SHEREEN MARISOL MERAJI, HOST:
Hello.
GENE DEMBY, HOST:
Hello.
MERAJI: (Singing) Iesha...
AYESHA RASCOE, BYLINE: Hey.
MERAJI: (Singing) You are the girl that I never had.
DEMBY: (Singing) You are the girl that I never had.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IESHA")
ANOTHER BAD CREATION: (Singing) Iesha, you are the girl that I never had. And I want to get to know you better. Iesha.
MERAJI: (Singing). Iesha.
I'm Shereen Marisol Meraji.
DEMBY: I'm Gene Demby, and this is CODE SWITCH...
MERAJI: ...From NPR. And that person we're serenading with Another Bad Creation's 1990 hit, "Iesha," is the one, the only...
RASCOE: Ayesha Rascoe, and I cover the White House for NPR.
DEMBY: Do you know the rap, though?
MERAJI: I don't know it, no. (Rapping). Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike, Chris, Mark, Red, Da, Ro.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IESHA")
ANOTHER BAD CREATION: (Rapping). Ronnie, Bobby, Ricky and Mike, Chris, Mark, Red, Da, Ro.
(LAUGHTER)
DEMBY: This is how y'all start all the NPR Politics Podcast though, right? I'm sure.
RASCOE: Pretty much.
(LAUGHTER)
MERAJI: If you listen to NPR's Politics Podcast or NPR at all, you know Ayesha Rascoe.
DEMBY: Ayesha has spent the last four years covering Donald Trump and his administration. So we asked her, what was it like at this time during the last transition back in 2017?
RASCOE: I mean, what it was was just very chaotic. There was a question at that point in time whether Trump would even allow the press to stay in the White House because technically, there's now no law that we have to be there. And there's no law that he has to have a pool of reporters travel with him everywhere. That's just the norm. And so there was this idea that he would just kick us out.
MERAJI: Ayesha told us that at the beginning of Trump's official start as president, she recalls being at the White House for an event. And when it was done, she says, Trump dismissed the press pool, then called them back again and said a few more things, dismissed them only to call them back again.
RASCOE: He seemed to be realizing on that, like, second day in office that he could just call the press whenever he wanted. He had this captive audience. And so I realized at that point that he would never kick the press out because he loved that attention.
DEMBY: So he had a captive audience. But - you know what I mean? - like, what was it like being in Trump's captive audience as a Black woman journalist?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEMBY: That's what we talked to Ayesha about on this episode of CODE SWITCH, the very last episode of the Trump presidency. I feel like I'm jinxing something.
MERAJI: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MERAJI: And we are talking to you on Monday, January 18, 2021, two days before Joe Biden is said to be sworn in as president of the United States. Did you think that maybe things might have slowed down for you...
(LAUGHTER)
MERAJI: ...At this point in the game? Did you think this is where we'd be?
RASCOE: I definitely thought that things would be much slower right now, or I hoped they would. I think it was a hope, I guess I should say. It was a hope. It was a wish. It was a dream. And it did not come true.
MERAJI: (Laughter) No.
RASCOE: It did not come true.
MERAJI: So if things were to work out the way you had hoped, wished and dreamed for them to have worked out by this time in the Trump beat, what would your life be like?
RASCOE: Normally what happens with a president who is no longer going to be president - a lame duck - things really quiet down. And it's not the fast paced, got to get this done, this is important breaking news. It's just kind of like, this is history. This is what happened.
MERAJI: A little bit of housekeeping.
RASCOE: Yeah, it's like housekeeping. It's not front of mind because generally, it's the person that's coming in - that's where everyone's attention is. But that is not obviously what happened in this situation.
DEMBY: (Laughter) Oh, your gift for understatements. So just in the past two weeks...
RASCOE: Yeah.
DEMBY: ...We've seen obviously an insurrection at the Capitol building, you know, by Trump supporters urged on by Donald Trump. Donald Trump said he wasn't going to come to the inauguration on Wednesday. And he became the first president in the history of the United States to be impeached twice. So what has it been like on your beat, like, to cover this over the last couple of weeks?
