In This Episode
A growing “pardon industry” helps wealthy offenders hire lobbyists to secure clemency from the White House, Chinese billionaires use surrogacy to produce dozens of U.S.-born heirs to inherit their empires, and Jill Scott tops the R&B charts with “Pressha,” a reminder that while the powerful build dynasties, the culture does too.
News
Pardon Industry Offers Rich Offenders a Path to Trump
Chinese billionaire who has fathered more than 100 children hopes to have dozens of U.S.-born boys to one day take over his business
Jill Scott’s ‘Pressha’ Hits No. 1 at R&B Radio
Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles, and Sharhonda talking 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. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to Women’s History Month. We are pumped to be back here. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @sunpulpit. And now at @sunpulpit.co, I just launched my sub stack this week.
DeRay Mckesson: Woop woop. Let’s go.
Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier at @BossierSha on Instagram and at BossierS on Spill. Speaking of Women’s History Month, your president has decided to mark the month by firing the woman who was head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, and replace her with Senator Marwayne Mullin. Lots of controversy surrounding Noem. She was the face of these really brutal, dehumanizing, ICE raids, tactics, deportations. She was face of PSAs that were being aired, particularly throughout Latin America, warning people, so to speak, not to come to the United States. There’s that infamous set of images of her in front of that prison in El Salvador. And Trump just decided she’s out. It seems some of that was a little bit of if we had been playing closer attention was starting to bubble up because some Republican lawmakers were also starting to question like if they were receiving too much blowback because of her tactics. There were some concerns around how much money ICE in particular was spending. And it seems like some commentators are like, maybe she did the thing that Trump hates the most, and became too much the face of the work. It’s like, step back, girl, chill, right? So I’m wondering what you all saw, what commentary you’ve seen and what strikes you about the either firing or reassigning, depending on who you’re listening to, of Kristi Noem.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay. [laughter] That husband of hers, ooh, he looked furious. You see how he was like sitting behind her.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: He just looked so angry. And oh, I knew, oh I would.
DeRay Mckesson: No, I didn’t see that.
Myles E. Johnson: Yes, I wish I was in that car. Oh, I know that that was better than anything HBO could have produced.
DeRay Mckesson: Oh I gotta look this up.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh, he looked furious when she was being asked those questions, I think, A, one thing that’s like kind of a pattern in Trump’s presidencies and Trump’s power and really conservative power is that it will always correct people who think that they are bigger than the program.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
Myles E. Johnson: Conservative pedophilia being the program. [laughter]
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: So like, I don’t care if you’re Omarosa, I don’t care like who do you think you are. If you are getting bigger brand recognition, then you’re gone. And then also, if you are stealing, if you are cheating, no, you need to stay clean so the people in the pedophilic conservative circle can get away with their dirt. We need you to be clean so they can be as dirty as possible. And it seems as though she didn’t get that. Last thing that I’ll say about it too is she’s also such a great example of how white womanhood does use their identity in order for imperial patriarchal things to exist. So when I think about her with these images with the guns and with the ICE officers and her kind of being called uh deportation Barbie and all these different things, here’s this white woman who’s really using all the trappings of white womanhood to further this kind of imperial patriarchal project, which is really disgusting. I hope that she is having a bad day.
DeRay Mckesson: Uh. [?] So remember that she is not unemployed. She will be moving to be the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, the new security initiative in the Western hemisphere that is gonna be announced on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I do love that Kristi Noem got fired while she was giving a speech. There is just nothing more Trump than that. To fire you and everybody in the room knows, but you, I mean, just chef’s kiss of chaos. The other thing, remember that one of the things that people were speculating brought her down was that she spent $200 million on some ICE ads and said that, and Trump said he had no clue about it and she testified that he did know about it. And it was that sort of like, you know, going back to what Myles said, like you can’t call me a liar. Like, you know like get like get with the program. The thing that I want to make sure that happens to the organizers is that we don’t let Kristi Noem’s firing be a fresh start or restart about how we think about ICE. Because there will be a period where ICE is probably less crazy because there just won’t be somebody running it. The other guy got moved, Bovino, and now she’s getting gone. So this new person, it’ll just take him time to continue the terror. And I don’t want people to be like, oh, well, there’s a new person there. It’s not going to be as bad. Don’t push for change. Don’t end ICE because a new person came and like this is where we sort of understand that we won with Trump. And it’s like, that’s not how this works. So like keep the pressure on. The other thing, I just wanted to read the qualifications of the new guy. Senator Mullin, the highest degree that he has is an associate degree in construction technology. He is the only US Senator without a bachelor’s degree. He has no law degree, no law enforcement background, no national security experience, and no security intelligence or emergency management skills. So when people talk about like the unqualified, he will be the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and is somebody’s cousin. You know, it’s like, and they run a host of agencies. I mean, people know ICE, but it’s like the Coast Guard, it’s FEMA. You know it’s like all things that we sort of need to work. And you know, just it highlights the scam of credentialing that happens for people of color that again, in this moment they have called DEI. But you’re like, this guy isn’t qualified to do, to run anything.
Sharhonda Bossier: At all.
DeRay Mckesson: And he is being made the secretary. I also love, this is random. You know how they called it the Department of War? And now that it is, now that we are at war, they’re calling it the department of defense again. They’re like, we’re not at war, it’s the Department of Defense. You’re like y’all are [?] to waste of everything.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, increasingly Americans have demonstrated that, to your point, DeRay, the desire for degrees and credentials really only applies to people of color, right? I also think that we have a growing segment of the population who have degrees, who are questioning their worth, right, and people starting to say, y’all jumped through a bunch of hoops, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smarter, better qualified, more learned than those of us who don’t have those degrees. So I think, overall, like people looking for people to have attained a certain level of like formal education has shifted in ways that I think opened opportunities for more people in some industries. This is a place where I’m like, you ain’t even got no on-the-job learning. You know what I’m saying? You ain’t have no apprenticeship. You ain’t have nothing, degrees aside. I think the other interesting thing for me about Mullin is, as you know, he is a member of the Cherokee Nation.
