When then-former Vice President Joe Biden appeared on "The Breakfast Club," the radio show hosted by Charlamagne Tha God in May 2020, he could not have envisioned that what he had to say to the New York audience would still haunt him four years later during a reelection bid that's all but a sure thing.
I probably don't have to remind readers what Biden said that riled so many people, but here's a reminder for those in the back (plus, it's possible that people missed the director's cut version of the offensive interview clip).
Wow: The Longer 'in Context' Video Clip From Joe Biden's 'You Ain't Black' Interview Was Even Worse
Readers might also remember Charlamagne didn't mince words about DEI in April.
Charlamagne Tha God on 'Mostly Garbage' DEI 'Bulls**t'
Then a couple of days ago, as my colleague Nick Arama wrote, Charlamagne hit back at MSNBC for smearing him as a megaphone for "MAGA messaging" after a January interview, when he tried to tell the truth about how much the crisis on the Southern border is likely to affect the 2024 election.
Charlamagne on Claim He's Voicing 'MAGA Messaging'
Anyone who's been paying attention knows he's not a Trump sycophant by any stretch of the imagination. On his own radio show Friday, reacting to the guilty verdict on Thursday against former president, Donald Trump in the Manhattan trial, Charlamagne repeated the narrative being spread by the White House and Democrats, in fact:
Nobody is above the law, so I'm not mad that justice was served on that end. But like [co-host] Morgan said, this don't change nothing, because Trump can still run for president, and it's just going to galvanize his base to go out there and support him[.]
There was more like that, when he appeared Saturday on CNN's "Smerconish" program, but he also told host Michael Smerconish whether he thinks the trial's outcome will "change the outcome of the election."
Charlamagne briefly engaged directly with the question, before forging ahead to talk about what he's been seeing and hearing on the New York City streets about which candidate's base seemed to be the most energized:
So it's really which candidate can energize their base the most. In a situation like this, it does energize Trump's base. Just yesterday, in New York City, I was going down Fifth Avenue, they were in the streets protesting, waving "F---- Biden" flags, stopping traffic....I do see Trump's base more energized right now than I do Joe Biden's
I see Biden's base upset with him over a number of things. I do think a situation like this gives them something to fight for.
But this was the part I found the most fascinating. Smerconish appears to go into a state of shock, after the radio host drops what he sees as the big difference (video at the link) between the former president and Biden in how they reach an audience:
Yeah, I think that, you know, one thing that Donald Trump did that I believe is a good thing is that he killed the language of politics. Like, the language of politics is dead. So, if you had these politicians who actually sat down with everyday, working-class people, and had conversations with everyday, working-class people.
I mean, that's what I get to do every morning on "The Breakfast Club," that's what I get to do when I'm out doing my, you know, community work, whether it's in South Carolina, whether it's in New Jersey, when you get to actually talk to people and see what's on people's minds.
When you get in front of those microphones, you'll always have that in your head.You'll always have, you know, in your mind, what people are actually saying.
Without spelling it out, he managed to nail the Democrat Party's problem. They are not the party of the middle class, as much as they like to portray themselves as that. The issues that draw voters' attention this cycle, like the flailing economy and the border, are not winners on the Left's bingo card. And for these kinds of messages to get broadcast on legacy media is especially damaging to Democrats depending on low-information voters who might have accidentally tuned in their TVs to CNN.
As far as the slogan about respecting the law goes, it's Democrats who ignore it at their peril in November: