Potential Biden Impeachment, and Explosive Revelations About Obama, with Rep. Wesley Hunt and David Garrow ｜ Ep. 605
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 19 minutes
Words per Minute
163.49811
Summary
David Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of the book Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. He s also the author of a piece that has been called perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism so far this year and we have an interview with the man at the center of it.
Transcript
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We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller
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Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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It is being called perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism
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And we have an interview with the man at the center of it.
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David Garrow is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian
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Have you read the Tablet magazine piece with him?
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If not, listen to today and then go back and read the piece.
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Tablet interviewed Garrow and boy, did it make headlines.
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who did this comprehensive biography on Barack Obama,
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Garrow's here today to tell us all about it firsthand.
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with one of the people who will have to vote on that
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Joining me now is Congressman Wesley Hunt of Texas.
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Representative Hunt, it's great to have you here.
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He said, you know, I said this during the Trump two impeachments,
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that this was going to be taking us down a slippery slope.
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impeachment of this guy, impeachment of that guy.
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like sort of figuring out whether we want to proceed
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with articles of impeachment against Joe Biden.
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So I've said this a few times on various shows.
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this might not be the smartest move for us to impeach Joe Biden.
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And I say that because this is the worst approval rating
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that we've had for a president in modern history.
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We want this guy to run against the GOP nominee in 2024.
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And I don't want to rally the troops around him.
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With that said, I got to say, he's done enough.
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And at some point, we as a country have got to look at this corrupt administration,
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maybe it may not be in our best interest politically.
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But then at some point, we are seeing millions and millions of dollars
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being funneled to this family through Joe Biden's son by using his influence
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influence and literally peddling our country away to other countries.
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And if articles of impeachment are brought to the floor,
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So let's talk about it, because yesterday, James Comer,
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head of the Oversight Committee, who's been all over this.
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And thank God, you know, thank God, because this needs to be exposed.
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Whether you love Joe Biden or you don't, this needs to be exposed,
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showing that by his tally, the number is now up to $20 million in payments
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from foreign sources to the Biden family and their business associates.
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Um, most of this was during his term as vice president,
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payments from Russia, from Ukraine, from Kazakhstan.
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And this is so if you take let's let's table the FBI form 1023,
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which said Joe Biden got a $5 million bribe from the Ukrainians
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And not to mention a $5 million bribe to Hunter as well, alleged.
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They don't they haven't been able to prove it yet.
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The memo itself says they'll never be able to prove it.
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It says that the payments were made in such an obscure way.
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But if you look at what we do know, Representative, I'm curious,
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because we know that millions of the IRS whistleblower said it was over 17 million.
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Now, Comer's saying it's 20 million that went to the Biden's Hunter
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and other family members during Joe's vice presidency from these foreign companies
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But it all happened while he was vice president, not president.
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So even though it may have happened while he was a vice president, what we do know is that Hunter Biden has continued to use his name and use his family to funnel money to his family.
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Basically, Hunter Biden has been his errand boy for the past, you know, six, seven, probably longer than that, probably for the past 20 years, even while he was a senator.
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Your question is very interesting, though, you know, in terms of him being the vice president.
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I would like to think that this just didn't stop when he was the vice president.
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I would like to think that over the course of the past few years, this behavior has continued.
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And I think if we just look a little bit deeper, we're going to find even more nefarious dealings with with Joe Biden while he was current president of these United States of America.
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But what's really frustrating to someone like me is to think that we have a family that we know for a fact has gotten millions of dollars from a Ukrainian national energy company in Burisma.
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And now we are giving the Ukrainian government hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxpaying money.
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And if we don't think that that's a conflict of interest and now we are not entering the realm of this being an issue of national defense, then I really don't know what is.
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We've seen a smoking gun. We already have the receipts.
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And look, if this is not about actually introducing articles of impeachment, OK, that's fine.
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It still is up to us on the Judiciary Committee.
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It's up to us, we in the halls of Congress, to make sure that the American people are well aware of what this president has done in this country, well aware of his son's actions, and to make sure that we decide very, very cautiously and very, very carefully in 2024.
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This is we the people. Now you know everything about the Biden family.
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Because you've got Joe Biden, according to these allegations, his family at least, taking millions from these Ukrainian oligarchs.
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And now we've got, as you point out, all this funding of Ukraine.
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You've got the relationship with the Chinese and the total disinterest in pursuing anything with respect to their spying on us or their spy balloons, not to mention the origins of COVID.
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And then you have this Russian oligarch's wife.
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She was the former first lady of Moscow, Yelena Batterina.
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And we knew this before, but there's an interesting sequence on this.
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It's not that Joe Biden's going easy on Russia.
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We all know, you know, he's he's on the Ukrainian side in that whole battle.
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But this particular woman who gave three point five million dollars to one of Hunter Biden's shell companies, three point five million dollars back in 2014 when Joe was vice president, she managed to escape Barack Obama's sanctions on Russia after they annexed Crimea in 2014.
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And she managed to avoid President Biden's broader sanctions against Moscow's business elite and oligarchs after their invasion of Ukraine.
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This woman, I mean, that was a full dragnet he laid down, Biden did on the Russian oligarchs after they invaded Ukraine.
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But not this lady who had given his son three point five million dollars.
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And while we don't have proof Biden cashed in any of those checks, we do have the Hunter laptop talking about how 10 percent goes to the big guy.
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Oftentimes on Judiciary Committee, we talk about a two tier justice system.
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You have laid out the case as to what's wrong with this family perfectly.
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Could you imagine if this were Donald Trump Jr.?
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Could you imagine this for any other former president?
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Not just to his family, but to the president himself.
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And the American public is sick of this two tier justice system.
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If you're going to turn a blind eye to this, then we have to stop indicting former presidents if we're not going to indict this current president.
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If we're going to continue to turn a blind eye to the nefarious actions of Hunter Biden, then that means we're going to turn a blind eye to the nefarious actions of basically any other regular citizen in this country, regardless of whose son you are.
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And I think the American public are absolutely sick and tired of watching these people get away with literally literal highway robbery.
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We are seeing the millions and millions of dollars being funneled through this family.
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If the average citizen doesn't get this kind of treatment, then what makes Hunter Biden so special?
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Remember, they were so mad that Ivanka Trump got an expedited approval of I think it was like a patent or a trademark application in China while Trump was president.
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OK, so that seemed to be somewhat taking advantage of the role her dad had.
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I don't remember the exact circumstances, but let's give him that one for the purposes of this discussion.
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Where is their interest in what in the 20 million dollars minimum we know that all the Bidens were getting while this guy was the sitting vice president?
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And then it's not like he left the world stage.
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But the thing on the on the payment from the Russian wife is is interesting to me because that came out in 2020.
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The fact that this woman, Yelena Batterina, had said three point five million to Hunter, his shell company, three point five.
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And what do the Democrats say when that came out?
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Well, now what's happened is Comer got the bank records and he's it's proof.
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And now the response from the Democrats is that's old news.
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Do you remember the debate that that that President Trump had with with with within candidate Joe Biden?