DeRay Mckesson: I didn’t know that.
Sharhonda Bossier: And I don’t know if you saw that the chief of the Cherokee Nation issued a statement, quote unquote, “congratulating him” on his, you know, selection and appointment.
DeRay Mckesson: Wow.
Sharhonda Bossier: And some people are like, dude, what are y’all doing over there? And then other people are, like, no, this is a calling in message if you read it, right? This is a, like hey, remember who you are, where you come from, and who your people are as you step into this role. I have seen interviews where Markwayne Mullin does talk about being Cherokee, does talk about having pride in his roots, in his heritage, and in his culture. It will be interesting to see how he does or does not leverage that as a shield for the wild stuff he’s about to green light in his new role.
DeRay Mckesson: That’s interesting, I didn’t know that.
Myles E. Johnson: I was going to say, I also think we need to stop like progressive washing, liberal washing, whatever these like different minority groups because maybe I had a friend who was going to Morehouse, my friend Ian, shout out to Ian, and he was going to Morehouse but like a big part of Ian’s work was he was a native Black person. He was a freedman. Like you look at him and he looks African and native. Like very beautiful man. And he was just not able to get any of the things that the Native communities get. And it wasn’t because he was–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, yeah, the Freedmen is a whole other thing. Yeah
Myles E. Johnson: And it wasn’t simply just because of white people or legalities, it was because the Cherokee people, all the native communities said, not yo Black ass. So when we look at immigration, when we look at people who appreciate their Cherokee heritage, who now go into like fascist politics, I think that we just have to mature. Like how we see people and what they’re willing to conspire with and why and this being a minority is not enough to not comply with fascism.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think that’s right. And I think things are not always as black and white as we would like for them to be when people are thinking about their own communities, experiences, et cetera. Speaking of which, you know, the U.S. and Israel decided to bomb Iran this week and I live in a community with a lot of Persian Jews and so the conversations in my neighborhood chats and on my morning walks have been really interesting and illuminating. And have highlighted this tension between both wanting regime change in Iran and questioning the US and Israel’s moral authority to be the people to help execute that. As the US, right, particularly Trump and his cabinet secretaries have been trying to walk this fine line between talking about the decision to invade and bomb Iran as either infrastructure building or regime change, but not both and depending on what day you catch them, it’s one or the other. I’m wondering if like me y’all woke up being like, okay, this is like for real happening, right? It felt like a sort of distant possibility for a while and what conversations you’ve heard. It’s again, my neighbors have been having really complicated complex feelings and discussions about it. And it’s also been really interesting to hear if you’re Persian, this isn’t political. Which is a common refrain in my neighborhood right now so curious about what y’ all are seeing from your various vantage points
DeRay Mckesson: I need to learn more about Iran and the history of the region. Like I know enough to be like, we shouldn’t do war like this. But the thing that sticks out to me is the interview that Trump did when they were like, well, who did you want to replace the Ayatollah? And he’s like, well, we mistakenly killed them. And you’re like, okay, well that is an interesting approach. And then it’s like well, did you, are you going to evacuate the people out? And he is like, I don’t know. You’re like, okay, well, you know that what about the embassy, like the American it just is like such a childish way to engage in any politics, certainly international politics. And then I look up and the group that does get a private play now is Trump’s social media coordinator and a TikTok star. And you’re like, oh, this is just, you know this is the stuff that breeds terrorism towards everybody, like towards the West. And you’re like I I get why people hate us. Like this makes total sense to me. And, you know, can you even call it terrorism when people are, like, rightfully outraged that you bombed their country? So like that’s one of it. The second is, you know, I’ve actually seen more commentary about Dubai, actually. I don’t know, like the bombing of the Dubai airport. That, you, know, so many people sort of, like went to Dubai as the, like safe place, and da-da-da, and you know nothing ever happens here. And then all of a sudden the airport is bombed, and the buildings are bombed. And it no longer is this refuge for rich people. And as we’ve talked about on the pod before, that refuge to rich people is only possible because of the extreme inequality of Dubai. So those are the conversations that I’ve seen people have. But the last thing I’ll say, I was very disappointed that four democratic senators voted alongside the Republicans to not restrict Trump’s power to continue the war in Iran. And you’re like, you know, AIPAC and and the lobby that has got the left in a choke hole, we have to continue to fight them. Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Myles E. Johnson: See, I knew what I was going to say and then that last sentence kind of like knocked me over a little bit. I have to like steer myself back. But I live in a working-class Black neighborhood so nobody’s talking about that. Like, except like the sparse, like white people are crazy. I think because so many Democratic presidents before Trump have done this, they have done things that are illegal, didn’t get the permissions of Congress, it’s just hard to whether it be this or Venezuela is really hard to kind of have like a moral standing in this or have like, a really political standing in this. And what’s also interesting about this too is that I’ve been noticing that the tactic from the Democratic Party seems to be if you are somebody on the left and you put language to geopolitical politics, you are iced out. We’re not talking to you no more. We’re not having this conversation, because that is where all of them agree with. That’s what that’s what all of them agree with, that’s how come there’s not a whole lot that they can say, that’s why there’s not a whole a lot of pushback. That’s why the pushback that is there is just a thread of commentary that kind of is flimsy when you look at it, because it’s like, oh, Trump didn’t do it exactly illegally how Biden did it, or it was exactly illegally, how Obama did it. So it’s kind of like this like nothing burger, but what does put a little bit of, I don’t even know if fear is the right word, but what does take me aback is that I do think that people who are on the left who have this kind of geopolitical consciousness are just being iced out because of A, the what happened with Palestine and because of what’s happening with people’s, um just knowing what AIPAC is and even knowing um to resist it.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And stuff like that. So those are all my thoughts on Iran right now. [laugh] I’m like.
