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The Current Transcript for November 4, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

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VOICE: Three years ago, we campaigned across the country on a pledge to make America great again. And that's exactly what we've done. America now has the best economy in the history of our country and we want to keep it that way.

LAURA LYNCH: We are now one year away from the election that will determine whether Donald Trump continues as president of the United States. It's been a tumultuous period, marked by scandals, resignations, firings and now an impeachment inquiry, something the Democrats have been emphasizing on the campaign trail.

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VOICE 1: We will all come together to defeat the most dangerous president in modern American history.

VOICE 2: He has solicited another foreign government to attack our election system.

VOICE 3: He has no sense of decency. He doesn't care about the law.

VOICE 4: The point is obvious. Dude gotta go.

LL: On the show today, we're taking an in-depth look at how the 2020 race is shaping up, the divisions both in the country and in the parties themselves because how the debates play out there could have ramifications around the world for years to come. We begin in the heart of Trump country. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

With U.S. election 1 year away, Republicans and Democrats weigh up Trump's chances of 4 more years

Guests: Amy Kremer, Rob Smith, Rick Wilson

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VOICE 1: What really was the rallies that got me back in the day. Watching rally after rally after rally and just saying, wow, this guy is just like us. This guy really cares. I didn't know nothing really about politics. I really didn't. And I never really paid attention nor cared, you know? Now, today, it's like I know everything that's going on because of him, because the way he communicates with us, you know, the communication with the people is just unbelievable.

VOICE 2: Twelve hour drive from Bedford, Texas, because we love Trump. All of us. This is my son and my daughter-in-law. We love him because he has dignity and because he loves America and he wants the best for America. He's not like other people that are politicians. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Trump for another four years. And it's because God is behind him too.

VOICE 3: That's right. The Democrats are making us so angry. We going drag, I'm going to drag everybody in my neighbourhood out to vote him.He's down to Earth. He's what we want. He's what we want. I mean, you talk to the Democratic Party, all they want is socialism, killing babies. I mean, that's not what all Christian Americans want. Give us jobs. We want jobs. We're one of the poorest states in the union. Now everybody has plenty to eat, a house to live in, home, job, a nice vehicle to drive in because of people like Donald Trump. Not because of people like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Sheel. Oh, I'd love to get my hands on him. Oh, I'd love to get my hands on him.

VOICE 4: If you had, if somebody had told me, five years ago that I would want to go to a campaign rally, that I would be this excited to go to a campaign rally, I would've told them they were crazy. I didn't pay attention to politics, didn't want nothing to do with politics, but this mam, President Trump, he's trying to restore equal justice under the law.

LL: The voices of Trump's supporters at a rally in Tupelo, Mississippi, over the weekend. It's rallies like that that helped propel Donald Trump to the White House in 2016. He may have seemed like a longshot even in the dying days of the campaignbhuiyans. Many pollsters believed he had no path to victory, but after almost three years in office, is President Trump on a path to re-election in 2020? I'm joined by Republican strategists for their assessment. Amy Kremer is the co-founder and chair of the Women for Trump Political Action Committee. She is in Atlanta, Georgia. And Rob Smith is a strategist with the conservative group Turning Point USA. He is in our New York City studio. Hello to you.

ROB SMITH: Good morning.

AMY KREMER: Good morning,.

LL: Rob, let's begin with you. What makes you think Donald Trump can win again?

ROB SMITH: There are a lot of things that make me think that Donald Trump can win again. We've got a really great economy. We've got a record low unemployment across many different types of people, but particularly African-Americans. And when you talk about black voters and how they will be engaged for the 2020 election, you want to look at something like the first step act, which is the most comprehensive criminal justice reform that was passed in a generation that passed under this president. This is the criminal justice reform. There were 3000 prisoners that were released for non-violent offences. Some of these men had done 20, 25, 30 years, and 90 percent of them were African-American. Now we've gotten to the point where criminal justice reform and mass incarceration and in doing something about this is a bipartisan issue. People on both sides are talking about this and this president has actually gotten that done. And I think that that will mean a lot to African-American voters.

LL: Now, I know that means a lot to you because you are African-American yourself. But I'm also wondering about young voters. When you talk to young voters, as you've been doing on campuses, what did they tell you?

ROB SMITH: Well, the thing about young voters, the zoomers and the younger millennials is that the thing about this president is that they are very excited about this president. They think he's funny. They think he's entertaining. There's something about how he's put his finger on the pulse of pop culture with that generation that I haven't seen in a politician, honestly, to tell you the truth, since Obama. And so these people are seeing right now, especially these younger zoomers, these Gen-Z-ers, they're seeing a really great economy. They're coming out of college, university to an economy that has opportunities for them and that has jobs for them and they see this. They understand the world that they're living in right now. The world that we are living in right now in terms of the economy, in terms of these things, is a much different world than the Obama years in a good way, especially for people that are just coming out of college.

LL: Amy Kremer, one year from the election, the president is not only facing impeachment, an impeachment inquiry, but also a litany of sexual assault allegations, criticism for pulling troops from backing the Kurds in Syria, accusations of racism. Does any of that do any damage to him?

AMY KREMER: No. Listen, these are as you said, all accusations and we believe in America, innocent until proven guilty. These are the same things that we heard back in 2016. And actually, I disagree with your premise there. That's not what he's facing. What he's facing is an economy that is on fire right now. Jobs are booming. There have been over 6 million jobs created since he took office. More than half of those have gone to women. We got the jobs report out last Friday. It was more than expected, more jobs created than expected for the month of October. Not only that, but jobs were the numbers were revised for September and October. Way up, as Rob said, African-American unemployment is at an all time low. Same thing with Hispanics. And he is focussed on making America great, OK. America first. That doesn't mean America alone. But that's what women care about. That's what all Americans care about and because of that, I think that he will win in 2020. And I think what the Democrats are doing is they're overplaying their hand and the American people are tired of it.

LL: But Amy, in spite of all of that, in spite of what you've listed as the good things that are happening, Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives last year. What does that tell you?

AMY KREMER: Well, Republicans did lose control of the House of Representatives, and I think they're going to take it back this time. There were two reasons that Republicans, I believe, lost control. One, because Republicans promised for years and years to repeal and replace Obamacare. They had the opportunity and they failed. And that's not on President Trump's shoulders, that's on Republican shoulders. Paul Ryan did not do what he should have done. That legislation should have been put together so that the day the president took office, it could have been signed and enacted into law. That was a Republican failure. And also, I believe that a lot of the people that voted for President Trump are bringing you to politics. They thought, you know what, we've got our guy in there. We've got Republican control of the House, the Senate. Things are going to go great. And they set that back and did not engage, did not go out and vote in the 2014 midterms. And I think you're going to see that change in 2020 because those people are getting off their couches and getting involved and become enacted in our politics today.

