Charlamagne Tha God’s more than 7 million monthly listeners hang on his every word for a reason: Charlamagne is plugged into real Americans’ lives. Listening to Charlamagne’s nationally syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club” has been likened to “sitting on America’s front porch” — a sensibility Charlamagne honed growing up in rural South Carolina. “It gave me a front row seat on working class people”. Now he’s putting politicians on both sides of the aisle on blast — from Trump (“he’s wiping his a** with the Constitution”) to Biden (“Joe Biden should have stepped down 2 years ago”) and sounding the alarm about the rule of law, our fragile Constitution and why Democrats should never stop asking about the Epstein files. Plus what Charlamagne says gives him hope: “the one branch of government that hasn’t failed us thus far: We the people.”
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Charlamagne tha God: I feel like there’s one branch of government we have left that hasn’t failed us thus far, and that branch of government is the people. You know what I mean?
Nicolle Wallace: A hundred percent.
Charlamagne tha God: We, the people.
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Nicolle Wallace: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of “The Best People” podcast. This guest is someone we’ve been hoping to talk to and wanting to talk to since the very first week that the “The Best People” podcast existed. He’s very busy. He’s in a lot of demand. He’s the host of the smash hit podcast, The Breakfast Club.” He’s not afraid to go into places, where some people in their silos might not go. We want to talk to him about that. But most importantly, he hates small talk and loves Judy Blume. So we knew we have some common ground today.
Charlamagne tha God, thank you so much for being here.
Charlamagne tha God: Peace. Nicolle, how are you?
Nicolle Wallace: I’m very good. I’m a fan and I’ve watched you on your own podcast. I’ve watched you on Lara Trump show. I’ve covered you. I thought you did the best interview that was done in the 107 days that Kamala Harris was a candidate.
Charlamagne tha God: Wow. Thank you for that.
Nicolle Wallace: I did. You know why? Because I was a press staffer for candidates, and I think that hard interviews are the interviews that make candidates look the best. And she did the best in what was one of the toughest interviews she had, and that was with you. And I think if she’d had more conversations where she was pushed, people would’ve seen more of her.
Charlamagne tha God: Well, yeah, that’s why it’s good to go outside your bubble. Even though, you know, I supported the VP and had been supporting her on our first campaign too, back in 2020. But, yeah, that’s why you got to go outside of your bubble. That’s why, to me, my favorite interview of hers was with Bret Baier on Fox.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Because I think that when she is pushed and she is challenged, you get a lot more of the real her.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. But this is the problem with the bubbles, right? Like, why inside a bubble can you not push? I mean, I don’t even think it matters what bubble you’re in. You should have a real conversation.
Charlamagne tha God: I completely agree. But, you know, we live in this era now where everybody has a jersey on, right. And what’s so crazy is we’re more critical of our actual sports teams than we are of our politicians. I don’t feel like you should put on a jersey when it comes to a politician. I think that when you are an American citizen, you should listen to what Democrats are saying. You should listen to what Republicans are saying. You should listen to what independents are saying. And whoever has the best ideas that align with either what you want done or what your ideologies are, then you vote for that party.
But, you know, everybody has on these jerseys. Man, we don’t even got jerseys. We got pompom. We ain’t even playing. We’re just cheerleading, and we refuse to be critical of whatever team we’re cheering for. It is weird.
Nicolle Wallace: But what I think Democrats would challenge you on is that the Republicans fell in line behind a felon and a guy who bragged about grabbing women wherever he wanted to, because he was a celebrity, and the Democrats were trying to deal with the asymmetry of the political moment. How do you respond to that?
Charlamagne tha God: I agree with you, but here’s the thing. Clearly, the American people didn’t care about any of that because the American people were just focused on, you know, the ideas that he was spewing. And it wasn’t even just ideas. It was just, you know, stating obvious and pointing out a lot of things that Democrats may have been ignoring, like the border, like the economy. He said it himself, man, we won on one word, groceries. You can’t tout things like Bidenomics when people aren’t feeling that in their pockets. You can’t just ignore people’s criticisms of the border and chalk it up with the MAGA messaging.
