Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and January sixth, rider Pamela Hemphill says
Speaker 1: she will refuse Trump's pardon. We have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today, MSNBC contributor to Charlie Sikes pars
Speaker 1: is the shock and awe as we talk about Trump's
Speaker 1: first day back in office. Then we will talk to
Speaker 1: Planned Parenthood President Alexis macgil Johnson about how they are
Speaker 1: going to go forward and try to protect women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 1: But first the news.
Speaker 2: So Mollie, it's the first day of the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is now just about twenty four hours old. As we
Speaker 2: go to tape this, I think the biggest concern of
Speaker 2: the shock at aw is as attack of the fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 2: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Here we are It's been a day of Trumps. He's
Speaker 1: basically decided he wants to a sharply to the Constitution
Speaker 1: and he wants to start with the fourteenth Amendment. I
Speaker 1: think it's important to realize the fourteenth Amendment. These are
Speaker 1: the amendments that came after the Civil War. Right, these
Speaker 1: are the amendments that were the kind of rebuilding America
Speaker 1: post slavery. These are the amendments that promised because remember,
Speaker 1: when children of African slaves were born in this country,
Speaker 1: they were not necessarily citizens. This was the way to
Speaker 1: undo that. And I don't think that you can look
Speaker 1: at trump Ism and as a vacuum. You have to
Speaker 1: look at this sort of historical president and remember, this
Speaker 1: is a larger movement to sort of undo the advances
Speaker 1: of FDR in the twentieth century, and that is what
Speaker 1: this is. So Trump's attack on birthright citizenship is not
Speaker 1: just about having less citizens. It's about a certain kind
Speaker 1: of homage to the past, a certain kind of undoing
Speaker 1: of so much progress. And I think it's worth realizing
Speaker 1: that one of the other things about this executive order,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is totally not constitutional, it's a
Speaker 1: complete shot in the dark. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the presidential immunity, you know, the idea that the
Speaker 1: president should be a monarch and not be responsible, broadly
Speaker 1: immune from prosecution for anything forever and ever, which was,
Speaker 1: by the way, a theory that a legal theory that
Speaker 1: Trump's lawyers brought to the Supreme Court, and one with
Speaker 1: which is why I bring this up. Look, Trump has
Speaker 1: capture of the Supreme Court. We know that, right, He's
Speaker 1: installed three justices. He has two who are absolute Trumpers
Speaker 1: to the core. You know, two who are basically Tucker
Speaker 1: Carls and fanboys. That's Thomas and Alidos. So for sure,
Speaker 1: this is in a normal presidency. In a normal America,
Speaker 1: this would not even get a minute because it's so
Speaker 1: uncom constitutional. But remember we are now living in Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. We are now living in the rous
Speaker 1: Vought extra constitutional world. We are post textualsts, and so
Speaker 1: you could see a world where these people are able
Speaker 1: to overturn the fourteenth Amendment. I want to point out
Speaker 1: one last thing about this executive order. It actually says
Speaker 1: that if you come to this country illegally, your child
Speaker 1: born here would not be a citizen. But it also
Speaker 1: says if you come to this country on an H
Speaker 1: one B visa you come to work, your child will
Speaker 1: not be a legal citizen either. These are like this
Speaker 1: is the beginning of making America a country more like France,
Speaker 1: or making America a country that is no longer a
Speaker 1: country of immigrants. Now, as someone whose great grandparents came
Speaker 1: to this country in the eighteen hundreds. It is, in
Speaker 1: my mind, just mind blowing that we've gotten to this
Speaker 1: moment and it is such a paradigm shift. It is
Speaker 1: so profoundly wrong on every level. And the truth is,
Speaker 1: the skin various part of it is that he may
Speaker 1: actually be able to take a sharp bat of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: We don't know, so that will be the big open
Speaker 1: question of the next couple months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am not looking forward to seeing what the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court says when they finally get that in their laps.
Speaker 2: But hopefully they Democrats are smart enough to do enough
Speaker 2: fuckery of the courts to delay that for as long
Speaker 2: as possible.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the Supreme Court wants. They may rule
Speaker 1: what he wants, but they may not want to take this.
Speaker 1: They may want to slow their role as slowly as
Speaker 1: possible because this will be a very unpopular decision. And
Speaker 1: they have already done a bunch of really unpopular decisions.
Speaker 1: And you'll remember that some of the people, even the
Speaker 1: most zalidous and I'm thinking of like Justice Roberts who
Speaker 1: wrote these Citizens United Agreement, who you know, the Citizens
Speaker 1: United decision, which is what actually got us here right,
Speaker 1: which was you know how there are billionaire oligarchs funding
Speaker 1: our elections. Now that guy knows that this be an
Speaker 1: epic should show for him, So I think stay tuned
Speaker 1: on this. There's something else I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is something that we did a lot of time
Speaker 1: with when we were talking about Project tween twenty five,
Speaker 1: and it's something that we were prepared for. But every
Speaker 1: time I'm optimistic, that's when I get into trouble. The
Speaker 1: Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight. If you listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast, you know what it is because we
Speaker 1: talk about it all the time. It's a wartime authority.
Speaker 1: It's been used three times. We're of eighteen twelve against
Speaker 1: the British, World War One, against the Germans, World War two,
Speaker 1: against all of the countries that you know, the Germans,
Speaker 1: the Japanese, et cetera. For internment camps. As we heard
Speaker 1: Michael Walden from the Brennan Center tell us this week,
Speaker 1: it is very faulty kind of reasoning that may not
Speaker 1: work for Trump, but this is the legal framework Trump
Speaker 1: is trying to use, and that is why he declared
Speaker 1: an emergency at the southern border to be at war
Speaker 1: with the cartels. So the question is, can he create
Speaker 1: a legal scenario where it seems as if we are
Speaker 1: at war despite the fact that we are not at war,
Speaker 1: and can he do that in order to then be
Speaker 1: able to designate different groups alien enemies. And by the way,
Speaker 1: when you go down the road of alien enemies, you
Speaker 1: end up with alien enemies like people from Mexico, like
Speaker 1: journalists who don't write stuff you like. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really sketchy ways to skin this cat
Speaker 1: and stay tuned.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the other thing I think we should get
Speaker 2: into is that Trump did all these pardons for the
Speaker 2: January sixth rioters. Everyone from the QAnon shaman who clearly
Speaker 2: did some bad things there to Enrique A. Tario who
Speaker 2: is serving twenty two years for seditious conspiracy are all
Speaker 2: either commuted or part of now.
