It's Time to Call Balls and Strikes and Nazis
Don't let the Trumpublicans do a soft reopening of Nazism.
A bit a shameless self promotion before we get into it. I’m about to head out on tour! Tickets are on sale now. Check out the dates below. If your town’s not on there, don’t fret. We’re about to announce more cities.
When I started working at CNN, I had two contracts: one for hosting and producing United Shades of America and one for being a CNN contributor. I didn’t ask for two contracts. It just sort of happened in all the negotiations. I’m not sure if CNN wanted the contributor contract or if my reps did. Either way both groups thought that it was a good idea for me to be on CNN more than just during the season of United Shades, so that the CNN audience could get used to me and hopefully fall in love with me. Your mileage may vary.
CNN contributors are the people who you see most often on the panels. Their chyron on the screen often lists them as “CNN Contributor.” That’s how you know they are being paid to be there. To be clear, it is no big deal that they are paid. All the news networks do this. They have a range of contributors with a range of experience and knowledge so that when something in the news happens, they have a person to call who can speak on it at a moment’s notice. With that plane crash in Washington D.C. earlier this week, I’m sure there were airline and airplane contributors who got calls like, “Can you come on so and so’s show IN AN HOUR?”
When I was a CNN contributor, I would (of course) get called to cover the racism beat. Although, sometimes I got called for the stand-up comedian beat. Generally, I would go on by myself and do a one-on-one interview with a CNN anchor. Occasionally, I would go on and be one of serveral pundits, each in our own box. Often, I wasn’t in the studio with hosts and the other panelists. I was in an Oakland studio or in my house once covid hit. I much preferred being on a show in a one-on-one interview. Here’s my favorite of one of those appearances byyyyyyyy faaaaaaaaaar. It is from 2019. I was on Don Lemon’s show. I had Black hair back then. Weirdly, Don still does have black hair.
I always got nervous going on those shows as part of a panel, because I never got comfortable with the dynamics. On a panel, there are generally one or two people collectively representing one side, and one or two people collectively representing another side. This is usually Democrats vs. Republicans. At least that was the theory. By the time I got to CNN, Barack Obama was in his last year in office, and Trump was campaigning. but by the time Trump took power, like a gremlin who had eaten after midnight, the Republicans on CNN morphed into something else: Trumpublicans. They didn’t just drink the Trump Kool-Aid; they snorted it while it was still powder.
What is the difference between Republicans and Trumpublicans? Republicans often have well-reasoned arguments, even if you disagree with them. Trumpublicans toss away all reasonable arguments and never argue in good faith. They flip flop, contradict themselves, and feign ignorance or offense (depending which one they need at the time). Worst of all, they are casually cruel while smiling like a cat that just ate the canary’s mother in front of the canary. The Trumpublicans play to an audience of one: Donald Trump. They don’t care about policy or humanity. They only care about scoring points on social media. They suuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Mostly, I was just horrified by their two-facedness. On the occasions when I was actually at the CNN studios, I would run into them in the green room, and they would smile at me and tell me how much they liked my work. Or they would make some sort of snide remark—that was meant to come off as gentle ribbing—about me being a liberal or something like that. I didn’t have a word for it at the time, but as kids today would say, it gave me the ick. Keep in mind that I have a huge tolerance for ick. I got famous for talking to the KKK. But at least the KKK were exactly who they claimed to be. Your average KKK member has more integrity than your average Trumpublican. It ain’t even up for debate.
One time, I remember walking into the green room at CNN and Kayleigh McEnany was in there waiting to be on somebody’s show. As soon as I saw her, without even thinking about it, I made a military style about-face and walked quickly out of the room. My body said no before my mind even realized what was happening. And this was when Kayleigh was just on her way up the Trump stooge ladder, well before she went full-time Trump stooge as his press secretary. Somehow I knew she was not to be associated with. God forbid I end up in a selfie. Trust your instincts, kids.
Very soon after being at CNN, I began to notice a pattern. No prominent Trumpublican held the job of CNN Trumpspondent for very long. The list of Trumplets who have come and gone at CNN is long and undistinguished. Jeffery Lord, Rick Santorum, Steve Cortes, and Ed Martin are just a few.
