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 Governor Pritzker says that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: essentially just declared war on the city of Chicago. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today. Notice the zone.
Speaker 1: Evan McMorris, Santorro stops by to talk Trump going to
Speaker 1: war on an American city. Then we'll talk to doctor
Speaker 1: Peter Hotez and Michael E. Mann about their new book
Speaker 1: Science under Siege, how to fight the five most powerful
Speaker 1: forces that throughout in our world. But first we have
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 2: Ollie.
Speaker 3: We used to do a podcast together called The New Abnormal,
Speaker 3: and things are feeling really fucking abnormal.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to take a minute here to talk
Speaker 1: about this moment we're in because I think it's really
Speaker 1: really important. The Administration has hit a boat in international
Speaker 1: waters outside of the coast of Venezuela. They say the
Speaker 1: boat is drug dealers. We don't know yet. It may be,
Speaker 1: it may not be. It tends to be that. The
Speaker 1: rules are that unless you're in war, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to kill boatloads of people, whether or not they are
Speaker 1: drug dealers. So this is a real abandonment of due process,
Speaker 1: which is one of the things that makes America great
Speaker 1: and keeps us all safe. Then we have Donald Trump
Speaker 1: this morning musing about going into Chicago because he wants
Speaker 1: to go to war with the city. Are using a
Speaker 1: lot of excuses, but the reality is that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It is at all points a real assault on our democracy,
Speaker 1: an assault on the way we've known. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have never lived in a time in this country where
Speaker 1: a political party is so out of balance, where Republicans
Speaker 1: are not running checks and balances on their own guy,
Speaker 1: where the president is completely unfettered and feels he can
Speaker 1: do whatever he wants and behaves basically like a monarch.
Speaker 1: And it's just really scary. And so I understand that
Speaker 1: when we're looking at the news and we're talking about
Speaker 1: what's happening and want listeners to understand that we do
Speaker 1: see how this is not how any of this is
Speaker 1: supposed to work. That we have three branches of government.
Speaker 1: The Congress is supposed to run a check on the executive.
Speaker 1: The executive is supposed to be checked by both Congress
Speaker 1: and the courts. And what's happening right now with the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court and the tank for Trump, and an executive
Speaker 1: branch that seems hell bent on the unitary executive theory
Speaker 1: a kind of right. There have been conservative scholars who
Speaker 1: have created a framework for Donald Trump to be a monarch,
Speaker 1: and that is what we're looking at right now. And
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court is stacked with people who are absolutely
Speaker 1: committed to letting Donald Trump rule this country in a
Speaker 1: way we have never seen. The Founders were scared of
Speaker 1: a monarch. The conservative legal system is now in a
Speaker 1: place to create one, and they have been working towards this,
Speaker 1: and so every Supreme Court decision really matters. If Trump
Speaker 1: loses on tariffs, that's a very good thing, even though
Speaker 1: the people challenging him are other Republicans. And we just
Speaker 1: have to hope and that there will be that there
Speaker 1: will be a few Republicans who will stand up to Trump,
Speaker 1: that there will be some people on the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: who realize how slippery this slope we're on is. Look,
Speaker 1: we're in that squishy middle between what was normal American
Speaker 1: democracy for so many years and what is this sort
Speaker 1: of middle ground that gets us to authoritarianism. And I
Speaker 1: really do hope that there are enough brave people to
Speaker 1: stand up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 3: The good news is is it We always worried that
Speaker 3: if we got to these moments, that the people wouldn't
Speaker 3: even see it. And I think that that was my
Speaker 3: great fear when Trump was reelected. But according to some
Speaker 3: polling that you and I were just looking at, the
Speaker 3: people are really seeing this shit for what it is
Speaker 3: and they're not happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think, look the tennis The reason the
Speaker 1: Tennis Association said, like, don't show the booing, and the
Speaker 1: reason that Donald Trump is so set to rig the
Speaker 1: midterms is because they understand. They get it. They know
Speaker 1: what they're doing isn't popular. And you know, sixty five
Speaker 1: percent of Americans seeing that Trump is making things more expensive,
Speaker 1: they get it. They know we're really seeing a moment
Speaker 1: where the American people know what's happening. The elites, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, the business leaders who are going to
Speaker 1: the White House and telling mister Trump what a genius
Speaker 1: he is in order to get tariff cut ats, they
Speaker 1: may not get it.
Speaker 3: Breaking land speed records, saying thank you in two minutes
Speaker 3: a million times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean, look, it's not potocracy. They have
Speaker 1: to please the autocat but they really don't. And the
Speaker 1: fact that they're all doing this, and by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to pause for a second.
Speaker 1: If those billionaires had all said no, that they weren't
Speaker 1: going to go to the White House, you know what
Speaker 1: would have happened. Yeah, he would have caved on the tariffs. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have caved on all the tariffs. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's not going to go to war with every tech bro.
Speaker 1: You know, if these wealthy people would get together and
Speaker 1: all be brave together, they'll be fine. One by one
Speaker 1: they can get ticked off, but if everyone gets together
Speaker 1: and is actually brave together, they would be fine. But
Speaker 1: that's not what's happening.
Speaker 3: No, speaking of new levels of depravity, many people are
Speaker 3: very alarmed with just Dance Vance's comments on Rand Paul
Speaker 3: tweet that blasted our policy of bombing a drug quote
Speaker 3: unquote drug vessel. Since we don't know, there's been an
Speaker 3: interesting reaction to this. Molly, what are you see in here?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This is so very very jd Vance. One of
Speaker 1: the things jd Vance does is he does trump Ism
Speaker 1: harder than Trump. It's interesting because it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Trump loves a convert and that's what this is, right,
Speaker 1: a convert who is doing trump Ism harder than Trump.
Speaker 1: So basically here's what happens. Rand Paul and the very
Speaker 1: few Republicans who have not become huge cowards are weirdly
Speaker 1: the Libertarians. And again, I think it's important to remember
Speaker 1: my friend Mondair Jones had a really good tweet about this,
Speaker 1: because I think this is a really important part of
Speaker 1: this story, which is that Rand Paul really does not
Speaker 1: occupy the moral high ground like this is what monde
Speaker 1: Are tweeted. Difficult to describe how dark this period in
Speaker 1: American politics must be for even Rand Paul, who single
Speaker 1: handedly blocked federal anti lynching legislation for years, to have
Speaker 1: to get on this app and incredulously ask the Vice
Speaker 1: President whether he ever read to kill a mocking bird. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I really do think it's important to realize that, like,
Speaker 1: none of these people are heroes, but Rand Paul does
Speaker 1: in fact understand due process. First of all, and again,
Speaker 1: nobody knows if it's a drug vessel, so maybe it is,
Speaker 1: maybe it isn't as the highest and best use of
Speaker 1: our military slamming this sentiment as despicable and thoughtless, but
Speaker 1: it's also a breach of international protocol, like if another
Speaker 1: country blew up a ship in our waters, say they
Speaker 1: went and blew up a ship in the Gulf of America.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that one. By the way, if all the
Speaker 1: members of the press had said we're going to go
Speaker 1: with the Associated Press when the Associated Press was banned
Speaker 1: from the White House, then Trump would have had to
Speaker 1: have let them back in. I mean, this is what
Speaker 1: has happened, is like every point people have gone along
Speaker 1: to get along, and they fucked themselves and everyone else.
Speaker 3: One of the things I think about a lot is
Speaker 3: in union culture, the word solidarity is the most important word.
Speaker 3: And this is a time that we need solidarity between
Speaker 3: the press and solidarity against this regime.
Speaker 1: Yeah so again, rand Paul jd Vance said he doesn't care.
