Juan Williams What the Hell Do You Have to Lose Book Reviews
WASHINGTON – Afterward the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee vowed to do improve in the next presidential election with younger voters and minorities.
Its leaders defended millions of dollars to begin working in minority communities that had not seen a Republican representative in years. And they hired several new minority staffers.
One of the RNC'due south hires was Raffi Williams, the youngest son of veteran Washington journalist and pundit Juan Williams. Author of a highly praised book on the civil rights motility, the elderberry Williams is now best known as a fixture on Fox News, though he spent most of his career at the Washington Post and National Public Radio.
Whereas the elder Williams became known for holding a handful of conservative views mixed with traditional Autonomous ones, Raffi— the youngest of his three children— isn't hedging his beliefs: He's a proud Republican.
And while his dad cut his teeth on roofing the civil rights movement and metro stories in Washington, the 26-year-old Raffi is taking up the conservative media portfolio for the RNC. It falls to him to grapple with websites like Breitbart News and the Daily Caller that have come from nowhere over the past few years and now play a meaning office in reflecting and shaping the zeitgeist of the conservative movement online.
Raffi Williams agreed to talk with Yahoo News about why he is a Republican, why he ended up in a different political political party than his father, and what he thinks the political party tin practise to concenter more people like him. Here is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for brevity and clarity:
Yahoo News: You're 26 years old, the third kid of Juan Williams and his wife, Delise. Where did they meet?
Raffi Williams: They met hither in D.C. My mom is a local, a native. My dad was a beat reporter for the Post. They met at a nightclub.
YN: Do you lot know the name of the nightclub?
RW: I don't. I think information technology'southward long gone at this point. But they met dancing.
YN: Your dad was a urban center desk reporter at the Washington Post. What was your dad doing when you were born?
RW: When I was built-in he was either— he was at the White House for a little bit with the Post, but I think he was done with that. I think he might have been working at the Washington Post magazine by that indicate. He was still in that organization, though.
YN: So maybe describe for me in your own words: Who is your dad?
RW: That's evidently a deep question. I think he's a straight shooter, he tries to be honest with his opinions and views, and he has years of experience just knowing D.C., knowing sources. And I recollect at the cease of the day I run into him as my dad before I see him as a reporter. A great example of this is when I was in higher when the NPR stuff went down, when he got fired from there. I didn't realize he was as big a deal every bit he was. I just saw him equally Dad. And I was up at college — I had a lacrosse game that day... YN: Which was?
RW: Haverford College. And my mom was up to sentinel the game, and after the game nosotros go get dinner. She gets a call from my dad like, 'I just got fired.' And we're like, 'Oh God, is everything OK?' My mom was worried. And the adjacent mean solar day I but go about my life every bit is. There'southward nothing I can do virtually information technology. And the next day it's a front end-page story in the national newspapers. And my friends come running upwardly to me like, 'Dude, we hung out last nighttime. Why didn't you tell me this was happening?' My girlfriend was pissed at me at the fourth dimension because I didn't tell her. And I was like, I just didn't think information technology was a big deal. I didn't realize people knew who my dad was. And that's when information technology dawned on me that he'due south actually a very public figure. People know who he is. I'chiliad not sure if that answers the question.
YN: It does. Some other fashion to get at the question is, what's been your first-hand ascertainment of your dad's political views? He was at NPR. He certainly has never identified as a conservative.
RW: No, no, no. My dad— I would call him a blue-canis familiaris Dem if I had to classify it. He definitely is more liberal than I am. But I think it has to exercise with his life story. He was an immigrant from Panama, came here when he was 3, grew upward in the projects of New York. He really found opportunity through scholarships to schools, so he sees the value of having a social safety internet. So he sees the skilful that the regime tin can do in his eyes, but he still thinks you take to work to accept advantage of information technology and to make the most of information technology. That's why I recall he'due south supportive of things like Obamacare or having welfare and that kind of stuff. Then he lives his American dream in that, and I think seeing him reach his American dream made me exist bourgeois considering I remember there'south a lot of personal responsibility that leads to that, that leads to success. And I recollect that it'southward non a bad thing to take a social rubber net— I think it'south of import— but I think that having one that is too big does non push button people to be the best they can be, does not encourage success in the way that I think is important. And I call back his parents played a large role in encouraging him to have personal responsibility and personal drive.
YN: What did his parents do?
RW: His mom was a seamstress, and his father was a battle trainer.
YN: Were in that location any political figures that were influential in his life?
RW: Not that I know of.
YN: He probably covered [one-time Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion] Barry, correct?
RW: Yeah, and Barry did not like my father. One night he came dorsum from existence out or whatever and our house was tossed, and on the bed was a meat cleaver. He wrote an commodity about this after Barry died for American CurrentSee, that Ben Carson magazine. He wrote damning pieces on Barry calling him out for the cronyism and corruption, and Barry sent a clear signal to my father. It didn't stop my father just...
YN: Your dad simply wrote a slice in a Ben Carson magazine?
RW: Yeah. The American CurrentSee.
YN: Why?
RW: They asked him to do it. Armstrong Williams and Ben Carson run the magazine.
YN: That'southward it. OK.
RW: They asked him to write it because he covered Barry.
YN: OK. So when did yous become politically aware? Was it in high schoolhouse?