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And he asked him President Trump asked him specifically about his dealings, 100, 100 Biden's dealings.
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And Joe Biden lied on national television to the entire world.
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He said, oh, I have absolutely nothing to do with Hunter Biden's dealings.
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I have absolutely nothing to do with his business deals.
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He didn't he didn't talk about Hunter Biden's qualifications to be on Burisma's board.
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Now we know he was in the room when Hunter Biden was calling in these favors.
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And he was saying that basically my father is sitting right here next to me.
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At what point do these people just stop lying and just say, yeah, you know what?
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I mean, we have we haven't yet established that with respect to Joe Biden, other than Hunter's references on his laptop.
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But with respect to the other Bidens, for sure, this another thing that Comer's memorandum proves is that in April of 2014, I mean, anybody doing business with a Kazakhstani oligarch when their father's the sitting vice president?
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It's like red flag, red flag, Kazakhstani oligarch Kenneth Rakijev wired the exact price of Hunter Biden's Porsche to a bank account used by Archer and Biden.
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And that's in addition to the million dollars a year he was getting from the Ukrainians via Burisma.
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But he I mean, so he got they bought they bought his Porsche.
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They paid a million dollars a year out of Ukraine.
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All this other million, three point five million from the Russians.
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And Barack Obama sat by and did absolutely nothing about this.
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Joe Biden ran for office as president as the new squeaky clean version.
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You know, he was going to be scandal free, just like Barack Obama, unlike the back in the room.
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And now, you know, what we have from the media is just a collective yawn.
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This is the dishonesty of the media that we're seeing, especially the media from the left.
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And what I what I always like to articulate, especially when I'm talking to people right
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here in my own district, a lot of people are very, very frustrated with the media and their
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lack of intellectual curiosity if it if it doesn't adhere with their agenda.
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But I tell people all the time, do you know that the media right now, especially the left,
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they have a lower approval rating than the halls of Congress?
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So we have to stop blaming the liberal media for them not reporting on these things.
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And it's up to us to take our message to the people through our social media outlets,
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through shows just like yours and doing exactly what you're doing by articulating what's wrong
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And I know it's working because right now, President Trump is up 18 points against Joe
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And it's only going to get worse from here because the average American is looking at
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all this and they're saying, you know what, I don't really care how I feel about President
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I don't really care about about what happened in the past.
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What I do know is that we have a two-tier justice system.
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We are going after a former president and we are making we are making a victim of a of
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That's that's a political opponent of the current president.
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And we are sticking the DOJ, the FBI on him with all these charges.
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And even if Politico, Politico or CSNBC or CNN, even if they may not report on it, we
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Peter Ducey of Fox News had a moment to shout a question at Joe Biden about Devin Archer's
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There's this testimony now where one of your son's former business associates is claiming
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that you were on speakerphone a lot with them talking business.
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OK, so can I give you here's my back of the envelope.
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He's the only one who asked him tough questions.
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But that was a fail because that that wasn't consistent.
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But if I were in a court of law, I would have stood up and said assumes facts, not in evidence.
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The whole thing was he'd call in during the business meeting.
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And it's basically just a show of, hey, I'm Joe Biden and I'm sanctioning this entire discussion.
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But he's smart enough not to say, like, so are we getting the three point five million,
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You have to stick with the actual facts alleged.
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And unfortunately, the president got to wiggle out of it and look like the one who was adherent
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I mean, honestly, I've said, Representative, I said, go right to him and say, why, when you
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were the sitting vice president of the United States and in charge of investigating corruption
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in Ukraine, did you allow your son to sit on a corrupt Ukrainian company's board?
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And what explanation do you have for that for the American people?
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I think Peter Doocy, he had that he had that one shot to try to get as much as he could in.
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I can't I can't agree more with you, but I still think to the average American, they
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Yes, I sanctioned three point five million dollars.
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But I think the insinuation that he is even on the phone call, the fact that his son can
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say, hey, my dad's going to call you and my dad's going to be on this call.
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And all he says, hi, hi, I'm Joe Biden in a very slurred Joe Biden way.
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That's all that that's all that's needed to know that these oligarchs and these people
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can pay for access to the United States of America.
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But I think you're absolutely right with your line of questioning and being precise.
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When you're dealing with people that are that are this squishy and this wiggly is something
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Yeah, this this woman, this the former wife of the mayor of Moscow, she had dinner with
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When the hell else is the wife of the mayor of Moscow going to have access to the vice president
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Just the mere fact that Hunter was able to orchestrate that, tell told her everything
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And now we're just all going to ignore this like it was absolutely nothing.
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You know, on your subject, on your subject of Trump, I think you're absolutely right.
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I, as you know, when he was running for office the first time I asked him that debate question
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But the truth is, like now it all just seems so small ball now that he's been president of
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the United States, now that he's under indictment three times and facing a fourth, the two tier
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And yet the media is kind of still on the name calling game.
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But I'm just saying, like today, all over the media is the fact that he kind of referred
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And like without any acknowledgement of what Chris Christie has been calling Donald Trump.
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But Chris Christie's basically said, I mean, every chance he gets, he calls Trump a criminal.
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I'd rather somebody call me a fat pig than a criminal.
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If President Trump gets this better than anybody else, he knows how to properly attack his opponent
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to drive their polling numbers down to get them out of the race.
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If we've watched any, if we've known anything over the course of the past few years, President
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Trump is kind of the master at painting someone as something.
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Really, at the time, their political career is actually going to be in jeopardy for the future.
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This is actually a very smart play by President Trump.
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If we can, if he can even show some compassion by saying he's not a fat pig, but he's out
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I think that's where a lot of Americans understand how President Trump operates.
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I watched that and I just kind of smiled at this program.
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I was like, oh, that's a very, it's a very savvy move by a person that's, that's a, that's,
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And he is going to brand, uh, of all his opponents, uh, at, at, at, at some point to
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make sure that he is going to be the victor in 2024.
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It's, I mean, it is, it's like, don't go there, right?
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Like if you, if you're going to get nasty with him, he's going to get nasty with you.
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And also, and also, I appreciate you, you're bringing up Chris Christie.
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He has said a lot of horrible things about President Trump over the course of the past
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So it's like, then it falls flat when he tries to sort of take the high road and like, I'm
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I've known him for 22 years is I am so in his head.
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It's because now I'm in second place in New Hampshire.
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And if he looks at everything I've done in my career and what he wants to talk about is
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Because I'll tell you this, there are tens of millions of Americans who have struggled
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with their weight the same way I struggle with my weight.
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And they look at somebody who talks like that and they say, that's a child.
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Chris Christie, again, you've already articulated this.
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He has been running his mouth for the past few years against President Trump.
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And trust me, if you punch him, he's going to punch back twice as hard.
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And why would President Trump show up to a debate when he is up 35, 40 points in almost
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And if Chris Christie thinks that he's second in New Hampshire right now, but if by second
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you mean you're still 35, 40 points behind the front runner, then fine.
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And if he's going to continue to try to talk tough and continue to try to punch at President
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And look, if he wants to be the victim right now and complain about his weight or his laziness
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But we all know that's not what we're talking about here.