I’ll never forget when MSNBC did that to me. And MSNBC did that to me based off me listening to people, me listening to people in New York City, listening to people in Chicago, activists in Chicago, and then them telling me what their issues with the border were. And their issues weren’t based on any type of prejudice for who was coming across the border. It was literally economics. It was, hey, these people are coming across the border and getting more resources than we are. Like, we’ve been sitting here in these pouring disenfranchised neighborhoods for years, and we have problems with housing, but they’re getting housing. We barely can make ends meet, but they’re getting, you know, stipends to be able to go out there and get food and things like that. How do you not listen to those people when they’re having those conversations?
And I remember me repeating exactly what I just said, based off the conversations I was having with people actually in the street, in these areas. And MSNBC said I was repeating MAGA messaging. I was like, damn, that means that y’all are not paying attention to your constituents.
Nicolle Wallace: And I think this is where Trump made inroads with a lot of Latinos who said, look, I came here whenever I came here, but it feels unfair, right? There are a lot of criticisms for everything that Trump is doing. I am not a fan of the way he’s summarily rounding people up and racially profiling people.
Charlamagne tha God: I agree.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I think it’s un-American, and it’s not what he said he was going to do. But to your more nuance point there, you do have to go listen to why people are excited about him.
Charlamagne tha God: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And I did a lot of that after he won the first time, and it actually wasn’t complicated. People liked the way he talked.
Charlamagne tha God: People liked the way he talked, and they liked what he was talking about. And I think that if you go back to his first term, he is the textbook example of people will forget what you said. They’ll forget what you did. But they’ll never forget how you made them feel.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: And at that time, when everybody was, you know, going through economic pains, he came through with those stimulus checks. He came through with those PPP loans. They just injected a whole lot of money into the American system, and it went into American people’s pockets. And people do not forget how they were bawling, you know, during his first term.
I read a poll this morning that said, you know, a lot of Americans are starting to blame Democrats for the government shutdown. It’s just simply because Republicans are better at messaging than Democrats will ever be. I can’t believe Democrats still haven’t figured out how to message.
But, right now, at a time when American people are hurting and they can point directly to the Trump administration and say, earlier in the year, it was DOGE cutting all the federal jobs. Now, they are in charge of every branch of government, and then as the government shut end, all of you are losing jobs. The fact that they can’t message that it’s the Republicans that are hurting their pockets right now, and people still think it’s the Democrats, it’s insane.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s insane. What should they do?
Charlamagne tha God: Well, I have a whole different theory. I felt like, you know, they shouldn’t have let the government shut down, and they shouldn’t have let Republicans jack up the healthcare prices. And then they could have pointed directly to Republicans and said, hey, this is the reason your healthcare prices are sky high, Republicans. That could have been their messaging, and it could have been one band, one voice. Everybody, everybody, everybody.
Trump administration jacked up your healthcare prices. That’s the reason your healthcare prices are high. But now that the government is shut down, the waters are too muddied, because it takes a bipartisan effort to keep the government open for the most part. So it seems like they have made it to where people really don’t care too much about why they’re not getting their checks. They just want their checks.
But Republicans have beat it in people’s head that it’s Democrats fault. And Democrats are taking credit for it, because they’re saying no. Yeah, we are no reason the government is shut down, but we’re doing it because we didn’t want your healthcare prices to get jacked up. So they’re taking a stand, but it’s hurting a whole lot of other people while this stand is being took.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s funny because on the Big Beautiful Bill, that’s what’s going to happen, right? The 11 to 17 million people that are going to lose Medicaid are going to have the consequence, and the communications around that are a lot clearer because the Democrats can say —
Charlamagne tha God: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: — we didn’t vote for it. And that’s why you’ve got some Republicans running away. But, I mean, this is controversial, right? Let people have a bad consequence and then blame the Republicans. To be totally blunt, the Democrats don’t always pull those messaging operations off either.
Charlamagne tha God: Well, you know, I guess it’s like pick your poison in a way. But elections do have consequences. So that’s another message you want to beat over people’s heads, right? Because there’s a lot of people that’s like, oh, it’s not going to be that bad. Oh, oh, that’s not going to happen. Oh, they would never cut Medicaid. Oh, they would never send, you know, the military in American cities. They would never do these things.
So these things are happening. So now, it’s not even hyperbole anymore. We told you. So I hate to say it, but you kind of got to reinforce, I told you, right? Because, like I said, the waters are so muddied right now because of the government shut down, and you have so many people losing jobs, and people don’t know who to blame. And they actually do not care. All they know is they are not getting a paycheck.
