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Welcome to Progress After Dark. Thank you, Dean Obadala, for the excellent lead-in that I can never hope to measure up to. I'm Fuegelsang, aided and abetted by the most dangerous production squad in radio, Chris Haussell, running this beast out of South Carolina, the great Thea Harper producing our show out of Brooklyn for the next three hours. We're going to be coming at you with Backs, Empathy, Music, and something resembling, but not quite achieving, wit. It's so good to be with you. We are joined by some of our favorite guests tonight. The great Lawrence Ross is back to talk about Kamala Harris and the history of African-American sororities and fraternities, which we're about to learn a lot more of as more of her backstory comes to the fore and Brian Tyler Cohen will be joining us tonight. I want to play this really quick. This is Tim Walz. He had some comments today. He spoke to the AFSCME. I can never pronounce AFSCME, the Union of Municipal and Public Employees. Here he is calling out the Trump Vans tickets glaring lack of support for actual working people. We all understand it in here. You've heard me say this. I know I'm preaching to the choir a little bit today. But the choir needs to sing. The choir needs to sing. And just so you know who's not in the choir, Donald Trump and JD Vance, they see the world very differently than we do. The only thing those two guys know about working people is how to work to take advantage of them. That's what they know about it. Every single chance they've gotten, they've waged war on workers and their ability to collectively bargain to take that away from them. What we're asking for is better wages, better benefits, better lives and dignity in the work that we do. There's a great bill in Congress should be the easiest vote you've ever taken. The pro-act make it easier to form a union and bargain. Allow people to have the freedom and make a choice. Allow them to be able to do that. They also oppose the Public Service Freedom Negotiate Act, which would require states to bargain with their employees. Wow, can he still please talk like that once he's vice president, please? Tammy in Texas, on line three, thank you so much for waiting. You're on SiriusXM. Hi Tammy. Hi, I read something that I haven't really heard mentioned about Tim Walks and his military service. What's that? And that's that even if he knew that his unit was going to be deployed, he wouldn't have been deployed with him because he was not fit for service because he had a cochlear implant in his ear because he was going to restart it and he wouldn't have been deployed with this because he would have been considered unfit for duty. I didn't even know that part about it. Him retiring really wouldn't have changed anything about him being deployed because he would have been deployed. No, yeah, I mean, as far as we know, he broke no rules or regulations by retiring when he did or how he did. If he did anything wrong, his battalion commander never held him accountable for it. And, and you know, I don't see how they're going to be able to get away with using this against him. It's only going to help the people. It's only going to help them with people who already hate Tim Walks and like Donald Trump. I mean, even if he did, even if he did avoid going to Iraq, he's got 24 years of honorable service. I mentioned to people who say that that, you know, tell you says Donnie Bones first. Yep. Yeah, exactly. You're literally voting for a draft Dodger who mocked Donald Trump's stole from veterans with Trump University. That's all I got to say to these people, Tammy. I say to them all, please explain why stealing from veterans is acceptable to you and why it should be acceptable to me. That's the only question I have for these folks because he stole from that. You could debate it with the Trump with the charity and the vets fundraiser because he got caught stealing and he had to pay some money back. He tried to, but he definitely stole from veterans with his fraud on life. I don't remember where I read that, but I read that somewhere. I think it was on daily calls a couple of days ago. Okay, right on. Well, even if even without it, I'm going to research that because I'd like to know, but even without it, he didn't do anything wrong. He was not. He got an honorable discharge. Yeah. And, you know, even if he knew they were being deployed, he wasn't going to be deployed with them anyway. Exactly right. Exactly right. He served honorably for 24 years. Unless there's new revelations that show he broke the law in some way. What's that? Yeah, he did. But JD van served honorably as well. He was a military reporter. I know he was a reporter like Al Gore was a reporter in Vietnam. Neither of them saw combat. They were both involved with the war effort, neither of them actually saw combat. And I'm not going to crap on on JD Vance's career of sitting in air condition trailers and typing up propaganda press releases for the Bush White House. Because at least he was serving. So there we go. Yeah. He's just serving. I don't have anything you can say. Yeah. Right on. Tammy, thank you. I'm going to look in the cochlear implant. That's fascinating. And I really appreciate your calling and being on top of this stuff. Thank you. Have a great evening. We're at 866-997-4748. Jeff in Indiana has been on hold forever. Jeff, thank you so much online for your on progress. Welcome. Well, I'm sure pleased to be here, John. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. I think I have this great idea. OK. Of having Taylor Swift invite Emily Lou Harris to open to open for her a few shows and come out and do a duet with her and then and then say as she says goodbye to Emily Lou, say typically like say hi to your sister from another mother or or a Mrs. Harris or in some way without exposing herself to nice indoors, Kamala Harris. Nice. Well, I think it'd be nice for both of them to endorse Kamala Harris, don't you? I don't think that's asking too much. Well, but Taylor doesn't really want to Taylor Swift, my friend, Jeff, I'll bet you money. I'll bet you I'll bet you five bucks that Taylor Swift will endorse Kamala Harris before election day. Well, here'd be a nice way to go. And I want to ask you to investigate one other thing that last column mentioned the bone spurs issue. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you for your service. Oh, my God. When when when did you serve, sir? Thank you. Thank you for your service. Sixty seven to seventy three right now. I would like to. I would like to verify the rumor that that he presented someone else's x-ray, someone that actually had beds, bone spurs. That Trump's doctor did? Yeah. The family doctor, I think, has long admitted. No, I read that. I read that. Well, I read that somehow someone with actual bone spurs x-ray was used in that fraud. Okay. Well, they did because the doctor, the doctor, he was from Queens, Larry Brownstein. He died about 15 years ago. He told the story of giving Donald Trump the diagnosis and his daughters have said that he made the whole thing up as a favor to Fred Trump, who of course was a big real estate douchebag in Queens at the time. Both of his daughters talked about this and they said they knew it for years. Yeah. He and Fred were friends and that doctor also rented his office from Fred. Yeah. Yep. So yeah, there's a quid pro quo right there. So Trump got diagnosed with bone spurs when he was twenty two about the x-ray. Yeah. I would too. I don't think we'll ever hear about it. You know, and again, I'm against Vietnam. I think it was wrong. Don't go any way you can avoid going, but Donald Trump never protested that war. You know what I'm saying? Bill Clinton protested the war and he didn't want to go. Muhammad Ali protested the war. He didn't want to go. They were draft of fires. These guys who didn't protest the war, but avoided going like Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, they're the draft dodgers. And I thank you for serving. The Bush is worse. He's a deserter. Yeah, he was. He was meetings. People all forgot about it, but Baby Bush was allowed to first they sent him to the Texas Air National Guard to work in the Champagne Squadron, flying decommissioned aircraft to protect the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong. And then he's allowed to just up and leave. He's allowed to up and leave to go to Arkansas to work on like it's the like he's the governor of Arizona. I'm sorry, the governor of Alaska. I just I feel like going by and he's just he just leaves and he's allowed to because he's a fortunate son who can bail. He's already bailing and then he bails on his bailing. It's called deserter. Yes, sir. Thank you. And I'm a fortunate son to my dad was a lifelong veteran who was who was at Yalta in the JAG and Satan reserves till the day he died and I'm from St. Paul as he was from he's from the neighboring he represented in Congress, U.S. Congress the first second district of Minnesota right now. No way. Yeah. Well, when I say fortunate son, Jeff, I mean it in the context of John Fogarty of a rich kid who doesn't have to go serve and poor kids go to serve. You certainly put in your time wearing the uniform as did your dad. And I love your Taylor Swift idea. Maybe she can bring out Joni Mitchell too. Just put that out there. I love Emmy Lou Harris. Well, you need to check Joni Mitchell on stage two as long as we're fantasizing here. The last name hookup is what Emmy Lou Harris is. Oh, you're right. Ah, you're right. Okay. See, you're swifter than me. Thank you, man. You're brilliant. Oh, great. I'm over. I appreciate it. I put it out there, my friend. Okay. When I see Taylor this weekend, I'll bring it up. Thank you so much, sir. Oh, good. The way the way airborne vets say say hi to each other's airborne. So to you, that's an honor. Thank you, sir. I'm not worthy. We're at 866-997-4748, 866-997, we're going to be joined in a few minutes by our friend, the great Keith Price. I want to play this for a second on Sirius XM POTUS. Our friend Jamie Raskin came by to remind our friend Julie Mason that we have to keep one eye on what Donald Trump will do if and or when he loses this election. Yeah. Well, I think that that's logical for people to be worried about that because they're obviously not running a real campaign where they go out and try to expand their base and bring in new voters and reach new constituencies. I mean, they're busy every day, alienating tens of millions of people, whether it's, you know, childless cat ladies or immigrants or, you know, you name it. And so that's not the way you run a campaign. If you think you're running the win, they're running to basically sue and to try to play a series of games and dirty tricks. So that's, you know, I think that is a decent anxiety people are having. But I will tell you that, look, we saw what they did in 2020 and we saw it culminate on January 6th with a combination of fraud, propaganda and violence. And so we are going to be ready this time with teams of lawyers all over the country in the swing states ready to defend the vote and will be ready, of course, in Washington. And on January 6th, it's just unfortunate that they're a political party now, which barely merits the title. It's much more like a cult of personality. And they've positioned themselves outside of the constitutional order. They're basically attacking the whole electoral system from the outside. My God, I love that man. 866-997-4748, again, they're going to try to steal it. They tried to steal it in 2020. They got violent in 2020. They're hiring lawyers now. We've seen these laws pop up all over the country where certain Republican legislators are allowed to throw out votes from certain counties. If they think there may have been some malfeasance, even without proof, they're going to try to steal it, start paying attention to all the Democrats talking about all the lawyers on the ground. 