The Megyn Kelly Show - Two Women Fighting Back, with ＂ThisIsSavvy＂ Savannah Edwards and Rancher Leisl Carpenter ｜ Ep. 125

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00:00:30.740 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:34.500 I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:39.060 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:41.980 Are those from Winners?

00:00:43.520 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings?

00:00:45.980 Did she pay full price?

00:00:47.300 Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:49.520 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:50.940 That dress? That jacket? Those shoes?

00:00:53.120 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:56.540 Stop wondering. Start winning.

00:00:58.640 Winners. Find fabulous for less.

00:01:01.320 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:03.240 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:01:12.660 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:01:14.360 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:01:15.880 Big day here on the show.

00:01:17.720 We're going to start with this.

00:01:18.880 Two women fighting back.

00:01:21.020 We're going to be joined first by Savannah Edwards. 0.91

00:01:24.860 She is a TikTok influencer, a blogger, a YouTuber, and she had the nerve to push back on some of these

00:01:32.320 race narratives, Savannah's Black, that were being fed by people like Alyssa Milano. 0.97

00:01:38.120 And guess what?

00:01:38.860 TikTok banned her. 0.86

00:01:39.920 They took down her entire account.

00:01:43.100 Well, she fought back, and we'll tell you what's going on there.

00:01:46.600 And then we're going to be joined by a woman named Liesl Carpenter. 0.99

00:01:49.820 She is a sixth-generation Wyoming rancher.

00:01:53.200 She's got a young babe, a 20-month-old son at home.

00:01:56.660 And she's really suffered thanks to COVID, as a lot of our farmers and ranchers here have in the United States.

00:02:03.760 Well, thanks to the Biden administration, she's not going to get any of the latest round of COVID relief

00:02:11.100 because she has the wrong skin color. 1.00

00:02:13.380 Because the relief that was offered in the American Rescue Plan for farmers and ranchers

00:02:19.000 requires, in order for you to get loan forgiveness, which is what they're offering,

00:02:23.500 plus 20%, for you to be a person of color. 0.71

00:02:26.320 You have to be Black or some other, quote, socially disadvantaged group, 0.96

00:02:30.280 which for these purposes does not include women or anyone other than Blacks, Hispanics, Latinos, American Indians.

00:02:37.320 I think it's Alaska Natives and Asian Americans.

00:02:40.540 Okay, so that's who can get it.

00:02:42.460 No white people at all, even if they've suffered mightily. 0.89

00:02:45.940 And if you're a Black person who hasn't suffered at all, you can still get the money. 0.96

00:02:48.940 So is that fair?

00:02:50.160 We're going to get into it with Liesl and her lawyer, Will Trackman,

00:02:52.860 on not just her case, but three or four others that have been winding their way through the system

00:02:57.720 slowly but surely and not coming out the way the Biden administration wants.

00:03:03.240 We'll get to all of that in one second.

00:03:04.720 But first, this.

00:03:11.500 Savannah Edwards.

00:03:12.400 How are you?

00:03:13.760 I'm good.

00:03:14.360 How are you?

00:03:15.360 I'm great.

00:03:16.400 Thank you so much for being here.

00:03:18.020 Thank you for having me.

00:03:19.580 You are on fire.

00:03:21.260 I confess to you, I'm not on TikTok.

00:03:23.960 It just sort of meanders over to my world of news sites when somebody makes news.

00:03:29.140 And that's how I first discovered you.

00:03:31.000 You are worth signing up.

00:03:32.160 You are worth letting the Chinese spy on me. 1.00

00:03:34.640 I just think your bits are so clever.

00:03:36.340 You're really just an insightful political and social commentator.

00:03:40.320 Is this how did you fall into it?

00:03:42.540 Did you did you design?

00:03:44.180 You know, is that by design or is that just by accident?

00:03:47.240 Literally by accident.

00:03:48.580 When I started doing TikTok, it was more so because I'm a New Orleans transplant.

00:03:53.860 I moved here about a year and a half ago.

00:03:55.540 Just kind of to show what New Orleans is from a new person's perspective.

00:04:00.340 And someone ended up asking a question on a TikTok.

00:04:03.720 I responded and it kind of snowballed from there.

00:04:07.500 OK, yes.

00:04:08.700 Right.

00:04:08.880 Because you'll give us like a little bit usually of the question you've been asked or the thing

00:04:12.780 you're responding to at the top of your your bits.

00:04:17.100 And and it's great because it's actually just a little tease.

00:04:19.840 I'm like, wait, what did Alyssa Milano say now?

00:04:22.240 And it's always nonsense, but it's not everybody's as effective at calling her out on it.

00:04:27.260 That is the clip that really went viral.

00:04:29.480 And I think led to you being on Fox and Friends.

00:04:31.220 But let me let me let me play it so the audience can get a flavor for what we're talking about.

00:04:36.200 It's Alyssa at the at the top, followed by Savannah's response.

00:04:39.420 For those of us who are not black men, imagine watching the news and seeing how people imagine

00:04:44.400 being a black man and being told by some white lady with a microphone that you and the criminal 0.96

00:04:48.860 on TV are one of the same because you look alike. 0.96

00:04:52.300 Imagine being told by society that white people can be all that they can be.

00:04:55.500 But you as a black man, the content of your character is completely irrelevant. 0.87

00:04:58.420 You are the color of your skin, and that is all you will ever be. 1.00

00:05:01.720 Imagine being told you can't figure out how to vote because of the color of your skin. 0.97

00:05:05.720 Socioeconomics affects everyone, but apparently you're not as smart as the poorest white person. 0.99

00:05:09.580 Lady, I don't want to hate you. 0.97

00:05:11.320 I'm a 90s kid.

00:05:12.180 I grew up with you, so I know you're very talented.

00:05:14.800 I understand your heart is in the right place, but you are everything you preach against.

00:05:18.540 You're not helping.

00:05:19.220 You're making things worse.

00:05:20.120 You're causing more division.

00:05:21.060 You're causing more fear. 0.99

00:05:22.200 Statistically speaking, I am more likely to be shot and killed by my black elderly neighbor across 1.00

00:05:25.980 the street than the cop who patrols my neighborhood. 0.76

00:05:28.400 Statistically speaking, homicide by cop is very rare, but people like you find power in fear,

00:05:32.580 so you keep it front page news.

00:05:34.160 You don't have to be a white supremacist.

00:05:36.060 You can be better. 0.98

00:05:37.940 Wow.

00:05:39.780 Well, the reason it was so powerful is that there, you know, there's been a comedian who

00:05:45.260 did a bit on white supremacist or Black Lives Matter activist and sort of ran the rhetoric

00:05:50.860 through that filter, and you couldn't quite tell which was which, and that is how somebody

00:05:56.640 like Alyssa Milano speaks. 0.99

00:05:58.540 Like, you captured the message so brilliantly.

00:06:00.640 So what was it that made you respond to her in particular?

00:06:04.400 Goodness.

00:06:05.100 It's that entire message in general that Black people are helpless and we need a pat on the

00:06:11.140 head and our lives are so hard because of the color of our skin and that we're all just

00:06:15.940 suffering and struggling and like it's her job as a white liberal woman to make sure I 1.00

00:06:22.840 have the best life possible.

00:06:23.920 It's just frustrating.

00:06:26.000 But you're young, right?

00:06:27.260 How old are you?

00:06:28.320 I just turned 34.

00:06:30.380 Yeah.

00:06:30.760 So you are young.

00:06:32.160 And so if, you know, a betting person would say, okay, young people tend to be more left

00:06:36.580 leaning.

00:06:37.080 They buy into these social causes.

00:06:38.480 They want to march for this, that, or the other thing.

00:06:41.040 So how did you get to be a young Black woman in the South who rejects this kind of rhetoric?

00:06:49.200 Oh, goodness.

00:06:50.400 Honestly, faith.

00:06:51.860 I came to know Jesus when I was 18.

00:06:54.940 And before that, I was very liberal.

00:06:56.760 I mean, I was 18 years old.

00:06:57.780 So what did I know?

00:06:58.640 But I was very liberal, left leaning.

00:07:01.720 And I think as I came to know Jesus more and I grew deeper into my own faith, my views

00:07:07.980 on a lot of the world started to shift and change.

00:07:11.380 So I started to see things, not so much that I believe differently, but I just saw the

00:07:16.040 world differently.

00:07:17.520 And I think that's, I think that's where it started.

00:07:19.620 Yeah, I feel like you're a common sense messenger.

00:07:20.720 And it doesn't, it's not just about race.

00:07:22.520 It's about any, any one of the number of issues that we're arguing about in our culture today.

00:07:28.000 You're a, you're a cultural commentator.

00:07:30.620 So we'll start with the race stuff, but I really want to get to like body positivity and

00:07:34.040 cultural appropriation.

00:07:35.300 Some of the stuff you've said on that.

00:07:36.420 Um, as somebody who pushes back on some of these, you know, lines of thinking that were

00:07:42.820 fed by the wokesters of the world, right? 0.99

00:07:45.080 Like we, white people are born with original sin says Robin D'Angelo, and no matter how 0.88

00:07:49.880 many times you apologize for it, you can never overcome it. 0.60

00:07:52.000 And so on and so forth.

00:07:53.480 Um, I wonder if you get blowback.

00:07:56.340 And before you answer that, let's just play this other clip of, this is you talking about

00:08:00.060 how white people are not a monolith and really neither are black people.

00:08:05.180 Uh, let's, let's play that clip. 0.80

00:08:06.540 Number one, white people are not a monolith.

00:08:08.540 Not every white person has the same values, the same upbringing, the same history.

00:08:12.400 Number two, brown people are not sinless. 1.00

00:08:15.400 We're not little babies or infants. 0.68

00:08:17.080 They get a pat on the head and a pass.

00:08:19.200 Every racial group on this planet has committed some kind of atrocity. 1.00

00:08:23.060 Number three, number one and number two really don't matter because no one is responsible

00:08:26.340 for the sins of their ancestors.

00:08:27.660 And no one has to apologize for the sins of their ancestors.

00:08:30.920 Well, their ancestors were colonizers.

00:08:32.680 My ancestors were slaves.

00:08:34.440 Does that make me submissive and easy to control?

00:08:36.680 Good luck.

00:08:37.920 It is completely understandable to hold animosity towards a singular person or two or three

00:08:42.180 people who have done you harm.

00:08:44.020 It is not understandable to hold animosity towards an entire group of people based on

00:08:48.420 the color of their skin.

00:08:49.780 I'm just going to say this straight. 0.99

00:08:51.320 Dear white people, I'm sorry you don't want to be called a racist, but stop giving ignorant 1.00

00:08:54.820 black people a pass. 1.00

00:08:55.860 This calling a spade a spade is not racist. 0.94

00:08:59.120 Wow.

00:08:59.560 I mean, we're going to be joined by a woman later who is a white rancher from Wyoming 1.00

00:09:06.180 who's challenging this bill, giving relief only to people of color in the ranching and

00:09:10.380 the farming industries.

00:09:11.060 And she's saying, I I'm struggling.

00:09:13.860 You know, why am I off the list automatically because of skin color?

00:09:17.320 And the response by the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, was because there's been hundreds

00:09:23.020 of years of discrimination and your ancestors did not object to that discrimination.

00:09:27.240 So you're in no position to object to it now. 0.98

00:09:29.680 That's ridiculous. 0.96

00:09:31.020 That makes no sense. 0.90

00:09:32.460 What does her ancestors have to do with her right now?

00:09:34.900 What do they know about her ancestors?

00:09:36.380 That's part of the problem is people look at someone who's white and they automatically

00:09:40.040 assume, oh, they must have been a slave owner.

00:09:43.020 Like, I think it was like six percent of white people owned slaves and there were even black 0.69

00:09:46.260 slave owners.

00:09:47.160 But there were far more white people who were fighting against slavery.

00:09:50.660 So who's who?

00:09:51.600 Does it even matter at this point?

00:09:53.840 It's twenty twenty one.

00:09:55.420 My great grandmother apparently killed somebody, went to prison.

00:09:57.680 Does that make me a murderer?

00:09:58.840 No, I'm Savannah.

00:10:00.580 I'm my own person.

00:10:01.400 I have my own life.

00:10:03.120 It's a good point.

00:10:04.240 But there are certain, you know, conservatives who make these points on on television, in

00:10:11.080 the audio world, what have you.

00:10:12.980 But if you are a black person, liberal or conservative, who makes these points, and I've had plenty of

00:10:18.220 liberals and conservatives of all different races on the show, from Thomas Chatterton Williams

00:10:22.380 to John McWhorter to Glenn Lowry to Coleman Hughes, three out of four of those I just

00:10:26.200 named are black liberals who just don't see race the way, you know, Robin DiAngelo does.

00:10:31.840 They sound more like you. 0.97

00:10:33.240 They all get called Uncle Tom's.

00:10:34.920 They all get pushed back.

00:10:36.360 They all get called terrible names.

00:10:38.840 And I wonder if you've had any of that.

00:10:41.080 Oh, yeah, all the time.

00:10:42.480 But TikTok has a very interesting feature called comment filters where you can filter certain

00:10:46.880 words out of your comment section.

00:10:48.660 So if someone calls me one of those names, they can.

00:10:51.160 They can see their comment, but no one else can.

00:10:54.120 And that gives me an opportunity to actually go back, review, and just block them.

00:10:57.560 I mean, I've been hearing these words since I was little.

00:11:00.740 So it doesn't even bother me at this point.

00:11:03.140 Is that right?

00:11:03.680 Why?

00:11:03.900 Have you always, is that because you've taken positions like this from the time you were

00:11:08.060 little or just people are nasty and racist in some cases and call names?

00:11:11.280 No, because I'm just different because I was that Black kid that enjoyed things that 0.92

00:11:16.480 weren't considered Black.

00:11:18.240 So I liked rock music.

00:11:19.600 I like to shop at Hot Topic.

00:11:21.480 I, you know, I speak, I've always been very articulate and I've always spoken well.

00:11:25.420 I sound like my mom.

00:11:26.240 No one in my house speaks with a quote unquote Black scent, you know, so I didn't grow up hearing

00:11:33.060 that. 0.91

00:11:33.540 So I got picked on by other Black kids.

