Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Fox's debate
Speaker 1: questions before Trump debated Biden. We have a fascinating show today,
Speaker 1: Semaphores Jordan Weissman explains to us the nuances of what
Speaker 1: is really going on with our railways and their regulations.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to New York Times opinion columnists Lydia
Speaker 1: Paul Green about the political realignment she's seeing across the globe.
Speaker 1: But first we have the one the only author of
Speaker 1: Win Every Argument MSNBC is Mattie Hassan. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Molly. So, the question is
Speaker 1: with this book, when Every Argument the art of debating, persuading,
Speaker 1: and public speaking, can you transfer what you do to
Speaker 1: us by reading a book. I'm skeptical. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: blame you from being skeptical because a lot of people
Speaker 1: think that public speaking, being able to argue, debate rhetoric,
Speaker 1: TV interviewing, TV hosting is something that you're kind of
Speaker 1: born with. There's a lot of talk about natural born
Speaker 1: speakers natural born orators, and I don't quite buy that. Look,
Speaker 1: is there an element of nature too? Of course there is,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of nurture. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: training and practicing that goes into it. And the reason
Speaker 1: I wrote this book and I wouldn't have written otherwise.
Speaker 1: There was twenty other books I could have written, But
Speaker 1: I genuinely wrote this book because I believe that these
Speaker 1: skills are transferable, they are learnable, they are teachable, and
Speaker 1: it's been going on for centuries. You don't have to
Speaker 1: date my work for it go back to the ancient Greeks,
Speaker 1: the ancient Romans. They came up with how to teach
Speaker 1: this stuff. A lot of the lessons and tips in
Speaker 1: the book are stuff that have been around for millennia.
Speaker 1: And if you go back. I tell the story of
Speaker 1: Demosthenes in the book Legendary Ancient Greek orator, lawyer, speech writer.
Speaker 1: The guy was hopeless as a public speaker. He was
Speaker 1: so bad. He had he had a stutter and a stammer.
Speaker 1: He had a shortness of breath when he spoke. He
Speaker 1: was embarrassed when he was out in public. He lacked confidence.
Speaker 1: So what does this guy Demostenes do. He basically builds
Speaker 1: himself an underground cave batman style, goes down there for
Speaker 1: months at a time. To make sure he doesn't come
Speaker 1: out of there. He shaves off behalf of his head
Speaker 1: so he'll be too embarrassed to go out in public.
Speaker 1: And he sits down there practicing, speaking, delivering, standing in
Speaker 1: front of a mirror. He runs up a hill when
Speaker 1: he does come out of the cave to work on
Speaker 1: his shortness of breath while he speaks as he runs
Speaker 1: up the hill. And Plutarch talks about this, that this
Speaker 1: guy Demostenes becomes one of the greatest orators of all time.
Speaker 1: He's the guy when it comes to rhetoric in ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: And I tell stories about Martin Luther King and Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill and others who we consider today to be great orators,
Speaker 1: great debaters, but they didn't start out that way. Winston
Speaker 1: Judge Will practiced while sitting in the bathtub, right his
Speaker 1: valet would overhear him murmuring in the tub. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think that you can learn this stuff. I
Speaker 1: think people try and wing it. People think you're either
Speaker 1: a natural one orator not true, or they think you
Speaker 1: can just wing it not true either. And the point
Speaker 1: of this book is to say you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a natural one orator, but you do have to
Speaker 1: work at it. There is a body of evidence as
Speaker 1: to how you can win over an audience, how you
Speaker 1: can corner an opponent with facts and figures, how you
Speaker 1: can connect with people emotionally, how you can kind of
Speaker 1: duck and dodge and evade your opponent's rhetorical attacks. There's
Speaker 1: a body of literature and work out there, and I
Speaker 1: try and bring it together in this book. And I
Speaker 1: try and bring it together with examples from my own life,
Speaker 1: my own career, and from history. So I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about this idea that there's sort of a
Speaker 1: way to stop bullshitters like Trump. Yes, so explain to
Speaker 1: us how we do that, because that could be useful.
Speaker 1: So I started writing this book, and I say, I
Speaker 1: say in the introduction to this book, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of books on rhetoric and oratory out there. I'm not
Speaker 1: the first person to go with. In fact, I rely
Speaker 1: on a lot of other great authors who I cite
Speaker 1: in the book. I mean, they're not that common, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a pretty cool move there's also an
Speaker 1: issue of have you actually done it? I say in
Speaker 1: the introduction, a lot of books are written by experts
Speaker 1: on rhetoric, history, professors, debate coaches. I'm coming here saying, look,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who has argued with people all over
Speaker 1: the world. I'm the guy who's argued inside the White House.
Speaker 1: I've argued inside Number ten downing Strey. I've argued inside
Speaker 1: the Saudi Embassy and managed to walk away with my
Speaker 1: life thankfully a few. Yeah. So I'm saying I'm bringing
Speaker 1: practical experiences. I'm not just a guys saying here it
Speaker 1: is in theory I try and say in the book,
Speaker 1: and here's how I did it, and what I would
Speaker 1: say on the bullshitting front is. As I wrote this book,
Speaker 1: I realized, look, a lot of these lessons are not
Speaker 1: new lessons. I need to address what's going on right
Speaker 1: now and right now. And you and I've discussed many
Speaker 1: a time, Molly on my show and yours, that we
Speaker 1: live in an era of kind of post truth conservatism
Speaker 1: and not a reality based Republican party. A former president
Speaker 1: who wants to be president again, who is a serial
Speaker 1: liar and bullshitter, whose own top strategist Steve Bannon famously said,
Speaker 1: our opponents are not the Democrats, they are the media.
Speaker 1: And the way to deal with the media, Steve Bannon said,
Speaker 1: is to flood the zone which shit. And that is
Speaker 1: exactly what they've done. You and I I cannot cope
Speaker 1: with the number of controversy, scandals, lies, gaffs because there's
Speaker 1: just so many of them. We rebut one lie, and
Speaker 1: there's one hundred behind them. And that is what Trump
Speaker 1: has perfected. And what I say in the book is
Speaker 1: beware the Gish galloper because Trump is not the first
Speaker 1: to do this. There is a technique known as the
Speaker 1: Gish gallop and it comes from a guy called Dwayne
Speaker 1: Gish who was a creationist, a Christian evangelical who went
Speaker 1: around debating with evolutionists, with scientists, with biologists about evolution.
Speaker 1: And the way he beat them, and he did beat
Speaker 1: them in public debates, was just by overwhelming them with
Speaker 1: cherry pick statistics, out of context quotes, misquoted scientific papers.
Speaker 1: But he would do it in such a confident, eloquent,
Speaker 1: fast paced way that an audience of lay people sitting
Speaker 1: at home or watching in the hall would say, wow,
Speaker 1: he knows his stuff, and the scientist hasn't rebutted every
Speaker 1: single thing he says, and that's how he was able
Speaker 1: to run rings around people. And that's where one scientist
Speaker 1: came up with this phrase, beware of the Gish gallop,
Speaker 1: and Trump does that, right. It's an incredible phrase. By
Speaker 1: the way, the Gish gallup it is. I think it's
Speaker 1: Eugenie Scotland name was who was the scientist her name is,
Speaker 1: I should say, who came up with this phrase because
Speaker 1: she said, look, I'm not going to debate with these people.
Speaker 1: I'll go on radio with them, but I won't do
Speaker 1: these debates which allow them to gallop uninterrupted. And that
Speaker 1: is what Trump does, right. We saw him in the
Speaker 1: Joe Biden I think it was the first debate with
Speaker 1: Chris Wallace in twenty twenty, where he just goes on
Speaker 1: and on and on and Wallace can't control it. Chris Wallace,
Speaker 1: who was a great interviewer, cannot stop him. Joe Biden
Speaker 1: cannot rebut every piece of nonsense he says. But at
Speaker 1: one point, I think he says a lie every nine seconds.