Speaker 1: Then jd Vance and Crassenstein got into it, which is,
Speaker 1: by the way, if anyone remembers from season one of
Speaker 1: this disaster, the Crassenstein's are these Twitter guys who are
Speaker 1: very involved in all sorts of problems.
Speaker 3: They were thrown off Twitter famously for doing inauthentic behavior
Speaker 3: and using body coast arms Yeah yeah, to praise their
Speaker 3: own tweets. Yeah yeah, real, real cool.
Speaker 1: Stuff, and also maybe other stuff. None of it's good.
Speaker 1: So but they're very liberal, or they're sort of liberal,
Speaker 1: or they're whatever. Anyway, they push back to it, and
Speaker 1: Jadvans is like, killing cartel members who poison our fellow
Speaker 1: citizens is the highest and best use of our military.
Speaker 1: Brian Krassenstein says killing civilians of another nation who are
Speaker 1: civilians without any due process is called a war crime.
Speaker 1: Now I would add that it's not actually a war,
Speaker 1: so it's actually a lot worse because if you declare war,
Speaker 1: there are different rules. But if you do not declare war,
Speaker 1: you're just doing even sort of worse stuff. Jdevans writes back,
Speaker 1: I don't give a shit what you call it. So
Speaker 1: this is why Trump loves a convert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I get really really depressed at the subject.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are like, oh, it's the find out,
Speaker 3: but this is a little too much find out for
Speaker 3: me personally. Trump's Dow law will limit payments to hospitals
Speaker 3: that treat low income patients, and the changes to Medicaid
Speaker 3: are going to be extremely harmful to rural hospitals.
Speaker 2: And this could be a lot of.
Speaker 3: People who are going to die from this because the
Speaker 3: hospital is going to be too far away when hospitals,
Speaker 3: because we're already seeing this in the South that a
Speaker 3: bunch of hospitals that were destroyed in the flooding are
Speaker 3: making it so it's very hard for people to get
Speaker 3: care in time.
Speaker 2: It's really really awful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they're going to limit payments to hospitals that
Speaker 1: treat low incompatience. This is Trump voters, basically, critics Warren.
Speaker 1: The change to Medicaid will be particularly harmful to rural
Speaker 1: hospitals struggling stay afloat. Now, they did this voodoo thing
Speaker 1: with the numbers where they cut one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: billion dollars to rural hospitals. And then you had RFK
Speaker 1: Junior last week talking to Bernie Sanders and he said,
Speaker 1: we've done fifty billion dollars, so we've saved rural hospitals.
Speaker 1: But what they've done is they've restored a little bit
Speaker 1: of the money, so they're still out one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1: This is going to be the thing that is going
Speaker 1: to close rural hospitals and a lot of these towns
Speaker 1: the only employer is the hospital or it's the largest employer,
Speaker 1: so you'll have a rural hospital you'll have. The Mississippi
Speaker 1: Hospital Association says expects Mississippi to get at least so
Speaker 1: it was going to get five hundred million over the
Speaker 1: next five years. I mean, this is just going to
Speaker 1: close all these hospitals and all these people are going
Speaker 1: to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of things that aren't good, Trump didn't notify
Speaker 3: Congress about a high Stake seal mission, and it seems
Speaker 3: that that breach is a protocol with Congress, and this
Speaker 3: could be a sticking point for mister Trump, according to
Speaker 3: The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, it's like Republicans will probably go
Speaker 1: along with it because they don't care. And I think
Speaker 1: like one of the things I think about, like during
Speaker 1: the RFK hearing, a lot of these Republicans gave RFK
Speaker 1: a hard time. But they could really put the sand
Speaker 1: in the gears. They could stop the government from working,
Speaker 1: They could do all sorts of things to get RFK out.
Speaker 1: They could say that RFK must resign. And they didn't
Speaker 1: do any of that. They just you know, said that
Speaker 1: they didn't have his full confidence. I mean, like, until
Speaker 1: Republicans do any kind of oversight, we're just going to
Speaker 1: be in free fall here. But the seal story is
Speaker 1: interesting because it's from Trump's first administration. So it means
Speaker 1: that even when they were pretending to follow the law,
Speaker 1: they weren't, which I think is probably pretty important and relevant. Also,
Speaker 1: they killed all these fishermen, They shot and killed everyone
Speaker 1: aboard the vessel. They turned out to be unarmed civilians.
Speaker 1: We didn't learn about it for six years, probably not
Speaker 1: a great sign. And the whole idea was that we're
Speaker 1: doing it because of why because we're going to war
Speaker 1: with North Korea. No, because they wanted to do some
Speaker 1: listening device. I mean, I don't know. We're just seeing
Speaker 1: so much carnage from this administration, even carnage we didn't
Speaker 1: even know about.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Evan mc morris Santorro is a reporter at Notice. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Evan, so good to be here again. As always, thinks
Speaker 2: are not going great.
Speaker 4: Well, I you know, it's it's a comparative issue, Like
Speaker 4: I mean, I would say that August there was a
Speaker 4: lot more fun because I was on vacation at some
Speaker 4: points and things were quiet. And now we're in September
Speaker 4: and so it just sort of is generally worse because
Speaker 4: things are very busy and crazy.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, we're into some.
Speaker 4: Actual you know, legislating and lawmaking and fighting and campaigning
Speaker 4: all sorts of stuff. So it's worse because it's busier
Speaker 4: and things are actually happening, but also, you know, things
Speaker 4: are happening, so that can be good, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's sort of like how you
Speaker 2: decide to look at it.
Speaker 1: Because Donald Trump is saying that he's going to declare
Speaker 1: war with the city of Chicago. So Trump had this
Speaker 1: meme that was like, I love the smell of deportation
Speaker 1: in the morning, right, mean, to trigger the libs. I
Speaker 1: think one of the big fallacies of the last decade
Speaker 1: and dealing with Trump is that two things can be true.
Speaker 1: He wants to trigger the libs and he also wants
Speaker 1: to end on norms and institution.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's exactly right. I mean, you know, exactly right.
Speaker 4: I mean the old quote, right was take him seriously
Speaker 4: but not literally.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: That was the original thing that you know, came now
Speaker 4: when he first ran and this idea that he's the
Speaker 4: people who are at his rallies are having a good
Speaker 4: time termed of playing along. Selena's and Helena Zita yeah,
Speaker 4: go on, the reality of the situation is that now
Speaker 4: you should take him serious and literally.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a guy who.
Speaker 4: Created something called the Department of War and is now
Speaker 4: talking about war.
Speaker 1: So like it on Chicago, but of the sort of
Speaker 1: bad stuff. Over the weekend, there was him deciding he's
Speaker 1: going to declare war on Chicago, fresh off of his
Speaker 1: administration losing you know, declaring war on Los Angeles basically
Speaker 1: in last season, and then that war was the courts
Speaker 1: were like, no, no, you can't actually do that because
Speaker 1: we have this thing called the Pasa Coma Tatis Act, right,
Speaker 1: and then he was like, oh, okay, I lost in court,
Speaker 1: so I planned to invade Chicago.