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We are talking about President Trump fighting back at somebody that has been talking trash
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I don't think there's one heavyset Trump supporter who actually is going to be offended
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Like he's using these very derogatory terms to insult somebody who he can't stand.
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I mean, Trump's admitted that he himself has got a bit of a weight problem in the past.
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So now speaking of the debate, Trump went on with Eric Bolling on Newsmax last night and
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And here's what he said about whether he's going to participate at the August 23rd Fox
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Yeah, I've already decided and I'll be announcing something next week and I wouldn't sign the
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Why would I sign a pledge of people on there that I wouldn't have?
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I wouldn't have certain people as, you know, somebody that I'd endorse.
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But I can name three or four people that I wouldn't support for president.
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So he says he's made his decision about whether he's going to attend the GOP debate.
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The head of the RNC has said he's got to tell them within 48 hours because it's not that
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I was at a debate that Trump skipped and we to the last second had the lectern ready to
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Yeah, he had not yet been the sitting president.
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The Secret Service protection and all that, you know, they follow the former presidents.
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You know, I can never speak for President Trump.
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But but if I were guessing, I just I don't see why this would help him out at this point.
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He has clearly surrounded himself with people that know what they're doing.
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Even watching that clip, you know, to kind of show that restraint when asked, you know,
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what three people would you not want to see the president of the United States or be or
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I thought to myself, wow, he wouldn't even name these people.
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President Trump is laser focused on getting our country back and talking about the things
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He's talking about making us safe again and securing our border and getting our economic
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status back to where it should be prior to COVID and making sure that people can afford
00:25:39.480
And so by going on a stage against people that you're up 30 points against, that doesn't
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It doesn't it doesn't it doesn't change the fact that I think the average primary voter
00:25:50.980
And Megan, my wife is from a small town in Iowa.
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So what if you if you already and I and I mean, driving around that small town, seeing
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the people in Iowa being around my in-laws, it's absolutely apparent that these people
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want somebody to walk in here on day one and get our country back heading in the right
00:26:20.580
So getting on that stage and getting into getting into a debate with Chris Christie, it's not going
00:26:26.480
Last but not least, I saw you at a hearing recently bringing up the gender issue and I
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You know, there's there's a cartoon that goes around on the Internet.
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It's some meme where the little child is saying to the parent, it's a girl, I think, saying,
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And her response is, but no, honey, you're a girl.
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Like people are injecting these doubts into our children's heads, like teachers that
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happened in our own school where teachers tried to inject doubts didn't work.
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But every week they were asking my son and his other classmates whether they were sure
00:27:04.660
they were still boys in the third grade weekly.
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But I saw you talking about the absurdity of letting these minors make these life altering
00:27:17.900
decisions that is not disclosed, that they will be infertile, that they will mutilate
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And this is how you put it in a clip that went viral.
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What would happen if we affirmed every thought that our children have?
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This is the food pyramid, according to my four-year-old and my two-year-old daughters.
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If my children had their way, they would have ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner and
00:28:02.260
But in the same country, we know that children are mature enough to make adult decisions that
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It was actually so beautifully said, but it's scary the path we're on, you know, because
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so many on the other side is weirdly it's become a political issue where these Democrats
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seem to think it's like a liberal thing to allow the four-year-olds to tell us whether
00:28:33.460
And it's kind of sad that we're even here at this country, but here we are.
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We've got to step up and make sure that we secure the future for this country by fighting
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I'm a West Point grad, flew 55 combat air missions in Baghdad, Apache pilot.
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I fought for the rights of people and adults to make their own decisions.
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If you're an adult, if you're a mature adult and you want to use your own money to transition
00:29:04.140
to whatever you want with your body, I cannot stop you, knock yourself out.
00:29:11.540
How dare us allow other people to mutilate our children and allow them to make these kinds
00:29:18.860
of decisions before they reach the age of being an adult?
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And the only thing we are stating here is the obvious.
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We cannot allow children to make adult-like decisions.
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That's why we are adults and that's why they are children.
00:29:37.860
That's why you cannot go in the military until you're 18 years old.
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That's why you cannot drink alcohol until you're 21 years old.
00:29:43.460
And if you can't do these things until you are deemed to be an adult, then why would we
00:29:48.000
allow you to change your gender before you are of the age to make adult-like decisions?
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I'm not scared of people that want to transition.
00:30:02.120
Our children should not be making these decisions and we as adults need to act like it.
00:30:07.700
Here, here, and the medical community that allows it ought to be punished in my view.
00:30:12.480
Right now, the news today is that the American Academy of Pediatrics is going to be reviewing
00:30:23.100
Sweden has reversed itself saying we are not giving hormones to people under 18.
00:30:27.260
You know, puberty blockers into cross-sex hormones sterilizes children, period.
00:30:34.280
But at the same time, they say, oh, but we reaffirm our gender-affirming care policy.
00:30:38.140
You know, everything we're doing is right and we're going to do a review, but everything we're
00:30:41.820
So we'll just see about that because more and more bold, brave, honest politicians like
00:30:46.580
you, Representative Wesley Hunt, are trying to hold them to account.
00:30:53.180
We look forward to continuing the conversation.
00:31:01.500
We will be right back with journalist David Garrow.
00:31:11.380
In a moment, I'm going to be joined by author and historian David Garrow.
00:31:15.740
But first, just a bit of background on his incredible span of work.
00:31:19.740
In 1986, Garrow released Bearing the Cross, a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
00:31:31.460
It is considered the definitive account of the fight for abortion rights in America.
00:31:36.460
In 2017, Garrow wrote the book Rising Star, The Making of Barack Obama.
00:31:42.520
He interviewed over a thousand people during a nine-year period, including the then president
00:31:51.880
He unearthed documents from every stage of Mr. Obama's life, before politics, and tracked
00:31:57.660
down a previously unknown girlfriend, someone who had never spoken to the press before.
00:32:02.940
Now, a new tablet magazine interview with Garrow is making its own headlines for Garrow's incredibly
00:32:09.700
frank assessment of how he views the former president's rise and continued stature in the
00:32:20.740
You are the most talked about person on the Internet right now, and that's a feat, sir.
00:32:33.340
And maybe you can explain to the audience why do you think we are talking about this six
00:32:42.580
Why didn't it go totally viral and dominate the headlines?
00:32:45.340
Well, when Rising Star was first published in May of 2017, you know, Barack had left office
00:32:54.120
four or five months earlier, and we were in the early stages of the Trump presidency, you
00:33:02.180
know, following that astonishing 2016 election.
00:33:06.360
One of the times that I went to see Obama in the Oval Office was in early December, and while
00:33:17.340
our conversations were officially off the record, it was very clear then, my previous visit had
00:33:27.240
It was very clear then, in early December, how shell-shocked the White House was that Trump
00:33:38.800
And I think that took a lot of air out of the room, so to speak, because Barack really, you
00:33:46.440
know, disappeared from public view once he left office in January of 2017.
