John Legend on Elon Musk, Donald Trump and baseless claims about eating cats and dogs

um thank you very much for talking to newsight John Legend my pleasure you are one of only a handful of people who've won the full set Grammys Emy an Oscar atony I am curious then as to why you chose a prince track not one of your own Let's Go Crazy to sing at the Democratic National Convention well it was an exciting night uh the uh Vice Presidential nominee was officially uh accepting the nomination and the Vice Presidential nominee is the governor of Minnesota the home state of Prince one of our greatest artists and of course one of Minnesota's favorite sons and um you know we thought it was only appropriate to introduce Governor walls with a Prince song he had named a highway after prince in Minnesota and uh we thought it was the perfect way to celebrate his nomination and get the room really going and it worked it felt really good uh got people dancing and it was a really uh electric atmosphere in the convention hall and uh it was a great way of leading into his speech you sang feeling good at the uh Biden Harris inauguration back in 2021 obviously a lot has happened since then do you think you'll be singing at a Harris woles woles inauguration come January I don't know but I I uh I believe they're going to win and uh I'm going to do my best to help them win um but um I I've just seen the level of enthusiasm uh go up dramatically with uh vice president Harris uh taking over the Reigns of the nomination for president and uh I'm so thrilled by the excitement that I'm seeing and how well she's performing on the campaign Trail not only in in speeches and and campaigning but uh I thought she did a masterful job in the debate and uh uh she's been uh a remarkable candidate and I think she's going to make a great president you've said that your eight-year-old daughter Luna looks up to KLA Harris yes why well um we got to spend some time with uh vice president Harris uh because Chrissy and uh vice president Harris did an event together Chrissy is your wife Chrissy is my wife and Chrissy has been a big advocate for Reproductive Rights uh in the US and as you know um because of the Supreme Court decision uh Reproductive Rights have been taken away uh in the in the United States in a lot of States uh and uh it was formerly guaranteed by Row versus Wade and that guarantee has disappeared now uh because of the do's decision and so there has been uh uh quite an uh a rise in activism especially uh from women but but from everyone who believes in Reproductive Rights in our country and Chrissy's been uh one of the people who's been speaking out um to uh uh preserve Reproductive Rights where we have them but also regain them uh in the places where it's been taken away and they did an event together uh at the White House and we brought our kids with us so they could see their mother in this setting and uh we were particularly um happy to see Luna uh witness this because she saw the first female vice president there and Luna we have always told her she can do anything she wants to do and that women uh are at least as smart as men and at least as capable as men at least at least and can do anything they want and um it's hard to tell kids that if we've never elected a woman to the most powerful position uh in the United States and I think it's about time that we have it's well past time that we have and so um I want uh Luna to see um kamla Harris elected to be president um not only because she's a woman but because she's the better candidate with a better vision for the future and she's imminently qualified to do this U but also because it's about time and it's well past time that she sees a woman Ascend to the most powerful office in the country you mentioned Reproductive Rights it's obviously a huge issue in this election it's an issue that goes right to the heart of your family and I wonder if I could ask you to share with our newsight audience why it's so important to you well we've always believed that it was uh it was important for women and their families and their doctors to make these intimate reproductive decisions that they have to make uh decisions that are going to affect their own bodies and their own health and the and sometimes their survival um and uh for our family it became particularly poignant when we dealt with a miscarriage uh we were losing our pregnancy we a pregnancy we wanted a baby we wanted uh we were losing him and uh we had to have abortion care to resolve that um to make sure that Chrissy didn't die uh she was bleeding uh profusely and and her life needed to be saved um and we had to have abortion care to do that and uh having that experience really informed us uh about the range of reasons that people may need an abortion and uh how intrusive it would be for the government to have any say in that kind of conversation and that decision could you imagine us going through the tragedy of losing a pregnancy the the physical uh duress that Chrissy was going through to uh resolve that and having to deal with at the same time uh legal red tape uh out of concern that uh the doctors might get arrested or that she might get arrested for uh uh doing what they needed to do to preserve her life um it's unconscionable that we would put any woman through that and that is literally happening right now in Texas and other states around the country that have taken away women's rights to abortion and they put the government in a place where they are in those small doctor's rooms doctor's offices uh being a part of the decision making when they have no place in that conversation and no place making decisions they put the criminal legal system uh into those conversations so that now people could get arrested and District Attorneys could have to prosecute doctors for doing their jobs and women for getting the health care that they need it's unconscionable and it needs to change right away and that's part of our motivation for wanting KLA Harris to become the the next president but it's also a part of the motivation for all of our activism around this issue um in the states and uh and and in any setting where we feel like we can make a difference in that first TV debate between Trump and Harris Mr Trump refused to rule out a nationwide abortion ban he says he has given people what they want by leaving the decision to individual states in your view is that what people want it's clear that's not what people wanted uh it was clear that uh before uh roow versus Wade was overturned that the majority of the country uh believed