Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Symone Sanders:

I do think that people think ambition should look different on women, especially women of color. I’ve been punished for my ambition.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Symone Sanders. She’s a political strategist and spokesperson who has held top communications roles on multiple Democratic presidential campaigns. At the age of 25, she served as national press secretary to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign. In 2020, she was a senior advisor to Joe Biden. Most recently, she served in the White House as senior advisor and chief spokesperson to Vice President Kamala Harris, a position she left late last year.

Preet Bharara:

Over the last several years, Sanders has become one of the highest-profile political staffers in recent memory. She’s been the subject of profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post. In 2020, she published a memoir called No, You Shut Up. Sanders is the host of a brand new MSNBC opinion show called Symone.

Preet Bharara:

I spoke with her about her meteoric rise in politics, how she intends to reach non-political group chats, and what it was really like to work for Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. One quick note, my conversation with Symone Sanders was recorded before the news broke of Justice Alito’s leaked draft opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade.

Preet Bharara:

That’s coming up. Stay Tuned.

Preet Bharara:

Folks, I know it’s been a heavy week, what with the draft opinion from Samuel Alito about the overturning of Roe v. Wade having been leaked. I’m still digesting and processing it, as I’m sure many of you are. If you haven’t already, check out my in-depth conversation with Joyce Vance, which we’ve made available to everyone in the Stay Tuned feed, about our thoughts, or at least our preliminary thoughts, about that opinion, what it means for the country, what it means for the Constitution, what it means for reproductive rights in America.

QUESTION & ANSWER:

Preet Bharara:

Now let’s get to your questions.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in a tweet from Beth Adime. “Why are January 6th committee hearings now going to take place in June? We need the information ASAP. Drip, drip, drip is not helpful. We need a full picture now, not later.”

Preet Bharara:

Beth, I hear where you’re coming from. It’s been a long time. The insurrection was a while back, but I would note a couple of things. One, it’s already May 5th at the time that this podcast drops. June is only a few weeks away. Among other things, the committee needs the time to interview as many witnesses as possible, and there’s still some who are on the horizon, to resolve disputes with other witnesses who are being intransigent, maybe to figure out a way for other witnesses who haven’t been sought yet to come and testify, including members of Donald Trump’s family. There are also hoards and hoards of documents and communications to look through, to get their ducks in a row.

Preet Bharara:

I think it’s also the case that the committee wants to make sure that the public hearings make a very big, substantive splash. There may be some thought that in June, when there’s possibly less news about the Supreme Court or about the war in Ukraine, that people in America will be able to focus more directly on their investigation with respect to January 6th.

Preet Bharara:

That leads me to a related question from Lori Bader, who asks, “What information will the 1/6 committee present in public hearings that we didn’t already learn from the second impeachment hearings?”

Preet Bharara:

Well, Lori, there’s a ton of information that had not come to light at the time of the second impeachment hearings, which took place only weeks after the January 6th insurrection. Hundreds of more witnesses have come forward and given information about what they knew, including people inside the White House, people inside the Justice Department, people otherwise in the orbit of Donald Trump. There are, as I mentioned a moment ago, literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and texts and other material that the committee has in its possession that the House and Senate didn’t have at the time of the second impeachment.

Preet Bharara:

There’s a ton more material. There’s a ton more information. We have cooperating witnesses among the people who have been arrested. We have seditious conspiracy charges against some of those folks. You see from the indictment in that case against the Oath Keepers that there are actually encrypted messages that are in the possession of the committee. There’s a whole heck of a lot of information we will learn in the public hearings that we didn’t know from the second impeachment hearings.

Preet Bharara:

Now, if you asked a slightly different question, which is, “What will we learn in the public hearings that we don’t already know from the ongoing drip, drip, drip of the 1/6 investigation?” that’s a harder question to answer. I think a lot of the information that’s come into the possession of the committee has either been disclosed or has been reported and leaked out. My view, though, is there’s something about focused public hearings, where committee members are very directed in how they ask questions, in which witnesses they call after having had closed-door sessions for hours and hours and hours with them, it presents a story, presented in a way that I think is very digestible to the public, and brings home, I think, some of the horrors of that day, and who was responsible, and who was conspiring with whom. Even if there’s not a lot of new revelations, I think the presentation in prime time by members of Congress may, in fact, move the needle on how people think about it.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in an email from Tom, who asks, “What are the legal implications, if any, for Marjorie Taylor Greene after she claimed not being able to recall whether she sent text messages to Mark Meadows advising for former President Trump to impose martial law?” Obviously, referring to the fact that there’s a text in the possession of the 1/6 committee between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mark Meadows from January 17th, 2021, in which Greene writes, “In our private chat with only members, several are saying the only way to save our republic is for Trump to call Marshall,” spelled M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L, “Marshall law. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”

Preet Bharara:

I think the implication of your question, Tom, is, isn’t that a lie, and doesn’t that subject Marjorie Taylor Greene to perjury charges because lying to Congress is against the law? While I agree with you that, as a general matter, it’s really, really hard to believe and find credible the idea that you wouldn’t remember having some conversation by text with the chief of staff to the sitting president of the United States about the declaration of martial law, I guess it’s within the realm of possibility.

Preet Bharara:

When people bring perjury charges, you want to be absolutely positive and sure, and be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person has lied about some fact. What you’ll find, depending on your circumstance and depending on the situation, you may find it implausible and even galling, it is a tried-and-true tactic of witnesses, in response to questions, not to say no, not to say yes, but to say, “I don’t recall.” It’s just a little bit of a harder thing to prove, and in some cases, quite difficult to prove.

Preet Bharara:

Sometimes you’ll see in court an executive who’s being tried for something takes the stand and testifies they don’t remember giving a particular directive or a particular order, and they will have established that they’re very, very busy people, and they send a lot of emails and they get a lot of texts. And even something very, very important, it’s hard to prove, because it’s subjective and something in someone’s mind, it’s hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is lying about their memory, although we in the public, as we’re watching the testimony, can roll our eyes.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was in the Senate and leading the investigation with respect to politicization of the Justice Department, there was a witness, a very significant witness, who I deposed for many hours. He was a high-ranking official at the Justice Department. The testimony took up probably a few hundred pages of transcript space.

Preet Bharara:

We had a follow-up deposition to answer some additional questions. At the beginning of the follow-up deposition, the lawyer for this witness says, “Before we begin with further questions, Mr. Bharara, I do want to put on the record something from my client.” I said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

Preet Bharara:

The lawyer for the witness opened up the transcript to some page, I don’t remember the page, but say page 178, and he said, “Mr. Client, here at line 14 on page 178, where Mr. Bharara asked you a question and you answered no, do you want to clarify that answer?” The witness said, “Yes. On that line when I said no, what I meant to say was, I don’t recall.”

