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 no labels say if Rond de
Speaker 1: Santis is a GOP nominee, they will drop their third
Speaker 1: party bid just want to have a fascist in the
Speaker 1: White House. We have such a thrilling show today Semaphores
Speaker 1: Dave Weigel tells us how the GOP are trying to
Speaker 1: win over Islamic voters with their culture wars. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to Maddie Kahn about her new book Young and Restless,
Speaker 1: The Girls who sparked America's revolutions.
Speaker 2: But first we have.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O'Brien. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Tim O'Brien, Hi, Ali, Hi.
Speaker 3: We always encounter each other when there's been sort of
Speaker 3: a cultural or legal or political car correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is every day, so it ends up being fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this one, this particular one is epic.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is epic, and it's also I feel like
Speaker 1: I've been through so many machinations with this as already,
Speaker 1: this federal indictment, there was the day it dropped and
Speaker 1: like I felt like people were on television saying like
Speaker 1: this is going to change everything, and then Republicans just
Speaker 1: decided they were going to fall back in line.
Speaker 3: Republicans are always going to fall back in line because
Speaker 3: they understand that propaganda and disinformation is a path to power,
Speaker 3: and so they should be kind of put in their
Speaker 3: own particular shoe box. I do feel like, having watched
Speaker 3: Donald Trump for ages, I've always felt there's been this
Speaker 3: myth that's built up around him that he escapes the
Speaker 3: law and he escapes accountability. I've always felt that's only
Speaker 3: because he hasn't really had the incentive prosecutorial artillery aimed
Speaker 3: at his wheelhouse, and now he does, and I do
Speaker 3: think this is different. I don't know that he's going
Speaker 3: to go to jail. I don't know that it's going
Speaker 3: to prevent him from ascending to the White House again.
Speaker 3: But Jack Smith landed a factually driven, air tight argument
Speaker 3: for why Donald Trump is a criminal. I think the
Speaker 3: system will find him guilty.
Speaker 2: No, I definitely think so too.
Speaker 1: I mean, thirty seven counts, thirty one of those are
Speaker 1: covered under this Espionage Act, which is not espionage but
Speaker 1: is the sort of the crimes that make.
Speaker 2: Up modern national security. Right.
Speaker 1: I mean I thought it was pretty interesting the defenses
Speaker 1: that you saw Republicans mount.
Speaker 2: I mean, my favorite one.
Speaker 1: Was Hugh Hewitt, who has thought of as a sort
Speaker 1: of more mainstream Republican right now, Well.
Speaker 3: I think he's I think he's an off the rails apologies.
Speaker 2: They're all off the rails apologists.
Speaker 3: But I think he's particularly off the rails, and I
Speaker 3: think he's ill informed. I don't know Hugh Hewett, but
Speaker 3: I don't I find I think there's other conservatives who
Speaker 3: are more substantive than him.
Speaker 1: No question, he is not substantive in any way, but
Speaker 1: I think of him as different than Charlie Kirk, is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, right, he writes for mainstream outleads.
Speaker 3: He's not a pre pubescent bratt who is a know nothing.
Speaker 1: Right, and so he is. Immediately after the indictment tweets.
Speaker 1: I read the indictment and there's nothing about trying to
Speaker 1: sell state secrets. I was like, so the bar is
Speaker 1: like actual espionage when we know people like Reality Winner
Speaker 1: and people like that who have gone to jail for
Speaker 1: many years.
Speaker 3: Well, and he was in charge with trying to sell
Speaker 3: state secrets. That's not part of the charges. They're saying
Speaker 3: that indictment is deficient for something it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Do right exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, I just thought it was interesting that, like,
Speaker 1: how on the ground these defenses could be.
Speaker 3: Lindsay Graham said a similar thing. But again, they're arguing.
Speaker 3: They're not arguing on the fact pattern. They are they're
Speaker 3: setting up straw men to pretend they can find fault
Speaker 3: with an indictment that is utterly fact driven and damning.
Speaker 3: And I can't believe the jury wouldn't be swayed by,
Speaker 3: you know, the speaking indictment that they've filed.
Speaker 1: Well, that will be the question. It will and the
Speaker 1: judge will be Judge Eileen Canna.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and even if you know she won't recuse,
Speaker 3: she probably won't be pulled off of Even if she
Speaker 3: just lets the machinery the courtroom go in the direction
Speaker 3: it should and let the jury reach a verdict, she
Speaker 3: still gets to sentence him, right, and sentencings are subjective
Speaker 3: acts at the discrimination of the judge. Trump could get
Speaker 3: as much as ten years on most of the count's
Speaker 3: twenty years. I think on one of the counts, what
Speaker 3: if she just says two days.
Speaker 1: Right now that said, the appeals process could knock a
Speaker 1: decision that's too far out of the range out.
Speaker 3: It could and I think, you know, this could become
Speaker 3: a ping pong ball in the appellate court. Obviously, so
Speaker 3: we don't know, but she's already been basically censured by
Speaker 3: fellow Republican jurists who have found her previous rulings wanting.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's going to putrun any special
Speaker 3: guard to sort of roll differently on this, but it
Speaker 3: is deeply ironic that she descended up with her I
Speaker 3: think it was shrewd of the DOJ. It can mean
Speaker 3: the grand jury. I mean, I think they needed to
Speaker 3: because the crid happened to mar Alago, the alleged crime, right,
Speaker 3: so they had to convene the grand jury there. But
Speaker 3: I also think it matters that Laridians found enough credibility
Speaker 3: and the evidence to hand up an indictment, and then
Speaker 3: the wheel spun around and she got the case. We're
Speaker 3: in such a crazy.
Speaker 2: Era, yeah, no, definitely.
Speaker 1: So now I want to ask you what do you
Speaker 1: think happens now?
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, he's a desperate person. I
Speaker 3: think the fact that he started attacking Jack Smith within
Speaker 3: ten seconds of this being fouled and not just attacking
Speaker 3: Jack Smith like in his traditional this is a witch hunt,
Speaker 3: this is the dam's coming after me. He called Jack
Speaker 3: Smith the coward. Donald Trump doesn't really care about other people.
Speaker 3: He doesn't focus on them. They don't weighan his mind
Speaker 3: unless he has a use for them. So if he's
Speaker 3: enamored of someone at their celebrity or an athlete where
Speaker 3: he envies their celebrity, he pays attention. If if it's
Speaker 3: somebody wants to corrupt or co op, he pays attention.
Speaker 3: And the third sort of category of human he pays
Speaker 3: attention to are the people that scare him. And I
Speaker 3: think he is deeply scared of Jackson and he's projecting
Speaker 3: cowardice on a Jacksmith because he's afraid, and I think
Speaker 3: he knows in his reptilian brain. So Donald Trump's seventy
Speaker 3: seventh birthday is today, Wow, which also happens to be
Speaker 3: the anniversary of the Espionajack. I'm not saying correlation is causationation.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it is interesting that the Espionajack, I think,
Speaker 3: was passed in nineteen seventeen on the same date that
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty six, Donald Trump was born In any event,
Speaker 3: I think he's very aware of this. For all of
Speaker 3: his bravado, and he is not a sophisticated man. And
Speaker 3: he got through his previous prior years with better legal
Speaker 3: advisors well Cage here and more wanton legal advisors around
Speaker 3: him than he has now. And he's he's open now,
Speaker 3: he's vulnerable, and I think he feels it. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: that means I think there's going to be political violence, right.