00:11:35.720 I got called Coon, Uncle Tom, and all the different names.

00:11:38.360 So at this point, I'm like, I'm used to it and I've been hearing it for so long.

00:11:42.300 It's not creative.

00:11:43.200 It's, it's almost like a gut reaction to anything that challenges their normal or what they've

00:11:50.620 been told is supposed to be normal for what it means to be Black.

00:11:53.760 So there must, you are, you go against everything I was told about what it means to be Black and

00:11:59.500 I don't know what to do about it. 0.99

00:12:01.040 So all I know to do is just attack you.

00:12:04.040 And you're undermining their message.

00:12:06.080 And it's not just, you go against, it's like you.

00:12:07.580 You, the fact that you exist and you think this way, this is how you see the world in

00:12:12.020 some way disproves their entire message that you're not empowered, that you're not smart

00:12:15.460 enough, that, you know, the white man needs to sacrifice more so that you can be an equal

00:12:19.520 participant in the conversation.

00:12:21.000 And, you know, it's, you meet somebody like you, it's like, that's obviously not true.

00:12:25.860 Right.

00:12:26.180 Because you have people nowadays, there's different figures and different speakers who are trying

00:12:30.280 to preach that all Black people have the same experience, that we all feel the same

00:12:35.080 way about racism, that we all go through the same thing.

00:12:37.700 We all feel the same way about the past.

00:12:39.980 So when someone like me comes up and says, well, no, no, not quite.

00:12:45.540 It's, it's like I brought on the apocalypse.

00:12:49.040 It's very undermining to, to the overall message.

00:12:52.020 That's why people like Candace Owens gets such pushback. 1.00

00:12:55.220 And Larry Elder, whose movie Uncle Tom was brilliant.

00:12:59.920 Love it.

00:13:00.600 You know, he, he just lives with the fact that people are going to call him that.

00:13:03.660 I mean, that's why he named his movie that.

00:13:05.280 And I know you saw it.

00:13:07.240 You did a bit about it.

00:13:09.020 Here it is.

00:13:09.840 To see an entire movie with people who not only look like me, but they think like me,

00:13:15.380 we share a similar worldview and a similar perspective.

00:13:19.020 It is so refreshing.

00:13:21.420 Not entirely sure what my expectations were, but this was definitely more than I expected.

00:13:26.700 I wasn't expecting such a beautiful display of history.

00:13:29.960 Man in the film, I think it was Chad Jackson who said, you know, when they call us names

00:13:33.280 like that, it's an attempt to put us in our place.

00:13:35.740 It's the new master's whip, except it's coming from our own people. 0.97

00:13:39.220 But here's the thing though, putting me in my place, you assume my place is standing next

00:13:43.800 to you.

00:13:44.180 No, that's your place.

00:13:46.040 I'm walking forward and you can't catch me.

00:13:49.280 But what was it about that movie that resonated with you?

00:13:52.500 It can be very lonely being black and being different.

00:13:56.020 So it's always encouraging to see that there are other people who are like me.

00:14:00.420 And I recognize a lot of the names from the movie, but just to hear them, just to hear

00:14:04.260 them say, and the, some of the things that I have been saying for years and feeling for

00:14:09.480 so many years, it's, um, it's just encouraging.

00:14:13.100 It's like, okay, I'm not alone.

00:14:14.160 I'm not by myself.

00:14:16.300 So that's the number one.

00:14:18.340 But just to hear history spoken in that way, I don't know how to explain it.

00:14:23.600 It's just this feeling.

00:14:24.580 I'm not alone.

00:14:25.240 I had on Jason Reilly, uh, who writes for the wall street journal recently, and he's

00:14:29.760 a, he's an AEI fellow and so on, but he wrote a book about Thomas soul and they made it into

00:14:35.180 a movie and do a documentary.

00:14:36.400 And, you know, he was making the point that why isn't Thomas soul taught in every classroom?

00:14:40.900 Why doesn't everybody know that name?

00:14:42.800 Um, and I do think that there, there's, there's a purposeful ostracizing of these heterodox 1.00

00:14:49.720 thinkers who happened to be black because there's, they're so undermining of the message

00:14:55.400 of something, someone like a Kendi or a D'Angelo, which is much more in fashion right now.

00:15:00.260 What do you think?

00:15:01.740 Oh, definitely.

00:15:02.940 You know, our world lives on trends right now.

00:15:05.600 The trend is people like D'Angelo, Kendi, who are preaching this very monolithic message

00:15:11.400 that this is the black experience.

00:15:13.920 So anything that challenged people can't handle more than one thought at a time.

00:15:17.100 They can't handle more than one narrative at a time.

00:15:20.200 They can't handle their brains being split into two different places.

00:15:23.780 They can't handle the thought that they may have to think critically, or maybe accept that

00:15:28.360 their thinking might've been flawed or they may have to change the way they see things.

00:15:33.500 So it's always one trend at a time.

00:15:36.780 Well, and what you do so well as you account for nuance, you know, saying, look, you know,

00:15:42.980 white people are not a monolith, but, but black people are not all sinless.

00:15:48.120 I mean, people are complicated as I'm saying in the show.

00:15:51.100 And we've gotten to this place as a society where we just don't accept that.

00:15:55.400 It has to be these broad brush assessments of groups based on their lady parts, their skin 0.97

00:16:01.360 color, their sexual preferences, what have you.

00:16:04.940 Oh, yes.

00:16:05.600 It's just odd.

00:16:06.480 I mean, I grew up in the nineties in the early two thousands, where some, some of this stuff

00:16:10.960 just didn't seem to matter, but now everyone wants to be labeled.

00:16:15.040 Everyone wants to make sure they fit neatly into a box and that their identity is secured

00:16:19.320 and can be easily seen because it's all performative because when you're alone by yourself in your

00:16:23.540 room, who are you and what are you and what are, what does it all matter?

00:16:26.600 It's all about wanting to be seen and wanting to be validated.

00:16:29.140 Well, you know, so one of the things that's, that bothers me about what's happening right

00:16:35.180 now in our culture, you hit on, which is why do these woke activists want to give so

00:16:39.560 much of their power away? 1.00

00:16:41.120 Why do they want to pretend that, you know, some kid singing a stupid song that happens 0.99

00:16:45.900 to have the N word in it, you know, that ends in an A, right? 0.99

00:16:49.200 He's just repeating the song that that somehow is soul crushing for them.

00:16:54.460 You know, I don't, it's not that I'm advocating use of the word.

00:16:56.340 I'm just saying, why, why do we have to act as though anyone's transgression causes a deep

00:17:03.200 personal wound?

00:17:04.540 And it could, it doesn't just have to be a color thing.

00:17:06.420 It can be a, you know, a woman feeling this way over toxic masculinity or what have you. 1.00

00:17:10.820 And it opens up old wounds.

00:17:12.300 Why?

00:17:13.000 Why?

00:17:13.280 I mean, I, I actually gave, I was speaking in front of a group of students once.

00:17:17.280 There was a young woman.

00:17:18.660 She was probably 18, 19. 0.97

00:17:21.140 I want to say, uh, she was black. 1.00

00:17:23.720 And she said, um, I'd said that basically a black writer had said that Santa Claus is

00:17:30.480 black is white and that she wants that one of that change. 0.97

00:17:33.400 And I agreed with her.

00:17:34.120 Santa Claus is white and asked, why does it have to change?

00:17:36.640 And she stood up and said, your remarks dehumanized me.

00:17:41.120 And I really thought to myself, first of all, you got to take that up with like your God and

00:17:45.440 your therapist.

00:17:45.980 Cause you should never let some random news lady dehumanize you.

00:17:49.240 How could, how could you give me that power over you?

00:17:52.340 Yes.

00:17:53.120 Oh goodness.

00:17:54.360 Cause people are, have wrapped their identities in these superficial things and not in something

00:17:58.900 that has actual substance and foundation.

00:18:01.340 So when you attack that thing, it's like you're attacking them.

00:18:05.500 But what you said earlier about, you know, this exchange of power, I think I've said it a

00:18:09.360 couple of times on my TikTok.

00:18:10.720 Um, no one has the power to make you feel any one way about you unless you give them

00:18:16.880 that power.

00:18:17.640 So if someone says something and they make you feel a certain way, you have to ask, well,

00:18:21.680 why have I given them this power?

00:18:23.460 Why have I allowed them to have this kind of control over me?

00:18:26.820 That's not the way people are thinking, but you're exactly right.

00:18:29.040 Because the, the other way of handling it is people will say things that offend me and

00:18:34.640 it's up to me to decide how I will respond and how deeply I will take that in and affect

00:18:39.820 my own judgment about myself.

00:18:42.100 And this is sort of one of the things I've been saying is it's great.

00:18:45.080 We can do all the, you know, training, sensitivity training we want, but it's never going to change

00:18:48.880 the fact that there are mean, insulting people in the world.

00:18:51.360 That's, that's life.

00:18:52.660 We're never going to get to all of them.

00:18:54.340 We're not going to be able to control everybody's bad behavior.

00:18:56.200 So the better resource, you know, as a mother, I look at my three kids.

00:18:59.460 I want them to be tougher.

00:19:00.720 You know, people will say nasty things.

00:19:02.140 You're not going to be able to handle that unless you get ready for it and decide how

00:19:05.740 you're going to handle that like internally.

00:19:07.280 So this is one of the reasons why one of my favorite skits of yours or bit skit, whatever

00:19:12.060 is your bit on body positivity.

00:19:14.220 Cause you, you hammer all of this.

00:19:16.220 Let's listen. 0.86

00:19:16.960 Honey, I'm fat.

00:19:17.940 Five foot one, 195 pounds.

00:19:20.060 I should be a walking health problem, but I'm not.

00:19:22.380 The only issue I have is my knees, but I'm pretty sure that's from the Tootsie Roll and

00:19:25.400 the butterfly.

00:19:26.200 I just pulled my BMI out of the 40s.

00:19:28.800 The most common form of oppression in the United States is letting others dictate how

00:19:32.180 you feel about you.

00:19:33.480 People are going to treat you all kinds of ways.

00:19:35.560 They're going to say whatever they want about you.

00:19:36.720 But the moment you let what they say dictate how you feel about you is the moment you give

00:19:39.980 them power over you.

00:19:41.660 Your validation shouldn't come from the mouths of other people.

00:19:44.320 I know I'm a teapot.

00:19:45.240 I see it every day when I look in the mirror.

00:19:46.580 No one has to remind me. 0.97

00:19:47.540 I'm an adorable, goofy little hot mess. 0.90

00:19:49.380 And I love it. 0.52

00:19:50.360 No one on God's green earth has the power to make me feel any different.

00:19:53.580 You get to the point where you accept and love you for you.

00:19:56.260 Whatever people have to say, it's either a dash of sugar in the pot or it's garbage in

00:19:59.580 the can.

00:20:00.160 Either way, it doesn't change anything.

00:20:02.260 That's amazing.

00:20:03.380 Dash of sugar in the pot or garbage in the can.

00:20:06.140 Yes.

00:20:07.020 Right.

00:20:07.640 I love that.

00:20:08.480 But that's that's another area where you're not, you know, you're not allowed to talk

00:20:12.040 about things like that.

00:20:12.840 Right.

00:20:13.040 You're we have to crack down on the bad behavior.

00:20:15.120 It's a it's a universal game of whack-a-mole right now.

00:20:18.220 Yeah.

00:20:18.760 I'm overweight.

00:20:19.540 I'm working on it.

00:20:20.380 I'm working on losing weight.

00:20:21.400 But now it's a trend on TikTok where if you say, oh, I don't want to be fat, you're

00:20:24.680 fat phobic.

00:20:25.900 Yep.

00:20:26.680 Like, leave me alone.

00:20:28.500 I just want to live a long time.

00:20:30.860 Is that why is that so horrible?

00:20:32.160 But there was a woman who commented and I couldn't find the comment.

00:20:37.680 That's what I was responding to where she said something like, you know, how people say

00:20:42.200 things and it makes us feel.

00:20:43.500 I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:20:45.380 Like, no, they didn't make you feel any way.

00:20:48.560 You allow what they said to make you feel a certain way.

00:20:51.720 You gave them that power.

00:20:53.440 You need to be strong within your own self, know who you are, know your value, your worth

00:20:57.680 so that when people come and they say things to you, you're fully armored.

00:21:01.260 They can't touch you.

00:21:02.640 And, you know, everyone wants to be oppressed.

00:21:05.320 Everyone wants that.

00:21:06.080 That's a new thing.

00:21:06.760 Now, people who are obese are oppressed.

00:21:08.200 We're not oppressed.

00:21:08.820 We just have trouble finding clothes.

00:21:12.260 I do think sometimes when somebody insults you, if it upsets you, it's almost a gift.

00:21:19.480 It allows you.

00:21:21.020 It's like a tell.

00:21:21.900 Oh, wow.

00:21:22.240 They hit on something that bothers me.

00:21:23.560 Why does that bother me?

00:21:24.780 Oh, it bothers me because I happen to believe it, too.

00:21:27.660 That's usually the answer.

00:21:29.120 So the insults that people hurl at you that don't bother you.

00:21:32.180 Usually don't because you know they're not true.

00:21:33.600 It's like, oh, this is BS.

00:21:34.460 It's not an honest broker.

00:21:35.380 Whatever.

00:21:35.700 I know I'm not that thing.

00:21:37.000 If it sticks, you might have concerns in your own head.

00:21:40.680 And so it's like, oh, great.

00:21:41.520 Something for me to work on.

00:21:42.960 You know, an area for me to shore up.

00:21:44.460 The dam came loose in that one spot.

00:21:46.320 I can work on that, right?

00:21:48.060 It's like, instead, it's lean into victimhood, complain about the other, and try to crack

00:21:52.800 down on people's speech.

00:21:53.960 Pretty much.

00:21:54.760 I mean, I agree with you.

00:21:55.680 When people say something bad about you and it hurts you, it's a gift because it forces

00:22:00.260 you to become self-aware.

00:22:01.720 And I think people are avoiding that self-awareness.

00:22:04.600 People don't want to be self-aware.

00:22:05.920 People don't want to admit that I have my own insecurities.

00:22:08.520 And I'm letting my insecurities dictate the way I operate and function throughout the

00:22:13.060 world.

00:22:13.440 But I like that you have a message of positivity on top of all this.

00:22:17.200 So you address that.

00:22:19.220 You get into, okay, you're feeling bad about yourself.

00:22:21.600 You don't, whatever it is, you don't like your weight.

00:22:23.820 You don't like the way you approach the world.

00:22:26.020 You don't like, and trust me, as a public figure, you've got to have this messaging

00:22:30.120 all the time.

00:22:30.760 You've got to sort of reset and remind yourself who you are.

00:22:33.240 You're not horrible because no matter who you are, they're going to say terrible things

00:22:35.900 about you.

00:22:36.200 And I'm sure this is happening to you as your power grows.

00:22:38.940 And your influence grows, which it has.

00:22:40.880 You've got over 54,000 followers on Instagram.

00:22:44.540 I mean, that's huge.

00:22:45.580 And you've got 737,000 plus on TikTok, over 13 million likes.

00:22:52.540 So your influence grows, you become a target.

00:22:55.660 But this, in the midst of all of it, this is your message to people who are wondering

00:23:00.300 whether they're bad, whether they're internally bad and some sort of a mistake.

00:23:07.340 Let's take a listen.

00:23:08.520 This kind of hit me, and I feel like I need to share it.

00:23:10.440 If you're a Christian, this will probably mean more to you than if you're not.

00:23:13.540 But if you're not, stick around.

00:23:15.700 It might mean something to you.

00:23:16.700 I don't know.

00:23:17.360 I don't know who this is for, but at some point in your life, you're going to have to

00:23:20.200 accept the fact that when God made you, he didn't make a mistake.

00:23:22.980 He didn't skip any steps.

00:23:24.200 He didn't leave anything out.

00:23:25.360 He knew exactly what he was doing.

00:23:27.200 He didn't skip the measuring cups.

00:23:28.700 He didn't guesstimate with the ingredients.

00:23:30.420 The recipe that created you was written long before you were even a thought.

00:23:34.500 If no one has ever told you, I will.

00:23:36.660 There's nothing wrong with you.

00:23:38.320 Everything about you is intentional.

00:23:40.560 Great thought and great care was put into every inch of you.

00:23:43.440 You don't need to be fixed.

00:23:45.820 Maybe not today, but one day, you will accept you exactly as you are.

00:23:50.160 And when you do, that kind of freedom is priceless.

00:23:55.760 That's so well said.

00:23:57.100 And you mentioned it before, your faith and what a role that's played in your outlook on

00:24:01.680 life.

00:24:02.140 Can you speak to that a bit?

00:24:03.500 Oh, yeah.

00:24:03.840 This is something I had to come to terms with on my own.

00:24:06.380 That's where I think a lot of what I say comes from is just life experience and lessons

00:24:10.380 I've learned along the way.

00:24:11.520 But, you know, I came to Christ when I was a teenager and being a teenager is just rough

00:24:16.340 in general, but it's one big identity crisis.

00:24:20.700 And it was through faith, my faith in God and learning who God is and the role he plays

00:24:26.900 in my life, the role he wants me to play in this world, that I've had to come to terms

00:24:31.200 with this is who I am.

00:24:33.520 Because I think everyone has parts of themselves they wish they could change and parts of themselves

00:24:38.380 that they don't like.

00:24:39.180 For the longest time, I was like, I want to be gentle.

00:24:41.520 I'm not gentle.

00:24:44.520 I am very bold and abrasive.

00:24:48.520 And I just kind of say things.

00:24:50.340 I don't think first.

00:24:52.700 And I was like, God, I just want to be gentle.

00:24:55.840 And I had to come to terms with God made some people gentle, but that's not how he made me.

00:25:02.120 He made me bold for a reason.

00:25:04.400 And it took me a while to accept, I am this person.

00:25:09.340 This is exactly who I am.

00:25:10.580 And we live in a world right now that's trying to tell people, based on the color of their skin,

00:25:14.920 their weight.

00:25:15.900 If you're too pretty, if you're too skinny, you know, if your family has been here for,

00:25:21.400 since the Mayflower, there's something intrinsically wrong with you.

00:25:25.420 And I just want people to know, like, what other people have to say, that's not the Bible.

00:25:30.500 And those people are not your God.

00:25:32.140 They don't get to dictate whatever it is you believe in.

00:25:35.060 They don't get to dictate who you are.

00:25:37.740 They don't get to define your character.

00:25:39.240 They don't get to define your worth.

00:25:40.560 And they don't get to define your value.

00:25:42.980 That's so true.

00:25:44.180 I wanted to be gentle, but I am bold.

00:25:47.360 I know what you're saying.

00:25:48.920 I, listen, I, I tried to be a morning talk show host on NBC News for a stint of my career.

00:25:55.280 Like, I too thought I would lean into gentle, but I also am bold.

00:25:59.680 And I've sort of gotten to the place in my own life now where I embrace my rough edges.

00:26:04.100 You know, I like my edges, but society tells me I shouldn't, right?

00:26:08.340 It tells me that they call me an ice queen in the, in the magazines.

00:26:12.220 Okay, that's fine.

00:26:13.220 What, what your version of ice queen is my edges, which I love and I wouldn't change for the world.

00:26:17.680 And all you have to do is try testing it out to, to figure that out, you know?

00:26:21.160 Oh yes.

00:26:22.340 Me embracing my edges.

00:26:23.640 That took a while, but once I got to that place, it was freedom.

00:26:26.740 I felt like I could finally not just be me, but walk in me for the first time.

00:26:31.260 That makes sense.

00:26:32.800 And you put, you put you out there.

00:26:35.400 Like you didn't just keep it to yourself.

00:26:36.720 You, you is the person we're seeing.

00:26:39.520 You are the reason, you know, you have millions and millions of hits and likes because people are, it's resonating.

00:26:45.380 We hear so much about authenticity in today's day and age.

00:26:48.460 Well, that's only if you say the right things.

00:26:50.140 If you, if the authentic you is approved by, you know, the unknown masses who decide what's appropriate.

00:26:55.500 What's great and bold about you is you're authentically you. 0.94

00:26:58.760 And as you say, adorable, goofy, little hot mess. 0.98

00:27:01.360 Yes. 0.94

00:27:02.300 Rock it.

00:27:02.980 Right.

00:27:03.940 Amen.

00:27:04.300 Amen.

00:27:04.560 All right.

00:27:07.020 Can we talk about cultural appropriation?

00:27:09.660 Because that's another big thing that I'm so sick of people lecturing me on.

00:27:12.600 It's like we have a, like there's a costume party in our neighborhood here at the beach.

00:27:16.420 Uh, we had it a couple of years ago where five families chose a different region of the world and offered one drink and one appetizer from that region.

00:27:25.920 Right.

00:27:26.700 And people would dress up as the region.

00:27:28.780 You know, our one friends did Russia in the 1980s and they were wearing like the babushkas and they had a bunch of red and they had pictures of Gorbachev and Reagan.

00:27:36.840 Okay, great.

00:27:38.060 I mean, now you'd be, you'd be called a cultural appropriator, right?

00:27:41.080 It's like, you can't wear the kimono.

00:27:43.040 If you're doing Japan, you can't wear the sombrero.

00:27:45.420 If you're doing Mexico, you can't, you can't do it. 0.99

00:27:47.540 Even I'll give you another example.

00:27:48.680 I took my, um, my family and I were in the Bahamas a couple of years ago.

00:27:51.800 And my little girl at the time wanted to get, um, you know, a couple of the braids and it was like, oh God, you're not allowed to do that.

00:27:59.660 And then she's like, why?

00:28:00.960 And I'm like, I don't even know how to explain this to you without introducing concepts that you're too young to understand, but let's just do something else.

00:28:07.600 And you tried to get at this after there was a white woman who was asking whether it was cultural appropriation to do something.

00:28:14.880 Would you remember what it was that she wanted to do?

00:28:17.000 I think she wanted to wear waist beads. 1.00

00:28:19.100 Wait, what are waist beads?

00:28:20.100 Um, waist beads, it all depends on what country we're talking about.

00:28:23.500 They're basically, it's bead, it's jewelry that goes around the waist.

00:28:27.000 Um, some places I think it's, they keep it hidden.

00:28:30.960 It's just, they're kind of as a symbol of maybe marital status, but I know in some places it's fashion.

00:28:36.680 Okay.

00:28:37.520 All right.

00:28:37.760 So she was asking whether she could do it.

00:28:39.680 And here's your response.

00:28:41.180 Do not let these Americans tell you what you can and cannot do with African culture.

00:28:44.600 Black American and African are not synonymous.

00:28:47.600 Just because we share a skin tone does not mean we share a culture.

00:28:50.100 We don't.

00:28:50.920 Culturally, we are very different.

00:28:52.460 Culturally, we are American, not African.

00:28:55.040 If you really want to know whether or not you should wear waist beads, ask an actual African. 1.00

00:29:00.360 Someone who's West African or Kenyan.

00:29:03.060 Ask them.

00:29:04.600 You're not going to tell you you can't wear them because Africans, for the most part, do not gatekeep their culture.

00:29:09.880 If Africans were gatekeepers of their culture, we wouldn't have box braids. 1.00

00:29:13.520 You have an honest culture question?

00:29:15.260 Don't ask an American because we don't know. 1.00

00:29:17.720 Being a POC does not come with a culture certification.

00:29:20.520 We're prone to ignorance just like everyone else.

00:29:22.580 Go to Google.

00:29:23.640 Look up a shop.

00:29:25.100 Send them an email.

00:29:26.260 Ask them your questions.

00:29:27.820 Not TikTok.

00:29:29.640 So true.

00:29:30.520 Whatever happened to being able to celebrate one another's cultures in that way?

00:29:33.300 It's so weird because this is the United States of America.

00:29:36.140 None of us really are indigenous to this piece of land.

00:29:39.500 We all came from somewhere else.

00:29:41.380 And we all brought pieces of those cultures with us.

00:29:45.920 Even African slaves brought pieces of their culture. 1.00

00:29:48.240 And some of that has survived today.

00:29:49.520 If you go to different coastal areas like South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, like where I'm at in New Orleans, you can see a lot of that here.

00:29:55.480 We've all brought pieces of culture from other places and created something that's uniquely American.

00:30:02.220 And you have a lot of young people, I think, weren't taught the melting pot aspect of America, which is so strange.

00:30:10.080 But with this particular video, I've seen a lot of people try to equate being Black in America to being Black in Africa.

00:30:20.760 This isn't, you know, 1619 where slavery was just started and we were, you know, fresh out of Africa.

00:30:28.660 You know, it's been several centuries.

00:30:30.440 We have our own culture here in the United States that's completely separate from whatever goes on in Africa. 1.00

00:30:36.540 It's 54 countries, 54 multiple different cultures.

00:30:40.740 But I just keep seeing this trend where you have young white people who want to explore something different than what's their norm and then they get shut down. 0.98

00:30:53.080 And it's ridiculous. 0.95

00:30:54.160 So, like, your daughter wanting to go get braids in the Bahamas, that's such a normal, traditional thing to do. 0.81

00:31:01.420 I think I went on my first cruise when I was 16.

00:31:03.520 That was, what, 2004, maybe?

00:31:06.120 2003?

00:31:07.180 And there were women doing braids right there on the boat. 1.00

00:31:10.980 And here's the thing, though, because people say, well, your daughter getting braids is cultural appropriation.

00:31:16.540 But are you going to tell those women they're not allowed to share their culture?

00:31:20.080 Right.

00:31:20.780 Right.

00:31:21.380 That it would be inappropriate of me to accept the offer.

00:31:23.880 If a white woman decides she wants box braids, more than likely she's either going to go to a friend to get it done or she's going to go to an African hair braiding salon. 1.00

00:31:31.260 Are you going to tell those African women they're not allowed to share their culture because it offends you, because you're bothered, because you're ignorant? 0.94

00:31:37.540 I mean, a lot of these things that we're trying to gatekeep, like box braids, it's not even American culture. 0.74

00:31:43.980 This is African culture that has been shared with women all over the world.

00:31:48.260 African hair braiding is an entire industry over in Russia.

00:31:50.800 And they've taken what was once just a traditional African hair braiding and turned it into something funky. 1.00

00:31:57.660 That's how culture works.

00:31:59.360 And I think that's part of the problem is no one is teaching these young people what culture is and how culture just works in our world.

00:32:07.180 It's not stagnant.

00:32:08.480 It doesn't stay in one place.

00:32:09.940 It's like a lily pad in a river.

00:32:12.020 It just it travels.

00:32:12.940 It goes places and it changes and it's like cultural diffusion and what it means to go from one culture to another.

00:32:21.000 You know, I'm in New Orleans.

00:32:22.060 I'm from the Carolinas.

00:32:23.540 Culturally, these are two 100 percent different places.

00:32:26.980 I may as well be in another country.

00:32:29.060 So what was I supposed to do?

00:32:30.080 Just stay in North Carolinian trying to adapt to New Orleans?

00:32:33.340 No, I had to shift cultures.

00:32:35.540 I had to shift the way I talk.

00:32:37.020 I had to shift the way I eat.

00:32:38.640 I had to shift the way I drive.

00:32:40.260 It makes me wonder, how are these young people being raised?

00:32:44.440 Are your parents exposing you to different cultures?

00:32:47.380 Are they taking you to museums?

00:32:49.060 Are they taking you to exhibits and shows?

00:32:52.100 Are they taking are they are y'all traveling?

00:32:55.040 Do they take you to the movies where you see something that's completely culturally different?

00:32:59.200 When someone like you, you know, this that you're just bold in your thinking and your and your behavior and you look around, you see all this stuff happening with the culture,

00:33:06.100 the cultural appropriation and the body positivity and the crackdown on, you know, all the monuments have to go.

00:33:11.760 I know you did a bit on that.

00:33:13.840 Alyssa Milano trying to tell you that you're a victim and, you know, so on and so forth. 0.69

00:33:18.920 Does it drive you crazy?

00:33:20.360 How is it making you feel?

00:33:22.260 It drives me nuts, honestly, because it's like it's almost like all of this happened overnight.

00:33:27.240 I don't remember the world being like this as I was growing up.

00:33:29.900 I felt like I had freedom to kind of just be myself with like stuff like Alyssa Milano and even Black Lives Matter.

00:33:35.960 I was having a conversation with some of my friends a couple of months ago, just catching up because I'd moved.

00:33:41.300 And they asked me how I was feeling about all of the things and, you know, the different protests and George Floyd and all that.

00:33:49.220 And I told them, I said, one of the most depressing things for me is before all of this happened, when people looked at me, I was Savannah.

00:33:56.360 But now when people look at me, I'm Black girl.

00:34:00.420 The first thing they see is the color of my skin and they wonder how to act accordingly.

00:34:05.600 And it's like I don't matter anymore.

00:34:07.560 The only thing that has value in my life is the color of my skin.

00:34:11.780 It's almost like currency.

00:34:13.380 And it's like I just want to get back to the point where I can literally just live my life.

00:34:18.000 I could travel and explore new things and buy artifacts and come back to my house and share it with my roommates or my mom or my brother and share people what I've learned.

00:34:27.900 And then just I feel like we're not living.

00:34:31.640 We're just existing.

00:34:33.020 And we're trying to exist without hurting anyone's feelings.

00:34:37.660 Which is not a realistic way to go through life.

00:34:40.100 It's not possible.

00:34:41.400 Let people be hurt.

00:34:42.640 They'll be all right.

00:34:44.240 Yes.

00:34:44.800 And they'll be tougher on the opposite end of it if they don't curl up into a ball and just give up, which is 99% of the time not what people do.

00:34:52.420 They make it through and they're stronger.

00:34:53.880 That's sort of the point I was making about Naomi Osaka, the tennis player.

00:34:58.800 I know you don't like to talk to the press because they're annoying.

00:35:01.560 I mean, I get it.

00:35:02.320 But most of us have annoying things about our jobs and we just do them anyway because it's part of the job.

00:35:07.320 And then we find out that we handled it like a boss, like a girl boss. 1.00

00:35:11.820 And everything's fine.

00:35:12.880 We don't just say like, no, I have to lean into this social anxiety I have.

00:35:16.640 Most of us say, I've got some social anxiety, so I'll deal with it.

00:35:19.440 I'm going to get through it.

00:35:20.260 I'm going to get better.

00:35:20.900 I'm going to stand up in front of groups of people and talk.

00:35:22.760 And then it'll lessen over time.

00:35:24.120 Whatever.

00:35:25.540 We're going a different way.

00:35:27.100 Definitely.

00:35:27.900 You've got to do the things that make you uncomfortable.

00:35:29.840 You've got to face the things that make you uncomfortable.

00:35:32.200 Or else you're just going to be an Agoraphore, but you're not going to go anywhere.

00:35:36.060 Right.

00:35:37.480 That's right.

00:35:38.000 Doing this interview, this is uncomfortable.

00:35:40.120 This is odd for me.

00:35:41.260 This is different.

00:35:41.880 But how am I going to see?

00:35:44.380 Being interviewed or why?

00:35:45.920 I'm not used to being interviewed.

00:35:47.060 I'm not used to talking to people.

00:35:48.480 It's easy being on TikTok.

00:35:49.680 I can pretend no one's watching.

00:35:51.340 Right.

00:35:51.860 I know what you mean.

00:35:53.260 So why'd you do it?

00:35:54.300 Because a new door has opened.

00:35:55.720 And in order for me to explore what's behind the door, I have to step forward.

00:35:59.400 I have to do things that make me uncomfortable.

00:36:01.920 I have to face fears I didn't even know I had until a couple weeks ago.

00:36:06.100 What if you fall on your face?

00:36:07.640 I'll get back up.

00:36:09.200 I'll be all right.

00:36:09.800 I fell on my face last week in roller skating.

00:36:12.340 I had a couple bruises, a scratch, and I had a great story to tell.

00:36:17.040 That's right.

00:36:17.980 So in the midst of all this, you forge forward, you make your social commentary, you put out the bit on Alyssa and so on.

00:36:23.600 And then you find out that TikTok, what, suspended you, closed down the channel?

00:36:29.740 What I read was they banned you.

00:36:32.240 Yeah.

00:36:32.360 What does that even mean?

00:36:33.340 What does that mean?

00:36:34.120 On TikTok, we call it a perma-bans because there's two different types of bans.

00:36:38.000 You can be temporarily blocked from posting for a couple of days.

00:36:41.060 Or you can be permanently banned where they, like, literally shut down your account.

00:36:44.880 You can't even log in.

00:36:45.860 So they permanently shut down my account.

00:36:48.420 What happened was, because here's the thing with TikTok, is they're trying to make, they're trying to create ways they can better enforce their community guidelines.

00:36:56.780 But what I think they're actually trying to do is to find more efficient ways to enforce their community guidelines, which has created an opening for people who can't handle discourse.

00:37:06.940 So what people did was they mass-reported my account.

00:37:10.500 And if you mass-report an account enough times, it triggers a ban.

00:37:14.580 My account got shut down.

00:37:16.200 What was it?

00:37:16.800 Do you know what was it that did that?

00:37:18.920 I did a video, a TikTok, about the Lion King because some lady was trying to gatekeep the circle of life. 0.76

00:37:24.900 And I'm like, this is a Disney song.

00:37:26.960 We're not doing this.

00:37:28.500 And that, yeah, and people got up in arms, basically saying, like, this is, this doesn't belong to just anyone.

00:37:34.780 This is a Disney song.

00:37:35.740 And I mentioned how, you know, this is an American song.

00:37:37.980 It's Disney.

00:37:38.820 It's American culture.

00:37:39.640 People are like, it's African culture. 0.96

00:37:41.040 I'm like, yes, it's an, like, why do I have to explain this to you?

00:37:45.180 It's an American production company.

00:37:46.960 It's an American recording studio.

00:37:48.840 Well, not American recordist, but American record label pushed out by the United States.

00:37:53.380 This is, this is, this is, it's Disney.

00:37:55.780 It's American.

00:37:56.240 People were just, we're not having it.

00:37:57.860 And so I think that's what triggered people to just mass report my account for no reason.

00:38:02.040 Do you, how do you know that?

00:38:03.560 I don't, honestly, because when I tried to reach out to TikTok to ask, like, how did this happen?

00:38:08.380 I didn't get a response.

00:38:09.560 I can only guess.

00:38:11.140 But I know that was the video that blew up right before everything happened.

00:38:15.280 Here is that video.

00:38:16.560 Are you seriously trying to gatekeep a Disney song?

00:38:18.620 It's an American classic.

00:38:19.740 Yes, it's in two different languages, recorded on three different continents, but it is an

00:38:23.680 American produced song.

00:38:25.280 Disney is American culture.

00:38:26.580 It is one of America's greatest contributions to the world.

00:38:29.600 And you say, we can't have anything. 0.87

00:38:31.900 This song isn't for black people. 0.99

00:38:33.720 It wasn't even written by black people. 0.93

00:38:35.780 Did you miss the part where it said Elton John and Tim Rice, the composer and the lyricist, 0.93

00:38:39.080 two white dudes.

00:38:40.080 The entire movie, directed by two white dudes, produced by a white person, written by three

00:38:44.200 white people.

00:38:45.360 The Disney Corporation, founded by a white guy.

00:38:48.220 Even the language has nothing to do with you.

00:38:50.760 It's English and Zulu, Zulu being a language native to the southern part of the African

00:38:54.020 continent.

00:38:54.580 If you are the American descendant of a slave, nine out of 10, your genetic ancestry has absolutely 0.57

00:38:58.980 nothing to do with the southern part of the African continent.

00:39:01.940 That one out of 10 is most likely Mozambique and Madagascar.

00:39:04.860 Still nothing to do with Zulu.

00:39:06.300 You can't gatekeep that which does not belong to you.

00:39:08.340 If you want to gatekeep something, create it yourself.

00:39:10.600 OK, so you do you get to appeal?

00:39:12.980 You go to TikTok and say, yo, I've got almost a million followers.

00:39:17.140 What did I say?

00:39:18.700 What did I do?

00:39:19.240 What was ban worthy?

00:39:20.480 And what happens?

00:39:21.900 I think if you catch it in time, if you go to your notifications, you can appeal it.

00:39:26.400 I didn't get that opportunity.

00:39:27.740 So what I had to do was actually email TikTok and ask for my account to get unbanned or for

00:39:34.920 them to review it.

00:39:36.280 And I put out a I'm set up a backup account on TikTok.

00:39:39.640 So I have a backup account just in case anything happens.

00:39:41.880 I went to my Instagram and I shared a video on both of those accounts to if you want to

00:39:48.300 email TikTok to help me get my account unbanned, do it.

00:39:51.500 And I had a lot of people respond.

00:39:53.860 If I had to guess, they probably got at least 2,000 emails, at least that much with my name

00:39:59.240 in the subject line.

00:40:00.640 And the thing is, I have a lot of I have a pretty good community on TikTok as far as people

00:40:06.560 whom I follow who follow me and I follow them.

00:40:08.980 So I was able to reach out to a couple of them and say, hey, this just happened.

00:40:13.740 And they were able to help me get the word out very, very quickly.

00:40:17.880 And so my account was back less than four.

00:40:20.100 So Saturday, I had a TikTok free day, basically.

00:40:23.920 Then my backup account was temporary blocked from posting until I think yesterday, because

00:40:30.740 TikTok took down two videos.

00:40:33.000 One of the videos they took down was the Alyssa Milano video. 0.65

00:40:35.900 They said, you know, oh, this is harassment and bullying.

00:40:38.160 And I'm like, this is still up on my other account.

00:40:42.180 And two, Alyssa Milano follows me on TikTok.

00:40:44.940 If she was bothered, she wouldn't be following me.

00:40:48.020 So did you ever hear from her?

00:40:51.100 She's never she'd all she does is follow me.

00:40:53.760 We've never spoken.

00:40:55.040 Not yet.

00:40:55.500 I'm sure it'll happen one day.

00:40:57.200 That's fascinating.

00:40:59.420 So that's crazy.

00:41:00.520 So do you feel like you're on thin ice with TikTok now?

00:41:03.080 Are you on double secret probation?

00:41:04.500 Or how does that stand?

00:41:06.440 I don't think I'm on thin ice because I know I've done nothing wrong and I know how to rectify

00:41:12.200 it and I know how to fix it.

00:41:13.140 So I'm not scared.

00:41:14.300 But I'm also kind of on thin ice.

00:41:17.380 It's I feel like I have to be careful.

00:41:19.360 And that's what makes me upset.

00:41:20.860 Isn't it so crazy?

00:41:22.200 I bet Robin DiAngelo is not on thin ice with TikTok. 0.96

00:41:24.900 I bet she could go out there as a white woman and say whatever the hell she wants. 1.00

00:41:27.720 But you as a black woman who pushed back on some of these narratives against, you know,

00:41:31.660 Milano, DiAngelo, what have you.

00:41:34.140 You got to watch it.

00:41:35.280 Yeah.

00:41:35.920 Like, I don't want to watch what I what I say.

00:41:37.620 I just want to say what I want.

00:41:39.120 It's the beauty of being an American.

00:41:41.600 Exactly.

00:41:42.620 Well, I'm glad you're reinstated.

00:41:44.000 I mean, that's first and foremost, and that you push back and that you got your army,

00:41:47.400 you know, your TikTok army or Insta army to fight back because that's the only way.

00:41:50.860 And I think there's there's always, I think, more people in your camp than the ones who

00:41:55.220 are pushing to cancel you.

00:41:56.340 You know, that was one thing we saw over that.

00:41:59.020 There was an organized campaign to get Piers Morgan booted out of his job.

00:42:01.940 It was like 40,000 people have complained.

00:42:03.620 It's like, you know how many more millions are behind the scenes right now just living

00:42:06.700 their lives and they don't know that Piers needs them.

00:42:08.820 You know, they're not they're not writing letters to go get somebody canceled or fight

00:42:12.580 back against the cancellation.

00:42:13.860 So you were smart to line up your army to motivate them, mobilize them.

00:42:19.400 And you won.

00:42:21.200 But but I got to ask you just about some of your background, Savannah, because I find you

00:42:25.820 so interesting.

00:42:26.700 Do you do you work outside?

00:42:28.220 Because I'm sure you could support yourself with some of the ads just based on these channels

00:42:31.260 and so on.

00:42:31.760 No, I mean, oh, no, not yet.

00:42:33.580 No.

00:42:35.380 So what do you do to support yourself?

00:42:38.320 I do have a full time job, so I kind of work in STEM, kind of in customer service.

00:42:43.180 Yeah, I've been trying to get out of customer service for years.

00:42:45.080 But, you know, when you're good at something, you just fall right back in.

00:42:49.460 That's true.

00:42:51.160 And so do you feel like people know who you are?

00:42:53.300 You ever run into somebody who's like, hey, aren't you the?

00:42:57.000 Oh, goodness.

00:42:57.840 At least twice a weekend.

00:43:00.420 At least twice a weekend.

00:43:02.140 It's I feel so bad because I'm so awkward in public.

00:43:06.440 I'm very introverted and I'm a little shy.

00:43:08.520 I've mentioned on my TikTok a couple times.

00:43:10.540 If you see me in public, you have to engage me in conversation because I will not engage

00:43:15.700 you in conversation and ignore my face.

00:43:18.360 I have no idea what my face says.

00:43:20.600 If my face says, don't talk to me, me and my face are not the same person.

00:43:24.780 Just come talk to me.

00:43:26.680 But it's usually you look familiar or I follow you on TikTok or are you on TikTok?

00:43:32.160 I follow you.

00:43:33.540 So are you you're from the South originally, right?

00:43:37.780 You were when you recently moved to New Orleans, but you're from Charlotte.

00:43:41.600 Yeah, I was born in Columbia, raised in Charlotte.

00:43:43.580 So Charlotte's home.

00:43:44.680 Now, do you think that there's something I mean, you tell me, but like Van Jones is a

00:43:48.520 friend of mine, a CNN commentator.

00:43:50.040 You probably know who he is.

00:43:50.880 But he's he's definitely a liberal guy and he's way more in line with like Black Lives 1.00

00:43:56.340 Matter and so on than I think you are.

00:43:58.740 But he's he's very reasonable in his approach, I think, to most issues.

00:44:03.200 I mean, I know him pretty well.

00:44:04.480 And I think as a black man who grew up in Tennessee, he just sees the world a little bit differently.

00:44:09.780 He just was surrounded by people who think differently and he learned to get along with

00:44:14.200 folks and I don't know, just chart his own path.

00:44:16.860 Do you think there's any any connection between, you know, you being in the South and raised

00:44:22.000 in the South and and your more heterodox views on race issues?

00:44:26.800 This is the beauty of America, even though our country is so large, we're a United Nation.

00:44:30.840 Different parts of our country have vastly different histories.

00:44:34.300 And the history of the South is very traumatic.

00:44:37.200 We went through something as a region so traumatic over the last 100, 150 years.

00:44:42.240 Well, let's start with, you know, 1776, you know, last 100, 150 years.

00:44:47.980 I think at this point, the South is exhausted.

00:44:50.880 And it's at the point now where it's like people here, we get along to get along.

00:44:55.980 The racism of the South isn't what it was 50, 60 years ago.

00:44:59.500 And I think that does influence the way I see the world because I live in a place where

00:45:05.900 all that petty stuff really just doesn't matter.

00:45:08.260 It mattered at one point, but we had to go through something very traumatic as a region

00:45:13.900 for us to realize that none of that matters.

00:45:17.580 It's all superficial.

00:45:19.220 It doesn't change who we are.

00:45:21.140 We just have to love one another and respect one another in spite of whatever our differences are.

00:45:27.400 And how about your parents?

00:45:29.780 Is it is it true that you're you're from a military family?

00:45:34.000 My mom served in the army.

00:45:35.900 My father served, he passed when I was four and a half.

00:45:38.640 He's buried in Calverton.

00:45:39.940 My stepfather is in the was in the Air Force.

00:45:43.280 He retired.

00:45:43.760 Now, he didn't retire.

00:45:44.400 He's a veteran.

00:45:45.400 OK, yep.

00:45:46.680 And I mean, do you think that had an influence on you in in in a good or a bad way?

00:45:52.340 I think in a good way.

00:45:53.940 Honestly, it gave me an appreciation for what the word sacrifice means.

00:45:59.200 And it gave me appreciation for our country.

00:46:01.640 I think when you come from a military family, whether, you know, your parents are still active

00:46:06.840 or they've retired, they've seen so much of the world.

00:46:12.520 And they almost have my mom has such a desire to share so much of it with me, as opposed

00:46:18.620 to, I think, parents who stay in the same place and don't go anywhere, which sounds awful.

00:46:22.980 But definitely coming from a family that's at a very young age, went out into the world.

00:46:32.660 I can definitely see how my mom was so eager to make sure me and my brother experienced

00:46:36.800 the world as well, because for her, the world opened up almost immediately because she was

00:46:43.240 in all these different places.

00:46:45.520 That's a good point.

00:46:46.180 And you do you learn about sacrifice and you learn about honor and love of country, which

00:46:51.680 isn't taught enough to this upcoming generation.

00:46:56.400 I mean, I saw some poll was the poll.

00:46:58.500 My team's probably got it, but it was like 34 percent of young people say they have pride

00:47:02.400 in America and in the flag.

00:47:04.160 Oh, really?

00:47:06.060 Thirty four percent.

00:47:07.580 They don't understand.

00:47:08.660 You know, they did.

00:47:09.120 They don't get it or they're willfully blind to it.

00:47:10.800 I don't know.

00:47:11.280 But it doesn't happen in military families.

00:47:13.260 No, because you grow up.

00:47:18.440 You grow up grateful.

00:47:20.120 I did anyway.

00:47:22.160 I grew up grateful and very appreciative.

00:47:25.600 And I grew up with a mom who encouraged me to express myself and be myself.

00:47:31.900 And to not be held back.

00:47:34.600 You know, this is forgive this weird question, but do you feel like the loss of your father

00:47:38.980 at a young age changed the way you think?

00:47:41.500 That's a good question.

00:47:44.500 I'm not going to lie.

00:47:45.500 I often think about how different my life would be had he still been alive.

00:47:49.780 They divorced.

00:47:50.900 I didn't know this until I was like maybe 10 or 11, but they divorced shortly before he

00:47:54.940 passed.

00:47:55.380 But he was very active.

00:47:58.000 He was a good dad and he loved the military.

00:48:01.360 He would have retired had he not passed.

00:48:05.260 But his passing definitely shapes the way I see other men and the way I form relationships.

00:48:19.580 And the more I've learned about him as I've gotten older has definitely wanted me to be

00:48:27.700 the absolute best person.

00:48:30.360 Because when I was little, he was just he was a ghost kind of, you know, he was just my

00:48:37.900 dad.

00:48:38.520 He was this thing that this thing, this person that everyone knew but me.

00:48:43.300 But now as I've kind of gotten to know him on my own terms, he was such a good man.

00:48:49.820 And the world was so robbed, not just me, but the whole world was robbed of this good

00:48:55.720 man.

00:48:56.140 And it's wanted me to be the best person that I can be.

00:49:02.380 It's helped me to appreciate me a lot more because I see so much of himself in me.

00:49:09.380 Because I think when you lose a parent, you often feel like there's half of you just doesn't

00:49:13.820 make sense.

00:49:14.980 More of me is starting to make sense the more I get to know him after death.

00:49:20.860 Wow.

00:49:22.660 Wow.

00:49:23.060 I feel like people who lose, it doesn't have to be a parent, but certainly a parent would

00:49:28.540 qualify somebody that they love at a very young age, just have a different perspective

00:49:33.420 on things and on what matters.

00:49:35.800 And I feel like I see some of that wisdom in your videos, which is sort of like, come

00:49:42.160 on, get busier.

00:49:43.660 Well, I have to say, I don't think you're going to be in customer service for much longer.

00:49:47.320 And I actually predict you're not going to be a social media influencer for much longer.

00:49:52.040 I want you to run for office.

00:49:53.520 I want you to do something.

00:49:54.540 Oh, gosh.

00:49:55.160 I do.

00:49:55.820 I want like, I see your influence expanding well beyond the digital world.

00:50:01.120 You're too sage.

00:50:02.540 It's, you've got to, you've got to put it to like seriously good use.

00:50:06.540 More people need to have access to you.

00:50:08.360 Oh, goodness.

00:50:08.960 Everyone wants me to run for president.

00:50:10.560 I'm like, no, the last thing they need to do is give me access to the nuclear codes.

00:50:16.480 Why not?

00:50:17.320 Wisdom, y'all.

00:50:18.180 That is not wise.

00:50:19.720 Uh, better you than Joe Biden, who doesn't appear to be all there at the moment.

00:50:25.020 I feel like at least you're all there.

00:50:27.360 Bless his heart.

00:50:29.560 Uh, listen, I would love to see your bold and awkward bunny face in there doing stuff near 1.00

00:50:34.700 the nuclear codes or otherwise, but I feel like great things are in your future, Savannah.

00:50:38.720 I'm honored to know you.

00:50:40.020 Thank you so much.

00:50:40.880 Up next, the Biden administration has passed a law that provides for loan relief for black

00:50:47.340 farmers.

00:50:48.100 But if you're white, you can't even apply. 0.84

00:50:50.840 When some white farmers and ranchers filed lawsuits and said, hey, that, that actually

00:50:55.980 seems discriminatory and unconstitutional.

00:50:58.320 Uh, the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack responded, where were you over the last hundred

00:51:04.140 years when your black counterparts were being discriminated against and that we didn't hear

00:51:08.180 a peep from you? 0.77

00:51:09.540 Okay.

00:51:09.880 So our guest today, uh, is 29 years old and the answer is she wasn't alive, but she is

00:51:15.860 suffering thanks to what happened by our government voluntarily in the COVID shutdown.

00:51:20.100 Liesl Carpenter joins us next with her lawyer on where all this is going.

00:51:23.760 Liesl, Will, how are you?

00:51:28.520 Good.

00:51:28.780 Doing great.

00:51:29.380 How are you?

00:51:30.140 I'm great.

00:51:30.700 Thank you guys so much for doing this and for being here.

00:51:33.140 Absolutely.

00:51:33.760 Of course.

00:51:34.560 Okay.

00:51:34.860 So let me just, uh, set the stage for our audience and then we'll get into your specific

00:51:38.980 story, Liesl.

00:51:40.240 Um, so we've got, it seems to me that most parties involved in these lawsuits agree, even

00:51:47.260 the plaintiffs who are represented by lawyers generally agree that the USDA has a

00:51:53.740 history of discriminating against black farmers, that the federal government has, has a bad

00:51:58.960 history of doing this and other farmers of color.

00:52:02.100 But the argument essentially is that we cannot remedy that in 2021 by doing more discriminating

00:52:11.340 on the basis of race, this time against non-persons of color, against white farmers and ranchers.

00:52:17.300 And that's not just an opinion that happens to be the law.

00:52:21.360 The Supreme court has so found in numerous cases and the Congress kind of ignored that

00:52:28.080 Supreme court precedent in my view, in doing this, well, you're the lawyer.

00:52:32.520 So I'm going to get to you on that in a second, but that's sort of where we stand.

00:52:36.320 We've had four lawsuits filed as far as I can count.

00:52:38.860 So far, yours is one of them, one in Texas, one in Wisconsin, uh, one in Florida, and now

00:52:44.040 yours out of Wyoming and the plaintiffs who are objecting to this policy, this now law

00:52:51.520 are winning.

00:52:52.820 They're winning across the board.

00:52:54.440 There, I, there has not been one court yet that found that this was okay.

00:52:59.300 Because as I said, the Supreme court seems pretty clear that you can't do this except

00:53:04.920 in the most narrow of circumstances, not this broad brush.

00:53:09.320 Like let's fix a very bad history with a sweeping law that discriminates against whites.

00:53:16.160 Okay.

00:53:16.880 So let's start with you, Liesl on your specific family situation.

00:53:20.640 You are, you're a rancher out in Wyoming.

00:53:24.340 How big is your ranch?

00:53:26.080 How old are you and what kind of ranching?

00:53:28.800 So I am 29 years old.

00:53:31.220 Um, I'm, I have a 20 month year old or old son.

00:53:34.820 Um, and I have been ranching my entire life.

00:53:38.320 So I'm a sixth generation rancher.

00:53:40.540 Uh, my family homesteaded the ranch that I live on right now in 1894.

00:53:45.860 Um, and they immigrated from Norway and Sweden.

00:53:48.980 Um, we run on 2,400 acres, uh, split between Albany County and Larimer County, Colorado, um,

00:53:55.920 and, um, Albany County in Wyoming.

00:53:57.820 And we run cow-calf, which is, uh, mama cows and baby calves.

00:54:03.080 And then we also have yearlings, which are any calf that's over the age of one.

00:54:08.820 Um, and then we also have bulls that we run with our cows as well.

00:54:12.420 And then we also have a haying operation, um, which means we harvest our native grass hay.

00:54:18.800 And we do that normally coming up here in a few weeks.

00:54:21.920 And that's what we sell.

00:54:23.420 And we also feed it directly through our cows.

00:54:25.760 Okay.

00:54:27.620 Let me ask you a Yankee kind of question from a girl who grew up in New York state,

00:54:31.300 which does have a lot of farmland where I'm from in upstate, but I never partook in it.

00:54:35.980 When you say it's a cow-calf operation, what, what happens to the cows?

00:54:39.860 Is it, is it, is it a beef ranch situation or what is it?

00:54:44.380 It's beef.

00:54:45.240 So, um, normally in the reference of cow-calf, it's generally beef.

00:54:49.500 Um, so we run Angus cattle with, um, also a herford.

00:54:54.800 And so in our production, cow-calf is a very long-term investment.

00:54:59.800 Um, we operate year round.

00:55:02.060 And so we will breed cows and we will get calves and then we will raise those calves on the cow.

00:55:10.540 And then generally in the fall, some people will hold onto those calves after they wean them, which means, you know, separate them from their mother.

00:55:19.700 And we will hold them.

00:55:21.820 We like to hold them for 45 days before we put them to the market.

00:55:25.520 And then some of them, we also keep through the next year and raise ourselves and then, um, market as grass-fed or corn-fed beef.

00:55:34.220 All right.

00:55:35.100 Then they die of natural causes and that's how they want to get in the supermarket.

00:55:39.840 Let's just go with that, Liesl.

00:55:41.940 I eat, I eat red meat, but I'm one of those people who likes to pretend it doesn't end the way it does.

00:55:46.540 It's, you know, it's a story for another day.

00:55:49.260 Um, okay.

00:55:50.040 So you're a rancher, you're in this business.

00:55:51.840 It's not an easy business and it certainly hasn't been an easy business over the past year and a half for any rancher or farmer in the United States.

00:56:00.540 But when, just talk to us before we got to the COVID year, how are you doing?

00:56:06.100 So our markets are always affected by literally everything.

00:56:11.300 Um, and so one of the biggest points that I would like to point out to the cow-calf and anybody in production cattle, um, is that our market is basically controlled by all the meatpacking industry.

00:56:23.980 And so our market is, our packers, there's only four of them that make up over 80% of the meatpacking industry.

00:56:32.580 So they can control our prices on what we get.

00:56:35.640 And so, um, we've had a lot of weird things happen with the packing industry.

00:56:42.000 And so prior to COVID, there was a fire at one of the packing houses and it sent our cattle prices through the floor.

00:56:50.920 Like it was horrible.

00:56:51.960 And it was just one packing house that was affected.

00:56:54.860 And so, you know, it's wrong how many packers, how the four packers are basically gaining up and saying, you guys only get this much money, but we can make over a thousand dollars per head.

00:57:06.940 And that's during the COVID year, yet we are struggling to even get a dollar profit on our cattle.

00:57:13.300 And so, um, so prior to COVID, we had very up and down markets.

00:57:19.840 And so like that year I'm referencing with the fire in Kansas at that production facility, um, or the processing plant, it really, it really kicked us in the knee and it hurt.

00:57:31.920 And so we were going to having to deal with that and our market hadn't really recovered.

