Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and an appeals court judge has declared
Speaker 1: DeSantis's band on transgender care to be unconstitutional. We have
Speaker 1: such a great joke for you today. Recovering polster Adam
Speaker 1: Carlson stops by to talk about his analysis of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four polls. Don't worry, It's not terrible. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to the Washington Post Sarah Ellison about how
Speaker 1: disinformation circles affect our media. But first we have legendary
Speaker 1: campaign manager and emotional support pundant, the author of the
Speaker 1: conspiracy to in America Five Ways my old Party is
Speaker 1: driving our democracy to autocracy. The Lincoln Projects owned Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 2: Hidekra me to a party.
Speaker 1: I'm such a fan of yours. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: it because I was thinking, like, now we can talk
Speaker 1: campaign with someone who has done many campaigns but also
Speaker 1: has a sort of nice, not too crazy way about him.
Speaker 1: I feel like campaigns make a person a little unhinged.
Speaker 2: They do, and most people work in campaigns and then
Speaker 2: they grow up and they do something else. As my
Speaker 2: long time partner Rush Street for and I used to say,
Speaker 2: we'd look around after every cycle and we go like,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with us? We still want to do campaigns.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think I probably in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways represented the worst of the American political system
Speaker 2: because I just like campaign I was never really interested
Speaker 2: in that thing called government, and it gave me a
Speaker 2: very simplistic and shallow and what proved to be ultimately
Speaker 2: dangerous value system, which is I was happy if I
Speaker 2: won and I was sad if I lost, And you know,
Speaker 2: that worked all great up until Trump. Then I had
Speaker 2: asked self, like, how is it that I didn't see this?
Speaker 2: There's not, unfortunately, any good answer I've come up with.
Speaker 2: And I think it's absurd to think that Trump hijacked
Speaker 2: the party. Nobody made anybody vote for Donald Trump, and
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is so popular in the Republican Party, and
Speaker 2: the party has become Donald Trump because it's what the
Speaker 2: party wants. Let's quit pretending, you know that there's some
Speaker 2: party that we're gonna go.
Speaker 1: Let you it's interesting to me. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of us spend probably way
Speaker 1: too much time thinking about is why is Donald Trump
Speaker 1: so popular? Like still and again he's not so popular, right,
Speaker 1: he's not, but he has a certain thing that people
Speaker 1: still like about him, despite the fact that he's a
Speaker 1: convicted felon and out on bail for three other cases.
Speaker 2: You can't get hung up on these little details, right exactly.
Speaker 1: But the question is, like, I think that some of
Speaker 1: this just comes down to, like, charismatic politicians do better
Speaker 1: with the electorate. I mean, is that possible? Is it
Speaker 1: just that simple?
Speaker 2: Listen, I'm pretty harsh about this, but I think I've
Speaker 2: earned a right to be harsh because I know these people,
Speaker 2: and I dealt with the Republican electorate. I don't think
Speaker 2: there's anything flattering that you can say about the Republican electorate.
Speaker 2: We can't blame this on Fox. At any given moment,
Speaker 2: the most watching Fox are three million and seventy plus
Speaker 2: million voted for Trump. There's more information available to voters
Speaker 2: today in America than any time or any place in history.
Speaker 2: I mean an actual true statement. It's not North Korea.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not Mississippi in nineteen sixty five, when
Speaker 2: there was people referred to being behind the Magnolia curtain
Speaker 2: because one family owned all the newspapers, and it's not
Speaker 2: that way. I think at the heart of Trump is race.
Speaker 2: And Trump's coalition is eighty five percent white in a
Speaker 2: country that is sixty fifty nine percent white less. So
Speaker 2: the time we finished this and I think that ultimately
Speaker 2: that is the reality of what happened to the Republican Party.
Speaker 2: And now I get in this argument with my still
Speaker 2: Republican friends and they go, well, so let me get
Speaker 2: this stressory. You think everybody voted for Trump is a racist,
Speaker 2: and it's just no. But I think everybody who voted
Speaker 2: for Trump pretty much thought something was more important to
Speaker 2: them than having a racist as president, because you can't
Speaker 2: deny that Donald Trump is a racist. And sixty percent
Speaker 2: of the electorate was non college educated whites. That's now
Speaker 2: forty percent and dropping. It's the fastest shrinking demographic in America,
Speaker 2: and I think that is at the fear of what
Speaker 2: drives so much of trump Ism. And they're right, they
Speaker 2: are losing control and America's headed to become a majority
Speaker 2: minority country, and in many ways it already has. If
Speaker 2: you're sixteen years and younger, in America, the majority are
Speaker 2: non white, you know, and odds look really really good
Speaker 2: they're going to be non white when they turn eighteen.