Speaker 4: In fact, the judge actually went even farther than saying,
Speaker 4: you can't do this because we have Passekama tatis. You know,
Speaker 4: the judge didn't even say and you should know. The
Speaker 4: judge says, you do know that we have it, and
Speaker 4: you willfully ignored it. I mean, it was a very
Speaker 4: strong attack on this president's attempt to use federal troops
Speaker 4: as law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: But this whole argument that's going on, it's this idea,
Speaker 4: this is you know, it's this base play that the
Speaker 4: idea is he's just going to keep trying to push
Speaker 4: the out. But now again we get into that weird
Speaker 4: moment with Trump where says I'm going to do it.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying when I'm going to do it. I'm
Speaker 4: just saying I am going to do it. I'm not
Speaker 4: saying what it's going to be able to say I'm
Speaker 4: going to do it. You know, there's some reports about
Speaker 4: him engaging with a Navy base up there to base
Speaker 4: ice operations out of We have seen a lot of
Speaker 4: moments where the courts have come in and sort of
Speaker 4: like pushed this administration out of the way, and they
Speaker 4: have like tried to ignore them but kind of listen
Speaker 4: to them and continue to push forward and can push forward.
Speaker 4: And once again, this is one of the circumstances in
Speaker 4: which the US Supreme Court is going to have to
Speaker 4: eventually weigh in and make a decision on this one
Speaker 4: way or another right because of course, the ruling in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles, thanks to a previous Supreme Court ruling, you know,
Speaker 4: in part, only applies to Los Angeles. So Trump can
Speaker 4: try to do what he did in Los Angeles in
Speaker 4: another city and you have to then go ahead and
Speaker 4: sue him again in that city. So legally it's very messy.
Speaker 4: But as you say, there's no indication here that this
Speaker 4: administration is at all, it isn't slowing down in this present.
Speaker 2: In fact, they're ramping it up, Wisha. You know, with
Speaker 2: Los Angeles it was like.
Speaker 4: We were there to protect these law enforcement officers who
Speaker 4: were enforcing this stuff.
Speaker 2: With DC, it was okay in DC, lookers, a crime
Speaker 2: is out of control. We're coming here to get rid
Speaker 2: of the crime.
Speaker 4: With Chicago, it's like Chicago is an enemy of us.
Speaker 4: We have to go to war with their election defessionals.
Speaker 1: Because we don't like their governor because he's richer than
Speaker 1: Trump is, I mean really and a liberal. I mean
Speaker 1: there's a lot of and Obama's from there. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not what my favorite part of the whole story
Speaker 1: is the administration says we are going into Chicago because
Speaker 1: of immigration, and Donald Trump says We're going into Chicago
Speaker 1: because of crime.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: And also, I mean, look, I think that you know,
Speaker 4: this is one of those things where we live in
Speaker 4: a separate Americas when it comes to narratives, right, and
Speaker 4: if you live in one America, you are looking at
Speaker 4: a city that went through a really rough time in
Speaker 4: the pandemic and then with this huge migrant surge like
Speaker 4: a lot of Americans and these did and is releasing
Speaker 4: its crime drop a great deal. If you're living in
Speaker 4: a different America, you have watched this city elect an
Speaker 4: extremely left wing mayor, and the belief is that this
Speaker 4: is a say that is completely out of control crime
Speaker 4: wise and has to be you know, taken by force
Speaker 4: and ramped to the ground. The question, of course comes,
Speaker 4: where is the middle of that right and where do
Speaker 4: those moderate voters or those independent voters, how do they
Speaker 4: look at this stuff? And you know, last time you
Speaker 4: and I talked, we talked a bit about how, like
Speaker 4: some of these podcasts, bros like Tim Dillon, etc. Had
Speaker 4: started to say, Hey, this looks a lot like the
Speaker 4: kind of stuff that the real weirdos like Alex Jones,
Speaker 4: you know, have been saying for years be scared of.
Speaker 4: And now as it ramps up, we'll see if they
Speaker 4: go along with it or don't. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 4: a very interesting moment for him politically, but it really is,
Speaker 4: I would imagine, pretty terrifying if you are a person.
Speaker 2: Who lives in Chicago, because you don't know what you're
Speaker 2: gonna do.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important to like, none of this
Speaker 1: is okay, Like no other president would do this. It's
Speaker 1: not okay. It's against the Constitution and against the law,
Speaker 1: which is why he keeps losing a court. So even
Speaker 1: if the political calculus, like we're looking at the political calculus,
Speaker 1: which is certainly important, the larger like American democracy story,
Speaker 1: which is that this is unprecedented, and so we have
Speaker 1: opened the door if Donald Trump, if his presidency ends,
Speaker 1: which we assume it will at some point, we are
Speaker 1: now in uncharted territories. Right. That's then the question of
Speaker 1: like when you see stuff like this, I know it's
Speaker 1: out of fashion to say like, oh my god, because
Speaker 1: part of the reason he does it is to say,
Speaker 1: oh my god. But it is truly like uncharted territory.
Speaker 4: Well, I think oh my god is a very important
Speaker 4: aspect of it. I Mean, the thing is, I think
Speaker 4: what you're talking about is also politics too.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I interviewed Catherine Cortez Mastow, the senator out of Nevada,
Speaker 4: the other day, and we're talking about a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff that's going on right this this is a month
Speaker 4: about spending bills and a month you know about you know,
Speaker 4: all the sort of leveraging the power of the purse,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And Cortes Masto is a person who wants
Speaker 4: to be She's a Democrat who wants to find a
Speaker 4: middle path, you know, a way where we can get
Speaker 4: back to compromise and sort of traditional order. The kind
Speaker 4: of democrat a lot of left wing democrats.
Speaker 2: Don't like a lot. This is what she's trying to do.
Speaker 2: And the thing is she said this amazing thing to me.
Speaker 4: Where she was like the weirdest thing for me about this,
Speaker 4: you know, she says is there are all these Republicans
Speaker 4: in this entire branch of government and they're not doing
Speaker 4: anything about it. This, I mean, our system is designed
Speaker 4: with a check and balance system. The most amazing thing
Speaker 4: is Trump, who has all this power, actually has an
Speaker 4: equal check in the legislative branch. Right, and so the
Speaker 4: idea of two branches of government sort of being taken.
Speaker 2: This is the part that's very, very crazy. Right.
Speaker 4: We've had presidents before who have a lot of delusions
Speaker 4: of grandeur, and we're to try a bunch of stuff
Speaker 4: that they are not legally allowed to do.
Speaker 2: Other branches come in and smack them down.
Speaker 4: Right now, you have a situation where this president wants
Speaker 4: to do stuff, the legislative branch appears to so far
Speaker 4: have zero interest in stopping or doing anything about it,
Speaker 4: which leads it up to this judicial branch. And you know,
Speaker 4: we've been seeing sort of the limits of the power
Speaker 4: of that, and also we've been seeing both the legislative
Speaker 4: branch and the executive branch pushing against those limits really
Speaker 4: really hard, because they are.
Speaker 2: Kind of united.
Speaker 4: And that is the part that is kind of a
Speaker 4: political question, because it's that legislative branch, of course, that
Speaker 4: voters are going to be asked to weigh in on
Speaker 4: next year. And so while Trump is operating in the
Speaker 4: sort of capacity of where I am the second term president,
Speaker 4: I can nothing can happen to me. I can do
Speaker 4: whatever I want. He is dragging along hundreds of people
Speaker 4: for whom they will have to answer for this. And
Speaker 4: that's why, to me, the question always is what will
Speaker 4: happen when that answering has to happen. Will people go
Speaker 4: along with it? We will they be upset? We don't
Speaker 4: totally know yet, but it is an oh my god moment.
Speaker 4: Of course, it's a oh my god moment. But it
Speaker 4: also put them over the same.
Speaker 1: Time, right, And we can see the polling, which is
Speaker 1: not great though he's always doesen't polls so well. Though
Speaker 1: he's underwater on issues which he used to never be
Speaker 1: underwater on. I'm thinking about things like immigration and the economy.
Speaker 1: And then you seeing these polls that showed that like
Speaker 1: sixty three percent of Americans believe Trump is making things
Speaker 1: more expensive. That's crazy. I mean, that's even Trump's people
Speaker 1: are saying that he's making things more expensive.
