let me say, this is very important. My grandmother had 11 children. Okay. 11 children. My mom was one

of 11 kids, you know, she still picked cotton and she would take the kids to work with her because, you know, there were no nannies. She couldn't afford a babysitter that was unheard of in her day. I just watched her do all of these things. And then on the weekend, she would go and tend to a wealthy white woman who needed taken care of. All she did was work. Her work ethic was incredible. You know, I was one of many, many kids that would be, you know, at my grandmother's house throughout the week and on the weekends. And I just remember watching her and I just didn't understand why she always was working. Actually, we called my grandmother mama, as a matter of fact, because she really was very

instrumental in raising us just as much as our own parents were. She wanted more. She just saw bigger than her surroundings. She didn't come from anything. She didn't have a support system. She didn't even have parents that honestly cared about her. And to watch her work and take care of these 11 kids and then her grandkids was something that always inspired me to believe that I could have anything I wanted in this world as long as I was willing to do the work. And I've been working ever since.

So Cynthia, why was it so important to you? There are plenty of people who will pay just to look at you, right? You've had a successful modeling career. You're now having a career as an actress, but you wanted to start businesses. You want to be an entrepreneur. Why? You wanted to start businesses. the generations to come after me. I really didn't realize how important it was at the time. I just thought I have to be the person to help my mom elevate. She went through a number of different things personally, a couple of bad marriages.

You know, my mom had me when she was 16 years old. And I always felt like if I was a mistake, I wanted to not be a mistake. She was in no way prepared to be a mom at 16 years old. I even think it was her first time having sex, to be honest. She's going to kill me. But what happened was, because she was so young after she had me, we kind of came up together, and I felt like a huge responsibility to make her proud. However I came into the world, I wanted to make it worth it to her because she gave up a lot of her childhood. She was a child when she had me basically. And she didn't have the opportunity to travel the world and do all these amazing things that I get an opportunity to. So, so much of what I do, Chris, I do it for myself and also do it for my mom. I do

it for my daughter. You can't choose where you're born or who you are born to. And I look at my surroundings, even as a young child, and I always thought there is more. I don't know where it is. I don't know how to get to it. I didn't have a bunch of rich people around me who could mentor me. Again, you know, I was a country kid. I grew up catching cat poles and fish. And literally, we weren't even allowed to stay in the house. We would get up in the mornings. They would feed us.

And you didn't have a choice about what you ate, what you ate. Just whatever was in front of you, you had to eat it. And you had to get out of the house because kids were not allowed to sit around, look at TV. And, you know, that was a luxury for my grandfather, you know, who was sitting and watch Samson and Son all day. We didn't even have the luxury of being in the house when I grew up. That's how we came up and we would go out and just walk around, you know, again, this was in the country thinking now, like how different the world is, how I really did have a chance to have freedom and have a childhood and, you know, everybody in the neighborhood, they were our nannies and our babysitters that they saw was, you know, doing something wrong. You know, they would come out on the porch and say,

hey, you kids, you guys get away from, you know, that train track and stop doing this and stop doing that. And it was great to be able to come up during the time that I did. I am 55 years old and I feel incredibly grateful to live such an amazing life and to be poor and then to have money and then start all over again to try to make money again and have businesses and what goes into all of that and still have the drive and the ambition and the dream. I think it starts with the dream first. One of my favorite speeches is from Dr. Martin Luther King. I have a dream and I just remember, I don't have a lot of talent, but I can work hard. But I was always a dreamer. So I was like, okay, I'm not that great at a lot of things. So let me figure out if I can get a job. All I have to do is be really good at the

job. I was always willing to learn. And I always just had that ambition and that excitement about if I can do this, I can do that. That's really what I've been doing my whole life is just putting myself in situations, whether I know what I'm doing or not, and learning and trying to surround myself with other people that I look up to that are successful. I think that's so important. You know, my grandmother had a sixth grade education. She died when she was 98 years old and she was working and she was driving still when she died. With that said, I think you're never too old to drink. You know, often we look at education as that's going to be the big decider. Now,

it hasn't worked out in America the way we need it to yet. But I often believe that education masks the need for entrepreneurial existence within minority communities. And then anything that exists in the minority community becomes even harder and more rare once you add gender to it. So if it's hard for black men, it's even harder for black women. And we talk education, but we don't talk entrepreneurial activity enough. And we see the disparities there are just as troubling, if not more troubling than we see in education. In 2019, I have a stat, employer firms, that's the government's way of saying a business with more than one employee. You had 2.3% were black owned, even though you have 14, 15% of the

population is black. And most black businesses are not employer businesses, meaning a lot of them are small businesses where the person who starts it are pretty much the main thing and maybe some family. And then we saw during PPP, during the economic problems and the pandemic, those businesses once again did not get served the way employer businesses did. So that had a disproportionate effect on the Black community. That story of how hard it is for Blacks to get into business, do you believe that that is something people need to understand in the community and in the country? Absolutely, 100%, Chris. I just literally closed down the Bailey Wine Cellar

in my Bailey Room event space because we never really recovered after COVID. Going back to your point, I don't fall under that umbrella of having a bunch of employees. It's myself, it's my sister and one other person. So with that said, in terms of the PPP loans, I was not really qualified to get much relief to help sustain my business. A lot of that stuff is salary-based.

And if you don't have a bunch of employees, you don't really fit in. You don't have the payroll. Exactly. Exactly. So with that said, you got to know when to hold them and you got to know when to fold them. And I think as a smart business woman, I had those businesses ran for five years again, because it was an event space with COVID people weren't going out and doing parties anymore. Everyone was afraid to go outside. And with my wine cellar, know when to shut up shop.

When you're broke. Yeah. Especially if you don't have access to capital. I mean, that's part of the problem. Anybody can start their own business, but the key to making money is using other people's money. Exactly. And you also said that you have to start with the dream. Hopefully it's different now. I was blessed with the ability to grow up with a lot of people from different walks of life and whether it was straight or just gay when I was growing up. Now you have the whole LGBTQ community, black, white, Asian. I saw a lot of diversity and the

idea of having the dream, the dream was different depending on which group you were talking about. And the dream for young black kids in America rarely is articulated as start your own business. You know what I mean? Either it's, well, get out of poverty, get into school. Not everybody has to have a master's degree to do well in life. You know, trades, entrepreneurs, building businesses. I feel like it's not even discussed that much. Right. Well, it's true. You know, I don't have a building businesses. I feel like it's not even discussed that much. Right. Well, it's true. I don't have a college degree. I basically graduated high school. I did take a couple of journalism classes right after I graduated. And then I ended up deciding to move to New York City from Alabama to pursue my modeling career. And at that time, I didn't know how that was going to

work out for me, but I knew that I had to take advantage of opportunity. I knew I had to figure out a way to change my circumstances. I was not seeing the things that I was dreaming about around me, with the exception of the amazing work ethic that my grandmother instilled in me. I always knew that I had to think bigger. So I moved to New York City, 18 in me. I always knew that I had to think bigger. So I moved to New York City, 18 years old. I think I had about $300 in my pocket. It was American Airline, my first time on an airplane. And I said a quick prayer. I knew once they closed the door that I wouldn't be able to get off the plane. So when they did, I said, you know what? This is hopefully the beginning of the life that I want to create for myself.

At the end of the day, just not being afraid to have vision, to dream and go for it. How empowering is it for you, Cynthia, to be able to rely on yourself in order to make money? You know, help people understand the difference between working for somebody else, even if it's getting a campaign as a model, that's definitely going to pay and what it means to you to know that you're working for yourself. What does that do? As a black woman? Oh my God. It means everything to me because I feel like not only am I putting myself in a position to be financially independent, to create different avenues and options for myself and the circles that I want to put myself in to continue to grow, to put myself in situations where I can continuously get inspiration, motivation to keep

going. Because the thing about becoming successful, Chris, is becoming successful is part one, staying successful is part two. It's like you don't get money and then the money just stays. You know, your lifestyle changes and you spend your money. So once you get to a certain level of success, you have to figure out like, hey, this is where I want to be. I got to keep this thing going. And with that, you know, I think I've reinvented myself several different times. You guys have gotten a chance to know Cynthia Bailey, the model who had great success. a chance to know Cynthia Bailey, the model who had great success. Cynthia Bailey, the reality star that had great success. I was on the Real Housewives of Atlanta for 11 consistent years as a peach holder, which was an amazing platform for me to spotlight my businesses. The one thing I did every single year that I was on the platform was start and showcase a new business. And even if it was something small,

the last thing I did was I actually started Black-owned business pop-up shops. Because as a Black business owner, not only do I want my businesses to thrive, I also want to create a platform to help other small Black businesses do well as well. So I created these pop-up shops. I actually call them Minding My Black-Owned Businesses. And it is something that I would love to take all over the United States in different cities where we pop up and get these small businesses, Black-owned and even small businesses, an opportunity to get exposure. And that's one thing that I was able to get a lot of being on show on Bravo TV. And they always did right by me and showed my businesses.

It's hard to start a business. It's harder to start a business if you're Black. And it's hardest to start a business if you're a Black woman. Is that a true statement? I do believe that that is true. I do believe that that is a true statement. Statistically, it's true. But have you felt it even as somebody with a profile? You know, I was reading a piece where it says to be a black business owner in America means enduring relentless racist roadblocks. Absolutely. One hundred percent. I know that me having the Housewife platform, my modeling platform, those platforms definitely helped me a little bit more than just any other normal Black woman that's trying to start a business. That was why it was important for me to make sure I leveraged those platforms. Because if I didn't have that, I mean, those were super instrumental in the success of my businesses. Because, you know, we had like at one point over 2 million people that watched the Real Housewives of Atlanta.

