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June 19, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
49:09
20240619_hell-never-endorse-biden-again-charlamagne-tha-god
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The Exhausted Majority 00:04:58
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111, every weekday at least.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
It is our 800th episode today.
Wow.
800 episodes.
How did we get here?
Thanks to all of you.
That's how.
Thanks so much for tuning in this day and all the others.
We've had some great shows recently and today is yet another that I'm super excited to bring to you.
Remember that viral, you ain't black if you're not voting for me comment by then candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign?
Well, you can thank my next guest for that one.
Joining me now is Charlemagne Vagad.
He is the author of the new book, Get Honest or Die Lying, Why Small Talk Sucks.
Find out more and get tickets for book signing at whysmalltalksucks.com.
Charlemagne, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Megan.
Thank you for having me.
How are you?
I'm great.
It's so nice to meet you.
You've made so much news with politicians and other cultural figures over the year, many of which we've played on this show, the soundbites thereof.
That one with Joe Biden just went completely viral.
And then I saw you on the view yesterday where they were trying to zero in on you and Biden and this presidential race.
And those ladies really, really, really wanted you to say that you endorse him.
You didn't want to do it, but eventually you admitted, okay, it's kind of a binary choice here.
I mean, it's basically a binary choice and that you're not going to vote for Trump.
So why wouldn't you just be explicit about it?
I wondered about the hesitation.
Simply because I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not a fan.
And, you know, I don't think that, you know, an endorsement, like people think that me not wanting to endorse means that I'm not voting, which I think is the strangest, strangest thing ever.
There was another moment in that conversation where I even said, hey, there's third party candidates.
Whoopi told me she'll beat my behind if I bring up, you know, third party candidates.
So I just think it's kind of strange where we are as a culture and as a society, where it's almost like there's either one of two extremes.
And if you're a person who just, you know, simply chooses to be objective, simply, you know, chooses to look at, you know, both candidates and say, hey, I think there's some right things here.
There's some wrong things there.
There's some good things here.
There's some, you know, good things over here.
Like just me being able to explore both options are all options that are out there.
For some reason, it bothers people.
And I don't, I don't understand why.
They were really pressing you.
They were like, do Biden is solid.
They wanted you to go to your audience and say, vote for Biden.
And it was very strange.
Like, you know, you've got some magic wand that's going to turn this thing if you just say, I endorse.
Can I ask you about third parties?
Would you consider RFKJ?
I mean, I've looked at all of them.
I've looked at RFK.
I've looked at Marianne Williamson.
I've looked at Cornell West.
Like I've looked at all of them.
I've been looking at third parties since, you know, 2016.
Like, you know, like 2016, people would say we didn't have the best options, right?
But I felt like Hillary Clinton was, you know, overly qualified to be president, but it's not like I didn't explore everything.
I explored after President Obama, I explored everything.
I explored conservatives.
I explored, you know, the Green Party.
I explored Democrats.
I feel like that's what you should do as an American citizen.
You know, I don't think the two-party system, you know, has been, has been the best thing for us here in America.
And I don't think there's anything wrong exploring everything.
I'm actually shocked that there hasn't been a third party candidate that's been able to come along and like really galvanize people, especially being that America seems to be, you know, so disappointed in the choices that we have now.
Do you think that there is like more pressure on you to quote endorse because you're black and there's a presumption that you have some influence with black voters who not by huge margins, but by some margins are migrating from the Democrat to the Republican Party or at least from Biden to Trump?
I think I think people, I don't know if people are necessary.
And I see the numbers, like I think I said, or 22% of people, 22% of black people may vote for Donald Trump.
I think that number is overstated a little bit.
But my guy, Tim Ryan, who used to be a congressman in Ohio, Tim Ryan always, well, senator in Ohio, I'm sorry.
Tim Ryan used to always, he talks about the exhausted majority.
And I think that's what most people are in this country.
We're the exhausted majority.
So it's not even just about being tired of, you know, Democrats or being tired of Republicans.
People are just tired of politics, period, you know?
And I think that's what you're seeing a lot of now.
Like even, you know, having the conversation about, you know, who I'm choosing to vote for.
Listen, I've said it over and over what I think about both candidates.
Right.
Stop Lying To Yourself 00:05:14
And it's, it's only me.
I don't know what's going to happen between now and November.
I don't think much is going to change.
But if these people want people to be, if these parties want people to be more energized about their candidates, maybe they should just run better candidates.
I don't think it's that.
I don't think it's rocket science.
You, in the book, you write about your background.
You grew up pretty poor in a single wide trailer and spending most of your time running around through the woods and had very hardworking mom, had a more complicated relationship with your dad.
Did you ever think that that kid, right, who was learning how to catch a rattlesnake in his spare time, would be in the position now where it's like your magic words of I endorse this candidate would be so important, right, to political TV shows and pundits?
No, not on that aspect.
I always knew that I was, you know, here to do something.
I always felt that in my spirit.
I used to be in my grandmother's yard in Monks Corner, South Carolina, and the field, like there used to be a field in front of her yard that used to separate my grandmother's house and like my cousin Gloria's house.