Speaker 1: And my point in the book is there is actually
Speaker 1: a way to stop a gift galloper and I say
Speaker 1: there's a three part structure that I use, and that
Speaker 1: is Number one. You pick your battles. You cannot stop
Speaker 1: every lie, don't try and do everything. Pick out the
Speaker 1: most ridiculous or dumb or offensive one, knock that one down,
Speaker 1: and allow the rest of the house of cards to fall.
Speaker 1: The second way you do it is to call it out.
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 1: You've got to identify it to the audience. You've got
Speaker 1: to say this is what they're doing, this is what
Speaker 1: Trump is doing, this is what Dwayne gets She's doing.
Speaker 1: They're trying to overwhelm you with nonsense. They don't want
Speaker 1: to stop and get deep into anything. Call it out.
Speaker 1: And the third point is don't budge. This is what
Speaker 1: I say to a lot of my colleagues in the
Speaker 1: US media. We move on too quickly in interviews. We
Speaker 1: need to have the follow up question. We need to say,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, I've asked about this, and you've
Speaker 1: given me seventeen different answers. I only want to know
Speaker 1: the answer to my question, and I'm not going on
Speaker 1: to the next question until you answer this one. And
Speaker 1: I point out it's my pinned tweet. That clip I
Speaker 1: did with Steve Rogers, who was a Trump advisor in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, which went viral, has had ten million views
Speaker 1: on Twitter because that was an interview where we decided
Speaker 1: my team and I Al Jezier English at the time,
Speaker 1: said we're not going to budge. We're going to ask
Speaker 1: him about Trump slie about steel mills. Trump had said, oh,
Speaker 1: they've opened new steel mills. No, they hadn't opened any,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to move on. I only tried his
Speaker 1: best to say, let's talk about this, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: No steel mills. We're not budging. So that is how
Speaker 1: you do it. It can be done, but it requires
Speaker 1: a strategy. People think Trump doesn't have a strategy. He does,
Speaker 1: so you have to have one too. And when I
Speaker 1: say Trump, I mean Trump is mini Trumps, all of
Speaker 1: the people who are spreading through the country and around
Speaker 1: the world. It's become a worldwide phenomenon, this Trumpian approach
Speaker 1: to interviews and debate. I mean, that's such a good
Speaker 1: point because you really can stop and get stuck in
Speaker 1: this kind of For example, Nicki Haley recently asked about
Speaker 1: Trump and she just you know, they don't feel any
Speaker 1: accountability to answer the question because they know you'll just
Speaker 1: move on. Yeah, don't budge is my motto. Don't budge, right,
Speaker 1: And I actually remember from like the nineties in the UK,
Speaker 1: you know you'd watch interviews where they would say no,
Speaker 1: but I asked you about this, what about this? Well
Speaker 1: there was a legendary clip and I heard your listeners
Speaker 1: to go look it up on YouTube. Jeremy Paxman, who
Speaker 1: was a kind of hero of mine when I was
Speaker 1: growing up in the UK. He was the attack dog
Speaker 1: on the BBC, the most famous ruthless political interview. He
Speaker 1: once said, I start every interview by thinking in my head,
Speaker 1: why is this lying bastard lying to me? And he
Speaker 1: he famously did an interview with the Home Secretary, the
Speaker 1: UQUA equivalent of the Attorney General, Michael Howard at the time,
Speaker 1: who had fired I think a prison governor, and the
Speaker 1: prison governor had said I can't remember the details. There
Speaker 1: was some argument about he fired the prison governor, and
Speaker 1: Paxman asked him about the governor thirteen times or fourteen
Speaker 1: times the same question because Howard hasn't answered it. And
Speaker 1: can you imagine on American TV having a public a
Speaker 1: government official on and asking the same question thirteen times. Amazing. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think you really have a good point here about
Speaker 1: the sort of style of interviewing that we really do
Speaker 1: need to go back to. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about Democrats. Why are Democrats better at this? I've got
Speaker 1: multiple theories. I can't say for sure. I do think
Speaker 1: there is this kind of technocratic element to the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: and it's a lawyerly element. Although you can't just blame
Speaker 1: in the law, but I do think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of lawyers in the Democratic Party, a lot of policy
Speaker 1: wants who think that if you argue with enough statistics,
Speaker 1: just one more policy paper, just one more statistic, one
Speaker 1: more fact or figure, and you will convince the nation.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't work like that. That is not how
Speaker 1: the American public, That's not how human beings. And I
Speaker 1: explain this in the second chapter of the book. I
Speaker 1: have to have facts, but you need to approach feelings too.
Speaker 1: It's not just facts. You need to address people's feelings.
Speaker 1: Aristotle told us this more than two thousand years ago
Speaker 1: in his book Rhetoric, that you need to focus on
Speaker 1: people's pathos, on the emotional appeal. You move people by
Speaker 1: hitting them in their heart, not just their head. And
Speaker 1: too many Democratic leaders for too long have focused just
Speaker 1: on their head. If we rationally win the argument, if
Speaker 1: we point out the contradiction and the other persons, if
Speaker 1: I have enough pages in my policy document, I will
Speaker 1: win them over. And I should think of the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen presidential election, Molly, and I think Donald Trump understood
Speaker 1: this and understands this very well. The right have understood
Speaker 1: how to energize their base by appealing to their emotions.
Speaker 1: And the emotions they appeal to, sadly are bigotry, anger, resentment.
Speaker 1: They are very good at kind of negatively demogogically riling
Speaker 1: up their base. But there's a theory behind it, which
Speaker 1: is people respond to emotion. Now I'm not telling Democrats
Speaker 1: to do that, but I'm saying, offer another emotional message,
Speaker 1: whether it's one based on hope or one based on
Speaker 1: anger at the right people that the point one percenters,
Speaker 1: the bankers, the people who actually screw you, not migrants,
Speaker 1: not trans kids. Right, And I think what happened in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen was Donald Trump comes on and says, lock
Speaker 1: her up, build the wall, ban Muslims, Hi, easy to
Speaker 1: remember and gets you really worked up all those issues.
Speaker 1: Tillary comes along and says, hey, here's my childcare proposal.
Speaker 1: It's seventeen points. It's really good. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it wasn't a good childcare proposal. I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: a great childcare proposal, but it's not going to win
Speaker 1: you a presidential election. And think about it, Molly. There
Speaker 1: have been six presidential elections in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: I keep making this point, it's so important. Three Democratic victories,
Speaker 1: three Democratic losses. The Democratic losses were Al Gore, John Kerry,
Speaker 1: and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic wins were Barack Obama and
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. What do Barack Obama and Joe Biden having
Speaker 1: common They talk like normal people. They talk in a
Speaker 1: way that's authentic. They're not just rehearsing talking points. Whereas Kerry, Gore,
Speaker 1: and Clinton, for all their brilliant they didn't inspire or
Speaker 1: move people. One of the things that I think all
Speaker 1: of us are thinking about all the time is can
Speaker 1: me Ron, I'm sorry, Ron de Santis, can he you
Speaker 1: know this fantasy of Trumpism without Trump right, which is
Speaker 1: really authoritarianism. Let's be honest, because there's not there's a
Speaker 1: you know, it's slogans and fascism. Can Trumpism without Trump
Speaker 1: be a thing? And what I think a lot of
Speaker 1: these people in the Donald request don't understand is that
Speaker 1: Ron de Santis is not a charismatic guy. No. On
Speaker 1: my book, I would say there are three chapters you
Speaker 1: can read which will tell you why Ron de Santis
Speaker 1: probably won't beat Donald Trump. The first is that chapter
Speaker 1: I mentioned on emotion, on appealing to people's emotions. He's
Speaker 1: been doing it well with his own kind of Florida
Speaker 1: captive audience. But Donald Trump is an expert at rilling
Speaker 1: people up, and in terms of that, he's a better speaker.