RASCOE: Just over the last couple of weeks, what it's been like?
(LAUGHTER)
DEMBY: Yeah, just since the (laughter)...
RASCOE: It's - no, I mean, it's not even - like, I will say, the last few weeks have been really kind of like a final, like, traumatic thing happening, like - and scary. Like, there are all these moments in covering Trump where it feels like you really don't know what's about to go down. And this seemed like the final moment of that. I mean, this past year has been intense. He got coronavirus. Like, we found that out at 1 in the morning.
MERAJI: Oh, right. I forgot about that.
RASCOE: Yeah, he got coronavirus.
DEMBY: Remember that happened? Yes.
RASCOE: Yeah. And he got, you know, had to rush off to the hospital. And so these are the things you're thinking, like, there have been so many moments where it's like, what happens next? What comes out of this? Two weeks left, I thought we wouldn't have had that. I thought we had past that point, but we weren't. Like, there was going to be one more. And this was going to be the one that really topped everything else because it was the most damaging.
MERAJI: But we have no idea how Wednesday is going to go (laughter)...
RASCOE: We don't.
MERAJI: ...In light of January 6.
RASCOE: We don't. And that's the other scary thing is that it's ongoing.
MERAJI: You know, a lot of people have talked about this past month of events being upsetting, yes - surprising, not so much. Donald Trump has been stirring up all of these white racial grievances since before he was even in office. So having reported on the presidency for the last four years, what's your take on that, that upsetting yes, surprising no?
RASCOE: I mean, it surprised me not because Trump hadn't already been stirring this pot, but to actually see it come together. Like, he had been lighting matches for a very long time. And I had seen the matches, but he had seemed - they hadn't ignited completely. I guess it's like you're watching something for four years. He's come out of everything - the first impeachment, the Russia investigation. He's had all these rallies. He's said all this wild stuff. He's attacked all these people. And yet it hasn't gone to the place of really no return.
DEMBY: So much has happened over the last few years when it comes to race in particular. So we just want to take you, Ayesha, back to a moment that a lot of people may have forgotten by now. This was something President Trump said way back last year in 2020.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Make America Great Again. By the way, they love African American people. They love Black people. MAGA loves Black people.
DEMBY: I feel like if you have to say that, though - you know what I mean? Like...
RASCOE: And what was interesting about that was he was setting Black people apart from MAGA. So Black people are not a part of MAGA 'cause MAGA loves them.
MERAJI: Oh, yes. Exactly.
DEMBY: Right.
RASCOE: That was an example of, like, something that - anybody else said something like that, that would be like - no, you would never forget it. Trump said that, and nobody even remembers it. But I remember that Saturday morning. You know, this was when there was all the unrest over the summer. Trump had said, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. They were talking about trying to bring in the military. But this was when President Trump was saying he wanted his supporters to come out and really is kind of foreshadowing what happened. He wanted - so he was seeing all the unrest by the White House. There were reports that he went into a bunker.
So his response was, well, I want my supporters to come out here. And so people were like, well, what, are you trying to start a race war? What do you mean? You want your supporters to come out and - what? - fight Black Lives Matter? And then because people were saying, well, what are you trying to say? Are you trying to start a race war? Then his response is, oh, no, I'm not - MAGA loves the Black people. And so I'm so (inaudible).
So, I mean - but I remember talking to my editor who is Black, you know, like, and both of us being, like - our brains were kind of fried. Like, we just couldn't believe what we were hearing. And I went back and listened to it a bunch of times. Did he say the Black - did he say the? Did he say the Black people? Because I wanted to make sure, so I'm like, but let me go back and listen a few - like, it just kind of - it blew - I think for both of us, it was just, like, what is going on in this world? You laugh at it because it's so ridiculous, but it was always sinister.
Like, looking at it now, even then, it was, you know, this very serious moment. But looking at what happened on the 6, you can even see the seeds of it in that - this idea that I'm going to call my supporters out, and then they're going to show you guys what's going on. It's been there, and it's been building.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MERAJI: More Ayesha after the break.