Speaker 2: And that is at the root of all of this.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I do not understand these CEOs
Speaker 2: who support Donald Trump. I think it's shameful. I think
Speaker 2: they should be shamed. I think to Steve Schwartzman, of
Speaker 2: the world, would you rather be a CEO in Russia?
Speaker 2: You have a pretty good year.
Speaker 1: It's a very short term way of thinking of the world.
Speaker 2: You look at Blackstone, Steve Schwartzman, So you've got a
Speaker 2: convicted felon in New York. Blackstone is over four thousand
Speaker 2: employees from New York. So is what Steve Schwartzman is
Speaker 2: CEO sending a message to his employees that the rule
Speaker 2: of law in New York State doesn't matter. That's interesting
Speaker 2: because I imagine if you work for Blackstone, they actually
Speaker 2: expect you to adhere to the laws of New York State.
Speaker 1: If Blackstone were hiring convicted felons, like if you want
Speaker 1: a job at Blackstone and you owe more than one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars, like yes, for fraud, would you get hired?
Speaker 2: Absolutely not. You can go to the Blackstone Code of Ethics,
Speaker 2: which is prominent, and I just don't understand why there
Speaker 2: should be a higher standard for being an intern at
Speaker 2: Blackstone than being president.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, exactly.
Speaker 2: And I think that those like Steve Schwartzman and Jamie
Speaker 2: Dimond has said nice things about Donald Trump before, famously
Speaker 2: at the Davos. I don't know what he said about
Speaker 2: who he's going to vote for at this stage. If
Speaker 2: he said anything, I think a lot of people are
Speaker 2: telling him to shut up, shut up and durabble. I
Speaker 2: think it is foolish to think that you can have
Speaker 2: the benefits of a democracy that you're enjoining now and
Speaker 2: elect a non democratic president, someone who is going to
Speaker 2: lead the country for four years, non wall d democratic
Speaker 2: and Trump obviously does not support democracy. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: no pretense of it. And if you think that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump won't come after you, you're feeding the alligator hoping
Speaker 2: he'll eat you. Last.
Speaker 1: Well, it's the Mitch McConnell saying, right.
Speaker 2: It is precisely the miss McConnell thing that workout. Mitch.
Speaker 2: I've talked about this before, you know. When I was
Speaker 2: writing this book, it was all a lie. I stumbled
Speaker 2: across the memoirs of friends on pathin who was a
Speaker 2: Pressian aristocrat responsible more than anybody else for ushering Hitler
Speaker 2: into power. So he wrote his memoir in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2: Now things had gone a little sideway, I mean, a
Speaker 2: one hundred million killed World War two Holocaust, and he
Speaker 2: still was defending supporting Hitler. And there are phrases that
Speaker 2: he uses is if memoir that are literally verbade him
Speaker 2: of what Ms McConnell said, that we will change him.
Speaker 2: There are more of us, He will have to adapt
Speaker 2: to us. So I wonder how did Mitch McConnell feel, well,
Speaker 2: his colleagues were running for their lives and their own offers.
Speaker 2: How did that work out? And still mits McConnell is
Speaker 2: afraid to say Donald Trump's name in public. So I
Speaker 2: think it's a historic failure of a party. And ultimately,
Speaker 2: I mean that's I said about the selection. The selection
Speaker 2: isn't remotely about Donald Trump. It's about each of us.
Speaker 2: We know who Donald Trump is, He's just who are we?
Speaker 2: And I think it's a character tist. You know, I
Speaker 2: am so offended by these Trump supporters that say, you know,
Speaker 2: the system was rigged. We had to resort to what
Speaker 2: you know, storming the Capitol and all of this. So
Speaker 2: let me get this straight. There are Americans who actually
Speaker 2: were prosecuted, were hunted, were tortured, were murdered to stop
Speaker 2: them from participating in the system. And they're called black America.
Speaker 2: So how did they react. They didn't storm the capital
Speaker 2: and violence easier. They stayed in the system, They registered
Speaker 2: more voters, they continue to believe in the system. And
Speaker 2: yet the overwhelmingly middle class white voters that support Trump
Speaker 2: have walked away from America. And I think it is
Speaker 2: shameful and I have no need to understand them. I really,
Speaker 2: I don't want to understand the guy in the camp
Speaker 2: all switch sweatshirt. I just want him walk up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, So let's talk about right now. We are
Speaker 1: still in this ecosystem where we don't really know know
Speaker 1: quite what the results from Trump's criminal conviction are going
Speaker 1: to be, though it does seem like there is some
Speaker 1: movement there. And I recently read something where that actually,
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden's trial is not hurting Biden as much as
Speaker 1: Trump World wanted it to. That actually people can have
Speaker 1: two thoughts at the same time, you know, shockingly, So
Speaker 1: I'm curious to know what you You know, we're sort
Speaker 1: of in this weird period run up to the conventions,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering what you think that Biden world should
Speaker 1: be doing and are they doing? What do you think?
