Comedian and stand-up comic Bill Burr joins Jemele to talk about his new book, his new album, and his new TV show on Comedy Central. He also talks about his trip to Myanmar with Ari Shafir and how he managed to get lost in the chaos of it all. Plus, he talks about why he doesn t want to be a dad anymore and why it s a good thing he s not. And, of course, there s a story about a guy who doesn t know where he s going to go after he s done with his current gig. And, he's not going to be back for a while, which is good because he needs a break from his busy schedule. He's going to take the rest of the summer off, which means he won t be on the airwaves for the next few weeks. And that's not a bad thing, because he has a lot of time to do something he loves to do, so why not take advantage of it? of course! Plus, we also talk about the new HBO show he's doing on HBO and why he thinks it s the best show on TV right now, and what it s like to go on the road with his wife and kids in the middle of the day. And we talk about Henry Rollins. . . . and a lot more! Enjoy the episode, and if you like it, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us what you think of it! Subscribe and tell a friend about it. We re listening to the podcast! Thank you! -Jemelec and we ll see you in the next episode of Jemelecism next week! Thanks for listening, Jeebus. -Jon Sorrentino Jon Jake Brian James Tom Mike Michael Ben David Tim Chad Matt John Evan Chris Mark Jack Andrew Kevin Sarah Cheers, Jacob Justin Matthew ( ) Will Sam Chacho Joe Julian Nick . Jeff Paul Brad Ian Thanks to: Alex Jordan Carl Steve Shane Daniel Ryan
00:03:52.000I believe at that point you can sort of create your own problems if you want to have tons of problems, but there are people who have a lot of money.
00:03:59.000Zach De La Roche is somebody else I'm a big fan of, Rage Against the Machine.
00:04:02.000That dude made his Rage Against the Machine money and is just peaced out.
00:04:09.000I'm not saying he doesn't have problems, but...
00:04:12.000Tom Morello probably has more problems because he's trying to like, I'm starting a band with Chuck D and the guy from Cypress Hill, and I'm also releasing a solo, and I'm also on tour with the E Street Band.
00:04:22.000Whereas Zach's like, every now and again I'll go out with Rage Against the Machine and pick up that big check.
00:04:27.000Other than that, I'm going back to LA. I mean, you know, so for me, there's a level of money you can get where you can sort of just turn the volume away.
00:04:33.000The guy from Calvin and Hobbes is another dude.
00:04:35.000Like, you know, the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes was the biggest comic strip at that time.
00:04:39.000People loved it, people worshipped it, and at some point after 10 years, like, I'm done, and hasn't been seen since.
00:04:44.000That's a good move if you could pull it off.
00:04:49.000My goal is to get to that place of, like, there's some, I don't know what the number is, but I feel like there's some number where you go, okay, that's the number where I can put it in the thing, in the index things, and it sits there, and it just, yeah, I'll be going.
00:05:05.000And maybe still, like the thing is, every now and again you sort of pop up to go, hey everybody, but I don't have the need for the attention part of it.
00:05:11.000It's like, you know, I like the work I do and I don't want to do the work I like to do, but I don't have any need for the star part of it.
00:05:52.000For a project I worked on, I actually met Oprah for this thing, and there's a whole team of people who are like, it's like 40-year-old white women who feel like they're in the Israeli army.
00:06:05.000Like, we will take you down if we need to.
00:06:08.000And then Oprah floats through the room like this happy beam of light, and they're like the ones who are like, no, we'll take care of it if it's a problem.
00:06:13.000You've got to be intense if you're around a person like that.
00:06:16.000Imagine how many people are trying to grab at Oprah.
00:06:18.000I mean, I'm sure you get crazy requests and bullshit all day.
00:07:19.000There was some sort of like, it was a court case.
00:07:23.000Yeah, somebody's gonna have to Google this.
00:07:24.000Did she say something about a particular company?
00:07:26.000She said on her show, she basically, I must have been about a particular company, but she said something about not eating red meat anymore.
00:09:29.000And some of them couldn't go back because New Orleans never got rebuilt in a lot of ways.
00:09:33.000And so there's people in Houston right now who move there because of Hurricane Katrina, and this happens.
00:09:37.000Well, I remember I went to Houston like six months after Hurricane Katrina, and there was a ton of people that had to move, that were stuck there, that were piled up together in houses, like many families in small houses.
00:11:41.000You got a fuckload of money and it all comes from preaching the word.
00:11:45.000So yeah, so you first sent out that link and then people said no and then he said it and now the doors are open and now they're taking pay.
00:11:51.000Yeah, Lakewood's doors are open We are receiving anyone who needs shelter and let's be clear There was apparently somebody tweeted out that there was like all the mosques in Houston had opened their doors already and we're talking.
00:12:00.000Yeah, so you know America Oh, those guys, there's just too much money involved.
00:12:08.000When you say, like, does Joel Olsteen, he must drive, like, some crazy car too, right?
00:12:12.000Yeah, I'm sure he has many crazy cars.
00:14:34.000I think that's the fact that, and it's because the whole God thing is caught up in our government, so there's people in our government who feel like, yeah, this helps me out.
00:14:44.000I can't be mad at him because I'm trying to be like him.
00:14:47.000All that happened during the Reagan administration.
00:14:50.000That's when they first started bringing in those right-wing evangelical people and making them a part of the Republican Party and a part of the campaigns.
00:14:58.000And those people all claimed to have people who follow them, so you want them to support you.
00:15:46.000Do you get people claiming that you're a part of fake news?
00:15:49.000Yeah, I mean, yes, but not any, I mean, just like, I'm caught up in the storm.
00:15:53.000Like, you know, it's not like, it doesn't always come to me, but somebody was like, I did something and somebody was like, another CNN fake news journalist, and I was like, hold on, I'm not a journalist.
00:16:02.000I'll take the fake news part, but I'm not actually a journalist.
00:16:05.000Yeah, yeah, so I mean, I get caught up in it, but I think, yeah, I mean, but it's not, I don't, it's not coming to me the way it's coming to other people, but.
00:16:12.000I mean the bigger thing for me is that when I took the job at CNN is that a lot of because I live in the Bay Area so a lot I was like what are my friends gonna think?
00:16:19.000You know CNN is not as much as the right wants to say they're the liberal news media to my friends They're not the liberal news media, you know, so what is it to your friends?
00:16:27.000Very middle of the road probably leaning to the right CNN leans to the right?
00:16:57.000Yeah, and I'm not, there are lots of perspectives at CNN, and CNN doesn't tell me to make it, they don't tell me to do anything other than what I'm doing, I want to be clear about that, but I'm saying the perception from people, I think it's funny, like some people see it as the liberal news media, and then I have friends who see it as maybe the center,
00:17:13.000but definitely, but also, or leading to the left, or leading to the right, and I'm just like, well, you know, I'm in there, and I'm not doing anything different because I'm there.
00:17:19.000Well, you have a different perspective also because you have essentially an entertainment show.
00:17:56.000Look at this rain over and over again.
00:17:58.000Your show, that's one thing though, being on a news network, anytime some shit goes down, they will bump your show.
00:18:05.000Like, if I record your show, then I'll go to it like, aw, what's this Russia shit?
00:18:11.000People think we've been bumped more than we have.
00:18:13.000Sunday nights is the best night to be on the news, because news things don't happen, but we've been bumped for the Orlando Shooter, which our episode was in Florida that week.
00:18:20.000I was like, yeah, take us off the air.
00:18:22.000I don't want to be looking like, look at how fun it is in Florida!
00:18:54.000People are still keyed into what's happening today.
00:18:57.000Whereas on Sunday, we're all sort of like, take a break.
00:19:00.000I think a lot of people thought that when Trump got into office, he would stop with all the insult tweets and stop with all the stuff that made him a popular person.
00:19:19.000And then all of a sudden they're like, hey, you're still doing that?
00:19:21.000I mean, even right now amidst all of his like sort of somewhat, you know, presidential style tweets about Houston, there are tweets about his enemies.
00:20:01.000I read an article that said, I didn't read the article, but the headline said, to be honest about this, Obama, the thought is that he's going to come back in the fall to help rebuild the Democratic Party.
00:20:09.000And I feel like, we don't know if we're going to be here in the fall.
00:20:20.000Now I get he's playing like that Star Trek chess where it's three levels and things are happening and he's seeing things I can't see and he sees the Matrix, but I feel like, you know, I just feel like I'd like to see you before the fall, even though the fall is only like two weeks away.
00:20:32.000Well, what could he do other than, you know...
00:21:22.000I mean I hope it's I mean is I I guess I'm a I I will say this I I think my party affiliation is Democrat But I'm not somebody who's like repping the Democratic Party.
00:21:30.000I don't these people sometimes think I am just because I'm Against Donald Trump, but So, I would say this, that I hope that that person is somebody whose name we don't even know yet.
00:21:39.000Because I feel like the thing that happened with Obama is he came out of nowhere.
00:21:42.000And I think if you go to the usual suspects, with the way that Kearns Bruce Kearns set up, you're doomed.
00:21:47.000If the Electoral College is still in place in four years, then we're doomed if we go to the usual suspects.
