during jim crow to say black americans were better off during jim crow is about the cheekiest i've ever heard in my life your people didn't go through jim crow here sir and yet you put put a cigar in your mouth and chomped on it and leaned back in a chair and said y'all n words was better off during jim crow because the family was together

Yeah, I mean, you could make Byron Donald in a lab, right? Like, you take sort of anti-Black colonial education mixed with MAGA, a little dose of homophobia mixed with some Eidos here and there, but also plenty...

I mean, it's fascinating.

It's fascinating.

Like, if you had told me that he was a character...

When I was in school...

And studying about, you know, J.C. Watts, a historical – you had told me that a character like Byron Donald could exist.

Black conservatives sometimes forget that there's still Black

And that is going to be the thing that matters probably more than anything

else.

Annie – I'm sorry.

I'm forgetting her name.

I just skipped it.

I was just talking about her.

But you look at the Democratic Senate candidate.

media framing.

Jason, your reaction to this news?

I'm not surprised.

Karl Rove was being very cute.

I mean, a lot of credit to the Wall Street Journal for putting in that headline on voting, because everyone knows what your drive-by reaction to that was.

When I first saw it, I was like, wait, he's not coming out for Tallarico.

But it sort of speaks to the fact that, like, hey, a lot of Republicans are feeling the way that Karl Rove does.

A lot of Republicans are saying, look, I'm not happy with the MAGA party.

And I think it makes a strong appeal, especially if Republicans' argument, and it seems to be their only argument, is Democrats are all socialist, communist anarchists.

Can you, can you walk us through that?

I, I...

Th- this actually makes me somewhat emotional.

This is such a huge deal because throughout his career, Stephen Colbert has been very supportive, not just of free speech rights, not just of labor and everything else like that.

And so for Marvel to say, "We're going to give you a replica shield of Captain America," was significant.

He's always had it in the background of his shows.

For him to give it to Jimmy Kimmel is basically like when Steve Rogers gave his shield to Sam Wilson at the end of [laughs] the Avengers series.

Hmm

Why wait for the midterms to be over? Why not just do it now?

But we can even go back to the to the core of what he's saying as the explanation for the reward or for the benefit, whatever.

It's it's to thank people for all they put up with during the Biden years.

Like what in the Aaron Rodgers are we doing here? You're still blaming your ex.

Get over it.

Right.

Like Joe Biden has been out of office for two years now.

What does this indicate in your view?

Jason?

I feel like what we're experiencing now in this administration as a whole is the negative result of what happened after 9/11, the inability of many of our political leaders to learn the lessons.

If we're complaining about the surveillance state today and flock cameras, where did that start? That started after 9/11 with this idea that surveilling the entire American public was going to make us safer.

We can get upset about George Bush saying, "If you're with us, you know, either you're with us or you're against us," 25 years ago, and now we have a president that basically says that anyone who disagrees with him is an enemy.

Uh, we can say 25 years ago that Bill Maher got kicked off the air for saying something not political and was told by people in the White House, "Hey, watch what you say," and today we've got Jimmy Kimmel, you know, having to hide interviews on YouTube because he's afraid of the FCC.

What we're experiencing now is the extreme version of what started 25 years ago, and it's very, very disappointing because I don't think that enough has been taught to young people.

As somebody who teaches college students, I'm shocked by how little they know about how much our politics have changed because a lot of the oppression, a lot of the difficulty we're experiencing today has been normalized over the last 25 years.

Jason?

I think, though, it is always a tension for voting rights experts how you warn of potential disenfranchisement without yourself driving that disenfranchisement.

Right, right.

It's the equivalent of telling your kids, you know, a 16-year-old who just got their license, look, wear your safety belt even though the highways are dangerous, right? You'll probably get to where you want to go safely, we're concerned, but wear that seatbelt, right? That's essentially what everybody is warning, and it makes sense, and I've talked about this before.

Most organizers and activists on the ground that I've spoken to for months They had game planned this out over a year ago.

But I don't think it can be stressed enough to the public how inherently corrupt it is to have an administration essentially changing the voting rules so quickly when we've already seen ballots get thrown out.

