Ah from me historic Lemonard Park in Los Angeles, California. I'm Tavist Smiley and I'm so glad to see you and me back in stride again. Before we get started with today's show, let me invite you to follow me on Facebook and Instagram at the real Tavis Smiley and get updates on x that's formerly Twitter at Tavis Smiley. By the way, should you miss any product today's program or want to catch up on previous shows, you can always visit the Tavismileyshow dot com. That's the Tavismightyshow dot com or wherever you get your podcast and listen to the Tavismoley podcast version of this live program at your leisure. Another great show on tap for you today. It's Monday, so we'll check in with dot Cornel West on the top side of our two as per usual, on the B side of our two, Karen Audiam is a bad girl. She was on this program when she was summarily dismissed by The Washington Post last year for what you ask doing her job. Today, an arbitrator ordered the Washington Post to reinstate Karen after she posted about white men who espouse hatred and violence following Charlie Kirk's killing of victory today for the right kind of Karen, we'll talk about it with my colleague and White House correspondent in the quarterlot quote on the b side of our two, plus Hakeem Jeffries is hanging out with Jared Kushner. What's that about? Lots to cover on the backside of our two in our third hour, two more conversations. First, we'll take the political prediction market to task with Galen Druke of the gd Politics podcast, and then on the b side of our three year conversation with the Emmy nominated veteran actor Ernest Harden Junior. Ernest is nominated for his outstanding guest appearance on the HBO Max hit medical drama The Pit. So Ernest comes live and stud do today in our third and final hour on the backside at least, but in this first hour, let's talk politics and more with former White House speech writer and Emmy winner himself Eli Addie Eli, How are you, sir? Great? How are you to man? If I can play man's good to have you, I can plain that being ingrade, you know me, let me let me. I mentioned South Carolina, and I want to go there right quick. Here. Pete booda judge, was in South Carolina over the weekend. He's thinking about another run and so he was there this weekend. Made made some natural news, of course, and uh, we may talk about that a little bit later in today's program. But I want to go to South Carolina because Donald Trump was just in South Carolina, uh, and had this to say about what he expects of Democrats if and when they take back the House this fall years ago. They're gonna flee our country. I'm going to be impeach. They're gonna do a peach me. They have no idea. Why I saw it today A congressman said on one of the shows, We're going to a peach person or Trump, We're going to a peach Oh really? Why the person was saying a neutral commentator for a change. I like neutral commentator. Oh, I see, you're gonnapeach him? Why? Uh, well, I don't know, I don't know. I mentioned earlier that we'll talk to new Cord lack Quarte about Jared Kushner and Hakim Jeffries and the meeting they had in the context or that is the backdrop here comes Donald Trump saying they are going to impeach me. I am not so sure about that. Uh, let me just let me just well, let me do this. I got thirty second shit, I wouldn't be fair. I want to hear what Eli has to say about that when we come forward. I do not believe that haw King Jeffries has the stomach to do that. I don't think the Democrats went back to the House, Hakim Jeffrey is gonna be jumping up and down to impeach Donald Trump. So Trump feels that way. Clearly there are those in the House who want to see Donald Trump impeached. I just don't know if impeachment sits anywhere near the top of the Democratic agenda, if they can pull this off coming November. But the president, he's bracing him himself for effects if the Dems take back the House. We'll talk about it with Eli Addi when we come forward on Tavis Smile. So Donald Trump is is concerned or feigning concern, that Democrats are going to impeach him if they get to the gavel back come November. What say you? You know, it's a complicated question because I'm a parent of young kids and as a lot of people with young kids will will tell you there have to be consequences. Right, we do have a justice system. I think there's been unbelievable corruption, self dealing, flouting of laws left and right in this administration on a scale we've never seen. But at the same time, I think if Leader Jefferies is reluctant to make the next two years about impeachment or even frankly about investigating you know, Trump in his cabinet, his highly corrupt cabinet, I would say, you know, up and down, it's for good reason, which is that I think this country right now is exhausted by inflation, you know, war, a government that seems to only want align its own pockets and to not you know, to be kicking people off of you know, Medicaid and not expanding health care, and in fact, you know, Obama Care premiums have been tripling in some cases. I think they want I think I think people in this country want a government that addresses their problems. And if we spend, if Democrats take back the House, which I think will almost certainly happen, I mean, we have a good chance at the Senate. It's hard to say whether that's going to happen, a lot of things have to line up correctly. But I think what we should do is use those two years to try, in the