So if I was talking about my modeling agency, the Bailey Agency School of Fashion, I have people all over the world that know that I have a modeling school, a modeling agency. And that's like free promotion for me at that point, which normally a regular black woman would have to pay for marketing and promotion. They would never have that type of worldwide exposure. And I could understand how they would easily get overwhelmed and give up. And not have access to capital. Getting the loans. It's always been interesting to me politically that for all the pitches that are made to the Black community, and recently we've had this pushback where there's like a point of a reevaluation. And I'm always slow about saying Black community because it makes this gross assumption that all black people are

the same. And I really try to be careful, you know, not to play the type like that because it's so obviously untrue. And yet in politics, black people are often spoken to as a group, but very rarely from the perspective of entrepreneurship. And it'll be, you know, we're going to get you jobs instead of jobs. Why isn't it ever access to capital? You talk about Dr. Martin's dream was about everybody being taken on the content of their character, meaning that if they're good enough to do it, they get to do it. And really business is really the bosom of that. Not just having a job, not even just going to school. Why do you go to school? To learn,

but to be able to make something of yourself. And isn't that really about owning a business? Absolutely. That and also particularly Black-owned businesses changing the community. By me opening up a business, I'm also giving job opportunities to my fellow Black community, changing the community, uplifting the community, putting back into Black communities. Some of the biggest vestiges of all the Southern suppression laws, the Black Codes, what was then called Jim Crow, the vagrancy laws, some of the longest manifestations with them were in holding down the ability of people of color to own businesses. People have always known that that's the key to power. You let somebody make their own money, create their own wealth, multiply their own

success. Now you can't control them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that those were the restrictions that were in place the longest in a lot of places. No, it's very true. I actually just recently, a couple of months ago, I was able to open a semi-permanent pop-up shop in the Beverly Center, which is a huge big deal for one of my brands. It is very expensive, obviously, to be able to lease a space in the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills. But I had an opportunity to meet someone who shared with me this initiative that the Beverly Center was doing for Black-owned businesses. And the way it works is they give me a space. Maybe it can be for three months, for six months, whatever. But long story short, instead of me paying a rent for like probably $8,000 to $10,000, $15,000 a month to be in the Beverly Center, they actually just take a percentage of my sales.

It's brand elevation for me. I can say I'm in the Beverly Center. I can leverage that, which totally takes my brand up and just have that exposure. There's so many different opportunities that are out there, the different grants that Black-owned businesses can get to help sustain their businesses, because it is a lot of our own financial capital that's going into our businesses. And it does get to the point where it's hard. Here's the thing with me as a Black woman. I don't just support Black-owned businesses. I support all businesses. And that reciprocity needs to work for everyone. Yeah, but it doesn't. And that's, you know, look, I mean, this goes back in recent history, even what Malcolm X was talking about,

you know, obviously there's a lot of controversy connected to Malcolm, depending on what phase of his life you were looking at. But his idea about having communities be built around black owned businesses that people in that community use, that was seen as heretical thinking, but that's how every ethnic pocket worked. You know, where I grew up, a lot of the businesses were Italian. Many Italians used them and they went there. The black community often has been discouraged from that. And as you referred to earlier, it's harder to start a business. It's harder to get capital. When things go bad, they go worse. If you're Black and if you're a Black woman, what do you think we can do to help create more entrepreneurship in the community?

Well, I think it's important for us to talk about entrepreneurship more in school, like even at an early age. Everyone doesn't want to be an entrepreneur. Everyone can't be an entrepreneur. It just, there's a reason why there's bosses and there's a reason why there's workers. Okay. But for the people that actually want to, I think that information and that skill set and that knowledge should be available to them at a very early age to just start even thinking as an entrepreneur. Because there's a lot of responsibility that comes with owning a business. Let's talk a little bit about what's been helping and what hasn't been helping. You had a very interesting dynamic toward the end of your run on the Housewives of Atlanta with your daughter.

And I was very moved by it. Your daughter decides in one of the tapings to say that she is sexually fluid, that she identifies as that. And there was support, but there are a lot of haters about LGBTQ, especially as you start to get into the nuance of different types of identities. What know, what was your feeling about what you were hearing about your daughter? My feeling was to let her know that I supported her. That was the main thing that I, well, that I love her and I support her. I've always believed that love is love. I know that for Noel to basically come out on television was not easy. But, you know, as a reality star, as the kid of a reality star, I didn't want her to feel like she had to keep it a secret.

As much love as she got for living in her truth and coming out, she definitely got a lot of hate. As a matter of fact, she had to get off social media for a bit just to take a break from it because she had people in her comments and even in my comments saying, you know, how can you support your child being gay? And in the Bible, it says this and the Bible says that and she's going to get Scott. There was a lot of that that came at us from a social media standpoint, especially toward Noel. And she removed herself from it, but she didn't forget it. You know, you can't unread those. You know what the problem is, is that social media by and large is still representative of fringe thinking.