RASCOE: It's only so many Black women in that space, and we all know each other. And those insults that he did - it felt like he was going down the line.
DEMBY: Stay with us.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEMBY: Gene.
MERAJI: Shereen.
DEMBY: CODE SWITCH.
MERAJI: And we're back with NPR's White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe.
DEMBY: The last time you came on the podcast, on CODE SWITCH, you spent months, like, going through all of Donald Trump's tweets, which, one, you're a masochist. Thank you for doing that for us. You're such a brave...
(LAUGHTER)
DEMBY: You were cataloguing specifically the ways that Trump was talking about, you know, Black political figures. People, you know, generally knew that he was tweeting racist stuff, right? Everyone knew that. So why - looking back on it, like, why was it so important for you to get into the specifics of the texture of his tweets?
RASCOE: So and that's something I've been thinking about a lot now, and that I do - I feel - I don't want to say justified, but I do feel like that was important work. The reason why I felt like it needed to be done is because I felt like Trump said so many things, and he did it with such frequency that people quickly would forget, or it became just kind of like background noise. Or people would just go, oh, well, he talks about everybody.
But when you actually sit down, and you look at his tweets, you realize he doesn't just talk about everybody in the same way. Eric Swalwell in the House, a Democrat, would always be talking about Trump saying all sorts of stuff, and he never really got that many tweets from Trump - maybe got like one or two - because that wasn't the person who he wanted to elevate.
Who he wanted to elevate as his opponent were Black women - Maxine Waters. He wanted to elevate the Squad - you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and, you know, Rashida Tlaib. He wanted to elevate them - Nancy Pelosi, a woman. He wants to elevate certain people, and he will go after them in certain ways.
Like, you know, he might go after Robert Mueller, who was investigating him for the things that he did, but he didn't go after him for his intelligence. But the people that he called stupid were - a lot of times, they were people of color. So Maxine Waters would be low IQ. In the midterms, out of all the candidates that he talked about, the Democrats, the only one that he called incompetent was Stacey Abrams when she was running for governor. But the only way you'd know that is you have to go through all the tweets because otherwise it's all just noise, and you'd think, oh, he's just talking about everybody. No, he only - he didn't call anybody else incompetent. The only one who he called incompetent and didn't have enough experience - I don't know if she has what it takes - is Stacey Abrams.
MERAJI: We talked about how much dehumanizing language Trump used against people of color specifically and women of color on the podcast. And it felt like that story just kind of came and went. And you mentioned in the answer to this question that you feel justified in cataloging his tweets because it really showed something very specific about him and his racism. Do you feel like your colleagues were as concerned about that as you were about Trump's racism?
RASCOE: I never had people necessarily push back on me wanting to talk about things. There were times where I think sometimes people might be a little bit like, you know, are we going to say this is because he's racist? Is this racism too? (Laughter) You know, people were a little like, are we bringing race into this too? But I do think that there's been an evolution in the way that people look at Trump, especially in the beginning, where I think just in general, as an industry, there were people who just felt like, well, yeah. Is everything really about race here? Maybe Trump just says things. He doesn't really mean it that way, you know, and this very clear thing - well, we don't want to make the people that support Trump feel like just because they support him, this has anything to do with race.
And I do think over time you've seen this shift where people realized, oh, no, this is all about race. And, you know, there used to be those - the defense of the idea that, well, people that voted for Trump, they couldn't be motivated by race because some of them also voted for Obama, which to me was always a silly talking point. It never made sense, as someone who lives in the U.S. and knows that race has never been that simple.
It's never been that - you know, people - you can vote for a Black man. That doesn't mean that you're not motivated by race. Like, you can have, you know, your Black friend over. You can have your - you know, the person raising your children can be Black. You love that person, but you still don't like them other Black people. So this has always been a part of it, right?
MERAJI: I agree with you on that point, but I feel like that evolution you brought up has been really slow.
RASCOE: Yes. Yes.
