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On this episode, we are joined by the hilarious standup comedian, TV writer and actress Yamaneika Saunders! And today, I’m going to tell her the story of one of most polarizing, but important people in US Politics: Condoleezza Rice – the FIRST! Black woman to serve as Secretary of State.

Next time on FIRST! – make sure to catch me and Atsuko Okatsuka as we talk about Wataru Misaka and how he became the FIRST! Asian American and FIRST! non-white basketball player in the NBA.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Kareem Rahma, Yamaneika Saunders, Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Kareem Rahma  00:06

It’s the life story of someone.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:08

Are they breaking down a racial barrier that I give a fuck about?

Kareem Rahma  00:12

TBD.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:14

Is it a pretty long story?

Kareem Rahma  00:17

I’m gonna try to do 60 minutes.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:20

Is that big of a story?

Kareem Rahma  00:22

I mean, it’s a life story.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:23

Who the fuck is this Harriet Tubman?

Kareem Rahma  00:27

No. So, I’m gonna show you a picture. Okay, and you’re gonna tell me if you know who this person is.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:43

So I’m almost certain. I don’t know who the hell this is.

Kareem Rahma  00:46

Alright, let’s just try it. And you either know who it is.

Yamaneika Saunders  00:50

Oh my God, Condoleezza Rice? I know she ain’t got a 60 minute story, no way. Condoleezza Rice, I love her because she’s a Black woman. So automatic. She gets love for me, because it’s hard to be a Black woman, but that hair, the political party she stepped into. And then outfits. Listen, I can tell her story in 10 seconds. […]

Kareem Rahma  01:27

Wait, all of those things are true. But we can’t ignore the fact I mean, even if she does have strange and wrong political beliefs. She was the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State.

Yamaneika Saunders  01:42

They love a Black woman to serve anything. Who cares it is, the Secretary, is she serving? We’re here to have her serve us.

Kareem Rahma  01:50

I was thinking like she’s serving looks.

Yamaneika Saunders  01:52

She was listen, have you seen somebody’s Republican bitches? No, they don’t serve. But also they let her be Secretary see is like, there we go again. There we go.

Kareem Rahma  02:09

What’s up, y’all. I’m Kareem Rahma, and welcome to FIRST, a funny show about spectacular people who had a serious impact on society and culture because they were first. Today I’m sitting with the hilarious stand-up comedian, TV writer and actress Yamaneika Saunders. And I’m going to tell her the story of one of the most polarizing, but important people in US politics. Condoleezza Rice, the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State. Condoleezza Rice is one of those people you might think you already know a lot about. But if you listen to this episode, and don’t discover something new about her, you get your money back.

Yamaneika Saunders  02:58

Of course. If you don’t listen, if you said to me, I bet you don’t know everything about Beyonce, I’d be like, I’ll take that bet. But if you say to me, I bet you don’t know anything about Condoleezza Rice. I barely, I only lost her name.

Kareem Rahma  03:13

Alright, so you’re gonna wind up. Alright, so Condoleezza Rice is in politics. So by nature, we’re gonna have really strong feelings about her. For context. She’s a Republican who’s most closely associated with George W. Bush, the second funniest president we’ve had, if you can ignore things like Guantanamo and Iraq, and Katrina, or really anything he did. Condoleezza did have one of the most fascinating careers in politics.

Yamaneika Saunders  03:37

Are you still drawing her. And can we just jump in when she was born? This is crazy. The intro on her.

Kareem Rahma  03:45

At one point, she was called the most powerful woman in the world by Forbes lover or hater, you can still admire Condoleezza Rice from her origins in Jim Crow, Alabama, to one of the highest positions in American politics.

Yamaneika Saunders  03:59

Did you say Condoleezza’s Rice?

Kareem Rahma  04:00

Condoleezza Rice? Yeah, so here’s the story of Condoleezza Rice, the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State. Now we’re getting into it. The story begins like this. Condoleezza Rice is born in 1954. In Jim Crow era, Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated big city in America. She has deep roots in the American South and can trace her ancestors back to enslaved people. John Wesley Rice, Condoleezza’s grandfather was the first in his family to graduate from college. He paid for his first year at Stillman College in cotton. And when he ran out of cotton, he found out that he could get a scholarship.

