Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody. Pre recording from the Home Bunker, Folks, As we close out the year and go into just you know a little bit of hibernation relaxation for the next couple of weeks, we have done some amazing interviews to leave you with as you are hopefully resting and relaxing with family, friends, or solo or with the fur baby.
Today's conversation is with one of my longtime favorites, the Reverend Mark Thompson and host of Make It Plain, joins us today to you know, provide a retrospective on where we find ourselves at the end of this year, as we embark on twenty twenty four, where black people the
Black vote, where we think that is headed. We've all experienced a lot and been through a lot, and you know, I'm bringing on guests over the break to kind of give their final thoughts as we head into what I believe is going to probably be the craziest, wildest, most you know, anxiety filled year in our lives, in this country's history. This is going to be one for the books, and it's why I continue to say that folks need
to take such good care of themselves. I've been having internal conversations with myself about my health, about my rest, about all of the things that I'm going to need to have the stamina to get through. And you know, this conversation is one of those things that give me a boost, and I hope that it does the same for you. Coming up next, my conversation with our friend
Mark Thompson. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to get our friend, the Reverend Mark Thompson, the host of Make It Plain back on wok F daily, which people ask for you, Mark, I am always appreciated that. I wish you can see his faith and reaction, surprise and excitement they ask for you. Particularly, I get DMed about, Oh when is when is Mark coming back on? And that is that is true?
Mark?
You know, as we close out this year, you know, I am filled with a lot as many people are, a lot of worry, a lot of anxiety, a lot of grief. I think that over the last several years we have experienced so much collective trauma at the hands of the MAGA supremacists, at the experience of living through a pandemic, experiencing now multiple wars that we are actually in modern time seeing the images and the videos in real time. This is unlike other past conflicts, crises and
wars that we have had. With the exposure and the usage of social media, people are very weary, as I know I am, and I wanted to get a sense from you as you're thinking now, as we always do a retrospective on the year, how are you closing it out? What are you feeling and what are you hearing from folks on the ground.
Well, first of all, pleasure to be with you and.
Thankful anytime to be sought after and missed, particularly by your audience. Maybe that means I'm doing one thing right in my life. We're at a we are at a very dangerous place, and I think that with the crisis going on in the world, the crisis everyone's focused on. No one is paying attention to the Sudan or Congo. Unfortunately, you know, people to mainstream me to decide what's important.
But in terms of the crisis, what's going on. It has messed up the world.
Communities are divided, cultures are divided, households are divided, even amongst some of my Jewish friends. So the good news is, for the first time in history, you have a massive response with regards to what's going on in Gaza and a demand that the Israeli Defense Force be held accountable for what's going on in Gaza. Obviously their responses are what about harmas well? What Harmas did was a surprise attack. If anybody knew in advance what Hammas was going to do,
everybody would have said no to that Harmas happened. Now we've known in advance every day what's going on in Gaza, and people are aren't happy about it.
This. When this happened October seventh.
I immediately became concerned because I realized the impact this could have on our domestic politics here in this country. And so it took me back to the day in the moment I lost my childhood innocence, Danielle. Now, a lot of people can probably tell various stories about how they lost their childhood innocence, but this is how I lost mind. I was I was always very interested in the news, interested in politics, interested in the world, interested
in journalism, interested in public theology. So at a very young age I was up on stuff. I can remember Watergate, even though I was just a kid, I remember seeing it on television and getting some of that. January twenty, nineteen eighty one, when Ronald Reagan lowers his hand, lowered his left hand and took his right hand off the Bible. The next words out of his mouth were, the hostages are now freed. And we had been through an over year long ordeal every day day, two hundred day, three
hundred day, four hundred of the hostages. We knew who Reagan was and what he would do, but would helpless to stop him because of.
The hostage crisis.
And so someone who most would consider even as he is in hospice, if not then now would consider very decent man lost the White House. When Reagan said that, I said, wait a minute, how are you making this announcement? You just took the oath of office. What are you doing? How do you know that? What do you as if? Almost as if he was taking credit.
For it right.
We later learned through the great journalists with Newsweek, Robert Perry, who passed away recently himself, that Reagan had sent George H. W. Bush and William Casey to Paris to meet with the Ayatola to have him keep the hostages. The term October Surprise is actually a misnoman. That wasn't the October Surprise. The Reagan and people were afraid that Carter had in October Surprise and would rescue the hostages. That what they
did was actually a prevention of the October Surprise. At that time, the Bushes had a close relation with the ben Ladens, and hw and Casey flew to Paris to meet with Ayatola on Osama bin Laden's father's plane.
But that's another conversation.