Congress at least to focus on making life more affordable for you know, working families in this country, and expanding health care instead of cutting it back, and expanding paths to come to this country legally instead of restricting them, and make this a place of opportunity again. You do realize, eli, with all due respect, that if we were talking about Barack Obama having done what Donald Trump is doing, no Republican guest on this program would be saying anything near what you're saying right now. You do realize it. Well, you know, look, I mean Obama, who I you know, love and got to meet, didn't really know personally, but you know, he he His big scandal was that he wore tan suit in the Oval office one day. I don't know if you remember the weeks of Republican outrage about the tan suit. It's just another level of hypocrisy, frankly, And you know, there have been plenty of Democratic presidents who have had their you know, versions of corruption and self dealing. I think you know, Barack Obama was a particularly morally upright person in that regard. But still, but see that, I'm coming back to your word. I let you have to eli not that easy, brother, not that I'm gonna put that hypocrisy word on you. And I say it respectfully and lovingly, of course, because because because this is the point. If Barack Obama with his black self in his tan suit, we're in the White House right now and it done what Donald Trump has done, There's no way that any Republican guest on this program would be saying to me, we shouldn't focus on the president. We ought to focus on the people's issues. They'd be going after Barack Obama every day, all day for the tan suit and everything else he's guilty of. And here you come now suggesting, well, other people want the Congress to focus on their issues, and so we're gonna let Donald Trump get away with literally no. Look, I'm not I'm not for letting him get away with anything. Yeah, You're making a very good point here, Bern Tavison, and I'm not for that. But I think at a certain point you have to be coolly strategic and realize that you know, I think Trump likes everything to always be about Trump, and if we are attacking Trump and tearing down Trump and impeaching Trump and investigating Trump, that will be satisfying to some portion of the electorate. And as I you know, began my answer by saying, it may be what is morally and legally required, but at the same time, I think this whole country is exhausted by Trump and everything to do with Trump, and a little disgusted. Look, his approval rating is now. I think thirty three percent of the country in a Rutter's poll that I saw this morning approve of his performance as president. Sixty four percent disapproved. I mean, those are you know, Richard Nixon may have had numbers that bad days before he resigned from office. That's, you know, the blinking red alarm. He doesn't care at all because he's a lame duck, despite the fact that he wears these you know, twenty twenty eight hats all the time, and he doesn't really care about his own party. He doesn't care about anybody, even hisself really, and he's out the door and all he wants to do is build monuments and put more you know, gold, you know, paint on the walls of the Oval Office. Which apparently he's been doing some gilding of the Oval office himself. That's what he thinks is the good use of his time as president. You know, talk about a metaphor. It's Marie Antoinette. You know, he just doesn't have any connection to what people are going through in this country and does not care, and is making everything worse and is lining his own pockets. So I think, and all of that, I suppose is making the case for impeaching him or trying to investigate him and you know, stir up all kinds of civil and criminal cases against him again. But I think what the country needs, after a decade of this madness, you know, other than the Biden years, is somebody who will put their problems first. So I mean, the danger of an impeachment proceeding or all these investigations, and maybe they need to happen, but the danger of them is that it just drags us into another Donald Trump rabbit hole where it's Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump Trump until people. I guess, no, I hear you, and I don't want to. I don't want to make light of the argument that you're making. I understand that the point you're making is a strategic point or is George W. Bush would say strategery. I get it. I get that, And yet I don't think it has to be either or it can be both. And we can have some new elected leadership in Washington that plays by the rules, that doesn't violate the law every day, it doesn't a lot of the American people every day. We can do that and at the same time both and not either or hold Donald Trump accountable. And yet I'm sensitive to your point about the strategy that the Democrats need to figure out how they're going to employ. Here's what I'm bothered by. I hear your point that people are exhausted by Donald Trump, no question about it. But are we not exhausted by a chief executive who breaks every law on the books? Are we not exhausted by a president who's engaged in a grift, a big grift? Are we not exhausted by et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And here's the thing, at the end of the day, if we don't make some effort, some attempt to investigate and to hold him accountable, then what you have is another white male getting away with high crimes