Yamaneika Saunders  04:46

Wait a minute, what in the nigga Christmas Carol is happening here. He paid for college in cotton?

Kareem Rahma  04:59

That’s what they say.

Yamaneika Saunders  05:01

That’s how much they say anything about Black. You may be seeing a grandmother got her hair done by paying a pig fee. Down on the sound right? What college is taking cotton?

Kareem Rahma  05:15

Apparently Stillman College, I’m assuming.

Yamaneika Saunders  05:17

Is this college real? I don’t want to go to no college and take cotton.

Kareem Rahma  05:21

I’m sure they took the cotton and they sold it for money probably. Why did they harvest rice? I have to get back to the story, because the next lines are really going to bother you.

Yamaneika Saunders  05:34

All of this has bothered me.

Kareem Rahma  05:39

And when he ran out of cotton, he found out you’re giving us, he could get a scholarship if he studied to be a Presbyterian minister. So that’s what he did.

Yamaneika Saunders  05:53

Let’s keep going because the Presbyterian part is the reason why Condoleezza Rice became a Republican.

Kareem Rahma  05:59

We do talk about that later. She specifically mentions when but it’s not because of that. Now, his son, aka Condoleezza Rice’s, father, John Wesley Rice, Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps and went to the same college and he too, became an ordained minister. But John Jr. was also really in the sports so he took a job as the athletic director and football coach at a local high school. And that’s where he fell in love with a science teacher named Angelina Ray. They got married in 1954. And exactly nine months later, they had their only child, a daughter, Condoleezza. Apparently, as a child, Conde, as will now call her had a big ass head. And as a kindergartener, she was teased for it. A classmate called her watermelon head.

Yamaneika Saunders  06:47

That was a Black kid. And let me explain something to you. You know why she wore them in the hand. Because when you got to speak White and Black, you got to have two brains. That’s why they canceled me.

Kareem Rahma  06:57

Actually, to my next point. The families in Alabama in the Jim Crow South weren’t allowed in Whites only restaurants, movie theaters and more. But at home, her parents drilled Condoleezza with confidence, telling her that she could be anything she wanted, even if she couldn’t eat at the diner nearby. At age 3, Condoleezza’s parents started teaching her French and Spanish how to play piano how to figure skate how to do ballet, and even gave her etiquette classes. She learned to read sheet music before she even learned to read words and learn to play Bach and Beethoven before her feet could even reach the pedals.

Yamaneika Saunders  07:33

Condoleezza Rice is a fucking genius her Nina Simone, there’s a bunch of people like do you know little Black kids got to know a 1000 things just to compete with mediocre White kids that know zero. She became Secretary of State no one do all these different languages studying all these different things. Underneath a man that we’re not even sure if he finished college.

Kareem Rahma  07:58

They call her watermelon, he’s peanut head. So it should also be noted here that both of her parents went to college, which was rare for any family in the south at the time. They were solidly middle class and considered one of the elites in the area. Still, being elite won’t save you from the threat of the KKK, some nights, Condoleezza’s dad sit on their porch with his gun in his lap after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, the first of a slew of White supremacist terrorist attacks against Black Americans. During this attack, more KKK Klansmen planted 19 sticks of dynamite under the steps of the church, and Condoleezza was close enough to hear the explosion. It killed 4 children, all girls and injured about two dozen more. Condoleezza was only 8 years old. And it obviously left a lasting impression in her words. Eventually, daddy and the man of the neighborhood formed a watch, they would take shifts at the head of the entrances to our street. Occasionally, they would fire a gun into the air to scare off intruders. This experience informed her adoration for the Second Amendment. Condoleezza once wrote, had my father and his neighbors registered their weapons, they surely would have confiscated them or worse. What better example of responsible gun ownership is there than what the men of my neighborhood did in response to the KKK.