Preet Bharara:

That’s an example of someone being very careful not to make a flat statement. It happens all the time. It can be frustrating and it can be something that’s not believable, but it does help in preventing legal action against you.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with my conversation with Symone Sanders.

THE INTERVIEW:

Preet Bharara:

In 2020, on Super Tuesday, as Joe Biden was beginning his victory speech, a protestor rushed the stage. Symone Sanders, then Biden senior advisor, did something unusual for a press person. She tackled the protestor. It was a stark example of the kind of thing Sanders has become known for, being strong and fearless, and protecting her bosses and their reputations at all costs.

Preet Bharara:

Symone Sanders, welcome to the show.

Symone Sanders:

Greetings. Thank you for having me, Preet. Very excited.

Preet Bharara:

So am I. Before we get to some other stuff, congratulations are in order. I understand you’re getting married.

Symone Sanders:

I am, August 13th.

Preet Bharara:

August 13th.

Symone Sanders:

This summer, yes, to the most amazing man.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a very auspicious date. I didn’t realize that that’s the date I got sworn in.

Symone Sanders:

Oh, it is? Oh, okay.

Preet Bharara:

As U.S. attorney back 13 years ago.

Symone Sanders:

Oh, wow.

Preet Bharara:

Congratulations on the upcoming wedding. Congratulations on your new show on MSNBC, which we’ll talk about a little bit. Here’s my first question, and you have to be very honest, okay? What’s tougher, planning a wedding planning a new show, or being the national press secretary for Bernie Sanders?

Symone Sanders:

I would argue being press secretary to Senator Sanders is tougher. It just requires a little more. I have all this help in planning a show. I have a really amazing team that I’ve assembled. My executive producer, she’s a newsroom veteran, so she’s no stranger to her way around the control room, unlike me, who’s like, “Can someone explain what a SOT is? What is S-O-T?” Sound on tape, by the way, for folks who are wondering.

Preet Bharara:

Oh. I don’t even know that.

Symone Sanders:

When I worked for Senator Sanders, we had a ragtag team. It was like working at a very fancy startup. There were three people in the communications department when I started, myself, the communications director, and the deputy communications director.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, what do you mean fancy? What was fancy about the startup?

Symone Sanders:

We did get free Ben & Jerry’s on the regular, Preet. Come on now.

Preet Bharara:

Vermont has its privileges. We’re going to get to Bernie Sanders and other folks that you’ve worked with and for in a moment, but you were just telling me before we started taping that you had a great time this weekend at the White House Correspondents Dinner. I didn’t go this year. I’ve been in the past. Do you think it’s a useful exercise? There are people who criticize it, say it’s access journalism; there’s too much cozying up between the press and people who are in office. Do you have a view of that?

Symone Sanders:

I do think it is worthwhile. I think people forget that the White House Correspondents Dinner is a fundraiser, and it raises money for scholarships. There were more than 2,600 people in the room. It was the largest room I’ve ever been in since COVID, Preet. Now, I had COVID about three weeks ago at this point. I’m negative. Thankfully, I tested negative after five days. So I felt invincible. Take me to a concert, honey, in the middle of a high school gym, and I’m going to be okay. But maybe in a month I will be holding on to my mask really tight again.

Symone Sanders:

But all of those people that came, they were either guests of news organizations or, as Trevor Noah joked, very rich people. All those folks bought tickets, and all of those tickets support scholarships. I think it’s worthwhile for that, and in a time where the media apparatus, particularly journalists who cover politicians, have been under attack, given the last president of the United States of America. In Russia right now, journalists are not free to write and say whatever they want. In many places around the globe, that is the case.

Symone Sanders:

The thing that is special about the United States of America is that journalists have the ability, have the right, to cover people in power, whether they be politicians or CEOs of social media companies, and ask the questions and write what they want to write. I think we should take opportunities to celebrate journalism, and this year especially, I think the press needs a little extra love.

Preet Bharara:

Have you ever come across a politician, because I don’t think there is one on either side of the aisle, but obviously you know better the people on the progressive side, who didn’t sometimes get annoyed or angry at the press and coverage of them?

Symone Sanders:

I have not. I have not. I think everyone is annoyed with coverage of them.

Preet Bharara:

There’s no such human, right?

Symone Sanders:

No. If you cover someone long enough, they’re going to have an issue with what you say.

Preet Bharara:

Are there people who you think… On the spectrum of being irritated and annoyed by coverage, who was, among the kinds of people that you’ve dealt with, who were least annoyed?

Symone Sanders:

Least annoyed? Okay. It’s a difficult question for me to answer because, in general, I think everybody that I’ve worked for at some point had that, “Okay, here they go again,” with whatever story, literally every single person. There’s not a person I’ve advised or worked for that didn’t have at least a couple stories that irritated them, or you know when you see some of these reporters coming, “Okay, this one’s going to have the questions, and this is the person you need to count to two, count to three, before you answer. We want to make sure. We want bad soundbites.”

Symone Sanders:

I think every single person is irritated. I have never worked for anyone, and I’m also thinking about the gubernatorial candidates I’ve worked for, state legislative candidates, not just the people who ran for president or the vice president of the United States of America, I’ve never worked for anyone who was fixated on it. Maybe I’m lucky. I’ve worked for a range of people. They’ve got some other stuff, but they were not fixated on the coverage of them, whether it be positive or negative. That is a good thing for a communications professional.

Symone Sanders:

I think about Vice President Harris. Fox News has a loop dedicated to bashing her every single day. Russia has bots, or had some bots. The troll farms have really died down since the war in Ukraine has been waging. I guess they’re a little busy with misinformation about what Russia is doing.

Symone Sanders:

But even her, someone who was targeted every single day, she didn’t come in fixated on it. It is not something that dominated the conversations that we had. She was aware of the coverage of herself, just as President Biden is aware of his coverage.

Symone Sanders:

Senator Sanders, very aware. The most unbothered person I think I’ve worked for is Senator Sanders. He is unbothered. He is just like, “Look, y’all know I’ve been saying the same thing for 45 years. Get with it.”

Preet Bharara:

He’s just comfortable in his skin.

Symone Sanders:

Yeah. Honestly, Senator Sanders is not someone that, throughout his career, has benefited from the attention of the broader media apparatus. He is someone that is… He was used to people not hanging on every word, covering every single thing that he says. He was used to finding organic and innovative ways to get his message out, because when the man ran for president, people weren’t covering him.

