Preet Bharara:

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

Jonathan Capehart:

There’s a price to pay when you correct the record, and it goes against a very deep-seated narrative, and that is you get called all sorts of names.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Jonathan Capehart. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The Washington Post. He’s also the author of a new memoir, Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man’s Search for Home.

I sat down with Jonathan a few weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival to talk about his book and the current state of our politics. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

From remaining hopeful amid political chaos to navigating his identity, Jonathan Capehart is ready to share his life story.

So my first question to you is, you are a relatively young man. Why a memoir right now? You going to write a second one?

Jonathan Capehart:

Volume two? Yeah, well, we’ll see. A lot will have to happen.

But in the first Trump administration, things were so awful early on that I thought, “You know what? I need to take a break. And now would be the perfect time to start putting down in pixels, all these stories I had from the summers that I spent in North Carolina at my grandparents.”

And my grandmother was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I went to Catholic school during the school year and then was Jehovah’s summer intern for 12 summers. And the indelible impressions that were made during those summers stayed with me all these years and I thought, “Now is the time to write them all down.” And so I spent a whole weekend, I just started writing and I couldn’t stop telling the stories of all the people and the characters who were in my life at the time.

And I sent what I had written to a bunch of friends, but three friends in particular were really encouraging. I sent it to Tamron Hall, to Joy Reid, and to April Ryan, and they all said, “Oh my God, this is wonderful. This is beautiful. Keep going. Keep going.”

April Ryan in particular was on me. Every time she saw me in public, she said, “How’s it going on the book? Are you still writing on the book? You need to tell your story. You need to tell your story.” That was 2017. And so it’s just worked out that this book is coming out now that we’re in a second Trump administration. Things are even more awful. I’m telling my story that I end the book on a hopeful note because I do think there’s reason to be hopeful.

Preet Bharara:

It’s interesting you say that because I just did a panel in this very tent.

Jonathan Capehart:

Uh-oh.

Preet Bharara:

That ended 20 minutes ago about optimism versus pessimism, and who was that that-

Jonathan Capehart:

Did … Oh, wow.

Preet Bharara:

… We have a lot of-

Jonathan Capehart:

Did pessimism win?

Preet Bharara:

… No.

Jonathan Capehart:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Hope always wins. But why are you hopeful, sir?

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, I’m hopeful because of the arc of my own personal story. And it goes back to again, taking a break from the awful in Trump one. I was reading Professor David Blight’s mammoth biography of Frederick Douglass. And early on, there was a paragraph that was written that really jumped out at me.

He wrote that Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, escaped, became one of the greatest orators in the country’s history. Pushed against slavery. Fought for women’s suffrage. Saw the end of slavery. Didn’t quite live to see women’s suffrage. Did all these things in this country, and then lived long enough to see almost all of it rolled back by the president, by Congress, by the courts.

And when I read that in my apartment as a free Black, out, gay married man in Washington DC with all the jobs that I have, it hit me. History is not linear. History is circular. And for every two steps forward, there might be a step back, but we keep moving forward.

And so how could I not be optimistic and hopeful when I’m reading about Frederick Douglass? And I see that in my own personal lived experience, I’m proof that his work did not die with the president, with Congress and the courts. That’s what keeps me hopeful. That’s what keeps me positive.

Preet Bharara:

This may be an unfair question. What do you think Frederick Douglass would say today about being hopeful and what has happened in the last number of years?

Jonathan Capehart:

I think he would say, “Still be hopeful.” How could Frederick Douglass, if he were to come back and according to President Trump in the first term, “A lot of people are talking about him. He’s doing a lot of great things.”

But if you’re Frederick Douglass and you’ve lived the life that he lived, and then you’re teleported here to 2025. Your socks would be blown off. You’d be like, “Wait, what? We had a Black president. What? We have African Americans free and doing all sorts of things that I pushed for when I was actually here?”

Of course, he’d be alarmed by a lot of the things that we’re going through now. But anyone who thinks that what we’re going through now is the worst it’s ever been is just wrong. Wrong.

Preet Bharara:

So you talk a lot about a lot of different things in the book. I want to ask you some questions about contemporary journalism a little bit later. Why’d you fall in love with the idea of journalism generally and being on TV specifically? Because that was pretty early for you.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yeah, so when I was growing up, I was what you would call a tattletale. I told-

Preet Bharara:

We call that a narc.

Jonathan Capehart:

… Well, you might call it a narc. I was a tattletale. I told everybody’s business, everybody’s business, including my mother’s, which she did not like.

