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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and thanks to Brigid Bergin and Nancy Solomon for filling in when I was on vacation last week. We begin this new week with a special edition of our show as well as by talking about the news of the day. Because as some of you know, today is the 60th anniversary of a March on Washington that gave us Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, but we're going to take a different tack to commemorate the anniversary and tie it to today.

We're not going to play "I Have a Dream" excerpts like you're probably hearing elsewhere. We're going to focus more on the larger context of the march, and on the man who was a key organizer of the march, a mentor to Dr. King and nearly twice his age, labor leader as well as civil rights leader, A. Philip Randolph. On the context of the march, people just usually call it the March on Washington and don't realize that that was just a shorthand for the full name of it, which was the March on Washington for jobs and freedom.

It certainly was centrally a civil rights march, of course, but it was also a labor rights march, a march for jobs and freedom. We'll talk about that later in the show. Being a march for freedom, I was thinking about how it can seem that that word has come to be used more these days on the political right than in the movements for social justice. It's really individual freedom from social justice or community concerns in this common form.

A recent example freedom from having to protect your neighbors from COVID during the pandemic emergency period by wearing masks in public places at that time. Remember that? Freedom. I did a word search to see how the word freedom was used in the Republican presidential primary debate last week. Here are a couple of examples. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum probably the most irrelevant candidate in the whole race, but a Republican who was on the stage. As you will hear in this clip, invoked freedom to signal the freedom of business owners from federal regulations and the freedom of the states to take away a woman's freedom over her own body if she gets pregnant. Doug Burgum from the debate.

Doug Burgum: We need to get back to freedom and liberty for the people in this country. We can't have Republicans who fight for 50 years for this great cause to return it back to the states, and then the next day they turn around and go, "No, the feds should do that, because the feds are stepping into people's lives. They're stepping into people's businesses over and over.

Brian Lehrer: Freedom from the federal government applies to individual business owners according to Burgum and to states on the issue of abortion, not to women. Another example of the word freedom being used in the debate candidate Vivek Ramaswamy used it in a totally inaccurate, if I may say a historical way. He had several problems with historical accuracy that night, as has been widely pointed out. In this one with the word freedom, and it's only a few seconds,

Vivek Ramaswamy: The US Constitution it is the strongest guarantor of freedom in human history. That is what won us the American Revolution. That is what will win us the revolution of 2024.

Brian Lehrer: Fact check, the US Constitution could not have won us the American Revolution because the Americans won the Revolutionary War in 1783. The Constitution wasn't even written until 1787, four years later at the Constitutional Convention and not ratified until six years later in 1789. That was wrong. Also, as for it being the strongest guarantor of freedom in human history.

Well, that original constitution, as I probably don't have to tell you, did not include the Bill of Rights yet, and did enshrine slavery in writing as a right of the states to impose like Doug Burgum and the state's right to ban abortions today, I guess, state's rights to impose slavery at that time, voting only for white male. Property owners and with no Bill of Rights yet that certainly left the original Constitution short of being the greatest guarantor of freedom in human history.

Why quibble over small things. By contrast, here's an example of how freedom was defined at the March on Washington 60 years ago today, August 28th, 1963. Just a few seconds here of March organizer, A. Philip Randolph.

1. Philip Randolph: We want a free democratic society dedicated to the political, economic and social advancement of man along moral lines.

Brian Lehrer: Freedom runs along moral lines a little different from Doug Burgum invoking business owners' freedoms as his primary modern example at the debate. Maybe A. Philip Randolph or Dr. King would've cited something like freedom from police killings like the one in the Bronx last week of 30-year-old Eric Duprey. Have you heard that story? Trying to flee a buy-and-bust operation on his motorcycle when an NYPD sergeant threw a cooler at him, causing the motorcycle to crash.