Symone Sanders:

I remember sitting in our headquarters in Burlington once, and Senator Sanders literally was about to give remarks somewhere. He had walked out, and at least two news stations had an empty Trump podium just being held, with anchors talking over the picture of the empty Trump podium, while Bernie Sanders is doing an event. Somebody like that, they are not… Senator Sanders is like, “You’re going to get what you’re going to get. Sometimes they’re going to cover me, sometimes they’re not, but I’m going to find innovative ways to get my message out.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. No, that’s a good attitude. Now, let’s go back to you for a moment, going some years back, but not too many years back, because you’re a young person. My understanding is you’ve always known you wanted to be in media. Could you tell my audience who Donna Burns is?

Symone Sanders:

Donna Burns was the TV reporter I would pretend to be as a child. I would pick up a spoon or a remote control or a bottle, and I would say, “This is Donna Burns reporting live.” I don’t know where Donna Burns worked, Preet. I don’t know what she was reporting on.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to ask you. You don’t know what network Donna Burns was at?

Symone Sanders:

She was a freelance journalist.

Preet Bharara:

I see. What was her beat?

Symone Sanders:

Anything and everything, the culture at the time. Sometimes the beat was the kitchen table.

Symone Sanders:

I can remember as far back as being a child, maybe seven or eight, so it is a full-circle moment for me to be launching a show on Saturday, May 7th, on MSNBC, along with a streaming show the following Monday, on Mondays and Tuesdays on demand on Peacock. I’m beyond elated and excited. It is nothing but grace, goodwill, a lot of hard work, and some prayers that got me here.

Preet Bharara:

Very well plugged. Your team will be very happy.

Symone Sanders:

One could argue I am a communications professional, okay? I’m just saying.

Preet Bharara:

One could argue. I think it’s on the resume. People make a lot of the fact of the career you’ve had, how successful you’ve been, the things that you’ve led, and you’re only 32 years old. Someone asked me recently… I’m 53. Someone was saying to me recently-

Symone Sanders:

Oh my goodness. You don’t look a day over 41, Preet. You really don’t.

Preet Bharara:

You are such a good communications professional.

Preet Bharara:

Someone was saying the way they felt about their age, they don’t think of themselves as being that age. I was asked, “How old do you, in your head, think you are? Often, I think I’m like 11, because I feel dumb a lot and I feel like a kid a lot.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask that question of you. How do you feel about your age? What do you think your age is in your head?

Symone Sanders:

Well, last week, I told someone I was 31, and my fiance reminded me that I left 31 a long time ago. I’m like, “No, I’m 31.”

Symone Sanders:

Look, in my head, I am a millennial. I’m a young person. I think that there are so many dynamic young people out there in the world that are doing really amazing, innovative things. These young people, my peers, they are taste makers, movers and shakers. These are people that are large and in charge. I just don’t think people…

Symone Sanders:

People look at me and they say, “Oh my goodness.” I’m not that special of a young person. I have found myself in the right places at the right time, and have benefited from people speaking my name in rooms that I was not in. But I know some amazing people who are my age or younger, who are way smarter than I am, who are just blowing my mind with the things that they are doing in life and the plans that they have.

Preet Bharara:

You and I are both ambitious people. I always tell people ambition is good, as long as it’s pressed into good service and you treat people well. But in just thinking about your trajectory and your background, and people saying, “Wait your turn. Wait your turn.” That famous moment when Ken Cuccinelli told you to shut up, and you said basically, “No, you shut up.”

Symone Sanders:

No, you shut up.

Preet Bharara:

No, you shut up.

Ken Cuccinelli:

Can I finish, Symone? Will you just shut up for a minute and let me finish?

Symone Sanders:

Pardon me, sir.

Speaker 4:

Easy, Ken.

Ken Cuccinelli:

God bless America.

Symone Sanders:

You don’t get to tell me to shut up on national television.

Speaker 4:

Hold on.

Symone Sanders:

I’m sorry.

Ken Cuccinelli:

Then all these racists come in-

Symone Sanders:

Under no circumstances do you get to speak to me in that manner.

Symone Sanders:

Then I wrote about it.

Preet Bharara:

Then you did, in a memoir. Do people think that female ambition is supposed to look different from male ambition? I’m not just talking about you. I’m also talking about Kamala Harris and others. Can you address that?

Symone Sanders:

I do think that people think ambition should look different on women, especially women of color. I’ve been punished for my ambition. I think it is amazing that I have this opportunity on MSNBC and on Peacock right now.

Symone Sanders:

When I go places now, whether I’m at the grocery store, I’m out at Target, or I bump into a group of young women somewhere, they are always telling me, “I’m so grateful for you. I’m grateful for your voice. You give me the confidence and the power to be myself, you bald, curvy Black girl.” I think that’s amazing. But I have been punished and locked out of a number of opportunities for simply being confident in who I am and not apologizing for my ambition.

Symone Sanders:

I’m good at what I do, Preet, and I don’t need to apologize for that. I’m good at what I do. I’m a really nice team player. I am a hard worker. I will get up early and I’ll stay up late, because I believe that’s what you need to do to put forth excellence. I brought that to every single thing that I have done.

Symone Sanders:

There are people out there in the world that want me to be a little bit more humble about my ability. There are folks that say, “You should not be saying what you want. You might need to jump in line, and understand that there’s a line. Look, I…”

Preet Bharara:

Are those Russians? Are those Russians saying that to you?

Symone Sanders:

No. No, these are real people. I haven’t jumped any lines. I’ve just done my work. And I have benefited from people who have come before me, of whose shoulders that I stand on, that have allowed me not to live the same struggles that they’ve lived. Why do people break barriers only to tell the next generation they’re supposed to struggle it out just like them? Well, what the hell did you break that barrier for?

Preet Bharara:

People want everyone-

Symone Sanders:

What is that about?

Preet Bharara:

People want everyone to go uphill in the snow both ways if they had to do that.

Symone Sanders:

I’m not doing that. Give me a sled.

Preet Bharara:

Can you answer, where are you on the ideological spectrum? Do you care to say?

Symone Sanders:

I am a pragmatic progressive, frankly, like most Black women in America. When I went to work for the president’s campaign in 2020, I got a lot of questions, so much so that I ended up having to do an interview, so that I could just explain it in one place so I could go and do my work. In that interview, I explained that the reason I can work for a Bernie Sanders and a Joe Biden is because my values and who I am and what I believe are not tied to one particular candidate.

Symone Sanders:

I do think there is a few generations of people who have been engaged in the political process who have tied their hopes and their dreams and their values to a particular candidate. That’s not me. My values are not looped up in Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, or Vice President Kamala Harris. I anchor my values, and I think that is what’s allowed me to navigate through this world.

Preet Bharara:

It sounds like something implicit in what you’re saying is… But I don’t want to put words in your mouth. Is it there’s a little bit too much cult of personality with politicians?