RW: I was always effectually politics. The conversation at my dinner table was always most politics. My brother was very politically aware. He ran for role. He worked for [former U.Southward. Senator] Norm Coleman. He's much older than I am, so I was always the immature child at the table, so I did not set the chat. But I didn't really know where I stood until high school, when I started to think almost information technology more and understand what it was. And for me it came down to, I was raised to be fiscally responsible, to put family commencement, to go become what you want— become achieve your American dream, no one's going to hand it to you— and my dad's very religious. My family's religious. So when I took my personal values and looked at which political spectrum I brutal on, it was clear that I was conservative and a Republican.
YN: And you decided this in high school?
RW: Yeah, my commencement internship was in loftier school actually, for [former Republican presidential nominee] Rick Santorum when he was nevertheless in the Senate. I worked under Robert Traynham, who was his communications manager at the time. And so that was kind of my first taste, and then the next summertime my brother ran for city council here in D.C. Then I was his little entrada intern, I gauge.
YN: So your blood brother was a political influence on you as well?
RW: Oh yes, there's no doubtfulness virtually that. I think yous have a combination of family values, what my parents taught me, my brother being a bourgeois and shepherding me forth in that regard, and also growing up in the '90s in D.C. Yous see the dangers of big government, you meet how information technology fails in terms of...
YN: How?
RW: — the city just wasn't operating in terms of garbage getting picked upwards. Y'all talk about the crime rate being loftier, being agape to go out at nighttime some places, and you still run into u.s. spending similar crazy and not addressing any of these problems. And having conversations with my dad about what was going on in the city was not good things and the danger of big government.
YN: What was your dad saying at that point nearly the city's dysfunction? Where did he pin the blame?
RW: I think he saw— you lot'd accept to have his word for it over mine— but from my retentiveness, he wrote a big feature slice on the fact that a kid graduated from D.C. public high schools and couldn't read. And information technology was a long four-parter or something on this kid. And a lot of it comes to a lack of accountability in D.C. city authorities which starts at the top, and I call up it started with Barry.
YN: Did he accept any favorable... I guess not, since [co-ordinate to Williams] the guy left a meat cleaver on his bed.
RW: Well, I retrieve my dad respects what Barry did during the civil rights move when he was a fellow member of SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]. But I think he was a guy who shows yous that some people can't handle power, and that sums up Barry I recollect pretty well. When he got it, he wasted it.
YN: Do you and your dad debate politics?
RW: All the time. Our family does Dominicus dinners every Dominicus. I see him — it depends normally on how busy I am— just commonly more than once a week, and the topic of the conversation usually is whatever the issue of the day is, and we go at it a footling flake.
YN: What practice you mostly disagree on the well-nigh? Where do you come across the world differently, politically?
RW: Obamacare is a big one, so we actually don't fence Obamacare anymore considering we got in a huge... Ordinarily it's very congenial and simply like, 'This is what I'grand hearing; this is what I'm seeing.' And with Obamacare, I think we got very upset and it became a little more personal than we usually like, so we just don't argue that anymore. I recall we disagree over [Wisconsin Representative] Paul Ryan's budget. He did not like it, and I really was a big fan. Those are the 2 biggest ones, though he does like what Paul Ryan is doing in terms of reaching out to the blackness customs, going out and doing the listening tours. He respects that. And I call up he thinks it'due south a adept pace. Whether he agrees or disagrees with the guy's policies, he does agree with the way he's doing that.
YN: Is there any way since going on Fox that he's been more conscientious to try to make certain he doesn't become instinctively conservative and just repeat what other conservatives are saying, to make sure he maintains his credibility every bit a moderate or a quasiliberal?
RW: My father has been with Fob since the beginning … I think the Fox people are very happy with him beingness the moderate or the liberal at the table. He has not felt the need to become more than conservative.
YN: No, my question is whether he's felt the need to become more liberal?
RW: Oh, I don't think and so. My dad truthfully believes what he espouses on Fox.
YN: Where did yous go to high school?
RW: I actually did five years of high school. Ii years at Georgetown Day School here in town, and and so I decided I wanted to become a hockey histrion, so I went up to boarding schoolhouse, repeated my sophomore year. It's a normal thing usually to do in boarding school, and then I did 3 years at Hotchkiss up in Connecticut.
YN: And so you plain grew up — your father was the son of immigrants — you grew upwardly fairly privileged and went to a actually quality high schoolhouse and so a boarding school. Do you think that'south impacted that political philosophy at all, just fifty-fifty being around other people who are generally more privileged?
RW: And then, at the boarding school they were definitely more conservative. A lot of the sons of Wall Street and daughters of Wall Street type of people. Simply Georgetown Twenty-four hour period School was uber-liberal. You're calling your teachers by their first names at that place. In my grade, you have Zach Beauchamp who was at TPM [Talking Points Memo] for a while. It'south a very liberal school. So I don't recall it influenced my politics in the sense of information technology influenced my understanding of the world, information technology influenced what I read and the people I was talking to ... merely if GDS impacted my politics, I'd be a liberal right now.
YN: When you were at GDS, did y'all already consider yourself a bourgeois?
RW: I don't think I had a leaning when I was there, actually. I think I was too young, actually. Information technology wasn't until I got to Hotchkiss. And and then Haverford College is uber-liberal too.
YN: Were yous politically agile in college?
RW: No, I volunteered for the McCain campaign when I was in college. I voted Republican when I was in college. But at that place wasn't even a college Republican lodge on my campus. That club didn't fifty-fifty exist. I call back they've started it since I've left. I was not, though, doing debates with Democrats.
Source: https://news.yahoo.com/juan-williams--son-on-why-he-became-a-republican-040631869.html