Jemele Hill has made a name for herself speaking truth to power as a journalist. She is also masterful at synthesizing the intersection of sports and politics. During his first administration, Hill was willing to go where many of her peers wouldn’t when she famously called out Donald Trump. Jen Psaki sits down with the “Spolitics” host and Atlantic writer to get her take on what she thinks Democrats should be doing to show voters they are willing to fight back.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jemele Hill: I think I speak for a lot of constituents. We don’t want to see this play nice stuff. And when Republicans are the minority, they somehow always find a way to do something disruptive and obstructionist. And that’s my expectation for this party.
Jen Psaki: That’s Jemele Hill. She’s a sports journalist and an author and a damn good one too. And her take on sports and politics often intersect in a way that’s both profound and provocative. She hosts a podcast aptly named “Spolitics” and she writes for “The Atlantic.” She worked for ESPN for years and her departure in 2018 was not without controversy.
After she did what many people with significant platforms would not. She called Trump a white supremacist who was unqualified to be president. And as a result, she became a target of the Trump White House and the MAGA machine. But that hasn’t stopped her from speaking out.
Welcome to “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.” So I’ve been a long time admirer of Jemele Hill. I love sports and politics and people who speak their mind. She also masterfully handles trolls, an art form we all could learn how to do better. And right now, she wants more from the Democrats.
So I wanted to talk with her about what she’d like to see. Here’s that conversation.
Jemele Hill, it’s so great to see you.
Jemele Hill: Yeah, great to see you too.
Jen Psaki: I don’t know that we’ve ever met in person. I was thinking about this.
Jemele Hill: We have not.
Jen Psaki: I don’t think so. I’ve long been an admirer of yours. And when we were talking about, on our team, about doing this podcast, about what just happened in the election, where do we go from here? Who can we talk with who would be interesting and candid? And I was like, I wonder if we call up Jemele Hill, if she’ll talk to me about this. So thank you again for taking the time.
Jemele Hill: Yeah, no problem at all. Happy to have this conversation.
Jen Psaki: So as I was reading about you, I’ve been a long-time admirer, and I love that you just speak your mind, and I’m a sports fan. I will never know as much as you know, but I will aspire. But one of the things I came across was this TED Talk you did back in 2015, where you talked about this fear of success, is how I would define it.
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Jemele Hill: You asked me today what my greatest fear is, and unequivocally, it’s success. I’m sure a lot of you probably didn’t expect me to say that, to say that my greatest fear is success, but it’s true. And here’s why. That’s because success, it creates expectations. Success, it creates stakes. Success, it creates accountability.
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Jen Psaki: And it struck me as, I know it wasn’t intentional at the time, but so topical in a lot of ways to today, and what I kind of see a little bit in politics, where people are operating from a place of fear. I think that’s applicable to a lot of Republicans, but I think Democrats too. I know you did that a long time ago, but what do you think about that?
Jemele Hill: You know, I would have never have expected that to be the connective tissue, because obviously that was sort of related to more personal growth, and I wasn’t thinking about politics when I did that TED Talk. But it does apply, because I just had this sort of debate with somebody online after a particular piece ran in The Atlantic, and this was on The Atlantic’s Instagram page, where I’m a contributing writer. You know, I think people have this idea of, and to some degree, I mean, we kind of romanticize a lot of things, especially things that are uncomfortable, but people sort of have this idea that we’re operating from this place of pragmatism, or operating from a more higher, noble place, when that’s not the truth at all.
I mean, you look at what’s happening now, especially as you see media company after media company capitulating to Donald Trump, which is not what the media is supposed to do. You’re not supposed to capitulate to anybody in power, but it’s all because of fear. It’s all because there’s something else on the line that they want, and they feel like this is the way to negotiate that. Or, you know, right now, there’s a lot of very angry Democrats, and I am one of them, I mean, to be frank. And the reason is that from the view that is a little bit farther away, maybe not as close as what you are, it feels like the party’s laying down.
Jen Psaki: That’s what I mean.
Jemele Hill: It feels that way. Yes, it does. And it feels like they’re already acquiescing before being asked. Now, that’s one thing if you’re forced into it. It’s another thing if by muscle, if by pressure, if by stakes, you are forced into a no-win situation. Okay, that’s one thing. But the capitulation before being asked is very troublesome. And I can tell you, for as long as I’ve been an adult, I have never written one single letter to any congressman, but I did it this week.
Jen Psaki: You did? What was it about?
Jemele Hill: I’ve never done it. It was about the fact that I didn’t vote for Elon Musk. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump either, but I definitely didn’t vote for Elon Musk. And I think his takeover, you could really call it a coup. His coup that he is pulling off right before our eyes is troublesome, doesn’t even begin to describe it. And before we started this recording, I was watching some video that Congressman Maxwell Frost had taken of lawmakers trying to get into the Department of Education and being locked out. I was like, what is happening here? And I know that every hour, every minute, there is another fire that is burning, but it just feels very much like the establishment Democrats have totally laid down or they are completely misreading the room about what their constituents want.
And even though he has been very vocal, but I did, I wrote a letter to Adam Schiff. First, I tried to call. And of course, as you might imagine during this time, all the voicemails are awful.
Jen Psaki: They’re like flooded, all these offices.
Jemele Hill: They’re flooded, yes. But I wanted him to know my expectation is, I don’t want to see you reach across the aisle to do shit.
