Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast, and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and we are now one year out
Speaker 1: from the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post Will Somer joins us to talk about
Speaker 1: the madness sweeping through the Republican Party. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to Josh from the et Injermentum newsletter about Trump and
Speaker 1: Desanta's escalating jobs at one another. But first we have
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project z
Speaker 1: owned Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Mollie Jong Fast. I'm delighted to be with you as always,
Speaker 3: I mean today from beautiful Savannah, Georgia, for my son's
Speaker 3: wedding week.
Speaker 1: This is a very remote little bit of interview. The
Speaker 1: two of us are both in weird places. You're in Savannah,
Speaker 1: Georgia for your son's wedding, which is the dream of
Speaker 1: every parent.
Speaker 3: Thank God.
Speaker 2: Yes, he means you've done it.
Speaker 3: After the children being wed, it is done. They are
Speaker 3: awfully launched. They all have careers and and now I
Speaker 3: await but the army of little Extra Wilson's to emerge
Speaker 3: into the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Rip Wilson ready to be a grandfather.
Speaker 1: And I am in my mother's apartment cleaning it out.
Speaker 2: Very heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of heartbreaking, I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 1: I've been acting my friends on the Hill all morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, Maggie, Mike Johnson. Is he very very stupid?
Speaker 1: Or is he playing three dimensional chess? Or is he
Speaker 1: eating the pieces? Discuss I have a belief.
Speaker 3: That Mike Johnson is like the species of creature that
Speaker 3: I discussed periodically called dumb smart guys. He is like
Speaker 3: Tad Cruz. He is narrowly intelligent about a certain set
Speaker 3: of things that he is very driven by religion. In
Speaker 3: his case, it is his cult like dedication to a
Speaker 3: small of evangelic anity, which I mean, look, I don't
Speaker 3: speak for Jesus, of.
Speaker 2: Course, yeah, I do get to be at.
Speaker 3: Variance with some Well, he's one of the brethren. I
Speaker 3: suspect that the narrow, pinched, fanatic, bizarro world version of
Speaker 3: Christianity that Mike Johnson seems to represent is more interested
Speaker 3: in telling those biddies to get back in the kitchen
Speaker 3: and take those shoes off and have more babies than
Speaker 3: the compassion of our Lord and Savior, if you take
Speaker 3: my meanings.
Speaker 1: But is he playing three dimensional chess when it comes
Speaker 1: to he passed so bipartisan sport for this Israel aid package.
Speaker 1: So instead of just passing the aid package the way
Speaker 1: one would normally do it, he decides he's going to
Speaker 1: add quote unquote pay for with the irs. Of course
Speaker 1: these offsets offset nothing.
Speaker 2: But what is going on?
Speaker 3: He offsets the costs of the fourteen billion costs by
Speaker 3: cutting the.
Speaker 2: IRS, which adds the depicit.
Speaker 3: Right, that cut will lead to a twenty three billion
Speaker 3: dollar loss a tax collection from the wealthiest taxpayer. I
Speaker 3: don't think it's three dimensional chess. I think it's actually
Speaker 3: a pretty shallow kind of feed the maga bass play,
Speaker 3: because you know, the first thing out there is this
Speaker 3: chunk of red meat of cutting the IRS. Now, look,
Speaker 3: I guess I missed the ball here on how it
Speaker 3: is that you allow the hyper wealthiest tax cheats.
Speaker 2: It's their donor base.
Speaker 3: I missed how that was part of the freedom agenda.
Speaker 3: They already are paying a significantly lower tax rate. You
Speaker 3: and I are not exactly like your basic bitch ten
Speaker 3: forty filers. We're not like in that category where.
Speaker 2: We can do our taxes on the back of a postcard.
Speaker 1: By the way, that was the one thing Trump ever
Speaker 1: said where I was like, now this this I could
Speaker 1: get interested in.
Speaker 2: And by the way, there was never any follow up
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 3: Right, But here's the thing, the idea that he's going
Speaker 3: to cut the irs. These are the specific programs thereafter
Speaker 3: are for these tax scoff laws and tax sheets at
Speaker 3: a very high level. And these we're talking about people
Speaker 3: who owe tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Of taxes to people like Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And I was just going to say, there are certain
Speaker 3: people you might you might know them as America's favorite
Speaker 3: first family of failed sons.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: I mean, these people deserve like a nineteen sixties TV show.
Speaker 3: They really do, like My Three Spawn or something. There's awful.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem is, like, you can't do a TV
Speaker 1: show with no likable characters.
Speaker 2: They'll be like, who should we root for in this?
Speaker 2: And you're like, the American people, not really.
Speaker 3: The meteors strike all of them.
Speaker 1: Yes, but we mean that in a completely theoretical sense
Speaker 1: and a spiritual sense, and not.
Speaker 3: I mean actual medior plunging.
Speaker 1: Now you don't anyway moving on to things they cannot
Speaker 1: get us.
Speaker 2: So where does this go? Right now?
Speaker 1: The setup is a MAGA might need Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: I don't think you want to go against Mitchell O'Connell.
Speaker 3: Listen, Mitch has lost a step or three. Mitch's old,
Speaker 3: tired and not doing well. But let me tell you, Washington,
Speaker 3: DC is littered with the bodies of the young and
Speaker 3: the song who thought they would take on Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 1: And went yeah, Paul Ryan, I mean that whole crew
Speaker 1: has gone.
Speaker 2: The young guns, no more guns, no more young. They're out.
Speaker 3: They're now disarmed and elderly and in exile. I think
Speaker 3: there's a real argument to be made here that McConnell,
Speaker 3: as much as people find him uncomfortable, or they find
Speaker 3: their ideological priors are completely different, or they blame him
Speaker 3: for any number of things, if you look at Washington
Speaker 3: right now, there is a moment where Mitch McConnell and
Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer could actually form a ad hoc temporary.
Speaker 2: De facto alliance.
Speaker 3: Yeah alliance, And honestly, I think from what I've seen
Speaker 3: even among Republicans in the last in the Senate. In
Speaker 3: the last couple of weeks, the normy's in the Senate,
Speaker 3: and it's a smaller number than it was, but there's
Speaker 3: still a plurality of the caucus. Right they're about done
Speaker 3: with the bullshit about they don't like Mike Johnson. In fact,
Speaker 3: I heard from a chief of staff from one of
Speaker 3: the most conservative, not a Maga senator, but an old
Speaker 3: mainline conservative, who said, Mike Johnson is absolutely poisoned. He
Speaker 3: is a bad guy. We're not going to play this game.
Speaker 3: We're not going to be part of the stunt casting.
Speaker 3: And in the Senate's internal business, they're growing number of
Speaker 3: senators who are like, Okay, we're done with Tommy Tumberville's bullshit.
Speaker 1: Which right now, let's talk about Tommy Tubravel. She was
Speaker 1: a coach from Alabama.
Speaker 3: He coached at Miami for a while too. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you ever heard about Miami back then, but
Speaker 3: there are rumors that Tommy enjoyed what was on the
Speaker 3: ground at Miami back then, if you take my meaning.
Speaker 1: We're not going to touch that innuendo, but we are
Speaker 1: going to say that he is holding this up because
Speaker 1: he does not want military members to be reimbursed for
Speaker 1: travel for abortion.
Speaker 3: Right, and so he is frozen the pro of hundreds
Speaker 3: and hundreds and hundreds of members of.
Speaker 2: The service for months and months and months.
