Transcript of Keeping Up With the Cult

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Ready? One, two, three.

Patriots, gay triets, they triets, black triets, brown triets, and to all of the crusty motherfuckers that don't support them, you can fuck off. We are in New York City with the one, the only, Abby Philip, who is single-handedly, in my opinion, making CNN relevant with your show. Yeah. I know.

You can't call- That's a huge burden. I know it is.

It's a huge burden.

It's a lot of you, Abby? Yeah, I'm hanging in there. Good. I'm hanging in there. I'm having fun. And you come on the show a lot, which I love. I know. It's fun. We enjoy it. You've given us some of our best one-liners, I think, in the history of the show.

What's so funny about Jennifer is she'll say something and I'll react in real-time, but we'll just move on. And then I'll see a clip of it on the internet and I bust out laughing. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that was so funny because you're so quick and so acidic tongue. Is that a good way to say it? Yes.

And it'll sometimes come out of nowhere, where she'll just start talking, and then she'll say something. I think it was like, You called Trump a whiny- Titty baby. Titty baby. Well, he is. That's in the top 10 things people have said on this show in terms of how surprised we were when it came out. We were just like, Wait, what did she just say it?

I think what it is- We're going to write it up on a wall somewhere in the office. It's sometimes the podcasting world because podcasters speak a little a bit more relaxed. That's what I like about your show, because you're having podcasters come on with pundits and with politicians. And so I think the reason your show is so successful is because it's mixing the totally people that really want to curate their content and stay on script. And a podcaster, I think it was Kevin O'Leary. I'm like, Why are you defending this man? He's such a Titty Baby, whines all the time. And that's really the way people talk. So I think it's fun.

I had never heard- It's a Southern thing. Titty Baby. Is that a Southern thing? Yeah, Southern thing. I had never heard Titty Baby. It's a Southern thing. Is that a Southern thing? Yeah, it's a Southern thing. I had never heard that before. But then I was like, yes, it makes perfect sense, the phrase. But it was so absolutely hilarious, just the surprise that you just caught us all by surprise. I actually wish that the show were even more conversational because some people I have to really walk them through, this is not going to be your standard television interview. We are actually talking to one another. This is a conversation. It's not a, I'm going to give my little diatribe and you give your diatribe, and we're just going to go back and forth talking past each other. And so a lot of people have to get used to that, the concept of talking to other people. Yeah, right. Surprisingly. Yeah.

No, I think it's such a good show because it's interesting when we're all in the green room together.

Yeah. Sometimes I wish I were in there with you guys to see what's happening.

We're all in there together, and then we're out. But everybody in the green room, you're asshole buddies. You know you're about to gear up to go sit down to lock against each other. But I think Like you, I wish that people would get a little bit more untethered to their scripts.

Yeah, 100 %.

Especially on the right. It's okay to criticize dear leader. It would actually be helpful if you criticized some of the insane things that he does. And I think that they would have more credibility as a messenger.

I 100 % agree. And the people who do that are the ones that I think do best on the show. They have the ability to be firm in their beliefs, mega beliefs, liberal beliefs, whatever it is, but they're actively thinking. They're actively saying, Oh, I don't really agree with that. I think that's a bad strategy. And you know what? The truth is, the number of times, especially these days, it's not that hard to get Democrats to criticize as Democrats. But these days, I can't get Democrats to defend Democrats these days. They're criticizing Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffrey all the time.

Yeah, I do that. Guilty.

I mean, all the time. And on the right, there's so much more fear. But I think the incentives are also a little different, too. It's not just the fear, it's that the adulation that you get from being a true believer is so intense that it's hard for people to walk away from that. There is a lot of social pressure to just be on the team, be a solid member of the team, and never stray from the party line. I think that's very intoxicating to a lot of people who come on our show because these clips really go far and wide. I just wish people would have just a little bit more courage. Just be a little brave.

I feel like a lot of the guests that are Trump-aligned, I feel like they are speaking on your show for an audience of one. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody knows exactly why they're justifying or defending something that is indefensible or denying something that we all objectively saw and heard with our eyes, denying that that existed because they know that it will upset this man, this titibaby, with this fragile ego. And that component feels somewhat regressive, like that we can't just call a spade a spade. So as you sit there, I told Abby the last time I saw her. She's so zen, and she's very powerful, but a quiet, powerful, commanding presence at the table. Do you ever just have the desire to just be like, Shut the fuck?