LL: Alright. I want to bring someone else into the conversation. Rick Wilson was a Republican strategist. He's the author of Everything Trump Touches Dies and the upcoming book Running Against the Devil. And he is in Tallahassee, Florida. Hi.

RICK WILSON: Good morning.

LL: Donald Trump is facing a possible impeachment inquiry. Do you think he can win again?

RICK WILSON: Look, there are ways that Donald Trump can win again, but it involves the Democrats doing what they do, which is to run a campaign that is tone deaf to the 15 or so swing states that will decide the election. And that's not a referendum on Donald Trump's performance. It's a referendum on the Democrats incompetence, because you know I noticed a lot of numbers being thrown around there, but the core number that should be appreciated in the current status of President Trump is that 64 percent of all women disapprove of the president. His numbers have tanked with women spectacularly. The losses in the House had nothing to do with Obamacare. That's an absurdity. What it had to do with was that women in the suburbs and educated women ran away from Donald Trump as fast as they possibly could and they continue to do so. They are a gigantic you know, there's a gigantic response to Donald Trump among educated women voters in this country and has been overwhelmingly negative. And there's no scenario, by the way, in which any professional pollster or any Republican person worth their salt is arguing that the Republicans are going to retake the House of Representatives. That just isn't in the cards.

LL: OK what about the presidency? Do you see yourself voting Republican in 2020?

RICK WILSON: Absolute if Donald Trump is the nominee, I will not vote for him under any circumstance. He has been a lawless, reckless, dangerous president at every turn. He is mentally unstable. He is engaged in ongoing corruption and criminality. And you know the conservative party that I came from and the conservative values that I still hold dear are not about a man in a cult, they are about a set of principles and the rule of law. And he is a man who daily is an affront to the rule of law and an affront to the constitution. He cannot contain or control his own behaviour in terms of the corruption he's engaged in, in terms of because of the attempt by this man to be a lawless president. So I can't vote for that.

LL: Okay. II want to let Rob Smith react to that.

ROB SMITH: Yeah. I mean, my reaction to that is that, you know, it's always nice to listen to a never-Trumper. It's very interesting.

LL: I'm sorry he's been a Republican strategist for quite a long time though.

ROB SMITH: Well, that's great, still a never Trumper. When I listen to somebody that says, as somebody that's new to the party, right. So I came out as conservative about a year and a half ago.

LL: Before that, you had been a Democrat and you even supported Bernie Sanders at one point. Correct?

ROB SMITH: Yes. Yes, absolutely. So I'm on a college speaking tour right now called From Leftist To Liberated. So when I hear these voices that are talking about, oh, well, this thing that's happening with Donald Trump and his supporters, it's not the party that I came from and it's almost like they're reaching for their smelling salts and clutching their pearls when they say it. What I see right now on the ground is.

LL: Rick, let Rob finish. I'll let you in.

ROB SMITH: So what I see right now on the ground is I see a lot of different types of people coming into the conservative movement and the Republican Party. I see a lot of energy. I see a group of people that is younger that is sort of more active in what's going on. And I think that he is right in a way that the party is changing and that is a good thing. It is a good thing the changes that are happening on the ground. Myself, like I'm a black gay Republican. OK, this party may not have been so welcoming to me about even five years ago. So I think that these changes are very positive.

LL: Rick?

RICK WILSON: Well, first off, let me just address one thing. The accusation of smelling salts and fainting couches and whatnot applies almost exclusively to the folks who are Donald Trump supporters who cannot abide criticism of the lord of their little cult. And the second thing is, Rob may be coming into the to the Trump movement, but the Trump movement is fundamentally unconservative. The Trump movement is authoritarian, it is nationalist, it is statist.

AMY KREMER: No it's not.

RICK WILSON: It is involved with spending as much money. It's spending more money and running up more debt and doing things that are against the constitution and the rule of law and the original vision of how executive and legislative power will balance than anyone could have imagined.

LL: OK, I just want to play some tape here. In the last election, Donald Trump appealed to many Americans who hadn't voted Republican before. He won Pennsylvania, including Westmoreland County, and that's traditionally a Democratic stronghold. I just want you to listen to one voter from there.

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VOICE: That flame is the burn off from the coal plant itself. That looks like a little bit of life that once was the absolute heartbeat of Pittsburgh in the Mon valley. American Steel was the heartbeat and I was very proud to be a Pittsburgh steel worker, very proud. My name is John Francis Golomb, a lifelong resident of Pennsylvania. I was employed by Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel for 35 years. It broke my heart when we lost our jobs to foreign steel. And when Donald Trump came here, I thought, oh, boy, he's the man I'm going to vote for. Hillary Clinton, she had an opportunity to come to my hometown, but we weren't worth it. But Donald Trump made us feel as if we were worth it. And what he told me is he envisioned Americans still bouncing back. And boy, that's what I needed to hear since 1987. No politician has ever brought it up. They just gave up on us. Right now, three years later, I'm absolutely disgusted. I'm a lifelong Democrat and never have I voted for a Republican. This time I did. And it's one of the greatest mistakes I've ever made. More or less, he was a Houdini. He told us what we wanted to hear in 2016. He never came back and no promises were kept. Monessen's worse than it was and Donald Trump doesn't care. He takes care of the rich, and that's it. He thumbs his nose at us. But when he needs us to vote, he'll come back up. Not this time. Not this time. I'd like to tell President Trump, thanks for nothing. Thanks for nothing. He took away my hope, my belief. He took everything away.

LL: Amy Kremer, what do you say to John Golomb?

AMY KREMER: Listen, I think you're always going to find people that are not happy with the president. That is something that we hear every day. But for people that are not happy with him, I know that the president is trying. I know he is focused on bringing jobs back to this country, bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country. That's exactly what he's been doing, is putting America first. You show me one person who's 401K is worse off today than it was four years ago.

LL: That being the retirement plan for many Americans.