Speaker 1: What if we think about Donald Trump, in all his craziness,
Speaker 1: he knows in a kind of demagogue way, how to
Speaker 1: move crowds and rallies. To Santis, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: to sanctimonies. And that leads me to my next point,
Speaker 1: which is I have a chapter in the book on
Speaker 1: am arguments. Why ad hominum arguments work. People keep telling
Speaker 1: you in debate schooling, high school debating, who play them ball,
Speaker 1: not the man? Don't attack people individually, attack the arguments.
Speaker 1: In the real world, Donald Trump showed us in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: he defeated sixteen Republicans, all of whom were more qualified
Speaker 1: than he wants, often by just calling them names low energy, Jeb,
Speaker 1: you know, lion Ted. We were all the little Marco
Speaker 1: and whether we like it or not, we could say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's so gross, are so offensive, that's so childish. It worked.
Speaker 1: It totally undermined his opponents. And good luck to Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis or Ron de Sanctimonius, or meet Moron when
Speaker 1: he's on a debate stage with Donald Trump. And again
Speaker 1: the third chapter I mentioned is that is the gish galloping.
Speaker 1: Trump will just gallop all over him. We saw DeSantis
Speaker 1: in the debate with Charlie Christ. He couldn't even take
Speaker 1: on Charlie Chris. Charlie Chris absolutely rhetorically destroyed him. Now,
Speaker 1: Charlie Chris didn't win the races because Charlie Chris wasn't right.
Speaker 1: Canada and Florida basically isn't a swing state anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't see how Ron de Sands beats Donald Trump in
Speaker 1: a debate. I just don't. I also think Tramp won't
Speaker 1: let him like Trump, maybe can't win, but he can
Speaker 1: make sure that DeSantis won't exactly I think that's the
Speaker 1: best bet for Democrats if you want the best personally,
Speaker 1: either Ron Desantist can't beat Trump. But let's say I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: and I've been wrong before, I was wrong about Trump
Speaker 1: winning in twenty sixteen. Let's say Desantist does beat Trump.
Speaker 1: That's probably the best scenario for the Democrats, is that
Speaker 1: DeSantis beat Trump. Trump doesn't concede, of course, he never
Speaker 1: concedes defeat. He says it was stolen and he either
Speaker 1: goes scorched earth on Desantists just attacking him and running
Speaker 1: as a third party candidate, or he says to his followers,
Speaker 1: stay at home from Mara Lago. And that is probably
Speaker 1: the Democrats best bet. If the reporting a body is
Speaker 1: divided between Desanders and Trump on the eve of November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, Yeah, this is going to be so stressful, Andy,
Speaker 1: and I could really use a break. I was promised
Speaker 1: that the world would go back to normal, by the way,
Speaker 1: just to get into sort of something I'm curious about
Speaker 1: my own personal edification. I mean, was this always going
Speaker 1: to be this kind of messy process to try to
Speaker 1: come back as a country or do you think it's
Speaker 1: been made worse by this incredibly smileless Republican Party. You
Speaker 1: can see, I have no opinion on that. I was
Speaker 1: going to say, you could have gone anywhere with that sentence,
Speaker 1: because I thought you'll send was it going to end
Speaker 1: with the spinelessness of the d J well also that yeah,
Speaker 1: because I would argue that I had no expectations of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. I didn't think they were going to go, hey,
Speaker 1: get rid of Donald Trump, let's clean up our party.
Speaker 1: That became clear when Kevin McCarthy went to bow to
Speaker 1: him at Moral Lago after to January the sixth. That
Speaker 1: was the moment you knew we do want to shadow
Speaker 1: of a doubt this party's not going to disown Trump.
Speaker 1: You see Nicki Haley right now being asked about Trump.
Speaker 1: She say, oh, I don't kick sideways. It's okay, good
Speaker 1: luck to because he does. By the way, also, it's
Speaker 1: up Donald Trump sideways up. Yeah, you're not the equal
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump for whatever you think you're appolling at
Speaker 1: six percent? Good luck. Yeah. What I would say is
Speaker 1: I didn't expect anything the Republican Party, but I did
Speaker 1: expect a democratic administration to do something substantive on these issues.
Speaker 1: And we know they tried and failed with the various
Speaker 1: bills to protect democracy, and Joe Manchin and kist In
Speaker 1: Cinema screweders all over. And we know that we now
Speaker 1: have a special counsel who seems to be taking all
Speaker 1: sorts of interesting actions, but in my view, all too little,
Speaker 1: too late. The idea that Donald Trump think about this,
Speaker 1: Just imagine that a proverbial Martian lands near your house
Speaker 1: and says, what's going on in American politics? And you say,
Speaker 1: all right, let me give you a quick summary. The
Speaker 1: president who lost the election last time around, didn't concede
Speaker 1: the election, incited a violent insurrection, tried a coup to
Speaker 1: stay in power, was condemned by everyone in America, including
Speaker 1: his own party, for about twenty four hours, and then
Speaker 1: he left office and nothing happened to him. And he's
Speaker 1: now running for president again and leading in his polls.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. And the Democratic body have to take some
Speaker 1: responsibility for that. The Biden administration has to take some
Speaker 1: responsibility for that. I mean, if this was another country,
Speaker 1: we always say the Brendon nine line, what would you
Speaker 1: say if you saw this in another country, that a
Speaker 1: president who's incited insurrection tried a coup is now inex
Speaker 1: basically in self imposed exile out of the capitol, still
Speaker 1: inciting violence, still lying, and possibly about to come back
Speaker 1: to power. We would judge that country to be in
Speaker 1: our own offensive terms. Banana Republic failed date all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. That's America in twenty twenty three. No, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just completely an utterly I mean, Merrick
Speaker 1: Garland was not the right guy man for this job
Speaker 1: in my opinion. I've said this on my show. He's
Speaker 1: a great lawyer, I'm sure a very decent human being.
Speaker 1: Democrats thought they were owning the cons by putting the
Speaker 1: guy who Mitch McConnell a rejected of the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: in the DOJ. But it just you needed someone like
Speaker 1: an Elizabeth Warren in the DOJ. You needed a kind
Speaker 1: of fighter who was going to come out the gate
Speaker 1: and say, let's clean this mess up. Democracy is under threats.
Speaker 1: My job to protect democracy right now, not try and
Speaker 1: appeal across the aisle and be this kind of fake
Speaker 1: bipartisan figure. Yeah, he just doesn't seem like the Fanny
Speaker 1: Willis case in Georgia. I mean, I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's a perfect case either. I mean, in theory, it's
Speaker 1: a perfect case. I've been I as a non lawyer,
Speaker 1: I've been saying for a while, like, what else do
Speaker 1: you need to lock him up? If I had been
Speaker 1: caught on tape telling Brad Ravensberger to find my candidate
Speaker 1: eleven tho, I'd be in prison. You and I would
Speaker 1: be in prisoned by now, right, Oh, no question, we've
Speaker 1: been j at least we'd be awaiting trial for sure.