So it makes it easy for one political party to say, no, it’s that political party’s fault. But the reality of the situation is I don’t think it’s a political win for anyone. That’s why I was so shocked even to see the polls where, you know, people are starting to blame Democrats. Bro, number one, that’s not true. And number two, it shouldn’t even be about party. Like, both of these parties should never want the government to shut down.
That’s why I said, to me, I felt like it would be better political strategy to allow the government not to get shut down and let the Republicans jack up the healthcare prices. And then you just point the finger at Republicans and say, this is what they always wanted to do. They said they were going to do it. They did it now. Now, how do we fix this in 2026? How do we fix this in 2028, America?
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I used to be in the Republican Party and I will tell you, the Republican Party tries to win the next day. The Democrats try to play 3D chess. There are a lot of smart Democrats, and so, they probably think they have, you know, the expertise to do that. But politics is about the thing that’s in front of you. And the thing that was in front of voters in November was expensive groceries, expensive everything, feeling shitty about the economy.
And I’ve watched your political analysis get, you know, really quite sophisticated and strategic. You know, you see around the corners of where these things are going and how the country is going to respond. Are you thinking, in any part of you, about running for office?
Charlamagne tha God: No. You know, it’s funny, people ask me that all the time, and I say, no. But then I say, I don’t know. And only reason I say I don’t know is because you never know what God has planned for you, right? Like, you never know what your future is going to look like. I’m only saying that at 47 years old. I don’t know what I’m going to feel like at 57. I don’t know, you know, but I don’t have any plans to do it.
But, I mean, the beauty of what I do is “Breakfast Club.” Professor Alice Randall from Vanderbilt University, she said, “The Breakfast Club” radio show is like sitting on America’s front porch. And I know about sitting on front porches because I’m from Moncks Corner, South Carolina. That’s what I grew up doing, sitting on my grandmother’s porch, sitting on my mama’s porch. My grandmother has been deceased since 2006. And when I’m home in South Carolina, I still go sit on her porch. And so, it’s like I have a front row seat to just working class people every day.
I’m from South Carolina. I go home all the time and talk to people in those rural areas. I’m talking to people in cities like Newark, New Jersey. I do an event called The Mental Wealth Expo. I’ve been doing it for five years. I just did it in Newark, New Jersey. I’m talking to these people.
So what I feel a lot of politicians do, Republicans and Democrats, they talk about people they never talk to. If you simply go and have conversations with your constituents, you’ll see what’s coming around the corner too. It’s not hard. And that’s a problem that I feel like, you know, a lot of really Democrats in a real way, Democrats always want to tell their people where to go, instead of following their people.
Nicolle Wallace: The other thing is you could go to your constituents and have an event planned for you, or you could just live in the real world. Like, I sometimes wonder what their days are like. Like, a normal person in their life isn’t sitting around, you know, looking for their MAGA hat, putting it on, and then having a conversation about Stephen Miller, right? Like, there’s a political dialog.
In my real life, I actually have no idea what people’s politics are because when things are really polarized, they don’t talk about politics, but they talk about their fears, and they talk about their worries, and they talk about their anxieties.
And the things that Trump promised, he’s betrayed the whole country, but he’s especially betrayed his own voters on issues like the economy, on foreign policy, where he’s now just blowing up boats in the middle of the ocean, after running as a guy that wanted peace everywhere. And the immigration stuff, it’s not good for the military, and it’s not good for the country to have a policy that brings everyone out into the streets because it’s so disturbing and people are protesting it.
Charlamagne tha God: I don’t understand that, Nicolle. I’ve said to myself a million times, what is the point of all of this chaos?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Like, you actually probably could get a lot more corruption done doing it in the dark, you know. We’ve seen some real sinister things happen in this country.
Nicolle Wallace: Like, don’t take the plane. Like, you can see the plane.
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. It’s like the fact that it’s so out in the open and so bright. It almost makes you wonder like what are they really trying to distract us from with this?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Is this administration just incompetent, you know, and just blatantly corrupt? And you have a bunch of people who really aren’t necessarily politicians, so they don’t have that political sophistication to pull off what they’re trying to pull off covertly. Maybe they only know how to do it, caveman style.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s the $64 million question. I mean, maybe it’s crypto. Who knows?