866-997-Grit. Let's get one more call before the break. Michael in California on line 6, thank you so much for waiting. Welcome to serious sex. Michael. Thank you for taking my call and thank you to your crew. I just wanted to mention something real quick. The court that you played of Governor Walz, he was talking to a labor union, and I was just thinking that Donald Trump's comments to Elon Musk where he was praising Elon Musk last night for being tough and firing striking workers, that should be a commercial. That should be a commercial break for the Harris-Wolf campaign and should be played in Michigan. You know, Trump has said enough, they just have enough material for so many commercials right before election day and even when people start voting by mail. We should play that clip again because you're right, it would be a great ad, and especially because Donald Trump sounds like a man who steals chickens in it. I mean, he sounds like Sylvester Staccat losing his denture. I mean, he's shocking. Like, yes, he went in part. Chris, do we still have that clip? Can we play that one more time of Trump celebrating Elon Musk trampling on the rights and dreams of his workers? I mean, I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, you want to quit? You're going strike day. I won't mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that's okay. You're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone, and you are the greatest. You would be very good. Oh, you would love it. But you know, if you look at Argy. He sounds like one of those creepy guys on the orgy at the end of Requiem for a Dream. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. There's your campaign ad. Right there. That's it. Yeah. I stand. Yeah. I bow down to your wisdom. And by the way, not to put too far in a point on it, my friend. But there's going to be more, aren't there? Every day. We're going to get more campaign ads out of this guy. Yeah. Thanks, man. Have a good one. Thank you. Let me go. We got to take a quick break. When we come back, we are joined by our comedy Daddy, Mr. Keith Price, who I've missed for the whole week and more of your calls at 866-997-4748 and a lot more news from the day to cover as well. This is progress. Have you ever covered a carpet stain with a rug, ignored a leaky faucet, pretended your half painted living room is supposed to look like that? Well, you're not alone. We've all got unfinished home projects, but there's an easier way. Thumbtack is the app that makes it easier to care for your home. Pull out your phone and in just a few taps. Search, chat, and book, highly rated prose right in your neighborhood. Download Thumbtack and start caring for your home the easier way. What makes a life a good one? Is it the adventure you have? Or the friends you find along the way? Maybe it's pursuing you passion while striving to protect, defend, and save what you believe in every single day. So, what makes a life a good one? In the Coast Guard, we think it's all of the above and more, but you'll have to find out for yourself. Visit GoCoastGuard.com to learn more. By the way, I was so excited talking about Donald Trump and Elon's ridiculous conversation on Twitter last night, and Trump's ramblings about nuclear warming and proliferation. I didn't get to the lies. Trump said that the Democratic Republic of Congo is emptying its prisons to send them here. That's a lie. Elon didn't correct him. Kamala Harris is not more left-wing than Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump is not a champion of free speech, which Elon Musk said. Elon Musk is wrong that inflation can be stopped by empowering what he calls a government efficiency commission and deregulating all major industries like the ones he owns. That is not true. Donald Trump talked about places that were made uninhabitable for thousands of years after nuclear planned accidents, and Elon the one time he pushed back said, "I've eaten locally grown vegetables at Fukushima." My God, they just kept lying and lying. Trump is not a champion of free speech. He's a champion of free stuff. He wants to ban flag burning and people in jail. He wants the government to strip TV stations of their licenses if he doesn't like what they say about him. He wants to ban woke ideology, whatever that is. He's not a fan of free speech. You know who is? Our next guest, my comedy daddy, my babe, my bow, and my boo, Keith Price was the first openly gay, black radio host at SiriusXM, and he co-anchored The Morning Show on the Breakthrough Channel out cue. Do yourself a favor and catch his wonderful Broadway-focused Instagram, Keith Price's curtain call. Comedy Daddy, I missed you all week. Welcome back to The Love Festival. Oh, hi John. I missed you too, my friend, but you're off performing and being fabulous everywhere. So that's what happens to happen. While you're writing your book. Come on, man. No, yeah. I've not seen it. I've not seen it. Not too much travel. I've been, I was in Atlanta two weeks ago, other than that. I've been chained to a desk and not seeing the sun. But I'm happy to be seeing you and Keith, we've talked with a number of our guests tonight about the fact that these right-wingers were all set to say let's go brand and then go after Hunter Biden. I haven't heard about the importance of Hunter Biden's laptop in three whole weeks, Keith. No one's talking about it, but they were not ready. They were not ready. None of us could have predicted the enthusiasm and joy and popularity of this almost three week old Kamala Harris campaign, I want to play some audio, but let me ask you, I mean, these are the gang that can't smear straight. Every five minutes, they're trying to find a new way to attack and all they're doing is getting cheers from people who are already voting for Trump. Well, the good thing is, is that they are spending all this time spending all these really ridiculous stories because it is very clear that they have nothing else to do. They still do not have a platform. They still do not have ways to make the country better except for denigrating the people that are running for the office that are on the other side. That's all they got. And so I feel like that it was a very smart move looking back now with hindsight 2020 that they didn't do this, that they did make this big switch or they did make this big plan. And maybe, I don't want to be the one that's suggested because that means I'm giving people way too much more credit than I think, but maybe this might have been the plan all along. This might have been the plan from the beginning if we could just hang in it, Joe would hang in there as long as possible and do a rope with dope. And then look, what I said for weeks, Keith, you were on the show, I said, because people didn't want Joe Biden to drop out our listeners and I promised I was going to be agnostic about it. And I said, you know, I'm going to support whatever, I'm not a Democrat. So whatever they decide, I'll support it. But I said, if Joe Biden were to drop out, he would not do it until after the Republican convention, once a running mate, a shitty running mate was locked in. Let me tell you, that might be Joe Biden's last greatest gift to us and his name is JD Vance. Yes, it is. It's party to retire. It's 80 year old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election. Nikki Haley, occasionally, there's, there she is speaking the truth. Nikki Haley also said, uh, over the winter, if we don't get, if we don't take Donald Trump off the ticket, Kamala Harris will be the next president. And wow, for a lady who's wrong about everything, she's right. Well, you know, again, cause she thought it was going to be her site. So, you know, she's, she's, she's now like, I mean, they all are now scrambling to try to find a place for themselves because honestly, when, when this endeavor on the Republican party fails, because I'm trying to be very positive, that when this fails, all of these people like Nikki Haley, um, uh, Marjorie Taylor Greens, uh, uh, uh, Matt Gates, they're all going to have to find a whole new objective upon how to pursue their whatever it is that they're pursuing. They're going to have to find a new way to do it because if they've got it, they've got it already. They've got a racist or term that they don't realize is racist and they call her a DEI higher. It's insanely qualified woman. And they're saying, oh, she only got it because of her race and her gender because they can't not be sexist. They can't not be racist. They can't not step on rakes and scare off the voters they need. Nope. And again, you know, in the end, in the end, if this plan works out, it will be very interesting to see what the Democrats will do if they're given both the house and the Senate and the White House. It's like, are they going to act? My thing is, is that if they get it all, are they going to start acting like the Republicans and just get shit that they want to get done and fuck everybody else? Because honestly, that's the only thing that we want to see next. We want to see them, you know, figure out like whatever that plan was that mansion and cinemas stood in the way of doing, bring that back and get that back on the plate. Well, we got a lot of that back. We got a lot of that already and that that was the Build Back bedroom. They were able to put a lot of that into the Inflation Reduction Act and it's really had a positive effect on the economy. But I agree. I want to see something done about the filibuster, Keith. I want to see something done about the Electoral College. I want to see Roe v. Wade codified court. If they want to go Supreme Court and you know what I think, I'm going Bernie Sanders 2020. I think that they should announce they want to lower the age for Medicare to 50. Just go down to 50 and watch how excited people get. Let people realize that, oh, wow, I don't have to worry about paying my fucking medical bills all the time. Turn fine and then go down to 40 the next year and really turn people on. If they can get it all, if they can get it all, I'd love to see them do it, Keith. They have a great chance, right? They can't be timid Democrats and then say, oh, we have to be conciliatory and get along with our friends. We don't want to abuse that. Yeah. And it's like, and that's that's in poor taste. We can't we can't take advantage of that to bring about the will of the voters. No, it would be wrong. You know what I mean. You know, and that's the that's their issue like they need to not be timid. They need to not be shy because again, I would say that they should have thought about being that way if if their agenda was not to really actually do things for American people. But if you have to be gangster at this point now to get shit done for American people, truly get it done and truly make make headways in which you know that by forcing this particular issue to happen with this infrastructure, we are going to have jobs by forcing, you know, and let us see you fighting for it. Let us see you fighting for it. Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly. I got to talk to you about just the craziest lie Donald Trump's doing this week. I didn't think crazy or lie then that women are giving birth to babies and the doctors are boring newborns. Yeah, I mean, which is just murder, right? Which is illegal and no one wants that he's he's so upset that Kamala Harris is drawing crowds that he's now alleging with no evidence that he's leading in all the real polls and that Joe Biden's going to come back and take his spot on the ticket any minute now. And Harris's crowds are and don't believe what you see. It's actual AI, it's AI footage and it's and it's not real. His his spoke spot Caroline Levitt said Kamala Harris is a week failed and dangerously liberal career politician tried to escape reality as he flip flops and every politician she's ever helped. So wait, is she weak or is she dangerous? I don't understand. Our friend Dan Abrams over on News Nation. Yeah. So they decided, hey, let's do a lot of coverage and let's give this lie some credibility by talking about the drama over the Harris walls rally attendance. I just want to play the show how some media is treating this lie because I love Dan. I've done a show many times, but he decided to talk about a controversy over crowd size by going to one of the greatest experts on crowd sizes in American politics. And that is the Trump administration's first press secretary, Sean Spicer, who lies about crowd size. Listen to this a five. Oh, cool. I think this goes back to a degree of wanting the respect for the size and scope of the movement that he's had. And he never felt as though the media has given him his due that he took this movement out of nowhere. He's not a political creature. He's a businessman that jumped into politics and established a movement, frankly, I've not seen in 30 years of politics. And I don't think that the media has ever given him the respect that he deserved for developing that. In fact, if you think about it during the primary campaign of 2015, it was he doesn't have a ground game. He doesn't understand politics. You've got these other well successful politicians, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, who clearly will best him. He probably won't make it. And again, and again, and again, he busted through sort of political hurdles. He said things that no one else had ever said in politics and was successful. And