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October 30, 2024 50 mins

Today's special guest is Ambassador Susan Rice. As a member of the Democratic Party, Susan Rice served as the 27th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013, and as the 23rd U.S. national security advisor from 2013 to 2017. She joins Host Ramses Ja to share reflections on her public service career and also share her thoughts on the 2024 Presidential election. 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Black Information Network Daily Podcast, and I'm
your host, ramses Ja. And sometimes the amount of stories
that make their way to us means that we simply
can't cover everything.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
That comes our way.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
But from time to time, a story just stays with
me and I will compelled to share it with you
and give you my thoughts.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
And now one more thing.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Ambassador Susan Rice is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and
public official. As a member of the Democratic Party, Rice
served under the last three Democratic US presidents and as
the twenty second Director of the United States Domestic Policy
Council from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three, as
the twenty seventh US Ambassador to the United Nations from

(00:46):
two thousand and nine to twenty thirteen, and as the
twenty third US National Security Advisor from twenty thirteen to
twenty seventeen. And she is our guest today. Welcome to
the show, Ambassador.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
It's screage to be with you both.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Thank you so much for that.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
So obviously this is an incredible time to live through.
There's a lot of in a scary time. I want
to act like it's not scary too, you know what,
I mean, I'm living here with you all, but you know,
we've seen a lot of changes, and it's it's not

(01:21):
lost on us that we get to have this conversation
with what we consider royalty. You know, you are not
just the type of person, but indeed the individual that
we look up to. You know, you've reached heights that
once upon a time we're unthinkable even in our own lifetimes.

(01:42):
And so to eat to meet you means a lot, certainly,
to have a conversation, To have you as a guest
on our show means the world. When I talk about
the times that we're living in, I'm referring specifically to
you know, this is a show where we've discussed quite
a bit that takes place in the political arena. We

(02:03):
are on the cusp of potentially nominating a black woman
to electing electing, sorry, to the presidency of the United States,
and this is something that has caused a lot of
excitement in a lot of circles around the country, not

(02:24):
the least of which is black women. And so to
have a person on our program that has more insight
into the goings on political goings on in DC, has
more insight into things like foreign policy, domestic policy. Has
insight into the implications of one administration versus the other

(02:48):
can help us to perhaps take what excitement we do
have and channel that into action to ensure that we
get the outcomes that we're hoping for.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Certainly we're hoping for on this.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Show, but also it might help us to understand how
to best support the president, how to best interpret, you know,
policies and understand how they might affect our lives on
the ground and so forth and so on. So this
is where that comes from. So I don't want to
keep talking about why. I want to get to the

(03:21):
good stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
So I'm really.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Glad to be here, looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
That's good, fantastic. So one of the questions that we
were talking about this would have been yesterday for us.
You know, there's there's been there's been so much said
about Donald Trump's Agenda forty seven and and you know
Project twenty twenty five more specifically, because we understand the
Project twenty twenty five is really something that you know,

(03:48):
he's tried to distance himself from, but we kind of
know better around here. His name is mentioned over three
hundred times in Project twenty twenty five, you.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Understand, and all the authors of Project twenty twenty five
are his closest advisor.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Thank you, sir, exactly. So let's start at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
What are some domestic policy concerns you have with Project
twenty twenty five or Agenda forty seven or whatever, and
then we're going to ask the same about the Harris administration.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, first of all, is you probably know Project twenty
twenty five is a nine hundred page document that Donald
Trump's advisors from his prior administration spent many, many months writing,
and it covers all aspects of domestic policy, and it's
really truly quite frightening. Let me just give you a

(04:40):
few examples of some of the things that I think
are most dangerous. First of all, when it comes to
economic policy, what Trump has said is he intends to
impose a twenty percent tariff on everything that comes into
the country from another country. So that's our fuel, that's

(05:04):
our food, that's our toys, that's our liquor, that you name,
it's it's literally everything we import. And you know, Trump
lies and says, well, the foreign countries will pay for that, No,
the American consumer will pay for that, because What happens
is if I'm you know, a company that's selling into

(05:28):
the United States, I'll buy it from France. Let's say
we're talking about you know, Kanyac, just as an example. Sure,
buy it from France, sell it into the United States.
But that twenty percent teriff the company has to pay,
and then it passes on the cost to the American consumer.
So that's a tax on Americans. The cost of that

(05:51):
tax is going to be four thousand dollars for the
average American family a year on top of all of
the other economic concerns that we have. His tax policy.
We're going to have a new tax legislation come up
for consideration in Congress next year. This is the renewal

(06:12):
of the Trump tax cuts from twenty seventeen. And what
he intends to do is give massive tax breaks to
the richest Americans, the billionaires and multi multi millionaires and
the richest corporations, and do that at the expense of
working in middle class Americans. So that too, is going

(06:32):
to be a huge burden on American families. He wants
to cut Social Security and Medicare. Every single budget that
he submitted when he was president cut Social Security and Medicare. Now,
there was just a study that came out this week
that said by a very respected think tank in Washington,

(06:54):
nonpartisan think tank, that Trump's policies on Social Security will
ensure that Social Security runs out of money in six
years time and that the average person will pay one
third more for their Social Security. So he wants to
get you know, cut social Security, cut Medicare, and he

(07:14):
is pledged to eliminate Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, which
has enabled more Black Americans to have health insurance than
at any time in our history. It has reduced the
cost of health care. Now we have ninety two percent
of Americans with health insurance. That's the highest rate ever

(07:36):
in our history. And black health care coverage has gone
way up over the last three and a half years
under Vice President Harrison and Joe Biden. He wants to
get rid of all that. Trump he wants to get
rid of the Affordable Care Act. But and then, if
you're concerned about women's reproductive rights, whether you're a man

(07:59):
or a woman, your father, a husband, a boyfriend, Donald
Trump's Project twenty twenty five would impose a national ban
on abortion and make it harder to get birth control
harder to get in vitro fertilization, criminalize doctors who prescribe

(08:23):
abortion medication through the mail, and require states to record
and register with the federal government women's miscarriages and abortions.
It's Orwellian. So all of those rights and freedoms go away.
And you know, if you have a girlfriend or a

(08:46):
daughter or a mother who has a pregnancy that for
whatever reason, they can't go through with. That's all of
our problem when Donald Trump is president. So those are
some examples. Let me give you just one other set
of examples. He wants to eliminate the Department of Education.
The Department of Education is the department that funds low

(09:08):
income schools in our country. It's the department that makes
head Start possible. So if you're a low income three
or four year old and you want to get the
beginnings of an education, head Start, which has been so impactful,
will be eliminated. It will wipe out any prospect of
student loan relief. The Department of Education under President Biden

(09:29):
and Vice President Harris has forgiven student loan debt for
five million Americans. That'll all be wiped out. So when
you talk about just getting rid of whole departments. You're
really talking about getting rid of institutions, particularly the Department
of Education that benefits Black Americans and gives us the
opportunity to get an education. So I could go on

(09:50):
and on, but those are just some examples of what
a Trump agenda would bring.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
I will not pretend that we don't want you to
go on. And we were having a conversation off air
today about misinformation and about there still being voters that
are undecided or voting against their own best interests by
aligning themselves with our former president's agenda and Project twenty
twenty five and not really processing how those things will

(10:14):
impact their lives, especially people who are not minority, who
are not women, who do not feel like anything in
their lives would change under our former president. In contrast,
we know, even though they continue to say that she
does not discuss policy, and we know that this is nonsense.
Can you highlight some things that are contrary the agenda?

(10:36):
The opportunity economy is a place that we can start
with Vice President Harris and things that her and Governor
Walls want to bring forward that will not just impact
minorities but all Americans.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yes, I can and I will, but before I go
to what Harris Wall's administration will bring, just want to
share one other thing that really is what's in many
ways keeping me up at night the most about Donald
Trump and the prospect of him coming back to the
White House. He has said, and I believe he means,

(11:09):
based on what he did in his first term, that
he wants to be a dictator from day one. He
wants to terminate the Constitution. But what he said most
recently and keeps repeating even when people who are speaking
on his behalf try to walk it back, is that
he believes that the greatest threat to the United States
is not Russia, it's not China. It's what he calls

(11:31):
the enemy within, yes, his political opponents, and basically that's
anybody who votes against him or doesn't agree with him,
or comes from a different party. And he said that
he is prepared to use the military of the United
States to go after the enemy within. That's running on
a platform, a campaign platform of civil war. There's no

(11:53):
other way to put it. That's what he intends to do.
That's if he's elected, and if he's not elected. I
think what he's doing with that rhetoric is trying to
give free license to his supporters to go on a rampage.
So that's another you know, serious as a heart attack concern.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Let's turn to Vice President Harris and what she's proposing.
She's put out a very comprehensive set of policy proposals
and starting let's start with the economy. Her basic framework
is we need an economy that works for everybody, not
just for the rich and for some people. And she

(12:37):
calls an opportunity economy. And what she's trying to do
is give people what they need to get ahead, not
just to you know, scrounge every day and get by. So,
for example, if you have a good idea and you
want to start a business, if you're an average person,
it's really hard to do. It's really hard to go

(12:59):
to a bank, you know, as just a regular person
and be able to get the kind of capital that
you need to start a business. Indeed, she's got two
really important initiatives for that. The first one is she
said that she will give up to one million loans
worth as much as twenty thousand dollars that'll be fully forgivable.

