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DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. On this episode, it’s me, Myles and Sharhonda, and Don. Back to talk about all the news with regard to race, justice, and equity from the past week. And don’t forget to follow the show on Instagram at Pod Save The People. Here we go.

[AD BREAK]

DeRay Mckesson: We are back with another episode of Pod Save the People, closing out Black History Month. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

Myles E. Johnson: Damn, that was quick. I did not think that Black History Month would go that quickly, but luckily to DeRay, I know that it wasn’t orchestrated against us. Thanks for Campaign Zero. I am Myles E. Johnson at @sunpulpit on Instagram. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I’m going to steal the McDonald’s slogan, 365 Black. This is Sharhonda Bossier at @BossierSha on–

DeRay Mckesson: Not McDonald’s. 

Sharhonda Bossier: –Instagram. That’s where it came from. 

Myles E. Johnson: Steal that. 

Sharhonda Bossier: They they steal basically exactly. And at @BossierS on Spill. 

Don Calloway: TLDR for this week. You better remember, don’t never let nobody talk crazy about the honorable Reverend Jesse Jackson. This is Don Calloway at @DCalloway on Instagram and Threads. 

DeRay Mckesson: Woop woop. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, it’s been an interesting week to close out Black History Month, particularly as it comes to two Black women who are slowly becoming the face of this current generation of leadership for the party, namely Kamala Harris and Jasmine Crockett. We’ve talked a lot about both of them, the speculation that Kamala plans to re-enter the presidential race, people’s reactions to Crockett’s senate campaign and her platform or the perception that there is a lack of a platform. And some of the conversation over the last week about the Colbert appearance of Talarico who is also running for the same seat. I feel like my timeline has been full of like both pundits and my friends chiming in in a way that hasn’t been true for a little while. And in fact, I had talked, I think the last time we were together, about feeling like Crockett wasn’t really on most people’s radar. I’m wondering what y’all are seeing, what y’all are hearing and how this builds on some of the conversations we’ve had about how the party thinks about its future, the future of the leadership of the party and particularly the role of Black women who are vying for party leadership roles. 

Myles E. Johnson: So I still think that Jasmine, and I’ve said this before, I still think that Jasmine is doing a good campaign for her constituency. I think a lot of people commenting don’t actually understand who she’s campaigning for. So when I see, last time I saw her she was like leading in the polls and she was like doing well and I kind of felt that way. I think larger, specifically when I think about Vice President Harris, it is so depressing that we’re still talking about Vice President Harris. It seems like the Newsom and the Harris of it all is the only conversation that we’re you know engaging with and that there’s not a fresh leadership that doesn’t have that kind of you know genocidal stink on it. That, to me, just feels deeply depressing. 

Don Calloway: While that is depressing in many respects, and I understand why you take such a feeling about it, the reality is that anyone who would be remotely prepared to legitimately participate in the Democratic presidential context in 2028 is probably gonna have to be somebody who’s been out there on the national affairs scene for a long time. And if you’ve been out there a long time, you probably got a whole lot that a whole lotta folks ain’t too happy with, particularly around some of the causes in which are just becoming acceptable, right? The genocide in Palestine, criminal justice issues, right, LGBTQIA2S plus issues, right? It has become in vogue in the last 10 years for people to get to the right side of the Lord on those issues. And therefore anybody, I would say even up through 2028, including AOC, anybody who’s on that stage, there’s gonna be a lot for the left to pick apart. And given how much it costs these days, given how much name recognition actually costs in real dollars to produce, it’s gonna a long time before you’ll see some legitimately fresh leadership emerge on the Democratic Party. That’s why it’s time to start looking at folks like the Working Families Party or other alternatives. But we still live in a two-party system. And that was a long, unplanned rant. 

DeRay Mckesson: I kind of like that Kamala hasn’t given up. You know, people, like, sort of just beat her up so wildly after she lost. And, you know, when she ran for president the first time, that didn’t go well. And the campaign didn’t have a lot of answers for things and da da da. And it would have been easy for Kamala to just go in the shadows of politics. And she just didn’t do it. So whether you like the book tour or not, by the time the next election comes, I think people won’t remember the book tour that much. I also think that it’s hard to, like Don said it’s hard to be a national figure, like it’s just hard to sort of become one of the names that everybody talks about. And I think that we, my hope is that we will actually see Kamala grow on a set of issues and that people will sort of come to appreciate that about her. I do think that AOC is going to be a formidable something by the time the next election happens. And I’m interested to see where her national or sort of global resonance is, and I think that that would be a real thing. I don’t know what happened with Jasmine Crockett. I don’t know, it just like, the whole election feels weird to me now. Like, I like don’t, no, it’s just all feels weird. So I, Talarico, Crockett just feels like a weird thing that happened that got really intense really quickly in a way that I can’t, I don’t quite understand. So I don’t know, it’s like the, you know, people are complaining about her website and then people are complaining about his ads. And just like, I don’t know, I feel like a lot. So I’m excited for people to vote and us, we can just figure out who the nominee is and then we sort of fight from there. But that got really weird really quick to me. I don’t know if it’s same to y’all, but it just got weird to me. 