The New York City medical examiner has ruled Eric Duprey's death a homicide. Listeners, what does freedom mean to you in 2023, 212-433-WNYC. We put that out there as a serious question as we honor the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. What does freedom mean to you in 2023? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can text that number as well. On the show today we will play A. Philip Randolph's full seven-minute speech from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

We will talk to a historian of the march and invite your oral history calls. Heads up if you're in the older sector of our audience. If you were there on August 28th, 1963, or if you just remember the march, those calls are coming up in about an hour, so don't call in with that now. Now, call in with what freedom means to you. We will talk with an economist later today as well about the economic goals of the march. There were very specific economic goals of that economic march for jobs and freedom, and how much they've been realized, not realized in 2023. That's all coming up.

Right now, some Monday morning politics with Jonathan Lemire, White House bureau chief for Politico and host of Way Too Early in the 5:00 AM Eastern Time hour on MSNBC, as well as a regular member of the Morning Joe team there from 6:00 to 10:00. Jonathan, always good of you to do some 10:00 AM overtime with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jonathan Lemire: Brian, I'm glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: The Republican debate was so overshadowed in the media by the Donald Trump's surrender and mugshot in the Fulton County, Georgia case that we might forget things like how Republicans and conservatives in general use the word freedom today. Do you think those Doug Bergham and Vivek Ramaswamy clips were good examples of that and in contrast to the way it was used in the March on Washington clip?

Jonathan Lemire: Oh, there's no question of that. That was a highly instructive comparison and how the definition of freedom has really shifted, at least on the political right. It does seem for so many Republicans conservatives now. It's purely that individual freedom. Almost a hyper-individualism where it's about my freedoms and far less about the community's freedom, the collective good.

That was the pandemic, as you noted, was probably the best example we've had of recently of that. Others would argue that the right to bear arms that firearm debate in this country is another example where there are some on the right who feel like they should have an unquestioned ability and freedom to have any sort of weapon that they want, including a weapon of war like an AR-15 that was used again this weekend in that shooting, the racially motivated shooting in Jacksonville, Florida.

As opposed to the actual definition in the Second Amendment that our founders had put pens to paper. Yes, I do think that's right. I also think to your other point that very little of what happened on Wednesday has changed much of the trajectory of the Republican primary race. We've seen a couple candidates get minor bumps here or there, but they all very much were in Donald Trump's shadow.

Brian Lehrer: In our weekend newsletter, I invited readers to text us what the word freedom means to them. Here's a sampling of the responses we got. "Freedom means being able to live unapologetically queer, trans, non-binary, or anywhere else on the spectrum." "For me, freedom means your rights and where my nose begins," wrote another listener. Another one, "To me, freedom means the right to live life unencumbered by unnecessary restraints. In doing so, we achieve autonomy over decisions."

Another reader wrote, "Freedom is the socially recognized power to participate in directing our shared political and cultural life." Interesting, Jonathan, already to the point that you were making the contrast between freedom is an individual thing, and freedom is a community thing. Continuing, someone wrote, "The more I spend time with immigrants, the more I have come to believe that freedom means fairness for all and a hope of safety to live your life." Someone else wrote, "Freedom is having a civil service pension, a rent-stabilized apartment, and time to do the painting and writing I put on hold."

Two more. "As an artist, freedom means that I can work in any medium and choose my subject matter freely, teach my art students to explore and create." Finally, someone else, "What the word freedom means to me, a mirage, an aspiration to counter the myriad ways that our ives are constrained by physical, social, and other forces."

There are a bunch more that you wrote in, folks, in response to our weekend newsletter. I'll read some more later, but those are some of the texts we received on what freedom means to some people who read the newsletter. Listeners, we can take some more thoughts on that from you on the phones in this segment. What does freedom mean to you in 2023? If you live through the civil rights era, do you see a contrast with how it's used in politics today? 212-433-9692.

Jonathan, I think one of the reasons Trump continues to dominate the Republican primary rank and file, tell me if you agree, is that there isn't much of a policy debate going on in the party, except maybe on Ukraine and maybe around the edges on abortion rights, just around the edges, as we heard from Doug Burgum. Why move on from the leader you already see is speaking from your interests? I'm curious if you saw any meaningful policy discussions in that debate.