Speaker 3: What are his other options?
Speaker 1: Well, he's certainly encouraging political violence. But yeah, you'll remember
Speaker 1: encouraging political violence. In Trump has encouraged political violence before.
Speaker 1: He will do it again. I mean that is that's
Speaker 1: not I mean, that's kind of how he does it.
Speaker 1: The question I think is more will his people be violent?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And you know January six would say yes, some
Speaker 3: of his political rallies would say yes, right. It turnout
Speaker 3: in Miami would say no, right right?
Speaker 2: I mean, or even in New York. Right.
Speaker 1: There was a whole indictments circus.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I remember like when Marjorie Taylor Green showed
Speaker 3: up and everyone was like, go away, silly woman. When
Speaker 3: you jumped back into her car and sped off. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way that's heartening. Like maybe the
Speaker 3: Trump Show is not going to get people onto the
Speaker 3: streets in the way it might have a few years ago.
Speaker 3: But I think that's still where he's going to go,
Speaker 3: especially if he gets convicted, and especially if he gets.
Speaker 1: Sentenced, right right, right, No, And I mean I think
Speaker 1: there's a real chance. There's also like remember there are
Speaker 1: the Georgia indictments.
Speaker 3: And there still is a possible January sixth indictment from
Speaker 3: the Justice Department on insurrection, which would, if he's found guilty,
Speaker 3: keep him from running again.
Speaker 2: Also, Jack Smith, when would that happen?
Speaker 3: I don't know, I have no idea. I mean, clearly
Speaker 3: they felt and I think they were right that the
Speaker 3: classified documents case was such a clear linear argument. And
Speaker 3: in the January sixth case, they're going to have to
Speaker 3: prove the Trump fomented the insurrection on January sixth, that
Speaker 3: he incited it, and he was a co conspirator in
Speaker 3: a sedition that could be open to interpretation in the
Speaker 3: way that this one isn't. But that's also the case
Speaker 3: that could keep him out of the Oval office. The
Speaker 3: Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War was aimed a keeping
Speaker 3: Confederates running government because they were seditious, and that language
Speaker 3: is still in there, right, Like, that's the heart of
Speaker 3: this is, we don't want rebellious people, irresponsible seditionists running
Speaker 3: our government, whether the Confederates or Donald Trump. But weirdly,
Speaker 3: in all of this, depending on the timing, if Trump
Speaker 3: were to run and win, he then if you were president,
Speaker 3: could dismiss these cases.
Speaker 1: Right And in fact, it seems like a very likely,
Speaker 1: especially with Judge Cannon, that a lot of these cases
Speaker 1: may happen after he's won the primary, the GOP primary,
Speaker 1: which I think he'll win, while he's running for president.
Speaker 1: I was actually texting with Ron DeSantis, Yes, Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: we're very close. No, with with Ron brownsde you know
Speaker 1: who happens to have the same name as Ron de
Speaker 1: Santis and lit a thowsful human being.
Speaker 2: Yes, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 1: He was saying, and he may not feel this way now,
Speaker 1: but he was saying he thought this actually pretty much
Speaker 1: clenched the GOP nomination for Trump.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that's actually an interesting thing to look at,
Speaker 3: and I'm not convinced it will. I think he may
Speaker 3: have clinched it regardless of this right. You know, after
Speaker 3: like three to four weeks after you know, Manhattan, da
Speaker 3: Alvin Brad indicted Trump and charged him in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: A few weeks after that event, the polls suggested that
Speaker 3: it gave Trump a boost, and I think that was
Speaker 3: a flimsy case relative to all the other ones. Like
Speaker 3: if if you had to have a ranking of where
Speaker 3: to go at him, that one felt me far down
Speaker 3: on the totem pole. It will be interesting to see
Speaker 3: in three to four weeks if there's some polling, and
Speaker 3: all the polls aren't reliable, but I will voters respond
Speaker 3: to this action. I think it would be interesting if
Speaker 3: they have a different response to this than they did
Speaker 3: to brag. And if they did, I think that may
Speaker 3: also have an electoral component to it. I think most
Speaker 3: Americans are sick of this car crash, but they don't
Speaker 3: want the car crash to get resolved in a unreliable way.
Speaker 2: What does that mean.
Speaker 3: I think they want the process to play out in
Speaker 3: a way in which it is clear and discernible, right,
Speaker 3: And I think this is a clear, discernible action. I
Speaker 3: think there's anywhereere you've got to interpret Trump's judgment or
Speaker 3: interpret did he do x Y or Z, people will
Speaker 3: start complaining. But like the Georgia case, in this case,
Speaker 3: like there's a tape in Georgia where he says, find
Speaker 3: me the eleven thousand and seven hundred votes or whatever,
Speaker 3: it's like, there's nothing like debatable around that he called
Speaker 3: them up and asked them to commit voting fraud. And
Speaker 3: in the document's case, his own cameras record his own
Speaker 3: people moving the stuff around to evade the law, and
Speaker 3: the obstruction case is open to interpretation. On the second
Speaker 3: you get into interpretation of the January sixth case, you know,
Speaker 3: people can fill that void. It can fill that vacuum,
Speaker 3: you know. I do think voters have stood up at
Speaker 3: crucial moments since twenty sixteen. Trump is not one a
Speaker 3: federal electoral referendum. Since twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, twenty twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, he's lost, despite everyone saying that trump Ism
Speaker 3: and Trump were going to rule the dead and it
Speaker 3: got deeply embarrassed in twenty two. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I am heartened that somewhere in the great unknown
Speaker 3: that is the United States, that some people are enough,
Speaker 3: people are to start at paid attention. Since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: But I get the sense that you don't believe that.
Speaker 3: Do you not feel that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 1: I mean the I think that those midterms were a
Speaker 1: referendum on Trump is. I think Trump has the numbers
Speaker 1: to continue with the GOP base, but I don't think
Speaker 1: he has the numbers.
Speaker 3: To win a general election.
Speaker 1: Right, And so I actually feel, you know, in my mind,
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario continues to be DeSantis because it,
Speaker 1: you know, trump is without Trump is quite scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I.
Speaker 1: Don't like Youngkin, but he doesn't seem to me quite
Speaker 1: as But I mean, I don't know. This Republican Party
Speaker 1: has definitely taken authoritarianism as their thing now in a
Speaker 1: really craven way.
Speaker 3: Right because, like you have, you have trained lawyers advocating
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and they don't think there's anything wrong with it,
Speaker 1: and they're very defensive about it. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: more worried about this sort of trump Ism without Trump
Speaker 1: than I am about Trump, because I think that people
Speaker 1: know what Trump is.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's going to stay with us, Molly, like
Speaker 3: that's a given, Like trump Ism is going to be
Speaker 3: with us for I don't know, I wouldn't say a generation,
Speaker 3: But I would say until it gets completely wrung out
Speaker 3: of the GOP primary process, it's not gone.
Speaker 1: Which means that basically that every election is going to
Speaker 1: be fascism more normal.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think it's even beyond what is
Speaker 3: fascism mean in the US context. To me, there's clearly
Speaker 3: this desire to just call institutional credibility into question, about
Speaker 3: the point where no one trusts facts, no one trusts
Speaker 3: what institutions say, whether those institutions are are the courts
Speaker 3: or the government, or the media or any sort of
Speaker 3: local authority. And that's an okay place for elites to
Speaker 3: live because they can also always resource themselves privately, But
Speaker 3: for most people who depend on both institutions and processes
Speaker 3: just for the normal given taricul their daily lives, that's anarchy.
