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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon and Jeff Shell are out, Joe Biden wants to be back in. The president released a reelection announcement video this morning. We'll get to that and play an excerpt. There's all this news today, as you have no doubt heard about allegedly sexist media men getting the boot by the companies that run all three major cable news operations. You probably know about Don Lemon now fired from CNN after the firestorm over his comment that Nikki Haley is passed her prime because women are considered past their prime once they pass their 40s. Don Lemon said that.

The one you probably know the least about is Jeff Shell, who was the CEO of NBCUniversal until Sunday when he admitted what he called an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company and said he was truly sorry. Now, according to multiple media reports, the woman is Hadley Gamble, a correspondent at CNBC, the Business Cable Channel, whose lawyer is telling reporters she has messages that document harassment and sex discrimination by Shell. And, of course, there's Tucker Carlson and lots of speculation there about the reasons he got fired yesterday from Fox News, but some of it goes like this: lying to his viewers, yes, that was highlighted in the Dominion voting machine and defamation suit that just cost the company more than three quarters of a billion dollars. It's not really a new offense and acceptable to management for Tucker Carlson to be lying to his viewers for a long time.

They even said that in court, we'll talk about that, the cost of doing business. Supporting the big lie about the stolen election, that Fox as a company did not support. Meh, all's fair in the pursuit of ratings. Supporting Vladimir Putin on the invasion of Ukraine. Putin, who recently took another Murdoch journalist hostage, Evan Gershkovich from the Wall Street Journal. No, that's okay. I guess they can compartmentalize that. But how about this? There's a new lawsuit against Fox by Carlson's own former chief guest booker Abby Grossberg, who alleges she was pressured into giving false testimony in the Dominion case and also that Carlson ran a sexist, misogynist, toxic workplace that included using the C-word in the workplace all the time as Grossberg put it in an NBC interview last month. He did that, not okay in the workplace, not okay in mixed company.

You would think he would probably get fired but he hadn't, at least until now. Let's consider that for a minute. Carlson using that word, guy in his position with so much he could lose. We're about to hear from Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. She's about to be our guest. Joan says Carlson once used the C-word to insult her. She published an article about it back in 2019. Fox didn't care then, but for even more corroborating evidence about that thing, did you hear NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on All Things Considered yesterday? He too had a firsthand story of Carlson using that word to describe someone in his presence. Here's that story. This begins with Folkenflik mentioning that allegation of vulgar language in the new Abby Grossberg lawsuit.

David Folkenflik: She said that he used a vulgar epithet like the most, I think, vile epithet you can use for a woman in describing one of Trump's key allies, Sidney Powell. Let me say, although it was a shocking term, I wasn't totally surprised by that. I had heard him use this term getting off a van at the Republican National Convention in 2016. I said to Carlson Tucker, "What are you doing?" He said, "What? She is." It was about someone else. I was pretty appalled in the moment.

Brian Lehrer: NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik on yesterday's All things Considered. Maybe, just maybe it was Tucker Carlson's workplace behavior more than any of his crimes against democracy that led to his sudden termination with that lawsuit looming. In any case, Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Jeff Shell are all out within a 24-hour period. Biden wants to stay in. For good measure, on another day this might have been the lead, Donald Trump goes on trial in a civil suit in New York today, accused of defamation and rape by the advice columnist E. Jean Carroll from an incident that stems from the 1990s and things that he said more recently.

With us now is Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, author of the book What's the Matter with White People, producer of the documentary The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte hosts the Tonight Show, that's suddenly very relevant because of the sad, breaking news that Harry Belafonte has died. They just announced that this morning. He was 96-years-old. So we're going to talk to Joan, not just about these bad media men, but about Harry Belafonte as well now. Joan has a new article for The Nation whose title I can't completely read on the air. It's called Don't Let the Door Hit You in the Ass. Tucker Carlson the racist misogynist Fox host lost his show, it's a great day for democracy, and for women. Joan, always great to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Joan: Thanks for having me, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: On such a sad occasion, and I imagine for you personally, did you know Harry Belafonte personally?

