Slew of Despair

for folks. Yesterday a slew of horrific breaking news came in and I'm going to go over each and every single one of the topics that came in over the wire, and I got to tell you that there are days where I have reached where I reach not have reached where I reach a level of rage that I need to kind of sit still, turn off everything everyone and remind myself why I do the work that I do, and to remind myself that this too shell pass, that we will continue to fight and move forward. But there

are days, and yesterday was that day. So what happened.

New Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was appointed as to succeed Sivance and Sivance's name, you know, because we have talked about it with our friend Glenn Kirshner and others, had a impaneled a grand jury, let me say, impaneled the grand jury to do deep dive investigation into what we know to be fraud that Donald Trump and his associates have been accompanied to to inflate the prices that inflate their assets, and then drop their assets to lie

about their accounting right through their accounting from maraz and the impaneled grand jury that was brought in was brought in for the longer than six week time because there was so much fucking evidence and they didn't want to have the normal six weeks switch up. Okay, so that happens in the fall elections happen. Sivance is gone, and now Alvin Bragg comes in. A black man is a Manhattan da Well fucking bombshell, I guess we learn once again not all skin folk are kinfolk. And so here's

where we stand. Two of the prosecutors, two of the lead prosecutors in the case. This is according to the New York Times. So let me say this, and if you watched Woke Wednesday yesterday, then you heard this accounting. But let me say it again. According to the New York Times, the two prosecutors leading the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into former President Donald Trump and his business practice abruptly resigned yesterday amid a month long, one month long pause.

And let me make things clear. We've learned a lot about grand juries. Right. Over the course of the last two years, we've learned a lot thanks to our friend Glenn Kirshner that comes on every week. And what we do know is that you have a finite amount of time to be able to present evidence, right, to then have a judge or to present evidence to decide whether

or not there is enough there to indict. Right. So one would think that when sid vance right in panels a grand jury for an extended period of time, that we would assume, given all that we fucking know about Donald Trump, that an indictment would be soon following. Well, thanks Alvin Bragg, you just gave Republicans their best advertisement, their best fucking get out of any type of jail card. Why because basically the resignations by the two prosecutors carry

are done and Mark F. Pomerants right after their resignations. Basically, what Republicans and what Donald Trump can now say is that according to Alvin Bragg, oh, he has doubts about moving forward. And they're like, what the fuck have we been doing for the past couple of years, Because I understand these investigations have been going on for years, okay, and every time that people tell us Oh, justice is slow, but it'll come. It'll come. Just wait, be patient. Our

legal system is slow, but it'll come. It'll come. Well, now, these two resignations point to the fact that once again, a Democrat that is in charge of actually seeking justice right against Donald Trump is once again gonna miss the fucking mark and fail and fail and fail and fail,

and remind you right that it is. It is a Democrat that decided, right, Merrick Garland decided not to take up for a Gene Carroll, the woman who accused one of the twenty some odd women that accused Donald Trump of sexual assault right in a Manhattan department store, who then sued him for libel right and defamation. And it was Merrick Garland and Joe Biden's Department of Justice that decided that they would defend Donald Trump in that case. How do we know how to fight friends, if we

don't even know who our true enemies are? Because right now, neither Alvin Bragg or Merrick Garland look like they are actually for the people. And if I hear one more fucking Democrat want to get on television to tell me, to tell the rest of us that all we need to be patient, but no man is above the law. Go fuck yourself, Go actually fuck yourself, because I am done.

So here's the continuation of this right. According to The New York Times, without mister Bragg's commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury. One of the people said they have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether mister Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.

The precise reasons for mister Bragg's pullback are, of course unknown, And what I have to say to folks, and this is what I said yesterday on Woke on Woke Wednesday. Here's the thing. The pullback isn't unknown. What I will say to everyone that will listen is follow the fucking money. Who supported Alvin bragg campaign. Who are his biggest donors? What are their ties to Donald Trump, the Trump administration,

the Trump organization, the Trump net worth of wealth. Right, go and find that information and then you can figure out why there has been a pullback over a course of a month. And nothing going on. Let me tell you something that stinks, the fucking lies and the fact that no one, no one with power, or with money or with access, is ever going to do what is right because each and every single one of those motherfucker's

hands are dirty. And that's what we know. We've had our friend Jennifer Tobb on the show all the time. Jennifer has come on to talk about her book Dirty Money and white collar Criminals and the reason why they're allowed to defraud. You know, millions of people get away with it like those fucking bumps on Wall Street did, but no one sees jail time. No, we bail out the banks when they defraud Americans, We bail out the Wall Street executives when they defraud Americans. Nobody goes to jail.

