Bishop William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, joins us as the Republican National Convention wraps up in Milwaukee. On the final night, Donald Trump’s invective-filled speech, coming just days after the attempt on his life, was promoted as an address about unity. But Barber says it was only “a unity of rejection” on offer — rejecting the rights of women, immigrants, workers, poor people, disenfranchised voters and more. “They may have toned down their voices, but they did not tone down their extreme policies,” he says.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination on Thursday night, just five days after surviving an assassination attempt. Trump gave the longest acceptance speech in convention history, clocking in at over 90 minutes. He began by recounting what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when a bullet grazed his right ear as he was giving a speech. He went on to repeatedly demonize migrants who seek refuge in the United States. He also attacked President Biden by name, despite a claim by campaign aides that he would not do so during the speech.
DONALD TRUMP: And then we had that horrible, horrible result, that we’ll never let happen again. The election result, we’re never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. We’re never going to let it happen again.
And they took off all the sanctions, and they did everything possible for Iran. And now Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon, which would have never happened.
This is a shame, what this administration — the damage that this administration has done. And I say it often: If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States — think of it, the 10 worst — added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done. Only going to use the term once, “Biden.” I’m not going to use the name anymore. Just one time. The damage that he’s done to this country is unthinkable. It’s unthinkable.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Bishop William Barber, national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, also president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He’s co-author of a new book, White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.
Bishop Barber, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t we start off with your response to the Republican convention of this week? I think one of the big takeaways of this convention, as Republicans talked about unity, is unifying people against marginalized communities, particularly throughout the week, speaker after speaker vilified everyone from immigrants to trans students.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, Amy, thank you for having me.
I think you’re exactly right. It was a unity of rejection, rejecting people in this American society. It was a unity in those who are against women’s right to choose, even though they tried to hide that, because you have to read the whole platform. It was unity against immigrants. But it is also — what they didn’t say, there was no conversation about the poor, 140 million poor and low-wage people in this country. This was a unity against labor rights, a unity against voting rights, a unity against living wages, a unity against healthcare for all.
This was a very extreme, extreme convention, even though we had just gone through an attempted assassination, which I renounce violence and was praying for the president and his family and the [inaudible] and their families and all of them. But it was almost as though it hadn’t happened. What you saw is that they went to the podium and the mic. They may have toned down their voices, but they did not tone down their extreme policies.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Bishop Barber, if you could speak — your book that’s just out is titled White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy. Talk about what you think ought to have been said throughout this convention on the crisis of poverty in the country that transcends race.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, when we talk about the book White Poverty, what we’re trying to say is that most of the time we talk about poverty in the media and other places, somebody puts up a Black woman on welfare, which is racist toward Black people, and it is dismissive of tens of millions of white people. There are 26 million poor and low-wealth Black people, about 58-60% of the Black population, and 66 million poor and low-wealth white people, which is 30% of the white population. But there is this attempt to marginalize poverty and not address it and suggest it’s a marginal issue, when, in fact, it impacts 140 million people in this country. Poverty kills 800 people a day, 295,000 people a year, the fourth leading cause of death. And we can solve it. It is abolishable. It is solvable through living wages and child tax credits and earned income tax credits and healthcare for all and fully funded public education.
But what we didn’t hear at this convention, that should have been heard, is: How are you going to address these issues? That was the real failure of the first debate. The poor and low-wage people are 30% of the electorate now, 40% in battleground states. The first debate didn’t ask either candidate, “What will you do about living wages? What will you do about earned income tax credit? What will you do about making sure people have paid family leave and healthcare? What will you do about social safety net programs for the disabled and the hurting and the poor among us? How will you address this American crisis? An American crisis. How will you address this epidemic of policy death that comes through poverty and not addressing poverty?” None of that was raised. How will you address voting rights?
