Speaker 1: So, people are backing away from the mic. They're backing
away from 2020. They're backing away from their progressive politics.
It's so weird to me. On the one hand, you've
got these democratic socialists who are winning, right? And then
you have the corporate wing of the democratic party, the
James Carvels and such who say, oh, well, we have to,
we have to pivot back to Joe Biden politics, something
unthreatening and moderate so that we can win. Although I
don't know where the proof is that that causes you
to win.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You But it's confusing to me because at the same
time that you see people, what I call progressive posers,
folks pretending to be democratic socialists when their voting record
doesn't show that, the sort of Timu Mamdani phenomena, everybody
wants to be the mayor of New York, but nobody's
willing to take the real positions of the mayor of
New York. At the same time, you have In Florida,
which would seem the most unlikely of places to elect
an Angie Nixon, or at least get her through in
the primary, a black woman who is a democratic socialist,
at the same time, you have this backing away from
the issues. And I'm thinking of our governor, Gavin Newsom,
who of course, are broadcasting from California, from the Crenshaw District, California,
South LA, Leimert Park. Our governor, who was touted as
a progressive and actually had taken some progressive positions and
supported some very positive kinds of legislations earlier in his career,
now is pivoted. And reparations is the perfect example, right?
He He signed the legislation to bring Dr. Shirley Weber's
bill to fruition, creating the first task force on reparations
for black people, black Americans in the nation, and bringing
it across the finish line with a powerful 1,200-page report.
Then we see the governor vetoing everything and sort of
backing away from those positions in support of reparations. and
tempering his image, we could say. And presidential ambitions seem
to be the reason, I would say, for that. The U.S. Congresswoman,
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who came, burst onto the scene, overturning a
moderate Democrat, an incumbent, a longtime incumbent there in New York,
with the label of democratic socialist and an ally of
Bernie Sanders. In fact, they did that tour together last year.
Now she's saying that woke was crazy. Now she's backing
away from the progressive or radical progressive politics that that
she came into office on. What is that? And I,
you know, I think it's problematic. I know she's thinking
of running for president. I get that. And I'm a
fan of AOC. Don't get me wrong. I think she's
done a great job as a like her politics, not everything,
but a lot of her political positions and policies. But
the fact that she's now saying backing away from woke,
that means, number one, either your principles are shaky, they
were never really solid in the first place, or you're
an opportunist. Number two, it means that the conservatives, the
anti-justice wing of the American body politic, has done such
a good job in demonizing woke that you feel you
have to distance yourself from woke. What does that mean? Really,
it means pronouns. What does that mean? It means calling
people what they want to be called. If you want
to be called Carl, I call you Carl. If you
want to be called Jenny, I call you Jenny. That's
basic respect. Now they want to call it wokeness. Treating
other people with respect is now wokeness. If you're a he,
I call you a he. If you're a she, I
call you a she. Who decides that? You, not me.
Is that crazy? No, that's just respect. Um, In a
recent interview, the congresswoman said, walked back her support of
the idea of defunding the police. Well, again, this is
a victory for the right and their ability to take
things and twist them. Defund the police means taking money
out of police budgets and putting it into other things
that can keep us safe. Mental health, anti-homelessness programs, Public
safety measures like lighting, like community councils, like intervention and
prevention efforts. But now she's walking it back. And she says,
her explanation is that because during 2020 and COVID, we
were willing to entertain a lot more things in the
public space. That we were more open to a range
of policies. But that those policies are no longer acceptable.
Why not? Why not? So she's getting a pat on
the back from conservative political strategists like James Carville. like
this guy Brent Buchanan, who's quoted in the LA Times,
calling her a good politician. And James Carville, who says
she can simply say, I'm grown. And people understand that.
As if being a democratic socialist or being a progressive
or putting forth ideas that some consider radical, like health
care for all, is immature or a sign that someone
is not fully developed politically. or chronologically, which is just
not the case. They're simply different philosophical approaches to solving
the same problems. But what you're telling me is that
Bernie Sanders hasn't quite grown up yet? Is that your argument?
That Angela Davis just needs a few more years to mature,
and then she'll stop being an abolitionist? I have to
disagree with that. And I don't think, I think we
lean into such moderate apologist pablum at the peril of
our party. That is not the path to victory. It's
the path to being another middle-of-the-road, nothing-burger of a politician.
Speaker 2: 809-20-1580.
Speaker 1: Agree, disagree, or you got another conversation. I'd love to
hear from you. 809-20-1580. I'm Dominique DiPrima for KBLA Talk 1580. Absolutely.
I do appreciate you on that. I say this and
I've been saying it for years, even before these democratic
socialists started doing better at the polling that we, the
people of We, the people, are where the energy is
in this party. We, the progressives, we, the black women, we,
the Latino people, we, the progressive people, the young people
in the party. Why are we listening? I know, James Carville, legendary, blah, blah, blah.
Why are we listening to all these folks that we've
already tried their way? If you always do what you've
always done, then you always get what you've always got. Yeah, okay,
thank you. Thank you for Bill Clinton, LOL, and welfare
reform that made more people poor. Thank you for Joe Biden.
Thank you for Barack Obama. I mean, I voted for
Biden and Obama, but my point is, would I rather
have had a more progressive option? Yes. And now we
have that possibility, and I'm so tired of it. of
hearing these Dems cry about how they can't win in
a general election. And then mainstream media piling on with
that same dumb narrative. Prove it. Let's prove they can't
win in a general election. Let's let Bernie go through
the convention. and get the nomination that he deserved. Let's
stop kneecapping our own progressives or convincing our progressives like
AOC that they need to kneecap or nerf themselves into
these sort of, you know, declawed versions of themselves. And
I also think that leads to disillusionment on the part
of our base, right? Because our base, like I'm a politician,
the base, because When you come into office on these lofty,
progressive ideas, and then you pivot to being a middle-of-the-road
corporate dem, and that happens over and over again, we
start to think that we lose faith, we lose hope,
we lose the impetus to even move. And to be fair,
people that think that Barack Obama pivoted are wrong. He
was always a moderate. He ran as a moderate. And
we knew what we were getting. We, you know, would
I take them over the resident every single day of
the week? But what I'm saying is right now we
have the opportunity for real progressive change and we need
to push the envelope, not back down. All right, let's
go to Alegria calling us from Los Angeles. Good morning.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Dominique. Thank you so much for taking my call.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. What's on your mind?
Speaker 3: Honestly, I am mostly just calling to thank you because
I appreciate you in this space so much. It's so
great to have reason and brilliant thinking on these topics.
And it's so refreshing and it's so appreciated. I didn't
realize how close we were in our Bernie, in our
Bernie love and dedication back in the day. I was
definitely a diehard Bernie Sanders, 2016, 2020, like, We should
have pushed that omelet long ago, and it's like you
just want to shake people. And, you know, it's like
the Democratic Party, which I've been a Democrat in forever,
really it seems like primarily and intentionally, like they'll do
whatever they can to lose. They're like intentional losers because
they won't listen to the actual people, the progressive people
of their party and beyond who are saying we want
something different and we expect something different. And it's difficult
and it's sad. So I just appreciate your voice here.
Speaker 1: I mean, and the thing about it is, so what
your takeaway is from Angie Nixon winning or your takeaway
is from Mamdani winning is that we all need to be, no,
we should all be, you know, East Indian or we
should all, you know, have locks. It's not, oh, look.
Medicare for all is really popular. People need health care. Oh, wow,
a public option for grocery stores is super popular because
people can't afford stuff. Like, instead of looking at the policies,
they want to keep the person and declaw them, take
away what people responded to in the first place. We
don't love AOC because she's got great lipstick and she's
an attractive Latina. We like her because of her policy positions.
And that is what I'm objecting to about the party here.
