-I want to ask about the fact that you have been covering
Black Lives Matter as a movement since 2012.
Can you speak to, you know, how you feel the movement has grown
and where you are currently at
in regards to optimism or pessimism?
-Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was covering even in 2012,
I was aware that, you know, Black Lives Matter,
it started, you know, during enslavement, right?
I mean, Black Lives Matter
is an age-old movement that just changes names.
It's been the Civil Rights Movement.
You know, it's been run by SNCC.
It's been run by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
It's been John Lewis' movement.
You know, it's been Dr. King's movement.
And you know, in 2012, it really launched
just as the term "Black Lives Matter."
You know, three Black queer women launched this hashtag.
And it was around Trayvon Martin, this kid
who's walking down the street minding his own business.
He gets killed by somebody
who had an aspiration of being a police officer.
So it had this sort of -- the flavor
of police violence against Black bodies.
And so it launched around this idea of saying, you know,
you need to think of these young lives as being important,
and why we don't do that in America is a big problem.
And so Black Lives Matter launched.
And the thing that was so different about then and now
is that at the time you had a president
who was incredibly empathetic to it.
He said, "If I had a son, he'd have looked like Trayvon
or I could have been Trayvon."
You had that empathy in the White House,
that desire to embrace the movement,
bring them into the White House, talk to them.
You know, Eric Holder was trying to figure out, how could we work
with Black Lives Matter to make the country better?
But the public was against them.
You know, the polling was terrible for Black Lives Matter.
You know, white America really rejected this movement
even when it was Eric Garner and Michael Brown
and all of these people.
You know, Freddie Gray.
I covered the Freddie Gray movement in the streets.
You're talking about a guy who was thrown limp
into the back of a police car,
and there was still very little empathy.
Even Tamir Rice, who was a baby, 12 years old.
Nothing seemed to move the public at large
other than Black folk and Brown folk to be for it.
Now you have the flip side of that.
It's completely upside down.
You have a president who's completely unsympathetic
and hostile to Black Lives Matter,
hostile to the idea of people kneeling, you know,
saying that we want fairness and justice from police.
But the public is now on
the Black Lives Matter movement's side.
And that is a huge change, and it's an important change.
You've now got white folks out there
marching and getting tear gassed.
Moms in Portland getting tear gassed
for Black Lives Matter.
Before, it was Heather Heyer putting her life on the line
and losing her life for Black Lives Matter.
Now it's a bunch of moms,
and I think it's an important difference
because it means it's broader.
This is not a niche movement.
It's not just a Black people concern.
This is the public realizing if they're coming for Black lives,
they're eventually coming for yours.
They're eventually coming for your security and peace.
All of us have to be in this together.
I think that is actually an important change.
And we're seeing legislation.
We're actually seeing it become legislation.
So that's important. -It's obviously also important
to have voices like yours talking about this.
You're the only Black woman anchoring a news show right now,
and we're really lucky to have you doing that.
I want to leave by asking,
are you preferring these hours to your "AM Joy" hours
when you hosted a morning show on MSNBC?
-Well, yes and no. Okay, so, on the "no" part,
two hours is like -- Think about how much you pay
for a 30-second television commercial, right?
Two hours is like gold, right? You have two whole hours.
So it's harder to shrink myself...
and all the questions I have.
I have like a hundred questions for Joe Biden.
I can only ask like 40 of them. Right?
You have to shrink it down.
And also I love having Mondays off.
People do not understand Monday being Saturday
and Tuesday being Sunday is everything.
You can get all your stuff done.
Nobody's in the stores. It's, like, perfect.
So I'm going to miss having Mondays and Tuesdays
as my weekend, but I love these hours
in the sense that it's immediate.
Like, I'm not analyzing the week from the back end.
We're literally now front line, every day, in the mix.
For a news junkie, there's nothing better
than being on the air every night in prime time.
It's just -- It's a fabulous opportunity.
-Well, congratulations again, and hopefully when this
all clears up, we'll see each other in the building.
All the best, Joy.
-I will wave through the German tourists at you.
[ Laughter ] -All right. Sounds good.