Jonathan Lemire: As a smart Republican strategist put it to me some time ago, why pay to watch the cover band when you can see the real thing, the Rolling Stones are still on tour. That's what we have here, where so many of these Republicans, there are a couple of exceptions which we can get into, are doing almost Trump impersonations, they're Trump-lite. You're right, there is very little in the way of policy differences. Yes, around the edges on abortion, I think Nikki Haley had a couple of moments, she broke through, she was one of the winners last week and she spoke about abortion acknowledging that there was no ability to get a national ban through, so why are we even talking about this?

While others, Republicans, Mike Pence included, really hammered home on that idea. Certainly, Ukraine is a big one and we have heard from the likes of say Chris Christie and Ace Hutchinson, and Mike Pence being very supportive of Keefe's efforts, while others including Trump, including Vivek Ramaswamy, being highly skeptical of what Ukraine is doing and suggesting the war should end even if that means giving Russia a lot of what it wants but those are few and far between.

Right now the Republican Party is a cult of personality. It is about Trump, it's about grievance, it's about attitude, it's about injustice, it's about the deep state, it's about allegations against Hunter Biden, whatever it is, but there's not a lot of disagreement within the party on basic tenets. Therefore if everyone is largely singing from the same choir book, well go with the guy who's the best singer. In that case, it's Donald Trump, who is without question, say what true.

There are plenty of listeners to your show who probably have very very strong negative feelings about Donald Trump, but he is undeniably a political force and has been now for nearly a decade. He is the leader of the party, and it seems like at least for now Republicans want to keep staying in tune with him even though there are so many alarm bells from the GOP's perspective about his ability to win a general election even though he looks so strong right now in the primaries.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe the reason Vivek Ramaswamy is moving up in the race for second place is he is a feisty speaker who, like Trump, sounds angry a lot and speaks in simple hyperbolic language a lot. I'm going to play one more example of him getting the founding of the country completely wrong, but framing Republican values in digestible soundbites in the process. Listen folks for his bullet points of original American values at the end of this clip, things no American was talking about in 1776.

Vivek Ramaswamy: I was born in 1985, and I grew up into a generation where we were taught to celebrate our diversity and our differences so much that we forgot all of the ways that we are really just the same as Americans bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion in 1776, and this is our moment to revive those common ideals. God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan Lemire, fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity and there are only two genders as common ideals the way he framed it that bonded Americans in 1776.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes, that wasn't really on the topic of discussion back then, but I think you've hit on something on Vivek Ramaswamy, who is as you can hear, he's very good on the stump, and he has seemingly established a bit of a connection with audience is someone who is a complete unknown just a few months ago, but he's pretty tireless. He says he'd never says no to an interview, he's out there far more than many of his republican competitors, he's got plenty of money he himself is quite rich so he's out there and he's is able to fund his campaign.

He is also someone who is frankly the most unapologetically pro-Trump candidate in the race. That's a pretty high bar because so many of them are very pro-Trump. He in fact over the weekend on Meet the Press said he believes Trump is the best president of this century. It was questioned, well if that's the case, why are you running to unseat him? He just suggested he could bring a new approach, but he has made it very clear. He is the first one to suggest that his hand shot up when he said he would support. Donald Trump were Trump to be the nominee, even if he were convicted of a felon, and his hand has gone up repeatedly, where he has said he if he were to be elected, he first act in office would be to pardon Donald Trump, and he has urged his other Republican candidates to make that same pledge.

There are some speculation in the Beltway that Ramaswamy is angling to be Trump's VP, that that may be what he's trying to do here, secure some sort of cabinet position, work Trump to win again but certainly he is the most extreme example, though, of something that's pretty common. With a few exceptions, Christie and Hutchinson among them, Republicans really are not going after Trump. Maybe they make the electability argument, they say, "Hey, we love Donald Trump, but we're not sure he could win again because of the legal questions," but no one is attacking him directly, at least no one who right now seemingly has a shot to unseat him.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just curious, since you watch the whole debate, I presume I took a vacation week privilege and only watched highlights but did anyone call Ramaswamy on his ridiculously anachronistic sighting of history?