And so here I am, I’m staying with my aunt and uncle in their apartment in the Bronx. And my Uncle McKinley worked at NBC. He worked at 30 Rock. He was an electrician. So he was heading to work, and he said, “Turn on the Today Show. They’re doing it from the Plaza. I’m going to find where the cameras are and I’m going to wave. So watch for me.”

And so I watched. And so I’m watching this show as a kid. It’s like, “Oh wait, these people tell other people’s business and it’s a job. Wow.” And so that began my fascination with being what I called a news commentator. I wanted to be a news commentator. And so, okay, that’s nerd cred points one.

Nerd cred point number two is in school, which I loved, I loved geography. And I had all sorts of National Geographic maps on the wall because I wanted to … When I’m watching the news, and NBC News exclusively. I’m watching and there’d be a report from Moscow. And so I would turn and look at my world map. Find Moscow or my Europe map. Find Moscow or my Russia map. And I wanted to know where the news was happening in relation to where I was right then. And so I just wanted to do the job.

And then fast-forward again, I’m at 30 Rock with my Uncle McKinley. I asked to come visit him. He had work to do in the nightly news office, and I was so excited. I thought I was going to meet all the greats, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw, Garrick Utley, and nobody was there.

It was 9:00 in the morning. I suffered this one woman, Ann Skakel Terrien and I worked up the courage. I was 16, 17 years old. I worked up the courage to ask her if she worked there. She did. She worked at Nightly News.

And then you see a kid in front of you and you ask him, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I was off to the races. I said, “Well, I want to be a NBC’s Moscow correspondent. Then I’m trying to decide between the London Bureau and the White House. If I go to the London Bureau, then I definitely want to go to the White House afterwards, and then I want to come to New York and be anchor of the Today Show.”

I don’t know the look she had on her face. I know the look I would’ve had on my face. And so my uncle comes back and he says, “Okay, it’s time to go.” And I thanked her for her time and she said, “Wait a minute.” And she opened the drawer, pulled out an NBC notepad, wrote down the name, Kay Bradley, her phone number. And then with a flourish, she rips off the paper and she goes, “Here, get yourself an internship on the Today Show.” And that started-

Preet Bharara:

And it worked.

Jonathan Capehart:

… Yeah, it worked.

Preet Bharara:

It worked. Now people talk about their inspirations and the people who were supportive of the things they wanted to do, and you talk about those people. But as is true in life, often, sometimes there are people who are not supportive and that drives you forward as well. And now, I can’t remember if it was your stepfather or one of your mother’s boyfriends.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes.

No, stepfather.

Preet Bharara:

Stepfather. Can you describe that?

Jonathan Capehart:

Describe?

Preet Bharara:

How he talked about your aspiration.

Jonathan Capehart:

Oh, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

And how you responded to that?

Jonathan Capehart:

He basically thought I was a fool and told me so. So this internship that I got, when Ann ripped off the paper, that was 40 years ago this year. The internship was the next summer, the summer of ’86. Fantastic experience. I guess I did such a great job, they asked me to come back a second summer. Summer of ’87.

And it was on my first day leaving for that internship that my then stepfather raises the window from the second floor of the house. And yells out, for the entire neighborhood to hear, “No self-respecting college student would work for free for a second summer.” And then he said, “You should take responsibility for your life.”

And I just said, “Don’t you think I’m taking responsibility for my life by working a second summer?” And that was that. But I used that negativity as fuel. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I was capable of.

And the most important thing that I got from my mother was what she didn’t say. She never said can’t. She never said, “You can’t.” And for that, the power of that, in order for you to understand the power of that, you have to know that back then and still today, I am … Well, back then, there was no journalist in my family. No writer. No author. No one in television. No one in television news.

I was the nerdy kid in my family who had this big, big dream and nobody knew how to help me, how to do it. But the one thing they didn’t do was crap all over my aspirations. And especially my mother. She never said, “You can.” All she would say was, “All right, baby, well, you can do it.” Sometimes that’s all you need.

Audience 1:

Yay, mom.

Preet Bharara:

There’s another aspect of your persistence and your interest in asking questions that I thought … It was one of my favorite stories from the book. And it has to do with your consideration about college and where you wanted to go. And where you ultimately ended up going, which is Carleton College. And as you pointed out in the book, this was pre-internet, so there’s no web page to look at. So if you had questions, what did you do?

Jonathan Capehart:

I picked up the phone and we had touch tone then. We’re no longer on rotary. Picked up the phone, dialed up Carleton College. And there was this one young woman there named Beth Clary, and she had such a nice, warm, inviting voice. And so whenever I called Carleton, I asked for her if I didn’t recognize the voice. But it wasn’t just one call a week or every other day. It was several times a day, every day. And I had lots of questions.