Yeah, the user base is broader and broader into the billions across the planet. No question about it. But the attitudes are fringe. of the planet, no question about it, but the attitudes are fringe. The problem is the rest of the media often gets lazy and picks up the fringe as the Vox Populi. This is how people just think about something. Now you have to deal with the fringe as if it was the main, and that creates the problem for you and for your daughter in this instance. So was it enough to just get away from it? Because eventually she had to come back. I think honestly, it gave her some anxiety, just kind of going forward with her life. She's very

reluctant to put a lot of things out there about herself now. You know, she has every right to her privacy. Noel never signed up to do the Real Housewives of Atlanta. She was a lot of things out there about herself now. You know, she has every right to her privacy. Noel never signed up to do the Real Housewives of Atlanta. She was a part of my package. She came on when she was eight years old and she grew up on the show. But now she's 22 and she has a choice about what she wants to share and what she doesn't want to share. Going back to her coming out fluid on the show, that was actually, when I look back over my journey as a housewife, one of my biggest moments on the show, because I felt like in some ways it gave her

the freedom to live her life and be herself without feeling like she's hiding something. I do have one regret being on the show when it comes to my daughter. We made the mistake, well, I made the mistake of being super excited about Noel going to college. I had production film every step of the way. She got into a couple of different colleges, but she decided that she was going to attend Howard University. And we show up on her real orientation day with full camera crew, bags from Bed Bath and Beyond, the whole thing. I know the deal.

They're filming all of this. They filmed us all the way to the point where we set up a room and we sat and talked to her about how she felt, whatever. Now we have parents, you know, again, my demographic is a little older. So for Noel's age range, all those moms are Cynthia Bailey fans. They're already telling their kids, get over there with Noel, make friends with Noel. I love Cynthia on Housewives. So now she's getting unwanted attention that she really didn't sign up for. She's getting kids that are befriending her because I'm on the show. She's the kid of Cynthia Bailey and their intentions were not always so genuine. It wasn't like an organic friendship.

And it ended up being really, really hard for her to be there because she was Cynthia Bailey's kid at this college. And we made such a fiasco of filming the whole thing that she ended up ultimately leaving after a year. It ended up being a mistake because I didn't think about this as an experience she can never get back. We needed to let her have that moment. We

needed to let her go. We need to just go as regular parents without cameras and do regular college stuff that parents do with their kid. I regretted that deeply. I know that her dad, Liam, regretted it, even though I was the leader of the whole situation, because I just thought, oh, we have to show this. It's great or whatever. You know, as parents, you know, you have your instincts. And for some reason, with everything else, you know, we're both busy people, Chris, but you always can feel when something's wrong with your kid. You can always just get that sense, like something's not right. And I remember being in New York City working and something said, surprise, Noel, and go to DC. And at this point, now we've moved her from off campus because that was causing such

a stir for her to be on campus. It just got so crazy. I said, okay, we're going to move you in your own place so you could just drive back and forth. And I remember showing up to her apartment and it was like a ghost showed up and she was like, the blinds are down and it's a cute little, you know, little one bedroom apartment and the energy, I just knew it wasn't right. So I just asked her, I asked my child, I said, do you want to do this? Do you want to be here? Are you okay? She said, no. And I said, do you want to leave? And she said, yes, I do. And I said, okay. I called the movers the next day. We started packing up. I stayed, I called my agent and said, I need a week. And we got it together. I wrapped up and returned all the cable boxes, you know, everything down.

And I removed my child from that situation because unfortunately, and I don't want to get emotional because I paid a lot of money to get my makeup done today. I don't want to cry at all. I think that was one of the best things I ever did in my life was to go and take her from college and bring her back here to Atlanta, to Lake Bailey. And I said, listen, take your time, take a couple of months and just figure out what you want to do. But you do what you want to do. And I'm not going to film anything. It's not going to be the focus of anything that's going on in my life. It's time for you to be able to separate yourself from housewives and being my kid. All parents learn from failure. We all make mistakes. We can't fix the past. We only learn

from it and hope to change what we do the next time. And there's always a next time. I mean, she's still a puppy, right? I mean, she's in her twenties. She's going to be asking you for stuff for the least the next 25 years. I know your daughter just went away to college, right? Yes. We just had that experience. And look, I'm no Cynthia Bailey and my daughter, you know, you're a lot bigger than I am, Chris. I'll have to dispute the assertion, but I'll do it another time. My point is this. I know better than you because I grew up as a child of a big time politician. Now, he was smart enough, unlike me, to not take me to college. He also didn't like where I was going to college and left it to my brother to take me. But I know better because I

grew up that way and I still make mistakes all the time. And it has forced my kids to be resilient in a way. And it's a battle to not be resentful. I'm sure it's the same way with you. I mean, you are mostly upside. Everybody has their haters. But in my world, it's very different than yours. And people can say whatever they want about me. That's what I signed up for.

That's part of it. They're going to criticize what I say. I'm in the news and information business. I'm putting myself out there to be scrutinized. When they do it to your kid, it really brings out a very raw side of an individual. And I can only imagine what it meant to you that you'd put your kid in that kind of situation. You know, I don't really go back and forth on social media with the trolls and the haters. I really only use the platform for good, for positivity, for education, for information. But if you come from my child on social media, you will see a very different side of Cynthia Bailey. As a matter of fact, that side is called called 50 cent 50 cent five zero c y n t okay not not the real 50 cent borrow it for a while what i need to when i when that other side has to come up but i did change the spelling a little bit for

it to be 50 cynthia it is the only time where i will get with you because i don't play about my kid my kid does not bother anybody So don't let the kind sweet Cynthia fully. You know, there is that other side that will come out when it's time to protect my family. I worry about concentrating negativity. It's one thing where you catch somebody doing something that society doesn't accept and there's some crowdsourced consequence. Call that canceling. I get it. But when you have people who want to go after someone because they're different, okay. And you jump up and down on their head. Yes. Do you think that person doesn't feel that way anymore? Do you think it doesn't in some way magnify the animosity that

exists? That's my concern is that you go, how dare you go after whoever, Noel, whoever it is, who doesn't fit into that person's idea of normal. And we're going to shout you down and we're going to make you feel like the dirt that you are. You didn't kill the idea, by the way. You know, you may have squashed that one echo of it. But if you want to change an idea, you need a better idea. And when it comes to how we accept people with different identities or types or whatever categorization you want. The better idea is to show how they're embraced, to show how they're accepted, to show who they are in full and let them not just live as a specific definition of their type.