Sharhonda Bossier: I think to your point about understanding sort of the influence over our lawmakers, it feels to me like right out the gate. A lot of the folks I follow online were like, oh, the U.S. is doing Israel’s bidding here, right? Like this is, and in some instances, right, when reporters, I should say, have talked to members of the Trump administration, they’ve been like, well, no, there was no immediate like physical threat to the US, but there was one to Israel and they are our proxy or our ally in the region and so right, X or Y or Z. There was footage of a retired US marine in his dress uniform showing up to protest the US’s decision to bomb Iran and he was met not just with like hostility but like actual physical force in trying to remove him from the room. His big push, again, is like a lot of what we’ve seen, at least what I’ve seen online, right, which is this is not our fight, this is not our war. This is about allowing one of our proxies in the region to continue to behave badly at the expense of other people and other countries and stability in the region. I’m wondering if y’all saw that video. And then two, like, what does it mean when this is how people are being treated for exercising their First Amendment rights? When even the uniform of being in the military no longer protects a white person, we have a history of that actually not protecting Black people, particularly after they’ve come back from war and wanting to fully participate in U.S. society and culture. But this felt new to me, seeing a white man in a military uniform treated this way and the decision for an elected official to jump in and try and get his lick.
DeRay Mckesson: Let me just read what Senator Sheehy wrote about this incident on Twitter afterwards.
Myles E. Johnson: Was Sheehy?
DeRay Mckesson: Sheehy is his name.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
DeRay Mckesson: Sheehy, right? Is that how you say it?
Myles E. Johnson: Shout out to pronouns.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s S-H-E-E H-Y. Capital police were attempting to remove an unhinged protester from the armed services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation. The gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence. That’s nasty work.
Myles E. Johnson: I only hope that more people realize how meaningless all these things that people have, like, imbue so much meaning, like, I don’t care if it’s the laws, your uniforms, whatever. Like, I hope more people are illuminated to the fact that the actual law of the land is imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy. I don’t just say those things as buzzwords, but I think that when you look at who’s able to be attacked during this go-around, you see that that even people who are not abiding by that kind of supreme law are also being, you know, even when I think about that quote you just said, that that reminds me of something they would spew on like a Black woman activist or something, like immediately calling you crazy and immediately calling you deranged, immediately making the narrative about your like own personal sanity and not about how insane it is to be attempting to colonize a nation right in front of our face. So like, my thing is, I feel like most Americans, most Americans do not care. And I think when I look at the mass media and I look out how the media is is spreading this and proliferating this, it feels like the neoliberal media is shaping a narrative that is untrue. I actually think that most people in America do not care who you kill, what you do, as long as 9/11 does not happen again. I think that most people in America are living in the wake of the paranoia and the insecurity of 9/11. I think, that that is just how it goes. And I also think that, most people, even when we talk about no AIPAC, even when we talk about Palestine or geopolitical politics, they’ll give us mouth service. I’m talking about Democrats too. I think Jasmine Crockett is a great example of this. They’ll give us mouth service to calm us down, but it’s really empty because what their belief is, is that you don’t know what you’re talking about. This is what it takes to keep America safe. It’s ugly. And that’s how come everybody is not built to be a soldier. Look away and continue to talk about race and continue to talk about this other s*** that we’re not going to change by the way, but talk about this stuff. Because this is out of your grasp, out of your depth. And the more we see moments like Venezuela and Iran and Palestine, the more it’s gonna sit that this is non-negotiable. We will be an imperial force and the only thing that’s gonna stop it is if we make it so people don’t join the military. If we make is so people feel socially or culturally ostracized for colluding with these imperial forces, that’s the only way we’re gonna be taken seriously around these subject matters, in my opinion, as people.
DeRay Mckesson: The spirit of that I agree with and that I mean all of it makes sense to me. I do think though that there’s a growing divide between the base and the party leadership that I think that people said that about AIPAC three years ago like nobody cares about this, this is like the insider stuff da da da. My father knows what AIPAC is in a way that he just wasn’t he didn’t he wasn’t plugged in, you know now he’s like DeRay this is crazy da da. I think the people that people call the far left have done an incredible job of moving the base. And the party is just being resistant but I actually think the base has moved, and I think a lot of people do care about, like I think people understand that like if a senator jumps across the table and does this stuff, that that like is wild and it is even wilder that nothing happens to them. So I think what I’m saying in response to you, Myles, is I actually think that the read that you offered to me is like spot on of the party. Like I’m like with you there. But I do think the base is moving. And I don’t think the base knows what to do with it. And I don’t think it’s organized and da da like there are a lot of issues I have with that. But yeah, but I think that people are moving, frankly, faster than I thought they would on some of these issues. And are like, which is why you see the Instagram videos of people being like, Iran, we didn’t do this. Like this not us. Like this was all still like, this is those people. Like, I don’t know. I do think, I think the base is getting it.
