USA TODAY National
NEW YORK − Rap superstar Cardi B entered a radio studio in midtown Manhattan on Sept. 18, a day after she announced she was expecting baby No. 4.
The Grammy winner was there to promote her new album on the nationally syndicated radio program "The Breakfast Club," co-hosted by an old friend, Charlamagne Tha God.
"Club" staffers brought cake and slushies and catered fare from the salty buffet chain Golden Corral in the Bronx. They brought blue and pink balloons. "You know we got a whole baby shower up here for Cardi," Charlamagne said on air during their talk of music and motherhood.
Then, Cardi blurted out a divine revelation: That off-air, the pair mainly speaks about politics.
Once known simply as a gossip guru, Charlamagne – who reaches over 7 million monthly "Club" listeners – still gets "the tea." But in recent years, the 47-year-old has emerged as one of America's most prominent political pundits, beefing with President Donald Trump and predicting Joe Biden's 2024 downfall.
"I keep saying the generation now of Democrats and the generation in the future, they're going to have to throw that old regime under the bus…" he says. "They're going to have to admit that that old regime was not connecting with people the way that they want to."
The previous day, ABC had sidelined late-night host Jimmy Kimmel under pressure from the Trump administration following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and excerpts from former Vice President Kamala Harris' score-settling campaign tell-all, "107 Days," had revived Democrats' 2024 debacle.
The Harris book was more evidence, Charlamagne said, that her presidential run was doomed by caution in an era of plain – and even reckless – talk.
"I'm very happy that she was very honest and candid about what she had been experiencing," he says of the book. "I hope it just gives them the freedom to speak freely and call a thing a thing."
Charlamagne Tha God and Kamala Harris' power struggle
Charlamagne felt vindicated with the release of "107." He had publicly warned Harris about being too hesitant against Trump in the run-up to last year's election.
Charlamagne and Harris have long shared a complex relationship with differences occasionally surfacing over his frequent criticism of Democratic messaging to everyday Americans.
Despite supporting the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, Charlamagne was left disappointed, and he vowed not to back them in 2024.
"'I've learned my lesson from doing that. Once they got in the White House, she … kind of disappeared,' " he told Politico. A change of heart came when Charlamagne lifted Harris’ impromptu White House run following Biden’s exit from the race last July.
How Charlamagne shed his 'shock jock' past
While Harris has been cast as an innately cautious public figure who rose to power in the insidery political circles of California's Bay Area, Charlamagne's boisterousness is rooted in South Carolina, where he was born and raised.
The history buff – whose legal name is Lenard Larry McKelvey – adopted the "God" portion of his moniker from the Five-Percent Nation sect, which believes that Black men are gods; The Charlamagne handle recalls the 8th-century emperor of Western and Central Europe, an alias he used while selling drugs as a teenager in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
"We create these characters when we're young to kind of protect the versions of ourselves that we haven't, you know, dealt with," he said on "The View" in 2022.
In his early years, he acted up at school. He also spent time in jail. Berkeley High assistant principal Ms. Brown predicted his rise on the radio. "She said, 'That boy mouth right there can start a riot or a revolution,'" he recalls.
After hustling at home state radio stations, Charlamagne’s big break arrived in 2006 when he was hired as the right hand to daytime diva Wendy Williams on her now-defunct New York radio show, "The Wendy Williams Experience." By 2010, he was named co-host of "The Breakfast Club."
He became radio royalty with infamous questions and a combative on-air style, once asking NBA legend Magic Johnson from whom he contracted HIV. Over the past decade, Charlamagne slowly scrapped his "shock jock" persona.
"People have watched me grow from the age of 28 to now – from 28 when I was with Wendy, to now being 47. If I was the same person, something's wrong," he says.
"For me, it was just like when I started to do the work on myself to say, 'Hey, I want to just be better as an individual,' " he adds.
Charlamagne Tha God gets deep
Unlike Williams, who famously avoided politics, Charlamagne leaned deeper into current events.
He leaned deeper into himself, too. He publicly revealed past childhood trauma. A search for higher ground – and healing – led to an experience with ayahuasca, a psychedelic plant brew said to unlock a spiritual awakening.