In the Republican platform, it’s addressed by not addressing it or saying they’re against it. We will wait to see about the Democratic platform. But that is a very — that is a failure, a failure of our society to constantly have debate after debate after debate, convention after convention after convention, and write off over 43% of the adults in this country which are poor and low-wealth, and over 51% of our children.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Bishop Barber, you know, to go back to another point that you make in your book, you say, “The shared experience of poverty has the potential to unite a movement for genuine change.” And as you were saying earlier, the rhetoric through the convention has been one of division. But I’d like to ask you about one specific claim that Trump made in his speech last night about jobs, Americans losing jobs, American citizens allegedly losing jobs to migrants. He said, in fact, that 107% of those jobs are taken by “illegal aliens” — so, leaving apart the fact that 107% is impossible.
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Right.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: He goes on to make the distinction that it is the Black population and the Hispanic population — it is their jobs that migrants are taking. If you could explain what you think the effect and the purpose of this kind of rhetoric is, this constant division between groups?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Yeah. Well, in White Poverty, we talk about how there is this mythology that you make poverty a Black issue or Brown issue, and you split people so that the greedy can work within the divisions, or I think they called it “positive polarization” in the so-called Southern strategy.
And what we are saying is that whether you’re in Appalachia and you’re poor, or whether you’re in the Delta and you’re poor, if you can’t pay your light bill, we’re all, in essence, Black in the dark. We need to bind people together.
What he did was a slick way of trying to pit people against one another, saying to Black people and Brown and others that you should be against immigrants, when, in fact, as you said, you can’t be 107. The percentage is off. His facts are off. It’s not true.
His policies cost us jobs. His tariff policies cost — the American people paid for it, according to economists, and we lost some 300,000 jobs. His refusal to support healthcare cost us jobs, because when you pass universal healthcare, not only does it keep people healthy, but it also provides jobs. His refusal to pass living wages hurt 55 million poor and low-wage people that make less than $15 an hour every day in this country. His refusal to raise the minimum wage — he actually in one speech said it was too high, $7.25 an hour, that it’s been since 2009.
So, what Trump was trying to do is play this division against one another, Black jobs versus white jobs versus Brown jobs, rather than uniting people together. And that’s one other thing about this convention. What we saw is, he’s never gotten a majority of the American people. He’s won through the Electoral College.
He said that God was on his side when he did not get killed. And thank God he did not get killed. We have to renounce that violence. And thank God something worse didn’t happen. But here’s the other theological side. If God is on your side, then how do your policies reflect that? Because God cares about the poor. God cares about the least of these. God, throughout the Scripture, cares about the worker and says the worker is worthy of his right. What he engaged in, after saying God was on his side, was he lied. He lied over and over again. He engaged in idolatry. “I, and I alone” — I’ve never heard the likes of idolatry. “I, and I alone, can fix the economy. I, and I alone, can stop war. I, and I alone, can prevent World War III.” He attacked President Biden with the lie that he’s worse than the worst 10 presidents combined. He did not tell the truth about how his policies actually hurt poor and working people. He’s against labor rights. He’s against union rights. He’s against living wages. And over and over again, you know, lie after lie after lie. And then he would not talk about what’s really in the platform so that the American people could hear what’s in the platform.
So, I’m deeply concerned when you say God is on your side — which we are thankful for the grace of God. But when Theodore Roosevelt was shot, after he was shot, he then promoted living wages and healthcare, environmental protection. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost assassinated, he supported the New Deal and Social Security and living wages. When Kennedy was shot and killed, Johnson then went on to push the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. The question is: What you do if you’ve receive grace? How does your policies reflect the grace that you claim to receive? And I didn’t see a lot of that or hear that in the speech that we heard last night.
AMY GOODMAN: Other speakers on the final night of the Republican National Convention included former Fox host Tucker Carlson. While he made no mention of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Carlson claimed Donald Trump is trying to restore democracy to the United States.