Speaker 4: Well, this is a central issue with this Trump second term,
Speaker 4: which is that when they were elected, the big conversation was,
Speaker 4: oh wow, these these Trumps. This maga is so much
Speaker 4: more disciplined and politically organized than the previous one, and
Speaker 4: they really know what they're doing and they're not gonna
Speaker 4: be all scattershot and all over the map.
Speaker 2: And the reality is some.
Speaker 4: Of these really big, hard problems that like Biden couldn't
Speaker 4: figure a way out of, for example, rising prices, et cetera,
Speaker 4: this administration is both exacerbating with its policies and also.
Speaker 2: Can't figure out a way out of. Politically, we are
Speaker 2: really seeing.
Speaker 4: As time goes on a kind of flopping around in
Speaker 4: the bottom of the boat when it comes to this administration,
Speaker 4: that was not seen in the opening months, right, that
Speaker 4: went back when they oh, my god, these guys are magic.
Speaker 2: They can do anything.
Speaker 4: No one can stop to look at the you know,
Speaker 4: they broadly rewrite all of US policy with the stroke
Speaker 4: of a pen, all this kind of stuff. But now
Speaker 4: we are seeing a thing in which, you know, these
Speaker 4: judges are smacking them down. These prices are changing. And
Speaker 4: as we have learned many times before, right, this immigration
Speaker 4: policy that they're doing is not exactly what they promised.
Speaker 2: You know, they promised a lot of different stuff.
Speaker 4: The President did say a number of occasions, we're gonna
Speaker 4: get twenty million people out of this country.
Speaker 2: They're going to go, they have to go.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously this is that would suggest the maxi
Speaker 4: importation scheme. But we also know that when they when
Speaker 4: they tried to do some of this harsher stuff in
Speaker 4: the first administration, it caused a public blowback. And I
Speaker 4: think that this is the thing now where they have
Speaker 4: yet to manage the politics of America being more compassionate
Speaker 4: about this than maybe they think that they are, and
Speaker 4: maybe more cognitive of how it actually works me a
Speaker 4: commedy than they think that they are. And so now
Speaker 4: you're seeing a situation now where they're kind of they
Speaker 4: have not yet solved that political problem either. To my eye,
Speaker 4: you were looking at an administration that looks like a
Speaker 4: lot of other ones when it comes to this period
Speaker 4: of time, which is that the sort of end of
Speaker 4: the part where it's only about Trump is sort of
Speaker 4: starting to end. You know, when all we're talking about
Speaker 4: is the last election, and now we're going to start
Speaker 4: talking about the next election. And that is when people
Speaker 4: start to worry about where they're standing and who they're
Speaker 4: standing next to. And I don't know that Trump has
Speaker 4: completely made it that everybody wants to stand next to
Speaker 4: him right now, like a lot of incoming presidents, don't
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: Right Well, also they're booing him, by the way, that
Speaker 1: was genius said that. I'm not sure whose order it was.
Speaker 1: Don't show the boo wang when Trump.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, the UST So the US right put out
Speaker 4: a memo telling people at the US broadcasts at the
Speaker 4: US Open not to show any disruption or booing of
Speaker 4: the president at the US Open.
Speaker 1: I say, an effect in action, right.
Speaker 2: That's a interesting way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: Okay, don't videotape my enormous house. I don't want anyone
Speaker 1: to see it, Okay, Like, please don't do any coverage
Speaker 1: of my private jet ride. I mean it's just like so,
Speaker 1: of course every video on my social media feed is
Speaker 1: people booing Trump at that tennis match.
Speaker 2: And you don't think it's more mixed than that Mali
Speaker 2: of maybe that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know what they're more, all right,
Speaker 1: So the first one is that it's sort of mixed,
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot of people there, but there
Speaker 1: are now more and more and more. The other thing
Speaker 1: is like these people had to wait for hours and
Speaker 1: hours for the mags, because if you're going to do
Speaker 1: a thing with Trump, they make sure you don't have
Speaker 1: a gun. I mean, any president and I have had
Speaker 1: to wait for mags. So they are now mad too
Speaker 1: because they've had to wait much longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean some of them missed the event or
Speaker 2: missed the beginning of the banker. They were stuck outside
Speaker 2: trying to get in, like you could.
Speaker 1: Get boot for that. That's a nonpartisan thing, but I
Speaker 1: do think that obviously these are people who are worried
Speaker 1: about his approval rating. And they're worried about what's going on.
Speaker 1: I want to get to this study because Jesse is
Speaker 1: obsessed with this study. Producer, Jesse desperately wants you to
Speaker 1: talk about this study. To talk about this study.
Speaker 2: Well, look, it's the.
Speaker 4: Kind of thing that I really nerd out about Molly,
Speaker 4: which would as you know, and I'm sure by now
Speaker 4: people who listen to your show. No, I am a
Speaker 4: pretty big nerve it comes this stuff and like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I was talking to strategies not long ago. This is
Speaker 4: a great month to talk about this study actually about
Speaker 4: sort of this thing that happens in political language where
Speaker 4: the party that people like it seems like, why can't
Speaker 4: they say anything in a normal way, Why can't they
Speaker 4: talk in a way where they look what's going on?
Speaker 4: Why is it that they sound so ridiculous? Well, this
Speaker 4: there's a study in Comparative Politics, this you know, this
Speaker 4: this journal that does this kind of nerdy stuff, and
Speaker 4: they analyze twenty five years of speeches by Danish members
Speaker 4: of parliament and government ministers. Okay, so they got one
Speaker 4: hundred and like more than a million speeches, right, and
Speaker 4: they found this thing that happened that when people were
Speaker 4: getting elected while they're on their way to getting elected,
Speaker 4: people understood what they were talking about.
Speaker 2: They spoken this very.
Speaker 4: Clean and easy to understand way. People knew what they
Speaker 4: were saying, and once they got elected, they all of
Speaker 4: a sudden started using these like rarer words and longer sences.
Speaker 4: They started talking about all this less politically relevant stuff
Speaker 4: like about you know, regulation, you know, there's you know,
Speaker 4: there's everything back of that.
Speaker 2: You know that Biden administration would kind of tell you that, look,
Speaker 2: the economy is really good.
Speaker 4: Look at this graph for example, right, And it was like,
Speaker 4: why are you This is insane?
Speaker 2: Why are you saying this? Everybody thinks it's horrible. Why
Speaker 2: are you pointing at this chart?
Speaker 4: Well, it turned out this is like a thing alast
Speaker 4: according to the study, right, that that happens across politics.
Speaker 4: And the most amazing part of it, right is it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter what party you were in or what political
Speaker 4: ideology you came from, But everybody sort of went into
Speaker 4: this thing where they got elected and they sort of
Speaker 4: got entered this hive mind of being indecipherable, and then
Speaker 4: as soon as they would leave, they started sounding normal again.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So the authors started trying to figure out how this
Speaker 4: worked and they found that it is like adding professional
Speaker 4: staff in to help these lawmakers not do this just
Speaker 4: makes it significantly worse. Right, professional staff in Denmark tended
Speaker 4: to be oriented towards legal precision, nuance and policy accuracy,
Speaker 4: not policy not public understanding. They push minister's rhetoric towards
Speaker 4: bureaucratic ease.
Speaker 2: What they need help with is making complex things simple.