Yamaneika Saunders  09:31

But I’m telling you, if they ever had to use those guns to protect themselves, they would have been killed. That’s the thing. And I think what’s happening here is you want to infiltrate the system that’s oppressing you so that you can make changes from within. And you know, I’ve always felt that about Condoleezza Rice. I know a lot of black people. We don’t like Republicans, and we don’t like the things that that they represent, and they stand for, and oftentimes we dismiss people who do that. But what I want people to understand is when you have a Condoleezza Rice. And you have a Candace Owens. Oh, those two different women.

Kareem Rahma  10:03

Well, this is another interesting part of the story is that Condoleezza’s dad was a Republican because local Democrats refused to allow him to register with their party. So let’s get back into the story, Conde story. When she was 13, she and her family left the south behind for Denver. At 15, Conde decided to be a professional concert pianist and her parents were both supportive. She graduated high school at 16 and started college at the University of Denver, where her father was the assistant dean.

Yamaneika Saunders  10:34

That’s crazy. How did he just jump into that position? He is all over the place.

Kareem Rahma  10:44

And Conde was a music major, but only until sophomore year, when she met kids half her age that were much better than her at piano. And she knew she’d never be as good as them and decided right then and there to just quit piano. She was like, I’m never gonna be the best of this. So I’m just gonna quit.

Yamaneika Saunders  11:07

That’s crazy. But she also has been taught by mother and father don’t tell her what’s going on with their hands. I would have been like, Hey, can you get me one of the teachers?

Kareem Rahma  11:11

Right? That’s a good point. Back in college, Condoleezza was gutted and broken hearted. She was a junior and hadn’t yet decided on what she’d shift her major to, she tried courses in English, Lit,  government, but she hated them all. Then during her spring semester, she happened upon a course in international politics, taught by a Czech refugee, Dr. Josef Korbel. It was here that Condoleezza found her new passion. In her words. Dr. Josef Korbel was a magnificent storyteller. He was someone who made international politics and the Soviet Union come alive. And suddenly this world opened up to me, and I thought, that’s what I want to do. Fun fact. Dr. Korbel her professor was […]. And Madeline went on to become Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State and the first woman to hold that post. So Conde has found this new passion.

Yamaneika Saunders  12:11

[…] you got going on? I feel like you’d be saying Miss rice. Mrs. Rice, don’t call her Conde.

Kareem Rahma  12:19

Condoleezza. So Condoleezza has found this new passion in politics, and she made her cum laude in international politics with a concentration in Soviet studies.

Yamaneika Saunders  12:32

Damn. Yo, how old is she? This time? 17?

Kareem Rahma  12:37

She’s 19.

Yamaneika Saunders  12:38

You know what I was doing at 19? I was digging through my grandparents attic […] so I could sell them.

Kareem Rahma  12:48

What was I doing? I was a telemarketer.

Yamaneika Saunders  12:54

That’s what you got to change […] over you.

Kareem Rahma  12:57

No, I got the shirt open. Because I’m an 80s looking man.

Yamaneika Saunders  13:01

Both of y’all have these porno stashes. I was looking for cameras. Catch me in a porno up here.

Kareem Rahma  13:10

No pornos on FIRST, but I do have to get back to FIRST. So, now it’s 1974. The Cold War is dragging on. She’s 19 with a college degree but she has no idea what to do with it. She’s young, jobless and without prospects. She does what all overachievers do and stays in school. Condoleezza enrolls in a political science program at the University of Notre Dame and she earned her master’s in political science at 20. And this is when her life begins to change. Condoleezza lands an internship with the State Department in DC and is stoked to work for the Carter administration.

Yamaneika Saunders  13:51

Damn the Carter. Listen, let me first of all, that’s what y’all dress like y’all just like Jimmy Carter.

Kareem Rahma  13:59

I do get it all from the vintage stores and the thrift shop.

Yamaneika Saunders  14:02

Have you been in any type of like a gap or?