Well, listen, I have actually... I I have had those moments that don't always end up on TV. But I mean, look, first of all, there are times when it is so annoying to me that I am clearly trying to stop the cacophony because no one at home can hear what's going on because everybody's talking at the same time and screaming at each other. I will have people look at me and see that I'm trying to shut them up and then look away and keep talking. Really? I just want to be like, Excuse me. Hello. Slam my hands on the table. Then there was one time where there was a big fight that happened at the table, and it was over some bullshit. I'll say it like that because it was honestly, it was It was literally a misunderstanding. One person misheard the other person. I had to just go to break while they were screaming at each other. In the break, I was like, Guys, what the fuck? What is going on? What are we doing here? I'm all for us disagreeing, right? But let's actually disagree about real things, not about misunderstandings. People just so caught up and wanting to be the last person to speak and wanting to be the loudest person at the table, and they just forget that, what are you even arguing about?

And there is something weird in a way. Okay, I said all that, but I also think that in a way, I don't mind that part of the show because I don't mind people being all in and being emotional and being upset or being sad or being whatever the emotions are, because I think those are real things. I think we need to be tethered in real things as opposed to in this fake, we're just going to sit here with our hands folded and talk to each other nice and polite when that's not the authentic emotion that's behind it. It's right up to that line of, let's be as real as we can, but I also think, let's not fight over dumb stuff. I agree. Let's fight over... There are real issues at hand here. There are things that matter to people in their lives. We're talking about health care, we're talking about economics, we're talking about people's life savings, their businesses that they've spent their whole lives creating that maybe might go away tomorrow because of terrorist. I mean, these are real things. Let's talk about those things, and let's not get caught up in silly fights about misunderstandings, and you just don't want to be the one to back down.

Well, speaking of silly things, we do like to ask our guests what they've had it with. Just everyday grievances. So, Abby, what have Who you had it with?

I'm so tired today. I can't really blame it on this, but in the aggregate, I'm tired of my daughter waking up at 5: 00 in the morning and waltzing into the room. Just like, mommy, Hi. What's going on? I had a dream. I had a dream about rainbow dinosaurs. It's like that at 5: 00 in the morning.

It doesn't matter what time you put a kid that age to bed. No. They always pop up like a toaster, right at 5: 00 AM. They do. Our kids, when they were little, I thought, Let's put them to bed later. They still woke up at the same time. Oh, no.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I mean, she literally, she will go to bed at 9: 00 and get up at 5: 00. And then she's just like, Bright as a daisy, just happy as a clam, and complete energy from sun up to sundown. I don't know where they get it from. I would like some of that, but I've had it with that. Hello.

Yeah, totally.

You're a young mother, so I have a question. I've just When I was a new baby mom, new kids, we had one book, What to expect the First Year. That was it. So if there was some type of behavior or tantrum, you would just look it up and say, Okay, yeah, that's developmentally normal. Now I feel like there's just this influx of mommy blogs and influence. Overwhelming. Mom talk. There's mom talk. There's all these different things you have to do with a small shot.

It's a lot of shit.

How do you feel about that? Is it hard?

It's impossible. It is impossible. I mean, in In a way, some of it is helpful because there are definitely some things that I'm like, What am I supposed to do when she does this? What am I supposed to do when she does that? And how do you not screw up your kid is really the thing that is the dominant thought when you're raising a child. How do I not torture this child and make them complain about their childhood trauma when they're older? But at the same time, I think for me, the hardest thing was around sleep for her. I actually think sleep and food are the two things that moms are guilted about the most. Do you let them sleep with you? Do you put them to bed too late? Do you let them cry? All the things. I think there's so much guilt that is associated with those things about how you balance their needs and your needs. Look, I'm a working mom, and I have a really busy job that requires all of my brain. From a very early age, I was like, She cannot sleep with us at all. Sometimes it would happen just because I just didn't have the energy to keep getting up, but I cannot sleep with this child in my bed.

I don't know. We put her in her own room when she was a month old. It was It was better for her. She slept better, I slept better. Even when I had to get up and go in there and deal with it, it was better for me and better for her. There were some mom friends of mine who they had their kids in their room until they were eight months old or they would co-sleep. And that's all fine, but it just did not work for me. I had to figure out the sleep thing and it didn't really work, but I had to try something because I was like, I I can't get rest when she's in the bed, period. Yeah, I agree. Then I was talking to some man, a very sweet guy, and I actually really appreciated this because he was like, Oh, I love when my son comes into our bed because it's so sweet and he's so little. I just thought to myself, I felt guilty because I was like, I should love this, but I don't. Yeah, right. I do not like it at all. I don't. I want to like it.

I want it to feel like all cozy and cuddly, but honestly, she's kicking me in my solar plexes. Totally. I agree.

Totally. I'm with you on that. I didn't sleep with my kids.