I have a segment coming up on the show called Couch Confession. And I sit on the couch and I talk about something that is personal, that is reflective of a struggle and that I know people normally wouldn't share. And I start off with what in my life is a layup because I'm about as flawed as they come. I talk about therapy and what I've been through and how helpful therapy has been to me and how my therapist prescribing an antidepressant for me while I was going through the depth of the troubles of my own recent family experience, how it made a difference for me. And I know, and you know, man, even if you're on reality TV, you want to get people looking at you sideways. You can say anything you want about your physical health. You can talk about any of

the nastiness that we go through and people be like, I'm with you, Cynthia Bailey. I know what that IBS is like. You talk about therapy or any type of need for mood medication and people will get sideways on you fast. What do you say about where we need to get today? I recently just started therapy about a month ago, and I've never had therapy before. It was one of those things where I never made it a priority. And I've had a lot of trauma in my life. I have tons of triggers every day. Now that I'm learning all the language, like, oh, that's trauma. This is why I feel this way.

I have a lot of stuff to unpack. Even just the story that I was sharing with you about the guilt that I have with filming Nobel's college experience. There's a lot of things that I have to unpack. Personal therapy is something that I think everyone can benefit from. Going quickly back to the entrepreneurship part of my life, I think the hardest struggle with being an entrepreneur, Chris, is balancing family and business. I never could figure out how to have both working at the same time. I was either super into my career, my businesses, and then I would come home burnt out and tired. Okay. I could never figure out how to make it work together. Okay. I could never figure out how to make it work together. That's one of the reasons that I decided to downsize, simplify my life, because there's nothing healthy about working yourself to death and not having quality of life, room when your mom goes through those doors, when I take her back and she's well into her seventies, she has underlying health conditions. Now you're thinking about, you know, she's going to wake up when it's over.

Everything becomes real. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know what? I have to live my life. I have to live my life. And I have to live a quality life. I want to understand myself. I want to be understood. I don't want to work all the time.

I love working, but most of my success is fear of being poor again. I don't want to go back there. I don't want to have to work 20 jobs like my grandmother did. And then on the weekends, cleaning houses, I don't choose that to be my life. However, I want to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor as well. I haven't taken a vacation. There has been no sand between these toes since the moment I left the Real Housewives of Atlanta. I literally haven't come up air since until my mom got sick. And that's when I said, you know what? What is the point of building this life and working all the time if you don't actually get to live your life? You know what they call that? What is that? Figuring out your why. You got to figure out your why. What is easy, right? This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm not going

to do. How is a little bit more challenging. Am I going to work for somebody else? Am I going to work for myself? Am I going to do it here? Am I going to do it there? Why is everything. And the reason that we just keep going is because that is the easiest way to live. We think that therapy is soft. Reflection is soft. Change is weakness. But the opposite is true. The older you get, you know that the easiest thing to do is, all right, mess that up. Let's keep going. Oh, that was horrible. Next. Just because you're done with the past doesn't mean it's done with you. And you need to think about it and understand what motivates everything that you do and how do you serve that. And then when you do that, things do get more simple, even if they're not easy. You know, when you say simple, okay, so I'm only going to focus on these things. These three things

may be very hard. They're difficult. They're not easy, but it's simple. When you find your why, which certainly it seems as though you have, all the hows start to get simple. I got to be a better version of myself. I got to enjoy. Of course, you're going to start doing therapy. Why? Because you want to work on yourself because you want to be the best form of yourself for your different pursuits. We're all backwards when we think of it. You know, people will hear that you go, oh, you go to therapy to find out that you're not crazy. People hear you go into therapy and they think that's why you are crazy because you're going. As you go through your journey of life, it's about doing the things that make me happy. I got 25 summers left at best. I want to do the things I want to do. I want to have time to actually spend with my family. Now I want to

be available. If someone gets sick in my family to come and take care of them, take them to drive them to the hospital myself, go through the whole thing and figure it out and help sign the papers and help get them dressed after. That's life. And God willing, I'm going to have somebody that's going to do that for me.

