-Thank you so much for being here.
-Thank you for having me, man.
This is late night "Late Night."
-This is late night "Late Night."
-Yeah, like tomorrow.
[ Laughter ]
-I should really stress,
you have a show at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow.
-Yeah, I got to be up at 4:20 in the morning.
-Wow. And that's every day, 4:20?
-Yes. my phone tells me to get ready for bed around 8:00.
I should be in bed by 8:20 to get eight hours of sleep.
That never happens, but it's the thought that counts.
-That's good. [ Laughter ]
Your show "The Breakfast Club" --
you have people from all walks of life on your show.
And this year it has become a stop
for a lot of the candidates. -Yeah.
-You've had Harris, Sanders, Booker, Buttigieg?
-Booker, Warren, Williamson.
-Anybody surprised you?
Anybody different than what you expected when they came in?
-I mean, I didn't have any expectations of any of them,
to be honest with you.
-Yeah. That's helpful.
-And I think that's the best way to approach it
when it comes to politicians, go in with no expectations,
because if you have an expectation,
you'll probably get let down.
So if you have no expectations, then you'll be like,
"Oh, he's not as bad as they say politicians are."
-Yeah, that's good. You just look at it as a macro.
-There you go. There you go.
-I imagine that when they're on their show,
you get to talk to them about things
that they are maybe not talking about other places
and introduce them to an audience that they're not --
So you probably provide them great value.
-Well, the best thing for me is I'm not a political pundit.
Like, I'm actually stupid when it comes to politics.
So I don't know anything.
I'm just, like, a private citizen that has a vote.
So I'm talking to them from the perspective of,
"Why I would vote for you?"
That's it. Simple, nothing else.
I don't have any vested interest in any one party, nothing.
-That must be nice for them.
-You know what? Let me rephrase that.
I will vote liberal this year.
Okay? -Okay.
[ Cheers and applause ]
And I voted liberal the only other two times
I voted or three times.
-You're 3 for 3? -Yes.
-I want to ask, this is your second book.
And you wrote this book only 18 months after your first book,
which was a bestseller.
-"The New York Times" bestseller.
-"New York Times" bestseller.
-I mean, because it could be a bestseller at, you know,
a pharmacy somewhere. [ Cheers and applause ]
-Yeah, yeah, you want to make sure. Yeah.
-"New York Times" bestseller, important to say, you know.
-[ Laughs ]
And did you have a plan after your first book
to turn around 18 months later with the second one?
-No, you know.
You know how it is? Have you ever put a book out?
-No, I haven't. So I don't know how it is.
-Yeah, exactly.
But, you know, they'll push you to do a second book,
but I really wasn't in a rush to do a second book
because I don't do things for money.
So I don't want to do things unless I got something to say,
and so I started going to therapy to, like, deal with
my anxiety and my PTSD and my bouts of depression,
and you know how it is when you go to therapy.
Like, you're sitting there, talking to your therapist,
and they're peeling back layers
of all kind of stuff in your life.
You're in there crying about your father
and you didn't know that you hated your father
but you really love your father
but she makes you feel like you hate him.
[ Laughter ]
And so it's like I started keeping a journal of everything
that was going on in therapy, and then I got with a doctor
named Dr. Ish because what I was trying to do is translate
what I was experiencing in therapy.
But what she was really making me do is just understand
what I was feeling so I would be able to explain my feelings
when it came to the clinical correlations.
I got a doctor named Dr. Ish to do that,
and it just became the pages in that book.
-And so you're very open and honest
about your anxiety and depression.
You also talk about how there's a real negative stigma
about issues like that in the black community.
Did you feel it was really important for you
to have that honesty with your readers in this case?
-Yeah, I mean, for me, man, the easiest thing in the world
is to be myself.
You know what I'm saying?
Like I can't front -- Like, right now I'm tired as hell.
[ Laughter ]
I had to say that because I feel like y'all are looking at me
and looking like, "He really looks tired."
But really that's just my probably anxiety.
[ Laughter ]
-We mentioned all the, you know, Democratic candidates
you've had on the show.
Have you had conservative candidates
or conservative pundits on your show?
Do you like talking to people like that?
We sometimes have trouble having them come on the show because
they want to talk about everything but Donald Trump.
They don't want to defend him,
and obviously it's something we'd like to ask them.
-Kind of hard to defend that guy at this point.
-Yeah. It's hard for us to have people on who support his party
without actually talking about him because
it seems a little unfair to divorce the two.
-Yeah, you know what's so sad about life, man --
A lot of us can't admit we made a mistake.
You know what I'm saying?
And that's what I see with a lot of Trump supporters.
They just don't want to admit they made a mistake.
It's okay. Just do better next year.
-Yeah, there you go.
-I just feel it's not enough honest conversations going on.
Like, I was watching the debate tonight,
and I was glad that Cory Booker brought up the fact
that they have said
there was Russian interference in our elections,
'cause me, as a voter, I'm like, okay, in 2020, how are we gonna
know that the voting process is fair
with all this rampant voter suppression going on
and the fact that we know it was Russian interference?
Like, how do we know the fight's not fixed?
I'm glad he brought that up.
-You have a thing, Donkey of the Day, on your show.
-Yes, that's where I give people
the credit they deserve for being stupid.
[ Laughter ]
I kind of like that right now for agreeing to do this show
at 1:00 in the morning. [ Laughter ]
-Wait, do you think you might be tomorrow's Donkey of the Day?
-I don't know. [ Laughter ]
And if I yawn right now, it has nothing to do with you.
[ Laughter ]
-I feel better when people yawn during the live shows.
I really do appreciate you making the time.
-Thanks for having me.
-I think it's great.
The platform you have is really wonderful.
-What about Donkey of the Day?
You just wanted to bring that up?
-Well, I was gonna say, did you see anything in the debates
that made you think --
Did you see any potential Donkey of the Days there?
-No, I mean, I was disappointed in a couple of the candidates.
You know what I'm saying?
I feet like Senator Harris
dropped the ball a little bit tonight.
-Yep.
-Joe Biden -- I just --
I just don't think he's good at debating.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-I think, like, he wants to be President
without doing the work.
Like, in my first book, "Black Privilege,"
I have this rule called "put the weed in the bag."
And it's all about the process. You know what I'm saying?
You can't skip the process.
Like, you know, there's this movie called "Belly,"
where these two kids were sitting down
with the two stars of the movie, DMX and Nas, and he was like,
"Yo, I want to go out there and get money!
I want to go out there and get money."
DMX was like, "Man, shut up and put the weed in the bag first."
So that means you can't escape the process.
I don't think Joe wants to put the weed in the bag.
He just wants to go out there and sell the weed.
-That's an excellent point. Charlamagne tha God, everybody.