Speaker 4: Right, So you're the idea of your big professional class
Speaker 4: that's not helping you, right, Right. Then the thing is
Speaker 4: who does the best from this, right is basically all
Speaker 4: of these populists that can sort of come in and
Speaker 4: use this out what seems I got to our language,
Speaker 4: it's actually very normal language. And I think this is
Speaker 4: a really important thing to think about in this month
Speaker 4: that we are in because one of the things that's
Speaker 4: about to happen are Democrats and Republicans, but specifically Democrats
Speaker 4: are going to be pushed very hard by their base
Speaker 4: to fight over these spending bills. Right, this idea of
Speaker 4: like shut the government down, don't shut the government down. Right.
Speaker 2: And I've done a lot of reporting about this.
Speaker 4: Actually, I have reporting coming out or are reporting on
Speaker 4: regularly coming out about this in the notice newsletter about
Speaker 4: everybody's been getting together since March when the Democrats caved
Speaker 4: and caved so embarrassingly to Trump about what are they
Speaker 4: supposed to do in September with this spending bill now
Speaker 4: and across the entire ideology they have decided what they
Speaker 4: need to do is they need to say we're going
Speaker 4: to draw aligne that says we want you to restore
Speaker 4: health care cuts and if you don't, we're going to
Speaker 4: push you. You know, we're going to in our heels
Speaker 4: and maybe the government shuts down over that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: The idea is trying to pull this conversation back from
Speaker 4: all this sort of weird bureaucratic stuff and some of
Speaker 4: the people can put their hands on So we'll see
Speaker 4: if it actually happens. But as you kind of like
Speaker 4: not to be synick about it, but I just just
Speaker 4: sort of see it not happen. Like think back to
Speaker 4: his study and think about the fact that like it
Speaker 4: is like one of the most difficult things for politicians
Speaker 4: to do, which is actually to do this thing that
Speaker 4: they that they need to do right now, which is
Speaker 4: take a very complicated thing like a must pass spending bill.
Speaker 4: The one piece of leverage of Democrats have in this
Speaker 4: trifecta and use it to score strong political points. It's very,
Speaker 4: very hard for them to do it. It's been studied in Denmark,
Speaker 4: you know, and as you watch it, as you watch
Speaker 4: this happen, I want you think back of this study
Speaker 4: and think back to the fact of just like how
Speaker 4: like anathema it is to how their brains operate. This's
Speaker 4: one of those INDIVI It just really made me very
Speaker 4: excited when I first read this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean I think it's a good point.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I was texting with a member this
Speaker 1: weekend and I was saying, why does Jeffries speak in
Speaker 1: such a deeply hard to relate to way when he
Speaker 1: is like, clearly pretty smart guy, And they were like
Speaker 1: the consultant class capture.
Speaker 4: I mean, look at the mom Donni thing in New York.
Speaker 4: I mean, Jeffres is a great example. I mean this
Speaker 4: mom Donnie guy is like makes you cheaper and making
Speaker 4: sure to afford rent and also like I don't like
Speaker 4: this sleep, you know, I don't like this stuff. We
Speaker 4: don't on in isreal or right, And we have seen
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party continually find it as they try to
Speaker 4: find some way to say both nothing and everything about
Speaker 4: these kinds of topics that they are losing raft and
Speaker 4: faith from their base.
Speaker 1: I want a party that's as hard on Donald Trump
Speaker 1: as it is on Mondami. I mean, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are we doing here? He won, he won the primary.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. And by the way, the argument
Speaker 1: when you talk to people about it, because it's all
Speaker 1: any Welsey and your people talk about, is that he's
Speaker 1: an anti Semite. And I say, why is he an
Speaker 1: anti Semite? And then the closest they can get is
Speaker 1: he's Muslim, which does not make you an anti Semite,
Speaker 1: It just makes you in a different religion.
Speaker 4: I mean, we talk about Jerry Nadler, right, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, he's pretty strong.
Speaker 2: I'm dying supporder.
Speaker 4: I think this is one of the situations that you're
Speaker 4: talking about right now, which is exactly why, despite the
Speaker 4: fact that Trump is in this difficult position where he
Speaker 4: is saying this stuff that is not particularly helpful to
Speaker 4: the Republican Party, right, Declaring war in Chicago is not
Speaker 4: particularly helpful when it comes to.
Speaker 2: Talking to you know, the moderate or independent voter.
Speaker 4: Right, he's talking about, you know, prices are going up,
Speaker 4: not particularly helpful.
Speaker 2: If you're a Republicans. But it's this other stuff.
Speaker 4: I see moments like this that you're talking about with
Speaker 4: the opposition party that really doesn't know what it believes
Speaker 4: when it comes to Maybe it's most exciting in terms
Speaker 4: of like public interest, new voice in a long time,
Speaker 4: with its you know, huge support that brushes away you know,
Speaker 4: all these Democrats that room figures a party that can't
Speaker 4: figure out what to do with this. This is why people,
Speaker 4: you know, continue to wonder, people like me who watch
Speaker 4: this stuff. You know, I'm not going to round here
Speaker 4: and say, hey, Democrats are going to do great. Democrats
Speaker 4: are in a great position here because Democrats don't kind
Speaker 4: of like really know what position they're in, Like you.
Speaker 2: Don't know who you're really talking to alf the time?
Speaker 2: Is that sure?
Speaker 4: But I think what this is, I think this is
Speaker 4: sort of what this whole moment is really about. Is
Speaker 4: that the fact is Trump is come giving them all
Speaker 4: their rope that they need. But the question is do
Speaker 4: Democrats know which way to tug on it if they
Speaker 4: want it? You know, is it okay to touch with
Speaker 4: get It's like, is it is this rope like you're
Speaker 4: ethically sourced enough or is it is rope to like
Speaker 4: go or like what do we get? Like the whole
Speaker 4: thing is just kind of like this party is still
Speaker 4: in this incredible amount of internal tumult despite the fact
Speaker 4: that like their they're leading, enemy is in charge and
Speaker 4: the clearing war on you know, Blue Cities, and it's
Speaker 4: a very it's a very strange moment to see. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you're abundant. It's your job is to tell
Speaker 4: us why that's happening. I can tell you that it
Speaker 4: is happening, and I don't understand what to say about
Speaker 4: it to you perfectly are.
Speaker 1: And now we're at a time.
Speaker 2: Thank you evan okay.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peter Hotez is the dean of Baylor College of
Speaker 1: Medicines National School of Tropical Medicine.
Speaker 5: Michael E.
Speaker 1: Mann is the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability
Speaker 1: and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, and they
Speaker 1: both are the authors of Science under Siege. How to
Speaker 1: Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that threat in Our World.
Speaker 1: Don't your hots tell me why you guys are here today.
Speaker 5: We're here, Mollie with my great colleague and friend Michael Mann.