Kareem Rahma  14:05

I’ve never bought anything new in literally 10 years. I have this story actually.

Yamaneika Saunders  14:12

Let’s get back to the story. First of all, I’m gonna tell you.

Kareem Rahma  14:17

Okay, back to the story story story. At the time, Condoleezza is a registered Democrat, but interestingly enough, Jimmy Carter would be the reason why she switched to the Republican Party. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Condoleezza thought his response was weak and naive. And in the 1980 presidential election, she voted for Ronald Reagan, the Republican who ran against Carter, when her State Department internship was over, she flies to Russia for the summer to study Russian at Moscow State University. She, I’m gonna call her an academic addict. She can’t stop. Just can’t stop learning. She’s addicted. She’s like, put it in my van. And in 1980, she wins a Ford Foundation fellowship and had to Stanford. And the following year she enrolls in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies in Denver, and in 1981, she received her PhD in political science. So now, at age 26, it’s Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Yamaneika Saunders  16:15

Did I tell you stop calling her Conde?  Dr. Baby Condoleezza Rice.

Kareem Rahma  17:44

Okay, so Condoleezza starts teaching at Stanford where she lectured on the Soviet Union, and she’s a legit superstar there. Everyone loved her. She was inspiring students the same way that Dr. Korbel inspired her, and this felt really fulfilling. She wasn’t looking for next move. But her next move found her. In 1985. Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser to Gerald Ford heard one of Condoleezza Rice lectures and was super impressed. They stayed in touch and he asked Condoleezza to be his Soviet specialists on the National Security Council. And this was a big deal. He basically opened the door for Condoleezza to get into government. Later after George Bush Senior becomes President, does same guy Scowcroft is tapped to be his National Security Adviser. Scowcroft, in turn promptly asked Condoleezza to come with him and be his Soviet expert. President Bush, this is the first Bush the old bush, daddy bush. President daddy Bush is captivated by Conde and would rely on her for dealing with Soviets. He made her director and then senior director of Soviet and Eastern European affairs in the National Security Council, and a special assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Yamaneika Saunders  19:07

That’s bullshit. What the […] is a special assistant?

Kareem Rahma  19:11

I think what special assistant to the president means is that she wrote Bush’s speeches, including one where Bush advised Ukraine’s parliament to not declare independence, which they ignored and declared independence anyways, but Bush introduced Condoleezza, to the Soviet Union, President Mikhail Gorbachev like this. This is Condoleezza Rice. She tells me everything I need to know about the Soviet Union. Very nice introduction. So she’s doing great in the White House. But Stanford had this policy where if you’re absent for two years, you wouldn’t qualify for tenure. So 1991 Condoleezza goes back to Stanford, again.

Yamaneika Saunders  19:51

Why is it two years How about two weeks? I mean, what the fuck is going on two years, you almost get happened two years.

Kareem Rahma  19:58

That’s true. That’s a long time. So in 1991, she goes back to teaching at Stanford to get the tenure. But forces are pulling her back to the White House. George Shultz, who was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, invited Condoleezza to be part of this super exclusive luncheon club, where a handful of influential government alumni got together to discuss foreign affairs. Obviously, Condoleezza was super young, and the total expert on the Soviet Union, she impressed their socks off.

Yamaneika Saunders  20:31

You mean to tell me they got food club to talk about the motherfuckers. They’re picking information from her. That’s why they want access to her because she’s done all the research on what they eat, boy, get the fuck out of the club. And it’s so secret. Oh, please,

Kareem Rahma  20:47

I guarantee you. There was no other women. There was definitely no other Black people in general.

Yamaneika Saunders  20:52

They made that luncheon club for her. Niggas love to eat. Let’s make a luncheon club and pick our brains that were lucky. They didn’t create a hair salon club. But they looked at our hair and said, well, we can’t get her that way. Because you don’t know her hair. But I bet you she eat.

Kareem Rahma  21:09

I gotta get back to this. So she became an insider with very, very powerful friends. And these relationships came in handy right away that same year, Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan. And Schultz recommended that Condoleezza be on the chevron board because she knew the president of Kazakhstan.