and misdemeanors. That's what you have, another white male and in the most multicultural, multiracial, multi ethic America ever, that absolutely sends the wrong signal. Number one, let me still go back to your babies, your precious babies you referenced earlier. That's the wrong message to your kids. You can get away, becames man. I'm of two minds about this, right because I do think there have to be consequences, and I do think we have to become a nation of laws again in a way that we aren't right now, you know, for you know, in too many ways because of this trend and because of this president. But let's say we take back just the House, which seems like the most likely outcome, though I think we have an increasing shot of taking back the Senate. You know, there's a limit to what a speaker Jeffreys will be able to do. He's not going to be able to enact a legislative agenda almost at all. Despite this meeting with Jared Kushner, which we could talk about, you know, he's he's gonna it's mostly going to be trying to show some voters at the margins what the difference is between the parties after two years, where there's basically been no Congress, and Congress has just you know, laid down and abdicated their job and let Donald Trump do whatever he's wanted to do because Republican members of the House and Senator are scared of him. They're scared of what he can do to them in Republican primaries. So I think if if the danger is that if a speaker Jeffries is seen as focusing primarily on impeachment investigations, and even if he does thirty percent that and seventy percent the other stuff, you know that right and left, the press will largely focus on the source of conflict, which is the impeachment in the investigations, I think it'll just seem like Park's on both their houses. It's just they're all just you know, in a sandbox, you know, fighting with each other, even though we're trying to you know, meet out some kind of justice. I would love for the contrast to be We're actually focused on the problems of the American people, and he's trying to you know, line in his own pockets and do these horrible things. You know, there's an old theory of presidential politics that my old friend David Axelrod likes to talk about that the country for presidents doesn't elect replicas, they elect remedies. And I don't. I don't think the path forward for Democrats is a pugilistic, extremist democrat. I think it's somebody who is a more successful version of a Joe Biden, somebody who can be seen as someone wants to govern, someone wants to solve problems, someone who's a little bit of a conciliator. Can heal the country after all of this horrible toxic damage that's been done. Yeah, a couple of minutes on this, and I'll push for you, but let me just let me let me lean on it one way time here. So Democrats have been promising that if in fact they take back the House, they're going to investigate Donald Trump for X, Y, and Z. They've been saying that on the record for months now, and that's part of the appeal, as you well know, to get to vote for them, that if we get in, we're going to investigate this fool. So what is the point of investigating Donald Trump if you're not prepared to take it the full length, which is to say, if it calls for impeachment then you ought to be impeached. I don't understand why we'd be investigating him if that's not what if that's not the end and aim once he's found guilty, which we all know he is, of these crimes. And mister Meanors, as I said a moment ago, the other point I'm raising is to use your back to your word pugilistic. I think there's gonna be some pugilism inside the Democratic Party. We see every day the intra party fighting, as it is at the Democratic National Committee level. Even inside the House we see Democrats not always on the same page. What happens when a fight breaks out openly, because as you well know, there will be Democrats who will demand that Donald Trump is investigated. They will demand that Donald trum impeached. And whether Hakim Jeffies goes along with it or not, he's got a fight on his hands inside of his own party the minute he becomes the historic black Speaker of the House. Eli ADDI, you know, look, I get that there's going to be a lot of energy, a lot of juice in the fall elections about taking Trump to task, investigating him and peaching him. And on the merits, I agree with you, he completely deserves that. It's going to depend on what happens in the Senate, because let's say we don't take back the Senate. Let's say we do and we have a one seat margin, which I think is the realistic option. You know, if we take back you know, take back the Senate at all, we're never going to convict them Trump in the Senate. We're just never going to be able to do that. That's not going to happen. So then it's you're a prosecutor deciding do I prosecute this case that I actually can't win a conviction on. Do we want to How much time do we want to take up doing that when we could instead take up time trying to, you know, get Obamacare subsidies back in place, so people whose health insurance costs have tripled and who now you know, have to use emergency rooms as crisis care because they don't have doctors. You know, how much time do we want to spend you know, actually trying to have an infrastructure policy in this country that creates jobs, trying to you know, get inflation under control, trying to expand affordable housing. You know, I would rather do that