00:21:51.000Well, Obama might have come out of nowhere, but a lot of people were looking at him like, this guy, here you got this guy, Harvard-educated, very articulate, good-looking, smooth, calm.
00:22:06.000When you look at The way Trump has been responding to all these things, how he freaks out when he gets a small crowd in Arizona at a press conference.
00:22:13.000I mean, the thing about Obama that stands out more than anything was his composure.
00:22:20.000Whether you agreed with him or not, and I certainly didn't agree with everything he did, he felt like a grown-up who was making thoughtful adult decisions that sometimes I disagreed with, but I knew he had thought them through.
00:22:29.000Well, and also, one of the most important things about being a president is the president sort of sets the tone for the rest of the country.
00:22:39.000Now, when the president represents the country and he's talking shit about people bleeding from plastic surgery and, you know, fake news and yelling about this, and then saying things that are just absolutely not true, that turn out to not be true, and it's like, and you have to, like,
00:22:54.000look at it, and then you vet it out, and you go, well, he's fucking lying?
00:23:20.000Most of, as we know, most of communication is nonverbal.
00:23:23.000Yeah, so the fact that he doesn't have to even if it sounds like he's saying the right thing if it's not landing with the people He's talking about the right way like if he says you know I support the blacks or whatever it is It's like if it doesn't feel like that to the blacks then it's not it doesn't mean anything Well people know when you're saying something from the heart versus when you're saying something for damage control like Charlottesville Like when he came out after Charlottesville and said that people are behaving badly on all sides on all sides Did you got a Nazi that ran over a crowd of protesters He hit
00:23:54.000the gas and ran over other white people, you dumb fuck.
00:24:13.000Well, I am of the belief that Non-violence is always the answer and that running around with masks on hitting people with bike locks We're showing up with sticks and bats and the shit that people are trying to do I think although their heart and their mind might be in the right place when you show up with with Bulletproof vests on and helmets and sticks people see that and that is an act of aggression and the Opposition is going to show up in turn with something similar or worse
00:24:44.000it escalates Well, I think the problem is is that I was in Berkeley I said in the weekend at the no hate in the Bay Rally that was supposed to that you know that Whoever said they were gonna show up alt-right people I don't they're also be names white supremacists, right?
00:24:56.000They were gonna show up like 4,000 people showed up by you know somewhere between three three and four thousand people on which side Mostly on the side of not the alt-right.
00:25:08.000But it was like, the side who was like, not in our streets, this is Berkeley, we don't play this shit, was way bigger than the side from the white supremacy alt-right side.
00:25:38.000But if you look at all the mainstream news reports, it focuses on those people, the Antifa or the people who are the Black Bloc anarchists, who were there to fight with people.
00:26:09.000And it was a very beautiful day, despite the reason why the day had come together.
00:26:14.000Well, there's a real problem in that the media needs something to bleed.
00:26:18.000They need some tear gas, they need a riot in order to get clicks.
00:26:22.000It's just like that New York Times article that I talked about with Conor McGregor's face being completely bloodied.
00:26:28.000No, you're doing that because you're trying to sell newspapers, not because that's what happened.
00:26:33.000And you haven't hired anybody there on staff who actually knows the UFC or knows boxing or knows combat sports.
00:26:38.000Like that's to me, it's like, we need an article about this.
00:26:40.000Well, and also having someone with a perspective that would go to that rally and say, look how many people are here that believe in equality, that believe in unity, that believe in peace, that just want to support this idea that the community is filled with way more of those people.
00:27:11.000Nobody's walking through Berkeley like, oh god, is Antifa about to show up to the farmer's market?
00:27:14.000Those people don't show up unless they feel like the shit is hitting the fan.
00:27:18.000What concerns me is that those people, when they're wearing the bike masks or the masks and the fucking vests and the knee pads and all the shit, that's where you get those assholes in Charlotte that showed up with guns.
00:27:32.000Like those guys that were open carrying in Charlotte with bulletproof vests on, walking on the street, showing trigger discipline with their finger on the outside of the gun.
00:27:43.000And many of them dressed in military garb, so they looked like they were part of the military or looked like they were part of law enforcement.
00:27:51.000Some people were confused and thought they were part of law enforcement.
00:27:56.000And I think the thing about Antifa, I would say this, too, is that the reason why Antifa even has a room to exist is because people in those communities don't think they can count on the police.
00:28:07.000Because there were two other protests in Berkeley that erupted in violence because the police were standing by watching it happen.
00:28:17.000And that certainly happened in Charlottesville, too.
00:28:19.000What's been said, and I don't know if this is true, but it's been said that the police were instructed in Berkeley to not engage with the anarchists.
00:28:48.000Because how the fuck could the mayor have enough time to be paying attention to every single issue that the police have to deal with when he's dealing with every single issue the mayor has to deal with?
00:30:07.000These people were out in tents at 120 degrees.
00:30:09.000There's an article that somebody wrote, and this kid was born in Tijuana, lived in Arizona, and got arrested for drunk driving and spent a year in those camps.
00:30:20.000You know, look, he was raised in America.
00:31:21.000Yeah, that the law is not applied equally to everyone.
00:31:26.000We know that if you have money and privilege, you can get out of situations, but that other people who don't have money and privilege can't get out of it.
00:31:41.000You know, it's, I mean, look, you shouldn't drunk drive.
00:31:44.000No, yeah, that's, I mean, I feel like there should be some punishment.
00:31:47.000Yeah, you should be, you should, if you break the law, there should be repercussions.
00:31:51.000Especially that one, because you don't have You have control of your body, and you're driving a deadly vehicle, and you could crash into a family.
00:31:57.000Look, there's a lot of real, real issues with that.
00:33:08.000There's a guy who got a third strike in California, because you know California, third strike law that happened, for firing a gun in the air.
00:33:33.000There's the other perspective is where the resource is going to come from to actually reform someone how much effort does it take and Individual cases are different and some people really are just Habitual criminals and there's nothing you can do about it And if you do release them and they continue to do a crime or they they hurt somebody That they didn't have to like where does the burden lie there,
00:33:53.000but I you know, I think Norway I believe is the country Jamie likes to look it up that the longest prison prison sentence you can get is 20 years you Prisoners live in like one-bedroom apartments like they you know, they have TV they have and the whole thing is like and this is San Quentin has this to there's rehab programs I talked to inmates who said that and then after 20 years in Norway,
00:34:12.000they talk to you and go Are you ready to go back outside like they don't let you out automatically, but they sort of check back in with you And so if you're not like the guy who shot up the those people in Norway, he's probably gonna get out again, right, but the whole idea is that Yeah, small percentage of prisoners served more than 14 years Wow Yeah,
00:34:29.000but the thing is, they're in there, like in San Quentin, I talked to inmates who said, in most California prisons, the rehab programs are AA and Jesus.
00:35:03.000Because it's the Bay Area and so there's all these things in the so that when you come out You are a more fully formed human being so that you have you have job skills You've you've done restorative justice programs You've helped other inmates who came in to do restorative justice programs so that when you come out It's not that it's easy to get to be paroled from prison,
00:35:19.000you know But when you come out you're more prepared for the world as opposed to guys in other prisons in California Who get out who have just been like doing rehab and Jesus and have no way to interact with the world Yeah, and just feel like they've just been punished, being isolated and locked in a cage.
00:35:33.000And as a lot of those guys say, they go in there for one crime that's not a big deal, and they learn how to be better and badder criminals in prison.
00:35:38.000Because you have to sort of like, California has like levels of prison.
00:35:41.000I think level four is the worst, or maybe level five.
00:35:44.000But anyway, so everybody sort of starts out at a level four.
00:35:47.000So if you are in prison in California for something, you know, shooting a gun in the air, you're there with murderers.
00:35:54.000And then you have to survive that and hopefully graduate to San Quentin.
00:35:57.000But if you're in there with murderers, you have to survive that.
00:35:59.000And so a lot of guys become bigger, badder criminals because they're surrounded by bigger, badder criminals.
00:36:07.000And so, to me, like the whole, I mean, you know, the, you know, and there's a lot of money that's already in prisons that's not being used well.
00:36:13.000The prison, you know, private prison system, like we are selling, private companies are selling, like they have to keep the prisons full because they're running a prison for profit.
00:36:24.000It's like we need to keep the beds full.
00:36:26.000It's not about rehab and rehabilitation.
00:36:28.000It's about we need to keep the beds full because we are a corporation running for profit.
00:37:28.000And there's many of those people who are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses, like marijuana and other things, who are there next to murderers.
00:37:54.000Nobody wants to go, you know, no politician goes, I have released more inmates from prison than any politician in the history of this country.
00:38:01.000No, that's All it takes is one Willie Horton, right?
00:38:04.000Yeah, which we, you know, and that was like, you know, we're, again, we're demonizing like one case.
00:38:09.000There's a picture that was on, I think it was in the San Francisco Chronicle, of an antifa, I'm going to go, antifa, black, black, I don't know, like with, like with, like a, like a gas bomb and, and surrounding that person is journalists taking pictures of him.
00:38:45.000Well, anytime there's some sort of a gathering, you're always going to have people in that gathering that act out, try to get more attention than they deserve, or that get caught up in the whole group movement.
00:38:57.000There's always this sort of gigantic mass...