(13:21):
If you want to start a business and you're a
black man or black woman or other person who's had
difficulty gaining access to capital. In addition to that, she's saying,
right now, our tax code is if if you want
to start a business, you can only get a tax
deduction of five thousand dollars to start a business. That
doesn't do anything for anybody. She's saying, let's increase that

(13:44):
ten times and give you fifty thousand dollars tax break
in the first year of your business to get started.
Put those two things together. You got a good idea.
You know, that's a way to start a business, whether
it's a you know, you're you know, single owner, you know,
sole owner of your business with your you know, maybe

(14:05):
you're fitness trainer, or maybe you're you know, doing a
transportation whatever it is, that's a business and you can
get you know what it's what you need to get
started and then expand it gets some employees. That's you know,
one thing, if you are working for a wage and

(14:26):
you're a low income person without a family, or just
maybe you're by yourself or you're married, there's something called
the earned income tax credit that you know, we need
to expand and extend. She's prepared to do that that's
worth fifteen hundred dollars a year for every individual who's

(14:47):
low income, working needs extra money in their pocket. Donald Trump,
you know, wants to impose this, as I mentioned, four
thousand dollars tax on every working family. She's saying she's
going to give a tax cut, a meaningful tax cut,
to one hundred million working families in this country. So,

(15:08):
for example, the child tax credit, the child tax credit
we were able to extend and expand in the first
year of the Biden Harris administration that cut black child
poverty in this country in half, but then Congress wouldn't
extend it. She is prepared to not just renew and

(15:30):
extend it, but expand it so that your first year,
if you have a child, you're going to get a
six thousand dollars tax credit for the first year of
that child, so you can buy your diapers, you can
buy the crib, you can get your car seat, you
can just get started. And then every year thereafter while
that child is a minor, you would get thirty six

(15:52):
hundred dollars a year as a tax break for every
child you have. That's huge for working families if you're
trying to you know, rent in a place where, like
so many cities, the rent is just too high and
you can't get you know, you can't get in. She's
talking about tax incentives to increase affordable rental housing in

(16:17):
this country so that we actually have the supply that
we need so that the prices come down. And if
you want to buy a home for the first time,
she's doing two things that are really important. First is
building three million new affordable homes, again through a tax
credit scheme, so that builders have an incentive to build

(16:39):
low income and affordable homes. And secondly, give you a
twenty five thousand dollars down payment assistance for your first
time home purchase. Those are just some of the examples
of what were in her economic plan. If you've got
an elderly parent, do you know how expensive it is

(17:00):
to give that person decent elder care. Yes, I've been
there too. I wasn't until recently, sadly my parents passed.
Having young kids at home for a period, and elderly
parents who were who were, you know, in really bad health.
She is committed to having Medicare pay for home care

(17:23):
so you don't have to send your mom or dad
to a nursing home where they may get, you know,
not the best care out there, but Medicare would help
you be able to take care of your parents in
the comfort of their own home. These are the kinds
of things that matter so much to regular folks. Your
grandma or your mom might be on Medicare, and under

(17:47):
Biden and Harris, if they're diabetic and they're on insulin.
It used to be that your insulin could cost three,
four or five hundred dollars a month, depending on what
kind of health insurance you had. Capped it at thirty
five dollars a month. You can no longer have to
pay if you're on Medicare more than thirty five dollars
a month for your insulince Kamala Harris wants that to

(18:09):
be available to everybody, not just your seniors on Medicare,
because there are a lot of us, you know, who
are under sixty five who are dealing with insulin. And
the other thing is, under President Biden and Vice President Harris,
they passed a law so that now you no longer

(18:31):
will have to pay, if you're a senior on Medicare
more than two thousand dollars a year for all your
prescription drugs. Now, that's lots of people are on these
expensive cancer drugs and everything else. It can cost ten
twenty thousand dollars a year. You'll never have to pay,
no matter how sick you are or what kind of
drugs you need, more than two thousand dollars a year
if you're on Medicare. She also will extend that to everybody,

(18:55):
not just seniors. So these are the kinds of programs
and plans that actually really are in people's lives.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
So clearly there are two very different agendas or the
the administrations that we have to choose from. I want
to go back just a bit because I think that
there are some things that need unpacking for our listeners specifically.