Speaker 1: It's literally on take, and there's no secondhand here say
Speaker 1: issues now this week, these past few days, we've been
Speaker 1: worried about what might happen because the grand Jury four
Speaker 1: person has been doing media rounds and giggling her way
Speaker 1: through interviews. She's someone I wish had read my book
Speaker 1: before she went on TV, because her appearances didn't do
Speaker 1: her any favors and may not have done the Georgia
Speaker 1: case any favors. But let's see, I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: and legal experts are mixed on that. But you know,
Speaker 1: as I've pointed out many a time, Georgia all his
Speaker 1: businesses won six and the incitement of violence, those are
Speaker 1: multiple cases. Just go back to obstruction of justice from
Speaker 1: Muller report. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to be
Speaker 1: the anarak on the Mulla Report. But Robert Muller outlined
Speaker 1: ten cases of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump. He
Speaker 1: then went and sat in front of Congress and said
Speaker 1: there's no immunity for a former president. He could be
Speaker 1: tried after he left office. He leaves office. Merrick Garland
Speaker 1: doesn't bring a single one of those cases before the
Speaker 1: statute of limitations runs out, they should just prosecute him
Speaker 1: for that, right, No, it's true, Maddie. You are one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. Thank you. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Jordan Weissman is
Speaker 1: the Washington bureau editor at Semaphore. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Jordan,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me on. Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the rail disaster
Speaker 1: in East Palestine. A rail disaster causing innumerable problems we
Speaker 1: don't even know the scope of them, largely environmental, much
Speaker 1: of which is caused by a lack of regulation. It
Speaker 1: appears so. I mean, right now that the federal government
Speaker 1: is still digging in, they're still investigating exactly what went wrong,
Speaker 1: but already people in Washington lawmakers are starting to get
Speaker 1: a sense of ways this possibly could have been prevented,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of policy options that have
Speaker 1: already been put forward or people are discussing that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say in general, the catastrophe disaster,
Speaker 1: I mean, just this whole thing is brought a lot
Speaker 1: of attention to an issue that has just gone under
Speaker 1: the radar forever, which is rail safety, and thankfully because
Speaker 1: it affects a lot of communities, especially in rural America. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to go for one, which is like
Speaker 1: a stupid question, but I need you to debunk it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of like pushback on the Republican
Speaker 1: side of like, while the particular regulation that Trump rolled
Speaker 1: back would not have prevented this, and while that is,
Speaker 1: I guess theoretically true, I would love for you to
Speaker 1: explain why, you know, this is not actually about one
Speaker 1: specific regulation. This isn't about one specific regulation. It's more
Speaker 1: about a general approach to rail safety. That's it kind
Speaker 1: of stretched back for a long time. You know, some
Speaker 1: people who have blamed the Obama administration too for maybe
Speaker 1: not doing enough fun to you in the past, or
Speaker 1: at least being too willing to kind of give into
Speaker 1: industry lobbying. But I think, yeah, we can talk about
Speaker 1: Trump briefly and what he did, and then we can
Speaker 1: talk more broadly about what's going on here. And so
Speaker 1: let's start with the controversy over Trump. And so at
Speaker 1: one point, the Obama administration put out a rule that
Speaker 1: involved what are known as highly hazardous flammable trains or
Speaker 1: trains that are carrying highly hazardous flammable material, which is
Speaker 1: a very important term here, and I want your listeners
Speaker 1: to remember. It's a very evocative term, but it actually
Speaker 1: needs a very specific thing. And part of that, there
Speaker 1: were all sorts of safety rules attached to these trains
Speaker 1: that were rolling through communities and basically posed a risk
Speaker 1: of explosion. And one of the rules that Obama tried
Speaker 1: to put in place would have required that they use
Speaker 1: essentially more modern, advanced electronic breaks instead of the sort
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century technology a lot of American rails equipped with.
Speaker 1: Right now, this seems like a good investment, seems like
Speaker 1: a reasonable thing to do, right and especially given the
Speaker 1: kinds of freight we were talking about it. And this
Speaker 1: rule was really designed to apply to trains that were
Speaker 1: carrying oil. It came out of the fracking boom sort of,
Speaker 1: and when a lot of trolling products were being transported
Speaker 1: by a train inst of pipeline, and sometimes they were
Speaker 1: derailing and causing serious environmental hazards and communities. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: laugh because this is so horrible. I'm only laughing because
Speaker 1: it is so horrible. Yeah, it's very one of the
Speaker 1: things that are you just look into like kind of
Speaker 1: the grim void of the way we do business in
Speaker 1: this country sometimes and you just it's dark, and you
Speaker 1: do have to laugh sometimes it's dark. Exactly. They put
Speaker 1: this rule in place, and so this rule got a
Speaker 1: lot of pushback from the industry, and Congress listened to
Speaker 1: the lobbying and they passed the law that said you
Speaker 1: need to kind of rethink this rule, and then they
Speaker 1: made them do what it's called a new cost benefit
Speaker 1: analysis on it. And after Congress did that, then the
Speaker 1: Trump administration came into office and they used this new
Speaker 1: law and the new cost benefit analysis as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to roll back this rule saying you have to put
Speaker 1: modern breaks on trains that are carrying explosive oil. Like, right,
Speaker 1: and yes, a crazy rule. Yes, yeah, this isn't the
Speaker 1: only instance where Trump rolled back or tried to kind
Speaker 1: of power back some real safety rules. But it's the
Speaker 1: one that everyone been focused on. Now. The reason this
Speaker 1: wouldn't have helped. This rule that Trump nixed would not
Speaker 1: have helped prevent this specific disaster is that it actually
Speaker 1: would not have covered trains carrying the specific type of
Speaker 1: explosive chemicals that this Norfolk Southern train was carrying. The
Speaker 1: highly hazardous Flammable Train rule really applied to things like oil,
Speaker 1: specifically what are known as Class three flammable liquids, and
Speaker 1: vinyl chloride, which is the chemical that was aboard this
Speaker 1: train in these Palestine is not a liquid. It is
Speaker 1: not a classy flammable liquid. And I apologize deeply. I
Speaker 1: cannot remember the specific classification of this chemical. I think
Speaker 1: we've got enough for our non experts here. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually covered by this rule, and so I think.
Speaker 1: But what that illustrates is that, you know, there's been
Speaker 1: this partisan back and forth about oh, well Trump undid
Speaker 1: the rule, and well, oh wouldn't have covered anything in
Speaker 1: the first place. And you know why if Biden cared
Speaker 1: so much, why didn't he try to do anything in
Speaker 1: the past years, A lot of people involved in this
Speaker 1: discussion are kind of looking at this situation and going, wait, okay,
Speaker 1: we can all agree something is really messed up here. Well,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think that one of the things
Speaker 1: I would love you to talk about now is that
Speaker 1: when the Biden administration came in, the Trump rhetoric actually
Speaker 1: worked on regulation, right. It made Democrats and I think
Speaker 1: other nonpartisans if there already left anxious about the idea
Speaker 1: of putting in more regulation because Trump had for so
Speaker 1: long said like regulation kills business. I mean, he wasn't
Speaker 1: the only one. Obviously. This is from a long line
Speaker 1: of conservative quote unquote thinking. But I would love for
Speaker 1: you to talk about the hesitation that Democrats had when
Speaker 1: they came in. But it's been pretty aggressive in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways about trying to reregulate certain industries. Part
Speaker 1: of the issue here is that it can just be
Speaker 1: really difficult to reregulate an industry that has been deregulated.
