Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am your host, Rams's Jah and trust you will hear from Qward very soon. This is a special episode. Recently we got to sit down with the one and only US Representative,
Jasmine Crockett and have a fantastic conversation about politics. We do often talk about politics on this show for the benefit of you, our listeners, and for the benefit of us. We are citizens in this country and voters the same as everyone else, and who better to get some insight from than the clapback Queen herself, and of course were honored to be able to sit down with her or over an hour. If you want the full uncut interview, you can always check out our website Civiccipher dot com.
But we do want you to stick around because this conversation discusses a number of things, many things of course important to Black America, but a lot of things important to America at large. Of course, we.
Are having to discuss the election season that we're in and the candidates that we have to choose from and so the Jasmine lets her feelings be known about that true to form. So I just think it's a fantastic conversation. We're really excited to share it with you, So stick around for that and so much more right here on civic ciper.
So.
One of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is the state of things in the political arena in recent years. We've seen a number of villains rise to various moments throughout again recent history, and we always have a new reason to be concerned about our future. I won't spend too much time discussing that because these villains have been well discussed and they're often delineated on this very program. But another thing that we
get is we get heroes. And one of the heroes that we've discussed on this program many times, actually we have the honor of sitting with and talking to today she is the Clapback Queen herself. Today we are joined by the one and only Jasmine Kraft. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I did not know where you were going with that.
It definitely David thinks that I would be the one wearing the case at the end of that, But I appreciate your kind thoughts and words. Sure, sure, it's because we are living in some very dangerous times.
Absolutely, absolutely. You know. One of the things that we end up dealing with on this show is positioning black women in a way that people can see them the way that we see them. And often I put Q in the in the Yeah, I put him out in front to say this, but I'll say it this time. On this show and all of our shows, we affirm that the black woman is as close to God as
we can be on this planet. And so when we suggest that you know, black women come to the rescue, black women are wearing the capes, that's something that we mean and when we've meant that the entire time that we've been in this space, so you know, for our long time listening as they understand that to be very true. But there are some people who are new to the show, of course, and people who are just now getting engaged in politics. Maybe they've just come of age, or maybe
this particular election cycle is of interest to them. So for those people, who admittedly is a very small amount of folks, i'd imagine, but after those people who are not familiar with who you are, give us a little bit of background just to bring them up to speak for the conversation.
Yeah. Absolutely, So I am, I guess technically considered a politician. I hate to be classified as a politician, but since I am the congresswoman that proudly represents Texas thirtieth Congressional District, which is anchored in Dallas County, Texas.
I am a freshman.
Our terms are two years at a time, and so I'm in the second year of my first term. I have been considered to be the most viral member of Congress during this current term. And you know, in recent times, I've done all these interviews where people have asked me about the virality and do you know what's happening when it's happening, and you know, are there things that you
can do to try to make it happen? And I tell people all the time that it's the unadulterated, unfiltered, raw moments, never the prepared remarks that go viral, and just to kind of give the listeners a little bit more acclamation. I am an attorney by trade, and so I did criminal defense work. I did civil rights work as well as some personal injury stuff. But I was a trial lawyer. I wasn't a death lawyer. I was
the girl that showed up in court. And I've represented anywhere from capital murder all the way down, and so I tried cases for almost two decades before I come into Congress, and I tell people all the time, I don't really like people to come in front of me and waste my fune five minutes, because that's all we get is five minutes. And so my ability to cross examine people and get my point across quickly has really
helped me in Congress. And knowing quote unquote my case, knowing what it is that is the subject matter of any potential hearing at any point in time, allows me to be able to deal with whatever lies somebody tries
to lib out there. I tend to be the girl that consistently wants to rise to the occasion of recognizing that black folk are great, and no matter how many times they try to disparage us, whether it's because of the color of my skin or whether it's because I'm a woman, I'm going to make you feel really bad that you try to mesa.
And so.
But even in doing that, you know, I look at representation completely different. My official title is that I a US representative, and for so long I have heard so many people say I just don't really feel like I'm seen or heard or represented.
