Eddie Glaude Jr.: What Trump Is ‘Appealing’ to Is Slavery — ‘the Superiority of White People to Own Black People’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
This is what I struggle with, Eddie. It’s do you try to reason with those people? Do you try to make some type of understanding of who they are when they’re built inherently on a hatred of others, of people who look like you and me, the black and brown people, because white America is what Trump tries to rally the people behind. So how do I as an individual if I’m looking to myself to lead, to not be lazy or not to be complacent, because it is easy to follow, as you say, what does it take for me to be able to have the mettle to feel I can make a difference in November?
>> Right, so first of all, what Trump is appealing to is what Frederick Douglass talked about in 1852. He said there’s a horrible reptile in the bosom of the nation and that was slavery. It was a certain set of assumptions not simply about black people, but about the superiority of white people to own people. He said we must rip that reptile from our hearts. It’s the central contradiction. It’s the contradiction that eats at the entrails of the country, and Donald Trump is appealing to those grievances, those hatreds, those old ghosts, as President Biden says, the old ghosts that have the nation by the throat. So
>> He says, we have to make a distinction between those people we must persuade and those people we must defeat. We often times spend a lot of energy trying to persuade people who really don’t accord standing. They are not interested in being persuaded. What you and I have to do is understand the problems right in front of us, not to think about this in some abstract way. I use this phrase over and over in the book. Let’s engage in our politics close to the ground. Let’s stop looking to D.C. Let’s look right where we are in the local communities around education and jobs and a decent wage and around basic municipal issues that face-off that can then be networked across the country. The problem is often right in front of our noses. Let’s not pan out too far. When we bring it close to the ground, that is when we can get about the hard work. It is not too much and we all have the courage and capacity and capability to do that work.
>> Your book is powerful and the personal anecdotes are one that, for me, resonate the