The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3675 - Reckoning with Harris' Silence on Gaza w/ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

It's Casual Friday on The Majority Report On today's program: Zohran Mamdani delivers on two of his biggest campaign promises. The NYC mayor has secured $1.2B in funding to expand universal childcare from 2,000 seats to 12,000. Additionally, the NYC Rent Board has voted to freeze the rent on rent-controlled apartments - this applies to over a million apartments throughout the five boroughs. Megyn Kelly celebrates the Supreme Court revoking Temporary Protection Status from at least 350,000 refugees from Haiti and Syria with a racist rant. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author and journalist, joins the program for a conversation about his piece in Vanity Fair: "Did Kamala Harris' Silence on Gaza Cost Her the White House?" In the Fun Half: Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro warns the DSA candidates that won their primaries that they won't be able to just engage in "performative politics" and eventually will have to deliver on their promises. Rep. Tom Suozzi goes on Fox News to "push back" against Mamdani's endorsed candidates. We take a look at some of our favorite right-wing podcasters, Jillian Michaels, Dave Rubin and Tim Pool, reacting to the primaries in New York. All that and more. Legal Defense Fund for MN Anti-ICE Organizers To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 SUNSET LAKE CBD:  Use the coupon code FS26 to save 25% on all full-spectrum CBD Gummies at SunsetLakeCBD.com. The sale ends June 27th at midnight Eastern time Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.  

Hi, folks. I got some great news for you, and it's coming from our friends up in Vermont. Those farmers at sunsetlake sabade.com. Right now, they're having a big sale on all of their full-spectrum sabade gummies. What does full spectrum mean? Well, it means essentially my favorite gummies from Sunset Lake Sabade. with the coupon code FS for full spectrum, FS26, you will save 25% on their fan favorites, including the vibe gummies with a little tiny bit attached, say, which is perfect for when you want to maybe, you know, do a show, but also you're celebrating. I'm not looking at you.

The more potent delta nine. They say gummies. Those will throw you for a loop. And the full spectrum, good night gummies, which I take now every night. And I sleep like a baby. I mean, sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night,

but that's because of my cat. I have another story about that. Also, babies often wake up in the middle of the night. Yes, I wake up crying, and I've soiled myself. That's basically it. What is full spectrum? You ask, it basically means these gummies contain all of the natural good stuff from the hemp plant working together, not just pure sabade by itself.

Some of them have seven and some of them have a little bit attached. Think of it like the whole team effort where every ingredient helps the others do their job better than if you are using them alone. That's called the entourage effect. The good night gummies are awesome. I used to be into the good night tincture and then I tried the gummies and off to the races for me. been very, very helpful. And like I say, with the vibe gummies,

I don't go near the Delta 9 because I get a little bit nervous. That's a little bit much for me. I need to block off like a half a day for something like that. But with the vibe gummies, I can hang out. I watch Survivor. You can vibe. Yeah, no, I can get... Head on over to Sunset Lake Sabadadadat.com

and use the coupon code FS26 to save 25% on all full spectrum. sabadagmies. The sale ends June 27th at midnight Eastern Times. See their site for additional terms and restrictions. Now time for the show. With Sam Cedar, where every day is casual Friday. That means Monday

is casual Monday. Tuesday, casual Tuesday. Wednesday, casual hump day. Thursday, casual thursday. That's what we call it. And Friday, casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Friday, June 26, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning

majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, all. Author, journalist, Tanahasi Coates will be with us, author of multiple books, both graphic and graphic novels. To discuss his piece, did Kamala Harris' silence on Gaza cost her the White House? Also on the program today, UN agency pauses Hormuz ship transits in the wake of an Iranian strike. they still control the Strait of Hormuz, ladies and gentlemen. Ukraine launches drone bombardments throughout Russia. Supreme Court okays Trump's revocation of protected status

to Haitian, Syrian, and frankly, probably all 1.3 million temporary protected status refugees. Supreme Court also bars lawsuits. against Roundup Weed Killer. Mamdani's pledge to freeze rents for stabilized apartments fulfilled in a 7-1 rent guideline board vote. Also on the program, billionaire wealth tax referendum petition certified. It will land on the California ballot in November. Core inflation hits 3.4%.

It's the highest in 2023. On a party-line vote, Republicans pass a $1.1 trillion defense budget through the House Appropriations Committee. And side note, they're also going to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Texas State Board of Education set to vote on imposing mandatory Bible instruction throughout. the Texas school system. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is casual Friday.

Look at this. We're matching again. We are sort of matching. You know what's crazy? I don't ever notice it until I look on the screen. Well, there you go. I mean, I would say you're wearing a charcoal polo. I'm wearing a black polo, but we're close enough. Okay.

When I bought it, it was black. Okay, understood. We will be talking about Zoran Mamdani's latest victory. That's really actually, too. The AVee is secured yesterday, more money for the expansion of child daycare to happen in 2027. And today, frozen rents for rent control people. despite the fact that it's supposedly impossible to happen. Right.

Like you can promise all of these things, but you've got to actually deliver. Oh, wait, it's 2026, not 2025. Yeah, thank you, Shepiro. Exactly. Right. But I will say this. On hearing about the frozen rent control in the expansion of the child care, as a Jew, I'm nervous. You're unsettled?

I'm unsettled by the whole thing. And so I don't know what I'm beside my. I don't know what I'm going to do. I know. Brad Lander's got everyone shaking in their boots. Exactly. Yes, he's terrifying figure. Looms over us all.

If there's one thing that everybody in Brooklyn knows, if you see Brad Lander walking down the sidewalk, you cross the street. He's the left's Trump, our next authoritarian leader. Meanwhile, this is a really, frankly, disturbing story. the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to what appears to be completely arbitrarily,

revoke the temporary protected status order for Haitians and Assyrians specifically, but it is undoubtedly going to have an impact on the entire. 1.3 million people from 17 countries that are in this country under temporary protected status. What temporary protected status means is it's basically a refugee program where if there is such political up evil in your country to make it unsafe, or if there has been a horrible natural disaster that has made it unsafe, for you to live in your country or hard you've been displaced you have no home and whatnot Haiti has had both repeatedly over and over again we have 300,000 Haitians in this country

under temporary protected status the court's conservative majority argue that the law doesn't allow courts to question the process that immigration authorities use to revoke protections This is absurd. Yes. Because the court is allowed to look at any of the executive branch's decisions to find if they are justified based upon the rules that were set up and the laws, the regulations that were set up by the executive branch itself or the legislation. Alito brush the side arguments that Trump's derogatory comments about Haitians

showed the decision was unlawfully tinged by prejudice. He called the statements insufficient to show that termination of Haiti's TPS designation was based on the race of Haitian people. He has called he is called, he said

Haitians all probably have AIDS. He has said that they eat cats and dogs. he has gone on to say that they come from asshole countries. It is absurd to say that there is no racism involved in this thing. In fact, here is Megan Kelly, stalwart of the conservative movement, making her case as to why Haitians should not go back to their country. And if you're listening in front of kids, there's a little language in this clip, right? What? No, she's being nice about nations, right? And look, this has been going on for over a dozen years.

