Cal Thomas reflects on Reverend Jesse Jackson’s 10-year novel-writing journey and his shift from moral messaging—like advising Black students to delay pregnancy—to two failed presidential bids, securing 4.9M votes in 1984 and 6.9M in 1988 while threatening Democratic unity. He dismisses the State of the Union’s partisan spectacle, citing media bias against conservatives, religious figures, and corporations, as Gerard Baker’s Wall Street Journal column highlights, though Thomas insists fairness over objectivity. A caller from Detroit alleges Jackson pressured businesses for donations in exchange for protection, while another challenges conservative Christians’ selective moral outrage—defending Trump’s tariffs despite economic fallout and ignoring January 6th hypocrisy. Media polarization and declining trust in journalism further erode public discourse, leaving audiences in echo chambers. [Automatically generated summary]
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
How long did it take you to write the novel?
It took me almost 10 years.
10 years.
10 years, yes, to write the novel.
Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in seven years.
So.
I know.
Well, what can I do?
It's 400 pages, David.
It's not a short book.
All right, well, man.
And actually, it was longer.
It was longer.
I had to cut my hands up.
You had to cut it.
Yes.
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I wanted to start on the death of the Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Your memories of Jesse Jackson.
I knew Jesse a little bit.
I accompanied him once to a middle school in Washington, D.C., an all-black school.
Many of the kids seemingly from poor neighborhoods.
And he gave an incredible speech.
He told the girls, save yourself until marriage.
Don't get pregnant at 14 or 15.
You're going to ruin your life.
And then he said to the boys, respect these girls.
Don't have sex with them.
You know, wait until you're married.
So after he got off the stage, I said, Jesse, that was a tremendous speech.
Why are you bothering with politics when this is the real future?
You can really change lives significantly.
And, you know, another time I invited him to speak at Jerry Falwell's church in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that was quite a shock to Falwell, so much so that he decided not to broadcast Jesse's sermon, although Jesse had invited him to speak at an all-black church in Lynchburg, where he was received very well.
But Jesse was a social gospel kind of minister, believing that works were the natural outcome of faith.
They do have a significant role, but being a Baptist minister, he should have known that the Baptist doctrine is something different.
It's salvation by grace through faith.
But he was a character and really an interesting guy.
He could bring an audience to cheers or to tears by his rhetoric.
Now, some people said the most dangerous place to be was between Jesse and a TV camera.
He certainly exploited his personality.
Some of Dr. King's staff were upset with him frequently because he would move into a situation, including after Dr. King's assassination, where he would seem to take over the event.
But he inspired a lot of people, and in an age when we don't have too many great orators anymore, he was certainly one of them.
I'd love to listen to him speak.
He was an amazing man and could really rouse a crowd.
What will be Jesse Jackson's legacy 50, 100 years from now?
Well, it's hard to say anybody's legacy, but I think the fact that he did so well in running for president twice, he got a significant number of votes.
He scared the Democrat leadership.
They believed that he was such a force that they wouldn't be able to control him.
So they gave him a plane and they gave him some money to fly around the country and to campaign, try to keep him happy, knowing that he was not going to get the nomination, but he could be dangerous in their point of view to the one who would get the nomination.
He certainly was a great advocate for civil rights, no question about it.
And his wonderful line, I am somebody, that was powerful.
Do you think this is a fair assessment?
This is the obituary in the New York Times.
It'll be in the paper version tomorrow.
Mr. Jackson picked up the mantle of Dr. King after his assassination in 1968, ran for president twice, long before Mr. Obama's election 2008.
But he never achieved either the commanding moral statue of Dr. King or the ultimate political triumph obtained by Mr. Obama.
Instead, through the power of his language and his energy and his ambition, he became a moral and political force in the racially ambiguous era when Jim Crow was still a vivid memory and black political power more an aspiration than a reality.
I think that's a very good assessment, and I would pick out the word in that ambition.
Dr. King's ambition, if you want to put it that way, was the recognition of the value of African Americans.
It wasn't the government's role to impose that value, but to acknowledge it.