Speaker 5: First of all, it's great to see you again. It's
Speaker 5: it's it's been too long. And you know, I learned
Speaker 5: so much from you being on MSNBC and others and
Speaker 5: CNN and talking during the pandemic. But I'm here with
Speaker 5: Michael Mann, who's Distinguished Climate Scientists at the University of
Speaker 5: Pennsylvanian professor, because we've written a new book and it's
Speaker 5: called Science under Siege, And what it does is we
Speaker 5: came up with this idea and when we started noticing
Speaker 5: that there was interesting overlap between the attacks on climate
Speaker 5: science with the attacks on biomedical science and realize that
Speaker 5: while if you think of them, each of the two
Speaker 5: circles of the Venn diagram, they're not entirely overlapping, but
Speaker 5: there's significant overlap, and unfortunately, some of it's coming from
Speaker 5: the same sources. And the anti science world has gone
Speaker 5: beyond vaccines and climates even climate science to create an
Speaker 5: entire ecosystem. And it doesn't just attack the science. It's
Speaker 5: attacking the scientists and portraying us as public enemies or
Speaker 5: cartoon villains, and so it's become very dark. And the
Speaker 5: reason that you'll hear today that we're so passionate about
Speaker 5: this topic and why it's so important it's starting to
Speaker 5: affect human life. People are dying, literally dying because of
Speaker 5: anti science activism, antiscience aggression, and that's why we have
Speaker 5: to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, Michael, if you would talk about how you know,
Speaker 1: I had always am married to an academic, and we
Speaker 1: had always had this thesis that when the climate change
Speaker 1: got bad enough, people would be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is what's happening. But in fact, it's almost as
Speaker 1: if the opposite has happened. So I'd love you to
Speaker 1: talk about that climate piece of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks, Molly. First of all, it's great to finally
Speaker 6: meet and to be with you here, and of course
Speaker 6: to be with my good friend Peter. And as he mentioned,
Speaker 6: you know, this sort of came together because we both
Speaker 6: found ourselves under attack. Me some time ago. Really the
Speaker 6: climate wars began decades ago, and so as I watched
Speaker 6: similar attacks that had very much, you know, the same feel.
Speaker 6: It was some of some of the same actors who
Speaker 6: are involved, the some of the same tactics, the same funders,
Speaker 6: the same sort of right wing uh you know, dark
Speaker 6: money organizations and conservative politicians. As I watched that on fold,
Speaker 6: I reached out to Peter, it's like, you know, what's
Speaker 6: happened to you, guys, is what's happened to us, and
Speaker 6: we should really compare notes, and we became good friends.
Speaker 6: We decided that it was really time to write a
Speaker 6: book that would draw upon our own respective experiences and
Speaker 6: the commonality. I mean, it's the same bad actors who
Speaker 6: are behind this. They're using a playbook that was written
Speaker 6: decades ago.
Speaker 1: I thought that if things got bad enough with climate
Speaker 1: that people would notice, just like if things got bad
Speaker 1: enough with COVID and people would be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this vaccine saved my life. But that's not what happened
Speaker 1: at all. And I'm wondering if you could talk us
Speaker 1: through this sort of parallel there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it's a great point, And you know, it's
Speaker 6: I sort of talk about this in terms of the
Speaker 6: Cuyahoga River moment, because back in the nineteen seventies, when
Speaker 6: the Cuyahoga River caught on fire, it was a galvanizing moment.
Speaker 6: There were a relatively small you know, there were three
Speaker 6: television news networks. We all were dealing with the same facts.
Speaker 6: We might differ in our opinions, but we could draw
Speaker 6: upon a similar universe of facts, and so there was
Speaker 6: the possibility that an event like that could galvanize public attention,
Speaker 6: it could bring people together across the partisan divide, and
Speaker 6: that's what happened. And you know, back then you actually
Speaker 6: had Richard Nixon who helped create the EPA. Right, the
Speaker 6: very EPA that the Trump administration is trying to dismantle
Speaker 6: or is dismantling, was actually created by a Republican president.
Speaker 6: And what's happened is the Republican Party has become so
Speaker 6: intimately connected to a small number of plutocrats. And we
Speaker 6: talk a lot about those plutocrats in this book and
Speaker 6: the influence that they wheel. You know that they are
Speaker 6: essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry
Speaker 6: and these other conservative interest groups. And if they stray
Speaker 6: from that, of course, as we know, they get primaried
Speaker 6: out of their congressional seat, what have you. And so
Speaker 6: there's this purity test that has been you know, used
Speaker 6: now for more than a decade to create the version
Speaker 6: of the Republican Party that we're dealing with today, to
Speaker 6: create the administration we're dealing with today, where no amount
Speaker 6: of facts, no amount of public opinion doesn't matter. They
Speaker 6: have their agenda. They feel like you know, they are
Speaker 6: immune to criticism, is what we're watching right now, and
Speaker 6: there's nothing to hold them back. And it doesn't matter
Speaker 6: how bad it gets for the rest of us, as
Speaker 6: long as it gets better for them, as long as
Speaker 6: a small number of plutocrats and oligarchs do better make
Speaker 6: more money, they don't care what happens to the rest
Speaker 6: of us. And right now, the institutions that are supposed
Speaker 6: to exist to help make them answerable to the rest
Speaker 6: of us, as you know, Molly, they're failing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, and for me, the watershed moment was,
Speaker 5: and we've spoken about this before, Molly, during the delta
Speaker 5: wave of COVID in the last half of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: after mRNA vaccines were widely available. The estimates are two
Speaker 5: hundred thousand Americans perish died because they refused COVID vaccines,
Speaker 5: because they were victims of this organized, fi well financed,
Speaker 5: politically motivated health disinformation campaign. And that's for me, the
Speaker 5: real moment, when you know, these are not small numbers
Speaker 5: of people dying. Two hundred thousand Americans died because they
Speaker 5: were targeted victims of this anti science empire and that's
Speaker 5: why we need to speak out about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's exactly right, deadly right, And the climate crisis
Speaker 6: is deadly. Fossil fuel pollution is deadly. Twenty five percent
Speaker 6: of all debts, by some estimates, are related to fossil
Speaker 6: fuel emissions or the climate change and the extreme weather
Speaker 6: events that result from it. So yeah, we're literally watching
Speaker 6: people die now because we're failing to listen to what
Speaker 6: science has to say.
Speaker 5: So the thirty, the big picture of the book is,
Speaker 5: you know, we always think of two of the most
Speaker 5: existential threats to humankind are our pandemics and illness and
Speaker 5: climate change, the climate crisis, and now we say it's
Speaker 5: actually there's a third leg to that tripod, and that
Speaker 5: is the massive anti science campaign and health and science
Speaker 5: disinformation empire that now prevents us from addressing it, and
Speaker 5: which will only ensure that this will continue to accelerate.
Speaker 5: And of course we're seeing this play out right now.
Speaker 1: So doctor who does maybe you talk about the measles
Speaker 1: for a minute, about what's happening with the measles right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it was you know, it was predicted. So
Speaker 5: we've this year, we've had a massive measles epidemic that
Speaker 5: started in West Texas and then moved up into the
Speaker 5: Panhandle and across the borders into New Mexico and then
Speaker 5: ultimately Oklahoma and Kansas and possibly Colorado. So a four
Speaker 5: or five state measles epidemic that landed one hundred kids
Speaker 5: in the hospital and two needless deaths among otherwise healthy
Speaker 5: school age kids whose parents made that decision not to vaccinate.
Speaker 5: And you might say, well, why did it start there?
Speaker 5: And the answer is this started in the same place
Speaker 5: where COVID vaccinations were really low, in the rural conservative
Speaker 5: areas of the country that are tuning into Fox News
Speaker 5: every night and Joe Rogan podcast and all of this,
Speaker 5: and so it was a spillover effect of the decline
Speaker 5: in COVID vaccinations occurred in the same part of the country.
Speaker 1: I also wonder I read really good reporting about this
Speaker 1: in pro Pablica that these the family, the mother of
Speaker 1: one of the children who died, was making a case
Speaker 1: that it's not that dead lay because her other kids survived.
Speaker 1: And I wondered, if you could just talk about that.
Speaker 1: That seems like the kind of thinking we're up against.
Speaker 5: You know, this is part of the anti vaccine playbook
Speaker 5: is to downplay the severity of the illness, just like
Speaker 5: they downplayed the severity of COVID. They said it was
Speaker 5: a it was a cold and lied about the populations
Speaker 5: that are at risk and the importance of long COVID.