Sharhonda Bossier: No, I want to name that I have also seen people sharing this often misattributed quote that Kristi Noem said as a way of pushing back on some of the pushback, right? So Kristi Noem’s, it’s quoting George Orwell, but I think there’s a dispute about whether or not Orwell ever said this, but the quote is, “people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” And I think when people are saying, like, this is wrong, which I do think a growing number of people are, I don’t dispute that, DeRay, I think people are like, y’all are naive if you think this isn’t necessary, right? And they’re leveraging some of that, which is I think part of the point that Myles is trying to make, right, which it is like, you might not like it, it might look ugly to you, but this is how you get to live the life you live. Because people are ready to do violence on your behalf. It’s the same like in my neighborhood, right? Like, you know, I’m an aspiring abolitionist because there’s still some people I think we should lock up, but we have the Beverly Hills Police Department, an expensive and expansive drone fleet and private security contracts that all make my neighborhood feel walkable to me. You know what I mean? And so somebody would tell me that the reason I feel like I can walk from my house to the gym at seven o’clock at night is because of that private security contract and that drone fleet.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, since 9/11, we have been like exchanging privacy for security, like that’s been the exchange and it’s been happening even like in digital ways. So just to be even clearer and maybe even like more bolder with this opinion, what I’m saying also is that I think that we’re going to see that the base does not decide, that whatever is happening popularly in the Democratic Party does not care if the Democratic leaders don’t want it to care. So now what we see is February, we see Henry Louis Gates create this bullshit a** PBS special about Jewish people and Black people that totally creates a fairy tale around Jewish and Black peoples harmonious, revolutionary acts together. Not saying that there wasn’t individual Jewish people and families doing those things, but the painting is that there was once this unity between these two communities. And if we could just go back to that, and perhaps Israel and Palestine is our bridge to figuring that out. It’s such a weird piece of propaganda that I’m like, super disappointed that Henry Louis Gates participated in, but that might be showing my naivete. Um. So that is the response. The response is when I’m talking to FD Signifier, there’s another person as well, I’m forgetting his name, but another like Black influencer who just came out in saying I can’t be a political influencer anymore because they want me to do this. They wanted me to do this around this Black person and their Jewish commitment, and they made me have to do it during Black History Month. So what they’re doing is saying this is real s***, not changing. So what we’re going to do is try to change the culture so we have more support behind us. And then the last thing that you were saying about Sharhonda was about so many of the men, the video games that we see, the culture, the Manisphere culture. The weird sprouts of violences that we experience, I don’t care if it’s school shootings, these spree shootings, so much of our culture and so much of what the Epstein class has tried to create are these men who are desiring to kill and brutalize. And they know that if they–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –do not do this, they’ll go to jail. So the military, police, ICE, is their excuse to exercise that impulse inside of them. And that is also how they’re kind of like funneling men inside of the military forces too.
Sharhonda Bossier: The White House is using call of duty clips to brag about what we’re doing in Iran, right? Like they’re literally leveraging the visuals that our brains have come to be familiar with and comfortable with, right, to sort of force this disconnection to the brutality of war and the human toll of it, right.
Myles E. Johnson: Last little piece of little geeky media thing too. There’s 10,000 other reasons how come when people attack different countries or when our military attacks different countries, it appears to be like a video game now. The fact that it’s so impersonal and it’s not direct combat, there’s a thousand reasons, but 100,001 is because there’s less of a gap from that video game to you actually doing it.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: I just wanna take a time out and say that we are missing Jesse Jackson’s funeral and they are cutting up on that stage in the best possible way. Hallelujah, amen. Sing it, praise him, come on.
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m gonna have to watch that on YouTube later. That’s gonna be the Friday cleanse I need.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Sharhonda Bossier: We have a Congress, at least in theory, and that Congress is supposed to serve as a check and balance on the president’s power. We had in Texas a pretty high profile contest to see who would represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, or at least be the Democratic nominee to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. We’ve talked a lot about Talarico and Crockett, what we think both represent in terms of the vision for the future of the party. And this week, Texas Democratic primary voters made a decision. And that decision was to ensure that Talarico was the person competing in the general election to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. My text messages blew up immediately once polls closed. And I think the most surprising thing to me was still seeing the Black women in my circle disappointed in the outcome, chiefly because it represented an investment that I thought most of us had committed to not making. Right? But we keep going back, we keep being hopeful. And I know that there are many factors that might influence a person’s vote. But at the end of the day, I think what we have seen repeatedly over the last two election cycles is that the party doesn’t yet know how to position a Black woman to garner widespread support among the base and that the hill for Black women to climb regardless of their track record, years of experience, years in office, seems to be steeper than anyone else’s. I know again that there were so many other things, including our conversations about Crockett’s positions on some third rail issues and the lack of like a clear and meaty platform in the lead up to the primary. Like we were like, okay, girl, you’re the anti-Trump, but what are you right outside of that? So very curious to know how y’all are reacting to the outcome of the Texas primary election, what you think the lessons are here and what you’re hearing people talk about that is beyond just the sort of race, racism, racial dynamic that could have been at play here.
Myles E. Johnson: So glad to be free, like because you know I feel like I feel like when these candidates.
Sharhonda Bossier: Myles.
Myles E. Johnson: I feel like these candidates when they when they get announced, I feel like I’m in like optimism prison and I have to like kind of edit how I like my–
DeRay Mckesson: Oh my God.
Myles E. Johnson: Like how I see it. But yeah. Now that I’m free, I think she was such a bad choice. I think she was such a bad like I– [laughter]
DeRay Mckesson: Optimism prison, by the way, Myles, is write an essay called Optimism Prison.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay. Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
DeRay Mckesson: Ten out of ten, you did that.