Speaker 1: Just sort of a logistical level. There are all sorts
Speaker 1: of laws and steps you have to take in order
Speaker 1: to get a new regulation in place. And part of
Speaker 1: what Congress and Trump did was they made it harder. Essentially,
Speaker 1: to reregulate the industry. They put certain kind of hurdles
Speaker 1: in place if anybody wanted to come back and say, actually, no,
Speaker 1: you should have electronic breaks on these trains. And that
Speaker 1: is something that Peputigg has been pointed too often when
Speaker 1: people have accused him of being too slow and too
Speaker 1: hesitant to try and tackle trains safety roles. He has
Speaker 1: essentially said, hey, you guys shackled me. There's only so
Speaker 1: much we can really do here. Nonetheless, it does appear
Speaker 1: that this disaster has really motivated is galvanized, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: is galvanized the administration to maybe be more aggressive and
Speaker 1: try to push things harder and also ask for help
Speaker 1: from Congress. I would say a combination of maybe conservative rhetoric,
Speaker 1: but also just more the concrete roadblocks that Republicans have
Speaker 1: put in place have made it a little tricky to
Speaker 1: regulate this industry. Yeah. I mean. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think is really interesting that has come out
Speaker 1: of this environmental crisis is you hear a lot of
Speaker 1: Republican including Hillbilly Senator Jady Vance and Ivy grad Yale
Speaker 1: law school graduate, I think, saying a lot of things
Speaker 1: about that They almost sound like they're on the populace left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been a little bit of that. I mean, the
Speaker 1: rhetoric around this accident has been a combination of interesting
Speaker 1: and kind of horrifying, right exactly, there's a real play
Speaker 1: to make this a thing that you know, white people
Speaker 1: are being forgotten, and that I mean is just craven
Speaker 1: but not unexpected, right, I mean, it's sort of you
Speaker 1: would anticipate it and maybe wrongful, maybe be naively a
Speaker 1: little bit surprised with how aggressively certain conservative talking heads
Speaker 1: really just dove right in to saying, oh, Democrats don't
Speaker 1: care about white Charlie Kirk wasn't surprising, but Charlie kar
Speaker 1: Verbatim said, if this is a result of the war
Speaker 1: on white people, Jesse Waters and Fox said they were
Speaker 1: trying to fight environmental racism by dumping toxic chemicals on
Speaker 1: poor white people, and Tucker Carlson had a whole spiel
Speaker 1: about how the fact that they were white and conservative
Speaker 1: was why their plight was being ignored, and jad Vance
Speaker 1: kind of danced on the edge of that in some
Speaker 1: of his comments. He basically said at one point that
Speaker 1: Pete Boutajidge was so wrapped up in fake woke quote
Speaker 1: issues like whether or not construction companies are hiring too
Speaker 1: many white workers, which was sort of a distortion of
Speaker 1: some comments he made, right, that was their favorite distortion
Speaker 1: of comments. But you know, poo Boodagage basically gave a
Speaker 1: conference where he said that you could hire more workers
Speaker 1: of color and communities where you're building things. But that's
Speaker 1: besides the thing. You know, he said that Boodagude was
Speaker 1: so wrapped up in these kinds of woke issues that
Speaker 1: he was ignoring real things like train safety. But you know,
Speaker 1: leaving that kind of mud slinging part of the conversation aside.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we should ignore it, but just
Speaker 1: for the moment. Yeah, there has also been this kind
Speaker 1: of populous sentiment among certain Republicans who've been saying, yes,
Speaker 1: the train company should pay for it, Yes, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: let these corporate just get away with it, which is
Speaker 1: the basis of the Republican Party as I remember in
Speaker 1: my youth. Yeah, I mean, yeah, right, it was laz
Speaker 1: a fair sort of a light touch, to say the least.
Speaker 1: And yeah, people have accused him of saying, well where
Speaker 1: were you during the Trump years? In JV. Vance's case,
Speaker 1: he actually wasn't in Congress, so that gives him a
Speaker 1: little bit more credibility. Although he's been hesitant to criticize Trump,
Speaker 1: and if you ask his people about that, they'll say,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be making this about Trump. This is about
Speaker 1: the year now. But he's been on the ground barn storming.
Speaker 1: And while he's been criticizing Biden, he's also been criticizing
Speaker 1: the company and saying more needs to be done. And
Speaker 1: he's been also working with Democrats on sending out letters
Speaker 1: and asking about possible policy responses. And as I wrote
Speaker 1: in an article this week, you know, his office tells
Speaker 1: me he's been workshopping legislation with members of both parties,
Speaker 1: which is that's why I say it's an interesting development.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're Jesse and I age. We
Speaker 1: grew up during the time of the exon Valdis, and
Speaker 1: you will remember the Republicans were basically like, you know,
Speaker 1: the birds are fine, you know they need a little soap.
Speaker 1: So I do think this is like a real development
Speaker 1: in its own strange way. I did think that the
Speaker 1: stuff with DeWine was fascinating because you know, he has
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration been held up as a sort
Speaker 1: of more rational Republican, and then we really saw he
Speaker 1: was kind of allergic to the federal help. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess that's one way to put it. Dwine's been interesting
Speaker 1: because he said, on the one hand, we don't need
Speaker 1: federal help. He's like, or he hasn't, he doesn't. He said,
Speaker 1: if we need it, we'll use it. We just haven't
Speaker 1: felt we haven't felt like we're missing anything, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: your cat will be fine, you know. You know, DeWine's
Speaker 1: response is less like keep the federal government away and
Speaker 1: more just that, yeah, people are handling this competently. And
Speaker 1: one notable thing about his response is that a lot
Speaker 1: odd Republicans early on have tried to suggest that Biden
Speaker 1: was too slow and that it was a problem that
Speaker 1: you know, senior officials weren't on the ground immediately and
Speaker 1: that they weren't doing enough to help. And DeWine has
Speaker 1: has literally said, I have no complaints about Biden's response. Right.
Speaker 1: He has said he's gotten up there and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're you know, offering whatever I need and it seems
Speaker 1: to be going to you know, we're getting the material
Speaker 1: that's necessary, and officials are helping us when we ask.
Speaker 1: You know, it's been a funny contrast. Like there was
Speaker 1: one point where um, and he's I think he's generally
Speaker 1: been trying to urge calm. There was one point where
Speaker 1: Vance challenged Biden officials to drink the tap water in
Speaker 1: East Palestine if they thought it was okay, this is
Speaker 1: so stupid. Yes, what happened with then Michael Reagan like
Speaker 1: showed up, Michael Regan, the EPA administrator. He went there
Speaker 1: and he and Dwine got together said cheers point classes
Speaker 1: to drink so stupid. You know, Dwine has been his impulses,
Speaker 1: like you said, kind of urge calm and and just
Speaker 1: be a mellow sort of what we thought of as
Speaker 1: an Ohio Republican for decades, kind of a Portman style Republican.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the demure small business owner who just
Speaker 1: wants to taxes low. That's sort of his m and
Speaker 1: it seems like the way he's trying to comport himself here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting, And I mean I do want to
Speaker 1: point out there's been like criticism of the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: which I think is totally fair, criticism of the Ohio
Speaker 1: Republican governor, which I also think is quite fair. But
Speaker 1: there was I mean, the EPA was on the ground
Speaker 1: that day, I mean supposedly within two hours though right
Speaker 1: the heads of the departments weren't immediately there. But the
Speaker 1: people who actually do this job day in and day out,
Speaker 1: you know, the civil servants and the experts were on
Speaker 1: the ground figuring out what needed to be done. So
Speaker 1: every no one really denies that. I mean it's a
Speaker 1: very meta conversation in a way, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the criticisms have just been, oh, you didn't show like,
Speaker 1: you didn't show you cared enough, you weren't there, although
Speaker 1: I will say there have been. You know, there was
Speaker 1: one former head of the EPA under George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 1: who I believe toiled political that he thought that it
Speaker 1: was a mistake that they didn't make a bigger deal
Speaker 1: of it, because it really would have helped communicate with
Speaker 1: the local population and made them feel safer in that sense.