Go home. Get out. We know our country's better than yours. That's because we filled it with our work ethic and our culture and our values. You being here only delusive for us, those who built it and live it. And half of you people, more than half, you won't assimilate. We don't want you. We don't care if you're offended. Get out.

Go home. Go back to fucking Haiti. Sorry. I'm just, I'm thinking about our friends in Ohio who've been dealing with these TPS Haitians for years now who are drunk driving all over their towns and killing people. This is the whole cats and dogs thing. Like they don't want to live like Americans live. Lie about cats and dogs.

This was supposed to be a temporary, it was supposed to be temporary help. and it's turned into another backdoor way of allowing someone permanent residency here. And they take advantage of all of our public services and our... I mean, it's Nazi lie. Okay, the reason that this TPS is an insufficient program is because there is no path to citizenship. So there are what, 1.3 million people, as you say, under this program, many of whom have built lives. TPS started for Haiti in 2010. Some of these people have been here for, you know, almost two decades at this point.

Over a decade. They have kids that go to school. That's what we're talking about here, uprooting their very lives. First off, we should say that the reason why you provide temporary protected status and the reason why it gets extended is because these problems that initially allowed for you to be allowed in the country remain. Here's just in the past three weeks. Haiti's displacement crisis record 1.5 million people. That is internal displacement.

That is a function of the complete sort of like anarchy. I don't even know a violent anarchy that exists in Haiti. And recall that the idea that this is because of their culture, where this is because of like they don't like to work hard. This country has been undermined by the United States. I don't know like a countless number of times. Like literally multiple coups perpetrated by the United States just in the 21st century. Right.

And that's after France. Maybe I guess at the end of the 20th century and the 21st century. And that's after what France did to Haiti. Well, France, Haiti was responsible. I don't know if most people don't seem to be aware of this. The Haitian Revolution in 1850, I want to say, where they threw off their colonizers and their enslavers. 1791, 1804. Okay, sorry, 50 years earlier.

They threw off their French colonizers and enslavers. They got independence. Of course, the United States was terrified at the idea of slaves revolting. France then put a blockade around Haiti. Haiti literally, until 1947, for almost 150 years, had to spend anywhere between 15 and 50% of their GDP to pay reparations to France because France lost all their property,

i.e. the literal human beings. The slaves, former slaves, had to pay France for their freedom and for France's loss of the commodity of these human beings. 15 to 50% of their GDP for 150 years. And then any attempts at democracy were thwarted by the United States. So the idea that this is some type of like cultural thing, like there's the racism. And she said, yeah, and she says that they're using our benefits.

They're leaching off of society. God, where have we heard about that before? When we call her a Nazi, we're not being hyperbolic. This is what Nazis were saying about Jews. It's all lies. They can't get Medicaid. TPS recipients are ineligible for Medicaid. They're ineligible for Medicare.

They're ineligible for Social Security. Because they're ineligible for our, like, the threadbare social safety that we have in this country, they actually pay more into our government than the actual citizens do because we get those benefits back at some point. At least for now. On top of all that, of course, the Katz's. dogs thing was a lie. And the drunk driving, I am sure, that

there has been a Haitian who has drunk drive. There's also been some Americans that have drunk driven as well. It's so dangerous. It is so dangerous in Haiti right now that

armed men have kidnapped James Boyard. He's a security expert. he's also the cabinet director of the Haiti's defense ministry and the police's inspector general. He had been tasked with helping Haiti rebuild its armed forces and assess the national police and implement reforms. He, his wife and his six-year-old daughter were kidnapped traveling to visit, to see a doctor for the child. So what this is in that they're advocating for is an ethnic cleansing of the child.

this country of black and brown people. Syrians are also impacted by this who have been kept in a sub-citizen status on purpose because both political parties refuse to deal with the issue of immigration. TPS always should have had a way for them to apply for citizenship and a pathway, but they've been kept in legal limbo because it's more easily exploited. And so now we're at the final, the end of that, which is the, okay, now you don't have any rights. we're going to attempt to deport you and put this ethnic cleansing campaign into practice? There is literally a billboard in New York City in an attempt to capitalize on Mondani Fear.

This is from a year ago. Where New Yorkers are encouraged to move to Ohio, presumably because they're so desperate to have people move there, despite the fact that there's no room for Haitians to live there. And we've seen all the reports that came from out of Springfield, Ohio, in the wake of those lies, where you had a lot of employers going like, the Haitians are the best workers I have. Oh, one of the articles in our packet this morning was saying how elder care homes are freaking out about this. Yeah, these are people that contribute to our society. And yet, also like these, these are places that were originally settled by, uh, like peasants from Europe that were considered

immigrants at the time. It's very ridiculous to close ranks. And built by slaves. And yet, that's awesome. And yet the Supreme court would have you believe, or at least the conservative majority that, um, there's no, uh, there's no evidence of racism here. I mean, they don't seem to have looked at any of the facts or added anything up, but that's just the name. nature of the Supreme Court. For smirching. The Klan Court. The court.

We'll be talking a lot about the court over the next couple of days, and I suspect over the next several months, as Alito and Thomas have some decisions to make about their futures. In the meantime, in a moment, we're going to be talking to Taana Hasi Coates,

author and journalists, about his most recent piece in Vanity Fair, did Kamala Harris' silence on Gaza, cost the White House. But first a word from our sponsor. You hear a lot about

game-changing hair products. I mean, I guess some people do. Some people? I don't necessarily work in those circles. However, for me, I noticed a little bit of thinning

that was happening back in the day. I would get out of the shower. I would look down on my towel, and I'd be like, wait a second. I'm shedding a little bit more than I should be. And I don't have many. I have a limited amount of arsenal of attributes. And my hair is one of them. And so I decided I wanted to help my hair, but I didn't want to take any drugs that may have some side effects, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I chose Nutrafall. Nutraval is the number one

dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement. It is a used by over 1.5 million people. I've been using NutraFal now. I mean, I've told the story a million times. We had it in the office years ago. They wanted to sponsor the program. Nobody was looking to take it at that time. A year later, I was like, I'm going to try this because I heard both from Emma and another friend of mine of two women who had amazing results with it. And again, I wanted to try it and wanted to get

a, take a drug. And it's been great. Neutral fall now has formulas built for men at different life stages, too. Neutrefall for men, guys, 18 to 49. And the new Neutrefall men 50 plus, which is mine.

Which is the first product of its kind, specifically made for men over 50. What about Ben over, well over 50. Address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in three to six months. Start Nutrafall today. Make the hat optional.

Visit Nutrafall.com. Enter the promo code TMR-10. That's TMR-10 for $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Find out why Nutrafall is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at Nutrafall.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code T-M-R-10. That's NeutraFal dot com, promo code TMR-10. Quick break. When we come back, we'll be talking to Ta-Nehisi Coates, author, journalist.