Speaker 3: Yes, agreed, agreed. The focus is always off. We are
saying we don't want our money to bomb children in Palestine.
We want health care. We want a humane society, and
we deserve that our money and taxes and politicians fight
for it. and they're unable to hear the things they
are so dedicated to their corporate donors and status quo that,
you know, they might as well not have ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's well said, but then to your
point about Democrats being dedicated to losing, the ones that
are winning are the ones that are bucking the party.
They are the Mamdani's. They are the Angie Nixon's. And
that's why I'm saying how can you, You want to
co-opt that, but once you co-opt it, it doesn't win anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, Alegria. I absolutely appreciate the call. She called
me at 800-920-1580. I invite you to do the same.
We've got Fred from L.A. on the phone. Good morning, Fred. Fred,
you with me? Microphone check.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, I guess we have lost Fred, or perhaps he'll
call me back. He called at 809-20-1580, 809-20-1580. It seems
more dire to me because we do have our midterm elections,
and the U.S. Extreme Court has now backed up the
resident in limiting mail-in voting. That may seem like a
little thing or not a thing to you, But it
is a big deal. This is part of a larger
plan by the Trump administration to limit voting. And it's
not voting for everyone that they want to limit. It's
limit voting for you. You, the progressive. You, the woman. You,
the black person. You, the Latino that's not, you know,
Team FAFO. It's trying to limit progressive voters. It's trying
to limit democratic voters. It's trying to limit low income voters.
And that is because they want to win. And if
you look at, this is the thing that really blew
my mind. When I started looking at the way that
Republicans are outnumbered all over the country in terms of
the number of humans that vote and how they've been
able to maintain control of these state houses, the White House,
the extreme court and the Congress, even though they don't
have the numbers, is really the story of the problems
with our democracy, right? It's the manipulation of the maps
through gerrymandering. It's the pimping of the electoral college. It's
the fact that DC and Puerto Rico do not have
statehood when in fact they should. Or if Puerto Rico
wants to be independent, be independent, but have a truly
representative democracy It's term limits on our Supreme Court. These
are the things that have allowed a group of people
that do not represent the majority of Americans or the
majority of American voters to continue to control so much
of the politics of this country. It's a masterclass in
undermining democracy. Let's go to Fred. We got him now.
Fred from L.A., you're on.
Speaker 4: Okay. Can you hear me now?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: Okay. Now, I want to respond to Adam from the
last hour. He's looking for something racist under every rock
on the poles that are knocked down on the storm
back east. I was a district driver by choice from
1979 to 86 of Palms Overhead. And you only can
set one pole. It takes six hours to set a pole.
Let me give you, I'm fast. If I came in
this morning and some drunk knocked over a pole last
night and looked like a toothpick snap, I would put
the hardware on the truck, a five-ton stake, go to
the pole. The lineman would change everything out, set a
new pole, change everything out, put the old stuff back
on me. It takes six hours. And then maybe in
this emergency situation, they might be able to get to
a second poll and do that. But that's a total
of a 12, 14 hour day. It takes six hours
to set a poll, Dominique.
Speaker 1: Okay, Fred, I'm going to suggest that you go back
and listen to that hour again, because Adam is very
much a by the book journalist and he actually was
only stating facts. He didn't say anything. Any conjecture about
race would have been coming from me. What Adam stated
were facts that, that, In black areas, it does take
longer to get the power back on. That black areas
are more likely to have power outages. Those are not opinions.
Those were actually facts. And so if you don't like them,
you know, that's your prerogative. But they're not coming from
Adam Mahoney's opinion. Those are actually supported by data and
you can go to capital B news.org and actually read
the article or go back. All of my podcasts are
available for free wherever you get your podcasts. They're also,
they live on YouTube so you can see them any,
anytime you want. I don't think he was looking for race.