Yamaneika Saunders  21:33

How the fuck do you know the President of Kazakhstan? And how come we didn’t hear about this earlier? Kazakhstan?

Kareem Rahma  21:39

She was in the White House. She’s in politics. And she’s the expert. I think so. I think that’s how people knew each other back then.

Yamaneika Saunders  21:52

What was his name, you don’t talk about the president of Kazakhstan? Listen, Chevron over you’re trying to drop $10 billion and fuck them some more ducks with some oil and grease and shit like that. This sign the dotted line and I’ll see you at the luncheon next week.

Kareem Rahma  22:10

No, and that’s what she did. She went to Kazakhstan. She helped grease the deal.

Yamaneika Saunders  22:15

Don’t say grease and Chevron with Chevron had going on with grease and seals and killing every pigeon and duck that wasn’t nailed down.

Kareem Rahma  22:23

And in 1993 Chevron named 120,000 ton supertanker after her, SS Condoleezza Rice. This is the SS.

Yamaneika Saunders  22:41

Black woman and wrong. I’m not even a Black woman. I’ve been doing it wrong. The way she has slinky her way into this is down. This is why I can’t get nowhere. If Chevron named anything after me it will be one of the day pumps and it’d be called the fat spinner.

Kareem Rahma  23:12

But she was named to two other super elite boards as well. The Trans American corporation in 1991, and Hewlett Packard in 1992.

Yamaneika Saunders  23:23

Listen, Hewlett Packard, Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Kareem Rahma  23:28

Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Yamaneika Saunders  23:30

everything I’ve said. I was delirious. I didn’t I have my respect. I’m so sorry for everything you will one of the most powerful people in the universe, the way she’s been. She’s making moves. You know, Black men who marry White women want to make moves like this. That’s why they marry white women. She did all of that without marrying the White one, she did with her education. I won’t be your best friend after this. Do you understand?

Kareem Rahma  23:58

I love that. I have to get your number. So things are going pretty well for Condoleezza. She’s killing it at Stanford, she’s wheeling and dealing around the world. But that doesn’t stop her from achieving even more when Condoleezza is 39 years old, she becomes the first female, first Black and youngest Provost in Stanford’s history, which is just a fancy word for Chief budget and academic officer.

Yamaneika Saunders  24:28

Why don’t we add the Black into it?

Kareem Rahma  24:31

First female, comma, first Black comma and youngest. Those are separate. I’m sure there were others before if the other people were White dudes. They got it. They got fucked over. Okay, so now we fast forward to the year 2000. George H. Bush’s son, George W. Bush is running for president. He asked Condoleezza to be his foreign policy adviser, which is a smart move, a journalist wrote, If she becomes Secretary of State or even something lesser, she will be big rock star big, a major cultural figure adorning the bedroom walls of innumerable kids and the covers of innumerable magazine. That article was right, but wouldn’t happen.

Yamaneika Saunders  25:26

We know she amazing. And the more information you give, the more I love her. If you think kids is gonna have posters of Condoleezza Rice up next to who Buzz Lightyear, like really less blessed. Take some of this down, not too big, too big. Listen, ladies and gentle whoever’s listening, if somebody can present a Condoleezza Rice poster, that from the back of the deck, not the one, you’re gonna go to my print of vistaprint.com and make right now, I mean, old school Condoleezza Rice, the ones with the wreath because you don’t you don’t pack moles on the side of her face. She got them beauty moles, and a light gap and a fucked up swoop on the side of her hair. That gap is crazy. I have to get back to this because I’m offering people, one person $5, and they can present the $5. […]

Kareem Rahma  26:30

You heard it here on first. How do you want them to get in touch with you?

Yamaneika Saunders  26:34

Call Condoleezza Rice and tell her to talk to the President of Kazakhstan and tell him to hit me up. We partied at the luncheon crew.