00:39:02.000Of people that will cause people to behave, some people, to behave in a way that's uncharacteristic.
00:39:09.000I mean, there's just that mob mentality.
00:39:55.000And I think the thing is that everybody responds differently.
00:39:58.000The thing that happened, I'll say specifically in Berkeley, was that there's a sense that these people brought violence to Berkeley the last two times they came.
00:40:05.000And people respond differently to threats of violence.
00:40:08.000Some people respond with the non-violent thing.
00:40:09.000Some people respond to, I won't go to the park that day.
00:40:11.000And some people respond with, fuck it, bring it.
00:40:14.000But don't you think there's also a real issue in you I mean you got to find out what is actual hate speech and what is like Someone like Ben Shapiro who I think is just a conservative guy Who's very articulate and doesn't promote hate at all and he's extremely reasonable But there's a lot of people that equate him even though he's an Orthodox Jew a lot of people equate him with being a Nazi and they try to silence him from speaking Like,
00:40:39.000when you do that, I think it becomes a giant issue.
00:40:41.000And I think you've got to let people talk.
00:40:43.000And if you disagree with people, I mean, as long as they're not out there promoting violence or promoting negativity or promoting some sort of a, you know, anything that it's abhorrent.
00:40:53.000But if you let someone talk, and then if you have someone that disagrees with them, have a debate.
00:40:59.000Have a debate and have everybody be peaceful and civil with each other.
00:41:02.000I mean, I think the problem is that line of what hate speech is, and I just talked to somebody from the ACLU on my other podcast about the whole hate speech thing.
00:42:19.000So I would say the thing about Ben Shapiro, and I've only seen a little bit of his work, but I know there are people on that side who it's an ideological argument.
00:42:28.000And ideological arguments sometimes can be filled with hate.
00:42:47.000But the problem is that now there's a whole movement associated with things that maybe Ben looks to be a part of, so that if he shows up, people don't know that he shows up going, I'm not bringing violence, but there may be violence traveling around with him.
00:43:01.000It's not him, but there are others like him, or less reasonable, like alt-right.
00:43:15.000I mean, there's people that are on that that are violent, and there's people that consider themselves anti-fascist that are extremely peaceful.
00:43:23.000And they would say that they're Antifa, the real Antifa.
00:43:35.000I don't know, but it's a thing that whenever we would see, I think now we're calling it Antifa, but there would be, I mean, this happened, there were some Black Lives Matter protests in Berkeley, and some black, black anarchists, it's described the same way, wearing black, all covered up, and they were like, and these people showed up,
00:43:50.000so I don't know if they were Antifa, and were like, great, now we can loot!
00:43:53.000And people stood in front of stores going, no, no, no, we're not doing that.
00:44:20.000Black guy waded through the white people.
00:44:22.000Well, there was white people that I saw doing it, too.
00:44:24.000So it must have been more than one incident.
00:44:28.000Certainly, there are people who are like...
00:44:30.000There's people who support Antifa because they feel like, well, we need somebody who stands up to this, but there's not people who support people beating people up randomly.
00:44:38.000So yes, Al Letson and other people stepped in.
00:44:41.000The thing about the Berkeley and the Bay Area is that people don't get, they think it's all one thing.
00:44:47.000Like, that it's all some sort of, like, lefty, like, socialist, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:51.000And the thing about Berkeley is it's not that.
00:44:54.000It's a lot of different people who feel like, who are on some version of the left, but they don't all necessarily agree with each other, and they let a lot of shit go.
00:45:01.000Like, it's not, like, you know, so that can be the naked guy who walks through town.
00:45:05.000Like, that doesn't mean we all support people walking around naked, but we're like...
00:45:09.000But it also means that during Obama's reign, I lived in San Francisco, there were libertarians set up on corners with big huge pictures of Obama with Hitler mustaches painted on him.
00:46:12.000And he wrote the Bush torture memos that said, you know, if you do some waterboarding, this is not a direct quote, but he wrote the memos that said that it sort of outlined how to do enhanced interrogation techniques.
00:46:51.000So I think that, you know, Ann Coulter can come speak at Berkeley anytime she wants to if there's this thing about, like, I'm not going to encourage violence.
00:48:35.000But the current thing is because when Milo was going to show up, There was the fear, and he had seen it happen before, where he was targeting students, either undocumented students, he was naming students during his stage thing who were undocumented or trans, and there was fear, like, that's promoting violence.
00:48:50.000The undocumented thing is a huge issue.
00:49:17.000California used to be an open carry state until the Black Panthers were like, oh, it is?
00:49:22.000And they went to Sacramento when Reagan was there and openly carrying, and people were like, huh, maybe this open carry is not such a good idea.
00:49:30.000It's not really a debate right now in Charlottesville, though, is it?
00:50:14.000Yeah, so this third time it was like, we were like, no.
00:50:17.000Well, Charlottesville to me was so representative of the times that we're in because all these white guys with citronella candles they got from Home Depot.
00:51:46.000I think they know the history of that.
00:51:48.000They know the history of the fact that if we show up carrying torches, it means something different than if we show up wearing headlamps or carrying our phones.
00:51:53.000But they couldn't even get those fucking Frankenstein-style torches where they wrap cloth.
00:52:26.000You know, there was probably a rehearsal for the torch thing where they actually did have regular torches and they're like, oh, this isn't.
00:52:59.000And yet they know that if you're a black person walking through the streets of Charlottesville and you see that coming your way, and you're invoked by images of America's past, where that was like, that equaled death.
00:53:12.000Because back then, the torches were for your house.
00:53:48.000That didn't alert her because it was just some guy walking under the torch, but it's specifically the context of night time, a group of hundreds of white guys carrying torches walking towards people.
00:54:18.000And I think it's also just really, you know, it's really indicative of, like you said, the times we live in, that they think they can get away with this and then get surprised when they get fired.
00:54:31.000Like, they think that, like, oh, we'll just do that and then we'll go to Applebee's.
00:54:34.000You know, like, it's just like, no, dude, we can see you.
00:54:37.000Well, it's indicative of them being fucking stupid, which is why they're doing it in the first place.
00:54:41.000Which is why when the president goes on both sides, maybe there were people, and a lot of people said this, maybe there were some white people who were like, yeah, I do feel like my rights are being a little bit trampled on and I really want to show up.
00:54:52.000The minute you hear people chanting like, oh, whatever the anti-Semitic things they were saying, you've got to go home.
00:54:57.000Yeah, what were they saying about take it back from the Jews or stop the Jews from taking over?
00:55:03.000Yeah, and the president can't come out against that.
00:55:07.000Well, he's seeing people open-carrying with military outfits on, walking with these folks.
00:55:13.000He's seeing these people walking down the street with torches.
00:55:16.000And he doesn't have some sort of an articulate response to that where he's saying, like, look, ladies and gentlemen, this is not being inclusive.
00:55:23.000This is not like stepping up and saying that what we need to do is come to some sort of an understanding and be at peace with each other, which is what America should be.
00:55:39.000He used to be more articulate, which is really weird.
00:55:42.000I don't think men should do anything when they're 70. I really don't, because I think they're old, their dick doesn't work anymore, their fucking skin's falling off their face, their back starts to hurt, they're cranky.
00:55:54.000I just think when you get to be that age, you should just shut the fuck up.
00:56:26.000They were trying to find something to get mad at.
00:56:29.000There would be days when he wouldn't wear a jacket.
00:56:31.000He would just wear a button-down shirt and a tie.
00:56:34.000Bush's thing was he always wore, W. Bush always wore a full suit.
00:56:37.000And Obama was like, I'm still the president.
00:56:39.000I'm just hot in This is the thing that's so stupid.
00:56:46.000There's many people on the left who had big, huge disagreements with Obama that we weren't able to express effectively because we were too busy defending his birth certificate.
00:57:56.000The thing that Trump does really effectively, the thing that George W. Bush did really effectively, Republicans do a good job of that.
00:58:02.000They really know how to use the bully pulpit to really push their things through.
00:58:06.000Not that Trump has really done anything to push things through, but he knows how to be a bully from the pulpit.
00:58:10.000He hasn't really passed any major legislation.
00:58:13.000But Obama, because he wanted to be an adult and he really wanted to be a unifier, and I think a lot of that comes literally from the fact that he's half black and half white, that he has existed in more than one world.
00:58:24.000I felt like there were times where it's like, dude, you are an effective speaker, you could really push through single-payer healthcare in a way.
00:59:17.000I don't think he used the full force of his bully pulpit in the way that I... I always said I wanted him to drive the presidency the way George W. Bush did.
00:59:26.000Do you feel like when someone gets into office, they realize how complex the inner workings of the federal government really are, and then they just kind of abandoned a lot of the ideas that they wanted to push when they got in there?
00:59:36.000Like, remember when Obama had that Hope and Change website that had all the stuff about whistleblowers?
00:59:40.000And now whistleblowers are going to be protected under the Obama administration.
00:59:44.000And then as soon as he got in office, he was worse on whistleblowers than anybody.
00:59:47.000And then he removed that section of the Hope and Change website.
00:59:50.000They deleted it after the whole, you know, the Edward Snowden thing and the Bradley Manning thing, Chelsea Manning thing.