He was just telling us the facts as, as they
are reported. And so, yeah, We're fact-based. That's how we
do it, Fred. Appreciate the call. We've got news, traffic,
and sports. Speaking of facts, then. only right here. And man,
as I said, the news cycle is spinning wildly. So
I think all of these conversations are important because With
the resident of the White House now moving to restrict
mail-in voting, and the Supreme Court is backing him on
that so far, even though there's another case that still
has to move through that may impact it. But basically,
they're already signaling they might as well just crown the
guy king. But in any case, if we are not
motivated to vote because we're all disillusioned by the these
sort of, you know, moderate, middle-of-the-road, defanged, not-about-nothing Democrats, then
we will continue to lose, even with the president, the
residents' approval ratings in the toilet. As those of you
who listen to me closely know, I clearly pivoted because
our guest for today did not arrive. And so I
have one of my homies who is joining me In
the clutch here, he's an award-winning journalist, a host, a
multidisciplinary artist, and a Harvard-trained scholar in faith, justice, and
public life. He's been in the New York Times, NPR,
CNN variety, and of course, first things first, Jared Hill.
Good morning. Good morning.
Speaker 2: Can I just say that I am honored to be
one of the people that you would call in a pinch.
So I'm just grateful to be here. So thank you
for having me. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm honored to have you in the phone to
call in a pinch. Okay, so there's a lot of
things going on. And I was talking about, you know,
this whole everyone sort of backing away from woke and
AOC renouncing defund the police and, you know, and at
the same time, you've got these democratic socialists energizing the
party and people winning and bucking the democratic establishment very successfully.
And we were talking off the air, at least via text,
about the alleged meeting, collaboration, whatever it is, between Hakeem
Jeffries and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. I'm not quite
sure what his title is beyond that. Special envoy of BS.
And again, you know, with Hakeem Jeffries, you have someone
who who's never been a progressive. He's always been a moderate.
He studied at the feet of Nancy Pelosi. But I
think it's becoming more pronounced now because of the loud
conversation about Gaza.
Speaker 2: So I'm very torn when it comes to the talking
Jeffries moment and meeting with Jared Kushner. I think of
myself as pretty left. And I come from like a
conflict resolution background. You mentioned that I went to Harvard
Divinity School. My degree is a master's of religion and
public life. And we look at the ways in which
a religion kind of operates as a power structure and
the ways that we can approach that from our different,
if you will. And it's been interesting to me because
a lot of that work has been rooted in peace
building and conflict resolution research. And so the ways in
which we are ever going to resolve these conflicts is
going to have to deal with some kind of engagement.
And also, I don't like the idea of Jared Kushner
sitting down with Joaquin Jeffries for anything.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And so I'm wrestling with both of those things at
the same time, because the things that we want, the
things that we want to achieve, the things that we're
aiming towards, they're going to require some kind of engagement, right?
And one of the books that we focused on in
my program was The Moral Imagination, written by John Lederach.
And within it, he talks about how peace is not
something that happens when you put guns down. Like, peace
also requires, like, building. and engagement and working together and
having conversations about what each other need, et cetera. And
so when I see this moment, and I hear you, right?
When I see this moment and these kinds of moments
where two people are having a meeting that you wouldn't
ordinarily want to see have a meeting, I also have
to consider what Hakeem Jeffries' job is and what things
are presented to him to say yes or no to
and the opportunities that can come from those yeses or nos.
And so I don't like how this looks or feels.
And I don't even know that I trust that it
was really useful. And I have to say, like, if
I want to believe in this guy to be able
to do his job, even if he's not as, as,
as far left as I would like him to be,
but I'm, he's the one that I, that I have
to work with or support. I have to kind of
want to give him a little bit of the benefit
of the doubt here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the, um, Talk show host Risi Colbert
made an interesting point, I think, yesterday on Instagram. She
was saying, why are we spending so much time criticizing
Hakeem Jeffries when we have to beat Republicans in the midterms?
