The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop John T. Cotes and Reverend Jeff Jemison on FCB Faith. And we are happy to have with us another exciting guest, none other than Ohio's representative from the forty fourth. District, Josh Williams. Josh is gonna talk about an article that he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It was an op ed and we're going to just dive right into is very interesting. Josh, how are you today. I'm doing really good. Thank you guys for having me on again. Yeah, and before we go any further, just like to say congratulations for being re elected. The article that you wrote appeared in the Wall Street Journal just a couple days after the Nov. Fifth election. It was entitled and it caught my attention and I'm sure many others thousands of others or probably millions, and it was entitled why the GOP is winning over minorities. I want to talk about that a little bit. Could you just kind of delve right into it and tell us what precipitated you to write that issue article. Yeah, so during my reelection, we were on the ground, not only in my district, but where a lot of my family members and my wife's family members live in the Inner City, which I don't represent in my district. But you know, when we go to family outings, were going to restaurants and bars. I go to my barbershop and we're talking political issues because it's a politically charged environment at the time, and I'm listening to black men and women like myself that are talking about the issues they care about, which were inflation, job security, job creation, good schools for their kids, lower taxes, being able to keep more money in their own pockets, you know, community safety. Immigration, but from a different perspective, they were more concerned with the fact that people were coming across the border getting resources given to them for free. But black people have struggled in the Inner City for generations and weren't getting that same type of reciprocal treatment by the federal government. So it was frustrating them. These were the issues I was hearing on the ground. But yet when I looked at the Democrat Party, both in my own race and in other races across the country, I'm watching the Democrat Party push the issue of abortion. I'm watching them push the issue of LGBTQ issues. I'm watching them send a message forward that is not resonating with the everyday people that I'm talking to on the ground that looked like me and looked like my wife. So I've literally was astounded when this continued leading all the way into the election. When I saw them making the stallion, you know, and Cardi B and Beyonce, I'm like, man, they're really pandering to minorities in a way that's disrespectful to the issues they care about. Maybe they don't realize it. And we walked into the election cycle and then boom, Trump wins the popular vote. He wins a overwhelming increase in both male Black votes, Black female votes, Hispanic even Hispanic female votes. And afterwards I thought I was going to wake up, you know, from this election cycle and have the Democrat Party try to address themselves, reevaluate what they needed to do to get back the trust and vote of the Black community and minority communities. But soon on Thursday morning, I turned on the TV and I'm listening to MSNBC say the reason Trump won is because he dug into or tapped into the institutional misogyny in America. He tapped into the institutional racism in America. I turned on CNN and I heard pundits saying black men need to reevaluate internally why they voted for someone that's a fascist and a Nazi. And that's when I realized, Oh my god, it's not that they're out of touch. They're just ignoring us. They expect our vote, they almost think it's bought and paid for, and they've moved on to other issues trying to build their coalition. And that's what precipitated me writing the Beed. I was simply trying to give an alert to my Democrat colleagues that are more moderate, there's a home here for you in the GOP, but also to my black and brown brothers and sisters that don't feel bad voting on your issues instead of your party affiliation. I was an issue voter for a. Very long time, an independent voter for a very long time, and when I voted those issues, I started to notice a trending my own votes that I'm voting for more Republicans as I got a little bit older, because those issues were being championed more by the GOP and the Democrats turned their back on it and went to these other issues as a conservative Christian that I don't agree with. That's why I think they're losing black and brown voters. And I think the GOP has the ability to pick up these voters consistently, not just in this election, but consistently if we stay on message and on issue. I agree with you one. It really amazed me with the amount of pandering that was going on. And I think that it's somewhat insulting to African Americans, especially men, to have Taylor Swift and all of these rock stars and and entertainers get out there to get your vote. And I think that's just it's it's it's so lightweight and not really addressing the pocketbook issues, the wallet issues, the bread and butter issues that affect most men, and not just men, but most most families. So I'm glad to hear you say that. What do you think can be done? I mean, because there's. Still a lot of people out there that just will don't get it. Uh do those folks have to do? Is it a generational thing? Do you think where people have to I hate to say this, but kind of like die off or just just rid into the sunset and the new generation of young people steps up and starts being involved with both parties like other like every