Sharhonda Bossier: But isn’t this where it’s supposed to get weird and intense, right? So that we feel great about the person we are putting up, right, to be at the top of the ticket. Isn’t this the place, the moment in time when we’re supposed to you know push people that we have influence with on issues that matter to us, right? You know, Don, you started in your opening by saying like, don’t let anybody play in the Reverend Dr. Jesse Jackson’s face this week, right? And like he’s actually been on the right side of issues related to Palestine and queer rights longer than a lot of people who have held elected office, right? And he is often a generation or two older than them, right. So he hasn’t had a lot of the experiences and a lot of the external pressure to get there. He got there sort of on his own. And I’m not saying that he’s perfect, right, but I am saying if we can expect someone who we all think of as an elder to be left of the people who are holding elected office in the party, what does that mean for where the party stands on those things that you have termed causes and where is there room in the primary process for us to fight that out? Because we all know come the general, everybody’s gonna tell us vote blue no matter who. 

Don Calloway: So very specifically, and I will keep this brief, Jesse Jackson was among the last, if only the first, and probably the last generation of actually free Black politicians. He had the right to stake stances that we now deem progressive because he came of age before Black people in the Democratic Party effectively became a accommodationist Black appendage to the Clinton regime. Which was effectively accommodationist republicanism, right? And so in order to be a member of the Congressional Black Caucus or in Black leadership that emerges from 1986 through about 1995 to 2000, that is an extraordinarily centrist group of African-Americans who took leadership. This is not Huey Newton and them, and Jesse is from a world of Huey Newtons and them, right, and he had the ability to come of age and blossom as a politician before the Gordon Gekko Negro of the CBC kind of took over, right, where we were effectively just a commercialist accommodationist segment of the Clinton Democratic Party. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Myles, I see your hand burning. 

Don Calloway: I might get canceled. Sorry.

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah uh no yeah. [laughter] 

Myles E. Johnson: I think that like a lot of the things that you’re saying, it’s funny. I find everything you say really, really cynical and really depressing. So the idea. But I like that you painted it out in like in your own way because I agree with you. I think that part of the reason why we’re in this kind of like neoliberal mess that we’re in specifically as a Black community is because of our abandonment of the Black power movement and because of our abandonment, of these kind of policies and these ideas and these goals that are independent from uh like the kind of like white establishment. But because there were so many uh negroes who wanted to uh kind of assimilate into that system were kind of stuck there now and now even when we’re talking about who’s going to be president for 2028 we don’t even dare them say anything about Black people. Like–

Don Calloway: Yes. That’s right.

Myles E. Johnson: Like like that’s not even a conversation that we’re already going to have. 

Don Calloway: That’s right. 

Myles E. Johnson: Which means we’re already kind of living in the aftermath of a failure of Black people integrating into American government and not having independent Black power movement. So that to me feels like a little bit more like more cynical, but I do want to say, because you said a lot there, Don, too. I also want to say that I think Zohran and him being nobody recognizing his name, and now people do recognize their name, I think you could do the same thing on the um on the national scale. I would offer that it’s probably even a necessity to do. I think that if you are running these candidates, that feels like such a risk, and it feels like maybe Democrats aren’t as scared as like eight years or four years of neo-fascism if they don’t try to do something riskier than what they’ve done before. So I hope the Democrats get less nihilistic and cynical and and start taking some risk.

Sharhonda Bossier: Whew. Speaking of things that are depressing, and at least pulling me closer and closer into nihilism and cynicism, we had a teacher, Linda Davis, die in a hit and run. Someone was fleeing ICE, and ICE was in hot pursuit of them, and hit and killed her on her way to work. And so, wanted to bring that here, one, just to like lift up the ways in which this kind of enforcement and presence in our communities endangers us all. But also curious to see if you all have, because I haven’t seen many high profile people talk about this as an example of the abuses of ICE. 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s so interesting the way that the killing of Renee and Alex got so much press and then this, her death just didn’t. So I think it’s right to point that out. Also, we just, you know, we launched Intent to End ICE campaign and we just polled it the other day and and I’ll tell you the, I think the results come out this week, but the Dems are all about every single version of getting rid of ICE. Like there’s not one proposal that the Dems are like flaky on. Like the party is to the right of the base on this. That like the base is far like we don’t need ICE, anything to undo it, we’re cool with, like everybody deserves due process, you should be able to sue police, like very progressive. And it’s interesting because I’m reminded often that the like leaders of the party and da da da, like I look at these poll results and I look at them and the disconnect between like the people in power and the base on a lot of things is just so far and ICE is one of them. Where like, you know, they’re timid about, you know, abolish ICE and all this other stuff. And you’re like the base is far on. I mean, we’re like in 60%, 70% support. This is not like a weird 40%, 30%. We got to fudge the numbers. So I think I’m I’m surprised by that in this moment, just because the base is really far and you know, Myles, you’ve talked about it, people have talked about this for a long time, is that there is this weird thing with the left where like the leaders fight the activists. They like just, they’re at war with the Left’s activists instead of embracing that energy to mobilize people. But again, when I look at the data with ICE, it’s like, and white people are to the left, like people are pretty progressive on this issue in a way that I haven’t seen recently. 