We're so busy criticizing, and I'm guilty of this, not
that I focus so much on Hakeem Jeffries, but I'm
so tired of these corporate, moderate, Democratic, mainstream establishment types
telling us that we need to be electable. that I
probably spend more time critiquing them than I do critiquing
the folks we got to beat in November. So I
may be guilty as charged. And she was pointing out
that there are thousands of posts about people criticizing Hakeem
Jeffries and very few posts criticizing Republicans that we'll be
running against in November. What are your thoughts on that, Jarrett?
Speaker 5: Well, I..
Speaker 4: We..
Speaker 2: I've been a journalist for 25 years as of next month.
And so our job, thank you. I always say I
counted 11th and 12th grade on the newspaper because those
years counted.
Speaker 1: I was wondering that, but okay, I'll count those.
Speaker 2: I thought you were doing math in your head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But I say that because the role of this job
is to check power, right? Is to raise the flag
and say, hey, this is not right. Or, hey, this
is something that's going on. And so I think there
is an importance in the critique. that you bring to
this moment or to these kinds of situations, that is
the job that you have, right? As a journalist, as
a progressive, as a liberal, as a leftist, as a
person with a voice, with a platform, as a person
who is out here doing this every day, right? That
is the job. And it's somebody else's job sometimes to
be the person who comes in and brings all of
these different pieces together to be able to make them useful.
And so I don't think it's wrong for you to
be checking... King Jeffries in this kind of moment or
any of the other Democrats, because as people further to
the left, it is our job to continue to pull
this coalition left, right? And so like when we had
this conversation about the mayor's race or even with the
governor's races, right? Ideally, we get two Democrats in each
of these roles so that we can pull whoever to
the left, that moderate person to the left. And that
was the conversation we had going into the midterms here.
And so I think it's important I think we just
have to figure out, like, what are the things that
we want and how do we get them? Because I
think that when we look at the Republicans, we see
people who are purely after power. They only want power.
And whatever it's going to take to get that power,
they will do. They will change the rules at a
moment's notice. The laws and rules are subject to change
without notice.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so, but we are here talking about people. We
want to, we want a lot of things more than
power and that is more difficult to achieve. And so
it's important for all of us to be in this,
in this back.
Speaker 4: And forth together.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's well said. Let's, let's go to Barbara calling us
from Orange County. Hi, Barbara. You're on with Jared Hill
and Dominique DiPrima. Welcome.
Speaker 5: Good morning, Dominique. I have three things right quick. Number one,
I voted for Bernie in the primary that time too.
I wish he'd have won. Number two, When would Dr.
Julia Malvo come on? Because there's some really things happening.
And number three, can we get Stacey Abrams and hire
her to work with a couple of the states to
help organize us like she did in Atlanta and flip
some stuff and maybe we can get where we need
to be?
Speaker 1: I love the way you're thinking, Barbara. Jarrett, you have
thoughts for Barbara?
Speaker 2: I'm looking up Stacey Abrams right now. I'm like, I
know that Stacey Abrams is doing a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Right, she's busy, right, right, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's not doing anything.
Speaker 4: Dr.
Speaker 1: Malveaux, yes, you know, I have her on speed dial, Barbara,
every time I'm confused about economic issues. Like right now,
I'm so confused about these tariffs. I thought the court
said he had to pay back the tariffs, but now
we're imposing tariffs on Canada. So, yes, I can't tell
you the exact day, Barbara, but Dr. Malveaux will be
back any minute.
Speaker 5: Well, here's the reason why I ask. It's because, I
don't know if you know this, but Aliko Dengote in
Nigeria just built the largest oil processing plant, which is
more than triple what two of the other major plants
are doing. And they are going public or they just
went public?
Speaker 1: Not tracking it. I will look it up. And when Dr.
M comes on, you know, she used to be my professor,
the youngest, flyest professor ever. When Dr. M comes up,
I will definitely ask her about that oil plant. Thank you, Barbara.
I appreciate you. Did you find anything, Jarrett?