Speaker 3: And I think, actually, these people aren't the far right,
Speaker 3: the MAGA people of the GOP aren't populist conservatives or anarchists.
Speaker 3: They want disorder because they're angry and they think the
Speaker 3: system as a whole is untrustworthy and should be brought down.
Speaker 3: And so in the American context, I really worry about
Speaker 3: just dissolution and fragmentation sort of like late Rome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and I think there's a real anxiety that
Speaker 1: that's where we are.
Speaker 3: But so then the question is how do we solve that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't know how we solve that. Give
Speaker 1: us like a two minutes on how we solve it.
Speaker 3: Well, I think leadership always matters. I think it matters
Speaker 3: in times of uncertainty, in times of chaos, that people
Speaker 3: of courage stand up, exert influence, authority and trust to
Speaker 3: get things back on track. And I think that Democrats
Speaker 3: have been bad at recruiting young, dynamic, credible people in
Speaker 3: giving them airtime so a base can be cultivated around them.
Speaker 3: I think historically the GOP has been better at that.
Speaker 3: So I think part of the solution is the Democrats
Speaker 3: need to get better at recruiting and promoting sharp, new,
Speaker 3: dynamic faces. I think secondarily, people have to fight for facts.
Speaker 3: But that's also a nebulous battle.
Speaker 2: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: The media is as poorly trusted as any other institution,
Speaker 3: in a lot of cases less so. But I think
Speaker 3: there's a long history behind that, and I think that
Speaker 3: that's a tough battle. And I think actually the United
Speaker 3: States is at a juncture that could go in very
Speaker 3: much the wrong way given all the factors in play.
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely pessimistic. I'm not optimistic. I just think
Speaker 3: we're on a bit of an I think we're on
Speaker 3: a knife edge in American society right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, how long can we be on a knife's edge?
Speaker 3: How long is it going to take England to recover
Speaker 3: from Brexit?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think I think societies can stay in
Speaker 3: flextu a long time, but they erode. And there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things we always do well in the US
Speaker 3: because there's a lot of unique virtues and skilled in
Speaker 3: the US, But there's also this weird I think the
Speaker 3: United States, the sort of sense of inevitability and survival
Speaker 3: that come what nay, everything bumps up against this anormous
Speaker 3: ship of the state that the US sales on. I
Speaker 3: think the Trump ERI calls that into question. I think
Speaker 3: people need to do the right thing and embrace values
Speaker 3: that are our disting values like democracy, equity, the facts,
Speaker 3: which is not happening right now. And the response the
Speaker 3: GOP's response to the Trump indictment is grotesque and disheartening
Speaker 3: because they're just craven politicos who want to acquire position
Speaker 3: and power for the sake of acquiring power with an
Speaker 3: agenda free world view.
Speaker 2: Tim O'Brien, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Molly, thank you for having me. It's always a treat.
Speaker 1: Dave Weigel is a reporter at Semaphore. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Dave, thanks for having me back. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Always delight to have you. So we're in this incredibly.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm incredibly depressed or just a
Speaker 1: little depressed, but I'm thinking about our political situation right
Speaker 1: now and feeling pretty depressed. Can you talk to us
Speaker 1: a little bit about the sort of insanity that's happening right.
Speaker 2: Now in MAGA world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, obviously the deep state is taking down Donald
Speaker 4: Trump because he got too close to the truth about
Speaker 4: child drafficking. That's what's happening in Florida today, right.
Speaker 2: It's the only answer that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the former president is showing up for his Dan
Speaker 4: Corty's got a couple special features that most people don't get,
Speaker 4: which is that he doesn't need to get a mug shot,
Speaker 4: I just need to get fingerprinted. But he is participating
Speaker 4: with investigation to his handling of classified material and more importantly.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is the thing I think, I think
Speaker 4: everyone kind of gets it right, but more importantly, just
Speaker 4: not cooperating with law enforcement and the FBI once they
Speaker 4: realize that he's taking stuff from the White House. That's
Speaker 4: what separates what's happened to Trump, that from what happened
Speaker 4: to Mike Pence, which is already forgotten, and the investigation
Speaker 4: into into Joe Biden. This is it's very clear from
Speaker 4: the indictment, which is which is a just like a
Speaker 4: fun read. I feel like it is a fun read.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 4: I'm usually fun read. Yeah, with photos, just for the details.
Speaker 4: Had he just behaved differently and handed the stuff back
Speaker 4: when asked about it, I'm not sure that this would
Speaker 4: be happening today. But that's happening. You have. I have
Speaker 4: some colleagues down there. I'm not down there myself, but
Speaker 4: you have what it's not probably probably a pretty reliable
Speaker 4: traveling maggot troop of Kerry Lake and vi Vey Ramaswami
Speaker 4: and Laura Lumer who lives in Florida, and Trump super
Speaker 4: fans who are saying this is a miscarriage of justice,
Speaker 4: that this is Joe Biden trying to take down his
Speaker 4: his chief political opponent. I think that they don't really
Speaker 4: be there saying because every Republican, with the exception of
Speaker 4: Basa Hudginson is running for president, has said almost the
Speaker 4: same thing, right, And.
Speaker 1: Now I want to talk about these candidates, because this
Speaker 1: is something that is completely like, here are these candidates.
Speaker 1: They are running against Donald Trump, right, They're running against him,
Speaker 1: and yet Donald Trump has made defending him the litmus
Speaker 1: test of this primary. So well, they're running against him,
Speaker 1: they're defending him.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 4: This is a trap for a lot of these candidates
Speaker 4: for a number of reasons. I think most people can
Speaker 4: even into it. Why. The first one that they're all
Speaker 4: dealing with is that most Republican voters, most people who
Speaker 4: say they're going to vote in this primary, like Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: and they think that he's being railroaded. If you look
Speaker 4: at the CBS poll which asked pretty directly about this
Speaker 4: that came out over the weekend, less than thirty percent
Speaker 4: close to twenty eight percent Republicans who thought there might
Speaker 4: be some merit into this case. In Florida, the vast
Speaker 4: majority said there was no merit, and half of the
Speaker 4: people who said there was said that it was probably
Speaker 4: a political sting to get him out of the race anyway.
Speaker 4: And when you're that is your elector that's who you're
Speaker 4: appealing to, you can either go for that small group
Speaker 4: that is not enough to win the nomination, or you
Speaker 4: can say, I agree that this is that he's being railroaded.
Speaker 4: I think what you've seen is a couple different responses.
Speaker 4: One is the AA vague response, which is literally turning
Speaker 4: your campaign over into a kind of flavor flav you
Speaker 4: know Chuck d situation where you're just showing up and saying, yeah, boy,
Speaker 4: whenever Trump says something.
Speaker 1: He's there today and he has like a sheet that
Speaker 1: he wants everyone to sign that will say they'll defend
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, every candidate.
Speaker 4: That they'll specifically that if they're elected president, they will
Speaker 4: pardon him.
Speaker 2: Pardon him, yes, yes, yes, the Willie.
Speaker 4: Mantion pardoning him. That is the That is one extreme.
Speaker 4: The other extreme is is Asa Hutchinson, the former governor
Speaker 4: of Arkansas, is a former prosecutor, and he's just saying
Speaker 4: we yes, Trump should leave the race. He has the
Speaker 4: way he's behaved in this indictment is is is untenable.
