Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really been loving the show, then we would really appreciate it if you would leave us a rating and review, subscribe to the show, and share it with your friends. Thanks y'all, Now time for the episode. On Theme is a production
of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends. Media listening to Donald Trump Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, President Trump, Donald James Trump.
Ever since June sixteenth, twenty fifteen, when Trump announced he was running for president the first time, there has not been a day that's gone by that we haven't heard his name.
But we were hearing about the Donald long before he became one of the most divisive political figures in modern US history.
From cameos and sitcoms, big parts and movies and references and songs, Trump has been a pop culture mainstay for a while now. I remember when he announced he was running for president, and then I kept hearing all these songs that had his name in it that I had never paid attention to before. I think there's a word for that.
Yeah, the batter Minehoff phenomenon, like you keep seeing or hearing a word after learning about it.
Yeah, So I was hearing all those old songs with Trump's name in it, and the references to him were pretty positive or at least neutral. So it got me wondering, can we track shifts and attitudes toward Donald Trump through black media. I have a feeling that we can. I'm Katie and I'm Eves. Today's episode Black Donald Trump. Do you remember the very first time you heard about Trump?
So, I'm telling the truth that my memory knows. So I'm not sure if it's the real first time I ever heard about Donald Trump. But my first memory of hearing about and seeing Donald Trump is the You're Fired era. So it was just like you're fired everywhere. What was the name of the reality television show that he was on, The Apprentice? The Apprentice it was, And that might be the thing, the first thing that comes to my mind as the earliest memory because it was so pervasive, like
everybody said you're fired. It was a meme within society and not just on the Internet, Like, yeah, in real life, people were like, you're fired, ha ha ha, it's funny, And somehow it was funny for a million times. Yeah, and it was like not even that interesting of a phrase. And also the fact that all of that was around like hostility toward another person. It's also pretty problematic and like I don't know what was going on there, But that's my earliest memory of learning about Trump and knowing
that he was a hard ass. He was serious about his business. You know, he had authority, he had money, Yeah, and he was a personality. Yeah, so that's what I remember. What about you?
Yeah, The Apprentice was the first time I remember seeing Trump and like knowing who he was and like talking about him. See, my family was a reality TV family, like because you remember like when real TV first got popping, like Survivor Big Brother, Like it would come on like prime time, you know, Dad come home from work, We would come home from school family and watch it. We would sit down and watch it. So I don't know if we were watching The Apprentice like that, but I
know I was watching it. Like why I cared about business? Like these people were like competing basically for internship.
I feel also, I mean, why did we care about wilderness survival? Why do we care about people living in a house together that are doing nothing.
I mean, why do we care about any of these reality TV shows? Hey, they fix it? So we were interested, and I was That's what I remember. I definitely gave up You're fired out one or two times for the girls, girl bars.
Okay.
By the time we were aware of Trump, he had already cast himself as an eccentric billionaire. Who knows if he really was a billionaire, but we knew he was a rich white guy with a distinct haircut.
And by his own admission, he wasn't the nicest guy, and he wasn't trying to be. He was a businessman and a business man and at his own brand of self mythmaking, one does not reach the upper echelons of society, like the Donald worrying about hurting people's feelings.
Take his cameo in The Fresh Prince, for example.
In season four, episode twenty five, the bank's family is offered a one million dollar profit by an unknown wealthy client who wants to buy the family house, and spoiler alert alert, that wealthy client turns out to be Donald Trump and his then wife Marla Maples.
When the Donald enters the bank's living room, Carlton faints from excitement. Oh my God, and Hillary rushes over to give a classic Hillary compliment, Hillary.
Banks, you know you look much richer in person. Will offers to cut the grass every weekend for fifty thousand dollars. It seems like the only person who isn't excited to see Trump is Ashley. Thank you for ruining my life, Ashley, what did you do?
Everybody's always blaming me for everything?
Actually was the woke one, Loki, Yeah, Ashley was the woke one, although I think within the context of the episode, it was more like a personal problem that she had with.