(19:26):
One of the things that I want to unpack is
let's talk about the insulin and the insulin cap. Now,
for our show, we have black listeners, and then we
have allies. We refer to listeners of our show as allies.
These are people who are allies. I mean, I don't

(19:46):
have to explain that.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
To you, so, but I want to.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
I want to make sure that everyone understands the significance
of insulin in the black community or for our non
black lie listeners because diabetes, sugar diabetes, you know what
I mean. This is something that you know, my grandmother had,
She was diabetic. Both my grandmothers. One of my grandmothers
lost their leg diabetes shortly after coming to the US

(20:18):
from Cuba. She lost her leg Afro Cuban woman. That's
something that shapes outcomes, you know what I mean, for
these these companies to be able to price gouge, for
it to disproproportionately affect black families, because diabetes is something

(20:40):
that it's a human condition, but it disproportionately affects black people.
There you go, that's something that's significant. I also want
to mention the Social Security element where you said that
Donald Trump's agenda would bankrupt it in six years. You
can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure you know
way more about it than I do. But the last

(21:01):
time I checked, social Security will solvent. I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
It's currently solvent. And we have a long term problem
that you know right now with baby boomers and everybody else,
we're taking more out of Social Security than people are
paying it. And so there's the constant challenge that will
hit in the mid twenty thirties right now, unless we
put more money into Social Security, you know, we've got

(21:27):
to keep it and replenish it. What Trump's proposals would
do is accelerate, bring you know, bring forward the date
whereby it becomes insolved, and in the process require people
to pay a third more. There you and that's you know,
he's putting out this proposal which sounds really good. You

(21:48):
don't have to pay taxes on your Social Security. Well,
not everybody pays tax on Sociecurity. It's certain people. And
the certain people who pay taxes that goes straight into
the trust fund keep it solvent. And the other thing
that people don't realize is all these undocumented people that
he's going to deport, they pay into the Social Security

(22:09):
trustful and they don't take anything out, but their wages
are withheld to help the rest of us pay for
Social Security. Now, yeah, we can talk about immigration, that's
not my point. But the point is that, you know,
policies have consequences. Things that sound good actually have consequences
for regular Americans who rely on their Social Security and

(22:32):
want to know that if I'm paying into it today,
it's going to be there for me when I need it.

Speaker 5 (22:37):
If my voice didn't matter, people wouldn't be trying so
hard to silence me. And if my vote didn't matter,
they wouldn't work so hard to take it away. So
you know why I'm voting this November because I know
they don't want me to.

Speaker 6 (22:49):
Your voice is powerful, your voice matters. Don't let your
voice be silenced. To register, confirm your voting status, or
get information about voting in your area, visit vote dot gov.
That's vote dot g ov a message from the Perception
Institute and the Black Information Network.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Now, there's one last thing I wanted to touch on
for the benefit of our listeners.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
And this is head Start.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
So one of the things that.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
One of the conversations that we've had on the show
is how investment in impoverished communities, low income communities shapes
outcomes for people that want the crime rate to drop.
Head start programs, after school programs. There's a direct correlation

(23:43):
between crime rates lowering and after school programs and head
Start programs being incorporated into the community and the being
accessible to the people. These are for people who can
fear for the safety of their communities.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
These are for.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
People who you know, we definitely have an activist element
in our show. I'm not going to pretend like I'm
not a part of that activist element. These are people
that want to see these types of investments in the
community rather than and increase display in police. This this

(24:25):
very program that we're talking about here shapes those outcomes,
and I think it's important to delineate these three things
and paint these pictures fully for our listeners, just so
that they understand that.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
So I just wanted to make sure no head.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Starts critically important. Yeah. If the data shows if you
can give a kid starting at age three or four,
you know, the beginnings of an education, which is what
head Start does, their high school completion rate goes way up,
Their prospects to you know, stay out of jail goes
way up. And you know, we need to invest in

(24:59):
how we need to invest in education. We need to
invest in our communities so that people have hope and
they have opportunities and jobs. You know Trump's approach, and
he's been very clear to go back to what he
said his agenda is in Project twenty twenty five. He
wants to bring back stopping frisk and make that, you know,

(25:22):
the standard everywhere. He wants to give police free reign
to do whatever they hell they want. And you know
who's going to suffer most from that, that's us. Yeah,
you know, you know remember after George Floyd he called
the people protesting thugs and he said, when you know,
the looting start starts, the shooting starts. That's his approach.