So why is Donald Trump any different? I said, you know, the only truth, the only truth that Donald Trump did tell is when he stood up at one of his fucking Maga hate rallies and said that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and he would watch his poll numbers go off. There is a reason why that man has received the name teflon Don in New York City because everyone knows he's a fucking crook.

Everybody knows that he's slippery and slimy. But until he ran for president, he used to give money to everybody, as mobsters do, so that regardless of who has the gavel, regardless of who is in office at the time that you may be doing your latest deal, that if you give them enough money, then of course they're going to do your bidding, or better yet, look the other way,

because that's actually all you really need. So no one is This is a thing that I think that we all need to begin to wrap our minds around, is that no one is good, No one in power is good, right, and so our choice as voters is to find the least bad, the least sleazy among the pile of assholes that we are handed every single day. Now. I don't know Alvin Bragg, right, I don't know anything about him, but what I do know is that he ain't shit

for this fucking move that he just made. That he has now become one of my biggest targets on this fucking show because I absolutely right want to do my due diligence and start to do my own research, you know, as they say on the right to figure out exactly why Alvin Bragg decided that he was going to pivot from his predecessors desires right and pinpoint this investigation around Donald Trump and decide that, you know what, I doubt we're going to move forward. The world is watching this case.

The world is watching America. The world is waiting around to see exactly what is going to be done, if anything about Donald Trump. And I'll tell you, we know that he was in charge of the insurrection. We know that he's broken multiple emolument's clause. We know that he tried to bribe the president of Ukraine. We know that he tried to bribe the fucking Secretary of State in Georgia. Go ahead and find me eleven seven hundred and forty six votes though, right, we know all of these things.

We knew it from when the Mulla report came up. Right. Here are the ten ways in which Donald Trump has obstructed the law. And once Donald Trump walked out of the White House and was no longer President of the United States, all any attorney with any fucking backbone had to do was that bring those ten fucking charges, right, those ten examples that the Mulla Report detailed out to the world and bring a case. But they didn't. And the question that we need to start asking ourselves is

why why won't anybody do anything? The same reason why you know, you sit around, and I'm gonna do a real big comparison. You sit around and you wonder, huh, Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking girls for how long to how many different people? How many different people were on that disgusting island, on his disgusting private jet, at his disgusting parties, including Donald Trump, including Bill Clinton, including Prince Andrew, including

Mohammed bin Salam. You see what all of those men have in common wealth and power and connections and access. And they were all connected to Jeffrey Epstein. So you think that these people weren't aware of the fact that he was a sex trafficker. You think that they had no idea what was going on. You think that they didn't spend decades looking the other fucking way. All of these it's an incestuous cesspool of greed and power that all commingle. It doesn't. This is where party doesn't matter,

Green does, capitalism does. That is their master. And when you have that kind of power, when you have that kind of access and wealth. You will do whatever the fuck you want to whomever you want, whenever you want, because you got DA's in your pocket, you got senators in your pocket, you got presidents in your pocket. We sit around and we wonder, like, why won't Democrats do anything? Why won't they stand up? Why did they continue to

fucking act as if they have no power whatsoever? This, again, friends, is what winning looks like. We have all the branches. Oh I'm sorry, except for the judiciary, right, we got Congress, we have the White House. But this is what winning feels like. So you begin to wonder and ask yourself

these questions. Who is actually making these deals? You know, Democrats want to put on a good show, like every single time that Republicans do the same thing that they've been doing for the last four decades, they want a feign shock. They want to say, oh my god, we have no idea where this came from. Oh, I don't know. It came from nineteen fifty two, it came from nineteen sixty eight, it came from this year, and this year