One of the things you said to Lara Trump really is something I’ve wanted to say and I’ve wanted to thank, but I haven’t dared to, and it’s that the Epstein issue could be like this break, because it’s not about the pro-democracy side or the Democrats. It’s actually about the base of the MAGA movement and the MAGA leaders, Trump and the Republicans who are subservient to him. Talk more about the split that either they don’t see, or they think they can just power through.
Charlamagne tha God: I mean, I still feel that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Me too.
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. It’s something that his base will not let go. You know, they gave so much energy to the podcast fear, for how they amplify Trump. But it’s the podcast fear that’s keeping that Epstein conversation going. I don’t know why mainstream media isn’t keeping it going. They kind of like bring it up in passing. They should still be pressing the issue, you know, on the Epstein files, because it’s the only thing that I’ve ever seen make that MAGA base be like, yo, he’s lying.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Out of the millions of lies we’ve heard, you know, him tell, that is the one that has made people be like, okay, something is not right over here. So, I guess that’s where they draw the line. So I don’t know why, you know, mainstream media, in particular, wouldn’t continue to press the issue. All of these other things come up. And don’t get me wrong, government shutdowns and all of those are very, very, very pressing issues, and it’s hard to say that things like that are just a distraction from the Epstein files, right? But, in a way, they are.
I know that it’s hard to discuss all these things at once. But when you’re talking about the government shutdown, when you’re talking about military being, you know, in American cities, you still should always punctuate with “And what about the Epstein files?”
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: What is he hiding in the Epstein files? Like, let him get mad. Let him get mad at press conferences. Let him get mad on, you know, Truth Social. But constantly keep that conversation going around the Epstein files.
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Nicolle Wallace: We’ll take a quick break right here. We’ll have much more of my conversation with radio icon and entrepreneur, Charlamagne tha God, on the other side. Stay with us.
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Nicolle Wallace: What do you think is in the Epstein files?
Charlamagne tha God: Mutually assured destruction for both parties. But guess what? I don’t care because I think that all of this old guard needs to be blown up. If there’s one thing that we’ve seen over the last decade, the old guard of the Democrats and the old guard of the Republicans, they cannot serve any of us moving forward. They just simply can’t.
So, you know, I don’t care who’s in the Epstein files. All of them can go, everybody, Republican, Democrats, you know, elected officials from other countries. I don’t care who they’re protecting. It all has to be blown up. And that’s actually one of the reasons I really do want to see it, you know, released, because I think it’ll allow a lot of people to put their pompoms down.
Nicolle Wallace: And to clear out the pipes, right?
Charlamagne tha God: Clear out the pipes. Especially in the Democratic Party, whoever is going to lead the Democratic Party in the future has to be willing to throw that old regime under the bus. That’s why I know the Vice President is getting a lot of flak for 107 days. And Governor Josh Shapiro asked a valid question. He said, you know, when she’s out here, she’s going to have to answer, well, how come you knew all of this, but didn’t say anything? That is a valid criticism and a valid question.
But I like the fact that, you know, she’s at least scratching the surface of the truth. That gives me some hope. Just for the party in the future, I would hope that that book, and along with the “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper, just gives the Democrats courage to tell the truth, right? Because Republicans aren’t even there yet. Like, Republicans, they’re still so brainwashed on MAGA, that they’re not even remotely attempting to tell the truth. Well, strangely enough, I’m lying. They are. Like, you know, you got the Marjorie Taylor Greene, which is even crazy to say, and then you have even —
Nicolle Wallace: Thomas Massie. Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. Thomas Massie.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: But then even on the talking head side, you have the Tucker Carlson. You have not enough conservative elected officials yet, but you have, you know, people who were conservative political pundits and a couple of the elected officials starting to tell the truth a little bit. So, yes, there’s chinks in the armor.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, how do you think we should be talking about what are clearly authoritarian steps, not even steps, leaps? I mean, Trump is taking authoritarian leaps in the way he’s using the Department of Justice, and the way he’s running out all of the top investigators at the FBI. But the rule of law doesn’t come up on anyone’s front porch. I mean, I’m a political nerd and I don’t ever sit at the sidelines of a baseball game talking about the rule of law. I mean, how should we be talking about that stuff?