00:33:53.100
I mean, everything disappeared from the headlines other than Donald Trump from the moment Trump
00:33:59.800
won for the next, well, you could argue till today.
00:34:04.720
But wasn't there an issue with people not publishing it or excerpting it?
00:34:13.100
Or was that with respect to the King revelations from the FBI tapes?
00:34:17.120
No, I didn't encounter any opposition or pushback.
00:34:25.340
I mean, Rising Star made the New York Times bestseller list for at least one week when it
00:34:33.260
And generally speaking, I was very happy with the review attention.
00:34:39.220
The Washington Post named one of the 10 best books of 2017.
00:34:43.620
So I think there was, you know, certainly, you know, Barack's, you know, disappearance from
00:34:51.640
the public stage after having been maybe all too visible day after day after day for eight
00:35:07.600
So I confused my facts because I know that when you did your reporting on what those FBI
00:35:14.580
King and what allegedly happened with a rape victim, they were less interested in that.
00:35:23.280
So one of the one of the big gets that you got was you tracked down not just Barack Obama's
00:35:30.940
ex-girlfriend, but somebody to whom he had proposed marriage not once, but twice.
00:35:35.440
And the story she told you about why their relationship ended kind of reframes a narrative that Barack
00:35:44.520
Obama himself was trying to pitch to us in his in his book, Dreams for My Father.
00:35:49.400
So can you explain that story to us and how you found the ex-girlfriend?
00:35:52.380
When Barack first really came to successful attention as a presidential candidate in early
00:36:09.040
I ordered a cheap paperback copy of Dreams from My Father and actually read most of it on
00:36:19.800
And right from the get go, it's pretty clear that it's not a work of history, that it's
00:36:29.640
But it's transparent that most of the characters have pseudonyms or are composite figures.
00:36:41.920
And for the balance of 2008 into early 2009, up through when he was inaugurated, I sort of
00:36:49.380
read everything I could long distance about his life up through when he went into the U.S.
00:36:58.760
And then in March of 2009, I made the decision to start doing interviews focused on his years as a
00:37:08.040
community organizer in Chicago, 1985 to 1988, because that's really the centerpiece of Dreams
00:37:16.200
I mean, I wanted to solve this large number of mysteries as to who were these people that
00:37:24.160
And so my focus very much was on the organizers who hired and trained him, the local people
00:37:32.440
in the far south side community with whom he worked.
00:37:36.180
And so I did several years of legwork of tracking down people.
00:37:41.880
And, you know, for folks who are like living in a public housing development, they're not
00:37:51.160
You know, if you've gone to Harvard Law School, as Barack did, it's pretty easy to find Harvard
00:37:59.440
But that work on the far south side, finding these people who knew him as a young man, you
00:38:06.160
know, before he got into politics, was deeply rewarding.
00:38:10.200
Some of these folks had spoken to a reporter or two, but many of them had not been found.
00:38:17.300
Now, to your particular question, during most of that time that Barack was working down in
00:38:25.680
Roseland at Alkill Gardens, he was living in Hyde Park, the integrated community around
00:38:34.540
And it was public record information that he had had a girlfriend with whom he lived for
00:38:42.380
a big chunk of that time, someone who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
00:38:51.400
Now, as someone who spent, you know, all my adult life in universities, as anyone who has
00:38:58.680
done that would know, you can find a student directory in the university library for any given
00:39:06.540
And so knowing Barack's address, the address at which he lived in those years, I had Alex
00:39:15.140
Lerner, my young University of Chicago research assistant, go to Regenstein Library, you know,
00:39:22.280
pull the student directories for, you know, 1986, 1987, 1988, and let's see who else lives at
00:39:31.520
So that's how I found Sheila Yeager, the woman with whom he lived.
00:39:36.000
We also found this nice couple that lived directly above them, who were both professors at North
00:39:45.000
And they had, you know, nice memories of knowing Barack and Sheila from the laundry room in the
00:39:52.160
It's so fascinating, because, of course, we're used to people doing these exhaustive bios and
00:40:01.940
And yet you were the first to find Sheila Yeager and her response upon you.
00:40:08.040
I mean, a Pulitzer Prize winning author contacting her was something to the effect of, I'm so glad
00:40:18.580
But I think the reason the story about why they broke up, the real reason, according to
00:40:22.360
her, is they diverge on the stories about why they grew up, why they broke up is resonating
00:40:28.600
because people already, especially in the Jewish community, had a suspicion that Barack Obama
00:40:36.900
Anybody who sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for as long as he did would be suspected of
00:40:42.220
this because he would rant about his anti-Semitic views.
00:40:50.480
So what was the story she told you about how they broke up and how does it differ from what
00:40:57.140
Barack Obama said in his 1995 memoir, you know, Dreams from My Father, about why he broke
00:41:09.260
First, I have a very positive opinion of Jeremiah Wright.
00:41:14.520
Um, he, uh, said any number of, uh, unpleasant, wacky things.
00:41:23.260
Um, but perhaps the person who was the greatest formative, uh, influence on my life, uh, was
00:41:31.640
the late Jim Cohn, James H. Cohn, the founder of Black Liberation Theology.
00:41:44.320
Uh, people view Jerry as, uh, a dangerous radical.
00:41:48.720
Uh, but to me, as someone who has spent much of my life immersed, uh, with Martin Luther
00:41:55.120
King Jr., um, Jerry is, Jerry during his time in active ministry, uh, was very much a combination
00:42:07.420
Um, now that's not to defend everything Jerry said, because particularly that, um, one time
00:42:13.340
at the National Press Club, uh, with Barbara Reynolds, um, he said some offensive things.
00:42:18.280
But, uh, it's certainly a part of my King training that we do not judge people, uh, by the one
00:42:27.040
or two, uh, worst things that, uh, uh, happened in the course of their lives.
00:42:33.220
Um, um, Sheila Yeager, um, is half Dutch, half Japanese.
00:42:43.200
And it's important, uh, to, to highlight in the context of, of what David Samuels in the
00:42:50.600
tablet interview, uh, really, uh, very much, uh, predominantly focused on that Sheila's
00:42:57.960
paternal grandparents, uh, uh, in the Netherlands, uh, during the World War II, uh, actively worked
00:43:08.700
Um, and, and they are enshrined, uh, if that's the right word, uh, at the memorial to heroes
00:43:18.900
Um, so that family history for Sheila is very important.
00:43:22.780
This is from the tablet, uh, magazine interview that writing that what you documented after
00:43:28.880
tracking down Sheila was an explosive fight over a very different subject from the one that
00:43:33.440
Barack Obama said ended their relationship in Sheila Jake Yeager's telling the quarrel
00:43:38.100
that ended their relationship was not about his self-identification as a black man.