Preet Bharara:

What kinds of questions?

Jonathan Capehart:

How cold does it get there? Do students really take the tunnels to get to and from classes? Help me understand, well, how do I pick classes? Why a trimester system and not a semester system? All sorts of questions. Again, free internet.

So my mom said to me one day, “You should ease up on the phone calls because you don’t want to make yourself a nuisance and then ruin your chances.”

So I was like, “Oh man, okay, fine.” Full 24 hour I did not call. I had so many questions but I did not call. The very next day, the phone rings at home and I pick up. And the person on the other end said, “Hello, this is Beth Clary from Carleton College wanting to speak to Jonathan.”

And I said, “Hi, Ms. Clary, it’s me.”

She said, “Hi, Jonathan. We didn’t hear from you yesterday. We wanted to make sure everything was okay? If you had any questions?”

I said, “I have tons of questions, but my mother said, ‘Don’t call.’ That I was being a nuisance.”

And she said, “Anytime you have a question, call, that’s why we’re here. Anytime.”

Preet Bharara:

I love that story.

Jonathan Capehart:

10 years ago, I gave the opening convocation speech at Carleton and I told this story to everyone. I give my speech to the freshman, but everyone on campus was there. All the classes, professors behind me. Do the speech. There’s a reception at the President’s residence after we’re all just standing around talking and who comes walking out of the crowd, but Beth Clary.

And my mother, said to me years ago, but long after I graduated. She said, “It was that one phone call that day that told her everything she needed to know about Carleton.” She thought if I’d gone there, that I would be going to a nurturing environment where there would be people who would be looking out for me. And that’s exactly what happened. Carleton is fabulous.

Preet Bharara:

You talk a bit about your struggles with your identity and being in different spaces. Newark, North Plainfield, the South Haslett, as we’ve already discussed. And the challenges of being Black in various spaces and of being gay, both before and after you were public.

We could talk a lot about the subtlety with which you talk about these things, but you’re also very poignant and honest and candid. And I thought a way to introduce the subject, then you can elaborate further, is could you tell the story about the porn stash?

Jonathan Capehart:

No.

Preet Bharara:

It’s in the book.

Jonathan Capehart:

It’s in the book, but that’s not where I thought you were going, Preet. I have a different story I would like to read. It’s a little more serious.

Preet Bharara:

So that was my ploy to get everyone to buy the book.

Jonathan Capehart:

I’ll give a synopsis.

Preet Bharara:

Hold on. I don’t know if you need that. I’m just going to read the title of … It’s a whole chapter.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yeah, in Chapter 8.

Preet Bharara:

Hide Your Porn Well, exclamation mark. All right, we can go to your story in a moment.

Jonathan Capehart:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Do you want to say anything more about this?

Jonathan Capehart:

Obviously, it’s how I came out to my mother. But it’s a story of how when this now former stepfather, my mother called me to tell me that the marriage was dissolving. And that probably by the end of the week she was going to move out.

And that sent jolt of urgency through me because if she’s going to move out of the house, all my stuff’s going to be there. She’s probably going to go through it. And I had a porn stash hidden in the room.

And so this was after I graduated college, but I was still at the college working as assistant to the president. So I called my junior year roommate, Ricardo, who was living in Teaneck, his hometown, and I sent him on an urgent mission. And the mission was to retrieve the box. And that’s all you need to know about the story. You need to just read the opening of Chapter 8.

Preet Bharara:

It’s very suspenseful. You want to read the book and the chapter to figure out how that turns out.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

But you wanted to talk about something else.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, yes, Preet, about identity. And really about navigating, about being Black in white spaces. And I tell this story about being in Haslet, which predominantly white town. I was the only one or one of a few in class.

And so I just very briefly read my experience in Haslet where I write, “Haslet was also where I began to learn how to be Black in white spaces. Blackness is always at the mercy of someone else’s judgment. You can be too Black, not Black enough, or not Black at all. And I have run the range my entire life. Some Black people are eager to take away my Black card. Some white people would rather I not mention my race at all.

“I was playing with my friends near the tennis court at the other end of the apartment complex. I don’t remember what we were talking about exactly, but we were laughing, telling little jokes. What I do remember is my contribution to the levity. ‘Well, I’m going to carry my Black ass down there,’ I said, employing a bit of phrasing common in Black households, and utterly unfamiliar to my white friends. ‘What does race have to do with this?’ one friend snapped.