And it's back when I was smaller, the field seemed so big, but it's actually not that big.
But I used to always be acting like I was on a stage and I used to be acting like, you know, I was performing, right?
And it was always like I was in a rock band.
And then, you know, as I got older, it was like I was a rapper.
So I always knew that I was, you know, supposed to be delivering some kind of message.
And this might sound kind of crazy to some people, but I remember meeting a medium back in 2006.
And, you know, he said to me, he goes, you know, he was just talking to me and he said, you know, you're going to achieve a lot of your goals relatively easy, but I just want you to know that, you know, when you get the way you're supposed to go, you're here to deliver a message.
And that same medium told me that he saw like a microphone in my future and he was talking about radio.
And he said, he was naming different radio personalities.
And it was not spooky at the time, but it was just like, hmm, he even told me I was going to have a daughter.
And that was in 2006.
I didn't have my first daughter until 2008.
So long story short, I always knew I ended up having four.
Long story short, I always knew that I was here to be on a platform of some sort, but I didn't know that it would be, I didn't know I would be Captain Sava Joe in an election.
You know, I think I read the book and I really enjoyed it.
And I think what makes you special is your extreme ability to be introspective, reflective about your life, to keep challenging yourself to keep changing, keep growing.
And you're very, very honest about what you perceive as your own shortcomings, whether it was early on in your marriage, something you addressed, whether it was the life lessons you took from your dad and your uncle and your sort of growing up, which you realized as an adult weren't so great, or even right down to, we don't have to get into it, but like the size of certain man parts that you just like, Howard Sternstaff, put it out there, Charlemagne.
I have to say, you're a brave man.
I don't know if you call it brave.
I just, I think that we lack self-awareness, man.
And I think that one of the main reasons that, you know, a lot of people just aren't being honest with themselves, which is why the book is called Get Honest or Die a Lying, is because it's so easy to be real with other people, but it's so hard to be real with yourself.
And, you know, they have all of these cliche terms.
Like, I keep it real, but usually the people who keep it real can only do that with others.
But man, when that mirror gets in front of them, it's very hard for them to have those like super honest conversations with themselves.
And my whole life, that's what I've, you know, challenged myself to be just honest.
Because, you know, my dad used to always tell me something when I was young.
He was like, man, when you lie to me, you're not lying to me.
You're lying to yourself.
And that's something that just always stuck with me.
And you can kind of tell the people who are lying to theirself and our society.
And I went away on a spiritual retreat, you know, earlier this year, me and my wife.
And one of the things that came up for me during that time away was stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people.
And that's literally what I wrote this book for.
I wrote this book for people to stop lying to themselves and stop volunteering those lies to other people.
All right.
I've got to read you this because my fourth grade boy was at an end of year ceremony just two days ago.
And my husband and I went and their fourth grade teacher read to this class of boys the following poem, which speaks exactly to what you're saying.
I cried, I'm not going to lie.
You're a dad.
You're going to be able to relate.
But it's called That Guy in the Glass.
It's by Dale Wimbrow and it goes as follows.
When you get what you want in your struggle for self and the world makes you king for a day, then go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that guy has to say.
For it isn't your mother, brother, or friends whose judgment you must pass.
The person whose verdict counts most in your life is the one staring back at the glass.
You can go down the pathway of years receiving pats on the back as you pass, but your final reward will be heartache and tears if you cheated that guy in the glass.
That's exactly what you're saying.
That Guy In The Glass 00:12:21
That's a theme of your book in some ways.
Powerful words.
Whoever that was who wrote that, they remixed Michael Jackson, man in the mirror.
I just want you to know I'm talking about the man in the mirror.
Man in the mirror.
Yeah.
I'm asking him to change his way.
That's all that is.
But whoever wrote that is absolutely, positively true.
The hardest thing for us to do is look in the mirror every day and be honest with ourselves.
And I literally challenge myself every day.
I wake up every day.
And before I'm, you know, honest with anybody else, before I'm telling anybody else about, you know, what I think they may be doing wrong, or if I give them compliments on what they're doing right, I talk to myself first.
Like, you know, that inner voice in your head, the things you tell yourself are really the most important.
And that's what I do every morning.
It's something you've worked at, you've cultivated.
You talk in the book about the therapy you've been through all the way down to, I don't know if this didn't exactly come from your therapist, but you have a spiritual guru in your life as well.
And the tree hugging, you're a tree hugger, but not exactly in the Green New Deal sense, in a different kind of way.
Yeah.
It's a chapter called Tree Hug the Block.
And, you know, I just talk about the benefits of, you know, doing things like forest bathing, you know, walking around in your yard with your shoes off and your socks off and just doing grounding exercises, you know, going up to trees, putting both hands on the trees, putting your forehead on the tree, taking a few deep breaths, you know, saying a prayer, you know, sometimes, you know, just sitting shirtless with your back to the tree.
You know, me and one of my spiritual advisors, her name is Jadi Albert, we laugh because, you know, she always says, you know, lay down in the ground, face, face down, ass up, right?
And just let the, let the earth, just feel the earth.