and this year. You know, all of the decades that they've been doing the same things, using the same people as their culprit and their battering rams right, making the same attempts to make sure that America becomes the beacon of white evangelical christiandom right, and that everybody who is not white, who is not wealthy, who is not straight, who is not Christian has no power. And not only do you not have any power, they want to ensure

that you live in fear. This is what folks are not getting right now, is that I believe and I'm beginning to believe, and there me because people say, Danielle, you sound like a conspiracy theorist. But do I Because if you have the power to actually stop atrocious things from happening, if you had the power to hauld Donald Trump in and the entire Trump administration in before an inquiry, if you had the power to say to your Department of Justice, I'm going to move out of your way.

But here is the thing, by virtue of who I am appointing to lead our US Department of Justice, I am going to make sure that when we say that nobody is above the law, that nobody is actually above the law. Why is it that Democrats are so quick, just like Republicans to want to turn the page right, there's about a handful of fighters in the Democrats within the party, but I'll tell you that the entirety, the actual establishment seems really to look like a bunch of

Republicans in sheep's clothing. Because you see, this is the thing that I'm starting to piece together. And I gotta admit, if you're gonna listen to democracy issue this morning, I set it on there, so I want to say it on here. I believe that Democrats are the biggest grifters.

I've been addicted to these grifters shows. Over the holiday weekend, I watched Inventing Anna, the Shonda Rhimes creation based on the real story of the fake German heiress who essentially fooled everyone into believing that she was an heiress, and she came, as they said, dangerously close to being able to essentially defraud one of the major investment banks in

the city in the world. Right. And then I watched the Tinder Swindler, right, the guy who went around defrauding a bunch of women out of their wealth, putting them into debts so that he could create this Ponzi scheme around women paying for other paying for his lavish lifestyle

and I started to think about grifting. Well. One I also started to think about I went into the wrong profession that clearly I should have been smarter, and I should have been like these people who can set up these kinds of schemes and for a fairly long time get away with them, right, and live high on the hog. But I digress. Democrats are grifters. Why because they steal

your money. No, it's because they steal your votes. And why do I use the words steal well, because Democrats, much in the way that ANNADELVI and the Tindler swindler, they put together this brand, right, this this idea that they are for the people, that they are the ones that will march with you, that they are the ones that are for LGBTQ equality, for voting rights for black people. Right.

You know, they tell you, they feed you these lines, right, and yet and yet when they actually are in a position to do anything about it, then all of a sudden, their hands become tied. All of a sudden, they have no backbone. All of a sudden, there are so many different rules and maneuvers that they need to follow, and now they're constructed, right, and all of a sudden, the people whose communities that they went to go tap dance

and do a jig for their vote. Once they got it, they turn around and all of a sudden they don't answer your calls. All of a sudden, they don't know who you are. Right and then right, like any good grifter, when you call them out on their bullshit, when you want to bring the heat down on them, they turn it into being your fault. While I never told you I was this wealthy, you just assumed I didn't try and defraud you. You just really also liked the lavish lifestyle.

So with Democrats, it's like them saying, well, we never told you. We said that the John Lewis ritzack had a nice ring to it. We didn't say we were going to get it past. We said providing a child tax credit could possibly keep families out of poverty. That providing this could potentially keep children out of poverty. That sounded nice. We didn't say we were actually gonna do it. Who told you that? We said that we would do our best to get the job done. We said that

no person was above the law. We didn't actually say that we were going to bring the law to them. They're grifters. They will do and say whatever it is that they need to do and say in order to

get your vote. And when you are a person of color, right, when you are a black or brown person, or an LGBTQ person, or a Muslim person, or you know, anyone who lives within within the identities of any of these marginalized, marginalized communities or at the intersection thereof what is your alternative, Right, you're gonna go and you're gonna go sit at the Republicans table because they don't want to sit with you, right, they'd rather burn the entire table down and not eat themselves,