And Dr. King frequently quoted scripture to justify not the notion that government would give rights to African Americans, but it would recognize those rights which in the words of the Declaration of Independence were endowed by our Creator.
And I think that was the difference between the two.
Dr. King had a cause and a goal and a method for achieving it, nonviolence.
And Jesse, yes, he had that goal too, but he certainly had a very strong ambition and a desire to be in front of the cameras.
Kyle Thomas with us this morning taking your phone calls and he's always happy to chat with C-SPAN viewers.
Absolutely doing it.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
We sit here today one week away from President Trump giving his State of the Union address.
How would you describe the state of the Union today?
Well, I think we continue to enjoy the endowed inalienable rights that we have from the founding.
The economy is improving.
I think back in the days after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and the economy was in bad shape, and that was one of the reasons that he and not Jimmy Carter was elected.
It took a while.
It took about two years.
He lost the majority in Congress in the off-year elections two years later because it takes a while for the economy to turn around.
And I think President Trump is in the same situation.
He has a lot of positive things going on, the tax cuts, the closed border, the deportation of known criminals, convicted criminals, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security for older people, a certain income level.
So I think gas prices are down substantially from what they were during the Biden administration, which affects other things, trucks that deliver food and other things.
So I hope, as a conservative, I hope the voters get that before the November election and don't elect the people who gave us those problems in the first place.
It makes no sense to me.
If you like 12% inflation, if you like open borders, then you're going to vote for the same people who are responsible for those.
But if you can wait and be patient and watch these policies kick in and be effective, as with even John Kennedy, who was a tax cutter, probably wouldn't get nominated in the Democrat Party for president today.
But it takes a little while to turn the big ship around.
Do state of the union still matter, or in the parlance of an old school journalist like yourself, is it a one-day story these days?
It's hardly even a one-day story.
It's so predictable.
I compare it to whack-a-mole, you know, with people jumping up and applauding every other line.
If you're a Republican or Republican president, Democrats sitting stone-faced and with their arms folded and not saying anything.
It's just the opposite, you know, when the other party is in power.
Obviously, the president has a view on the economy and the state of the union that is positive.
And the Democrats, who will give an alternative, I hope not AOC after her performance in Munich, but they'll have an alternative speaker saying, no, things are terrible.
Give us the power back.
So it doesn't really mean that much.
You know, the early days, the president would send a written message to Congress, but in the TV age, they've got to have that time on the air.
You've seen a lot of these.
What was the last state of the union that really mattered?
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Well, probably Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, I would think.
Reagan did a couple of really good ones.
It's hard to remember them.
You'd have to look them up.
You have to Google them because they're pretty much predictable.
There's no Democrat who said, the country's terrible under my administration, and I'm doing a lousy job.
And there's no Republican who said the same thing.
You know, it's all positive and uplifting, and our policies are working, and give us a little more time.
And so I think that's really why they're not that important, because they don't really reflect reality.
Mentioned you're an old school newspaper, man.
What are your thoughts on the Washington Post, the major cuts to one of the major newspapers here in Washington, D.C. that we've read for years?
Well, the Post has been living off of its Watergate reputation for 50 years.
And Jerry, what's the name of the, of the Baker of the Wall Street Journal wrote a good piece, and then I wrote one following it, on the cause of the decline of newspapers.
And one of them is that they just didn't pay attention to a significant demographic, and that would be conservatives.
It's just not the way they covered stories.
It's also the stories they ignored.
So if you put two papers together in Washington, the Washington Times and the Post, you would think they would be covering different countries or different stories.
I think it's sad.
I mean, the Post was a great paper.
It was always in my house growing up, along with the Evening Star, the afternoon newspaper, the Daily News.
We had, I think, four papers, the Times-Herald, and many papers.
New York had several newspapers.
People don't read anymore.
They don't read books.
They don't read newspapers.
They go to Instagram or TikTok or other social media for information.
There's no editorial staff that will correct any mistakes or keep the stories from being erroneous.
So people now just tend to tune into what they already think.
That's why you have Fox News for the conservatives and MSNBC for the liberals.