It feels so easy for especially a guy to say, Oh, it's so sweet. I love it. But when you're a mom, they're on you like a koala. They are.

They're so hard. I think that the thing about young motherhood that was so hard for me to identify until after, and I realized it's a very lonely thing. Even though you're with this other person that you love more than anything else, there's not a word in the English language that can describe how much you love. But it's an isolating... You've been removed from all society that you knew before, and you're reduced to these shows and these puzzles and somebody kicking you at night. And there's a loneliness to it that's hard to articulate. And when you said that, I wish I loved this part, or I wish I loved that part, that's the mind fuck of motherhood. I agree. Because there's this burden that you think, I have to be a 12 out of 10 on all of these issues. And I think my advice to young mothers would be, unsolicited advice, find what works for you. If you don't like doing puzzles with your child, don't do them. Don't do them. That's okay. Find what you're good at with your kids. And that's what I did. But now I see I have these nephews, and they're having kids now.

And the pressure of mom talk and then mommy groups, I thought it was bad When our kids were little. It's so intense right now.

It's so intense. And they're doing all this stuff. And my schedule, my show is at 10: 00 at night. So I have this weird schedule where I'm exhausted in the morning and in the evening I'm working. And at 3: 00, she gets home from school, let's pick up. And a lot of the other parents, not all of them, but a lot of the other parents are there and they hang out with the kids after school. And the times I do pick her up, which is not that often, because this is just not a thing I can do with my schedule. But when I do pick her up, I'm like, People are texting me and I've got things to respond to and I've got a meeting that I'm on. I'm not all the way there. I wish I could be, but I'm just not. I've had to let go of some of those things. That's just not my ministry. I can't do that. But on the weekends, I'm there. We're going to bake Pinkalicious cupcakes together till the cows come home. I can do that, but there are a lot of things that I cannot do.

That isolation that you're talking about, it's in these little moments because as a mother of a young child, It's all the little moments that add up that nobody sees. Sometimes not even your spouse sees. Because mommy is always like, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, Those tiny moments when you feel like nobody sees how much my energy is being drawn from. Nobody sees how many things that I am trying to work out, all the five different activities that they're doing in a week, all the playdates, all the moms that want to meet up, all the kids that are being mean to my kid. It's all on you and in your brain, and that is isolating.

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I want to shift gears. This is related to you having a daughter, but it's the uptick of racism that I'm feeling, and I'm a white woman. So I can't imagine how you're feeling it. And I always often think about you when these Republicans or MAGA supporters are sitting at your table, and they're talking about how horrific DEI was and meaning Ketanji Brown Jackson. And it always seems like Black women are the first that always get beat up on by the electorate at large. And so you're a very successful Black woman, graduated from Harvard. The language that they use, to me, I perceive it as very dismissive of the accomplishments of a Black woman, because I know that those men couldn't survive in a meritocracy without their white skin and their daddy's bank account, because I know these type of guys. I know you're a million times smarter, had to work a million times harder. And now that there is this uptick, especially where I live, and I'm sure it's nationwide, and you're raising a young black girl, will you speak a little bit about what it's like sitting at the table as a person that went to Harvard, a very successful, fabulous black woman?

And you hear this effort both whispers and just write out loud demeaning Black women. And then you're raising a beautiful young Black woman. I just want to platform that fight in that space because it's something I care deeply about.

Yeah. I mean, there's no question that there's a permission structure that's been created to demean people because of the color of their skin. And using DEI as an excuse to do that by basically saying, well, the existence of affirmative action means that all of these people who have accomplished things are not qualified or didn't deserve it, got a leg up. Or took a white person's job. It took literally is what they say. That's just flat out wrong. It's It's nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense. But also, if you've been in any of these spaces, as I have, when I went to Harvard, I grew up just working class immigrant family. I went to public schools my entire life. I got to Harvard and realized that 60% of the people I was around were people who grew up rich, went to private schools, maybe their dads and moms were famous. Is that a Hello? It's very much not. You're exactly right. All of the people who did not fall into those buckets actually had to work their asses off to get there. There were some people who obviously were born on third base. That's the reality of the so-called meritocracy in this country and really around the world, is that it's always been the case that if you came from privileged, if your parents were wealthy, if you You were white, you had a leg up on everybody else in this country.

In many cases, there's a lot of documented proof that that is still true.

It's 100% true, Abby.

I mean, it's not a supposition. It's not academic in the sense that it's a theory. There have been lawsuits about banks that discriminate against people because they are Black, or because of the neighborhood that they live in, or whatever it is.

Or the realtors. Have you heard about that? Or the realtors, yeah. They remove the signs. If it's a Black couple that lived there, if there's pictures, personal photographs, the realtor will remove the Black couple, and then they notice the house will sell.