His books include The Water Dancer, The Message, and we're going to discuss, in part, his piece in Vanity Fair. Did Kamala Harris' silence on Gaza cost her the White House? We'll be right back. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin on The Majority Report. It is a pleasure to welcome to the program, Ta Nahasi Coates, author, journalist, multiple books, including graphic novels, which I've actually gotten my son one, is into this. And also a contributing editor, Vanie Fair, Sterling Brown endowed chair in the English department at Howard University. and we're here to discuss, at least in part, his piece did Kamala Harris silence on Gaza, Kosser, the White House, and Vanity Fair.

Donahasi, welcome to the program. Well, thanks for having me, Sam and Emma. Good to see you. Let's, well, let's just start. What is your opinion? Just, I mean, on a, before we get into actually the breaking down this question, Do we have a sense as to whether she lost over Gaza? I have a story to tell about that.

So just the short answer is I do not. Like I could not definitively tell you that. And I think for different reasons on both sides, there are people who would like to tell you that. Maybe they have a better sense of it than I do. The story I have to tell is that this, the original headline, if you go back and look at this story,

if somebody can do it through the way back machine. That was not the headline. The headline was something, I can't remember what it was, but it was probably something more akin to what the story actually talks about. And, God, this is a horrible sound of our times. It was not getting read. And so we had to figure out on our side, and I was intimately applauded this.

Like, look, we just spent all this time doing this research, doing all this reading and everything, how do we get this thing? Like, how do we get people into this, you know, much more complicated conversation that we want to have, that I want to have actually about American Empire, about Palestine, about Gaza, how that actually fits into, you know, American history? And what happens when that has a collision with, you know, the black freedom tradition in this country that, in fact, made Kamala Harris possible in the first place?

And I don't know what it says about our times that we had to boil it down to this very, you know, fundamental but hot question that finally got people to read. So what I'm trying to say is not only do I not have an answer, even in writing the piece, I wasn't, I was only kind of interested in the question. I was interested in something else. Well, what I love about the piece, I mean, there's so much to love here. But one of the major themes is about adding empire to the list of adversaries to black people gaining power politically in this country. And at the very least updating it to make sure that that's included. to reflect the history here.

There's one great quote of yours. I have it here on page 11, just saying, Gaza is not a betrayal of American democratic tradition, but an expression of an American imperial tradition. Can you expand on that? Because I also think it ties into how you interwove Fannie Lou Hamer's radicalism into the piece and contrasting how that was kind of distorted by the DNC,

and then embrace in a different way by the uncommitted movement. Yeah, you know, thanks for that question. I mean, the first thing I have to say is that a broader critique or the notion that the black struggle is not just about, you know, black people's right to follow other immigrant groups and become white,

you know, to integrate, you know, the power. That's a long, longstanding critique that, you know, it's very hard to not be aware of that. You know, everybody knows the famous James Baldwin quote about, you know, integrating a burning house. I have to be honest with you until probably I went over the Palestine in 2023 and then all of the reading and all the conversation that spun out of that. I could not have told you that in detail what that meant.

So, okay, did I know that obviously, you know, the United States of America was built on the theft of land, the genocide of the indigenous people of the country? Yes, yes, I knew that. Did I understand that that was immediately followed by, you know, the overthrow of, you know, the queen of Hawaii? Yeah, I kind of knew that. Did I understand, you know, about the war in the Philippines after that and Teddy Roosevelt and imperialism and Cuba and the Dominican Republic? Yeah, kind of a little bit. What I did not understand at all was the extent to which the 20th century was not, you know, know, the cessation of this imperial impulse. But in fact, was the continuation of it, that Eisenhower

could not go a year without trying to overthrow, you know, the leadership of some country, somewhere. Sometimes democracy, sometimes not. Democracy was completely irrelevant to that. That John F. Kennedy comes into office. And before he was in office, you know, he went around the world and wrote, you know, all of this stuff against imperialism, got in office and went right at it, you know, and was so profligate with it that, in fact, you know, when he was killed, You know, Malcolm X got in all this trouble for saying chickens had come home to Roos, but that was exactly what Bobby Kennedy thought. That was what Lyndon Johnson thought, that Lyndon Johnson himself was no different, you know,

that he followed that up, that obviously Nixon was no different. And so when you start seeing it, you know, to that level, what you say is this is actually a tradition that extends back to the founding of the country. And I think what makes it hard is two things. The first thing is it is so contrary to how most Americans think of, of their country. And the image that America has propagated throughout the world. And in fact, that when black people, you know, who have, you know, maintain integration as a huge part of their struggle, see reaching, you know, the apex of power as, as, as, you know, a black president,

the notion that we would now then inherit that tradition and how that collides, you know, with our own, you know, desires and impulses that, you know, long been part of our struggle. It's tough. You know, when, you know, I was the in the party of your piece where you are comparing that era of Kennedy and Johnson and Truman for that matter. And but the gains that black people made, particularly obviously in the 60s, it occurs to me too that like the impulse at that time. I mean, American imperial imperial impulse, the motivation or the justification may be. changes through our history. In that era, it was very much driven by an anti-communism, which I'm also quite convinced the gains of black people during that era were also through that

lens of anti-communism as we were involved in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. It's almost like that was part of the same project on some level. Yeah, you know, but one of the, And I'm glad you asked that question because there was no room to get into this in the peace. But one of the really chilling things is the extent to which communism was often just an excuse. For instance, when Mossadegh was not a communist. And that was the excuse they gave for overthrowing him. But the real reason was they wanted access to, you know, the oil that, you know, he was threatening the nationalized or had national. Our Benz in Guatemala, I mean, he's not like a puppet, you know, of the Soviet Union.

But they use, you know, communism as this excuse. And so, you know, look, had it been communism, that would have been wrong enough. But so many of these governments were not, I mean, what would it? Lombo was, you know, wasn't a communist or wasn't yet. Certainly he was, you know, making alliances or looking to make alliances with, with the Soviet Union. But so much of this effort was directed at, you know, government and states that, you know, you look at it. And it's like, oh, you guys are just using that, you know, as an excuse, you know?

And I guess, you know, this is the point where I would just like to say that, you know, you know, there are books that really influence me on this, the Jakarta Method, Stephen Kenzel book, The Brothers. And what you see in that work is that, you know, communism is just an excuse to take shit from people, to be honest. Corporations taking that. I mean, I, right.

But I mean, to be fair, I'm not convinced that they felt it was communist for countries, to nationalize their resources or to keep their resources for their own people. That was their perception of what communism was. It was antithetical to capitalism, which is in and of itself, has a sort of imperialistic quality. I mean, the shark has to keep moving or dies type of situation. Yeah, just to expand on that, I'm curious about your thoughts on this. you know, when we're talking about, say, you know, the enfranchisement of black people and the right to vote and those gains happening in the 60s, and the notion of democracy and what that means, both internally in the imperial core, we could also talk about Israel calling itself a democracy and yet ruling over an entire population with impunity and giving them no political rights, it's almost a mirror image of how the United States Empire interacts with,

the world via imperialism, where, okay, yes, within the imperial core, within the privileged state, there is some semblance of democratic representation, but in the Jim Crow South, of course, black people were excluded from that in this country. And then internationally, we make all of these decisions as an empire that impact millions and millions of lives. We've killed millions and millions of people for the American project. And they have no say in that. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, Emma, can you just clarify that question a little bit for me?

