W. Kamau Bell
speaker
1,269 appearances
5 recordings
5 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 14 Oct
W. Kamau Bell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.
Appearances
I still sort of am connected to this country and invested in this country and checking in on this country and probably in some way making money off this country. But I just think that the last election really proved that, oh, this country really may not, we may have turned a corner.
But it's not significant enough that people act like it means something. It didn't swing anything. It didn't swing anything, yeah.
Yeah, because most people, no matter their race, don't pay that close attention to politics. Right. So I think we always sort of – people like me and you are like, oh, did you see what happened?
Exactly. And it just sort of comes through the ether. And then somebody they know online says, that's not real. They go, he said it's not real. Or Joe Rogan tells them something. So the idea being that I don't think that most people are paying that close attention. So I can't really – get mad at them for voting for Trump.
Now, if you're out there hustling for Trump as a black person, that's a different thing. I feel like now you're a grifter. Yes. But I think most people just sort of, like, do you know the day of the election, like, there was a spike in Google of, like, Why isn't Joe Biden on the ballot? Yeah. Yeah.
And a big spike. Yeah. So that to me is like most, we think most people are paying.
It's like us. At 6.13 this morning, the president said, you know, did you see his tweets? And most people aren't doing that. And so I have more empathy for those people than other people do. My beef is with people who are on my side who are being bad actors.
Like I'd rather, if I'm going to put some beef into an area, it's going to be into the like, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumers of the world where it's like nothing.
Because money rules politics, it just means that those at the top are generally not going to be what we want them to be. Yeah. So therefore, we have to be, as a society, we have to be in a position to bully them into the position we want them to be in because they're not going to do it on their own. On their own good.
I do think that like at this particular moment in American history, if you are a person in power and a Democrat and you're not like actively like out there every day calling balls and strikes and actively out there every day, like sort of figuring out how to speak, how to sort of speak directly to people's country and how to like marshal the forces.
If you're a person who goes, I don't know what leverage we have. I can't trust you.
Yes. No, I'm with you.
But, see, this is Obama. This is where... Think about Obama. Obama came out of nowhere, basically.
Like, he was not a guy who was being groomed. He groomed himself. Groom is a weird word to use now. But he sort of believed. Him and Michelle believed it before anybody else saw it. Yeah. Michelle didn't, but he did. Yeah. You know more than me. You're much closer to the Obamas than I am. I've never met them.
So I think that's the model is go find these leaders who are now state senators, who are now like Summer Lee, who's from Pennsylvania, is a great example. She won a moderate district. I don't know if she's a socialist, but she's a democratic socialist. She's a progressive black woman, had to defeat AIPAC money to win her Congress seat.
Latifah Simon, where I'm from, just took over Barbara Lee's seat. Our dynamic leaders who are now in the Congress, go find, Go find those dynamic leaders and start to prepare the way for them.
And I think that right now, I would say the Democrat Party should be like the NBA in Africa in the 80s. Just go look for tall guys. Yeah. Just go look for like, just go. And I think that if they go, if they were to focus on that, I would be, Hakeem Jeffries can do whatever he wants to do, Chuck Schumer, but you really need to go invest in new talent. Yeah.
And I think right now they're sort of like, when they say things like we don't have leverage, it's like you're trying to hold on to your position.
Yeah. So I think that like until we can like get money out of politics, which is a big thing, the Democratic Party is only to be taken seriously if they understand like we need new blood.
they didn't just sort of like explode out of nowhere. They were like, that's the guy. He's young. He's charismatic. You know, Malcolm X was in prison and came out of prison and started giving speeches like, wait a minute, that guy talks really good. Like, you have to go find these people. And then when you find them, you have to turn the power over to them instead of just using it.
Showing 1041–1060 of 1,269 · page 53 of 64
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