00:59:59.000Yeah, I think usually, we're not saying that with this current president, but I do think that's the thing where they get in there and suddenly people go, because as part of this, you are the most powerful individual in the world, but also the train is going this way.
01:00:22.000You're not going to get somebody who's...
01:00:26.000The Alicia Garza from Black Lives Matter is not going to be the president as much as I think she'd be great at it because it's just not going to end up with somebody who actually has a revolutionary mindset.
01:00:35.000So then if you start out there, then when you put those people in there, then they, you know, I don't know what the pressures of the office are.
01:00:41.000I'm sure they're amazing, but it automatically leads you to capitulate, you know?
01:00:43.000And if you have a revolutionary mindset, you might be able to use that for one aspect of being the leader of the entire free world.
01:00:52.000But what about all the other shit that guy has to deal with all day long?
01:01:06.000There's a shitload of jobs that they haven't even filled yet.
01:01:09.000Apparently for Trump, there's extra time in the day.
01:01:11.000But I do think, and I want to be clear, because I know people listening, when I say revolutionary mindset, I mean single-payer healthcare is a revolutionary mindset.
01:01:18.000Every American has the right to healthcare.
01:01:22.000Every American has the right to send their kids to good public schools that are well-funded.
01:01:28.000These are things I think that are, when I say revolutionary mindset, I don't mean setting things on fire.
01:01:33.000I mean like Revolutionary ideas that every person in this country deserves.
01:01:37.000And I think that those people aren't going to be in the driver's seat of the White House.
01:01:41.000Well, utilizing the resources that we have because of the fact that we pay taxes, a tremendous amount of money goes to the federal government with very little recourse.
01:01:59.000You know, what would be more important to fund?
01:02:01.000I mean, I think we should all have that conversation.
01:02:04.000And I just think that the way it's structured right now, the amount of power that corporations have, the amount of power that special interest groups have influenced the president, the amount of just the sheer money in politics with lobbyists.
01:02:18.000And, you know, there's this one community outside of Washington, D.C. It's one of the richest communities in the world, and it's all lobbyists.
01:02:25.000I mean, these are just people that are using and selling influence.
01:02:29.000Yeah, you know, people sort of call me a communist, but I think I'm not a communist at all.
01:02:39.000I also believe I can help spread a better message and use my resources to help people, but I'm in show business.
01:02:49.000I know activists, and I know how hard they work, and then I sometimes use my resources to help those people out and donate money, but I'm in show business.
01:03:54.000And I'm not trying to do a commercial, but it's a website where schools in your area, you go to the website, and you put in, like, your zip code.
01:04:01.000And you will see the public schools in your area that need things.
01:04:26.000Every teacher, even at private schools, but certainly public schools, put their paycheck back into the school because they go, the kids need, we're trying to teach a learning thing and we don't have the stuff and they can't afford it.
01:04:38.000So every public school teacher I've ever known used some of their check to go back into the school.
01:05:57.000Yeah, and then, you know, we were talking about it before we got on, but there's all these, like, you know, there's, like, religion is a good way to make money, but then there's all these, like, motivational speaker type people.
01:06:42.000I mean, if you, for example, were like this weekend in Berkeley, I'm doing the Joe Rogan motivational speaking training seminar, I'd be like, I'm gonna go see what Joe's talking about, because there's clearly a thing you've done, and you could be like, I want to know how this all happened.
01:08:05.000And so he's done all the substances he can do and all the combinations, and he's had all the new houses, all the cars, and then you wake up in a room like, what does this mean?
01:08:16.000And somebody's like, I got a new take on Jesus for you.
01:08:59.000I don't think that anybody can get through what Bieber did and be any better than he is.
01:09:04.000I think it's insane to think that you could take a child and not have them go through the normal developmental shit that we all go through, not being liked and trying to get people to like you and dating a girl and getting your heart broke and getting in a fight and getting in arguments and not having any money.
01:10:32.000That's why they don't let you rent a car until you're 25. Yeah.
01:10:34.000We need a person behind the wheel of this car.
01:10:36.000Yeah, I didn't, by the way, I didn't have that opinion until like maybe about five or six years ago.
01:10:40.000I'm like slowly starting to develop that, like realizing that when you see someone who's young and stupid and doing dumb shit, like, oh, their fucking brain's not even ready yet.
01:10:48.000Yeah, I mean, I think that, well, the older you get, you might keep raising that level too.
01:11:23.000That's why it's really sad when you talk to someone who's 50 who doesn't know anything about the world, doesn't read, doesn't pay attention, isn't watching documentaries.
01:11:31.000That's what I think is so awful about Trump is he seems completely uncurious.
01:11:34.000He doesn't seem like a curious individual.
01:13:18.000So I think Trump has done that to the presidency, where it's like, we thought there was just the process of natural selection, ended up with somebody who at least had a through line of an idea.
01:13:28.000Because if you don't agree with Bush, George W. Bush, or you don't agree with Clinton, you at least knew there was a through line of an idea.
01:13:34.000And I think with Trump, there's not the belief that there's a through line of an idea.
01:13:38.000Yeah, and there's also this idea that he wings things.
01:13:42.000Like, he gets and has these press conferences.
01:13:44.000Like, that one that he had that really set a lot of people back, like, just a couple of months into his presidency, where he went on this, like, 70-minute rant and just, you know, rallied about fake news.
01:13:54.000And people came out of that going, what in the fuck was that?
01:15:06.000Like, what kind of crazy ego battles have to have on live television?
01:15:10.000This is a guy who's way more related to Bieber than he is to any other president, as far as, like, he's surrounded by people who have told him, good job, good decision.
01:15:17.000I mean, there's the insanity of, like, first of all, there was the fake Time magazine cover that was in his golf courses.
01:16:09.000The Potomac River near the 15th green is shown during round three of the senior PGA championship at Trump National Golf Course on May 27th.
01:16:19.0002015 report about a factually inaccurate plaque featured at Donald Trump's Northern Virginia Trump National Golf Club has resurfaced this week in light of the president's controversial remarks about the violent weekend in Charlottesville.
01:16:34.000And they went to like three different historians, and one, and they were like, yeah, that's, there's no, he's not even getting something wrong.
01:16:41.000It's not like, yeah, there was, it's just, yeah, just that didn't.
01:16:45.000Or someone did that and brought it to him?
01:16:47.000In the New York Times story, they questioned him about it, and he says, no, I talked to historians who said it was a very blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:16:53.000He, it's in the, uh, see, no, uh-uh, no way.
01:16:57.000Nothing like that ever happened there, Richard Gillespie.
01:16:59.000He was adamant about the accuracy of the plaque.
01:17:01.000However, uh, I would say that people were shot.
01:17:23.000Because the battle's not everywhere people are.
01:17:26.000The Trump, a self-professed big history fan, was unable to name the historians he claimed had told him the site was known as the River of Blood.
01:17:39.000Yeah, and that's been there for a while.
01:17:40.000So to me, it's like, this is, again, this is where the press...
01:17:43.000Forget the fake news media, the fake news.
01:17:45.000This is where the press really fucked up, is by entertaining him through the election season without really making a hard effort to go right at the truth of the matter.
01:17:57.000Like, people thought, again, I think people were seduced by the idea, well, it's...
01:18:57.000It shouldn't matter, but it does matter.
01:18:59.000And also, they were using he was born in Kenya as a way to promote a lot of conspiracy theories that were connected to him.
01:19:05.000That if you start to buy the, it was a fake birth certificate because his parents, when he was born, knew he was going to be the first black president.
01:19:11.000So they got him a fake Hawaii birth certificate.
01:19:14.000And then you attach a lot of things to him that illegitimize his presidency.
01:19:18.000Because if Trump had said, I don't agree with Obama's policy on this and this and this and left all this stuff behind, then yeah, let's run for president.
01:19:26.000Well, the craziest one was that he was some sort of a Manchurian candidate.
01:19:29.000He was some sort of an undercover Muslim that was sent to destroy America.
01:21:51.000Many people have looked at the original and it's like it's clearly not the right, like the font isn't laid out, there's all sorts of things to make.
01:22:39.000I think he, yeah, I don't think he could have anticipated that he was running against 16 people or 15 people who just couldn't, who should have all been the clear, like, you know, any of them should have been like, well, my Jeb Bush, but none of them had enough personality to top him.
01:22:53.000Jeb Bush seemed like he didn't really want to do it either.
01:22:56.000Seems like he was kind of like half-assing it.
01:22:58.000Well, I don't think George W. really wanted it either.
01:22:59.000That's the amazing thing about America.
01:23:00.000You can become the president and not even really want it if you're a rich white dude.
01:23:05.000Like, you can say, I guess I'll be the president.
01:23:06.000Well, who the fuck is going to do it next?
01:23:08.000That's what's going to be interesting.
01:23:10.000I just hope it's not the people whose names I already know.
01:23:15.000Maybe I just like the thing about there was decided about Obama the black thing was exciting for me personally But the fact that he was under the age like he was in his 40s That was exciting like it was like a president who had actually who you know and life had life And and also was still had a lot of life ahead of him.
01:23:30.000Yeah, they did he would now that he's done He's still like a young a young old man You know that he was that he had done things you had probably done.