Charlamagne tha God: I think there’s two ways to talk about it. I think there’s ways to talk about it. Like how you just said it, you know, authoritarian strategy, that’s what I’ve been saying, a lot of authoritarian strategy. You know, you can’t say authoritarian rule yet, right? We’re still in democracy as of right now. But what I would say and what I do say to my listeners is it’s just unconstitutional.
If you voted for Donald Trump because he was America First and he was going to make America great again, and you’re waving your red, white, and blue flag. And you’re all about patriotism. What he’s doing is unconstitutional. He’s literally wiping his ass with the Constitution. These are things I was saying even during the campaign.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: Like, this is the same man who said, we should terminate parts of the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election. I said this on Fox News a couple of times. I said it on Gutfeld show, and I said it when I sat with Brian Kilmeade. Right? And they were acting like their fact-checkers couldn’t find that statement, like, even though it was right there, right? It’s right there.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: So, for me, it’s like, yo, just let the patriots know that this is unconstitutional. The things he’s doing violate the Constitution. So if you really claim to be America and America First, and you’re MAGA, you want to make America great again, do you really want a leader that doesn’t care about the Constitution?
Nicolle Wallace: You know what’s funny is I used to be a Republican and I used to know those folks. I never knew Greg Gutfield, but I knew Brian Kilmeade. He’s written books about American history, and I know that he doesn’t believe that the Constitution should be in a paper shredder, that Trump is shoving it in. What happens to a man, to a human, to make them subvert all of their beliefs before Trump?
Charlamagne tha God: I really have no idea. Somebody asked me and Andrew Schulz. You know, we have a podcast called “The Brilliant Idiots.” Somebody asked us that question yesterday. They literally said, what about Trump makes other leaders so afraid? Now, they didn’t specify whether it was world leaders, or elected officials, or leaders of corporations. I really don’t know the answer to that.
My response is, man, maybe he’s really got things on people behind the scenes, or maybe he’s making people’s lives real miserable behind the scenes, or maybe people are scared of the public, you know, verbal lashing that they might receive. Maybe they really are afraid of the mob that storm the Capitol on January 6th. Maybe they are afraid of these radicals who might do violence to them in the street. I don’t know. It seems like it’s a lot of hypotheticals that they’re afraid of, because I haven’t seen anything that they can’t push back on if they just chose to push back on it.
Like, I was watching former President Barack Obama speak this week and he was like, yo, just stand up. He was just telling the elected officials and leaders of these corporations, just stand up.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: The leaders of these institutions, like, yo, just stand up and say, no. I don’t know what it is that’s making them afraid just to say no.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, to your point, Trump doesn’t do anything behind closed doors. Like, I covered President Obama’s comments. He seemed to be speaking directly to the folks that have yet to capitulate, basically saying, don’t do it.
Let me ask you about the other side of the equation, for the few people who haven’t fallen into silos. I was thinking on my way up to the studio here, it’s like you, Ken Burns and Matthew McConaughey are the only people I can think of who can go on, like Lara Trump and Meghan McCain and MSNB. Like, there are very few people who even exist in this moment, across like the membrane of partisanship. But what explains your absence of fear for saying anything to anyone?
Charlamagne tha God: Maybe ignorance is bliss. Maybe I’m just too dumb to realize. I don’t know.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s not it.
Charlamagne tha God: Maybe I’m just too dumb to realize that maybe I shouldn’t be doing that. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of when I first started radio. And when I first started radio, I didn’t go to college, I didn’t work at a college radio station. You know, of course, we didn’t have podcasting, or YouTube, or anything back then.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: So I was just an intern who worked in the promotions department, who got an opportunity on the microphone. Nobody ever told me what not to do. It was always, what did they say? I would rather beg for forgiveness than permission. I think that’s what they say.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Exactly.
Charlamagne tha God: So it was almost like, well, I didn’t know. But even in me not knowing, it never stopped me from being me, because nobody ever taught me how to be otherwise. So I’m not an elected official. I’m not a politician. I’m not a surrogate for anybody. I’m just an American citizen. I’m a guy from Moncks Corner, South Carolina, who grew up around a bunch of different people.