it shouldn't have been overturned Ed and especially since it's been overturned there's even been more support uh for abortion rights because people see the consequences of it being overturned and see the impact that it's had on people's lives of course people didn't want that and uh he says it's better because it's back in the States but that means Texas has different rules than New York and California and uh what are the women of Texas being put through because Texas has different different rules what I just talked about with uh the possibility of having to bleed out and risk a woman's life lives to uh resolve a miscarriage uh because they're worried about uh being prosecuted for uh for uh doing something to save the woman's life uh this is crazy like we should not be doing this in any state uh and so throwing it back to the states is no consolation when a huge percentage of the population are in states with really oppressive rules on this I'm going to quote your wife Chrissy's own words she said let's call it what it is I had an abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance MH going public with something so intimate so personal so sensitive so upsetting how difficult a decision was was that I'm proud of her because she took our own trauma and our own pain and um turned it into a way of informing her own advocacy and and her own way of fighting for change in the country and she said that after the do's decision so uh she was uh seeing um the threat that Reproductive Rights were under in the country the the threat that women's rights were under in the country and saying understanding the story uh the trauma that we've gone through um we can use that trauma to try to make women's lives better all around the country and she used her platform and her experience to help advocate for other women to have the rights that they need to um to make their own decisions about their own health care and when and if they have children I want to ask you more about Donald Trump if I may he has said that he has done more for black people than any president since Lincoln you're laughing he's delusional and I I think we saw his delusion on display uh in the debate of some of the conspiracy theories that I I I mean I definitely want to ask you about that in a moment but on this he in an interview he said he has many black friends he says he understands black people because he feels like them that he too has been discriminated against he's been given a champion of Black America award from from the black conservative Association you're laughing at everything that that I'm I'm I'm is this not hilarious I'm surprised you're not laughing too he he he says all that means he cannot be racist do you agree well I I think his actions have shown that it's uh it's quite in his uh in his character to be racist um from uh the birther conspiracy lie that he was spreading about our first black president to the nonsense he was saying about uh kamla Harris not being black until she was uh to uh even equating his own uh uh felony convictions with him being uh accepted in the black community as if that's the only uh characterization that would make him have something in common with the black community is racist in itself um when he clearly lost the election in 2020 he targeted black uh majority black cities and black precincts and black election workers uh to disenfranchise Black voters and to demonize them uh he and Rudy Giuliani demonized black election workers made it seem like they were uh drug dealers or moving around ballots like they were uh heroin bials it's just nasty racism and then it culminated in him characterizing the Haitian immigrants that live in my hometown Springfield Ohio uh who have come there to work and experience the American dream and are contributing to our community and to our society he spread vicious rumors about them uh eating cats and dogs um playing to bigotry racism and xenophobia like he always does um it's clear um that he's always um believed that black and brown people are inferior and um he's used that belief um in his political message to divide the country in terms of Springfield where you're from you said that's where your roots are um he a spokesman for this for the city has said there have been no credible reports that any immigrants have eaten the town's cats and dogs eating the town's pets and that is backed up by the police division but what do you make of that kind of rhetoric I mean it's obvious what it is you know he believes that black and brown people are inferior he's been demonizing um black and brown immigrants uh as long as he's been in public life and he's used that message to Galvanize his support and divide the country and uh it's the same Playbook he's been doing it for quite a long time and hopefully America's tired of it um we can do better we have way more in common than what separates us and uh hopefully we can uh find a way to unify and and celebrate what we have in common rather than uh allowing such a divisive politician to uh make us hate each other and and suspect each other the mayor Rob Rue said we're focusing on X and Facebook posts and we're trying to squash these rumors about immigrants eating cats and dogs but it takes a lot of time yeah to get the truth back when you hear the kind of things that have been said during this presidential campaign how much is there an issue with truth and if there is a big issue do you worry about getting it back I do think there's an issue with truth and and you know it's it's exacerbated when the CE or when the head of X um is a purveyor of misinformation and disinformation um you think Elon Musk is oh he certainly is I mean it's not I don't think he is it's just a fact he is a purveyor of disinformation and misinformation spreads false rumors all the time and he's also he says that's freedom of speech and he he's well he's a freedom of speech purist he also claims to be someone who believes in the truth and he spreads false rumors all the time what what do you put Trump's popularity amongst black Americans down to and I'm looking at the most recent ipsos poll which was done for the Washington Post which says Mr Trump's favorability among black Americans is up four points to 15 from 11 in 202 too yeah so that tells me he's extremely unpopular with black people okay yesir fair enough and he's least popular with black people if you compare uh us to any other group of people in America but but but support among African American and Hispanic voters has increased in recent years if it's from 11 to 15 I just think it's