The Yeah, it wasn't ideological, but.
In effect, you know, in the scene, definitely, I think it was still helpful to show one person that wasn't
completely doting over Donald Trump. I do think that, like so many sitcoms, had a tendency to bring somebody in and make a big fuss about it, a big ado about who that person was, and making sure the people knew who it was, because I guess at that time most people who were watching were going to know who Donald Trump was, and when he walked in, they didn't really need the it's Donald Trump walking in, yeah, and then what they stilled it, But they still did it.
They had the live audience clap, which I know is like time to clap now, But it's interesting too because if you notice Philip Banks, the dad and the fresh prince, he shakes Trump's hand, Hillary shakes his hand, Carlton Fates, Will's trying to get it to Kay on the side, Ashley's like openly hostile. But the wife, un Viv, the
light skinned one, she just kind of stands there. And so in a podcast interview she did she said that she refused to shake his hand, which I was like, I don't know how much of this is just like going back and like, oh yeah, like I knew about Trump back then, even though he was doing some like shisty stuff back then too. But I'm like, or was it just like the the wives weren't shaking hands, you know, like was it really like, oh, I'm making a statement here, or.
Yeah, some people try to retcon their own careers, and I don't know if she's doing that or not. But still she did it, so I guess the outcome is the outcome. And I Will also say I'm not mad at Will him asking for money. I'm not mad at especially for cutting the grass, which might have been something he was already doing, right, and it was a lot of money he asked for. So I'm also like he saw the man and what his usefulness was to him,
and he was trying to take advantage of that. So kind of not mad at that.
Yeah, but I definitely think even the numbers of people who were in that scene only one person kind of like standing up and saying like, I don't like this dude. It's kind of reflective of how people probably thought of Trump back then. Like it's like, oh, he's rich, he must be like really smart and really good. And then there's like the outliers like naw, this guy sucks actually, And I think that was probably mirroring greater society.
Well, and then that happened later on era that we were witnessed to Trump and his popularity the Apprentice era, because it was, you know, the same, like people doting on him, you know, and he had done more in between those two eras when this episode air and then when we were like watching The Apprentice, more had happened
and people were still acting the same. I wonder do you think that the percentages were the same in terms of like a simple size if this was a simple size of a larger group of people like black people, that it would still be like a one to five situation where it's like five four of the people are like doting on him and one of the people are like, I don't fuck with you, and I'm about to show it. I don't know.
I definitely was like, maybe there's more people in like the neutral ground than like openly hostile, because I know, I wasn't privy to all the wow shit he was doing. I just knew that he was like a rich guy who like made a big deal about having a golden toilet.
It's like, okay, sure.
Yeah, but not like this is a bad guy, because you know, the way things were portrayed back then, it wouldn't have gotten that deep.
No, for you to think that, yeah, very surface.
Yeah, so you would have to be doing your own research, which I was not, and I don't think a load people.
Were, and it was harder to do it internet researching like then, right, you had to really be passionate about this topic.
The Fresh Prince episode is a far cry from the Blackish episode Please Baby Please, which was scheduled to air February twenty seventh, twenty eighteen, but was shelld by ABC until August twenty twenty.
Twenty twenty was such an interesting year, to.
Say the very least, so Trump himself didn't make a cameo in the Blackish episode, but Dre, the dad of the family, references him and b roll footage of Donald Trump plays as he's trying to explain Trump's election to his youngest son, Davante.
He calls Trump the shady King, and he blames him for dividing people and sees Trump's presidency as a backlash against the election of Barack Obama as the first black president.
This particular episode was written after the Charlottesville rally, you know, the one with tiki torches, which was shocking for a lot of people. This episode also touched on Colin Kaepernick's kneeling during the national anthem, which Trump used as a way to rile up his base.
Would you love to see one of these NFL owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now out He's fired.