00:57:36.480 And then we also are really affected by drought conditions.

00:57:40.000 And so when mother nature doesn't give us the rain, the snow, any of the necessary water to grow plants on a rangeland or even growing crops, um, it affects our cattle market.

00:57:52.720 And so when everything is extremely dry, producers are selling these animals to the market.

00:57:59.440 And so our supply drastically increases.

00:58:02.340 And so our price per head goes drastically down as well.

00:58:07.500 And so in a few years, if people keep selling and selling, then of course, according to the law, supply and demand, your prices will go up, but we haven't seen that.

00:58:16.240 And so the Packers are just making a killing and, um, it's wrong.

00:58:22.200 So the ranchers aren't.

00:58:23.620 Okay.

00:58:23.880 So, so the government is looking at this and I know that there was some COVID relief in the, in the Trump plan, uh, that went out.

00:58:32.800 But the, the argument here has been no matter what the relief is, whether it's COVID relief for ranchers and farmers, or it's been prior efforts to do something about the racial discrimination that's historic in this industry, it never quite works.

00:58:48.480 It never quite winds up helping in particular black farmers.

00:58:52.840 And so Biden comes in and says, all right, it's actually based on a bill that Raphael Warnock, the, the guy who won in Georgia, who everybody thought was going to lose, but he won, uh, and those runoffs, he submitted this bill and said, we, we got to give about $4 billion, uh, to black farmers and, and other farmers of color.

00:59:12.680 As a remedy, as a remedy, as a remedy for past discrimination and, and really this law doesn't pay any attention to whether they are hurting economically today.

00:59:24.680 So just by way of example, Megan Markle could turn some of her $16 million estate in Montecito into farmland and apply for relief under this, this law. 1.00

00:59:38.220 And she would, she would get it because she has the right skin color. 0.94

00:59:40.840 You, however, who've been in this industry for six generations, you know, you're, you've got a young kid, you've been struggling financially going into this.

00:59:49.020 You can't get it because you have different melanin, even though you don't have Megan Markle's money.

00:59:52.940 Okay.

00:59:53.800 So let, let, let, let me bring in your lawyer will, because well, as I see it, you know, the justification from everybody is there have been decades, decades of discrimination, uh, by these federal programs.

01:00:08.140 And there's no matter what they try to do, the funding never reaches farmers of color.

01:00:14.900 And so this is going to allow them to go directly to the farmers of color and not only pay off their loans, but apparently they get 120% of their loans paid.

01:00:25.200 How does that work?

01:00:26.660 Yeah, that's right.

01:00:27.340 So as we were reading the statute, we were thinking, okay, well, you know, I guess they're going to get their loans paid off.

01:00:32.280 And then we saw the 120% number, which you'll notice is higher than a hundred percent.

01:00:37.620 And the agriculture department has said, well, that's to cover the taxes because when we pay off your hundred percent of your loan, that's a taxable event.

01:00:46.040 So now we are going to subsidize your tax bill as well.

01:00:50.260 Uh, so that was interesting that you actually get a windfall from owing money to, uh, the farm service agency.

01:00:56.240 You're exactly right, Megan.

01:00:57.400 This is just about melanin.

01:00:58.960 This is just about whether or not you meet one of these racial classifications that has nothing to do with whether you contracted COVID, whether your farm or your ranch suffered from COVID, whether you suffered from discrimination by the USDA.

01:01:12.440 It is a blunt instrument.

01:01:15.040 Uh, you could have taken out your loan last year and all of a sudden you would be eligible regardless of circumstances for forgiveness now.

01:01:22.320 So even in the heyday of affirmative action, I don't think I've ever seen a program that is this blunt and is this designed to divide us by race and treat us differently on the basis of that race.

01:01:34.160 Hmm.

01:01:35.180 Why?

01:01:35.660 I mean, I learned back in law school that when you've got a program like this, if you've got, if you're trying to openly discriminate on the basis of race, which is definitely what they're doing, you have to pass.

01:01:49.500 It's called strict scrutiny in the law in order for your behavior as the government to be upheld, to be allowed.

01:01:56.720 And that is a very tough standard for someone to pass by design.

01:02:02.180 It's basically there's a presumption that you've done something unlawful, right?

01:02:07.240 If you're if they're applying strict scrutiny and you're making a race based classification, the laws is basically going to presume that you've done something you're not allowed to do.

01:02:17.140 Um, and I'll analyze the law under basically you need a compelling state interest for doing it and has to be very narrowly tailored to the specific problem you're looking at.

01:02:32.100 It's very hard to get your law upheld under that standard.

01:02:34.900 So you tell me whether all the courts so far, these four courts, and I know you haven't yet got a ruling, but have applied this strict scrutiny and.

01:02:46.580 And has it survived that initial scrutiny in any one of these cases?

01:02:51.900 Well, the answer is no, it hasn't survived, which is which is good news.

01:02:56.420 And I'll talk a little bit about a Tennessee case that my firm is also involved in a second.

01:03:01.220 But the key there is that you and I took very similar law school courses because those cases all say that you cannot get out of this very, very demanding review just by pleading that your program is beneficial to minorities.

01:03:16.140 So my firm, Mountain States Legal Foundation, litigated a case called Adirant in the 1990s where the government was saying it's OK to give preferences to minorities when handing out federal contracts because it benefits those minorities.

01:03:29.940 And so that shouldn't be subject to the same type of review.

01:03:33.720 That argument lost. It lost in the 90s.

01:03:37.160 It has been the law for over two decades that regardless of whether you say your program is good or bad for minorities, it is subject to this very demanding strict scrutiny review.

01:03:48.880 And the courts that have looked at this in Wisconsin and Florida and Texas have all said that's the law that applies.

01:03:56.160 The government, to its credit, has acknowledged that, although they have resisted the idea that it's presumptively unconstitutional.

01:04:03.660 They keep saying, no, we meet strict scrutiny.

01:04:07.020 This is a very compelling interest and we are very narrowly tailored to it.

01:04:11.500 So they are fighting back even on those grounds.

01:04:14.660 That's the only that's really all they can say, because there is a constitutional ban on race discrimination.

01:04:20.800 You're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race in the United States.

01:04:24.080 It's very, very clear.

01:04:25.900 But let me put it to you this way, Will, because I think some of our listeners will be thinking, well, we know that, for example, at the college level, some race discrimination is allowed.

01:04:35.540 Right. Some not quotas, but race has been upheld by the Supreme Court as a factor, a sort of plus factor that colleges can use in deciding who who gets in.

01:04:47.280 So it's not banned in all circumstances.

01:04:49.520 And so why why couldn't you, you know, credibly say this is this is like an affirmative action program?

01:04:55.980 Yeah, well, it's true that race considerations in higher education, for instance, are in some very narrow cases permissible.

01:05:05.980 So in the Texas case a couple of years ago, where the University of Texas has a small racial preference, the Supreme Court said, you know, it's such a small preference and so unique to the student that we will go ahead and uphold it.

01:05:18.940 In a Michigan case 20 years ago, they said the same thing.

01:05:22.100 But those are cases where it's a factor of a factor.

01:05:26.180 And the court has been very clear that you cannot have a quota.

01:05:29.380 You cannot say, OK, we're going to admit 20 percent Asian-Americans and then 20 percent African-Americans and go on down the line.

01:05:36.720 You have to give each person their unique evaluation before you can make a decision.

01:05:42.000 So this program for farmers and ranchers throws caution to the wind and says, no, we aren't going to make any individual determinations.

01:05:49.060 We aren't going to even look behind the curtain at what actually happened on your farm or ranch.

01:05:54.760 We're just going to cut the checks.

01:05:56.740 And that is not going to pass muster, given these affirmative action cases and how narrowly they've been drawn.

01:06:03.400 You mentioned that University of Texas case.

01:06:05.140 In that case, the Supreme Court rejected the interest in remedying societal discrimination, saying it has no logical stopping point.

01:06:15.620 And there was a quote as follows, the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

01:06:23.620 That's exactly it.

01:06:24.960 I've said this so many times just in the larger context of America today.

01:06:28.120 You don't solve past discrimination by more discrimination.

01:06:31.140 The answer to racism is not more racism.

01:06:33.660 That's not a Megyn Kelly thought.

01:06:35.060 That's a Supreme Court thought.

01:06:36.280 That's a founder's thought.

01:06:37.180 That's in our documents, essentially, the principle, which is race discrimination is wrong, period.

01:06:42.000 And so one of the main questions is, so what should they do if you've got this history of discrimination?

01:06:49.660 You know, and it seems like everybody agrees it's bad.

01:06:52.140 You look at the Department of Agriculture and black farmers.

01:06:54.320 You're not going to like what you see.

01:06:55.640 It's not going to make you feel very good about America.

01:06:57.740 But what do we do now?

01:06:59.620 So if you can't pass a law saying, OK, forgive the loans of the black farmers, because there really aren't that many, maybe 14000 in the United States.

01:07:08.480 Forgive their loans.

01:07:09.140 No, you can't do that, say, three courts so far.

01:07:12.520 What can they do, Will?

01:07:14.420 Yeah, it's a good question.

01:07:15.460 Certainly the history of racism from the Agriculture Department is odious, and we certainly don't want to defend that.

01:07:22.840 Now, there was a lawsuit in the 2000s that the Obama administration settled called the Pigford case.

01:07:28.680 Pigford.

01:07:29.140 And in that case, they issued millions of dollars in payments to black farmers who had suffered direct discrimination.

01:07:36.060 And so I'm not opposed to payments like that.

01:07:38.960 The government says, well, yeah, but that payment wasn't enough.

01:07:42.200 And state taxes ended up consuming a lot of those payments.

01:07:47.120 So if they wanted to supplement the settlement agreement, that would be one thing.

01:07:50.980 Or if they were saying, well, last year's aid, even though Nancy Pelosi's house was part of that process, didn't go to African-American farmers.

01:08:01.620 We've constructed it the wrong way.

01:08:04.320 They could have a race neutral policy of giving aid to people who didn't get it last year.

01:08:08.720 Or they could give a race neutral policy about people who have actually suffered from COVID.

01:08:17.440 And the government says that's disproportionately minorities.

01:08:20.280 But that's a race neutral way of getting at some of these problems.

01:08:23.360 And the Constitution lets you do things in race neutral ways.

01:08:27.880 But it's when you classify us by race that you really divide us and you actually create more tension than remedy when you do that.

01:08:36.220 Because look at Liesel's case.

01:08:37.520 Liesel is directly suffering from COVID-19 in terms of her farm and ranch.

01:08:43.840 And the only reason she can't have that remedy is because of her skin color. 0.99

01:08:48.420 I've actually had people come and say, why doesn't she just self-identify as a minority so that she can get she can get this aid? 1.00

01:08:56.560 Obviously, Liesel is an honest person.

01:08:58.100 She's not going to do that. 0.73

01:08:58.880 But it is a little bit silly to say, you know, if you were just born into a different skin color, you'd be fine.

01:09:04.880 You'd get your 120 percent payout.

01:09:07.300 And that's just not legal.

01:09:08.400 That's not something that our Constitution permits.

01:09:11.040 So you can be a black farmer who's who's doing well right now, who maybe just launched a year ago and you'll get the money.

01:09:19.000 But you can be a white farmer or rancher who's been suffering for years, trying to make ends meet, trying to help Americans put food on the table and nowhere near as well off as my imaginary black farmer. 0.84

01:09:31.820 And you can't get the money.

01:09:34.360 Well, as you put it best, you could be a member of the royal British family and still get this aid.

01:09:39.420 Barack Obama could start a farm.

01:09:41.300 In his downtime, he's going to get the money.

01:09:44.140 Right.

01:09:44.320 So the loan had to had to have been taken out last year before.

01:09:47.600 But yes, the answer is any any person could have been eligible for this loan, regardless of their individual circumstances.

01:09:55.600 So what I mean, you tell me, Liesel, because I read that you wrote an op-ed in the New York Post and you said this law, Biden's law, is seemingly designed to racially humiliate Americans like me.

01:10:06.980 How so?

01:10:07.460 Well, you know, it just makes it so we don't feel like we're included.

01:10:13.020 It's basically a slap in the face saying, hey, just because you're white, you can't apply.

01:10:19.660 And, you know, it's wrong.

01:10:21.180 I mean, you've been talking about the USDA's past discrimination.

01:10:24.880 Well, a big part of it is women like me have been discriminated against, not me specifically, but women in the past.

01:10:33.780 And they're completely overlooking that aspect of it.

01:10:37.080 And so being a white woman who's recognized as being socially disadvantaged, it does humiliate me because I should be a part of that group.

01:10:46.100 And then, you know, I look down at my neighbors who are struggling, who are barely getting by, and I don't know if they're going to make it another year.

01:10:54.140 And it's humiliating to them because they don't feel like they deserve it enough either.

01:10:58.500 And, you know, it's just completely wrong that they are doing this.

01:11:04.860 And, you know, humiliation in so many ways of this is it's just wrong.

01:11:12.580 And I wish that they would have done a better job of structuring this so it doesn't put us in this position to make us look bad, to make us look like we're needy, to make us look like it's a welfare payment or any of that.

01:11:26.240 It has nothing to do with that.

01:11:27.720 And so when you bring a voice to it, people see that and then they're like judging you on everything else.

01:11:33.200 And so, you know, it's just a vicious cycle of humiliation.

01:11:36.740 And it should have never happened.

01:11:38.840 Well, I'm sure you didn't expect to be fighting a race war on top of, right? 0.83

01:11:44.060 It's like no one wants to bring a case like this and sort of you're not trying to take away anything from black farmers and ranchers.

01:11:51.660 You're trying to, as I understand it, to make this a more need-based analysis, which would ignore skin color, right?

01:12:00.820 Or at least maybe it could be a factor, but you wouldn't be ruled out right from the get-go just because you weren't born with the right skin color.

01:12:08.300 Yep.

01:12:08.840 Well, the nature of these lawsuits is that sometimes you only have certain tools in your toolbox.

01:12:13.860 So we've asked for the program to be stopped currently.

01:12:18.460 And at the end of the day, if the government wants to expand the program to everyone, regardless of race, that's something that they could also do.

01:12:24.860 Okay, but here's how Secretary Tom Vilsack of Agriculture has responded.

01:12:30.280 And this guy, people should know, has his own history.

01:12:33.260 He's been accused of not doing enough when he was in this role under Obama, and they don't think he was particularly supportive of the African-American community back then, including in this role.

01:12:42.400 So this guy's on his heels.

01:12:43.600 This is how he has responded to people like you, Liesl.

01:12:48.380 It's a wonder where these farmers, or in your case, ranchers, were over the last 100 years when their black counterparts were being discriminated against.

01:12:56.860 And we didn't hear a peep from white farmers about how unfortunate that circumstance was.

01:13:02.520 He goes on, now we're having white farmers stepping up and asking why they're not included in the program.

01:13:08.260 Well, it's pretty clear why.

01:13:09.780 Because they've had the access of all the programs for the last 100 years.

01:13:14.660 It's important for us to acknowledge the cumulative effect of discrimination.

01:13:18.940 And this is one way Congress is directing us to do that.

01:13:22.200 Your thoughts on that one, Liesl?

01:13:23.220 So it really drives me nuts how they make it completely about just a certain race being discriminated against.

01:13:33.600 The USDA has a long history of discriminating not just against blacks, but also Native Americans and Hispanics and women.

01:13:42.380 And so they're not even including every aspect of it.

01:13:45.400 And, you know, I would love to hear their statistic on how much CFAP money went to women.

01:13:53.320 Because that statistic is never included.

01:13:56.780 It's only a broad spectrum.

01:13:58.660 Yes, that's what the CARES Act last year that Trump did.

01:14:02.660 Yes.

01:14:03.380 And so they're always saying, like, well, 95% of this funding went to white farmers.

01:14:08.280 Well, what about women like me that are the majority owner, that are the ones making the decision on a day-to-day basis? 0.93

01:14:15.480 They've never included that number.

01:14:17.280 And we have been discriminated against by the USDA.

01:14:21.760 And that group is considered.

01:14:24.200 But they're completely omitting us.

01:14:26.140 And it's only because I'm white.

01:14:28.420 And so when they say we're trying to make the discrimination claims, you know, in the past and remedy that,

01:14:34.740 they're not including everybody that's even been affected by it.

01:14:38.520 And so, to me, if they were to include everyone, it would be a lot different.

01:14:45.160 But they're not.

01:14:46.380 And so they're just picking and choosing.

01:14:48.220 Yeah, they're choosing among different minority groups or historically disadvantaged groups in the agriculture industry,

01:14:53.880 based on, you know, what Raphael Warnock proposed is essentially it.

01:14:59.040 Can I ask you about this, though, Will, because you see this stat a lot that they say the vast majority of prior COVID farming aid

01:15:07.240 and the Trump's and Trump's CARES Act went to white farmers.

01:15:10.660 Historically, the loans have gone to white farmers.

01:15:15.840 You know, the numbers are are overwhelming that it's been white farmers who have been helped

01:15:22.280 instead of black farmers by the government.

01:15:25.580 And when I look at the percentage, like you look at it on a percentage basis, it's never going to end well for the black farmers

01:15:33.620 because black farmers, if they only make up two percent of agriculture, then they wouldn't get much more. 0.97

01:15:39.680 I mean, the ninety five to ninety ninety five to ninety eight percent of the aid is going to wind up in the hands of white farmers and ranchers 0.75

01:15:44.960 because that's how the industry looks.

01:15:47.260 Fans of the new term that's going around called equity like to point to statistics like this,

01:15:54.720 where it's like X X percentage of something went to non-whites and that's disproportionate.

01:16:01.980 But here you're exactly right, where the vast majority, I think something like ninety five percent of farmers are white and ninety seven percent of CARES Act aid went to whites.

01:16:11.380 But again, that was a racially racially neutral program that Speaker Pelosi had a strong hand in.

01:16:18.060 I don't think there's an allegation that, you know, Speaker Pelosi's house was full of white supremacists when they passed the CARES Act.

01:16:24.320 The argument about the hundred years really gets on my nerves, though, from Secretary Vilsack.

01:16:30.300 You know, Liesl's twenty nine years old. 1.00

01:16:31.880 She she wasn't around a hundred years ago to raise an objection when USDA was discriminated against discriminated against an African-American.

01:16:40.740 But the program goes far beyond African-Americans.

01:16:43.660 It also covers Asian-Americans and Native Americans, Alaska Natives.

01:16:48.120 You know, it's hard for me to imagine the the mismatch that's going on between what Congress says actually happened and what this program does.

01:16:57.480 Remember, these are people that actually got the loans.

01:16:59.460 It's you know, it's very possible that people who suffer the discrimination don't have farms anymore.

01:17:04.640 Yes, that's right.

01:17:05.760 And then should be noted in many circumstances entered into you serious situations.

01:17:10.920 In other words, highly exploitative situations to get the loans they needed.

01:17:14.840 And that's a sad reality of our of our history, that black farmers couldn't get the loans from the government, went to other sources.

01:17:20.880 And it did set them back.

01:17:22.700 It did send them back for generations.

01:17:24.920 Keep going.

01:17:25.320 Sure.

01:17:25.620 Yeah.

01:17:25.780 Yeah.

01:17:26.420 But but there's no there's no aid that's ever gone out previously.

01:17:29.700 That's one hundred and twenty percent of your loan value.

01:17:32.140 That that is not a thing that's happened before for anyone.

01:17:35.340 Right.

01:17:35.500 And your point is, if the people who are going to be helped by this particular law are people who did get loans.

01:17:40.040 This is the farmers of color who did get loans and and now are going to get them repaid by the federal taxpayer.

01:17:47.580 Plus 20 percent.

01:17:50.220 And, you know, I think you could make the case to help the agricultural industry and the farmers and ranchers in it.

01:17:55.700 But to say that no person of color has to prove any of this is need based is pretty extraordinary.

01:18:01.940 I like they can be killing it and they're still going to get the money plus 20 percent.

01:18:06.220 And you can be suffering as a white person and you're not going to get a dime. 0.97

01:18:09.940 So. 0.79

01:18:10.700 All right.

01:18:11.860 As I understand it, there are the four lawsuits.

01:18:14.400 There was the one in Florida, which granted a national preliminary injunction.

01:18:20.060 And that holds until there's a trial in the case, because the judge there, Marsha Morales Howard, said the Constitution's promise of equal justice under the law is that the government will treat people as individuals, not simply as members of their racial group.

01:18:33.460 Citing a Supreme Court case from 1995.

01:18:36.200 So if if this happens, like what what's going to be the first thing to actually throw out the law?

01:18:42.000 When does the law actually get thrown out and redone or, you know, they try to do it need based however they need to save it?

01:18:48.020 Well, yeah.

01:18:49.140 So to be clear, Mountain State Legal Foundation, my firm and another firm called the Southeastern Legal Foundation out of Atlanta have teamed up in both Liesel's case and then a Tennessee case called Holman, where we continue to await our own ruling on a preliminary injunction.

01:19:04.040 So the Florida and Texas courts have issued preliminary injunctions.

01:19:07.900 We would be the third out of Tennessee.

01:19:10.200 So those orders, as you point out, Megan, do halt the program temporarily until the end of the case.

01:19:19.800 And so the end of the case could involve discovery, whether that's interviewing Secretary Bilsack or trying to discover evidence from from the FSA itself in terms of what sort of money is in the pot, has to go through the legal process.

01:19:34.960 And at the end of the day, you have a trial and and then you have a ruling from a judge.

01:19:40.020 So if the judge says, yeah, there's no change, this was an unconstitutional program all along, all you do is make that preliminary injunction, a permanent one.

01:19:48.060 And the program is halted. Congress or sorry, the USDA can't go forward.

01:19:53.220 And then we have justice, you know, quote unquote justice.

01:19:56.860 We we worked really hard. We spent a lot of time putting ourselves back to square one.

01:20:00.740 Now, of course, the government could say, OK, we want to do something else with aid like a racially neutral policy based on need.

01:20:09.880 But, yeah, the idea is that this program can't go forward as it is written.

01:20:14.660 And the preliminary injunction preserves the status quo, the current status quo, until a judge can make a ruling on the program itself.

01:20:23.120 So up next, we're going to talk to Liesl about how her ranch is actually doing and whether she's in danger of losing it if they don't see this relief law turned around or expanded to include those who are suffering financially.

01:20:38.320 Keep in mind, suffering financially in large part because of what the government did.

01:20:42.100 Right. So why isn't it helping all of them, at least those who need it?

01:20:46.400 That's next. But before we get to that, we've got an exciting real talk for you today.

01:20:50.960 And we're excited about it because it's about our show.

01:20:53.600 Which, if you're listening, you may care about as well.

01:20:56.440 You may have heard that this week we announced an exciting partnership with SiriusXM.

01:21:02.020 And I am really excited about this and I'm really excited about SiriusXM.

01:21:05.860 So first and foremost, the show is is still the show.

01:21:08.840 It's still under my control entirely.

01:21:11.400 The editorial control is 100 percent mine.

01:21:13.680 I'm still going to be covering every single issue the way we've been covering them on the show.

01:21:17.960 But we're excited because we have this blue chip brand now behind us who loves it all.

01:21:22.380 And believes in free discussion and conversation.

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01:21:27.860 So the podcast is expanding to this starts in September.

01:21:33.000 Five days a week.

01:21:34.200 Yay.

01:21:34.900 By popular demand.

01:21:35.720 A lot of our listeners have been asking for that.

01:21:37.340 And we're going to launch a video.

01:21:39.920 So that's awesome, too.

01:21:40.840 You're going to be able to check us out on YouTube if that's how you prefer to consume your news or this program.

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01:21:54.320 So what that means is that you're going to be able to listen to the podcast live if you want from 12 to 2 on Sirius Eastern time.

01:22:04.940 12 noon to 2 p.m. Eastern on Sirius XM radio.

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01:22:13.540 And that could be fun because you'll hear us do it live without a net.

01:22:17.200 And the good thing is we're going to be taking listener calls on that show so I can interact with you guys live.

01:22:23.940 And I'm really looking forward to that.

01:22:25.860 Like, I love getting to know the audience and I love the reviews for that reason.

01:22:29.920 I think we're going to it's going to be really fun to hear directly from you.

01:22:32.220 So we'll have the call lines and all that fun stuff.

01:22:34.080 And if you prefer just taking it in podcast form, the great news is you don't have to change a thing.

01:22:39.540 The podcast version of the show remains free, available to you on all platforms that you can now download podcasts on.

01:22:45.940 So we're not just going to be behind a paywall that you can no longer access, you know, come September.

01:22:51.700 Nothing's going to change in your life other than you'll get more of us.

01:22:55.000 You'll get more ways to consume us.

01:22:56.640 You'll get a more expanded access to us via, you know, phone calls and calling in and all that.

01:23:02.940 And we're also going to bring some of this to you even before September.

01:23:06.580 So over the summer, we're going to expand to four days a week.

01:23:08.900 And we're going to start putting out some extended clips on YouTube.

01:23:12.860 So you can check that out and we'll start sort of building up that platform.

01:23:16.080 It's just my my show, my channel on YouTube and sort of expanding as we go.

01:23:21.920 Right. It's going to be a little bit later in the day we'll release the podcast.

01:23:25.440 We're going to start releasing the new shows around 4 p.m.

01:23:28.920 Eastern time on all podcast platforms beginning in July, except for Friday.

01:23:33.980 We'll still do a morning release on Fridays.

01:23:35.760 So it shouldn't affect you because if you like getting it first thing in the morning, you'll just listen to the day before in the morning.

01:23:42.560 Anyway, all of this is awesome.

01:23:44.300 I think it's a great brand.

01:23:45.620 This is the brand that's stood behind, you know, people of all political stripes saying all sorts of things.

01:23:51.100 They have a record of having a pretty steely spine.

01:23:55.540 But in the end, it doesn't really matter because I'm in charge of the editorial.

01:23:58.860 So don't worry.

01:24:00.060 I'll still be me.

01:24:01.220 You'll just get a lot more of us and take it in however you want.

01:24:04.340 OK, so that's our exciting announcement.

01:24:06.320 Hope you'll continue listening.

01:24:07.400 And I just want to say thank you, because without all of you guys, we wouldn't have been offered this opportunity.

01:24:12.540 And, you know, the show, you know, you've heard me say it's doing well, but it's literally one of the top podcasts in the country, not just for news.

01:24:18.760 One of the top podcasts in all of the United States.

01:24:22.380 So that's thanks to you guys.

01:24:24.080 We're on to something.

01:24:25.460 And I feel like we've all been in on this together.

01:24:27.760 And our exciting platform only grows as does our power, our influence and just the good times that we're going to continue having together.

01:24:35.400 All right.

01:24:35.620 Back to our guests in one minute.

01:24:36.820 First, this.

01:24:37.280 If they had to redo the law, you know, Biden and this Congress, could they could they pass something that is just need based that hat that allows a plus in the way the college programs can for race to acknowledge the history here?

01:24:56.480 Would that, in your view, be constitutional?

01:24:58.160 You know, I would need to see something before passing judgment on it, even though I'm a very judgy person.

01:25:04.480 I'm not sure that I understand.

01:25:08.700 Yeah.

01:25:09.240 So it would definitely have a greater likelihood, again, given those affirmative action precedents where we saw courts say, well, you can put a tiny thumb on the scale for race if it's really related to a compelling interest and a narrow tailoring.

01:25:23.880 There are the interests about diversity in college education.

01:25:26.860 So I don't think you could you could use the same thing if a program were really about, you know, we want a diversity of farmers or diversity of ranchers that I'm just not sure how persuasive that would be to report.

01:25:39.660 Well, you know, it's an interesting debate because now you get back into can you today remedy the harms of the past by some form?

01:25:47.740 I mean, still, that is some form of discrimination against white farmers and ranchers who won't who won't get the thumb on the scale through no fault of their own.

01:25:57.080 They're not the ones who made those decisions.

01:25:59.680 You know, look at Vilsack when he was there under Obama.

01:26:02.180 He made some of those decisions.

01:26:03.220 Right. So, like, Liesel made none of these decisions and she might benefit because she's a woman and she's hurting financially. 0.54

01:26:10.300 But I do wonder, is it is it problematic to try to remedy historical discrimination in this way by making the current generation by dividing them based on skin color?