My first white friend name was Thomas Evans. He lived on the right of me, and all my black friends lived on the left. The presidents and the trotters and everybody else, and we all hung out and we all kicked it, and it was more of a class thing. So I never was afraid to talk to different people. And my mother, ma’am, my mother was an English teacher and she gave me a great piece of advice. She said, read things that don’t pertain to you. And so that put a level of curiosity in me, that transcended even past books.
It was just about people. I always was a very cognizant of my surroundings and my space. So if I found myself sitting next to somebody in a plane, or sitting in a waiting room with somebody, I always end up cranking up a conversation with this person and just talking. And you meet people that are just different. I don’t put myself in bubbles. I don’t put myself in boxes. And so, for me, that served me very well in my media career because I’m a curious person. I like sitting down, having conversations with a little bit of everybody.
I hate when people label things and they say, this is the right, or this is the left, or this is red, or this is blue. It’s all people, at the end of the day, and I really do think, because of my South Carolina upbringing, man. There’s certain people that can tell you about this. Bakari Sellerscan talk to you about this. People like Jim Clyburn can talk, people like Nancy Mace can talk to you about this.
When you live in a place like South Carolina, you’re just talking to people who are different. Like, they’re white. They might be Republican. You might be black and a liberal. You might be black and nothing. You might meet somebody who’s white and nothing. You’re just all these people from this country, town, and you got to exist with each other. You know what I’m saying?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. And I think to your magnetic poll for your listeners and your viewers now, it’s that you don’t change if your tie to this business is other humans.
Charlamagne tha God: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: I read all the stories, after the election, of people that weren’t going to talk to Trump voters anymore, and I was like, but, wait, what if you’re married to one, or what if it’s your parents? Like, who are the people that don’t know anyone who voted for? I don’t know who they are because 99% of Americans, I would imagine, have someone deeply enmeshed in their life, either through their family, or their work, or their church, or their community who made this choice that I disagree with it.
I think Trump threatens everything that I love about the country, threatens our jobs as journalists and media figures. But I could never cut out the people who voted for, even if I wanted to. And I’m not saying I don’t understand the instinct because it’s hard to be vulnerable around people that you think are for something that hurts.
I think part of what you’re talking about, about throwing out everything in our politics, just throwing out people that don’t sort of live normal lives anymore. Is that fair?
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. Well, to your point about what you said about people who didn’t want to talk to people who voted for Trump, that’s not even logical. Why it’s not even logical is because you don’t know who a Trump supporter is.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Nicolle Wallace: Like, the person making your coffee at Starbucks in the morning might be a Trump supporter. You’re not going to let them make your coffee? Like, the Uber you call and the person driving might be a Democrat. If you’re a Republican, you’re not going to get in the car? The logic, it even make no sense.
But I just feel like there’s this shared trust that exists amongst all humans, and we don’t talk about it enough, or tap into it enough because of all of our so-called differences. But think about it, Nicolle, today, you woke up and you probably interacted with a lot of different people. If you leave your house, you’re going to interact with a lot of different people.
There’s only one thing that keeps me and you returning home safely at night, and that is the shared trust that we have amongst each other. Because all it takes is for one of us to be crazy. Like, you might go to a Starbucks, order a coffee, and there’s a crazy person in the back who’s like, oh, that person is a Democrat. Oh, that person is a Trump supporter. They might put something poisonous in our drink. Or you might be in a car with somebody and they, oh, you’re a Trump supporter, and they drive off the road. Like, just think about how ridiculous that would be.
So there’s still a shared trust amongst us, as people, that keeps us civilized and keeps us from, you know, really hurting each other. And I think times like this, we need to lean into that more than we do, you know, worrying about what we don’t have in common politically.
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Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Charlamagne tha God continues after a quick break. Don’t go anywhere.
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Nicolle Wallace: I guess the other side of that is it’s so difficult when you see what they’re doing. You know, trumped up charges against Letitia James whose only, you know, sin was holding Donald Trump’s fraudulent company accountable.
Charlamagne tha God: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: You know, I mean, there is such an audacious bucket of things that Trump is doing, that people that are still enthusiastic about it, that I think, you know, should have to answer for, but it can’t extend into, or paralyze, I guess, our ability to function. And I wonder would you draw the line anywhere?
