THE NEW ABNORMAL

Biden Told ‘Be Bold’ in Order to ‘Save the Republic’

Princeton Professor of African American studies Eddie Glaude tells The New Abnormal why he warned the U.S. president that democracy could die unless he is willing to “go big.”

It is not every day you get to talk to the president, and Princeton Prof. Eddie Glaude tells The New Abnormal’s Molly Jong-Fast that he wasn’t going to let the profundity of the situation stop him from telling “the most powerful man in the world” that he had a chance to “usher in a new America.”

Glaude, an expert on African American studies and host of the History Is US podcast, said Americans have to speak up loudly for democracy or risk seeing the country slide backwards.

“What I’ve witnessed over President Biden’s first term is that our problem in this country cuts much deeper than just simply the illiberalism of the Republican Party or the violence of Trumpism. It cuts much deeper than that. It goes all the way to the Democratic Party, to everyday ordinary people who are willing to be complicit in their silence. So we have so much more to do if we’re going to save the Republic,” he said.

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“I’ve watched the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act languish in Congress. I’ve watched the attack on Critical Race Theory. I’ve watched ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws, watched Roe V Wade about to be overturned, and I saw that this was really an all out assault on the revolutions of the mid 20th century. That we wanted to go back, that there was this nostalgic longing, and, of course, at the center of it was by the Jan. 6 insurrection and you heard ‘Stop the Steal’ and you know, ‘we’re gonna take back our country.’”

“[Biden] was the first vice president to the first African American president, he is the first president to have the first African American vice president. He could usher in a new America, change the center of gravity of the country, if he dared to be bold.

“The scale of the problems we face requires a response at scale,” he said.

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Plus, Beast contributor Francisco Alvarado joins the pod to talk about his reporting on a petition underway in Nebraska to require people to present IDs when voting in elections. A police investigation has been sparked over claims that petition circulators have fraudulently been collecting signatures. And who is bankrolling the voter ID campaign? None other than Marlene Ricketts—the billionaire co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and mother of Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts.

“She donated $376,000 in July of last year and that’s basically what the [voter ID] committee has been running and operating on this entire time,” Alvarado said.

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Mathew MurphyEditor

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