then, and again, I'm no fan of Donald Trump's and I think he deserves, you know, whatever the worst punishment is. But we're not going to convict him. We're not going to convict him. So do we want to spend all that time? It's it's satisfying emotionally, but is it really going to achieve anything? True Responses Two Responses will move on to Jared Kushner and Harakeen Jeffrey speaking of Vakueen Jefferson as being the ad I've said more times I can count, and with the course on my career that if you really want to know whether or not there's any real justice at the epicenter of whatever issue you're discussing, if you wonder if there's any if there's any real justice embody therein, all you have to do is to flip the frame. Flip flip the frame. By that, I mean just switch out the colors. I repeat what I said earlier. If Donald Trump were black and doing this, we know exactly where this conversation would be leading us, Just as if those insurrectionists on January sixth were black, we know how the outcome would be very different. All you got to do is to flip the frame. Just switch out the color, and that tells you whether or not it's a legitimate conversation. That tells you whether or not there's any real modicum even of justice at play when you flip out the colors. That's the first point. If Donald Trump were black, we'd be having a very different conversation. Number One, I don't mean eli, I mean the country. Yeah. No, and there's no question. And we know with you there is no question. The second point is I said earlier, it sends the wrong message in so many ways. I'm thinking of all these black and brown people in this country right now who have been caught up, who are in fact caught up right now, many of them innocent, but caught up right now in our system of injustice, our system of jurisprudence. Who would love to hear somebody saying, you know what, we ain't gonna We're not gonna charge you, we're not gonna prosecute you, We're not even gonna investigate you, because, you know what, the American people have real problems that we need to be addressing. And Jamal and Letitia, we you know, and and and and and Jose and Maria we not We're not gonna spend time. We're not gonna waste time hemming you up for the crimes that you allegedly committed, because we have other problems we need to focus on. I know black and brown folk who would love to hear that kind of commentary, that kind of analysis, and they never will. But because he's Donald Trump, because he's a rich, powerful white male, because of strategory, we're gonna let him off the hook because we got better things to do. And again I digress, but I think you take my point last word to you, ELI on this issue, will move forward. Look, there's nobody who would be happier if Donald Trump were impeached and remove from office. I think he's unworthy of the job. I think he's highly corrupt. I think we're going to be spending decades finding out the full scale of the way he's looted our government. I think they're going to find half the China missing when that guy finally leaves the building, and his fingernails, you know, in the doorway as they pull him away. But I try to, as I said, be coolly strategic. I try to step back and think what am I actually hoping we achieve in this country? And I want to make you know, I want a government that makes people's lives better in measurable ways. And you know he's he's just one of these people who tends to slip through your hands just when you think you've got him, and maybe you know, we should just let him go off into the sunset. And if you look at the guy walking around, that may not be long. Yeah, you point, that's why he's Anemy winning TV writer. Fingernails in the in the in the doorways, they're pulling him out half the china missing. That's why Eli Aaddi is an Emmy winner himself. Let me close on this note. I think we started this half hour playing this Donald Trump clip and mister President, you ain't got none to worry about. Democrats ain't gonna do nothing. They're gonna they're not gonna come anywhere near trying to impeach you. I don't believe, and I believe that's why Donald Trump is making a mockery of Democrats in saying what he said in South Carolina. He knows they ain't coming for him. He knows that, and so he's leaning into this making fun of Democrats because he knows that they're not gonna impeach you. They ain't got the temerity to do so. I digress from now. You're listening to Eliaddi on Tavisli Addy, Emmy Award winning TV writer from a speechwriter in the White House, specifically for Vice President Al Gore as delight to have Eli on the program in case you just and then we had a spirited, uh, spirited debate, not really a debate, but we would it were spirited them in the first thirty minutes. We mostly agree, yeah. We mostly agree, Yeah, but it was spirited. We've been talking about Donald Trump, who was in South Carolina a couple of days ago, and I think made a mockery of Democrats in South Carolina when he suggested they're going to impeach me. There, Miles, you got you got to think you do up again if I can't mind my down. Trump imprestonation is not really that good. It's only twenty eight seconds. Listen to it. Listen to it yourself. Years ago, They're gonna flee our country. I'm going to be impeached. They're gonna impeach me. They have no idea Why I saw it today, A congressman said on one of the shows, we're going to a peach person or Trump, We're going to a peach