00:43:43.100
And the, the impetus was not about a play regarding the American black experience, but an exhibit
00:43:48.880
at Chicago's Sparris Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann at the time that Obama
00:43:55.340
and Sheila visited the Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a black mayoral aid named
00:44:00.740
Steve Coakley, who in a series of letters organized by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam accused
00:44:05.980
Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against
00:44:13.980
What set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple's relationship was Obama's
00:44:21.380
He, he would not condemn these comments and she was upset that he would not condemn Coakley
00:44:29.400
So this seems to be her saying, you know, that maybe not that he's antisemitic, but he's certainly
00:44:35.000
not going to, not going to condemn, um, these particular comments about that seem antisemitic
00:44:43.820
So that's David Samuel's, you know, summary account.
00:44:48.000
Um, I won't quarrel with it in full, uh, but I'm not at all sure that Sheila would, would
00:44:57.720
Well, you're saying if she was upset about it because she's got the Dutch heritage and
00:45:02.060
I understand, I mean, the Dutch did a lot to, to try to save, you know, the Jews that
00:45:05.960
they could, but like, that seems to be the reason that it resonated with her.
00:45:12.680
And I, I should say too, that I, I think it's, it's accurate to say that Sheila, because
00:45:16.560
she's half Japanese, uh, does not identify herself as white.
00:45:22.160
Um, all right, standby because, uh, there's much, much more to get to.
00:45:25.920
I got to squeeze in a quick break and we'll come right back with David Garrow, who stays
00:45:34.160
David, just to pick up on the Jeremiah Wright thing.
00:45:39.080
Um, you know, there, we don't have to revisit that.
00:45:45.980
He may be lovely, but I remember the goddamn America and the chickens have come home to
00:45:53.140
And the reason people thought he was antisemitic was he said the reason that president Obama
00:46:00.080
had not spoken with him in a long time was quote, this is from him directly.
00:46:06.900
I told my baby daughter that he talked to me in five years when he's a lame duck or in
00:46:11.140
eight years when he's out of office, they will not let him talk to somebody who calls
00:46:15.900
I said that from the beginning, he's a politician.
00:46:20.640
So them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me.
00:46:22.900
Sounds about as antisemitic as somebody would ever openly get in modern day America.
00:46:30.200
Granted on that one quote, Jeremiah was very hurt.
00:46:36.900
And angry about how Barack treated him once Barack began running for president.
00:46:48.580
Barack and Michelle were married by Jerry at Trinity United Church.
00:46:53.300
Um, and, uh, I don't normally say things like this, but, um, if, if Barack ever had a quasi father's
00:47:07.660
Um, and Jeremiah's work at that church, uh, for decades, uh, was just superb.
00:47:14.980
Um, that congregation, uh, had a, a, a huge positive presence on the far South side of
00:47:22.800
Um, so that's why on balance, I very strongly, uh, defend, uh, Jeremiah.
00:47:30.320
Um, uh, he understood my background, uh, in, in King world with movement people, um, and
00:47:40.240
introduced me to, to members of his congregation so that they could speak to me about Barack
00:47:45.440
Um, and it, it bears saying that, um, once, uh, Barack and Michelle were married and Barack
00:47:52.480
began in Illinois politics, uh, they weren't doing much of anything at Trinity Church.
00:47:58.180
They were not active, uh, weekly members of the congregation.
00:48:02.540
Uh, Jeremiah's impact on Barack back 86, 87, 88 was very important.
00:48:10.920
Um, but, um, I think it's fair to say that, that Reverend Wright, uh, was, was, was hurt,
00:48:18.820
uh, by how Barack, uh, increasingly distanced himself, uh, as his political ascent, uh, went
00:48:32.540
But you write in, in the book about how he doesn't really have, he doesn't hold on to
00:48:37.200
people like he doesn't have the long term relationships that you would typically see.
00:48:43.360
You compare him to Jack Kennedy, uh, who was very different.
00:48:48.720
I mean, um, I, this is what I said to David Samuels in the interview.
00:48:52.060
I mean, no, no matter what we say about president Kennedy and some of his behavior, uh, in the
00:48:57.320
White House with young women, uh, is, you know, atrociously.
00:49:02.820
Um, but, um, Jack Kennedy was intensely loyal, uh, to people who'd been with him going back
00:49:11.820
Um, one of his closest friends, Lem Billings, was an openly gay man in the 1950s, in the
00:49:18.960
1960s, uh, living in part at the White House in the early 60s.
00:49:28.080
Um, I have very mixed feelings about President Kennedy, but his loyalty to people close to
00:49:39.460
Um, Barack Obama, on the other hand, um, he remained quite close to several of his high
00:49:46.320
school buddies, uh, from Hawaii, like Mike Ramos.
00:49:50.020
Um, but the people with whom he remained close were, were not people who, uh, ended up going
00:49:57.040
to Harvard Law School, um, and becoming, uh, you know, almost public figures, uh, you know,
00:50:04.280
because of, of Barack's, uh, achievement as, as the first African-American president of,
00:50:09.960
of the Harvard Law Review in, in 1990, 1991, uh, when multiple major, uh, papers and magazines,
00:50:20.880
Um, and in particular in Illinois, um, the people who were just essentially, uh,
00:50:27.040
uh, to Barack's, uh, ascent in Illinois politics, uh, Dan Shulman, uh, Carol Harwell, um, one
00:50:38.500
would expect more long-term loyalty, uh, from the average human being.
00:50:46.440
But he's, he moves up, he sort of moves up on the social ladder and finds new friends
00:50:52.160
I mean, you point out that even Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod only go back to 2003 with
00:50:58.600
him and that, you know, he quickly sort of fell in with the Beyonce Jay-Z kind of crowd
00:51:06.620
and enjoyed his time on the yachts, which turns out was a, was a personal goal of his.
00:51:12.940
The, the two things he once said he most wanted were, it wasn't a yacht.
00:51:24.000
That's not what, what American man is thinking about getting a valet?
00:51:27.620
Valet, like a valet who dresses you or like a valet who passes, who parks your car?
00:51:33.380
And, and as, as we tragically saw just a few weeks ago with the drowning on Martha's Vineyard,
00:51:38.880
uh, how many people have 24, seven personal chefs, uh, living with them?
00:51:46.100
Uh, I mean, I don't think that's true of, of all former presidents.
00:51:51.860
I doubt very much that Jimmy Carter over the years has had a, has had a personal chef.
00:51:58.900
Um, but what I, what I should say is that, um, and this goes back to, to the, uh, Obama
00:52:08.120
first term presidency, when I was interviewing, uh, scores and scores of people, uh, black people
00:52:14.320
in Chicago, whom had known, uh, Barack and Michelle back then, um, you know, even during
00:52:20.240
the presidency, this, this outsized interest in, in hanging with celebrities, uh, began to
00:52:27.360
appear, um, and the accurate summary is, is that black Chicagoans were not astounded that
00:52:37.900
Barack, uh, developed this, this interest in, in somehow elevating himself, uh, by hanging
00:52:46.740
with celebrities, uh, but they were very disappointed and pained, uh, that Michelle, uh, was a part of,
00:52:57.360
part of this change because they rightly quite understandably had always viewed Michelle as,
00:53:05.440
as this clue, perfect product of, of working class, uh, South side black Chicago, uh, coming
00:53:15.340
from a humble, but, but very hardworking family, both her dad and her mom, uh, her brother,
00:53:22.240
likewise, uh, Craig, uh, became very successful as a basketball coach, um, and so for Michelle
00:53:29.380
to lose that grounding, uh, uh, I think a lot of people in black Chicago found, uh, just
00:53:40.720
You, um, write about how there, there wasn't a ton of loyalty.