“Nothing specifically in everything culturally. They had no idea what Black meant in that sense. To them, I was invoking race where it didn’t belong. To me, I was treating friends like family.

“In our families, Black is used for comedic effect or to put an exclamation mark on a warning. Mom, like all Black parents and relatives, was adept at the latter. ‘Don’t you ever, as long as you’re Black,’ was a favorite preface for one of mom’s admonitions against doing any number of offenses.

“Black ass is used in multiple ways, especially to grab one’s attention. One of mom’s favorites was, ‘You better bring your Black ass here right now.’ Or, ‘Your Black ass is going to get left if you don’t hurry up.’

“My use of Black ass was clearly comedic, but in feeling comfortable with my white friends, I violated an unspoken agreement with an unspoken expectation. I was not Black at all. The burden was mine to glide effortlessly between my Black home and family to the whiter world.

“The rules of the unspoken agreement are designed for maximum white comfort with Black presence, which means we must constantly prove to white people, especially those who don’t know us, that we are following their rules.

“Hence, my mother’s mantra, that is the mantra in every African American household, ‘You have to work twice as hard to be considered just as good and just as qualified as them.’ If you are ever considered such, know that it comes grudgingly, and even then the whiter world will remind you of where it believes your place to be.”

Preet Bharara:

Well done.

Stay tuned. There’s more of my conversation with Jonathan Capehart coming up.

The difficulty I imagine, as an opinion writer for you, given a lot of issues that you discussed in the book, is the question that some people might have of what your writing orientation is.

Do you think of yourself as speaking from time to time for a particular community or set of communities? Or do you think of yourself as always trying to speak what the truth is? And often those are aligned? And sometimes they’re not. And that’s my setup for asking you about a very difficult time that you had writing about Michael Brown who was killed in Ferguson some years ago. There’s a lot of controversy about that. Can you tell that story and how you handled it?

Jonathan Capehart:

So when you’re an opinion writer, and especially an editorial writer, which is how my career began in print, you bring your whole self to the table. You’re a reporter first, but then you say, “As an African American, this is how I view it.” I’m not the spokesperson for Black people. I’m not the spokesperson for LGBTQ people, but I am the Black LGBTQ person at the table in the conversation at that time.

And so when I started writing columns more and more under my own name, I really leaned into that. And I would like to think I grew a following and an audience, a Sherpa or an ambassador to various issues for various people for whom I might be the only Black person they follow or read or watch on television and who they trust.

So when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson initially, and then I watched it play out on social media on Twitter. I was guest anchoring the next morning and wrote a whole commentary about how awful this was. And my God, the police shot him in the back and the whole thing. And wrote column after column after column, not just about Michael Brown. But remember, what preceded Michael Brown was Trayvon Martin. So I had been writing all about the killings of unarmed African Americans, particularly Black men for a while then.

But something happened. Attorney General Eric Holder, president Obama’s and I think the first African American attorney general in the United States, ordered two reports to be written. One about the city of Ferguson, Missouri and how the structures of the city led to what happened, these stops. And the second was on the actual shooting of Michael Brown.

When the reports came out at the same time, a lot of attention was paid to the Ferguson report. Quite honestly, I think, because it was the easiest of the two. It was the easiest to explain how Ferguson was financing itself on the backs of the poor and Black and Brown through tickets and fees and things like that. And I remember being on television and talking all about the Ferguson report, but after one television hit, I realized, you haven’t even read-

Preet Bharara:

The other report.

Jonathan Capehart:

… the other report.

And so I read the other report on the shooting of Michael Brown. And the more I read, the more I became sick to my stomach because I then realized and understood, that all of the things I’d been writing about the shooting of Michael Brown, the entire tone and tenor and conversation about the shooting of Michael Brown, was wrong.

And as I dove into the report, I finished the report, I felt duty bound to write a column that pulled back from what I had written for months, if not more than a year. And I felt duty bound as a journalist because all I have as a journalist is my word and my reputation that people will … I wanted people to trust me the next time another Black person was shot and killed. And I needed to correct the record.

But there’s a price to pay when you correct the record and it goes against a very deep-seated narrative. And that is you get called all sorts of names. And so all the people on the right who were saying that I had been fostering this negative environment by writing about Trayvon and writing about Michael Brown, and writing about all the other people who’d been killed, suddenly it flipped on its head.

Now, I had conservatives saying, “You’re one of the good ones. You are a real journalist. You’re telling the truth.” And then I had African Americans and other folks on the left who were screaming at me saying, “You Uncle Tom, you’re anti-Black. You’re a house N-word. How dare you?”