Members of the Johnson family talked about climate change, which Trump denied, Trump's borderwall, and differences between white supremacy and black pride. So going from seeing the Fresh Prince how they reacted to him being on set to this black episode which is all about him really but not having him on set but you know Sean Bee roll of him and all that stuff. What do you see the changes like reflective of those two episodes from these different eras from mid nineties to twenty twenty.
Well one, Trump's not on the show, which I think is a statement in itself, like you didn't choose to bring this person in. So that's a big difference between the two of them, because you're willing to pay somebody money to give them a cameo spot in your show, regardless of what the reaction to them once they get on the show is. So he didn't get paid for this, They didn't choose to give him more time. But I also think it was a teaching moment in terms of
the Blackish episode. It was like a moment of glory for Trump in the Fresh Prince episode. So I think that there is also an element of a shift in the way that sitcom storytelling happened because there were so many of these tropes like cameos, and Blackish still does cameos as well. But I think that their choice to tell the story about Trump in this way that's kind of pulled back from him, and it's more at a distance, is more of this contemporary time of storytelling in sitcoms.
I thought it was telling too. It's like in The Fresh Print's episode, he's a wealthy guy who can change his family's life even though the banks got money, like they did not need to move, but he has the ability to give them a lot of money and change
their lives as one family's lives. But in the telling in Blackish, it's like he's changing the whole country, Like the whole family is like distirred by him for different reasons, like the younger kids are worried about climate change, the grandparents are looking at how like the white supremacists aren't afraid to show their faces in public anymore, as opposed
to like the KKK who cover their faces. So it's like his influence between ninety five and twenty twenty is vastly different, right, Like it's more of an interpersonal exchange in The Fresh Prince versus like a societal change. In Blackish, Donald Trump was not influencing our lives as toddlers.
Yeah, it's reflective of the skill of his impact, Yeah, has changed over time.
Yeah, So like ninety five, nothing Trump did was impacting us. Twenty twenty different story. I think that was really indicative just of like how things have changed from then to now.
Also indicative of the consensus of thought and how much like our ability to share thoughts in an easier way
than it was back in nineteen ninety five. That was their fresh friends, Yeah, because you know, it's so easy for us to exchange our ideas about how we feel about what's happening in the political world now, and the art that we create, especially the television that becomes these shared moments between society, is going to often be reflective of what the consensus and thought is, and of course that depends upon who the writers are, what their political
or social leanings may be. You know, they're the writers and the creators. Biases are going to show up in the storytelling as well, so it's going to be attuned to that and also attuned to like what your audience is probably going to want to hear. So you know, this is also going to affirm and be in alignment with what a lot of the audience for Blackish are interested in, which is interesting because like the audiences are so for people, like the kinds of people who would
have watched Fresh Prince versus Blackish. But it's like we get to see our evolution and thought and that's not a negative. It's just like as we learn things, you know, we change how we speak about them.
I want to push back on that because I feel like the Blackish episode was the four White People, okay, and I think a lot of Blackish is for white people because it's like explaining like how black people feel about certain things in like a way that's very like just like now, how you talk to other black people.
Like for example, Dre talking to his infant son, was saying like something to the effect of Trump wants like black people to go back to being and then he showed enslaved people, but he said, let's just call him really cheap gardeners, Like he wouldn't even say like slave or slavery, which I thought was just like very strange, like no black person is going to censor themselves in
that way if they're speaking to other black people. Or even when he was talking to when Drey was talking to his dad, the grandpa in this show, Lawrence Fishburne, he was giving like a history on like Black Pride and you know the song Saint Loud, I'm Black and I'm proud, like giving like a history on that, and it's like black people do not need this in that like such like elementary one on one type of way.
So it definitely felt like the Blackish episode was like, hey, white people, like, we know, like you're experiencing economic anxiety, but treat us like people.