I think his view is at some point, will you at least show me a little bit of respect about the movement that I've created? And I think that's just deep in his bones that he doesn't feel that anyone has ever given him that proper due. I want to go the news father and I want it now, man, baby, petulant, little grubby, dickless, Ken crotch, man, baby, he's entitled, whining, dickless, man, baby. So in other words, man, baby, wants you to pat him on the head and give him a fucking cookie for a campaign nine years ago, nine years ago. He wants credit now for nine years ago, a campaign that began with a racist lie about the first black president and peaked with a taped confession of sexual assault. Give man, baby, a cookie for what he did. These, this is what they got again, again, you're, he's, he's trying to glorify. First of all, the most asked and I think ever in the world. And we're talking about crowd size. That's what we're glorified. So it's like, again, he wants to play size queen with Kamala Harris. And if we're going to play that, it's very clear that she's got the bigger dick in this scenario. And so that's just, that's just the way it's going to be. And he better learn to get used to that and stop sitting and whining. Because again, these, it's funny because these heterosexual straight men that are having all of this conflict right now with Kamala Harris and her experience and Kamala Harris and her, her crowd size and Kamala Harris and what has she really done? Like these are all the most mediocre motherfuckers that are walking around on this planet right now offering absolutely zero to the world, having to question this woman and question her, her, her experience, question her, her ability. They're doing all of this because again, they are themselves the most mediocre, mediocre. They're the essence of mediocrity, as you say, they are so, they're pointless. These are points, Sean Spicer, really girl, really misting, your whole, your whole dancing with the stars experience, you're going to come back with this bullshit, girl, please. What's she going to do? What's she going to do? But grub, and grub, and grub to her old meal ticket, right? I mean, Sean Spicer, he's, Sean Spicer's going to come out and say something interesting and get himself a career on his own merits. He's got to still grub to people who will never speak to him again. It's so sad again. And we have not heard his name up until just this past week, I know, he's been completely out of the scene. Wow. I'm sorry I have to bring it back. Well, but for Dan Abrams, Mr., this is at the one with the meditation. He's like, you know, gone through that whole process. No, that's another. I don't know. That's another A/B/C former A/B/C guys. Dan does a lot of shows with the Boo About Cops. I, you know, Dan's, Dan's on the, I've done Dan's show a lot. He's done this show as well. Keith, we have a lot of listeners who want to weigh in on all of this Michigan. So are you ready to speak to them tonight? On the ground. Shall we begin? Oh, California is online. Three. Marsha, thank you for waiting on hold. You're on SiriusXM. Keith and I welcome you. Oh, it's so wonderful to hear your voices. I have to say I got final chills and tears in my eyes when you were talking to the airborne veteran. Wasn't he great? Yes, he was great and you were great with him. It was just, you guys were a wonderful duo. Thank you. We rehearsed that bit a lot. So I'm glad we got it all right. Thank you. He was lovely. And you're lovely as well. What's on your mind? Yes. What's that? Well, that, well, basically, that's why I called, but I just wanted to say that with my now deceased dog, we used to, we were a pet therapy team and we would go to the VA and visit the vets there. And that was the highlight of her week. And I was a little stressed because occasionally I would give her the wrong command. And instead of putting her paws on a bed, she would leap up and pounce on the patient. So you're like the most wonderful person who's ever called into the Scott Forsaken show is what you are. Aren't you? You are the most wonderful? You bring service dogs to veterans. Let me ask you, would you, would you, would you ever have another? I'm so sorry. We lost your dog, but would you ever have another dog to bring to the VA? I have three dogs now and one of them is a little reactive, but the other two have already passed their canine good citizen test. No, that's great. So the next is love on a leash for them. And then we can take them to the VA or to help kids learn how to read. Kids love to read to dogs. And the librarians pull books about dogs because that's what dogs want to hear about of course. And it is the most adorable thing you have ever witnessed. And of course, the dog doesn't correct or criticize. And so the kids feel more free talking, you know, reading to the dogs, really, really sweet. You are, you are really sweet. I love this whole story. Keith, this is so important to me that I have a listenership that is kind and moral to carmically balance out me. You know what I mean? Like, I look like a better person because I have people of her quality calling into the show. Marsha, thank you. You make this. You make my producers look more moral by your wonderful call. Thank you so much. She classes up the joint, doesn't she? Yeah. My producers are a surly lot. I got to tell you, you make us all look better. Thank you so much. Have a great evening. Thank you. Call us anytime. I'll have more with you. 866 997. Grit. Mike and Florida has been waiting a while. Mike, thank you so much. You're on with Keith. Welcome. All right, good evening, John. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you. Hey, I got two things for you tonight on Trump's monumental trip to to Montana, apparently, I don't know if you know about this, but apparently that's that airplane that he had to make the emergency landing, yeah, apparently that was that was Jeffrey Epstein's all the Lolita Express. I think you're confusing two different and I think you're confusing two different deeply embarrassing Trump stories. He lied about a helicopter that had to make an emergency landing with Willie Brown, who came out and said Trump was lying and making it all up, but his airplane really did used to be owned by Jeffrey Epstein. I only can assume that's because Trump has good memories of the cabin. But apparently that plane, they repainted it with the Trump campaign. Yes. Him and him and JD Vance, they repainted it and put a, they didn't make it a emergency landing, but they repainted it with the Trump campaign thing. They renumbered the tail, they read, yeah, they renumbered the tail, but you can't change the serial number on that plane. Right. Definitely was that now, you know, one thing about that, one more thing he says, he's got good memories of the plane, even though some of them might be minor. I think JD Vance also likes the couch in that thing. Oh, thank you. Oh, Keith, we're doing it. I love it. Yes. Yes. That was a one to punch. Am I going to flag a coach or first grade? What I'm saying is I just want to, I just want to correct the record. Our caller is correct. Trump's plane did have a mechanical failure. Oh, it did. I'm so sorry, Tana. And that's why he had to use Epstein's plane afterwards. Oh, I didn't realize I was confusing this with his public lie, just mirror a black woman. I'm so sorry. Thank you for straightening me out. But I'm a Detroit boy, I'm living in Florida now, and you mentioned in one of your previous callers about pizza and pizza in Chicago. Well, I just want you to know for a fact, now this is a fact, this isn't rumor or anything else. Oh, yeah. Okay. And if you want original deep dish pizza, you need to get it in Detroit at a place called Relief Bar. Yep. I heard about this in the 1940s, right? That's it. He made it in parts pants originally out of from the factory. That's where I was first made, and it's before anybody else made a deep dish pizza. Just over here. What you're saying is Chicago is guilty of cultural appropriation from Detroit. That's what I'm hearing in this call. No, no, no, no, I'm going to do it. Quizine appropriation, Quizine appropriation, then. Yes. Deep dish pizza in Chicago is a two layer pizza. It's different than original deep dish pizza, what we have now when you get deep dish pizza like from from Pizza Hut or all these other deep dish pizza. No, that's not real pizza. That's nothing. No, the first time I had deep dish pizza in Chicago was kind of awkward because my chair left the restaurant with me. I mean, it's just it's just it's just hard, but anyway, give me some cheers on. I'm happy. Oh, you don't know that, and I spent, I spent 14 months in combat in 69 and 70. God bless you. Bullshit. And this bullshit from J.D. Vance. Who's hitting me? Look, I'm not going to dare to date anybody who serves his country in the military. Not at all. Not at all. Nope. This this bullshit from J.D. Vance, who was a community, a Rama writer in behind the lines and writing stories and talking shit about a man that did 24 years in the military is just not right. Thank you. Thank you for your service and thank you for calling that out because you're exactly right. And and the guy served 24 years and they're doing anything they can do to try to smear them. And it ain't going to work. What a pleasure to talk to you, sir. Thank you again. Keith, they're they're just trying anything to smear Tim Walz and I'm sorry, man, like Tim Walz is I think what Hillary Clinton hoped Tim Kane would be. Do you remember Tim Kane? No, not many do. But like the anti Trump, the nice old white guy who's like the dad that you you you like. This guy is a machine, man. He's like a love machine. Well, you know what's interesting though? It's like I read this is like some quote on the Internet, of course, on on Twitter. But how is it that this man is going to criticize somebody's military career when he's working with somebody who basically dodged the draft? He's he's helping like like where where does your credibility actually begin? Because at this point, you still have none as far as I'll have excuse me, if you see JD Vance, have you seen JD Vance in drag? Have you seen him? Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. That party city, that party. Girl, please. Missed him. That's a horrible wig, horrible. That's the kind of wig a straight man would pick for himself. So I'm going to let him have that I'm going to let him have that. If you really care about his drag, his drag would be more intense because say what you want to say about Justin Trudeau and that blackface thing, you got to give it to him. His blackface look real, real good. So I don't know. I don't I don't have to give it to him, but I'll let you you're allowed to grade black faces level of quality because it was like, wow, if you didn't flip that hand over, you wouldn't know. When they start being mimes, I'll judge how white they look. I'm qualified for Kabuki theater rate. I can rate you at a scale of Kabuki to anemia as what I can do to albino, but you know, but again, here we are, like this guy is a joke and I find it so fascinating that we are going to spend now the next, what, three months, four months, watching these people flip and flop and flop and flip and bring absolutely nothing to the table. And yet there's going to be still, you know, 35, 40% of this country that's going to be sitting there, like chomping at the bit for every piece of foolishness and lies and and and misinformation that these people are throwing at them. And we have to spend all this time and energy combating that and again, yeah, talk to me. I was just going to say it's no, you know, we have to do all of this and remember that we have not fixed the voting situation in this country. We are still we still haven't figured that shit out. We still haven't tried to oil it in so many ways. We can't even think of it's not three or four months. It's less than three. It's two months and three weeks. It is upon us. Let me go to Sean and Callie before the break. Sean, I'm line two. Welcome. Thank you so much. You're on with Keith. Hey, brother Keith, you know, by the way, you you posted on, you know, the social media about a boy, the Glenn Miller played songs to me, they hit parade back. We all chose the all the all in the family. I posted it. There was a clip of all of the family that was at the way it was either the wedding of Lionel or the beginning of Lionel's relationship with Jenny and it was a big party and Archie and George Jefferson were there and it was this weird dichotomy about race that was going on in that scene that if you were to have, you couldn't play the scene again today and there's just no way