Symone Sanders:

There is. There is.

Preet Bharara:

Is that new?

Symone Sanders:

No, it’s not new. You can think of people who felt very viscerally about John F. Kennedy. I know people who feel very viscerally about Ronald Reagan. We also know people that feel very viscerally about former President Donald Trump or President Obama or Secretary Hillary Clinton.

Symone Sanders:

Politicians, elected officials, they are icons in many communities. They are leaders, full stop. Because of that, people see them, and it stirs up something in someone. That’s why I love politics, Preet. That’s why I did it for so long, because the people who come out to political rallies, except for the Trump rallies… Now, I’ve got to put an asterisk by this explanation. Put an asterisk there, not the people that go to Trump rallies.

Symone Sanders:

But in general, the people that go out to political rallies, whether they be for Democrats, Republicans, or an independent senator from Vermont, they have to stand in line for, sometimes, hours. They wait to get in. Then they’re standing for sometimes 45 minutes before the person that they see comes to the stage. They speak sometimes for only 20 or 30 minutes, and they are salivating on every single word because they believe that this person, whoever they may be, has the power and the opportunity to change their lives, to make it better. That is a very powerful thing. I understand how a cult personality can set in, but I think we need people who are willing to be independent thinkers. My ideology isn’t tied to a person.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. You should care about these things, you should fight for the causes you believe, and you should support candidates. I think, though, that every once in a while, particular politicians are put on a pedestal too much and you get this cultish thing going on.

Preet Bharara:

Let me ask you this. It just occurred to me while you were speaking. When you were young and following the news and you were acting as Donna Burns, and you hadn’t actually worked for elected officials yet, I’m sure you had some view of them. I don’t know if you put them on a pedestal in some general way or not. Then having worked with them, and I’m not talking about a particular person, overall, has your estimation of elected officials and people who run for office gone up or gone down through that process?

Symone Sanders:

It was confirmed. My estimation about elected officials was confirmed. As a young person, I used to actually want to be… I played a TV reporter at home, but I wanted to be a judge, because I thought judges and politicians were two of the most powerful people or things you could be in the world, actually. Judges, they have the power to decide people’s lives in the palm of their hands. They are helping enforce and breaking down the law. Then the politicians are the ones that make the laws that govern the society we live in every single day.

Symone Sanders:

Well, I figured out, actually, after I interned for my local mayor’s office in college, that another group of powerful people were the people behind the politicians, because those are the people that help shepherd and guide the message and the strategy and the direction. But my thought has been confirmed. Politicians, elected officials, aspiring politicians are some of the most powerful people in this country. They are not the most powerful, but one of the most powerful things you can be is an elected official, a governor, a mayor, a state legislative official, a county councilperson, a district attorney.

Preet Bharara:

How come you’re not running?

Symone Sanders:

I used to want to be a politician. I thought I was going to run for my city council seat. I’m from North Omaha, Nebraska, District 2. Shout-out to District 2. I was shadowing my councilman at the time, and I had to come to Washington, D.C. It was after I graduated. I used to do a lot of juvenile justice work for one of the organizations I was with, so I came for a meeting.

Symone Sanders:

When you fly out of Nebraska, Preet, you’ve got to fly through Chicago or Atlanta to get to D.C. There are very few direct flights, especially now during COVID. Back then, there weren’t as many direct flights, so I flew through Chicago.

Symone Sanders:

On my Chicago to D.C. flight, I am sitting next to the most GQed-out white boy you have ever seen. He is fine. He got the hair. He got the nice suit on, Preet. He had a nice little briefcase. I said, “What does this man do?”

Symone Sanders:

I struck up a conversation with him. At that point, that gentleman had to have been maybe 30 years old, maybe 31, and he was talking to me about how he used to work in D.C. for a member of Congress, and now he does consulting. He has some federal contracts, and he does some work overseas.

Symone Sanders:

I thought about him my entire trip to D.C. and my entire ride home. I thought, “Why couldn’t that be me?” City council seats aren’t going anywhere tomorrow, in my estimation. You’re going to always need local elected officials. But my opportunity to go to D.C. and maybe do something that nobody that I know has done before, that window is not always going to be open, so let me try that. If it doesn’t work out, I can always go home. Well, I left in 2014 and-

Preet Bharara:

Never went back.

Symone Sanders:

I’ve only been back to visit ever since.

Preet Bharara:

Is politics still a possibility for yourself in the future, or not really?

Symone Sanders:

I don’t think I want to be an elected official. I am enjoying getting my makeup done every day, Preet, and not having to figure out if the campaign finance laws say it’s okay for me to get my makeup done.

Preet Bharara:

That’s why I do a podcast. No makeup necessary. That’s why I draw the line.

Symone Sanders:

No. Yeah. I like what I’m doing now, and I’m excited about this opportunity. A lot of people… Someone asked me a couple weeks ago, have I ruled out ever going back to the White House or going back to politics? I want people to know that this isn’t just a pit stop for me, something I’m doing in the meantime so I can recharge for politics.

Symone Sanders:

I am excited about this opportunity and this show. I’m excited about not just being a part of the conversation, but facilitating the conversations people are having. It’s what you’re doing with your podcast. You are not just being a part of the conversation; you are actively influencing it.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I hope so.

Symone Sanders:

I think so.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask another question about politicians. I know some, and I’ve worked for one, Senator Schumer. With most people, there is a delta. There is some differential between what they’re like behind closed doors and when they’re comfortable and relaxed with their staff or with their friends or with their family, and the way they are out in public, on the stump or when they’re meeting with voters and at rallies and at marches and whatever the case may be. My question is, which of the people you have dealt with has the least amount of differential between their public persona and… I’m going to make a guess, just based on something you said earlier. Is it Bernie Sanders?

Symone Sanders:

I think the most who is just… You can catch him at anytime and you’re going to get the same thing, is Senator Sanders, because he literally has been saying the exact same thing for the last 40-something years. If you pull up a clip from Senator Sanders in 2020, a clip from him in 2016, and a clip from him in 1992, if he’s talking about the economy, he’s got that same riff. Bernie Sanders’s guiding principle is that we live… It was when I knew him. His guiding principle may have changed, but I doubt it, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I doubt it.

Symone Sanders:

He often talked about the fact that we lived in a rigged economy kept in place by a system of corrupt campaign finance. Because we lived in a rigged economy kept in place by a system of corrupt campaign finance, we need to do this on closing the wealth gap. We need to do this on taxes. We need to do this for healthcare. We need to do this when it comes to criminal justice. It all comes back to that.

Symone Sanders:

Some could argue that’s a great thing. Some could argue, I have heard criticism, that saying the same thing for the last 30, 40-something years isn’t great because people should evolve over time. I’m not here to debate one side or another. I’m just here to lay out the facts in the conversation.