MERAJI: It feels like, almost, that people - some people waited till January 6 to go, OK, maybe this was about race.
RASCOE: Well, they had the Confederate flag, so maybe this is isn't just about heritage.
MERAJI: And they busted into the Capitol with guns.
RASCOE: Yes. I do think it's been slow. Like, I think it's been slow. And the thing is, maybe the media or certain people in the media did not get it, but his followers always got it. They knew what he was saying. They knew - you know, they could make - they filled in the dots. They knew exactly what he's saying when he's saying Maxine Waters is low IQ. They know exactly what he was saying when he was saying those football players shouldn't kneel and calling them SOBs. They knew exactly what language he was using and what message he was trying to send forth.
MERAJI: Yeah, I did this piece ahead of the 2016 election for Montana. Remember that one, Gene?
DEMBY: Yeah.
MERAJI: I interviewed a ton of pro-Trump people in Montana, Ayesha, and they were believing all kinds of conspiracy theories about terrorists coming to their rural towns because of refugee resettlement.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sharia law goes against our Constitution, goes against the laws of our land. It's being practiced in 20 states in this country. They want to convert us, or they want to kill us.
MERAJI: And I remember being scared. And I mentioned this to colleagues who were like, oh, there's nothing to be worried about. That's a fringe element. They've always been there. You know, they were totally shrugging it off. And I look back now, and I think, man, my gut - to be that scared was right. Like, I should have trusted my gut.
RASCOE: Yeah. You know, I think the - you know, when you create this alternate reality - and people really have bought into it, and they've been buying into it. And it's always - what's interesting now is that back then, the bad guys were the terrorists coming over the border or whatever. And then it became, you know, it's just basically the left and the liberals in the cities and antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Like, that's where it ended at, is it ended with the cities where they have all this unrest is going to come to where we're at. Basically, the Black and brown people are going to come in here, and they're going to take us over.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MERAJI: Ayesha, as you know quite well, during Trump's time in office, he became known for verbally harassing the media in general, but particularly Black women reporters. If you don't mind, we're going to play a little bit of a highlight reel - or, I'm sorry, a low-light reel of Trump harassing Black women reporters. It starts with Yamiche Alcindor from PBS asking a question, and we're also going to hear from CNN's Abby Phillips in this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. Now people are also saying that the president...
TRUMP: I don't know why you'd say that. That's such a racist question.
ALCINDOR: There are some people that say that now...
TRUMP: What a stupid question that is. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.
The same thing with April Ryan. I mean, you talk about somebody that's a loser. She doesn't know what...
MERAJI: So what was it like reporting on a president who has been called out over and over again for his horrible comments about Black women?
RASCOE: You know, it was tough. Like, I never caught it the way those reporters - you know, I had - towards the end, you know, I asked a question that Trump didn't like, and he got an attitude with me, but I never got it the way they did and never to that extent.
But being a Black woman in that space - and, like, when he was talking mad at Yamiche over that white nationalist question, I was sitting right beside Yamiche after that happened. And, you know, obviously I know her. She's a friend. And I remember just, like, doing the - what you do in those situations when it was done. Like, you did good. You did a good job. You asked a great question. That's what I told her.
And I obviously know April Ryan. You know, there are only so many Black women, and we all know each other. And it's only so many Black women in that space. And those insults that he did, they happened in a space of time right after the midterms. And so it felt like he was going down the line. You know, it was like, well, who is next? Like, it's only, like, you know, so many of us for him to attack.
And there were times - you know, obviously I don't catch it. Like I said, I haven't had death threats, like other people have had. But when I did that story on him, you know, the way he talked about Black people, and I said that Trump was calling Maxine Waters low IQ, someone tweeted at me, well, she is low IQ, and so are you. You're low IQ, too, and you can't talk. And, you know, the way you speak and da, da, da, da (ph). I mean, they were using the same, you know, the same language against me. And so those same attacks are turned back around.
And so it has - I think in some ways, obviously, it has taken a toll. It has been a lot. You know, I won't dismiss that it hasn't been a weight. It has been a weight.