Speaker 1: Ronald Trump, besides doing a boatload of executive orders, he
Speaker 1: pardoned all of the January six riders. He did this
Speaker 1: because he said he would. It was a campaign promise,
Speaker 1: but all the Republican senators said he wouldn't. Even like
Speaker 1: people like JD. Vance said, well, you know, and even
Speaker 1: like last week, Pam Bondi said she would go through
Speaker 1: each pardon one by one and decide, well, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened yesterday. Yesterday Trump just pardoned all of them,
Speaker 1: including people who had done violence on police, including the
Speaker 1: guy who was like whars Nancy, including the guy in
Speaker 1: the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, including the QAnon shaman who is
Speaker 1: so sane and centered. The first thing he tweeted was
Speaker 1: all caps gonna buy some mother fucking guns. I love
Speaker 1: this country. God bless America. Lots of explanation points, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine. So here he is, my man, the
Speaker 1: law and order president, engaging in pardon palooza for some reason.
Speaker 1: And also I might add, like, if you're Zuckerberg and
Speaker 1: you have worked so hard on your public persona, and
Speaker 1: you have so many publicists and comms people and this
Speaker 1: and that, you are now on the same side as
Speaker 1: the QAnon shaman, Like, how do you do that, Mark Zuckerberg?
Speaker 1: How do you pretend you're a good guy when you
Speaker 1: are on the same team as the QAnon shaman. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you can do that.
Speaker 2: I'm going with you. Kemp.
Speaker 1: Charlie Sykes is the author of the Newsletter to the
Speaker 1: Contrary and the book How the right lawsuits mind. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. My friend Charlie.
Speaker 3: Sikes Day one, Day one, Molly John, how do you do?
Speaker 3: How'd you get through day one?
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like there are so
Speaker 1: many parts of it that are like you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember doing this and five years ago, four years ago.
Speaker 1: But then there are moments where you're like, I can't
Speaker 1: just the sheer. I don't know. I feel like part
Speaker 1: of me is like I can't do this again or anymore,
Speaker 1: And then part of me is like, oh, I know
Speaker 1: how to do this. This is not so hard.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think part of it is that
Speaker 3: it's all going to be very very clear, it's going
Speaker 3: to be laid out. We aren't the people, you know,
Speaker 3: screaming this guy is going to do X, because he's
Speaker 3: going to actually do it. So okay, this is kind
Speaker 3: of weird. It's kind of my contrarian side of me that,
Speaker 3: you know, I actually feel vindicated and liberated in a
Speaker 3: certain way. I mean, it is depressing to see all
Speaker 3: of this happening. There's a sense of unreality about it.
Speaker 3: But for a lot of us who've been saying, you
Speaker 3: know this, this man is going to He's going to
Speaker 3: free the people who attacked and beat the cops, and
Speaker 3: people would roll their eyes. Oh that's Trump de arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3: Now it's Trump last twenty four hours now. And also
Speaker 3: I think the contrast between the people. I mean, it
Speaker 3: is interesting to me to watch and I understand that
Speaker 3: people who were burned out about this and watching the
Speaker 3: media coverage, you got a sense of just how lame
Speaker 3: their approaching it in how so much of the political
Speaker 3: class can't figure out how to deal with the new
Speaker 3: legitimate Donald Trump. And I'm like, fuck this, He's still
Speaker 3: the same guy. He's a convicted felon twice in peace,
Speaker 3: you know, adjudicated sexual abuser. And you may be memory
Speaker 3: holding this, but you know what, I kind of remember,
Speaker 3: and I can feel it's kind of a superpower that
Speaker 3: we remember this witch and we've been warning you, and
Speaker 3: you just kind of sit back and get the popcorn.
Speaker 3: In a dark sort of way.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like I'm listening to you,
Speaker 1: and for sure there is this surrealness, right like this
Speaker 1: happened again. Jesse and I did this whole documentary on
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five, during the summer, and then here
Speaker 1: he is just doing all this stuff, like ending the
Speaker 1: ability for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which is one
Speaker 1: of these things where it's like, why would you ever
Speaker 1: do that? There are certain things where you could make
Speaker 1: a conservative case for it, or you would say, but
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that you can't do that because
Speaker 1: drug companies need to get richer is just very hard.
Speaker 1: So it's vindicating in the fact that it's watching it
Speaker 1: happen is not surprising. Again, like with all this stuff,
Speaker 1: we're not going to be the people, or at least
Speaker 1: at first, we're not going to be the people who
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm sure you saw the video of
Speaker 1: the woman who was waiting for her appointment to apply
Speaker 1: for asylum be canceled because they took down the software.