01:23:38.000He was like, yeah, I did a little coke He probably played video games.
01:23:43.000The reason why he became such a pop culture president, because he would say, I listen to Jay-Z, and you're like, I believe he probably does.
01:24:04.000Than right now from politics and from, like, I've never felt like the president is more disconnected from the people of the United States either.
01:24:12.000And the people that support him, boy, they're so, I've never seen that before either.
01:24:17.000The type of people that are, like, really into Donald Trump being president.
01:24:21.000You know, just everything that he says, they hang on every word, they turn everything into a positive, they spin everything, they hashtag MAGA. It's really odd.
01:24:34.000And it feels to me like it's very much a, you got Obama, we get him.
01:24:38.000It feels like they were sick of the love that Obama got.
01:24:42.000Even though by the end, I mean, Obama got a lot of love, but it wasn't as fervent by the end, you know, but I mean, until the end, then he got fervent right before he left.
01:24:49.000But it's a real sort of like a lot of that love of Trump comes from, it's real like, it's like wanting to spite liberals, like, you know, ha ha ha ha.
01:24:57.000Like, you don't care if Trump does something that's bad for you if it hurts a liberal's feelings, you know, like you just want somebody who is hurting Hillary, you know what I mean, or hurting the liberals.
01:25:07.000It's not about what's good for you, because if you're looking at what's good for you, this is not good for you.
01:25:13.000Well, it's also like getting some sort of a reasonable conservative that someone would step up right now would be very interesting.
01:25:22.000It would be very interesting if you could find someone who's a reasonable conservative who knows how to debate and can form a sentence and can respond under pressure.
01:25:32.000What Trump also brings to the table is he's like this ominous sort of character.
01:25:46.000Yeah, and I think that the problem is that there's all these people who are trying to position themselves as the Trump alternative, but then if you dig too deep into their records, it's like, well, they really support all the things Trump supports, but they're just not out loud racists.
01:27:27.000Those of us who don't think he should make it through four years in the White House, or hope that he resigns or gets impeached, can't take it for granted that that's going to happen.
01:28:11.000I think the reality is that after four years, this is the thing, if he does last me four years, that he gets to the end of four years like, I don't want to do this again.
01:29:01.000Yeah, but I do think that like if it's a fact you really cuz like you know it certainly has there's a reported of like Ivanka's brands are down You know like the thing people are not they thought this is gonna help that stuff right if it's not helping that stuff and at the end of four years and it's I think he could leave because he's annoyed by it all but he'll have some big speech about I've done what I came to do,
01:29:19.000and I think I've really drained this way.
01:29:20.000He'll just say he did, and his people will be like, yay!
01:29:23.000Yeah, talk about how unemployment was at its lowest rate in 15 years.
01:29:28.000Even though the arc that unemployment is on is the same arc that it's been on.
01:29:34.000It's all going on the same path that it's always been on.
01:29:37.000I think there was some initial speculation that he was going to be good for business, and then there was some sort of a rise in the Dow because of that.
01:29:57.000They've been owned by a Chicago-based real estate equity firm, Equity Residential, since 2005. Now, Trump Place will remain on the condominium buildings 200, 220, and 240 Riverside Boulevard,
01:30:13.000which neither Equity Residential nor Trump own.
01:30:45.000The problem is, again, they may make it after Trump that it's a legal thing.
01:30:49.000All these things were just what had been done and what people assumed would always be done.
01:30:55.000The one shining grace of Trump is that it exposes We think that it's more complicated to become the president, and more complicated to be the president, and that there's more restraints on the president than there actually are.
01:31:09.000So now that we know that, maybe, but when Trump leaves eventually, forget Republicans and Democrats, it's on the benefit for the entire world that the president can't launch nukes.
01:31:22.000I'm not making this a Republican or Democrat, it should be a couple more people than just one guy.
01:31:27.000But what about pardoning people that are criminals?
01:32:08.000There's all this stuff that happens in the law where they're like, we've I've never actually asked that question because nobody thought that was a question that should be asked!
01:32:15.000Like, nobody ever thought that a president would think to do that, you know?
01:32:18.000So there's all these sort of things where it's like there's no, you know, he could sign a thing and then the Supreme Court would have to be like, is this okay?
01:32:52.000Yeah, and he knows Arpaio's a criminal, you know?
01:32:55.000Now, the question is, why didn't you do something about it before McCain?
01:32:58.000Again, you don't have any jurisdiction in that way, but you could have used your bully pulpit more effectively if you thought he was a criminal before this.
01:33:31.000Yeah, I know you're a criminal, but magic.
01:33:35.000The part of it that should be good is there are many people who are in prison, again, like we talked about earlier, for things where you're like, The rest of your life.
01:34:30.000Yeah, most granted clemency by Obama have been convicted on drug charges and have received lengthy and sometimes mandatory sentences at the height of the war on drugs.
01:34:40.000That's the scariest thing about that Jeff Sessions asshole.
01:34:42.000He wanted to bring that stuff back and bring back Just Say No and start arresting people for pot.
01:34:56.000I feel like even if you had a 45-year-old Republican president They would be more open to things than the 71-year-old Trump, or any 71-year-old Republican, or any 71-year-old Democrat, just by the nature of the fact that, for the most part,
01:35:12.00045-year-old Republicans don't care about where people go to the bathroom.
01:35:16.000I think, again, old people shouldn't be running shit.
01:35:20.000I did this joke briefly, but I didn't stick.
01:35:22.000But it was the idea that you can be too young to vote, and you can also be too old to vote.
01:35:55.000Well, it does if it's an incredibly wise old person who's learned a bunch of things and has control of their ego and is a person who really wants to make the world a better place.
01:36:05.000But is also on some HGH so they can actually live up to the rigors of the job.
01:36:17.000I don't even remember where I saw it from, because when I looked it back up, like, it said there was no real history of him using drugs, but some people have had rumors that maybe he was doing, like, fen-fen and whatnot in the 80s or something like that.
01:36:30.000I wonder where the guy gets the energy.
01:36:32.000When he was doing that whole thing with Hillary, and then it was revealed that Hillary, when they were running for president, was on New Vigil, or Pro Vigil, which is a narcolepsy drug.
01:36:42.000So they give it to fighter pilots to keep them awake.
01:37:11.000It was essentially originally created as a performance-enhancing drug, but they needed some sort of a reason to medically prescribe it to people, so they went, uh, narcolepsy?
01:37:22.000Yeah, yeah, narcolepsy, so they ran with it.
01:37:29.000I don't know if it's his actual truth, but it's MSNBC. Fun fact, in 1982, Trump started taking amphetamine derivatives, abused them, only supposed to take two for 25 days, stayed on for eight years, really.
01:37:59.000Dr. Joseph, what does it say up there?
01:38:02.000It said, the doctor wrote the prescriptions.
01:38:05.000Dr. Joseph Greenberg diagnosed him with metabolic imbalance, which we have never heard about again.
01:38:11.000Greenberg was later publicly shamed as someone who provides uppers to rich people in Manhattan, a metabolic imbalance, if true.
01:38:21.000It could be electrolyte insufficiencies, anaerobic imbalances, acid imbalances, an assortment of related disorders that could have serious health consequences.
01:38:29.000Yet his other doctor, Dr. Harold Borenstein said he had been Trump's doctor since 1980 and never mentioned the metabolic imbalance found by Greenberg.
01:39:01.000But that would make sense, because if you see how much energy he had when he was doing the campaign against Hillary, god damn, the guy never got tired.
01:41:21.000Yeah, we got to get someone like Elon Musk.
01:41:23.000We got to get like some super genius who seems to be able to do everything.
01:41:26.000Well, that's the thing the other sort of good side of this is that it is certainly opened up the possibilities of who can be the president.
01:42:40.000Because, you know, your show is a very unique show on CNN, and it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you have a lot of creative leeway on that show.
01:42:53.000Yes, that's the thing about the show that has been such a...
01:42:56.000It's been so cool because, you know, I've had a career where I was, like, sort of in the trenches, you know, for a long time, just trying to figure it out, and didn't think I'd ever get this opportunity.
01:43:04.000And the way that I got there was not some way that made any sense.
01:43:07.000But now I sit in a room, I just had a kickoff meeting yesterday, and it's a room full of people like, what do you want to do, Kamau?
01:43:11.000And, you know, it's like, I feel super hashtag blessed to be in that position.
01:43:19.000Yeah, because it's like, it was not something that five years ago I wasn't like, you'll probably end up on CNN. And also to be at CNN, that wasn't like, none of these things were on my like...
01:43:35.000And that was on FX? On FX and then FXX. And then get the FX out of here.
01:43:41.000So yeah, it was on FX. Now FX is a legit channel, but my show helped launch FX and didn't do a good job, so that's why the show got canceled.
01:43:51.000I'd started to take meetings like general meetings and I ended up at a and it was all with sort of news organizations like little online like I thought it wasn't like Entertainment channels.
01:44:00.000It was all these news things that thought like you could do something here with your thing and nobody had a real idea And I went to CNN and met Jeff Zucker had the like a 15-minute meeting with Jeff Zucker where he was like had 18,000 TVs on and Gave me a news quiz.
01:44:13.000He's like you pay attention to the news I go.