MERAJI: Remind us what he did to you, 'cause I remember that being on social media.
RASCOE: He got mad at a question that I did. And this was during the coronavirus. President Trump - I asked him a question. I think this was at some point where there had been - we had reached another milestone in deaths. He had done an event. And everybody was just, you know, sitting around talking about what a great job they had done responding to the coronavirus. And so I asked a question like, you're taking credit for these things that you say have gone right.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RASCOE: You want credit for what the government has done. Do you take any responsibility...
Do you take any responsibility for, you know, however many thousand people had died at that point? And he answered...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Minimal numbers were going to be a hundred thousand people.
RASCOE: But then after that, he - you could tell he was upset. And then when I tried to ask a follow-up later on or ask another question later on...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RASCOE: Mr. President, I know that you...
...He kind of went, oh, wait, wait, wait. Does anybody else have a question?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: OK, hold it one second. Any other questions from any other people?
RASCOE: No? Thank you. We're done.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: OK, thank you very much, everybody.
RASCOE: Like, it was just like a power play. Like (laughter)...
MERAJI: Right.
RASCOE: ...You not getting another question. And, like - but it was never anything like on the level of other people. But he did get an attitude with me. But you could see how quickly it shifts and how quickly you become the person who is under attack for some reason.
DEMBY: So - and I'm just curious about what you make of this - the way we cover politics, right? Like, one of the things that happens in the news media, particularly around sort of partisan politics, is we cover things as Democrats want this, and Republicans want this. And you can see that there's always been, like, a lot of limitations to, like, what that means for, like, American political discourse. But I think we saw that really clearly in the Trump administration - was that a lot of stuff that he was doing and the response to that stuff was sort of framed as, like, partisan fighting, right?
RASCOE: Yeah.
DEMBY: Like, I was curious what you think of what we should do with that framing going forward because it seems like talking about these things as Democrat and Republican problems or Democrat and Republican disagreements sort of flattens all of the other dimensions of the stuff that was happening during the Trump administration.
RASCOE: It does. And I think that this has been an issue that the media's definitely still trying to grapple with, because there were, obviously - at times, there were false equivalence, right? Like, there were this - you know, if these weren't necessarily, like, fights over, like, I'm going to raise taxes or lower taxes - these were just, like, fights over, like, what is actual reality. You know, there was no comparison.
Like, you couldn't go like, well, Trump called Omarosa Manigault Newman a dog, but Nancy Pelosi said, I want, you know, to tax people who make more money. Like, there's not - they're two totally different (laughter) - like, you can't, like, do what - there's no - it's not the same. Like, the language is just not the same, right? Like, and it's not like a bias to say it. It's just a fact. Like, it's just not - it's not the same.
And I think we've seen that play out in that it's not the same. And so I think that at a certain point, it is not objective to have someone over here, like, you know, saying all sorts of things, not playing by any of the rules, you know, not doing it, and then trying to say, well, but people on the other side don't tie their shoes sometimes. It's not...
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: That is not objectivity. And I think that people have to come to terms with that. Like, it's not being objective to say whether they both do the same thing when they're not doing the same thing.
MERAJI: This podcast episode is going to drop on the last day of the Trump presidency. What do you think are going to be the lasting effects of all of this chaos, especially when it comes to talking about race?
RASCOE: Yeah. The lasting effect on this country - I think there is obviously just - it's not something that Trump came up with - racism and white supremacy. That's not something that he came up with, but that is something that - that white grievance that he played upon and that he intuitively knew was something that he could ride to the top of the U.S. power structure. And that's what he did.
And that the way that he did that and the way that he went about that, I think that that has changed. It's just changed the way politicians talk about each other, the things that they're willing to say about each other. And it's not about just trying to be polite. But when you start talking about people as enemies and as stupid, it ends up with violence because you're making people be less than human. And so I think that opening that door to politicians being more willing to say those things is something that I think we will be feeling the effects of for a long time. And I do think it's damaging.