Joan: Oh, yes. We worked very closely together on that documentary. I did a piece about that week in 1968 that he hosted The Tonight Show for The Nation years ago, 2017, I think. I knew that it should be a documentary, but that's not really what I do as you know. With Joy Reed, my friend from MSNBC and a couple of other people, we were able to pull together a team of actual real documentary people who helped us get it made and came out in 2020. It's streaming on Peacock. I urge people to watch it, but in the course of that, he gave us at least three, four hours of interviews. We had lunch a few times and he was also incredibly generous in getting other celebrities and friends of his to talk to us because sometimes people were- everyone's busy, let's just put it that way, but a letter from Harry Belafonte might get your attention.

I learned so much in the writing of that piece first, and then the documentary. He truly was a civil rights hero. He was really up with Dr. King. He made so much of Dr. King's work possible with his financial generosity. He supported the family for many years. He was constantly bailing people out of jail, including Dr. King, and he was a strategist. He wasn't just somebody who sang and gave money, but he was a strategist and a key sounding board for Dr. King. Dr. King would stay in Harry's apartment on the Upper West Side whenever he came to New York. He had a room, he had a bottle of Harvey's Bristol cream that Harry kept for him, and they would talk all night about the movement and what they were up against.

That part of the story is very important. My father loved his music, so I grew up listening to that too. It's a loss, but it's a day to celebrate a great life, and again, a great man when we're sitting here to talk about these horrific media men who are also something to celebrate that they're paying some kind of consequences finally, but let's honor him for who he was and how he wasn't that, and think of his wife Pamela and his children today, because as old as he is, it's never easy to lose someone like that.

Brian Lehrer: That's right. Harry Belafonte was 96. I'm seeing in the New York Times report on this, which just moved a few minutes ago. This is brand new news that we're reacting to, and it just so happens that Joan Walsh was going to be our guest anyway, who as she's been describing, produced that documentary with Joy Reed The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte hosts the Tonight Show. He was 96. The Times says the cause was congestive heart failure, according to Ken Sunshine, Harry Belafonte's longtime spokesman. What was that 1968 fill in, I guess it would've been for Johnny Carson at that time as host of The Tonight Show? What was it about that that grabbed you, that thought it was movie worthy?

Joan: Well, partly that I hadn't known about it, and it's funny because it's not like it was really hidden. There's a chapter in Harry's own memoir that talks about it and how meaningful it was to him. I did my Googling and there was really almost nothing about it. A few mentions in books, and that was it. I just became fascinated by it, and I had an initial interview with him. Basically, Johnny did not do this. Johnny would have guest hosts for one night, and if he was gone for a week, he would have five guest hosts, maybe somebody would do two nights.

He never gave that chair away for a full week, but it was February of 1968, and times were really rough in terms of civil rights, the anti-war movement, and increasing violence. I think that Johnny Carson, who is not known as a particularly political person, thought that this was an important thing to do, and so did the folks at NBC to their credit. He got a lot of help. All of Johnny's bookers worked with him to book the week, but it was his guest list entirely.

He had Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. They were bookends of the week, but he also had, I can go on and on, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Wilt Chamberlain, Zero Mostel, Paul Newman, Nipsey Russell, just like white, Black, Indian, in the case of Buffy, who we talked to for the film was wonderful, Petula Clark-- I'm sorry, Petula was not on that week. They had a special that taped a few weeks later that we talk about in the film because it became notorious because they literally touched hands, and that could not be. Anyway, Petula was here. She's still performing, she's still amazing, and we were able to sit down and talk to her.

