Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and the US economy added nine hundred
Speaker 1: and eleven thousand fewer jobs than previously reported in the
Speaker 1: largest ever revision. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson stops by to
Speaker 1: talk to us about how the nineties brought us the
Speaker 1: deranged Republican nightmare we live through today. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to Josh Touric about his run for the open Iowa
Speaker 1: Senate seat. But first we have the stories the media
Speaker 1: is missing.
Speaker 2: My oh boy, it's a day. So I thought this
Speaker 2: was really interesting. We've talked a lot about this character,
Speaker 2: Bill Polti, who we haven't said much about before until
Speaker 2: recent weeks. But the House is going to probe him.
Speaker 2: And I mean just yesterday there was reports that Scott
Speaker 2: Bessett was going to well, he was going to be
Speaker 2: the sixth person that Scott besson threatened to punch. What
Speaker 2: do you see in here? This is wild?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think we can all agree that as
Speaker 1: much as a lot of us don't agree with Scott Bessant,
Speaker 1: Treasury secretary. We all respect his ability to get into
Speaker 1: physical violence. We certainly saw Scott Bessen had an altercation
Speaker 1: with the Elon Musk. Now he has threatened to punch
Speaker 1: Bill Pulty in the face. And Poulty is mostly famous
Speaker 1: for running this very sleepy branch of government, the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: He's a housing official. But what I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting about him is that he's basically found all this
Speaker 1: mortgage stuff. How he's found it, we don't know. So
Speaker 1: he uses it against the president's enemies. So he used
Speaker 1: it against Lisa Cook. He has used it against New
Speaker 1: York ag Tish James, so he basically trots us out.
Speaker 1: Now we have found that his parents use this using
Speaker 1: two houses. So basically Poulty had accused Cook of listing
Speaker 1: both a house in Michigan and a condo and Atlanta
Speaker 1: as a primary resident. Poultice's parents did this, And I
Speaker 1: think the bigger question is why is he using this
Speaker 1: federal agency to investigate Donald Trump's enemies. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of this is legal. So let's see what happens here.
Speaker 1: We got democrats. Raskin sent Pulty a letter. He demands
Speaker 1: that Pulty produce all records related to selective investigations. I
Speaker 1: think this is really the way forward for Democrats that
Speaker 1: the only way that anyone is ever going to take
Speaker 1: them seriously is if they do stuff like this, like
Speaker 1: they just push and push and push and hold these
Speaker 1: people accountable. So I think this is really good again,
Speaker 1: like we're seeing members of the House do this, We're
Speaker 1: just not seeing it from leadership. And I wish we were.
Speaker 2: After the drawing of what we thought was going to
Speaker 2: be a woman's body and now many interpretations say is
Speaker 2: a girl's body. On Trump's birthday letter to Epstein, we're
Speaker 2: thinking that this discharge petition might actually go through that
Speaker 2: Thomas Massey's pushing what do you see him?
Speaker 1: So basically this is what they told me this whole
Speaker 1: time there comms people had said that there are two
Speaker 1: Democratic seats that are going to be filled. One is
Speaker 1: the seat in Virginia. That was Jerry Connolly's seat. You'll
Speaker 1: remember they put him as the head of Oversight instead
Speaker 1: of AOC and then he died. But Democrats wanted because
Speaker 1: he had seniority, even though he had throw cancer, he
Speaker 1: got the job even though he was in treatment, and
Speaker 1: then he died. So that seat is now being filled,
Speaker 1: and then there's another seat that Democrats are going to get.
Speaker 1: So even if Republicans don't do the right thing here
Speaker 1: and sign this discharge petition, they will get to the
Speaker 1: number in these special elections. So Johnson has already so
Speaker 1: embarrassed himself with this story. He said that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was an FBI in format. There is no evidence to
Speaker 1: support this that he was trying to shut down Epstein
Speaker 1: from the inside. Mike Johnson walked it back. Always a
Speaker 1: great sign and always a little bit shocking when someone
Speaker 1: from Trump World actually walks something back like amazing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: walked it back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: Milton down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Trump is still goetting to sue Rupert Murdoch for ten
Speaker 1: trillion dollars because numbers, what do they mean?
Speaker 2: Trump has never met a lawsuit he'll potentially lose that
Speaker 2: he doesn't like, so it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And also since numbers no longer have any meanings, Since
Speaker 1: Trump is getting ten trillion dollars in tariffs, why not
Speaker 1: sue Rubert Murdoch ten zillion dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: People always say the thing is like Bennon's theory that
Speaker 2: you throw six things at the wall.
Speaker 4: Esjra.
Speaker 2: Trump had some really interesting comments about domess violence that
Speaker 2: really disturbed a lot of people, including me yesterday, A
Speaker 2: level fight with the wife is a saying that you
Speaker 2: don't want to see belittled in language.
Speaker 1: Ever, this was actually pretty shocking when I saw it.
Speaker 1: Yet another moment where I was like, that can't be real. This,
Speaker 1: this is me, my sad gen X situation. That can't
Speaker 1: be real, young gen X, I might add. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: went to the Museum of the Bible, which I've actually
Speaker 1: been to because one of my kids wanted to go.
Speaker 1: It was funded by the hobby lobby crew. Oh yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it includes lots of artwork that some of which
Speaker 1: is fake, some of which is looted antiquities, some of
Speaker 1: which is repurposed to be nonsense. But it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting museum and everyone should go there. It's also free
Speaker 1: because they feel it is aligned with their mission. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so Trump is in this museum giving a talk about
Speaker 1: religious tolerance. These are like he's trying to hit the
Speaker 1: notes that get the base excited. So evangelicals are being
Speaker 1: discriminated against is a big one, and he gets in
Speaker 1: it and he just starts musing and macking about domestic
Speaker 1: violence and he calls it a little fight with the wife.