Speaker 2: Well, I want to know that she has a show
that she's already been doing for quite a while, Stacey Abrams,
over on the Cricket Network. And she's really been doing
a lot of work of kind of breaking down the
ways in which fascism has been rolling out. And so
she's The most recent time that I saw her, she
was talking about the 10 different points of change that
have to be affected to demarcate fascism. I believe that's
how it was positioned.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, Barbara's talking about the on-the-ground organizing that she
did when she pulled all those voters, you know, and
gave them a run for their money for governor and,
you know, mobilizing black voters, mobilizing progressive voters, women. This
mail-in voting decision by the U.S. Extreme Court, I don't
know how exactly it's going to manifest. I know that
for me, as soon as I heard it, I said, okay,
I won't be voting by mail because it literally means
you're putting your ballot into federal custody. And the Supreme
Court has said that they can restrict the use of
mail ballots. So I don't know how that's going to
land exactly. But there are people that don't have any
other option. You know what I mean? They're not near
a polling place. They're not mobile. It's really worrisome. So
I think that's where that's coming from is how do
we mobilize people so that no matter how much Republicans cheat,
because we can see that they're gearing up to cheat
in the midterms, that they lose anyway because the margins
are so overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mail-in ballot piece of this upcoming election is
a really frustrating space because it's a place where we
can very clearly see that they have created a problem
that didn't exist, right? They've also created a narrative around
a problem.
Speaker 5: As if it existed, but it didn't.
Speaker 2: We've known that mail-in ballots have been a safe way
to vote across the country for, I believe, generations at
this point. And so when I think about this story,
it frustrates me in that kind of way. And I
think that for myself, I always take my ballot that
comes in the mail and I go drop it off
at the ballot. at the polling place on election day.
That's how I've been kind of always worrying through my
voting plan, if you will. And right now, we keep
saying to people, like, it's very important to, like, have
a plan for how you vote. Because as we are
approaching this, we can see Los Angeles, you might not
be as concerned, but who knows what could be happening.
But we know that people are listening to this around
the country and around the world. And for those of
you that are in other places that are not going
to be as we would see it here in Los Angeles,
it might be a great idea to start thinking about, like,
how do you want to vote? Because as Dominique has
put it, we are putting your vote into federal custody
and we know what federal custody looks like. We know
what that looks like in various different kinds of ways.
Speaker 1: Justice Katandji Brown-Jackson said that this decision, quote, needlessly injects
chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections. And clearly
that's exactly what it's meant to do. So this is,
you know, this is a concern. And I think it is,
I think Barbara's correct that one of the antidotes to
that concern is to mobilize such a tsunami of voters
that the cheating doesn't win. I think that's got to
be part of it, whether it's Stacey Abrams or Latoya
Brown or me or you, the get out the vote
effort is going to have to be Herculean. Jared Hill
is here with me, filling in in the clutch, pinch
hitting today on First Things First. I'm Dominique DiPrima for
KBLA Talk 1580. Okay, Republicans, Jared Hill says, their main
goal is power. no matter what it takes, uh, Jared
Hill and award-winning journalists is joining me for the second
part of the hour. Um, does that include writing in
the trunks of SUVs and, uh, and you know, yeah,
I mean, is, is that, is that what this, of
course I'm, I'm referring to the, the, the woman known
as the president's binky. Um, Is she, you know, is
she after power? Is it a love connection? What is
happening with Natalie Harp and the resident of the White House?
Speaker 2: So I've not heard the president's binky. That's a personal memory.
But I have heard different kinds of things similar to that.
I think the word that the White House has tried
to use is like ballet or something like that. Her
position is like ballet. very unclear in another way that
she kind of spoke about Jared Kushner and the way
that this administration and the crime family works. But like,
it's interesting to kind of hear Natalie Harp's story. Natalie
Harp is someone who is always at the side of
the president. She originally was a personality over on one
of the conservative networks. And she has really just fawned
over the president in ways that don't make any logical
sense to me. She's like she has written letters to
the president saying that he's the only thing that matters
to her. She's now been working in this administration now
over the course of two years, and she's the person
who kind of gets information to the president, but also
spends a lot of time with the president and with
him at all times, seemingly. You're talking about her being
in the trunk of an SUV because of the way that...