Speaker 1: So like, we won't be the first people to feel
Speaker 1: the wrath of this. But I don't know. I want
Speaker 1: to keep my humanity, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I do know what you mean, And I think that's
Speaker 3: part of the challenges that keep your equilibrium, to keep
Speaker 3: your sanity, and I think part of it is to
Speaker 3: really work hard at separating the signal from the noise
Speaker 3: to separate, you know, what's kind of the performative distraction
Speaker 3: and what and what should we really be honing in on.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was thinking this morning as I
Speaker 3: was pretting together my newsletter, actually before I was pretting
Speaker 3: together my newsletter, which is to the contrary, on the
Speaker 3: subject that I had to break down in the various
Speaker 3: categories bullshit, you should ignore stuff that's fun, that you
Speaker 3: should ignore stuff that is troubling. But let's put on
Speaker 3: the back burner for now, and what we really ought
Speaker 3: to be talking about today. And I think that that
Speaker 3: kind of triage is going to be necessary every single day.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we could obsess endlessly about why
Speaker 3: is he renaming mountains and the Gulf because he's up
Speaker 3: and he's got these weird you know fetishes, you know.
Speaker 1: And also manifest destiny is the sort of homage to
Speaker 1: the kind of Jim right, I mean, it's an homage
Speaker 1: to that world that no longer exists.
Speaker 3: Well, there may be a time, you know, when we
Speaker 3: decide to invade other countries that it's going to move
Speaker 3: up to the front burner. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: yesterday was the day that I mean, you want to
Speaker 3: talk about dystopian moments when he freed fifteen hundred people
Speaker 3: who he had incited to overturn the last election and
Speaker 3: violently attack the Capitol. Now, this is one of those
Speaker 3: moments where you go, Okay, folks, are you really shrugging
Speaker 3: about this? Are you really shrugging about the kinds of
Speaker 3: people that he just turned out? Are you shrugging about
Speaker 3: the seditionist insurrectionists, the people who tased cops, who beat cops.
Speaker 3: I mean, look at those pictures. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: that's one of those clarifying moments because you know, millions
Speaker 3: of people of ordered for Donald Trump, but there's no
Speaker 3: indication that, you know, that's really what the American people
Speaker 3: wanted him to do on day one. And so yesterday
Speaker 3: I started the day saying we all ought to be
Speaker 3: thinking about Charlie Chaplin, you know, remembering to laugh at
Speaker 3: these guys. But it was a dark day for the
Speaker 3: rule of law and how aggressive Trump is going to be.
Speaker 3: I mean, you remember there was a debate, my only
Speaker 3: remember there was a debate eight years should we take
Speaker 3: him seriously or literally?
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 3: And I think that now it's pretty obvious that on
Speaker 3: you know, when he says something that the default position
Speaker 3: ought to be that we ought to take him as
Speaker 3: seriously as a fucking heart attack, because he's going to
Speaker 3: do everything he said, or he's going to try to
Speaker 3: do now. He's not going to get away with it.
Speaker 3: He's not going to be able to unilaterally amend the
Speaker 3: Constitution when it comes to birthright citizenship. But I think
Speaker 3: that every Project twenty twenty five outlandish thing that people
Speaker 3: speculated about expected it. It's rolling down the mountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. And
Speaker 1: we're thinking about is how we handle this Trump two
Speaker 1: point zero. Certain things will be publicity stunts or trolls.
Speaker 1: Certain things will be actually real. I mean with the
Speaker 1: one hundred executive orders, almost one hundred executive orders. The
Speaker 1: idea here was again to as Steve Ann and Chock
Speaker 1: and Awe right Days of Thunder, try to make it
Speaker 1: so hard to keep up. The keeping up becomes, you know,
Speaker 1: the job more than covering it. And so that is
Speaker 1: when we're going to have to be selective. I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this may sound contradictory. I mean, remember to
Speaker 3: laugh at them when they're clown like, but also to
Speaker 3: be outraged when they offend the basic rules of civilization.
Speaker 3: So I had a question that I want to ask
Speaker 3: you please, because I'll tell you, it's bothering me more
Speaker 3: and more. And it is this question of what are
Speaker 3: the rules of civility in Trump two point zero. You
Speaker 3: know we may have talked about it. I know I
Speaker 3: wrote about it. After no Mother Pence refused to shake
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Everybody else is like, yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: you know, congratulations mister president, and let's yuck it up now.
Speaker 3: Like five minutes ago, we were calling you a fascist,
Speaker 3: existential threat to democracy, you know, and a djudicated rapist
Speaker 3: they convicted Fellain. Hey, what the hell you won the election?
Speaker 3: So I guess as I watched and look, I just
Speaker 3: don't know if my reaction to write about this. So
Speaker 3: as I watched Trump show up at the White House
Speaker 3: and Joe Biden comes tottering out and says, welcome home,
Speaker 3: I'm going, really, is that necessary?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: Does everybody need to sort of pretend that this is
Speaker 3: in fact normal when you have been telling us for
Speaker 3: the last year. And I was trying to think about
Speaker 3: how to frame this that if you knew that somebody
Speaker 3: had raped a woman down the street from you, and
Speaker 3: they came up to you and they said, hey, Molly,
Speaker 3: how are you. Would you like to go get a
Speaker 3: cut cup of coffee? You'd say, fuck, no, no. If
Speaker 3: one of the people who tased Michael Fanone at the
Speaker 3: Capitol walked in the room, would you stand up and
Speaker 3: go shake hands with that person? And if the answer
Speaker 3: is no, then why would you get up and go
Speaker 3: across the room and shake hands with the man who
Speaker 3: incited the attack? Why would you decide that winning an
Speaker 3: election somehow means that everything you had said about this
Speaker 3: man now suddenly needs to be backburned. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean?
Speaker 1: I want to go a step further with us, because
Speaker 1: for the last three months, we've seen a ton of
Speaker 1: like closing up to Trump, and I believe it was
Speaker 1: based on this supposition that Donald Trump might not be
Speaker 1: as bad this time, and that we didn't want to
Speaker 1: look stupid. This is my theory of the case. What
Speaker 1: I think was so important about yesterday was it dispelled
Speaker 1: every second right of like maybe this time see I
Speaker 1: think Democrats actually what happened was I think they truly
Speaker 1: believed that Trump was the threat he was, that he
Speaker 1: still is, and then all of a sudden when he won,
Speaker 1: what kicked in was a certain kind of anxiety that,
Speaker 1: oh my god, maybe we were all wrong. And I
Speaker 1: think I saw this in the media for sure, that
Speaker 1: there was an anxiety that perhaps Trump would be better
Speaker 1: this time. You know, I have a friend who is
Speaker 1: a very good one reports on Trump, and I kept
Speaker 1: asking this person, is he better? Does he seem less crazy?
Speaker 1: Does he seem like he's And the person kept saying, no,
Speaker 1: same person, same person, same person. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what we say yesterday, he's the same person.
Speaker 3: Well, but also I think that there's a sense that somehow, okay,
Speaker 3: he was uncivil, he was crude and gross, and we're
Speaker 3: going to show that we are better. We're going to
Speaker 3: observe the norms.
Speaker 4: That he broke.
Speaker 3: So in effect, what you're allowing him to do is
Speaker 3: to use those norms to destroy those norms, to use
Speaker 3: the constitutional niceties to destroy the constitutional nicety.
Speaker 1: Yes, but you're talking about Merek Garland here right.
Speaker 3: Well, no, No, I'm talking about everybody that went to
Speaker 3: lunch with him, everybody that's just hanging around Democrats. And
Speaker 3: I think part of it is for the average person
Speaker 3: who's watching this. If you're told, you know, hair on fire,
Speaker 3: this man is maybe you know, a fascist adjacent. This
Speaker 3: man is a danger, is a real and present danger
Speaker 3: to every American value. And then you welcome him in
Speaker 3: the White House and you sit down and you had tea.
Speaker 3: There's a sense that, Okay, you didn't really mean that
Speaker 3: was just politics, right, that's what you guys just say.
Speaker 3: It's like this game. We say shit about each other,
Speaker 3: but when the kabuki dance is over, it's like, wink,
Speaker 3: wink wink, we're still all buddies. We're kind of all
Speaker 3: in on it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the feel I have.
Speaker 3: So we've talked endlessly about don't normalize this guy, don't
Speaker 3: normalize this guy. Then the election comes in comes along,
Speaker 3: and it's like, okay, them to normalize everything, even though
Speaker 3: even though as you say he is, it's almost like
Speaker 3: he's standing there in the middle of Fifth Avenue saying
Speaker 3: I am not normal. I am a fucking lunatic rhinoceros
Speaker 3: running down the street, and everybody's going, oh, it suck y. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, turning the page, a new president, a new direction. Oh,
Speaker 3: the president is unusually exuberant today. Well, he's remming in
Speaker 3: with his fucking horn.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't laugh, and again we laugh to keep from crying.
Speaker 1: We should laugh, we should Okay, perhaps we should laugh,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I know, I mean, this is a continual
Speaker 1: problem of having what little of the free press is
Speaker 1: laught during the whatever. This is the sort of and
Speaker 1: the kind of you know, hopefully not the end of
Speaker 1: liberal democracy. I mean, is there anything that makes you
Speaker 1: feel better?
Speaker 3: Well, by the way, we should laugh. We shouldn't go
Speaker 3: to lunch with him. I think that's the formulation.
Speaker 1: Yes, and Bernie Sanders, there was that moment when I'm
Speaker 1: sure you saw the photo of Bernie Sanders just sitting
Speaker 1: there not clapping as Klobashar was giving this sort of
Speaker 1: welcome speech to Trump, and I thought that was sort
Speaker 1: of just the right posture.
Speaker 3: The only thing that makes me feel better is the
Speaker 3: sense that something that can't last forever won't last forever,
Speaker 3: that this too shall pass. But that's sort of the
Speaker 3: moment of stoic modesty that is very much out of
Speaker 3: fashion these days. But by the way, can we just
Speaker 3: talk briefly about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1: Oh briefly, just briefly, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: So here you have Trump, and I think this is
Speaker 3: one thing that was so unsubtle, the gathering of the
Speaker 3: tech ola, Garks, Elon and Zuckerberg and Bezos, and they're
Speaker 3: all in the front row. The cabinet is in the
Speaker 3: back row. On the one hand, it's the conspicuous groveling
Speaker 3: by the billionaires, but also Trump really triumphing in the
Speaker 3: way that he's brought them to heal. And apparently members
Speaker 3: of Congress in the cabinet were told you can't bring
Speaker 3: your spouses, but they made the exception for Bezos, whose
Speaker 3: girlfriends shows up well in an interesting way. And of
Speaker 3: course the highlight then of the of the tech bro
Speaker 3: broligarchy sitting there is Mark Zuckerberg oggling her cleavance.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm sorry, we're elevating the discourse here.
Speaker 3: My twelve year old self needs to be in the
Speaker 3: room for this discussion.
Speaker 1: This feels like a Rick Wilson conversation and not a
Speaker 1: Charlie Sykes conversation. But yes, I will allow it, Yes,
Speaker 1: sorry Rick.
Speaker 3: So but also what was interesting, and I think it
Speaker 3: was George Conway highlighted this on.
Speaker 1: So George Conway conversation.
Speaker 3: No, no, because I was thinking about this is that
Speaker 3: remember when when Bezos nixed the Washington Post endorsement of Kamalairis,
Speaker 3: he said, well, endorsements snow give the sense of bias
Speaker 3: and blah blah blah blah, and and somebody tweeted it out.
Speaker 3: So I wonder how all the staffers of the Washington
Speaker 3: Post are feeling now about, you know, Jeff Bezos yucking
Speaker 3: it up with Donald Trump. So that's kind of the
Speaker 3: normalization that I'm talking about. So you asked what makes
Speaker 3: me feel better? And I think I've said this to
Speaker 3: you before. All incoming administrations overplay their hand, they misread
Speaker 3: their mandates. And a populist, you know, man of the people,
Speaker 3: working class movement that is clearly dominated by arrogant, juvenile billionaires,
Speaker 3: I don't know that strikes me as having a structural flaw.
Speaker 1: I think so too. And in fact, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I wonder a lot about is how here
Speaker 1: we are at this moment, right and we have these
Speaker 1: tech oligarchs whose companies and whose families in some cases
Speaker 1: have spent billions of dollars on right pr and comms
Speaker 1: like you know, Amazon, think about like even oil company
Speaker 1: is like we love climate. You know, these people all
Speaker 1: they care about is what other people think of them.
Speaker 1: They are standing in the front row of a guy
Speaker 1: who then pardons a number of violent fenders, right political
Speaker 1: you know, offenders. And then later on that day, a
Speaker 1: different tech bro makes a gesture that we are that
Speaker 1: the ADL promises us is not a Nazi salute. But
Speaker 1: then the discourse is now completely about whether or not
Speaker 1: it was a Nazi salute. And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you're in a discourse about that, you are losing.
Speaker 3: Part of me thinks that that's kind of a distraction.
Speaker 3: The way, the way that I phrased it in my
Speaker 3: newsletter this morning was is that, you know, Elon Musk
Speaker 3: reminded us that he's really all out of fucks to
Speaker 3: give about whether think that he whether people think that
Speaker 3: he is a Nazi.
Speaker 1: He doesn't care, right, he doesn't care.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I'd be much more willing to
Speaker 3: cut him some slack if you know, five minutes before this,
Speaker 3: he hadn't endorsed the Neil Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't know why you or.
Speaker 3: That he hadn't have a track record of posting any
Speaker 3: Semitic comments on his shitty site. So yeah, that is
Speaker 3: one of those weird sorts of those weird sorts of things.
Speaker 3: In the end, that feels it feels like a distraction
Speaker 3: for everybody. But I think we're going to have it.
Speaker 3: By the way, he was obviously in a really good mood,
Speaker 3: having you know, shit Ramaswami and got him out of dog.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 3: How about that VI didn't even make it to the inauguration.
Speaker 1: It's true, so efficient that they got rid of their
Speaker 1: co head right away. I mean, that's the thing is like,
Speaker 1: here's a party where party is the wrong word. An
Speaker 1: oligar ruler, a sovereign according to the Supreme Court, who
Speaker 1: basically has a tend that includes the guy in the
Speaker 1: Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, the Zionists.
Speaker 3: Right, So you're way smarter about this stuff, and I am,
Speaker 3: so can I ask you another question?
Speaker 1: Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I haven't gotten my head around what may actually be
Speaker 3: the biggest story of the last forty eight hours, this
Speaker 3: massive meme coin that Donald Trump has put out. There's
Speaker 3: a Donald Trump coin, there's a millenniaup coin. And if
Speaker 3: I'm reading this right, these things are worth tens of
Speaker 3: billions of dollars and so if you want to just
Speaker 3: now anybody just put Boodle cash Health into the pocket
Speaker 3: of the president, all you have to do is buy
Speaker 3: one of these fogus coins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, meme him.
Speaker 3: It is part of it is just the nakedness of
Speaker 3: it is like, hey, you thought I'd be constrained about
Speaker 3: just pure forget the grift, We're going straight to the graft.
Speaker 1: Yes, meme coin. So basically the idea here is that
Speaker 1: you can make a coin. You can make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. By the way, what I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about this coin is not anything except this. It has
Speaker 1: made the crypto people really mad because it's so blatantly
Speaker 1: corrupt that they feel it's undermining the sort of low
Speaker 1: the you know. For example, my husband is a VC
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I was interviewing someone who
Speaker 1: deals with crypto, and I said, so, basically the net
Speaker 1: of this whole interview was he said, it's a complete scam.
Speaker 1: And my husband looks at me and he says, well,
Speaker 1: is the dollar a scam? Right? Currency is the value
Speaker 1: that you know occasionally he's like a finance bro And
Speaker 1: I was like, is the dollar scam? What? And what
Speaker 1: the bitcoin people don't like is that they have now
Speaker 1: laid down with trump Ism. It undermines the whole sort
Speaker 1: of currency itself, and that is where we are. Well.
Speaker 3: This makes me think, though, that there's really a potential
Speaker 3: to highlight these among the many hypocrisies and cruelties of
Speaker 3: this administration, the hypocrisy about populism, the problem of rich
Speaker 3: and poor. I don't know that Democrats can break away
Speaker 3: from their normal identity politics to say, let's just go
Speaker 3: back to the just the massive wealth gap here and
Speaker 3: and and the massive rigging of the system by these billionaires.
Speaker 3: And you know, maybe we need new language. You know,
Speaker 3: obviously oligarchy is not something you're going to be hearing
Speaker 3: on the street, you know. But the fact that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is sort of ripping off the mask of being
Speaker 3: a fat cat and aligning himself with the robber barons,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't there's a certain aspirational aspect
Speaker 3: of you know, some of the the Trumpet supporters when
Speaker 3: they look at rich people and they they are filled
Speaker 3: with admiration for their talents, and they think that they
Speaker 3: can they can be wealthy. But I also think that
Speaker 3: there's there's a debate that we have to have over
Speaker 3: the massive and obscene concentration of power that we're seeing
Speaker 3: with the richest man in the world and most powerful
Speaker 3: man in the world collude to take care of themselves
Speaker 3: and leave the rest of us out.
Speaker 1: And that is where we are. Thank you, Charlie.
Speaker 3: And we're just getting started. We only have four more
Speaker 3: years of this.
Speaker 4: Molly, He's it's so bad.
Speaker 1: Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Alexis.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. Mollie. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: You've been on this podcast before. You're the president of
Speaker 1: Planned Parenthood. We've been through the highs, We've been through
Speaker 1: the lows. This feels like the lowest.