Kareem Rahma  26:44

Okay, so that article was right. But it wouldn’t happen until Bush’s second term. I guess it wasn’t right. Now that we’re talking about the posters. She wouldn’t be a rockstar, but no one had the posters.

Yamaneika Saunders  26:54

He fucked up everything he dimmed her light. She should have been president, based upon all this shit. She should have been President.

Kareem Rahma  27:01

I bet if she ran now, she would be very, very popular. She would have, she would have been Hillary.

Yamaneika Saunders  27:07

They’re not telling her story. I should not have come here to watch you and Magnum PI and his 1998 Salvation Army chains with the hairy chest. I should not have had to come here and do this, to hear this kind of shit about Condoleezza Rice.

Kareem Rahma  27:25

I feel you, but that’s why we’re here. We can’t do anything about the past. But we can do something about the present.

Yamaneika Saunders  27:32

I feel like you tried to read something out and make me feel like, this is definitely a segue. I want you to next thing I’m gonna proceed. This is not a transition.

Kareem Rahma  27:47

But her job got crazy.

Yamaneika Saunders  27:52

There you go.

Kareem Rahma  27:53

But her job got crazy quick. This was the year 2000. And we all know what happened in 2001. In the aftermath of 911, Condoleezza joined the chorus in the White House wanting to hit back hard. She encouraged Bush to leave attacks on Taliban targets, and Afghanistan and in 2003, advised bush to overthrow Saddam Hussein and Iraq. She wrote an op ed in the New York Times called Why We know Iraq was lying, floating the idea that Saddam was hiding nukes. Inevitably, the invasion of Iraq happened and things only got messier. Condoleezza directly approved the CIA’s request to use enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding, and the CIA would hide behind the permission they obtained calling their actions are illegal.

Yamaneika Saunders  28:40

She turned into a Star Wars villain. And I still haven’t lost my love for her.

Kareem Rahma  28:48

Things would only get better for Condoleezza in 2004, Bush was reelected. And Condoleezza got a fat ass promotion.

Yamaneika Saunders  28:55

Oh, yeah. She said, listen to you coming back, you better take it apart.

Kareem Rahma  29:00

And this one would be what would solidify her legacy as the first Black woman to become Secretary of State, the nation’s highest level diplomats. I’m having a hard time saying it with excitement but shit. A burst is a first is a first. So Condoleezza has confirmation hearing was a fiery one, she was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 85 to 13. The most negative votes towards the secretary of state since 1825. Some senators were upset at her record, namely for equating Saddam with terrorists in the region. Senator Barbara Boxer wanted to hold Dr. Rice and the Bush administration accountable for their failures in Iraq.

Yamaneika Saunders  29:49

I would have went to her office on day one and be like, I heard you but she was looking for me, bitch, here I go. Shit. Like bitch, you better make sure I never see you roaming the hall.

Kareem Rahma  30:09

And the job was hard. But Condoleezza did do a lot. She helped navigate an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza Strip. There’s a cringy quote from this period when Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters, he was distracted the first time he met her, in his word. I have to confess it was hard for me to concentrate in the conversation with Condoleezza Rice, because she has such nice legs. That’s what the Prime Minister of Israel said.

Yamaneika Saunders  30:38

Listen, you better give this Black woman her props for gorgeous legs.

Kareem Rahma  30:45

She has soft skin.

Yamaneika Saunders  30:46

What’s a love story doing all this? What a minute she would love.

Kareem Rahma  30:51

She says, I’m out, no love. She’s like, I don’t have a personal life. She said that on the record. No boyfriends. She’s been attached to a couple people like they. She’s definitely […], but she’s […] in private.

Yamaneika Saunders  31:03

See, ladies you gotta get I knew I was on the right path. You have to give these men up if you want something. If you want a man, you never gonna be a Condoleezza Rice, or you won’t be is a mediocre bitch, serving up rice to some bum. That’s telling you he wants a home cooked meal.

Kareem Rahma  31:22

Okay. So she’s doing all these nice things. […] says she has nice legs. She also travels to North Korea and convinces them to negotiate a dismantling of their nuclear weapons program.