Jen Psaki: Uh-huh.
Jemele Hill: I don’t want to see you confirm, vote for anybody. Like I look at what the confirmation, what they were for Marco Rubio. And I get it like in this political atmosphere.
Jen Psaki: In the rank order of offensive.
Jemele Hill: Right, exactly. Like he ranks pretty low, right?
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Jemele Hill: But it’s not about where he ranks, all right? It’s about the fact that he’s willing to do the bidding of somebody who is completely unqualified and unstable. And to me that disqualifies him automatically. I don’t want to see a single Democrat vote in favor of anybody being proposed as part of Trump’s administration. Not a single vote, not one. And the security reasons and the conflicts of interest and all the things that come along with Elon Musk, I just had to let it be known that, yo man, this is unacceptable. And I think I speak for a lot of constituents, we don’t want to see this play nice stuff. And when Republicans are the minority, they somehow always find a way to do something disruptive and obstructionist. And that’s my expectation for this party.
So I say all that to say that operating out of fear, and a lot of it is that people don’t think the worst that will happen that will actually happen. And when you study the history and the falls of regimes, they literally are all like this. It’s just like, no, it’s not really going to happen. It doesn’t matter if I compromise this time. It’s always death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s not a single blow. It is little by little, decision by decision, making the capitulations, making the compromises, doing things that are out of fear, as opposed to out of courage, as opposed to really standing up for people when it matters. What did I elect you for if you didn’t do that? What is the point of your job if you don’t do that? So going back to that TED talk, little did I know how true that would be. And in this way, that is so super alarming.
Jen Psaki: This is why I wanted to ask you about this, because I think for me, and I think for a lot of people, and look, I’ve lived in Washington a long time. Whenever people say I’m a part of the establishment, I’m like, no, thank you. But it felt like the election happened, right? Everybody licked their wounds for a while. That’s allowed. Some people are still licking their wounds. It takes time. And then it was like, okay, Trump’s not inaugurated yet. And then he’s inaugurated. So now it’s real now, right? And you want something more. And I can’t define what that is.
It is, yes, blocking nominees. It is doing things that are bolder. What does that look and feel like to you that you want that you’re not seeing?
Jemele Hill: It looks and feels like Representative Jasmine Crockett. That’s what it looks like to me. And, you know, AOC, that’s what it looks like. And I know that you can’t just limit the action to conversations on social media or going before the media, but I think your constituents need to see you. They need to see you fighting, be it protesting outside of these government offices, be it, I don’t care if you hold a press conference every single day to remind people what the shitstorm is actually happening. Do that, okay?
And then, you know, there are plenty of actions I still feel like that can be taken, but I said this during the election, as we saw things unfold, I was of the belief and have been for a while that Trump was going to win this election. So I was under no--
Jen Psaki: You felt like that before?
Jemele Hill: Oh, totally, yes. I felt like this before that he was going to win the election. To me, it didn’t matter if it was Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, I thought he was going to win. And that mostly has to do with the flow of information and not just the misinformation, but the fact that the right wing very solidly owns all the major media outlets in this country, and they are able to get their message on repeat 24 hours a day with no pushback whatsoever, and there’s no Democratic equivalent.
As much as people want to point out MSNBC, MSNBC isn’t Fox. They’re not the equivalent of that on the left side. And I think that because of a lack of understanding of how pervasive that culture is when you have people now that are getting their news from podcasts, when you have Joe Rogan and those types that have become the main vessel of information for people, yeah, you’re going to get the result that you get unless you have some brilliant counter, unless you do a lot of groundwork to try to counter that. So I was of that opinion anyway.
But I think the fight has to be an all hands on deck. People, you’re sending these fundraising letters, and I can tell you, people don’t want to hear it. They literally don’t. I mean, at this point, they’re just like, “We just saw you rave.” Like, don’t even do it, man.
Jen Psaki: A gazillion dollars. Please stop asking me for money.
Jemele Hill: Please stop asking me for money, because if this is the result, man, this is not cutting it. But I think that people want to see some real resistance, some real fight, some real organizing at the grassroots level. And again, I said this during the election, a lot of Democrats would rather die on the sword of nobility than fight. Nobility gets you nowhere. Win the election.
Jen Psaki: Tell me what you mean about nobility. Like, ivory tower-ness or just --
Jemele Hill: It’s very ivory tower. It’s very take the high road. It’s very, well, I at least can say that I reached across the aisle or the decorum. They’re worried about order and decorum. It’s like, no one cares about that anymore.
Jen Psaki: No one cares.
Jemele Hill: And that side definitely doesn’t care. You know, to use a sports analogy, you’re using an outdated playbook. It doesn’t work. And I think that they can do this without giving up the ideals and the values that they want to stand for. You don’t have to compromise your values to meet somebody where they are. And they need to learn how to meet Republicans where they are. And it seems like--
Jen Psaki: And Democrats.
Jemele Hill: And other Democrats.
Jen Psaki: And Democrats.
Jemele Hill: Yes, I totally agree.
Jen Psaki: A huge swath of them, yeah.
Jemele Hill: Yes, meet them, meet people where they are. You know, it’s like this idea that they want all these pats on the back for being more noble and following the rules and no one gives a shit about that. And I just don’t know. Like, I don’t know if it’s an out of touch thing. I don’t know if it’s that they’re so far removed that they don’t understand the way their constituents want to see them operate in this moment, but they are failing in every possible way.