Jonathan Lemire: No one did that, to my recollection, but certainly he was the target of a lot of ire on the stage. From the reading that I had, watching on television and from some in the room, Ramaswamy seemed to get under the skin of some of those other candidates who didn't seem to like him all that much. There has been some rumblings of other campaigns, they find him annoying or ingratiating, overly ingratiating, whatever it might be, but it was also a fact of where the race stands right now, that he had momentum going into the night and therefore he, with Trump not there, was the subject of a number of attacks.

Nikki Haley in particular went after him on issues of foreign policy. Chris Christie went after him and even made the Barack Obama comparison. Others didn't miss opportunities to take swipes at Ramaswamy, perhaps to the benefit of the person who say a few weeks ago and certainly a few months ago, you would have thought would have been center stage in Trump's absence. Governor DeSantis whose campaign, since this race began seen as the top Trump alternative.

Polls suggest that's still the case but he has fallen dramatically. His support has plummeted. There was a sense that were he to have a really bad night, maybe his candidacy wouldn't even be able to recover. Instead, he largely stayed out of the line of fire and had what most observers thought was a decent night. At the very least, he stopped the bleeding. He let Ramaswamy take most of the shots at that.

Brian Lehrer: As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, if you're just joining us, we've invited listeners to call in with your thoughts on the meaning of freedom in 2023. Is it different from what people might have meant primarily in 1963? Marina in Greenpoint, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marina.

Marina: Hello, good morning. Thanks so much for taking my call. I think the first thing I just want to say that the US Constitution was inspired by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which is a five indigenous nations, who had what can be thought of as the first, the seeds of the Constitution that the US Constitution was then built from. Then the question about freedom and my personal freedom and all of that, it makes me shirk away a little bit from the question when questions of freedom are talked about or asked about without a deeper sense of obligation towards one another.

When I imagine my own personal freedom, so-called personal freedom, which I don't even know what that is, because I live in a world that's interconnected. For me to go out into my neighborhood and to be able to know the plants that are around me, know the local grasses, what is the water, who are my neighbors, how am I connected to a world that's much big than I am, and what are my responsibilities and obligations within that? I think that what happened during the pandemic with masking, it became about this personal choice or the personal risk assessment. That is a completely isolated freedom, because masks are fundamentally relational, because we share air. In a pandemic, public health cannot exist in a completely isolated, individualized neoliberal self.

Brian Lehrer: Marina, thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to Janet in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Good morning. I'm not sure if I should be in this segment because I wanted to talk about my mother being at the March on Washington, and the relation to Trump being indicted by a Black woman and all those Black people in Atlanta who have changed, who are arresting him and booking him. I don't think my mother in '67, or I was 12 about, would have believed that we would be arresting a President, and a Black woman would be doing it. To me, I've seen a lot of changes in the years after the March on Washington, and I don't know if he would have even dreamed this. I don't know if I would have even dreamed this so many years ago. That's what I'd like to say.

Brian Lehrer: Janet, thank you. Thank you very much. Certainly, as we think about Martin Luther King, Dr. King on the 60th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, of course, he was centered for much of his life in Atlanta, and here it is, after all, a Black woman in Atlanta who as district attorney just indicted Donald Trump on those charges. That's a great thing to point out, Janet. Thank you very much. Kanene in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kanene.

Kanene: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. You know I've been calling for years, I've been doing my show called Black Issues Issues because of these specific reasons. The notion of freedom. I feel like when you look at different candidates, when they run for office, they never center racial justice, and they definitely don't center racial justice specifically for Black people.

When you look at Bloomberg, when you look at de Blasio, they can have 50% Black male unemployment and run for president. The barometer, the arbiter. The way in which we judge the gross domestic product of America too often does not in any way, shape or form consider Black lives. When you look at 90% of the people who've lost their jobs in the past four months, you can look this up, were Black.