01:26:23.220 Yeah, you know, there are court cases that say if it's really recent in time, then we might give you a little bit more leeway.

01:26:29.080 Obviously, when you need to desegregate the schools, right, because they've been segregated, you might have to take into account race right after in order to desegregate.

01:26:37.880 Here, though, I agree with you.

01:26:40.060 You know, Liesel is not responsible for decisions made in the Carter administration or the Johnson administration.

01:26:45.720 Liesel is trying to do the best she can for her ranch right now. 0.95

01:26:49.080 And even a minor preference, I think, would be objectionable for her.

01:26:52.900 You know, I think that she ought to be considered at the front of the line because of the actual suffering that has happened on her ranch due to COVID-19.

01:27:02.860 So if you're going to pass a COVID-19 relief bill, you ought to direct it at the people who suffered from COVID-19.

01:27:09.840 Right. Let's not forget, that's what this was.

01:27:11.880 This wasn't just general, you know, just a gift of money.

01:27:15.800 It was based on COVID relief.

01:27:17.960 And just before I go back to Liesel on that, a question for you, because it seems to me the precedent being set in your case, Tennessee and elsewhere, Wyoming, Florida and so on, could relate to the debate that's happening on reparations in the country right now.

01:27:34.540 Where we're talking about future reparations programs based entirely on a person, on a person's race.

01:27:43.680 I mean, it's essentially collective guilt, collective innocence, collective punishment and rewards, you know, over 100 years after the Civil War ended.

01:27:53.220 And I do think the law that you guys are going to create here, or at least have affirmed if the Supreme Court follows precedent, could put an end to those types of bills or laws working their way through right now.

01:28:07.140 What do you think?

01:28:08.240 Yeah, I think that's a good point.

01:28:09.860 You know, I have a feeling the government will do a better job trying to be a little bit more clever if it tries to do reparations than it did in this sort of last minute rush to get the American Rescue Plan Act signed in March.

01:28:23.680 You know, I could see them saying, well, okay, we're only going to give the money to a descendant of a slave who, you know, was a slave from this year to that year.

01:28:32.520 And maybe they'll try to say what's more connected to some of the past discrimination.

01:28:36.960 I don't think that's going to hold up.

01:28:38.480 You know, I do think any reparations plan is going to be subject to the same sorts of legal challenges that we're bringing here.

01:28:44.760 And that's exactly how it should be.

01:28:48.160 You know, dividing us up by race and treating us differently by giving us money on the basis of our skin color is very problematic.

01:28:56.120 Well, I mean, there's only so much the government can do in today's day and age.

01:28:58.840 I mean, I think about it from a woman angle.

01:29:00.820 A woman could easily file a lawsuit and say, look at that, we've been second class citizens for the better part of our country's history. 1.00

01:29:08.360 We just celebrated Independence Day, read the Declaration of Independence at our Fourth of July party.

01:29:14.280 And of course, it's all men are created equal and governments of men and so on.

01:29:18.220 And there's a reason for that.

01:29:19.380 Women were second class citizens and have been, it was reflected in the way we lived and the laws that we had. 1.00

01:29:23.560 And there's only so much we can do about that now.

01:29:26.740 You know, it's tough to go to this sitting government with people who were not born or around during those times and say, fix it just as a legal matter.

01:29:37.760 It's just, it's really impossible.

01:29:40.560 That's the truth, Will.

01:29:41.980 Yeah.

01:29:42.420 Yeah, I completely agree.

01:29:44.240 And I think it does more harm than good.

01:29:46.880 Yeah.

01:29:47.220 And as you point out, you know, there have been lawsuits.

01:29:49.320 Women have filed lawsuits in the past. 1.00

01:29:50.780 And we had black people file lawsuits in Pigford 1 and 2.

01:29:55.040 And that's a good way of trying to redress it.

01:29:58.080 It doesn't always work in the moment, especially when you're dealing with a racist society or sexist society, which we were back then.

01:30:04.820 So, yeah, I see the frustration of those weren't cure-alls because, you know, they were operating in a system that was against them to begin with.

01:30:12.240 But it's sort of a bit by bit fight.

01:30:14.400 You know, you make progress bit by bit and it's tough to look back in a sweeping manner and say, you know, with a magic wand there, it's solved because we have this little thing called the Constitution that doesn't allow you to do this stuff.

01:30:25.740 It's just because it wasn't allowed back then and they did it doesn't mean that we should now do it today out in the open.

01:30:32.100 All right.

01:30:32.200 So, Liza, let me go back to you and finish this up with how you guys are doing.

01:30:36.120 How is your ranch doing today?

01:30:38.280 And, you know, how are you doing as a young mom of a 20-month-old?

01:30:42.900 Well, you know, COVID, it was scary.

01:30:45.620 I was really, really nervous back in March when we were looking at our markets and they were going through the floor.

01:30:55.320 And I was really nervous because, you know, we make our money on selling calves and providing beef for consumers.

01:31:03.840 And when we have nowhere to market our animals, what do you do?

01:31:07.980 You know, like you can only hold on to them for so long or because it's going to cost you too much money or you haul them to the auction house and you lose every penny and then you have bills to pay.

01:31:20.280 And, you know, our industry is extremely hard because we literally buy everything at retail and we sell our animals at wholesale.

01:31:30.120 And so, you know, that's really hard to, for the person who's not involved in our industry to understand because, you know, we have to buy vaccines, we buy medications, we buy feed, we pay for pasture, we pay for water, we pay for electricity, we pay for tractors, we pay for literally everything.

01:31:50.920 And so many people benefit from our industry because we are constantly putting money into our local economies.

01:31:58.580 And so when we had COVID happen, we still had to go buy everything, we still had to go do everything on a daily basis in hopes that our cattle would be worth something.

01:32:10.740 And, you know, we were really rolling the dice, hoping and praying that the markets, we had at least hopefully make zero, you know, which is a terrible thing to hope, but, you know, you hope to break even.

01:32:23.520 And, you know, it was really hard.

01:32:26.780 And so I'd like to tell you an example.

01:32:29.340 So for the same time period last year at COVID, our animals were about 30 cents per hundred weight or $30 per hundred weight, which is like 30 cents a pound lower.

01:32:43.060 So if you sold a calf that was 550 pounds, you would have lost, you know, a lot of money.

01:32:50.240 And so to put that into perspective, like a calf was sold for $1.47, a hundred weight and at 550 pounds, that means we lost $110 just on that calf alone without factoring into any other expenses and crude that year.

01:33:10.420 And so, you know, that's really hard to fathom.

01:33:12.420 And so if you have a hundred calves that you lost $110 on, that's $11,000, that's a lot of money.

01:33:21.260 And for most people, that's enough to make them completely go under and not have money to make those payments.

01:33:27.380 And so last year, if the government did not have that CFAP money, I know us and a lot of producers would have really struggled because that gave us a little extra.

01:33:40.240 It didn't cover everything lost.

01:33:42.200 It didn't even come close to it.

01:33:43.800 But, you know, it gave us a little extra to, you know, pay other bills and pay things down.

01:33:49.660 And, you know, we are very fortunate in our situation because of our location.

01:33:56.120 We don't have the same exact extreme drought that other people faced last year.

01:34:00.740 So we had hay that we could grow and feed to our cattle, but it cost an astronomical amount because it was a drought.

01:34:09.240 We had wildfires and people were buying it up like crazy.

01:34:12.760 And then the cost of our cow and our calf was so low, it's hard to justify it on paper to keep it.

01:34:19.360 And so right now, we are still making those tough decisions because part of our ground last year did burn in a wildfire that we lease.

01:34:27.560 And we have to sell down.

01:34:29.540 And when you sell down an animal that you buy for a long-term investment, you lose so much money.

01:34:36.780 And we were selling them in an extremely low market for those cows.

01:34:41.180 And so just on the cow side of it, there's the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Oklahoma State University put out a figure that for 2020 and 2021, you lost at least $250 per cow.

01:34:57.860 And that's insane.

01:34:59.280 So if you have 100 head of cows, that's $25,000, you know, so that's a lot of money.

01:35:07.400 And it's extremely hard to justify these expenses when our market is low.

01:35:14.000 And so to answer your question, how are we doing?

01:35:16.600 We're making really tough decisions.

01:35:17.980 And it's tough decisions that we don't like to make because what we have made our decision today will affect us five years down the road, 10 years down the road.

01:35:28.080 It's not just this year that it's affecting us.

01:35:30.500 It's affecting us forever.

01:35:34.400 Thanks for staying with us this far.

01:35:35.920 The end of the episode and who's coming up on our next show is right after this quick break.

01:35:40.500 The ranch has been in your family since 1894.

01:35:48.380 This is your sole source of income.

01:35:50.880 Is there is there danger that you're going to lose this thing?

01:35:54.900 Well, every day we wake up as a risk, Megan.

01:35:58.560 You know, like last year, we had a wildfire.

01:36:02.240 It could have taken us completely out of production and we would have had to sell because if we lost all our cows, we would have no money.

01:36:10.500 We would have no way to pay our bills.

01:36:13.420 And so if we had a blizzard come through, that's a natural thing that we always is affecting us.

01:36:20.460 We'll lose calves and cows.

01:36:22.600 And a few years ago, there was a horrendous blizzard in the fall and so many people lost their entire herds.

01:36:29.420 And so every day we wake up, we are always at the risk of going out of business.

01:36:33.480 And then when you throw the market issues in, of course, it's it's a real risk because you can't just keep throwing money at an investment and expect it to just keep losing money and losing money.

01:36:49.000 Because if you're losing money, how do you feed yourself?

01:36:52.480 And so, you know, it's extremely scary.

01:36:55.480 And, you know, I am fortunate, like I said, to have a ranch that's been in our family a long time.

01:37:02.320 But even though it's been in our family a long time, it doesn't mean that our family never struggled financially because my grandparents, they had to take out operating loans just to pay their to pay for groceries and to pay for fuel and to pay for all the other expenses.

01:37:18.180 And they never were able to pay it off.

01:37:20.140 And so those debts accrued through generations.

01:37:24.120 And and that's what I get to take over is their debt.

01:37:27.360 And, you know, I'm not just paying my debts.

01:37:30.320 I'm paying their debts that have been for 30 years.

01:37:33.180 And that's a common thing.

01:37:35.880 You know, what what Vilsack is basically saying to you now is that where were your grandparents when it was even tougher for their black counterparts who weren't getting any loans at all?

01:37:44.660 They just sat there and they they reaped the rewards of their skin color and they said nothing about how unfortunate it was for their black counterparts. 0.91

01:37:55.220 And that's why he and the government are in the position that they're in today and having to pass a law like this.

01:38:01.520 Think about how how silly that is to say that Liesl's grandmother, a great grandmother, should have been going to officials 75 years ago to complain about USDA discrimination when it was happening.

01:38:13.140 And that's why they need to suffer discrimination, why Liesl needs to suffer discrimination today, even though the pandemic didn't discriminate when it affected Liesl's farm. 1.00

01:38:22.820 Now the government says we have to discriminate because your grandparents didn't do enough.

01:38:27.640 Now, like what if your grandparent did complain?

01:38:29.580 Can you get the money?

01:38:32.820 You should be checking your records.

01:38:34.660 You never know.

01:38:36.060 Listen, this whole thing is just so it's just so nefarious.

01:38:40.100 I understand the goal.

01:38:41.160 The goal is laudable, right, trying to help these black farmers who who have been victims of discrimination.

01:38:46.300 Maybe, you know, that as a group, yes, on a case by case basis is how we judge these things in the law.

01:38:52.420 But the law is the law.

01:38:54.180 You just you're not allowed to do what they're doing.

01:38:55.920 And that's why you guys keep winning.

01:38:57.260 And they have to they have to be more honest and frankly, more clever in coming up with meaningful solutions.

01:39:03.160 So they can they can abide by the principles that are behind the very founding of the country and for really good reasons.

01:39:11.220 Liesl, I'm I'm praying for you.

01:39:13.040 I'm wishing you all the best.

01:39:14.440 I hope it's a great, easy winter, I guess.

01:39:17.300 We're going to get through the summer first.

01:39:18.580 But I feel like this is going to be so far.

01:39:22.500 Yeah, exactly.

01:39:23.280 So far, you guys seem to be batting a thousand.

01:39:25.440 And well, good luck to you.

01:39:26.880 Thank you for the explanations.

01:39:28.540 Thanks, Megan.

01:39:29.420 Thank you.

01:39:34.260 All right.

01:39:34.800 Don't miss the show on Friday because we've got Jason Whitlock coming back on along with Uncle Jimmy.

01:39:39.500 That is part.

01:39:40.000 That's his partner in the new podcast that he is launching.

01:39:43.160 They talk about politics, faith, sports, all of it.

01:39:48.020 So we're going to get into it with them.

01:39:50.380 And I should mention I meant to mention this before I forgot.

01:39:53.860 We had promised you that Marcus Luttrello was coming on and he is.

01:39:57.040 He is.

01:39:57.440 We just postponed it a little because we have the chance to get both Marcus and his brother, Morgan Luttrello.

01:40:03.020 I'd say he has an identical twin on together, talking about everything.

01:40:07.120 Lone Survivor, his experience, their childhood, the whole bit.

01:40:10.940 They're totally charming together.

01:40:12.780 And my experience is just having listened to Morgan, you get a lot of interesting insights on Marcus's background and their family when you listen to him and the two of them.

01:40:21.720 So we moved it back a little.

01:40:23.380 It's postponed.

01:40:23.960 It's not canceled.

01:40:24.860 Love him.

01:40:25.280 I've been in very close touch with him and his wife, and it's all good.

01:40:28.320 We just moved it back a little bit.

01:40:29.880 So that is coming.

01:40:30.740 And stay tuned.

01:40:32.800 And in the meantime, have a great weekend.

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01:40:49.000 Look forward to hearing from you.

01:40:51.440 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

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The Megyn Kelly Show - July 07, 2021

Two Women Fighting Back, with ＂ThisIsSavvy＂ Savannah Edwards and Rancher Leisl Carpenter ｜ Ep. 125

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