And I get it. This is the burden of the Democratic Party that the Republicans don’t have to worry about. The Democrats have to be the tent party. They have to be the everybody’s welcome party. And that sometimes can lead to a lot of confusion about how to get into lockstep. They’re not only charged with fixing the problem, they’re charged with finding the solution when someone else created the problem.
See, Republicans don’t have to do that. They can cause chaos all day long and ain’t nobody asking them to fix shit. But the Democrats, everybody’s screaming at them right now, like, “Well, why don’t you fix this? Why don’t you ask the people who created it?” Because they know nothing’s going to happen. So they are at an unfair advantage there, but I think there’s a lot that they can work with. And like you said, I get it. People want to lick their wounds and cower after what happened. And it felt like a kick in the teeth.
But let me remind people, and I’m sure you have done this too, he did not win 50% of the vote. He won 49. That means that there’s a lot of people who do, that is not a mandate. That does not mean that all of a sudden that people buy into those type of politics and that kind of rhetoric from him. It means that you didn’t do a good job of getting everybody out to vote. There’s a swath of Americans that just said, “Screw it, I’m not going to vote.” Those are your people, all right? That’s who you need to tap into and figure out, how can I get this base energized? And how can I bring more people to the party?
Jen Psaki: There’s so much you just said that I want to ask you more about. I mean, one of them is, I think one of the ways that Democrats talk is they want to have an A in the advanced American history class. They want to sit in the front row. And I now, when I’m working on scripts, I strike authoritarianism, oligarchy. This is not how human beings talk, right? And this is something that I feel like maybe it’s because people are in their own bubble here. Everybody’s in different bubbles, but on progressive cable networks and also within progressive Democratic bubbles, it becomes a conversation that isn’t what most of the country is having.
And one of the things that’s so interesting about your background, I mean, sports to me is like a model of something else, right, and how people talk about sports. Now, as someone reminded me recently, the difference with sports and politics, although there are many other ones, is like people have a game and then they shake hands at the end, right? Politicians have become, it’s a little less that way. But one of the things you do that I think for some reason, most political people or people on the Democratic side don’t have the capacity to do or think they can’t do is talk about sports, culture, politics, not in silos, right, but in like one weaving, I’m a human being way.
Jemele Hill: Yeah, I mean, that’s the beauty of sports is that the reason I have a sports and political podcast is called “Spolitics,” right? And as much as people complain about how, “No, I don’t want my politics and sports mixing together, like they’re vegetables on a plate mixing with the mashed potatoes.” And it’s like, no, they’ve always intertwined. Back during the days of George Washington, my very first episode of “Spolitics,” I broke down how George Washington used to get his constituents drunk and they play games, and that’s how he got them to vote. That was sports and politics.
Andrew Jackson, really big into the ponies, as they say, right, a huge gambler, you know, a bit of a gambling addict, in fact. And so presidents for a long time used sports as a way to connect with people. And the reason why is because sports, regardless of social and economic background, race, gender, brings people together. It’s a natural thing.
You know, you may have somebody who’s filthy rich, somebody who works in janitorial, but they both Eagles fans. When the Eagles come on, they don’t care about that, right? And so it gives you an opportunity and a vessel to kind of understand how the world works. But through sports, all the issues that are happening in politics are happening in sports.
And sometimes people are better off understanding those issues when it’s explained through their favorite athlete, through their favorite team, through a moment in sports. Then they can understand what the power of sports can be and the power of humanity and where that gets us. And so that is why I think that, you know, sort of that sports and politics merge. I mean, Donald Trump loves the NFL. He loves football. He wanted to be an NFL owner. And by God, we really should, if anything, I’d love to go back in time and fix it so he could be an NFL owner because maybe he never would have run for president.
Jen Psaki: It’d be better. We would all be better.
Jemele Hill: He would have never would have run for president. Like, just let him take another business. Who cares? Like, we probably wouldn’t have seen that guy again. But no, there’s just a natural marriage that was there. I mean, a lot of times sports was way ahead of society.
I mean, the NFL started integrating players in 1946. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947. This is 20 plus years before we got the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. Like, it was happening in sports. And it was through that lens that people were able to understand the cost of segregation and also understand humanity in a different way as it related to Black folks and people of color. So that’s why I think sports is very effective in this matter.
Jen Psaki: It also feels like, and you wrote this piece, “What Happened to the Politically Conscious Black Athlete” back in the fall, I believe it was, which reading that, it made me think sometimes there are trends in terms of where people are that you miss in politics somehow, but you can see in so many other aspects of society. And in the piece, you’d kind of talk about how more women athletes were for Harris, more publicly, and a lot of these prominent Black male athletes who had been out there in 2020, now were silent.
But we’ve also seen this sort of trend. How have you seen that trend? And what do you think that sort of tells us, or does it tell us something about young Black men and their movement a little bit, at least in the last election, away from Democrats?
Jemele Hill: Well, it does tell you a few things. One, the biggest thing that helped athletes galvanize was that they were both the NBA, and the WNBA were playing in bubbles because of COVID. So you actually had everybody together, and that was so much easier to organize, to then talk about these issues. In 2020, LeBron James started More Than a Vote, a huge national voting rights campaign in terms of getting people registered. You had NBA owners opening up their arenas and using them as voting stations so that people could vote in those. So it just seemed to be this kind of collective consciousness like, “Hey, we got to get everybody out to vote.” And obviously, with the murder of George Floyd, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, with all of that weighing so heavily on society, you knew that this was all sort of fueling this momentum and this moment and this movement.
