'Women shouldn't vote': Podcaster recalls 'shocking' encounter with Trump supporters

26 March

Five days into Donald Trump's second presidency, Sam Seder — the progressive actor who has been hosting or co-hosting "The Majority Reporter" since 2004 — debated 20 Trump supporters during an event hosted by Jubilee Media for their "Surrounded" series. Seder has talked to conservatives many times over the years, but the January event was different. Seder wasn't talking to Never Trumpers he might have some common ground with, but rather, with hardcore MAGA ideologues with unapologetically far-right views.

Seder described that experience during a late March appearance on the podcast "The Last Laugh."

The 58-year-old Seder explained, "I was prepared for there to be more people there who were going to be able to engage on the substance of what I was talking about, and there was not a lot of that…. One of my contentions was, unless you're a billionaire, a religious fundamentalist, or a xenophobic nationalist, you made a mistake in voting for Donald Trump. And it did not occur to me that instead of someone saying, 'Hey, I’m not a billionaire, and I'm not a theocrat, and I'm not a white nationalist, but I care about X, Y or Z, like, I'm worried about inflation' — no one came and said that."

Some of the comments from Trump supporters, Seder noted, were even more extreme than he expected.

The "Majority Report" host recalled, "Instead, what happened was, someone came down and said, 'I am a Christian theocrat, and this is why Christian theocracy is better, because I have a moral foundation for my beliefs.' And it took me longer than I would have wanted to pivot to like, 'Well, let's hear your vision of America, after you get what you want.' And it was 'women subjugated by men,' I'm not paraphrasing. That was the part that was shocking to me. Women subjugated by men, no marriage equality, no marriage for fun, essentially no birth control."

Seder added, "It turns out this guy, his avatar on Twitter is 'Women shouldn't vote.' It never occurred to me that someone's going to come and promote that in such a full-throated way. And then, there was a woman who followed him who came and said, 'What’s wrong with xenophobic nationalism?'"

During his appearance on "The Last Laugh," Seder was critical of the way Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is handling his new podcast. Newsom has no problem with Seder interviewing far-right MAGA Republicans like "War Room" host Steve Bannon and Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, but he criticized the "wrong way" Newsom is doing it.

"I think it's perfectly fine to go and have a conversation with people," Seder argued, "and I think it's perfectly fine to share a platform and whatnot. But if I have a conversation with those people, there will be absolutely zero misunderstanding or ambiguity as to where I stand in relationship to them…. And so, I'm not going to be friendly in that environment. I will be polite, but in no way does politeness require you to be chummy. And I think that’s really unhealthy, because it understates the stakes that are going on in this situation."

Seder continued, "I mean, Charlie Kirk has said stuff on his program that, if he was on the left, Gavin Newsom would never sit with him because of how antisemitic it is. The idea that Jews have been historically sort of anti-white and that type of stuff — Gavin Newsom wouldn't be caught dead with anybody (on the left who said that). But the amount of benefit of doubt is gross."

Read a partial transcript of Sam Seder's appearance on "The Last Laugh" at this Daily Beast link.

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