Speaker 2: Real who amongst us energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really does. And he says a little fight with
Speaker 1: the wife, and then he sort of goes into you know,
Speaker 1: why should the police be involved if you're just beating
Speaker 1: up your wife. What I think is so interesting about
Speaker 1: this moment that we're in is that Donald Trump is,
Speaker 1: while he has captured all these institutions and we're such
Speaker 1: a weak and soft country that we've sort of let
Speaker 1: him do whatever he wants to does, he's really still
Speaker 1: got a sort of Shakespearean thing where he can't stop
Speaker 1: telling on himself, he can't stop sort of self destructing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a real lesson here about people getting
Speaker 1: what they want. I think this kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. I mean it's obviously quite disturbing. Kurt Anderson
Speaker 1: is the author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasy Land. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 3: Happy to be in Fast Politics once again.
Speaker 1: Every day is a greater descent into fantasy Land. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is the myths, the and also everything is nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, forever and ever until we die.
Speaker 3: Discuss I would give anything for it to be nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four again.
Speaker 5: But you know, it certainly is the beginnings of ging
Speaker 5: Rich and the descent of the Republican Party into that
Speaker 5: the morass of the last thirty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. It is. I mean in fantasy land.
Speaker 3: And as long as we're talking about titles in my
Speaker 3: books Evil Guiniusness, which came afterwards, I really thought of
Speaker 3: them both as a double volume, the first one being Yes,
Speaker 3: this longstanding American weakness for the excitingly untrue right. And
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has embodied that. He came along just as
Speaker 3: I was finishing that book, and it was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I felt some guilt, like, oh, I have my poster
Speaker 3: boy here for this, but he is so that and
Speaker 3: you know it was published in his first year, and
Speaker 3: you know, the week after it was published, QAnon started.
Speaker 3: And then there's Donald Trump lying about everything and building
Speaker 3: this movement, this true movement. You can unders states that
Speaker 3: of people who who share, you know, not a coherent ideality.
Speaker 3: That's the thing, right, It's interesting they share all kinds
Speaker 3: of fantasies and conspiracy theories in the Bobby Kennedy flavor
Speaker 3: and the government's taking over this or that, you know,
Speaker 3: and and and just the inconsistency and incoherence of it
Speaker 3: all is phenomenal. And you know, people keep saying, oh,
Speaker 3: you should update it, right anew and well, no, it's
Speaker 3: just there, it is. I mean, you know, I could
Speaker 3: devote my entire life to doing a daily thing about it. No,
Speaker 3: it's it's nuts. And and I don't know what to say,
Speaker 3: you know, and I keep waiting for enough people to
Speaker 3: have since slapped into them. And I think, as I
Speaker 3: talk about in fantasy land, when the economics go wrong
Speaker 3: as they did in two thousand and eight, right, you
Speaker 3: can't pretend there's not a giant, great recession. You can't
Speaker 3: pretend prices aren't going up, you can't pretend the economy
Speaker 3: is now starting to go into recession, so that there
Speaker 3: is the reality slap of economic reality, which at this point,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess I'm depending on because in political terms,
Speaker 3: because he can't wish that away. They can't wish that away.
Speaker 3: And just as you know, not to compare it to
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, but just as we the Biden and Democrats
Speaker 3: can say, oh no, the inflation is really yeah, it's
Speaker 3: going away. It's Okay, shit, you know you're not feeling it. Well,
Speaker 3: people didn't buy hat and they're not going to buy this.
Speaker 3: And more than more than ever again my hope, I
Speaker 3: always find the glimmers of hope and green shoes. You know,
Speaker 3: this is so clearly and so undern mily his he
Speaker 3: still occasionally tries as, oh, no, it's Biden. I'm I
Speaker 3: heerd Biden. You didn't. Terrorists are years, you know, all
Speaker 3: all of its years, the the the you know, this
Speaker 3: radical change in the labor market, apart from the grotesque
Speaker 3: street thug fascism of the master importations, you know, all
Speaker 3: of it is going to is going to be his
Speaker 3: and and uh you know, I mean I was already
Speaker 3: hopeful about the midterms, and and the timing of the
Speaker 3: of the economic wreckage looks just great for politically speaking,
Speaker 3: you know, a year from now it's going to be terrible.
Speaker 3: So that's my failing. But as you said that, you're
Speaker 3: framing the descent into fantasy land and the degree to
Speaker 3: which the evil geniuses, which is to say, rich people
Speaker 3: and corporate ba by and large and the elected Republicans
Speaker 3: in Washington have all all you know, as we know
Speaker 3: ninety six percent of them absolutely bought in and hope
Speaker 3: there will be a price to pay, because and I
Speaker 3: think there will be. And I think this is not
Speaker 3: going to last forever anymore. I say to myself, not
Speaker 3: off in a public anymore than it did in Germany.
Speaker 3: We just got to keep as nearly as we can
Speaker 3: shouting the truth in you know, non hair on fire.
Speaker 3: But it's extreme and it's not normal. And what it's
Speaker 3: going to take all kinds of new things, whether it's
Speaker 3: letting the government shut down in a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: or or whatever it is to it's a new ball game.
Speaker 3: It's a new ball game.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's where I have to say.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to talk about the Birthday Book, because
Speaker 1: the Birthday Book feels like something that I mean, it can't.
Speaker 1: You know, it was put together in the nineties, early
Speaker 1: two thousands, right before Epstein's first arrest, right when he
Speaker 1: gets this got the Sweetheart deal, which was two thousand
Speaker 1: and four. But it exists in this time. I mean,
Speaker 1: what I think is so interesting about what I've seen
Speaker 1: of it so far is that you know, there's stuff
Speaker 1: from Trump, there's stuff from Less Wexler, there's stuff from
Speaker 1: dersh weed. There's you know, it feels like another world.
Speaker 3: You know it does. And I said to my wife,
Speaker 3: yesterd boy, there there was this parallel, dirty, rich universe
Speaker 3: going on in our midst and we're just you know,
Speaker 3: Pollyanna innocence. Yes, it does feel like you know the world.