Myles E. Johnson: So I think that this loss is just as important as Zohran’s win, right? I think that Black people are having a hard time getting the actual taste of what we represent to most people and how we are being proliferated in the digital sphere. And the digital sphere is making such a huge narrative around us. And we’re not really in control of it. We think we’re in control of it, but we’re not. We’re getting dismissed. So when we essentialize everything to race or everything to gender and that being it, then we’re just not taking seriously. Now, I was correct. It’s not about me being right, but I was correct around the activation around Jasmine. And I felt for my friends who were in Texas and what I was hearing about it in Texas was that there was a lot of support around her. It was Obama-esque. And when you look at the numbers, those were a lot numbers. What Talarico needed to win were, those were big numbers for a Texas primary. So she did activate it. It just wasn’t enough. And I’m afraid that what’s gonna end up happening is that the Democratic party is gonna continue to produce these neoliberal, AIPAC-friendly, but we going to pretend that she’s not, and do a whole bunch of talking and dancing around it, Black folks. And then they’re also going to, you know, algorithm privilege these neoliberal pundits. And then only thing that’s going to do is make most Black people seem as though that they are part of this kind of neoliberal old class. And then we’re all when it comes to the policies that we care about, when it comes to the changes that we hear about, we’re going to have to hope that the POC or white person who’s actually going to get the ticket actually cares. You know, like that, like to me, that’s what’s going to be it. The last thing that um I’ll say too around, well, who knows what was, if it’s going to really be the last thing, last thing during this time that I’m going to say around this too, is I am so big capital D disgusted at this man running. And now I’m seeing these kind of viral clips go around of people being like, oh, well, you got it. Okay, that’s all it takes. Now that he won the ticket, what I’m seeing is people trying to deactivate Black people, specifically Black women from voting for Talarico in November, and I’m like, so we’re here playing teams again. So you see yourself in Jasmine Crockett, and you’re having this kind of like culturally incestuous relationship with her, which meaning her in power means you’re in power, and her loss is your loss, and that’s not how politics go. And that is to me something that we need to, that I would hope that we would have left with Obama, but I keep on seeing it being rebirthed and to me every single time, no matter if it’s the Black woman drinking Starbucks, no matter if it the countless kind of viral videos I’ve been seeing since this moment, my fear is that we are just bleeding power and Black voices and Black concerns are just gonna be seen as obsolete and a part of this neoliberal fiction that we’re getting rid of. And then we’re gonna have some Black floaters who are accepted into these white leftist spaces, but cannot actually put their policies or their concerns or their community or their racist concerns to the forefront because we decided to let the Democrats be our leaders. I don’t get that. I don’t get that strategy. Well, I do get the strategy, but the strategy makes me sad.
DeRay Mckesson: I saw Talarico used to be a teacher. I saw Talarico speak last time I was in Texas. And I was like, I get it. I was, like, get why people like him. It makes sense to me. The only thing I’ll add to this is that he can beat the Republican. He can. Now, he can’t beat the Republic or question about if he can beat the Republican if Jasmine Crockett’s people don’t vote for him. That will make it very hard. But when you look at the numbers, 1.2 million people voted for Talarico. Almost 1.1 million people voted for Jasmine. Neither of the Republicans got a million votes. One Republican got 900,000 votes, and the other Republican got 880,000 votes. That if the left votes, they will beat the Republican and we will have a Democratic Senator in Texas. And Jasmine still got cheated because they was playing games in Dallas. She wouldn’t have gotten 200,000 votes in Dallas that she would have needed to beat Talarico. But the games they played in Dallas, and she still got more votes than the highest vote getter on the Republican side. So like, if we vote in Texas and now that they know the games they playing, we could just make this real hot. Beto laid the groundwork for it. You know, Beto couldn’t do it, but I think they can beat them.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, I am glad to hear that you are optimistic about the future of at least one part of our country.
Myles E. Johnson: Texas is a big part, can I just remind people of one thing, when Mike Johnson was asked publicly around Jasmine Crockett running, and how he like shook his hands and he like he was smiling that–
Sharhonda Bossier: Bird man hand rub.
Myles E. Johnson: That he was rubbing his hands.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And he was just doing that little evil gay man smile that I know so well. And this is why he was rubbing his hands, because he knew something was under the pipeline. I feel like Talarico was not even announced yet. And now we have kind of racialized, and I’m being Dr. Cornell West in making up words, but algorithmized this and and and whatever, this race. So now the disappointment. Now, the racial undertones of it, this white man versus this Black woman, now all that’s there and all that’s influencing people being activated, which, if enough people are disappointed, the Republican can win. If it was just Jasmine, or if it was just Talarico, or there was something that if the Democratic Party was a real party, and actually was able to talk about it, they would be able to say, you know what, we’re all going to go behind Jasmine or you know what? We’re all going to go behind Talarico because we can’t afford this kind of cultural digitized split. But no, we didn’t do that. And now the aftermath to me is a little scarier because I’m seeing culturally what is happening because of Jasmine’s loss, and how that will affect people’s willingness to vote. And again, people say a whole lot of s*** on the internet, but as we can see, a lot of people will say something on the Internet or not say nothing at all, and you’ll see in the numbers that they didn’t come out and vote. You’ll see in the numbers of what what they really go do.
DeRay Mckesson: To be fair, Jasmine did tell people to support Talarico, and she said, we are we are coming behind the nominee and–
Myles E. Johnson: Every politician says that.
DeRay Mckesson: I just am saying it. Trump didn’t say it.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m just saying everybody needs to, like that it takes more than that. It takes whatever pundit class that you that you are directing, get them to come up with a different narrative around Talarico and Jasmine. That’s what it takes. It takes actual culture shifting, not some platitudes that every politician has to say. To me.