starve themselves than allow you to come sit over there. Oh you want to come sit the Democrats, Well, they actually keep moving their table, right, and you don't really know which one there's is, but they keep waving you over. But then you get close and the table's gone. So when I'm saying that we are fighting two wars here, the real war that is about holding onto our democracy at the face of in the face of the rise of fascism that is not just happening in this country,

but is happening around the world. That there is a realignment that is happening, except it's like the realignment in the Twilight Zone, where at one time we used to refer to these dictators and these authoritarian regimes as the axis of evil, right, But now Republicans are rooting for Putin downing their own president, and you're seeing the Fox news is of the war world, the fascists of the world takeover, move their ways into other countries that who's

also on shaky ground. So we have the real war that we're fighting with the Republicans, we have a shadow war that we're fighting with spineless democrats. And the only ones that are going to get hurt are us. So I say that if we're going to get hurt anyway, right then we might as well fucking go down swinging and let them know that we fucking see them for who they are, that we see them, that they're not going to get away with lying to us, with telling

us that they are for us. And then I can point to several places, several policies over decades where they have destroyed communities of color, where they have left women hanging, hoping that they would renew the Violence Against Women Act. They don't care, folks, They just pretend to and the ones who are actual fighters are the ones that the

establishment will throw under the bus and already have. The anger that I am feeling these days is like you know when you eat something that is so hot that even after you douse yourself with water or eat bread or drink milk, like it's still the fire is still burning. That's how I felt after reading every single bit of breaking news. I'm gonna move on to the next story,

which is just as repulsive as the last one. A while ago on Twitter, I kind of put my own stamp on Martin Neo Mueller's poem first they came for and when I did so, it went kind of mini viral with like, you know, fifteen thousand retweets or something. And what I wrote was, first they came for women's rights, but you weren't a woman or a person with the uterus, so you didn't care. Then they came for voting rights, but because you were still able to vote, you did

nothing about it. Then they came for LGBTQ rights, but you weren't queer, and you don't know anybody that's queer, so you didn't care. And then they came for you, and there was no one left to fight for you. What did they come for? First, reproductive rights, the same thing that they have been coming for since nineteen seventy four, started in Texas and has expanded like a cancer around the country to eventually reaching the Supreme Court, who will

make the final decision in June. And we already know what that decision is going to be. Roe will stand in name only, an abortion will become a thing of the past, forty six, forty seventy years, close to damn near fifty years. But Democrats didn't stay vigilant, right, They kept saying ROE is codified, it's a law of the land. Nothing is the law of the land. You are one election cycle away from losing everything. But Democrats didn't tell

you that in twenty sixteen. Right. They were more concerned with whether or not the media was more concerned with whether or not Hillary was going to wear a flannel, right, more concerned with whether or not she could shed a tear. Democrats didn't come out swinging in twenty sixteen and tell you that you were one election cycle away from losing everything that you thought was codified. Right, but her emails, Now, what are they coming for next? Because they never they

never don't come for black people, right. We know that we're the persistent and consistent target of Republicans and conservatives right, and Democrats serve us up on a platter all the time because it's easy, right and because you know, as they believe, they don't really need us. We're only thirteen percent of the population. It's always about cording Chad and Karen back over right, who haven't voted for them or

with them in four or five decades. So they came for uteruses consistently come in for black folks, with police brutality, voting restrictions, economic disparities, all of these things. Well, now

Abbot in Texas has decided what's next. According to Vogue, the latest in a long line of attacks on the existence, freedom, and dignity of LGBTQ plus individuals in the United States was waged on Wednesday, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott officially officially directed agencies to investigate gender affirming care for trans

youth as child abuse. In a letter to the States Apartment of Family and Protective Services, Abbott define gender affirming treatments for transgender children, including gender reassignment surgery, as puberty and puberty blocking medications as quote abusive procedures. Let me tell you something about how I feel when I read that, When I saw that come across Twitter. LGBTQ youth make

up the largest number of homeless youth in America. LGBTQ youth make up most attempted suicides in the United States. Lgbt Q youth are the most vulnerable children in our society. Do you know what abuse looks like? It looks like actions that Abbott just took. It looks like telling LGBTQ

youth that you don't fucking matter. It looks like not investigating real child abusers, right, But those that actually care enough and listen to children and believe them when they say who I am does not match the body that I am in. You cannot imagine the pain I cannot as a black queer siss woman, imagine the horror that trans children and trans adults go through. You know who's most likely to be murdered in this country, black trans women.