Charlamagne tha God: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Let me be clear. I draw the line at all of that, but I still have to sit back and look at it. And just from a strategy perspective, I can’t sit here and act like I’m not impressed and I’m going to tell you why, because he does things that Democrats should have done to him the last four years. He calls it straight. That person is corrupt. That person needs to be in jail. Who you think they should have been saying that about, those four years they were in office, instead of saying things like, I’m not going to get involved, I’m not going to get involved.
Nicolle Wallace: 1,000%.
Charlamagne tha God: And then when Biden gets out the White House, he goes, oh, I shouldn’t have hired Merrick Garland. I should have hired somebody that was going to prosecute the case. Duh. And you should have spoken out against it because what happens, the American people aren’t really that invested. Some of us are way more invested, you know, into what’s going on than other people. Some of the people are just looking at it from the surface.
So if you tell me somebody is a criminal, you tell me somebody is corrupt, but you don’t treat them that way, then I got to start questioning, are they really that corrupt and really that criminal? But then he gets in the White House and treats people like they’re really that corrupt and that criminal, and they’re not. So then most people will be like, well, I guess that person committed a crime. You know, I guess that person is in the wrong. He does what the Biden administration should have done to him.
And man, I can’t sit here and act like it it’s not still working, because to your point, you don’t have people washing their hands or drawing the line at a lot of the nut ass stuff that he’s doing.
Nicolle Wallace: So what is the way out of this moment, or what is the way through? A lot of people are really feeling like they can’t take the news, their mental health is suffering. Like, you know, I think you got three daughters, four daughters?
Charlamagne tha God: Four daughters. Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: You have four daughters. I got two kids. I can’t just say like I’m going to go to sleep and wake up in three and a half years. Like, you know, we have to thrive, not just survive these three and a half years. How do we do that?
Charlamagne tha God: That is the million-dollar question. I think all of us need to get back to a real sense of community. I think that, you know, there are a lot of things that divide us. But I think that, you know, if we believe in what America promises us. You know, it’s supposed to be freedom, liberty and justice for all. Then we have to know that that don’t even exist right now. I’m talking about in this current moment, right now, that does not exist. The rule of law does not exist in America. The Constitution is a very, very fragile document right now.
This is where people confuse me. We use language like authoritarian, and we use language like fascist. I don’t even want to use that language, and the reason I don’t want to use that language is because how can I use that language, but then still tell people to vote in 2026, still tell people to vote in 2028. There’s no such thing as a free and fair election under an authoritarian regime. There’s no such thing as a free and fair election under fascism. So, you know, there’s a part of me that’s still holding out hope, but you can’t vote out fascism, Nicolle. You can’t vote out authoritarianism.
So to answer your question, I don’t know what it is that we do. But I know it’s going to take some real resistance, and I think we might be past the point of politics in regards to that resistance. It might take like a national boycott or something. I don’t know. I feel like there’s one branch of government we have left that hasn’t failed us thus far, and that branch of government is the people. You know what I mean?
Nicolle Wallace: A hundred percent.
Charlamagne tha God: We, the people. So we, the people, have to think of ways to create resistance because I really do feel like we’re past the point of anything political getting us out of this situation.
Nicolle Wallace: Are your kids paying any attention to this moment? Like, how do you talk about it with your kids?
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. My oldest is 17. She talks about it, kind of, but she’s busy, busy living her life.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. Good.
Charlamagne tha God: But, strangely, my youngest is really into it and I think that’s kind of my fault because, you know, when I’m home, CNN is on, MSNBC is on, and Fox News is on. Like, I’m watching this on television. And sometimes my daughter, my 6-year-old will be sitting next to me and she’ll literally be reading the ticker, because they’re young and they’re just getting in their reading now.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: And she’s reading the ticker and stuff like that, and they’re asking questions. And this is interesting to me because, like, this stuff is complex. It’s nuanced. The things that are happening in this country are new even to me. And so being that it’s new to me, I can point to a lot of things in history and say, well, this happened in this country, this happened in this country. A lot of that is starting to happen here now. But it feels like you’re almost overstimulating them with information because —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: –you know, there are things that happen here, and I have to go look at history and other places to see, you know, how that turned out, because this is pretty new for America.
Nicolle Wallace: Isn’t that insane though, just Google Orban during the election, you know, how long did they have a free press? That was one of my Google searches. And just the idea that we’re even asking those questions feels, you know, to your point, like something people can reject.