100% or they'll get higher offers for the house, or it'll appraise for more because the value of the house is determined by the appraiser who works for the bank. Even down to people's names, I've always thought to myself that, especially early in my journalistic career when I worked in print and I was not on television, my name, Abby. Sometimes people would get on the phone with me, and we would have a whole conversation, and maybe we would meet each other in person, and they would have no idea that I was a Black woman. Maybe it's because of the way I talk, but also because of my name. That's actually a privilege that I had, that I could do my job early in my career because I was calling people on the phone, and they literally had no idea that I was a Black woman until maybe they met me in person or they saw me in the halls on Capitol Hill or at the White House or whatever. It's sad. It is. That that helps. But it's true. I do think that being on television, you can't... I'm on TV, you know what I look like, right?

I walk into a room, nobody mistakes me for anything other than I am. I'm extremely proud of that. But then you get the vitriol that comes from that. But at the same time, you talked about my daughter. First of all, raising a daughter in the world that I'm in right now, she is still always often the only one who looks like her. So instilling in her the confidence, first of all, the actual skills. She has to actually... She is smart, but she has to actually know her stuff. There is no universe in which a daughter of mine is not going to be just as prepared as everybody else, because I know that she's going into a world that's going to assume that she's not. So we will start there. She has to be prepared and ready and smart. But then she also has to really understand and know intuitively in her bones that she is those things. I tell her every day, because at four years old, you wouldn't believe the fact that there are kids right now at four years old that demean other kids. That say, Oh, that's not pretty. You don't know about that.

They make other kids feel bad. You have to teach kids at a really young age to buck up and to really understand their power and to really understand that they are smart, that they are worthy. I think just the fact that she sees me operating Totally. The way that I do, it's normal to her. She looks on the TV and she's like, Oh, there's mommy. She's on TV. I bring her to events and she's comfortable in her skin. I'm really proud of that because I know, unfortunately, even we're in 2025, and 10 years from now, 15 years from now, I don't really think it's going to be all that different in the sense that I think she's still going to have to prove herself.

I I agree with you.

Because you would have thought, Okay, we're 30 years from the '80s, right? We'll talk about the book at some point, but this is when I'm talking about my book, I think about the fact that 30 years ago in the '80s, there was rampant racism in this country. Oh, yeah. Okay, and now in 2025, just go on X. There is rampant racism in this country. People literally call me the N-word every single day. They call me a monkey every single day. Some of these people are maybe they're real, maybe they're not. But some of them are real people, and they're sitting in their basement just being racists. That's not an indictment on any large group of people. I'm just saying there are individuals, there are many people who are racist because I experience that racism on a daily basis. It does not face me, but I also know that it's not going to go away by the time my daughter is in her 20s. So I'm going to prepare her for that world because it's unfortunate, but it's also human nature. It's part of who we are as a species. I hope and pray that one day we're able to get past that, but we're not past it.

No. I grew up in the '80s, and I remember there was such an effort growing up for us not to be racist. I I remember that if I needed something from somebody, I'd be like, Oh, is standing over next to that guy? And they're sitting next to a black guy. And I would be like, The guy in the green sweatshirt. And I would just start to clench. And I'm like a teenager because I felt like we couldn't say, Next, standing next to that black man. There was like this. That was the area that I grew up in. And then my parents were very progressive, very anti-racist. I'm very fortunate to have grown up in the place that I grew up that they were so progressive, because that's not the norm. We grew up around a lot of racist. But now, since BLM and all of this, I read a lot of books about this and about white fragility and just seeing somebody's blackness. And when white people say, Oh, I don't see color. And I've heard that my whole life from the most racist people that I know. Oh, I never see color. But now I can say, Oh, she's standing right there next to that pretty black lady.

That you can just say Say that about somebody's color. But now I feel like we've gone back. My husband is a criminal defense lawyer, and he had some clients that had an issue with the school district. It wasn't really a crime. But the parents transferred their daughters, who were black athletes, from a school in Oklahoma City, Inner City, to a rural town. And within the first two days of school, these girls are getting D1 scholarships, incredible basketball players. Within the first 48 hours, I think they had been called the N-word by all of their rural town friends at least 24 or 30 times. And that didn't happen in the '80s. I didn't hear that... I knew that some people were racist, but not like that. I feel like there's such an uptick of it. And I feel like people like Angie and me are good allies, incredible messengers to speak for and with the Black community that our lives are inherently better. Everybody's lives are better when we learn how to live comfortably and grow in multiculturalism. Because white people stuff, all white people, Abby, I'm just going to tell you, it's fucking boring. We don't have cookouts.