Sharhonda Bossier: Wasn’t it also reported earlier that in Texas they did try to run a slate and that the proposal was that Talarico, instead of running for senate, would run for governor and he decided to run for senate and that sort of threw the party in a difficult position around who they were going to get behind and how to talk about these candidates as part of a slate. That’s my understanding from earlier reporting.
Myles E. Johnson: It should have been an easier decision because let’s be real. I don’t know how somebody washes Jasmine. Jasmine did great, but also Talarico did great. So so that’s how come–
Sharhonda Bossier: Right.
Myles E. Johnson: –like, so what is this polling for? What is this data? What is this AI? What are y’all doing? If this person comes and washes this very extremely talented Black woman, where’s the strategy coming from? Like why are we in this place where we’re always out strategized by the right? Like, that to me that feels like incompetent.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, speaking of being out-strategized, Myles, a thing that you, months ago, were talking about is the U.S. being out strategized by China in a number of ways.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh yeah.
Sharhonda Bossier: And China really already not being like an ascendant world power, but being the world power.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m learning Mandarin as we speak.
DeRay Mckesson: Myles, go take a nap.
Sharhonda Bossier: My news this week is about a class of wealthy Chinese business people who are paying for U.S.- based surrogates. Many of them are unmarried men who are trying to father as many children as they can because they have a vision for those children having citizenship in the United States and in China. And they want those male children to be potential successors to the throne of their business empires. And they want their female children to be really desirable, high value wives to the sons of other businessmen across the world, right? Many of them have cited Elon Musk as their example here, both in terms of like, I would love for my children to marry Elon Musk’s children. And the like, we all know Elon Musk has 50, 11 children, right? And all of that is about passing on his genes because he’s a white supremacist and a eugenicist. But it is also about him trying to ensure that his quote unquote, “legacy,” right, ends up in the hands of his offspring. I’m bringing it to the pod because one, I was like, damn, here’s another thing I didn’t know I needed to be paying attention to that’s like happening on like the world stage. Two, increasingly, I’m observing how wealth puts people above the state as an entity, right? So what these people are trying to do is create a new class of like global person for whom borders and passports don’t represent the same hurdles, limitations as they do for those of us who don’t have access to billions of dollars. And I think there’s some really interesting questions about the US birthright citizenship. Which we often hear talked about in terms of like, you know, I grew up in California, right? They’re like, these Mexicans are coming here, they’re having these anchor babies, blah, blah blah, right. But this is a completely different class of person, right, who was essentially leveraging the same constitutional protections for the same outcome, but being talked about very different ways. The U.S. doesn’t really regulate surrogacy, which, you know has its own set of complications. But I’m truly, truly fascinated by the class dynamic here, what people are trying to do in building a global billionaire elite, literally by creating children to succeed them and to take the helm of their businesses and empires. And also I am thinking about the implications for how we think about US birthright citizenship. So lots of things happening here. Starting to see these stories and my mind was blown and y’all are some of the smartest people I know, so I always wanna hear what y’ all think.
DeRay Mckesson: My mind was also blown when you so you previewed it last week. And then when I read it, I was like, I don’t know if I’d ever thought about birth tourism, but like the at the basic level, I’m like, yeah, it makes sense. You know you, people would have a baby here, like that that makes sense to me. But the surrogate part, I just like, oh, this is this is when you’re like, you’re not rich. Like this isn’t even something I like. I don’t know, I just never even like entertained this as an option. And like the amount of money you’d have to have to navigate this just is wild to me. It also is a reminder of what happens when you get one party that, or a group of people who are just anti-regulation in general, like I’m I’m surprised that this entire field is sort of like there are no rules from the government at all. Like forget the birthright part of it. It also feels ripe for abuse, just like sheer taking advantage of surrogates, a baby, like all of it, like the IVF process, like the the opportunity for abuse and fraud just feels very high. But I also think about, I hadn’t even heard about this to even push somebody to be like, there should be some rules for this. So I am floored, I learned. Thank you, Sharhonda. I feel like I see most things around sort of justice issues, but this one. You got me.
Myles E. Johnson: I think the term that I made up while reading this article was soft nuclear power. So like the idea of soft cultural power, meeting like really nuclear strategy. Because if you have generations of elite-classed Chinese folks, so I’m using these words because I need a bigger vocabulary, not because I actually believe in like the kind of xenophobic language as wrapped in like infiltration. But now you do have these folks who are part of Chinese government, part of the Chinese elite class, who are also able to be in the American elite class. And we all see how money gives you access into global politics and those strategies. So when you think about things that China maybe once done, when you about things that the Chinese may want in 20, 30, 40, 50 years, this is a really great strategy to make sure that the West cannot take on or stop the bigger Chinese strategy, which is how come to me, we all need to start learning Mandarin beause that’s [laughter] because that’s kind of a, no matter where you sit politically, that’s a bad-ass [?] strategy to me. And it’s proven to be successful, it’s proving to work. And I think we’re all going to have to readjust how we see the East within our lifetimes. And I thing the propaganda that we have around the East, we’re going to have to reconstruct that. And then also we’re gonna have to look about how people are seeing the future of America and how people are strategizing around it.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And how some people are not precious. You know, a lot of this stuff around the nuclear family and leave it to beaver and a family being this individual soft thing is just this fiction that America has come up with to make you feel better about producing kids so they can go into the workforce or the military force. But Chinese folks are not that precious about it. You know? Even when I think about even taking out of China, you want to think about West African culture and Yoruba culture. Some of those cultures are less precious about the nuclear family in the way that we’re precious about it. And you’re seeing strategize about how to take over the West and not use lethal hard power, but use soft power and use our own laws to be able to make sure we can essentially do what we’re doing to Israel in the future and so they can remain empowered and I’m not going to pretend to be like a China scholar, even though I aspire to be one. But what we will say is that comeback is severe. That comeback from where they were 20 or 30 years ago to where they are now.