In This Episode
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TRANSCRIPT
Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, December 5th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show thrilled to see the U.S. Institute of Peace renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. I’m looking forward to the openings of the Karoline Leavitt School of Being Truthful and Not Condescending. And the J.D. Vance Academy of getting offline and touching grass like a normal person. [musical break] On today’s show, President Donald Trump holds a photo-op to tout peace in a region where there isn’t peace. And the Supreme Court rules on Texas’s maps, falling in lockstep with its guiding principle. The rule of law, according to Trump. But let’s start with the Republican Party. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the GOP has changed over the last decade. A lot. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, released a news survey on Monday. It’s attempt to figure out who exactly is a Republican these days. According to the data, the think tank separated the GOP, or as it refers to it, the current GOP, into two groups. Core Republicans, which it identifies as people who have voted for GOP candidates since before 2016, and new entrant Republicans, who are recent first-time GOP presidential voters, as in people who may have voted for former President Barack Obama, but then voted for President Trump. The takeaways? New entrant Republicans are more conspiratorial, more likely to be racist and anti-Semitic, and more likely to support the use of political violence. And they are pulling the GOP in their direction. Which worries me. And it worries South Carolina Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn. He’s written a new book, The First Eight, about the eight Black South Carolina congressmen who preceded him in office. All of them were Republicans at a very different time for the party. Representative Clyburn became the ninth Black congressman from the state when he was elected in 1992, nearly a century after the last of the first eight served in office. When I spoke to the representative, he told me that it felt urgent to write the book now because the forces that caused that rupture are still visible and growing today.
[clip of Jim Clyburn] It’s about those eight African Americans from South Carolina that served before me, but it’s also about the nine to five year period between number eight and yours truly number nine. And what brought that about and how what is happening today is reminiscent of those events and what we ought to be doing to prevent it from happening again.
Jane Coaston: Here’s Representative Clyburn on his new book The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation. Congressman Clyburn, welcome to What a Day.
Jim Clyburn: Thank you very much for having me.
Jane Coaston: The history you cover in the first eight is one that I think a lot of Americans don’t know nearly enough about. So let’s start with some background. All of the first eight, which unsurprisingly to people who know history, were members of the Republican Party.
Jim Clyburn: Yeah.
Jane Coaston: What did the party represent at the time and how did that compare to the platform of Democrats, particularly redeemer Democrats?
Jim Clyburn: Well, as you know, all African Americans were members of the Party of Lincoln. It’s just that simple. My mother and father were both Republicans. I grew up considering myself a Republican, went off to college, and all the way up to around 1960. That’s what most of us thought that we were. Now, this book explains some things that people tend not to focus on. It was Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, who African Americans had voted for, who made the deal with the Redeemers to bring an end to Reconstruction. Lincoln was a great Republican president, but he got assassinated. And the Republicans that came after him did not follow what he had started.
Jane Coaston: In 1870, you discussed Joseph Rainey, who became the first black person to ever serve in Congress from any state. What should people know about his backstory?
Jim Clyburn: Well, he’s the first elected, not the first to serve. The first to serve were two senators from Mississippi. But back then, senators were not elected. They were appointed by their legislatures. But the first to ever be elected was Joseph Rainey. He was from Georgetown, South Carolina, was born enslaved, but his father was a barber who earned enough money to purchase his family’s freedom. And so Joseph Rainey became free by purchase. In the first eight, I talk about how all eight of these people related to uh to the institution of slavery. And only three of them had been enslaved. One, Rainey, uh got his freedom purchased. Of course um, Robert Smalls, the star of the book, so to speak, escaped from slavery in a very dramatic way.
Jane Coaston: I I love how you write about Robert Smalls escaping from slavery, stealing a Confederate boat, pretending to be a Confederate captain, managing to properly imitate the Confederate horn call in order to deliver the boat to the Union with a white flag.
Jim Clyburn: Right.
Jane Coaston: And I love how you have that image from Harper’s Weekly describing it as like one of the most daring moments in history. And you you talk about how he lived the most consequential life, not just of the first eight, but of quote, “any South Carolinian in memory.” Can you explain how instrumental Smalls was in shifting the course of the Civil War, especially the role that African American soldiers played in the war?