other ethnic group. I think it's. Important that we get the young people engaged, like myself, into the party so young people can feel represented. Representation is always a good thing, But what I think is more important is that the Republican Party, not only in Ohio but across the United States, including our federal government, stay can consistently on message. You know, we don't get this power and then all of a sudden go back to pushing policies that can be shaped a certain way by mainstream media that are not friends to us. Instead, we should focus on policies that the average blue collar worker and the inner cities and in the royal areas are going to care about. You know, I said it on my Fox News interview. You know, these issues are not white issues, brown issues, Black issues, their American issues. When you address it from that perspective, it will automatically affect black people. Right when you fix job creation problems, when you fix workforce development problems, making it where people can get draw job training and upskill training for free in our community, like we're doing here in Ohio. When you make it about lowering the income tax, when you make it about removing tax on tips, when you make it about hopefully, something I want to push is removing the payroll tax on ten ninety nine employees, giving them the benefit of being entrepreneurs. When you start approaching issues like that, things that are going to affect all Americans and and black people see how it affects them as well, they will vote for that for the future. But when you go to the table saying, well, what are your. Black and brown issues, and you highlight things like racism, and what you do is you try to charge the political cycle with Black Lives Matter movements or protests about the killing of one individual, Will hundreds of people die on a weekend in Chicago and you don't say a word that politically charged? Uh? Uh? Will own that that politically politically charged? Uh? Pandering right that emotionally charged. Pandering to minorities only works on a select number of people that are emotionally sensitive and are not emotionally uh mature enough to say, I'm not going to buy into you having someone dancing on the stage torking, I'm not going to have you. I'm not going to buy into you bringing on a celebrity like Oprah, and then afterwards we find out that all of you were paid to be there, right, kind of false endorsements. Instead, I'm going to worry about the average guy in the home, trying to provide force family, try to pay the rent, try to pay the mortgage, try to pay the car. No, trying to figure out why housing prices or housing valuations have increased, and Lucas County sixty percent, you know, over the last three year reevaluation period, increasing our property taxes tenfold. People care about that stuff, and we need not only President Trump to address it, but we need the newly controlled Republican Senator House to address it. We need our state legislatures to buy into this American First agenda. And we need to point out when the Democrat Party is pandering to a particular group because it's not. Oh. I pray that black men and women and brown men and women in America realize their true power. See. I can get in a long philosophical conversation about you know, how we were in the civil rights movement and Herbert Hoover saw that as a national security a crisis, the two parent black family and the power that we had to bring forward the civil rights movement and get real results and the policies. I can show you how it was intensity used to dissolve the nuclear black family, make it into a single mother household, put the black men in prison, shut down the industrialized training facilities in our inner city schools. So you wouldn't be able to get a good job right out of high school like we used to be able to. You would have to go off to college and get these degrees, and then they wouldn't hire us like I can show you the institutional racism that came from the actual Democratic Party that hurt us. But what black and brown people need to realize is if you pay attention to that election. We said it for a long time, if Trump can get twelve to fifteen percent of the black vote, the election will be hit. He's swung it harder than that, right He's He's swung it way harder than that. Even when it came to Hispanic males, Oh my god, he picked up huge gains there. And when they realize their true power, that they are the group that can help select a president, they need to start bringing calling people to tasks to fix their everyday problems. When they realize that and they look at, well, who's putting forward policies that can benefit us. They're going to come home to the Republican Party like we were up into the nineteen sixties. Yeah, there's so many people that come to mind that form alliances. So many African American religious communities and other folks form alliances with folks that they have no belief in what they stand for. For instance, you can walk in on my I'd say ninety nine percent of the churches want young boys to grow up to be men, they want young girls to grow up to be women. They have ministries, women's ministries, men's ministries, and the importance of these things that are just critical to the existence of reproduction and sustaining are you know, Black communities and people as a race. So and there's so many issues like that where they get watered down and compromised. And what happens is there's a lot of people that want people to stand up for what's right, what's always been right. And you know, for instance, you haven't heard a thing about men can get pregnant since this election has been over, and