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Crazy.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Where are they going to be 30 years from now? And now that they already have a baby, if that baby is born today, and in 30 years, 35 years, they can run for political office, and they can run somewhere. And they see that the liberal politics work and where the conservative politics work, and who knows what other type of candidates we’ll have. That also softens us to certain types of representations. We could be looking at a half Chinese, half white president. Then who knows what the global political future will look like and who has it and what we’ll be discussing once that’s the truth. So that’s half tin foil, half half in my good reading papers, but that’s just that’s just my hypothesis of what’s going on.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I just am constantly thinking about the ways in which it’s so clear that the US is pay to play, despite our like, talking about other countries as corrupt and use of deeply problematic terms like banana republic, etc, etc. You know? And speaking of figuring out that the U.S. is pay-to-play, DeRay, your news this week.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, so we’ve talked about the pardon process before when the president has the power if you have a federal charge to let you out of prison. And the short version, which you could obviously expect from Trump is that people are paying to get out, that they are lobbying the pardon office, that they’re paying people who have relationships to Trump to get out. I wanna start with Alice Marie Johnson. I don’t know if you remember Alice Marie Johnston, but she became a famous figure in the criminal justice space because of the First Step Act and Trump sort of used her as a symbol of his progressive values and also Kim Kardashian had a relationship with her and that sort of made her a figure. I don’t know if you remember, but Trump appointed her as the pardons czar when he first, like when he comes back. So her sentence got commuted, and then he granted her a full pardon in 2020. And I bring her up because she has become in the criminal justice space, a shield for any criticism about Trump and the pardons because people are like, well, you can’t, you know, Alice is there, you can’t criticize her, da da da da da. So that’s sort of a fascinating thing. But in the article, it just highlights these set of stories where people are getting out on wild, they’re just getting out on wild charges.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: They owe a ton of restitution because they have paid somebody. And the details don’t really matter, right? There’s like a guy who, you know, embezzled money. There are a million stories. There are only a set in the New York Times article, but there are, he’s pardoned a lot of people. And not only the January 6th people who have went on to re-offend and do wild things, but it does make you think about the discretion that we give executives in general. Like, you now, every governor has pardon power and the president also has pardon power. And just the sheer grift that has happened, is like one bucket that I’m just like wrestling with. And then the second is like, you know, we built a system of checks and balances structurally for a lot of things. But then there are these interesting things that there is no check on. And pardons is one of them that there really is no structural check on, so you know you can impeach the president, you can get a judge out, the judge can hold people in contempt. There’s a robust general net of checks and balances if people use them in ways that make sense. But the pardon process is one where there is none. There is literally nothing you can do if the governor or the president pardons a crime and the president can pardon himself, which we you know realized in the last go around. And I’m just fascinated by that as like a policy person, is it even good practice to have something that is uncheckable by anybody else in the pardoning process is one of them. And I you know, you all can assume obviously who gets pardoned and who doesn’t get pardoned, right? There are a ton of people for nonviolent crimes that we should just let out because you can, and those people are not. Or nonviolent crime that didn’t hurt anybody, right, like drugs and stuff. You get these people with the nonviolent crimes are embezzling $100 billion and ruining everybody’s credit, and you know.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: People are losing their health insurance and stuff, and those people i are getting pardoned. So fascinated by the policy questions here and just a reminder of the sheer scope of the grift.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I, too, am fascinated by the policy questions here. Also like, finding out that people are paying Trump associates with the promise that they will get a pardon and then a promise of a bonus if the pardon actually happens, right? It’s like it’s everybody is making money off this like hand over fist. And then I think about the timidity of like some democratic governors and previous presidents, right, to pardon people who, you know, to your point, DeRay, were incarcerated for things that, like, no longer are big deals anymore. You know what I mean? Like, we should have had people being like, nonviolent drug offenses, y’all are out, right? Like, you did some dumb s*** when you were 17, you didn’t serve 20 years, like you’re out. You know, what I means? Like he doesn’t care at all. And consistently, I keep watching Dems pretend that they’re constrained by this like idea of the rule of law. The other thing is that we don’t think about the violence, also to your point, of like upending people’s entire lives because you’ve been embezzling, right? Or you know I think about like the Enron scandal as an example, right? Like people lost everything. And you know like you’re like, all these other people are rich. They had their summers, they had their boats, they had their lake houses. Meanwhile, I can’t feed my kids. And that is violence. And we don’t talk about it in the same way. And I just wish that Dems would, this is an example of like where I wish that Dems will be like, oh bet, bet. You know? And like actually do something to improve people’s lives. I think about the people in California who were sentenced under three strikes laws, who should be out and have another chance. I think about my brother who did some dumb s*** when he was 18 and is now 50 and still locked up. You know what I mean? Like there’s just so many other people who are deserving of grace and mercy that just are not getting it because I don’t have like a million dollars to pay someone in the hopes that like my brother would get a pardon. You know? And then lastly, you know, we we talked about Alice Marie Johnson, but also a celebrity face of this is the Chrisleys, you know? Like the parents who were arrested, went to prison, their daughter made friends with, they’re the like white Southern family and everybody thinks the dad is gay. Have we talked about this? And like the dad has become like a crusader for you know incarcerated people, blah, blah blah. And we can’t deny the role of celebrity and money and access in that one either, even as much as I like their little podcast content when it comes across my timeline, you know? But yeah, it’s disheartening to see how sheer and clear the veneer of like propriety is on these decisions and to not see Democrats actually try and advance anything close to criminal justice reform by leveraging the same tools at their disposal.