And then you fast forward four years later, and unfortunately, and I had a fear of this in 2020, is that I kind of knew that all them Black squares and all the, you know, you got the NFL commissioner apologizing, but he’s not really naming what he’s apologizing for. You got all these things happening. And I knew that it was never going to be sustainable, in part because the thing about when you’re deciding to do something courageous, I don’t judge you by what you do when you have support. I judge you by what you do when it’s not convenient.
And it was very convenient, unfortunately, because there was sort of a mass agreement that what happened to George Floyd was wrong. And that gave a lot of people permission to finally say, like, “Oh, I stand for justice. I stand for these things.” But the moment there wasn’t a crowd behind him, the moment that same level of support wasn’t there, and you didn’t have those Black squares, and suddenly everybody’s like, “Ooh, maybe I don’t.” Because if I step out here and I say this thing that I know to be a truth, but no one else is saying it with me, then again, I cowered to the fear.
And so that’s what we’re seeing now in the wake of this anti-DEI movement. And the whole thing about Woke is, it all ties back to what you said about how when you read your scripts, you scratch certain terms from the scripts or whatever, because you know people don’t know what that means. Like, even fascism doesn’t, like, people don’t know.
Jen Psaki: That’s another good one.
Jemele Hill: They don’t care. They’re just like, “Nah, they don’t.” But you know what did work? I mean, not to go off on a tangent, what did work was when Tim Walz called them weird.
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Tim Walz: Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird. They’re running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something. But we’re not afraid of weird people. We’re a little bit creeped out, but we’re not afraid.
They talk about freedom, freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room, freedom to tell your kids what they can read. That stuff is weird. They come across weird. They seem obsessed with this.
(End of Video Clip)
Jemele Hill: Notice how effective that was.
Jen Psaki: Yeah, it did work.
Jemele Hill: I was like, “That is kind of strange.”
Jen Psaki: I know.
Jemele Hill: And it worked.
Jen Psaki: Well, then they kind of, I mean, the thing that struck me with that is, like, Tim Walz, who propelled himself onto the ticket because he went out on television and talked like a sort of guy you’d meet in the hardware store.
Jemele Hill: Normal person.
Jen Psaki: Right? And then they put him in a closet, and we never saw him again, right? After he became the running mate.
Jemele Hill: Yeah, that was a big mistake.
Jen Psaki: We’re going to take a quick break here, and when we’re back, Jemele and I look at the fear some Democrats seem to have when it comes to speaking to issues that may feel controversial. That’s next.
(BREAK)
Jen Psaki: Since you mentioned fascism and DEI, there’s no connection. But I do think DEI is something that -- there’s obviously this effort to, I mean, destroy it, but, like, also to co-opt it, right? By the Trump administration. And I do feel like it’s one of those things I’m not sure Democrats have quite figured out how to talk about it in a way that people understand. What it has to do with them. But what do you think?
Jemele Hill: No, they have not figured out a way to talk about it because they’re still trying to tiptoe around it. Like, they’re in this sort of --
Jen Psaki: And, like, why? They’re fearful or --
Jen Psaki: I think they’re fearful of -- in their mind, they have this sort of constituent that they --it’s an old -- it’s not necessarily a Bible verse, but something that often I learned at church, where it’s like pastors often say you can’t serve two masters, and the Democrats often try to serve two masters, and hence why they wind up satisfying no one, right? They’re trying to appeal to the same voter that would vote for Donald Trump, and they then also don’t want to alienate the voters that do support him, which is the ones that do believe in DEI, that do believe in diversity and understand its benefits and its merit. And so then they wind up doing nothing, which doesn’t satisfy anyone.
And what they should do, frankly, and I felt the same way when it came to discussing trans athletes, you can’t ignore those issues, and you have to confront the fact that there are people who do not understand what it’s like to be trans. They don’t understand transitioning. They don’t know what gender-affirming care means. They don’t know the rules of this. And if you’re relying on the media to explain it to them, God bless you, but they don’t understand that it’s a rigorous process before you’re given any of these medications. They have never explained this to people.
And so when you don’t explain things to people, they’re left to think of it in their own mind. They don’t know that quotas have been illegal for a very long time. They don’t understand that even though DEI has, in terms of co-opting it, they’ve made sure that DEI becomes synonymous with Black, with queer, with anything that is not white, because they never bring up the fact that Black women benefit from DEI, too. They don’t bring up the fact that veterans are part of DEI, the disabled, like, they never gave this information to people, and they just let them fill the holes of information with their own biases, which we know in this media age, whatever you think in your mind is the truth, you can find something to confirm it, right?
And so it’s like, that’s what I meant about not understanding how pervasive and how dangerous this misinformation and disinformation is, particularly when all the platforms are owned by the people who are Trump supporters, who are supporting certain ideologies out there.
So what they should have done is not only attack the lies of DEI, I think they should have done more to show people the benefits and what we get out of it and why it is important, because yes, historically, there is no question, there have been certain groups of people who have been frozen out of certain opportunities. And those same people who suddenly want equality and they want everything to be fair did not complain when there were Black people and brown people and gay people being frozen out of opportunities, didn’t hear them say anything about the lack of equality.
I think you have to confront it head on, and you can’t be afraid to hurt some feelings along the way. People do actually respect when you take a stance as opposed to no stance or trying to serve two masters.
Jen Psaki: Yeah, the fear of pissing people off is paralyzing to people, right? And you’re going to piss somebody off. That’s sort of how some of these things go. I mean, one of the things, a few people have made this point to me that like cancel culture is something Democrats are more scared of, right? And cancel culture has lots of meanings and you’ve dealt with your own experience with this, which you wrote in your book many, many years ago, right? Do you think that’s true? Like that Democrats are more fragile about? I mean, corporations definitely are, you experienced that. I mean, and just to remind people not to reiterate this, but you wrote about it in your book. I mean, you called Trump a white supremacist who’s largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists.
I think we’ve all watched now this play out over the course of many years. So like, that’s it, right? I’m not like, that’s it. And like you dealt with corporations being fearful, but I think sometimes we see this among Democrats too, not around that necessarily, but around this fear of saying the wrong thing or not fitting into the box.
Jemele Hill: And it’s funny though, because I think that they sometimes mistakenly use Hollywood as the example of like, what is cancel culture? And Hollywood is, I mean, I live in LA. Hollywood is, it’s a real place, but not really. So they see, it’s got a right. And it’s not just a fakeness. It’s just like, okay, if viewers are upset at a TV show or upset over a recording artist, like, who cares? You know what I’m saying? And sometimes people tend to, and this is another unfair thing that Democrats get tagged with. There are things that happen among, you know, say liberals or leftists that have nothing to do with the stance of the national party at all, nothing at all. So like all the people, understandably so, who were upset at one of Dave Chappelle’s more recent standups where he took a lot of shots at the transgender community, AKA the alphabet community, as he called them. Then they attach that to, oh, Democrats always cancel somebody like, uh-uh, time out. I was like, and I understood by the way, why the trans community was upset. But if a community is upset about how somebody is talking about them, that’s got nothing to do with the Democratic party. That is just, they are upset.
Jen Psaki: At Dave Chappelle.
Jemele Hill: At Dave Chappelle. That has nothing to do with anybody else. Right. And by the way, cancel culture isn’t real. Can we just admit this?
Jen Psaki: Yeah, it’s maybe, it’s like the worst phrase. It’s like, and what I mean by it is also sometimes Democrats, and I, you wrote this piece, I don’t remember when it was, about like Tim Tebow and his mom, right? Yeah.
Jemele Hill: When they did a pro-life ad.
Jen Psaki: Yeah. So what I mean is also this fear of like coloring outside of the lines of like what you’re allowed to say and be, when the truth is everybody’s a little bit gray in this country about all sorts of things, right?
And it’s a little bit like Democrats for a long time, like didn’t eat a Chick-fil-A. Maybe they still don’t. And then I’m kind of like, I’m not, I’m like.
Jemele Hill: That is a lie. They are eating a Chick-fil-A.
Jen Psaki: But you know what I mean? It was like one of those things that I was like, this is not how like change or movements happen. I don’t know. But like, so that’s what I mean by it too. It just takes many forms.
Jemele Hill: Well, there’s, I think a lot of people who get very sensitive on the right about cancel culture, what they’re upset about is accountability. That’s what they’re upset about. Accountability and cancel culture are not the same things. And if you say something, because I’ve said this before to people who have this position, oh, you can’t say anything these days. Well, what is it that you want to say? What do you have to say that’s so earth shattering and so provocative?
Jen Psaki: Well, you must think highly of your own power.
Jemele Hill: I’m just like, what, what, what is it? What new diatribe or conversation are you going to bring to us that we can’t handle? And more often than not, what they’re upset about is that they actually have to have consideration and respect for people that they didn’t respect. That’s really what it boils down to.
So there are a lot of people that complain like, oh, I can’t make gay jokes the way I used to. Oh, so you’re upset because you can’t slur people who now have agency and are telling you, hey, this is our boundary and you’re mad at them.
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Jemele Hill: Okay. I mean, I don’t know what to tell you. Like, you know what I’m saying? I was like, so you mad that you can’t slur people the way you used to? Like who dies on that hill?
Jen Psaki: Why is that the hill you’re dying in?
Jemele Hill: Why is that the thing? And it’s like, no, it’s not that people, there’s nothing wrong with being more evolved and being more educated. You know, I think about the conversation and the language we used to use around the queer community when I was growing up and it’s changed dramatically. And that’s a good thing. All right. That is a good thing. And perhaps if you feel like that community is too sensitive, maybe the reason they are, that if you go back to the ‘80s and ‘90s, and how they were discussed, that’s probably the reason that they are.
Probably is. Okay. And I understand that. And they have every right to feel that way. But I think it’s been weaponized to make it seem like people can’t take a joke or that this is considering all the craziness on the internet. I don’t know why they would say that, but it’s been weaponized in a way that makes it seem like it’s real consequences. Sometimes people just stop fucking with you because you stupid. And it’s okay. And it’s like, that’s their right. If you’re putting things out there that they don’t like.
I mean, I don’t know how else to explain it. So these comedians that are like, I can’t say what I want to say. Well, what you want to say? What’s revolutionary that you want to say? What did I miss? Right? What did I miss? It’s like, it’s nothing. Eddie Murphy, who’s one of the greatest comedians ever. When you go back and watch his raw special. Brilliant. Can’t say a lot of that today. He even said he wouldn’t want to tell those jokes today. I don’t tell the same jokes. I told it 22 years. I’m a 40 plus year old woman. I should be.
It’s like, it’s not that hard to understand. So it’s just another way for them to whine. What is really hilarious when you look at the top podcast and the top media, they’re all right-wing people. So like who is holding back your platform? No one is holding you back. You can say what you want.
Jen Psaki: Well, what do people do? What do we all, people listening? I mean, nobody’s listening right now who is like looking for advice for the Republican party in all likelihood, but we can still talk about it. But I mean, there is this question and people shorthanded as like the Democrats need a Joe Rogan. This is like, it’s, that’s not the right way of describing it, but it’s like, there is this, is it an absence of voices and absence of understanding of how to do it? An absence of people who support those type of values, not listening to each other’s stuff and lifting it up. How do we begin to address it?
Jemele Hill: Got to break the echo chamber. And I think that Democrats need to put a lot more money in media. And you know, the people, if anything, what has proven to be the blueprint that doesn’t work. And again, you can tell me if I’m wrong, this is way more your level of expertise than mine, but that whole play into the center thing. How many times are they going to do that and lose? I’m just like, how many times are we going to do this?
Jen Psaki: Well, I mean, I’ve said this many times, like I have all due respect to Liz Cheney, who is very courageous, but like ending the campaign to appealing to the Liz Cheney voter.
Jemele Hill: Can’t do that.
Jen Psaki: It was like, what are we doing? Because there’s millions of people who should be supporting Democrats who did not turn out. Like, let’s talk about those people. They seem more gettable.
Jemele Hill: When you have to win the turnout game, that means you have to win the passion and enthusiasm game. The way you win that game is you got to go harder for the things you believe in. You don’t go the other way. The people that didn’t vote for you or chose to vote for Donald Trump or are Trump supporters ain’t voting for you. Give up on those people to some degree. I mean, I, you know, I know that it’s not in a politician’s nature to want to, quote, give up on people. You could still represent them if you get in the office and like look out for their needs, even if they didn’t vote for you. That’s part of your job. But in terms of turning out your people, worry about your people. Is this producer I had when I was at ESPN, they gave me this brilliant analogy that I’ve never forgotten when it came to attracting viewers.
And he said, you got to think of yourself as throwing a party and you throw in the dopest party you could possibly think of. People in VIP bottles, you having a great time. You know, everybody in there sweating, dancing, blah, blah, blah. You know who you don’t worry about? The people hating outside the club. That’s who you don’t worry about. You don’t give a shit about them people. Right. Oh, well, because you know what will happen? They go look through the windows and be like, damn, we want to get in that party. It looks fun. Don’t worry about them. Democrats need to stop worrying about the people hating outside the club. They pay too much attention to them. Worry about the people inside the club, already popping bottles, already in there getting drunk, already sweating. Worry about them. Stop worrying about the people outside the club.
Jen Psaki: I mean, I feel like this needs to be a bumper sticker. Worry about the people inside the club. It’s like worry about them.
Next up, I’ll talk with Jemele about the importance of journalism in this moment and the public seeming lack of trust in the media overall.
(BREAK)
Jen Psaki: I mean, you’ve had your own journey in media, right? Where you and you’ve talked about this, where you were trained as like, don’t share your point of view. A journalist has no point of view, or you can describe it more accurately. I’ve thought a lot about this for people because I can share my point of view and say what I think, which is quite freeing. It feels hard not to do that in this moment.
Jemele Hill: Well, I think sometimes journalists, we’ve used objectivity in a way that allows us to be let off the hook. Like we use objectivity as a crutch, right? The whole point of journalism was always truth. That was the part, right? That is the part of journalism is that exposing a truth, whether comfortable or uncomfortable, that is what you do. To do that, you got to be able to call a thing a thing.
And so you can’t say like, oh, the president appeared to not remember something. No, he lied. It’s okay to say he lied. All right. You can’t soft shell the language. You have to be honest with people. And when people feel like you’re not being honest with them, they don’t trust you.
So the lack of trust that people have in the media, they’ve earned it. They have unfortunately earned this because in the moments that require them to be journalists, they haven’t acted that way.
Yes, you’re going to piss people off. The whole point of journalism is disruption. The point is not to acquiesce. The point is not to get along. The point is not to curb or not to cater to access rather than information. The point is the journalism.
So I feel like what you have to do as a journalist is you have to be loyal to the truth and you have to be unbiased. Unbiased is not the same as objective because objective means that there’s two sides to every story. Is there two sides to racism?
Jen Psaki: There’s a whole lot of that going on right now.
Jemele Hill: The both sides is crazy. I’m just like, so what’s the both sides of the most prominent person in the Trump administration being Elon Musk? What’s the both sides to a Nazi salute? I just want to know. What’s the other side of that? Just want to know.
Jen Psaki: I’m not here to argue it.
Jemele Hill: Exactly. I’m like, so you sit up here arguing for a Nazi salute? I don’t understand. So there’s not two sides to that. And we keep giving two sides to things that are not two-sideable if I may bring something up. So either it’s racism or it’s not. There’s not two sides of that. So what happens is that when readers see that, they can sniff that and they know it’s not authentic and they know that it’s not genuine. And I don’t know if the media can ever regain the trust of the public, but I do know this is right now, the best journalism is being done by independent journalists and independent journalistic organizations. They’re phenomenal.