The combination of high and low and comedians and politicians and Dr. King, it struck me as just a really extraordinary week that also made me feel like, in some ways, Brian, maybe we've gone backwards since 1968. We have a lot of diversity and representation more than we did even five years ago, less than we need. The scope of Harry's ambition for this week, and the people it pulled together. I say this in the film, it was like he was willing this world into existence, these racially integrated warm casual people were obviously close friends, they enjoyed each other.

He was inviting us to have a glimpse of this future that meant so much to him, at a time when integration was almost becoming a little bit passé because of the slowness of basically the white establishment in dealing with the grievances of African-Americans all across the country. I was really struck by that. He took a full-page ad out in Variety afterwards where he thanked not only his luminary guests but all of the people who worked on the show with him behind the cameras. Johnny's secretary, we interviewed her, she had saved that and she brought it to us and it was funny because he said something like, "I want to thank you for joining me in The Sit In taking over The Tonight Show for a week.

Brian Lehrer: The Sit-In.

Joan: The Sit-In and we were really struggling how it can happen with what are we naming this thing? It was like, "Oh, The Sit In, we had it."

Brian Lehrer: That's so great because it's a play on The Fill In. He was a Fill In host but it references, of course, the political act of a sit-in.

Joan: The political sit-ins and he was sitting in for John. Look, we say that, right? Today's sit-in for Brian Lehrer. No one can replace him but sit-in today. [unintelligible 00:14:38] Yes, it did a lot of work, and it was great and showed us how self-aware he was at the time of exactly the political meaning of what he was doing.

Brian Lehrer: Well, listeners, if you're just joining us, the one piece of Joan Walsh's prominent work that I thought we would not be talking about on the show this morning is her role as producer of the documentary The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show, and we learned about five minutes before we went on that they've announced the death of Harry Belafonte at 96 years old. We've been talking about that. We are going to get to the rest of the news now that we booked Joan to talk about.

Let's expand what the call-in portion of the segment might be as well. Listeners, we were going to say your call is welcome on Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Jeff Shell, E. Jean Carroll versus Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden announcing for re-election, any of those things at 212-433-WNYC, and all of that still stands. Anybody want to pay tribute to Harry Belafonte, you can do that too. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

Joan, we were just hearing some of your personal stories with respect to Harry Belafonte, and we have a personal story of yours on really the flip side of your emotional life, having to do with Tucker Carlson. We play David Folkenflik's first-person account of the ease with which Tucker Carlson called women that particular four-letter word. Abby Grossberg says in her lawsuit against her former colleague Carlson that he flings it all the time. What's the family show FCC-friendly radio version of your own Tucker Carlson C-word story?

Joan: I'll do my best. My daughter could be listening, Brian. We don't want that. It was totally bizarre and out of the blue, although I guess now that I know, this is the way he talks, it shouldn't have been surprising. It happened in I think 2010 when I was editor-in-chief of Salon. We did have social media, but it wasn't as big a thing. We used to do what we called just reactions where-- Now what you would do is send an intern to Twitter and round up what everybody's saying about X, Y, or Z, but at the time, you have to call people and see if you can get them to talk to you, just give me a paragraph about whatever. This has something to do with Barack Obama and I think relating to the ACA, the Affordable Care Act.

Why I would have someone called Tucker Carlson is embarrassing to me now anyway, but an intern who is now a very prominent sports journalist, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, dutifully made this call and found himself on the receiving end of being asked, "What's it like to work for a C-word like Joan Walsh?" She's such a C-word and questions about my sex life. Just really insulting gross inappropriate stuff. Nothing about Barack Obama strangely. He gets off and he's sitting in a corner with other interns and people in an open office where people can tell that he's having a really uncomfortable conversation.

He gets off and he tells his supervisor what's just happened, and she comes into me, and she's very upset. She's like, "This is disgusting. What should we do about it," and he wasn't taping it. He called him back and tried to get him to say it on tape because we would have run something about it, and he wouldn't. He denied that he ever said it, but everyone around Ethan knew something bad had happened. I just decided in the moment that I really wasn't going to do that to a young person at the start of his career, pit him against Tucker Carlson. I believed in him. It just seem fair.