Speaker 5: Same thing with measles. I mean, and this is where
Speaker 5: RFK Junior or a Health and Human Services secretary, really
Speaker 5: showed his true colors. So when he should have been
Speaker 5: out there encouraging people in the endemic areas to vaccinate,
Speaker 5: what was he saying. He was saying the hospitalizations weren't
Speaker 5: because the kids were sick, it was because they were
Speaker 5: being quarantined or isolated.
Speaker 2: That wasn't true.
Speaker 5: He was saying the measles vaccine is a leaky vaccine
Speaker 5: or doesn't stand well to immunizations, which declines it not true.
Speaker 5: And he quoted false numbers that that seemed to come
Speaker 5: out of nowhere or and then this is, you know,
Speaker 5: something else that we talk about in the book, how
Speaker 5: with Kennedy's rhetoric that he's been, you know, pushing anti
Speaker 5: vaccine sentiments and for decades now he's changed a little
Speaker 5: bit and he's adopted some of the health, wellness and
Speaker 5: influencerer industry, So you know which buys up what they
Speaker 5: can in bulk and then they jack up the price
Speaker 5: by repackaging it and selling it a telehealth visits. So
Speaker 5: what does Kennedy come out and say, Well, you can
Speaker 5: either get the measles mompster bella vaccine or you can
Speaker 5: get this useless cocktail of supplements of vitamin am be,
Speaker 5: deciniede and clorythrumycin and cot live royal. Where does that
Speaker 5: come from? It comes from the from the very corrupt
Speaker 5: health and wellness and influencer industry. So it's interesting in
Speaker 5: that he's sort of changed the nature of his rhetoric
Speaker 5: in order to adapt become more acront as well.
Speaker 6: And Mollie, I think if I can, if I may,
Speaker 6: what you're sort of getting at, right, is that this
Speaker 6: used to be the ultimate restoring force. Right that when
Speaker 6: you are directly impacted your loved ones, your uh you know,
Speaker 6: your home, uh. When you feel the impacts directly, then
Speaker 6: you go to the ballot the ballot box, and you
Speaker 6: and you defend your interest by voting for politicians who
Speaker 6: will who will defend him. And it seems like that's
Speaker 6: failing right now, because people who have literally lost loved
Speaker 6: ones to you know, to the anti vaxx movement are
Speaker 6: in denial when leaders of their movement die from you know,
Speaker 6: COVID nineteen right, like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like the guy from Turning Point US, Yeah, exactly, or
Speaker 1: who's a diamond of diamond and silk.
Speaker 6: Yeah, many of them. He was a presidential candidate and
Speaker 6: African American presidential.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, the harmon Kin nine nine nine nine, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: and he was here's the Here's the thing that's so
Speaker 7: distressing and and sort of morbidly ironic was that he
Speaker 7: was actually still tweeting anti vax rhetoric from beyond the
Speaker 7: crypt the account, his account was still promoting.
Speaker 6: So in the same thing with climate, right the floods
Speaker 6: in the southeastern US from Hurricane Helene, you know, you
Speaker 6: had people who were literally you know, falling victim to
Speaker 6: conspiracy theories that people who are coming, you know, government
Speaker 6: officials who were coming to their defense were actually there
Speaker 6: to steal their stuff. And and and they're in denial
Speaker 6: of the impact that climate change is having on these
Speaker 6: extreme weather events. They're literally destroying their homes, whether it's floods,
Speaker 6: whether it's wildfires, whether it's coastal storms. And so we've
Speaker 6: reached the point where we're witnessing the devastating consequences of
Speaker 6: pandemics in the climate crisis. And as Peter said, this
Speaker 6: third leg of the stool disinformation makes it impossible for
Speaker 6: us to have a good faith conversation about the linkage
Speaker 6: between you know, what the science says and what people
Speaker 6: are now dealing with.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so there's no autocorrection, there's no feedback loops.
Speaker 5: It just keeps on accelerating. And what they're doing is
Speaker 5: and we're seeing this with podcasters and the five groups
Speaker 5: of individual five groups that we talk about. Instead of
Speaker 5: having the auto correction, they instead double down and they
Speaker 5: reinvent what's causing the problem. And of course they have
Speaker 5: enormous bad and width and money and power.
Speaker 1: Michael, one of the things I've been really deeply weirded
Speaker 1: out by is Elon Musk comes to Fame on a
Speaker 1: lunch on solar and evs and just explain to me
Speaker 1: how that happens, because that seems baffline.
Speaker 6: No, it is, you know, and and and only we
Speaker 6: have to you know, turn to fiction to really, I mean,
Speaker 6: because it's sort of a classic Bond villain arc. Right,
Speaker 6: there's no other way to describe what we've seen with
Speaker 6: Elon Musk, where he was this hero of sort of
Speaker 6: clean energy movement, and then something happened, something snapped. What
Speaker 6: happened It is like literally like you know the narratives
Speaker 6: you sometimes find in Bond films, where you know, something
Speaker 6: happened to him that turned him and and and and
Speaker 6: it became basically perhaps the most powerful agent for the
Speaker 6: promotion of anti science, even anti science that goes against
Speaker 6: his own interests, right, because you know, I mean Tesla
Speaker 6: and uh it was you know, the the the battery,
Speaker 6: whatever his battery. You know, he was selling these mega
Speaker 6: batteries or whatever they were. He was sort of heavily
Speaker 6: invested in clean energy technology and and yet allowed, not
Speaker 6: not only allowed, made Twitter an outlet for the promotion
Speaker 6: of anti science, gave free reign to the bad actors.
Speaker 6: We talk about Petro states like Saudi Arabia and Russia
Speaker 6: that have carte blanche to promote their misinformation now on
Speaker 6: his medium.
Speaker 1: Right, So, what what do you think to play here
Speaker 1: is just he's more racist than he is something else.
Speaker 5: I mean it just so it's it's just it's mind boggling, right.
Speaker 5: I Mean, here's someone ordinarily I would admire. He's here
Speaker 5: in Texas like I am. He's created star bas you know,
Speaker 5: and I like to think of Texas as a state
Speaker 5: of innovation and science and technology, and he's you know,
Speaker 5: he's been out in front on that. And all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, you know, he's a tacking me for not
Speaker 5: debating Robert F. Kennedy Junior on the Joe Rogan Show.
Speaker 5: And I'm just shocked by it all, trying to understand it.
Speaker 5: And and you, I think you helped me explain it, Molly,
Speaker 5: that you know, they were propping him up to run
Speaker 5: for president, needed people like me to debate him. But
Speaker 5: that's so that's how dark it's going in Interestingly, when
Speaker 5: you talk about Elon, he's one of the five p's
Speaker 5: that we talk about in the book. We identify part
Speaker 5: five categories in the in the first one of the
Speaker 5: plutocrats and and and of course Elon Musk is the
Speaker 5: quintessential plutocrat involved in He satisfied several the definitions of
Speaker 5: several categories.
Speaker 2: He's a plutocrat.
Speaker 6: He's in some sense the press because with Twitter or
Speaker 6: x he has this, you know, more influence than any
Speaker 6: media outlet, his social media outlet, and he is a propagandist, right.
Speaker 5: What's interesting is his his new AI program Groc. You know,
Speaker 5: people were going after me about this and then and
Speaker 5: Groc was became my best friend on X started defending
Speaker 5: me because you know, he was just saying, no, that's
Speaker 5: not what doctor Owad does is and but now that's
Speaker 5: changed too. He's I think he's doing some fine tone.
Speaker 6: When Grock isn't going down a Nazi uh you know,
Speaker 6: rabbit hole, he sometimes actually.
Speaker 1: So let's talk through what I mean. This is all
Speaker 1: so deep upsetting on science, climate and just my nightmare fuel.
