of their peers. tucker: i don t want to live in a country the former president comes out recently, in think today, and says racial issues have never been better in america and i know that you want to think you left the country a better place than you found it. that s just a flat out lie. y there s no measure by which that s true, and if we re having this conversation now that suggest that it s not true, it s ridiculous. the premise here and the premise for the entire discussion we re having is that white america is under attack, and that s what i find to be fundamentally not true. tucker: i m not makingg the case that white america s under attack.am i m making the case that the society that we re trying to live in is one in which people are judged by what they do, by the choices that they make, not judged by legal characteristics over which they have no control such as their race or their height or their eye color for that matter, and if democratic leaders, liberal leaders are
when you re a public servant, dh you think that you have a duty to represent your fellow citizens first, second, andnt third, or do you think you have the duty to represent people who look like you too? you have a duty to represent your fellow citizens, which ise the problem with the republican party not including everyone because black folk are their fellow citizens too. gay and lesbian folks are too. tucker: i m not here to defend the republican party, which i think is really damaged in a lot of ways. but i have got to be completely honest, it s a little much considering the democratic party has officially exclusionary policies based on race for how it chooses delegates, for how it allocates power, for how it sends money, and certainly in the presidential nominating contest. you can t imagine that that s not a massive factor in who gets chosen. the leadership is chosen by a popular improper vote, however the democratic party has chosen to put in institutional measures to rectif
tucker: the last question, you describe yourself as a progressive, as a man of the left. the new york times has attacked your book savagely in a review, and the main problem appeared to be that you criticized st. obama at the end of your book. given that your book has this critical assessment at its end, are you surprised that the left can t deal with that apparently? i think in today s culture and today s politics, unfortunately, we sometimes see partisanship trumping a verb i like trumping professionalism. i m an academic, a scholar, historian. it s sad the new york times gives into partisan fervor, butt i am playing a long game. t i m a scholar. this book will be the authoritative account of barack obama s prepresidential life. i believe for decades to come. tucker: that is without question true, and good for you for doing all the work required to produce it. thank you. w mtv just handed out new acting
the republican party has not recognized that. o tucker: i lived in d.c. as a kid and it was a majority black city, and the city government was majority african-american. do you think they were making less good decisions because they were almost all one color?nt i don t know i didn ter study d.c. politics. what i do know is that the policy represented the greater diversity that we ve seen in our country. the republican party if you look at the representatives and the leadership of that party, and i m friends with will hurd. i have great faith in what they contribute to the republican party, but they are not right now at the top ranking decision-makers of leadership. tucker: but you re not allowing for the possibility that people are individuals and they reach their own, not necessarily in reference to the group, whatever group you think they belong to. it s because they re each one created by god to make his own choices? this is not individually about race, this is a lack of
the room when creating a system that will control 1/5 to 1/6 of our nation s economy. that is a tangible choice made by the republican party.on tangible choice made by the n trump administration to have a room full of white men deciding on women s health. tucker: a room full of white men decided on obamacare. the democratic caucus and i m not being about what color i am or what you are, it s about the principle, judging people for what they do and the decisions that they make rather than by the color of their skin. the content of their character, you could say. why is it bad that these people are a specific color? does that color make it hard for you to make wise decisions? it represents a lack of diversity in perspective and that lack of diversity of perspective is hard to think that they re making the best policy for our entire country.ec you and i live in washington, d.c., we can t walk six blocks without seeing a variety of rainbow shades of all different types of folk, and t