You know, That's what it was given to me. Well, one, I think he might be giving sitcoms storytelling a little bit too much credit because so many of those types of sitcoms are meant to be didactic, so they have moral they have morality and lessons wrapped up into them. So I actually don't think we disagree because I still think those two audiences are the same because I don't
think Fresh Prince was written for black people either. I think it was written for general audiences, and that's why you have scenes with Trump able to come in the first place. Fresh Prince wasn't It was about a rich family and it has those elements wrapped up into it of the black struggle nearves. But like you know, it's
the same things. I think that we criticize, or maybe not all the time criticized, but question about Blackish, where it's like, how can they be representative of all black people? You know, so many black people were in the situation that the people were fresh Prince were, but you know, not one show is not going to represent like the totality of like all black experiences. So I think I think we were like on the same page.
Yeah, And now that I think about it, the Blackish those they rich too. I feel like in the nineties, like being rich was like because that like mansion they show, like okay, but.
Like they rich money, they got money.
So yeah, it's like there's morals and I think in the blackst episode it was like the hashtag message that was kind of just like okay, girl, we get it for me.
Isn't the Blackish family in California? I believe? So Yeah.
Also just like the fact that ABC waited over two years to release this episode because they thought it was I don't know, I don't know the for real, but there's a reason behind that. You know. In the in the creator of Blackish, Kenya Bears, he was like, you know,
not happy about that. He wanted to get this out he wanted to have this message heard, and ABC was like, not chill until like the racial reckoning of twenty twenty, and then like, okay, it can be out now because like people are walker now, I guess, even though I don't think the Blackish episode was too spicy, but so.
If one episode was, I'll be like, yeah, y'all doing that like that.
Yeah, it wasn't anything to me, but maybe I am more radical, but if you have a good take on it. But so like in the Fresh Prince, there wouldn't even be that conversation like oh, we can't have Donald Trump on this, we have to wait to release it, because there wasn't anything for that, but ABC was.
Like, let's wait two years, let it cool off. So definitely different control of information. Yeah, and also shows like how much the network has a hand and what can be disseminated and when, but you know it can came out so and like these things are always relevant. So yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, because he was still doing the crazy stuff when it came out. Yeah, and still lives to this day, to this day. And on that note, we
got to go to a break. But on the other side, we'll be talking about how these allusions to Donald Trump show up in music.
Okay, So the forum where I've witnessed Trump get the most shout outs is hip hop, and the difference between songs that came out before Trump was president and the ones that came out after he was elected is stark.
I know one song we were digging to in middle school by Atlanta's on Young Jock is going Down.
Oh you know, I was at the school dance get in it, And it's such a good example of the types of ways black folks referenced Trump when he was just a really rich guy. He was like aspirational and was shorthand for six sucessful.
Yeah, to call yourself the black Donald Trump, you gotta really think highly of.
Him, And he wasn't the only Atlanta rapper to do so. In his twenty eleven song Trump Gez, heils his own success and labels himself the Trump of the hood. He says, richest nigga in my hood, call me Donald Trump the type of nigga to count my money while I smoke a blunt period, and Trump responded in a tweet, Oh now another rapper doing a Trump song Young Gez Trump lyrics?
Why aren't these guys paying me.
Great impression, Katie, thank you. Songs of this era were definitely giving. I'm successful now so successful. In fact, let me name drop someone I see as the peak of success.
Started from the bottom. Now I'm Trump.
Literally in Lil Wayne's Ice Cream, he says I was in the trenches, now I'm in the.
Trump, referencing Trump Tower in New York.
Which Trump infamously proclaimed was the tallest building in New York after the Twin Towers went down during nine to eleven. But that's neither here nor there. Other pre election songs mentioned Trump Tower as a marker of success. You've got Jay Z's success in which he both's apartment at the Trump I've only slept in once.
Nicki Minaj said total meet me at the Trump. Evanka in the Flawless.
Remix sounds like these rappers are a revolving door at Trump Tower. What do you think it is about a huge building with the Trump name emblazon on it that is great fodder for these rappers?