I carried that story around with me for a while, and then about four years ago, Media Matters uncovered a trove of Tucker's I'm sure fascinating and educational interviews with Bubba the Loves Sponge, I guess, radio personality, not Brian Lehrer for sure, where he likewise use the C-word all the time, made inappropriate remarks about his daughter, other really, really sexist things. I wound up writing about it because it's like, "Yes, this is him. He does this. He did this to me. He's doing it to other women."

Brian Lehrer: Now so much corroboration. I want to pull out from Tucker's own behavior to the workplace context because in lots of workplaces, if a guy uses that word these days even once to refer to a female colleague or even at all in mixed company, he'd probably get fired, but not apparently at Fox News, at least not for a long, long time. Do you think, in effect, their workplace culture has represented the old-school male values that Carlson and his ideological compadre Vladimir Putin espouse in public?

Joan: Oh, absolutely. Let's remember, this is Roger Ailes' creation. The late not great Roger Ailes, he was driven out by his own mistreatment of groping and assaulting women who worked for him. Likewise, Bill O'Reilly, who preceded Tucker in that eight o'clock spot, driven out for his sexual abuse of women. Clearly, this was the culture. Abby Grossberg's lawsuit says Tucker's top producer would grill her about the sex life of Maria Bartiromo, who she worked for before she went to work for Carlson, but while also calling her crazy and menopausal, which women really like that. I don't know if you knew that, Brian, but we love being called menopausal.

Brian Lehrer: I thought so.

Joan: Yes. Feel free to just throw that one around. No, I don't want to get you fired. I really like you. Anyway, they had a picture of Nancy Pelosi in a bikini. Women politicians who were silly enough to go on his stupid show would be ranked in terms of whether they were attractive or not, let's put it in the most clean way possible, and so it's been hiding in plain sight. It's not something he does when he's at a bar. Actually, I don't think he drinks anymore, at a party. Not that it's good in any of those places, but you know what I mean. It was absolutely part of the workplace and if you were a woman, you were expected to deal with it.

Brian Lehrer: Based on all the reporting you've seen over the last day, did that allegation in the new lawsuit by his former chief guest booker Abby Grossberg play a role in the firing, and if so, a big role, a small role? The first thing everybody thought about was the Dominion lawsuit and what they revealed about Tucker saying things on air he apparently didn't really believe. How do these interact with each other as far as you could tell?

Joan: Obviously, they interact, and I don't think there's any one thing, but I do think there is some reporting. The LA Times is reporting this very strongly, that the Grossberg lawsuit was a big part of it. There's also reporting that they didn't like. He criticized the higher-ups about their decisions specifically to call the election for Joe Biden, to occasionally fact-check and Trump's defenders' election fraud lies.

I don't know that he ever used Rupert Murdoch's name, but he was criticizing some decisions that Murdoch was making and then reversing because Murdoch himself would be like, "Oh, no, we know these are lies. We can't go out and say this," but then, oh, no, the stock price is tanking because everybody wants to go to Newsmax and hear the lies, so more lies, please. I think that there's reporting that criticizing Murdoch and the CEO Suzanne Scott got him in trouble, too. There's no reporting that says his lying to his audience is a problem. I guess there's also some reporting that his completely insane and evil coverage of the January 6th insurrection as a peaceful protest and nothing happened, tourists visiting the Capitol and the police waved them in, I think that was embarrassing as well.

Brian Lehrer: Right, which is wrong. Even Mitch McConnell criticized him publicly for that. One other thing about his lying, and there's so much more we want to get to about the impact on our political culture if there is one, of this one host reviled as he is by many losing his job, and also Don Lemon and Jeff Shell and Donald Trump and Joe Biden and their news.

They knew and embraced his reported lying so much so that they used it as a defense in court. I imagine you know about this. Let me tell our listeners this story. This is a paragraph from another David Folkenflik NPR story. This is from 2020, and this is the quote, "Now comes the claim that you can expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth."

That assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics, it's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News' own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. "It worked, by the way," David Folkenflik reported. He writes, "Just read US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers. It says, 'The general tenor of the show should then inform a viewer that Carlson is not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary.'" That's a quote from Fox News' lawyers. Did you know about that, Jo?

Joan: I didn't know about that specific quote. I knew there was something. I'd seen that characterized before, but yes, it's like alternative facts. Turn on Tucker Carlson and get some alternative facts, as Kellyanne Conway once told us. Yes, it's really quite remarkable. It's like they use the news term, they were fair and balanced. We report, you decide. But no, it's we lie and you get fooled, basically. You get uninformed, you get poorly informed. That's a defense. We've seen that before where they were like, "Yes, Sean Hannity." I think Sean Hannity, another terrible force in the world.

I don't know about his treatment of women, but they defended against something having to do with Hannity by saying he's not a journalist. He's an entertainer. They try to have it both ways. I thought that the Dominion suit gave us a lot of information, and I was not somebody who was despondent that it didn't go to trial. I didn't really think it would go to trial, and if it did go to trial, it wasn't going to be televised. We weren't going to get to see Tucker being cross-examined as much as all of us would have loved that. It brought out a lot of information like that. The other suits to come will likely bring out more.

Smartmatic is going ahead with an even bigger claim against Fox. We've got shareholder lawsuits relating to their peddling the big lie, and then, of course, two lawsuits by Abby Grossberg. One having to do with the toxic work environment and the other having to do with the way she was treated by Fox lawyers and how she felt like she was being coached, essentially, to lie in her deposition and also potentially to take the fall, her and Maria Bartiromo, for the reporting of completely false information about not just Dominion and Smartmatic and the voting machines, but everything, all the crazy, crazy stories they were coming up with to justify overturning the election. They're still in hot water.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're experiencing what we might call moral whiplash here on the show so far this morning as we talk about this Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and Jeff Shell news, Donald Trump going on trial in a civil suit by E. Jean Carroll, accusing him of not just defamation but a rape that she says took place in the 1990s.

At the same time, we will talk about Joe Biden officially announcing this morning that he's running for reelection, and we're talking about the news that broke just before the show that Harry Belafonte has died at the age of 96 and our guest Joan Walsh, who was already booked on the show in her role as national affairs correspondent for The Nation and someone who has had personal sexist slur encounters, let's say, with Tucker Carlson talking about her also is the producer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte hosts The Tonight Show.

As I say, moral whiplash for Joan and me so far this morning. Let's take a phone call. Larry in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Larry.

Larry: Hi. Good morning, Brian and Ms. Walsh. I'm calling to speak about Harry Belafonte but it just allow me if you may to just throw this in about these three media gentlemen. You know what I've noticed especially going back to those that became casualties of the Me Too movement, I could list them all, that these men if not wealthy have money, and there's an arrogance that comes with having that and it also translates into power. This is what is a big issue at the heart of these men's conduct. Having said that, yes, I called to salute Harry Belafonte and for full disclosure, we share an affinity in that I'm Jamaican and he's of Jamaican descent.

He's such a tower of a gentleman in so many regards. Growing up back home we knew him through the movies, didn't know really much until his calypso music but didn't know about his activism and his civil rights activity and so forth until we came to these United States and learned how much of a tower figure is. I'm heartened to know that he played such a [unintelligible 00:31:41].

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Oh, I thought you were done.

Larry: [unintelligible 00:31:43] America.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you were happy to learn he played such an integral role in the Civil Rights Movement in America. Larry, thank you for your call. Sharon in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi Brian. How are you doing? I'm so happy to be talking to you and tell you and your listeners that I super highly recommend Harry Belafonte's autobiography. It's called My Song. I knew him as a singer growing up listening to my father's records. I do remember my father saying to me once he was actually a really big civil rights activist but I didn't really understand that as a kid. I found this autobiography sitting on my father's shelf after he died in 2020 and read it.