Don Calloway: Yo, this sister’s name should absolutely go down right next to Renee Good and Alex Pretti because each of them were killed by ICE. That is the fact of the matter, even though you could argue, well, we didn’t have her on video and, well, we didn’t see that or she wasn’t shot. No, she is a victim of a war that this administration has declared against the citizens of an American city. And when you invite a war upon a city, a town, These are the things that happen. People flee from soldiers. People run from being captured and having their lives changed. And people are standing in streets, or other cars are on those streets, in which acts of aggression that are acts of war take place. And I’m sorry for being kind of you know didactic here, but I think it’s important to state the obvious. She is a casualty of the civil war that President Trump incited everywhere that is primarily theatered this week in Minnesota. I spent some time this week in California with the Democratic Attorneys General for their policy conference. And a lot of the discussion is around, okay, these are individual state-based departments of justice, 23 of which are run by Democratic chief legal officers, the attorneys general. What can they do collectively to fight back against a department of justice run absolutely amok? And so, but obviously at the center of those discussions is attorney general Keith Ellison, who is an extraordinarily talented public servant. But I think one of the things that he and some of his colleagues from his office said is, the president sent Holman up to make this big announcement about a drawdown. There has been no drawdown, the people of Minnesota remain under siege, the town remains the locus of this unfortunate municipal civil war that the president has claimed. And a part of his manipulation of the media is to get the announcement out that it’s over. So the media and everybody will take their eyes and attention away. But the attack of ICE upon the citizens of Minneapolis is still very much in play. So we should keep our hearts and minds focused and trained on that. And this sister’s passing is indicative of the idea that it is. So we can say, and I know I wind down here, but we can say yes, she wasn’t on video. Yes, she was a Black woman. Yes, wasn’t shot. But also part of the non-media is a function of this happening after the president made the media play of telling the world he had drawn down when in fact he has not. 

Myles E. Johnson: I think specifically now, because Trump is in office, a lot of people are running on their kind of impulses. So a lot people are doing things, reacting to things, talking about things, just based off of like their reactionary impulses, and I think the reactionary impulse is that Black women dying is normal. And I think the other impulse is that white people dying is odd, and I think that we can try to fix it. It’s kind of the same thing I talk about when it comes to the algorithm and how when everybody kind of became a micro influencer, everybody creates gym content, and everybody talks about diet culture and everybody posts light skin people. So you would think that with it in your own hands, you would disrupt those kind of white supremacist capitalist patriarchal image makings, but we don’t. We recreate them because it really kind of starts in your mind. And to me, that’s what we’re seeing right here. And honestly, too. Listen, I’ve been saying this for a minute now, but I think Black people, specifically Black people who are interested in maintaining or increasing Black folks’ interest in electoral politics because that interest is bleeding through. I think this whole Black women staying home. This whole Black people not doing anything and interacting with anything that’s going on politically, that being married with this [bleep], I think that kind of like put a certain type of nail in the coffin. Because not only do we know that you might get shot and you might die, you know, and then the ICE officers who are reported to have let her bleed out and actually celebrate and give each other high fives after that happened. Allegedly, that’s what I heard. Don’t sue me. This is a fake fireplace. So that also happening. But then also, the fact that once you are gone, there’s not going to be any respect for it unless you have a group of activated Black people who want to annoy essentially the media so much until they cover it, you will also just be disappeared. So it’s not even like your martyrdom is even going to matter. And I think that that type of nihilism, that kind of like Afro pessimistic like consciousness that I think a lot of regular Black people are coming towards, even if they don’t have the language towards it, is going to be diabolical for Black people who want Black people to kind of be interested in their Black electoral power. Before I give this off, of course, I think Negroes who go to college, Negroes who assimilated into whatever business or industries that call for it will always vote. But that is a shrinking people. Like still, most Black people do not have a degree. Most people are not engaged with those different things and these moments only kind of reaffirm their stance on staying outside of political movements. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think we’ve talked a lot about the tension, but also the need for inside the system and outside the system activists and players, right? And Don, I’m going to pass this over to you because I think someone who lived his life in a way that was about building outside power to force a system to be responsive to that outside power, but also, right, who, when the opportunities presented themselves, wanted to very much be an inside the-system player, passed this week. So I’m gonna. 