Jen Psaki: What do you consume and read? Tell me.
Jemele Hill: I will tell you recently, I just became a subscriber to it. It is a prison journalism project. That’s excellent. So it’s prisoners. In fact, one of the pieces I just read, one inmate wrote about the experience of when Luigi Mangione, what it was like when he came to that prison. He was in that prison briefly, but they’re doing very fascinating, very humane reporting and telling you what the system looks like for them from the inside is very interesting. It is really, really good. I also read the “Mississippi Free Press” which is excellent. They’re the ones who broke the Brett Favre story about him stealing the money from welfare recipients. “The Tennessee Holler” another independent journalism organization, “Mother Jones” “News Now.” There’s a lot of really good places doing really good journalism. They’re doing the job that we’re supposed to be doing.
The traditionalists in me, as much as I grapple with it, I still do have my “LA Times”, “Washington Post”, and “New York Times” subscription in large part because I have friends that work in all of those places. And I feel like I don’t think they should be punished for the idiocy of their owners.
And so, and of course, I’m from Detroit, so I just subscribed to the “Detroit Free Press”, where I used to work, “USA Today”. I mean, I probably read a good, you know, “Daily Beast”, “Forbes”, “Bloomberg”, “Financial Times”. I probably a good 30 publications a day, at least.
Jen Psaki: Jeez, I need a briefing from you every day in your free time.
Jemele Hill: Well, you know, it’s, yeah, on top of like front office sports. I didn’t mention any sports.
Jen Psaki: Oh, I know, you didn’t want to talk about all the sports. How do you consume sports news?
Jemele Hill: So, you know, I mean, obviously ESPN is like still a major vehicle. I can consume a lot of news there, but “Front Office Sports”, “The Athletic” I’m 2000 years old. I prefer to read things as opposed to see things. Like I love documentaries, that’s true. But like, I need to read it. Like, it feels like it sits in better. And if I, listen, if it wouldn’t become eventually a messy corner in my house, I would still have a physical newspaper. Like even with books.
Jen Psaki: Same, it’s the dream. I’m 2000 years, I have printed paper with me. I just want to acknowledge.
Jemele Hill: Listen, my doing TV, they would sort of make fun of me because I needed a legal pad. Like, I don’t want to write everything on the computer. I want to, when I write it out, it’s like, that’s when it sinks in. That’s when it’s real to me. So yes, I have index cards here. I have like all sorts of things. I write on things. I have a journal here. Like I don’t.
Jen Psaki: I love this quality. Okay. Now, before I let you go, I feel like one of the things that I’m trying to help people understand is there’s like a little hope out there, right? There’s, you mentioned Jasmine Crockett. She’s phenomenal. Maxwell Frost also doesn’t operate from a place of fear. You mentioned him. There’s a lot of like, and I get this from friends and there’s like a lot online too of like, I don’t want to watch the news. I don’t want to be a part of the process anymore. I want to kind of remove myself. I think for a lot of, and I don’t speak for all black women, but for a lot of black women who have like long been the backbone of the Democratic Party, it’s a feeling like we just worked our ass off. Like I’m tired.
Jemele Hill: Yep. Y’all got it.
Jen Psaki: Well, I mean, but like, and it’s all like, I’m like, yeah, it’s like totally fair. But what do you tell people? Like, how do you get people engaged or you’re just like, take your time. It’s okay.
Jemele Hill:” So this is a wonderfully timed question because a friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, Cari Champion, who people may see on CNN quite a bit, she’s a contributor there and does a lot of things in the media space. We worked together at ESPN. She sent me an amazing video. I wish I remembered the young man’s name, but he did a breakdown of how the Heritage Foundation was created. And here’s something I did not know, because as much as I read all these publications, you can’t know everything. All right.
Jen Psaki: Even you with your hours of news consumption.
Jemele Hill: Yes. I cannot know everything, but he pointed out, and I did not know this, that the Heritage Foundation, the roots of it come back to the organization of six students. That is the starting point of it. They started the Federalist Society, right? It was a student-led, student-run, student-organized organization. And of course, you have multiple Supreme Court justices that are part of the Federalist Society.
So from that, what it got me to thinking about is, I think when we think of resistance, we think about it on such big terms that it becomes so big that it’s intimidating and nobody wants to do it. Like, how can we organize against all of this? We’re getting executive orders every five minutes. What can we do? It starts small. This was the plan we’re seeing implemented now took 50 years. 50 years. So that lets you know the time, the patience that had to happen for that to happen. And I’m not saying that we should wait 50 years. But what I am saying is that small movements, as we saw in 2020, when the world galvanized against something that they found to be objectionable and horrible, it didn’t take that much for it to become a wildfire. It did not take that much.
And so I think people need to see the resistance. If they see the resistance, they’re encouraged to join the resistance. So as much as a lot of us did feel that I’m part of the 92 percent as in 92 percent of Black women that voted for Kamala Harris, like as much as many of us have the right to feel like, I’m tired, y’all got it, we tried, we’re tired of this. I get it. But then I also think about the people that came before me and not that I could ever breathe the same air as them, but we had ancestors who had way less resources than we have that never laid down.
They didn’t do it. I mean, I think about this woman here. This is my Ida B. Wells Barbie doll.