Yamaneika Saunders  33:14

North Korea? You can’t even get into Korea is crazy over there. They don’t even let people American. Trying to, listen, try to go to North Korea right now. And see what happened when you fly southwest over the day of North Korea and see if they don’t put you on a front to plane back in coat.

Kareem Rahma  33:44

Okay, I’m gonna go. I’m gonna do this. All right. Okay? We have some stuff coming out. Okay, this is my favorite part. In another weird episode, Gaddafi of Libya told a reporter Yes. Liza, Liza, Liza. I love her very much. And he wants made a videotape for her to watch, which was mostly photos of her with other world leaders set to a song he got commissioned, called Black flower in the White House, written for her by a Libyan composer. She called it weird, but at least it wasn’t raunchy. He also gave her gifts worth 1000s of dollars including a diamond ring and a wooden box, a loot and an accompanying DVD and a locket with his own picture inside of it.

Yamaneika Saunders  34:36

Listen, I let you go long enough. A loot that’s some way some shit that in […] that’s like some doctor sushi. This little one got her some […]. Do you know how many Black men probably stepped over Condoleezza Rice and all these other minutes going crazy over her. Black women please, please stop listening to Kevin Samuels and he’s telling you that you ain’t high value. Condoleezza Rice got Chevron. She probably the only person when the gas prices was high that day was paying her to put gas in her car. A song about her, the guy says the mother legs. These niggas that run the world. You’re fighting over some guy. Oh, he cheated on me. He works at minor keys.

Kareem Rahma  35:43

That’s the deepest cut. I can’t believe you said […]. So when the rebels killed Gaddafi and took over his palace, they found an entire photo album, full Condoleezza pictures and he was obsessed.

Yamaneika Saunders  36:04

Condoleezza you are the what is the highest level of it? You are wow, she’s amazing. I want to learn from her.

Kareem Rahma  36:16

I really I’m like, glad that you’re hearing the story in detail. And it’s making you feel like this is tight. People know the name and you’re like, oh, okay, cool. She was, but then you hear all the smarts and all the ways to you manipulated everyone and you’re like, she’s fucking tight. I mean, she’s also like, okay, how about this? I’m gonna read the script. In 2009 Condoleezza left her post with a mixed legacy. She was on the cover of magazines, a rock star in a celebrity just like that journalist from before predicted. The Bush presidency was a disaster, particularly on the foreign affairs front, and that’s Condoleezza Brown, but she would come out relatively unscathed.

Yamaneika Saunders  37:00

No, no. The Bush administration was a disaster because of the damn Bush’s leave Condoleezza out of because if it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t even know half the shit today. They didn’t know nothing. Because it’d be White men out here doing shit. They always try to find a way Oh, he really was misunderstood. Nobody knew fog that I put you […]

Kareem Rahma  37:30

Try to make George Bush a lone wolf.

Yamaneika Saunders  37:33

H stands for Hey, do you have a brain? Okay, is a moron. The only reason why the lights were staying on anyway was because of her.

Kareem Rahma  37:49

You can’t deny it. Condoleezza put in the work. Nobody has traveled more as Secretary of State. Condoleezza visited 83 countries traveling for over 2000 hours, which is approximately 90 days.

Yamaneika Saunders  38:06

She left hard dicks everywhere she went, and she got all the President’s phone numbers. And also she wins, and she should be President of the United States.

Kareem Rahma  38:23

And she hasn’t stopped working. She returned to Stanford University, and in 2020, Condoleezza became director of the school’s Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank. In addition, she’s a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates and Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm and in a nod to her father’s love of sports, she’s also a part owner of the Denver Broncos as of now.

Yamaneika Saunders  38:49

Stop.

Kareem Rahma  38:56

I have to keep going.

Yamaneika Saunders  39:01

You just don’t run past that. The Denver fucking Broncos bro? How many good Denver Broncos. I’ve been sleeping. I’ve been sillies back Posturepedic mattresses.