AMY KREMER: Right. Because the stock market is at an all time high. Job creation and job growth, it's not just job creation, it's wages have increased over the past four years. I mean, this economy is roaring right now. And these people can get out there and say whatever they want and you're going to have women that marched in the streets the day after the president was inaugurated with their pink hats on. And I guarantee you there will be some of those women that go and vote for Donald Trump and the reason why is because his policies that are good for me and my family. I feel safer. My community is safer. America is safer. Those same policies are affecting the other women too, and other men and people vote on pocketbook. You can talk about the rhetoric and all the strategist talk you want, but I live in the heartland. And let me tell you people love this president.

LL: OK. I understand the heartland. There's also the Rust Belt. There are a number of states there that are critical to anyone hoping to win a presidential contest in the United States because of the Electoral College. It doesn't just matter about popular vote as we all know.

AMY KREMER: Exactly, that's how he got in.

LL: So I want to go to Rob Smith. Rob, when you hear that kind of anger and disillusionment in what may be a key battleground state, does that concern you?

ROB SMITH: You know what, it does concern me. Like Amy said, there are always going to be people that are dissatisfied. There's always going to be people like that. What really concerns me about that person and what concerns me about that person in general and when I hear things like that is the amount of sort of control that they put in the hands of one person. You know what I mean? So even though I'm a supporter of the president, I don't believe that my fate lies in the hands of one man. Like I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a self-made person. I grew up in Akron, Ohio. I went to the military. I was the first person in my family to get an undergraduate degree as well as a graduate degree. I'm a really kind of like bootstrap it, do it myself kind of guy. And what a comment like that speaks to is somebody that had been may be waiting on one person to change their life too much. I don't think that anybody should be waiting on any politician to change their lives. The only thing politicians can do for us, especially in a place like America that is all about entrepreneurship, is that they can make it easier for us to help ourselves.

LL: Rick Wilson, I want to bring you in.

RICK WILSON: Well, I think that the steel worker that you heard from represents something that is a problem for this president and that is the sales job is great and the performance of it is papered over by a lot of happy talk. You know, steel jobs in this country have not meaningfully returned. There are, the president's talking about dozens of new steel mills opening, there are not. Talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands new steel jobs. There are not. Talking about coal jobs coming back. They're not. These are industries that have you know met the global economy and like many things that conservatives used to believe in, the fact that markets are dynamic and things change over time and creative destruction is an element of all economic history, you know, this idea we're going to go back to this 1950s economy was always absurd. But a lot of people who were very desperate and disappointed and who had been promised things by both sides of the political fence over the years. That we were going to restore all these jobs. You know, of course, they were right picking for a guy who is a great con man. Who is a great guy for looking at someone's weaknesses and exploiting them. And those things are not trivial when it comes to the psychology of folks in the Midwest, and especially because the president's trade war has been absolutely devastating. Farm bankruptcies are up 28 percent. You've got the Midwest is in a teetering economic crisis.

LL: Believe it or not, we are already running out of time. We've got about a minute left and I just want to go to each of you briefly, Rob Smith, Donald Trump is such a divisive figure. How important is it to you that he try to bring Americans together?

ROB SMITH: You know, I think that the president does a really good job trying to bring us together. The problem is, is that he fights a media that is against him 110 percent. And I think it is our responsibility as Americans to be better and kinder to one another and to talk about the issues in ways that are not super divisive. And everybody listening out here can follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

LL: Amy Kremer, what do you say?

AMY KREMER: Listen, I mean, I want Washington to try to bring us together, but Washington is never going to try to do that. They're never going to succeed on that. It's incumbent upon the people of this country. We need to be more respectful of each other. We need to have more civil discourse and not be so hateful and just filled with hate because you don't like who our president is. I'm sorry that Hillary Clinton lost. I mean elections have consequences and this president's going to go down.

LL: Amy, I'm going give the last word to Rick here. You've got about 20 seconds.

RICK WILSON: Well, look, I think to see the election has been incredibly consequential coming forward. I think Donald Trump comes into it with enormous headwinds facing him. And I think that Americans are hardly sick of a lot of the things that he has done. It's going to be a challenge of the Democrats to run a campaign worthy of the opportunity they've been given.

LL: I am sure we will be talking to you all again over the course of the next year. Thank you.

RICK WILSON: Thank you.

ROB SMITH: Thank you.

AMY KREMER: Thank you.

LL: Rick Wilson is the author of Everything Trump Touches Dies. He's a columnist with The Daily Beast. He's in Tallahassee, Florida. Amy Kremer is the co-founder and chair of the Women for Trump Political Action Committee. She's in Atlanta, Georgia. And Rob Smith is with Turning Point USA. He was in our New York City studio. Don't go away, our special coverage of countdown to the 2020 U.S. presidential election continues. We've heard from the Republicans. Next up, the Democrats.

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VOICE 1: First thing we can do is universal child care for every baby in this country, age 0 to 5. All of them.

VOICE 2: We must treat climate change as the existential security challenge.

VOICE 3: We will rise and make sure that we have health care as a right for everyone. We will rise.

LL: Come back for that after the news. I am Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

With U.S. election 1 year away, Republicans and Democrats weigh up Trump's chances of 4 more years… continued

Guests: Celinda Lake, Carol Anderson, Yasmine Taeb

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, meet the Alberta band that's keeping the spirit of Spinal Tap alive. But first, we continue our one year countdown to the 2020 U.S. election. Before the news, I spoke with Republicans. Next, do the Democrats have what it takes to dump Trump?

[Music]

LL: In 2016, Michigan went Republican red by the narrowest margin of victory in the state's presidential election history. That win included Macomb County, a working class area just north of Detroit. It's a bellwether county that had solidly supported Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in previous elections and it will be a key battleground in 2020. We went for a drive around Macomb County with the Mayor of Sterling Heights, Michael Taylor.