I just want to make sure I'm responding. Sure. Just the comparison between, say, like, American democracy being democratic for people within it, is really democracy being democratic for people within it. But the sheer power of the decisions that come from said democracy impacting people outside of those borders in really deadly destructive ways and how that shows, you know, what political rights within these, say, kind of imperial cores means for the rest of the world? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

And I just, I think one of the great problems with that, and I haven't spent enough time in Israel proper to understand whether it is true, but certainly within America, it's just, like, look, I was raised in a pretty, you know, dissident family, you know. Again, I was not, you know, completely new to these arguments. But the extent of it is really, really hard. Like to understand, like, look, in the black community, Johnson has seen as one of the good presidents. You know, and to understand that, like, at the same time he's, you know, contemplating and signing the Voting Rights Act, you know, he's engineering the overthrow, you know, of the government in Indonesia

that is going to lead to a million deaths. And God knows how many people, you know, in prison that many of the people that you hold up, you know, as being part of your, your very liberating struggle will then, in turn, do great harm, you know, to other people around the world. I mean, it, it, it, it, it, it breaks the brain, you know, because then it's like, okay, so what am I actually trying to do here? Like, what, what is my struggle? Because in these communities, I mean, people really, really are suffering. This is happening at the very same time, you know, that people are being lynched, that your, that your, you know, leaders are being shot down, that you are suffering, you know, segregation, which in and other.

itself is its own system of plunder. So like, like, what is my place in this? And probably the most sympathetic reading, you know, I can give to, you know, if not to Kamala Harris, but to certainly, you know, the movement that supported her among black people is it's like, how are we supposed to think about this? Like, like, who are we supposed to be, you know, inside this? And I wrote that piece to really, to challenge people on that, on that particular point. I was also struck in the piece, getting back to that a little bit. There was a quote by Tiffany Cross, a journalist and author, who was part of an early movement to get Biden to commit to naming a black woman as the vice presidential nominee. and the in the quote is I would think

I would hope anyway that a black woman is someone who's going to say the uncomfortable thing in the I would trust that a black woman could not see tens of thousands of children being murdered and not be struck by that not be moved by that whether you're a mother or not I trust we experienced that

we saw that firsthand of violence in America and we've had to tap into our humanity in a certain way I mean the in the pieces in many ways about that sort of paradox of where black people have to now sort of like in power buy into the the same the the the the the the I guess the contemporary version of what was happening in this country um uh years back or some iteration

of it um but are we like uh is that a problem that I mean I with with our politics on some level I mean I see this with Jews right like I was taught I much of my education I'm at an age where, you know, much of my Jewish education was founded on the Holocaust. I had my Hebrew school teachers. A couple of them, you know, had tattoos on their arms. I mean, that was, you know, we were 30 years out from the Holocaust when I was 10 or whatever it was. And the lesson that I understood was that, like, Jews would never do what they're doing in Israel. and I've been proven wrong.

I mean, and to a certain extent, it's why I think like many Jews turned a blind eye to what was going on there for so many years because it was just not comprehensible. And on some level, like, maybe the problem is holding on to these notions that an identity, and even the cultural stuff that's built into that identity ends up dictating in these moments. Yeah, so I want to separate two things. You know, I think the one thing you've mentioned is the notion that because you go through an experience, because you're oppressed, you are necessarily inert from the impulse to oppress other people. That is nonsense.

You know what I mean? Like that just, there's just, you know, it's not just Jews. It's not just black folks. I mean, you just have plenty of experience of, you know, immigrant group after immigrant group. You say coming from Europe over here and actually, you know, duplicating. oppression even as they flee from it and throughout the world. I mean, that just is a consistent thing of humanity. The one part I want to hold on to, and this is what Tiffany was really speaking to because, I mean, she was actually speaking as somebody who was disappointed in Kamala,

you know, not as somebody who, you know, was endorsing. You know, what, what, Kamala's, you know, silence and her unwillingness, you know, to have a, you know, a Palestinian speaker. She was actually speaking of a disappointment. The notion is that it should teach you something. And I do hold to that. I do hold to that because I do think that it's important to ask of people who have been oppressed, who have been, you know, terrorized themselves,

who have been excluded and marginalized themselves, that they learn something from that. And I actually think that is contrary to the expectation. Because I think it's contrary to the expectation that they won't, like that they will have some automatic understanding

of it and thus won't do it themselves just because they went through it. I think, the expectation that there should be some degree of knowledge, some degree of compassion, some degree of understanding. I think it's a good thing. I mean, one of the things I say to is the back of the piece is, look, despite everything we've heard and everything we've read and despite, you know, the division between, you know, certain camps of black activists and certain camps of Palestinian activists, man, if you look at the polling, I mean, the most skeptical group of people of Israel's actions in Gaza were, in fact, black people, the first, you know,

co-spons of the ceasefire, you know, who works with Rashida Taleb as a black woman. It's, it's, uh, Cory Bush. And the first group of majority, I think it was like half of the group of people who ultimately signed on to that were black. Yeah, me church, which, you know, is not known for its radicalism, you know, comes out, you know, against it. A number of black pastors come out, you know, against it. So this is a very complicated thing, you know, that's going on. And I've seen it even in the reaction to my piece. I think it was, you know, very much in that piece. There were black women in that piece who, you know, will support Kamala to the Hill, and there are black women in that peace who were deeply, deeply disappointed, you know,

and how she handled Gaza. And so, you know, I feel like as somebody who roots himself in the black freedom tradition, like I have a responsibility to make sure that this experience does not become a badge for us to go and do things to other people or support the doing of things to other people. Yeah. And it's also when you see all that makes sense. Does that make sense? It does.

It does. But I guess I guess. Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is. I think it's an interesting question. Well, I mean, I think like there's, there's a difference between a moral expectation and a political expectation. Right? Like, you know, I mean, there was nothing in Harris's history that would indicate a particular sensitivity.

to a whole host of questions that one would on a sort of like moral or ethical sense, like say, you know, maybe there should be more sensitivity simply because of the tradition and what your ancestors have gone through. And so it was simply a function of a profile as opposed to someone who has. has actually engaged in that tradition. And that's where I start getting into political. I disagree with that. Look, I mean, this is the thing I say at the back of the piece. I mean, she's very clear in her biography about like how she grew up

and the values she grew up on. She talks about her, you know, her parents being involved in the protest tradition. She was born in 1964 in the Bay Area, which is, you know, a hotbed of political activism and radicalism. she's very clear in her book about, you know, who she was raised on, about seeing people like Ameri Barak, about seeing people like Fannie Lou Hamer and how that influenced her. She herself roots herself in it. Now, you can say in her career, like maybe you can say, in her career.