Honestly, they are the only ones I can remember. And I’m not gonna spend my day trying to track these rubes down. I had to Google “bald republican CNN” to find the name of one of them, David Urban. Apparently, he is still at CNN defending Trump. All rest of the names that I listed left CNN in a blaze of un-glory. At some point in their time at CNN, they all went too hard in the paint for Trumpism, and it left the network with no choice other than to let them go or to quietly stop booking them.
Of all these wannabe Trump-valets, Jeffrey Lord was my “favorite.” He had an affable manner that he used to obscure his hate filled heart. He came off like your racist neighbor. Fine in small doses, but you don’t want to have a whole conversation with him. Lord was fired from CNN for… wait for it…
I sort of feel bad for the old guy. He did this before the current era when we both-sides the “seig heil.” Nowadays, maybe he could have saved his job just by saying, “My fingers have autism.”
Things were different back when Lord did this in 2017. Back then CNN responded to his action by saying, “Nazi salutes are indefensible." Wow! I miss the old days. Make America Hate Nazis Again! Although, maybe there was some small print at the end of CNN’s sentence that read, “Nazi salutes are indefensible… unless you are a billionaire.”
Currently, CNN’s number one Trumpublican is Scott Jennings. He has been a contributor since 2017, and for years Scott has masqueraded as a “reasonable republican.” But now that Trump is back, Scott is “masq off.” He has done this by failing the easiest test that any adult can take, a test many adults are failing before our very eyes. Can you identify a Nazi?
The Elon Musk Nazi salute was a test of how much bullshit we are all willing to put up with in the Trump era. Like any reasonable person, I saw Elon do a Nazi salute and then my brain told me that it was indeed a Nazi salute. But just like I predicted on Instagram that day, many folks decided it wasn’t a Nazi salute for various reasons. I am most sympathetic to people not wanting to believe it was a Nazi salute because those people didn’t want to believe that they lived in a world where it was possible for someone to fire off a Hitler handshake and suffer zero consequences. If that is what happened, then how can you face the day wondering what’s next and how far this goes. But I have no sympathy for the other reasons that I see people denying the truth. The reasons are that those people, themselves, are both Nazis and cowards. History’s worst combination. They are too afraid to heil their own seigs. It’s sad really.
I believe that Scott Jennings falls into that second group. He wants to be there onstage, right next to Elon, where he can feel most alive, but Scott is too afraid to ask. So instead Scott tries to prove his love for the Nazis by defending Elon’s “gratitude to the crowd”. ICK!
Early this week on one of the aforementioned CNN panels, Scott doubled down, and he referred to all reasonable people’s attempts to call a Nazi a Nazi as “salute trutherism.” I have no words to respond to that nonsense. I… just… can’t. I am in fact filled to the brim with can’t.
Luckily, I wasn’t on that panel. And it was even luckier for all of us that Washington Post op-ed columnist and CNN contributor Catherine Rampell was on the panel. Ms. Rampell did something that I wish I would have done in that moment. But, honestly, I’m not sure I would have even thought of it. When Scott downplayed Elon’s Nazi salute, Ms. Rampell turned to Scott, looked him dead in his dead eyes and said, “so do it right now on TV. So do it right now on TV. If you think this is a normal way to greet people, then do it right now on TV.”
WOOOOOO! My wig was effectively snatched.
Of course, Scott did not perform Elon’s soon-to-be trademarked expression of gratitude, because he knows that he would end up in Jeffery Lord Land if he did, and Scott still likes those CNN checks. Ms. Rampell checkmated his argument that we were all making much ado about nothing when he sat there and did nothing. He didn’t dare express Elon Musk-style gratitude. Scott is only here for the toxic windbaggery and not for the actual fight. He was—and it pains me to say this—smart not to take the bait.
However, a woman named Laura Smith couldn’t resist taking the bait. In the days that followed Elon’s Nazi salute, Laura decided to post a TikTok video that she claimed was for her friends who were struggling in the wake of Trump’s inauguration. She was clearly quoting and aping Elon when she said, “My heart goes out to you,” and fired off her own version of his gesture. Her churlish smile said that she knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to throw a rock and hide her hand. Unfortunately for her, she had a job as a local elected official in her small Pennsylvanian town. I say “had a job” because, of course, in the days that followed, she was forced to resign, even though she is a Trumpublican and lives in a Trumpublican area. Apparently, her constituents had no problem identifying the gesture as exactly what it was: hate.