And I say, “Look, read the report. It’s right there.” So what you’re going to say to me, the Black Attorney General of the United States is going to put out a false report on behalf of the Black President of the United States? If you’re not going to trust them, then you’re not going to trust anybody on that particular issue.

Preet Bharara:

I had different but a parallel experience when I was US attorney based on a number of, I’m Indian American, on some Indian Americans we had been prosecuting, including a particular mid-level diplomat. And someone wrote that I was an Uncle Tom of the Indian American variation. And then someone else wrote that, “Obviously, I had orchestrated the arrests to prove myself to my white masters, presumably Eric Holder and Barack Obama.”

So I feel your … But it wasn’t enjoyable. It wasn’t enjoyable. How did you react to hearing that? Was it more than you expected or did you anticipate all of that?

Jonathan Capehart:

I totally anticipated it because by then I’d gone through it in various iterations. I went through it when we wrote the series of editorials about the Apollo Theater, and I went up against the Harlem establishment. I went up against Charlie Rangel. I went up against an entrenched African American political establishment, I and we at the Daily News editorial board, and all the things I was called as a result of the piece I wrote about the shooting of Michael Brown. I was called the same things back then at that point, 20 years earlier. So there’s nothing really anyone can call me or say to me or say about me that I haven’t already heard.

Preet Bharara:

Something that I hadn’t known was that you were involved in politics for periods of time in between writing stints and you worked on the campaign for Michael Bloomberg.

Jonathan Capehart:

First one. Yep.

Preet Bharara:

In 2001. So you have some understanding of the city and city politics, in fact, mayoral politics. Obviously, I’m about to ask you what your reaction is to the primary last Tuesday and the ascendancy of Mr. Mamdani?

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, it’s very interesting that here’s this person who no one gave a shot to. Sort of along the same thing that happened to Mike Bloomberg when he ran in 2001. Everyone thought, “Oh, well, he’s going to get totally decimated by Mark Green. Mark Green’s going to be the mayor.” We all know how that turned out.

But what Mamdani did was he actually went out and asked people for their votes. We’re in a completely different time now than 2001. And I think Governor Cuomo, I guess tried to run a Rose Garden strategy. And thought that his big establishment ties, and not even ties, he is the establishment, that that would get him through. And it didn’t.

The caution I put on, particularly my brethren in the press, who it seems like bound and determined, and some Democrats, to use this race as a bellwether. A harbinger of where the party is going. Don’t do that. This was just the primary.

Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, will still be on the ballot as an independent. Andrew Cuomo has his own ballot line in November. He’s still deciding what he’s going to do. So Mamdani is going to be facing those two folks most likely in November.

The other thing people need to remember is that yes, New York City has the reputation of being the bastion of liberalism on the East Coast and the way that San Francisco is on the West Coast. And that New York is just filled with these far left progressives who want to do all sorts of things that are anathema to the country. But if you look at what’s actually happened in New York City, that’s just not the case.

Preet Bharara:

Bloomberg had three terms.

Jonathan Capehart:

Right. Well, you beat me to it because before Bloomberg, there was Rudy Giuliani with his two terms as mayor. Followed by Mike Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican the first term. Ran as an independent the second and third terms who elected Eric Adams as mayor. He is not far left at all.

And so that’s why I caution folks in my profession, and certainly Democrats who are perennially have their hair on fire about everything, to, you know what? Just pump the brakes a bit, relax a bit, because this story is not over. There’s a general election to be run, and I’d be a fool to predict what would happen.

Preet Bharara:

So you don’t think, based on what’s happened to this point, that Democrats around the country should start thinking about modeling themselves after Mamdani?

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, no, no, no. That’s a different thing. If you’re modeling yourself on Mamdani, I hope what you take from him is meet people where they are. Meaning, he was all over social media. Use social media to get to the folks who you need to get out to vote. And the most important thing is ask people for their votes. Get out there on the streets.

Andrew Cuomo would do events, such as he did, and then race to his car and leave. Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan, asking people for their votes. Do not underestimate the power of just presence. You’re not going to get everybody, but people will be impressed that you actually showed up, was in their face and said, “Hey, I’m running for mayor. I would love your vote.”

Preet Bharara:

Some people have made the argument that it’s even simpler than that. It’s probably a lot of things, but I’ve heard people make the argument, it’s maybe just age versus youth. Particularly, in the aftermath of the Biden experience is having to leave the ticket. That as youth for youth’s sake is something the Democratic Party needs to think about and take seriously. Do you buy that?