Speaker 3: But I don't think it is another world. I think
Speaker 3: that world exists in different form right now, and it's
Speaker 3: tooner layer it will be exposed too. No, I don't
Speaker 3: you know it is. It is of another time because
Speaker 3: of the names and less West and Alan Dershowitz and
Speaker 3: all the rest are everybody except Donald Trump are gone
Speaker 3: more or less. The entitlement is still absolutely there. And
Speaker 3: I see I still see that. I mean, and and
Speaker 3: I would say, I mean obviously the great wealth and
Speaker 3: I can do anything because I'm rich. Thing is here
Speaker 3: more than ever. And I see not Epstein, sex trafficking,
Speaker 3: examples of it all over all the time, but but
Speaker 3: similar things. It's just as grotesque. The thing about that too,
Speaker 3: I mean again in terms of in terms of just
Speaker 3: the delusional or welly and fantasy. The denial yesterday by
Speaker 3: the the you know, Deputy White House Chiefs and Staff
Speaker 3: in charge of comms and by the Press Secretary of like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: look these things obviously aren't his. Well, they look just
Speaker 3: like the ones you were showing. And they look just
Speaker 3: like the ones I have in my personal files. First
Speaker 3: of all, and and and then the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 3: which in it's.
Speaker 1: By the famous liberal famous.
Speaker 3: Are analyzing why the signature looks is the same, Why, yes,
Speaker 3: he looked at all these drawings he's done. Yes, look
Speaker 3: at all the times he's used enigmental.
Speaker 6: You know, it's just like boom boom boom, like this
Speaker 6: forensic spy magazine, like tickdown that is fantastic, you know,
Speaker 6: good for in his ya last days alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as he's he ruined the country, but he's getting
Speaker 1: his last licks and at Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: So anyway something and again you know, and and and
Speaker 3: what's her name? Carolyne Lovett said no, and the Wall
Speaker 3: Street Journal story proves this has all been false. Uh no,
Speaker 3: it proves the opposite. So anyway it is. It is remarkable,
Speaker 3: and it's you know, I remember, you know, speaking of
Speaker 3: the nineties. I don't know, you may be too young,
Speaker 3: remember bag Dad Bob during the war.
Speaker 1: But that's what this is.
Speaker 3: The embodiment of like, no, no, they're not. The Americans
Speaker 3: are nowhere in there. We're fine, We're good. That's all right,
Speaker 3: we'll see. I mean, and and and again that you
Speaker 3: can't make it up daily thing like oh, we're gonna
Speaker 3: make We're gonna make Eric Adams, Mayor of New York,
Speaker 3: get out of the way for Andrew Cuomo by making
Speaker 3: him the ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: I mean, I amazing, amaze, and.
Speaker 3: Man, that would be a great reality show, yes, but
Speaker 3: it's just it is astonishing. And you know, and as
Speaker 3: I said, so let's well the mom Donnie thing, is
Speaker 3: it glimo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but let's I want to stay on this idea
Speaker 1: that the world that we're living in right now is
Speaker 1: created in the nineties, because I actually think it was
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who are funding this presidency
Speaker 1: or running this White House are creatures of that world.
Speaker 1: And I think of like Susie Wild who came up
Speaker 1: under Bush too. You know, Donald Trump obviously most of
Speaker 1: his friends and the people around him, And I just
Speaker 1: wonder if you know the the thing that made Trump
Speaker 1: and the thing you know, I was talking to someone
Speaker 1: who knew him and had talked to him pretty recently
Speaker 1: and said that one of the things he spends the
Speaker 1: most time worrying about is is this breaking through? Like
Speaker 1: are people watching? Are people seeing me? Are people right?
Speaker 1: Am I getting the airtime? Is it being shown now?
Speaker 1: Because he's right, he's still thinking about like traditional linear
Speaker 1: television and not necessarily where a lot of people are.
Speaker 1: But I think that you know, he was at the
Speaker 1: US Open yesterday, He is at He is trying to
Speaker 1: be at every sporting event. He wants to have USC
Speaker 1: fighters on the on the lawn of the White House.
Speaker 1: And I just wonder if you could talk about this
Speaker 1: idea of being downstream of culture and how Donald Trump
Speaker 1: learned that and how that equates the nineties.
Speaker 3: Well, he is was and is a show business person.
Speaker 3: Right when he was somebody in real estate, he said, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm you know, sixty years ago, more than six
Speaker 3: years ago, he said, I was thinking about getting into
Speaker 3: show business and producing Broadway plays and stuff. But I'm
Speaker 3: going to do I went to be in real estate
Speaker 3: and make that show business too. And as I've written about,
Speaker 3: you know, it was in this long, perfectly calibrated timed
Speaker 3: way to do what has always been done in America,
Speaker 3: which is everything is show business, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: religion was show business in the United States, or in
Speaker 3: America before it's the United States unlike anywhere else, and
Speaker 3: everything and every you know, Buffalo Bill, all of it
Speaker 3: was show business. And you know, presidential politics had started
Speaker 3: that becoming how with television and then Robt Reagan and
Speaker 3: then up to Donald Trump. And he was perfectly positioned
Speaker 3: to do that. And so being a WWE famous guy
Speaker 3: before he was you know, I mean, that was as
Speaker 3: important a part of his fame in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: as anything else. You know, then came apprentice orything and
Speaker 3: playing the character that this character against that rival evil
Speaker 3: character and just doing whatever it took to make people
Speaker 3: watch and cheer and like, Okay, they know it's a fake,
Speaker 3: but but like, well, we still like it, right, And
Speaker 3: to bring that to make our politics, at least our
Speaker 3: Republican politics, at least his unique and singular version of
Speaker 3: politics that was, you know, I mean, it's like a
Speaker 3: wild movie, a piece of satire, might judge idiocracy thing
Speaker 3: that a novel I wrote in nineteen ninety nine about
Speaker 3: the murder of reality and and and and television and
Speaker 3: it's it's it's just come true. So yes, the seeds
Speaker 3: robbed too laid there. And of course all of these
Speaker 3: people too, just because of their age, because they're you know,
Speaker 3: the nineties, people were still young enough to now be
Speaker 3: compositions of power. But so many of these people, of course,
Speaker 3: were not in politics at all. I mean, Bobby Kennedy
Speaker 3: of the nineties was still you know, a drug addict
Speaker 3: and a failed and a failed district attorney who had
Speaker 3: then become apparently a legit environmental lawyer and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, but again there the why is he there
Speaker 3: because his last name is Kennedy? Period and destroyed? Why
Speaker 3: is our public health system being destroyed? And and and
Speaker 3: years and years of important all kinds of medical and
Speaker 3: other scientific work being destroyed because this kid, my cocaine
Speaker 3: dealer's name is Kennedy. And again it's this crazy you know,
Speaker 3: celebrity tale wagging the dog of the republic in a
Speaker 3: way that yes, it begs all understanding.