A dad to four girls, Charlamagne is open about his struggles with anxiety and depression and now shares a quiet life with his wife Jessica Gadsden in a leafy New Jersey suburb. That relatability has resonated with an army of loyal listeners, according to content expert Kelly Barner.
"He's willing to be transparent and take risks, be vulnerable about himself," Barner says. "I think that leads other people to open up to him in a way that means his conversations reveal things about the people that he's talking to."
Charlamagne also stuck to radio – an evolving media format – as his main gig, while other radio personalities, including Williams and Ryan Seacrest, flocked to TV.
Left-leaning journalist Aaron Parnas – who has garnered over 6 million Instagram and TikTok followers – said that Charlamagne's "authenticity" is behind the continued success of his brand as audiences shift to social media and streaming services. "It just shows that it's not the platform you’re on, it's the person you are," Parnas says.
In September 2020, Charlamagne launched the Black Effect Podcast Network in conjunction with longtime creative partner iHeartMedia and former TV producer Dollie Bishop.
"I'm an awkward person with people when I first know you," Charlamagne tells USA TODAY of his off-air demeanor. But he connected effortlessly with Bishop, who leads production and development at Black Effect. The podcast network celebrated its fifth anniversary on Sept. 9 and has netted over 1 billion downloads.
"I wanted Black Effect to be to podcasting what BET was to television," Charlamagne says, referring to Black Entertainment Television, a billion-dollar business. "Five years later, we're looking at what podcasting has become, so I'm looking like, 'Yo, why can't we be the new BET period?'"
Charlamagne launched his own popular podcast, "The Brilliant Idiots," in 2014 with comedian Andrew Schulz. A weekly debrief between close friends, "Idiots" grew into a home for civil discourse long before Schulz voted for Trump last year.
"I don't care if he has a different political view. I know him. I know his family," Charlamagne says. Schulz is now an outspoken critic of Trump. "My friend is an honest person who calls balls and strikes when he's for something," Charlamagne adds.
Charlamagne’s feud with Trump
A lifelong quest for answers led him away from the "Club" in search of uncharted territory in the same vein as Jon Stewart and former President Barack Obama. Democrats, he says, spend too much time preaching to the converted.
"I like talking to the other – the so-called other – side, even though I don't feel like I'm on a side," Charlamagne says. "I just like talking to people who have different viewpoints, different ideologies." This August, Charlamagne appeared as a guest on Lara Trump's Fox News show after Trump's daughter-in-law stopped by "The Breakfast Club" as a 2024 surrogate.
Charlamagne said he felt pulled by a higher power to go on Lara Trump's "My View." "I was like, 'You know what? I want to go do it' and that's where God wanted me to be on the Thursday that we taped, and that's the conversation that he wanted me to have," he says.
To have a bigger reach, he believes that one must reach out. "Now you see the Pete Buttigiegs, or even the Gavin Newsoms who go on the conservative platforms and have conversations with people – and I personally feel like it works," he adds.
On Lara Trump's show, Charlamagne predicted "traditional conservatives" would take back the Republican party from its MAGA base after turmoil over convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
After the episode, Trump slammed him, calling him a "racist sleazebag." "Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?" Trump wrote of Charlamagne's "Tha God" handle.
"I loved it," Charlamagne says of Trump's insults. "It's great." He then named the president his "Donkey of the Day" on a daily "Club" segment. In contrast to her father-in-law’s criticism, Lara Trump offered admiration for Charlamagne's reach in a statement provided to USA TODAY by Fox: "He has a lot of influence over a younger demographic who listen to his political views."
"You need to be comfortable going on platforms that may not be friendly in order to reach people who rarely hear your point of view," she says.
Charlamagne Tha God: Trump won on ‘dinner table issues’
From Charlamagne’s point of view, Trump won over working-class voters because Democrats failed to properly communicate about "dinner table issues."
He said he thinks the party lost due to frustration over the southern border and affordability, while Trump "spoke to that."