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VOICE: We're trying to diversify our economy, but that blue collar mentality and those automotive workers who make up the backbone of our city, you know, they were there looking for a different message. They want to see a president who supports this. And what I mean by this is automotive plants. And that's why I think President Trump's message here resonated so well, is that whether it's true or not, there was this thought and this belief that the federal government doesn't have any use for these manufacturing workers, that the thousands and tens of thousands that make up our our local economy here. And President Trump came here. He spoke directly to them. What he said resonated with them and I don't blame them for pulling the trigger and voting for somebody that's a little bit unconventional because his message was unconventional and we needed something like that here. Frankly, I haven't seen anything out of the Democrats yet that would change my mind that that's the message that's going to work here. You know, I'm kind of unique in that I've gone on record saying I voted for him. But, man, I certainly have some buyer's remorse. I don't think I could vote for him again because of his unprofessional attitude. And I don't think he represents our country very well, but man, when you talk to people who voted for him here, they seem to still have his back there. They're more fervent in their support for him than ever. And what I hear most is he's doing exactly what he said he would do. He wasn't promising to be the most polished politician ever. He promised to come in here, tell it how it is, and fight for the American workers and fight for the American people. That's the mentality of the blue collar, hardworking, good, honest, decent people here is they're willing to forgive all the antics and nonsense on Twitter. They just feel that that's all white noise and what's really mattering to them is that their 401K is way up, that they've got a job, that the economy is strong, that we've had peace and prosperity. We haven't had any major terrorism attacks here in the United States. The quality of life is good right now. And so it's hard to vote for a radical change. This is not a town where you're going to come in and say, hey, everything is bad, everything is awful. We have to blow it all up and start over from scratch like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders is proposing. So I don't see that message working frankly. If you think that the Ukrainian phone call is going to convince somebody here who voted for Trump, who's happy that things are going well for their family are better than they were 10 years ago, you're sadly going to be mistaken. And the Democrats better have a better message than, hey Donald Trump is a really mean, nasty, classless guy. That's not going to work here in Sterling Heights.

LL: That is Michael Taylor. He's the mayor of Sterling Heights in a bellwether county in Michigan, a state that the Democrats need to flip. I'm joined by three Democrats to discuss the dilemma Mayor Taylor raises. Celinda Lake is a Democratic pollster and president of Lake Research Partners. She's also working for candidate Joseph Biden in this election. She is in our Washington, D.C. studio. Yasmine Taeb is the first Muslim woman and first Iranian-American to be elected to the Democratic National Committee. She is in McLean, Virginia. And Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African-American Studies at Emory University. She's the author of White Rage and One Person, No Vote. She is in Atlanta, Georgia. Hello to all of you.

YASMINE TAEB: Hello.

CELINDA LAKE: Hello.

LL: So the mayor of Michigan, you heard him. He says if you think Trump voters won't vote for him again because of a Ukrainian phone call or because he's a nasty, classless guy, you're mistaken. Yasmine Taeb, what will sway those voters?

YASMINE TAEB: No, absolutely. I think that, you know, one of the main reasons that we were not successful in 2016 was it because we didn't put in the time and resources to focus on our working class. We, you know, didn't emphasize the need to increase wages to ensure that our working families were being taken care of. As the mayor pointed out, in 2016, as you know, we lost with less than 80,000 votes that determined, you know, three battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. That should have easily gone to Hillary Clinton. And the reason why ultimately the Democrats were not successful was because, as noted earlier in the Republican panel by, you know, the voter that voted for President Trump is because Trump came in to these, you know, counties that were neglected by a Democrat and spoke to workers and talking about increasing wages. However, we know that's not what's happening right now. We know that Donald Trump has enabled corporate wage theft. We know that he's made it difficult for workers to unionize. I believe that we need a nominee for the Democratic Party who front and centre will be talking about the challenges and struggles of working class and our candidates are doing that. They're talking about, you know, ensuring that we raise wages, that we fight for our unions, that we provide health care for for every single person.

LL: Carol Anderson, I want to turn to to you. How big a role do you think issues like the Ukrainian call and the impeachment inquiry that's come of it, how big a role will that play in motivating Democrats to go to the polls?

CAROL ANDERSON: I think it will be more of confirmation that Donald Trump is lawless. You see that the polls have risen considerably in terms of supporting the impeachment inquiry. And so it's that lawlessness that that has been his leitmotif. I mean, he had to pay a huge fine for fraud before he was inaugurated.

LL: But it doesn't seem to be moving the needle substantially when it comes to voting intentions. They may support an impeachment inquiry, but it doesn't seem to be shifting the game when it comes to who they're going to vote for for president.

CAROL ANDERSON: And I think that one of the things that we haven't seen discussed in the debates and that still doesn't seem to be on the radar, is that the Democrats have to focus on what voter suppression does in these states, how it takes out Democratic constituency. Because that's where the target is. And unless we fully understand that messaging about Trump only gets us half the way there.

LL: Alright and we will talk some more about voter suppression. But just right now, I want to turn to Celinda Lake. What role do you think the impeachment inquiry will play in the Democratic bid for the White House?

CELINDA LAKE: Well, I think the impeachment inquiry demonstrates two major, major flaws of Donald Trump that are particularly affecting women. And by the way, there's a huge gender gap on impeachment. Women are solidly in favour of it. Men are more reluctant. Democrats, by the way, are solidly in favour of impeachment. But it shows, as Carol said, that he is above the law or thinks he is above the law. No one is above the law in this country. It shows a divisive present. And it shows his, Yasmin said, a president whose margins in the wealthy and more interested in himself than he is in the country. So it raises up some major themes. I do also agree that the Democrats have to have an economic platform. And every candidate, every Democratic candidates running on the economy, every Democrat candidate is running on health care reform. Every Democratic candidates running on climate change. Every Democratic candidates running on tax reform. So we have a strong platform outline besides impeachment.

LL: That leads so nicely into my next question, Celinda. One year out, there is still this very crowded field in the Democratic presidential primary. So how much does it matter who is the successful candidate, if as you say, they're all offering the same sorts of things on the platform?

CELINDA LAKE: Oh, I think it matters, but I'm working for one of the four. So, of course, I think it matters, although I admire many, many of the candidates. There's a big range of difference in terms of style. There's obviously a range of difference in demographics. There's a range of difference in approach, a pragmatic approach versus bold change, what plans cost, et cetera. So I think there are some differences, but any Democrat is going to offer a vivid contrast to Donald Trump. And I believe and we're probably on this phone maybe all supporting different candidates, but I think all of us would be united wholeheartedly behind Dennis the Menace if he could beat Donald Trump.

LL: OK, I do want to talk more about leadership. Let's listen to Sarah Lloyd. She votes Democrat and she ran for Congress in 2016. We caught up with her as she was doing her morning routine on her dairy farm outside of Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin.

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VOICE: I am still feeling the Bern. I am a Bernie Sanders person. I really am committed to the platform that Bernie has been talking about forever. And that really is about fighting back to build an economy that really works for our families and our communities. And the thing that is at the core of that is that we have to battle back against the corporate control of our economy. And so I do like the Democrats that are talking about that and that. It is very scary what's going on in the country. I'm very concerned about just all of the things that are happening. So I need a Democratic candidate that's going to fight and not trying to push towards the middle because they don't want to make anyone mad. Like we should all be really mad. And so I need a candidate that's going to fight. I think to win the presidency, the Democrats are going to need, especially in Wisconsin, they gotta go big and they gotta go bold because what we saw in 2016 is they went kinda low key and they didn't really ask people to vote for them and they didn't make people an offer that was interesting and needed for people's lives. And we saw what happened is a lot of people just didn't show up. The economy is crushing people. It's crushing people here in farm country. It's crushing people in our communities of colour, in our urban areas and we got to work together and we need candidates that are gonna push through on that.