Speaker 1: Right there, There is an attention to brands, an attention
Speaker 1: to names that is very Trumpian, right. I also think
Speaker 1: that RFK, that was the way he appealed to women voters,
Speaker 1: was that he saw that they were Trump friendly women
Speaker 1: voters who liked Maha and who thought Maha was somehow
Speaker 1: something that would solve their problems. And I think there
Speaker 1: is also a sort of post COVID emotional meltdown that
Speaker 1: has happened in our country that.
Speaker 3: More the COVID, I think the effects obvious and less
Speaker 3: of this of COVID are still with us and messing
Speaker 3: with all kinds of in them.
Speaker 1: Have Maha without COVID.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you know, speaking of Maha, and you know,
Speaker 3: almost everyone I know says, well, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of things about Earth. There are some things aboubby Kennedy.
Speaker 3: Yes he's a nut, yes he's yes, yes he's destroying science.
Speaker 3: But there's things he says that if you just did those,
Speaker 3: you know whatever, taking chemicals out of food, you know,
Speaker 3: taking pharmaceutical prescription, pharmaceutical lives off television, all on there.
Speaker 3: There are things like yeah, sure, if that's Maha, I'm
Speaker 3: down with it, until you get into no, all vaccines
Speaker 3: are bad and and I should be able to not
Speaker 3: take vaccines if I want all that and tell you
Speaker 3: into the craziness that there's there's you know, saying Maha
Speaker 3: and and simply like California, you know, healthiness and and
Speaker 3: and then there's insanity and and you know you I
Speaker 3: think it's important to distinguish those and and make make
Speaker 3: the people who were attracted to the right reasonable part
Speaker 3: of it. Like I understand like this guy is uh,
Speaker 3: you know is I mean, you're going to make your
Speaker 3: kids die and make us make make your parents die.
Speaker 1: I mean the best example of them how craziness is
Speaker 1: Florida where they're where they're no longer making kids get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: I mean that is an intense.
Speaker 3: And again it takes a while. You know, the herd,
Speaker 3: the immune herd has protected everybody for so long they
Speaker 3: they forget if they ever knew or ever understood that
Speaker 3: that's what That's why people didn't get these horrible, deadly child.
Speaker 1: We're going to see bad, bad stuff happen real soon,
Speaker 1: do you think. Like one of the things that I
Speaker 1: often think to myself is like, we are actually hurtling
Speaker 1: towards disaster pretty and the question.
Speaker 3: Is which disaster or disasters are we hurtling toward. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I don't know how quickly, but and I don't
Speaker 3: like it. You know, it's like one of these numbers
Speaker 3: is going to come up, and whether it's unnecessarily uncontrolled epidemics, well,
Speaker 3: god knows, I don't need.
Speaker 1: To, right, it doesn't matter. But you can see that
Speaker 1: we're hurtling towards something bad. The lack of regulation when
Speaker 1: it comes to stable coin, the disassembling our security. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: clearly something catastrophic is we're hurdling towards.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a reasonable bet. Unfortunately, I think it is.
Speaker 3: Lenin famously said, and is you know, the worse the better,
Speaker 3: you know, you get things terrible, and then the revolution
Speaker 3: will come. I've never been there. Yeah, but this is
Speaker 3: not going to end well, it just is not going
Speaker 3: to end well. I hope you know, whatever disaster comes,
Speaker 3: it's it's not so existential that it can't be recovered.
Speaker 1: From the thing that I am stressedtruck by is like
Speaker 1: we have government. Government is good and does things for people,
Speaker 1: and disassembling it is bad and we're about to find
Speaker 1: out why.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you can still stipulate that, Yes, of course,
Speaker 3: there's lots of blowdered, old fashioned, inefficient things. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I mean again, there are reasonable versions of everything, just
Speaker 3: as there are reasonable versions of my mother's are reasonable
Speaker 3: reasonable version of a doge thing like, yeah, let's see
Speaker 3: what isn't doing its job anymore. Let's not just assume
Speaker 3: that the most regulation is the better or all of it.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean the buy the crazy binariness,
Speaker 3: and and here we are way over here like in
Speaker 3: the real burn it down sense, And and that nihilism,
Speaker 3: the burn it down nihilism is is a significant part
Speaker 3: of the Trump uh base movement feeling, you know, just
Speaker 3: fuck it, fight it, yeah, burn it down. It's not working.
Speaker 3: It's rigg you know, And and that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Fuck Kurt Anderson, please come.
Speaker 3: Back, always will you? And always happy too.
Speaker 1: Josh Turik is a member of the Iowa House of
Speaker 1: Representatives from the twentieth district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh,
Speaker 1: thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Very excited to have you. So you are running in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Just tell us your origin story.