We don't have any fucking thing like that. It is Lee Greenwalled snooze-fest. It's just all white culture.

I think that part of it, the segregation that still exists in this country is really at the heart of it. And it's everywhere. It's not just in rural America. I live in Manhattan. It's very segregated here. Really? Oh, yes. It's very segregated here. I lived in DC. It's pretty segregated there, too. American communities are divided along racial lines, largely to a lesser degree, socioeconomic lines. But that is still the way that most people live. So where we live, my daughter, we go to the park in our neighborhood, Eight out of 10 times, she's the only Black kid in the park. There are dozens of kids running around. She's the only one. And so many kids are still growing up never having been in close proximity to person of color. They don't even know what to do. We cannot pretend that children do not see difference. They do. Of course. They know long hair, they know short hair, they know dark skin, they know light skin. They see it. But the question is, what do they do with that information? How do we teach them how to process that information in a healthy way, in a way that helps them understand that we are all human beings and that we can all live together, and that the differences, the physical differences between us do not actually amount to all that much.

And I don't think that we are doing a very good job of teaching children that. I think there's also an effort to do the exact opposite, to pretend like that doesn't exist. Frankly, I spend a lot of time looking at what partisans are saying, what the far right's saying, what the left is saying. What the far right talks about a lot when it comes to race is that we are different. They are dangerous. They are a threat to us as white people. That's actually a real thing that people say. No, it is. I've been a little bit shocked. I don't want to overstate it because I've been covering politics for a long time, so I've seen a lot of things. But it is so sad to me that that is being and those people are not being ostracized. I agree with that. We have worked so hard as a country to not believe those things. I really believe that the vast majority of people in this country do not believe those things, or they do not think that it is right to take a whole category of people and say, They're bad, they're violent, they're stupid.

The whole structure does that. There are some people who are literally... They have millions of followers. They have huge followings, and this is what they preach. The problem with our politics right now is that those types of voices are not being properly ostracized. I agree. We've got to get to a place where we talk to the real people in this country, the ones that are not racist and the ones that are not crazy and the ones that are not pushing us into the far corners of division. The only reason I can get up every day and do this is because I really believe believe there are way more of those people around than not.

See, I have felt that there are more of us than them in a lot of ways. And I think with the Charlie Kirk murder, that's when I thought, This racism. Charlie Kirk, I hate that he was murdered. I hate that he was... All the terrible things that happened to him. But that does not change the fact that he was a racist and he was a misogynist. But yet in DC, they're The State of Oklahoma was like... I mean, I know federally they did the flags, but we had a superintendent that wanted to put curriculum and talk about Charlie Kirk. I'm like, he was not a hero.

I think what she's saying is there is a Where we live in Oklahoma, that racism that you said about they're different, they're dangerous, that is very real, and that has never gone anywhere. And it is mainly a part of white evangelical culture. Culture, which is different from Black evangelical culture, which is about social justice and things. White evangelical culture, if you search it back, the origins are the KKK, and it's still very, very prevalent. Pumps has family members that say those very things. And I agree with you that a little bit of cancel culture needs to be retained for this type of racism because it hurts all of us It hurts everybody. And when I see you on CNN sometimes, and I hear people diminishing DEI, some guy, and I'm knowing how much harder you had to work, how much smarter you are to get into Harvard. Here's a prime example. My sons, when they take the ACT, how much is the ACT prep test? Okay, here's your check. Go take the ACT prep test. The black kids that played on Roman's AAU basketball team, did they get to do the ACT prep? No. Their parents couldn't afford it.

I know that he is already getting affirmative action through my bank account. I know that. And I think that we have to have these conversations and normalize these conversations, because what happened in the '80s, where either you were a racist or you just weren't allowed to talk about race, wasn't helpful either. Listener, the hot book of the summer. I have it the wrong way. Take two. Listener, the Hot Book of the summer is now the cool book of the fall. It is in Trump's America, I can tell you with absolute certainty, the best book that has ever been written. And believe me, a lot of people are talking about it. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's talking about it. It took us one day to write it. On day one.

Because we took a cognitive test and it was book, write, done.

All right. Anyway, please buy our book. It's a great way to support us. It is a really fun read for the fall. Curl up with your pumpkin spice lattes and just enjoy living the American dream in Dipset Trump's America.

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I've been thinking a lot about this idea of cancel culture, right? Because you just When you brought that up, it brought that to my mind. I also think about the show that I do every night in which we affirmatively say we want voices at the table that are truly diverse, where we can really understand the range of views that exist in this country. We work really hard to make sure that there are actual MAGA voices at the table. That is important because I also think that we need to air it out. Let's put it on the table. Sometimes I think about the '80s and the quiet bigotry that existed at that time. I do wonder, would we be better off if we just knew, if people just actually were upfront about their views rather than it's underneath the surface?