00:53:46.120
There wasn't a ton of loyalty, nor interest in the pitfalls that came to the lives of some
00:53:54.680
And in particular, the end of one of their lives, um, right.
00:53:58.860
Talking with, um, tablet about Claire Sediak, forgive me, Sediak.
00:54:06.280
Who died at age 50, leaving behind a four-year-old.
00:54:10.060
And what, why is the story of Claire interesting to you?
00:54:14.260
Springfield is, is a small town, uh, politically small town.
00:54:18.920
Um, and particularly, uh, in the world of the Illinois state Senate back then, uh, relationships
00:54:29.340
Um, uh, a number of, of, uh, state Senate staffers who, who were officially Republicans,
00:54:36.360
uh, worked closely, helpfully with Barack, um, and it bears emphasizing, uh, that Barack
00:54:44.740
himself in Springfield, this is a very important aspect of his life story, uh, that Barack was
00:54:51.420
very active and outgoing in working and negotiating and making deals with conservative Republican
00:55:00.680
lawmakers, uh, lawmakers, uh, lawmakers more conservative, uh, than most of the folks he
00:55:08.000
was dealing with in the U.S. Senate or U.S. House as president.
00:55:12.880
Um, and Barack's success in Springfield, um, lay in the fact that he was both personable,
00:55:21.560
Um, Barack's most strained relationships in Springfield were with other black Democrats, um,
00:55:30.140
guys from the hood, let us say, um, who very explicitly didn't think Barack was black enough.
00:55:38.200
Um, that was, uh, a, a predominant theme, uh, in Chicago politics, especially when Barack
00:55:45.920
unsuccessfully, uh, challenged incumbent Congressman Bobby Rush, uh, in a congressional primary in,
00:55:52.700
in 1999-2000, uh, Barack was, was defeated by really a humiliating margin.
00:55:59.740
Getting 31% of the vote, uh, in part because the Rush campaign did, uh, a very powerful job of,
00:56:07.740
of painting Barack as this, uh, uh, multicultural, uh, uh, newcomer from, uh, Hawaii and Indonesia.
00:56:15.900
Um, but in the world of Springfield, um, when, uh, uh, someone, uh, has a life crisis,
00:56:24.480
a medical crisis, um, the community pitches in, um, and everybody contributes through,
00:56:31.320
uh, uh, GoFundMe, uh, uh, type of, uh, of, you know, web contributions.
00:56:40.140
Um, there was a, a fellow who was very helpful to Barack named Matt Jones, uh, several years
00:56:48.580
Um, and when I went to that contribution page, um, you know, I may have given, say, $50.
00:56:55.580
I mean, I had a very nice, you know, hour and a half, two hour interview with, with Matt Jones.
00:57:00.060
Um, but you could go down that list and see everyone in Springfield, uh, Democrats and Republicans
00:57:07.340
had all kicked in to help support, uh, the Jones family.
00:57:11.360
Um, same thing when Claire Sudouk died, uh, back in, in the year 2000, uh, she had been
00:57:17.740
the head finance person on Barack's, uh, 2003, 2004 Senate race, uh, a crucial early figure.
00:57:25.640
Um, and you, again, you go down the list of contributors on that page.
00:57:30.220
Um, and it's everybody who worked on that Obama campaign, not the candidate, but everyone
00:57:44.300
He's not a loyal, like what, what does that show you?
00:57:47.700
Um, the most poignant example of this is, is Dan Shulman.
00:57:53.300
Um, Dan is a, a really lifelong, uh, Illinois political operative, uh, was on the state Senate
00:58:00.900
staff when Barack first got to the state Senate in 1997.
00:58:04.200
Um, and Dan ended up devoting years of his life to advancing Barack, um, uh, 365 days a year.
00:58:15.060
Um, and Barack could not have made his rise through Illinois politics, uh, without Dan Shulman.
00:58:23.260
Um, and that's not just Dave Garrow saying that you could find 500 people, uh, in Illinois who'd
00:58:30.260
say the exact same thing, uh, particularly people from Springfield.
00:58:33.220
Um, and Dan gets sort of pushed aside in, in 2004 in the Senate, uh, campaign, uh, recall how
00:58:42.940
Barack goes from, uh, a sort of unknown third rank primary candidate, uh, to winning that
00:58:52.660
Democratic senatorial primary in early 2004 and then his speech at the summer 2004, uh,
00:59:02.800
Democratic National Convention, uh, is what helped to national celebrity states.
00:59:09.440
Uh, but Dan, uh, you know, again, I think the average human being, uh, the average politician,
00:59:17.440
uh, would have shown, uh, much more loyalty to Dan Shulman, uh, than was the case with Barack.
00:59:24.520
We skip past the question of the girlfriends without mentioning one of the other
00:59:29.660
And that is, there was another girlfriend that he had whose letters with Barack were produced
00:59:36.980
She gave you letters between the two of them, except for the one paragraph that would then
00:59:42.600
wind up going public via other means, um, via Emory University.
00:59:46.720
And you sent a research down there to go researcher to go print what was in that paragraph in the
00:59:56.200
This has made a lot of news, but it, it turns out that he was writing to his then girlfriend.
01:00:01.580
This is, you know, back in the younger years about how he had repeated fantasies of having
01:00:11.600
It's like, it's like, is Barack Obama a gay man?
01:00:17.280
Like what, what is your takeaway of the significance of that paragraph and why she didn't want to
01:00:24.480
produce it to you and why no one's really gone there on the reporting, even though it has been
01:00:29.220
out there that once it was made public via Emory.
01:00:32.580
Um, several things, Megan, um, both Alex McNair, who was Barack's girlfriend of 1981 to 1983,
01:00:42.040
uh, and Genevieve Cook, who was his girlfriend in, in New York, uh, in 84, 85, uh, both, uh,
01:00:51.180
shared with me, uh, all the letters, um, that Barack had, had written them back then.
01:00:56.760
Uh, Barack was very much someone who was sending handwritten letters and postcards, not just
01:01:04.640
to girlfriends, but to other friends, uh, during the 1980s.
01:01:08.440
Uh, this sound, this may sound very quaint, uh, to younger people today who, uh, the idea
01:01:14.720
of, of people actually mailing handwritten letters, uh, to the postal service.
01:01:23.180
Like, even when I got together with Doug in 2006, he would write me letters.
01:01:28.700
I mean, it's like not so long ago we used to do that.
01:01:31.980
Um, so when I first went to see Alex McNair out Eastern Long Island, um, sort of in 2009,
01:01:41.740
Um, so Alex let me read, uh, and, and take very detailed, uh, quotational notes, uh, from
01:01:50.140
all those letters, but she redacted one paragraph, uh, said it was too sensitive, uh, you know,
01:01:57.120
for while he was president, uh, said it was about homosexuality.