Speaker 4: Sure, origin story. I was born right here. We're not
Speaker 4: exactly where I'm sitting, but in this town of Council Bus, Iowa,
Speaker 4: which is a blue collar town, you've got sixty five
Speaker 4: percent of the people that live at or below the
Speaker 4: poverty line. Here. I was born to a working class
Speaker 4: to say lower middle class, oftentimes poor family. I've got
Speaker 4: three sisters in one brother. I was born to a
Speaker 4: Vietnam veteran father that was exposed to agan ORNs, so
Speaker 4: I was born with a condition called spina bifida, had
Speaker 4: my first surgery at one day old and had twenty
Speaker 4: one surgeries by the age of twelve. And someone that
Speaker 4: went through an enormous amount of economic adversity and certainly
Speaker 4: on the healthcare side. A family that we shared clothes
Speaker 4: and got a lot of our clothes from the Goodwill
Speaker 4: and a mother that at times that was putting the
Speaker 4: groceries on the credit card. In the summer times, we
Speaker 4: were going to the free summer lunch programs to get
Speaker 4: our food. And I'm grateful that I grew up in
Speaker 4: Iowa at a time when we were number one in
Speaker 4: public education, and I had a lot of support from
Speaker 4: the AAS which provides special education here. Thankfully for me,
Speaker 4: what really saved my life was I was exposed to
Speaker 4: wheelchair basketball and an adaptive sports program across the river
Speaker 4: in Omaha, Nebraska, and that really gave me everything that
Speaker 4: I needed from friends and it legitimately saved my life.
Speaker 4: I played well enough in wheelchair basketball that I was
Speaker 4: able to get a partial scholarship to play at the
Speaker 4: collegiate level. I went to a place called Southwest Minnesota
Speaker 4: State University along with the help of vocational Rehabilitation. Had
Speaker 4: it not been for wheelchair basketball or voke rehabit never
Speaker 4: would have went to Calle and played well enough there
Speaker 4: that I set a lot of records, scored sixty three
Speaker 4: points in a game, and scored four thousand career points,
Speaker 4: which I'm proud I barely eked out Caitlin Clark there
Speaker 4: and then had the opportunity to play something I did
Speaker 4: not actually know existed when I was in college, which
Speaker 4: is professional wheelchair basketball, which doesn't exist in America, so
Speaker 4: the have to play abroad. So I had the opportunity
Speaker 4: to live and play basketball in places like France and
Speaker 4: Spain and Italy and Australia. But by the time it
Speaker 4: was done and the biges accomplishment was I had the
Speaker 4: opportunity which was my goal from day one, which was
Speaker 4: to represent the country in the Paralympic Games, which the
Speaker 4: Summer of Paralympic Games is the second largest sporting event
Speaker 4: on Earth behind the Summer Olympic Games. Played in four
Speaker 4: Paralympic Games and won two gold medals in wheelchair basketball
Speaker 4: back to back, and finished my career in Tokyo. Last
Speaker 4: game that I played was winning a gold medal. Along
Speaker 4: the way, got a bachelor's degree in history, got a
Speaker 4: master's degree in business administration. Briefly was a small business
Speaker 4: owner as well for more than ten years been a
Speaker 4: director of a nonprofit organization that helps disabled kids have
Speaker 4: access to adaptive sports programs like wheelchair basketball, just because
Speaker 4: it honestly had saved my life and profound impact it
Speaker 4: made on me, and to be a role model to
Speaker 4: other kids with disabilities because they don't see enough role
Speaker 4: models from the from the disabled community. And then as well,
Speaker 4: what got me interested in politics is when I finished
Speaker 4: my basketball career, I started working as well with disabled individuals.
Speaker 4: Working for a company called New Motion. I was assessing
Speaker 4: and providing wheelchairs, power both power wheelchairs and manual wheelchairs
Speaker 4: and mobility devices for the disabled population. And it was
Speaker 4: in there that every single day we were dealing with
Speaker 4: denial rates and delay rates. I was working specifically with
Speaker 4: individuals with muscular dystrophe and als LU Garrig's disease, and
Speaker 4: these are people that just do not have time for
Speaker 4: denial rates. And we were showing that since Iowa had
Speaker 4: privatized the medicaid system, we were showing a thousand percent
Speaker 4: increase and the denial rate, and I felt that that
Speaker 4: was wrong. And then with a little bit of recent search,
Speaker 4: had found out that Iowa we had never had a
Speaker 4: permanently disabled member in the Iowa legislature. That's one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty year history of the state, a governing body
Speaker 4: of one hundred and fifty members. Meanwhile, we have one
Speaker 4: in five io ones that are blind or death or
Speaker 4: intellectually disabled or physically disabled. And I thought, well, is.
Speaker 1: That higher than others dates.
Speaker 4: In terms of the lack of representation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also in terms of the level, like one
Speaker 1: in five is that what most states are?
Speaker 4: Now? There's variants in terms of the statistics on that.
Speaker 4: I would say a bare minimum, the number that we've
Speaker 4: always used is the silent fifteen. We the fifteen, So
Speaker 4: a bare minimum, it's fifteen percent of the population would
Speaker 4: be considered disabled. It gets a little bit tricky in
Speaker 4: terms of that number, especially what is your definition of disability?
Speaker 4: The invisible disabilities, those with autism, et cetera. Right, but
Speaker 4: here in Iowa, we could have a slightly higher rates
Speaker 4: one in five here here in Iowa. But you know,
Speaker 4: along with our cancer rates, we could have higher levels
Speaker 4: of disabilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you ran for state legislature.
Speaker 4: Yeah, ran for state legislature. And I knew it was
Speaker 4: to be difficult. I'm out here in the rightest part
Speaker 4: of the state, which is western Iowa, and knew it
Speaker 4: was going to be very, very difficult. Especially in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two. It was not a good year to run
Speaker 4: as Democrats. Most people said it would be impossible to win,
Speaker 4: and I did. If you've seen the launch video, that's
Speaker 4: exactly how I went out every single day and just
Speaker 4: drug my wheelchair upstairs to have conversations with Independence and
Speaker 4: Republicans day after day. I outperformed the top of the
Speaker 4: ticket by thirteen points and won my first election by
Speaker 4: just six votes, and then turned around in a year
Speaker 4: that was actually twenty four was actually even worse out here.
Speaker 4: Trump won my county by twenty points, one of the
Speaker 4: two communities that I represent, by double digits, and I
Speaker 4: was able to win by nearly six percent. So I
Speaker 4: was very proud of that outperformed the top of the
Speaker 4: ticket by much more than any other Democrat in the state.