Yeah, I don't see color.

Yeah, just a little bit hidden. I think that there is something about that time where people had maybe racist views, but they hid it. They didn't want people to know. I don't know that it helps us to pretend like it's not happening. I think we should really understand what are the contours of our politics. What are we really talking about here? What do you really believe and what do I really believe? Let's air that out. I think that there's a conversation that needs to actually happen. When I say that there are these reprehensible views that I think should be on the far corners of our politics, what I really mean is that our leaders, the people who actually run this place, this country, should have the guts to say, We don't believe those things. The tent is not open to those people. I think that's true of the far right. There are elements of the far left that that is true of. I don't know if that's really cancel culture so much as leadership, which is to say we're going to draw the boundaries of our movement.

What do you do when the racists are in charge, like they are now? Well, look- Stephen Miller is a white supremacist. He is, and he's basically running the White House. They keep Trump busy with his decorative projects. He's building the arch now. He's got his oval office design. And then you have these real sociopaths that are real anti-Semite, true white supremacists like Steven Miller. And even though he's Jewish, he's like a Nazi Jew.

Well, look, I can't speak to what Steven Miller's motivations are. I've met him. I've talked to him. I've interviewed him. How tall is he?

Yeah, we're dying to know.

Oh, God, I can't remember that. Short? I truly cannot remember him. I am short, so my understanding of people's height is not great. I do think that you have to understand what motivates the people who are in power. If people are in power, you got to understand what their ideology is, truly understand what motivates them, where they're going. And I do think that requires listening. I mean, I listen to what the Steve Bannons of the World say. I listen very carefully to what Steven Miller says because it really tells you where this is all heading. And my only point is that we do need to hear those things. And I think there are a lot of people in the country that really never hear what is being said on the other side. If you disagree with it, if you don't hear it and understand it and understand the motivations behind it, it's going to be really hard for you to figure out how to come about it. Then on the other side, on the right, there is also a similar lack of hearing. They don't hear a lot of what you believe. They don't understand it.

When you're consuming media on the right, you really don't hear what people on the left are saying at all. And so there needs to be a space where people can actually hear each other, and we can hear the real thing, not the watered-down version of it. And I do think that that is going to be uncomfortable for people to experience. That's why our show, it can be very uncomfortable for people because they're like, I can't believe This person is saying that. I'm just saying, you better believe it because half the country- No, believes it. One way or another, on the left or the right, half the country believes what these folks are saying. Believe it and listen to it and understand it. Also, maybe there's a part of your mind that you might say, Well, that little piece of what they're saying is not wrong. I disagree with everything else that they said, but that little piece of what they're is not wrong. And that little piece of what they're saying on the other side is not wrong. And I think that even if that happens 10% of the time, I think that's actually more than what most people experience in their day-to-day consuming of information on the internet and on television.

And I do think people get better when they have disagreements. When Jennifer and I disagree or we have different perspectives, I feel like I learn from her perspective and vice versa. Yeah, I do. I just feel like you get better when you hear everybody's perspective.

And even if I I disagree with somebody's perspective on the right, I agree with you that you have to understand where they're coming from, because what we have right now is a phenomenon where you have someone like Zora and Momdani who is getting triple Trumpers to vote for him. A Democratic socialist is getting people that voted for Trump three times to vote for him. Aocs experience this. Graham Plattner, the senatorial candidate in Maine. Well, so what's the connection between these far-left Democratic socialists and these MAGA triple Trumpers? Affordability.

Yeah. Economic interest. I think about that all the time because as I was writing this book about Jesse Jackson's campaign- Tell us about your book, too. This is not a shameful plug. It's just an actual connection here. I mean, he was running on economic interests that are shared between people of all of these different backgrounds. He called it the Rainbow Coalition, but it was a coalition of people who shared a common interest in economic prosperity, in bringing... Maga talks about America First, he talked about, Instead of spending money on foreign wars, let's spend that money at home. I think that's fundamentally the basis on which those campaigns in 1984 and 1988 were run. One of the things that people don't know that Jesse Jackson did was that he spent a lot of time with farmers. He was in Missouri, and he was in Iowa, and he was in more rural parts of Michigan and other parts of the country, in the south as well, on farms, on tractors, rallying with farmers. I remember that. Talking to white people. There's a part of the book where I mentioned that During the campaign, he went back to Selma, Alabama, to campaign.