Jim Clyburn: Well, to begin with, that ship, the Planter, was a prize ship in the Confederate uh cause. When he took that ship, he took their biggest prize from them. And then he became the navigator for that ship once it was turned over to the Union soldiers. And of course, um he won battles. He participated in 17 battles with that ship, and he won all of those battles as far as we could tell. But the most consequential thing, I think, was six months after he escaped from slavery, General Saxton sent him to appear to Washington to try to convince Abraham Lincoln to let African Americans fight in that war because the Union was losing. They didn’t have enough manpower. They needed the manpower that was them. At the time, Lincoln’s good friend was trying to get him to allow Blacks to fight, but it didn’t happen. Not until Smalls sat down with Lincoln in August of 1862. Convinced Abraham Lincoln to allow him to recruit 5,000 formerly enslaved in that war. The number grew to many, many more after that initial induction and after the war, Lincoln said that but for the freedmen, the Union would have lost that war. And the freedmen were came into service because Robert Smalls convinced Abraham Lincoln to let it happen. And so you can go through the history of every South Carolinian and look at the consequences that may have floored uh flowed from their lives. You will not find any that’s more consequential than Robert Smalls’.
Jane Coaston: At the same time that Black people were making advances in politics, there was an intense violent backlash among many white southerners, which included the resurgence of the Klan, less well known is a section of Democrats known as red shirts, and you write about this. What echoes of the red shirts do you see in today’s MAGA movement?
Jim Clyburn: Oh, I just saw something on TV this morning that reminded me of it. And so I’m gonna march you through it. Back during the revolutionary war, there were red coats. During the Civil War, the aftermath to it, they wore red shirts. Today, the anti-progressives, the redeemers, I call them, people who would like to redeem the South to pre-Civil War days wore red shirts. Today, people who would like to redeem this country to what I call pre-1960 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, they are now wearing red caps. So if you look at how these movements took place, how they took on things like uniforms, things like nicknames, you go throughout this whole period, and you will see that one of the tools that was used back during the Jim Crow era was to hang nicknames on people. Um. George Washington Murray, uh who’s number eight on this list, was nicknamed the Black Crow. These nicknames that hung on people back during Jim Crow, all are being resurrected today. And that’s one reason I wrote the book the way I it’s written because I wanted people to see the similarities in what’s happening today and what happened back then.
Jane Coaston: I’m glad you mentioned the Voting Rights Act. You note in the book that an amendment to the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five led to the redistricting in South Carolina that made your 1992 election to the House possible. Many court watchers think that the Supreme Court could gut Section Two of the Voting Rights Act this term. What are your biggest concerns if that happens?
Jim Clyburn: Well, I expect for that to happen. Everything that’s going on today seemed to be tracking what came after the Civil Rights Act of 1866. These eight people, or at least those who were in office at the time, they are the ones who successfully fought and got the Civil Rights Act of 1866. And the Supreme Court started with the slaughterhouse cases and going all the way up to Pleasant versus Ferguson, continued to reinterpret, reinterpret what that Civil Rights Act really meant until they successfully neutered that act. The same thing is happening today. The Supreme Court is now addressing the vote rights act of 1965. After 11, 12 years ago, they made section four and five of that act ineffective. Now they’re aimed at section two, with the case that’s currently before them. And so I expect for them the Supreme Court to track as it did before. What we’ve got to do, hopefully, is respond, unlike the response was before, and I think it’s beginning to happen. I hope it holds. We saw it in New Jersey and Virginia, New York, Mississippi, Georgia, we’re on course not have the same result that came after the gutting of the 1866 Civil Rights Act.
Jane Coaston: What lessons do you want younger generations of activists and politicians to take from the stories of the first eight?
Jim Clyburn: I hope they will learn two important lessons. The first one is the power of one vote. I’ve heard too many people, young and not so young, lament about my one vote and whether or not it matters. Well, the reconstruction period that was brought on by the Emancipation Proclamation came to an end by a vote of eight to seven. One vote. Jim Crow became the law of the land by a vote in the Electoral College of 185 to 184. One vote. So I want everybody to recognize that those two, two of the most important events in the lives of African Americans. Those two things were decided by a single vote. And the second thing I would want young people to know is something I got from my dad, who said to me one day during the dark moments of the 1950s and ’60s. I can’t remember exactly what incident precipitated it, but my dad said to me, son, the darkest point of the night is that moment just before dawn. And that was his way of telling me that no matter how dark it may seem, you never give up the fight.
Jane Coaston: Congressman Clyburn, thank you so much for joining me.
Jim Clyburn: Thank you so much for having me.
Jane Coaston: That was my interview with South Carolina Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn. His new book is The First Eight, a personal history of the pioneering Black congressmen who shaped a nation. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today.
[sung] Headlines.
[clip of John Garamendi] Let’s understand this Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is marching side by side with Trump on most every issue. And here’s another example where the Supreme Court simply says, Okay, we’ll go with Trump on this one.