Kick it over to you to kick us off on a conversation about the life and legacy of Jesse Jackson. 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

[AD BREAK]

Don Calloway: So partially I volunteered for this, but partially it feels like this is the dude with the gray beard in the room. So, all right, let’s get into it. Reverend Jesse. I remember 1987, my mom taking my brother and I to Kansas City to hear Reverend Jesse address the Progressive Baptist National Convention. And it felt like what it felt to hear Dr. King. I have to imagine it felt like what it felt for some kid to hear and just be enraptured by Barack Obama at certain times in the ’08 campaign. But I’d never seen a man control a room. I’d ever seen so many Black people or people in general have so much faith and belief and trust in one man. And it felt intimate. It felt like the most powerful sermon that was as intimate as possible, yet it was being held in a basketball arena in a city at the time. And I could tell more so than anything, not that he was charismatic or he was handsome or he was smart, he was all of those things. I could tell that he had lived a life in which he had worked to earn the trust of Black people. And I always thought that that was the highest compliment that I could place on anybody’s life is that all these people are not fooled. You are not tricking these people. They have seen, since you were 17 years old at North Carolina A&T, volunteering for student leadership and participating in organizing the energy in the immediate post-Citian era, right? Like, this is a man who, you know, I’ve been on the battlefield for Black people for a long time. And to pass away at 84, after that having been your life for at least 60 years, I think it leads to the inevitable conclusion that Jesse Jackson has forgotten more that he’s actually done for Black people than most of us will ever actually do in a lifetime. This is a man who, his actions were singularly accretive to the lives of Black people, if only by reason of longevity. This is a man who has 65 years in the public eye, right? Devoted to one thing. And so he has been so fundamentally accretive at value adding to the lives of Black America that much in the way that Edward Kennedy is far more a consequential figure than his brothers, both of whom ran for president, one who was president, Jesse Jackson is the lion of the civil rights movement because of the longevity. Because of the areas he was able to touch from the Wall Street movement to international diplomacy to breaking into corporate America to doing business as vendors with corporate. I mean, these are all things that he put real programmatic systems into place to create lanes and opportunity for Black people. And I can testify to the nuances and details of so many of those. But Jesse Jackson is a singular and towering figure in the history of Black people in this country. And I’m thankful that that I was in the same room as him many, many times, and to be able to benefit from his example. 

DeRay Mckesson: One of the things that I appreciate about Jesse, not only, you know, obviously I was a baby when he ran for president, but I understand what that did for the landscape and I’ve studied the history. But Jesse showed up in Ferguson. He was there in the early days and it mattered. I remember seeing Jesse, like, cause like obviously we knew who Jesse Jackson was. You see him on the street, you’re like, is that Jesse Jackson down here on Canfield? And I appreciate that he, he understood the fight for a lifetime, that it wasn’t just a thing when he was a student. it wasn’t just a thing when King was alive. It wasn’t just a thing just when he ran for president. It mattered, especially in those early days, because people said we were crazy. They were like, the protesters are wrong, and all these kids need to go in the house, and da, da, da and it mattered that he showed up. And it mattered that Sharpton showed up, it mattered they came in those early days when people were discrediting the protesters so dramatically. And you know, none of we were so young. That we didn’t have sort of a long-term perspective on the police. We sort of knew the police were, but they had been fighting fights like this for a much longer time, and they were able to provide a context around it. But just them showing up signaled something to people that was actually really powerful. And I think about, you know, I had the privilege of, and have the privilege of being a national civil rights leader now, but I think about how many people didn’t show up in those early days. How many people thought we were silly and we were the kids and that’s not the way to do it and y’all are being rude and da-da-da. Like we heard all of those things from a lot of leaders who today wanna, you know, they want us to give speeches at their things and they want us to, but in the earliest days they were not kind to us uh but Jesse was.