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, I mean, she, I mean, she may self-proclaim, but, you know, you know, it's like she was a prosecutor. You know, honestly, I don't, I don't have a complete breakdown on her career. but I guess what I want to say is I don't really want to I am deeply uncomfortable condemning or writing off people

who looked at her saw themselves in her and also said we expect you to see some measure of our struggle and your humanity in other people now maybe they were ultimately wrong you know in that But I guess I'm a little uncomfortable, you know, condemning that. Well, it's also, I think, you know, when we're having a systemic conversation about, you know, you have a quote fairly, or not a quote, you write early on in your piece about a black presidency as a contradiction.

It owes its power to a movement against racist state violence at home, but seeks an office, which is always practiced racist state violence abroad. And I think, you know, Harris was not a transformational political. figure in terms of a vision in that way. And the circumstances in which she was thrust into the nomination did not give her the ability to pivot in that way. And I don't necessarily think ideologically she had that kind of politics. But it's perhaps more of a way to indict the system of empire than it is to, I don't know, basically indict assumptions made about her from voters that have been and black voters in the Democratic Party in particular have been told time and time again election cycle after election cycle that you have to vote Democrat as a harm reduction

measure. The problem is that we've gotten to a point where there's no credibility on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. And I was like one of the things I really was trying to do was to some degree take the focus off of her and think about this like the idea of a black president. period and to a large extent about the presidency. And, you know, Sam, I, I think the question you're kind of getting at is probably one that I have been thinking about since I, you know, I came back from Palestine. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Like the extent to which these groups and end this history actually matters when you're talking about, you know, actual power.

And, you know, Emma, I guess at the end, you know, I'm still trying to figure this out myself, you know. And I don't have a firm answer here. But I guess the question I am asking myself, which goes beyond the scope of that piece, what is a black presidency actually worth? Like what are we trying to do here? And maybe larger than that, to what extent, you know, should we be organizing our politics around individuals as presidents? Now, presidents have a lot of power.

I'm not, you know, saying the presidency period, but individuals, you know, as presidents. You know, there was nothing, to your point, Sam, there was nothing. if you look at the biography of Abraham Lincoln, that would indicate the kind of impact he would ultimately have on black life in this country. You know, he was a pretty middle of the road, you know, and really kind of remained one until like the last two years of his life, really, you know, as you get deeper into the war. What I think is that we maybe give more attention to the character of people than we should and don't pay attention to maybe the history and the context that's happening around them.

You know, that ultimately may, you know, shape them, you know, more than like who, like how great they are, you know, necessarily as, as a, as a, as a human being or, you know, how courageous they are themselves. Yeah. I mean, it's about, I think, having a collectivist worldview as well, which I think, you know, perhaps at one point, maybe we'll talk about New York. We're having some of, I think people's minds are changing about. about what Zoramam Dani describes as the warmth of collectivism versus the rugged individualism that sometimes I think sets people figureheads like Kamala Harris up to be. I mean, frankly, the way that Biden sidelined her and also at the beginning, I would say,

undercut her by explicitly tokenizing her to a degree, didn't help her in many ways. And just to stay on your piece for one more second, because I really appreciated this part of it, as well, when you were contextualizing black women's trauma in this country and you were describing enslavement as a system of rape, and you quoted this historian, Paula, Paula Gittling's. The great politics. She alone could give birth to a slave. Blacks constituted a permanent labor force and metaphor that were perpetuated through the black woman's womb. Just this idea that black women in particular bore this burden in America as they could produce more slaves, right? And just to compare it to right now, you see some of the atrocity propaganda and how Israelis present themselves.

as victims of these scary Muslims, rabid Palestinians that are coming after their women to attack them. And there's this kind of self-victimization as well, where, you know, specifically if people of color show humanity towards Palestinians, you'll have Zionists treat these calls for liberation as like attacks, as bigotry against the oppressor. And I'm just wondering if you've noticed some of those similarities about the atrocity propaganda about Palestinians

and how in many ways it looks like these were clipped from the Jim Crow South to justify lynchings. Yeah, yeah, I have. I have. I have. I definitely have. And, you know, my way of dealing with that is there's right and wrong in the world. You could take the worst, you know, most heinous thing or the most heinous system, you know, that you've seen, maybe slavery itself and nothing, you know, about that makes me think that that should be done to the people that are perpetrated. Some things are just absolutely in themselves, you know, completely wrong. And I think having a politic that is more based on peoples as opposed to ethnic affinities is extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely important.

You know, and maybe even in this question that we keep, you know, that we've been circling around in this interview, you know, I mean, I've said this before, but to me, look, you know, what I saw over there, either it's right or wrong, you know. and there is nothing that I could see any Palestinian doing that would make what I saw on the West Bank in Hebron, in the settlements themselves, which I actually went into, nothing. Nothing I can see that. Like nothing makes that right. I don't care what they did. And like there is this implicit notion that some people deserve certain things, you know.

and that is then in turn used, you know, or it becomes very, very vulnerable because if you can pin certain acts on certain people, well, they're terrorists, well, they dis, look at who they till,

look at you. You know, that somehow then can justify, you know, systemic cruelty, systems of plunders, systems of exploitation. And I just,

I just don't, I don't believe that. Can I, can I just, can I just a quick journalistic license before we move off this piece? Sure. Of course.

Sam, I want to ask you because, you know, I've actually heard you, you know, speak about this quite a bit on this show. And your question really does intrigue me. What? Like, having seen everything you've seen and come to your place of consciousness about Palestine and Israel and Zionism and everything, like, what is all of that teaching about the Holocaust mean to you? Does the Holocaust have any sort of place in your politics? Does it have anything to teach you in terms of struggle? I mean, honestly, like, I think at this time, when I think about it and its resonance, I see it as a mass trauma. Like, I mean, it's almost like my perspective on it has changed to, you know, that's just what dominates my thinking now in this era is that this is, it's really more of like a cycle.

thing. Like there is literally a, what we're seeing is some type of mass reaction to, like, a mass trauma. I can't really place it in other, any other context. I mean, I, you know, I, the, the, the relationship between the Holocaust and Israel was so cemented in my young, uh, in my young, uh, Jewish teachings. I mean, I think as a kid, I was aware, you know, my son just got bar mitzvahed, and I remember my bar mitzvah's speech, I said something to the effect of like, we're all here because of the Holocaust. And like we're guilty.

We feel guilty. And that was not met with the, with the, I mean, not everybody was excited about that, but at the time, but in retrospect, I think I was on to something on some level, like there was a in in the license that that that that many people perceive that it gives them I think is just um really problematic uh like the somehow uh I mean I think it's just like a trauma reaction um which is you know I hope people don't interpret as a as an excuse but it but then also empowered by like the state as well and by institutions in ways. I think that came after.