Speaker 1: The communications response was sort of fumbled, and so you
Speaker 1: could possibly genuinely criticize on those grounds, But in general,
Speaker 1: the folks who are supposed to show up in the
Speaker 1: wake of a disaster showed up. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: I think is a really important point. And again, like
Speaker 1: I think there's really a sense in which this is
Speaker 1: an issue that Democrats can be leading on, and so
Speaker 1: when they, you know, there was a certain sense in
Speaker 1: which they ceded the opportunity by not getting in there sooner,
Speaker 1: and so that would be my criticism is that this
Speaker 1: environmental regulation could be sort of the cornerstone of democratic
Speaker 1: legislation period paragraph and especially with the Chips Act coming
Speaker 1: down the pike, we're going to have another opportunity act
Speaker 1: for environmental legislation and make the case. So I do
Speaker 1: think in that way. You know, if mayor Pete had
Speaker 1: been there the day after her, there would have been
Speaker 1: an opportunity. Yeah, and you know, I think just to
Speaker 1: harp from politics a little bit more, you know, one
Speaker 1: thing that Biden really emphasized early on in his administration
Speaker 1: was that he was going to be a president for everybody, right,
Speaker 1: He really made that point. And one of the most
Speaker 1: concrete ways in which Trump kind of made it clear
Speaker 1: he wasn't a president for everybody was disaster response, where
Speaker 1: he would sort of dangle it in front of the
Speaker 1: state of California and act like, oh, maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you guys don't deserve my help because
Speaker 1: you don't vote for me, or because he haven't been supportive,
Speaker 1: whereas Bid came in and made it very clear that
Speaker 1: he wasn't going to be that sort of a vindictive
Speaker 1: you know, chief executive, and in general, he's been extremely
Speaker 1: his administration has been extremely responsive to disasters everywhere and
Speaker 1: has been responsive here, but maybe lost sight of the
Speaker 1: need to really show it. And that might possibly because
Speaker 1: the week this happened, all of Washington was totally obsessed
Speaker 1: with that balloon that flew over the United States. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, I forgot about the balloon. You've already forgotten
Speaker 1: about the damn balloon. But like that week, all of
Speaker 1: DC was just talking about nothing up the balloon and
Speaker 1: so and they were mad that he hadn't shot down
Speaker 1: the balloon sooner it was right, which that was he
Speaker 1: was sitting there saying, you know, that could actually cause
Speaker 1: a little bit of a disaster in one of these
Speaker 1: rural communities. Meanwhile, but that was all of Watchington was
Speaker 1: focused on this balloon. And so you know, maybe if
Speaker 1: that hadn't been the case, that the administration would have
Speaker 1: done a better job kind of handling the communication side
Speaker 1: and making sure that the local community felt like it
Speaker 1: was being looked after. When there was this massive, terrifying
Speaker 1: smoke plumes right rising from this controlled burn of the train,
Speaker 1: you know, it was you know, white noise had suddenly
Speaker 1: become real life. That is I think also a fair criticism,
Speaker 1: maybe again just to talk about the optics as opposed
Speaker 1: to the substance of what happened. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good point. This rail disaster really
Speaker 1: does show us at all. Politics ultimately is local, and
Speaker 1: Ohio is going to have a Senate race in twenty
Speaker 1: four We're going to be talking a lot about Ohio.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a throwdown. It's going to be a throwdown.
Speaker 1: I don't know who the Republicans are going to run,
Speaker 1: so it might not end up such a road. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it depends. Right, Shirt Brown is girding himself and if
Speaker 1: you'll notice, he's also all over this crap. I mean
Speaker 1: he's he and Vants are working together on stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: they're sending letters. You're saying, oh, I'm gonna work with
Speaker 1: Van Stuy make sure there's a long term plan to
Speaker 1: look after East Palestine and ensure that the local environment
Speaker 1: is safe for everybody. I mean, he clearly sees the
Speaker 1: political importance of this. Thank you so much. I hope
Speaker 1: he'll come back, Jordan, have me anytime. Lydia. Paul Green
Speaker 1: is an opinion columnist at The New York Times. Welcome
Speaker 1: too Fast Politics, Lydia. Oh my gosh, I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: be here. A long time listener, first time caller. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we're delighted to have you, and you are a newly
Speaker 1: minted opinion columnist since October. Since you have come to opinion,
Speaker 1: and this is not obviously your first rodeo. You come
Speaker 1: from writing and editing and podcasting. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think has been incredibly cool, and this
Speaker 1: leads to why we're having you today, is that you
Speaker 1: have done opinion with more reporting than is the standard,
Speaker 1: and in a very exciting an international way, which makes
Speaker 1: sense because you were also a war correspondent. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's very kind of you. I always say that I
Speaker 1: actually don't have a ton of opinions, and the only
Speaker 1: way I can figure out what I think is to
Speaker 1: go out and report. So this is just really a
Speaker 1: laborious way of me figuring out what my opinions are
Speaker 1: is going out into the world and seeing what I
Speaker 1: can see. So, but I had a long career as
Speaker 1: a foreign correspondent, and that I think has always kind
Speaker 1: of been the heart and soul of my work and
Speaker 1: the thing that I'm most passionate about. The first column
Speaker 1: you wrote, your debut column, was about Haiti, and I
Speaker 1: want you to just explain to us a little bit
Speaker 1: about why you chose Haiti and why that was such
Speaker 1: an important column for you to write, and then we'll
Speaker 1: get on to what you're focused on now. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I have been engaged with Haiti two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: when I was sent there as a very very young
Speaker 1: reporter at the New York Times. It was really my
Speaker 1: first experience as a foreign correspondent, and it's a place
Speaker 1: that really gets under your skin. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have worked there and have kind of made their bones
Speaker 1: there as foreign correspondence. And I've always thought a lot
Speaker 1: about the work that we do as foreign correspondence, the
Speaker 1: way that we kind of parachute into places, the extractive
Speaker 1: nature of the work, and how our sort of quick
Speaker 1: impressions can have a lasting impact on the places that
Speaker 1: we covered. And so I wanted to go back and
Speaker 1: really reflect on the current situation and my own work
Speaker 1: there on the relationship with the United States, as a
Speaker 1: sort of statement of purpose that I was, as a
Speaker 1: columnist going to go out into the world. I was
Speaker 1: going to report, and I was also going to hold
Speaker 1: by self to account and really think about my own
Speaker 1: role as an observer and a chronicler of these things.
Speaker 1: So that's why it felt really important to me to
Speaker 1: go to Haiti. Yeah, that's such an interesting point. I mean,
Speaker 1: because I see so many people that I am friendly
Speaker 1: with or tangentially. Now those people are all in Ukraine
Speaker 1: right now, and then they'll go to and so I
Speaker 1: think it's really interesting. I was really impressed that you
Speaker 1: went to Syria, though, because I feel this way, maybe
Speaker 1: because my cousins grew up in Lebanon during the eighties,
Speaker 1: and so there are always those countries where it feels
Speaker 1: like America has decided the country is too far gone,
Speaker 1: which was always growing up, my feeling that America had
Speaker 1: sort of had decided that Lebanon was sort of an
Speaker 1: unsavable country. And so everything I've read about Syria has
Speaker 1: given me the sense that they're just it's so complicated
Speaker 1: and there's so much tragedy. So I thought it was
Speaker 1: really impressive that you went back there, and so can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that. It's remarkable the
Speaker 1: extent to which we've all kind of memory hold the
Speaker 1: conflict in Syria, Right, This is a war that started, well,
Speaker 1: it actually started as part of the Arab Spring and
Speaker 1: a kind of civilian uprising that then kind of morphed
Speaker 1: into an armed struggle. And you know, it's been going
Speaker 1: on since twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and in these like
Speaker 1: really fundamental ways, if you think about it, it has
Speaker 1: shaped the world that we live in now. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to imagine the rise of right wing parties in Europe,
Speaker 1: for example, and to a certain extent, the rise of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in the United States, were it not for
Speaker 1: the huge migration crisis that the Syrian conflict set off.