(25:44):
He said it again and again on the campaign trail.
Why do you think he's been endorsed by the Fraternal
Order of Police because he wants to turn the police
on our black communities. That's his approach, and we all
know what that looks like. So you know, it's a
contrast between you know, somebody who wants as many guns

(26:06):
in our communities as can possibly be the case, ghost guns,
you know, three D printed guns, assault weapons. He's for
whatever the NRA wants, and the more black people killed
on our streets, as far as he's concerned, the better,
Versus Kamala Harris, who knows we need responsible gun safety
legislation so that we have background checks, so that we

(26:28):
don't have assault weapons, which are only you know, weapons
of war on our streets. You don't need those for hunting.
And she's a gun owner, you know, the we need
red flag laws so that people are going through a crisis,
you know, there's an opportunity and they're a danger to
themselves or danger to somebody else that their guns can

(26:49):
be taken away for a period of time until they're okay.
You know, it's just the contrasts again, could not be greater.
Donald Trump is a guy who said that the exonerated
five five, yes, you know, should be executed, even after
he knew they were innocent. That's who he is. He's

(27:10):
a guy who said Barack Obama wasn't born in this country,
started the whole birth of thing. He just despises and
disparages black people at every chance he gets.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Yeah, that's how he introduced himself to the political arena,
you know, by yeah, the birth is, you know, President
Obama's citizenship. We only have you for a few more minutes.
And because we encounter a lot of undecided and apathetic voters,
and we've heard some of their reasons. Why so, there's
some things that happened during our last elections and promises
that were made regarding the John Lewis Voting Rights Act

(27:44):
and the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act that were
not as fully addressed as a lot of our listeners
and potential voters might feel, and amongst young people, the
United States aid to Israel has been a divisive issue
with younger voters. Can you, as best you can give
us some contrast between Vice President Harris and former President

(28:05):
Donald Trump's foreign policy with regards to this conflict, and
about some fulfilled promises for black voters as well.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yeah, no, thank you for asking about this. Let me talk.
Let me start with the two pieces of legislation you mentioned,
the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the George Floyd Legislation.
President I was working in the White House on these
issues at the beginning of the administration until last year.

(28:34):
We worked really hard to get Congress to pass the
George Floyd Justice and Policing Act and the John Lewis
Voting Rights Act. And in the Senate, where we did
not have, you know, the sixty vote threshold to get
past the filibuster, and we had two Senators Joe Manchin

(28:55):
and Kirsten Cinema, who refused to allow any reform of
the filibuster, it was impossible to get those two pieces
of legislation pass. Now, good news is Mansion cinema are retiring,
and if we can get a majority in the Senate,
even not a sixty vote majority, just a majority, uh

(29:16):
in the House. In the Senate, those pieces of legislation
have a very real prospect of success. But in the
absence of being able to get the legislation pass for
George Floyd, what President Biden and Vice President Harris did,
and I was very much part of this, was to
write an executive order which was the most expansive and

(29:36):
comprehensive executive order to reform policing for the federal law
enforcement that's ever been done. So all the things that
we were concerned about with George Floyd, banning choke holds,
you know, uh banning, you know, all of the most
abusive police tactics, ensuring that there's a database in a

(30:00):
registry for bad cops that have, you know, committed crimes
in one jurisdiction but then get hired in another. We
fixed all that at the federal level. And there are
hundreds of thousands of federal law enforcement, whether it's your ICE,
your Border Patrol, your FBI, your DEA, those are all
federal law enforcement and they are now bound by this

(30:22):
executive order. So it's not as much as what we
wanted to get with the George Floyd legislation, where it
would apply at the state and local level. But we
did do it at the federal level. But there's more
to be done. And that's why it matters not just
who's the president, but what kind of Congress we have.
But I also want to say, you know that you
point to two pieces of legislation, they are important that

(30:43):
we're all frustrated or not law. But I think people
forget what has been accomplished. You know, I don't think
people really know that under Vice President Harris and Joe Biden,
we have reached the lowest black unemployment rate in the
history of unemployment rate being recorded over fifty years, the
highest health insurance rate of Black Americans in our history.

