Frankly, things are too fraught right now to be stressing about some mess that happened on “The Breakfast Club,†so unless you really want to know what happened in the impromptu conversation between Charlamagne tha God, DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh that aired on Monday afternoon, we totally understand if you want to close this tab. For the rest of you, here’s what happened. The conversation attempted to explain why people are “fed up†with police brutality against black Americans and how anyone, even white people, can combat it. Well, that’s at least what it seemed like “The Breakfast Club†crew came ready to do. The conversation began with all four expressing their disgust and anger at George Floyd’s violent death. “I think that’s probably the closest thing to the Devil that I have ever seen in my life,†DJ Envy said.
But the convo quickly devolved into a losing battle when Limbaugh declared he didn’t believe in white privilege or even the notion of systemic discrimination within institutions. He didn’t explain why he cares about police brutality now, after condemning Colin Kaepernick in 2016, nor did he offer up advice on how to expose more people to the cause, both questions asked by DJ Envy and Yee. Instead, he doled out hypotheticals and questions like “If the Minnesota Vikings had announced two nights ago that they were gonna hire Colin Kaepernick, would the riots have stopped?†and “If what happened to George Floyd had happened to a white man, we probably wouldn’t even have heard about it,†and don’t forget “You had people electing the first African-American president in our history. He served for eight years. Why isn’t there anything to show for it that makes you less angry than you were then?†By that point, a fed-up Charlamagne laid it out plain and simple: “Once again, it doesn’t matter who is in the White House if that person is not willing to dismantle the mechanism of white supremacy.†Limbaugh laughed that off and pivoted to calling out the Democratic Party for their inaction, but Charlamagne didn’t play into all that. “I don’t disagree with you,†he replied. “That’s why I’m not letting nobody politicize black pain and tell us that this is one person’s fault just because they’re trying to win an election in November. This is America’s fault.â€
After a tangent where Limbaugh tried to gain sympathy for Donald Trump (and during which Charlamagne checked him on some statistics), the radio host hit Limbaugh with the ultimate question: How do we end white supremacy? “Well, that’s another show, guys, because you’d have to define what that means to you,†Limbaugh said. “I don’t feel like I am a white supremacist and I don’t think there’s much white supremacy going on out there.†So, I guess this was a waste of airtime? Limbaugh pressed for more time — maybe another conversation another time. “Not if we just gon dance the whole time,†Charlamagne said. “If you’re gonna have some honest conversations with us and stop telling us things like white privilege doesn’t exist and you don’t know why white supremacy is. If we can do that, yes.â€