01:44:14.000Yeah, and he gave me a news quiz to see if I paid attention to the news Really?
01:45:14.000So, then, they had been pitched a show by this company, All Three Media, now Main Event Media, called Black Man White America, where a black man travels around to white spaces in America.
01:46:28.000And also when we got there, we got there during daylight, so we had to be there for two or three hours while they did all their rites, while I talked to them and interviewed them, they did rites and rituals, and then it ended with them setting the cross on fire.
01:46:40.000And they were more than willing to do all this on television, which is even more shocking.
01:46:44.000Yeah, you can see up there, they mostly kept their hoods on, but one guy took his hood off so you could see his face.
01:46:52.000People ask me, why would they want to be on TV? Because everybody wants to be on TV. We talked to a bunch of different Klan groups, or the producers did.
01:47:00.000Most of them didn't want to be on TV, but there was like three or four that did, because they thought they were spreading the word.
01:47:19.000It's like, I'm not telling you what I believe, but they believe that the Bible doesn't think that the races should mix, the Bible doesn't, you know, all these things that people quote out of the Bible.
01:47:31.000And they believe that America is a white country founded by white people and that That the people who, like the black people and the Mexican people, and eventually the Catholics and the Jews, although I guess they're cooler with Catholics now, they used to hate the Catholics, should get to leave, go back home.
01:47:47.000And the whole America is for white people is the whole white, is just a different way of saying the white ethnostate thing that a lot of the people, a lot of the alt-right and the white nationalist movement say.
01:47:58.000And so, you know, they think that this is, you know, they think America, they think the whole idea of America is that it's for whites only and that the rest of us need to go home.
01:48:12.000To be standing there with these people in the woods, in Kentucky, looking into the eyes of madness while they're wearing satin sheets over their head with holes poked out for eyes.
01:48:25.000We got there, I got out of the car, and there's a line in the show where you can hear me before you see them.
01:48:29.000I'm going like, And that was really me saying this was not a good idea.
01:48:35.000That was not me making a joke because I see a phalanx of them and they're all standing there in detention and right when we got there the guy who was in all blue was like immediately goes into a rant about Ferguson it was in 2014 so it was all about Ferguson and how black people how to police themselves and the white man is gonna da da da da da while at the same time they don't advocate violence because it's clear that at some point they were told if you talk about violence the FBI will be here every weekend you know So they're like,
01:49:04.000That shows that black people aren't whatever, blah, blah, blah, aren't the equivalent of the white man.
01:49:08.000And so I had to, so when we first started shooting, there was just like, this guy was just going off and I just sort of was like having to take it.
01:49:15.000And wondering, is this going to be the next three hours?
01:50:02.000No, I talked to like, you know, because you go, well, you know, like there was one point they said the Bible says that, you know, man should not.
01:50:10.000I was like, yeah, but the Bible also says you shouldn't eat lobster.
01:50:13.000I just went to Red Lobster last night, brother.
01:50:16.000So they recognize the hypocrisy, but they can't see why it doesn't make sense.
01:50:40.000But I feel like you can really love white people, but it shouldn't come with at the expense of black people feeling safe or anybody feeling safe.
01:50:46.000It's the same thing with the alt-right.
01:50:47.000You can think what you want to think, but nobody should feel like their safety is being violated in that process.
01:50:51.000You know, the funny thing was is that, so we would film and then we'd have to stop down because we were changing cameras.
01:50:56.000Whenever we'd stop down, they'd pull off the hoods off and they'd be like, man, it's hot under here.
01:51:00.000And I was like, yeah, maybe you guys should have designed the hoods differently.
01:51:20.000And one of them was this blonde woman.
01:51:22.000The one who was in red, when she took her hood off, she was like, I mean, she looked like Britney Spears at 18. Like this blonde, you know, as we've sounded earlier, maybe I don't know what a pretty white woman looks like, but she was But she was a brawn.
01:52:03.000Got a couple drinks in there, you guys started dancing.
01:52:05.000Well, I just felt like, if I could just take you to LA, there's a whole life for you away from Kentucky where you would have a, you know, like, I could make a lot of money off you, kid.
01:52:14.000Isn't it so funny, though, that it's just what you're exposed to?
01:52:16.000If you're a young child and you just don't understand, you don't know any better.
01:52:20.000And you're born into the Klan, and there's not enough black people in your community for you to go, well, that's weird, because these black people are fine.
01:52:25.000Because in this part of Kentucky, there's not a lot of black people.
01:52:28.000There are some, because black people are everywhere, but there's not enough for these people to interact with.
01:52:34.000And you're told to avoid that black guy who works at the Home Depot.
01:52:37.000And you just see that it's about circumstance.
01:52:42.000About you know if we could get the if you get people out of these circumstances, I think they would change but I But the momentum of the input of the environment that you're in it just gets so People get so wrapped up in and caught up in it and it becomes how they think and it's you don't want to stand out from the group You don't want to be ostracized and there's a fucking cross.
01:53:03.000It's not gonna light itself But they were really excited.
01:53:07.000Like, this one guy I talked to, we sort of built a rapport in that moment, and he was excited to talk about how the burn...
01:53:38.000What if I'm here to talk to these 15 guys and then a hundred Klan members run out of the woods to take down CNN? You know, this is before fake news Trump.
01:56:16.000It's like your life experiences are benefited by the fact that you're surrounded by lots of different That is really interesting when you put it that way.
01:56:23.000I mean, you do find that the bigger cities tend to be way more liberal, like New York and L.A. in particular.
01:56:29.000Certainly more liberal than the surrounding areas.
01:56:31.000Like, you know, Houston is a blue dot, but it's not as blue as Berkeley is, but the surrounding area is much different.
01:56:47.000To me, that's what the whole thing is.
01:56:51.000You don't get the benefit of having a diverse community because you're like, which Chinese restaurant do I want to go to?
01:56:58.000You want to go to the Chinese restaurant?
01:57:01.000That's run by the Chinese family who's like, this was a badass.
01:57:03.000Well, it's also the fear, you know, the fear of the other when you're not around them.
01:57:07.000I think if you're around people all the time that are all sorts of different people, you find assholes that are white and cool people that are brown and you just sort of go, oh, they're just humans.
01:57:20.000And so we lump off into groups so we somehow or another have people that we relate to.
01:57:25.000Well, I mean, I think it's the whole thing about, like, we have fear of the unknown, and somehow our fear of the unknown is the fear that somehow that unknown thing is going to hurt us or affect us in some negative way.
01:57:36.000I mean, you know, when Obama first went into the White House, you know, I would have lost money on marriage equality, gay marriage.
02:00:51.000To me, it's about, we're going to have this conversation, people are going to watch this conversation, and that will create more conversation.
02:00:56.000Well, you're getting this weird opportunity to be, again, like I'm saying, you're you.
02:01:01.000I know you, so when I see you on TV, I'm like, oh, that's you.
02:01:06.000That's not normal for a television show.
02:01:09.000You notice when people take on the host of, whether it's The Tonight Show or one of those kind of shows, they automatically become this different thing than they usually are.
02:01:19.000They become like the host of And for me, the reason that is, is because there's not a ton of these shows out there.
02:01:27.000So there's not like, it's like, oh, Kamau got that show.
02:01:29.000It's like, talk shows, the minute I got totally biased, suddenly I'm seeing articles about The Tonight Show, you know, Late Late Show, and totally biased.
02:01:39.000And then I'm being compared to those people, and I'm being judged against, like, well, Last Night Fallon lip sync with Justin Timberlake, and Kamau talked to Laverne Cox.
02:02:19.000I don't think it's a good way to have meaningful conversations.
02:02:22.000Giant groups of people and everybody's clapping.
02:02:25.000So you're trying to like play to them to make a good point.
02:02:28.000So you're not necessarily expressing yourself like what are the real thoughts going on in my mind as much as you're just trying to like get those hits.
02:04:19.000It's about, I just want to hang out with this dude for an hour.
02:04:20.000And so I feel like with United Shades, the more it becomes that, I just want to hang out with Camille for an hour, then that's the show I want it to be.
02:04:27.000Yeah, well you figured out a way to do it, man.
02:04:29.000And kudos to CNN for allowing you to just be yourself.
02:04:32.000Yeah, people always ask all the time, how much pushback do you get?
02:04:35.000I think the most pushback we got last season was, we had two fart jokes in the show, and they're like, you have to I was pretty pissed.
02:04:44.000I'm like, but they're different fart jokes.
02:05:32.000Yeah, so it was like, I got to make the version of the show I wanted.
02:05:35.000Well, at the same time, I'm talking about the history of Chinatown and doing all those other things, but it ended with me, the last line is like, you know, I really learned a lot this week.
02:05:50.000Sometimes the people who write, like, because people will write parts of the show, and they will write it, like, the way journalists would do it.
02:05:55.000This week I've learned that people come together.
02:05:57.000And there's some of that that still ends.
02:06:01.000Do you write monologues, or do you just talk?
02:06:06.000What happens is they will write a version of the script, and then I will get that, and then sometimes I will pull whole sections out, and then once we get into the VO booth, it's me and usually a couple other comedians, like Ethan Berlin, Ron G,
02:06:21.000this season's going to be Dwayne Kennedy, who will then be on the phone together in the VO booth and riff other things out.