Charlamagne tha God: It’s not America. Like, literally, it’s not America. America through all its fault, it’s not perfect. It hasn’t been a perfect system for Black people. It hasn’t been a perfect system for women. It hasn’t been a perfect system for gay. Definitely, it hasn’t been a perfect system for the poor of any color, sexuality, religion. But it’s still America. So we thought there was still a rule of law, you know, that everybody was required to follow in, like, all of our American norms. You know what, I am going to say they’re being tested. I’m not going to say the house of card has been completely demolished, but they’re being tested right now. So I don’t know how we pass this test.
Nicolle Wallace: I want to give you a last word on something you alluded to, what can we do better? Because it feels like if you want America to stay America, and you want the prodemocracy side to be the bigger side, you know, we all have to put our heads together. What can we do better? What can I do better?
Charlamagne tha God: I think what we’re doing now. I think communication is key, and we really cannot be afraid to speak truth to power, at a time like this. But you got to be able to speak truth to power about it all. You can’t just speak truth to power about Republicans. You got to speak truth to power about Democrats.
I told people for the last few years, if you lie to folks about Democrats, they won’t believe you when you tell them the truth about conservatives and what’s going on with Donald Trump. And I don’t even like to say the word “conservative” and Donald Trump, even though the party has become the party at MAGA, but I still believe in the traditional conservative. You know, I still believe that there are a lot of conservatives out there who can’t wait to get their party back to what they knew it to be.
I think that MAGA is an anomaly, a very effective anomaly, and I think it’s up to we, the people, like everybody, to determine how long this MAGA thing is going last. So I just think that we got to continue to have more communication, speak a lot of truth to power, because I think one of the reasons we’re in this situation is because folks didn’t speak truth to power. I’m a person who got a lot of flak for saying a lot of things that people like the VP were saying, the anonymous elected officials in 107 days were saying.
Like, I was saying these things. There was no reason for Joe Biden to, you know, announce that he was running for a second term. It was just ridiculous. He was an extremely unpopular president, and he should have stepped down two years ago to give Democrats a fighting chance. He should have hired an attorney general that was actually going prosecute the case against Donald Trump. They shouldn’t have washed their hands and say, I’m going to leave it up to the DOJ and everything. No. If you feel like somebody is a real threat to democracy, think about the language we were using, Nicolle. A threat to democracy, a fascist. You have people calling him the next Hitler on both sides. His vice president called him that. If he was really that kind of a threat, why didn’t they act like it? You know what I mean?
Nicolle Wallace: It’s a question that our kids will wrestle with when they read whatever is written about this time. When they read the history this time, they’ll wrestle with, you know, how did the people around Joe Biden send him out to that debate that day?
Charlamagne tha God: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: How did that debate happen?
Charlamagne tha God: I was on “Breakfast Club.” I was on “Brilliant Idiots.” I was on “Young Turks.” I did an interview with Jonathan Karl, and I said, Joe Biden should not ever debate Donald Trump. Donald Trump will wash Joe Biden in a debate. He’ll make Joe Biden look so old. This was months before the debate. I couldn’t wait to repost that the night of the debate. When I tell you I couldn’t wait, I’m like, I’m not no political strategist. Who thought that was a good idea? Anybody with a little bit of common sense was like, nah, don’t do that. So, yeah, we just got to be honest, man. Like, that’s why I wrote this book right here. You see this? “Get Honest Or Die Lying.”
Nicolle Wallace: Well, that’s how I knew to stay away from any small talk with you.
Charlamagne tha God: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I guess the last thing I would say is, you know, the tragedy of what we’re talking about is that we have Donald Trump, who doesn’t remember who was president on January 6th.
Charlamagne tha God: Yeah. I really think that’s more of an indictment of Democrats than anybody. And I know people get mad at me when I keep saying that over and over, but it was the Democrat’s election to lose. They were in power. They were there and they did not treat him like the threat. They told us he was. I don’t know what they were waiting on.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Charlamagne tha God: I don’t know what they thought was going happen. I don’t know. But it didn’t work.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, you can’t deny where we are and where we ended up. I’d love to do this again. Thank you.
Charlamagne tha God: Let’s do it. Thank you very much, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Charlamagne tha God: All right. Peace.
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