And not that we needed proof that billionaires are not like us or that Elon is a Nazi, but Elon gave us more proof of both recently when he made a virtual appearance at a campaign event for a far right political party in Germany. Here is the core of his message. These are direct quotes from Elon.
“It's good to be proud of German culture and German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything."
“I think there’s, like, frankly too much of a focus on past guilt and we need to move beyond that."
"Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their parents, their great-grandparents.”
What’s that sound? Is it the soft relaunch of the OG German Nazi party? I’m sure this time it will just be about getting the railroads to run on time.
All of this is to say, Scott Jennings, you are a Nazi. I need no more proof than your refusal to publicly acknowledge other Nazis and, worse, your abhorrent need to defend them. I also have to mention that you defend them so poorly.
I hereby formally recognize that a big part of my job in 2025—and moving through this next era—is to be exceedingly honest. Just like a baseball umpire, I call balls and strikes. If we are going to live in an era where some people are going to tiptoe around Nazis—or even be Nazis—then it becomes my job to step on those people’s toes. Unluckily for the Nazis, I wear size 13 shoes. So…
If you’re a nazi, I’m calling you a nazi.
If you’re a racist, I’m calling you a racist.
If you’re an Islamophobe, I’m calling you an Islamophobe.
If you are anti-Arab, I am calling you an anti-Arab racist, until I hear a better term for that.
If you’re an antisemite, I’m calling you a nazi, because that rolls off the tongue better than “anitsemite.”
If you’re anti-Asian then I’m calling you Anti-Asian fuckwad, because I can.
If you’re a sexist or misogynist or male chauvinist then I’m calling you Bill Maher.
If you’re a groomer, then I’m calling Kendrick Lamar to drop five diss tracks on your head.
If you are anti-Palestinian, then I’m calling you a Netanyahu.
If you’re a homophobe, a transphobe, and/or an ableist asshole, then I’m calling you all those things and more.
And if you’re a billionaire, I’m calling you soft and weak, with a paper-thin sense of self, until you prove otherwise. (I see you Mackenzie Scott.)
I reserve my right to add new things to this list, either things I forgot or hates that I learn about along the way.
Feel free to add your own “if, thens” in the comments below.
If you feel the same way that I do, jump into the bunker and have a snack. The food is way better over here anyway.
So… who’s with me?
You’re With Me
Office Hours Follow Up!
Thank you to my paid subscribers for showing up to the last Office Hours. It was really great to have that space the day after the inauguration. Special guest Kate Schatz and I talked about the know your lane activity from our book DO THE WORK!: An Antiracist Activity Book. That book is in fashion again thanks to Trump and his goons. (Yay?) Kate and I talked about the “Know Your Lane” activity from our book. It helps you figure out ways to help when you feel overwhelmed. You know, like, how you are feeling RIGHT NOW.
A few days after the Office Hours I was tagged in this Instagram video from somone who was there with us. She tells the story of how coming to Office Hours helped her figure out how to help in her lane of expertise. Take a few seconds and watch it. It is so heartwamring and beautifully shot.
Get your own copy of DO THE WORK!: An Antiracist Activity Book! The link goes to Bookshop.org. Buying from them supports independent bookstores.
Our February Office Hours are happening on Thursday 2/27 at 12pm PT / 3pm ET. Join me and a special guest to celebrate Black History Month.
Say Hello to This A-Hole
Meet Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick. Here he is on CNN advocatng for the end of free lunches in public schools and being wistful for days before child labor laws. He is a true A-Hole. He is also quite stupid because he claims he was working before child labor laws, and those began in 1938.
Here are his phone numbers, if you want to let him know how you feel:
(202) 225-4272
(770) 232-3005
And here’s his Instagram if you want to gve him feedback on his thoughts on school choice.
My goodness, but this was a deeply satisfying read.
Thank you for calling out Bill Maher. Back in the day I was a fan. Now he just is unbearable. I have wondered if it’s just me. I’m a little old to be a “snowflake”.