Jane Coaston: California Democratic Representative John Garamendi responded on CNN to news that the Supreme Court said it’s actually a okay for now for Texas to use a redrawn map that would favor Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections, which is a major bummer. Last month, a panel of federal judges in Texas struck down the now infamous map, claiming, quote, “substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.” But SCOTUS disagreed. In an unsigned order, the conservative justices wrote, quote, “the district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal state balance in elections.” The three liberal justices dissented. Basically, the wick on the nationwide gerrymandering stick burns ever closer to an explosion. Court battles are underway in states like Missouri and Florida, and others, including Indiana and Virginia, are weighing new maps heading into 2026. Whichever party wins the map wars could walk into the midterms with a major structural advantage. With Thursday’s order, the Supreme Court has put that on hold until it delivers a final judgment in the case. Let the cheating Olympics begin. President Trump hosted the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo at the recently and shamelessly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on Thursday. The leaders of the two African nations officially signed a peace agreement back in June, but they traveled to DC to sign it again, this time for the Trump photo opp. The deal was brokered by the US, the African Union, and Qatar. It aims to end the years long conflict between the Congo and over 100 armed groups, the most powerful of which has been backed by Rwanda. Here’s Trump speaking at the deal signing.
[clip of President Donald Trump] They’ve spent a lot of time killing each other and now they’re gonna spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States of America economically like every other country does.
Jane Coaston: Leaving aside the hugging and hand holding and vague sarcasm, I think he means that the US will now take advantage of Rwanda and the Congo economically. Because the Trump administration also signed a deal with the Congo in the hopes of gaining greater access to the country’s critical minerals. And while Trump insists that this peace deal has brought an end to the conflict in the region, that’s not really the case. The Associated Press reports that fighting between Congolese soldiers and Rwanda backed rebels is ongoing. The FBI arrested a man on Thursday accused of placing pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Parties in DC a day before the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. The bombs never detonated.
[clip of unnamed NBC news reporter] Some of the evidence here, Tom, was particularly unique, especially the Nike sneakers that they found that this individual was wearing.
Jane Coaston: NBC News is referring to Nike Air Max speed turf sneakers that may have helped lead to a breakthrough in the case. For years, the investigation confused law enforcement and spawned conspiracy theories about January 6th. Apparently, agents filed subpoenas for credit card records from retailers that sold the shoes the suspect was believed to be wearing in an effort to narrow down potential buyers. The suspect was charged in connection with planting the bombs and is expected to appear in court today. Attorney General and contender for Worst blonde ever, Pam Bondi held a press conference Thursday alongside a slew of other self important DOJ officials like FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino. They applauded one another for their hard detective work. Bondi said they cracked the case all on their own.
[clip of Pam Bondi] Let me be clear, there was no new tip, there was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work, working as a team, along with ATF, Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department, and of course the FBI. We are working every day to restore the public’s trust.
Jane Coaston: Good luck with that.
[clip of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers the movie] Here’s the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for one million dollars.
Jane Coaston: In Austin Powers International Man of Mystery, Dr. Evil wants to hold the world ransom for $1 million. But its henchman, number two, points out to Dr. Evil back in 1997, a million bucks ain’t what it used to be. And here in 2025, things are so upside down that even people making six figures are struggling to keep up. Dollar Tree underscored that crisis in an announcement this week. Of the three million new households who visited its stores last quarter, more than half earned more than $100,000. Later in Austin Powers, Dr. Evil ups the ransom to $100 billion, which used to signal mega villain wealth. But I’ve got bad news for him and for us. Money doesn’t mean what it used to, except for the ultra-rich. Until recently, a $100 billion net worth put you among the world’s wealthiest. Now, thanks to exploding AI and tech valuations, the bar has doubled to $200 billion. It’s a textbook, K-shaped economy. The affluent are buoyed by rising markets while everyone else tightens their belts. The Swiss Bank UBS reports billionaire wealth hit record highs this year. There are more billionaires than ever, and their fortunes have never been larger. So much for the rest of us. And in today’s economy, Dr. Evil’s $100 billion plan wouldn’t even get him into supervillain territory. At $342 billion, that mantle belongs to Elon Musk. And that’s the news. [music break].
[AD BREAK]
Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate how the Pantone color of 2026 is white, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how okay according to Pantone, the color is Cloud Dancer. Which the company says represents, quote, “opening up new avenues and ways of thinking,” like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and it’s white. It’s like really white. It’s egg salad white. It’s wagon wheel white. It’s white. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Caitlin Plummer, Tyler Hill, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of News and Politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break][AD BREAK]