Speaker 3: We're approaching six or seven months now on it, including
Speaker 3: the commandant of the Marine Corps, including the commander of
Speaker 3: the third MA Marie Division, including the commanders that would
Speaker 3: be taking a part in the current deployment in the
Speaker 3: Mediterranean of two aircraft carrier battlegroups in the Mediterranean, and
Speaker 3: including a Marine three star general who suffered a heart
Speaker 3: attack because he's been working literally twenty hours a day
Speaker 3: to do to do job of the commandant and the
Speaker 3: job that he's currently assigned to.
Speaker 1: And this three star general who had the heart attack
Speaker 1: is currently in the hospital. It did serve to make
Speaker 1: people like Alaska's Senator Dan Sullivan, and also we saw
Speaker 1: a couple of other Republicans come out really hard against Tubervail,
Speaker 1: all of them saying that this was really unfair and
Speaker 1: he was punishing the military.
Speaker 2: Yes, in a crazy way.
Speaker 3: Correct, And I will say this as neat as I can.
Speaker 3: Tommy Tubberville's agenda here is quite frankly in service only
Speaker 3: to a group of people who are in his staff
Speaker 3: that I'm sort of getting some terrain on this. Now.
Speaker 3: There are a group of people in his staff who
Speaker 3: are these young, hyper alt right types who are pushing
Speaker 3: this agenda, and the abortion thing is an excuse for them,
Speaker 3: not a reason. They want to cause chaos in the
Speaker 3: US military. They are Bannonites, they're burn it down type,
Speaker 3: and what they're doing is very deliberately ranted towards trying
Speaker 3: to break the US chain of command because they have
Speaker 3: a belief that the military is just chuck full of
Speaker 3: these Marxist Soros activists and they're going to burn it
Speaker 3: all down. It is crazy.
Speaker 2: Now here's my question, is it his staffers?
Speaker 1: Is this like a die Fi situation where the staff
Speaker 1: is running the asylum? Because Tommy Tuberville seems like the
Speaker 1: Louis Gohmert of the Senate.
Speaker 2: He seems real dumb.
Speaker 3: Tommy Tuberville is easily overcome by inanimate objects. Tommy Turberville
Speaker 3: could not operate a coaster of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my think.
Speaker 3: He is the guy who knows how to how to
Speaker 3: coach sportball. But that is the limit of Tommy Tuberville's
Speaker 3: knowledge experience, and he's been given a set of talking
Speaker 3: points to go out and repeat this stuff about abortion tourism. Yeah,
Speaker 3: no one is doing abortion tourism, Tommy, dummy. But look,
Speaker 3: the people that are the most thrilled by this aren't
Speaker 3: even the abortion people. People that are most thrilled by
Speaker 3: this are the Chinese and the Iranians and the Russians.
Speaker 3: Because he is recapping the American military is leaving our
Speaker 3: troops without leadership in the field. This is now to
Speaker 3: the point where Tommy Tuberville is a national security threat.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately the people of Alabama, even though, by the way, everybody,
Speaker 3: he does not live in Alabama. He lives in Florida.
Speaker 3: Their joke about him being the third Senator from Florida
Speaker 3: is actually real. He does not live in his home state.
Speaker 1: What would be the play here? They're doing a couple
Speaker 1: of the appointments, you know, on a voice so too yesterday,
Speaker 1: I'm more today, I more this. You know, they're going
Speaker 1: to do a bunch. But what's the play here? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a way to go?
Speaker 2: I mean, could you change that?
Speaker 1: You need sixty votes to change the center rules? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think there are nine Republicans who are willing
Speaker 1: to go along with like Tuoburville must be stopped.
Speaker 3: Well, from what I've told right now, there are six,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to say their names because I
Speaker 3: don't think that that helps the fight right now, and
Speaker 3: I don't want any to be mobbed. I think there
Speaker 3: are six. I think we're very close to adding enough
Speaker 3: to get over the line. It is going to be
Speaker 3: a big blood bath. I suspect that what's going to
Speaker 3: have to happen is it's going to have to happen
Speaker 3: while they're in session on the floor in a in
Speaker 3: like a quick march order with a very closed kind
Speaker 3: of rule, that that's all that it applies to, and
Speaker 3: that they're going to bring it in, sweep the place clean,
Speaker 3: and blow Tupperville away. But if the names of the
Speaker 3: all of them were known ahead of time, Box would
Speaker 3: start to drumbeat all that garbage.
Speaker 1: I want to go back for Armena and just talk
Speaker 1: about the House. The government is funded till November seventeenth.
Speaker 1: This Israel aid package is already Schumer said it dies
Speaker 1: in the Senate, right, it does in the Senate. Mitch
Speaker 1: mcconnald doesn't like it. Biden said he's going to be
Speaker 1: to it. So this goes nowhere. So now does Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson now spend the next two weeks just hitting his
Speaker 1: head against the wall, or do you think he tries
Speaker 1: something bipartisan.
Speaker 3: Look, Mike is under the same problematic rule that took
Speaker 3: out Kevin, and he ends that if he crosses Gates
Speaker 3: and the rest of the pro Russia pro Putin.
Speaker 1: Coalition, the one person motioned to vakate MATC. Gates will
Speaker 1: do it again.
Speaker 3: Right, They'll vacate. They'll burn it all down again and
Speaker 3: start the clock over. Here's the moment that I think
Speaker 3: that Johnson's really going to be tested on. They don't
Speaker 3: want a spending bill. As much as they claim they
Speaker 3: don't want to do CRS, they also don't want to
Speaker 3: do an actual budget because that puts them under the
Speaker 3: spotlight and it shows exactly how much each of them is.
Speaker 3: You know, I hate spending. And then they asked for Oh,
Speaker 3: by the way, I need a bridge in my district.
Speaker 3: I need this, I need that, I need this, I
Speaker 3: need that. The problem with dedicating yourself to the forces
Speaker 3: of chaos is that when the bill comes due, everybody's
Speaker 3: looking around like who's going to take out the credit
Speaker 3: card first? And the chaos monkeys? They want the restaurant
Speaker 3: or to come in and stay. I'm calling the cops.
Speaker 3: They want they want the blow up, they want the shit.
Speaker 3: The idea of operating the government is anathema to the
Speaker 3: radical edge of the Bannonite movement. They want to burn
Speaker 3: it down. And so what would they love to do.
Speaker 3: They'd love to burn it down, pass no aid for
Speaker 3: anybody blame Joe Biden called Joe Biden an anti Semite
Speaker 3: because he wouldn't do their specific bill. It's very predictable.
Speaker 1: Molly, what's your money on a government shut down before
Speaker 1: November of seventeenth.
Speaker 3: Three to two odds?
Speaker 2: Pretty good out, all right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it would last a long time.
Speaker 2: Because Republicans are going to be blamed for that.
Speaker 3: Every time the government shutdown happens, the party in the
Speaker 3: majority is blamed for it one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 3: And this particular shut down, and look, we know this
Speaker 3: for a fact. Not one of these Republicans who bleme
Speaker 3: eats about fiscal conservatism gives a good goddamn about the deficit.
Speaker 3: They do not care. When they passed a one point
Speaker 3: seven trillion dollar tax bill for Donald Trump. When you
Speaker 3: did the analysis of it, it benefited about two hundred
Speaker 3: super high net worth individuals and families in this country.
Speaker 3: Majority of the benefit went to about two hundred individuals
Speaker 3: and families and companies. So they don't really care about it.
Speaker 3: But like back in my days as a Republican, when
Speaker 3: we talked about fiscal responsibility, I actually thought we meant it.
Speaker 3: We didn't. We meant the preservation of tax cuts for
Speaker 3: a narrow sector of the economy. As a legitimate conservative,
Speaker 3: not a fake like fake orgasm conservative, you know, if
Speaker 3: you're going to have fiscal responsibility, it has to be
Speaker 3: applied equally to everyone. So right now, the Trump tax
Speaker 3: bill has expired. So the tiny trickle that helped the
Speaker 3: middle class and the Trump tax bill it ages out.
Speaker 3: It's gone. It disappears this year, So next year everybody's
Speaker 3: taxes go up except for us super wealthiest. If they're
Speaker 3: willing to shut down the government so that those things
Speaker 3: can be preserved, that tells you everything about.
Speaker 1: Just one last thing. Dessanda's lips. Is this more embarrassing
Speaker 1: than Scott Walker's presidential run?
Speaker 3: Discuss this makes Scott Walker's presidential run look like Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3: This so embarrassing and look, I wrote a piece about
Speaker 3: this on my subset called little Boots. This will forever
Speaker 3: be his brand, This will be the thing that he
Speaker 3: is forever remembered by. Okay, this is like Ed Musky
Speaker 3: crying in front of the press.
Speaker 2: Is decaucus than the tank.
Speaker 3: Is decaucus in the tank, and it makes decaucus in
Speaker 3: the tank look like Churchill on the floor of Parliament
Speaker 3: blasting the knos. It is so beyond the valley of
Speaker 3: just embarrassing and horrible. And he will never live this down.
Speaker 1: If you are working on this campaign and you had
Speaker 1: a candidate who was wearing lifts, would you just never
Speaker 1: have led.
Speaker 2: Him wear lifts.
Speaker 3: I would never have let him wear lifts. There was
Speaker 3: some talk during the Bush and Gore race early on
Speaker 3: of do you tell w to put on some higher
Speaker 3: heeled shoes or whatever. Now w wore cowboy boots organically
Speaker 3: as a fucking text.
Speaker 2: You can see lived in Texas and he is about I.
Speaker 3: Don't know, a Bush, about six foot, I guess. But
Speaker 3: Gore was huge, course a big tall guy. And there's
Speaker 3: this idea that like Al Gore was gonna be so
Speaker 3: tall over him on the stage, and Bush himself was like,
Speaker 3: get the fuck out of here, come on, And ironically
Speaker 3: this idea that you had to make the stantus like
Speaker 3: go from five to seven or five to eight or
Speaker 3: five to night whatever the height Hea is to six
Speaker 3: foot you know, like I'm five eleven okay, like every
Speaker 3: day fucking profile in America and earlier Wilson fly too.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm an actual five to ten without fancy
Speaker 3: high heel shoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that you have to ment and mention this.
Speaker 1: We are, by the way, the same height you and I. Well.
Speaker 2: Sommer is a reporter at the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Welcome back too Fast Politics, my friend and yours potentially, Will.
Speaker 4: Sommer, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: I think of you.
Speaker 1: As the guy who knows what is happening in the
Speaker 1: darkest corners of the Internet.
Speaker 2: I want to start by.
Speaker 5: Talking about a piece you just wrote because the.
Speaker 1: Darkest corners of the Internet happened to dovetail with the
Speaker 1: Republicans in the House discuss.
Speaker 6: I wrote this piece during sort of the speakership chaos,
Speaker 6: before Mike Johnson emerged as the victor, and just sort
Speaker 6: of this is the story about how the right wing
Speaker 6: media and the world of you know, whether it's Sean
Speaker 6: Hannity's show on Fox or Steve Bannon's show, which I
Speaker 6: believe is on Real America's Voice.
Speaker 5: You know that, you know, Real America's Voice.
Speaker 4: We all love that one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, how they sort of contribute to the chaos because
Speaker 6: it gives an outsized amount of power to this this
Speaker 6: kind of Matt Gatsey and fringe in that they can
Speaker 6: go on Steve Bannon's show and say, this random congressman
Speaker 6: from Arkansas is not voting for Jim Jordan the way
Speaker 6: we want, so you need to call his office and
Speaker 6: pressure him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like this is trump is We saw
Speaker 1: it like with death threats in twenty seventeen, twenty.
Speaker 5: Sixteen, fifty and like, you know, you have to support
Speaker 5: our guy.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen like this kind of top down bullying
Speaker 1: on like procedural votes before.
Speaker 4: It's really weird.
Speaker 6: I mean watching these shows and they would be it
Speaker 6: would be like Patrick McHenry's holding up the vote to
Speaker 6: get to the floor tonight and then you see and
Speaker 6: you know it is not clear that there's a tie here,
Speaker 6: but then all the amount of like threats and death
Speaker 6: threats to Republican members of Congress and and their wives
Speaker 6: who if they weren't voting for Jim Jordan.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's as far as I know.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's unheard of, certainly since the modern era,
Speaker 6: that the average sort of grassroots activist would be disinvolved
Speaker 6: in whether the vote is going to the floor tonight
Speaker 6: or tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Right? Is this a sort of interest in governance? Are
Speaker 1: these people more interested in the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: the federal government? This cannot be.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that
Speaker 4: everyone got the Almanac of American.
Speaker 6: Politics Christmas and now they're all fired up.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 6: I think it's that the speaker's race, like so many
Speaker 6: other things, has been sort of subsumed into the rights
Speaker 6: cultural war within itself. And because really, you know, someone
Speaker 6: like Steve Scalise is not all that different from someone
Speaker 6: like Jim Jordan ideologically, but you know, it's sort of
Speaker 6: this attitude, and it's this idea that Jim Jordan was
Speaker 6: willing to risk it all in a way that Steve
Speaker 6: Scalise was not. And so you have someone like Steve
Speaker 6: Bannon who really wants to I think feel that he
Speaker 6: had his role in this process. So he riles up
Speaker 6: what he calls the war room posse to go, you know,
Speaker 6: deluge these congressmen with calls, and ultimately that's I did
Speaker 6: succeed because they got this really far right wing guy
Speaker 6: and Mike Johnson to be the speaker.
Speaker 1: Yes, so Mike Johnson looks like Paul Ryan, but he
Speaker 1: acts like Sydney Powell. And this is my takeaway. But
Speaker 1: I feel like you've looked at him from a different angle.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you my hot take and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna.
Speaker 5: Tell me why I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps I'm right, but I might get more out
Speaker 1: of being wrong. This is a guy who was a
Speaker 1: religious zealot Christian extremist, then in twenty twenty saw an
Speaker 1: opportunity by writing this Amakus Brief to get involved or
Speaker 1: trying to overturn the election for our man, not mine,
Speaker 1: but his man, Donald Trump. Then has become a sort
Speaker 1: of right wing media fever pitch.
Speaker 5: Kind of guy. Is that what this is? Or is that?
Speaker 5: Am I wrong?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 6: No, I mean I think that's more or less like
Speaker 6: you're right on. This is a guy who was basically
Speaker 6: a backbencher. Very few people were aware of this guy
Speaker 6: who comes from a real like Christian nationalist background, a
Speaker 6: lot of anti gay stuff in his past, a lot
Speaker 6: of just this idea that you know, America is like
Speaker 6: a very affirmatively Christian nation, that that is sort of
Speaker 6: key to what it is to be American. And then
Speaker 6: he emerges from you know, relative obscurity in twenty twenty
Speaker 6: he sort of came up with what was sort of
Speaker 6: the thinking man's election denial, right, And so, you know,
Speaker 6: on one hand, you have someone like Sidney Powell or
Speaker 6: Mike Lindell who's ranting and raving and saying, you know,
Speaker 6: a supercomputer stole the election, or dominion did it. And
Speaker 6: I believe Mike Johnson got a little bit of the
Speaker 6: dominion stuff. But his idea was, well, what if we
Speaker 6: say the election has to be overturned because certain states
Speaker 6: changed their election laws in ways we don't like to allow,
Speaker 6: you know, more male and voting perhaps or early voting.
Speaker 6: People might notice this when Republican members of Congress who
Speaker 6: are not like really on the fringe of the fringe,
Speaker 6: when they're asked, do you think the election was stolen?
Speaker 6: They'll say, well, I think there were a lot of
Speaker 6: like weird voting law changes, and it's like, well, that's
Speaker 6: not what anyone means by the election was stolen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the laws changed, and.
Speaker 2: You didn't like it.
Speaker 6: You know, we're talking about like mail trucks full of
Speaker 6: fake ballots rolling up and stuff like that. But in
Speaker 6: this case, so yes, he sort of came up with
Speaker 6: the polite version of trying to steal the election.
Speaker 1: It is interesting because the election thing, the fac the
Speaker 1: fake electors lying about the election, which has become the
Speaker 1: Republican party line, and that really was something that was
Speaker 1: dreamed up in the sort of fever swamp that you.
Speaker 1: Sorry to tell you, I still consider you to be
Speaker 1: a person who lives in I do.
Speaker 4: I love it, Molly, I have a high tolerance for it.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised at how well that lie took and
Speaker 1: how much it sort of growned the mainstream or did
Speaker 1: you sort of expect this?
Speaker 6: I mean, honestly, yeah, I mean, even as someone who
Speaker 6: has really been up at sort of the right of
Speaker 6: the face of all this action, I mean every step
Speaker 6: of the way, I've been surprised with how the Republican
Speaker 6: Party has really allowed these conspiracy theories, including election denial.
Speaker 6: It's really fester. I mean I remember on election night
Speaker 6: when Trump got up and said, well, I didn't.
Speaker 4: Lose and they stolen.
Speaker 6: I thought, oh geez, it's something that you could have
Speaker 6: seen coming, but still felt like a real crossing the
Speaker 6: rubicon moment. And then at each step as the GOP
Speaker 6: really welcomed that in and now it's really you know,
Speaker 6: the mainstream line. I mean, taking it back to Mike Johnson,
Speaker 6: we saw that after his at the press conference where
Speaker 6: he was asked, you know, after he was selected as
Speaker 6: their nominee, after he was asked, do you still think
Speaker 6: the election was stolen? I mean it's something they don't
Speaker 6: really want to address because they know the base thinks
Speaker 6: the election was stolen and Trump does. But they realized
Speaker 6: that the average person thinks that's crazy. And so when
Speaker 6: the reporter that, then everyone goes so shut up. You know, hey,
Speaker 6: you know what a rude thing to bring up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was incredible, I have to say, because it
Speaker 1: did feel like they have a problem, right, They have
Speaker 1: this problem which is the thing that the base loves,
Speaker 1: alienates and my instream voter.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly, And I mean that's something that you see
Speaker 6: over and over is that I certainly saw on the
Speaker 6: speaker's race, was this idea that the person the base
Speaker 6: wants who is just this like like someone like Jim Jordan,
Speaker 6: who's you know, most famous for just like owning liberals
Speaker 6: in his viral videos and hearings. That's not going to
Speaker 6: appeal to the average voter, but you know, they're kind
Speaker 6: of locked in this thing. I mean, it's the same
Speaker 6: thing we're seeing with Trump and and honestly, I think
Speaker 6: the genius of getting Mike Johnson is that he's a
Speaker 6: guy very few people even in the Republican Party knew about,
Speaker 6: and that he has a very bland name, and so
Speaker 6: I mean I think that it is sort of a
Speaker 6: name that goes in and out of your head, and
Speaker 6: so it makes it hard for people to think, you know,
Speaker 6: a name like McCarthy's, scalies, even Jim Jordan is a
Speaker 6: name that I think sticks with people more so it's
Speaker 6: like a bit more of an enigma to the average voter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because it's like I think about, you know,
Speaker 1: just strategically, if I were a Democratic dread just which
Speaker 1: I'm very much not, I would be nervous about Republicans
Speaker 1: picking someone like a Tom Emer.
Speaker 5: Or even as Steve Scalise.
Speaker 1: It's very right wing, but like sort of affable and
Speaker 1: likable and not too crazy. Even though in my heart
Speaker 1: of hearts, I want them to pick someone like that
Speaker 1: so government can work. It seems like it would help
Speaker 1: them more in this election season to pick someone normal
Speaker 1: who you could have out there on the step, seeming
Speaker 1: like Republicans hadn't lost their goddamn minds. But they absolutely
Speaker 1: did not have any interest in that person.
Speaker 4: No, no, exactly.
Speaker 6: I mean, like I said, I mean when I looked
Speaker 6: at sites like the Gateway Pundit or when I watched
Speaker 6: t Bannon show, I mean, there is a sense that,
Speaker 6: you know, and this is how sort of the GOP's
Speaker 6: activist fringe has managed to drive the party, you know,
Speaker 6: at least since the Tea Party movement, is that they
Speaker 6: just want it more and they're more intense, and you know,
Speaker 6: the moderates end up as they did, you know, I mean,
Speaker 6: this was this idea that with Jim Jordan and the
Speaker 6: moderates were so concerned.
Speaker 4: Because they didn't want an election, deny or and all
Speaker 4: this stuff.
Speaker 6: And then you get Mike Johnson, who's one of the
Speaker 6: architects of trying to steal the electure.
Speaker 4: They go, okay, so let's talk for.
Speaker 1: A minute about what happens on Steve Bannon's show. A
Speaker 1: little bit obsessed with Steve Bannon Show because it is
Speaker 1: I mean, I want you to explain to us, like
Speaker 1: how many people watch it and why it seems to
Speaker 1: be setting the agenda on some And again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say anything nice about Steve Bannon here, except
Speaker 1: I'm going to say one nice thing about Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: which is he's very smart. A lot of these people
Speaker 1: are very stupid and who sort of fall into this
Speaker 1: like a Sean Hannity, But this guy is actually quite smart,
Speaker 1: which is why he's so dangerous discussed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, like, look, this is a guy who
Speaker 6: certainly loves to participate in his own self mythologizing.
Speaker 4: But you know, he is a very active player. I
Speaker 4: mean he's in DC.
Speaker 6: I think his studio is in Capitol Hill, so it's
Speaker 6: very close by for members of Congress like Gates who
Speaker 6: want to swing by. And I mean he was very
Speaker 6: engaged during the Speaker's race and saying, you know, telling
Speaker 6: the you know it's called war rooms.
Speaker 4: You know, he has members of Congress.
Speaker 6: He has sort of a rotating cast of sort of
Speaker 6: like Trump administration leftovers who come on and are sort of,
Speaker 6: you know, hawking their own things. One thing I think
Speaker 6: is interesting about Bannon is he's a guy who's willing
Speaker 6: to try to sort of make new issues on the right.
Speaker 6: Like he was a big activist against transhumanism, so the
Speaker 6: idea that you know, we're going to merge with robots,
Speaker 6: and so he's been really like pushing that and it
Speaker 6: may not still be the case, but on his website,
Speaker 6: the big issues, it was used to say, election, pandemic,
Speaker 6: and transhumanism.
Speaker 4: He's really sort of a pioneer in these ideas.
Speaker 1: Right, Matt Gates has emerged as the reason why Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy is not the Speaker of the House anymore. What
Speaker 1: do you think a Matt Gates' endgame is and why
Speaker 1: do you think Matt Gates would so set on removing mcarthy.
Speaker 6: It is interesting, I mean, you know, perhaps his endgame.
Speaker 6: I mean there's talk that he wants to run for
Speaker 6: a governor of Florida. He does seem to love getting
Speaker 6: attention and power, like many politicians, I guess, I mean,
Speaker 6: we all remember that, you know, he grew up in
Speaker 6: the Truman show House where The Truman Show was filmed,
Speaker 6: and so he's.
Speaker 4: A quirky guy. I guess what I try to say.
Speaker 6: But you know, I think there was like some personal
Speaker 6: enmity in the fact that he just sort of wanted
Speaker 6: a head because, as you said, I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 6: really make a ton of sense to get rid of
Speaker 6: Kevin McCarthy and then throw the GOP into chaos for
Speaker 6: a month. But at the same time, he was also
Speaker 6: you know, reportedly very mad that McCarthy had allowed this
Speaker 6: ethics investigation into him, and so that he you know,
Speaker 6: he wanted to take him out for that.
Speaker 5: It is just incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: There seems to be like a schism between Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green and Lauren Bopert.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well this is a very intense schism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, how did this happen?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 6: So, I mean, you know, you hate to see two
Speaker 6: QAnon believers by.
Speaker 5: It, just hate to see it.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean you have.
Speaker 6: Two women with sort of like outsize personalized as well.
Speaker 6: I think this dates back to when McCarthy was first
Speaker 6: getting elected as speaker, and I think Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 6: seems to have figured, well, there's an advantage for me
Speaker 6: in cutting a deal with McCarthy and being one of
Speaker 6: his lieutenants rather than fighting him in something that he's.
Speaker 4: Eventually going to win.
Speaker 6: And Bobert chose the opposite side, teamed up with Matt Gates,
Speaker 6: and then throughout we then see I believe my colleague,
Speaker 6: my former colleague Zact Beatrizza at the Daily Beast had
Speaker 6: some reporting. I mean, this got to the point that
Speaker 6: they had an argument in the women's room one of
Speaker 6: the restrooms at the Capitol where they were kind of,
Speaker 6: you know, really getting intense with each other. And so,
Speaker 6: I mean, this is like a very legit and ongoing feud,
Speaker 6: and I believe there were some tweets about it. I mean,
Speaker 6: so it is interesting because you know, from the outside,
Speaker 6: they you would think of them as very similar politically
Speaker 6: and temperamentally. But I think Marjorie Taylor Green has proved
Speaker 6: herself to be sort of a more adept political player
Speaker 6: because we think about Lauren Bobert, she's kind of playing
Speaker 6: second fiddle to Matt Gates and that whole crew. She's
Speaker 6: kind of part of this crew that includes like Paul
Speaker 6: Gosar and Louis Gohmer and all these characters. Martor Taylor
Speaker 6: Green's kind of on her own path. And also, you know,
Speaker 6: Marjorie Taylor Green does not have a video of herself
Speaker 6: getting a little wild at beetlejuice, right, And so I
Speaker 6: think that show some more wisdom as well, by the way.
Speaker 5: A terrifying conversation that chows more wisdom.
Speaker 1: But I do know what you're saying. I mean, it
Speaker 1: does seem likely that Lauren Bobert is going to lose
Speaker 1: her seat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she barely got it last year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 6: and she really only has added on more and more
Speaker 6: scandal since then.
Speaker 4: And so I mean, we'll have to see. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not looking great, I would.
Speaker 5: Say, in the house.
Speaker 1: Besides those two, you have this new speaker. Then you
Speaker 1: have sort of the kind of ken Buck v. The
Speaker 1: crazies talk about that dynamic because it seems like ken
Speaker 1: Buck is the Mitt Romney of the House.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: I mean you have the situation where you have Ken
Speaker 6: Buck and a few other members of Congress or Republicans
Speaker 6: who just seem to be really fed up with it,
Speaker 6: and you know, and like Mitt Romney Now ken Buck
Speaker 6: says he won't run for reelection, right, and so I
Speaker 6: think like Romney Buck appears to have realized, you know, geez,
Speaker 6: like the crazies really are in control of this party
Speaker 6: and it's not going to be fixed anytime soon.
Speaker 4: As just calling it quits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like there's a Maga crew in the
Speaker 1: Senate that is Ted Cruz, jd Vance and sort of
Speaker 1: are you seeing that and what does that look like?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Sure, I mean jd Vance, Josh Hawley, Right, I mean
Speaker 6: in the case of Jady Vance, certainly he's sort of
Speaker 6: the hero of what a lot of young Republican activists
Speaker 6: call the new Right, which is to say, sort of
Speaker 6: a proto fascist right, and that it is very focused on.
Speaker 6: If you think about the difference between them and maybe
Speaker 6: you know you're more traditional hard right Republican, is that
Speaker 6: they feel, the young folks and jd Vance feel that
Speaker 6: the previous set was did not crush their enemies enough.
Speaker 6: And so that's why they love or loved Ron DeSantis
Speaker 6: because they saw him as someone who, you know, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna you know, strip Disney World down plank by plank
Speaker 6: and stuff like that. But then you know, we've already
Speaker 6: seen a lot of that movement implode, at least in
Speaker 6: this collection cycle. I mean, Ron DeSantis did awfully. Nate Hawkman,
Speaker 6: who is this young hero of the New Right, he
Speaker 6: joined the DeSantis campaign and then got fired for making
Speaker 6: the video with the Nazi symbolism.
Speaker 4: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Because Nazi symbolism is not funny, and none of this
Speaker 1: is funny, but it is also just so stupid.
Speaker 5: It's amazing, it's.
Speaker 6: So crazy, like why would you yeah, you know, let's
Speaker 6: just put I mean, it's how Internet addled these guys are,
Speaker 6: and how within their own universe they are that they're like, well,
Speaker 6: why don't we just slip this Son and rad In
Speaker 6: and we're gonna have kind of these liked Santi's stormtroopers marching.
Speaker 4: Thought'll be fine. I don't think anyone will mind that.
Speaker 6: And so that is sort of the movement that Jade
Speaker 6: Vance has seen as this hero of that. These are
Speaker 6: the people who call for an American Caesar, right, because
Speaker 6: you can't if you say an American Hitler or American Mussolini,
Speaker 6: people won't like that. But you can say, oh, I
Speaker 6: like Caesarism, right, Yeah, Caesarism that's great.
Speaker 1: I have sort of one last question for you, which
Speaker 1: is the people who went on DeSantis World, because there
Speaker 1: was a sort of schism, right people, A lot of
Speaker 1: Trump people, not a lot, but some Trump people went
Speaker 1: off to Santas World.
Speaker 5: Can they come back to Trump World or is it
Speaker 5: over for them?
Speaker 6: I think it depends. I think it depends how aggressive
Speaker 6: some of them were. I mean, you have people like
Speaker 6: the guys on Twitter, like John Cardillo, dave Reeboy, these
Speaker 6: kind of like bald musclemen, middle aged types in Florida,
Speaker 6: these guys who just really like jousted with the sort
Speaker 6: of the the Maga die hards that your Laura Lumer types.
Speaker 6: You're like, these these people who I mean, they will
Speaker 6: die for Trump. And that's what Dessanta's doesn't have, is
Speaker 6: that he doesn't have these people who are willing to
Speaker 6: just look like absolute buffoons for him. And so for
Speaker 6: those guys, I think it's I mean, I don't think
Speaker 6: they're coming back to Trump Land. I think they have
Speaker 6: to become never Trump guys, but not in like a
Speaker 6: Lincoln project way, like like I don't know if there's
Speaker 6: going to be the Dassanta's Project afterwards for those guys
Speaker 6: so that they could like find a living because really
Speaker 6: they're stuck. And so The New York Times had a
Speaker 6: story recently about the Dssanta's efforts to sort of take
Speaker 6: over the MAGA social media universe and just how badly
Speaker 6: they imploded in this idea. I mean, you see the
Speaker 6: tweets wear I can't remember exactly what. Just recently they
Speaker 6: were like it's been X number days since Donald Trump
Speaker 6: had a flub.
Speaker 4: This is the new flub counter and it's like, oh, brother.
Speaker 6: You know, it reminds you of when Christy was like
Speaker 6: I call him Donald Duck and it's like, you know,
Speaker 6: there were so many meetings about it, and it just dies.
Speaker 5: I call him Donald Duck. Will sommer, always a delight.
Speaker 5: We'll never call you Donald Duck.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: That means a lot, Molly, thank you.
Speaker 1: Josh is the editor of the Endermentum newsletter. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics et Indermentum. Whose real name is Josh, and
Speaker 1: we're interviewing you today. I'm a subscriber and a fan.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you. You've been really chronicling
Speaker 1: this incredible Republican Is it a primary?
Speaker 5: It feels like it's not even a primary.
Speaker 7: No, not really. I haven't read it about it since.
Speaker 7: Like I think August I wrote like a series on
Speaker 7: DeSantis and I kind of officially said his bid was dead.
Speaker 7: When I started, I titled it The Art of Losing,
Speaker 7: and it was that was like back in June, and
Speaker 7: by the time, like I wrote, like, I was like
Speaker 7: a couple months into it, I was already like, this
Speaker 7: is kind of over a pound of sick of this.
Speaker 7: But I finished that I gave kind of like my
Speaker 7: opinion on him of that series. But I haven't red
Speaker 7: I don't think I've read about the primary since then.
Speaker 7: I think it's kind of settled. The Trump has wanted.
Speaker 7: It's pretty embarrassing there's they're still going through with it.
Speaker 7: But like I have that series and I did on it,
Speaker 7: but everything else is kind of just looking Republicans more
Speaker 7: generally after that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're going to talk about that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But I was talking to a friend of mine who's
Speaker 1: a journalist, and he was saying straight news journalist, and
Speaker 1: he was saying he has to go to Miami for
Speaker 1: the debate, and I was like, oh my god, they
Speaker 1: are still having Republican debate.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I saw like DeSantis responding to like some news
Speaker 7: stuff the other day, and it's like, I forgot he's
Speaker 7: still alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really weird by the way he just fell
Speaker 1: down that Scott Walker Hale right where it's just if
Speaker 1: you're a completely uncharismatic person, you should not run for president.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's part of it. I'm still thinking now,
Speaker 2: like how.
Speaker 7: To write a porst mortem for that campaign. If he
Speaker 7: could have done anything differently that it could have had
Speaker 7: a different result, because he was pulling very well in
Speaker 7: the winter earlier this year, but that obviously completely fell apart.
Speaker 7: And it's strange looking back, like why that was even
Speaker 7: the case back then, what people kind of saw from
Speaker 7: him and what they expected him to be. I think
Speaker 7: if he wanted to have a chance of like putting
Speaker 7: in a decent showing he had to be a lot
Speaker 7: more anti Trump than he actually was. He really tried
Speaker 7: to appeal to everybody, ended up just alienating everybody.
Speaker 1: This is like the fundamental problem that a lot of
Speaker 1: these Republicans had. It's like the primary numbers were like
Speaker 1: Trump and everybody else. So if you were going to
Speaker 1: be a never Trump candidate, right, you could be a
Speaker 1: never Trump, not the way Mitt Romney is never Trump,
Speaker 1: but the way Ken Buck is never Trump. Right, they're similar,
Speaker 1: but you're going to in it. In twenty twenty, twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Democrats basically.
Speaker 5: Cleared the field.
Speaker 1: They were like, Joe Biden may not be my first choice,
Speaker 1: but he is a candidate.
Speaker 5: That reads like a white guy who can win.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he had the best numbers. I was a Bernie
Speaker 7: supporter back then, but like even then, I was kind
Speaker 7: of like looking at the polling there as like making
Speaker 7: a calculated risk because like Bernie and Biden always pulled
Speaker 7: the best versus Trump. It was like they always led
Speaker 7: by seven or eight points and Biden led by it
Speaker 7: like a quite higher than him. So like for my
Speaker 7: personal calculation, like, oh, I think that Bernie like will
Speaker 7: be better president than him, So I'm willing to take
Speaker 7: that risk of one or two percent because they're leading
Speaker 7: by so much. But like I wasn't under any illusions
Speaker 7: that Biden was the most wasn't the most electable at
Speaker 7: the time, Like the calculation that that was the main
Speaker 7: thing that Prayorg has, Like it made sense, like from
Speaker 7: some perspectives.
Speaker 5: He seemed the most electable to you.
Speaker 2: He was probably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because it's like, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: was like, as a Jew, I was like, we're never
Speaker 1: going to have.
Speaker 5: A two president.
Speaker 3: No, it's so sad.
Speaker 1: It was like, I like Bernie a lot, but like
Speaker 1: the idea that we would have someone who literally looks
Speaker 1: like one of my relatives as president, like seemed impossible.
Speaker 4: It was so cool.
Speaker 7: He felt like like he had the accent of everything.
Speaker 7: He kind of had the attitude.
Speaker 5: Yeah. No, I mean he's like Larry David. So the
Speaker 5: calculus was like, this is the guy. He may not
Speaker 5: be your first choice, but he can win.
Speaker 1: I mean, why couldn't Republicans do that with a nicky
Speaker 1: Haley or someone I mean, I'm not saying the.
Speaker 7: Satus would have made the most sense to do that.
Speaker 7: Disantus actually had an incredible twenty twenty two. I really like,
Speaker 7: if people don't recognize me or know my stuff, really
Speaker 7: my I first got attention because I was one of
Speaker 7: the people who said that there was not going to
Speaker 7: be a red wave in twenty twenty two. I said
Speaker 7: that Democrats want a lot stronger position. It wasn't like
Speaker 7: the toughest call to make. There were a lot of
Speaker 7: like side twenty that way, but it was surprisingly uncommon
Speaker 7: for people to say that, So I was very vocal
Speaker 7: in that and that got me some attention, which is kind.
Speaker 2: Of where I am now.
Speaker 7: And I was very down on how all the looking
Speaker 7: performed everywhere, but the satists did undeniablely well. Like running
Speaker 7: by twenty points in Florida is impressive. He won like
Speaker 7: Miami and Palm Beach County. That's like not like nothing,
Speaker 7: that's really those are good numbers, and none of the
Speaker 7: other candidates in the race really have that kind of record,
Speaker 7: but they all kind of ran anyway. I think it
Speaker 7: was a mix of like they genuinely saw this as
Speaker 7: like one of their last chances of new too, something
Speaker 7: they always planned to and just went threw it.
Speaker 3: Out of muscle memory.