Speaker 2: I am a great admirer of the Biden campaign. I
Speaker 2: think they ran a brilliant campaign in twenty twenty that
Speaker 2: they don't get enough credit for. You know, be the
Speaker 2: incumbent president is incredibly difficult, and you know, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: we passed campaign financing, so each Democratic Republican nominee got
Speaker 2: the same amount of money, and under that system, it
Speaker 2: did level the playing field. Under that system, Bush lost
Speaker 2: and Carter lost. So then in two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: Obama walked away from that system, so he spent a
Speaker 2: general election about three hundred and seventy million. McCain spent
Speaker 2: eighty four million. So, as always happens, once nobody steps
Speaker 2: out of the system, everybody steps out. So twenty twelve
Speaker 2: was the first time since nineteen seventy two Nixon McGovern
Speaker 2: the two candidates were running against each other who were
Speaker 2: not in the federal funding system Romney Obama. Romney lost,
Speaker 2: so Biden beat An incumbent president not in the federal
Speaker 2: funding system, so it's fair at last, when is the
Speaker 2: last time that happened? Well, the answer happens to be
Speaker 2: Herbert Hoover and he had a bad year. So I
Speaker 2: have tremendous respect for what the Biden campaign does. They
Speaker 2: have this quality that is so rare in politics, which
Speaker 2: is patience. And you know, there is this overwhelming human
Speaker 2: tendency to day trade politics, so you have you know,
Speaker 2: Biden goes out and has a lousy press conference after
Speaker 2: this Special Council's finding, and you know, you have people
Speaker 2: like Ezra Client writing you should get out, this is
Speaker 2: it right, and then a few weeks later he gives
Speaker 2: a great state of the Union space you go, well,
Speaker 2: maybe you shouldn't get out, and politics is not for
Speaker 2: day traders. You know. My greatest worry where i'm the
Speaker 2: Biden campaign would be peaking too early strangers that may seem,
Speaker 2: because I think there is a great narrative in American
Speaker 2: tradition of coming from behind, and I think the greatest
Speaker 2: danger for the Biden campaign is they're going to start
Speaker 2: leading too early, and then they may drop back, and
Speaker 2: then it's harder to go back again. You know, I
Speaker 2: have no contact with the Biden campaign, so this is
Speaker 2: just purely outsider. I think that they understand the rhythm
Speaker 2: of this campaign and there is no need to win
Speaker 2: every news cycle that I think he'll probably be behind
Speaker 2: until the Democratic Convention, and then I think after the
Speaker 2: Invention they'll be able to come out and prosecute a
Speaker 2: campaign against Trump. That the elements are being laid for now.
Speaker 2: And if I had to make a bet now, I
Speaker 2: don't think the race is going to be particularly close.
Speaker 2: I think it'll be close to about October twentieth, and
Speaker 2: then it's going to be like nineteen eighty and when
Speaker 2: Carter started to drop. I don't understand what you get
Speaker 2: when you vote for Donald Trump. What do you get
Speaker 2: when you vote for Republicans? I don't know. There's no
Speaker 2: policy except Project twenty twenty five, which God knows they
Speaker 2: don't want to talk about much because it is overwhelmingly unpopular.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I was struck by this
Speaker 1: weekend was that Trump was in Nevada and he said
Speaker 1: to the group, I will make it so you don't
Speaker 1: have to pay taxes on tips anymore, a wildly unpopular thing.
Speaker 1: It's not clear how many people actually do pay taxes
Speaker 1: on tips. But that ability to just say whatever he
Speaker 1: would any interest in the possibility of being actually able
Speaker 1: to do it. Do you think that helps him? I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like that that's the thing where I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's not bound by the truth at all.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, this has always been the case. He
Speaker 2: was going to balance the budget in four years, said
Speaker 2: so when a Washington Post interview, he was going to
Speaker 2: make health care a beautiful plan for health care Mexico,
Speaker 2: was going to pay for the wall, as Mark Cuban
Speaker 2: famously said, he is the guy who will say anything
Speaker 2: at closing time to get laid right, all right. And
Speaker 2: I think that his ability to do that is reduced
Speaker 2: every day because the difference between what he has said
Speaker 2: he was going to do and what he does is greater,
Speaker 2: and that includes to what he has actually done. So
Speaker 2: he's actually taken away roe v. Eight. Okay, let's live
Speaker 2: in that world. He actually is supporting putin. Let's live
Speaker 2: in that world.