Well, I just think one it just functions as a really good symbol, Like you have this thing that represents Trump that isn't Trump himself, that you have access to. So that's an easy way into Trump's wealth and glamour. And it has his name emblazoned on it, so the stature, the image, it just becomes like the perfect symbol for it. And of course, like we use symbols and storytelling all
the time, so I think it's convenient in that way. Two, not to get too signifiant, but it's also a phallic symbol, I must say, as a building, it is a symbol of this like patriarchal situation. It's imposing, it's a large you know. So I think that like that goes along with it if you want to go a little deeper
into signifying. But I also think as an outgrowth of who Trump himself is, a lot of these rappers had this money over everything perspective, and so it was really easy to slough off all of the other things that came with that. And I think that's not just a Trump thing, Like we saw rappers in so many other instances shout out to our look up to people who have trash morals, like people who are like drug kingpins, who are like mob bosses and things like that, who
commit all these other crimes. So when you turn this person into a caricature, who's just a display of wealth instead of somebody who has a whole entire life who has done other things in it that are very complicated for whatever reasons they are. It's like, let's just turn a blind eye to that and then go and look
at this person as a wat of cash. Yeah, instead, So I think that came into play when it came to Trump Towers, like it was easy to look at Trump as just another person who could be the person who was symbolizing their money over everything attitude and the fact that he had a building to contain in house. That attitude was just like perfect.
I do think it's related to mainstream hip hop's like bravado and obsession with being a winner. In capitalism, everyone wants to be a boss. For most rappers, they know what it's like to be exploited, and they relish being on the other side of capitalism's equation, like let me.
Be in the club. I want to be in the capitalist club too.
Girl Nelly said it best in Country Grammar, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, let me and looking up all these lyrics, there's just like Trump Trump, Trump, Trump Trump, Like he's getting so much free marketing advertisement and that's been my beef with a lot of rappers is like shouting out like tom Ford and Hill Figure and like all these like brands. I'm like, are they paying you to do this?
Hip hop is so influential and I don't want to go too far and being like rappers are the reason why Trump has been president, but they did give him like a lot of like touchdowns for people sad you know what I'm saying, Like, oh, yeah, like why he said he was in.
The church and now you know Trump? Who's this Trump guy? The thing is too Trump doesn't have receipts, and y'all talking about him and all this money stuff like, oh he has receipts and they're terrible. Does That's what I'm saying, Like for you to be able to say, yeah, they're bankrupts, like all of like this's not working out for you. So are you saying you're gonna have issues with your
financial situation? The interesting thing about Trump though, because rappers do have this history of like putting so much attention into adding things into their work that they're probably not getting paid for. I'm not in their pockets, so I don't fully know, but I know a lot of the time when they're calling out things like alcohol, brands are really doomssed for being in them that they're not getting money from a lot of that, or bags or shoes.
But Trump doesn't have a product, so at least these other things that they're shouting out. It's like you.
Could presumably be using these things and really like them.
You could presumably be using them, you could presumably get brand deals. It's just like there's an actual physical object that goes along with it and something that may get you some returns in some way or another. Because if you shout out alcohol a lot, maybe alcohol becomes part of your brand. And so many people, so many celebrities, musicians, different kinds of artists have alcohol deals. Now, that is showing what's brands say for you is easily alcohol. You
know you're not a children's brand. We know you talk about alcohol, so it's easy for you to get a brand deal in the future. Versus Trump, you ain't getting nothing. What you're getting just like.
What's the payback for that being in the same conversation with him, I guess, But really I feel like he's getting more than the rappers are.
Oh absolutely, I agree with you, because like girl. All this arrogance he has, it's like, y'all, it's feeding y'all, confirming it.
I will say Trump is easy to rhyme.
Oh yeah, bump hump, bump rump crump. Are we sixty?
But yeah, So that is one beef. I have ways rappers, not just with Trump with the products, but like you said, like you could get a brand deal, you could just really love Michael Core's.
I don't know. So pre election songs have similar themes of equating Trump to success and rappers frequenting Trump Tower because that's what rich and powerful people do. What are the post election songs sounding like?