Speaker 1: So what is the solve here?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know we wish you know, we we we
Speaker 6: really did wish we had a simple answer.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: Maybe it's you know, as you pick up your puppy,
Speaker 6: you maybe it's turning over our planet to you know,
Speaker 6: to puppies, puppies, other sentient organisms too. I mean, because
Speaker 6: we've screwed it up so much. And you know it's
Speaker 6: our values, right, I mean the value system right now
Speaker 6: in the United States that incentivizes a candidate like Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: You know, it's people voting against their interest in every
Speaker 6: possible sense, and the very notion of democracy, the functioning
Speaker 6: of democracy, demands that people vote in some way in
Speaker 6: their own interest. And when they don't, when they can
Speaker 6: be conned into voting diametrically, you know, in a way
Speaker 6: that's diametrically opposed to the interests, you get the situation
Speaker 6: that we have. What's the solution to it? I mean,
Speaker 6: there is no simple fix. Right, We've got to we've
Speaker 6: got to reclaim our politics. Right and in the end,
Speaker 6: you know, people ask, well, you know, what can I do?
Speaker 6: Can I if I recycle? You know, if I don't
Speaker 6: drive as much? What are the behavior The most important
Speaker 6: behavior agent is to be part of a collective action
Speaker 6: that restores you know, that the votes in politicians who
Speaker 6: will do our bidding rather than the bidding of the
Speaker 6: plutocrats who have installed them. And I still, I think
Speaker 6: we still have some faith, if you want to call it, that,
Speaker 6: that that there is some resolve left in the electorate
Speaker 6: that we will see consequences in this midterm election for
Speaker 6: the unprecedented assault on our democracy, on science and everything
Speaker 6: else that's playing out literally in real time. You know,
Speaker 6: by the time we get off this call. There'll be
Speaker 6: some new development, some new awful headline, and we frame
Speaker 6: it in the end Peter and I I convinced Peter
Speaker 6: that this into this framing. I guess there's a token
Speaker 6: esque feel to this moment, and it's about, you know,
Speaker 6: there's this moment in the Lord of the Rings. The
Speaker 6: line is there's some good in the world and it's
Speaker 6: worth fighting for. Right and there's still some good in
Speaker 6: the world and it's worth fighting for even though no
Speaker 6: White wizard will come to our defense. That's not going
Speaker 6: to happen. We fight on because we.
Speaker 2: Have no choice. This is literally a battle to preserve.
Speaker 6: The planet as we know it, humanity as we know it,
Speaker 6: and we must do everything we can to push back
Speaker 6: against the anti science, against the fascism, and all of
Speaker 6: these strains that have now come together to create this
Speaker 6: very dangerous pivotal moment in American politics and perhaps when
Speaker 6: it comes to the fate of the world writ large.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and in the meantime, I think there are some
Speaker 5: more straightforward things that can make a difference. I mean,
Speaker 5: one of the five piece, you know, the five pleas
Speaker 5: are the plutocrats, the petrostates, the pros, the propagandas and
Speaker 5: the press and the press. Of course, we talk a
Speaker 5: lot about the Murdoch Press and Fox News and the
Speaker 5: damage of newscorps and and and detail that, but you know,
Speaker 5: we also have to talk about some of the mainstream newspapers.
Speaker 5: Even the New York Times and the Washington Post did
Speaker 5: a lot of false equivalency and felt the need to
Speaker 5: voice very strong pseudoscience or anti science opinions and kind
Speaker 5: of create that form them, equivalent, platform them, and give
Speaker 5: this false equivalency. That did almost as much damage as
Speaker 5: as the Murdoch Press because it caused people that we
Speaker 5: really care about to think twice about what the scientists
Speaker 5: are saying. That should be something easy to walk back from.
Speaker 6: But so far performative neutrality, and it's as much a
Speaker 6: threat as sort of the right wing noise machine.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: I think another is, you know, as scienceists too, we
Speaker 5: need to be more out in the public domain. We
Speaker 5: quote a study that's done by a policy group in Washington,
Speaker 5: DC called Research America, and they do these surveys pretty routinely,
Speaker 5: and they ask the American people, can you name a
Speaker 5: living scientist? And it turns out the numbers are always
Speaker 5: about the same seventy five percent of Americans cannot name
Speaker 5: a living scientist.
Speaker 6: And those our good friend Bill ni most likely right right,
Speaker 6: that's but so there's no so that's and that's partly
Speaker 6: a consequence of our research universities and academic health centers
Speaker 6: discouraging scientists from being out in the public domain because
Speaker 6: they want to all the flow of information.
Speaker 5: They worry about the impact on the brand and we
Speaker 5: so that makes it easier for them to the bad
Speaker 5: actors to portray us as sort of shadowy figures wearing
Speaker 5: white coats, plotting the various things and.
Speaker 6: And are called scientists. Be brave, you know, the stakes
Speaker 6: are too great for us to not be on the
Speaker 6: front lines now fighting back against misinformation and disinformation. As
Speaker 6: speakers of each chapter we have you know, there we
Speaker 6: end with a discussion of some of the very specific
Speaker 6: things that we can try to do to deal with this, uh,
Speaker 6: you know, this this existential challenge. But sort of in
Speaker 6: the final chapter we take a step back and look
Speaker 6: at the big picture. In the big pictures, we we've
Speaker 6: got to reclaim our our politics, because if we don't,
Speaker 6: there's simply no way to fight back.
Speaker 2: This tide of of of ideologically and UH.
Speaker 6: And and and and and and financially motivated UH, anti science,
Speaker 6: misinformation and disinformation.
Speaker 5: And we're starting now to see a globalize as well.
Speaker 5: So you know, you're seeing it with the alternative for
Speaker 5: Deutsche Lamparty in Germany. You're seeing bits and pieces show
Speaker 5: up in France, and even in low and middle income
Speaker 5: countries which have been pretty good about holding the line
Speaker 5: from anti vaccine sentiment. I do a lot of work
Speaker 5: in Latin American countries. Now that's starting to falter as well.
Speaker 5: So what's going on in you know, you know the
Speaker 5: US is good at exporting its stuff, right, we export
Speaker 5: our movies, our music, and now we're exporting this stuff
Speaker 5: and it's that is really very troubling.
Speaker 1: Itter Michael, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 6: Oh, thank you, it was it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2: It went by too quickly, really.
Speaker 5: Absolutely night gave you, gave me a great name, fuel,
Speaker 5: We give you a great voice during the pandemic, Molly,
Speaker 5: and I'm always grateful for that and.
Speaker 2: Thanks for all you do. Thank you for.
Speaker 7: No mo.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon Smiley.
Speaker 3: I have this thing all the time that I forget
Speaker 3: about a lot of the politicians we deal since we
Speaker 3: have to keep track of, like, you know, seven hundred
Speaker 3: different people. Missouri Senator Eric Schmid is one I often
Speaker 3: forget about, and then when I'm reminded of him, it's
Speaker 3: usually very bad, As is the case here we're Sleep
Speaker 3: magazine or Sleep website, whatever we call it these days reports.
Speaker 3: He said, what is in them? It is a white person.
Speaker 3: America is a white homeland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this whole performative white supremacy which the
Speaker 1: right is obsessed with. Where who can be a bigger racist?
Speaker 1: I mean, the white homeland. It's like a line right
Speaker 1: out of Christian nationalism, the white homeland. It's also it's
Speaker 1: not true, right, the whole country was set up for
Speaker 1: people who came in, killed all the Native Americans, not
Speaker 1: all of them, but many of them. It's not a
Speaker 1: white homeland. It's not Denmark or something. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is what it takes to make it in Maga
Speaker 1: right now, and that's where we are. 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.