LL: Alight. Sarah Loyd says go big and bold and that she's feeling the Bern. Carol Anderson, what do you think of her take on where the Democrats need to go?

CAROL ANDERSON: I do think that it's correct in that they've got to look at the issues of the economy, they've got to look at the issues of what's happening in farm country. And we also have to understand that when we talk about like flyover country or the rural areas that somehow we code that is just white only and those areas are not white only. And so we have to have a party and a candidate that are responsive to the various needs in those communities. And I'm just going to say it again, the massive drop in voting that happened in Wisconsin, 60,000 fewer votes between 2012 and 2016. If we don't pay attention to what these voter suppression laws did, then we're going to miss out again.

LL: Do you think that that is being ignored? II'm hearing a lot of talk about it.

CAROL ANDERSON: Yeah, I think it's being ignored. I think, we have some kind of discussions about gerrymandering, but we're not seeing the kinds of efforts about really unveiling and saying what happens when we require certain types of I.D. and and won't allow other types of I.D. or when we have to have I.D. at all. But given that the it's based on the lie of voter fraud, when we close down departments of motor vehicles where people can easily access those I.D. or when we mess with the hours in certain neighbourhoods, when we close polls in certain areas that make it much more difficult for people to vote and that we're very strategic about where we close those polls. And so it has to be a much broader analysis, an effort of understanding how we have put in these obstacles in certain communities. And those are communities that are overwhelmingly that overwhelmingly vote Democratic. So if we just say, oh, it was a bad candidate or, oh, didn't message well without understanding that the barriers that were put up by 2016 had a lot to do with the fact that there was a man installed in the White House.

LL: Point taken. Yasmine Taeb, what do you think about this idea that we're hearing that many say Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren's policies are too left wing? We heard from the mayor in Michigan who suggested they were considered radical.

YASMINE TAEB: Sure. So I tend to agree with Sarah. As I comment earlier, I was running for Congress in Wisconsin. I believe that, you know, in 2016 when Bernie Sanders was running, many of the ideas that he was running on and the policies he's advocating for were termed as a fringe policies. But now, as you see, the vast majority of the candidates running in the Democratic nomination have adopted his policies, their mainstream policies, and again, which we've discussed some of these. But, you know, when we're talking about Medicare for all and we're talking about, you know, fighting for a green new deal, when we're talking about raising wages to a living wage and fighting for unions and campaign finance reform and ensuring that candidates running for office, you don't accept corporate PAC money, all of those ideas that were once known to be these radical ideas in 2016 are kind of mainstream. Now we have progressive whining all across the country, progressive insurgents running and winning. And I do believe that that is a winning message for us. And I believe and support and agree with Sarah that we do need to go big and bold. And I understand that. So my co panellists who are supporting somebody other more kind of moderate, centrist candidate may not agree. But, you know, we I do believe that we need someone who is capable of motivating and energizing young people, communities of colour. Immigrants are obviously working families and, you know, ensuring that we get every single person out to the polls. And that's that's the way that we are going to be successful in ensuring that we have a candidate that speaks to all communities.

LL: Celinda Lake, over to you.

CELINDA LAKE: Well, I think that, first of all, Carol is making a very important point, which is the systematic and across institutions barriers to voting that are being put up and frankly, the lack of investment in getting turnout. We can't show up on October 15th and say, hey, come vote. We have to start this effort. Now, I think that Donald Trump is frankly the one who will energize young people and people of colour, etc. I think that he is very energized into the Democratic base and I think all of our nominees will be successful in getting out the vote. If these barriers and if the investments are made early, 41 percent of voters think the most important thing in their vote is beating Donald Trump of Democratic voters. And right now, today, brand new polling released by Siena College shows that Joe Biden is the one who's most successful in five of the six states.

LL: Albeit by a very narrow margin.

CELINDA LAKE: Right. By very narrow margin, but he won by very narrow margin as Yasmin gave those numbers earlier on. I think the point right now is we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to get that blue collar voter in Pittsburgh and we have to get that congressional candidate in Wisconsin. And I think it's very, very important that we nominate someone who can also appeal, particularly to white, independent, non-college educated women who are the key swing vote in 2020.

LL: Yasmine, I want to come back to you, because we hear between you and Celinda, maybe some differences in what the Democratic Party means in leadership. At some point the party's going to have to come together around a candidate. What do you think needs to be done to unite the different wings of the Democratic Party?

YASMINE TAEB: You know, and this is this is going to be a challenge for us moving forward. There's been a lot of discussions right now in terms of what's going to be happening with the convention and whether it's going to be a contested convention, whether one candidate is going to be garnering the majority of the vote or not. And as of right now, that's unclear and sort of unlikely. And again, I think that if we hadn't to the convention with, you know, not a clear picture of who's going to be the nominee, that I would hope that, you know, that the candidates that are polling it at the bottom would choose to drop out and kind of support the the ones that the you know, the top two or top three. I do believe that we need to ensure that we don't dismiss or neglect any of the concerns of our community. And again, we've talked a lot about what our working families are looking for, what young people are looking for, young voters right now. One of the top issues for them is climate change, making sure that we have a candidate that that's a priority for the young people really care about candidates who care about their education. Making it easier for them to go to college and be able to pay off their college loans. You know someone who cares about making the political process more fair and ensuring that we get corporate money out of politics. So I do hope that whoever our nominee ultimately is that, you know, they respect and listen to the concerns of all of our communities and take that in mind.

LL: I want the three of you to just listen to one more piece of tape. This is filmmaker Michael Moore. He warned Democrats in 2016 that Donald Trump would win and on MSNBC, he gave some advice to Democrats for 2020.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: It's always possible, every Democrat or anybody who's thinking of voting for the Democrat, which I hope is everybody, must think from every day, from today until November 3rd next year that it is possible for Trump to pull it off. You have to think like that. Whether you know too many liberals, I think, want to just feel good. And there's no time for that. We have to behave as if the worst could happen.

LL: And Carol Anderson, what do you think of Michael Moore's advice?