I don't remember even how that started to happen, but
that was one of the first things I heard about her.
Speaker 1: Because there was no room for her in the car. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2: They've got her running behind golf carts. They've got her
doing all kinds of like unreasonable things because she's so
devoted to the president. And the more and more I
hear about this, I have a lot of questions about
like where she's actually came from or what the actual
goal is or like giving her information or who she
might be giving information to. She's participating in a lot
of meetings that the president is a part of, all
of his appearances. You think I'm, you think I'm wild?
Speaker 1: No, I think you're right. I mean, She could be
a handler. Who knows? She might be, you know, she
could be sent by Kim Jong-un. Like, we don't really know.
Her brother says she's written letters to more than one president,
including Bush, which makes her sound like a groupie. But
who the heck knows?
Speaker 2: Well, I think about a few different things. Like, I
don't have any information that says, like, you know, she's
been planted by any of these countries or whatever, any
of these adversaries. But I do know that this is
an administration that does not run background checks on folks
and gives security clearance away a lot more freely than
any other administration would. We do know that this is
a family that has relationships all over the world because
of their holdings and their businesses. And we've seen those
kinds of relationships kind of played out in the first
administration and then in the years subsequent. And so when
we think about a person who made her way up
to the president just by being a blonde white woman
who admired him and is always fawning over him, that's
a pretty.
Speaker 4: Low bar, right?
Speaker 2: We don't really have, we don't have a.
Speaker 4: Lot of, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of reason to have faith that like she is
someone who has a high moral standard or is even
like really devoted to the values of this country. We
don't know those kinds of things, right? We don't know
how she could be getting information. We don't know what
she's doing with that information. We don't know what she
has on her. They call her the human printer. She
carries around a small printer to be able to print
out information. to the president to give him information that
he tends to like. We tend to see a lot
of that information end up in his social posts. We
tend to see him take a lot of the information
that comes from her as being fact. And that has
a major implication when you're giving information to the president
of the United States. There are other jobs that she
supposedly has that are related to his health, related to
various different ways that I don't see people talking about
in media, about things that he needs and services that
are necessary for his day-to-day ongoings. But I think that
Natalie Harp is someone who could stand to be a
really interesting figure as America continues to watch her sit
next to its president.
Speaker 1: I mean, real talk, if my husband has a valet
that's traveling in a trunk to be with him, she's
fired immediately. I don't know how Melania is cool with
that either.
Speaker 2: Well, Dominique, to this point, the days after John Ossoff
made the comments about flying around with Natalie, we saw
Melania Trump for the first time up here at the
White House, right? She stepped out into the Rose Garden
for an event that was going on, and the first
thing she said was, I heard you guys miss me, right?
So it has been addressed, right? It is a present conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt. No doubt, Jarrett. Thank you so much
for hopping on at the last minute. Remind folks how
to follow you and find your writings and artworks.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can find all my work. I'm at Jarrett
Hill on all the different platforms. You can check out
my book, Historically Black Phrases, from my one of your
little friends to who all going to be there at historicallyblackphrases.com.
Speaker 4: We have a new.
Speaker 2: Game that comes out in September called Watch Your Mouth,
which is a game that you can play with your
friends or family at the cookout, the reunion, whatever it is.
So all of those different things you can check out. And, yeah,
thank you for having me, Domino.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Tavis Smiley's on deck. He's got
a great lineup for you today. As per usual, you
do not want to miss that. Tap in with me
on social media at Deprima Radio, D-I-P-R-I-M-A, and then radio
or at KBLA 1580 everywhere. Like my father, the late,
great poet Laura. of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka, used to
say a person is either free or they are not free.
There can be no apprenticeship for freedom. Until tomorrow, my
beloved KBLA delegation, one love.