Speaker 4: H he cannot leave the country. He should drop out.
Speaker 4: Asa Hutchinson, who is appollent one percent, does not have
Speaker 4: that appeal to most of the party. In between, you've
Speaker 4: got the rest of the responses, which are I think
Speaker 4: Nikay Halley kind of dramatized the most because she put
Speaker 4: out one response then added to it on Fox saying,
Speaker 4: we all are worried that the law enforcement is being
Speaker 4: weaponized in some way. And at the same time, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump made some mistakes and if you nominate me, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to have the same problems. They're all meandering
Speaker 4: towards saying this guy will be harder to elect and
Speaker 4: if he is elected, is going to have just a
Speaker 4: ton of problems governing. I think what they have to
Speaker 4: deal with again, Vivica just leaning into it, some candidates
Speaker 4: jumping around it, is well, if our base thinks that
Speaker 4: everything he's faced with is a conspiracy or fake or
Speaker 4: the deep state, then what's even the downside of him
Speaker 4: him winning again? I maybe because this is something that
Speaker 4: a lot of Trump and DeSantis debaters, and that's most
Speaker 4: of the problem based now they have is do you
Speaker 4: want a candidate who like DeSantis will get in there.
Speaker 4: There'll be a scandal from time to time, but nothing existential.
Speaker 4: He kind of swats back his enemies, or do you
Speaker 4: want somebody who's less focused and is constantly getting into trouble.
Speaker 4: The needle they're trying to thread is that the Republican
Speaker 4: voters to say, if Trump's getting in trouble, that means
Speaker 4: he's doing the right thing and everything he's accused of
Speaker 4: his fake right.
Speaker 1: I thought they were just being cowardly cowards, which they are.
Speaker 1: But these candidates have seen the polling and they see
Speaker 1: that there's no lane for someone who does it, who
Speaker 1: isn't a trumpy sycophan, right.
Speaker 4: Right, And all of them, I should add, when they're
Speaker 4: getting into this race and thinking about how do you
Speaker 4: get the nomination, they all do things seriously about it
Speaker 4: unless they're they're just doing this to raise money, is
Speaker 4: all right? What would need to happen for me to win?
Speaker 4: And if you boil it down, it is they need
Speaker 4: rhn dea Santis to fade, and they think he will.
Speaker 4: It's one thing I think every Republican running for present
Speaker 4: believe they just have more raw political talent than he does.
Speaker 4: It's hard to lass, right, Yeah, they need Trump to
Speaker 4: be so knocked out of the race. That they're not
Speaker 4: competing against us. So you'll get them kind of talking
Speaker 4: on background or off the record about how they think
Speaker 4: that Trump could be forced not to run. The problems
Speaker 4: could be overwhelming, he could drop out. I think that
Speaker 4: that gets less and less likely whatever they open their mouths,
Speaker 4: because one argument they're making is this is Joe Biden's
Speaker 4: chief political foe, and this is everything that's being thrown
Speaker 4: at him as a way to get himut of the race.
Speaker 4: If he then drops out of the race, what's the
Speaker 4: next question is it? Hey, are you are do you
Speaker 4: endorse how the deep state took out Joe Biden's most
Speaker 4: powerful political opponent and is making a settle for one
Speaker 4: of you guys. It's not tenable as just a logical
Speaker 4: exercise unless you're Asa Hudgerson you're saying, yeah, this is
Speaker 4: pretty bad. She should not review should not be running.
Speaker 2: That is a really good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just the calculus is so impossible, right,
Speaker 1: and then also you have to defend Trump, but you
Speaker 1: also have to I mean, DeSantis wanted to run to
Speaker 1: the right of him, and these other people are sort
Speaker 1: of trying to run to the right of him too,
Speaker 1: or at least sort of the same, if not more.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they have not distinguished themselves much on policy compared
Speaker 4: to Trump, except to the right. And you bring up
Speaker 4: to Santis, He's the one who's done the most of this.
Speaker 4: He has said that he was true Mega, he was
Speaker 4: true America first, even when Trump was and the examples
Speaker 4: he gives me. He gave some of this in Iowa
Speaker 4: when he did this for his to date only real
Speaker 4: press conference in the campaign, and he was saying, well,
Speaker 4: basically the Trump was willing to do amnesty for dreamers.
Speaker 4: Trump has talked down entitlement reform, has no plans of
Speaker 4: ever performing soci security Medicare. He said with Hugh Hewitt
Speaker 4: in more recent interview that Trump's Supreme Court appointees were
Speaker 4: obviously good and he's on record supporting them, but he
Speaker 4: wanted to put more conservative judges in the mold of
Speaker 4: Alito and Scalia so that he is attacked from the
Speaker 4: right right. But that's basically it. Nobody disagrees with the premise,
Speaker 4: I mean. And part of this is that Trump has
Speaker 4: just kind of won a lot of the policy debates
Speaker 4: in the party. If you were covering the Republicans in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, there was a disagreement on whether you would
Speaker 4: solve immigration with a border wall and things that move
Speaker 4: so far that Republicans are arguing drug smuggling a thing
Speaker 4: that happens mostly through you know, legal ports of entry,
Speaker 4: we need to build a border wall to stop that.
Speaker 4: They've embraced so many of Trump's ideas that they've build
Speaker 4: retrofically defend how he acted as president. They really haven't
Speaker 4: distinguished himselves much. And here is a different thing that
Speaker 4: I would do that he would not if he wins.
Speaker 4: They just say I would do it more efficiently, I
Speaker 4: would do it without scandal. Please don't take what I
Speaker 4: just said as an endorsement of people investigating it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the thing again that I don't totally get is
Speaker 1: it seems like Trump was a cult of personality, right,
Speaker 1: and that now he's running against people who so, Okay,
Speaker 1: they don't have policy, but they also don't necessarily have personality.
Speaker 4: They have I think, more recognizable politician personalities. They're not
Speaker 4: going to be as flamboyant as Trump is. They're not
Speaker 4: going to insult people the way that he does. When
Speaker 4: they do it is usually through staff. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think that the DeSantis staff attitude. You way to argue
Speaker 4: on Twitter is kind of will make fun of you
Speaker 4: for the question to ask. But nobody punches as many
Speaker 4: targets as Trump does. So yeah, they are running as
Speaker 4: wouldn't be nice if there was a normal Republican president
Speaker 4: who took these issues on. But I mean, I didn't
Speaker 4: mention one thing. I've been covering a lot because I
Speaker 4: can't talk about it is even gender issues. They have
Speaker 4: tried to get to his right on and which been
Speaker 4: tough because Trump since he left the presidency has got
Speaker 4: as he moved around this on gender identity, on everything
Speaker 4: touching that issue is the frontier of LGBT rights. So
Speaker 4: nobody really disagrees with him. They just think, well, look
Speaker 4: what he did when the White House, he had a
Speaker 4: transgender military band to get tied up. He didn't really
Speaker 4: do anything about the schools. If I get in, I
Speaker 4: know what my plan is. And so they've basically adopted
Speaker 4: a lot of his policies. They've gone further through right
Speaker 4: and they've run on efficiency. That is something every primary
Speaker 4: is different. You mentioned called a personality. It's still unsettled,
Speaker 4: and question to me how much of Republican disappointment with
Speaker 4: Trump is he didn't deliver on X or Y policy
Speaker 4: and how much is just I trust him, but he
Speaker 4: got railroaded. If they think that he just got railroaded
Speaker 4: and then in the next term he would do everything
Speaker 4: everything left on his agenda, You're then all right, what
Speaker 4: are you offering that he's not offering kind of nothing.