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes and no. This is also the same party that swooned over Bernie Sanders. He’s not exactly young. In fact, I think isn’t he about the same age? Maybe older?

Preet Bharara:

He’s older.

Jonathan Capehart:

Older than President Biden?

Preet Bharara:

Well, maybe, I don’t know.

Jonathan Capehart:

It’s not about age. What Mamdani and Sanders have in common, aside from super progressive policies, is they have ideas. They don’t just say, “I’m running for something.” They say, “I’m running for something and if you elect me, here’s what I will do.” Now, whether they’ll be able to do it if they’re elected, that’s a whole other question.

But Mamdani said, for instance, “I’m going to, free buses, free bus service.” I can’t tell you what Andrew Cuomo said he would do as mayor. And I think that is the difference. You could have an older candidate with ideas who goes places, which explains Bernie Sanders at 80-something-years-old.

Preet Bharara:

Mamdani also said, “Globalize intifada.”

Jonathan Capehart:

Yeah, well, he’s going to have to answer for that.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, okay.

Jonathan Capehart:

That’s why I say, the general election is going to be a completely different matter.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think this gives Eric Adams a shot?

Jonathan Capehart:

Sure. Again, remember, I worked on Bloomberg’s first campaign for mayor. The campaign people said he would never win. So anything is possible. That’s the number one thing I learned from working that one political campaign.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Jonathan Capehart after this.

Are you worried about press freedom in this country at this moment?

Jonathan Capehart:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

How much?

Jonathan Capehart:

Very. We went from a first Trump term where he just called us enemy of the people and had his followers jeer the press riser in the back.

Now, not only are we enemies of the people, but he’s taking legal actions against CBS. Legal action against ABC. Legal action against 60 Minutes. So we have a litigious president who has not been shy about trying to stifle us through litigation. That’s why I like what Governor Newsom is doing.

Preet Bharara:

I was going to ask you about that. I don’t know if people saw on the last day, Governor Newsom has sued Fox News for a very particular amount of money.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yeah, the same amount of money that Fox had to pay, what was it, Dominion Voting System?

Preet Bharara:

$187 million. So it’s not gimmicky at all.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, sure, yeah, it’s gimmicky. And the fact that he’s doing this lawsuit, will he win? Who knows. But as Joan Collins did on Dynasty as Alexis Carrington, she goes through a balcony and she says, “I have the receipts.”

Newsom has the receipts. He can prove that what Jesse Watters said was wrong and was a lie. And I like that you call it gimmicky and I’ll give that to you. But I think what a lot of people want from Democratic leaders is the same amount of fight and fire that has been coming from the right and from President Trump on behalf of his folks.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Look, I saw someone being asked that question and they were asked something like, “Is this trolling or is this a legitimate legal case?” And the person answered, “It can be both.”

Jonathan Capehart:

It can be both.

Preet Bharara:

It can be both.

Jonathan Capehart:

It is both.

Preet Bharara:

This is just things that are on my mind. Nationally, politically, who is the leader of the Democratic Party at the moment?

Jonathan Capehart:

Oh my God, I hate this question. You know why I hate it?

Preet Bharara:

I can give you a different version of it. I’ll give you a choice. Why isn’t it Obama?

Jonathan Capehart:

Oh.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, you don’t like that either?

Jonathan Capehart:

I hate that question too. No, no, no. I will.

Preet Bharara:

We can go back to the porn chapter.

Jonathan Capehart:

Here’s why I hate both those questions and they’re related. Democrats are always, always, always looking for the one. Who’s going to be the one to lead us? When what Democrats need right now is to focus on what the hell are you going to do to win back the house in ’26 and win back the White House in ’28? And it’s not going to be waiting for the one.

And it’s certainly not going to be waiting for President Obama. He’s already done his service. He did eight years. On his way out he said, “I’m done. It’s now up to you as citizens to keep things going.” That is still the case. Stop looking for him to pop out from out of nowhere and lead everyone to salvation. And as a corollary to that, leave Michelle Obama alone. She’s not going to run for anything.

But back to Democrats. While folks are waiting for this mythical figure to come from out of nowhere to lead the Democratic Party, how about paying attention to the Democrats who are actually out there showing leadership in this very moment?

You’ve got AOC and Bernie Sanders, opposite ends of the age spectrum, who are going out there and having rallies in red states. Getting thousands of people, speaking to people’s desires and certainly their fears. But speaking to people who are looking for leadership. Or how about Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman Crockett, who in hearing after hearing and television programs like mine, lays it down and lays it out in very clear, blunt language about what’s happening.