01:02:01.480
Um, and then after Rising Star was published in 2017, uh, it was announced that Alex had
01:02:13.260
And there were a number of news stories, uh, the Atlanta paper, the New York Times, uh,
01:02:21.380
Uh, but none of the stories made any reference to this paragraph that had been, uh, redacted
01:02:29.420
Um, and so I asked one of my oldest friends, Harvey Clare, K-L-E-H-R, uh, who's a very distinguished,
01:02:36.580
uh, historian of American communism, uh, has been a professor at Emory his whole life.
01:02:41.580
Uh, I asked Harvey to, to go to the Emory archives, visit the Emory archives, uh, they
01:02:47.420
wouldn't let even Harvey make a photocopy, uh, of that page in the letter.
01:02:52.740
Um, and so Harvey had to copy down the missing paragraph, you know, pencil and paper, um, and,
01:03:01.140
And so that language about Barack telling Alex that he regularly fantasized, uh, about relations
01:03:09.280
with men, that's in the paperback edition of rising star, uh, which was published in
01:03:16.040
Uh, but I believe only one, uh, fairly obscure, uh, conservative website, uh, mentioned it at
01:03:26.600
Uh, so I'm, uh, frankly bemused, uh, that that has been sitting in public view, uh, in the
01:03:34.940
paperback of the book for, uh, over five years now, uh, before most people, uh, decided they
01:03:42.960
Well, I mean, you can bet everything that if Trump had some letter in which he talked about
01:03:50.060
repeatedly fantasizing about having sex with men, it would be everywhere to me as a member
01:03:56.880
of the media, this just seems like the media running cover for him on, this is something
01:04:00.700
that would be embarrassing potentially to him and that they, they don't want to embarrass
01:04:05.500
Well, I mean, certainly in the context of when Emory, uh, put out the story in 2017 of, of
01:04:13.540
having acquired the letters, uh, one might think that the journalists, uh, covering that
01:04:22.800
I mean, now perhaps Emory didn't encourage them to do that.
01:04:26.420
Uh, maybe they were shown only selected portions, um, but it's the same thing with, uh, you know,
01:04:33.840
my, uh, finding Sheely Yeager, uh, in 2009, um, you just have to have the, the, uh, uh, historical
01:04:43.680
discipline or the historical motivation, uh, to go to the library and, and read things.
01:04:50.220
Mm. That's crazy. What you seem to be expecting of journalists. I don't understand this high
01:04:56.500
bar that you've set to a little round there too. There too, to me, it's like the elevation
01:05:04.240
of Barack Obama was important to the left in this country. It was important to them. It was,
01:05:10.500
you've made this point too, that they were working something out of their own about their own history,
01:05:15.260
their own feelings, race, and so on. And factoring in, um, you know, yes, point taken that, uh,
01:05:22.800
Sheila is half Japanese too, but also half Dutch. Uh, so she looks white. So I white ish
01:05:29.820
ex-girlfriend, uh, fantasizing about having gay sex. That was not part of the program that no one
01:05:36.860
would have any interest in that. They only wanted to elevate the 2004 democratic national convention
01:05:42.980
speaker. There is no black, uh, red America. There is no blue America. There is only the red way,
01:05:48.100
whatever the United States of America. And he would go on to govern in a very, very different way as
01:05:52.860
even he would ultimately admit. Um, the Obama presidency turned out very different, uh, than what
01:06:03.920
people who'd known Barack back in Illinois politics, uh, would have expected. Um, and indeed,
01:06:10.740
as you just emphasized in terms of that 2004, uh, democratic convention speech, um, uh, Barack was in
01:06:19.420
no way, uh, up through that time, uh, someone who, uh, uh, embraced, uh, or advocated, uh, what we now,
01:06:29.800
what we nowadays call identity politics. Um, uh, Barack during those early years was much more,
01:06:37.600
uh, uh, someone in the Dr. King tradition, uh, of a multiracial, uh, progressive coalition.
01:06:46.360
Uh, that's the, the Barack Obama who was, you know, running for the U S Senate running for the
01:06:52.180
presidency. Yeah. What happened? I think there's no question. I may have said this to,
01:06:58.940
uh, uh, the David Samuel's, uh, perhaps not, but my, uh, three days of conversations with
01:07:07.820
President Obama, uh, in the Oval Office, uh, left me with the very clear, uh, feeling and belief
01:07:17.900
that the experience of the presidency had made him blacker. That by 2016,
01:07:27.380
he is much more consciously identifying as African-American than he was in say, even 2008.
01:07:37.680
Now, I think that that change in Barack's feelings was the result of how much, uh, over the top
01:07:48.860
hostility, uh, was directed towards him, uh, from the right, uh, during his presidency.
01:07:56.300
Um, I think one of the major mistakes that the Obama White House made was in not releasing the
01:08:04.440
quote unquote long form, uh, birth certificate, uh, very early on, uh, when birtherism, uh, was first
01:08:13.340
challenging, uh, Barack's birth in Hawaii, uh, with these loony notions that he was born in Kenya or
01:08:20.560
Indonesia or wherever. Um, I think the fact that Barack is this multiracial figure, uh, someone with
01:08:29.820
a truly African father, uh, someone who spent two or three years of his young adulthood in Indonesia,
01:08:36.820
uh, because his, uh, mother's second husband, his stepfather, uh, was Indonesian. I think the fact that
01:08:46.260
this, that Barack was this sort of multinational multiracial figure, uh, made him seem more
01:08:54.920
unfamiliar, uh, to some people, uh, than had he been, uh, just a, an, you know, average, if we can
01:09:03.460
say, uh, U S raised, uh, African-American man. Hmm. Right. So he was, I mean, he's a mixed race guy from
01:09:12.120
Hawaii, uh, but why wouldn't he have just submitted the long form birth certificate? I mean, why, like
01:09:19.360
he could have put that to bed quickly and relatively easily, but he didn't. Yeah. Correct. Uh, I think
01:09:27.900
it was, I think they refused to take it seriously that they thought this was so crazy that it would
01:09:35.800
be, uh, you know, wrong to, to give this the time of day. Well, politically that was a, an unforced
01:09:44.860
error. It was, it was self-harming. David, I definitely want to talk about MLK, but before we
01:09:52.200
close out the Obama discussion, one of the comments you made, um, to Samuels was that
01:09:58.060
this sort of chasing after wealth status, celebrity friends, it leaves one hollow.
01:10:07.380
I think that's true. I think that's true for any man or a woman president or not. It's probably not
01:10:11.920
an unusual feeling for someone who runs for president because let's face it, you've got to
01:10:16.480
be a little nuts to want to be president, especially in today's day and age. You just, it's just such,
01:10:22.500
such an extraordinary sacrifice and your life changes dramatically, especially if young,
01:10:26.220
young children and all the things. So when you, when you look at Barack Obama, is that what you see
01:10:31.360
someone who is hollow? How would you, how would you describe him in that way?