Symone Sanders:

I also think that folks like the president and the vice president, I see the same person when they are out in public with folks that I have seen with them behind closed doors. The president genuinely cares about people, and he cares about his staff. He is the person that will tell you to go home, like, “Are you missing something with your family? Forget about this, and we will see you later.”

Symone Sanders:

The vice president is so endearing. She gardens. She has a garden at the vice president’s residence, and she also had one at her home in LA. I don’t cook, Preet. Let me just-

Preet Bharara:

Neither do I.

Symone Sanders:

… preface this. I am not a chef. It’s not me in my house that is making sure we have a good meal. It is my fiance.

Symone Sanders:

I told her once about my fiance and how he’s a chef. Ever since I told her that, when she would go home to her garden in LA, and before she had her garden at the vice president’s residence, she would always bring back herbs. She would bring me a little plastic baggy, and the herbs were for my fiance, Shawn. That continued when she moved into the vice president’s residence. Then she started bringing them in for her staff. She would put a little bowl outside her office in the West Wing, and you could come in and get fresh things from the vice president’s garden at VPR.

Symone Sanders:

I think that people are… I genuinely think that I have not worked for… Any of the big names that people know that I’ve worked for, they are not a completely different person in private. But I do think that Senator Sanders is unique in that he has just been saying the same thing for so long, and he is completely unbothered. It’s not that he doesn’t care. He is just the most unbothered elected official I have ever met.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Of the people we’ve been discussing, the person I know personally the best is the vice president, Kamala Harris. We were colleagues in the law enforcement community, done some events together. We’ve been friendly for a number of years, and I like her very much. I think she’s a terrific person. What do you make… Then, obviously, you worked for her for a bit. What do you make of the criticism of her, not just on the right but even in Democratic circles, that she doesn’t have accomplishments to her name? Is that fair or not?

Symone Sanders:

I don’t think it’s fair, but I also think we have to look at the facts. The facts are, up until Vice President Harris, could you tell me what the vice president of the United States of America did every day? Did people want to know?

Preet Bharara:

Dick Cheney took a lot of liberty away.

Symone Sanders:

Except for Dick Cheney.

Preet Bharara:

I can tell you about Dick.

Symone Sanders:

Except for Dick Cheney. Now, Dick Cheney is a notable exception here. This is no shade to the president, maybe a little bit of shade to former Vice President Pence. But no, no shade to Pence. People didn’t know what the… It’s not common knowledge to know what the vice president does every day. That’s just the facts.

Symone Sanders:

You think you know what the president does every day. I don’t think people really understand what the president does every day, but they think they have an idea. They know that they are the president of the United States of America, so it must mean that they are, at any given time, picking up a red phone, making decisions. But it’s not general knowledge about what the vice president does every day.

Symone Sanders:

I do think that because she is a historic vice president, she is the first woman, the first woman of color, first Black woman, first woman of South Asian descent, to sit in that role, there is an expectation that because she is historic, she makes history every day, and that’s not how the vice presidency works. I think the idea of what she is supposed to do and who people think she is supposed to be, and a number of these people are Democrats, runs into the reality of the vice presidency. That’s one thing.

Symone Sanders:

I do think that she… I think that there is valid criticism of every elected official. There’s valid criticism of the president and of this White House, and there is valid criticism of the vice president. I think that oftentimes, though, the criticism of the vice president traffics in racist tropes and sexism. I challenge people to…

Symone Sanders:

When I used to work there, I would say to people “Look, you’re doing this story. I’m probably not going to like it. Ask yourself, would you write this story about Joe Biden? Ask yourself, have you ever thought about writing this story about Mike Pence? Insert any other man who has ever been a vice president of the United States of America. If the answer to that question is yes, carry on, send me your questions. But if the answer is no, or you hesitate, I challenge you to think about what kind of bias has crept up into this reporting.”

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Symone Sanders after this.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that if, in 2024, or leading up to 2024, Joe Biden decides not to seek reelection, is there any other viable candidate other than Kamala Harris?

Symone Sanders:

There’s a lot in that question, Preet. First of all-

Preet Bharara:

I know.

Symone Sanders:

… again, the facts.

Preet Bharara:

That’s why I asked it.

Symone Sanders:

First, the fact is that President Joe Biden has said he is seeking reelection.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a hypothetical. I know you don’t want to answer the hypothetical.

Symone Sanders:

It’s a hypothetical. But in the event that he decides not to seek the presidency, I saw a panel, I’m not going to say where I saw the panel the other day, where people were talking about how, “Oh, it would be a free-for-all if the president doesn’t seek reelection.” I just think you have to look at the reality of American politics and the Democratic Party apparatus.

Symone Sanders:

The reality of the apparatus is that a sitting vice president or a sitting president is a very powerful person. In this case, if the president… It’s why if the president… He says he’s running for reelection. When he does, he has the opportunity to travel around the country. Every single day that he steps out to do his duties as president, whether he is campaigning or not, the American people are seeing him, and it is coloring what they think about him and the kind of president that he is, and if they would like to vote for him again. It’s a very powerful place to be.

Symone Sanders:

Well, the current vice president of the United States of America, if the president does not run, would be very well poised. She has the bully pulpit of the White House to fly around and do her due diligence as the vice president of the United States of America. Everybody looks at her like, “Uh-oh,” and they are thinking about that as they look towards-

Preet Bharara:

So you wouldn’t expect her to be challenged in a primary?

Symone Sanders:

Oh, I didn’t say that. I think there are very… There’s lots of ambitious people in the world.

Preet Bharara:

Is Senator Sanders done running?

Symone Sanders:

I don’t know if he’s done running. I know there was all that about that memo. I don’t really know if that’s real. Senator Sanders has now twice sought the presidency, and he gained more votes last time in 2020 than he did in 2016.

Symone Sanders:

I fundamentally believe that you cannot win a Democratic primary in the United States of America currently in this climate, nor a general election as a Democrat, without garnering a substantial amount of votes from African American and Hispanic voters in America. The way the primaries for the presidency are set up on the Democratic side of the aisle, you have to be able to win a substantial amount of Black and Latino voters. If you can’t, you’re not going to be the nominee, let alone a general election.

Preet Bharara:

That’s what Joe Biden did in South Carolina, right?

Symone Sanders:

Yeah, South Carolina, but all of Super Tuesday.