Or Congressman Robert Garcia of California who just became the ranking member, the youngest ranking member of the Oversight Committee. Who has been out there since Inauguration Day speaking, not truth to power, but getting out there. Not waiting for permission from Democratic leadership to speak about what’s happening in the country.

Those are just the few names that I can rattle off the top of my head in the two seconds that we have left in this part of the session. But there are Democrats out there who are doing the things that Democrats say they want their leaders to do. How about focus on those folks who are doing it?

And one last thing. We don’t know who the nominee is going to be in ’28. In 1992, no one saw Bill Clinton coming. In 2008, everyone thought it was going to be Secretary Clinton who was going to be, or Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t secretary by then. Senator Clinton who was going to be the Democratic nominee for president and who was going to be president. And Barack Obama, Senator Obama, came from out of nowhere and beat her.

Who is going to be the person who’s going to come from out of nowhere in ’28 to be the nominee? And I would posit and this, I give credit to my husband Nick, who said from the very beginning after Trump won reelection, “That maybe Democrats should look beyond politicians. Maybe they should look in other industries for people to run for president.” Because hell, if Donald Trump can run for president and be president, anybody can run.

Preet Bharara:

Everyone is eligible.

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes. Literally.

Preet Bharara:

We have about eight minutes and change for questions from the audience. I think there’s a mic that we got one question over here.

Audience 1:

Thanks. Great session. My question is how can Democrats improve their messaging to Middle America? Because when I think about 2028, for example, everyone’s mentioning all these names, but you know what comes up to me is Andy Beshear, who’s won two terms in Kentucky. And who’s Bill Clinton-like without the other baggage.

And so my question for you is, is the issue is that there continues to be this East Coast, West Coast message in the hopes that Middle America will adapt, which so far they have not.

Jonathan Capehart:

So thank you for your question. And as you’re asking the question, I immediately thought of Nathan Sage. He is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Iowa to run against Joni Ernst. If you were to look at Nathan Sage, instantly you would think, “Oh, he’s got to be MAGA.” If you were to just hear, just listen to the tenor and tone of his voice, you would think, “Oh, he’s absolutely MAGA.” And he’s not. He’s a Big D Democrat.

And I always focus on him because … You should just Google him. Look him up and watch his minute and a half, two-minute video. He is not confused about why he’s a Democrat. He knows exactly why he’s a Democrat, Big D Democrat.

What makes him, and I think this is what he has in common with … Maybe not so much in common with Andy Beshear. But he knows his reason for being a Democrat. He knows why he wants to run. He knows how to talk about the issues in ways that are not think tanky, that haven’t been focus group to death. He’s just a regular guy talking about issues that he and his friends talk about, he and his community talk about.

And I asked him, “Well, you look like MAGA and sound like MAGA. You’re a little rough because at the end of your video you say, ‘You’re going to beat Joni Ernst’s corporate ass in November.'”

And he said, “Look, this is how we talk. This is how we talk. And so when I’m walking around and talking to people, they’re running up to me because I’m talking like a real person.”

And so if anything, I think Democrats need to start talking like a real person, get away from the consultants, go with your gut. If you’re running in a district, if you’re running in a state, you know your constituents. The people you want to represent. You know what they care about because you live there. So go with your gut.

You can draw a line from Nathan Sage, Andy Beshear to Mamdani just on that issue. He is asking people for their votes by talking to them about the things they care about. And I think that’s what Democrats need to do from coast to coast, from the east to the Midwest, to the mountains to the west.

Preet Bharara:

A question I think back there.

Audience 2:

Hi. What I’m wondering, as somebody who has spent a lot of time being the only Black person in a lot of the spaces that I run in.

I know how easy it is to end up in contexts where people are referring to as an Uncle Tom and so on. And I wonder, it’s easy to say, “I don’t care what people say about me. Those labels don’t matter.” But there is a legitimate criticism at times that they are making about sometimes the tendency of Black people to distance themselves sometimes from their own culture when they reach certain levels of attainment within their career.

And I wonder if you have had any wrestling with this subject in such a way where you have wanted to intentionally try to avoid being called an Uncle Tom? Or where you’ve had to rethink something that you were saying or doing as a result of someone leveling that at you?

Jonathan Capehart:

No.

Audience 2:

Okay.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, thank you. No, no, no. And I said it like that on purpose because … And I take your point. It is easy to just say, “I don’t care what people think.” But when someone gets to the point where they’re saying, “I don’t care what people think.” What that means is they know who they are in their core. They know exactly who they are. And the people who are leveling the charges at them, calling them Uncle Tom, calling them house N-word, calling them all these names, they don’t know me. They don’t know you.