they could have ever worked that scene and it was the greatest sitcom America's produced. It just is. It was not beautiful because when you when you posted that and I got it and I finally had a time to look on social media and I was like, you know, I used to, you know, I'm that old. I'm I just turned 57. So yes. Happy birthday. Oh, honey, shut up. You shut up. You and I are both the same names. You shut up. You are not old. Okay. That's not old. That's not old. That's not old. Halfway to a hundred. Keith Richards is 80, man. You're that. Yeah. The Keith Richards is 80. You're not old. Go on. Yes. But no, when you when you posted this and they were dealing with what we're dealing with right now, I mean, it is funny as fuck that that's funny because, you know, the point is, is like I was calling tonight to say, do you really, if you are anywhere near Donald Bin Laden, do you really want them to show up to debate with Kamala Harris? So I'm going to say this. I don't predict anything. There's no how the fuck you're not going to show up to that. There's no way. He's not going to show up for the debates. He's not going to show up for the debates. You don't think he will? I think he will. I think he will. He will show up at least to one debate. He'll do one. He'll do one. He'll get humiliated. He's going to get creamed. He's going to get embarrassed. He's going to get put in this place in a way that he's not used to having people do to him. Oh, yeah. And that's going to be great. And then we'll see what he decides to do after that other debate because I think it's only going to be one of those three that they have scheduled that it's going to actually have to be the ABC debate. And if I had, if I had power to do anything, I'd have the power to email Donald Trump's phone every day, a clip of Kamala Harris beating, subduing, and mounting Bill Barr when she interrogated him in the Senate because it was a beautiful thing. She bitch smack Bill Barr and Donald Trump needs to watch that and be afraid, be very afraid. And she made what's the name cry? Oh, yeah. Yes. Justice. Justice. A legend rapist. Oh, yeah. Right. The up that guy. Yes. He's a character, narrow them down. Sean, really quick before the break. Tell me. Yes. Well, I'm going to say, I mean, Kamala is fierce. She's brilliant and she's been there and she's done that and we're not going back. I mean, we're taking this to the offense and we are going to roll like a steam train. You're here. Yep. Done. Love it, man. Thank you so much, Sean. You're a gentleman. I don't know why you listened to this show. They're here to Carmichael. I know. My chie. My God. I am just a beneficiary of just being around good people and moral people and competent, qualified people. All right. Really quick break. We'll be right back in just a moment with your calls. This is progress. Welcome back to series XM. I'm John Fugel saying, so you guys know about the party of Lincoln. You know it's not the party of Lincoln. It's not even the party of quail anymore. But let me please quote our next guest who I've waited for a long time to get on this program. Quote, Republicans have spent decades hiding behind their historical branding to give themselves cover to act in a way that is completely antithetical to their professed values. These are conservatives who don't intend to conserve anything. Constitutionless who don't adhere to the Constitution. Textualists who are content to discard any text that doesn't confirm their prior beliefs. The Republicans don't even believe in their namesake of a republic anymore. End quote. That is the great Brian Tyler Cohen, who you guys know from podcasting and youtubing and being brilliant on MSNBC as a contributor. He hosts the excellent podcast, which I enjoy called No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. And his new book is one you're going to want to have. It really nails exactly the moral rot at the heart of what used to be the party of Lincoln. It is called shameless Republicans and deliberate dysfunction and the battle to preserve democracy. It's all about the long con of the modern GOP while they're hiding behind gaslighting and slogans and catchphrases. This is a book about the dangers of the ever whitening gulf between the Republican brand and what they really do. Our friend Jamie Raskin wrote the forward and it's a great pleasure to welcome Brian Tyler Cohen, the serious XM John, thank you so much for having me. I've been a fan of yours for a long time and really happy to be here. I'm honored to have you. Thank you. It's very, very mutual. What do they stand for, Brian? What do they stand for? I mean, making the rich richer and convincing hardworking Republican white people that that's a good thing. I know they stand for those two things, but in your exhaustive, exhaustive data, is there anything else? Well, you know, all you have to do is look at what they've done with their political capital. When he came into office, what did he do despite his populist promises to so many people on the campaign trail? He passed a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. And not only that, he then promised people, he then dangled the carrot of a middle-class tax cut, but only if Republicans were able to retain power through the midterms. So it is always this promise that they will eventually do something, but when they have the moment, the opportunity to actually deliver on anything, every single time it is to the same people, as to the wealthy donors who fund their campaigns, and to the Christophasius who backed these people up. I mean, you look at Dobbs, for example, what they did with Dobbs. This is a long con of the Republican Party. They use their political capital to appoint Supreme Court justices who would go on to overturn Roe. So it is about clawing back rights from the American people, and it's about helping themselves financially. Absolutely. It's certainly not about anything in the Bible, or it's not about anything that puts the middle class first. I keep trying to find Brian, and I always ask our guests, when have Republicans put non-millionaires first on a policy level since Nixon and the earned income tax credit? I mean, I keep trying to find out, I mean, Bush, senior, signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, I guess, but it's not like it was something Republicans fought for. It seems like it's all about the branding. And that's why your book is so important and brilliant, because you focus on how they've leaned on this historical branding to give themselves this permission structure, to betray everything they say. Was that by design, or is that just kind of evolved in a sleazy way? That's a great question. I think it's a little bit of both. I think once they realize, for example, that they have a right-wing media ecosystem with no scruples that will never push back and give them cover to continue to perpetuate the behavior that they're perpetuating, and they realize that they wouldn't actually be held accountable to what they're doing, I think that they realized they could just discard all pretense, right? And so, whereas in the past, they at least made some modest effort to present themselves as the party of the Constitution, of family values, of fiscal responsibility, of states rights of law and order, all of their professed values, all of that glossy veneer now, when they have right-wing media by their side, which will never push back on any of these things, and when you have mainstream media who is so focused on preserving access to these people, and equating the left with the right, that there's real pushback from the mainstream media either, there wasn't any reason for Republicans to keep up the pretense, and so now they can just discard all of it while focusing on their true priority, which is just the consolidation of power. Amen, and you're right, I mean you think about this right-wing media ecosystem, we're just after the 50th anniversary of Nixon resigning, and I've long thought, Brian, that if Nixon had Fox News, Barry Goldwater wouldn't have had to come to the White House and knock on his door and tell him it was time to go. Exactly. I mean, he could have made it, he could have made it with that kind of propaganda support. And in fact, that was the whole point of Fox News. I speak in the book about the Ales memo, and this isn't a memo that Roger Ales wrote in the lead up to Fox News, and it would eventually become what Fox News is. And he wanted to make sure that what happens to Richard Nixon in the aftermath of Watergate never happened again, and cut to 50 years later, we are seeing the natural conclusion of the plans that were put in place all of those years ago. And now, far from a right-wing media ecosystem holding Donald Trump accountable, far from him being excommunicated from the party, they have rallied around him and embraced him as their standard bear yet again, making the Republican nominee for president, even though what he did was objectively 100 times worse than what happened with Watergate. Yeah, indeed. I mean, but as you point out in the book, in many ways, the mainstream media deserves even more blame than the hate-driven right-wing infrastructure, because they know it's a farce, but this is the great shame of profit-driven news that we will see MAGA was able to have its toxic rise because mainstream media realized we can cut away from a Hillary speech to show an empty podium of Donald Trump and the hate-watching, it doesn't matter, we'll put Satan on if that'll give us more clicks. Correct. When you have corporate media that is first and foremost beholden to shareholders, that is going to be the priority on that screen. And I think with the rise of independent media, of progressive media, we're finally seeing some type of an ecosystem that can properly push back and kind of cut down on this asymmetry right now that exists, because what the Republicans benefit from is a right-wing media ecosystem that is shamelessly propagandizing for Republicans. And then you have a quote-unquote left-wing media ecosystem that is so desperate not to be perceived as left-wing that they bend over backwards to overcompensate and kowtow to the right. And so in the lead-up to the 2016 election, for example, I think the New York Times ran something like 69 cover stories on Hillary's emails, which was apparently the biggest national security threat that we ever faced as a country. And yet when Ivanka Trump did the exact same thing while Donald Trump was in office, that came and went like a fart in a hurricane. So apparently it wasn't that big of an issue anymore. But that's because the mainstream media takes its cues from Republicans, they allow Republicans to be their assignment editors all in pursuit of this elusive acceptance by the right. But they'll never get it. I mean, the right will always call the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post fake news. But still, these outlets will bend over backwards in blind deference to these people, hoping that one day they'll accept them with all of this goodwill that just never arrives. Yeah, they'll never stop chasing that Fox News clickbait demographic and you're so right. The media is not liberal, some journalists are liberal and the media should be liberal in a free society. You should have a liberal media that questions authority, but they're actually just terrified of being called liberal. And so we get this false equivalency that we live in where Donald Trump got a $10 million bribe from the leader of Egypt and it disappears. Donald Trump had a secret Chinese bank account while serving as president and was paid by the Chinese government. It's dropped and you nail it how the GOP has managed to play the media and work the reps by talking about their values as justification for their position. So we're fiscally responsible except no Republicans balanced a budget with a surplus since Eisenhower and only Democrats have done deficit reduction in my lifetime. States rights unless your state wants to have gun safety laws, law and order unless we're beating the crap out of cops on the Capitol steps and of course family values. Oh, Brian, it was really in Bush, senior in Reagan when the family values trope became the loudest. Are they, are they still trying to carry that? Are they still trying to put forth the pretense of a family values party eight years after nominating Caligula for the first time? Absolutely. In fact, that's the principal focus of JD Vance's disastrous campaign right now. He's presenting himself as this, as this pro family guy, but all it is is just, is just discrimination and hate wrapped up in a glossy veneer of family values. Look what the Republicans parties did. Look what the Republican party is doing right now. They are refusing to vote for IVF, which for many people is quite literally the only way they can start a family. How do you profess to be a pro family party while preventing people from actually building one? And then you look at their support or lack thereof for snap benefits, for example, which is the only way to feed kids and low income folks, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which overwhelmingly benefits kids and the disabled and low income Americans. I mean, on issue after issue, when Republicans actually have the chance to put action behind their words, they refuse to vote for anything that could even be construed, minorly construed as being pro family. And then you look at where Republicans are actually in full control of government. And in those states, those are the ones that have the lowest success rates for maternal mortality, infant mortality. So when Republicans have full Republican control, those metrics really speak for themselves. Let me quote you again, sir, the fish rots from the head and an abandonment of family values help define Trump's presidency right down to his sad troop of foot soldiers. In 2018, an alarming majority of Republicans supported a bill that forcibly separated undocumented migrant children from their parents as soon as they crossed the southern border. Now, of course, Ryan, there wasn't out quite about this. The family separation policy was ultimately turned back. I mean, but the fact that most people don't know about it, the fact that barely anyone talks about the forced involuntary hysterectomies of migrant women, which was about as Nazi as we got during the Trump years, the fact that they're still trying to return children to their families six, seven years later, because the Trump administration never had a system in place to return these children. They were just lying and just just stealing them. The fact that most people don't know about this and aren't angry about this, and it never got the kind of play that Hunter Biden's laptop got, set a failure of the media. Is it a failure of the Democratic Party messaging for making sure that Donald Trump stealing children didn't get as much hype as Hillary Clinton's emails? I think see all of the above. Look, I think Democrats themselves have a lot of lessons to learn. And to their credit, they're learning those lessons now in terms of how to better communicate with people. I mean, if you go back to the days of Obamacare, for example, and the introduction of the ACA, and Democrats were trying to expose the virtues of Medicare Part D, and clearly that wasn't going to work. You have Republicans on the other side who were just pushing death panels, which one is a more potent message. But now, if you look at Kamala Harris and Tim Walls, the message that they're sending, we're not going back when we fight, we win, mine your own damn business. These are short, pithy, effective, compelling messages. So Democrats to their credit are right now learning some of the messaging virtues that to their credit, the Trump administration was able to put forward and the Trump campaign was able to put forward. But in terms of the media, they're not going to learn just by virtue of being shamed. The onus is on the independent media's ecosystem and the progressive media ecosystem to just show them, if you're not going to do it, we will. And people are clearly tuning in to legacy media less and less, and maybe that'll be the kick in the ass that legacy media needs to recognize, hey, we're losing influence because people are tired of this both side-stick that we're doing right now, tired of the asymmetry presented in politics right now, and see what a joke in retrospect, heaping coverage onto something like the Hunter Biden scandal was when we have actual scandals, life and death scenarios happening right in front of us that are barely getting any play, and people can see with their own eyes. We know when we're being conned, and that's what's happening right now. I do take some solace from the amount of white supremacists who blew their retirement savings on Let's Go Brandon merch for the 2024 election. I take a lot of confidence. That's right. We're talking with the great Brian Tyler Cohen about his excellent new book, Shameless, Republicans deliberate dysfunction in the battle to preserve democracy. It's the rarest of books. It both infuriated me and inspired me at the same time. So well played, sir. You do talk in the book about how the groundwork for Trumpism was laid by Republicans like Gingrich, this opposition for partisan gain and working together is seen as weakness. Newt Gingrich famously said, we will have zero compromise, which is at the time I was shocked. It's essentially saying we don't want to do anything to improve the lives of the people who put us there. Of course, Mitch McConnell pursued that strategy all throughout Obama's terms and Biden's as well. It's almost like the Republican party now has this new mandate, this new curse on them. If they do their jobs, they lose their jobs. Eric Cantor met with Barack Obama every week and said no to everything. So Dave Bratt, primary to him saying, can you believe Eric Cantor sits down with Barack Obama every week? I'll never sit with Barack Obama. So even by obstructing, just by showing up and saying no, he was smeared and we've seen it. So many Republicans in the Congress who can't work with Democrats because they know they'll get primary too. Are they hostage to their own shitty messaging and stupidity? Well, they're hostage to their own earlier strategy, really, to the point where now there is no incentive structure to do any compromise or any legislating, really. I mean, the only incentive structure on the Republican side is to find people who are going to just burn down government in service of building their own brands. That's where someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene came from. And it's not the Mitt Romney's and Liz Cheney's and Adam Kinzinger's who are ascending in the Republican party. It's true. It's the clowns. It's true. And that's why I titled the book that the Republicans have a deliberate strategy of dysfunction, a deliberate policy of dysfunction because their goal here is to basically burn the government down from the inside when they have power. And then to point to the thing that they just burn down as evidence that government can't work. And so go ahead and elect people who believe that we should shrink government down to nothing. So it's this vicious cycle where they break something and then point to the thing that they just broke as evidence that they should that be in charge because they don't believe in the core functions of government. What pushes back against that is that with when Democrats had full control of government in the first two years of Joe Biden's administration and they had the same majority in the house, by the way, as the Republicans would then have where they did nothing with it, they were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act, the Pact Act, the gun safety law, the infrastructure law, the Violence Against Women Act, codified marriage equality into federal law, add 16 million jobs and bring the unemployment rate down to a 50 year low. So that's what happens when you have people in government who believe in the core functions of government, when you have people who are working there who believe it can work. And so that's the asymmetry on display right here. If you, you know, the Republicans talk about government waste all the time. There is nothing more wasteful than throwing your money at a Republican party to put them in power to do nothing with it. If you want government to work, then, then elect people who believe that government can actually work. You make a great point, which makes me want to ask something else, is burning the whole thing down? And I agree with you. Like they're, they're nuts. It's like the craziest part of the comments section came to life and ran for office. Like I often call it the, I often call it the, the, the manifestation of a Dan Bongino comment section on Facebook. I think you know how you used to watch C-SPAD, like, like these lunatics would call Brian Lamb and just spout out nonsense and Brian Lam would have to sit there and look serious when they still took calls on TV shows. It's like those people are now the ones being elected. And I agree. They talk a lot about burning it all down. I believe they love to burn it all down because they don't think about things too deeply. Brian is burning it all down the goal of the donors who own the Republican party or is this perceived as politicking just to get them elected so I can get my tax cut and deregulation to pollute more. Bingo. I think they draw on the fears of the broader electorate in terms of these social issues and they elect people. But at the top ranks of the party, they know that their goal is one thing and one thing only and that is tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country. And that's evidenced by the fact that despite all of the populist bullshitting that Donald Trump did when he was a candidate, when it came time for him to actually govern, he did one thing with his political capital and that was give a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. So again, you just have to look at what they do. They're not hiding any of this. The only thing they actually care about was not helping the middle class like they claim, not helping the working class, not making sure that they would have more jobs, they lost more jobs, not making sure that the economy would be better. The economy was worse, not making sure unemployment went down, unemployment went up. All you have to do is look at what they did when they actually had power and what they do with power every single time. And what they've done with their power since Reagan in the 1980s when income inequality first began exploding in this country and the great decades of American prosperity in the 50s and 60s and 70s went away and that is just keeping tax advantages onto the wealthiest Americans, the people who need it the least. And that is the great shame of a party that hides behind this branding of being family values or Christian or any of the other virtues they confer on to themselves while hurting the very people who need that help the most. That's it. It also shows economically Donald Trump's no different than the Bush's. It's all the same racket with the Republican name. I do want to ask you, you are heralded as having been the first content creator to interview President Biden. And I'd be most remiss if I didn't get your opinion, Brian, I know you've been asked about this a lot, but how do you feel the president handled one of the toughest personal and professional dramas we've ever seen a cheap executive be put through? I'm astonished at the toughness of this man and the love this man has for his country. As you know, Joe Biden really wanted to run. Joe Biden really felt he could beat Donald Trump. And I still think he could have Joe Biden did not want to drop out of this race. And it was just one of the most striking things I've ever seen a person, male or female do in American politics. Three weeks on, how does it feel to you? I mean, clearly, I think with what we're seeing right now in terms of Kamala Harris's Ascendant campaign, it's clear he made the right decision. I don't want to understate how difficult what he did was and how uncommon it is in history and the history of the world for someone who has power, who is currently holding on to power to voluntarily cede it to somebody else when he had full reign of being able to continue running the federal government, running the free world, basically. So I think he deserves all the credit in the world. I know that it took, it actually, relatively speaking, did not take that much time for him to come to terms with the reality. I think it was just a few weeks. But for him to do that shows, it is the final paragraph in a long story of Joe Biden showing that he's willing to put his words behind his actions. He came on to the political scene, ran against Donald Trump for expressly the purpose of protecting democracy against this slide toward autocracy and him voluntarily stepping aside, ceding power. When let's be clear, he didn't have to, yes, of course, there was pressure on him to do so, but he didn't have to. The decision to do so was not the decision of a bunch of guys in some smoky, backfilled room. It was his decision. So he made the decision to consciously step aside. And I think he deserves all the credit in the world, and that will be in large part when Kamala Harris wins this election