Jen Psaki: Oh my God, I love that.
Jemele Hill: My Ida B. Wells, the godmother of journalism. Without her, we would not know about lynching, about the horrors that Black men were facing in the South. She risked her life so that we would understand the depravity of racism. Ida B. Wells didn’t have a whole lot to work with. Ida B. Wells still put her life on the line. So what do I look like laying down in my comfy office, driving the car that I drive, being able to make the money I can make? What do I look like laying down?
It would seem to me like I would be engaging in some real soft behavior because I’d had it hard. I got it easy, comparatively speaking. And if I use this as an excuse to lay down, then I didn’t really stand and believe in what I said I did. So that’s all I got.
Jen Psaki: That is a lot. Everyone needs an Ida B. Wells Barbie, it seems. They need to reproduce those in this moment.
I actually have one more thing I want to ask you about just because I’ve always been wondering. One of the things I’ve noticed, one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast, is that political TV is so formal. There’s a formality to it that almost feels outdated and unnatural. I realize I’m participating in this process, but I grew up as a, I was a tomboy kid too. I did tons of sports. If I had a gun to my head, I couldn’t do my own hair and makeup. I have no idea, right?
And there is, well, when you watch as a consumer of sports media, it’s less formal. It’s more conversational. It’s more people at a table where you feel it’s more spontaneous. I don’t know if it actually is, but it comes across that way. What do you think, and obviously bazillions more people watch sports than watch political media. What do you think as a person who cares about how people consume politics and how people understand what’s happening in their systems, that political media could do better? I mean, are there models or are there things they could do that makes it more accessible?
Jemele Hill: Yeah, no, they’re definitely models. It’s, again, it’s understanding that to really enact change, you’ve got to be willing to disrupt and break the system. So even if you look at, like, there are actually a lot of cues other than the content and the crazy things that they say, but there’s a lot of things that the right-wing political pundits figured out that those that either are in the middle or just in sort of regular network news.
Jen Psaki: Yeah, what do you think those are?
Jemele Hill: So one is that people now, they do like relax. They do like informal. They almost, because of the explosion of the podcast audience, they like TV shows that look like podcasts. Right. So they like conversations. They like for their hosts to come on, wear what I’m wearing, a hoodie and some sweats.
Jen Psaki: I know. It was Andrea Mitchell’s last day. So I had to wear something that was like sort of appropriate.
Jemele Hill: They want to see people relaxed on couches. They want to see people at a desk, as you said. They want some levity in their political news. It certainly can be heavy. It certainly can be informative. But when you do watch Joe Rogan and you see his interaction and by play with guests, it’s very informal. You know, they talk about taboo things. And while I’m not at all a fan of Joe Rogan’s and everything out of his mouth, I tend to disagree with, I respect and understand how he built his audience. And I see why visually it’s appealing beyond just the type of conversation.
So I think you have to be willing in the political space to not take yourself so seriously, because that’s not as inviting to people. The people like real talk and real conversation, and they like informality. They like for things to feel like a hang. And even though it’s serious, they like that part of it. And so I think you’re going to see more shows take on the feel of being a podcast, even though it might be a TV show.
Jen Psaki: I love that. I’m a consumer of podcasts, too.
Jemele Hill, I love talking to you. You’re so fun and smart and all of the things. And I really appreciate you taking the time.
Jemele Hill: Well, I appreciate being here. This was a great conversation to have. And I hope people, as we are bombarded to some degree, already exhausted. January felt like 12 years. See that that’s the point. The point is to exhaust you so that you don’t feel like fighting anymore. So the other piece of advice I would give to people is that you have to be somewhat judicious and create some boundaries about the news and how much of it you consume so that you can maintain your spirit. Because not only is voicing your opinion, fighting, letting people know what’s unacceptable, that you won’t stand for this. Yes, that’s important. But what also is a level of resistance is joy.
That is also important.
Jen Psaki: That is very wise advice. Show all the parts of your humanity. Don’t feel like you have to be the kid in the front of the class trying to get an A in astrophysics to participate in the process because we don’t need any more of those.
Thank you, Jemele. Great talking to you. Thank you for all your wisdom.
So Jemele had a lot to say and a few things stuck out to me. One of them is something I hear from Democrats a lot, people who are working on campaigns or in politics or on Capitol Hill, and that is that they want the Democrats to fight harder. They want more resistance. They don’t want so much agreement on things because they’re not seeing that fight enough. We’ve seen a little bit of it, but Jemele made pretty clear that’s where she’s coming from, and I think she’s not alone in that.
The other piece is the analogy she gave that I think is so apt. I almost need to print it off and put it at my desk. And it is about how Democrats are often way too worried about the people who are pissed off outside of the club and not worried enough about making a party for the people who are inside the club, as in the people who agree with them, the people who are members of the party or should be. And that is a big lesson and a very clear analogy for one of the things I think people should take away from 2024.
Thanks for listening to “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.” We’ll be back next Monday with new episodes. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get exclusive bonus content.
The senior producer for The Blueprint is Margaret Menefee, and our producer is Vicki Vergolina. John Ball is our associate producer. Our booking producer is Michelle Hoffner, and we get additional support from Makena Roberts. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory. And Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Alex Lupica is the executive producer of “Inside with Jen Psaki” and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio.
I’m your host, Jen Psaki. Search for “The Blueprint” wherever you get your podcasts and follow the series.