Speaker 4: It feels like a dark time. I mean, without question,
Speaker 4: right from our vantage point, we are still very much
Speaker 4: responding to a public health crisis that was caused by
Speaker 4: the very people who are now leading this country and
Speaker 4: folks who are literally in the position to make it worse.
Speaker 4: And I think that that makes it very alarming, you know,
Speaker 4: in a moment where we need to be really fighting back.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about what this
Speaker 1: sort of landscape looks like. Roby Wade no longer the
Speaker 1: law of the land. We were told by Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who knows. I mean, what I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: about this moment is you've had this twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: election cycle where people voted in red states to codify
Speaker 1: row right, right, Like, clearly this was an important issue
Speaker 1: to them, But then they also voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Right, you want me to make it make sense.
Speaker 1: I would certainly love to make it make sense, yes, please.
Speaker 4: You know, look, I think that where people had the
Speaker 4: opportunity to codify their personal individual freedoms community freedoms, they
Speaker 4: chose to do so, and where they had an opportunity to,
Speaker 4: you know, vote for I think where proximity to patriarchy,
Speaker 4: proximity to ensuring that they no longer have to feel
Speaker 4: bad about sharing a sense of belonging with other Americans,
Speaker 4: they also voted to do that, right, I mean, closing
Speaker 4: arguments were you know, really patriarchy and white nationally, And
Speaker 4: I think there are a lot of people, even people
Speaker 4: women and people of color, who chose that proximity over
Speaker 4: the freedom of all that is actually I think what
Speaker 4: feels so demoralizing in the moment to see that come
Speaker 4: through in the way the executive orders are being put
Speaker 4: through you know, deep concern about communities while still fighting
Speaker 4: to protect yourself and your own and your own community.
Speaker 4: It's a bit of a disconnect. But I also think
Speaker 4: what that means for reproductive freedom is that you know,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump does not have a mandate to gut reproductive
Speaker 4: rights even further because the majority of Americans continue to
Speaker 4: and demonstrated it with all of these ballad initiatives, how
Speaker 4: much they believe that that politicians shouldn't be making these decisions,
Speaker 4: that politicians are not more qualified than doctors to be
Speaker 4: able to support them in their reproductive journeys. So it
Speaker 4: is definitely a mixed bag. But I do think that
Speaker 4: we're clear that Donald Trump doesn't have a mandate, and
Speaker 4: with that, we're going to have to leverage the folks,
Speaker 4: the broadswath of Americans who who do support freedom in
Speaker 4: that regard.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because while this was happening after Trump had won,
Speaker 1: Texas has this law and the books that overturned grow
Speaker 1: a year before the Supreme Court did it, And this
Speaker 1: law has bounties, and I'm wondering if you could talk
Speaker 1: about the bounties and then talk about what the right
Speaker 1: wing organizations are doing to try and encourage husband's boyfriends,
Speaker 1: exes to sue women, and how that creates a sort
Speaker 1: of world that I don't think any of us really
Speaker 1: are ready for.
Speaker 4: Mollie, can you believe that the incentivizing that is happening
Speaker 4: to encourage men, boyfriends, husbands to essentially report out on
Speaker 4: their wives girlfriend's behavior. I mean, like that is the
Speaker 4: kind of thing that I think is a level of
Speaker 4: meant that we have not seen that kind of permission
Speaker 4: structure to fully Can I say, surveil the experiences of
Speaker 4: women across this country and empower those that have kind
Speaker 4: of the closest information to participate in lawsuits in states
Speaker 4: with abortion bands, Like, the level of surveillance and privacy
Speaker 4: sharing is alarming.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This idea here, this was baked into this SBA
Speaker 1: to the Texas law, was that you could suit someone
Speaker 1: or the people who help them get an abortion. We
Speaker 1: have never seen something like this happen in real time.
Speaker 1: We're going to see it now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think we should look at all of these things,
Speaker 4: whether it's the bounty laws, whether it's the kind of
Speaker 4: specific recruitment of boyfriends and husbands to report out on
Speaker 4: their partners, whether it is the laws or the lawsuits
Speaker 4: attacking providers in states that have access to abortion for
Speaker 4: their mailing of abortion medication over state lines, whether it's
Speaker 4: crossing state lines, whether it's miners crossing state lines. I
Speaker 4: think they are going to, you know, continue to build
Speaker 4: a patchwork of abortion restrictions and ensuing litigation that will
Speaker 4: gain like roll up through the court systems because we
Speaker 4: will have to fight each of these restrictions. They'll roll
Speaker 4: up through the court restrictions so that they can add
Speaker 4: further restrictions onto access to abortion right.
Speaker 1: And also they will create a world where women of
Speaker 1: reproductive health are basically I mean this is an homage
Speaker 1: to the fugitive slave, a aact.
Speaker 4: It's intended to create fear, chaos, confusion, to really discourage
Speaker 4: people from having body autonomy even when it is lawful.
Speaker 1: Explain to us sort of what is the focus right now?
Speaker 1: You have blue states who have red states. Red states
Speaker 1: are completely controlled by the right, and what does the
Speaker 1: landscape look like right now?
Speaker 4: They're nineteen states that have restrictions on access to abortion.
Speaker 4: This is two and a half years after the Jobs decision.
Speaker 4: You know, we've seen through the storytelling that abortion bands
Speaker 4: had made pregnancy more dangerous. We've seen the loss of
Speaker 4: life you know of those we know amount of women
Speaker 4: like Amber Thurman, you know, who are afraid to get
Speaker 4: access or went to get access to care at their
Speaker 4: local hospitals and they were denied care until they were
Speaker 4: too sick in order to treat them. We have seen
Speaker 4: doctors leaving states and residents declining to come into states
Speaker 4: to practice OBGYN band states because fearful of the concern.