Do you know who doesn't care about their murder? Everyone this message that Abbot just sent and descantists will follow in. All of these dirt, bad pieces of shit who want to tell you about their Christian fucking values. But they don't give a damn about anybody's sentity of life. They don't give a damn about children, but want to tell you that they are the party of family values. This is how you value children, This is how you value life by taking measures that save their lives and telling

them that that is abuse. And then what throwing the people that do those procedures or the families that allow for these life saving measures. You're going to throw them in jail along with the people who try and vote. Go fuck yourself. It is not enough for us to sit around and say, oh, well, I don't live in Florida, I don't live in Texas. I don't know why people live there. These are our kids, this is our life, and they are trying to take it away from us.

They are not just trying to roll back rights. This is what I want everybody to understand. They don't want to just roll back rights. They want to codify white supremacy, heterosexuality into law, Christianity right, bring back prayer in schools, Erase any mention of civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, the Native American quest for rights gone. You will be praying to that flag, you will be monitored. We are

not just going back to Jim Crow. This is McCarthyism, Jim Crowe, Trumpism all rolled up into one and then with the dabs of apartheide. They will not stop until those of us who do not look like them, pray like them, love like them, and show up like them. Are afraid for our lives. With each measure, they are doing their damnedest to force us back into closets, right, to force black folks to keep your head down, move off the sidewalk, yes, ma'am, no sir, to just be

thankful that we're allowed to exist. But they will make sure that that existence is painful so that we all stay in line. This is where America is headed. And the said fucking thing about it is that no one is going to stop them. No one. No one is coming, not the people that we voted for to keep in power. And people want to say, oh, Joe Biden, he's a nice guy, you know, he came in with a lot

going on. I don't give a fuck, because let me tell you something, if you have one shot at something, you got one shot, leave it all on the fucking table. If you care so much about your legacy. Then you do whatever it fucking takes for people to tell you that you went down, but you went down as a warrior. Let them say decades later, Oh, America wasn't ready, but they came with the fire, instead of pandering, instead of summits, with fucking Joe Manchin and Kursten cinema, so that you

can trade voting rights. You can trade the rights of black people, of brown, people of LGBTQ, people of those of us who are both and think that we're gonna what come and give you our votes. You already left us alone, right. Oh you want to tell us that things can get worse, we fucking know, but you ain't gonna do dick about it. Black man was murdered in the goddamn street. We can't get police reform. How many murders have happened since that one, but we can't get

police reform. It's too much, it's too woke. We are moving into this phase of America, the dark ages that I need everybody to wrap their minds around and not lie to yourselves and say, oh, it's not gonna be that bad. Oh, this will never happen. Because I want you, I want us to stop using the word never, because we are living inside of one of those nevers right now.

I never thought that there would be a global health pandemic that would shut down cities and shut down borders and countries, that then entire political parties across the world would just say is over and then that means it's over, and not give a fuck about public health and be so fucking bold and honest about it. No. I never thought that the world would turn into an Orwellian fucking Butler mash up. And yet here we are, and yet here we are. So everything that we think could never happen,

you should now know is possible. Everything that we believed. Oh well, they can't bring back segregation. Why not? It was decided by this Preme Court. When Amy Covid Barrett was asked about whether or not the Brown versus the Board of Education was settled law, she didn't give a straight answer. So, once they're done with Roe, they will go to Brown. Once they're done with Brown, they will go to Windsor once they're done with Windsor, they'll go

to Plessy. Right, Like, I want folks to recognize that all of the rights that you believe that you have right now didn't come through acts of Congress. They came through the courts. Mitch McConnell stacked those courts. We have a six to three Supreme Court, and we have three hundred federal judges on the bench that don't deserve to be there, according to the American Bar Associate, and some of them are as young as thirty five years old.