We've already seen people be told that their polling places are going to disappear.

Today is the kickoff of the NFL season.

Yeah, I mean, though, Dr. Justin Johnson, I think there is sort of a tacit admission from Republicans that that is true, given that their messaging has basically been Democrats are communists, socialists, anarchists, and not like here is the amazing economic agenda that we would like to use to support Americans.

He's going to meet with these oil executives, but he's not solving his core problem, which is his war of choice with Iran that he has given himself no off-ramp for.

Yeah.

So this is sort of like setting a ton of fires in a neighborhood and saying, but I'm going to have a conversation with the firemen right here, right now.

The fire is still raging, right? The fire is the war in the Middle East.

And as long as, as you put it and as everyone puts it, as long as this war of choice continues, you cannot hope to affect what's happening in the commodities markets, which is eventually what has the impact on how our gross prices manifest themselves when we go to the pump of the United States.

Look, Donald Trump is already in trouble when it comes to issues of affordability and being concerned about the American economy.

That's why his administration is so obsessed with voter suppression in various ways around the country, because they know they have no economic argument because they're addicted to pointless wars.

But who would it be that would be particularly excited by a lack of tax auditing?

The fight is in the Strait of Hormones, dummy.

We all knew this would happen.

Smart people knew this would happen.

And to extend your metaphor, this is not just chickens coming home to roost, right? The chickens are so mad they are now raising canes, right? That's how mad they are, right? Because the American people are experiencing this at the pump.

The American people are experiencing this at universities for people who don't want to come to this country anymore.

ROTC programs are seeing a Dropping applications because people don't want to like like this, the longer and look, we can all take the sort of left wing perspective, the lyric, you know, we got money for war and can't feed the poor.

That's always been the case in America.

What what does that tell you about the disconnect? And how does this play out for voters

When you look at how the Republican Party, President Trump, have been trying to navigate that aspect of it, does it feel like there is any plan on that side of it? There's clearly no plan when it comes to the actual war, but even the protecting our other interests from our other foreign adversaries here.

No, I mean, there's not much of a plan at all, Eugene, because it wasn't a smart idea to go into the war, right? Look, we've seen this before, right? 30 something years ago when everyone thought that, oh, okay, the United States can just march into Iraq and they're all gonna welcome us there.

The same arrogance, the same foolish political and military leaders try the same thing every time and they fail.

And here's the thing.

It's not just that there's no clear plan from the administration.

There ain't no clear path out of the Strait of Hormuz either, and there never will be, probably for the rest of our lives.

All this has established is that Iran can basically hold the entire world in their hands by tightening up that strait.

And I wonder, as someone who is a student of politics, if not history, you think that that's far gone from our politics now and how the leadership of our country is going to operate.

Jason?

I think we had friendly relations with Canada for a long time.

I don't know if this started with Drake and Kendrick, but now it's turned into this, like, heated rivalry between our countries.

Now people are taking shots back and forth, and that's not what we used to have to think about, right? We're used to politicians maybe being critical of our neighbors to the south but not to the north.

I, I think the larger issue here, and, and Mike Johnson exemplifies this and Trump exemplifies this, when you're explaining, you're losing, right? When Mike Johnson has to give a sixth-grade history lesson to make everybody feel better, you know things are gonna go badly.

And Trump has been sort of preparing...

He, he's kind of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Sorry.

And now, for a moment of clarity.

the Supreme Court, while captured, does sometimes, you know, every clock is right at some point during the day, and so that they may do the right thing in this case.

And I firmly believe that they will do the right thing.

We just filed a supplemental complaint today.

Now that we know that the rule is out, so everything is in order and in line, and we are seeking emergency relief.

We are going to push as hard as we possibly can to get this resolved before mail-in balloting starts.

But the reality of it is, this is like the East Wing of the White

House.

But the practical implication of that means that it's happening unless there's another court case that stops them.

I'm going to say, again, as all of you all have said, I'm not a lawyer.

I don't play one on TV.

The reality is, if we're looking back on this 30 years from now, when we're hopefully not in a gulag, people are going to say this is ridiculous.

All of this language is ridiculous.

This is just an authoritarian movement.

As you mentioned, it has nothing to do with competence, right? Like, this is a government that can't keep soldiers from jumping off boats, can't keep us from poop lettuce and rotten eggs, right? I really doubt they have an effective, reasonable way of organizing how an election is supposed to work.

Like

Uh, Jason, your thoughts?

thoughts?Uh, this is, this is bad, and, and I've read several different pieces about this, how bad these poll numbers are for Trump, how much of a concern it is.

The people in the White House are like, "You know, how low can you go? How low can you go?" Thir- 30% is terrible heading into Labor Day weekend, which is pretty much where people start paying attention.

But I, I think it's pretty obvious.

Our-- we've seen this the entire year.

The president is completely detached from the economy that people are experiencing, and that's trickling down to all of his spokespeople.

So what you've got is a bunch of congressional candidates out there running around trying to deliver a local message when their boss in the White House is louder than them, and the message right now seems to be, "He doesn't care.

Jason?

Jason, to that point, you know, i- is it wise for Democrats to focus on the past, the fact that Donalds specifically, you know, was only three days into office before voting to block the certification of the 2020 election results? Should they be focusing on the economy and on forward-looking issues as opposed to re-litigating the past along with those who are e- election-denying curious?

curious?I mean, look, the, the, the jury already made their decision on re-litigating the past.

Donald Trump got back into office after attempting a violent coup.

So that's not something that's going to, uh, harm Byron Donald when it comes to running for office.

But the bigger issue is this, and I've been saying this all along, this election is not about, you know, progressives versus establishment.

It's not really about left versus right.

It's about do something versus do nothing.

[laughs]

And I just don't see how we make everybody else realize that because it feels like these people are perfectly content to just drive off the cliff so long as they can scream MAGA with the last bit of breath in their bodies.

Well, there's a couple of things with that.

One, the post office is profitable.

It just depends on how you determine profit.

I mean, that's the thing.

What has happened for 35 years now is this sort of funny, ridiculous math where they look at the entity of the post office itself and say, well, we spend this money and we get this much back.

That's not really how you determine profitability.

right

Uh, Jason, your, your view on all this.

Well, it, it's interesting because this push for AI and the way they're selling it, it, it's fascinating that the speed-- They talk about we have to do this ludicrous speed, like, you know, from Space Balls.

But I'm thinking of another quote from Space Balls when they're talking about yogurt, and they say, "Yogurt the wise, Yogurt the brilliant, Yogurt all these things," and he tells everybody, "Calm down, I'm just plain yogurt," right? In a lot of ways, AI might just be plain yogurt.

They're selling us on this idea that it's going to be this absolute miracle that's going to transform everyone's lives, and right now there's a lot of debt, a lot of danger, and a lot of environment- environmental damage being done, and we have no proof, and a matter of fact, history suggests otherwise, that this AI bubble will ever turn into something that benefits everybody else.

But the consequences of a bubble bursting in failure could be devastating for an entire generation's economy and environment.

We'll work it out." At what point does that actually fit the very oligarch critique that we're hearing? Is that not hyperbole?

hyperbole?All right, we see it with the father and the son, right? I mean, yes, Oracle is, is great.

He's a great businessman, but he's getting these loans because he's a businessman.

And they're paying for it.

They're paying for it, and the attacks on Talarico aren't really working, right? So you got Paxton calling him a freak and all these things, and as the, as the famous lyric goes, right, you know, "If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones, and if you got a glass jaw, watch your mouth," right? Y- Paxton is attacking Talarico for being some sort of outlier when in fact his behavior, his morality, and his corruption has been a problem.

And Talarico, and I give him a lot of credit for this, he went to Wheeler Baptist Church.

I've met Reverend Crosby.

That's a very important, powerful church for him to go to in Houston.

He was on The Beat.

Now it's Houston's Beat, ninety-three point seven radio, and he was there talking to the African American community, talking about Kendrick versus Drake and how he liked Family Matters.

Uh, what do you see here and in that contrast with Trump?

We, we haven't hit Labor Day.

So yeah, so all of these are sort of funny, you know, silly time conversations.

It's pre-season football, right? People are gonna start caring once you start heading further into the school season, where it's like, "Hey, this is how much it pays for me to get my kids clothes for school this fall.

This is how much the gas is costing because I'm going back to work and kids are heading back to campus," and everything else like that.

That's when it's really gonna matter.

The biggest problem that the Republicans face, it ain't money, I don't really necessarily think it's messaging, it's inconsistency, right? Because if I'm a Republican and I'm running in Ohio, I have an Ohio based message.

Yeah

... brand new poll today talking about the motivation of particularly Black women.

Right.

Those are the small construction people.

Those are the car dealerships.

Those are small medical supply people.

They are the ones who also tend to be swing voters, and they are hurting.

They can't do their summer hires.

They can't bring in their kids at a lower rate that they used to.

What about, though, the, the one of the counters that I got that i- is, also goes along the lines of the flaws with some of these Republican candidates are already baked in, too, such as Ken Paxton.

It's more like an F-shaped economy.

The reason that the Democrats have now taken a slight lead on being better with the economy is not just because of what Democrats are doing.

It's because Republicans, Pew just did a poll on this, 35% of Republicans now say that their party is failing to manage the economy.

It's their own people.

The call is coming from inside the house, people are that unhappy.

And in particular, when you look at a place like Nevada, where Trump is saying everything is great and w- fantastic, he won Nevada.

Well, he didn't win Nevada, but his success in Nevada was because he got, like, 35% of the Latino vote.

I know that my life costs too dang much."

Yeah.

There are splits within families, splits within communities.

Not hostile ones, but there were a lot of people, certainly in the African American community, the super voters, the 55 and above, who were like, "Look, Haley Stevens, she has more experience.

I'm more comfortable with her, and I think that white voters in the upper part of the state will be more comfortable with her." And then you had other people saying, "Look, we need change.

We have to do something different.

Mike Rogers is more of the same.

We have to do something different." So I think if Abdul El-Sayed can get those couples to say, "Hey, look, we both want Trump out, we both want to stop him," I think he's got a chance this fall.

[laughs] Exactly.

But frankly, that applies for moderate Democrats, too, just sort of saying, like, look, we've been left behind.

Right, right.

It's funny.

I don't think your paycheck looks at whether you vote a Republican or Democrat, right? No one else's does, right? So this is a message that both Democrats and Republicans can fight on.

But the Republicans, after 40 years, after our entire lifetimes, have finally blown their lead when it comes to economic competence, right? And that's a mixture of consistent sort of downsizing of the economy and insensitivity on the part of the administration and a failure to come around with a decent message.

Now, Look, we've talked all the time, we talk on the air about the K-shaped economy, right? Where people who are doing well, this K, they're going up, and people who are doing badly, it's kind of this bottom part of the K.

The K-shaped economy really stands for it's kicking everybody's butt, right? And the party that can say that most consistently and then offer a solution.

That's why it's sort of striking that Jeanine Pirro was willing to defy him.

Uh, your view on the reality of all this?

Well, the reality of all this is that, you know, whatever metaphor you wanna use, Donald Trump is not as popular as he once was.

He's not able to bring back the old hits.

He's not able to intimidate people, either in the press, uh, or in politics, or even voters the way that he used to.

He's not coming back for some big reunion tour over the summer.

So him having to sit there and not only hear people report on his misdeeds and his association with mi- misdeeds and get awarded for it, but also having his own party members not back him up and not stand for him is an indicator of how weakened he is with only 99 days before the election.

What do you see in these current numbers from Fox?

What I see is Donald Trump's inability to continue communicating with voters.

I ask it because I think it has to inform the process moving forward.

Alicia, this is not Monday morning quarterbacking.

This was the Sunday pregame show, right? Because you had a lot of people who said, and many people of color and many women, when Graham Plattner was on the rise, when he was the boy crush of all the mainstream Acela Media people, there were people pointing out, hey, he has a neo-Nazi tattoo.

Hey, he said all of these crazy racist things.

Hey.

there's a history here of inappropriate and abusive behavior towards women.

All of these things were apparently there, but you still had people in the state who said, that's fine because he's this rough and tumble white guy with a redemption story.

I mean, so close, Jason Johnson.