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, culturally, it’s really interesting for me. So like the first thing that I thought about was, weirdly, was like the kind of arguments, the digital arguments I’ve been seeing around Toni Morrison. And the New York Times released a headline for a podcast that said Toni Morrison isn’t a saint. And the podcast is not that bad, but like the headline was obviously very like bold, and people were responding to that headline. And although I was agreeing, like spiritually with the people who were talking and who were saying, don’t talk about Toni Morrison’s legacy like that, or people who were arguing about this, saying like, don’t degrade Toni Morrison’s legacy. I also do want us to not conflate like Toni Morrison’s legacy with how white supremacy approved of her. And I think that sometimes what makes Toni Morrison so great to some people isn’t about the genius of the writing, the genius of the storytelling, the genius of a mind, it’s often about that genius being validated by white supremacy. And the reason why I say that is because no matter what, when you are in white supremacist capitalist media, you will, and if you’re Black, you will be minstrelized. And when I think about Alice Marie Johnson, this is how I’m connecting it, when I think about Alice Marie Johnson, now she is just how we have Ice Barbie. Now she’s Pardoned Aunt Jemima. Now she is this this mascot, this minstrel mascot who is in front of us in order to make this kind of white supremacist power strategy happen. And that is what she’s being used for now. And that’s how she’s being uplifted now. And that’s how come I’m so critical of all Black people who decide to participate with mainstream media, no matter if you made Sinners, no matter what you got going on, because no matter what, it’s going to figure out a way to make you support empire and also, if it can, in the meantime, how to humiliate you. Because let’s be real, the position that Alice Marie Johnson finds herself in is a humiliating one. It’s one where all of her image, all of her name is now being tied to letting white criminals who are hyper capitalists out of jail, which is its own type of like social cultural prison to be attached to that. And that is–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –not just what kind of happens, that’s what this machine does.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, we’re gonna need some sage after that.
Myles E. Johnson: Sorry. So speaking of somebody who lives in the mainstream media, who I think knows how to navigate it really well, I think that we can do a whole class on the neo-soul movement. Though as I get older, I see how amazing the neo soul movement was. And I know that I’m using a white man’s marketing language for it, but you know. Language is a place I struggle, like I always say. So I’m just using it for shorthand for soul music and hip hop music with Afrocentric leanings that came out in the ’90s and 2000s. And Jill Scott just released, A, Jill Scott was on the vanguard of that movement and she just released a new album that has a single called Pressha. And Pressha just got to number one on the R&B charts. To me, this is history because Pressha’s using real instruments. If you listen to the song, there’s no auto-tune. If you listen to the song, it really sounds like something out of 1972. When I think about different artists, like, I feel like a little bit of Chaka Khan and Rufus with how she’s like melting this kind of like rock and psychedelic into a ballad world, maybe even like mid like Aretha Franklin, when she was doing her psychedelic soul things. It kind of all lands inside of there. And for it to go number one on the R&B charts to me is so beautiful and showing that people’s ears are ready for real sounds. And I think that that does say something about like our collective consciousness and our psyche, that we are embracing this music and embracing the moments that she’s having as well. And then again, this song is talking about how she’s represented in the media and how she navigated her romantic life and she is a thick Black woman. And I think that it’s taken such intentional strategy in order to not mammify herself. It takes intentional strategy to not become that kind of minstrel Aunt Jemima that America wants to turn you into, no matter if you’re Alice Marie Johnson or Oprah. And I’m not saying that Jill Scott hasn’t necessarily fallen into those trappings in her entire career, but I do think that she’s a good example as somebody who’s really, really resisted that and has made pathways of being able to give us messages that are radical and also spiritually transcendent, specifically in a time of fascism, which I think is really, really impressive. The other reason why I’m bringing this to you is because I did review the song in full on my sub stack, sunpulpit.co. So please sign up and please read the full review when you get the chance and tell me what you think. But I wanted to bring this in because I think she’s making women history right in front of our face. And I think in 20 years, we’ll look back at this time. And just like I get shocked, I’m like, Erykah Badu put that out during Bush era? Damn! That was hard. I think we’ll look back on this Jill Scott album and say oh my goodness. What a brave centered focused album to put out during this time of fascism that we’re in right now Thank you, Jilly from Philly. Have y’all listened to Pressha? Did you see the video?
DeRay Mckesson: [starts singing] My name is J-I-L-L -S-C-O-T-T. [stops singing] I’ve not listened to it and I’ve only seen her press run around it, but I am committed to listening to it soon. And I love, I mean, Jill Scott, the legend. I’m more excited that there’ll be younger people who just don’t know Jill Scott. Like there’s a 23 year old who’s an intern at Campaign Zero who don’t Jill. Like he just, he’s too young to have been around when Jill was our Jill. So I’m excited that there’s new music for the kids to learn Jill Scott.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I have listened to it. Also, to your point, I love the press run around it because people are like, oh, Jill is sexy, you know? And that is actually what I see most where people are, like, oh, wait a minute, she hot. Like, hold on a second, how I miss that, you now? And there is something about her being at that age and in that body and her and people being like, wait a moment, you know, like hold on a second, not mammifying her has been really interesting to see particularly as a woman who is who is aging. I love me some Jill Scott. I had tickets to see her at the Blue Note on Grammy weekend and then she caught COVID. So I was really sad cause she was going to do the live album and I was really, really, really looking forward, I mean I paid $500 for two tickets. Like that’s how committed I was to like being in the place. So I hope I get a chance to see her do this album live. I got a chance to see her do the 25th anniversary of I Am Jill Scott Live and it was an experience, right? So shout out to Jilly from Philly to your point for giving us sage in Women’s History Month. [music break]
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]