Oh? Really? Why the person was asking a neutral commentator for a change? I like neutral commentator. Oh, I see, you're gonna peach him? Why? Uh, well, I don't know. I don't know. Eli. I think you may be slightly younger than I am. But do you do you remember Gary Hart? Sure? Absolutely so you're recalling Gary Heart challenge reporters to catch him. Yeah, and that was a different time. Yeah, yeah, But my point of being, I'm being some of a tongue in cheek. Gary Hart challenged reporters to to to catch him, and they did as I recalled. They were hiding out in trees trying to catch Gary Hart because he sort of challenged them. You never want to do that to the press. Donald Trump is doing the same thing to Democrats. They're gonna impeach me. He's begging them to impeach him, but he knows they won't. And that's what I meant by reving this in their face, making a mockery. You don't think I'm right about that? Well, I think the difference. I mean, look, I think Donald Trump is kind of pathological. He may think he's innocent of everything. I think there's something just off in his brain. He certainly has no shame, no remorse about anything, and I think he sees his own behavior differently. I think he thinks he's a dictator or a king and kind of above the law, you know, just by his mere existence. Really, it's really on a level we've never seen. I think you get out front and you say they're going to impeach me, and you dare them to do. So, that's what I think is at work here. I digress right now, All right, Hakim Jeffries and Jared Kushner, this is all over the news. They got together for a meeting, and I don't know that they expected it to get out, but he got out, and everybody's trying to figure out what it means. So what does it mean, Eliadi? Yeah, it's hard to say that it means anything. Really. I guess they had worked together on some legislation criminal justice reform in the first Trump term and had a bit of a relationship, and at least what they're telling the press as well, they keep in touch anyway, which I have hard time believing in any serious way. But you know, there's a very good chance. I think there's an almost one hundred percent chance the Democrats take back the House. The White House knows that they're thinking to themselves, is there some way we can keep a channel open to Jeffries so that, you know, if he's the speaker, we can work together on things that we agree on. Uh, you know, and Kushner is the person that they sort of dispatch for these tricky missions. But if you look at Jared Kushner's record on you know, piece in the Middle East, on ending the Iran War, pretty much everything on on ending the war, you know, between Russia and Ukraine, anything he is dispatched to do ends up a gigantic failure. And they tend to be impossible tasks. It's like the old Steve Martin joke about you know he's gonna now he's gonna inhale a grand piano through straw. Well, basically Krishnan has been asked to inhale a grand piano through restraw and you know, establish some kind of common ground with a guy Trump has insulted a hundred different ways, and whose agenda He's tried to sabotage her every conceivable way. I don't really see them working together. Yep, if and when. Jeffy speak, let me let me just set Jared Kushner's side for the second, for a second, He's less important to meet hockeym Jeffrey's for all the obvious reasons more important. And I want to just ask you a point blank, direct, forthright question about Hakim Jeffreys and whether or not he is the right man for this moment. And historically we could ask this question of any number of people. I mean, clearly bb Net and Yahoo is the wrong person at this moment. Some could argue that y'all Sair air Fat back in the day was the wrong person at that moment. We could do this all day long. If if we're friends of history, as you and I are, we could ask these questions historically whether or not these persons were the wrong people at the wrong time. So this Hakim Jeffreys question, I wrestled with it all the time. I mean, I like Haiking personally, never done anything, never done anything to me. Happens to be one of my fraternity brothers. He's been a guest on this program. Oh cool, Yeah, yes, he's been a guest on the program. So I mean I get along with Hakim Jeffries. And yet, and yet, and yet, I see all the ways, I see all the issues on which Haiqim Jeffries seems not necessarily to be in step with the base of the Democratic Party. Yeah, when you talk to members of the House, they swear about Haikim, They love Lakimen Jeffy. I never talked to anybody or in the House who doesn't like Hakim Jeffries a likable god, and many of them think he's a good leader, and they understand what he's up against. And so you know, there's no dislike per se of Hakim. And at the moment, I don't see anybody or know anybody who's gonna put their name out front volunteer themselves to run against top King Jeffries. That could change between now November, if they went back to the House, we shall see. I'm saying all that to ask whether or not, for a variety of reasons, you believe history making he will be if they pull this off, whether or not that makes Hi Kim Jeffries the right person at this moment to lead Democrats. Many raids the same question about Schumer. You take my. Point, Here's what I would say to that. I like him a lot, I respect him a lot. I started my career in Washington actually working for a House minority leader to get parts, so I understand