Speaker 4: You're offering the ability to run for a second term
Speaker 4: because he can't. But that's about it.
Speaker 1: It's a completely strange situation. I mean, I guess it's
Speaker 1: really just twenty fifteen all over again.
Speaker 4: Right, So the main difference is beyond disrumpting former president.
Speaker 4: So you have a permission structure. All these every Republican
Speaker 4: voter in this primary, almost unless they were not alive
Speaker 4: yet or they didn't vote, they've all voted for Donald
Speaker 4: Trump at some point. So you have Republicans who have
Speaker 4: already voted for this guy. They're already used to his idea,
Speaker 4: his ideas, his version of politics. You have him losing
Speaker 4: an election, which a lot of Republicans don't think he did,
Speaker 4: and you actually have a more conservative base for Trump
Speaker 4: than you did in the past. So this is I
Speaker 4: don't think it's forgotten per se. But I think it
Speaker 4: gets left out of some analysis is that Trump did
Speaker 4: best withstead of working class Republican voters who were not
Speaker 4: necessarily the most conservative, the most conservative would vote for
Speaker 4: Cruise in a lot of these primaries. That is now
Speaker 4: his base. It's actually more modern Republicans who just don't
Speaker 4: want Trump back, who are saying they'll even vote for DeSantis,
Speaker 4: who's again, not to repeat it what I said, but
Speaker 4: running to Trump's right. But since he's not him and
Speaker 4: that he's the fresh face, he's the alternative, they're looking
Speaker 4: for something else there. You're not seeing a debate about
Speaker 4: how Trump would change the party because he already has.
Speaker 4: So he's in a better position than he was in
Speaker 4: twenty Sixteen's campaigning less, I mean, he's doing less actual
Speaker 4: in person events. But these legal problems are the best
Speaker 4: example of just how much better he's he had a
Speaker 4: position he's in with the same sort of tragedy of
Speaker 4: the comments of the other candidates that you had in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. If this is what happened to Trump, let's
Speaker 4: imagine is twenty sixteen or twenty fifteen, and let's imagine
Speaker 4: Trump had somehow got classified documents, or let's imagine he's
Speaker 4: in court over alleged sexual abuse. What would have happened
Speaker 4: then is what happened with the Trump University lawsuit, which
Speaker 4: is other candidates saying, hey, this is bad. He did
Speaker 4: something unethical. We can't have a president who did that.
Speaker 4: As the nominee, he's going to be in trouble.
Speaker 2: But now no more.
Speaker 1: He is winning the attention economy, and so you're seeing
Speaker 1: everybody else sort of shrivel up and die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fair. I think it's this six inquid abut it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean depressing.
Speaker 1: It's actually made me really, I mean, there are other
Speaker 1: things that are making me depress, but I feel like
Speaker 1: that's also one of them. I feel like the listeners
Speaker 1: don't like it when I start talking a bit hoo
Speaker 1: to depress him. I can't imagine why they don't find
Speaker 1: that Trump. So MEGA has sort of figured out another
Speaker 1: group to appeal to explain this, because this is really
Speaker 1: interesting LGBTQ stuff.
Speaker 4: If you're looking at what issues are relatively new for
Speaker 4: the party for this cycle. Obviously not gay rights, obviously
Speaker 4: not the traditional marriage those are not new, but a
Speaker 4: confidence that they can win voters who don't like Republicans
Speaker 4: and other issues on gender issues, that's pretty new for
Speaker 4: the version of that's new, and you saw Republicans do
Speaker 4: this in two thousand and four, much less to do
Speaker 4: those in eight They have as much a light to
Speaker 4: stand on. With gay marriage and black voters, there's big
Speaker 4: a lot of outreached in Ohio to religious black voters,
Speaker 4: to religious minorities in general, religious spanics saying the traditional
Speaker 4: family is going to be destroyed by the left and
Speaker 4: not by us. We want a moment a constitution. You're
Speaker 4: seeing a new version of that around LGBT issues, transgender people.
Speaker 4: One thing I was just kind of focusing on over
Speaker 4: the last couple of days is you're seeing a lot
Speaker 4: with Muslim voters who the Republicans just stopped competing for
Speaker 4: ten years ago. I mean, the politics the party have
Speaker 4: shifted so much that you remember the inciting event for
Speaker 4: Trump to introduce the Muslim travel ban.
Speaker 1: No, I just remember he sort of had the band
Speaker 1: teed up, but I don't remember what caused it.
Speaker 4: Well, he kind of did. The event was the Pulse
Speaker 4: nightclub shooting in Orlando. He was sort of taking this
Speaker 4: what was the popular Republican position for fifteen sixteen years
Speaker 4: was this is a pluralistic, democratic country with tolerance, and
Speaker 4: we can't have Muslim sharia law, believe in terrorists coming
Speaker 4: in and ruining it. That has changed and he talks
Speaker 4: less about the Muslim ban. Now he does talk about
Speaker 4: preventing medicaid from covering gender medicine, hormones, et cetera. In
Speaker 4: that spirit, they've been doing more outreach to voters who
Speaker 4: just may have totally bailed on their party over immigration policies,
Speaker 4: over the Muslim band, et cetera. But they also are
Speaker 4: not socially liberal. They're not progressive. If they hear about groomors,
Speaker 4: they're going to agree with that.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 4: One example is the new outreach chair of the Michigan
Speaker 4: Republican Party, And Michigan's a place where this really kind
Speaker 4: of picked up in Dearborn, where parents are protesting some
Speaker 4: sexual content in school, mostly Muslim parents. The hour's chair
Speaker 4: of the Michigan Party is the first Muslim to have
Speaker 4: that job, and if you look at her Twitter account
Speaker 4: or social media, it's all about gender, it's all about
Speaker 4: the left groomers. She's a big fan of libs, of TikTok.
Speaker 4: They've gone in a more cultural direction because they think
Speaker 4: there is more territory to gain there. That's pretty new
Speaker 4: for this cycle, if not a lot of of the
Speaker 4: policies are.
Speaker 1: It's so fucked up because we're not in cable news,
Speaker 1: so we can say this that the right has decided that, Like.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can see this progression.
Speaker 1: Right. They started with we just want to protect children,
Speaker 1: don't say gay to third grade, then to high school,
Speaker 1: you know, we just want to protect them.
Speaker 2: From drag queens.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden they're like, we just
Speaker 1: don't want pride shove down our throat. And then you
Speaker 1: see where this is going, right, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: like clearly they're going to go after gay people, and
Speaker 1: it's just it just is sort of mind blowing that.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like one of the few issues
Speaker 1: that is really settled and is popular and they're going
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: After it anyway.
Speaker 4: Well, it's for them, not settled, and it touches on
Speaker 4: so many things. And one question people have when I
Speaker 4: write about it is did it Republicans learn from the
Speaker 4: midterms this is not like not a winning issue. Well
Speaker 4: they didn't. They think what they think? They want to
Speaker 4: keep pounding away on it. They think that as more
Speaker 4: people find out what they're talking about, they're going to
Speaker 4: come to their side. And you saw Gallop this week
Speaker 4: had it updated of its twenty twenty one poll on
Speaker 4: a couple of gender issues, and over the last two years,
Speaker 4: the number of people who want what the poll calls
Speaker 4: somebody's birth gender to determine which sports they play. You know,
Speaker 4: if you're born female but transition to female, you're too bad,
Speaker 4: you're playing male sports. That attitude got much more popular
Speaker 4: by seven points. That went to sixty nine percent who
Speaker 4: agree with that. Even when they asked is it moral
Speaker 4: to change genders? Which is fairly open ended question, that
Speaker 4: decreased too, and among Democrats it was stable. Most Democrats
Speaker 4: actually said, oh no, it's more of them. I should
Speaker 4: say believe that Morald to do so, it's perfectly fine.
Speaker 4: But more Democrats again they shifted by seven points, were aligned,
Speaker 4: i'd say with Nikki Ailey position on transgender athletes. And
Speaker 4: this is something that the White House put out a
Speaker 4: new guidance for schools based on this. It got some pushback,
Speaker 4: but that's a good example the Biden station trying to
Speaker 4: find some ground they can defend on a policy that
Speaker 4: might not be that might be very easily demogogued. So
Speaker 4: that is new. That's how Republicans are reacting to it.
Speaker 4: That's what I hear. I mean when I cover these candidates,
Speaker 4: I hear that in every speech. I don't hear much
Speaker 4: talk about tax cuts. I don't hear much talk about
Speaker 4: foreign policy outside Ukraine. Just the issue matrix has shifted
Speaker 4: a lot, and a lot of it can be dealt
Speaker 4: with by saying I want to replace Biden, but a
Speaker 4: lot more can be like we won a more conservative
Speaker 4: country and a rollback of a lot of liberal rights
Speaker 4: and privileges that people got used to over the last
Speaker 4: ten years.
Speaker 2: So crazy.
Speaker 1: I was reading that piece you wrote where you had
Speaker 1: the people and the audience are like, we're really concerned
Speaker 1: with inflation and we really want, you know, to hear
Speaker 1: about taxes, and then you know, that was I think
Speaker 1: that was in Iowa last week, right, And then every
Speaker 1: single candidate just talked about gender at.
Speaker 4: Least if they touched a policy that was that. I
Speaker 4: mean a lot of the time they spent on stage
Speaker 4: was introducing themselves because many of them are not very
Speaker 4: well known. That was a promise. All that made the
Speaker 4: all following all, following Trump, the rest has basically been
Speaker 4: like this idea, and this has been popular for years
Speaker 4: that the Democrats, when they have power, purposely are trying
Speaker 4: to destroy the country, not just taking it in a
Speaker 4: different direction than they would like to, but going out
Speaker 4: of their way to undermine it so that the country
Speaker 4: is unrecognizable. That's the theme. And so you know, going
Speaker 4: around the edges with Mark, tax policy is going to
Speaker 4: be different. I mean Hutchinson, I got. I'm not picking
Speaker 4: on Hutchinson. I'm just saying, as a candidate who's not
Speaker 4: playing the defend drum game.
Speaker 2: Right, he is a little more different than everybody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of his lines is that he would reduce the
Speaker 4: federal workforce by ten percent. And you listen to that
Speaker 4: and like, you could probably do that. There's probably ways
Speaker 4: to do that. That but that gets less applause than
Speaker 4: Vick Ramaswami saying No, I want to be like a CEO.
Speaker 4: I want to fire as many of these federal employees
Speaker 4: as possibly. I want to reinterpret the federal scheduling of
Speaker 4: government employees that we can replace them with our guys.
Speaker 4: You can if you're desantists. I want to replace basically
Speaker 4: everyone the FBI with attorneys who are going to be
Speaker 4: politicize things. And you could read between the lines, you
Speaker 4: know that would that mean that these are attorneys who
Speaker 4: are not going to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Probably not.
Speaker 4: Like the thing about that is, you know, if you
Speaker 4: were a Hillary Clinton, for example, he hearing that the
Speaker 4: FBI is slanty favorite Democrats is gonna be weird. But
Speaker 4: that's what they talked about.
Speaker 2: That was great. Thank you so much, Dave Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the
Speaker 1: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now,
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Speaker 2: Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Maddie con is the author of Young and Restless, The
Speaker 1: Girls who Sparked America's Revolutions.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie con Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for having me.
Speaker 1: First, I want you to explain to us why you
Speaker 1: decided to write this book and how, uh you know,
Speaker 1: teenage girls do not get a ton of, you know, airtime,
Speaker 1: except when they're being used to bully trans kids. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about teenage girls and how you decided
Speaker 1: to write those.
Speaker 5: Yes, I agree with you, they are more often being
Speaker 5: weaponized against their will than they are speaking for themselves
Speaker 5: in public. I think one of the things that I
Speaker 5: feel about having written this book is a lot of
Speaker 5: people I think wonder, like, what is the adult audience
Speaker 5: for a book about teenage girls. I like to start
Speaker 5: by reminding people that if you've ever read a book
Speaker 5: about a war or seen a movie about a war,
Speaker 5: you are deeply invested in the history of teenage boys.
Speaker 5: So this book is truly for everybody. And I think
Speaker 5: that the history of teenage girls has gotten really short shrift,
Speaker 5: and part of that means that I think we don't
Speaker 5: totally understand how the progress that has been made in
Speaker 5: this country, limited though it may be, has actually happened
Speaker 5: since teenage girls have been on the forefront of so
Speaker 5: much of it. And I decided to write the book
Speaker 5: because I had the lucky experience of having been in
Speaker 5: correspondence with and communication with teenage girls for basically my
Speaker 5: entire professional life. I worked at Elle and then I
Speaker 5: worked at Glamour, and that meant that I was constantly
Speaker 5: coming into contact with these amazing, ambitious, determined, fierce teenage
Speaker 5: girls who were trying to change the world in all
Speaker 5: kinds of ways and had become in the course of
Speaker 5: what felt to me at the time like a decade
Speaker 5: or so, these incredible communicators who were managing to move
Speaker 5: the needle at least in public discourse on issues like
Speaker 5: climate change and gun violence in ways that I felt
Speaker 5: like adults had not yet become hip too. And when
Speaker 5: I first started this project, I thought I would really
Speaker 5: write about this generation of teenage girls and what was
Speaker 5: going on with them such that they were on the
Speaker 5: forefront of all of these social movements.
Speaker 2: And then I started to.
Speaker 5: Do more research and put my good old library skills
Speaker 5: to work and talk to historians and dig in deeper.
Speaker 5: And I guess, you know, I would have always known
Speaker 5: that students were so involved in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 5: but it turned out that there had been this incredible
Speaker 5: history of teenage girls, advocating for labor rights, for suffrage,
Speaker 5: for Title nine, for second wave feminism that had been
Speaker 5: buried for really centuries, and so the project became much
Speaker 5: bigger and much more daunting, And the book really came
Speaker 5: out of that whole process. So it starts in the
Speaker 5: eighteen hundreds and it continues until today.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about Rosa Parks. I don't think
Speaker 1: I realized how young she was.