Speaker 1: Looking back, it seems clear that Russia getting involved in
Speaker 1: Syria was very much a kind of training wheels moment
Speaker 1: for what they would ultimately do in Ukraine and the
Speaker 1: kind of brutality that they would bring to bear. And
Speaker 1: I think that a big part of why I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go to Syria was because because of that forgetting.
Speaker 1: And I feel like a big part of my role
Speaker 1: as a columnist is to remind people of things that
Speaker 1: we'd rather not think about and try to link them
Speaker 1: to the present in a way that makes them more
Speaker 1: real and more pressing. And I think also just to
Speaker 1: remind people like, we're all human beings, and you know,
Speaker 1: I met the family that I met there, I mean,
Speaker 1: how could you not be moved by the extraordinary story
Speaker 1: of loss that they have been through. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just really important that as human beings we actually
Speaker 1: see each other's human stories. Yeah, I think saying about
Speaker 1: Russia's really so interesting because it's absolutely true, and we
Speaker 1: saw so much of this early propaganda disinformation come through
Speaker 1: the war in Syria. I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: that's another example of something that, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of information wore that the Syrian government and also later
Speaker 1: the Russians helped prosecute in Syria was really kind of
Speaker 1: a portent of what was to come. And we've seen
Speaker 1: the credible technology prowess that and also just kind of
Speaker 1: human intelligence prowess that the Russians have in being able
Speaker 1: to manipulate the conversation in any given society, and that
Speaker 1: certainly happened in Syria. It certainly happened in Europe. As
Speaker 1: relates to Syria. That was absolutely a harp in Europe.
Speaker 1: What was to come? Yeah, Oh, it's such a releak
Speaker 1: time in American life. One of your columns, there's like
Speaker 1: a tad phrase about how, you know, Americans think of
Speaker 1: themselves as the center of the world, but we're really
Speaker 1: you know, we're really just part of it. I'm not
Speaker 1: quoting verbade him at all. I'm butchering the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But growing up, I would always be so impressed when
Speaker 1: you go to another country and people would just make
Speaker 1: fun of you for being American, because Americans are social centered.
Speaker 1: Would always be my what the takeaway I would get?
Speaker 1: But what's happening in India right now is and you've
Speaker 1: written about this is kind of like we don't devote
Speaker 1: a lot of national news to it, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. Oh, it's a huge deal. And you know,
Speaker 1: I would also say, Molly, like just to your earlier
Speaker 1: point about you know, who's the center of the universe.
Speaker 1: I had a psychoanalyst who I saw for many years
Speaker 1: who had this line that has always stuck with me,
Speaker 1: and he said, ninety five percent of what people say
Speaker 1: is about themselves, and so is the other five percent.
Speaker 1: It's human nature to think that you're the center of
Speaker 1: the universe, right like we all we all do it.
Speaker 1: And I think that the United States has a particular
Speaker 1: virulent strain of that disease. I think that what's really
Speaker 1: striking about Indian and I've been following India for quite
Speaker 1: some time. I first went there in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine as a foreign correspondent. At the time that I
Speaker 1: went there, you know, it was this sort of world's
Speaker 1: largest democracy, and it sort of seemed like a lot
Speaker 1: of the problems that had bedeviled India in the past
Speaker 1: we're really sort of firmly in the past, including the deep,
Speaker 1: deep divisions between Hindus and Muslims, which had been a
Speaker 1: sort of recurring motif again and again. And the thing
Speaker 1: that really struck me in just looking at the rise
Speaker 1: of the current Prime Minister Norrendermodi, but also the relationships
Speaker 1: that he's built around the world and the way in
Speaker 1: which he's kind of playing on this international stage which
Speaker 1: has become much more multipolar, with the rise of China,
Speaker 1: the rise of Russia. It's fascinating to see how the
Speaker 1: United States and other Western powers are sort of turning
Speaker 1: a blind eye both to the prejudice and in some
Speaker 1: cases atrocities that are happening to Muslims and other religious
Speaker 1: minorities in India, but also the increasing consolidation of power
Speaker 1: that makes India look a lot less like a democracy
Speaker 1: than it used to. Part of what I was trying
Speaker 1: to say in that column was that as Americans, we've
Speaker 1: always had a foreign policy that is utilitarian towards our interests,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's useful for us to pretend that
Speaker 1: India is this amazing democracy and to pretend that none
Speaker 1: of these problems are actually happening, right and going on,
Speaker 1: And so I just wanted to remind people, Look, we
Speaker 1: may think of this as our great democratic ally, but
Speaker 1: actually Narandramodi is in the process of essentially trying to
Speaker 1: become a figure non unlike Shijing Ping in China. So
Speaker 1: I just think it's really important for us to to
Speaker 1: think about these things in a global context and also
Speaker 1: with some real kind of historical knowledge. So that's what
Speaker 1: I always try to bring It is so by the way,
Speaker 1: incredibly grim to see this happening. Like every time we
Speaker 1: lose another democracy, it does ultimately, you know, America, I
Speaker 1: think for a long time we all thought, or at
Speaker 1: least I certainly thought, will never be one of those
Speaker 1: countries that's on those you know, democracy watch lists, but
Speaker 1: we did end up there. I think that this is
Speaker 1: another thing about thinking about the centrality of America to
Speaker 1: the world thing. And I'm actually writing about this right
Speaker 1: now because I'm working on a column about Turkey, which
Speaker 1: was the other place that was really affected by the earthquakes,
Speaker 1: much more so. I mean, fifty thousand people died, and
Speaker 1: ninety percent of them died in Turkey. But what we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now is we're really in the age of
Speaker 1: the elected autocrat. You know, where you have elections and
Speaker 1: those elections produce a winner. They're elections where you know,
Speaker 1: technically people go to the polls and file their ballot
Speaker 1: and you know, elect somebody. But the person who's on
Speaker 1: the ballot who wins has usually undertaken a huge number
Speaker 1: of measures beforehand in order to make sure that he's
Speaker 1: the only viable candidate. And of course it's always a heat,
Speaker 1: almost always a heat right, And so you know, they've
Speaker 1: cracked down on the independent media. They've really really reduced
Speaker 1: the role of civil society. They've made sure that that
Speaker 1: the parliament or the legislature has essentially no role in
Speaker 1: overseeing or checking their power. You know, use the judiciary
Speaker 1: to make sure that none of your viable opponents can
Speaker 1: actually run against you. That's the thing that's happened in Turkey,
Speaker 1: which is going to have an election, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to have an election in May. We'll see when it
Speaker 1: actually happens because they're dealing with this devastating earthquake. But
Speaker 1: you hear that set of facts, and it's hard not
Speaker 1: to think about our own country, right, the way in
Speaker 1: which various politicians are trying to take the judicial or
Speaker 1: the legislative or and this is happening more at the
Speaker 1: state level than at the national level. Of that, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is a whole other conversation. But it's very,
Speaker 1: very striking to see how we're actually not that different
Speaker 1: from these other places, right. It's the De Santist plan.
Speaker 1: Crackdown on the media, make sure that people are studying
Speaker 1: what you want them to study. Don't allow people to vote,
Speaker 1: write like Florida had voted to let people who have
Speaker 1: been incarcerated vote, and then he sets up these stings
Speaker 1: to make it so people who were incarcerated can't, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, just a lot of the stuff that we
Speaker 1: see in Turkey, we're seeing in this modern day Republican Party.