Symone Sanders:

While I think Senator Sanders could wage a very competitive race in a general election, maybe he has to win a Democratic primary first, and I don’t see what Senator Sanders has done different between 2016, 2020, and now that would cause a substantial amount of African American voters and Latino voters to cast their ballot for him when there are other options and people on the ballot. So not to say that the vice president wouldn’t be challenged. I just think that the way it’s set up, she would win a primary.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned Super Tuesday. One, I was watching Joe Biden’s victory speech on Super Tuesday, so you know where this is going. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, until I was preparing for this interview. I can’t remember how far the protestor got, but I think there was a protestor. An anti-dairy protestor got on the stage. Remind folks what you did.

Symone Sanders:

I grabbed the protestor and dragged them off the stage-

Preet Bharara:

With your bare hands.

Symone Sanders:

… with my bare hands to save then-candidate Joe Biden and Dr. B and the president’s sister, Valerie Biden. It seems funny now, but in that moment, Preet, we didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t have Secret Service at the time.

Preet Bharara:

Well, he didn’t need… Have you thought about a career in the Secret Service, actually?

Symone Sanders:

I guess there’s still time. You can’t be a new Secret Service agent past the age of, I think, 35, though, so-

Preet Bharara:

You got three years.

Symone Sanders:

I need to make a decision pretty quick. But again, I’m happy to be an anchor on MSNBC. I’m just saying.

Preet Bharara:

If this was a drinking game and we had to take a swill every time we mentioned the show, I think your producers would be very happy. They’d be very happy.

Symone Sanders:

I’m just playing to my audience of one.

Preet Bharara:

I know. I want you to handicap the other side. In 2024, if Donald Trump runs again, do you think he pretty much wraps up the nomination if he wants it?

Symone Sanders:

Well, it depends on a few factors. Let me just back up, before we get to 2024, we are looking at midterm elections-

Preet Bharara:

Well, yeah, tell me about that then.

Symone Sanders:

… this year, correct?

Preet Bharara:

Let’s start there.

Symone Sanders:

You’ve got primaries that are happening all over the country. The first primaries kicked off in Texas in February, actually. Yeah, it was February. You got primaries in Ohio coming up. You got primaries all over the place. How the former President Trump fares in those primaries with his endorsements and the kind of people that he is supporting makes a difference.

Symone Sanders:

Let me just tell you, crowds don’t vote. I used to work for Bernie Sanders, and he got the crowds, honey, 15,000 people at one of our first West Coast swing rallies. Crowds don’t vote. You cannot judge what is going to happen at the polls based off the crowds people get at their political events. I think really we have to look at the kind of endorsements that Trump has been making, how those candidates are faring, how the other pieces of the Republican Party apparatus are feeling and what they are saying and actively doing as it relates to the Trump wing.

Symone Sanders:

My belief is that there are… The Republican Party used to really only have two factions. You had your conservatives and then you had your Tea Party Republicans. Well, now there are many more factions. You’ve got your QAnon caucus. You have Trump Republicans. They would never call themselves left-leaning, but people that like to work across the aisle. We could go on. Given all of these different dimensions, I think looking at the midterms and who wins out where is a good determination on the Republican side of the aisle about what could happen in 2024.

Symone Sanders:

I know for a fact Donald Trump did not enjoy being president. I know that intimately. I find it very hard to believe that someone who did not enjoy being president would go through great lengths to again get the presidency. I think what Donald Trump enjoys most is people talking about him, are candidates coming and kissing the ring.

Preet Bharara:

No, 100%. I agree with everything you’ve said, but the reason why I’m of the view that, even though he didn’t love it, he might seek the presidency again, is because if your goal is to be the most-talked-about person on Earth, the way to do that is to be the sitting president.

Symone Sanders:

Well, folks continue to talk about Donald Trump, and he isn’t running for anything.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, but I don’t think he’s the most-talked-about person. It will hurt him-

Symone Sanders:

He is the most-mentioned person in rap music of all time.

Preet Bharara:

Is that true?

Symone Sanders:

It is true. Check me. Fact-check me.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not Elon Musk?

Symone Sanders:

It is not Elon Musk.

Preet Bharara:

He’s getting talked about quite a bit. He’s getting talked about quite a bit.

Symone Sanders:

He’s got a ways to go.

Symone Sanders:

You think about who Donald Trump was before he was the racist birther conspiracy theorist who tried to take down the first Black president, and then someone who ran the presidential campaign he ran that was filled and tinged with racism and sexism. He was someone that hobnobbed with celebrities, with the tastemakers and the culture movers. That’s what he likes.

Symone Sanders:

I don’t know Donald Trump personally. I know some people that know him, but I don’t know him. My just belief is that there is a lot actually happening within the Republican Party apparatus, and it is not a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump will be, if he decides to run, that he will be the nominee. It’s just not. But if he is the Republican Party nominee, I think everybody should expect to strap in and continue to re-litigate the 2020 election, because that’s what it’s going to be about.

Preet Bharara:

Oh my goodness. You said earlier that there are valid criticisms of Joe Biden. Do you want to give any examples?

Symone Sanders:

No. I just know they exist.

Preet Bharara:

I thought I was going to get you on that one.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you said, I think recently, talking about your show that’ll be starting soon, that you hope for non-political group chats, which I think would be terrific. How on earth is that possible?

Symone Sanders:

Non-political group chats are all around us, Preet. On my show, Symone, we’re going to talk about the day’s headlines, but we’re going to go deeper. We’re going to go into the stories that people all across this country care about. We’re not just going to talk about what’s happening in D.C. We’re going to go beyond the Beltway. We’re going to talk about culture. Culture is arts, music, television, film, technology.

Symone Sanders:

Elon Musk buying Twitter is actually not a political story. It’s a culture story. Actually, it’s the intersection of the two. That is something we would do with my culture critics.

Symone Sanders:

I love the Housewives. Maybe the Housewives make sense, Preet. I don’t know. We haven’t practiced it, but maybe the Housewives might make sense for one of the segments.

Symone Sanders:

Think about it like this. We will have a political panel. Think of our political panel as similar to the panels folks see on Meet the Press Daily. We’ll have a reporter. This is the way we have practiced it. We will have a reporter, then we will have someone that’s maybe a little more conservative, somebody else that’s maybe a little bit more blue, and myself, and we will have the conversation. I have practiced with some Republicans and some recovering Republicans, and you can expect to see those folks on my political panel.

Symone Sanders:

But I’m also going to do a culture panel of my culture critics. Do you know that NBC News has an internet culture reporter?

Preet Bharara:

I did not know that.

Symone Sanders:

I found out this week. Do you know that the NPR has a culture critic? Every outlet has someone, or a team actually, who is dedicated to covering the intersection of politics and culture, the shifting ways in which arts, TV, music, film, technology are influencing the lives that we live every single day, so we’re going to have those conversations. Frankly, those are some of the conversations people are having in those non-political group chats.