(31:09):
Black wealth creation has gone up sixty percent in this
country since before the pandemic. We have more black businesses
being started under Vice President Harris and Joe Biden then
in thirty years. So there's just a lot of things
that people I've talked about, student loan forgiveness five million Americans,

(31:32):
not everybody we wanted to get because the court's blocked
some stuff, but five million Americans, you know, are not
paying for their student loans anymore. So there's a lot
that we've gotten done, but there's much more to do,
and that's what Kamala Harris wants to do with all
the proposals that I've already shared with you. So it's

(31:53):
really important that we have in the White House people
who are trying to get the right thing done, and
when they are accompanied by people in Congress, there is
a huge amount we can do. We had the first
comprehensive gun safety legislation in thirty years. We've talked about
Medicare and insulin and drug costs. You know, Trump wants

(32:15):
to repeal all that and take away your ACA. There
are just so many things that are important that make
a difference and matters who's in the White House. You
asked about the Middle East. I think that here too,
the contrast couldn't be more stark. Kamala Harris has been

(32:37):
very clear that what happened on October seventh was horrific
crimes against twelve hundred Israelis who were killed and many raped,
and that Israel has a right to defend itself. But
having said that, she is also horrified by the extreme

(32:59):
suffering of the people in Gaza that frankly goes well beyond,
in my opinion, what is strategically necessary or smart if
you're a friend of Israel. And she's been very clear
that we have to end the war. We've got to
get the hostages home, We've got to have a ceasefire,
and we need for the people of Gaza and all

(33:22):
Palestinians to not just have humanitarian assistance and be able
to rebuild after what has been tremendous destruction, but have
a very real near term prospect of having a state
of their own with dignity and security, living side by
side in peace with Israel. And so that is what

(33:44):
she is committed to. Donald Trump is cheerleading Benjamin Netanyado,
not net Nyahu, to go bomb Rand's nuclear facilities, which
will draw the United States directly into war with Iran,
cheerleading net Yahoo to can continue the war in Gaza
and to you know, and to turn Lebanon into a

(34:05):
parking lot. He is He's the one who pulled out
of the nuclear agreement with Iran and had nothing to
replace it, and now Iran is closer than ever to
having the capacity to build nuclear weapons. You know, he
has no commitment to a two state solution, doesn't want
to see a Palestinian state. He's basically saying to Netanyahu,

(34:26):
do whatever the hell you want, kind of like what
he said to Putin. So you know, that's the contrast.
And if anybody is confused about Donald Trump caring one
god about the Palestinian people, then look at his record,
Look at his record. What is you know, the situation

(34:47):
in the Middle East is heartbreaking and horrifying, But the
answer is having Someboddy in the White House who cares,
who understands the stakes, both as you know, a friend
of Israel, but as a friend of the people of
Palestine as well as the broader Middle East. We don't

(35:08):
need more war, we need real solutions. And so again,
the difference couldn't be more stark.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
So this is something that we believe on the show,
everything that you said. The nature of our elections in
this country leaves us with a binary choice. It's either

(35:37):
this or it's that, and that's those are the only
two options. You compare one to the other, often you
end up And I don't love the way that this sounds,
but this is a common you know, conversation that people
have around the country. You end up with the lesser
of two evils. On this show, we have elevated Jewish voices,

(36:00):
and we've elevated Palestinian voices. We consider ourselves brothers to
many communities, and in order to gain insight for ourselves
and for our listeners, we've had these conversations. One of
the things that's happened, and you're just in the best

(36:20):
position for us to ask. One of the things that's
happened is that Palestinian folks and people who have aligned themselves,
younger voters, college students around the current you know, and
we've been to some of these protests. What they're seeing
right now is the United States funding Israel's attack on

(36:43):
the Palestinian people. And for those folks, when it comes
to the binary of this election, they feel that they're
left with an impossible choice. Now again, we have had
to have difficult, very difficult conversations with people that we
love on the show about that. So when you say
it's heartbreaking, trust us when I say that we understand

(37:05):
that feeling. We've tried our best. Can you offer any
words that might motivate someone who's caught in the middle
There that maybe we haven't been able to offer them
in terms of motivating them to vote. We try not
to scare people, and I don't think that would be

(37:26):
what you try to do.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
But maybe there's.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Something that some access, some insight that you might have,
and we have to ask that question because we've had
these conversations here.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Well, let me say several things. First of all, you know,
there's such strong feelings, justifiably so, on both sides of
this question, and it's what's happening in the Middle East,
you know, is brutally painful, and it's so we got
to take people's concerns and passions about this seriously, and

(37:57):
I do. Secondly, i'd say, you know, Kamala Harris, as
she herself has said, she's not Joe Biden. She's got
a different history, a different set of experiences, She's of
a new generation. Her approach to this is not going
to be identical to Joe Biden's. But as long as
she's a sitting vice president, there are limits to, you know,