I mean, I think the impetus. I mean, look, the people in the Argun and the Haganah and the Stern gang, they justified doing some horrible things. And I think it was because we're owed something. We have license. And, and I think that, you know, disseminates through a, of people and I don't know how you recover from that. I mean, I have no idea.

But it's it's a bad thing. You know, like I. What's the point of teaching about the Holocaust? I mean, if the answer is we just need better guns. Yeah. I mean, one thing, again, you would know this better than me. But I, being struck by just this year. number of Jewish voices in the Palestinian freedom of, I mean, being struck by what happened

in what was Dan Goldman's district. I mean, is there not one argument that actually people heard the lessons too well? I mean, like, they just, they just believed them and took them too well in, you know, ways that maybe, you know, some of the people teaching the lessons did not want them to, and they're just applying those universally. Oh, in other words, that it wasn't taught, it was not taught like this means for everybody, but that some people absorb that. I mean, that was the argument that, um, yeah, that was the argument that I think like, was it a former Obama official was making on her book tour? Oh, yes. That literally like people misunderstood. I mean, yeah, that's what she said. She did say that. Yes. I heard that. I mean, she was like, we made a mistake. Yes.

Uh, I mean, that's, that's nuts. I mean, in my mind, that's nuts. Like, I don't remember like, you know, And, you know, I grew up in Western Massachusetts. It was not like a very, like, it was not the most Jewish of places, but we were, you know, in Hebrews school, I don't remember a teacher saying, hey, look, this, what you're learning this. When we say never again, it means that we've got to get armed and fight. Like that, no. Isn't that nationalism, though? Isn't that the drug of nationalism that gives you this feeling of empowerment and pride and it can be addicting in and of its. itself and you have Israeli nationalists that say, we are not the Jews that would let the Holocaust

happen to us. And that is not reflective of Jewish diaspora in this country at all, but in Jewish institutions where they're at large scale Zionist institutions, that is the more, that is the operational view. And I think that's part of the contradiction when you see that, you know, a majority of Jewish Democrats believe Israel's committing genocide, but the Jewish institutions, are not reflecting the population in this country. But I think it's also has to do with like age proximity, you know, temporal proximity to the Holocaust. I mean, certainly, you know, I've told this story many times,

but like a friend of my fathers who came to my bar mitzvah, my sister's bar mitzvahs, had many Passover's with us, called him like a year ago and asked if I was an anti-Semite. And my father, asked, are you inviting him to Saul's bar mitzvah? And I'm like, ah, no. I'm not going to be doing that. No, no. No.

Because he's Jewish? Yeah. I said, we have a quota. Too many Jews are coming. So we can't do that. But I mean, honestly, it was like, I think that's just a mass psychosis, frankly. I mean, and I, and I, I don't know if it's a question of like

there was a you know I think in the context of Israel and certainly the Molly Crab Apple's new book I mean covers some of this and certainly the research there was a disdain for the Jewry of Europe there was a victim blaming

I think that took place and I think like the the reason why Benjamin Netanyahu calls himself Benjamin Netanyahu has changed his name I don't want to dead name them. I don't remember what it was. But I think it was an idea of escaping that profile. Like we don't want to be those Stettled Jews or those ghetto Jews.

And it looks a lot worse as time goes on. With that said, also... Sorry, that took us on. I want to tangent. No, but that's fine. The, I want to ask also, like, in terms of like the, the, the, the, that paradox in the, uh, in the piece, where does Obama fit into that? Like, where does like, like, like, in terms of that, like, how do you perceive Obama

within that, um, that framework? Um, in much the same way I, I, I perceive has. I mean, I think it's the same thing. You know, I think it's actually completely the same thing. And again, this was not an awareness or consciousness, you know, I had. But, I mean, obviously, you know, you have, what is it? The week after he's elected and Bush is, you know, a lame duck, they airstrike a wedding party.

And then five years later, I mean, everyone was in Afghanistan. Five years later in Yemen, the air strike another wedding party. you know, Libya, you know, look, and you can, you know,

say all these things about, you know, how bad a guy Gaddafi was. I'm not here to disagree with you. But the notion that our policy is that a head of a state,

you know, should die being dragged out of a pipe and, you know, sodomized, you know, with the bayonet. And then that the secretary of state will go on national news

and laugh about it and brag about it. Right? Like that, there's a, a, you know, kind of disdain. And I just think like we have this acceptance. And, you know, to your point, clearly being black is not, you know, inert individuals, you know, from this acceptance that, you know, we're just going to make war in the Middle East. And, and it's fine.

You know, it's fine. And that's just the state of play. And that's okay. And, you know, look, to be honest with you, and Obama's, you know, obviously kind of an apex of this, what I am concerned with. Maybe this is like the latent national listening. What I am concerned with is that from Colin Powell to Condoleza Rice to Barack Obama through Susan Rice, through Linda Thomas Greenfield, through Kamala Harris, that we are becoming the face of this shit. And I don't want us to be the face of it. I don't want us to be the face of it. I don't think we want to be I don't think we quite understand because I didn't, you know, what that all, you know, means. You know, and again, I cite them as individuals, but I don't, I'm not, you know, necessarily

interested, you know, in their particular, you know, moral failings or whatever. You know, I think that, you know, there's systemic things at work, you know. But I just, I don't, I don't, I don't want the end line of our struggle to be. us sitting in the UN justifying dropping bombs on people like how they drop bombs on Tulsa you know what I mean? Like I don't like that's not what the drug is for me

I mean I get like what is this is going to sound like a weird question but but why like I mean I get it I mean I get it from like a I get it on one level but the what are the implications of that

outside of like existential for me yeah I mean and I can tell you why I mean I just like I am not here talking to you I'm not here having this conversation with you if not for the fact

that people sacrificed you know people died I mean I'm going to tell you what you already know people struggled, people made this possible. And there is a tradition of their vision of liberty, not just being solely for black people to get things. That was like why it was important to cite Koretta Scott King, you know, and to note the fact that Koretta Scott King was loudly against the Vietnam War, three, four years before Martin Luther King himself was for, you know, what she says is so, so powerful. You know, she says, listen, how can Lyndon,

you know, B. Johnson, be so sympathetic, you know, to these, you know, black kids in Alabama while dropping bombs on Vietnam, you know, Vietnamese children. And she says something really, really important. I think it's because we let him, you know, for Fannie Lou Hamer, you know, at the same time that, you know, she's arguing against, you know, segregation, you know, and the Mississippi, you know, a Democratic delegation being segregated to be against, you know, what she calls this racist war in Vietnam. And I focused on black women because that was the piece, but there's certainly, you know, a many more, you know,

when going to Boyce. What I'm saying is I owe them, man. Like, like, I owe them. They're the reason I am here. And, like, they were fighting for something. And I guess I feel a particular debt to them. And so, like, that's the why. You know, like, I owe Correa Scott King.