in November. The final chapter in Joe Biden's legacy, which will be one of protecting democracy in this country. I so agree with everything you just said. I think that it's when she is elected, it will show that he found a way to beat Trump one more time. And I've never seen anything like it. Yeah, I've also never seen anything like the the the Nepo baby clusterfuck that we witnessed of millionaire at birth apartheid Nepo baby and millionaire at birth racist landlord Nepo baby having this on the Nazi chat room that Twitter has turned into this discussion. I've never heard anything so baffling starting with Elon Musk clearly and quite brilliantly articulating the dangers of climate change as if trying to coach and coax Donald Trump to get to the right place, which showed us that Elon knows the dangers of the planet being on fire, but he's still perfectly willing to vote for the arsonist. Right. Right. I mean, it really doesn't make any sense unless you recognize that more important than his purported adherence to to protecting the climate is just helping himself financially. And at the end of the day, like we were just talking about, that is really what it comes down to. So, you know, to have somebody like Elon Musk bring Donald Trump on, I'm actually okay with it. And I don't know if this is a bit of a contrarian take, but I'm okay with it. Any time that Donald Trump can come out, put himself out in front of the American people and continue to spew the hot garbage that he spewed thus far that will do nothing to draw in young people or people of color or suburban moms or people who are on the fence or pro-democracy Republicans or independents, more power to you, man. If you want to go on, go on Twitter and have your Nazi chat about how unions are bad and then go out and try to try to gain the support of the working class and of union members, be my guest. If you want to go on stage at the National Association of Black Journalists and deny the biraciality of Kamala Harris and then think that you're going to gain the support of people of color in this country, be my guest. Boom, boom. One last question, Brian, and thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I love your book. I hope everyone buys it. We JD Vance, you know, I said for a long time when I was having our listeners call and nine to one people didn't want the president to leave and we were talking people off ledges every night. And I tried to tell people if Joe Biden does make a choice, he won't announce it until after the RNC when Trump's running mate is locked in. I think JD Vance might be Biden's final gift to us, but I'd be most honest if I didn't ask you how you feel about man baby's choice of baby man as running mate and how sick of fancy being the only qualification because JD Vance couldn't rig another election like Mike Pence could have done. What do you think of this choice and what was there anything beyond an ability to suck up that guided the casting? To answer that question, absolutely not. The sole qualification for Donald Trump having a VP right now was to make sure that that person couldn't do what Mike Pence did, which was follow the law, which was to make sure that they couldn't anoint the loser of an election the winner. The selection of JD Vance is nothing more than a reflection of Donald Trump's hubris here. Remember in JD Vance, Trump chose somebody not because he was not a moderate, not somebody from a swing state, not somebody of a different race or religion or ethnicity, not somebody who would give anything, even resembling a permission structure for those who weren't already on board with Trump to come on board, which is what Mike Pence did in 2016 for Donald Trump. What JD Vance did was allow Donald Trump to double triple quadruple down on Trumpism. He just saw in him Donald Trump 2.0, he was making a play solely for the base. He was not only confident, but cocky that he would win against Joe Biden. And so he chose this guy who afforded him zero additional benefits. In fact, somebody who ran behind Donald Trump himself in the state of Ohio. So this guy is a drag on the ticket, not to mention how weird he is and just how poor his popularity rating is in this country and just how not ready for prime time JD Vance is. But in doing so, when it then became Kamala Harris, not only were all of these states suddenly back in play, and now we're seeing them fall into the Democratic column again, but then it allowed Kamala Harris beyond that to choose somebody like Tim Walz who does do what JD Vance doesn't by offering a permission structure for voters who may not be into Kamala Harris because she's a San Francisco liberal, she's a black woman. Well, now you've got someone in Tim Walz who grew up a farmer. He's a rural American, he's a Midwesterner, he's a high school teacher, a football coach, he's a union guy, and so this is what it looks like when you're building a broad coalition and inviting people into that tense that you want to build. And what Donald Trump and JD Vance are doing is just focusing solely on the exact same people and that overconfidence is what's going to kill him in the end. He could have had Nikki Haley and brought back the one third of his own party that hates him, but he needed a suck up. Although I should mention that Nikki Haley was perfectly content to discard any dignity that she had on her own by going up on stage and endorsing Donald Trump anyway. Yeah, but now she gets to run in 2028, so it's all about her to begin with. Ryan Tyler Cohen, it's so great to finally belatedly get you on this program. The new book, which I recommend highly, is called Shameless, Republicans Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy. Brian, what's the best way for our evil army of the night to follow you and keep up with all your work? Oh, I'm everywhere at Brian Tyler Cohen on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, all the websites. And of course, to grab the book, you can go to Brian Tyler Cohen dot com slash book. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll be right back. I'm John Fuell saying this is SiriusXM progress. We're at 866-997-4748. I'm so happy that Lawrence Ross is going to join us in a few minutes. Let's go back to the phones really quick. If you're on hold, I promise we're going to get to you this hour, so please be patient with us. Brooks in Arizona. Thank you for waiting. You're on serious. Yeah. Hi, John. Hey, I listened to your commentary about the Christian Dominionists and the one who would see this earth as something we use as we see fit and we just use it up. And I have read a book just recently that I've been recommending to all my Christian friends. And it's a book called the Echo Bible and it's the Torah. It's the first five books of the Bible and it's a rabbinical commentary written by many rabbis going all the way back to the Babylonian synagogues. Really, our understanding of what God has been trying to tell us in those first five books about how we were to be stewards of his earth, that the earth was gifted to us and that we were to have compassion on his creatures. And it is a condemnation pretty much of our whole meat industry the way we do. We don't do kosher anymore. I think a lot of the rabbis have given up on kosher because they don't trust the industrial meat company. That was also St. Paul's selling point when Paul who was a Roman citizen and a Pharisee at the same time began trying to sell Jesus' movement to the non-Jews because the Jews were all getting stoned by Paul's old friends and getting murdered by Paul's old friends back in Jerusalem. So Paul starts trying to, you know, his main talking points were, hey, you don't have to keep kosher and you can keep the end of your penis. And within 300 years, all kosher restrictions were dropped from Jesus' movement. But you know, and they really present it as that the kosher was a bit of a compromise as well because that was not even God's intention. But we're not even keeping kosher now and so a lot of the rabbis are turning to be vegans or vegetarians. Fascinating. Fascinating. I strongly exhort, I mean, I called in to exhort Christian people that might hear this to go and read this book and understand those first five books in our Bible better than we do because it expresses God's heart as to how we're to live and we're not living that way. Yeah, I actually agree and I think that every Christian should know more about the first five books of the Bible because yes, some of the laws are very barbaric by our modern standards and again, so much of Leviticus is really just about how to keep people to keep their faith and keep reproducing for these freed slaves who don't realize they're going to be stuck in the desert for 40 years. Tell us the name of the book in one more time, please. It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible. It opened my eyes in so many ways to things I didn't know about. Well, yeah, because so many of these rules that seem crazy in Leviticus, they, you know, like mildew is as bad as leprosy. What? But when you consider it, no, these people were nomads, they were living in the desert and trying to find a home and they had to be very, very clean and keep the faith. A lot of the stuff about don't sleep with men, don't have bestiality. A lot of this was just keep having sex to keep making babies, don't have sex with a woman on her period. These rules that seem archaic, they were designed to try to keep the tribes numbers up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Tell me the name of the book in one more time. And you say, you know, of course, you know, you think that what life was like back then and that they were living in the wilderness and how you apply this to today's world. But we're not making any effort to try to do it. That's the thing. Oh, listen, the Christians aren't even taught about how Jesus applied it to today's world or what, you know, fulfilling the law really means. I mean, Jesus never stopped being Jewish, but he certainly challenged a lot of laws in very interesting ways. Tell me the name of the book one more time. It's called the Echo Bible, E.C.O. The Bible. Echo Bible. Oh, got it. Echo Bible. Love it. It's two volumes. It's one volume. The first two books and the second is the next three. It's an ecological commentary on the Torah by Rabbi Nero and Leo D. Well, you know what? I'm going to have to check that out before I write my next book because it's one of the few issues I didn't write a chapter on for the book about the Bible I'm putting out. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It's fascinating. And it's verse by verse, but it's the rabbinical commentary, their thoughts on this and it's very interesting. Oh, I love it. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I look forward to reading it. That for me is a relaxing beach reading, if you're me. This is Sirius XF progress of John Fuell saying, "Oh, hey, everyone. It's our producer, Chris." Hey. It was an interesting phone call because that was Brooks. And if I remember correctly, the last we saw him, he was the librarian at Shoshang Penitentiary. So it's good to hear from him these days. Wow. You went back 30 years for that one, Brooks. Yeah. I know I read the book. I saw a movie. Brooks was the old guy. The old guy who hung himself. The old guy who hung himself. Right? Well, I'm forgetting that part. The, if a person. I'm just saying, someone in the audience caught your reference. If a person named Brooks calls this show and starts talking about books, we should read. I'm going to think of Shoshang. All righty. I actually think the Shoshang book is better than the movie. Yeah. I said it. I read the book when I was 14. It's actually, it's more intense than the movie. You know who else is intense? Our next guest, a man I admire greatly now. We used to get Lawrence Ross in the studio all the time, and when we were in L.A., and the studios were still in Beverly Hills, we, every time we went out there, Professor Ross was there. And so now that we've begun doing shows in L.A. again, it's been such a pleasure to see this man. Tonight, he's joining us remotely. Lawrence Ross is one of America's most important lecturers and writers of African American literature. He's written six books, including The Divine Nine, The History of African American Fraternities and Cerardis, which of course is about to become a lot more timely with our current nominee for the Democratic Party for president. He also wrote The Ways of Black Folks, A Year in the Life of a People, Money Shot, The Wild Nights and Lonely Days in the Black, Poor and Industry. This man's been around. I also recommend Black Ball, the black and white politics of race on America's campuses. He's lectured at over 500 colleges and universities, universally recognizes an expert in the field of African American Fraternities and Cerardis, and been interviewed everywhere you can think of. Professor Ross, it's such a pleasure to have you back. Welcome to SiriusXM. Thank you so much. I was thinking about, I think it was like around seven years ago that I actually joined you in New York for, yeah, and it was, because I was driving across the country. I had just finished teaching an MFA course in screenwriting over at Hollins University, and I decided that I was going to drive across, since you were in New York, I go to the Northern Route back in order to come over to talk and join your show. Well, I'm so honored to have you, and I'm glad that for whatever reason, we've gaslit you enough that you'll keep coming back, and we can keep on taking advantage of you, so thank you. Well, I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, so there's nothing I can do. Well, thank you. I'm really thrilled about your wife. You guys have been together a long time, by the way. You posted a very attractive photo, and I just want to say, it's a bit rude that at 30 years, the two of you look this good? Is it 30 years? 32 years, Mary. 32. Yeah, it's rude. Everyone thinks how long is it? How long is it coming? How long is the couple? How long are we able to? We first met in 1988 at a party, or as my, as our son says, in the 19s. 88. Wow. I mean, in the gay world, you've had like the Golden Jubilee. That congratulations. And again, rudely attractive couple. Tell my wife I said so. I have so much. I want to talk to you about Lawrence. I'm so glad you're with us before we even begin. Let's just start kind of macro here. You know, when you were on our show prior to the last presidential election, we talked about the different reasons that some black men swing to the far right and predictions for how this small but alarming group would grow. And I just want to start up asking, how has this voting demographic of just black guys who have a thing for authoritarians? How has that changed over the past few years? You know what? I think, you know, this has kind of been the most pleasant surprise, right? You know how at the beginning, you know, I have the black women for Kamala and then black man for Kamala. And I think there's like a little bit of introspection between 2020 and 2024 amongst a lot of black men. And I think it's not necessarily that the, the kernel of, you know, the small kernel of black men who are, you know, are attracted to the same massage. You need the same, you know, authoritarian, strong man type of projection that Trump puts out has, has, has disappeared. I'm not saying that, but I think the, I think I was going to say, I think the brothers who are basically who are like on the side who never talked, never said anything kind of like, well, you know, 50, 50 type of deal, I think they've been more empowered because I think they recognize the burden that their wives, their girlfriends, their daughters, their mothers, all of them did in terms of getting a democratic president into office. And, and from what I've been just pleasantly surprised is that online social media, you know, we amplify voices on social media. So they may be a little bit more amplified than they are in real life, but I've seen a fight back against it. And it were a little bit reflects how the pitch perfectness of the, the Harris waltz communication has been, right? They recognize, they know they're going to get the, the misogyny, they're going to get the racism, but you know, we're not, we're not spending time, but I got to play whack them all with it. You know, all we're going to do is just basically tell you you're wrong and keep moving and go toward the prize. You're right. I mean, Trump's racist attacks against the vice president aren't surprising, but I got to say they've taken on a somewhat different tone. Um, you've, you've talked about this a lot. And I want to ask you, what is Trump's deliberate mispronunciation of her first name? In these insults ever, what does it tell us about the state of his campaign? Well, it's like the, it's like the last bits of desperation. What happens oftentimes, you know, if you, for example, if you're black, basically your name is your ownership, it's, it says something about who you are in the world. It says about like a prospect, and this is for everyone, but particularly for black people, the idea of being able to own who and what you are. This is the reason we have, you know, beautifully different names, you know, parents with their aspirations or just the idea we're trying to make, you know, our children unique in a, in a way. And Trump knows what he's doing is just basic, the basic level of, of disrespect of saying that I don't care who you say you are. I control you and I can control everything from how I identify you. I can control you in terms of saying whether or not you're, your identity in terms of whether or not you're racial identity, I as a white supremacist can come in here and actually use the levers of racism to tell people that I can diminish you in any which way I want. But the problem is you only get that if you react to it. And you know, I've always been of the nature, you know, I've always, you know, I, I, I went to a Jesuit high school out here in Los Angeles and I, I tell, you know, I, they bring me from time to time to talk to the, to the African American students. And I, I tell them, you know, you, you, you don't let you like the racist be your metric, right? You, you don't want to sit up there and chase your tail, trying to prove to people who don't believe that you're human, that you're human. You know, that's there. And so what happens with Kamala, there's a discipline, I, I, I'm a lifelong Democrat. There's, I almost even don't even put this, want to put this in the world. But there, there's a discipline that's been happening with a, with a Harris Waltz campaign that has been just, oh, chefs kiss beautiful in terms of not following. Give me an example, because I completely agree. When I heard Trump demanding she go debate him in front of a live audience on Fox News, I just thought that would be the most punk thing of her to do for a channel that's paying three quarters of a billion dollars for lying about the last election. And she didn't even acknowledge it. What, what have been some of the not taking debate moments that this Harris walls team have done that you've admired? Well, the walls, the, the, the, the Harris walls team recognizes this one thing. When you're facing a bully who obviously does not know anything, right? So if you're, if you're facing someone who you project in terms of, well, they were the president, they were of this office and you give them an elevated status, you know, based upon a normal president, right? A normal respect. Yeah. Yeah. Even if she didn't agree with politically, I don't agree with George W. Bush and anything, but I still give him the respect of the president. He did. I can see that, right? You can't do that with a reality show president. You have to recognize that how you diminish him is how you diminish every single bully you've ever seen, which is to make them small by mocking. You use their limitations to their, your advantage. So the comms team, I don't know if you saw before the, whatever that was, you know, administer. Yeah. The comms with the grocery props. Yeah. With the, with the, with the, with the honey bunches of O's, uh, you know, on the table, the comms team, instead of, you know, we Democrats, you know, we love our technical. Hey, nobody loves technical and theoretical more than me, but at some points in time, what you have to do is you have to make it your voice, your political voice clear to people. That's the reason why Tim Waltz is weird. That's right. Because you didn't have to have, you know, my systemic racism and intern, you know, my explanations and anything like that, but you can, everybody else can actually go around the idea, Hey, you know, something is kind of weird when you're sitting up here, trying to monitor the, uh, the reproductive, um, decisions of women. That's kind of weird. And you keep doing that over and over and anyone, even people, by the way, who are trumpers can look around. They look to themselves and they can be self-reflective and go, well, wait a second, is that me? And that's when you start breaking the spell. And I think that's what they've done magnificently. And I also like the fact that they acknowledge that the media, and I'm, you know, I'm a proud. Oh my goodness. I should say this national association of black journalists, a member, although we did not shine ourselves with glory, uh, a couple of weeks ago, but I'm here for the free press. I'm here for the free press in terms of, you know, holding a candidate's accountable, whether or not I like them or not. But the media has proven that they have not been able to hold Donald Trump accountable. I, I haven't heard a question about Egypt and $10 million. I just haven't heard it. Yeah. No. I mean, what, I'm, I'm saying like, Hey, how come Hillary's emails all got in all of our inboxes and yet all the media is keeping Donald Trump's emailed up a secret? It's just insane. It's the way that the reps have been worked. The way the refs have been worked. Right. And you look at it from the standpoint of saying, look, if as a, as a politician, the politician doesn't mind going out there and getting tough questions. You know, Hey, you asked me tough questions. I will stand. I was, it's, it's, it's even really good for a politician because they get battled, you know, tested as they do it. Right. But at the exact same time, you, you can't tell me that you didn't, you haven't figured out how this guy after eight years of being on the scene, that you haven't been able to figure out how to muddle through just the fact checking part, right? And if you can't do that, I'm going to sit up and I'm going to tell you, I'll get to you. But you know what I rather do? Get right to the people. I'm not going to have my message filtered. I'm not going to have it, you know, twisted. I'll get right to the people. And that's what's working. I think back to Barack Obama's first debate against Mitt Romney, where Obama had just flown into Denver and the altitude was affecting him and Romney was gish galloping all night and Obama took the bait net first debate. He was answering Romney's lie five lies ago and Mitt told seven more before he could finish. What you're talking about is not even playing the game. Let me quote you. You tweeted this. And I'm really psyched to read this because your prose is choice quote. So it's clear the GOP attack is an oldies but goodies list a mispronouncer name because black people don't deserve that respect be say this highly educated woman is dumb because she's black see, but say she's not really black D get Negro Stooges to amplify above holy crap. You nailed it in one tweet. It's yeah, they're not going back to what I tell my fellow alums at Loyola is that Loyola High School is that they're not magic, right? They're not. They're not very. Oh my God. This is complex. They know the the the pinch points when it comes to tapping into America, but here's the thing. 25 years of me traveling around the country, right and talking about, you know, controversies like race and things like that. And people ask me like, well, what do white people say? You know the white people I meet most most often are Tim Walz Tim Walz is the guy's decent man who's like, Hey, I, you know, I recognize this world is changing and I don't have to center myself in whiteness. I'm just trying to understand things, right? And that's who I I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm agreeing. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's one of those things that, you know, the the Trump, I mean, the Trump campaign only has one, you know, we, you know, I heard you talking about garbage before, you know, they're like a they're like a one hit wonder that keeps pounding, you know, I'm not saying garbage by the way, but I'm saying, right, keep pounding that one hit. And after a while, you go, I'm tired of hitting that message, you know, and this is, and I always talk about the fact that I'm a joke and I joke my UCLA alums. I'm a recovering UCLA film school grant, right? And I, I, I, and I talk about the fact is that I look through everything in story, right? And right now I'm looking at this as basically the third act. You know, people are on the, on the Republican side are just confounded by the fact of why can't Trump change? Well, the villain never changes, then that's the point of that's right, the protagonist has to change by the end of the third act to the villain is not there's a straight line in the wavy line and the straight line doesn't change the the we you could plot this. I like my wife gets, you know, annoyed because I plot everything in life through story and I say, you know, it's the low point was Biden, right in the second act, right, is the low point that the, the up this and then he goes work the dark night of the soul where he has got to contemplate all the back to as bad as it gets, but he's got to get kicked into third act. And how does he get that with some new information and that new information is polling information. And then he says he hands it over to Kamala. And then from there, we just speed through the third act doesn't mean that we're not going to get obstacles. We're going to get a October surprise of some sort. We're going to get some issues with the Republicans sending poll workers who do this or that. But the climax is always going to be the same. If everyone does what they're supposed to do, they're going to go and vote. And you know, what's going to happen, we're going to vote in larger numbers that have been happening that in 2022, 2020 and 18 and in 2016. And then that's when the fever is going to is going to break. You're so right. You're so right. We're talking with Professor Lawrence Ross. I have to ask you. And I want to talk about screenwriting in a second as well because I want to talk about something you're doing. But across the US, we are seeing members of black Greek organizations, the divine nine, uniting around a singular mission that I am so excited to hear about. And it's just about increasing voter turnout in the US election this year. Lawrence, how are they doing it? And what can other groups learn from what the black fraternities and sororities are doing right now? Well, it is kind of a crucial difference between predominantly black fraternities or sororities and predominantly white fraternities. And I want to say the caveat is that predominantly white fraternities or sororities do philanthropy. They do great work. You know, we kind of stereotype them as animal houses, stuff like that, but they do great work. But black fraternities or sororities have been doing voter registration since the 20s. You know, from my fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, we've been doing voteless people as a hopeless people as our voter registration and education for nearly 100 years. And so on the Instagram account, on the Instagram account, they're putting voter registration for us. Oh, this is like as people say, you know, this is our jam. We do voter registration and voter information on the local. We do it on the the the the state and we do it on the federal. I'm the, you know, our alumni chapters have a really big impact compared to predominantly white fraternities and sororities. And I'm the the former, as of last year, I mean, as of June, the former chapter president for our Inglewood chapter. And one of the very first things we decided to do was to have a judges form because 99% of people walk into the booth and just have no clue as to who is the judge. And we end up trying to figure out, you know, who, you know, by their background. And so we guess what we're setting up a judges form. But for the divine nine, obviously Kamala Harris is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. And you know, we're 501c seven. So we can endorse a candidate, obviously, but what we do, but we go into areas where, you know, people don't do voter registration, the poor, you know, lower income, socioeconomic income areas, we go into places that we are always there. And so people trust us when we go and say, Hey, here are all the issues. You make your own choice, but here are all the issues or, you know, here's how to register to vote. We forget that there are like 100 million people Americans who don't vote, you know, in, in elections. And oftentimes it's just kind of two things, the voter suppression that, you know, the other side pumps out to make it appear difficult and then difficult. And then there's also the notion of like, well, you know, rational human beings don't like doing things. They don't feel comfortable, right? And so if you don't have a habit of doing it, then you don't do it. And so our job is divine nine and all of our organizations, you know, are just wonderful at this. We go out into those communities. We give the information. We work together. The council of presidents for the divine nine have gotten together and said, Hey, we're going to go and supercharge our voter registration and voter education programs together and work together. So it's, to me, it's the essence of why I became a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha at Berkeley, you know, during the South Africa divester movement. It was, you know, I saw politically active brothers who are out there doing the work. What they weren't going out doing, just grab the microphone. They were doing the work. Yeah. I mean, it, it feels like we're allowed to say it's insanely inspiring right now. Do you feel that learns? Oh, yes. Because I think it's, there's a point in time where, and this is where I hope we don't, in the, in the midst of this, get lost the Hillary Clinton aspect of, you know, taking a hammer at that glass ceiling, you know, if we finally get it across, that glass ceiling had to have some cracks in it and she had to take the slings and arrows, regardless of whether or not of her deficiencies as a candidate or, you know, what the campaign did, she did a lot for that. But what that also taught us is that it's possible. It's the exact same feeling that black people had when it came for Obama. You know, black people weren't exactly just running through Obama in, in, in, at the beginning in '08. It's been kind of psychologically nothing had, you know, going back to the screen, right? No one thought he'd get the nomination. No one, no one could dare believe, I hope he would get the nomination in 2007, 2008. Comedians have lived their lives telling jokes about the first black president and, and how, you know, what was going to happen and how this is going to happen and the possibility. And then it happened. And then suddenly, this is where how seeing something actually is important. And once you see it, then you no longer have that psychological barrier saying, oh, this is, this is actually possible. So with Kamala, we walked into it going, yeah, we can do this because we know the playbook. We know exactly what's coming at us. We know exactly what we need to do. My wife's, I, I, I joke because my wife has best friends and she's a member of Delta Sima Theta. There are four deltas on her, her group chat and four AKs. They're all best friends. And they're normally chatting each day anyway. But the minute Kamala actually was nominated, where, you know, basically was picked, their, their whole thing sounded, their phone, their phone sounded like a telegraph. You know, it was beep, beep, beep, beep, because they were just absolutely activated. And I tell people that when it comes to the divine nine, in particular, the sororities, the GOP has no idea what's going to happen. They have no idea. It's a little bit like the Avengers, you know, they're going to come together. And they, because no one is going to outwork these black women. No one is going to outwork these. Yeah. I know they're the ones who keep our economy going. Lawrence, I have to ask you if you can tell us a bit about the Patreon for the metaphor club. Your creative space. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. You're doing this. Oh, God, yes. I love what you do. Oh, thank you. So six years ago, my fraternity brothers and I recognized that in, in, in the heart of like South Central and Le Mert Park, there wasn't a creative space for, on Crenshaw Boulevard in particular, there wasn't a creative space for young African American writers. And actually, you know, we found out later on, you know, Gen Xers and baby boomers too, who were creative and didn't have access. And we, what we decided to do is create a, a co-working space, right? Now, co-working space isn't like, you know, we works, people just like, Oh, it's a, we works. No, it's not that. What we wanted to do was to shrink access and privilege. I always talk about the fact that I'm from Inglewood, California, you know, where I'm from Crenshaw Boulevard and everything that I've gotten is from the community that poured into me. And so for six years, what we've done is we've operated, we've survived the pandemic. Our members, you know, who paid $99 a month. They served, they, they helped us all the way through the pandemic. And what happened was that we decided, you know, we wanted to go big, we wanted to do something big. And so as part of that, we decided, hey, we have a good group of like PhD students, young writers, screenwriters, creative, you know, creative writing, novelists and things like that. And what we wanted to do is try, this is just our attempt to try to create kind of like a nouveau Harlem Renaissance, but in Los Angeles. But the, but the problem is, is that when you're working with underserved communities, it's they're underserved. And so oftentimes what happens is that they're not able to, they have all the talent, but they don't have the, the funds to actually participate. Now I want to be clear, I want to be clear to your audience, we're a for profit business. So we, you know, because we have kids in grad school and, and it's Bellman and all the rest of the places. But we, we joke that we're kind of like the most nonprofit for profit on the faces earth, because we just basically see money back in. But what we're looking to do, and we had not thought about it, was to create a Patreon. And this is like our first attempt to do it. And basically what we're just asking folks is that if you're interested, we're not pressing anybody, we're kind of even like, you know, reluctant asking people. But if you're interested in like sponsoring somebody, you know, it would be $99 per month via our Patreon, but we do so much with it. We bring in folks like we had Kim Powers in, who's two time nominated for Academy Award, he came in and talked about two weeks ago about screenwriting to stick, you know, the folks who are in the neighborhood. Yeah, we had Jamil Hillian, we've had Walter Mosley in, you know, we've had people who have been just wonderful about bringing their, their time and sharing their time. And this allows us that $99 allows people to come in and to write. And they, to be able to get the, the things that they're not able to get around the community. And so that's where our dream is to, if we don't know where we can do this, but a thousand folks that we sponsor is 24 hours of just, you know, people using a space and it's kind of listening. And as I joke, I just joke with him, I go, when I, I can't, when I have to walk with a cane and I can't see to my left, you know, what I want is to be able to look back and people to say, Oh my God, that's where blagity blag got their stuff. That's Lawrence. We, they're going to make us hit a hard break, but I want you to come back please this summer because I want to talk more about the metaphor club and we'll get the word out even more. Before we hit our hard break, I just want to ask, I want to ask you, you are actually doing an introduction to screenwriting class via zoom. And I want people to know about this because you are a master of structure and that's what I love. It's an eight week course. Can you just give us the information how people can learn more about that too? Yeah, they can email me at alpha A L P H A one nine zero six at gmail.com. I told you I went to UCLA, but not everybody can get to UCLA. So I got a lot of people in different parts of the country were like, can you teach an introduction to screenwriting? And I'm not really a writer and I love you for that. And so what I do is for eight weeks, I teach you all the foundational and the fundamentals. It's $600 for eight weeks, so less than $100 a week. And it doesn't matter where you are, and it doesn't matter what your ability, I am more than willing to be able to work with you. And I typically work with a group of about six to 10. So we have a ball. Great. Listen, I want to take it. Lawrence Ross, I'm sorry we can't talk all night. I could do this for you for days. Please come back and see us later on in the month because it's going to be a very interesting campaign season and I'd love to do anything you're working on. Thank you. Without the dog. Thank you, professor. It's an honor to have you with us. Give my best to your wife. not a creepy way. This is progress.