And man, you'd be surprised how when you're stressed out or if, you know, you're, you know, battling like a bout of depression or your anxiety levels are high, you'd be surprised how that just brings you right back to center.
And, you know, we used to laugh, you know, back in the day at the people who used to consider themselves, you know, tree huggers.
You'd be like, oh, man, they just high.
Everything, everything is great when you're high.
And guess what?
Megan, they're right.
You know, when you're high, you walking around doing some grounding in the backyard, or even when you're not high, it really does feel great.
And it really does bring you back to center in a real way.
I like the beach too.
I like walking, you know, barefoot on the beach.
You know, I would hope I'm, I would hope the only time you're walking on the beach is barefoot, but walking on the beach barefoot, going in the ocean, you know, you know, being in the ocean, looking right up at the sun, saying a prayer directly from the water to the sun, man, all of that brings you back to center in such real ways.
I know you say in the book, if you're feeling self-conscious about hugging a tree, of actually hugging a tree, putting your face up against the tree, start small, maybe just sit with your back up against the tree so people don't think you're crazy, but you could kind of graduate to a full five-minute hug of a tree and it actually could be transformative.
That's such a beautiful way of dealing with anxiety, which you admit you have dealt with for years, versus just taking a pill, which is what the medical community will push on you these days.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, I'm not against, you know, anybody who needs medication, you know, for certain things, but, you know, personally, I've never had to use it.
I remember my father, even when I was young, when they were trying to put me on like Ridland as a child, you know, my father was like, no, back then, though, it wasn't, you know, he don't need riddling because he don't need to just be on medication.
It was, he don't need no riddling.
He needs his ass beat, right?
So, but even now, it's like, I don't, we don't, we don't necessarily, medicine shouldn't be the first option all the time.
You know, I feel like, you know, this is a glorious earth that we, that we're on.
And like, there's a lot of natural remedies and holistic remedies that we could be, you know, tapping into that bring us those same results.
A lot of those things in the pharmaceutical, pharmaceutical world do.
So how did you make it so big in radio and now podcasting too with the kind of anxiety that you suffer from?
And as you were growing up, you talk about how it was very much social anxiety.
How did you get over that?
How do you deal with that to this day?
That's the strangest thing about anxiety, right?
Like anxiety creeps up on you at weird times.
It's those times when you're just literally laying on your couch at home.
And then all of a sudden you get up and you start checking to see if all the doors are locked, right?
Or, you know, Like you can be laying on the couch and there's a ceiling fan going and you just start thinking to yourself, what if that ceiling fan, you know, flies off and like cuts my head off?
Like it's just the stupidest, strangest things.
But when it comes to like getting in front of a microphone and talking to millions of people, yes, there's a level of anxiety there, but for some reason, it doesn't give you, you know, those same panic attacks of just going through regular everyday life.
I have no idea why I'm able to get in front of a microphone and, you know, talk to millions of people effortlessly, but I can't be in a party with 50 people without wanting to go home, you know, because I'm already having a panic attack because I'm thinking about, you know, the worst possible scenarios happening.
I am too, but it's usually that guy over there is going to come over here and talk to me.
It's not about the ceiling fans.
Oh, God.
I don't want to do that.
That is actually another reason I wrote this book.
That's why I think small talk sucks, because I don't think they understand when you're a person who's already dealing with anxiety and you've had to say prayers and do breathing exercises and put your beads on, right?
And all your other things just to show up in the world.
The last thing I want to do is have a meaningless conversation with a stranger.
Like at least come into my life or come up to me and bring me a conversation of value that may ease, you know, whatever it is I got going on.
I tell a story in the book about, I tell a story in the book how I was at the airport and, you know, you know, I'm a person who's been attacked in the street a couple of times, right?
Like right here, right here in New York City, you know, just for things that I've said on the radio, like, you know, back in the day, though, not anything recently, but like over a decade ago.
And, but I'm still, you still have that PTSD from things like that.
So I'm at the airport and this guy comes up to me and he's trying to talk, but he's like not really saying anything.
So automatically I'm on alert.
And then he finally goes, he's stuttering and he's telling me that he has a speech impediment.
So he's asking me to bear with him while he gets out what it is he's trying to get out.
He cut the small talk, you know, and he told me exactly what it was from the beginning.
So that one little moment eases my anxiety and lets me know, okay, this person isn't a foe.
He's not, he's not any type of opposition in any way, shape or form.
He just has something he wants to say to me and it's hard for him to get out.
And if that, if that individual who has a speech impediment can let me know that we can do the same thing.
We should be able to tell people, hey, man, I don't want to talk about that right now.
And if we link social anxiety to the hatred of small talk, I have to say, I too hate small talk and have a fair amount of social anxiety, not anxiety in the regular lane, but social anxiety.
And I had never linked the two.
This is actually an insightful thought that one is causing the other because I, like you, am much more comfortable when the conversation is substantive.
Yes.
And you think about it, right?
It's a link because when somebody says, okay, Megan Kelly, you have to be this place at seven o'clock at night.
You're already dreading all the things you know you have to do in order to get to this place.
And if you got something to do the next day, you're like, I'm going at seven.