Speaker 4: We just are seeing these bands hurt communities across the South,
Speaker 4: in the Midwest, you know, economies, businesses, universities are all
Speaker 4: experiencing the kind of fallout, right because that's just the
Speaker 4: practical implication of how hard it is to recruit or
Speaker 4: maintain residents and communities when you don't have enough of
Speaker 4: an OBGUI in supply to help people build their families.
Speaker 4: And then you know, obviously all of these dangerous restrictions
Speaker 4: continue to you know, we will see these efforts to
Speaker 4: create new standing, you know, whether the law we were
Speaker 4: just talking about the lawsuits really giving standing to boyfriends
Speaker 4: and husbands who you know, they would claim our victims
Speaker 4: of abortion, or giving standing to embryos and fetuses through
Speaker 4: some of the personhood amendments that we will continue to
Speaker 4: see through things like the so called you know, the
Speaker 4: various legislation and so, you know, I think we need
Speaker 4: to continue to expect that literally, the same kind of
Speaker 4: test cases and patchwork restrictions that ultimately ended up being
Speaker 4: part of the downfall of the road decision are going
Speaker 4: to be the ones that are intent to try to
Speaker 4: strengthen the hand of the jobs decision.
Speaker 1: Right. This is the thing that keeps me up at night.
Speaker 1: We saw these women come forward during the campaign, in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four campaign, and they told these absolutely
Speaker 1: blood curdling stories about the kind of things that no
Speaker 1: one in a modern country, in a wealthy, modern country,
Speaker 1: should have to go through. And voters rejected those stories,
Speaker 1: or they just ignored them, or they didn't hear them,
Speaker 1: or they chose not to hear them. I mean, are
Speaker 1: we in this moment where it's just going to have
Speaker 1: to get worse and worse and worse. I know we
Speaker 1: shouldn't think this way, but like, you can't give people
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want. Do all these white women who
Speaker 1: voted for Trump, do they not understand that this affects
Speaker 1: very much affects them.
Speaker 4: I think they very much do understand the impact. I
Speaker 4: think they were moved by the stories, and they also
Speaker 4: believed Trump when he said he wouldn't do anything about abortion.
Speaker 4: I think that's really the paradox here is that the
Speaker 4: majority of Americans, including you know, women of all demographics, men,
Speaker 4: religious cammunities, rural communities, you know, folks who genuinely believe
Speaker 4: in advancing freedom, support it reproductive freedom. And yet I
Speaker 4: think their proximity to you know, fighting for the protections
Speaker 4: of themselves really no pun intended Trump, their other concerns
Speaker 4: that these rights would be taken away. And I think
Speaker 4: that's that's the question we need to answer, is like
Speaker 4: why did they believe that he would not do anything,
Speaker 4: especially when we watch his entire anti abortion cabinet come
Speaker 4: into play. Right, you've got Pamponde as age, You've got
Speaker 4: Russell Lott from Project twenty twenty five, and O and B,
Speaker 4: you've got Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Right, the
Speaker 4: roles of these cabinet picks have literally empowered this administration
Speaker 4: to take steps that would impede access to abortion care,
Speaker 4: sexual reproductive health care really as a whole, here and globally.
Speaker 4: And so I think the question that we have to
Speaker 4: now pose back to those very people who said, you know,
Speaker 4: either they didn't believe him or it wasn't disqualifying because
Speaker 4: they did think it would happen. How are they going
Speaker 4: to hold President Trump to his word every day for
Speaker 4: the next four years? Right, Planned Parenthood, you know, our
Speaker 4: organizations are suppurs. We know, we're just going to every
Speaker 4: day remind this administration of his pledge not only that
Speaker 4: he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban, but that any
Speaker 4: other effort like defunding Planned Parenthood or trying to issue
Speaker 4: guidance around comstock that is not consistent with what the
Speaker 4: law intended, would be efforts to essentially enact a national
Speaker 4: abortion ban. So we're going to be reminding him. The
Speaker 4: question is, how are all of these folks who said
Speaker 4: that this would not be disqualifying going to hold him
Speaker 4: to accountable because that is actually where we will need
Speaker 4: to grow and build our strength and power, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really important point now, as
Speaker 1: someone who did all of this research on Project twenty
Speaker 1: two five and interviewed all these academics, one of the
Speaker 1: things about Project twenty twenty five this embryoic personhood, right,
Speaker 1: they call it fetal person but it's really they're really embryos.
Speaker 1: It opens the door to a real war on birth
Speaker 1: control too, which is where I think this is all headed,
Speaker 1: and where if you're an evangelical, you want to shut
Speaker 1: down abortion, but you really want to shut down birth control.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping you could sort of explain where you're
Speaker 1: seeing that, if you're seeing that maybe or not, and
Speaker 1: how Planned Parenthood hopes to protect that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Well, look after the Dabbs decision, what we have seen
Speaker 4: in our just in the health centers at Planned Parenthood,
Speaker 4: you know, vasectomy appointments have increased by twelve hundred percent,
Speaker 4: i UD appointments have increased by seven hundred and sixty percent,
Speaker 4: birth control implant by three hundred and forty percent. Like
Speaker 4: the people are speaking with their you know, with their
Speaker 4: feet and near appointments, you know, around the kind of
Speaker 4: healthcare that they need, right, you don't see that kind
Speaker 4: of surge in demand without the you know, the the
Speaker 4: concern and the fear that they will not be able
Speaker 4: to get access to, you know, what is just considered
Speaker 4: basic normal life as healthcare, right, affordable healthcare. We saw
Speaker 4: the attacks as they came through the IBF case in Alabama.