Getting older is a luxury not granted to everyone. God forbid I get to see another 25 summers. A lot of women in my industry, they don't talk about their age. 50 cent was a whole nother thing. You know, that's the 50 cent that will get you together if you come for a kid. And there's also the 50 cent that's celebrated. I celebrated turning 50 for the entire year because it is a blessing. It is a luxury not granted to everyone to get old. And I don't ever want anyone to feel like getting old means it's a negative thing. Getting old is a beautiful thing. My grandmother died, Frankie Mayford died when she was 98 years old and she didn't get to do

half of the stuff I did. I have a duty to represent her. Representation is important as a Black woman, to live my life, to work hard, be kind, to make mistakes, to learn from mistakes, to go to therapy, to drive my mom to the hospital. And when I get out with you before I get on with my therapist, I got to make sure she's good. I actually gave her some CBD before I came up here. And it had a little extra in it. So hopefully mama's sleeping down there. Not miss the moment, not look back on my life and say, why did I work so hard all the time? Why didn't I make myself a priority?

You know, it was very emotional. I haven't even posted about that yet because I was dealing with my mom. But I am going to post about closing my two businesses because I think it's important for people to know I started this business five years ago. This was my decision to end it. All good things sometimes have to come to an end. As an entrepreneur, as a celebrity, reality star, actress, whatever you want to call me, it's important to show everything. Just be transparent with the things that I'm doing. I don't want to be like, hey, yeah, I'm this big super entrepreneur and nothing stops me and I have no issues with anything.

Hey, you know what? We never recovered after COVID. And it doesn't make sense anymore for me to continue to float this business. That's how you keep it real. And that's how you explain your success because you learn from your failures and your adjustments,

not from your successes. People rarely look back on things that went well as things that were formative in their life. It's about when they didn't and they made an adjustment and then they had a success. And you're showing that every time out, which I think is a big reason that people look to you as much as they do. And it's also easy to talk about being 55 when you look so damn good. Okay. You look like me. You lie about your age. You look like you, you're happy about your age all day long because you look so good. People say black don't crack. That's not true. Black cracks. Okay. I make it a

point going back to wellness, try to take care of myself, you know, facials and using good products on myself. Yes. There's some filler and Botox in there where it's needed, you know, because I am on television and, you know, I am judged on a different level than people that are not on television. So I have to keep myself in working condition. Okay. And I'm very transparent about that. Every time I go get anything done, I'm right on social media saying, Hey ladies, I got a little tweak for my doctor in New York. It was time to kind of clean up under the eyes a little bit. I own everything that I do because this is part of the maintenance of, you know, I can't try to jump into the acting world unless I look, you know, as best as I can look and feel as best as I can feel.

And, you know, when you look better, you feel better. A hundred percent. Cynthia Bailey, I hope this is the first of many conversations to come. You've got a lot of chapters left to write, and I look forward to being along for the ride. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much, Chris. Again, thank you so much for this amazing opportunity. I had so much fun talking to you.

I really feel like just talking, just having great conversation. So much love and respect for you. Appreciate it. Best to your mom. Best to the whole family. All right. Thank you so much. God bless.

to the whole family. All right. Thank you so much. God bless. Cynthia Bailey gets me deep in my feels. I have a lot of respect for what she's doing and for what it has taken for her to get where she is. And what an interesting sense of herself she's been able to develop by going through life and dealing what has been brought her way. And I got to tell you, the numbers tell the story that her toil is not her alone. OK, 2019, you had five million plus employer firms, businesses more than one employee. It's really important because for PPE funding and a lot of government help, you have to be an employer firm. And a lot of small businesses aren't, especially black owned. employer firm. And a lot of small businesses aren't, especially Black-owned. Only 2.3% of employer firms were Black-owned, even though Black people compromise 14% of the country's population. If you want people to be able to get themselves to a better place, they have to have

access to equity and the ability to generate their own success or failure. Business matters. ability to generate their own success or failure. Business matters. I would argue that it is time for us to reassess what we're doing with education and how it helps people to get in business for themselves. As Cynthia said, not everybody's supposed to be a boss, but everybody should be able to have a chance. That's what they want. We don't fake the funk here, and here's the real talk. Over 40 years of age, 52% of us experience some kind of ED between the ages of 40 and 70. I know it's taboo, it's embarrassing, but it shouldn't be. Thankfully, we now have HIMS, and it's changing the vibe by providing affordable access to ED treatment, and it's all online. HIMS is changing men's health care.

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price is going to vary based on product and subscription plan. I want to take a look at a news piece from the Washington Post, okay? Reputable organization. Again, don't succumb to negativity as a proxy for insight, all right? Not everything is bad. Not everybody's a liar unless they agree with you, okay? Be open, free agent, open mind, open heart, willing to listen to what you may not agree with. Maybe you can learn. Steel sharpens steel. Now, one of the aspects of seeing the game is how things are reported in the news. And having been in it for a very long time, sometimes I pick up

on indications of reporting that backs an agenda. Okay? Case in point, Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden's 2020 victory. Now, is this true? Yes, this is true. Is it fair? Not to me. It seems like misplaced energy to me

understanding the situation. And I will take you through why. I think that it's the first two words, Ginny Thomas. If this were somebody else, you'd never hear this story because lots of people were going after their lawmakers to overturn it because they were drinking the Kool-Aid. Every election is bound to have some kind of problem. It is an imperfect process. Okay. Our elections are imperfect. I think they could be a lot closer to perfect,

but we don't want to make a lot of changes. It's bizarre to me how the insiders and all these different interests have always wanted to keep it the way it is. It's bizarre that you live your whole life online. Now, I don't know where my money is, my mortgage, my all these things. I do everything online, not voting, not voting. We really can't do any better. But certainly it's imperfect every time. But that doesn't mean that there is fraud that changed the outcome anytime. And certainly we've seen it studied again and again, millions, if not billions of votes

reviewed. Fraud is just not a widespread thing. Thank God. I don't know how it isn't, but it isn't. And it didn't happen in 2020, okay? Joe Biden won the election and all these Trump judges reviewed the best efforts of Trump's people to say otherwise and rejected them.

And not because there's no justice in America. These are your judges, right? This is why conservatives were so happy they got their judges. The law is the law. And luckily, although I don't believe in luck, but it is nice that the men and women that reviewed these cases did their job. So does that mean that the politics stopped? Nope. Why? Because it works, makes people scared, makes people angry, makes people vote. So they keep it going. Okay. So the Washington Post did the right thing calling out Ginny Thomas, right? No, not necessarily. Well, you just said that the fraud wasn't real. Yeah, I know. I don't believe the fraud was real. I have seen no proof otherwise. I think Trump even knows that and is pushing it because it plays to advantage. And I think that other people who are elected officials on the right say nothing because they refuse to understand that silence has a power and that what they ignore, they empower and as a result now own. And I think they're going to see that in the midterms. Now, what bothers me about this piece? You'll see as we go along. So it's about how Justice Thomas's wife was very

involved, they say, with efforts to overturn the election. Did she press Wisconsin lawmakers? Yes. Now, why does this matter? Well, before it was just Arizona, but now it's Arizona and Wisconsin. So it's two states that she did this in. Doesn't matter to me. She obviously believes what she believes. Who cares how many states she sent letters to? Yeah, but she told them to, in quotes, choose their own presidential electors. And the voters choose them in Arizona. So she's basically asking them to steal it. Sounds like a stretch to me.

Why? Because she's obviously asking them to do anything they can. Now, you can say, yeah, but I think Jenny Thomas is off her rocker with this one. OK, she can be wrong. It doesn't mean that she's committing a crime. She's just wrong. And her politics are off. That is evidently the case.

But is she more than that? I don't see it in this piece, because what happens is you continue to read. And this is one of my biggest gripes when it comes especially to print, is that the things that create balance are often too deep in the piece. And we'll see that here. Thomas sent all of the emails via free routes. What's that? An online platform that allows people to send pre-written emails to multiple elected officials.

Oh, okay. So now what do we know? This was a mass mailing. This wasn't her strong army people she knew, right? A little different, right? Did she press lawmakers? Yeah, but these were emails that according to her lawyer, and there's no proof to expose

that the lawyer's not telling the truth. She didn't write the emails. She had nothing to do with who they were getting sent to, but she absolutely believes in the truth. She didn't write the emails. She had nothing to do with who they were getting sent to, but she absolutely believes in the effort. She's absolutely involved in, excited by, and wanting to change the outcome of the last election. Absolutely. And you have every right, and I would argue good reason to think, what a waste of time and what a stupid notion. But that doesn't mean it's fair to paint her as a part of some conspiracy to break the law. So now you find out, down several paragraphs,

so it was really like this mass mailing she sent out. It wasn't this kind of directed and focused effort. Okay. And she asks in this form letter that her lawyer says she didn't even write, and we don't have any proof that she did. And that doesn't sound so crazy. Often they attract big names. Hey, can we use you to send these things? Because it'll matter more to people. Now, should she have thought about that?

Absolutely. And realize that she may only matter in this mix because of her husband? Maybe. But this is her decision. Ginny Thomas's political activism is highly unusual for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice. I don't know that. I know that it's highly unusual for the spouse of a Supreme Court justice to get called out by the media, but the media doesn't like what she's doing. Question, if Ginny Thomas were an advocate for reproductive rights and she was pushing lawmakers to fight the laws that are going to restrict health care for women in states and create all kinds of problems down the line, would she get this kind of attention? Now, by the way, I think that making that kind of stand for reproductive rights would be a noble thing. I do not think this is. But would she get the same

attention? I argue no, because the media wouldn't want to call it out. And I don't see January 6th or the corollary of events thereafter as in any way as significant to lives in America as reproductive rights. She has said that the two of them keep their professional lives separate. And this is done in a suggestion as you go along through it, like that's impossible. It happens all the time in politics. It happens all the time in the media. So I think it's doable. Now we get into the meat of why I don't like the piece. The scrutiny of the Thomases intensified this year after the Post and CBS News obtained copies of text messages that Ginny Thomas exchanged with Mark Meadows and Eastman. Well, why did this bother them? Because I'm telling you, I do the job. Her name and connecting

Justice Thomas, who was not popular in the media, to the efforts to organize January 6th or anything nefarious involved in overturning the election is very appetizing. Okay. So now it becomes what the piece is really about is whether Ginny Thomas can be linked to the conspiracy to create January 6th to overturn the election. She talked to Meadows. She talked to Eastman. About what? We don't really know. But this judge said that he thinks it had something to do with a critical objective of the January 6th plan. Now that's very interesting a critical objective of the January 6th plan. Now that's very interesting language. That's not January 6th.