Preet Bharara:

You said culture now a few times, and it reminds me of, I think, something very important that you said that I’d love for you to elaborate on. People talk about the culture wars, and they seem to be at a high fever pitch at the moment. You have said the culture wars are not a distraction; the cultural wars are the playbook. What do you mean by that?

Symone Sanders:

Yes. The culture wars are the playbook. A lot of my Democratic friends like to talk about the fact that folks should not be distracted by bills trampling on the rights of women to make decisions about their own body, or bills that are rolling back hard-fought wins when it comes to voting rights, or bills that are literally demonizing, vilifying, and putting the lives of LGBTQ+ people in this country in danger. We should focus on the economy.

Symone Sanders:

Well, let me just say, some of my Republican friends, they aren’t running on anything but those bills. Have you seen a tax plan, Preet? I haven’t. Oh, I did. I did. Rick Scott said the Republicans are going to raise middle-class Americans’ taxes. I don’t think that’s gone over well, so much so that Mitch McConnell was like, “We are not running on that.” So it is the playbook.

Symone Sanders:

I actually think that we are doing the American people a disservice by not digging in more and having real conversations about a number of these issues. It is not a distraction what is happening in Florida, Texas, or Kentucky. These are real people’s lives. Frankly, the bill that passed in Florida didn’t say just LGBTQ+ people who are Democrats; it said LGBTQ+ people, period. There are trans Republicans. There are trans and gay and lesbian independents and Republicans in this country. There’s not an asterisk by voting rights only for people who are Democrats. No, they’re talking about if you are a young person, a person of color, if you live on a reservation. Oftentimes, it is disenfranchising old people, students.

Symone Sanders:

I think instead of brushing these things to the side in the media apparatus, we have a duty and a diligence to talk about them, and we’re going to talk about them. We’re going to cover the culture issues on my show. Frankly, Preet, I really think that if we had a 24-hour news cycle in 1963, 1964, 1965, there would’ve been some would-be commentators somewhere, on some political panel, on whatever network talking about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Big Five are really just… These are the culture wars. What they really need to focus on is the economy.

Symone Sanders:

Think about it. That’s essentially what people are saying right now. It seems asinine to describe the fight for voting rights, the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, as mere culture wars. But that’s exactly what people are doing about these very pressing issues that are happening in our country right now.

Preet Bharara:

When you think about politics and messaging for Democrats, particularly when they’re identified opponents on the other side of the aisle, do you from time to time try to put yourself in the shoes of the voters who might prefer the other candidate?

Preet Bharara:

The reason I ask the question is I was in Florida recently and talked to a friend of mine who I’ve known for a very long time, and I was a little bit taken aback, because we’re like-minded in a lot of ways, but have drifted apart politically in recent years. He’s a really smart person who I’ve known for 30 years, who was speaking positively about Ron DeSantis. I hadn’t considered why a person like that might find Ron DeSantis attractive, because I don’t.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a theory as to why Republicans in Florida… And not just Republicans, but there are independents. He’s made inroads with them. Whether you like him or not, or agree with him or not, do you have a theory as to why that is?

Symone Sanders:

I think people are dynamic. People are dynamic when it comes to their taste in food, in music, in film. People are dynamic when it comes to their politics. This goes back to… You asked me how I describe myself, and I said a pragmatic progressive. There’s not a one-size-fit-all type thing happening. I think that is how your friend can have good things to say about Ron DeSantis and feel like that he has done a good job, and probably disagrees with him on some other issues. People have nuance.

Symone Sanders:

I have people in my family who are very close to me who voted for President Trump. Some of my immediate family members voted for President Trump. What? I have somebody that believes that everybody that supports and that subscribes to Trumpism, everyone is not a racist. Everybody is not, so there is nuance.

Symone Sanders:

I do try to think about it from that vantage point when I’m trying to have conversations, which is why I want to make sure that if I’m doing a political panel on my show, I want to try to book a Republican or a recovering Republican, because I want somebody to unpack what is going on and what’s happening from that perspective, because it’s a real one.

Preet Bharara:

One of your colleagues at your network, and I’m not allowed to say it too many times because I’m under contract with CNN, which I should say more, CNN-

Symone Sanders:

Come on. Get your mentions up, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

The most trusted name in news.

Preet Bharara:

One of your colleagues, some years ago I was talking to her, and I was just reminded of it by what you were saying. There are voters in America who voted for Obama, Obama, Trump, and probably… This was before Biden got elected. There are, in fact, voters who went Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden. It’s not in the tens of millions, but there’s a lot.

Preet Bharara:

That’s an important fact, I think, further to the point you’ve been making throughout the show. Not everybody is like… Maybe some of our listeners are like you might be or I might be. I’m pretty down the line, vote for the progressive candidate in presidential elections, since I was of voting age, but a lot of people aren’t.

Symone Sanders:

Yeah. That means we have to talk to people who do not live in LA, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., or New York to figure out why, to get their perspective, to illuminate what is happening across the country. There are McCain-Obama-Trump-Biden voters. There are Romney-Clinton voters. There are many different iterations of this, and that’s why I love focus groups. That’s why I love talking to real people. I actually don’t care for the polls, because you can make a poll say anything.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t get the feeling. You just have a number. You like to get the spirit of where people are.

Symone Sanders:

Yeah, exactly. Focus groups, we can get the follow-up. I think that we need more focus groups in America, and we need more people who are forced to go out there and talk to people in their respective spaces and places.

Preet Bharara:

Final question about advice you might give to Democrats. I’ve asked this question to various people before, and I’m sometimes surprised by the answer. How would you today complete the phrase, made famous by the former first lady, “When they go low, we go…”? Come on, Symone.

Symone Sanders:

Well, when they go low, it seems like we just go silent sometimes, some people.

Preet Bharara:

What should we do? When they go low, what should we do?

Symone Sanders:

Look, I think when folks go low, Democrats should not shy away from the fight. Some of these fights are worthwhile fights. Some of them are not.

Symone Sanders:

I’m thinking about during the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings, where a number of the committee members, all of them Republicans who did this, essentially accused Judge Jackson of being a pedophile. She sat there and she defended her record, and Chairman Durbin set the record straight. Then afterwards I turned on my television across many networks, and I looked on the Twitters and the Instagrams, and I saw a number of strategies saying, “Republicans are the real pedophiles.”

Symone Sanders:

How does that work? No, Republicans are not the real pedophiles. That’s not why they’re calling Ketanji Brown Jackson a pedophile. They are accusing Judge Jackson of pedophilia because they are trying to speak to a very specific piece of the base of the Republican Party, the QAnon believers, because it is a core tenet of what people who subscribe to QAnon believe. They believe that everybody in Washington, all the Democrats in Washington, D.C., are running a child sex prostitution ring. That is why they were doing it.