Kareem Rahma  39:38

As of now, though, she’s done with politics. Or at least that’s what she said when a bunch of schoolchildren in New York asked her if she’d run for president. Condoleezza is still a fierce defender of the Republican Party. She said negative things about critical race theory she’s downplayed the me too movement and is ardently against anything that is perceived as being part of the Democratic agenda.

Yamaneika Saunders  39:58

Listen, listen, I know you trying to put a blue bow on this? But this got to get unwrapped. There’s no reason for Condoleezza Rice to assign herself with Blackness. It’s never worked for her, not once her pretending to be a White man. And thinking like White men, is a reason why she’s the director of Stanford college that her father probably had to pay cotton to get her into. She’s been all over the place. diplomats and men of society all over the world have decided that they think that she’s the hottest thing and I get it, no woman wants to just be known for being hot. But if you can’t be known for being hot, you would mind it.

Kareem Rahma  40:40

She’s a genius. She is a genius. So these positions make a lot more sense when you consider that even though she grew up in segregated Alabama, she was raised to not see herself as part of the civil rights movement at all. In her words. The essence of America, that which really unites us is not ethnicity or nationality or religion. It is an idea. And what an idea it is that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things that it doesn’t matter where you came from.

Yamaneika Saunders  41:11

That’s bullshit. Everything she has had. As much as I respect her. I love her now, but you cannot tell me that in the process all these fucking luncheons and all the Secretary of State and all these people just looking at her legs and got fucking jerk off of photo albums to her that at some point, none of them had tried to treat her like she was a nigger. That’s a lie. None of them talk to her like? I’m one of the funniest women in comedy. I still got knickers who are mediocre to me when I say because I mean White, Black. I got many in comedy still talking to me. Like I ain’t better than them. So don’t act like as a Black woman in the sea of white men. Because white men are toxic the white women so you know, they talk a crazy shit to her. But she can’t put her mind into that. Because where she made her money is off the bat because of being and having access to White men who were not intimidated by her even though they should understand they should be intimidated by her because she mind fucked all.

Kareem Rahma  42:21

I have good news though, about that quote that I just read. You can buy it as a fridge magnet on Amazon for $7.49.

Yamaneika Saunders  42:30

I will be giving Condoleezza Rice a dime; she got all the money. She’s above currency.

Kareem Rahma  42:40

She’s probably very very rich.

Yamaneika Saunders  42:42

She has an oil take from Chevron. She probably remember refrigerate all food is made fresh every day.

Kareem Rahma  42:48

Okay, so love her or hate her you cannot deny her impact. And that, my friends is the story of Condoleezza Rice, the youngest Provost in Stanford History, the youngest National Security Adviser ever in US history, and the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State. Thank you, Yamaneika Saunders for joining us. This was you. Me talking this great and illuminating and wonderful and smart and funny.

Yamaneika Saunders  43:32

There’s only one thing that that I didn’t like, well, after everything was said and done, that last sentence you should have read, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.

Kareem Rahma  43:45

You’re right. We’re gonna leave this episode. I stand corrected. I stand corrected.

Kareem Rahma  44:03

next time on first, make sure to catch me with Atsuko Okatsuka as we talked about what Wataru Misaka, the first Asian American and first non-white player in the NBA.

CREDITS  44:15

FIRST is produced by some friends and salts. Ad sales and distribution by Lemonada Media. The show is created and hosted by Kareem Rahma. Executive producers for some friends are Kareem Rahma, Andrew […], researched by […], original audio production music and sound design by Salt. Executive producers for Salt are […] salts Head of Production […], Salt’s head of engineering, […], Salt’s head of post-production Robert Adler’s, Production Manager Alice […], post-production coordinator […], recording engineer Aaron Kennedy, edited and sound designed by […] Harris, dialogue supervision by Noah Kowalski. Additional sound design and music supervision by […], mixed by Ben O’Neil. Original music and composition by […] additional Music courtesy of extreme music recorded at Salt Studios in Los Angeles and the cutting room in New York City.