CAROL ANDERSON: We do have to pay attention that the worst could happen, because, I mean, we have to be cognizant and of of foreign interference in our elections because we haven't done what needs to be done to secure our elections. We need to be cognizant of the kind of shutting down of key Democratic constituencies because the electoral functions of states are run by Republicans. And we see that this is a stronghold that he has on them. And we need to be cognizant of the fact that he drums up. I have talked about it before. He puts a kilo of pure, uncut white supremacy on the table. And that's the drug he feeds to a constituency that gets riled up. And so he gives them Muslim bans and xenophobia and children in cages and says, I'm making America great. And so we have to be aware of all of that. This is a man who does not play by the rules because he does not believe that the rules apply to him.

LL: OK. We we have about a minute and a half left and I want to go around the table. Celinda Lake, right now, and I think I might know the answer to your question. Who do you think will be the Democratic nominee and why will he or she win the election?

CELINDA LAKE: Well, I am very worried that whoever our nominee is will not beat Donald Trump. I am extremely concerned about that. And between the economy and the kind of massive money an organization that he has amassed, I am terrified of that. And I think, as Joe Biden says, four years of Donald Trump is an aberration. Eight years permanently changes the character of the country. I believe that every single one of our nominees has broader policies, bolder policies than we had in 2016. And I think that the most important thing we have to focus on is one, who can be Donald Trump? And two, who can start day one to clean up the mess and chaos that Donald Trump has started?

LL: Alright. We have less than a minute now. Yasmine, same question to you.

YASMINE TAEB: I do also believe that, you know, any of our candidates running right now in the Democratic nomination would obviously be a far better choice than Donald Trump. I believe that our nominee will either be Senator Bernie Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren, because, you know.

LL: OK. I have to give Carol her chance too. Carol Anderson, what's your best guess on who will be the Democratic nominee?

CAROL ANDERSON: I think that it's going to be the one that can stimulate the base the most, and that's with dealing with issues of climate change and with the issue of massive inequality.

LL: Got a name for me?

CAROL ANDERSON: [Laughter]

LL: Alright. All three of you, thank you. I'm sure we'll be speaking with you again.

CELINDA LAKE: Thank you.

CAROL ANDERSON: Thank you so much.

YASMINE TAEB: Thank you.

LL: Celinda Lake is a Democratic pollster and president of Lake Research Partners. She was in our Washington, D.C. studio. Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African-American Studies at Emory University. Her newest book is One Person, No Vote. She was in Atlanta, Georgia. And Yasmine Taeb is an elected member of the Democratic National Committee. She was in McLean, Virginia. Well, coming up in our next half hour. His grandfather was a commandant at Auschwitz. Her grandparents survived its horrors. Now they're sharing a stage and urging a new generation to never forget. My conversation with Rainer Hoss and Allison Nazarian in about 90 seconds. I'm Laura Lynch. You're listening to The Current.

[Music]

The grandson of the commandant of Auschwitz explains why he believes the evil o Nazism never died

Guests: Allison Nazarian, Rainer Hoss

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I don't know what I feel today. I honestly don't know.

VOICE 2: It's very sad. It's a very sad day. We always said never again, but it did it happen again. It's just unbelievable. Eleven people lost their lives just because they are Jews.

LL: Two Holocaust survivors, Carl and Bella Schachter, clearly shaken after the attack one year ago on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest act of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history. Eleven people were killed and for many, it was a troubling echo of a dark period in history when industrial scale killing was the policy of a Nazi government. And as Holocaust Education Week continues, my next two guests are determined to keep that memory alive. Allison Nazarian's grandparents survived Auschwitz. She is the author of Aftermath: A Granddaughter's Story of Legacy, Healing and Hope. We reached her in Boca Raton. And Rainer Hoss's grandfather was Rudolf Hoss, the notorious commandant of Auschwitz. He's become an anti-racist activist. We reached him in Stuttgart, Germany. Hello to you both.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: Hello.

RAINER HOSS: Hello. Thanks for inviting me to the program.

LL: Let's start with you. How did you react when you heard about the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh?

RAINER HOSS: I really get angry about things like that. Well, we have that in Germany as well right now. We have it in England. I think it's a worldwide sentiment which always get attacked by the Jews. So they get tracked down by all these fascists and national socialists and I really hate that.

LL: You heard those Holocaust survivors in Pittsburgh make a direct connection between that massacre last year and the Nazi final solution. Did you see the connection?

RAINER HOSS: Oh, of course. I think that the perils they use in modern ways are the same like the Nazi regime used in the past. So there is no difference between it.

LL: Allison Nazarian your grandparents survived Auschwitz and other camps. What do you think about when you hear the voices of those two survivors in Pittsburgh?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: It literally brought tears to my eyes because the lady sounded so much like my grandmother with the accent. My grandmother used to always say which many Jews said never again and you know, they hate us because we're Jewish. And growing up in America, you know, I didn't see that as much. I knew what my grandparents experience was, but I kind of felt like that was an isolated, horrible thing that happened and that'll never happen again to us. And obviously that, you know, that is a sure thing. So just hearing that really brings up a lot of different things for me, for sure.

LL: Rainer, tell me about your grandfather, Rudolf Hoss.

RAINER HOSS: He was a conducted a million mass murderer of Jews and different opinions of the Reich. So he never felt regretted in any way what he did. So I'm ashamed about the legacy of my family and that nobody out of the family really takes care about it. They glorified him until today. Said what a good soldier he was. And it's incredible for me.

LL: Yeah your own family glorified him. Can you describe a little bit more for us though, what his role was, what he did at Auschwitz?

RAINER HOSS: So he created Auschwitz on the beginning. So that means he was the first time 1939 there and visited and saw there is some stone barracks there. Yeah and he starts to imprison people. And in his memoirs, he said it was not planned to became an extermination camp. I found out now over 30 years research, it was planned from the beginning to execute all the opponents and Jews of the Reich. Not in Germany, to do that outside Germany, so nobody really gets notice about it. And after it, we know what the result of it. When we were there, there was no more than 30 times, there was over 4000 students and all. And it's always a huge grief for me to go inside while I know that's the place he creates. And it was not that somebody said you have to, no he was willing to do it and he did it.