So when I saw this October seventh, and I'm looking at Joe Biden, I said, this is about more than what we think it is. Why Because then Yahoo and Putin have a relationship. Putin and Trump have a relationship. Trump, I'm sorry, Putin, I'm sorry Yahoo. Then Yahoo is the Trump of Israel, under investigation, potentially under trial.
Nobody likes it.
Nine eleven resurrected the political career of Giuliani and w Bush. October seventh, as He's called it, our own nine eleven. That's what Nen Yahoo calls it. Residents is political fortune. Although I don't think it's working because what the news isn't reporting is all of the family members of hostages.
And protests that are happening all over all over the country.
Who can who can in an effort to root out Hamas kill hostages? I mean mass with Jimmy Carter said, you know, we just gonna blow up in around and killed all the hostages. No, so there's that putin, and then y'all have such a relationship. That's why even though at least the third of the Ukraine is Jewish and Zelensky is Jewish, you haven't seen Israel anywhere near the Ukraine and its defense.
And so this is very troubling. I think the Biden administration, I.
Think they know everything I'm saying, but they have to walk very thin line because in this country, one believes that you have to show unconditional support for Israel to win the Jewish electorate.
But I think they're missing something.
I think that's changed because I've been in the streets with Jews here in America. You know, we live at this technological age, so people in the past people to have cell phones, people don't have access. There was no Algazier. So people a saying, wait a minute, my so called homeland is killing these people mercilessly. It's disproportionate to what happened on October seventh, and a population that is a majority of young people.
Half population in gazas is kids.
So what are we really doing here? Not only are we risking in defense of their human rights, risking democracy here, because that's what we're doing. Every time someone says I'm not going to vote for Biden because of what's going on in Gaza, you're you're risking democracy here.
What do you think Trump's gonna do? I've even had to, you know, say some of my palstending friends, Oh, you.
Don't get in if you ever mentioned I said, well, but what you also have to understand we got to fight this battle on both fronts. We can't allow Trump. What do you think Trump's gonna do. He's already said he's gonna do a Muslim band. You know he's gonna support whatever this is nen Yahoo's doing because the three name.
But y'all just googled net and Yahoo and putin and then.
He hit Google images and his mind blowing, there's more pictures than the am together, than me and Danielle and so not exaggerating, this is the pictures coming over me I've never seen so many pictures on Google of two people together. I'm talking about spouses and couples. I've never
seen it. So I think we're in trouble. Michigan is vulnerable, and I think what this White House is gonna have to do is is yesterday, resolve this, shut this down, because this is only helping the three people I named Trump, n Yahu and putin.
You know the thing, though, Mark, is that first of all, the history lesson that you just dropped is like just a reminder of how dirty the bushes are, how dirty Reagan was, and just this is why the more that people learn, the more distrustful that they become of government, because you learn all of these things after the fact, and then you have people like Kissinger right, who die at one hundred years old and are never tried for the millions of people that they killed with a lie
right of we're protecting democracy. We have to do these you know, type of covert actions because of blah blah blah blah blah, right, when we all know that it has to do with money and power. You know, I keep saying I had said when these events took place, these horrific attacks on August seventh, They were absolutely horrific. Do you know what else? We learned that they knew a year in advance that it was coming. Hey, do
you know what else we learned? That like, they were doing practice runs that were called out by IDF military that said, wait, this actually looks like the dry run of what we saw, what we were alerted to a year ago. And what did they say?
Hmm?
Keep quiet?
Right?
And I kept saying to myself, and I will say it again. I'm not a foreign affairs expert, but anytime that conflict arises, you have to ask yourself who benefits from the continued violence? Who benefits and in what ways are they benefiting? Right? Because it isn't just an ideological benefit, right, it is a monetary one. We know that what is ripe in the Middle East oil? Right? Whoever holds those reserves holds the power to turn off and on right
the pipes. And so when I look at all of this, I look at it from every angle, including what the
basis is, which is white supremacy, right and domination. Why are the anti Semitics in the Trump flack uh and and base like go rah rah rah for what net Yahoo is doing because in their twisted and contorted minds, they believe that this kind of violence will somehow usher in the second Coming, Right, Like, this is where these fucking people, This is where these people are, right, Like people have to really understand like where the mindset is
around all of this. But I want to go back to one of the things that you said, which is about this October surprise and the fact that we know that the bombs that are being dropped, the damage that is being caused, the recent pictures that we just saw of men and boys being stripped down to their underwear being thrown in the back of IDF vehicles, us being asked about these pictures, which they are not condemning. They just say that they're disturbing, and they're asking the people
that committed those very acts to do an investigation. Mark, where does that sound familiar when we ask the cops, the whatever police department to investigate themselves after unarmed black person is murdered, whether they are shot, whether they are choked to death, what have you? Please? Oh, it's so disturbing, go ahead and investigate yourself. It just doesn't make sense. And I think that young people, people people of color are looking at this situation and saying this looks eerily familiar.
Now, I would agree with you there, and again, I think what people have to understand that this is a part of the overall agenda to affect what's going on over here. And so we get caught up in what's going on over there and over here. We still have voting rights on the line, affirmative action, education, black history, women losing their bodily autonomy every single day.
And.
LGBTQIA community gets it. Marriage equality is on the block. If Trump gets back in office, that's gone.
Okay.
So when we look at all of these things, we've got to figure out a way to deal with this, and we've got to appeal to this administration to understand that otherwise they'll be gone as well. I get the impression that they do. I don't think they know what to do. And it also doesn't help the Democrats have never been good, as you and I have talked about before. Then then you know, Democrats have never been good at touting their own accomplishments and the things that have gotten it.
I mean, jobs are still being created, but doesn't matter. I mean, nobody's talked about that everybody's talking about what's going on in Gaza. Just this week, I was with CDWA Communication Workers of America, the union. They're not paying the women who work at the call center who answer the call for Medicare and affordable Care. They're not paying them a living wage. The administration could pick up the phone call the private contractor and do something about that,
but they won't do it. So I don't get what some of that is about. I don't think Biden is being served well by his advisor. Trump is releasing a plan for Black America, and there are some black folks, particularly black men, that are being duped in this thinking that, you know, because Trump got this swag and you know, I'm with it. Black women, as usually, you all gonna have to hold us up. Some folks talking about what he gave me my stemmych We ain't no more stimmy.
You only let the stemmy go and understand what's really really at stake here. But I don't know that we'll win that argument. It's kind of scary because even people who I've known all my life are are confused, and they're talking about not voting. That's the other thing that has to happen I'm not even talking about people necessarily going to vote for Trump. Now you have people say they're not going to vote at all. At what people need to be educated about is that.
Not voting is a vote.
When you don't vote, you voting because we only have a two party system, so it's not like it it doesn't hurt someone, it actually helps someone else because there's still more of a us. There are more women. You put together all the people who are affected by these policies than a one time are considered minorities, women, people of color, seniors, the poor. Put all us together, we are together collectively the majority in this country. So when we don't vote, that actually takes the one vote for
Trump and doubles it. It's a Trump vote times too when we don't vote. But it's a hard sell because people are getting me, will marked Biden is funding a slaughter in godsp I have no response for that. He is he is, and that's what the United States has always done and it's time for that to change. And then this whole argument when it's cancel culture and ironment too, which makes it eve word. There's so many different tentacles
to this octopus. People getting canceled people being called at They tried to you know, they tried to fire the president of Harvard.
Now granted, whoever prepared those college presidents for their testimony, Oh.
My god should be fired. She would be FIREDE.
Watch this say two things to you.
Because we people the political advice that we're offering the Biden administration right now on this show. People pay millions of dollars for bad political advice, we're given it for free. Same thing with those college presidents. They could have called me and you the night before, what should we do?
Yep, we could tell the five minutes.
I don't understand that, but you know, thankfully the sisters survived. But we're in that moment of cancelation. And for example, for about a week or so, it didn't last, it didn't didn't hold. But there was this thing, you know, the Israeli government got mainstream needed to say, well, what about raping women?
Women? Rape women? I heard raping of women, rape of women, raping of women, over and over and over and over and over again.
And they got mad when people said, but what about you said the butt you anti semitic, and then you wouldn't favor of raping women which which also was kind of triggering to me. It should be triggering to all of us as black folks. That's not the first time in history that the sexual assault has been used yep, to subjugate people. So, folks, you know more than one thing is true.
Yep.
Sexual assault against women is a war crime. There's one sentence. Here's another sentence.
The killing of innocent civilian women and children is also a war crime. All right, So no, there's no We're not going.
To do the oppression or victimization olympics here.
Both are equally wrong.
One might be the greater wrong because the one we're talking about death. You're indiscriminately bombing and killing people, but you're saying rape because these are women of a certain culture. He would go again, their lives are more valuable than another. So that's unacceptable. But this is touring the world asunder And you're right, they knew about it a year in advance. At least the Bushes knew about nine eleven that later came out. Conder leaves all of them because they all
knew about it. They knew about this. So we've seen these moments in history where these things happen for the benefit of those who are in power to maintain and sustain their power.
Yeah, I think that this is where I become readily disheartened and hardened right to the facts, which are that you know, all of this is disgusting, right, the United States unequivocal, you know, stance on what we have readily said and seen as an unjust system. I visited Israel and Palestine in twenty fifteen, and I came back home jacked up emotionally, and I said, this place feels eerily familiar. Right.
It doesn't make any sense that we refer to this as the only democracy in the Middle East, because this looks like no democracy I've known, Right, and so.