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, I feel like there's a real
Speaker 1: shift that in certain parts of this world, we're seeing
Speaker 1: a sort of embrace of this autocracy. Absolutely, and I
Speaker 1: think that those policies are coming along with a kind
Speaker 1: of social revanchism as well, which gets into another topic
Speaker 1: that I've spent some time writing about. I think that
Speaker 1: we're living in this age of I think tremendous backlash
Speaker 1: against the social progress that we've made around gender, around LGBTQ,
Speaker 1: issues around race, and that is absolutely playing out here
Speaker 1: in the United States, but it played out earlier in
Speaker 1: places like Hungary. You're seeing in Israel, for example, which
Speaker 1: was a pioneer of lgbt right, a very very strong
Speaker 1: pushback and roll back from the reactionary conservative forces within
Speaker 1: the government. And so I think we're really living in
Speaker 1: this age of reaction and all of the old kind
Speaker 1: of political chivalleths about the right is actually about freedom,
Speaker 1: and you know it's up as down, down as up,
Speaker 1: and words in many ways feel like they just don't
Speaker 1: have any meaning anymore. Agreed, And it's such an interesting time.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think I want to like now
Speaker 1: we need to do? This is something I always do
Speaker 1: in interviews, which I think people find very annoying, but
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. I want to know, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a historical precedent for times in which there is
Speaker 1: a lot of progress and then there is a kind
Speaker 1: of backlad Susan Valuti wrote about it. Do you think
Speaker 1: that we are in one of those backlashes and that
Speaker 1: democracy will continue or do you think that we really
Speaker 1: run a field and this is going to We're going
Speaker 1: to go into something more horrible. I'm inherently an optimistic person,
Speaker 1: and I think that the reality is that curveballs come
Speaker 1: that we don't expect, right, I mean, take Turkey for instance.
Speaker 1: You know it it seemed to be on this trajectory
Speaker 1: that you know that the current president type air to one,
Speaker 1: was just going to kind of continue on and consolidate power.
Speaker 1: But a couple of things happen that we're outside of
Speaker 1: his control. One is this huge economic crisis related to
Speaker 1: you know, COVID and interest rates and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, which was already eroding his popularity, right and
Speaker 1: then now, like a literal act of God, an earthquake
Speaker 1: has brought all of this condomation down on his government
Speaker 1: because of the slowness of how they responded, because a
Speaker 1: lot of the buildings were shoddy and the government hadn't
Speaker 1: done enough to make sure that building codes were adhered
Speaker 1: to and so on, and so I think, like this
Speaker 1: sounds a little grim, but the place where I find
Speaker 1: optimism is that, like, we can't really predict what's coming
Speaker 1: around the corner, and earthquake is actually a little bit
Speaker 1: like climate change. It's this thing that we know is coming,
Speaker 1: but like we sort of think about it as a
Speaker 1: thing that's in the distant future. But I think that
Speaker 1: there are things like that out on the horizon that
Speaker 1: you know, they could end up sort of sharpening and
Speaker 1: pushing us further in on the trend line that we
Speaker 1: already seem to be on, but they could also push
Speaker 1: us in an entirely different direction. And it's just hard
Speaker 1: to know. And I think our work is people who
Speaker 1: care about other human beings and who want the world
Speaker 1: to be a better, more inclusive place, who believe in
Speaker 1: self governance and all those kinds of things. It's our
Speaker 1: job to really sort of focus and build even in
Speaker 1: these moments that feel like they're filled with despair. And
Speaker 1: you know, as a journalist, I feel like it's my
Speaker 1: job to highlight the places where people are doing that
Speaker 1: work and trying to make change happen, because when the
Speaker 1: opportunity arises, never let a good crisis go to ways,
Speaker 1: there is the moment to say, actually, this needs to change,
Speaker 1: and let's radically shift the direction that we're going. I
Speaker 1: have one more question because this hits on something I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about a lot. This environmental crisis, this trained
Speaker 1: crisis in East Palistin is one of these moments where
Speaker 1: we're seeing why we have regulation. I think about this
Speaker 1: all the time because during the Trump I don't want
Speaker 1: to even say presidency because I don't know that that
Speaker 1: was what it was, but the Trump fever dream there
Speaker 1: was he would constantly get up there and say regulation
Speaker 1: is bad, and everyone would be like, is regulation bad?
Speaker 1: Maybe regulation is bad, you know, because like it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where, until you have an accident, you
Speaker 1: can't quite figure out, you know, it's hard to make
Speaker 1: a case for a regulation. We're seeing, really here a
Speaker 1: moment where the American people in a red state, in
Speaker 1: a red town, or seeing really firsthand the value of
Speaker 1: regulation and the value of holding these companies accountable for
Speaker 1: their misdeeds. I mean, do you think there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for legislation and do you also think it's craven to
Speaker 1: think this way? More importantly, well, I mean, I try
Speaker 1: not to judge when it comes to legislation, and under
Speaker 1: the current political situation, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we can say this, but the current political clusterfuck in Washington,
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine. It seems like we're just going
Speaker 1: to have a parade of crazies doing investigations into Jewish
Speaker 1: space lasers. So I don't know about legislation. What I
Speaker 1: do know is that, you know, I do think that
Speaker 1: we're coming to terms with the fact that we have
Speaker 1: two kinds of problems in this country when it comes
Speaker 1: to regulation. One is we're incredibly lax when it comes
Speaker 1: to corporations and environmental rules and things like that. And
Speaker 1: that's absolutely what we're seeing in East Palestine right this
Speaker 1: is a chemical that like absolutely should not have been
Speaker 1: transported in the way that it was. Those railways should
Speaker 1: have been upgraded long and long long ago. So it
Speaker 1: feels like there is a place where we need, you know,
Speaker 1: much more stringent action and more regulation. But there are
Speaker 1: other places where we have regulation, sometimes for environmental reasons
Speaker 1: or reasons that seem on their face like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with that, like local control and things like
Speaker 1: that that get in the way of solving other problems, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the housing crisis. So much of our housing
Speaker 1: crisis comes from the fact that it's very, very difficult
Speaker 1: to build anything, and that is a very very complicated thicket.
Speaker 1: So I think that we need to think really really
Speaker 1: carefully about like what sort of rules we make for
Speaker 1: ourselves as a society and what the knock on effects
Speaker 1: are going to be. And ultimately the question is, you know,
Speaker 1: qui bono, who benefits? And in every case we need
Speaker 1: to think about how do we spread the benefits of
Speaker 1: the protection or the benefits of the loosening of a
Speaker 1: regulation towards more and more people, which I think gives
Speaker 1: an opportunity for it to be more sort of human
Speaker 1: centered and less for corporations or for wealthy homeowners in
Speaker 1: both cases. So that's I think the direction that we
Speaker 1: need to be moving in Lydia. They thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back. Such a pleasure and anytime,
Speaker 1: Molly Jesse Cannon by John Fast did you know that
Speaker 1: I'm a director? You're a director? Tell me more well
Speaker 1: by GOP congressperson standards of what they do for there's
Speaker 1: resumes these days. I once audited next Girlfriends UCLA film
Speaker 1: studies classes three different times, and really by their standards
Speaker 1: these days, that means I can say I'm an expert
Speaker 1: film director. This is my favorite new GOP fabulous first
Speaker 1: term Congressman Andy Ogles. I kind of like Googles, like
Speaker 1: it feels more fun. Googles claims to have graduated from
Speaker 1: Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in international relations. However,
Speaker 1: it turns out he has a degree in Liberal studies
Speaker 1: and is only take in one single economics class, for
Speaker 1: which he received a see congratulations to all the people
Speaker 1: who enabled this to happen. The modern day Republican Party
Speaker 1: is prepperd Grate. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday Wednesday and Friday to your the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.