I do hope that that slow evolution we talked about with the media kind of having the scales fall off their eyes when it comes to race and seeing that these are real issues - I hope that that continues and hopefully escalates and goes faster than it's been going. I do hope that that continues and that people realize that that anger and all those things that drove these people to the Capitol with, you know, Confederate flags, with white supremacist, you know, anti-Semitic T-shirts and - that all of these things have been building in this country for a very long time and that we need to not act as if those things don't exist.
MERAJI: Or they're fringe.
RASCOE: Or they're fringe - because they're very mainstream, right? They're very mainstream. So that's what my hope is. I don't know what exactly happens, though.
And I will say, too, that Trump leaves with a Black woman, a woman of color as vice president coming into office. He leaves with, you know, Stacey Abrams elevated after he called her incompetent, with two Democrats coming from Georgia to be in the Senate. So he leaves with people that he spoke out against elevated.
MERAJI: Yeah.
RASCOE: And, you know, and a lot of the Black women reporters that he went against are also doing very well - Yamiche Alcindor, Abby Phillip, April Ryan. So, you know, I don't know exactly what to say. You can't keep a good woman down.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: I don't know. But, I mean...
MERAJI: Yes.
RASCOE: But that is also a part of the legacy of, like, you know, he said and did all those things, but a lot of people have still, you know, been able to do great things in all of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEMBY: That was NPR White House correspondent Ayesha Rascoe reflecting on her past four years that she spent covering the Trump administration.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEMBY: And, y'all, that is our show.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DEMBY: We made it, y'all, all of us. We made it to the end of this era.
MERAJI: Yes, we made it. And as a nation, we are likely to be dissecting the lasting effects of this administration for decades to come.
DEMBY: Goodie.
MERAJI: As a team, the CODE SWITCH team, we're also going to take some time to think about this next phase of American history that we're getting into. What big issues will get new light under the Biden-Harris administration? What do we need to dig into deeper, regardless of who's in office? And who are the artists and activists and cultural leaders we need to be paying more attention to? And what role will COVID play in all this?
DEMBY: Oh, my God. Yeah.
MERAJI: Hopefully not one for too much longer. It's a lot.
DEMBY: It's a lot. So we're going to spend the next few weeks reporting and reflecting and processing. And we want to hear from y'all. So tell us what stories you think we need to be telling. Who should we be talking to? Email us at codeswitch@npr.org with the subject line Race in 2021 to let us know.
MERAJI: And you can follow us on Twitter, IG. Remember, we're @NPRCodeSwitch.
DEMBY: And subscribe to our newsletter, which is very, very dope. You can find our newsletter at npr.org/codeswitchnewsletter.
MERAJI: This episode was produced by Kumari Devarajan and edited by Leah Donnella. It was fact-checked by Natalie Escobar and our new intern, Summer Thomad.
DEMBY: Welcome, Summer. And a shoutout to the rest of the CODE SWITCH massive. You got Karen Grigsby Bates. You got Jess Kung. You got Alyssa Jeong Perry. You got LA Johnson and, of course, Steve Drummond.
MERAJI: Who are you?
DEMBY: I am Gene Demby. Who are you?
MERAJI: And I am Shereen Marisol Meraji.
DEMBY: Y'all be easy.
MERAJI: Peace.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MERAJI: On that tip, I am definitely looking forward to watching Sonia Sotomayor swear in Kamala Harris because that's history right there, you know? A Puerto Rican Supreme Court justice swearing in a Black and Asian woman vice president - I get emotional thinking about that.
RASCOE: It's a big deal. And I know Gene will appreciate this. She is - you know, she's a Howard grad (laughter).
DEMBY: Oh, I knew it. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. I'm surprised we got this far.
RASCOE: She is - you know, Kamala Harris is a Howard grad. So it's someone at HBCU and someone, you know, from Howard University, the mecca, which I also graduated from. And so...
DEMBY: (Laughter) Did you now? Is that what happened?
RASCOE: Did you all know that? Did you know that? Did you know that?
DEMBY: I did not know that.
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