And I never wanted to be that person.
I wanted people to say, I have a representative that is sitting at the table and making sure that my position is heard.
And it is those moments.
In my opinion, that go viral because it is it's not the norm, it's the exception. When the norm should be whatever community you come from, your representative should sound like you, look like you, and should be lobbying the case for the issues that matter most for you.
The first time we got to connect with you in person was at the National Urban League National Convention, but we have been cheerleaders and supporters in the stands waiving on prom pomps for you long before that. At that time, all of us were very excited some news that we had just gotten regarding the Democratic ticket for the office
of president. Our vice president has been very vocal about her feeling like she needs to earn people's votes, specifically black men, so she doesn't feel she's entitled to them just because she's black. What are some of the issues you think are important to that base that she's trying to reach in whose votes that she's now trying to earn.
Yeah, yeah, I love her, you know, thank you for given that level set.
And I'm just going to say this real quick before I answer your question.
Please, I think as black people in general, we have always been the ones that have never shied away from hard work. We aren't given positions on boards, we're not given positions in government, we're not given positions in schools like we're not the legacies get admitted to these institutions. We've had to work and earn every single thing that we've ever gotten. And the fact that the vice president is absolutely committed to going out and earning the votes,
taking her fight straight to the people. I mean, you know, I think I don't sleep, and then I think about her schedule and then I'm like, I'm like, but she got a PJ so mah, because I'm like running through the airport, like, yes, can you get me through screening
so I can get to my next city. But nevertheless, I definitely don't have time to pity myself as I have the privilege of going around the country and arguing and making a case for why the Harris Walls ticket is the ticket that is the Team USA ticket, to ticket that will look out for all of us and not leave anybody behind. I appreciate the fact that she, as well as Governor Walls, are not afraid of hard work, because they both came from places in which they weren't
born into fortune. They weren't given four hundred million dollars when they entered this earth. Instead, they had to work to get everything that they've ever gotten, and so that's
why they're not afraid of the hard work. As it relates to black man specifically, I can say that I've had a number of conversations with black men, and I think one of the things that kind of frustrates me in general when we start talking about the election is that I really do subscribe to the idea that none of us are amnaith no one, and so there isn't one kind of happy pill for any one group of people.
I will say that there.
Are some targets that are on specific groups that no matter what your priorities are, the same targets.
Are coming for you.
And so I think it is important not only for us to highlight the alternative and talk about the targets that are on our collective backs, whether we're talking about the fact that Donald Trump specifically wants to get rid of criminal immunity for law enforcement officers.
As we have just now gotten to.
The point that we have prosecutors that have the audacity to say that law enforcement isn't necessarily above the law, we can still probably count on one, maybe two hands, the number of prosecutions that we've seen in this country for law enforcement officers that have gone out and shot us did like we were dogs in the street, right, And so that's a collective target because we have someone where you know, there are those of us as someone who's done the civil rights work and know how difficult
it is to get around qualified immunity and things like that, because what we'll have is we end up being killed and we don't get any criminal justice, and we usually
don't get any civil justice. And so as we've been pushing the envelope for getting rid of qualified immunity so that the civil remedies are available when one of us is killed, now he not only doesn't obviously is not going to support the civil side, but once I go even further and say, for those few progressive prosecutors that have thought that your life mattered enough that they would actually prosecute a police officer. I don't want that to happen anymore.
And so that's a collective target.
Now when I talk to some other brothers about the things that matter most of them, for some of them, it's I will say, collectively, there's a number of them that talk about small business ownership, and they don't like the idea of potentially Democrats trying to push on quote unquote hand me out like they want. They don't want you to just say, oh, we're going to try to get you a good job, you know, a good union
paying job. Like there are black men that are like, I don't want to go work for somebody else, Like I want my own business. What are you going to do to help me create my own generational wealth and have my own legacy to leave behind. And so I think that's why you hear her really making the point not just for black men, but like generally speaking, for those that are saying, you know what, I want my
own small business. And so this five thousand dollars tax benefit that you used to get when you start a small business, She's like, you can't do nothing with five thousand dollars. She's like, that's only going to help you if you've got a concept of a business, right. She was like, right, exactly right, So she's up in that
to fifty thousand. We've not really talked very much about the record, but we know that there were a record number of small businesses and black owned businesses specifically that were able to benefit. As relates to everybody know about PPP.
Wee, we've got in trouble with PPP. People got in trouble with the PPP, but.
You know, but it truly did, and we've seen a record number of newly created black owned businesses because of the loosening of the rains a little bit and making sure and definitely the initial roll law out was bad.
People.
Remember first of all, these were democratic policies that were pushed to the House in the Senate, but it was under Donald Trump who was still president when the first policies were pushed through. And what we saw was that the only people that got money where people they didn't even need the money. We saw NFL and NBA teams and all of them, they all had access to capital
and the little guys didn't. It wasn't until we got rid of Donald Trump and we ended up with President Biden that they actually started to make sure that those small businesses that were complaining that the big banks weren't giving them access to these loans. If people really think back, it's like you try to go and apply for the PPP law and they say all the money had already been given out and it was the big guys that
got it. The small guy only started getting it when Democrats controlled every lever the House, the Senate, as well as the White House.
So I think that that's one of the issues. Another issue that has been brought.
Up his criminal justice reform, and so you know, there also was this selective memory or it is just a failure of us to really talk about and brag because Democrats are terrible about bragging. Republicans will take credit for stuff they am none to do, but Democrats won't even brag on stuff they didn't.
Done it right.
And so you know, they felt as if there were some changes that were made on the federal level while Trump was in office. None of that again was initiated under Trump. He signed it into law. So yes, should we say, okay, thank you for signing it into law if we can. But don't conflate that with that actually being on his policy positions.
That he actually lobbed.
When we look at the things that he lobbed, he lived and got us the Supreme Court. If you think that Trump is looking out for us, just look at our Supreme Court justices and right now their approval rating is the lowest that is historically ever been.
Because it's his justices. They got rid of affirmative action.
And for those that you know, I don't know what different opinions may exist around affirmative action. Affirmative action has never been about a gimme. That's never what it did. What it did is said, listen, all you got is a bunch of lily white people. Those are the only people you will consider. There is great lengths that exist in some of these people that aren't lily white. That's all it is. But you don't get there, and somehow
they gonna give you. Well, because you was an affirmative action in mission hooding, you get an extra ten points on every tense.
Like that ain't what it is like. You got to.
Survive, like you've got to make it in and you've got to survive. But it at least makes them actually look at you and say, you know what, let's open up this pool of candidates. And so now what we've seen is we've seen a decrease in the enrollment of diverse students at these IVY leagues and other pwis. And what we've seen is that there's a higher demand for HBCUs.
And when we think back to Donald Trump, now, one thing that presidents can do, presidents always do is they put out their budget and that signals to the Congress, these are the things that we want to do. This is how I want to place money. But at the end of the day, the budget belongs to the Congress. It doesn't belong to the president. So he just kind of like, this is my robap, please follow it. Especially if we control if the same parties control the House,
it's in it. When Donald Trump put out his budget, he wanted to zero out funding for HBCUs. That that was his proposal, is to zero out HBCU money and to give credit where credit is due. It was a Bush that had initially agreed to this level of funding, which is definitely not where we need our hbc used to be.
But it was.
Something and it was a Republican.
It was a Bush that signed the initial funding into law for our HBCUs. So this was two hundred and fifty three million dollars.
But Trump saw it as an opportunity to do a photo app and so after a black woman in North Carolina who attended a HBCU who taught at an HBCU, doctor Adams. It was doctor Adams, my CBC colleague, who fought to get that money back, and so once it came back, he then invited all the HBCU presidents in for a photo. And so everybody's like, see Donald Trump was taking care to HBC's not really not really guys, kind of like those STiMi checks, not really, not really,
not really guys. So they did that. But then when people, you know, I was constantly kind of going in on people before the vice president became the nominee, where people felt away, they felt let down. They were like, well, you know, she the vice president, but I mean, what has she done. I'm like, first of all, if you can't name five other vice presidents, we not about that conversation.
Let's start there, like we like you at least need to be able to name five other vice presidents and correct, but most people can't get to the names right because most people don't look at a vice president at all. I mean, a vice president is a supporting cast member, and she has been integral. And I think that Joe Biden takes a different stance. He tries to do more of a partnership type of situation, kind of like what he came into with Barack Obama. And so I think
that that's kind of how he tries to govern. That led to a record sixteen billion dollars with a B, not sixteen billion dollars for the investment into HBCUs. It mattered that there was an HBCU grad that was sitting there as a second in command, and not even just from the monetary standpoint, I mean when we look at Howard and the spike in applications just once she became, because then it's not for so long there's been these limitations.
If you went to an HBCU and she's defied the limitations, she's on the verb of becoming the most powerful person in the world, and she graduated from AH and so I think that that really tells if I had to tell a story about black people in general, is that we are more resilient than any other form of people that we've ever met. When you think about our presence here, they can talk about kicking us out and this and that,
But we ain't asked to come here. We got dragged here, to be clear, right, like, we got dragged here, and we labored and we built correct. We built this country and we're still here. And while we still have so many obstacles that we still get faced with, we somehow persist. And if I had to send one message to my black man is to know that like, there never should be competition. I appreciate that you laid out kind of the historical context of your show and being clearly you've
always uplifted black women. I see no reason for any of us to fight one another.
I love my black men.
I know that I probably wouldn't necessarily be here but for black men in my life, because it was a group of black male lawyers that are like my brothers that came to me and was like, you got to run, and we know it costs money. We put money down. The first people to bet on me were black men like that was who was like, let me invest in you. And so I think that we have to appreciate that collectively,
this world has never given us our due. And so one thing is for sure, regardless as to whether or not you agree with her one hundred percent or not at all, one thing is for sure is that she understands the struggles that this life presents to you more than any white man ever will. And so, you know, regardless of what's what. But like I keep saying, they're gonna kick me off the trail because because I never
I never say what they tell me to say. Number one and number two I remember, I'll make this final point that y'all can move on. I went to North Carolina and I was doing a fundraiser for the Victory Fund. And this was soon after Arkawi's not r Kelly, that's messed up. I don't call them mar Kelly Puffy. This soon after child, I call them are a lot of birds.
Yeah, that clearly in my mind anyway.
Nevertheless, and so I said, if you want a better example of how this country views us, no matter how much money we have and how the systems are inequitable, look at Diddy situation and look at Trumps. Now. I'm not saying either one of them is right. I'm not saying even when them is wrong, y'all don't come from the defense side. So I will give Trump his thirty four felony convictions wrong because he been convicted. He still got other stuff that he's technically presuming instant for his
same thing with Diddy. But here's the deal. Did he has bad cases? Definitely, not thirty four counts of them so far? He got him in one jurisdiction, he didn't get let out, y'all. They did not release him right. And here it is, Trump had close to ninety He had over eighty something counts pending in four different jurisdictions, then ultimately got found guilty and was going in talking about the judges, talking about the judges starter in New
York doing all kinds of things. Now, in my experience, the most cases I ever have for one defendant was a little under forty. He had thirty something counts. He didn't have a record. It was his first time, I mean, in trouble, and he did it with a bang, for sure. But the fans got him as well as the state. He never got out like he never got released pre trial.
So I don't want people to be fooled into believing that because he's been subjected to the criminal justice system, that they're in any similar kind of level of understanding, because I would argue that he's barely been subjected to the criminal justice system, because I know, I've had to represent protesters. I've had protesters to spend more time in jail with the Donald Trump and you know, and I got them off of air cases.
So no, this isn't equitable. He doesn't understand.
He wouldn't know what it was like to walk a day in one of our shoes, where you get brought up on charges that really are not significant at all, and you are being forced into taking a plea. He doesn't know that life like that is a completely different life from what we experience in the black community. The same people that feel like the criminal justice system has
never been just, but it's only been injust right. That's he's living the type of criminal justice system we was looking for, the one that said, oh I got all these cases, but hey, you know what that person is, let me let me be out.
I'm gonna be good. I'm a clown. The judges and everybody else.
Yeah, I mean literally like intimidating witnesses, all this kind of you ain't catch a whole other fifty kind of cases like this is it's it's insane, It's insane. What Yeah, it's insane.
You know, there's there's something that that I think is really interesting that is taking place here. You're absolutely right, you know, for all of the things that have happened.
Let's go back to.
Let's go back to like the me Too movement for a second, where I think this concept started to jail. You know, listen to black women, beat on black women, believe black women, you know, all this sort of stuff. And then of course that had swelled up to twenty twenty, and then it skyrocketed ever since then. And then now we're celebrating black grow magic and black boy joy and all this sort of stuff, but hyper focused on our women,
you know what I mean. We need to find lost black women, we need to dedicate more media resources, We needed all these sorts of things, right, this concerted effort that has in my estimation, included black men. It's so interesting to see the breakdown of that when it comes to voting for a black woman, right, and you know, no one is going to agree one hundred percent with anyone else. We're all different people. Right. No one is
going to get anything one hundred percent right. But one of the things that I believed, that we understood in the majority of the past decade is that if we were working together, that cohesiveness would allow us to accomplish more, to move the needle, to change and shape outcomes, particularly for the black community. And if we shape those outcomes around the sensibilities of black women, we would all be okay.
This is what I thought. So for me, it was very interesting to see this breakdown right at this intersection of what we have a black woman who can now be the most powerful human being on earth, and black men of all people are standing around like no, oh, no, right, So let's uh, you know, in your in your opinion, Let's take it back a little bit because in this moment we're seeing the breakdown. But I'm curious what kind of led up to that. So let me let me
ask the question this way. We recall covering sort of an erosion of support from black men to the then presumed Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, and that felt a little weird because that group of people had historically been reliably democratic, and then obviously, with the announcement of Kamala Harris taking the reins of the future of the Democratic Party. There had been some ground recovered, but as we've been discussing, there are still some black men who are holding out.
And I wonder if there are some historical like, how has this group of people gotten here? In your estimation, having talked to black men around the country, what pieces are many of us missing? Because I think we know those pieces we can start trying to rebuild. Certainly, folks like.
Hell and message, I think, okay, So I'll say this way. Democrats are very good at basis we can. You know, you would imagine that projects on twenty five would have been ours. I mean, we are the ones that speak in these large kind of.
Very deep, you know. But that's not what the other side does.
And when we look at the numbers across the board, the numbers are clear that the more educated folk are tending to kind of dig a little deeper, and we are getting the lion's share of those that are more educated, so to speak.
And that's across the board.
What I find is that Trump has been very good at taking advantage of people that don't have the luxury of time, people that are literally fighting to make sure that they can keep a roof over their head, keep clothes on the backs of their children, and keep food on the table. And when your focus is on those things, you don't have time necessarily to dig in.
And learn it all. And he's taking advantage of that.
And so one of the reasons that we see that this team has said, I mean JD Van said, I'll lie if it'll get me attention.
So they're liars.
And if they can just get a few people to believe their lives they will make They will say they have no ethics, they have no rules, they have no morals.
They will say whatever to win.
And so for those people that are like mm hmm, that don't even sound right, right, like those people that have the luxury of saying, let me go through my research or let me consult with my such and such somebody in my circle. Which is why I'm trying to tell people get out of your circles. Like if you vote in the right way, chances are your circle is good. We need to start talking to people who aren't really engaged in these kind of conversations.
That's what we need to do.
We end up in our little silos, you know, your sororities and your fraternities and all this kind of stuff, and all of y'all are talking, right, what are we doing to actually start talking to other people, because again, we have a shared fate and so we need to start talking about the threats and we need to talk about the possibilities. But if we're not engaging, and I think that's what's happening, We're not engaging with a number of the black men that have checked out,