Speaker 1: So how did you do it?
Speaker 4: First? Is that it's hard work. I say that the
Speaker 4: right candidate, with the right message and the right work ethic,
Speaker 4: you can win in very adverse conditions. What I did
Speaker 4: was that I went out every single day. I never
Speaker 4: took a day off, it didn't matter rain or shine harder.
Speaker 4: And I went out and drug my wheelchair up to
Speaker 4: have conversations with and it was almost exclusively Republicans and
Speaker 4: independence and I found that although I wasn't particularly efficient,
Speaker 4: you know, sometimes it would take me ten or fifteen
Speaker 4: minutes to crawl up there, that I became very effective.
Speaker 4: And I would find that, regardless of where people sat
Speaker 4: on the political spectrum, always the very first question that
Speaker 4: I would be asked is, well, how in the world
Speaker 4: did you get up here? Well, I crawled up here.
Speaker 4: That's how important your vote is. And then I would
Speaker 4: find that even if it was the most extreme Republican
Speaker 4: or conservative, that they would be willing to give me
Speaker 4: three or four minutes of their time given the fact
Speaker 4: that I just drugged my wheelchair up there and crawled
Speaker 4: up there to have a conversation with them, and I
Speaker 4: would find that in you know, four or five minutes
Speaker 4: of conversation, I could be very effective about here's who
Speaker 4: I am, here's what I've done, here, here's why I'm running.
Speaker 4: And I would focus on the kitchen table issues. That's
Speaker 4: what I talked about was I'm doing this because I'm
Speaker 4: someone that's gone through an enormous amount of economic struggle
Speaker 4: and an enormous amount of health care struggle, and people
Speaker 4: are people are struggling legitimately, it doesn't matter where you
Speaker 4: said on the political spectrum of a livable wage, of
Speaker 4: keeping food on the table, keeping the lights on, of
Speaker 4: you know, struggling with their healthcare cost. I would hear
Speaker 4: over and over and over from people they didn't have
Speaker 4: insurance or they were underinsured, or the waiting list, or
Speaker 4: the denial rates, the out of pocket costs, and these
Speaker 4: are people even that were on private insurance. And then
Speaker 4: even more grotesque, I would hear over and over from people,
Speaker 4: you know, I've changed my job, I've changed my insurance,
Speaker 4: and now I can't afford to take my insulin or
Speaker 4: I can't afford to take my medication. It's just fundamentally
Speaker 4: wrong to live in the richest nation on Earth and
Speaker 4: people happen to make the determination do I take my medication,
Speaker 4: do I take my pills, or do I pay my bills?
Speaker 4: It's just wrong, and these are things that I focused on.
Speaker 4: I also talked a lot about Iowa was growing cancer rate,
Speaker 4: because that's something that affects people all over. We don't
Speaker 4: do anything really about that at the at the Iowa level,
Speaker 4: and certainly now with what we're looking at with nih cuts,
Speaker 4: we're the only state with a growing cancer rate.
Speaker 1: Are you the only state with the growing cancer right?
Speaker 4: Yes, recently, I believe it was Utah that had a
Speaker 4: very very percentage of increase, but their overall cancer rates
Speaker 4: are so low it's almost minuscule in terms of the difference.
Speaker 4: Now we are number two in terms of overall cancer rates,
Speaker 4: behind only Kentucky, but we are quickly catching them, and
Speaker 4: at the rate that we're continuing, we are going to
Speaker 4: surpass them. We are the only state with a significant
Speaker 4: rate of cancer.
Speaker 1: What kind of cancer?
Speaker 4: Fith In terms of pediatric cancer, We're seeing a large
Speaker 4: amounts of breast cancer, We're seeing a large amounts of
Speaker 4: skin cancer. I actually was doing a bill in my
Speaker 4: first session, there was something called the EhP that was
Speaker 4: in intermitted catheters, and so those of us with that
Speaker 4: are disabled or are using this to go to the restroom,
Speaker 4: and it's a known carcinogen in this DHP, and the
Speaker 4: cather industry has the ability to do this without the
Speaker 4: cancer's cartomes. So I ran a bill for Iowa to
Speaker 4: be the very first state to ban the EhP and
Speaker 4: have no state appropriation go with time. So I was
Speaker 4: actually spending a lot of time at the University of
Speaker 4: Iowa talking with him about the can rates because my
Speaker 4: assumption was where they are going to see the highest
Speaker 4: rates of cancer, we're going to be in the disabled population,
Speaker 4: those that are using intermittent catheters, because we were seeing
Speaker 4: a bladder cancer epidemic, and they were saying no, by far,
Speaker 4: the areas that we are seeing the highest rates of
Speaker 4: cancer are in these rural communities and those that are
Speaker 4: exposed to the glaveh of states and the pesticide and
Speaker 4: lack of water qualities.
Speaker 1: Brunt Off so crazy.
Speaker 4: We have really had rails a rate on here. We
Speaker 4: have really high levels of obesity, we have high levels
Speaker 4: of smoking, we have high levels of alcohol. But the
Speaker 4: real issue, if you're to look at the cancer map,
Speaker 4: it very closely mimics our water quality epidemic as well.
Speaker 4: I think they're directly coordinlated. And we're not doing enough
Speaker 4: about either of those two issues here in Iowa.
Speaker 1: So you talk to these voters who are losing stuff
Speaker 1: under Republicans and yet full maga. What's the cognitive dissonance there?
Speaker 4: It is interesting. I think it's twofold one. I think
Speaker 4: the Republican Party has done a good job of of
Speaker 4: diverting the attention to issues that are largely irrelevant, focusing
Speaker 4: on the culture war issues, and so people are showing
Speaker 4: up and that's what they're voting on, is they're voting
Speaker 4: on cultuur war issues. And then the other issue is
Speaker 4: that maybe we have not done a good enough job
Speaker 4: of ensuring that we are the party of the workers
Speaker 4: of the middle class, that we are the party that
Speaker 4: is going to ensure that you're going to have a
Speaker 4: livable wage, that you're going to have affordable housing, and
Speaker 4: that you're going to have affordable healthcare. One of the
Speaker 4: fascinating things for me and going out there and knocking
Speaker 4: basically every single door in my district twice now in
Speaker 4: a very red district. Is that the one singular issue
Speaker 4: that I found that was unanimously supported was that our
Speaker 4: healthcare system is fundamentally broken, that we're the only country
Speaker 4: that doesn't provide at least a baseline level of health
Speaker 4: care for its citizens. That we pay three times as
Speaker 4: much as any other nation on earth for our health care,
Speaker 4: but we get by far the worst outcomes. However, I
Speaker 4: found that it was a complete disconnect of when people
Speaker 4: are showing up to vote, them not understanding that the
Speaker 4: way that they're voting, both at the local level, certainly
Speaker 4: at the state level, and certainly at the federal level,
Speaker 4: that that was directly correlated to how their healthcout outcomes
Speaker 4: were coming out. So's you're right, there is a disconnect
Speaker 4: there and something that I tried to make a good
Speaker 4: job of saying, no, No, I am a prairie populist.
Speaker 4: This are the things that I'm focusing on, and that
Speaker 4: is driving down the cost and making sure that you
Speaker 4: have access to all these things so that you're not
Speaker 4: voting against your own self interest.
Speaker 1: So I like this idea of being a prairie populist brand,
Speaker 1: the Democratic brand, not super popular at this moment, How
Speaker 1: do you run against the brand but with the brand, because.
Speaker 4: We're internally transforming that brand, and I think by candidates
Speaker 4: like myself, that's how we're doing it is we're saying,
Speaker 4: this is what a democrat is, this is what an
Speaker 4: FDR JFK democrat is, this is what a Tom Harkin
Speaker 4: prairie populist democrat is. You asked me what a prairie
Speaker 4: populist is. It is someone that is fighting for the
Speaker 4: average worker. It is someone that is fighting for the
Speaker 4: middle class. It's someone that's fighting for working families, someone
Speaker 4: that's fighting for small farms. It's someone that's fighting for
Speaker 4: our public schools, that's fighting for affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 4: It's voting for affordable housing, which is really the essence
Speaker 4: of the American dream. That's fighting for a livable wage
Speaker 4: in a a in a minimum wage. That to me
Speaker 4: is what true populism is. I think that one of
Speaker 4: the big mistakes that with that that we have made
Speaker 4: is that too many people have sat back and said, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, there's there's just there's just too many ignorant
Speaker 4: people that are that are voting for the Trump administration
Speaker 4: or for you know, people like Joni Urns and Chuck Grassley.
Speaker 4: I have said that Donald Trump accurately addressed that the
Speaker 4: the status quo is not working for the middle class,
Speaker 4: that the middle class is being hollowed out, the system
Speaker 4: is rare, the system is rigged, absolutely, that the middle
Speaker 4: class is disappearing, that the people are legitimately struggling with
Speaker 4: keeping a roof above their head and keeping food on
Speaker 4: the table. The problem is that his policies of faux
Speaker 4: populism are not addressing it. They're actually just making it worse.
Speaker 4: And that we are now living into Americas the haves
Speaker 4: and the have nots. It is literally a second Gilded Age.
Speaker 4: It is the ninety nine versus the one. And that
Speaker 4: is what I have talked about, is I am a
Speaker 4: genuine populist, a true populist, someone that is not only
Speaker 4: accurately addressing that you're struggling, but I'm going to actually
Speaker 4: go up there and fight for you, not just for billionaires,
Speaker 4: not just for large corporations, not just for lobbyists, but
Speaker 4: fight for you. And I think that that is an
Speaker 4: important distinction. And I think that people see an authenticity
Speaker 4: and a genuineness to me and to my story. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm someone that I've won gold medals, I've accomplished my goals.
Speaker 4: I didn't need to get involved in this, certainly at
Speaker 4: the state level. I've made an enormous amount of sacrifice
Speaker 4: for this. But I understand in like a genuine patriotic
Speaker 4: sense that people are strong buggling, and they're struggling both
Speaker 4: on the economic side and on the healthcare side, and
Speaker 4: they need someone that understands that and empathizes with that,
Speaker 4: but also is going to work worth with the party
Speaker 4: and with the other party, work in a bipartisan way
Speaker 4: to provide solutions to their problems. That's what people want
Speaker 4: at their essence. They don't even care red versus Blue.
Speaker 4: They want someone that really cares and is actually going
Speaker 4: to do the hard work to provide solutions to the problems. That,
Speaker 4: to me is what a very populist is as well.
Speaker 1: How do you win in a place like Iowa that
Speaker 1: is so red, I mean like we've gotten our hopes
Speaker 1: up before, we really have, like Sarah Gillian, and so
Speaker 1: much heartbreak in this political system, And tell me how
Speaker 1: do you win in Iowa?
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you first at the Iowa level, and
Speaker 4: then about myself. One is I would say that Iowa,
Speaker 4: we are not a red state. We are a common
Speaker 4: sense state. We are a state that voted twice for
Speaker 4: Obama and now three times for Trump. We have more
Speaker 4: Obama Trump counties than any other state in the Union.
Speaker 4: We are a state that for thirty years we had
Speaker 4: my political hero, Senator Tom Harkin. We are someone as
Speaker 4: recent as Trump's first midterm, and I'm feeling a whole
Speaker 4: lot more energy now than even in Trump's first midterm,
Speaker 4: where we won three of the four congressional races and
Speaker 4: we nearly won all four of our congressional seats. We
Speaker 4: are as recent as twenty twenty two, so we're not
Speaker 4: talking about old history in old time that we were
Speaker 4: only one point five percent away from having three of
Speaker 4: our six statewide officials being Democrats. We are, at our essence,
Speaker 4: we are a common sense state. And I would say
Speaker 4: that I am a common sense Prairie populist. And you
Speaker 4: ask how we win, well, the greatest future, you know,
Speaker 4: indicator of future success is previous success. And I am
Speaker 4: the Democrat that has been winning out here in the
Speaker 4: reddest part of the state, outperforming by the largest margin
Speaker 4: of any Democrat, outperforming by fourteen points in what was
Speaker 4: a very very red Trump district. And I did that
Speaker 4: by what I told you. It's the right candidate, the
Speaker 4: right work ethic, and the right message you can win.