Speaker 5: Well, Rosa Parks would have been in her thirties and
Speaker 5: forties when we meet her, sort of when she comes
Speaker 5: into the historical view for most people. But she had
Speaker 5: started her activism as a fairly young woman. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that I think people really don't realize
Speaker 5: about her is that she was deeply, deeply invested in
Speaker 5: the work of young people. Before she took the action
Speaker 5: that led to the Montgomery bus boycott, she was the
Speaker 5: head of the NAACP Youth Council in Montgomery, and she
Speaker 5: was constantly mentoring teenagers, boys and girls. When she went
Speaker 5: to the Highlander Folks School, she had been prepared, which,
Speaker 5: by the way, the Highlander Folks School sort of a
Speaker 5: training ground for organizers, particularly in the civil rights kind
Speaker 5: of sleep away camp for activists. She had been prepared
Speaker 5: to kind of give up on her activism. She just
Speaker 5: felt like these people were too stuck in their ways.
Speaker 5: She wasn't making traction, And when she left, she said,
Speaker 5: I'm going to go back basically for the kids that
Speaker 5: I think this next generation has so much potential. I'm
Speaker 5: going to continue in this work because I want to
Speaker 5: work with young people. And one of the young people
Speaker 5: that she was very invested in, especially before nineteen fifty
Speaker 5: five when she started the Montgomery bus boycott, was a
Speaker 5: teenager named Claudette Colvin who was in high school and
Speaker 5: actually had been arrested nine months before Rosa Parks for
Speaker 5: the same crime for refusing to give up her seat
Speaker 5: on a segregated bus. Claudette maybe would have thought at
Speaker 5: one point that she would have been the person who
Speaker 5: became the face of the Montgomery bus boycott, but for
Speaker 5: a variety of reasons, she was kind of cast aside
Speaker 5: by the movement, and Rosa Parks took a real interest
Speaker 5: in her and didn't want her to give up on
Speaker 5: her organizing just because you know, she wasn't going to
Speaker 5: be the figurehead of this particular aspect of the movement.
Speaker 5: And they were really close. As I say in the book,
Speaker 5: Rosa Parks knew how Claudette took her coffee. I mean,
Speaker 5: these two women spent a lot of time together. And
Speaker 5: a few months later, after the bus boycott had already
Speaker 5: started and Rosa Parks became the woman that we all
Speaker 5: know her to be, Claudette Covin did go back to
Speaker 5: her activism and she became the plaintiff in this extraordinary
Speaker 5: case that is part of the reason the boycott ended,
Speaker 5: Browder v. Gale, which ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about this Chinese immigrant, Mabel ping Wa.
Speaker 5: Yes, I try not to play favorites in the book,
Speaker 5: but I do love her story. So Mabel was a
Speaker 5: Chinese immigrant at a time where there were very few discrimination.
Speaker 5: I guess we could say that much hasn't changed. Was rampant,
Speaker 5: and she was the daughter of also Chinese immigrants. Her
Speaker 5: father was a minister, which is how he kind of
Speaker 5: circumvented these really stringent and very discriminatory immigration laws that
Speaker 5: prevented Chinese people from coming to this country. And she was,
Speaker 5: by all accounts, just brilliant. She thrived in high school,
Speaker 5: she went to Barro and she joined a very very
Speaker 5: small group of Chinese students at Barnard and was very
Speaker 5: very involved, particularly actually in the plight of Chinese women
Speaker 5: in China. She was following Chinese politics really closely, as
Speaker 5: were a lot of her peers, and partially because of that,
Speaker 5: she became really involved in the suffrage movement, which was
Speaker 5: exploding at this time. This is like nineteen twelve, nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 5: nineteen fourteen, around that time in New York, and people
Speaker 5: were just totally obsessed with the way that she talked
Speaker 5: about this issue. There was a newspaper article that said
Speaker 5: when she spoke, people left mabilized by her talks, like
Speaker 5: she was that charismatic and articulate, And partially she made
Speaker 5: her case for sort of global women's rights. And for
Speaker 5: many reasons, she got landed on the radar of the
Speaker 5: suffragists who were operating in New York at the time,
Speaker 5: trying to build consensus about this idea of this crazy
Speaker 5: idea of which in voting, and Mabel, who was so
Speaker 5: precocious and so articulate, became this great way to get
Speaker 5: people interested in this cause. And what I liked about
Speaker 5: her story is that she was very aware of how
Speaker 5: she was being used and how she wanted to be heard,
Speaker 5: because I think there is this tension in that story
Speaker 5: between these white women who are running this movement and
Speaker 5: the very young Chinese teenager that they want to have
Speaker 5: kind of trotted out at their gatherings. But Mabel really
Speaker 5: never held back and told these groups of mostly white
Speaker 5: women again exactly what she thought of their hypocrisies and
Speaker 5: their stances, and how they were planning to vote and
Speaker 5: how they were organizing. She became one of the first
Speaker 5: women to earn a PhD from Columbia in economics. And
Speaker 5: I think that one thing I just think everyone should
Speaker 5: know about Mabel is that she eventually sort of gave
Speaker 5: up her activism as an adult. That she decided after
Speaker 5: her father died and the Great Depression to run her
Speaker 5: father's church, and she had friends in high places who
Speaker 5: begged her to come back to the world of more
Speaker 5: public facing organizing. And I just think one thing I
Speaker 5: wanted to do with this book was to say that
Speaker 5: not every story of girlhood extraordinaryness ends in someone becoming
Speaker 5: a public figure or someone wanting that kind of stage
Speaker 5: for the rest of their life. And hard as it was,
Speaker 5: for me who wanted me able to be famous and
Speaker 5: huge and great. I think one of the things I
Speaker 5: tried to do with the book was remind people that
Speaker 5: really girls get to decide for themselves what kind of
Speaker 5: future they want to have.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this idea that girls get to
Speaker 1: decide for themselves, what kind of future they have? Talked
Speaker 1: to me about what you see teenage girls' role right
Speaker 1: now in America and the legacy there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things
Speaker 5: I found from this book was and I think most
Speaker 5: people who have read a headline in the past five
Speaker 5: years know this to be true too, is that teenage
Speaker 5: and girls in particular who are loud and who are
Speaker 5: quick and who are savvy about how to use whatever
Speaker 5: the technological organizing tools of their days are get a
Speaker 5: lot of attention, and they often get attention in ways
Speaker 5: that adults, and sadly, particularly I think adult women don't
Speaker 5: get attention when teenagers are criticizing adults in public. That
Speaker 5: gets attention for good and for ill in ways that
Speaker 5: when adults do it, it's just political sniping or sparring,
Speaker 5: and it doesn't garner that same level of interest. And
Speaker 5: so I think that it's two things right. It's that
Speaker 5: girls are incredible communicators for these causes, and we see
Speaker 5: that happening with people like Greta Tunberg with the organizers
Speaker 5: that came out of Parkland and started March for Our Lives,
Speaker 5: both girls and boys in that case, and non binary
Speaker 5: activists too. But I think the problem is, and this
Speaker 5: is something that comes up a lot in the book
Speaker 5: and has come up across generations, is that teenagers don't
Speaker 5: have real power. Most of the people that we're talking
Speaker 5: about only just were able to vote, or not even
Speaker 5: are yet able to vote. They can't elect people, they
Speaker 5: can't campaign for office themselves, they can't run yet. I mean,
Speaker 5: there are very very limited spheres of influence that teenagers
Speaker 5: can have in a public space, and the most powerful
Speaker 5: one that they can have is speaking is being heard.
Speaker 5: And I think the tension is always going to be
Speaker 5: for young people who are so good at getting their
Speaker 5: voices out there and often are so much better at
Speaker 5: that than adults are. Where do they want their influence
Speaker 5: or I guess how do they want their influence to live?