TUCKER CARLSON: From the famous escalator ride nine years ago until today of Donald Trump’s public life has been to remind us of one fact, which is a leader’s duty is to his people, to his country and to no other. That’s the point. That’s the only point. And another word for this is “democracy.” Democracy, in case you’re a little sick of being beaten in the face with democracy on television, actual democracy is the proposition that the citizens of a country own that country. They’re not renters. They’re not serfs. They’re not slaves. They are the owners of the country. And for that to be true, their leaders have to represent them, which is another way of saying they have to do what the people want them to do, or a close approximation thereof. But if they completely ignore what people want, not just one year, but generationally, say, for 50 years, then it may be — I don’t know what. It’s not a democracy. And so, I think the entire Trump project, paradoxically — he’s attacked as an enemy of democracy — is to return democracy to the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Tucker Carlson addressing the Republican National Convention. He was forced out of Fox News. Bishop Barber, can you respond to what he said?
BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, I can see why he was forced out, because they — you know, I just call it lying. I mean, people try to say “twisting words.” You know, you had a lot of people speak at that convention that had called Trump everything from an “American Hitler” — that’s what J.D. Vance said, and Tucker Carlson and others of them had negative things to say. Now they’re saying he’s the holder, he’s the keeper of democracy.
You turn loose people on January 6 that lie about an election and caused an insurrection, and you’re protective of democracy? No. You claimed that there’s voter suppression — I mean, voter fraud, when there’s not. No. You put justices on the Supreme Court who uphold voter suppression rather than stop it. No. Your party has been the party that has produced over a thousand [inaudible] in statehouses to suppress the vote, and you claim you’re for democracy? No. You stand up and say you and you alone. That doesn’t sound like the people; that sounds like you. You push policies that are against what the majority of Americans want. Americans want living wages, but they’re not pushing living wages. Americans want universal healthcare; they’re not pushing universal healthcare. And the majority of Americans want those things.
And so, what you have here is the ability to engage in smoke and mirrors. My grandmother used to have a saying that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. But the danger of that is this lie with such a straight face and to be actually the antithesis of one thing. For instance, to name something, as many extremists do who claim themselves to be Republican, a freedom party, but then you participate in the kind of policies that are against freedom. It is a lesson in hypocrisy at the deepest level of what we saw during this convention. And it doesn’t matter if your voice is easy and quiet, and you claim to do unity, and you’re just not screaming and hollering. The substance was so subversive to this experiment of democracy.
And, Amy, if I might say, you know, I’m praying for the Democrats now, as they are talking about what they’re going to do in their candidate, because many of us, as a private citizen, support the Biden-Harris ticket. But I’m concerned about how they are processing asking the president, those that are saying, “You ought to step down,” because they’re saying, “Because of the polls, you ought to step down.” Well, polls don’t vote. That’s not a part of our Constitution. They’re saying, “Well, because your age.” Well, we don’t have an age requirement, except you can’t be but so young. They are saying that “You ought to step down because of health.” Well, health, in itself, is not a cause to step down, because if that was the case, Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt nor Kennedy would have qualified for the presidency, been able to serve.
We have a process in place. One, if you want to be in, then run during the primary. Two, we have the 25th Amendment. Three, the president can step down, and the vice president takes over. That’s why we have a vice president. But this notion of calling someone to step out, opening up the convention, because folk threaten to take money back, threaten to — are talking about polls in July and in August, is very concerning, because of the way it undermines the democratic process. We have a process in place in this country. If you believe somebody should not be in office, they’re too old, too young, too inexperienced, to frail, then run against them. If they are incapacitated, 25th Amendment. If they resign, then the vice president takes over. And we’ve got to be careful in this moment.
What I think ought to happen is that we ought to support a ticket that is there and push issues, get away from just the candidate and promote the issues that they support, and then mobilize the biggest swing vote in the country, which is poor and low-wage infrequent voters, 30 million of them, and young people, and tell them what the issues are. And lay down a 100-day plan and let people vote for that, and then follow the processes that are already in our Constitution, because you have to be very careful that you don’t then, in an effort to do something, actually set precedents that are contrary to the constitutional provisions that we already have existing in this country.
AMY GOODMAN: Bishop William Barber, we want thank you for being with us, national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach, founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, co-author of the new book, White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.