Good question, and I'll give you an answer after the break. So Trump has had some messed up politics.
For a while. Who could forget that? Trump placed full page advertisements in four New York City newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the death penalty for the Central Park five yeah.
And in the nineteen seventies, the US Department of Justice sued Donald Trump, his father, and Trump management, alleging the Trumps engaged in racial discriminate against black folks in their Brooklyn apartments. But although he's been well known for decades, most people weren't really tuned into him like they were after he announced his intentions for running for president and really leaned into his pro white supremacy bag.
And he was never good in the hood. Again, basically we saw them true colors.
Jay Z, who as you recall, once bribed about having a vacant apartment in Trump Towers, later wrapped I got your president, tweeting I don't even meet with him.
I forgot about Trump's tweets.
The tweet in question, somebody please inform jay Z that because of my policies, black employment has just been reported to be at the.
Lowest rate ever recorded.
That was in response to jay Z telling Van Jones that it wasn't okay for Trump to say terrible things about black people despite black employment rates being low. Jay Z said, quote, it's not about money. At the end of the day. Money doesn't equate to happiness.
It doesn't. That's missing the whole point, which is pretty antithetical to a lot of his message.
Hey, jay Z contains multitudes.
I guess yeah, he's definitely entitled to change his views on Trump.
I think YG's FDT or F. Donald Trump is the epitome of how hip hop doesn't really mess with Trump like that anymore. Me and all my people's we always thought he was straight influential MF when it came to the business. But now since we know how you really feel, this how we feel fuck Donald Trump. Yg raps accusing Trump of being racist.
Quite the evolution from simply saying his name being a flex.
Yeah, I imagine a lot of these rappers cringe at some of their old lyrics. They weren't looking at him as a political figure, just a rich person they aspired to be Like.
I mean, we all moved through time and got to grow up at some point, so I feel like it's just indicative of how we learned more over this time period, for sure.
And I think being pro Trump now is like as a black person is like considered edgy, as like being uhtimately anti Trump back then was considered like, oh, he's on a different wave. But yeah, I don't think Trump can go back to being all the way good. No, you'll have just sound drastic.
I mean, what would that be.
Give me an example, I think if he gave reparations, he'd be good because niggas was happy about that little stimmy out of.
His own pocket or just you know, setting up a situation for it just government. Now the bar is a love child, not the stimmy. I just caught that.
Niggas is happy they were, And I mean, of course some rappers still like him, like Kanye, like Kanye, but the overall hip hop sentiment these days are similar to that of Joey Badass.
You got the gut squeeze Donald Trump.
Now it's time for roll credits. This segment where we give credit to a person, place, or thing that we encountered during the week.
Katie, who, what, where or when would you like to give credit to today?
I would like to give credit to changing your mind when you get new information. I think sometimes people get like really stuck in, like oh I said this publicly and so I can't like shift in my attitude. But once you have more information, your mind can change. And
I think that's a positive thing. And I think people should not try to be like, oh, gotcha, you changed your mind, because like it's natural to like grow up, like we see in this episode with the rappers and Trump, it's like natural to like to change your mind once you get more information.
So would like to give credit to that. I would like to give credit to this week artists who support other artists. It can be really hard, you know, sharing your work, making a living off of it if that's
what you choose to do. And it's really nice to have encouragement and support in different ways, even if it's not monetary support, if it's you know, just encouragement and like saying you got this, you know, sending a text message here and there, you know, try to see how you can help a person with their work, are and
involving in their work. Really grateful for those kind of people, and it's like really nice to see other people do it too, Like when you go out to spaces and you see people clapping and cheering for people when they're doing things where they're clearly like pushing themselves to put their art out in the world, and you see that like, Okay, if I do this, there will be other people out there who will root for me as well. So that's why I want to give credit to today.
I love that and with that, we will see you next week.
While on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You can also send us an email at hello at on Theme dot Show. Head to on Theme dot Show to check out the show notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows