Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein Hash Out Their Charlie Kirk Disagreement

[Ish Gibor]

Jamaal Bowman and the MTR criticise Ezra Klein on his past behaviour and exchanges he had with TMR, and the exchanges Ezra had with Ta-Nehisi.


Jamaal Bowman Reacts To Thug Stormtroopers Raiding Chicago Neighborhood | Jamaal Bowman | TMR



For those who don't want to "click", a loosely transcript. Part 1.

38:50 Of course, Ezra Klein is leading that freaking conversation. Yes. Like, of course. I I don't want
38:57 Ezra Klein to come to the Bronx to try to persuade people in the Bronx to vote a certain way.
39:02 That's the That's the problem. Well, listen to Ezra Klein and and John

1:02:22 Ezra Klein. You know what I'm saying? Like I want to be like you know I'm I'm I'm the I'm I'm the you know what do you
1:02:29 call the hood whisperer, right? where like I'm not talking that Ezra Klein, you know, dumb I'm I'm talking

1:11:42 I don't know because when I when I hear Ezra Klein talk, I'm like, is he even

1:12:39 guess to me to see how many people even cared but you've referenced Ezra a few times so I'm curious like

1:13:20 where where Ezra is seems totally oblivious to that. Right. So when you

1:13:25 say, you know, Charlie Kirk was doing politics the right way
1:13:31 and much of, if not all of his rhetoric was just punching down on vulnerable
1:13:36 people and straight racist and sexist and trans phobic and then saying other
1:13:43 wild stuff like calling for public executions to be televised, like just wildness, right? So, how is that
1:13:49 practicing politics the right way in alignment with the way Ezra Klein thinks we should practice politics? How is the
1:13:57 the the action of going to colleges and having conversations with college students separate from what he actually
1:14:04 said out of his mouth? How are we not doing how are we not the guy's organization has a watch list
1:14:11 of 100 professors? I mean the to my mind my
1:14:17 my assumption what what what it really is revealing about Ezra Klein is not as
1:14:23 rigorous as he well that's a great reject that's a that's a that's and that's why
1:14:29 I was like you know disorienting for me and like cognitive dissonance for me right he had a brand but this is a guy also I
1:14:37 have to say who was saying that was touting Paul Ryan back in the day yeah
1:14:42 and Paul Ryan was als also just a paper tiger of intellectualism and and and and
1:14:50 so this has always been there with Ezra. It's just that there is an awareness by the Democratic
1:14:59 voter. They are getting more sophisticated as to what is actually going on. You can see it in the numbers
1:15:06 of like what they wanted for the shutdown. Like the polling numbers on this shutdown are very different than
1:15:11 they have been in years past. compromise issues like this. There is an
1:15:16 awareness amongst a set of Democratic voters who were sort
1:15:22 of like the classic I elect my people, you guys take care of it. I've got other

1:18:52 with a certain level of passion and of course brilliance and Ezra's not even acknowledging him. And I'm just like
1:18:59 this is what it is to be black in America. Like we we give you our
1:19:05 our pain, our suffering, our trauma, our perspective, our intellect, our history, our work ethic. We do it in classrooms.
1:19:13 We do it in the workplace. We're doing it in this in conversation with Ezra and
1:19:19 you liberal white man don't even acknowledge it. And then to make it even
1:19:25 worse, you choose whiteness and and and and to go even further, you choose white
1:19:31 supremacy, the ideology you're aligning yourself with with that just like Gavin
1:19:37 Newsome, right? No, like like but no, but that but to add to the I
1:19:44 don't know if this part struck you but for me where I was like oh my god was when Tan Hei goes into this uh you know
1:19:53 uh you know long thoughtful piece where he speaks about what you're saying about how for for black people in this country
1:19:59 violence is a constant in politics political violence is a constant and this was maybe 20 minutes in and Ezra
1:20:05 says like I'm paraphrasing obviously but if we zoom out too much and give too much
1:20:10 historical context, we miss we're too deterministic and we miss the
1:20:16 moment. And that was for me like a jaw-dropping moment where he basically said,
1:20:23 "I don't I don't really care about systemic racism right now. I've had I've had white people do that
1:20:29 to me in my life, the same exact thing." And that that's
1:20:34 literally what people like, you know, uh who's a white racist on the Republic,
1:20:40 that's what they do. Like they say, you know, let's not look at history. How long? How long are we talking about
1:20:47 right that that's what they do? And he's doing the same thing. And I'm like, dog, do you know what you're doing right now?
1:20:54 And I And so anyway, we're talking about him, but now let's zoom out to the Democratic
1:21:00 party or the Democratic establishment. this is how they move. So, you know, I'm
1:21:07 the crazy one in Congress because I I think we should have uh universal child
1:21:12 care and paid leave and affordable housing for every American and I speak out about it. I'm the crazy one because
1:21:19 I'm yelling in the hallway at Thomas Massie about gun violence and why don't you do anything? We just have more

 

[Ish Gibor]

Part 2...

1:21:24 chill. I'm crazy cuz I'm losing my in this place because we have a new mass
1:21:30 shooting every month or or multiple times a month or a week depending on the
1:21:36 community and we not and we're just going about our day like that. It it
1:21:42 would drive me crazy. And so, but for them, it's just the ideology. I it it
1:21:47 aligns to one part of the cast system and it's designed to just maintain that
1:21:53 place. And so, and and and the right feels it too. That's why Trump's uh
1:21:58 initial running on draining the swamp and criticism of the it works because uh
1:22:04 rural white people feel the same way like this is some BS, right? So it's
1:22:10 that's actually a unifying thing if we could have the right leader bring bring it together properly. Yeah. Some measure of populism. The only
1:22:17 thing I will say about uh Ezra's sort of like inability
1:22:23 to understand or uh regardless of whether
1:22:29 it's willful or not in terms of like to understand um
1:22:34 to understand enough just basic that he wouldn't have written that about Charlie Kirk. Although I think maybe it was just
1:22:40 sort of a lazy like I just watched the you know five minutes a minute at at a college. But I will say he did very
1:22:48 similar thing to me as another white Jewish liberal essentially um when we
1:22:55 were talking about uh about sort of broadly what impacts politics. He's um
1:23:02 very consciously I think um I think it's a
1:23:10 I was I've always had a perspective because I remember when he was an intern at American Prospect and and and um so
1:23:17 it's been 20 years I've followed his uh his trajectory
1:23:22 and uh I always thought it was an obliviousness but I think there's actually like
1:23:28 there's brand management uh that's going on there and a um a a sense that like
1:23:37 that same sort of dynamic of these are going to there are certain doors I need to keep open
1:23:42 that maintain my uh my status wherever it is and and one of them is to sort of
1:23:48 like ride above at various times some measure of
1:23:55 investment in politics like emotional investment intellectual investment like
1:24:00 it's it's there there's always an attitude of like whoa you're getting
1:24:06 carried away type of thing. Uh yeah, we got to maintain this thing. Uh
1:24:11 lest I you I lose my my position. Yeah. In in in this whole grand scheme of
1:24:17 things, right? And you know, the iron law of institutions, I think, is what Kevin Drum used to say, like
1:24:23 someone would rather be a top, you know,
1:24:28 would you like to ride the bench on the varsity team or be the captain of the JV? Like that's sort of the
1:24:35 Yeah. And you're you're progressive, man. You're not liberal. I know. I know. But I But we got to say that. Yes. Cuz when I
1:24:41 first got into politics No, I'm to the left of liberal. Yes. Yeah. When when I when I first got into politics and people would speak that
1:24:47 way, I didn't know what they meant. Like liberal versus progressive, I was like, "Oh, that's that's interesting." And
1:24:53 then in the 2024 cycle, I got introduced to the real Westchester County, New York, and it was just mad liberals.
1:25:02 You know what I'm saying? these liberals who like in 2020, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, they were progressive for
1:25:08 5 seconds, you know, 2024, they were all liberals. They like, Jamal, you better vote for
1:25:14 that extra 14 billion to Israel. I'm like, yo, they already they already
1:25:19 defended themselves. This was like December, right? You know, they already defended themselves. I don't think they need 14 billion more to keep going.
1:25:26 Jamal, we can't support you if you don't I thought you were Jews for Jamal. Like this was a Jews for Jamal call I was on.
1:25:32 I thought y'all were my people. They all they shifted. They went from progressive to liberal.
1:25:39 But isn't that though exactly what Ezra was saying about we're get we it it's the Zionist is the same thing. History
1:25:46 started on October 7th apparently and then let's not look too back in far into history and deal with like the whole
1:25:51 slavery and the red line. Someone tell me that we have to start this conversation October 7th.
1:25:56 There you go. I had that conversation at the break fast last night. That's what Ezra
1:26:02 that's. That's what Ezra said to to Coats. I mean, isn't that the isn't that liberal ideology to a degree?
1:26:08 And it's him saying, "What? Why are we losing? Well, why aren't we winning?" Well, we're not winning because we're
1:26:15 not aligned enough to Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and and and um and Ben
1:26:22 Shapiro and and and you know, Nick Fuentes. like we're not aligned enough to we got to go a little bit. But again,
1:26:29 full circle to the point I made about like the DC and Democrats in these in
1:26:34 these swing districts, right? Like again, you have people in these districts, which I would make the argument they're probably more
1:26:40 progressive, but they're not voting because they're like, "You're all full of crap. I'm not participating." But if
1:26:47 we actually engage them in a way that was authentic and really rooted in
1:26:52 making a strong democracy healthy for everyone, I think we could increase voter turnout. And we're raising
1:26:59 hundreds of millions of dollars every cycle. Why don't we microtarget or
1:27:05 strategically target the people who haven't vote, the zerorime voters, you know, that that could change things.

1:27:11 All right. Well, um, uh, Jamal Bowman, it has been a real pleasure. So much fun
1:27:18 to have you in studio and have you here. Um, and really appreciate the work that you have done and are doing. Um, thank