LL: Allison, tell me about your grandparents.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: So my grandparents were both Polish Jews from a city called Lodz in Poland, which was the second largest city after Warsaw. And they were both in the Lodz ghetto. They were both in Auschwitz. My grandmother was taken from Auschwitz. She says she was saved from Auschwitz and taken to hard labour. She had to clean up basically rubble from bombings. That's how she was saved from at Auschwitz and then she was liberated. My grandfather, I believe, was liberated in Dachau, but they had both spent time in Auschwitz. My grandmother, until the day she died in her 90s, remembered with precision the night that she arrived at Auschwitz on the platform. She said she saw a Mengele with it with a German shepherd and her mother at that time was separated from her. She went one way and her mother went the other way and she never saw her mother again. So that's the kind of story and the kind of details that I was brought up with from the day I was born. And, you know, that was something that was kind of ingrained in me from the very earliest stories. So Auschwitz, to me was something very personal in so many ways.

LL: Josef Mengele being the doctor who carried out what can only be described as cruel, barbaric experiments on people and children in the camp.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: Yes. Yes.

LL: Rudolf Hoss was arrested after the Nazi capitulation in 1945. He testified at Nuremberg with other Nazi war criminals. Listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

Sounds from Rudolf Hoss's testimony at Nuremberg in 1945.

LL: Now Rainer Hoss, what goes through your mind when you hear your grandfather speaking about the fuhrer, the SS and Auschwitz?

RAINER HOSS: Yeah, it really haunts me all the time if I see it together with the film. So to see his face and he's such a normal person. And the only thing I get as a result out of it is that everybody inherited some person. It's only the way the situation how we let him out. But obedience and then what he said or wrote in his memoirs that he followed obedience and that he never questioned any things, I can't believe that.

LL: Well, yeah, was he an ordinary man who was caught up in an evil system or was he evil himself, do you think?

RAINER HOSS: A bit of both. Well, after my research, so many people think he was like he said, he served in the First World War. That was a lie. So he was indoctrinated in France, I think 1924, 1928 after he came out of the prison and became a friend of Himmler. So that was the radicalization of him, an indoctrination of the regime. And he was a willing tool. So he never said anything against it. He said okay, these are the enemies of the state. We have to act. Most of the Germans did the same.

LL: Your grandfather was eventually hanged for war crimes. I'm wondering what you think of him being executed for what he did?

RAINER HOSS: I'm normally not a friend of executions, but in that way I can accept that and I know many times it's always the first round I go when I go inside the camp to go round the gallow. He found the end on that gallow. And it gives me some freedom inside.

LL: He was actually hanged within sight of where the Jews were killed in the camp at Auschwitz.

RAINER HOSS: He was hanged on the main camp and on a special way he was the only commander on that way. With a few on his villa, with the few on the crematoria and on his head office, so the prisoners build the gallows shortly in France and cleaned up everything. So they cleaned up as well. The crematoria they open from the ashes off to kill people there, so that he get not mixed with anybody else and then hang him in 1947.

LL: And when you went there the first time and you saw that, you saw where your grandfather was executed. What went through your mind?

RAINER HOSS: In some ways, it was really, really spooky for me to enter Auschwitz the first time. And it was 2009 when I was the first time there and I went in. It's always, really always to say my heart beat goes up and I'm in a completely different mood. I cannot really explain that situation. It's kind of fear, it's kind of, yeah, strange situation for me to know he was the guy who create all of it.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: So Rainer is talking about his grandfather and he mentioned 1947. That was the year that my mom, who was their only child, was born in Bergen Belsen, which was considered, it was called a DP or a displaced persons camp, which was basically a refugee camp. So I'm just thinking sort of like this cycle of life or how things overlap. People think, OK, the Holocaust is over. In my family a lot of the reverberations were just starting. So my grandparents went on to move to America in 1951. They became the most proud and patriotic Americans you could imagine. And my grandmother especially went out to have just a beautiful, wonderful, full life. But she I mean, she was a master compartmentalizer because she never forgot one detail. Nothing. Nothing, Nothing. Literally until the day she died. So it kind of just showed me that you can go on and have this beautiful full life and you can have joy and you can have grandkids and great grandkids, but it never, ever, ever leaves. And it doesn't just end with that generation. It passed on to my mom, who ended up having a very tragic life, and then it passed on to me. And I kind of thought, OK, this is where the pattern ends. I have to heal this and I have to make sure you know I don't pass this on to my kids. But it's just important to know like these things don't just end, you know, on the date that they end in history. They go on for years and sometimes for generations.

LL: How do you heal this?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: How do you heal this? It's taken me a long time. For instance, as I was saying earlier, every story I was told from, you know, basically the first time I can remember hearing stories was about the Holocaust and I was surrounded by it in so many ways. All of my grandparents friends were Holocaust survivors. Every book in our house was about the Holocaust. And I just remember thinking, well, I first remember being surprised that not everybody's grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I kind of thought in my early days that's just how it was. So as I got older, I realized, OK, this is my family history, but it's not everybody else's family history. And I realized that my mom didn't have the mental health really to to kind of take matters into her own hands and pass on the good parts of it. But without the I guess, the bad parts of it. So I decided at a younger age I was going to do that when I had kids. And, you know, I was going to tell my kids about our family history and I was going to make sure they knew about it. But I wasn't going to immerse every aspect of their life into it. And I was going to make sure that they didn't have this to heal from. And my kids today are both university students, young adults. And I think I've done a pretty good job of that. It's not easy. And, you know, I wish I could tell you this is how you do it. You know, A, B, C and D, but it's a really long process. I think the first time somebody ever told me, you know, you have to break this, I was 16 years old. And, you know, I'm 48 today. So it takes a while.

LL: Yeah it does. I mean, you are both united by this really dark chapter in the history of the world. I want to ask you both what it's like for you to actually be listening to each other. Rainer, what is it like to hear Allison?

RAINER HOSS: So it was my choice to go deeper inside that situation of I don't know if I would call it healing like like my family ignores all of it and glorified it. So I think there are many factors, but it shows on the end that we can talk on the same program about the same situation from different angles of history. So it should be not always that way that we said, okay he is the perpetrator and he is the victim side. No, I not really do that that way. So I'm right now connected with 176 survivors worldwide. I was part of the modern trials against like the bookkeeper of Auschwitz and help the survivors. later on as well with the compensation of war stuff. We found many, many difficulties and judgments in a way where I said, wow, I can't believe that happens in Germany again. So things like that, I don't really like.