Myles E. Johnson: So I have like complicated like feelings about Jesse Jackson. A, I think because I’m a spooky astrology numerology girl. Right? And I think Jesse dying on Huey P. Newton’s birthday, if I was writing a book and I had that death happen, I think that is just imbued with so much symbolism, no matter if you think it’s on purpose or not. It’s just so rich. And off the back of what Don was just saying, how Jesse kind of leaded a lot of Black people into this kind of neoliberal, milk toast, corporatist, democratic place. And he dies on Huey P. Newton, who could be seen as like the yin to that yang. And I don’t know that the poetry there is really big. And um I think one of my first memories of Jesse Jackson was when he said he was going to cut Obama’s nuts off, and I was upset. I was like, why would he say that about Obama? Because I was totally Obama and Hope-pilled. And then, you know, live long enough. I’m 35 now. Live long enough, and you go from rooting for Obama to agreeing with Jesse Jackson. I was, like, why was he talking to them men like that? And then even when I think about um some of like President Barack Obama’s blubs during Vice President Harris’ run, and him kind of getting the same critique of talking down to Black men. So this is like kind of a constant error that Obama seems to be running into that Jesse Jackson had talked about before. And if I remember correctly, his bigger critique was Obama does not address the systemic problems that are harming Black people. He makes it all about self-responsibility and he talks down to Black people. And I think that now we have a whole crop of politicians who do that, be Black or white, who do that to Black people instead of giving us the policies that we need in order to rectify what has been happening to us. And the last thing that I’ll say, too, because I’m in the dirty natty, I’m very close to Avondale and, you know, the videos and the arguments that I get into now are entertaining, but not necessarily for the podcast. And I had no idea about this Hosea Williams clip that was going viral. And I’m from Atlanta, so Hosea Williams is an important figure to me or a figure that I’ve always heard about. And always kind of like respected, by Hosea Williams’ details of this story about Jesse Jackson that to me is a little disturbing. The idea that Jesse Jackson saw Martin Luther King get shot and then doused himself in Martin Luther Kings blood in order to do press for a couple of days around Martin Luther King because he knew that that would help him get more attention and it kind of helped recreate his stardom off the back of now, you know, Martin Luther Kings demise and [sigh] without giving too much critique over what Hosea Williams said, I think that I find it useful to think, what does that mean that we are on the shoulders or we are picturing ourselves on the shoulders of leadership that is willing to do that and kind of be so white about fame, white about rich, like just thinking about like this tragic thing happened. The Kris Jenner in my head is going to figure out how to make sure my stardom persists. And then it makes me wonder, then who does that kind of leadership birth? And I think sometimes when I look at just the disappointing ways that I see a lot of Black political leadership right now, it’s like, oh, it makes sense that somebody who does that birthed leaders who do this and say okay to genocides and talk about people who are in Epstein and say that those are my friends and don’t talk about my colleagues like that. It clicks for me. It connects. 

Don Calloway: So I wanna be clear that I hear and respect everything you’re saying and I agree with much of it. I just wanna be clearer that I’m saying that Jesse was the last politician who existed outside of, so I don’t wanna suggest that he birthed the generation that was the Reagan accommodationist, you know, pro-AIPAC, all of that. No, Jesse was the last one to exist outside of that and that’s because he grew from Black power spaces. He was their forefather perhaps generationally, but he did not his ideology did not create them. There’s a whole bunch of other reasons why they came about, but listen, Jesse was not without criticism. 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s what I’m saying. So I just want to make sure that that–

Don Calloway: Okay okay. 

Myles E. Johnson: –that’s not what you’re saying. That’s that’s what I’m saying, I’m saying that Jesse Jackson–

Don Calloway: Okay gotcha. 

Myles E. Johnson: –is a part of a generation and a leader who integrated us into this neoliberal hellscape we’re in now. 

Don Calloway: Mmm. Fair enough. Jesse Jackson is not without criticism, uh by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. He was inherently a showman. It’s interesting how we’ve heard these stories evolve over the years. There is no dispute that Jesse Jackson did a round of press on April 5th, 1968 and beyond, wearing the blood splattered shirt of Dr. King. There’s no dispute about that. That was an intentional decision that he made and what he wanted to show the world. I have always heard that story told in a way to besmirch Jesse’s character. But it is no different an act of promotion than was Mamie Till’s decision to leave the casket open to show the world the brutality of the moment that had just taken place. I’ve always heard that story told in a way like, oh, he wiped the blood all over or doused, I think, is the word you used. I don’t think it happened like that, but I certainly do think his behavior was not detached from his personal instinct for self-promotion. But I will say, and I do think, that Jesse always acted with integrity. And such that his self-promotion was connected to movement promotion or an important aspect of the movement that he felt could grab some universe of advantage for Black folks. And again, Jesse’s not without criticism by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, right? But I think that this is a man whose contributions to society kind of far exceeded. He’s a net positive, and I think he gave a lot more than he took. 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. 

[AD BREAK]