When I see Bidenomics and I hear, yes, it's great, I guess, symbolically, that we can book our former President, but I'd rather have the sustainability of Black people be non-negotiable. The racially motivated killings, the killing of the narrative of what America means and all the contributions that Black people have had to this country, the killing of that, the book banning of that. I want actual tangible things and these things are actually done, instead of talking points. Biden has the Lift Every Voice and Sing plan. Have you heard anything coming out of his mouth about this? No. We have Kamala and we have Ketanji. We have these symbols. They're great, but in terms of the tone, the level of survival, the racial impact in terms of our health and in terms of our economics, I always say racism isn't just emotional. When I do diversity trainings, racism is also economic. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Kanene, you'll be interested, I think, in a segment coming up on the show in about an hour with a guest from the Economic Policy Institute where we're going to assess the success of the March on Washington and the movement that it was part of 60 years later, explicitly in economic terms. Tune in for that coming up in a little over an hour, and thank you for your call today. One more on what freedom means to you. Saleem in Middletown. You're on WNYC. Hello, Saleem.

Saleem: Brian, longtime listener. Thank you very much. Good morning to you and your guests. There is no freedom in any society. I'm tired of everybody keeps saying freedom, freedom. We live in society. We're not living in jungle. I don't care what the Constitution says. You respect me, I respect you. We walk on the same street, as your first caller said. You breathe the same air. You need to wear mask. I don't want you to spit on my face. You may not like it, but I'm wearing the mask.

Your last caller, she quoted bunch of stuff that is not true, and I hope you correct it in your next segment. I wish I could call your next segment, but I'm having obligations. There is no absolute freedom in society. That's the problem with every site, left and right. We need to define what the freedom is. You live in society. We have differences, we have races, we have genders. That's not a freedom.

This is the problem we have. We threw the words. I advise you and your listener read a book, Wisdom of Crowds. We're following the crowds. This book was published in 1980 during Reagan administrations. Please read this book. This is what's happening to our society. What do you mean by freedom? You live in my society. You cannot come up there and threw your dog garbage on my streets. That's not freedom. You can carry your gun, but you cannot shoot me. That's the problem. We do not define what really freedom is.

Brian Lehrer: Saleem, I'm going to leave it there.

Saleem: I wish the best for you and your guests.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, and the best for you. There's an interesting smattering of calls defining freedom in the ways that they think about it on the 60th anniversary of what was called the march for jobs and freedom, that March on Washington in 1963.

Jonathan Lemire, before you go, give us one more Monday Morning Politics thought. We've been talking about the Republicans. On the Democratic side, I see that one of your recent articles says White House Bureau Chief of Politico is called Biden World moves to stave off Cornel West and No Labels threat. Can you take us into that for our last minute?

Jonathan Lemire: Sure, happy to do so. The President is back in Washington after a week's vacation last week, and certainly, he is running largely unopposed in the Democratic primary field. Yes, there's some RFK Jr. attention, but what the White House and the team around the President to get him secure another four years. They're looking, of course, at the general election. At the moment, they projected Donald Trump would be their opponent, and they know how close the election was last time, how the 2016 election was, too.

Any sort of third-party candidate would pose a threat. There is a sense with whether it's from the No Labels organization or Cornel West, that either of those candidates, West at the moment would be in the Green Party ticket, would be more of a threat to draw votes away from Biden than Trump. That is something that they are deeply aware of even at this early stage in the election and aim to try to ward off those challenges.

Brian Lehrer: Jonathan Lemire, White House bureau chief for Politico, host of Way Too Early in the 5:00 AM Eastern time hour on MSNBC, as well as a regular member of the Morning Joe team there from 6:00 to 10:00. Jonathan, we always appreciate it. Thanks very much.

Jonathan Lemire: My pleasure. Hope to do it again soon.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Much more to come.

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