LL: Allison, what does it feel like listening to Rainer, knowing who his grandfather was and how he feels about everything now?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: So I think there are kind of several layers for me to that answer. On one hand, I respect what he's doing and I have a lot of compassion and empathy. Not only is he speaking out about his family history, but it seems like he's kind of defying his family that's here now too, and I can't imagine what that's like. On the other hand, I know like my grandparents, for instance, and my grandmother in particular were not forgiving people. And, you know, I heard about the Nazis and the Poles and how they all hated us and what they did to us, you know, every day of my life. So it's hard to reconcile that with my desire to be a loving person and a compassionate person and somebody who promotes healing. But I do think that the only way you do make changes is to do the uncomfortable things to go against sometimes what was ingrained in you when you were growing up to put the fear aside, even if it's scary to do that and to open yourself up to understanding what might have happened and how that can be avoided in the future. So it's different layers. I'm happy to meet him. I'm happy to hear from him. I also think, gosh, what would my zaidi think if I was sharing this interview with this person. And I appreciate that you're laughing because it's not something I'm saying about you personally in any way. I just think, you know, I have one outlook, but the people who raised me had a different outlook. And, you know, you have to always kind of reconcile that as you move forward.

LL: Well, Allison, is there something that you'd like to say directly to Rainer?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: I mean, the main thing is just that I really what he's doing in his own personal life, it can't be easy. And, you know, it's something he was born into, just like I was born into what happened to my grandparents. He literally had no you know, it's the kind of thing like it's sort of like the most important thing that happened in your life, but you weren't even born yet. So how can you have any control over that or even apologize for it or proclaim it. So I respect you. I can't imagine what the rest of your family is like if they're lying to you about what happened or about, you know, who your grandpa was.

RAINER HOSS: They really like me.

LL: No Rainer, let's be serious here. What does your family think of your role as a public anti-Nazi activist?

RAINER HOSS: Oh, they really hate me for it. So one of my aunts, she lives in Washington, D.C. and she said Rainer opens the Pandora's box. So and she starts accusing me in so many ways, like I'm drug addicted. And he became a father in the age of 17. And he lies, nothing like that happens. So I said OK, I will prove you wrong and I did. The first thing when I wrote my book and make all the research, the first book I wrote, I send it over to her with best greetings now, that's your father. That's my grandfather. That's our legacy. So why you hide? And since that moment, she never said anything about me and then I found out that one of my cousins, she lives in Australia and she is a vice president of the White Aryans.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: Wow.

RAINER HOSS: So I see all that stuff never ends in my family and I'm the only one still, the only one of the whole family who speaks openly about it in public.

LL: Allison, you touched on your mother having a hard time handling all of everything of the legacy over the years. Can you tell us what happened to your mother?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: Sure. My mom was born in a refugee camp in Germany, came over at the age of 4 to Baltimore in the United States. Was an only child. Never had siblings and grew up, not the happiest childhood. She was left alone, alive. My grandparents worked very, very hard when they came to America like many immigrants and didn't talk that much at the time about what happened to them. All my mom knew was that she had no relatives. I think she had one uncle. It was very lonely for her and it was very confusing and she never really came to terms or healed, to use that word, from what happened to her or what she heard from her parents. And at the age of 51, she committed suicide, which was about 20 years ago. Back then, I think she thought she was the only person who experienced any of this. She didn't feel there were people she could talk to. But as my grandmother went on in the 1980s and 1990s, she became a very well-known and popular speaker in the Washington, D.C. area. She would tell her story at churches and synagogues and Rotary Clubs, and she even spoke at the White House in the 90s and she was blossoming. And her story really empowered her and inspired others. Meanwhile, my mom was kind of just getting worse and worse and didn't have that kind of an outlet or didn't feel that kind of inspiration or I guess didn't feel empowered by what happened to her, what she experienced and kind of deteriorated from there. So it was kind of like a dichotomy in my family where one person was able to come to terms with things and the other just really went on a downward spiral. So for my mom, I also feel a great responsibility to kind of do what I can to, I don't know, not just to heal, but to tell the story and to show that something like this does reverberate through generations. It doesn't just end on a date in history when things are done.

LL: Rainer I want to ask both of you what you think the legacy of Auschwitz is? Rainer, what do you think that the legacy is?

RAINER HOSS: I think that in my opinion, of course, I created a foundation nad our main motto is never forget, always learn. So I think at the moment when I see what happens in the world, especially right now in Europe, it's really hard for me to believe that people not learn out of history.

LL: Allison, what do you think the legacy of Auschwitz is?

ALLISON NAZARIAN: I think I'd echo a lot of that. I think what happens is as you get further removed from whatever the horrible event was, you think, oh, that's ancient history, that could never happen today. And then the wheels we see today are in motion and all sorts of ways, starting with the clip we paid and played in the beginning of the shooting and in Pittsburgh and just, you know, things we see in the news every day. And then you think, well, that's not going to happen here, that's happening somewhere else or that's not going to happen to my people. That's going to happen to another group of people. And, you know, it's like that poem, first they came for this group, then they came for this group and they came from this group. And then they came for me, but there was nobody left to help me. And so it does take doing the hard things. It does take coming together like us talking today, even though it might feel uncomfortable for me in some way or for Rainer in some way. You know, that's how change happens and you don't always know that you're the person that can that can make a little change or that, you know, your change might reflect in somebody else's life that you don't even know is listening. So it's hard. It's not easy. But we do have you know when those people say never again, no matter what they're referring to, we have to take it very seriously.

LL: Well, I thank both of you and I have tremendous respect for both of you for coming on and listening to each other and speaking to each other with such great heart. Thank you.

RAINER HOSS: Thank you.

ALLISON NAZARIAN: Thank you for having us.

LL: Rainer Hoss is an anti-racist activist, and he's the grandson of Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz. He was in Stuttgart. And Allison Nazarian is the granddaughter of Auschwitz survivors and the author of Aftermath: A Granddaughter's Story of Legacy, Healing and Hope. Both were in Toronto over the weekend speaking at the Sarah & Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

[Music]

LL: That's our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. If you missed our special coverage of the U.S. election one year out, be sure to download the new CBC Listen app. You can catch up on show highlights on demand anytime. Now before we pass the mic, we're going to leave you with something that might spark a bit of nostalgia.

SOUNDCLIP

[Scene from This is Spinal Tap]

LL: Yes. That's from the classic mockumentary. This is Spinal Tap, released 35 years ago. The movie followed a fictional heavy metal band as the members attempted a comeback tour. Now, the rock n' roll world of that movie may seem kind of out dated today, but is it really? As CBC producer Jennifer Keene found out, at least one Alberta band is keeping the spirit of Spinal Tap alive. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Interview with heavy metal band Striker]

[Music: Theme]

Nov. 4, 2019 episode transcript

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