02:06:27.000So it's great to actually be able to hire, because I was clear with CNN, I need to hire comedians on this show.
02:06:32.000It can't just be me and the news people or the TV people.
02:06:35.000Well, it seems like not just a show, but also an opportunity for you to just sort of broaden your experience with human beings, which is interesting.
02:06:43.000I mean, we went to Barrow, Alaska in the first season.
02:07:03.000We went in, I think it was, what it was, it was spring in the rest of America, but it was still like, you know, deep snow on the ground and frozen.
02:07:11.000But it was like, it was like negative 20. There it is right there.
02:08:01.000Anchorage, when I was there, one of the first things I saw when we were driving the rental car to the hotel was a group of people standing on the corner holding up signs saying, Honk for Equality.
02:08:11.000And all these people were honking as they drove by.
02:08:14.000And there was all these people with purple hair and shit.
02:08:17.000And I was like, oh, this is like a real city.
02:08:20.000Yeah, no, Anchorage is like, I mean, it's like Bakersfield.
02:08:55.000Sometimes people think the show is just me talking to scary people, but most of the show is just me talking to people that I've never talked to before.
02:09:04.000Yeah, and so we did an episode about, we said, let me see something with Muslims, but it's like, well that's a big topic, but we went to Hamtramck in Dearborn, Michigan, It's a super small town, the highest percentage of Arabs and Muslims in America, like 30% Arabs and Muslim in this town.
02:09:17.000And it's like a sleepy suburb where you just happen to see lots of women in hijab walking around.
02:09:23.000But you sort of feel like, is this right?
02:10:09.000So I think that And then we got to talk about, well, what about in Saudi Arabia?
02:10:13.000And they go, the government of Saudi Arabia does a lot of shit that's wrong, and they use Islam as a way to justify it, just like the way the American government does a lot of shit that's wrong and says God and country.
02:10:21.000You know, it's not about the religion, it's about the expression of the religion.
02:10:24.000So, you know, for me, it's like, to be able to ask those dumb questions.
02:10:27.000We got to go to Standing Rock, in the middle of Standing Rock.
02:10:29.000And while it was going down the Dakota Pipeline?
02:10:54.000If you just can decide to have your business go through my land and dig a fucking pipeline that may or may not poison my wells, if everything goes wrong, what is public land?
02:12:01.000So it's like, and it was, that was one of my favorite episodes, because, again, I get to sit and ask all the dumb questions that I have and other people have.
02:12:08.000And sometimes I ask dumb questions that I kind of know the answer to, but I feel like we need to ask the dumb questions.
02:12:13.000Don't go tapping people in line at Starbucks and asking them dumb questions.
02:12:17.000Yeah, the Dakota Pipeline was extremely disturbing, because it was one of the clearest examples of money over rights, money over land ownership, money over everything that we're going through with this thing.
02:13:56.000And it's this thing where, believe me, Even though I had gone to San Quentin and filmed, I went to San Quentin and filmed the show.
02:14:02.000I walked in with the co-warden or the junior warden, I don't know who he is, and Sam, and he was like, we walk in to the yard, and he's like, how do you feel?
02:14:15.000And I'm like, because we're walking into the yard, and it's all just inmates doing sit-ups and push-ups and hanging out, playing basketball.
02:14:34.000And that's exactly how it happened, and we left it in the show.
02:14:36.000And then from that point forward, it was just like, if you sort of close your eyes, it was just talking mostly to black men who've had a lot of life experience and been through a lot of shit and who have learned a lot from what they went through and have done therapy and self-actualized and educated themselves and all these types of things.
02:14:54.000But then you realize, they're never going to leave.
02:14:55.000They have a lot of experience, a lot of wealth of knowledge, a lot of skills, and they're never going to leave.
02:15:53.000Him and this kid who was a chess genius, they're sitting down, this ex-con and this chess genius, sitting down playing chess in their head in front of me.
02:16:03.000And it reminds me, it's like the autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X said, there's all this wisdom in the hood that these can be mathematical geniuses.
02:16:12.000These can be the people who cure cancer, but they're not being put in positions where they can actually take advantage of this.
02:16:20.000Yeah, and also mistakes, like whatever mistake you make when you're a young person, whether it's selling drugs or shooting a gun in the air for your third offense, there's certain mistakes that automatically disqualify you from any personal growth for the rest of your life.
02:16:41.000And the thing is, it should be a really small list of things that disqualify you from society for the rest of your life, especially at 18. There are things, but it should be a pretty small finite list.
02:16:59.000Yeah, if we if we like sort of put you in therapy and educate you you're still gonna be a monster We should still be working on these people, but it's certainly not inefficient It's not for the betterment for society that we've taken this huge pool of people out of the prison system And as and you know,
02:17:15.000this is the thing Black people are like 12% of the American population.
02:17:18.000We're 40% of the American prison population.
02:17:20.000Somewhere around there, please Google it, make sure.
02:17:22.000But it's not because we're doing 40% of the crime.
02:17:26.000Black people do crime, but we're over-sentenced a lot of times.
02:17:29.000We're not getting proper representation.
02:17:34.000So it's like something that a white guy in Nebraska does, a black guy does in California, something that's in prison for the rest of his life.
02:17:53.000If you look at the graph of the number of people in prison, it stays pretty constant for a long time, and then right around the 80s, it goes...
02:18:02.000We have somewhere between 2 and 3 million people in prison.
02:19:45.000Like, they didn't do any sort of big background check.
02:19:47.000And there was a huge article he did a couple years ago, like a year or so ago, about being a prison guard.
02:19:51.000And I mean, if you read it, it's like...
02:19:53.000The things you can get away with when you are the prison guard and the ways in which you can treat people at this prison in Louisiana, it's a nightmare.
02:20:01.000Prison is supposed to be about rehabilitation.
02:20:55.000San Quentin's the prison that every prisoner wants to graduate to in California.
02:21:00.000And so a lot of the guys end up illegally bringing food in and then making food together in their cells because they're like, I can't eat this.
02:22:04.000It's like $80 billion, some sort of crazy figure of debt.
02:22:07.000And it's just because the U.S. has used Puerto Rico, it's like the ATM. We sort of did things there, and because it wasn't a state, we didn't have to do it the same way.
02:22:17.000But it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life.
02:22:20.000And I was there, the showrunner, Donnie Jackson, he'd been there before.
02:22:25.000He's like, there's houses for $25,000.
02:22:28.000And I was like calling my wife, we don't own a house in California, we should buy a house!
02:22:34.000It's such a fun, beautiful place that has been exploited by the United States of America by not being a state and not being an independent country.
02:22:51.000But for me, it's like being in a foreign country but your cell phone works.
02:22:55.000Like so it's like so you get all the like different culture and new food and and you get all the like You know the people speak Spanish So if you speak a little bit of Spanish you can get by it's a super diverse place So like I as a guy's married to a white woman with a couple mixed-race kids We don't feel like we stick out there,
02:23:12.000you know, we're just sort of like and the weather was I was like I I was I want to I want to go back so badly Really?
02:23:24.000I think if I was all said and done, I think I could be like, I think at this point it'd be hard, but I certainly think, if my life was an East Coast life, maybe, because there's a lot of people, a lot of Puerto Ricans who live in New York who have houses in Puerto Rico, but then I also feel weird because I'm not Puerto Rican, like, am I a gentrifier?
02:24:58.000I'm talking about that version of me that somehow ends up with Kevin Hart money without working as hard as Kevin Hart.
02:25:06.000Or somehow something happens where you go, man, it's weird that I invested in that shoelace company and now those shoelaces are everywhere!
02:25:13.000Then it would be like, I'm tapped out.
02:25:17.000I would certainly spend some time there.
02:25:19.000If you go to Puerto Rico, though, and you move all your business to Puerto Rico, you move your money to Puerto Rico, you don't have to pay taxes.
02:25:49.000I mean, it's weird, because last season when the show went off the air, I felt like I could tell that people didn't, sort of the talk about the show had gone away.
02:25:56.000But the Trump era is good for business.
02:26:00.000What do you mean like you felt that the talk had gone away?
02:26:02.000Well, just like, you know, when your special comes out and you're walking around town, more people may recognize you.
02:26:07.000You know, like, more people are like, ah!
02:26:09.000And then when your special's not out, it's not, you know, sometimes the volume gets turned down.
02:26:13.000But with this, like, I still walk around and it's like the show is still on the air.
02:26:16.000People are still talking about the show when they see me.
02:26:17.000There's a sense of, like, Like they really feel the show in a very deep way like I hear from people like families watch the show together and like, you know, and I didn't make it for that reason so it so it feels like the show We the first season show Obama was still in office So I felt like that was like the mixtape and the first season was like the out the second thing was like the album and so I feel like now like people are looking for the show in a different way so it feels like I Knowing that,
02:26:40.000I have to make sure the show steps it up a notch.
02:26:42.000I feel the pressure to make sure that we don't...
02:26:45.000I don't want to make the show like, which white supremacist is he going to talk to this season?
02:26:53.000So you feel like a sense of responsibility, not just to entertain, but also to kind of get some ideas out there that maybe would reach people.
02:27:00.000I just I mean, I feel like we're all as comedians.
02:27:02.000We're all responsible to our material.
02:27:50.000Well, you also, you're part of this giant discussion, whether you're a comedian or an author or a journalist, you're part of this giant discussion, which is human culture.
02:27:59.000And I think we need people that are articulate and thoughtful on all sides.
02:28:04.000We need to, like, figure out that there's going to be all styles of humans that Different things that people are interested in, but what's gotta be, like, the most important thing about being an American is respecting all the other styles of human, all the other ways people think,
02:28:20.000whether they're conservative or whether they're liberal or whether they're, you know, whether they choose to, whatever the fuck it is.
02:28:28.000You want to live off the land in Alaska or whether you want to be in Manhattan and I mean, you know, whether you want to be in Alabama or whether you want to be in Berkeley.
02:28:36.000And I go to both those places, so I see all those people.
02:28:38.000So I think the thing is, and you have to realize that just as something maybe makes you nervous or scared, it's not always about you.
02:28:45.000And I think that's the big thing that people get wrong about the Bay Area.
02:28:47.000We're not all a bunch of liberal people on the same page.
02:28:49.000We just recognize that we all go out there because it's like, I just want to go someplace where I can do my own thing.
02:28:53.000And just go meet some rich people in Marin County, if you think that.
02:30:21.000I don't know, though, because I think the response to it has genuinely energized people to look at the surroundings, look at politics, look at the way we're governing this civilization, the way that we're interacting with each other.
02:30:38.000The people that are responding to these people walking down the street with fucking Home Depot candles and screaming out, Yeah.
02:31:08.000What part of us is represented in this ugly aspect of our culture, whether it's people that hate white people or people that hate black people or people that hate Jews?
02:31:23.000What has failed that this still exists?
02:31:26.000And I think these conversations are a big part.
02:31:29.000I mean, what you're doing by doing your show is you're, you know, for millions of people, they get to tune in and they get to just, like, hear the words and it adds layers to the way they understand human beings.
02:33:21.000The Sean Spicer one was hilarious because Trump thought that Melissa McCarthy doing it made him look weak because a woman was doing his impression.
02:33:28.000There was a push at one point to have Rosie O'Donnell do Trump and I was like, that would have been amazing.
02:34:43.00035. I like the fact that she's out there like, you kind of know she knows this a lot too, but I'm not blinking.
02:34:48.000One of the things that she said when Trump was attacking people on Twitter, she was like, if you attack him, he hits back ten times harder.
02:35:21.000So his supporters believe, if he did it, and this is what Trump believes, you can tell, if I say it, it's presidential.
02:35:27.000If I say it, then it's worthy of the president saying it.
02:35:29.000So if me retweeting as he did the other day, like, you know, whatever, some sort of conspiracy theory, like nonsense, then it's a legitimate thing.
02:35:55.000I was talking to a woman yesterday who was a public school teacher, and she was saying, or had been a public school teacher, and she's talking to other public school teachers about there are kids...
02:36:02.000Who go to school every day, who are born in this country, you know, they may be, they're from the Latino kids who are born in this country, their parents are undocumented, and they go to school every day afraid that their parents are gonna be kicked out of the country, and not knowing what that does to them, and now somebody's like,
02:36:30.000Trump doing all that up there filters down to some kid in a public school classroom who gets in a fight and then they expel him because he's like, he's got an attitude problem.
02:36:38.000People don't think enough about how this is affecting regular-ass people.
02:36:43.000Well, he's a role model, believe it or not.
02:36:45.000Because he's the president, and the president, by definition, is a role model.
02:36:48.000I mean, when you were a kid, when I was in grade school, I remember kids saying, I want to be president someday, and other kids going, wow, this motherfucker's reaching for the stars.
02:36:58.000Like, wow, you know, and how difficult would that be?
02:37:03.000But, you know, but then again, I grew up, I remember, like, growing up, I remember when Reagan was in office, and I remember all my family being like, ugh.
02:37:10.000Everybody was like that, which is amazing.
02:37:13.000There was a lot of people that were like that when Reagan was in office, which is so weird, like the whole revisionist history thing that happened after he was dead.
02:37:22.000Yeah, he's the modern great president.
02:37:26.000Yeah, do you guys remember the whole Ali Noor thing?
02:37:44.000Yeah, no, I think that, so, to me, it's like, in my lifetime, it's like people were like, Like, people I know, Reagan was such a bad president.
02:37:52.000And then you get George W. Bush, no, that's a bad president.
02:38:02.000And that's why I think when you say, like, seeing how people react to Trump and stand up and in the streets...
02:38:06.000To me, it's like today they're doing that or they did it this weekend, but it's like at some point people either they get exhausted by doing that.
02:38:12.000There's a march right now going from Charlottesville to DC to protest, you know, all the things that Trump said in the wake of Charlottesville.
02:38:28.000They're doing it right now, as we're talking.
02:38:29.000I think a lot of times with those marches, the hardcore people start first, and then I might show up Saturday afternoon, hey guys, we walked this whole...
02:39:43.000There's an old expression that comes to gambling and it also can be applied to weight loss and a bunch of other things in life that you get better the same way you got sick.
02:39:51.000Like with gambling, you can't just win it all back.
02:39:56.000You gotta slowly try to chip away and get back.
02:39:59.000And then with weight loss, you can't just lose all that weight.
02:40:10.000And I think for our culture, it's going to take a while to sort all this out.
02:40:15.000And I think we also have a problem that the actual operating system that we use, this whole representative government that was set up back when you had to take a letter by horse to get to people.
02:40:29.000And it creates a lot of red tape and it creates a lot of bureaucratic inefficiency that I think if we had no government right now and we're trying to structure a government, the last thing we would do is have one person with an incredible amount of power that could also launch the nukes and pardon criminals.
02:40:58.000People that are mathematics professors, that understand economics, people that understand geography and understand cultural differences, people that really understand healthcare, that really understand Understand all the different things we're dealing with.
02:41:12.000And we wouldn't make the Supreme Court a lifetime appointment.
02:41:14.000You would go, you know, you get it for 20 years and then you move on.
02:41:18.000Yeah, you don't, you don't, and we wouldn't, there's no, this is the thing I don't think Democrats focus enough on unless they're doing it behind closed doors.
02:41:25.000You would not have the Electoral College.
02:41:47.000Like, in California, by the time the polls close, they tell you who won, because they're like, we know how California voted.
02:41:51.000So then I become a person who's like, what's the point of me voting for, you know, it's like, you know, so for me, Electoral College, and then...
02:41:58.000Gerrymandering where the whole thing where they get to sort of they divide your neighborhood up into a way that sort of benefits the you know those are the things that are really That's why it's scary about who comes after Trump because as long as the Electoral College exists it automatically sort of tips the country to more sort of Right-leaning direction,
02:42:14.000you know and and now which is maybe fine except when the right becomes Trump You know like you know if it's it's different if it's President John McCain, which I'm not a huge John McCain fan But I feel like at least there's a through line, you know where so for me it's like The electoral college is never—that's why the left has to fight so hard.
02:42:30.000And I feel like if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer aren't in meetings right now, like, we gotta fuck this electoral college up, we gotta take it down, then we're sort of losing the plot of how this works.
02:42:39.000Well, I don't think it's necessary anymore.
02:42:41.000And this idea that, well, the people in the middle need it because the people on the coasts, the large population centers, they can dictate.
02:43:10.000We're all supposed to be in this thing together.
02:43:12.000It would be a way more interesting election if everybody knew they're just counting the votes.
02:43:17.000Yeah, and there's great people in the middle, too.
02:43:20.000And politicians would have to work way harder instead of going, well, I'm not going to go talk to people up and down California, because that's already set.
02:43:26.000I think there's an issue with states, too.
02:43:28.000I think there's an issue with people voting.
02:43:30.000Like, we lost California, and now Nevada's gone.
02:43:33.000I just think it should be just one lump group of humans.
02:43:55.000You know, like, people get We get in these teams.
02:43:58.000When it comes to the United States of America, when it comes to being the president, I genuinely think that we have to look at ourselves as one group of humans.
02:44:06.000Well, I think we should at least feel like that each of our voices counts.
02:44:44.000Because the thing is, this is one thing I'll say about United Shades.
02:44:47.000When I go to the South Side of Chicago, we did an episode about gangs and gun violence, and gang violence in the South and West Side of Chicago.
02:44:53.000And I did an episode of Appalachia, mostly about coal and the coal industry and how it's dying.
02:44:59.000And even people there know, yeah, it's dying.
02:45:01.000When Trump comes, a lot of them cheer.
02:45:03.000But what they're cheering for is jobs.
02:45:05.000They're not cheering for coal, necessarily.
02:45:07.000If you said, we have other jobs for you, they'll take those jobs.
02:45:10.000Now, they do have pride in the culture of the coal culture because it's about their life, but it doesn't have to be that.
02:45:15.000But all I'm saying is people in Appalachia who voted for Trump, people in Chicago who voted for Hillary, are all just worried about jobs and better schools for their kids.
02:45:25.000But when we break it down to this left, right, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it starts to change the conversation when really there is a party, and some people would say it's the Green Party, but you could form a party around those ideas and not where these other parties have gone.