Native Land Pod is a production of iHeartRadio in partnership with Recent Choice Media.
Welcome, Welcome, Well Come, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Welcome home. Y'all, This is Angela Rye with Tivity Cross and Andrew Gillum.
You tuned into this week's mini pod.
So on this show, we are constantly making decisions about what topics to present to you guys who listen at home. Thank you for tuning in every week. And we have a duty that we take very seriously to discuss stories that are not only relevant to our audience, but we treat it like what you want to know and what you need to know. So I know that you guys have heard me grown consistently about when we cover Trump, because I do.
I really get tired of it.
And behind the scenes, this has been an ongoing debate between us, and we want to bring you in the process of how we decide what to cover, why we decide these things, And I've often said our most interesting conversations take place when we're in the hotel getting here and makeup and you know, getting ourselves together, or when we're remote we have a call with just the of
us co hosts where we talk about these things. So I want to dive right in and talk about some of the things that we've debated in the past about covering and some of the things that's an ongoing debate with us now. And I wish we had a videographer this morning, because you all would have seen a Jerry Springer throw down with the three of us, the three of us about what we cover. I take behind the scenes. They get tired of me. Okay, no, never, that's so I don't I know, we have a clip to play.
I don't want to start us out there well because I think it's on the same tone of things that we have disagreed about covering before, and Trump, I think leads that I you know, I've talked about covering him at nauseum.
I think people are tired of it, exhausted.
And I think it is and we all come to this in three different roles, three different histories, and three different goals. You know, we have different goals that we have on this podcast. And I think for me, I have never wanted to follow the news, but drive the news. And so while everybody else is talking about Trump, I think, what are are people at home not hearing about? Which is a thousand things every single day.
Angela.
I'll let you say what you think, but I feel like your thing is this is a big, huge story and you are super concerned about him getting back in the White House, like we all are. But you're like, no, we got to sound the alarm on this, and Andrew you have said, like, not normalized this. Something that we played that I had a serious challenge with was the clip from of the black people talking about voting for Trump people.
Trump oro Biden.
Trump say that the business man he's gonna think and Biden is a racist?
Who do you think has done more for the black community? Trump a bider. I ain't even see Biden yet.
I know Trump was out, he was at Brod That's why he felt as Wall Mike everything. And you know, we've been here all the time and can't get a free Hamburger and they come here get all this shit. And I'm saying, so that's why I say, yeah, Biden, he ain't doing she Han shit. So but Trump, I would feel that he would be the better person to get in Biden.
I'll tell you what my challenge was as a journalists have to remind myself we're not in the newsroom, you know. But in my mind, I think this is the newsroom and we're you know. But I thought immediately it felt irresponsible for me because I had never heard of this outlet. It was like Black Conservative Network one. Two, It hadn't been independently vetted, Like, we don't know what this is, you know. Three, are these paid people? Do we know
these were actual voters? They said they were. That's why I stopped myself and saying, black people in Chicago, I don't even know that. They said they're in Chicago. We don't know where y'all paid to participate? How do we know your registered voters? And in a newsroom you feel comfortable playing whatever because it's been vetted eighteen times. I also thought the narrative of black people voting for Trump
is another irresponsible one that the media pushes consistently. Angela, you thought really strongly about playing that, and so we we cut out what the discussion between us and I kind of now as we left back in, I want to hear.
Some of it, some of it but not all of it, okay.
And we cut the sound bite short. So I but what they whatever they missed? I want you to say, like why.
Yeah, I don't want to do a deep dive on this necessarily, but I will say this.
I get asked.
I don't know about y'all, but I consistently get asked by folks who are older than me, how do they talk to their kids? How do they talk to their grandkids who are saying they might vote for Trump, or they're free thinkers, or they might sit at home, which to us, to me is you know, basically a de facto vote for Trump. I also am hearing so much,
I think, especially when we first started the pot. Around that time, there was so much rumbling about the migrant crisis in Chicago, in LA in New York, and how people were responding to that, particularly in our communit these because they felt uncared for by people who we consistently elect, and that has been an age old problem too. And then I think, finally, I want us to always feel safe delving into the things that make us cringe and uncomfortable and have to face what is.
And I think that partially comes from my trauma.
Around the twenty sixteen election, because I was so freaking cocky about what was not going to happen. I was so there's no way nobody thinks like that, and this time I'm like, no, I'm gonna hone in. Even if it was a video that is like rife with misinformation, I want to see it because I want to know what the other arguments are when you are paying people to go knock on doors in ways that they haven't made that investment in our community on the progressive.