(38:18):
what she can say or do. She's been clear that
she thinks that, you know, the United States has a
responsibility to support Israel's right to defend itself, but she
also believes that how they do it matters, and that
we cannot be indifferent to the suffering of the Palestine

(38:40):
and people. We've got to be There's no dichotomy in
the real world between believing Israel has a right to
defend itself and supporting and bolstering the aspirations of the
Palestinian people to have a state of their own, and
to ending this horrific war and not seeing it Expand
third point I say is, look at the contrast between

(39:03):
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on this issue, and as
I just explained, it couldn't be more stark. And some
people might say, well, hell, I'll just stay home or
my vote, you know whatever, I'll you know it, Uh,
you know, I'm not voting for either one of them.
Will not a vote A vote for Donald Trump, a
vote for Jill Stein or Cornell West, or not voting

(39:23):
at all. Those are all votes for Donald Trump. So
let's be clear about that. And that The final point
I'd make is that you know, maybe people have heard this,
you know, all their lives, this is the most important
election of our lifetime. But this really is the most
important election of our lifetime. Given what Donald Trump intends
to do to this country and to black people in

(39:45):
this country and to our democracy. And the difference this
time between now and every other time we've said it's
the most important election of our lifetime is that the
Supreme Court has said that the president of the the
United States can do whatever he or she wants with
immunity from prosecution. So, in other words, there are literally

(40:09):
no guardrails on Donald Trump. If Donald Trump wants to
use a military against Americans, he can. If Donald Trump
wants to you know, sick the police on every black
person in this country, he can. If he wants to
you know, round up and deport anybody whose skin color
he doesn't like, or strip citizenship from naturalized citizens, he can't.

(40:35):
So this is really, truly, you know, a consequential moment.
And as much as you may feel passionately and be
horrified by what's happening in the Middle East, I don't
know about you, but I don't feel like I have
the luxury to make my choice and my vote dependent

(40:55):
on anyone issue, as strongly as I might feel about it,
Because if I do that, I'm saying to every woman
in this country that will lose their reproductive freedom. I
don't care about you. I'm saying to every senior citizen
who is you know, depending on Medicare and Social Security

(41:17):
and has gotten now their thirty five dollars insulin and
their cap on prescription drugs, to hell with you. I
don't care about you. I'm saying to every black person
in this country. I don't care if Donald Trump, you know,
wants to send us back to Jim Crow. I mean,
there's just so much at stake here, and yes, the

(41:37):
Middle East is vitally important, but it is not the
only issue in this campaign. And I just as a
you know, I've got young kids in college aged kids,
and I know how you know, how firmly and strongly
felt this issue is. But you know they are privileged.

(41:58):
There are so many people in this country who will
suffer immeasurably given a Donald Trump presidency in contrast to
a Kamala Harris presidency. And I for one, am not
willing to sell my fellow countrymen and women down there,
you know, down the river over any single issue, however important,
may be.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Before we let you go, I want to just get
one more question on just because again, we cover a
lot of topics that you know, activists around the country
feel very passionate about. As someone who supported the Paris Agreement,
you're in a better position than most to help us
understand and discuss the differences and the two nominees approaches

(42:43):
to climate change exactly. So would you share with us
and with our listeners those different approaches? What future do
we have to look forward to?

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah? Again, the choice couldn't be more distinct. You know,
Kamala Harris believes that our climate is warming rapidly and
dangerously do in substantial part to human activity, and that
we have got to get a grip on this problem.
Is you know, sitting here in Phoenix, we all understand

(43:19):
very very well. Yeah, or you know, uh, you know,
if you're in western North Carolina or Florida or or Georgia,
you know what, you know what climate change is doing
in terms of flooding. We've got to get a grip
on this problem. Donald Trump continues to call climate change
a hoax. He didn't believe it, didn't care about it.

(43:41):
He invited the the biggest oil companies tomorrow Lago and said,
if you give me a million dollars or more from
my campaign, you know, I will make sure that we
continue to protect big oil. And do you know nothing
that big oil doesn't want done with respect to dealing

(44:01):
with the climate and climate change. Dald Trump doesn't even
talk about climate change. He talks about the environment, which
for him means, you know, clean water and clean air,
except he doesn't want clean water and clean air for
black and brown communities. So he and you mentioned the
Paris Agreement. One of the first things he did when

(44:23):
he came into office in twenty seventeen was to pull
the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, which
we negotiated under President Obama. That made every country in
the world commit to very concrete targets for lowering their emissions,
and collectively, if countries adhere to those emission reduction targets,

(44:47):
we will make meaningful progress towards tackling climate change. It's
not enough. We need to actually strengthen and re up
those commitments. But when you pull out the Climate Agreement,
when you pull out of Paris, which Trump has said
he'll do again on day one, you know, we are
ensuring that not just the United States, but the rest

(45:08):
of the world will not take the steps necessary to
address climate change.