They are reacting to what they see of you in that moment, but they don’t know the struggles and stuff that you’ve gone through that got you to that particular point. The folks who sing all those things about me, they don’t know half of my story. Great, you have this vision of me simply because I look real nice in a navy blue suit and I talk good on television, but those people don’t know me. Those people don’t know you.

And I tell young people all the time, “If you know yourself, there’s nothing anyone can say about you that should hurt you to the point where you’re questioning everything about yourself.”

Of course, being called all those names hurts. It’s not nice. It’s terrible. But at the end of the day, those people saying those things don’t know me. And if they knew me, they probably wouldn’t say it. They probably wouldn’t say it, but that’s on them.

And it takes lived experience. It takes time to get to that point. So I had to give myself a lot of grace. I think you and other folks who have that question should give themselves some grace. But never ever let anybody tell you who you are when you know exactly who you are.

Preet Bharara:

We have time for one or two, probably just one. If it’s quick, we can do two.

Jonathan Capehart:

I promise I’ll be faster.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, right there.

Audience 3:

Was it Beth who kept answering your calls at Carleton? Was that her name?

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes.

Audience 3:

Yes. I’m just curious. I’m a sucker for a good story. When she came into the room after hearing what you said, what did she say to you? What did it mean to her?

Jonathan Capehart:

Oh, she gave me a big hug. At the time, was living in Oregon. And she was on vacation with Carleton friends in Wisconsin, and they told her, “Jonathan is speaking at Convocation.” And so she changed her plans and drove from Wisconsin to Carlton to be there. She had no idea what I was going to say.

And just as a epilogue, I was doing an event at Harvard with Professor Gates and I did a book signing afterwards. And a book comes across and I look up and it’s Beth Clary. And I said, “Why do you keep doing this? You just pop from out of nowhere.”

So she was very touched by hearing that story, and I tell it all the time just to make it clear to people that it’s sometimes the smallest, kindest thing that can mean the world to somebody else.

Preet Bharara:

Super quick right here.

Audience 4:

As a gay man, what strengths does that bring to your work, to your perception of the world around you? And what are the challenges?

Jonathan Capehart:

Oh, sure, in 35 seconds.

Preet Bharara:

34 seconds.

Jonathan Capehart:

I will just say this, all of the things that when I bring to the table as an African American, I bring the same thing as an out gay married man. That my lived experience as an LGBTQ person, when I started in the business, it was my experience as a gay man. And now 30-something years later, my experience as an LGBTQ+ person informs my view of the world.

When David Brooks and I sit at that table on Friday, although yesterday I did it from a studio and he did it from a van here in Aspen, I’m bringing all of that to the conversation. And sometimes, it could just be as simple, we’re talking about something not related to LGBTQ issues, but I just say, “My husband and I have this conversation all the time.” Just being able to do that, just being able to say that, has an impact for LGBTQ+ people who might not know I’m gay. How that’s possible? I don’t know.

But I’ve gotten emails from people saying, “I had no idea.” Or from young people who marvel at the fact that, “I just heard you just casually mention your husband. I’ve never heard that before. That’s wonderful to hear. To know that you are out there and you’re representing us.”

So we’re going through a lot of challenges as a community. We’ve been going through a lot of challenges as a community for decades now, and it’s the T in the LGBTQ that’s really going through it right now. But the thing that gives me hope is that the conversation around the T that we’re having right now reminds me of the very same conversation we were having about the L and the G, 30 years ago. And look where we are now. And so I’m hopeful that all of the letters in our alphabet will get to a better place.

But to end where we started, I am incredibly hopeful that we will get through this very bumpy, turbulent flight that we’re in as Americans. We will get through the other side. We just have to remain hopeful and remember who we are.

My favorite line of President Biden’s that he ended every speech on that always made me tear up. And it’s when he would say, “We are the United States of America. There’s nothing we can’t do when we put our minds to it and we do it together.” That’s the way I think about the time that we are in, no matter which community hat I have on.

Preet Bharara:

Just a point for me. There are a lot of lessons in this book. One that I’ve taken away, I didn’t get to ask you about, was repeatedly through the book, someone gave you the lesson that everything you do in life is an audition for something else in life, which I think is very profound. So thank you for that. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your service. Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Capehart:

Thank you, Preet. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

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

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 at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Bluesky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338. That’s 833-99-Preet. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

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 deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernandez. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost.

I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.