I'm going to be out by eight.
I want to be back home in my bed by nine o'clock.
And I hope when you get there, you're thinking about all the conversations people want to have with you.
You're thinking about, you know, what people are going to try to get from you.
Cause a lot of a lot of it is people just trying to take from your energy at these places.
It's not a lot of pouring into you when you go to these events.
Good.
So stuff like that, man.
It's like, yes, it does cause a lot of a lot of social anxiety.
And it's another reason why I keep telling people, small talk sucks.
I do not like it in any way, shape or form.
And it's not even just about the small chit chat either, Megan.
It's about how we make these micros macros nowadays.
So most of the things these people are coming to talk to you about, they're not big issues, but folks act like they're the biggest issues in the world.
And so when the actual big issues come across our desk, we don't even know how to talk about them, you know, if we even choose to talk about them at all.
And you sound right now to me like Jocko Willink, the badass Navy SEAL, who's like the godfather of all Navy SEALs, who he came on the show and I was talking to him about all the stuff we argue about all the day, every day, all the day.
And he was like, just don't give it any energy whatsoever.
You know, you just, the way you solve these things, you just, you don't even talk about them.
You don't, I'm like, well, there goes my whole career.
I mean, that's kind of what I'm in the business of doing.
No, I don't think you talk about small talk.
I think I think that there's a lot of macro issues that you discuss that we both discuss, you know, and it's not that you're not going to ever have any small talk.
I just want us to cut down on it.
And I want us to get into, you know, just talking about the big issues, talking about the macro issues, the things that actually matter, the things that actually, you know, impact us as a society.
And I think social media does a horrible job, you know, at discussing the macros.
I think social media is the place where micros go to become macros.
And it's these small issues that really don't even matter.
And you know how you know they don't matter?
Because the conversation about them doesn't even last.
It'll last 12 hours at best.
Give it 24, 24 hour news cycle is scratching it nowadays.
If something lasts 24 hours, I'm shocked.
There's a lot of good advice in here for young people who, and you make fun of yourself.
And I could relate to this too, about how every generation is like, this next generation sucks.
They're lazy back in my day, you know, barefoot to school, both ways, no.
But you do raise the point of like telling younger people today, and you have a lot of fans who are young in your audience, you're not entitled to anything.
You should bring a fair amount of humility to your next job.
It's hard work and elbows, Greece, that are going to get you ahead and not a sitting around thinking, why is life so unfair?
That's right.
Yeah, the more things change, you know, the more they stay the same.
So, you know, as we live in this society where everything looks like it's easier than what it actually is because of social media, like, you know, my guy, you know, Pastor Stephen Furdick, he's actually from my hometown, Moscone, South Carolina.
He has this quote where he says, social media is literally everybody is everybody's highlight reel.
So you're comparing your real life.
You're comparing the process that you're, you know, going through in life to somebody else's highlight reel.
And because of that highlight reel that people are constantly posting, we feel like we can just skip steps.
We feel like we can just, you know, skip the process.
Like everything, you know, takes time.
Like there's no such thing as, you know, getting pregnant and then having the baby the next day.
You know, you get pregnant and you carry that baby for nine months for a reason.
There's different trimesters for a reason.
It's a process.
You know, there's a process of coals going to diamonds, right?
Like it's all a process.
And this generation, you know, feels like they can just skip the process only because of social media, because it's so easy to walk down the street and see somebody else's fandom and take a picture in front of it, if that's your thing, and then post it.
And then everybody will be putting 100 emojis in your comments.
Like you're out here doing the, you're out here winning.
It's not even your car.
So it's like, I just try to tell kids, I try to tell the younger generation, you can't escape the process.
And you got to have patience.
Patience is another lost art nowadays because of social media, because you have all of these people lying about where they are in life.
You Can't Escape The Process 00:02:23
Right.
And how they got there.
And it's definitely not there.
And how they got there.
You write in the book about how you had um, a time in which you were dealing, doing drugs, and I think dealing drugs and that's sort of the birth of your stage name.
A lot of our audience was asking in the comments before you came on, what where, what is Charlemagne the god?
And there actually is a very interesting explanation behind it.
Can you tell us?
Yeah, I come from a very small town in monks clones, south Carolina.
The population now is probably like 10 000, 11 000 people, but when I was growing up it was like six to seven thousand.
So like everybody knew each other.
And so when I did get into, you know selling, selling crack, like I would wear a hoodie and I would tell people my name was Charles, because I knew that if I told them my name Lenard right they, they would be like oh that's uh, Larry's son or oh that's, that's Julie's son.
And it was so funny megan, that the people who were buying crack would go tell my parents that I was selling it okay, but they wouldn't tell my parents that they were buying it.
You know, even though people knew.
So Charles was just like a moniker uh, that I that I started running with and that I was um in night school because I got kicked out of two high schools.
I got kicked out of Berkeley high school and then I got kicked out of scrap of high school.
So I was in night school reading a history book and I saw the Roman emperor Charlemagne, and Charlemagne was French for Charles The Great and um, he went about spreading religion and in education and I literally just said to myself that is a cool name.