Speaker 6 (45:12):
In a meaningful way.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
So it's this is dead serious, literally, uh and uh,
you know, under Vice President Harrison President Biden, we passed
something called the Inflation Reduction Act. It's kind of a
confusing name, but it was the single biggest piece of

(45:34):
investment in clean energy jobs and clean energy technology that
our country has ever made. And you know, we are
now providing incentives, tax incentives for everything, like if you
want to you know, buy new uh, you know, heat
pump for your house, you can get a tax incentive

(45:55):
for that. If you want to buy an electric vehicle,
you can get a tax incentive for that. And if
you're a company building clean energy, or if you're you know,
trying to get clean school buses on the streets. You know,
that's what the Inflation Reduction Act is made possible. Donald
Trump has said he's going to repeal it, so you know,

(46:16):
again it's it's kind of you know, night and day.

Speaker 4 (46:20):
The mistakes and importance of this moment are not hyperbolic,
they really aren't.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
I mean, I wish I wish there wasn't so much
at stake, because it's you know, it makes you nervous
not knowing how it's going to go. And what it
means is really truly people need to vote, and they
need to be informed when they vote. They need to
understand that. And when Donald Trump, you know, says that
he wants to unleash the military on Americans, we can't

(46:47):
assume that's rhetoric. That's what he almost did on January sixth,
but he had a vice president, uh and others who
wouldn't go along with it. There's a reason why Donald
Trump's vice president, two of his national security advisors, two
of his secretaries of defense, former chairman of the Joint

(47:10):
chiefs of Staff, one of his secretaries of State, and
his White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, a
four star general, have all said that Donald Trump is dangerous,
he's unfit, and they can't support him to be president again.
Have you ever heard of that situation where people who
work that closely with somebody, people.

Speaker 4 (47:30):
Who are appointed by him, appointed.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
By him, said he can't come back. He's too dangerous.
This is not a joke. So people need to vote.
They need to get their family members out to vote.
They need to volunteer and knock on doors and make
book calls. I mean, this thing is it's all up
on this and I really appreciate the chance to be
able to talk with you in.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
Your bless You've forgiven us some time. We really appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
There's that One of the things that that Q says
very often is that you know, when you say it enough,
it starts to lose it's it's meaning. But because in
every election, we've always said this is the most important
election of our lives, and you said it, you know,
you said it for him, because we've had to say
that so so often. In fact, we have when we

(48:17):
leave this interview, we have another like in person event
that we need to go to where that basically is
the message that we're communicating to that audience.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
And so.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I appreciate you coming and spending time with us. I
hope this sounds the way that I wanted to. But
we're so proud of you. We're so proud of you,
and you know this is probably like like the highlight
of the show so far, you know what I mean,

(48:50):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
It's really nice for you to say that. I'm proud
of you, guys, because you're doing something really important in
your community, getting finally important messages to people who may
not get them from other places. And you know, people
need to believe that that they have a stake in
their their communities, their country, the world, and they do,

(49:15):
but sometimes it's hard to just put that in perspective.
And you all do that so well.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
So thank you, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Before before we let you go, if you'd like, please
share any sort of you know, digital content, websites, social media,
anything like that so people can tap in with you,
what you got going on with, you know whatever. Make
sure we leave some connective tissue if you want.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Well, I'm on I'm on X formally Twitter at at
Ambassador Rice. I'm on Instagram at at Ambrice. But uh,
you know, I I think more important than you know
my social media is you know, giving people who don't

(50:04):
have as much of a voice the opportunity to be heard.
And that's what you're doing. So I'm down with that
more than elon musks X.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Thank you so much. Yeah, we'll take all right.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Well once again, Today's guest is Ambassador Susan Rice, American diplomat.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Policy advisor and public official.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
Who served under the last three Democratic presidents. Thank you
so much, Thank you. This has been a production of
the Black Information Network. Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson.
Have some thoughts you'd like to share, use the red
microphone talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app. While you're there,
be sure to hit subscribing down With all of our episodes,
I'm your host ramses Jah on all social media. Join

(50:45):
us tomorrow as we share our news with our voice
from our perspective right here on the Black Information Network
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