hopefully we will never hear any more. Of that stuff. But they're things like that that the Democratic Party, the Democrat Party embraced and started embracing so much of this uh, this this these cultural issues that that just go against the grain. And there's so many people, so many regular I hate to say regular, but just so many men, traditional values and so forth that don't want to embrace a lot of this stuff that uh is non uh that that is coming uh into into existence that really is to their own detriment. So one of the reasons, yeah, one of the reasons we're not hearing, you know, making get pregnant anymore is because they just lost the House, the Senate, the presidency, and we control the Supreme Court. So mainstream media on a national level is not gonna talk about that anymore. They're gonna talk Trump bad for the next two years and try to be an obstructions. But what we got to do is we got to continue to pay attention to the state legislatures. Right, We're gonna we're gonna continue to see Democrat legislators push that agenda. Right, We're gonna see California do what they just did and try to increase the age of how long what the age gap can be from a person having sex with a minor. You know, they just made it where it's ten years. So most states, like in Ohio, we have this caveat in the law where if you have sex with someone that's under age or even sexual conduct, that's unlawful, but if you're within four years of that person, it's a lower offense. When in California, they tried to make it lawful to have sex within ten years, so a fourteen year old could be having sex with a twenty four year old and they tried to put it under the wraps of This is disproportionally harming, harming the LGBTQ community, as in men having sex with boys and girls, women having sex with little girls. And all we have to. Do is continue to pay attention to the state legislatures because they are still pushing these issues. It's just on a national level, they just lost control. So they're they're moving into preservation mode, which is Trump bad. These are his bad appoint to, this is his bad policy. We vote knowing this, we vote knowing this, We vote knowing this. That's what they're gonna do moving forward because that helps their agenda. And then just like Barack Obama when he got elected into a second term, he ran under one thing, and then once he got in office, that's what all the I'm not going to defend the Defensive Marriage Act. I'm gonna promote gay marriage. I'm gonna promote LGBTQ issues once he was actually in there. So we're not going to see those issues again unless they get back in power in either chamber, which won't be at least for hopefully a long time, but we're gonna have an opportunity for at least two years. Absolutely. I'm gonna let our producer jump in here with a quick question. I'm sure we want to say something. Go ahead, yeah, quick question, Josh. I mean, we've seen the historic outcome of the election, and we saw you guys talked about the increase of the black and Hispanic vote. But we also know that there are issues that are maybe not necessarily unique to our community, but they're more acute in our community that we're still dealing with. So, now that the Republicans have won these voters over, what responsibility do you think the party has to address those issues in order to keep those voters. I think they have an obligation, and I will even use a stronger word, they have a mandate to address those issues. But here's the issue, Derby, is that in order to address those issues, they have to know about it. You're asking a party. That doesn't look like us to find issues when people in the inner city won't work with us. So like I've tried to fix issues in the inner city of Toledo working with our county commissioners on parts of my county I don't even live in, and they refuse to work with me. They don't want me to address those issues because as soon as Josh Williams addresses those issues, it's a win for Josh Williams, and it hurts our party's image because Republicans are fixing issues in our cities instead of us being able to fix it, so they play the oppositionists. What needs to happen now is those black and brown individuals that voted for Donald Trump and in Ohio Bernie Moreno and myself, they need to come forward with their issues and let us as good legislators come up with solutions for those issues. But you can't expect individuals to find the issues in your community when we're being blocked out by the party that controls a lot of those communities. Because even though he won those votes, Toledo still controlled by Democrats. The county is still controlled by Democrats. Yeah, he picked up margins in those areas, but as soon as we try to fix problems in the area, we get pushed back by the elected officials. Absolutely. That's why we've launched this show, Keeping America First to be a bridge. We're going to be a bridge to those that need to come across, those that need to come across down I'll tell you one thing that we have found in our discussions with all across the country. What's happening is a lot of folks are afraid to speak up. They've been been banned on social media for speaking up. First Amendment rights have been violated. And we want to be that bridge and that conduit to bring new people across the bridge to join us and making this country better and keeping America First. Well, we're out of time, Josh closing words, and we're going to have you back. Well, I appreciate you guys having me on again. We're going to continue to push forward to see more black and brown representation within the GOP. Let's keep fighting the good fight. Thank you, and thank you to our audience.