Speaker 5: Because just speaking and getting attention for an issue is
Speaker 5: not the same as being able to achieve some kind
Speaker 5: of legislative or political victory. And I think a lot
Speaker 5: of young people who do this work find it frustrating
Speaker 5: that they are drawing so much attention to these causes,
Speaker 5: but then when it comes time to address these issues
Speaker 5: in policy ways or legislative ways, nobody really wants to
Speaker 5: give them a seat at the table. And I think
Speaker 5: that's always going to be the tension of teenage organizing.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you about Greta Thurnberg, because she
Speaker 1: is a f like right now, the sort of teenage
Speaker 1: girl organizer of the moment. Yeah, talk to me about
Speaker 1: her and where she sort of fits in with the legacy.
Speaker 5: Well, I think one thing that's really interesting about Greta
Speaker 5: is when you listen to her speeches, she is constantly
Speaker 5: talking about how she shouldn't have to be here, she
Speaker 5: shouldn't have to be doing this. One of the things
Speaker 5: that she often says is angrily, you know you've stolen
Speaker 5: my childhood. I don't want to be spending my time
Speaker 5: telling you that you're burning this planet. I don't want
Speaker 5: to be famous. I don't want to be a celebrity,
Speaker 5: but I'm called to action because nobody seems to be
Speaker 5: doing the things that need to be done to safeguard
Speaker 5: the future of the earth. I think that that is
Speaker 5: an undercurrent for a lot of teenage activists that Greta
Speaker 5: makes very explicit that there are other ways she would
Speaker 5: like to be spending her time. I mean, I write
Speaker 5: in the book about the children who advocated for nuclear disarmament,
Speaker 5: who write explicitly in their letters to the president or
Speaker 5: in their organizing materials, we don't want to be here.
Speaker 5: We want to be doing our homework, riding our bikes,
Speaker 5: playing outside, doing any number of other things. There is
Speaker 5: a kind of self sacrifice that I think is part
Speaker 5: of the narrative of teenage activism that I think Greta
Speaker 5: summarizes really well and speaks to I think some people definitely,
Speaker 5: and Greta being the flashpoint that she is, this is
Speaker 5: definitely true of her find that to be I don't know,
Speaker 5: holier than thou somehow or not solutions oriented in some way.
Speaker 5: I think though, that when what children and young people have,
Speaker 5: when the most potent force that they have on their
Speaker 5: side is their youth, part of the effective way of
Speaker 5: communicating publicly is to say this should not be my responsibility,
Speaker 5: but because adults aren't doing their job. It is my responsibility.
Speaker 5: And that comes up again and again and again when
Speaker 5: Greta is giving speeches. You guys are supposed to be
Speaker 5: finding the solutions to these problems, but you're not doing it.
Speaker 5: So I have to make a big fuss about it.
Speaker 5: And clearly it's worked. I mean, people are talking about
Speaker 5: her and about climate change, partially because so many bad
Speaker 5: things are happening in the world brought on by climate change,
Speaker 5: but in ways that they definitely didn't a few years.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to this really horrendous thing
Speaker 1: that Nikki Haley said this weekend. Yes, she said that
Speaker 1: teenage girls are killing themselves because of trans athletes in sports. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we are in the middle of a mental health crisis
Speaker 1: post pandemic, likely inspired by the post pandemic, right, mental
Speaker 1: health crisis that is in many ways about the pandemic
Speaker 1: and about a lot of other things. But I'm just curious,
Speaker 1: what do you think about this idea. You know that
Speaker 1: people use teenage girls like this in this way to
Speaker 1: beat up trans kids, and we're seeing this as like,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like they never cared about girls
Speaker 1: sports either, and now there's like this concern for girls sports.
Speaker 5: Yes, and they definitely don't want equal AD dollars going
Speaker 5: to the WNBA, and they don't care to see those
Speaker 5: games on TV, and they have no interest in supporting
Speaker 5: the infrastructure of women and girls' sports except to use
Speaker 5: it as a cudgel against trans people. I mean, truly,
Speaker 5: I find it. First of all, I find it maddening,
Speaker 5: But on a really deep level, I find it really
Speaker 5: heartbreaking because for this book, I talk to so many
Speaker 5: young women across the country who feel so much genuine
Speaker 5: anxiety and fear about the direction that this world is
Speaker 5: going in. Many of them have trans friends. I talk
Speaker 5: to a lot of trans girls for this book, who,
Speaker 5: of course are included in the category of girl as
Speaker 5: I and I think most normal people define it. And
Speaker 5: it's such a distraction to try to pit these groups
Speaker 5: of people against each other. But I also think it's
Speaker 5: really in line with the way that America fetishizes girlhood
Speaker 5: as sort of an idea without any content or humanity
Speaker 5: behind it. So we have this vision of you know,
Speaker 5: the American girl, blonde, white, probably pigtails, innocence, naivete, and
Speaker 5: that ideal needs to be preserved at all costs, But
Speaker 5: girls themselves are being cast aside and treated terribly in
Speaker 5: this culture all the time by these same people that
Speaker 5: say that they act to protect them. I mean, it
Speaker 5: doesn't surprise me, and I'm sure it doesn't surprise you
Speaker 5: that this same rhetoric of protecting girlhood comes at a
Speaker 5: time where we're also hearing about ten year olds who
Speaker 5: are having to travel out of state to get abortions.
Speaker 5: It is all part of the same discussion and the
Speaker 5: same ideology that lifts up this one image of girlhood
Speaker 5: that has truly no content and no humanity at the
Speaker 5: expense of literally every single girl in this country. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't think that there is a girl dealing with
Speaker 5: anxiety alive who would say that trans girls are their
Speaker 5: biggest problem. It's a ridiculous and manufactured thing, but it
Speaker 5: fits squarely in this tradition of using girls as a
Speaker 5: shield or as a way to distract without actually asking
Speaker 5: them what's going on in their lives. And I just
Speaker 5: really find it hard to believe that Nikki Haley is
Speaker 5: invested in the mental health crisis of teenagers in general
Speaker 5: and certainly girls in particular, if that's her idea for
Speaker 5: how to solve. And also, this isn't my point, but
Speaker 5: we know that the much bigger threat to teenage girls
Speaker 5: is sis teenage boys, not trans girls. So I think
Speaker 5: that too. Just expose this for what it is, which
Speaker 5: is really cynical and really damaging. And that's the worst part,
Speaker 5: because it's not just a gross political thing to do.
Speaker 5: It really really affects people, and it affects families, and
Speaker 5: it's just so not worth it. And yet I know
Speaker 5: this is not going to be the last time in
Speaker 5: this election cycle that we hear something like this.
Speaker 2: Maddie, this was great. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me on now.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon, Mai junk Fast.
Speaker 5: You know, it's a funny thing. There is quite the
Speaker 5: scene outside that courtroom for Trump getting indicted today.
Speaker 2: What'd you see there?
Speaker 1: Well, I was in New York City, thank god, and
Speaker 1: not in Miami in the middle of the June heat.
Speaker 1: But I would like to say that I was on
Speaker 1: Sky News earlier today and they played a package where
Speaker 1: they interviewed all of these people at the courthouse, and
Speaker 1: the people at the courthouse seemed completely crazy, and I
Speaker 1: realized while I was watching this video that the rest
Speaker 1: of the world is laughing at us, and the rest
Speaker 1: of the world laughing at us is today's moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.