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I just wanted to flag this. It’s on the New Republic and the headline reads, turns out there was voter fraud in Georgia by Elon Musk. I found this article really, really interesting. Let me um read a little portion from you. In October 2024, the Georgia Secretary of State Offices launched an investigation after receiving numerous reports from residents across several counties saying they received partially pre-filled absentee ballots, applications from Musk’s America PAC, according to John Fervier, the state election board’s chairman. There was evidence to suggest America PAC had violated a state law that prohibits any person or entity other than an authorized relative to send an absentee ballot application pre-filled with electors required information according to Janice Johnston, SCB’s vice chairman. So, like I think a lot of people were saying it, but I think that depending on where you were or how you were saying it kind of depended on if you said it, if that makes sense, meaning you didn’t want to seem conspiratorial. If you’re saying like something feels weird about this election, something feels weird about this clean sweep that things don’t quite feel right, and this is kind of hinting that maybe there was some voter fraud. Maybe it is happening in Georgia, but if it was happening in George, maybe there’s some other place it was happening too. And I have my own ideas. How come the Democrats don’t chase this, but again, I think about the depression of people’s interest in politics and interest in voting, because it feels like, oh, so this person did everything right, maybe even won, and there’s still no fight. You know we’re not going to storm the Capitol, so we kind of rely on the people inside of the institutional power structure to symbolically storm the capital, really run amok. To make sure that this is a legitimate election. And it just it just kind of depresses me yet again. To me, it felt so obvious. There were so many people who were Democrats, wine mums, normies, who wanted there to be a recount, wanted there be a bigger investigation, wanted to feel like somebody was fighting for them. You know, that disappointment that happens to a lot of people when the person who they thought was gonna win doesn’t win. And sometimes even the even if it’s just for vanity, the look at the, the recounts or the investigations just help that kind of morale and the fact that it wasn’t done. And you know, you can say it’s for money, but I remember two days after she lost or maybe a month after she loss, there was more people asking me for money. There were more text messages coming, so I know y’all ain’t scared to ask for a dollar. Like, ask me for five dollars so y’all can go investigate this. So I don’t know like where these discoveries are gonna go, but obviously I hope that they go to an impeachment. I hope it goes towards there being even stricter laws, if laws even matter anymore, but like even stricter laws around who gets to participate in what technologies, gets to participate in our voting system because I think that we found a crook. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, I’ll say that I had pretty quickly turned away from like the voter fraud and election rigging accusations. I think honestly, because even though this story is about Elon, who is very clearly squarely in Trump’s camp, it also feels like it’s a space that the Republicans own and are winning right now. So I think if you ask people to do almost like an immediate word association with voter fraud or election rigging. And who is like doing it, I think your average person is going to make an immediate association to Dems, right? Because I feel like the Republicans have really commandeered and and owned that narrative. And so you know I feel we see stories like this all the time, right, it’s somebody who’s a Trump ally who was registered to vote in New Jersey and in Florida or something like that. But they have really figured out how to make the Dems the face of election rigging and and undermining of our democratic processes, um which is just fascinating, um especially, I think, given this story and given that people were vocal about it in real time. 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m sort of interested in this question of like, how do you hold the richest man to ever exist accountable? So so many of these laws were put in place when you know a $2,000 fine was a big deal to campaign or you like the so he gets a letter of reprimand from the board, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about a letter of reprimand. He also doesn’t get about a $2000 fine, right? So if that’s the scope of your authority to hold somebody accountable, how do you hold the most wealthy man to ever exist? How do you hold him accountable? And I don’t know if our structure is set up for that outside of the criminal, like locking him up. Like that seems to be the only round of options and election crimes aren’t, I think, you know they don’t give you prison sentences in the state of Georgia or probably anywhere else, frankly. Maybe a couple of days in jail, but you know, what if the sanctions like precluded him from ever opening a PAC again, ever donating, you’re like how do you curtail the richest man in the world from infecting politics in this way? I don’t think that we have thought through that. And the systems certainly were designed way before wealth in this way was concentrated. 

Don Calloway: We’re all old enough to remember QAnon being birthed as a rage machine against this notion of pedophilia, organized pedophila at the highest spaces of the democratic party, including cannibalism of children and all of these horrific things. But the fundamental core of it all was pedophilia. We see that that is taking place, has taken place, consistently takes place via the Epstein files. And so the very thing that you know you’ve accused the left of is something that is consistently and persistently happening in these most, you know the evil rungs of the right wing, which–

Myles E. Johnson: The left are eating babies too though. 

Don Calloway: Oh, fair. Listen, yes. 

Myles E. Johnson: According to the files. 

Don Calloway: According to the files, right? The evil was apolitical in many instances, right. But these are in many respects the people who are driving the Trump administration, certainly the president was among them. I say this to say that no different is this universe of you all stole the election, you stole the election in 2016, because remember, he says that we cheated in the one that he actually won, right? And so you cheated in 2016. You cheated in ’24. We’ve located it to Georgia. Well every time they come up with like their most vile and heinous accusations is actually telling you the stuff they’ve actually done themselves, right? Or are doing or are actively engaged in. And look, we know that there is no widespread progressive side or democratic leaning fraud. We that’s just not a thing that is taking place, such that it need be named numerically. But the voter fraud in this country typically has to do with Republicans finding ways to determine that Black folks or Democratic leaning folks can’t vote. That is the cheating that’s happening in the voter and electoral game. And there’s no universe in which we have found that when they start making the accusations that we’re doing something, we’re about batting 1,000 that this is what they’re actually doing. So yes, all the actual fraud was found with your mans over at Tesla. 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. 

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Sharhonda Bossier: Fraud. I have been obsessed with the ways in which we are defrauding and extracting from poor people in this country and and working class people. My latest obsession has been prediction markets and what people are doing to try and you know strike it big and what they’re willing to bet on. Also a couple weeks ago my news was about a payday lender that was co-located with a prediction market betting. Anyway, just I’m constantly thinking about right now how those of us who think of ourselves as the middle class and I understand that as a political construct and like particularly an electoral strategy, right, for us to all think of ourselves as middle class because we want to feel like when candidates are on stage and they’re on TV, they’re talking to us and about us. But my news this week is about a new, let’s call it, tactic that members of the quote unquote “middle class” are employing so that they are able to make ends meet. My story is about the number of Americans who are selling their blood plasma in order to afford basic things like grocery and daycare for their kids. I’m gonna read a little bit from the article. So an estimated 200,000 people a day across the country as part of a multi-billion dollar business fueled by a growing number of Americans willing to trade their blood for money in an economy where many have seen job prospects weaken, costs rise and savings dwindle. The transactions occur in more than 1200 plasma centers. So there are now more places to sell plasma than there are Costco stores in the US. And researchers have found that when a new plasma center opens in a neighborhood, foot traffic at local grocery stores increases, interest in payday loans declines, and crime goes down, an indication of the way money from plasma props up households’ finances for necessities. This feels very dystopian, very dark, but it’s also a thing that I wanted to bring, uh because what does it mean when people are, when we’re literally having to sell parts of ourselves, right, to afford basic necessities. 

Myles E. Johnson: I want to say that we might have discussed this in some capacity on this podcast before because I remember talking about it. It’s funny reading the article because this is so common with people who are cross-class realities. My type before I got partnered was often um unemployable and artistic, which means you’re about to be selling some blood like in order to make rent. And even now, like even when I’m in the Midwest and stuff like that, it’s such a casual thing that people have to do. But also, everybody talks about the how humiliating it is. And I think that that feeling of humiliation, I guess I just kind of continue asking myself the same question, how long will a segment of the population put up with this kind of ritualized humiliation? How long will people say, oh, I live in the richest country in the world, but I’m selling my blood in order to make groceries until we get even more violent than we already are? Like, we already got the school shootings, we already have dangerous neighborhoods, but are we going to be able to humiliate people until that middle class becomes smaller and also becomes target? You know, and that’s kind of been like a little, not an anxiety, but a concern thing that I’ve been thinking about. The other thing I want to say is the only presidential candidate to mention that very thing during the last presidental election was Marianne Williamson. She was the only one to talk about that. They ain’t nobody else talk about that. Trump was stuttering, Biden was incoherent, and Kamala Harris was talking about Bitcoin and how she we gonna have the most lethal, whatever, army in the world. But Mary Williamson was right in the middle of that presidential pulpit, literally naming that very scenario that so many Americans are going through. And it’s kind of funny to me, because obviously I understand how come she’s dismissed as a presidential candidate, but it also feels wild to me that somebody who was so on the outside, who’s so unprepared, who should never be the president had more to say around most working people’s realities than the people who are supposed to be the most trusted people. 

Don Calloway: Man, you have to achieve so much presence and safety and position in society to get to a place where you are a recognized candidate for president. You’ve been safe for a long time. And that’s unfortunate, because to the point you’ve just made, it means you inherently no longer speak for people actually in the struggle. Again, shout out to Jesse Jackson, 84, because he’s the closest we’ve seen to somebody who was actually still in the trenches or had contact with people in the trenches in a way that clearly, as you just pointed out, nobody had that in 2024, and probably don’t have it in 2028 unless AOC runs. 

DeRay Mckesson: Because I grew up seeing these centers and I just saw one down the street not too long ago, I thought this was just a thing that was a thing in the way that everybody donates blood. Every country probably has some, you donate with the Red Cross or something like that. I didn’t realize that America supplies 70% of the plasma around the world. That this is a uniquely American phenomenon in that for one patient, you might need a hundred people’s plasma. Like I, you know, this makes me think of like, Henrietta Lacks, you know, an industry now on the heels of Henrietta Lacks. But I just didn’t know that. I’m like 70% is crazy. That is crazy. And they won’t make public how they price the plasma donation. You can only donate twice a week. And you know there’s there are no real studies on whether that’s healthy or not to donate that frequently. And yeah, I just was I was shocked about that. So shout out to bringing it. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