Speaker 4: And I believe that my story, my background, my resume,
Speaker 4: but even more so my grit, my determination, my work ethic,
Speaker 4: and arguably most importantly, the issues that I'm going to
Speaker 4: focus on the kitchen table issues. Doing something about the
Speaker 4: actual plights of Iowans of driving down cost a livable wage,
Speaker 4: affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals, doing something about our cancer rate,
Speaker 4: doing something about our water quality issues, supporting our public schools,
Speaker 4: supporting infrastructure, supporting family farms. This is what's going to
Speaker 4: win because islands are ready for change. I feel everywhere
Speaker 4: that I go, we're getting turnouts that we haven't seen.
Speaker 4: That's both in the rural areas in the urban areas.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you this that it is a scary
Speaker 4: time right now to be in rural Iowa, and Trump's
Speaker 4: chaotic tariffs are only making this situation dramatically worse. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of farmers that are terrified We're not
Speaker 4: moving any of our soybeans. Commodity prices are going down,
Speaker 4: and we are looking at the possibility of moving into
Speaker 4: a second farm crisis here, and people are tired of it.
Speaker 4: I hear over and over and over everywhere I go,
Speaker 4: but particularly in the rural communities. I voted for Trump.
Speaker 4: I voted for Ernest, but I did not vote for
Speaker 4: this naked corruption and certainly not to cut people's health
Speaker 4: care and food assistance to poor kids and disabled individuals
Speaker 4: just to give tax breaks to billionaires. And I think
Speaker 4: that we are common sence state and we are ready
Speaker 4: for change.
Speaker 1: So you really are hearing Trump regret.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent everywhere that I go, and we're seeing
Speaker 4: turnout in enthusiasm and engagement that we have just not
Speaker 4: seen certainly since Trump's first midterm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting because, like you clearly see, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in a coastal city, but I definitely see, you know,
Speaker 1: when I talk to people who are out there, they're saying,
Speaker 1: and I see these crowds, you know, these huge crowds.
Speaker 1: So what is the next move for you? What does
Speaker 1: it look like now? What's the sort of calendar forward?
Speaker 4: Hard work? It's going out and traveling the state it's
Speaker 4: long days. Like last weekend, I was in Cedar Rapids,
Speaker 4: I was in Iowa City, I did an event in Ames, Iowa.
Speaker 4: Then was back in Des Moines and I did event
Speaker 4: and very very rural Iowa, which we had an amazing turnout,
Speaker 4: about three hundred people out there in Nashville, Iowa. And
Speaker 4: so it's returning home at you know, one or two
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning and starting up and doing it
Speaker 4: again at eight o'clock the next day. It's really really
Speaker 4: hard work. We've got an east coast trip coming up.
Speaker 4: We're going to go out to Davenport, to Burlington and
Speaker 4: Dubuque and Waterloo. That's what it's going to take is we,
Speaker 4: as Iowans and as Iowa Democrats, we cannot anymore just
Speaker 4: rely on the urban areas turning out and voting for us.
Speaker 4: We've got to be willing to go out there to
Speaker 4: these red communities, to these small rural communities and preach
Speaker 4: this message of prairie populism and talk about the issues
Speaker 4: that actually matter. We got three point two million islands
Speaker 4: that need to have a roof above the head, that
Speaker 4: need to have a Liverpool wage, that need to have
Speaker 4: healthcare and talk to them about enough of the faux populism.
Speaker 4: We need to get back to genuine populism and that
Speaker 4: I'm someone that is practicing what I'm preaching. I'm not
Speaker 4: taking any corporate pack money. I'm going to be up
Speaker 4: there fighting for Iowa in Iowans, not just looking out
Speaker 4: for billionaires in large corps operations.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, Josh, Absolutely, my
Speaker 1: pleasure a moment second, Jesse Cannon, Hi, John fast So.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people don't realize this, but
Speaker 2: like non compete agreements really can for freelancers like me,
Speaker 2: it can be really nightmare things. We have to navigate
Speaker 2: get taken out of contracts all the time. And we
Speaker 2: were on a road where a lot of states were
Speaker 2: banning these and it looked like there would be a
Speaker 2: national band, but nope, Trump administration has come in and
Speaker 2: it's estimated that four hundred billion dollars in worker pay
Speaker 2: will be lost from this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, noncompete, anything that makes life better for workers.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not into we have just like you know,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. And the Supreme Court will let
Speaker 1: him do all of that stuff. The Supreme Court let
Speaker 1: him fire Rebecca Slaughter. Then, so basically Trump fire Rebecca
Speaker 1: Slaughter who was in the FTC. They brought her back,
Speaker 1: the court said it wasn't allowed, and then the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said, no, do whatever you want. So we see
Speaker 1: Donald Trump just destroying these government institutions and the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court saying he's fine to do it. The other thing
Speaker 1: that just to add for a moment of fucker, because
Speaker 1: I think it really is something that we should is
Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court said that ICE can detain Americans
Speaker 1: based on race. By the way, they said, you can't
Speaker 1: allow people to get into college based on race, but
Speaker 1: you absolutely can detain people based on race. This is
Speaker 1: pretty wild stuff. And it also means that ICE will
Speaker 1: now have open season on Latino's. Latino voters, some of
Speaker 1: whom voted for Trump, now have less freedom and if
Speaker 1: you look a certain way, you are now less free
Speaker 1: than other people in this country. Just a mind blowing
Speaker 1: thing for the Supreme Court to do. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.