It it it is.
I think that people don't need to be foreign affairs expert experts to understand that humanity is on the line here, our collective and moral right, morality as people as humans. When we can sit around and watch devastation, cruelty, violence reign supreme, and then have nation states justify it and think that you can bomb your way to peace, right,
that's just not It's not how it works. And so my final question for you, Mark is that as we turn you know, the calendar year with eleven months, you know, to go. If you were to sit down face to face with President Biden, what would you tell him in terms of what is that stake.
What's at stake, President Biden, is your presidency and more than that, really, because your presidency is the firewall against pretty much the end of democracy and end the politics in this country, the politics Joy read Afred Joe Reid has already said politics in America is over, and that may very well be true. But that's the only thing. And Biden hinted it at the fundraiser. He said, if Trump wasn't running, he might not even be running. He's native one year old man who wants to do that
at that age and risk. You know, we just used to be the cliche of the vice presidents in one heart beat away from the presidency. That is literally true right now. And I'm not wishing ill will on anybody anything. It happened to any one of us any day, but when you're that age, you don't know. So I think that's where it stands. Look, the other world leaders got it, President of France, Prime minister in Britain, Canada, they ran up in Israel ran all oh.
Then Yahoo got back home.
Saw those people on the streets, which is bigger than anything we've seen since Vietnam here in America.
When doctor King led those parts, whoop, they switched up. You ain't hurt. You have not seen or heard a word from those leaders. They are chilled.
You know, they're not running around and putting themselves right in the middle of it. And then as someone that this is just a theory, another analyst said this the other day. Not only is there this Putin and then Yahoo relationship, but specifically this is what it's for.
This this what I'm about to say is known. It is not such just a theory.
When Israel sends his bombs in the Syria and other parts of the Middle East where Russian missile defense systems are, Russia says, we won't shoot your misciles down with our defense systems as long as you stay out of Ukraine. So we know that's one part of the deal. But there's another hypothesis about another part of the deal. Let's get everybody out of Gaza, and Putin says, I'll keep bombing Ukraine, but I will then airlift any Jews in
Ukraine into their new settling homes in Gaza. All right, So we got to look at the big picture here. And if I'm not saying that's but that's a hypothesis. If that's true, kind of fits the narrative. Why not you drive everybody out of Gaza. You just got to open space. We can't put anybody in there. And we know that the settler issue, the expansion issue. People say that it's anti Semitic, Well, have they not settled, have they not expanded?
It's just an objective reality.
And the size of Palestine has shrunk since nineteen forty seven, nineteen forty that is just a fact. So a world that is more aware of these realities and more concerned about them. Twenty years going with nobody nobody care. Let's be honest. People have awakened. This younger generation has awakened, and even some of the older generations looks say, you know what, maybe that's just how it is right now.
You never know how things is gonna change. Danielle, folks walk up on twenty three in October twenty three say you know what, we ain't with this no more.
We little over this whole bombardment.
Let's take you know, the Palaestitians out Horets the Liberal publication, the Liberal General.
They have documented all of then.
Yahoo's favorable comments about hamas funding them because they created a foil real quick.
Since Listen's lad.
To hear from me, check out the Netflix movie series Cleo over the Holidays.
Have you watched that yet? No? I haven't.
I've heard about it.
So it's about a young lady who's it's a revenge movie. She was a member of the East German Stace in Berlin, the Secret Service, and they did some pretty hainous things and she's out to get revenge and to get this red briefcase. Nobody can reveal the contents of it's safe and took the way she's trying to get to it. But when the briefcase finally revealed, I'll just give you a spoiler, but you gotta still watch it.
Didn't spoil whole movie. You gotta watch it.
What it's really about is how the Reagan administration financed the East German government in Berlin and in East Germany so that the Reagan administration would have a foil in this country. So when he's over there tear down his wall, he's literally been financing the people on the other side of the wall, Hamas is that full for Nan Yahoo, they don't want a.
Two stay solution. Nope.
So we have to look at this and what I'm saying does not even I know, sound conspiratory on any of our listeners, but neither to a lot of people in the mainstream now because they're seeing it for themselves.
Yep. That's the good and bad of social media.
There a lot of bad things about it, Elon Musk, but there are some good things. Is because for every colonel of foolishness, you still get some kernels of truth and exposure that people otherwise wouldn't know about.
So we got to get this thing right. Yeah.
As always, my friend, the Reverend Mark Thompson, appreciate you, your analysis, your insight, and I look forward to more conversations with you in the new year.
We got to have them because you know, our lives, our democracy, our justice, our rights, our human rights, all of this is on the line in twenty twenty four.
Folks. Thank you, Danielle, thank you.
That is it for me to day, dear friends on woke a f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke.
As fuck