Side, I want us to know what that is.
And so my whole thing here is if I can reach people by going into what makes me uncomfortable, I'm gonna do it. That also, like as an attorney, that sharpens my argument. So I want to know what's being said. I'll leave it there because but even.
The piece of we don't really know what this is, you know, I don't even know where we got it from. But I'm like, I literally have never heard about it, So I wonder your it was online.
They played it on Fox, you know, but I'm saying, you know, you can laugh.
But that goes to my point though, like Fox, you know, to me, it just wasn't vetted.
Ino Fox is like, it doesn't have to be vetted more more millions of people are so I would think even people on our side, because they want to know what the other side's saying. Then I would argue, if we were gonna play, and I want to say, Angel will put this in the script, because when me Andrew were like what anels like, I mean, it was in the script, you know, like I put it there. We
just hadn't looked at it, so it was there. But then I would say to I would have put a caveat, like, oh, let me just be clear, we don't know what this is, so that would you even get to it because y'all had this reaction. I didn't get to even say, like, this is this ship that they're playing?
Your platform something like that, because I think that is the bigger question when you platform something like that or what we choose to platform, are you drawing unnecessary attention to it? Are you elevating something based off what all of them are said, Cause you're saying, I'm leaning it, I'm traumatized, and it makes me uncomfortable and cringe.
I want to lean into it.
Think about all the people out there who make us uncomfortable and cringe worthy because they're saying something asinine and ignorant by us having this platform, elevating it, presenting it out there are we helping them say, now, look at this what I would call nonsense and weigh in and taking time away from something more substantive. And I want, I want you all to know Andrew told me we need not be so highbrow and our covers.
I want Andrew to.
Weigh it on that too. But that's what I put out there to y'all.
So I'll just offer. I heard you say this is what they're playing on Fox, and it pricked me because I couldn't tolerate the exercise of listening to Fox and your comment just now about you can't the Kravat's javits centered.
Down the street, yes, yes.
Talking to Bill Clinton as it looked like the world
was coming. I couldn't believe what was happening. In fact, I left so early in the night because it to go to the airport to sleep at the airport so I could be on the first flight out the next morning back home to just get in bed and sleep, because I wasn't sure what the world was going to be made right, So I remember the trauma of that, and those two things helped me to play along my objection around the focusing of that particular video, was you
said it was playing on Fox, and I said to myself, Okay, so we really ever get our voices centered in the news on Fox? And so the one time you're going to put black folk voices on your platform is when they are talking nonsense. I mean just I was so mad at everybody in that thing. And you're right, I didn't know whether they were paid with the actor. I
didn't know any of that. None of us did. But on the rare occasions in which we're going to get a platform, let's at least elevate where there is a majoritarian view, or at least a critical mass view, not this very narrow and isolated view. Yeah, maybe it's more than we would want, but ten percent of the voter voting black. You know, folks in this country are voting for Trump of what we have baked in, that's what they have pretty much gotten.
It's just my point.
That's always been the case. So this whole like sound the alarm narrative that I'm like that happened in every election except for Obama.
I do think it's important to sound the alarm. I did not want to platform what was a view that I don't hear e spread ever in that way and then use that as the jumping off point to either agree with the popular assertion that blacks are flocking the Trump or to disagree with blacks flocking the Trump. There are other ways in which I felt like that point could have been made short of that video. That video, however,
was shocked. It was awe and it did percolate up a conversation amongst you know, our new followers.
Yeah, it wasn't just us.
I know it.
I know it.
People were shocked that we were As our j told me, they were shocked that we were shocked to hear.
Those I wasn't shocked to hear the comments.
Well, I didn't believe them. I didn't believe them, was my thing.
All Right, y'all, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
The fools and the fact that everybody else seems to have heard all this stuff calculating.
I'm not saying I hadn't heard it, Andrew, I'm saying I don't want to be an echo tanker for they play on five.
I guess I should say that's how we.
Were talking about what we were we were supposed to cover overall, and now we're.
Why But then let me excuse myself if I could just finish this point, which is to say, I don't mean it to be an attack on this particular. I mean this to be a blowback of when we have the ability to platform something and it is a view, let it be more than a basically Trump paid ad, and maybe a more legitimate platform of voices that are this, this, that and the third. And I only use a Trump ad as a harbinger for whatever the issue is. If we're going to give it platform, we're going to give
it life and breath. Don't let it be just for shocka and value, you know, shock value, But let it be for it. That's not my condemnation of this, by the way, it is in general. This is this is the bar I think I set for for how I screen things. But I also don't want to have my head so buried in the saying, knowing that my network of voices and ears say are saying one thing, and just because this disagrees with that that it isn't true. I also know that not to be the case as well.