"If you're sitting here in a country where you are like, 'Damn, I'm sitting here poor and (expletive) up, but these people are coming over and I feel like they're getting more than me,'" Charlamagne says, then of course, voters were "going to feel resentful." He remains unimpressed by national Democrats.
"You're talking about a party right now that has zero identity, don't know whether they're coming or going, still trying to play politics, still don't have any real fight," he says. If the party wants to win future elections, younger Democrats should "throw that old regime under the bus," Charlamagne says.
Pressing Biden over 'cognitive health,' sparring over 'you ain't Black'
In "107 Days," Harris bashed Biden's decision to run for reelection, calling it "recklessness."
Back in 2020, during Biden's first run against Trump, he joined "The Breakfast Club" for an interview that now seems prescient. The conversation began with pleasantries as Biden sought to connect with Charlamagne's audience by saying Trump's policies were "killing" Black Americans.
But Charlamagne quickly pivoted, asking Biden to respond to talk in conservative media that there were problems with his "cognitive health."
"They don't think everything's working upstairs. What do you say to that?" he asked, pressing Biden on whether he was hurting his chances by being "MIA," or missing in action, on the campaign trail due to the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.
The interview got especially tense when Biden criticized Black voters who were considering voting for Trump. Biden said, "you ain't Black" to voters struggling with that decision, comments that stoked fierce criticism and an apology.
Will Charlamagne Tha God run for office?
In his "My View" interview with Lara Trump, Charlamagne’s comments about Trump weren't the only ones that made waves. He also offered more bold advice for Democrats ahead of the 2028 presidential race, revealing he would like to see "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart run as a "change agent."
"He'd be somebody I'd like to see really get in the race and disrupt things in 2028," Charlamagne said.
So, after his comments about Stewart, would Charlamagne himself ever consider entering politics? "No," he says first, before admitting "that don’t mean no."
"Yeah, you never know," he says. "We say people see things in you that you don't see in yourself. I've been hearing that enough and having people say that to me enough that I don't know what God has planned for me in the future."
'You're supposed to grow,' says Charlamagne
On the morning Cardi B visited the "Club," she led the line for Golden Corral after her interview with Charlamagne and his co-host Loren LoRosa.
Charlamagne ate fruit from a plate next to Bishop instead. He chose the healthier option – like leaving "shock value" behind – as he's tried to do over the past decade. "You're not just supposed to age," he says. "You're supposed to grow, you're supposed to evolve."
Although his mouth can still be a ticking time bomb when cameras roll, Charlamagne is disarmed off the airwaves by staff members and creative partners like Bishop. He says he has "no idea" why his voice has resonated.
Bishop does. "When people can't live in their authenticity and who they are, they go identify and find it in someone else," she says. "And I think because that is there, and they want that, they magnetize and gravitate toward him because he has it: The essence, the energy."
That Thursday, Charlamagne gave "Donkey of the Day" to ABC for shelving Kimmel. "It just feels like they're just bending the knee," he says. He is unsurprised by the country's divided reaction to Kirk's death.
"Regardless of how you may feel about an individual, he had people that love him," he says. "I don't know why people don't realize that for everybody that you hate, there are millions and millions of people that love that individual."
"He's just a polarizing figure," Charlamagne says. "Most people that have that kind of audience are – they're polarizing. I'm polarizing." From the dark studio in Manhattan, Charlamagne said his listeners help him see the light.
"I'm from a rural area. Those are the people that I grew up around, those are the people that I'm still around," he says. "When I go home, like when I'm in Newark, New Jersey, or Harlem at the food bank, those are the people that you see every single day."
"If you listen to those people, you'll always know what's going on in the world and what politicians are getting wrong," he continues.
Last year, the first presidential primary contest for Democrats was held in Charlamagne's native South Carolina. His voice has reached voters that Trump won over. Voters that Democrats need to win back. Will the party listen?
(This story has been updated with new information.)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Beefing with Trump, bashing Biden, Charlamagne Tha God storms American politics
Reporting by Jay Stahl, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
America News
Associated Press US News
CNN
Reuters US Top
KTAR News 92.3
Newsweek Top
Raw Story