I mean, I read and watch everybody, but increasingly, people only want to read and watch what reaffirms what they already think.
That's not growth.
And I think it's sad that the Post is a shadow of its former self.
Before the death, before we learned about the death of Jesse Jackson today, our opening question for the Washington Journal today was going to be a journalism question, but we pivoted to the life and legacy.
But you mentioned Gerard Baker and his column in the Wall Street Journal.
I'd actually pulled a quote from that column as part of that discussion that we're going to have.
So let me read it to viewers now, and I want your thoughts on it.
Gerard Baker, last week in the Wall Street Journal, the president's attacks on the media are indefensible and troubling, but it never seems to occur to his targets that the primary reason he gets away with them is that faith in the honesty of these institutions has already been devastated by their own tendentious work.
The lists of recent media distortions from the Russia collusion hooks to COVID and Black Lives Matter is long.
But the most important form of bias, more insidious because it is necessarily hard to measure, isn't what the news reports.
It is what it chooses not to report.
Investigative reporting is vital for accountability, but for most journalists, the people and institutions that need to be held accountable are only those that fit into their selective demonology.
Corporations and their leaders, the rich, right-wing politicians, labor unions, bureaucracies, academic institutions, not so much.
Well, we all have a worldview.
We all start with that.
But I remember the late David Brinkley, who was a great influencer of mine when I worked as a copyboy at NBC and later as a reporter.
He said, it's impossible to be objective, so we must try to be fair.
Now, I think that's a very, very powerful thought.
So you may have everybody has a worldview, as I said, but in order to be fair, if you're covering a story and there is another side, you have an obligation as a journalist, if you want to be credible, of fairly reporting what the other view is.
But as Jerry suggested, and as I've written, so many now in the media just ignore conservatives, religious people who go to church on Sunday.
They don't know anybody.
One of my favorite stories, a columnist friend of mine from the New York Times, several couple of years ago called me up about something and at the end of the conversation said, by the way, are you still writing your column?
And I felt like saying, yeah, are you?
But, you know, he didn't read it.
I read his.
I have many liberal friends in the media.
But increasingly, we are a one-dimensional people, only reading and thinking one way.
And I think that's dangerous for democracy.
It's why the founders put a free press in the Constitution, the only business that was mentioned, because a free press and a viable press and a believable press, as Gallup finds now, the latest poll takes these every year, lowest approval rating, lowest trust level in the media, all of it, in the history of its polling.
That's sad.
But it's the only industry that won't do anything to turn it around.
You wake up in the morning, you get your cup of coffee, you sit down at your table.
What are you reading in the morning?
I like to tell people I read two things every morning, my Bible and the New York Times, so I know what each side is doing.
Ba-doom, boom.
I read, I get a lot of this online now, but I get the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, which is always fun, and breaks some stories.
Again, back to your point earlier, that others ignore.
They were first on the laptop, the Hunter Biden laptop, which was censored from social media, proved to be true.
And there's a lot of stuff that they cover that the other media don't.
So I used to read five papers in the morning, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Washington Post, and one other.
And now I get most of them online.
And you can read Cal Thomas and his columns in the Washington Times and newspapers around the country, nationally central.
Fewer of them now, unfortunately.
At the top, I had 500 papers carrying me, and because of the condition of the newspaper industry, it's now just under 200, but I'm still scratching out a living.
Good Morning, Line for Democrats00:10:34
And he's here to take your phone calls and your questions.
Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, as usual.
And we've got about 28 minutes left with him.
Christine is in Rhode Island Independent.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I forgot your first name.
Is it Jeff?
This is Cal Thomas.
I'm John.
What's your question?
Oh, John.
No, I just wanted to say how much I loved Jeff Jackson.
I can remember when he was trying to become the national, when he was on the Democratic ticket.
He wanted to be president of the United States.
And I remember the Rainbow Coalition.
And I remember that speech when he was going on screen and saying how he wants to be president.
And he kept on saying, our time has come.
Our time has come.
And that resonated with me so much.
And that's what I wanted to tell you.