I already called myself Charles, so i'm gonna just start calling myself uh, Charlemagne.
And you know, back then I used to rap, so it was a cool rap name and I always said it would look good on on a marquee or on the front of a book.
And I think I was right.
And it does.
It does.
And where did the god come from?
My husband Doug has resolved to start using that after many phrases, after having seen me reading your book.
I study uh, I studied the Five Percent teachings, you know, and in the Five percent teachings they teach that uh, you know, God is a Greek word derived from the Aramic words Gumaz, the bar, which means wisdom, strength and beauty, and the first letter of each word was used by Greek students when they would identify their uh, Egyptian teachers, and so it kind of really doesn't make any sense because Charlemagne is Charles the Great and then it's the god.
So it's Charles the Great, the god, but yo man, I was 17 and smoking a lot of back then.
Channel Your Energies Differently 00:02:34
But you know what?
It also makes sense to me because the book does spend some time on positive messaging and how uh, you talk about the astronaut theory and how when we're raising our kids, we can't, we don't want to over correct.
So much against everybody gets a trophy society that we veer into cynicism with our kids like no you, I mean, let's be realistic you're not actually going to the Nfl.
Maybe you should channel your energies a different way.
You're very much against that.
I think the positive, uplifting name for yourself is totally in line with now.
I know how you parent your own daughters absolutely, and you know I got, I got four daughters.
And when they ask me, when they tell me they want to do things, I don't shoot it down because I had older people in my life who did that to me.
I I tell a story in one of my, my first books uh, because this is my third book, but I tell a story in my first book, black privilege, about how um, I had a, I had a, a cousin aunt.
She like my mom's, my mom's cousin, but she was also like an aunt to me as well.
And I remember just talking about all of these big plans I had and all of these things I wanted to do in my life, and I remember she said to me, don't set your goals so high.
You know, don't set your goals so high because if you don't reach them you're going to be disappointed.
And I paused for a second and I said that is the stupidest I ever heard in my life.
Like why would you ever tell a child that?
Like I wasn't even a child, I was like I don't know 19 20, but I was like why would you ever tell anybody that?
So, my thing with my kids, when they want to do something yo, let's try it out.
Like I got one of my, one of my daughters recently started soccer and you know she, she liked it at first past couple of practices.
She don't want to go, why?
She said it's too hot out.
I don't want to be out there in that heat.
I'm not going to force her to go out there and do the soccer if she doesn't want to, if she, because if you genuinely love something, you're going to want to do it regardless, right?
That's how I was with radio.
It didn't matter that I wasn't making any money.
I've been doing radio 26 years.
I didn't start making money really really in radio till probably my I don't know 10th or 12th year in radio, so it took a long time.
You know, I started doing radio in 1998.
I didn't start really making money until probably 2010, right so, but I loved it.
So that thing that you uh love to do that is probably going to change your life is that thing that you're going to do for free.
So if she's, if she doesn't want to go do soccer, i'm not, i'm not going to press her to do it.
Yeah, there's no, but i'll give it.
I'll give her the opportunity to that at this point in your life.
So I want to ask you this, because you're very positive in your messaging.
You're real uh, but you're positive in your messaging.
And then there was a chapter I wanted to ask you about, which is 16.
Systemic Racism And Division 00:15:34
This wasn't you, it was uh, Aaron Magruder who was the man behind the Boondocks comic strip and it was the only chapter I was like wow well, this is not positive, this is, this is some stark stuff and it's about deflation.
Yeah, it's about race in America and it's about you know us allegedly being a white supremacist country and Republicans don't do for poor white people, but they still vote Republican and they do it because if they were to vote Democrat, the n-word would benefit.
It's got a lot of incendiary thoughts on how evil Republicans are, because they really just exist to keep the black man down.
And I it's not you, but you put it in your book by this guy, Aaron Magruder.
So what are your feelings on that?
Um, I think Aaron is expressing in a an emotion and feelings and saying things that a lot of people feel.
You know, a lot of people in the black community absolutely positively feel like that, but it's not even you know just Republicans.
I just feel like you know government in general.
I think that there's been a lot of systemic things that have been done, you know, to black people in this country to put, you know, black people in certain positions in this country, and there hasn't been enough systemic things done, you know, to get us out.
You know I think one of the, you know, main critiques of the Democratic Party is that you know they are supposed to be the party that that represents us and and and supports us.
And you know people don't feel like they have fought hard, hard enough for black people.
That's why every presidential election cycle, we're back having these same conversations about Democrats going out there and earning the black vote.
Like if Democrats had done historically what they say they are going to do for black people, they wouldn't be in this position every four years where they're out here trying to push me in.
What do you think that is?
Like, what do you think that is?
Because I know there's a divide between the parties and some factions of the country that the Democrats, and we keep hearing them saying things that we heard Biden at the Morehouse College the other day saying with a very dark message about this country, that the country doesn't love you back as a young black graduate and talking in very negative terms about what their futures look like.
And you contrast that just to what Barack Obama said in front of the same audience, you know, eight years ago.
It was very uplifting and also empowering.
Like you can do it.
You can make a difference in this great country.
You have nothing but blue sky ahead of you.
Very different, stark messages.
What's in chapter 16 sounds more like Biden?
So how do you see it?
More like Biden, more like Obama?
Well, I think I would like to see it more like President Obama.
And the reason I would like to see it more like President Obama, because as he said, these are his words, the audacity of hope.
Like you have to be optimistic.
Like I'm optimistic because I was raised on a dirt road in Monks Corner, South Carolina.
My mother was an English teacher.
The most she ever made, you know, was $30,000 a year at one point.
You know, my father was a great guy, you know, who had a lot of flaws, right?
And he was a construction worker, but he also had his own mental health issues and his, you know, he dealt with substance abuse.
And I'm not supposed to come, you know, out of out of that circumstance.
But because, you know, I was able to come out of that circumstance and just because of, you know, other conversations I've seen from people who come from environments like mine, I have to have the audacity of hope.
I have to have, you know, optimism, but I also have to deal with reality too.
And it's also, it's just interesting that, you know, President Biden would go to Morehouse and, you know, make those statements when a lot of those issues, those problems, he's contributed to, you know, whether it was, you know, the 86 mandatory minimum sentencing, you know, whether it was the 88 crack laws, the 94 crime bill.
There's a lot of things that he, you know, contributed to in regards to keeping, you know, the black man down, right?
So it's just interesting that he would go to Morehouse and talk like that.
You're the president of the United States of America.
You are the person that, you know, we are looking to, you know, at least, if not change some of those things, speak to changing some of those things because you contributed to so much of that.
What do you think?
Tim Scott, he's from South Carolina, still reportedly on the short list toward becoming Trump's VP.
He says he firmly believes America is not a racist country, a belief I share.
Do you?
No, I highly disagree with that.
I mean, of course there's systemic racism in this country.
I don't believe every single white person in America is racist, but there has been systemic racism.
Like, yes, 100% sure has.
Everything from, you know, slavery to, you know, Jim Crow laws to redlining to, you know, the war on drugs.
Like, yes, like to act to act like there is not systemic racism in this country is silly.
Today, 2024.
I mean, it's like to think that Democrats who run the education system and largely the criminal justice system and so many, so much of government today who pride themselves on being DEI and anti-racist and all that, that they're running these massive racist organizations would seem a stretch to even some of them.
Well, you have to have these DEI programs because of systemic racism.
So things like that tell you that these systemic racism still exists because you still have to have programs like that to ensure that there's diversity, to ensure that there's equity, to ensure that there's inclusion.
So yes, systemic racism absolutely still exists in America.
It's not something, it's something that we can dismantle, but we have to want to dismantle it.
And the only way we're going to dismantle it is if we first acknowledge that it exists.
Like as I say in the book, and it's a great quote, you just can't heal what you don't reveal.
I don't think any of us do ourselves any favors by acting like these things don't exist.
You know, I mean, I think the difference between where you are and where I am is I acknowledge everything you said about this country and its history.
You know, we had a couple rough 200 years from the foundation with slavery and then through the Jim Crow laws.
But then we got to a place where we passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and we had a way, a revolution in the country to start looking at this differently.
And when I grew up in the 80s and the 90s, race relations had vastly improved.
We were hanging out with one another, not thinking about skin color all the time.
We actually instituted affirmative action programs, which were upheld under law, even though they're not totally consistent with our constitution.
But we did all of that because we understood the history.
And now we're in this place where it seems to be flipping to what Kendi says, which is anti-white racism.
That's fine.
That's how we're going to remedy the remnants that are still left over the past.
And I think that's causing more racial division.
Am I wrong?
I think social media makes us think that, you know, certain things, I think social media amplifies certain things on purpose.
And we have to be very careful about that because we don't even know if a lot of these conversations are real on social media.
Like, you know, I still believe that Coyote Pro is alive and well.
And I think that a lot of times these conversations that happen on social media really just happen to keep us all having a whole lot of small talk, having a whole lot of small talk about, you know, foolishness and nonsense, like the anti-white racism.
Like what, what is that?
You would have to tell me what that is.
Like, what is it?
It's what Kendi's pushing.
What Kendi says is the answer to past discrimination is future discrimination and present discrimination against those who perpetrated it, notwithstanding the fact that we had nothing to do with what happened in the 1860s.
We weren't around.
It wasn't us.
It wasn't most of our ancestors.
And most of us have a completely open-minded attitude toward our black and brown friends and would never do anything to hurt them or see them as less than.
And we don't want us or our children being punished because of sins of the father, grandfather, great-great, whoever.
Got you.
Yeah, I can't speak for all black people because all black people aren't monolithic.
But, you know, all the black people that I know, they just want equality.
You know, they want to be, they, they want to be treated, you know, fairly.
They don't want to, you know, walk outside and have, you know, a police officer harass them just because of the color, the color of their skin.
You know, they don't want to be, you know, denied a job or, you know, a place to stay, you know, just because of the color of their skin.
We don't want to be black supremacists.
We don't want to, we don't want to, you know, be what, you know, white supremacists were to black people.
Like that's not, at least the black people I know, that's not what we're after in any way, shape or form.
Well, I think the messaging of the book on empowerment and possibilities and getting honest, as it's called, getting honest or dying lying, makes a ton of sense.
And I hope we can continue this conversation.
I know you got to run, but I have so much more I want to talk to you about.
So please come back.
I mean, I got like 10 more minutes if you want to talk.
I don't know.
Oh, you do?
Oh, great.
Oh, okay.
Sorry.
No, let's keep it rolling then.
All right, so let's can we spend a minute on politics?
Because I am interested in your thoughts on it.
Because I know you're not a fan of Trump.
And I think that you think he's racist, but you tell me because I look at Biden's history of comments and I'm like, oh my Lord, including to you, that thing about if you're not going to vote for me, you ain't black.
That's listed on the on the tally of the racist or racially insensitive things he said.
You know, what's the more interesting conversation for me?
And this is, I'm glad you brought that up in regard to Trump.
Why does nobody ever talk about him being unpatriotic?
Like not like not being patriotic.
And what I mean by that is if he says he wants to suspend the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election or, you know, his lawyers were in court and his lawyers were like, well, he never agreed to support the Constitution.
Or we saw him, you know, attempt to lead lead an attempted coup of this country.
Like there's, that's just unconstitutional.
Like, why does nobody ever say he's not a patriot?
Like, why does that discussion never come up?
Because when I think about it, when I think about how mad, you know, conservatives seem to get sometimes when they see people, you know, taking a knee, right?
At football games and they call that, you know, not being patriotic.
How come nobody ever says, you know, wanting to suspend, you know, the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election?
How come nobody ever says that's not patriotic?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's no question.
I don't know what specific year you're referring to, but I've seen Trump truth social posts that speak to exactly what you are saying.
I don't know about in court, but he's suggested things like that.
I think I'm not going to defend Colorado.
But here's the thing.
So, and I don't defend Trump's behavior after January 6th at all.
I don't think he behaved well in any way, shape or form.
But I just think that there are bigger issues.
And I think if you're going to talk about actions that are extra constitutional, there are sins, I mean, grave sins on both sides, but especially on Biden's side.
You know, the end around he did on the Supreme Court on some of the COVID stuff on the rent abatement possibilities on now the student loans that he's not allowed to be doing, but he's trying to find a way to do it anyway, on trying to get Trump off the ballot so that voters can't vote for him on using the justice system for the first time in almost 250 years to go after a political opponent, all those things.
They don't make me say, yay, for all the stuff Trump did post-January 6th, but they even the playing field for me more where I'm like, I'm just going to vote on who I think is going to get the country in the best shape.
I think that's what most people are.
But, you know, even what you said just now, it's kind of like the Spider-Man meme, right?
Because, you know, you can say those things about President Biden, but then you point to Donald Trump in January 6th.
You can also point to Donald Trump trying to find 11,000 more votes in Georgia.
And, you know, we always know voter suppression is a thing.
So it's just like, listen, man, I just don't believe in politicians, period.
And as I said earlier, anybody, anybody that wants me to, you know, endorse a politician at this point, then y'all have to put out some better candidates and put out some people that I believe in.
Cause I don't believe in any of them.
But to your point, I'm not sitting out the election in November, which is something that I would also like to just put on record.
I've never told anybody not to vote.
Now, I've had conversations with people and I've said, I understand why people don't want to, but I think that you should still get out there and vote for, you know, who you think can keep this country on course.
You know, like for me right now, I feel like I'm voting to preserve, you know, democracy because, you know, I've read Project 25.
I don't know how you feel about it, but, you know, Project 25, it's very terrifying to me.
And, you know, like I said, we've seen what Donald Trump has attempted to do, to do on January 6th.
And, you know, hearing rhetoric like, I want to suspend the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election.
That's scary.
That's not the kind of... America I want to live in.
Well, what do you think about Joe Biden bragging that he's doing ends around the Supreme Court, which is what he just said this week on this so-called student loan forgiveness, which essentially means the truckers listening to us right now are going to have to pay off the student loans of the rich college elites, something he was told by the Supreme Court he didn't have the power to do.
He's not a king.
And he's out there bragging that he's doing ends around them, notwithstanding rulings he's forced to follow.
Like that stuff, too, is extra constitutional.
His refusal to enforce the border law, extra constitutional.
I mean, he could have been impeached for just what's happening along the southern border alone, not to mention him having classified documents and all the other laws that he has allegedly broken.
I look at him and I think he's got no moral high ground.
I don't think either one of, you cannot talk about anybody standing on a moral high ground when Donald Trump is on the other side.
I don't think either one of them can talk about, you know, standing on moral high ground.
But, you know, when it comes to doing things like the student loan debt, this might sound crazy, but I know this is why people like certain elected officials.
I feel like this is why some people like Trump.
I think people have no problem with you bending the rules or breaking the rules if there's a tangible benefit to it.
I think that, you know, a lot of people like Trump and they support Trump because they know Trump is willing to go hard for who he considers his base.
Now, you know, like Aaron said in Death of a Nation in my book, you know, he's convinced these poor, you know, white voters that he is for them, but their conditions aren't getting any better either, you know?