Honestly, I don't think we would've had the Civil Rights movement as we know it if Belafonte hadn't been part of it because he was absolutely instrumental in so many things that happened behind the scenes. The opening introduction of it is him and Sidney Poitier literally trying to take cash to students in the South who were trying to register Black people to vote and being chased by a lynch mob. It's just incredible what that man did and I am so sad that he died but we honor his memory.

Brian Lehrer: Sharon, thank you so much for your call. We'll continue with Joan Walsh in a minute plus this 30 seconds of music.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, author of the book What's the Matter with White People? producer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte hosts The Tonight Show as we're talking about Harry Belafonte who we learned died at 96 just before we went on the air this morning but also about the news about Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Jeff Shell, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden announcing for reelection this morning.

One other thing about Carson before we move on. What impact, I think this is the most important question, do you think Tucker's firing will have on the national political conversation? Your sub-headline says It's a great day for democracy but even with a reported 3 million viewers a night the large majority of Americans don't watch Fox or any cable news channel. Is this bigger news in media world than it is in democracy world?

Joan: It's hard to really draw that, find a distinction for me anyway, Brian, because the media world influences the democracy world. As long as we have people like Tucker Carlson keeping folks angry and stupid and full of white grievance basically it's a threat to democracy and pedaling the line that he pedaled about January 6th that it was no harm done is a threat to democracy. Now what comes next? Who gets that slot? I did a piece saying bye-bye Bill O'Reilly when he got panned.

Then we got Tucker. It's too early to celebrate although I did toast to Tucker last night with my sister because who knows who we're going to get in that slot? Somebody on Twitter yesterday suggested Donald J. Trump Jr. Who knows? Kimberly [unintelligible 00:35:37]. It could conceivably be worse. I hope it won't. I hope maybe they've learned some certain lessons. It's too early to celebrate. They've not called and offered me the show. I just want to let everybody know that. You'll be the first to know, Brian, when that happens.

Brian Lehrer: Then there's the firing of Don Lemon who, for people who don't watch CNN, was co-host of the morning show there. On the air there overall for I think nearly 20 years, he was a mainstay 10:00 PM to midnight Eastern Time for years. Many people haven't heard this. Here's the one clip of Don Lemon with his two female co-hosts on the morning show. He's reacting to Nikki Haley, Republican presidential hopeful saying Joe Biden is passed his prime. Haley is 51 years old as Don Lemon launches this exchange.

Don Lemon: This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable. I think it's the wrong road to go down. She says politicians or something are not in their prime. Nikki Haley isn't in her prime. Sorry. When a woman is considered be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s. That's not according to me.

Speaker 6: Prime for what?

Don Lemon: It depends. It's just like prime. If you Google, when is a woman in her prime, it'll say 20s, 30s, and 40s. I'm saying I agree with that. I think she has to be careful about saying that politicians aren't in their prime [unintelligible 00:37:11]

Speaker 6: I think we need to qualify her. Are you talking about prime for child bearing?

[crosstalk]

Don Lemon: Don't shoot the messenger. I'm just saying what the facts are on Google and everybody at home. When is a woman in her prime? It says 20s, 30s, and 40s. I'm just saying, Nikki Haley should be careful about saying that politicians are not in their prime and they need to be in their prime when they serve because she wouldn't be in her prime according to Google or whatever it is.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Joan, you were a CNN contributor for a while. Do you have a Don Lemon story like you had a Tucker Carlson [unintelligible 00:37:42]

Joan: No I absolutely don't. I never had any kind of experience like that with Don. I was on his show quite a lot. He treated me with respect, but there's no denying what we all heard in that clip and in other clips. There seems to be a pattern of even in this day and age being willing to make comments like that. He also defended the pay differential where women's soccer players make less money than men because they're just not as interesting and a couple of other choice things like that. There were rumors of a lot of backstage tension between him and his two female co-hosts.