I owe Fannie LeMay. I owe W.E.B. Why do you think then does, wasn't Obama and Harris? Like what? Well, no, no, but why do you think they don't think that? Brother, that's a million-dollar question. Because as I said, you know, it was very important to me

that I end that piece the way I did because Harris's biography does not strike me as somebody who was new to the notion of black struggle and that intersection with a broader international struggle. in fact, she probably knows more about it than I do. You know, I just read some books recently. She probably has been thinking about this. It's in Obama's book.

It's actually in his book. He talks, like, he arrives in Indonesia maybe a year, you know, after, you know, they start, you know, massacring people and putting people into any rights about it. I mean, it's, you know, his defense. It's not like, it's not like he hides it. He's very much aware of that why that didn't, you know, ultimately play a larger part in his policy. I, I, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's because you got to be a peculiar or a different kind of person to run for presidents, to be the president in the first place.

You know, maybe that like weeds out, you know, certain people, you know, right off the back. You know, I don't know. You know, I don't know. Some would say it actually did, you know. And this is about as restrained as it gets for an American president. You know, some would tell you that, you know, and I'm just telling you what the reporting, you know, I did told me. I don't think this should offer any sort of comfort or consolation or forgiveness on the parts of Palestinians themselves. But I had so many people tell me, in fact, I had, you know, founders of uncommitted tell me that behind the scenes, you know, Kamala Harris clearly disagreed with Joe Biden and would say it. And they believed her and they believed that she was sincere, you know. Now, what you would say to me, and I think this is correct, is that what you say is what matters ultimately. And what you say off the record and behind the scenes is it's kind of irrelevant, you know?

you know, I'm just some, I don't know why it doesn't matter more. I don't know. I guess, Sam, can I just, I know I've talked a lot, but I'm actually thinking this through as I talk. What I will tell you is, even in that era, there were people who thought that it should not be a bigger deal. There were people that were mad at Fannie Lou Hamer. The SCLC was mad at Coretta Scott King

for going out and talking about the Vietnam War. WB, the boys had tension with the NAACP. You know, and so even in that era, And what I have to acknowledge is, yes, there were very, very important black people who actually said, oh, no, actually, this is just for us. You know, and that that's a tradition, too. Well, perhaps it's about weighing the, say, what blame goes around against the institutional barriers and the newness of black civil rights and also the impulse, frankly, by many liberals to, as you say, put up black face. in places and people as a way to obscure, I think, some of their own policies. And it is kind of results in a culmination of an erasure of the collective struggle

that the right is speed running, of course. Like we could talk about America 250 and this insane nationalism, cage matches on the White House lawn and what that's supposed to indicate about. America's history versus the reality. But perhaps it's about melding in that context when trying to talk about critiques about the roles that black people play within the institution of our government. Yeah. I mean, I do think it's that. And I just think, um, like, you as a black person, like your pain, your agony, your slavery, your Jim Crow, all of that is very much responsible for this country as it exists.

And yet, you yourself also believe that there, you know, maybe some wonder, not maybe you do, that there's some wonderful things about this country that, you know, the notion of all men are created equal, actually if it could be realized that is a beautiful thing. And so, like, asking people, which is, in fact, what I am asking, asking people to fight for their own right to be fully invested citizens of this country, while at the same time transforming what the country is on a deeply, deeply fundamental

level, because, like, this country has been imperialist from, you know, from its founding. It's a high bar. It's a high bar. It's a very, very, very high bar. I think it's a necessary bar. But it's a, I can't tell you another group that's actually done that. Maybe somewhere there is, you know, maybe people know. But that, that, like, you're fighting two things at the same time, you know, and that, that's, you know,

great, great, you know, it's very difficult to try to integrate into something while transforming the thing at the same time. Does class play any role in those who, um, who don't have that same recognition of what maybe the past, what kind of responsibility they have in the present? Possibly. Possibly. I mean, I don't like the people who I, you know, I'm cited, their class origins are diverse. You know, you can't really draw a straight line from Fannie Lou Hamer through Greta, Scott King, through, you know, W.E.B. DeBois.

I mean, I guess this is not, you know, I guess this is somewhat to some extent class. I do think that not having access to resources as black people tend. not to be. And certainly as, you know, working class and poor black people tend not to be, it means that you, you just see less of the world, you know? And then at the same time, I mean, like the question you asked me, you know, at the beginning, or not at the beginning, just a few questions ago. And yet those who actually see more of the world are not necessarily always transformed by it, you know. So I don't know. I don't know. And I literally don't know. Like, I'm not trying to, you know, battle away your question. But,

Look, there are people who write these kind of pieces because they have reached a definitive answer. And I've never been that kind of, you know, journalist myself. You know, I mean, this is a process, you know, that, as I said, began like three years ago, you know, that I'm in the midst of, you know, and if I'm doing it right and, you know, we're talking another three years, you know, I'll have a deeper and more complicated answer. Do you think that your politics have changed or to what extent have they changed? you say over the past a couple of decades? Yeah, I mean, they had to. They had to. You know, what I would say is, you know, my father was in the Black Panther Party.

You know, my mom was, you know, had her own set of radicalism myself, was, you know, the first person, you know, it taught me to read. And reading was an act of liberation. I mean, the first person who I heard about the notion that maybe something was going wrong. And it was some sort of, you know, behavioral. you know, some issue of oppression. And it was like sitting there with my dad watching the evening news.

But the problem is there is so much about the world that you hear within your community when you're young that because we don't have the resources, we don't then therefore have access to the science and the information to back up those resources. And so, you know, I go off to college. I go off to become a writer. You know, I went to a lot of, you know, I ended up working for a lot of elite institutions. institutions where they did know how to produce the kind of journalism that I'm producing. Now I had to learn from them because there was no black radical publication that, for instance,

could support the work that I had to do to write the case for reparations. That's really expensive work, man. It actually costs a lot of money to tell a writer that for the next year and a half, this is all you have to care about. You go read about this. You go to Chicago. go, you know, as many times as you want, you interview as many people as you want. You know, it's only a certain, you know, few places where you can go to learn how to do that. And I guess one of the more shocking things is, you know, like to do all of that research, to do the reading, to do the reporting, and for it to bring you back, you know, to your dad's living room, you know, where maybe folks's analysis was not the most sophisticated, but their

basic moral sense was right. And if it's one thing that I probably regret, I mean, regret is the strong word, but it's the word I have right now. If there's one thing that I regret in a process of coming to consciousness was the notion that somehow knowledge dictates morality, that because people can know things, you know, they will necessarily, you know, have a moral outcome. And so therefore, because I was working around people,

at different points in my career, whose vocabulary was larger than my, who maybe didn't have my Baltimore accent, who had been the places that I had not been. You know, who, like my mom's analysis of Israel, Palestine, would be, oh, the Palestinians are the blacks. Like, that's what she would say, right? And you would say, oh, that's, you know, somebody who had been there or knew what I would say, that's not, you know, sophisticated enough because this, this isn't that.