That's not the planning of that event, what happened that day, but the objective of the plan, which was to have contested states certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump. So the judge is being used as proof that these questions about why she was with Meadows and Eastman and whether that matters,

because it means that Thomas may have been involved in all that dirty shit that led to January 6th. That's not what the judge said, but they're using the judge as proof of the suggestion because that's the suggestion that they want. Then it's that Thomas said she'd comply, but then didn't with a request for an interview. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why. Let me see how many letters the answer is. One, two, three, six. Lawyer. Her lawyer said, what are you, crazy? You think I'm going to put you down in front of this bunch of politicians who are looking to hang people for this?

No way. And she got scared and she listened to her lawyer because she didn't want to go through it. Is that so hard to understand? Do I like it? Nope. I think that if you are going to be this strong and wrong, you should sit down and answer for it and answer the questions. Not easy, but you put yourself in the situation. In a letter obtained by the Post, the lawyer, a longtime close associate of the

Thomases, why is that relevant, described Ginny Thomas's text messages to Meadows as entirely unremarkable and said they don't suggest she had any role in the attack on the Capitol. He cast her invitation to Eastman, she invited Eastman to go speak at some group, as simply an invitation to speak, not an endorsement of his views or any indication of a working relationship. Hey, doesn't mean she hates him either, right? If they contact you to speak with a group, it's probably because they like you. He also said she played no role in organizing the email campaign to Arizona lawmakers and did not draft or edit the form letters she sent.

Now, one, that's way too deep in this piece that her lawyer says she had nothing to do with the writing of the letter or who it got sent to. Because if your headline is going to be she pressed Wisconsin lawmakers, you make it sound like it was targeted and she was, you know, was at her direction and she wanted it. And it seems she was way more removed. And it comes way too late, way too late. And that's not by accident. Now, I also want to know what did the Washington Post send to this lawyer as questions? Because the suggestion here is that, well, he brought it up. He brought it up. Should have nothing to do with January 6th. Should have nothing to do with that. And you know what a denial does? Is it suggests that maybe it happened. Isn't that perverse? That's how addicted we are to the negative, how suspicious we are,

how skeptical, how cynical even. But what I want to know is what they asked him. Because what if he was asked, did she have any role in the planning for January 6th? Is it true that she wrote these things directly? Is it true that she did this? Is it true that this is why she invited East? If he were asked the questions that way, then these responses are not that interesting to me because the scary suggestion was in the question not the answer he didn't just bring it up as if this was something that needed to be addressed now very interestingly one of the lawmakers from wisconsin that was pressed by thomas then deep in the piece says i didn't feel pressed at all the majority were mass-generated form letters making nonspecific claims about alleged irregularities, a right-wing fraud-finding effort, and a clip from Fox's Sean Hannity show.

Now, these are all the things that bother the media about this. And I'm not saying that it's wrong that it bothers them, but there is an agenda here. And listen, save me the, yeah, the truth is the agenda. Calling out, hey, then go after the people who did it. Okay. Don't just chase a bold faced name because she's Thomas's wife. And look, Justice Thomas did you a favor. He then wound up being the lone justice who sided with Trump that Trump should have been able to block Congress's ability to get documents about January 6th. And he didn't even offer an opinion as to why. That's on him. But just because somebody does something the wrong way doesn't

mean that you should do it the wrong way also. That's what my point is. That's the game. It's not okay because Justice Thomas bothers you. It's not okay to make insinuations about his wife and create this big piece that gives a suggestion that it can't back up because you don't like that they are lying or believe lies about the election. Do it the right way. Go after the people who are driving.

Well, that's why they do it, Chris. Ginny Thomas is driving it. Please. You think she's our problem? I don't think so. I don't think so. According to the records, Thomas was the fourth of more than 30 people who sent that particular form email November 9th and

10th. They only talk about one other sender. The one other sender they talk about was a person named Stephanie Coleman. A woman named Stephanie Miller Coleman is the widow of one of Clarence Thomas's former clerks. So those are the only people who are interesting out of the 30, are people that you can connect to somebody else who's in power. This is about seeing the game. I'm not saying that it's filled with lies. It isn't. It's filled with suggestions that are motivating an agenda that is not yours.

Even if you believe this, by the way, that you should be rooting out everybody who's trying to push this bullshit about the election having been stolen right up into our former president. I see it as just about disqualifying from my vote. You still think you won this election based on nothing? I don't know. I can trust your basis of judgment on anything. thing. But even if you feel, as I suggest to you, you should, that the election, while I'm sure it was flawed in many ways, as all of them are, Joe Biden is our president. He won the election. There's no significant proof to examine anything else. And we know because they've tried. And now

they're just forwarding a lie just to foment the tension. And yes, a Supreme Court justice's wife is part of those efforts. But is this the way to do the job? Thank you so much for participating in the Chris Cuomo Project. Please continue to spread the word, get people to subscribe. It's always gonna be free or follow. Get your free agent gear so we can get that fund up and start giving money where it will

matter. All right. I will see you next time, my brothers and sisters.