I'm a little uncomfortable lumping him in with Tucker because what Tucker did was so much more egregious. There was also reporting that Variety did about incidents of at least disrespect going back years. I didn't see it coming either necessarily. He was supposedly getting some kind of sensitivity training which is almost always BS. Anyway, yes, it was very interesting the way those two things happened literally within an hour of each other yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: I guess I'm going to jump ahead for time here. I wanted to talk about Trump and E Jean Carroll, but I think it's more important that we talk about President Biden announcing for reelection this morning. Here's about a minute, the first minute of his announcement video.

President Biden: Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There's nothing more important, nothing more sacred. That's been the work of my first term to fight for our democracy. This shouldn't be a red or blue issue to protect our rights, to make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally and that everyone is given a fair shot at making it. Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms, cutting social security that you paid for your entire life while cutting taxes from the very wealthy, dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love, all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.

Brian Lehrer: Well, on any other day, the obvious lead story would be the President of the United States announcing his reelection campaign. Today, it took us till 42 minutes past the hour after talking about the death of Harry Belafonte, and Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, and all of that going on. Joan, Biden's running, no surprise, there are multiple polls showing most Americans don't want him to and that he would beat Trump, but in theory lose to some other theoretical unnamed Republican. Even as we may not dismiss Nikki Haley saying Biden is past his prime as just opposition politics, or as we may dismiss it as that, a lot of Americans who say he shouldn't run cite his being 80 years old as a reason. How's Joe Biden doing as president, according to you at The Nation?

Joan: He's doing surprisingly well, Brian. I think that his accomplishments have been extraordinary given the opposition that he faces, not only from Republicans, but sometimes from his own party, Joe Manchin, and now Christen independent cinema. He's had it tough and still was able to get through COVID relief, and then the Infrastructure Act, the Chips Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Manchin insisted on naming it that, but it was really a lot more, investments again, in the economy than that, manufacturing jobs are growing, Black unemployment is at its lowest since we've actually measured Black unemployment.

He's done a great job. I think he's tried to do some things that he doesn't have the votes for, like after the Dobbs decision tried to enshrine at least the bare minimum protections that Roe v. Wade used to afford women. He doesn't have the votes for that. He didn't have the votes for civil rights and voting rights reform, and people were disappointed about that. On balance, the things that he can do, he's done. It's a little bit difficult to get excited, necessarily, since, as you say, we did know he was going to do this and, Joe, we've known you forever. I liked the video. It's a video, so you play the audio, but the images are both stirring and disturbing. He is not shy at all about showing images of the violence of January 6th and taking on the MAGA extremists and dealing with the threats to democracy that we face.

There's been some reporting and opinionating about what's more important to focus on, the economy, the improvements in the economy, the improvements that are yet to come, or the threats to democracy? The answer is both, and I think it certainly in that video, he is doing both. It's a moving montage of all sorts of Americans and a lot of face time also for Vice President Kamala Harris, who really has to be even more of a presence if only to assuage people who are concerned about his age and that mid second term, something happens or he is unwell, she's got to be, again, believable as a president, and I think they've been giving her better, more high profile things to do, and I think she's been stepping up herself particularly on the abortion issue.

I'm optimistic. He loses against unnamed Republicans, but he's not going to run against an unnamed Republican. He or she is going to be named and they are going to be twisted in knots. Ron DeSantis, I've written about this, we're never going to see President Ron DeSantis. He's self destructing. I was going to say down in Florida, but no, he's in Tokyo, he's all over the world acting like he's going to be president while he's ignoring the flooding in Fort Lauderdale. He's just a very not likeable guy. Chris Christie tried it. Sorry, Chris, that's not going to happen. Mike Pence is hated by MAGA world because he didn't overturn the election on January 6th, so I could go down the list. Unless Biden really stumbles, which is possible, I don't see any of these people beating him.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and sometimes it depends what's happening in the moment, in the summer of 2024 more than what's happening right now. Just very briefly on Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon, they're certainly not the moral equivalents of each other, but do you think in both cases, it's fair to say this isn't CNNs parent company or Fox News's parent company coming down on the side of right versus wrong, or women's equality or anything like that, that it's purely a financial calculation that they're going to lose more money than they make because of the continued presence of these two?