such a minor difference and um but it's going the trajectory is up but the headline to me is he's extremely unpopular with black people okay but why do you think some black people have appear to have migrated towards it I think some black people will do all sorts of things there's a lot of us there's 40 million of us in America and uh we don't all think alike and some people um maybe fooled by his Bluster his machismo his uh his uh claims to be good for the economy whatever uh there's enough black people that you can find 10 or 15% of us to do anything but uh we're not a monolith and uh and he's still less popular with us than with any other group in the country is it personal with you and Trump he says you're boring he he's talks about Chrissy your wife calling her filthy mouth does any of that hurt uh not at all um I think I have such contempt for him as a human being and his character he a liar he's a narcissist and so if he doesn't think highly of me I wear that as a badge of honor in Your Song Glory which featured in the film Selma you sing about Rosa Parks and the bus and the civil rights movement of the 60s in your view is there still an ongoing civil rights struggle all these years later in the States you know um I think um there have been kind of es and flows when uh the civil rights movement has been more uh palpable in the country and obviously we had quite a um uh Peak uh of that movement during uh 2020 and 2021 in response to George Floyd's murder uh George Floyd's murder in uh in Minnesota and um since then there's been quite a backlash uh and some of the energy has subsided around it partially I think because there haven't been as many public uh examples of uh of those kinds of uh deaths and murders like uh George Floyd's was the fact that it was caught untape the fact that it was during a time when uh we were all on lockdown uh I think all of that kind of affected how much attention was uh put on it and so uh I think the level of activism has certainly come down from that Peak um and I don't look forward to another moment like that so that we can Inspire more activism I don't I don't want that to to need to be the case for us to have the activism we need and I think honestly a lot of the most important activism is kind of the day-to-day stuff that uh doesn't get a lot of headlines and so a lot of the work that my uh organization does uh free America is around the day-to-day work uh working with local government trying to make things more fair and Equitable making sure we have uh more affordable housing uh better educational opportunities and so a lot of the activism I think that we really need on a on a kind of more regular basis is the stuff that doesn't get a lot of headlines but it's happening and and it's key it's absolutely key to life chances isn't it absolutely it's it's really key to actually changing the structures and the systems that affect people's lives and so that's what we're really working working on right now you and of course now Taylor Swift are among a very high-profile list of celebrities who are backing K Harris sure do you think it has any effect on voters I don't know that all of it has an effect but I'm I I'm pretty aware that Taylor Swift is extremely influential and you know especially with a certain group of people um especially with young girls and some of those young girls are 18 and are going to be eligible to vote and they may not have been paying attention to the election uh as much as people like me and uh having her highlight uh who she's supporting but also inform them about how to register to vote and where they can go to do that uh I think is really powerful and I'm glad that she's using the massive influence she has to educate the public and uh inform them how she's going to vote based on her own values and I thought she did it in a very uh uh nice tongue and Chic way with the cat and the signing off as the childless cat lady uh to make it clear that she was paying attention when uh when JD Vance was making his statements about uh what what he thinks of women's role in society you're here in the UK to promote an album of lullab and singalongs aimed at children yeah it's called My Favorite Dream and alongside some Classics Like You Are My Sunshine which we used to sing to our my boys there are nine new songs by you were these inspired by your own children absolutely uh the songs I wrote them at home first time I ever wrote an album at home uh in our piano room there and uh I thought very specifically about the messages that we like to give to our kids I wrote a list down when I was thinking about what I wanted to write about of themes and and messages that we like to give to our kids to inspire them to to comfort them to motivate them and I wrote the songs based on those themes that I wrote down and uh it was directly inspired by the conversations we have with our kids although they're not just the messages are not just for kids all they honestly they're not and I talk to a lot of adults and they're like yeah I could use a message like that give us an example of message like I have a song called when I feel sad and we all feel sad we all get down sometimes and it's a song about trying to focus on the things we love in our lives uh the things that make us happy uh whenever we get down as a way of picking us up and um you know I did the album with sufan Stevens who's a remarkable producer and artist and arranger and he had been um going through his own personal tragedy in the past year he lost his partner and he was going through some health struggles and he told me how much emotional wisdom he found in the music um and how uh good it was for him to work on the album because he needed those messages in his own life and I think a lot of people will find the messages useful in their own lives too and I wanted the music to feel like uh it was not only for kids but for their entire families and for adults without kids anybody uh who loves music and I and I tried to write it and have suan produce it at a musical standard that I felt like was was on par with any other album that I would put out and I didn't want to uh compromise on uh musical standards just because I was writing for kids I I I didn't want to feel like I was dumbing it down uh even though I wrote the lyric with kids in mind um I I always beli that we can make a great children's album with this musical standard that was as high as any other album that I would make John Legend thank you very much for talking to news tonight and our audience thank you thank you so so much what a pleasure