There was a local white official who had been one of the state troopers who was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge beating civil rights marchers. He gave Jesse Jackson a key to the city and said, I was on the other side of the Selma march all those years ago, but now I'm giving you the keys to the city. Look, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, a lot had changed between the '60s when the civil rights movement was so deadly and so bloody and the '80s. But Jesse Jackson was going to white people and saying, We have more in common than we have that's different. And fundamentally, what we have in common is that the populism of it all was that the powers that be are not working for us. Government is working for big corporations. They're working for special interests, and they're not working for you. And that's the message that someone like Zora and Mamdani and Bernie Sanders and AOC are running on. To an extent, Donald Trump ran on. Yes, exactly right. What I think is so interesting is that there is something there. Populism is not a new thing. It's been around for a long time.

But the way that it has manifested in our politics has gone the spectrum all the way from Jesse Jackson to Donald Trump. That's because there is a yearning in the American populace, and really a lot of places, for people to feel heard, for people to feel listened to, for them to feel like somebody is interested in the things that matter to them in terms of their survival and their families and how they make it through a day. And that's part of the lesson. That's part of the lesson of this book. And also, there's something in Jesse Jackson's story about talking across difference. Another scene that I talk about in the book, as he was running for President, I think this was in 1984, he went down to visit George Wallace, who famously said, Segregation now, segregation forever. George Wallace had been shot in an assassination attempt and was not in good shape. He was in a wheelchair. Jesse Jackson went down there and visited him at his home, and they sat on the porch and they drank tea and ate food. They talked about running for president. George Wallace talked about how he was an avid segregationist.

There he was sitting with Jesse Jackson, a civil rights leader, and giving him advice on how to run for president. I do sometimes think, could something like that happen today? Would we tolerate someone going and visiting a former segregationist and sitting with them in their home? I don't know the reason why he did that, but I think one of the reasons that he did that was to basically We have to move forward as a country, and we have to do so by acknowledging what happened in the past, renouncing what happened in the past and holding hands together and walking into the future. I do think that that's always been Jesse Jackson's message, which was like, I'm not going to say I'm not going to talk to you because you're a racist, but I'm going to tell you what we have in common and ask you to move past your prejudices and move forward together with me. He's always been willing to do that in a way that I think rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, surprised a lot of people, maybe confused a lot of people. But at the very least, it's interesting.

I think there are some lessons in there about the ways in which he didn't just say, This guy is irredeemable. I mean, you could easily have said that George Wallace was irredeemable. But he went to his house and said, First of all, you're going to have me in your home. I mean, I think that alone is a flex, right? Absolutely. To show up and just to say, I'm there. But also to say that the future of the country is going to mean that we are going to help you move into the future where you abandon these reprehensible views. Black people have always had to do that. We've always had to help white people abandon their reprehensible views and walk into the future together. That's what I was- And Jesse Jackson has been that person. He did it in the '60s, in the '70s, in the '80s, and so on and so forth. I think a lot of people think of him, on the right, maybe even on the left, as this race hustler figure that's always talking about race. But he He wasn't talking about race to divide people. First of all, he was talking about race to say, You have political power, Black people.

You have the power to vote. You should use that power. But he was also saying, We're all in this together. It was a rainbow coalition. Black people, white people, gay people. He was one of the first people to talk about gay people openly at a Democratic convention. It was about saying, We see who who you are, and we're going to all be in this together going forward into the future.

That race hustler, I think that is a trope that a lot of white people use when black people make them feel uncomfortable. I remember when he was running and lived in an all-white neighborhood, went to an all-white public school. Maybe I graduated with 600, 700 people. Maybe there's three or four black kids. When it's white, as an upbringing as you can get. I remember him running. I remember my parents liking him. But I remember just the general vibe was the typical, Oh, he's a crazy black person. That was the vibe. Because the color of his skin and because he spoke so openly about human rights, race, whatever he spoke about, the white default setting is to call him a race hustler and then be dismissive. And I remember that, and I was probably at 10: 00 to 15: 00 somewhere during that time period, but that was the default setting that the culture that I grew up in, where a Black person, no matter what they said, it was automatically dismissed. Demeaned.

Yeah. That's one of the reasons, frankly, that I wrote this book. When I started going back through the clips and reading how he was talked about, it was so clear to me that even in the contemporaneous coverage of him as a candidate, people could never see past his Blackness, and also the that he was a part of the civil rights movement, which a lot of people still thought was a radical thing. When people did show up at his rallies, and sometimes people would come just out of curiosity, they would come out of those rallies thinking, Oh, he actually is saying what I believe he's actually standing up for us. In today's world, you can only imagine somebody at the time in the 1980s, he was so well known. He was so well known. I mean, very popular among the people who loved him. But even if you didn't love him, you knew who he was. National figure. Yeah, totally. He was a massive national figure. I mean, there are photos in the book of him with Don King and Donald Trump. Donald Trump was everywhere. Donald Trump was everywhere. They were at a fight, a boxing match together.