Speaker 4: We are going to continue to see the conversations they
Speaker 4: were having in Tennessee. If you remember the lawmakers that
Speaker 4: were caught on audio talking about like now is the
Speaker 4: time to take on contraception. You know, these ideas are
Speaker 4: out there. It is about as we have seen with
Speaker 4: SB eight, with jobs, with you know, so many other
Speaker 4: efforts to undo restrictions around abortion, that they always start
Speaker 4: off kind of in a laboratory, you know, a law
Speaker 4: where they're see how far they can push the boundary,
Speaker 4: and then they use that to export to other states
Speaker 4: who'd be willing to kind of test the law and
Speaker 4: push that forward. And so even though you know, we
Speaker 4: know ninety nine percent of women have used birth control
Speaker 4: in their lifetime, we are going to see the restrictions
Speaker 4: start to come into play as a way to see
Speaker 4: how much they can get away with in the name
Speaker 4: of power and control.
Speaker 1: Do you think that there's a moment where the American
Speaker 1: people are like, oh my god, or do you think
Speaker 1: that never happens. Like one of the things that I
Speaker 1: was struck by in the last cycle was that you
Speaker 1: would talk to voters and you would say, well, Trump's
Speaker 1: going to do this, this and this, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe you. Do you think there's something that can happen
Speaker 1: that voters will be like, oh my god? Or do
Speaker 1: you think now? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I asked this question a lot of myself because I
Speaker 4: do think that.
Speaker 1: This is literally what I think of all that. Like
Speaker 1: I'm like, is there a moment where they go like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't get the pill anymore, I
Speaker 1: can't buy condoms like you know, or do they just
Speaker 1: think like why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 4: Why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 1: Right? No, I know, but I'm just saying like that
Speaker 1: they're so jacked up on misinformation and disinformation that they're
Speaker 1: somehow like there were voters you remember during the Biden
Speaker 1: administration who thought that Biden was the reason that Roe v.
Speaker 1: Waite was overturned, right right right?
Speaker 4: Because we're in like.
Speaker 1: A disinformation you know, healthcape.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the thing I worry about. No, I mean, like
Speaker 4: I think it's it's a really important question. And I
Speaker 4: you know, and I say, it's like the thing I
Speaker 4: ask myself it really is, how do you stop the
Speaker 4: normalization of the harm, right, how do you stop the
Speaker 4: kind of normalization of our freedoms being taken away? And
Speaker 4: we cannot accept the fact that the future state of
Speaker 4: reproductive healthcare is flying across the country get access to abortion,
Speaker 4: getting on a bus, you know, and traveling eighteen hours
Speaker 4: both ways in order to get back in time to
Speaker 4: start your next shift. Like the reality that we are
Speaker 4: allowing for a normalization treatment of people to not be
Speaker 4: able to get the cure that they need where they live,
Speaker 4: I think, is the first, like, you know, huge alarm bell.
Speaker 4: And then you layer onto that people are actually dying, right,
Speaker 4: people not even intended abortion care, but who have required
Speaker 4: it through their pregnancy, you know, outcomes are not now
Speaker 4: no longer being able to get the access they need
Speaker 4: in an emergent way. That like you continue to layer
Speaker 4: on the harms and the normalization, and you say, like
Speaker 4: how did we wake up? And look like why aren't
Speaker 4: we there right now?
Speaker 1: Like that is question?
Speaker 4: But then I look at Corollari's in other movements, right,
Speaker 4: I think about I think about all of the young
Speaker 4: people that have died over the years in gun violence
Speaker 4: in schools. You know, if we have normalized that through
Speaker 4: shooter drillings and teaching kids how to be silent and
Speaker 4: hide in closets to not draw attention. What have we
Speaker 4: done to quell the outrage that needs to exist every
Speaker 4: time a child dies? And so I wonder about the
Speaker 4: exhaustion and the wariness of the outrage, and also like,
Speaker 4: at what point, you know, are we able to you know,
Speaker 4: bring people back to a real, formidable understanding that their
Speaker 4: freedoms have been approached in this way?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, Alexis.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mollie, No moment.
Speaker 1: Perfectly Jesse Cannon, Milly.
Speaker 2: So there was a hand gesture heard around the world
Speaker 2: by one Elon Musk yesterday at Trump's inauguration, and it
Speaker 2: seems it's got the ADL a little twisted like a
Speaker 2: pretzel about what to do here? What are you seeing?
Speaker 1: So here we go. This is not surprising at all,
Speaker 1: but the ADL, which is a friend of Trump and
Speaker 1: Elon so Trump. So yesterday Elon made a hand gesture
Speaker 1: that certainly looked like a Nazi salute to everyone who
Speaker 1: saw it, but not the brain trust at the ADL,
Speaker 1: who tweeted, go for it.
Speaker 2: This is a delicate moment. It's a new day. And
Speaker 2: yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed.
Speaker 2: Social media only ats the anxiety. It seems that Elon
Speaker 2: Musk made an awkward gesture at a moment of enthusiasm,
Speaker 2: not a Nazi salute. But again, we appreciate that people
Speaker 2: are on edge in this moment. All sides should give
Speaker 2: one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit
Speaker 2: of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a
Speaker 2: new beginning. Let's hope for healing and work towards unity
Speaker 2: in the months and years ahead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, heali like in unity from the river to the sea.
Speaker 1: It's considered to be anti Semitism, but an actual Nazi
Speaker 1: salute not so much watermelons. Here's Olab Schaltz. Perhaps you've
Speaker 1: heard of him, German chancellor who Musk is mad at
Speaker 1: because Musk wants the far right Nazi party to win
Speaker 1: in Germany, and he said at the World Economic Forum
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, what we do not accept is if this
Speaker 1: is support for extreme right positions. After a reporter asked
Speaker 1: him what he thought of Musk's gesture, So, Adl, maybe
Speaker 1: you should be as brave as the leader of Germany.
Speaker 2: I think we have to zoom back history to September fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, where Elon Musk said the ADL, because
Speaker 2: they are so aggressive in their demands and banned social
Speaker 2: mediacounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators
Speaker 2: of anti Semitism on this platform, and then threaten to
Speaker 2: sue them for four billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Four billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's really good that we let someone get this rich.
Speaker 1: Good work everyone. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
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