01:10:37.260
I view him as a disappointing figure. Um, it was certainly a disappointing presidency,
01:10:42.180
um, you know, particularly in the foreign policy realm, uh, you know, where there were multiple,
01:10:48.260
um, uh, instances of, of, you know, grave disappointment, Syria,
01:10:53.960
Crimea back in 2014. Um, but in terms of a post-presidency, let's not forget Jimmy Carter.
01:11:01.300
Um, now Jimmy Carter, needless to say, did not have a successful presidency either. Um, but ever
01:11:08.280
since leaving the white house, um, you know, Carter, uh, built a tremendous life of public service.
01:11:15.680
Um, so there's, there's, there's a model out there, um, that you could follow, uh, if you're
01:11:21.940
Barack Obama, um, you know, not, you know, hanging with, you know, Jimmy, I doubt Jimmy Carter has ever
01:11:27.600
met Jay-Z or Beyonce. Um, there's, there's, there's another path to take, uh, if you're a progressive
01:11:34.780
Democrat and wants to, uh, continue living by the values that you once had.
01:11:41.620
Hmm. Why, why isn't he? I mean, he's not living that life. He stayed in DC for a long time. He's
01:11:47.880
at Martha's Vineyard. He's more in the see and be seen lane.
01:11:54.280
Uh, again, I, I said earlier, Megan, uh, uh, in black Chicago, people are, are most surprised that
01:12:03.900
Michelle, uh, did not keep them grounded, uh, in who they once were.
01:12:09.080
Hmm. I guess they were expecting too much of her. Uh, maybe they misjudged her and what's
01:12:15.740
important to her as well. Um, okay. So let's talk about Dr. King because you are the biographer.
01:12:23.120
I realize a lot of biographies have been written on him, but you, you want to pull a surprise for
01:12:27.600
your work. And it, it made a bunch of headlines. I think it was 2019 when you, did you get access to
01:12:37.120
the actual FBI tapes or transcripts of the tapes? Maybe just set it up for us so that the audience
01:12:43.140
knows what we're talking about. Cause you wrote the biography and we knew that the FBI had taped
01:12:47.200
him. And then what happened, what, what happened in the addendum, like the 26, 2019 reporting that led
01:12:53.160
to that, that, that revelation? Certainly, this is a little bit complicated. So bear with me in 2018,
01:13:00.920
the national archives, uh, put up on the web, uh, hundreds of thousands of pages of intelligence
01:13:08.940
community documents, uh, that back in the 1970s had been shared with congressional privately,
01:13:16.980
secretly shared with congressional investigating committees. That's pursuant to the 1990, 1992
01:13:24.560
Kennedy assassination records act, uh, which some viewers will be familiar with, uh, because
01:13:32.780
everything that went to the congressional investigating committees was then given to the
01:13:38.740
national archives. Now, one of those committees looked into the FBI's harassment of Dr. King,
01:13:45.200
another of the committees looked into the King assassination as well as the Kennedy assassination.
01:13:51.080
So in this JFK records act, humongous amount of material, there's a lot of stuff about Dr. King
01:13:59.700
that's been released in dribs and drabs over the years. Uh, the 2018 release, uh, was especially notable,
01:14:09.720
uh, because it included a lot of unredacted material based on the FBI's wiretapping and microphone
01:14:20.020
bugging of Dr. King. Now, part two of the complications. Back in 1997, a federal judge put under court seal
01:14:32.160
for 50 years, all of the raw materials from the King wiretaps and hotel recordings. Those sit in a vault
01:14:43.420
at main archives on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. The court seal expires at the end of January, 2027.
01:14:52.400
Okay. And so you, you got access in a way that no one else has to what's in there. It's a preview of
01:15:02.200
what we're going to see in 2027. And the shocking revelation to me and to many was that Dr. King
01:15:10.020
allegedly witnessed and potentially egged on the rape of one of his congregants by one of his
01:15:22.400
colleagues. Is that correctly stated? Uh, not one of his congregants. Dr. King, uh, did not view
01:15:32.460
women as the equals of men. And that was manifest in his treatment of women who worked in his civil
01:15:41.760
rights organization. Uh, Dr. King was also myself and other biographers believe never of a monogamous
01:15:49.940
person. Um, there's a superb, very recent, uh, new King biography by my, my friend and colleague,
01:15:56.540
Jonathan I, E I G titled just King. Uh, John's is, is a very nice, important updating of my bearing
01:16:04.780
the cross. Dr. King also had, uh, certainly by 1964, a serious drinking problem, a binge drinking
01:16:14.080
problem. Um, and he had a set of friends, male friends, uh, most of them, uh, fellow pastors who
01:16:23.840
were his sort of party companions and they would do, uh, group parties, uh, would be a tasteful way to say
01:16:32.140
it. The first time that the FBI records Dr. King in a hotel room by putting up, having microphones
01:16:39.840
installed in, in, in the lamps in the hotel bedroom is at the Willard Hotel in Washington in, in early
01:16:46.880
1964. And the fruits of that recording, according to the FBI documents, uh, involved one of King's,
01:16:57.560
uh, fellow preacher buddies, uh, forcing himself upon a woman, uh, a woman, black woman who, uh,
01:17:04.840
worked at the Philadelphia Navy yard. Uh, we've known, uh, the basics of that story, uh, for over
01:17:11.880
40 years. Uh, there's a garbled version of that story in my 1981 book, uh, Before Bearing the Cross,
01:17:19.420
the FBI and Martin Luther King. Uh, but what was new in the 2018, uh, National Archives release was that
01:17:28.080
King himself was allegedly in the room, uh, uh, when this other pastor, uh, forced himself on this
01:17:36.000
woman. Um, now I'm always ambivalent about stressing, uh, that King could be very drunk at
01:17:46.240
times because it sounds like, you know, we're making a sort of frat house or frat boy excuse. Oh,
01:17:51.380
he was just drunk. Well, um, that was a problem for King. Um, uh, you know, King was under tremendous
01:18:00.040
public stress, um, always in demand, uh, always feeling pressure. Um, and the drinking got worse
01:18:07.340
as, as the years went by. You know, to me, it offers a more complete picture of the man who's been
01:18:14.900
almost deified and there, you know, no one is perfect just to put it in very simple terms,
01:18:20.600
not even Dr. Martin Luther King. Uh, you know, no one is perfect. It's not to excuse anything he did,
01:18:26.880
but you know, we need to have that understanding when we look both at the figures who we've, you
01:18:34.420
know, lionized on of the left and the left could bear this in mind when looking at the figures on the
01:18:40.280
right of whom they are so quick to condemn when they make a misstatement or a misstep,
01:18:44.960
uh, just as human nature. Uh, I love the discussion. I look forward to reading the
01:18:50.920
whole book and I'm sorry that I failed to do so the first time when it came out rising star.
01:18:55.240
David, thank you so much for all of your great, great work. And we look forward to reading you more.
01:19:00.560
Thank you, Megan. All the best. And thank you all for joining me today. I want to tell you that we
01:19:05.920
have a new episode coming out as an extra weekend show that's out Saturday morning. See you soon.
01:19:13.560
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.