Speaker 7: Are there just trying to get a position in Trump's cabinet,
Speaker 7: which I think is the case for some of them.
Speaker 7: I think definitely for vec although things have looked a
Speaker 7: little dicier for him than they did like a couple
Speaker 7: months ago, so he had to do the Santis had.
Speaker 7: First off, if he was a good politician, he would
Speaker 7: have been able to clear the field like that. It
Speaker 7: would that's just a prerequisite, like you need to get
Speaker 7: people out of the race to promise them whatever you
Speaker 7: show them the reality. He's just not like good at
Speaker 7: that nuts and bald stuff. He never really has been
Speaker 7: if you look at like my series on him.
Speaker 1: He wasn't connecting with the like back ben chief Florida
Speaker 1: Congress people had he wanted to work that he could have,
Speaker 1: you know, had people at the governor's mansion.
Speaker 5: I mean there just was. He was not good at
Speaker 5: the vote whipping part of politics.
Speaker 7: Yeah, nuts and bald stuff, not like not even ideological,
Speaker 7: just like basic competency things. The one story that always
Speaker 7: sticks with me is when he flew up the DC
Speaker 7: to meet with a bunch of these Republicans and representatives
Speaker 7: from Florida because he was kind of having a cold
Speaker 7: war of endorsements with Trump that he lost very decisively,
Speaker 7: but this was in the early stages of that, and
Speaker 7: he met with these like congressmen in this hotel for
Speaker 7: several hours, and those people came out and they said,
Speaker 7: we endorsed Trump. So we actively did like made them
Speaker 7: go away from him from spending that effort. And it's
Speaker 7: something you can see just across his entire career. The
Speaker 7: more people see of him, the less they like him,
Speaker 7: except in Florida. I guess they're just weird.
Speaker 1: Some of what happened in Florida is that the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party fell off a cliff and they ran a guy
Speaker 1: who was probably a uniquely bad candidate. Right he had
Speaker 1: been a Republican.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Christ was pretty poor. Both the lives, they ran
Speaker 7: pretty poor candidates. Gillum in twenty eighteen got a lot
Speaker 7: of attention, but looking back on it, he was actually
Speaker 7: under like FBI investigation during the campaign, which might not
Speaker 7: have been ideal, and he's still only narrowly lost. Christ
Speaker 7: was just very, very Poortus, like most incumbent governers across
Speaker 7: the country were popular. Desantus wasn't unique by any means
Speaker 7: of having a strong year last year. I think Whitmer
Speaker 7: actually had better numbers than him relative to how the
Speaker 7: country was leading. Yeah, but nobody really ever talks about
Speaker 7: that because of the media is sexist and they hate Whitmer.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that for a minute, because
Speaker 1: this is like a peccadillo of mine. Obviously daughter of
Speaker 1: a second wave feminists, Like this is something I think
Speaker 1: about a lot. Why is it that women politicians here's Whitmer.
Speaker 1: She reads, and again, I'm going to say something that
Speaker 1: people are not going to like, but I think it's right.
Speaker 5: She reads in the least feminine way.
Speaker 1: She plays up her sort of ability to seem like
Speaker 1: a quote unquote normal politician, if that makes sense.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like her fixed the damn roads, the kind of
Speaker 7: a very kind of.
Speaker 1: Masculine energy, very careful, almost was the victim of an
Speaker 1: enormously scary violent crime, very fucking tough, tough, tough, tough,
Speaker 1: and still really gets all of the sexism.
Speaker 7: Yeah, people just generally don't take that seriously. But also
Speaker 7: because she didn't know when to shift gears when it
Speaker 7: benefited her. When Dobbs came out, she was really the
Speaker 7: one politician in the country who did the most to
Speaker 7: engineer that to her benefit. She campaigned relentlessly on abortion.
Speaker 7: She defined her opponent as zone anti abortion extreamist. She
Speaker 7: was like spearheading effort to get an abortion referendum on
Speaker 7: the ballot at the same time as her So she
Speaker 7: wasn't like afraid to run away from that issue. She
Speaker 7: saw it as successful and she really did it like
Speaker 7: more better than anybody else in the country. I think
Speaker 7: across the entire state Michigan shifted blue compared to twenty twenty.
Speaker 7: It wasn't just her. She carried everybody across the line
Speaker 7: and obviously got her trifecta from it. So it was
Speaker 7: a uniquely like just well managed state party campaign there
Speaker 7: that I think got kind of overlooked because people just said, oh,
Speaker 7: generally democrats did well, some Democrats did well, some did
Speaker 7: better than others, and she was definitely in the higher
Speaker 7: end of that.
Speaker 5: It sounds like it was the opposite of New York State.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, give me the TLDR on twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I don't get nobody get mad at me,
Speaker 1: but who do you see as strong? I read a
Speaker 1: piece in one of those political magazines that was like,
Speaker 1: she's twenty twenty eight. Did you see that candidates are
Speaker 1: buying in case they can manage to get Who do
Speaker 1: you like for twenty twenty eight? Oh?
Speaker 7: Well, I wrote, like, I'm a list of this actually
Speaker 7: most few one. I don't want to go through everything,
Speaker 7: but I have on Whitmer as the highest there by far.
Speaker 3: I think she's kind of.
Speaker 7: In a cheer of her own. If you're like a
Speaker 7: left winger, she's not really anything totally new from what
Speaker 7: you've seen Democrats before. She's very much a mainstream liberal.
Speaker 7: But like really any analysis of her like kind of
Speaker 7: my take on it is that she's a liberal who
Speaker 7: can definitively win, like in terms of a lifetidentity. Nobody
Speaker 7: really has her track record. She has a history of
Speaker 7: using the power that she got through her savvy electoral
Speaker 7: sort of approach for like very positive legislative gains in
Speaker 7: a very tough legislative environment. She has one seed majorities
Speaker 7: in both of the state houses there and has been
Speaker 7: able to repeal Right to Work I think, codify Obamacare.
Speaker 7: I think she did that two days ago, codifi Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 7: and Michigan just like a very tremendously productive year they've
Speaker 7: had there. So I don't think really anybody else has
Speaker 7: the combination of executive experience and demonstrated political competency that
Speaker 7: she has. Warnock, I think as a Georgian I've always
Speaker 7: been a fan of him. I'm still surprised that he's one,
Speaker 7: not like two, but basically four elections for Warnock. Yeah,
Speaker 7: he's had to work so hard. I saw him like
Speaker 7: at a rally one time, he looked so tired. I
Speaker 7: told him he was going to win so and I
Speaker 7: was right. So that was a fun little moment.
Speaker 5: He has really had to work it though.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, when you look at this sort
Speaker 1: of speakership battle, were you surprised?
Speaker 2: Tell me?
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like they just had a moment
Speaker 1: where they like, we can't embarrass ourselves anymore.