At the end of the day, my mom was right, though. Right. Like, morally, my mom was correct. You know what I'm saying? Like she might not have the vocabulary and she might not have, you know, never been there, but that these people who have traveled the world, you know, have been in war zones, you know, covered crises, read books that, you know, I, you know, had not read. Smoke languages that I, that I did not speak.

You know what I mean? Had been in rooms that I had not been in. Then my mom's morality, you know, was not just, and my dad's morality was not, you know, just the thing that should be, you know, guiding started. Actually, it in some ways mattered more. You know, and in the knowledge, that was not a thing I knew. And that was not a thing that, you know, I was aware of. And I guess I say that I don't regret it because when I try to think about how this could have went another way, I mean, I regret it because that's the emotion I have. I have an emotion of regret. But Sam, when I try to chart a path by which I become somebody who can answer the questions that I have about the world in a way that is sufficient to me that satisfies my own curiosity, I don't know how else this goes, you know?

Tonnehasi Coates, the pieces, did Kamala Harris's silence on Gaza Costa, the White House, though that title was sort of a... Updated? We had to do it. That is the, that is the, that is the, the, the, you got to get to.

You got to read, man. Exactly. You got to get you to read. It's a tremendous piece. Really appreciate your time. We, of course, will link to that at majority.fm and in the YouTube and podcast descriptions. Thank you so much of your time. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. Big fans of your work. Hey, thank you for your questions. I don't, these are not questions I normally get asked. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. All right, folks. That's it for us in the first half of the program today.

We will head into the fun half of the program, wherein we will have fun. We will. So much fun. So much fun. I think we should just rest on our laurels for the guests we have. I was just thinking this week, we did have amazing guests this week. Truly. I was thinking about the guests.

I mean, Mouin and Estead in one day. And I walked out of the office. I was like, damn, that was a great show. Then Tuesday, who do we have? I can't even remember. I don't test in our life. I thought like exactly. Wednesday I missed the Morris Katz interview.

Instead, we had six weeks ago. That's what it feels like to me. Tuesday was Rick Pearlstein. Right. Only a best-selling historian. Yeah. Morris Katz on Wednesday. Which I was so bummed to miss.

I actually honestly thought that you were going to be in here. I told you. haircut. No, no. No, I know. I thought you were going to cancel everything. Oh, yeah. Well, it's sort of, that's a best-up interview. The whole week, we've got, we've had people say that the whole week of best-ups. I just rolled

the week. Yeah, I just updated the best of us with a bunch. And we interviewed the DSA coaches yesterday as well as Tracy, but, you know, the DSA coaches had a lot to, to, to say in New York City and triumph a week. Yeah. I saw that breaking points also got them, so

Tracy's reporting is incredible. I don't know if I could put it in the best of because it is the most infuriating story ever. Such an infuriating story. But, yeah, we kind of killed it this week. Pat's on the back for us. Join the Majorityport.com. That's right. You can help this program survive and thrive and keep on thriving with what we're doing.

I tried to come up with another Ive and all I had was jive. Surviving? I said survive and thrive. Oh, surviving. You want us to keep on driving the bus? Drive, yeah. Folks, join the majori report.com. Join the majority report.com.

Also, check out the AM Quiki. amquicky.com. You get news stories three days a week for free in your email box. And also, our new streamlined to Instagram handle, which is majority. dot FM on Instagram. Whenever I have to put in for press credentials, I have to put

all our handles in, and I fill them out for most of you guys, and I have to search every, I had to search every time. I was like, what's the TikTok? What's the YouTube? What's the Instagram? Now we all know. Majority.fm. And I will say, I am getting a lot of great feedback on

my Instagram account. All I'm doing is I'm hitting accept, and I have no idea. People are like, our message, they're like, you put up a post. And I'm like, I did. Gino put up the post for you. No, I'm doing it.

No, I know you're clicking upset. I know you're just not making the post. I'm sorry. I was agreeing with you. No. You said Gino is doing it. Gino picked up the toddler and put him on the toilet, but Sam used the toilet. I made the poop.

Somehow, it always comes back. at this. It was Brian's fault. I know this time. It was my fault. Anyways, majority.fm. And of course, in the podcast and YouTube descriptions, we have all of our Instagram handles. You can follow us on TikTok.

You can follow us on Facebook. Maybe you have some grandparents who really need to hear some of this stuff. Turn them on to us on Facebook. And, of course, wherever you are, give us a good review or I don't know, whatever. Also, just coffee.coffey. Co-op, fair trade coffee. Using coupon code majority, you get 10% off, you can buy the majority port blend. Matt, what's happening? Yeah, in 98 minutes, 97 minutes, new episode of Jacobin Show will be coming on right at 3 o'clock.

Eastern time. We're talking with Astro Taylor about democracy and Alex Brunzini vendor about the air. of Hamilton, both have articles in the new issue of Jacobin on America's great 250th birthday celebration, and so we're talking about that sort of stuff. So check that out right after the show today.

Follow me on Instagram at Matt Matlock. Well, okay. Get your own plug for the Instagram. Matt's heavily invested in this. Folks, how far are you from 10,000? Let's just do this. 435, I think. Damn.

Come on. You know what? your problem is you're not doing posts enough. That is unironically true. I'm not doing that many posts, but I did do a big too many stories? I did a big London post.

I'm doing too much scrolls on the 4-U page. What's that? Nothing. It's all right. What does that mean? It's just his algorithm is feeding him hot girls. That's what he's saying. That's a vital man.

That's what he's saying. Because we sometimes use your TikTok, Matt, so we see. You can make sure I don't go over on that. You know what I would suggest to you? Unboxings. Think about it. Yeah.

Just spice it up. You're a couple unboxings away from 10,000 followers, buddy. Oh, me do the unboxing. Yeah, yeah. I need to buy some stuff. New lab bikes. Yep. You should do an unboxing with that battery backup so that people understand why, despite the fact that we're...

It's not really the type of crowd I'm trying to get out. That sounds as hot as Mad's For You, Paige. Sue yourself. Sue yourself, but you don't want to alienate the unboxing community in the way you just did. That's going to come back and bite you in the ass. Okay. Folks, we'll see you. One word, Unabomber. His last unboxing.

All right. Sorry. All right, we are. It might take off strength like a... We're back. I wanted to go home. I guess we're still doing another half from the show. Sorry.

Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look. look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts.

Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey, Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun. No, me, Keene. You did it. Fun pack.

Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys. today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.

Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, uh, you want to smoke this? Um, 7-8? Yes. It's on your mind. We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go to write. Libertarians.

They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e-gook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge men. I'm positive and quivery. I believe 96, I want to say. 57, 210, 301, 501, one half, three-eighth, nine-eleven for instance, $3,400, $1,900, $6,5,4, $3 trillion sold.

It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call it satire, Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you.

Folks. obviously yeah sun's out guns out they entertain ideas anyway I have a question who cares is enabled folks I love it I do love that

gotta jump gotta be quick I get a jump clock we're already late and the guy's being a dick so screw him sent to a gulaw outrageous

what is wrong with you love you love you love you