And I honestly, of the three of us, ANGELA, I trust your instincts. At a pedestrian level better than I trust most because you go to places like the breakfast club and you listen in to calls that are coming in, and I think people feel a level of access with you that they come to you and they come direct because they feel that you meet them direct.
They also drag the shit out of me for being a democratic shield. I think all I'm saying is but but I can't keep saying everybody's nuts. But I think if that's their perspective, and I think everything that's a different perspective, is it nuts? Like sometimes sometimes when people, when people are so hurt and damage, they go and do the other extreme thing and it is not okay and it's not cool, but it doesn't just happen politically, and I think it is irresponsible. Like, fine, you guys
didn't like the video. Cool, that's not the point. If we're only talking to ourselves, that little bubble is going to continue to shrink until we suffocate.
We can say that it needed to be a legitimate source.
Motherfuckers had stuff to say about when a Washington Post article came out about black people in Detroit not wanting to vote for Joe Biden and potentially voting for Donald Trump. When the uncommitted option came out, there were one hundred thousand plus people that voted uncommitted.
This is at real issue. So if people take issue.
With how we cover it, like, then find another option or let's talk about another option.
But to be like this ain't cool.
I don't like it because they're not a legitimate source, or because I don't care. What I don't want to do is ever again go back to what I did in twenty sixteen and be blind to the facts. There are millions of people who are willing to even endanger us and our policies, and they're doing it every day on Capitol Hill and through state legislatures all over this country. This is not a minority view just because it's a minority of black people. And again, I don't think that
this is the point. It's not just about this one clip. It is we should be able to disagree and even if tip, if you think something is nonsense, or Andrew, you think I could have found a better source, let's find that instead of being like, oh, I'm not going to cover it.
That's how we end up losing engagement.
Literally, like, we're in a place now where this shit is so narrowed down and so refined and so like, we're not engaging people anymore.
I don't receive that it's true, like, look at the numbers, but I think the numbers at episode eighteen are emblematic of a brand new show birthing and growing, and almost all things that are new and fresh are new and fresh at the start, and then it begins to settle into itself, and then we get a leveling point where then we make goals around what the growth areas then become think, if things always remained how they began, why the hell does anybody to have an aspiration toward doing
better or a fear of what worse looks like. I'm not bothered by that because I actually believe that what was most important is for the three of us to find our voices, to sediment into what those are, allow our audience to find what their relationship is to each of us and also to our voices and ownership, so that they can give feedback. I'm not afraid of topics that I disagree with at all. That's all good with me.
I'm also not afraid of news that gets covered by cable news and we cover it here because I respect the brilliance of each of your perspectives. And I almost for sure know that you're going to offer a point, probably much more salient than anything I've heard on cable news, and much more resident for me than anything I've heard anyplace else. But I don't think cable news is our bookend. I don't think that is our contrast. We are our
own space. We don't have to be contrasted in that way in order to be in vogue or out of vogue if it's news. Take Trump, for instance. We got to talk about this thing because it ain't normal. It ain't natural, and there are people growing up in our democratic republic who are now perceiving these things to just be par for the course. They are not par for the course. We have all experienced democracy that looks way different than how we've observed it these last several years,
almost decade. So all I'm saying is the moment we start to turn off, to tune off that, not give mention to it, not give word to it, we then I think, allow and create permission for everybody else for no good reason, to just turn off to it because it's a name that seems familiar in one that I'm tired of hearing that's a very lazy approach to maintaining a democracy. And I realize that that's not the battle everybody wakes up to fight. But you'll wake up to
fight it when that shit ain't here no more. And I don't want to wait to that point, because it's too late. Very rarely do we go back and get back the rights that we gave away. Think about after nine to eleven and all the the the civil and personal rights we gave a way to the government for the sake of security. Yeah, and we never got any of it back. The government still goes into all of
our shit without permission. Because Congress and the United and the and the public, the military industrial complex basically said, don't let a good crisis go to waste. Let us get into the emails, the phones, the records, the tapping, the intelligence of every individual America, and then start to build lists. These things happen. We know they do, so
I we can give it up. Just because we're tired of a person's name and their recurrence in the news every day, that's not a good enough reason not to talk about it, all right.
So as y'all see, we disagree on what the cover sometimes.
Thanks for listening, y'all.
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