So in this moment, remind yourself that the Holocaust was legal, Slavery was legal, Apartheide was legal. What is legal and illegal is not a matter of law. It is a matter of power. And we have seeded all of that

power to the Republican Party, to a fascist regime. And each and every single day that Republicans come up with excuses instead of actions, that come up with more fucking empty metaphors right and niceties instead of strategy, they are seeding your life, the life of your children, your grandchildren, your great grandchildren to the oppressor. They are not even waiting for twenty twenty four. They don't have to because

Democrats haven't even shown up to the battle. You know, when folks say, oh, they brought a butter knife to a gunfight, Democrats didn't even show up. They were too chicken shit. All we have are ourselves. All we have is each other. And if we aren't sharing this message, if we aren't ringing the alarm, if we aren't saying of folks, Hey, you see what they're doing to these LGBTQ people in Texas. You see what they're doing. This

is a testing ground. I have heard so many times friends of mine say, well, thank god we live in New York. As if New York is some type of fortress with a mode of sharks and crocodiles in it, As if no one is going to be able to get to you because you're in New York or you're in California. These are the times when I start to really ask myself what does it mean to be safe?

What does safety look like when the people that are supposed to protect you are also your biggest enemies, When the people that you elect to represent you or the reason for your demise, then what is safety? The only way to secure safety is through power, and no one gives up power, not willingly. And that's the real thing that we need to start really thinking about and strategizing about. This is an entire white supremist power grab that is happening at America. America is going to be the leader

of the axis of evil? Do you get that? Do we understand that? And no one is standing in their way? You still have Joe Biden referring to Mitch McConnell, the architect of the fall of the courts to Republicans, as his friend, And I'm like, motherfucker, do you get it? And what I realize day in and day out is that they don't fucking get it. They don't get it, but we do. And the question that is going to keep rolling around in my brain is what are we

going to do about it? Because I'm about ready to put the screws to somebody, and it's sure is not going to be my own fucking head, That's for goddamn sure, because if I'm going down, oh I'm going down fighting, But I'm going to make sure that everybody knows who exactly was against us always because at my time, when my time comes, oh, I'm going to make sure that there is enough information, there are enough of my own words out there that no one will be able to

twist them or erase them or rewrite them. So make sure right that the actions that you take right that remember at one point in time, at some point, you will be an ancestor will people be proud or will they be embarrassed. That's the question that Democrats should be asking themselves, because this isn't about morality anymore. We know that they don't have any If it's not shame, if

it's not hope, then it's got to be fear. So how do we put the fear of God into Democrats to do what is right for the majority, because that is exactly who we are. And now, dear friends, for your woke moment of wellness. You know, during yesterday's Woke Wednesday, my mother texts me and she says, Danielle, I want you after the show to go out onto your balcony and take ten deep breaths. Mommy loves you. This is

what she says to me in my text. I'm very lucky and fortunate, and I realize it is so important that when you feel the rage creeping in, when it feels like it is going to consume you. If you are laying down, if you're walking, stop ground your feet right, put your ten toes into the ground, like feel it through. If you are a barefoot great if you are not, if you're in shoes, press them down, strengthen up your back, shoulders down, close your eyes and take in three because

you know we're all busy. Deep breaths in on the count of four, and out on the same count of four. There is something about stopping, grounding and breathing, but it is a grounding that happens in yoga and yoga if you've ever taken a class, this is the posture mountain pose. Mountain pose is when you really are grounding through your feet, like acting as if you were growing roots, and then

through that root growing down. It's actually stretching the top of you up, like feeling as if you were pulling from the tops of your head while the bottom of your feet are grounding. So there's this lengthening, as my mother says, it's lengthening that is happening. And then you put your hands down right and you have this straining posture and your feet are grounded and your head is up and you're just pulling right in both directions and breathe.

Breathe in deep, counting to four, our exhale out counting to four, and do if you can do ten rounds of that brilliant. If you can do three rounds of that perfection, then afterwards just sit, just stand and see if you feel a difference. It's that grounding that ensures that we don't get blown around with all of their hot air and all of their bullshit. That, friends, is your woke moment of wellness. That is it for me today, Friends on Woke A app as always power to the

people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.