that job a little bit from the inside. And what you really are in his job, Hakiem Jeffrey's job, you're a class president. So the fact that you can't get a single Congressman to say a bad thing about him, that's why he's the leader of the Democrats, because those are the people who elected him. He's not a national you know, elected official. He's not a president. He won't have that megaphone. He's not somebody we pick to go toe to toe with the president. He's picked to serve the needs of his members by his members. The fact that he may be out of step with the base of his party, and I suppose you're talking about the more sort of activist progressive left that's been powering a lot of recent primary victories, and it is the source of a lot of energy in the party right now. But I think, you know, Jefferies represents the mainstream of the party. He represents the party broadly speaking, and he represents I think the kind of leadership you need to bridge all these different factions. You know. Tip O'Neil, Democratic Speaker of the House in the eighties, always used to say, if this were Europe, the Democratic Party would be five parties, and I think that's still true. It's an almost impossible job. So I think expecting him as Speaker to suddenly be this charismatic national leader who goes toe to toe with Donald Trump, he won't really be doing that. He'll be letting his members do press conferences instead of him. Many times, that's part of that job. Members of Congress all have egos. They don't want somebody to be their leader who's going to boss them around and tell them what to do and overshadow them. It's why our expectations of a democratic House have to be pretty limited. There's nobody in that job, even somebody like Nancy Pelosi, who I think is unbelievable and an incredible leader, who can, you know, day after day after day, really go toe to toe with the President and potentially take them down. It's the legislative leader's role is different, and I think will be limited. And he can set an agenda, and he can build a consensus, and it's going to be a broad consensus that includes every part of the party, and it won't satisfy the sort of fire and brimstone left. It's driving a lot of energy right now in the party. Speaking of fire and brimstone left. As I said earlier in this program, there's always an intra party squabble up inside the Democratic Party about one thing or another, multiple things, usually all at once. It's always in fighting inside the Democratic Party. So here's the latest. Democrats have now narrowed their twenty twenty eight convention. Speaking of the twenty twenty eight race, they've narrowed their convention finalist cities to three Boston, Denver, and Philly. Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia. I've been at conventions in all three of those places during my career covering the Democratic Party. So those are three finalists, Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia, which did not make the black mayor of Atlanta happy. He has said that the DNC has snubbed black voters by not choosing the atl And now there's a fight inside the party about where they're gonna have their convention. There's some Democratic Party insiders who have slapped the mayor back and spanked Tire for even suggesting such a thing. That just because we didn't choose Atlanta, that does not mean that we're disrespecting black voters. So here's yet another squabble up inside the Democratic Party. I used to think years ago that these cities actually made a difference. I don't think they matter one hour older right now. I don't think it matters what city you could be in Compton, you could be in Alaska. I don't think it matter in Anchorage. I don't think it matters what city Democrats go to in twenty twenty eight. I'll tell you why we come for and see if Eli Addid deagrees or disagrees you're listening to Tavismart. You aren't even Eli Addy. So here's my read of this, and I could be wrong. If I am, you feel free to disabuse me of this notion. I used to think these cities mattered because there was some strategicy. There's that word again, Thanks George W. Bush. There was some strategy that went into how these decisions were made, and there still is. But at the end of the day, we know the South Carolina is the first date in the Democratic primary process, and more importantly, we know that these elections come down to a handful of swing states, and as you well know as well as I do, not just a handful of swing states, but a handful of districts inside of those swing states. That's how tight these races have become. For president, You're looking at a few swing states and frankly a handful of districts inside of those swing states. I don't know that Philadelphia is the answer to the prayer, because it is one of the swingiest of swing states, and so that thing can still go the other direction even if you meet there for your convention. Denver ain't no part of the Democratic base in Denver. I ain't hating on Denver, but it ain't no part of your base in Denver. And in Boston, Eh, don't get me started. So I'm not so sure the mayor of Atlanta, the black mayor, is right when he says it's a snub to black voters. But you could make the argument about black voters. You can make the argument about the South, make the argument about rafaol Warknock and John Also, if putting off the impossible, you can make the argument about Kisha Land's bottoms, a black woman from a mayor of Atlanta running for governor. You can make a lot of arguments for why Atlanta would be a decent place, perhaps the best place to have the convention. But here's why it doesn't matter, because it's all about those swing states and those handful of districts. Who cares where the convention is? I digress Elid de Micah's yours. No, I completely agree with you, and thank you for saying that it's meaningless where the convention is held. I think if the convention were held on zoom from you know, a fishing vote in Thailand, I don't think it would make a difference. There's no voter who cares where it is. By and large, you know the sorts of low information swing voters who really decide elections, These harder to reach voters who have swung back and forth in the last couple of elections, you know, younger voters, certain non college educated, you know voters, Latino voters. They're not even watching the convention at all. It's a TV commercial. It's like saying a boy member of General Motors is upset because they're filming their next TV commercial in Philly instead of you know, Atlanta. It doesn't really make a difference. Now, all due respect to the Mayor of Atlanta. What it does bring is economic activity, tourism. All your hotels will be booked for a bunch of days. But honestly, conventions need to be significantly rethought. They used to be the place where nominees were chosen and you'd have, you know, eight, ten, twelve rounds of balloting before you know, Andrew Jackson would emerge as the nominee or whoever. But it doesn't work that way anymore. And it's a kind of a traditional exercise in a country that has lost its patients with traditionalism. And I think we need to give it up, and I think we need to stop caring. And maybe the next convention should just have different speeches and events from nineteen cities and give everybody a piece of the pie, and you know, stop the squabbling. In our remaining moments, Eli Addie, I will ask you whether or not this Republican mid term convention, which has never happened before, is going to make a difference in November. You're listening to Savage Smiley and the Eliaddy with three minutes to go when this first hour and we'll talk to out to corn O West top of the second ey as we do every Monday and Thursday. So stand back for that just a few moments. So Donald Trump announced some time ago Elis you know, that they were gonna do something they've never done before Republicans. That is, I have a midterm convention to rally the troops. They chose Dallas as the site of their convention. Speaking of convention sites, it will be September ninth and tenth. Will it have an impact? Will it rally the troops? Will it would it energize the base? Might Donald Trump pull off an upset here? We thought there's gonna be a big red wave in the mid terms for Joe Biden. That red wave never materialize. Might Donald Trump's convention in Dallas slow down this predictable or predicted blue wave in November. No, I don't think so. And the reason it won't, I mean, for that to happen, I think Donald Trump would need a brain transplant because he's incapable of doing anything that drives an actual message that voters care about. I mean, Republicans in Congress and around the country have been you know, sounding, you know, the alarm for months now that that you know, inflation, the wars, the rising cost of healthcare, that voters, including many Trump voters, have real concerns about their pocketbooks and their lives, and none of that is being addressed because it's all how can he build his ballroom? What new monument can he build over here? Can you name ten things after himself? Because he knows no one else is going to do it after he's gone, and that and whatever they write for him, whatever they stick on a teleprompter, is not what he's going to say at that midterm convention. And I think it's going to be a great big bust. You heard it here first. There you go. Let me close on this note that you raised a moment ago. And I think you're right about this. I never heard anybody say it so clearly and so plainly. That's why again, he's an Emmy Award winning TV writer. This, this pinchion that Donald Trump has for naming stuff after him, he's not just born of his ego. I think you're right, though, it is born of the fact that he knows it. Once he's gone, ain't nobody gonna do it? Yeah, that's right. I mean this, you know somewhere, you know, deep inside himself, he must have some awareness that he is in Ireland in many ways. And I think we're going to be reckoning with this presidency for many decades to come. How we let it happen? How all the china's missing, all the door knobs are gone in that building, and all the gold gilded things he's putting there he's going to try to stuff into a suitcase. I mean, you know, it's it's this is this is who we chose. No, And just just because I'm petty like this, We're also gonna be wrestling Eli with how we let him get away with it? See what I did there? See what I did? For sure? I agree with you. You did it well as you always do. Go wrest with that too. How we let him get away with it because Democrats chose not to go after him for all his crimes. But I doctor right, all right, Eli Addie, you're the best man. Good to have you on. Well do it against you? Goodtime, my friend. I love being on here. I love having you on. Thanks for your time. When we come forward to Cornell West, who I also love having on this program. You're listening to Tavishment