Myles E. Johnson: The most apocalyptic um thing though, because I think in New York, sometimes you just don’t notice certain things. Or that I’ll say that for me, I wouldn’t like notice certain things in New York there’s so many buildings everywhere. What’s wild is me being going to like certain places in Michigan, certain places in Ohio, and it just be, you know, these towns are just gutted, dilapidated buildings, they’re just gutted. And then there’s just a clean new new build of where you can donate plasma. That to me feels deeply apocalyptic almost like when you go somewhere you see like a hood and then there’s like a big Scientology building and you’re like hold on this don’t feel right. 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I wanted to bring this new article that cites a study around tourism numbers. So the United States was the only major destination to see a decline in foreign visitors last year, recording a 6% drop, an industry group noted it. And then January of 2026 continued to see a decline in inbound visitors down almost 5%. Visitors from Canada, usually the second largest source of US tourism after Mexico, which I didn’t know, that makes sense though, plunged by 28% in January compared to January 2024. And they note that like other markets like Germany and France, significant declines and then Britain, which was one of the major markets, did see a little bit of growth. And I bring it because I think about all the stuff with the visas and the, you know, how border control is being wild and the people, TSA, and they’re checking people’s phones and stuff. I would think that more of the industries impacted by tourism would push back on Trump, just because like these drops are economic problems for a whole host of companies and industries. And, you know, you think about the bed and breakfasts’ all these places that just assume people will come because they’ve always come. And then suddenly they don’t. And you are in like a tailspin. And there’s nothing you personally can do about it. So I want to bring it, A, because the numbers were interesting to me, but I think about like FIFA and all these other things that we’re planning to do. And you’re like, you know, it only works if people come. Like the whole the whole thing is predicated on the fact that there will be people. And what do you do when there the people just don’t come? And maybe the people are talking out somewhere, but I haven’t seen the tourism industry like push back really hard on this stuff. But you know for the people not motivated by race, but motivated by economics, I would think that this would be a thing and it doesn’t seem to be. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I was in Vegas until this morning for an athletic competition, and Vegas was a ghost town. And I was surprised by that. And I was just sort of asking, you know, locals, like, what’s going on? And in addition to it being just expensive, right, and Americans not having money. And when people travel, like you want to go to a place that’s poppin’, right? So if you’re going to Vegas right now, you’re not getting popping Vegas. They also were just like increasingly this is a place that caters to the rich. So the moneyed people are still making their money. They’re just serving fewer of us, right? So everyone wants curated this, a private that, you know, and upscale this. And so the wealthy are still driving spending and getting their experiences and their access. And those are the people who would be in Trump’s ear. It’s the rest of us who are not able to access those things, right. And that, at least you know from the folks that I talked to in Vegas seemed to be the prevailing and commonly hailed theme around what was happening in a tourist destination like that. 

Myles E. Johnson: Like, obviously, when I like read this article, I think like the Trump correlation is obvious to me. I think another thing, like another layer that I was looking at was I was watching this video about Japan and like the people’s fascination with going to Japan and somebody was like, have you noticed that all your friends are going to Japan? And then kind of talking about Japan’s popularity and even China’s popularity in recent months, really, on like TikTok and just like visitors and stuff like that. And I think that when we zoom out after like this Trump era, I wonder if these numbers will recover because I think there is a bigger cultural fall of Western culture. I think that more people are uninterested in the places that the West produces for us to go visit. And to your point, like luxury, vacation, it’s all privatized. Everybody’s trying to get like middle-class billionaire experiences right now. So to your point, not being seen as a part of that experience, you know, like if everybody can see you at Bali, not orchestrated on your Instagram, but if everybody can see it, then you’re kind of in a middle class, lower middle class Bali. Now like, you know, so I think that’s a part of it too. So yeah, just to like wrap that up, I think I’m very interested in these numbers, even after Trump, because I think culturally, everything that made the West enticing is slowly decaying. 

Don Calloway: That’s interesting, so I think a couple of things. Number one, macro global economics. When you concentrate wealth in the hands of 10 folks, that’s gonna be felt globally. So I imagine that the working class family who would take an annual vacation or the organization who would put it in their budget to take their kids to America on a tour, they ain’t got it just the same as Americans don’t have it. And I think that is a functional effect of wealth being concentrated in the hands of so few at this time. And that’s, that’s a global thing. But yes, I think you cannot diminish the Trump effect here. Each of us here have probably been blessed to have the privilege to travel overseas and the first thing that people, you know, of station ask, or people who are curious ask once they find out you’re American is, Oh, Barack Obama. And I remember how proud and excited people were and curious they were about that. I also remember being in Europe during the time of George Bush. When people who are a little less excited about the prospects of America. So I imagine that some of that is happening, but I also think just as a fundamental like cause and effect, if you are a Brown family in the Caribbean or somewhere in South America or Latin America, and you have the means to take trips. Hey, don’t go over there, they’re gonna grab your ass and when they get you, ain’t nothing we can do for you and we told you not to go. Why would we think that that is not a common narrative among households around the world? Because guess what? It’s an actual truth of what’s happening. Now will ICE probably come get your vacationing family? No, but you know, this is the way that horror stories are spread and in this instance, it’s not totally detached from the truth. So why would you add risk? Why would you increase a risk profile of your family, which is the only thing in the world that you’re here to protect by going to America? No, thank you. I’ll go to London, I’ll to Paris. I’ll go hike the Adirondacks, but I’m not going to Minneapolis to visit our cousins when they snatching our types of folks off the street up there. 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week, and don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save The People and Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrie and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]