I mean, these were the types of people. He was with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. I mean, he was one of the most famous people in America. If that were transplanted to the 21st century with the Internet, I can only imagine how this would have been a different story. Totally. A totally different story. Totally.

In many ways, I think that you have Jesse Jackson that probably played a huge role in priming the electorate for having a black President, Barack Obama.

In many, many ways.

Bernie Sanders is priming the electorate to rid themselves of corporate interest and go back to the people. He never won. Bernie Sanders never won. But they do important national work that helps move the pulse of the electorate. Okay, Abby, we have to play a quick lightning round of Had It or Hit It. Oh, my God. Welcome to Had It or Hit It. I would hit it. Had it. Had it. I hit it every day, sometimes twice a day. All right. Had It or Hit It, Generational Warfare.

Had It.

The Gen Z versus Millennial Yeah.

I'm sorry. We were cool once, too. I bet you guys feel that, right?

I'm over it. I don't know that I was ever cool. I was. I was super cool.

I mean, I thought I was, but I'm looking back at pictures, I think- I'm like, Listen, Gen Z, you guys are also going to grow up one day, and they're going to be making fun of you, too.

That's right. I'm sorry.

It's coming.

But I still think we're cool. Okay. Had it or hit it, TikTok dances.

Had it. I'm over it. I'm over. I'm sorry. I know. It's like 2% One of the time, it's great. And then the rest of the time, it's cringe for me. I know that that's controversial, but I just- I agree with you.

If they're really good, I like it. But when I see just the girl that's in the grocery store aisle, I'm like, What are you doing? You cannot do TikTok dancing in the grocery store.

Also, ma'am, this is a sidewalk. Right.

People have to go places.

Do not be recording your TikTok dance on a sidewalk. I would have that for sure.

Okay. Had it or hit it, Harvard University. I'm sorry, I put you in a pickle.

Hit it. Can I just say one really quick thing? I know this is rapid fire. Yeah. Harvard University does an enormous amount to make sure that people who otherwise would not have the chance to graduate from college, graduate from college. I am one of those people. They have incredibly generous financial aid. They do not let anybody not graduate because of an inability to pay. I wish more universities, public and private. Many of the IVs, I think, do this, but I wish they would be more like Harvard in that respect and do not let a failure to pay prevent people from graduating. People give Harvard such a bad rap, but they are so good about that. I'm a graduate, so I am biased. But I do think that one of the biggest problems we have in this country is people going bankrupt trying to get an education, and we've got to stop that. Anyway, end of I like it.

All right, last one. Had it or hit it, the United States of America.

Hit it. I am still here for this country. Listen, we are here. We're going to be 250 years old, and We are going to be here, okay? I do think it's been worse than this in the sense in the global scheme of things. Are you kidding me? There's no question. We are going to get through this just like we've gotten through everything else. The process of us getting through this is really just about how you decide what American you want to be. Are you going to be Are you going to be one of those Americans that makes the country better, or are you going to be one of the Americans who gets us deeper into division? I think that this is the moment for all of us to decide what part of the history we want to be in and write our own story and do the work. Do the work of making this a great country.

We're on team better. Yeah. We're on team better, although sometimes I'm on team.

We are team better. Hey, I'm on team America all day, every day. I think that we have the fundamental capacity to be better in a way that is head and shoulders above every other country on this planet. I really do think so. It is the self-correcting ability that we have that is what makes us different. That's not an automatic thing. It's because there are people who live here who make that happen. I think that that's going to continue to be the case.

I agree. Abby, I love having you on. I cannot wait to read your book because he was such a part of the political landscape growing up. It's always a pleasure to see you.

You will learn a lot, I think. And listen, it's the good, the bad, and the ugly. He's a real person, right? I don't believe in telling sugar-coated stories. I tell the real deal. I think you'll learn a lot about him as a person and about us as a country. And it'll be interesting to you, even if you lived through it, which many people did.

I'm excited. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Abby. I'll see you soon. Thank you guys. Great to see you. I'll see you guys. Great to see you. Listener, we'll see you next Tuesday and Thursday. Yeah. Okay. Bye.

I'll tell you what I've had it with.

Let's hear it. I'm had it with that. Listen up, patriots, gay-triots, and matrix. We have a new podcast that has dropped. It's called iHip News. It's Monday through Friday, every day, 15 to 20 minutes hot takes on the political landscape of the United States of America always served with a side of petty grievances.

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