Joan: That's potentially true for Tucker, although he brought in a lot of money.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of money.

Joan: I'm not sure that's true with Don Lemon. I don't know that he had publicly become so toxic yet, but I could be missing that. It was just a workplace situation that was not getting any better where the angry and disgruntled felt-

Brian Lehrer: Colleagues.

Joan: -aggrieved. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Let's end with two more quick Harry Belafonte stories that are coming in on the phones. Hal in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Hal, we've got about a minute for you.

Hal: Okay, I'll go fast. Thanks, Brian. I was a carpenter working on the Upper West Side in the building and I was filthy covered in tar and stuff and stuff. The service elevator not working, I got into the regular elevator full of fancy people backing away from me slightly. I look up and who should be there but Harry Belafonte and I said, "Harry Belafonte," and there was a silence and he looked up and said, "You look our a wreck, man," and everybody broke up laughing. Then he shook my hand, my filthy hand, and left the elevator laughing and that was my encounter.

Brian Lehrer: That's a great story. Kevin in Bridgeport, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hi. I'm calling, my dad Richard Twain was in the music business. He actually got Santana signed to Columbia Records, but he started as a salesman in Fresno, California, and then was working for RCA Records. In the mid '60s, Harry was playing at Lake Tahoe and my dad decided that he wanted to go see him. He went, he didn't have tickets, but he was newly working for RCA Records and Harry was on RCA, so we went and the maître d' said, "Well, I'm sorry, you don't have tickets, you can't get in," and he gave him his RCA card.

He said, "All right, well, hold on." He went back and he came back and said, "Mr. Belafonte said yes, come in," and gave him great seats to the show. My dad was blown away. He just couldn't believe how talented and incredible the show was. Then afterwards, the maître d' came over and said, "Harry wants to see you." He's like, "Great," and he was in his early 20s. He brought him backstage and, "How are you? Come on in." My father was blown away and a reporter came and knocked on the door. They came and they said, "There's a reporter here that's here to do an interview with you." He opened the door and he said, "No, I told you that the interview is tomorrow. It's not today."

The reporter said, "Yes, but I'm here now, so I'd like to do it now." He said, "I'm entertaining my friend right now. I can't do the interview with you now. We'll do it tomorrow." When the door closed, Harry said to my dad, "Well, I just made another enemy, but you know what? You have to you have to go with your principles and you're here now." He ended up befriending my dad and said, "Why don't you stay? We'll use the President's boat in any way." My dad brought other people and just remarkable of what a person Harry Belafonte was as well as his incredible talent, just amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Kevin and Hal there with two more stories of the graciousness of Harry Belafonte as well as the musical talent and the commitment to civil rights. There we leave it with Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, author of the book, What's the Matter with White People?, and producer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte hosts the Tonight Show. Joan, thank you so much.

Joan: Thanks, Brian. I'm really glad. That was serendipitous.

Brian Lehrer: It was amazing. Again, I'll just say one more time for listeners who didn't hear the whole segment, we had booked Joan to talk about the Tucker Carlson, Don Lemon, Jeff Shell, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden news. With her personal connection to Harry Belafonte, it was a complete coincidence that we learned just before we went on that Harry Belafonte has passed at age 96. Yes, serendipitous, I feel blessed that we had you lined up and that you were able to give the tribute that you did early in the segment and then take the calls with us. Joan, thank you so much.

Joan: Thank you, Brian, appreciate it.

 

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