And I always liked him.
I know there's been a lot of negativity about him, but I don't care because I saw him for what he could bring to America.
And I'm sorry he didn't get to become the candidate for president.
Christine, thanks for the call from Rhode Island.
Cal Thomas, does a Jesse Jackson nomination beat Ronald Reagan in 1984 or George H.W. Bush in 1988?
What do you mean by beat?
He didn't beat them, but do you think he would have beaten them if he had gotten the nomination, if it had not been Mondale and Dukakis?
Right.
No, I don't.
I think, well, there are a number of things.
I hate to mention the racial angle, but I think a lot of Southerners at the time, this is before Obama, would probably not have voted for him.
I don't think a lot of people believe that he had the political chops or the experience to deal with that office.
Now, it's true that he did go to the Middle East.
He did go to, I think, North Korea.
He did get some hostages released, which is all very well and good.
But of course, those who did that hostage releasing have their own motivations to make themselves look good in the eyes of the world.
So I think he was a significant figure in the civil rights movement.
I think he had some influence in the Democrat Party, but I don't think that he had the experience or wisdom to be president.
Do you think he should have run again after 1988?
No, probably not.
I mean, usually you get one time around the track.
He got two.
And then he went on to other things.
I mean, I was with him once in Detroit before we appeared on a PBS program together.
And in the green room, he was making calls to companies and telling them that he could help keep them from demonstrators if they would make a contribution to his Rainbow Coalition.
So that's the kind of guy Jesse was.
He's a character and a hustler and a very articulate individual.
To the Lone Star State, this is George.
Good morning, Line for Democrats.
Hey, George.
Good morning, John.
And good morning, Mr. Thomas.
Good morning, sir.
Thank you for taking my call.
Delighted.
You talked about the economy.
Well, it's only taken, and you should wait until the economy improves.
I'm going to make two comments.
The first comment I'm going to make is, yeah, I waited 10 months, and because of Trump's tariffs, I lost my job that I'd had for over 30 years with an American equipment manufacturer because we can't get aluminum, can't get steel, we can't import machinery because of the tariffs.
So they went through and said, all the senior employees, it's time to go.
So I lost my job December 31st, 2025.
Happy New Year.
Okay?
So that's my one comment about wait on the economy.
I'm waiting.
We'll see what happens.
I'll be okay.
I've been through ups and downs in the economy before, but I had a job through president after president for 30-something years.
And now I don't have a job in 10 months because of Trump's tariffs.
Okay.
The second thing I wanted to say is respect you as a colonist.
I used to read your column.
And I would read it again when you would be in the American Statesman.
But we can't get the American statesman.
I live about 27 miles outside of Austin.
And the American statesman, Austin American Statesman, is a shadow of itself.
Yeah, many of them are.
We don't even get on Sunday.
Well, George, let me let Cal Thomas.
Well, first, George, I can certainly empathize.
I've been unemployed before.
It's no fun.
And people don't return your phone calls.
You're out there by yourself, and especially if you've had a job, as you've said, for 37 years, it's very, very difficult.
I don't know if you can directly tie that to tariffs.
Now, there's a debate about that, of course, between Republicans and Democrats, and even among some Republicans.
I do think, though, that Trump is right when he talks about the unfairness of some countries that impose large tariffs on American imports and basically get a free ride or far less when they're trying to import things into the United States.
There ought to be some equity there.
What was your other point about not being able to get your column on the Austin American Statesman?
Well, yeah, they dumped that some time ago.
But you can get all my stuff on my website, CalThomas.com, along with a handsome picture of me and a copy of my latest book, which I hope you'll get.
The lead story in the Austin American Statesman, at least the online version, is about early voting starting for the Texas primaries, the Texas primary taking place in two weeks, the beginning of primary season.
Three states will have primaries two weeks from today.
What is your estimate at this point of the midterm elections?
Will Republicans be able to hold the House and Senate?
Well, it's only February, and I'm writing in my column today.
Anything can and probably will happen between now and then.
You've got the possibility of an attack on Iran.
The stock market is at all-time highs.
Certainly seniors, retirees are very happy about that because it's padding their retirement benefits.
Gas prices are down.
Trump is not on the ballot, but he's going to be campaigning, according to his staff, as if he was.
So we'll see if that carries over or not.
I just find it amazing that in such a short period between the time that Biden lost the election to Trump, that there are many people who want to return the Democrats to power, which gave us 12% inflation, open borders, men and women's locker rooms and sports, and all these other crazy social and economic policies, which caused a lot of them to vote for Trump to turn them around.
Now he is turning some of them around.
The border, gas prices are significantly lower.
You'll remember that Biden rated the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to get gas prices down a little bit.
It didn't work very much.
But with Trump now, in some places, it's under regular gas, under $2 a gallon.
And in most places, the average is under $3 a gallon.
So that puts more money in people's pocket, or at least keeps more money flowing from outside of their pockets.
And I think all those things are significant.
And you've got the media, of course, the mainstream media, that won't promote any of that stuff.
So that's why Trump's going to go out around the country and the local stations will cover it.
Skip here in Washington, D.C., Independent.
Good morning.
You're on with Cal Thomas.
Hello, Cal.
Hi, Skip.
I've read you for years and respect you as a conservative and a Christian.
I want to say, talk about, well, first of all, as far as the economy is concerned, inflation never got to 12%.
It was around 9%, and it was after the pandemic, supply chain issues.
And when Trump took office, it was down to 2.7%, which is about what it is now.
So, you know, let's be accurate with facts.
And speaking of facts, one of the biggest issues I have with people who claim to be Christians is they believe conspiracy theories.
They believe things about other people that aren't true.
January 6th in my hometown, those people were not very Christian, even though they claimed to be when they attacked the Capitol.
So I want you, because I respect you as a columnist and a Christian, please explain the hypocrisy of today's conservative Christians when it comes to whether they're really living up to the ideals of the Bible.
Yeah, you're quite right.
And I've written about this, and others have as well.
Pete Wiener, the New York Times, the late Mike Gerson, The Washington Post, conservative Christians who blasted Bill Clinton for his extramarital activities, alleged and real, said character was all that mattered in a president, or certainly mattered a lot, maybe not all, but mattered a lot.
But when it came to Donald Trump, they seem to be forgiving of anything for him in exchange for the policies they like.
We've had hypocrites around from the beginning.
You could probably say once in a while I've expressed some thoughts that seemed hypocritical.
But I wouldn't characterize all conservative Christians just by what a few do.
I'm a big Broadway musical fan, and I always like to go back to the original Cast, Not the Road Show.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Wednesday morning, we'll talk about the 18,000-plus claims filed in federal court from immigrants challenging detention under the Trump administration with reporter Perla Treviso of the Pro-Publica Texas Tribune Investigative Unit.
And Roger Zachheim, director of the Ronald Reagan Institute, will discuss foreign policy in the Trump administration, including talks between the U.S., Iran, and Ukraine, and the state of European relations.
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Reverend Jesse Jackson's Legacy00:01:27
The Reverend Jesse Lewis Jackson has died at the age of 84.
Known for his many years of activism in the civil rights movement, Reverend Jackson also gained national attention in politics when he launched a 1984 bid for the White House, becoming the second African American to mount a national campaign for president as a Democrat.
He came in third place during the primary behind Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale.
He ran a second campaign for president four years later, but lost that nomination to Michael Dukakis.
Continuing his political service, Jesse Jackson served as a shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997.
His primary role in the unpaid position was to lobby for D.C. statehood.
Throughout his career, Reverend Jackson established several advocacy organizations, which later merged into the current Rainbow Push Coalition, which champions for social justice, voting rights, and economic equality.
In 2000, Reverend Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.
Just last year, he was diagnosed with progressive supernuclear palsy, a rare brain disease that affects body movements with conditions similar to Parkinson's disease.
Reverend Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and their five children.
All day on C-SPAN 2, we're showing programming from our archives of Jesse Jackson in his own words, speaking at conventions about his life and legacy and his presidential campaigns.