Why People Like Trump 00:06:02
And I have to say that the economy was much better under Trump.
And the voter, poll after poll after poll reflects that.
Sure, but it never trickles down to the poor.
And I don't even understand why we keep acting like it does.
Like, you know, it's like you'll see people say the economy is great.
You know, stocks are up.
The people I'm talking about don't have no stocks.
The people I'm talking about that live in those rural areas and most corners, South Carolina, like where I'm from, they don't know nothing about no damn stock market.
They can't see past their bills.
All they're trying to do is keep some food on their table and a roof over their head.
My first, and we've been laughing.
Under Biden, inflation has risen to plus 17%.
And then some is still hovering.
And these people are paying almost 30% more on certain things like food and not to mention gas prices.
That's all under Joe Biden because of his spendthrift ways, because he's just dumping the people's money on all sorts of legislation, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and the COVID relief that didn't have to go through when he first took over.
All those things have consequences.
Trump, I'm not, I'm not.
He kept off slow.
Listen, the poor was still poor under Trump.
And Trump had Trump did convince a whole bunch of poor white people to go out there and vote for him, but their conditions have not changed.
I guarantee you, if you was the worst.
I'm not saying Trump solved it.
Yes.
But they changed for the worse under Joe Biden.
And the thing is, like, they think they worry about immigration, right?
Immigrants coming in with cheap labor, taking the jobs that were available to them.
That's all happening under Joe Biden in record numbers now.
Like they, the, the kitchen table issues that people vote on have gotten worse under Biden.
and we're better under Trump.
There was a black focus group in what state was it, Steve?
Was it South Carolina?
No, was it it was Georgia that happened just the other day that MSNBC went down and conducted and they asked these black voters and we're talking about all voters, not just black, but why would you vote for Trump?
Like, what are you thinking?
Because they said they're going to.
Here's what they said.
We actually queued it up.
Do each of you support Donald Trump?
I do.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, for all three of you.
Yes.
Has this trial changed your opinion, even caused you to waver or question that at all?
No, it's actually caused me to support him more.
I just don't believe that it's a coincidence that we have a trial happening in Atlanta.
We have one happening in New York.
So the question people are beginning to ask themselves like I did is like, why now?
I've talked to many people who formerly identified as a Democrat.
They have changed their political persuasion to independent and they are looking forward to voting for Trump because now they find something in common with a political candidate at that level.
When you say they find commonality, what is that commonality?
They have felt persecuted by the system of American injustice.
And it's not a stretch for them to think that Trump may be a victim as well.
And there was more on it, Charlemagne, where they said they think he'd be a stronger leader in dealing with some of our adversaries.
Yeah, I can see where they would feel that way about the stronger leader part.
I hate that whole conversation about people are gravitating, black people are gravitating towards Trump because, you know, we've been persecuted by the system and he's being persecuted by that same system.
No, Donald Trump is a person who has reaped the benefits of that system.
He's a white male, rich, privileged man.
That is the reason that these trials have even taken so long to happen because they were even dragging their feet.
America has no system in place to even prosecute a person like Donald Trump.
They never thought that they would have to do that.
A former president of the United States of America, like they, they like, no.
So I disagree with all of that.
I disagree with all of that wholeheartedly.
Now, I do feel, if you ask me why people, you know, the black people, some black people I know have gravitated towards Trump, you know, a lot of them talk about money, right?
Like they talk about the stimulus checks and they talk about, you know, the PPP loans, right?
And what I would tell them is, yeah, you got some extra money in your pocket, but at what cost?
At what cost?
Because think about the circumstances that happened in order for you to get that money in your pocket.
Millions of people had to die because of COVID, because of, you know, Donald Trump's poor planning in regard to the COVID, of him getting rid of, you know, pandemic teams.
It's not a stretch to blame COVID on him.
I mean, I think we have the Chinese.
But he did get rid of the pandemic teams that were in place to kind of, you know, at least, at least slow down, you know, things slow down.
Oh, come on.
What do we have, Anthony Fauci?
I think that's a fair thing to blame on Trump because he should have turfed that guy out long before.
I'm just saying, I feel like I think Trump could have handled COVID better.
And I don't want to see him.
I do.
I want more Americans to get more money in their pocket, but not at the expense of millions of people dying because of, let's just say, poor planning from the government.
And you have to say the administration that was in place at that time, because it was the Trump administration in place during that.
All right.
Well, we'll put a pin in that one.
And going back over COVID is just a bummer in general.
But there is a lot more to discuss.
You've got a busy day ahead promoting the book.
And I wish you all the best on it to be continued, I hope.
Yes.
Yes.
That's why I like, but that's why I like these conversations.
That was not small talk.
We did not have small talk the last 10 minutes.
And we disagreed and didn't disrespect each other in no way, shape, or form.
We had conversation.
It wasn't confrontation.
Can't America learn something from this?
Megan?
Yes.
Right on.
All right.
Don't forget, buy the book today.
It's called Get Honest or Die Lying by Charlemagne the God.
It's fascinating, as you can tell, is he?
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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