Symone Sanders:

They’re trying to score cheap political points, and people need to call it out. That’s what people should have said, not accusing Republicans of being pedophiles. What the hell is that? What is that?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. No, I think you’re right. I think you’re right about that.

Preet Bharara:

Sometimes it pays to be strong in language. I wrote about this and commented on it before with respect to Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing. At some point, Senator Cory Booker read the room and said what a lot of people were thinking, but didn’t have, I think, the eloquence or the inkling to say. And you’ve got to do that. There’s that-

Symone Sanders:

Yeah. Praise the Lord for Cory Booker, and God bless Black men in America, because Senator Booker did in that moment and stood in the gap for every single Black woman in America, for every woman of color who has ever been, essentially, proverbially or actually shouted down in a meeting, cut off, talked over, had her credentials questioned.

Symone Sanders:

Judge Jackson was more qualified than every single person sitting up there in that panel questioning her. She couldn’t break stride. She could not react. She had to be stoic. Every woman in America, but particularly every Black woman in America, understood the look on her face and the plight that she was enduring. Thank the Lord for Cory Booker for calling it how we all saw it and putting it on the record.

Preet Bharara:

No, I think it was an extraordinary moment, or number of moments, when he spoke about those issues and spoke from his heart.

Preet Bharara:

Final question. I know you’ve got to go. What advice do you give young people, young people generally, and then young women, and then maybe more specifically young Black women, who see you as a role model and have seen your career and see how you didn’t wait? You wouldn’t shut up when someone told you to shut up. What do you say to folks who want to do and accomplish things like you have?

Symone Sanders:

The advice that I would give young people is… I’d give them three pieces of advice. First, ask for the thing that you know you have worked for. How many times do we often ask for the thing right up under the thing we know that we want or the thing that we’ve worked for, because that’s what we think the proverbial they will give to us?

Symone Sanders:

No, I’m asking for the thing that I want, and I’m going to make you tell me no. Oftentimes, if you ask for what you want and what you believe you worked for, a lot of times you’re going to get it. At least, that’s been my story. I got a lot of nos, but I got some very good yeses, Preet-

Preet Bharara:

Yes, you have.

Symone Sanders:

Some good yeses.

Symone Sanders:

The second thing I would tell young people is that you have to be able to do the work, and you need to execute. I have never asked for a job or a position or a space and place, and not been able to perform when I get there. There are very few people in the world that can outwork me. I will get up early. I may not want to leave my house too early, but I will be up. And I will stay up late.

Symone Sanders:

There are people that are smarter than me. There’s somebody out there that speaks better than I do. There’s someone that knows how to read a teleprompter better than I can, and someone with more experience. But there are very few people that can outwork me.

Symone Sanders:

Young people need to do the work. They need to get their research and be able to back up what you say. And read. We’ve got to read. We’ve got to get off Twitter and read.

Symone Sanders:

The final thing I would say to young people out there, especially to my young women and my young women of color, my young Black women, your authentic self is just okay. People broke down barriers so that I could host a show on television starting May 7th at 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, and on Peacock starting May 9th, as a bald, curvy Black woman from North Omaha, Nebraska, with pointy nails, sometimes a bedazzled nail, and a colorblock jumpsuit, or a blue dress and a bold lip. But I know what I’m talking about.

Symone Sanders:

Your authentic self is just okay. You don’t have to put on anything to get into any of these rooms and pretend to be somebody else. I want young women, young people across the board, but young women and young women of color especially, to know that who they are is just all right. If the people got a problem with it, the world needs to adjust. And they are adjusting, Preet. They are adjusting. A long time ago, somebody told me I was not palatable enough for cable television. I don’t know what they meant.

Preet Bharara:

You know what they meant.

Symone Sanders:

Maybe I was too bald, too Black. I don’t know.

Preet Bharara:

You know what they meant. Yeah.

Symone Sanders:

I don’t know. I wasn’t palatable. But they’re adjusting, Preet, and they’re going to be real adjusted come Saturday.

Preet Bharara:

On that note, Symone Sanders, thanks for being on the show. Congratulations on your success, and good luck with the wedding.

Symone Sanders:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Preet. I will see you soon.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Symone Sanders continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

BUTTON:

Preet Bharara:

I want to end the show this week by celebrating a true American hero who you may know about. It’s chef and humanitarian Jose Andres. For those not familiar with Andres and his amazing work, he’s the founder of the World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing meals to communities in the aftermath of natural and sometimes manmade disasters.

Preet Bharara:

Andres was inspired to start the organization in 2010, when he traveled as a humanitarian aid worker to Haiti after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the country. In the years since, as you may know, he’s focused on building an empowerment network of chefs who not only feed people, but also concentrate on four distinct areas of support around food, education, health, jobs, and social enterprise. In 2016, Andres’s work with the World Central Kitchen earned him a National Humanities Medal, which he received at the White House.

Preet Bharara:

The organization, by the way, still operates in Haiti, providing food and resources to communities there, but they have also expanded across the globe in any place you can imagine, organizing hundreds and thousands of meals to communities facing disaster and supporting local chefs and producers. World Central Kitchen, led by Chef Andres, was feeding people in Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. They fed people in the aftermath of a volcano eruption in Guatemala and after a hurricane in The Bahamas. They also set up a popup kitchen in D.C. to feed federal employees after the government shutdown in 2018, when workers couldn’t get paid.

Preet Bharara:

Those are only a few examples. Chef Andres operates literally around the globe and serves up millions of meals to people who need them. Most recently, they’ve been operating in war-torn Ukraine. At the end of February, as thousands fled Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, the World Central Kitchen set up mobile stations to deliver food to people in Odessa, Ukraine, and now he has locations all over the country. Photos and videos on Twitter show organization workers and Ukrainian chefs handing out hot chicken stew, soup, tea, and apple pie as people fled their homes. That’s just, again, a fraction of the work that Chef Andres and his organization has done.

Preet Bharara:

I mention this, in part, because this week I was able to attend a special screening of an amazing film, We Feed People, which was first released in March. The National Geographic documentary is directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard, and follows chef and humanitarian Jose Andres. I must say, the movie was inspiring and emotional, and it made you think about how much suffering there is in the world. I found that it reminded me of my absolute favorite quote from Mahatma Gandhi, who once said, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Think about that.

Preet Bharara:

I highly recommend that you become more familiar with the work of Chef Andres. I recommend seeing this film if you get the chance. If you’re interested in supporting the incredible and important work of World Central Kitchen, check out their website in the show notes to this episode.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Symone Sanders.

Preet Bharara:

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Preet Bharara:

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Sean Walsh, and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.