Speaker 5: We just have to pick whoever it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was my most recent article. But US politics,
Speaker 7: I call it just good old fashioned political failure. That
Speaker 7: wasn't everybody wants to chalk it up like, oh, Washington's dysfunctional,
Speaker 7: Washington can get anything done. That was beyond that and
Speaker 7: all of these instances. You just have these kind of
Speaker 7: cases of Republicans being really like just stupid beyond like
Speaker 7: an ideological level. The conclusion I kind of came to
Speaker 7: when I was writing about this and like finishing that
Speaker 7: piece was we're used to Republicans being evil or bad,
Speaker 7: like pushing evil and bad policies, and we can still
Speaker 7: fear them because evil and bad people can be very
Speaker 7: competent and savvy, right, But this new Republican Party isn't
Speaker 7: like they're not just bad, but they're also dumb. So
Speaker 7: it's not just their policies are bad. Their policies are
Speaker 7: just stupid, and you believe in enough stupid policies, eventually
Speaker 7: you just become stupid yourself, and you get to a
Speaker 7: point where you're like Jim Jordan and you're like having
Speaker 7: your supporter send death threats to the people who won't
Speaker 7: vote for you and blaming them for that, embarrassing yourself
Speaker 7: on a national stage. Are you Steve Scalise and you're
Speaker 7: at the apex of your career you can't even articulate
Speaker 7: why you should be speaker? Are Tom Emmer and God
Speaker 7: just hates you and you have to drop out after
Speaker 7: four hours. It's not even like that they just believe
Speaker 7: in bad things that they're not popular. They're just personally
Speaker 7: stupid to the point where they can't even selfishly seek
Speaker 7: power the way that they used to be able to.
Speaker 1: We keep finding them sort of unable to deliver for
Speaker 1: them besides their voters, for themselves.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the difference, because it used to be that
Speaker 7: these guys could personally benefit from being in power. Now
Speaker 7: they just can't really accomplish anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like the thing I think about a
Speaker 1: lot is here we are. We have this guy. He
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to do the speaker job at all.
Speaker 1: He's hired two people from Fox News to be in
Speaker 1: his team, right, he didn't hire like.
Speaker 7: He's a total hicic dumb ass. I can say this
Speaker 7: is a Southerner. He just like is really just one
Speaker 7: of those stupid people that you see you are involved
Speaker 7: in right wing politics?
Speaker 5: Were this me?
Speaker 1: And I woke up one day and was like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I'm the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 5: I'm completely unprepared for this job.
Speaker 1: I have no idea who anyone is. I cannot whip votes.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows who I am. I just met miss McConnell.
Speaker 5: This is like America's worst anxiety dream.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you just hire all of the smart people who
Speaker 1: worked for McCarthy, who is also a moron? Like, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you yeah, instead of pulling out people from Fox News.
Speaker 5: I mean, what's the thinking here?
Speaker 7: I think the one thing with Mike Johnson that makes
Speaker 7: them particularly important here is that he genuinely believes in
Speaker 7: like God and thinks that like he's fulfilling some kind
Speaker 7: of large like he's a younger creationist. He thinks that
Speaker 7: the earth is six thousand years old. He genuinely believes
Speaker 7: in this stuff and what he wanted. He probably thought like, well,
Speaker 7: that's probably just because God is rewarding me for all
Speaker 7: the other stuff that I did before. So I imagine
Speaker 7: he has a tremendous level of confidence where he thinks
Speaker 7: he's being divinely rewarded for being a massive homophob for
Speaker 7: his entire life. And he's just thinking like, well, this
Speaker 7: is going well, why don't I just continue with what
Speaker 7: I'm doing. The thing is, what he was doing before
Speaker 7: was at a really low level, and when you're at
Speaker 7: this higher stage, you have to be very tactful in
Speaker 7: what you say and very like measured and strategic. So
Speaker 7: he's just going out there and singing like, oh yeah,
Speaker 7: Joe Biden, this guy who I'm gonna have to work
Speaker 7: with for the next year. I think he's seen Aisle.
Speaker 7: He's just gonna personally insult him.
Speaker 5: Not brilliant.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll pass the israel A that everybody sports. If
Speaker 7: you let us take money away from the irs so
Speaker 7: rich people cannot pay taxes, and then that gets revealed
Speaker 7: to cost more money than it'll save. It's just like
Speaker 7: a baseline level of incompetence there that makes you really
Speaker 7: realize why this guy was like a last its choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. You think he's able to
Speaker 1: stick around just the Israel AID stuff.
Speaker 5: I think there are.
Speaker 1: People in the Senate who believe they can put together
Speaker 1: a package and then bring it back to the House
Speaker 1: and get the bipartisan vote. I mean, are Republicans willing
Speaker 1: to die on this? Hell they love Israel?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't think so. The question will be I
Speaker 7: think if it's going to be a combined Ukraine Israel
Speaker 7: package or if they're going to be split. And the
Speaker 7: Ukraine stuff is obviously like a lot more contentious in
Speaker 7: terms of passing than the Israel stuff is. The offsetting
Speaker 7: it is completely dead on arrival. It's politically unpopular. That's
Speaker 7: just a complete stunt and looks embarrassing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's dead on arrival. So what was the
Speaker 5: point of doing that?
Speaker 7: He's just not It's like what I said, like these
Speaker 7: guys believe in dumb stuff, and at a certain point
Speaker 7: they just are kind of dumb themselves, like they live
Speaker 7: in an echoed chamber. They think that everybody thinks the
Speaker 7: way that they do, and they misinterpreted the reason why
Speaker 7: they wanted the past, and they think that just doing
Speaker 7: far right stunts is like going to get people interested.
Speaker 7: When Jim Jordan said, according to Politico that like he
Speaker 7: was trying to threaten least and he said America wants me,
Speaker 7: I think he sincerely thinks that America does want him, because,
Speaker 7: like you think, these guys are looking at like what
Speaker 7: normal people think. They're just looking at like their supporters.
Speaker 7: They have a bunch of yes men around them. They're
Speaker 7: kind of atrophying into a party that would be one
Speaker 7: that you'd expect to be organized around Trump, which is
Speaker 7: just not very confident.
Speaker 1: Thank you, no moment, Wilson.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm here for all your fuckery needs.
Speaker 2: Do you have a moment of.
Speaker 3: You know, I have a moment of fuckery from Thursday
Speaker 3: watching Eric fail Son, absolutely the best bed for the
Speaker 3: Trump family, absolutely losed his mind and blow it on
Speaker 3: the stand. You had to know that in Donald Trump's head,
Speaker 3: like everything was validated at that moment about how shittingly
Speaker 3: he treats Eric, because Eric literally not have made a
Speaker 3: dumber set of statements in the course of that appearance.
Speaker 3: Although the secondary moment of fuckery that's coming is Avoka
Speaker 3: has to testify, He's gonna struggle with a set of
Speaker 3: feelings of betrayal, hatred, and arousal all at once.
Speaker 1: I have to say that the Evanka, she gets my
Speaker 1: moment of rockery because she said she couldn't testify during
Speaker 1: the school week.
Speaker 2: I have three children. They do go to school. But
Speaker 2: she moved to Miami is not very far from New York.
Speaker 2: That's like a two hour flight.
Speaker 1: You could theoretically, and you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know this, but her father has a lot of
Speaker 1: real estate in New York. She could fly on his
Speaker 1: plane and be back for dinner the next night.
Speaker 3: I would be remis if I failed to mention that
Speaker 3: Evanka has an army of Nanny Cook's gardeners, drivers, health servants, ladies' maids,
Speaker 3: under butlers, butlers, the entire Downton abbey f constellation of
Speaker 3: household staff. And give me a break.
Speaker 1: We think that Ivanka does not need to take the
Speaker 1: school week from testifying.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And if you think of Vodka is sitting
Speaker 3: at home with a little Kushner Sprague saying okay, honey,
Speaker 3: have you finished all your homework? No? They have some
Speaker 3: sort of staff or in house to deal with that.
Speaker 3: I for you. So that is our moment of cook right,
Speaker 3: A glorious, glittering moment of trumpy and fuckery.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rex, thank you, thank you. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.