Speaker 1: What do you think about those polls that say people
Speaker 1: don't believe that Trump actually was the person who took
Speaker 1: away roe v. Wade.
Speaker 2: It's troubling. I think that's why if you're sitting in
Speaker 2: a Biden campaign, you want to spend over a billion dollars,
Speaker 2: and I think that's you know, as that old phrase goes,
Speaker 2: campaigns matter, and I think that there are a lot
Speaker 2: of very substantive, impressive, life affecting positive changes that have
Speaker 2: been brought by the Biden administration. Unemployment at record lows,
Speaker 2: you have stock markets at record highs. That does affect
Speaker 2: people more than realize because of the one ks. You
Speaker 2: have wages rising. All of this actually is a positive
Speaker 2: underpinning to people. People who now are paying thirty three
Speaker 2: dollars for insulin know that people who are going to
Speaker 2: pay lesser than Haler's know that now it is always
Speaker 2: difficult for any incumbent to get credit for what they've done.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, were sitting focus groups in
Speaker 2: the Bush campaign, and one of the great goals of
Speaker 2: the Bush administration was to reduce taxes for those in
Speaker 2: the lower income So the goal was family of four
Speaker 2: making forty thousand dollars or less would pay no income tax,
Speaker 2: which happened under Bush. So we would sit in focus
Speaker 2: groups with people who no longer were paying income tax
Speaker 2: and would ask them, are you paying more income tax
Speaker 2: now under Bush or not, they say I'm paying more now,
Speaker 2: and then you would generally point out where you're actually
Speaker 2: not paying any income tax now, and they would say, well,
Speaker 2: I'm paying more in taxes, and they just wouldn't believe you.
Speaker 2: And that's why in two thousand and four, among other reasons,
Speaker 2: we decided correctly, I think, really led by Carl Rowe,
Speaker 2: who I do think is a genius, that there were
Speaker 2: very few persuadable voters. I mean we would show people
Speaker 2: ads that, like you know, Mark McKinnon and I had
Speaker 2: made about women voting in Afghanistan, and people would cry,
Speaker 2: I mean openly cry. Men would cry. And then they'd say,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm never going to vote for him. That's
Speaker 2: the best thing I've ever seen. I'm never going to
Speaker 2: vote for And out of that strategy of what came
Speaker 2: to be known as Fortress precincts, which the way you
Speaker 2: could win, the path to win was very simple. Where
Speaker 2: you got sixty percent, you needed to get sixty three percent.
Speaker 2: Where you got fifty two, you needed to get fifty five.
Speaker 2: You had to just increase your margin by just a
Speaker 2: little in every one of these precincts and not go
Speaker 2: after persuading voters. And I think that the Biden campaign
Speaker 2: is in much the same reality now. So Biden won
Speaker 2: by eight million votes, Trump lost. He needs new customers.
Speaker 2: You start with the question how many Biden twenty Trump
Speaker 2: twenty four voters are there? Some? I don't think there's
Speaker 2: massive amounts. So what is Trump doing to get new customers?
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, he's saying, if you're
Speaker 2: not a long term, devoted customer here, we don't want
Speaker 2: your business. Which people hear that, and I think they react.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of behind, you know, Nikki Haley,
Speaker 2: and ultimately politics is more about addition and subtraction. And
Speaker 2: you know, one of my favorite clients in Haley Barber,
Speaker 2: you know, ran for governor Mississippi after a career in politics,
Speaker 2: and Haley like to say, it's better to be for
Speaker 2: the future because it's going to happen anyway. And you know,
Speaker 2: the Republican Party is basically at war with the modern world,
Speaker 2: and I think they're going to lose.
Speaker 1: I would literally sit here with you all day because
Speaker 1: you just are so soothing. But I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point that the Republican Party is at war
Speaker 1: with the future. Thank you so much, Stewart Stevens. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you. Spring is here, and I bet you
Speaker 1: are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up
Speaker 1: some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened
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Speaker 1: Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some,
Speaker 1: head to fastpolitics dot com. Adam Carlson is a former
Speaker 1: and recovering Democratic polster. Adam, welcome back. I think of
Speaker 1: you as a fan favorite.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's very flattering. Well, I'm really happy to
Speaker 3: be here. Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: Because we deal with polls, right, I hate polls. You
Speaker 1: probably don't hate poles as much as I hate poles,
Speaker 1: since you're a recovering pollster, But I find polls to
Speaker 1: be very annoying. But they're really the only indicator we
Speaker 1: have ultimately, right. We can do turnout on the primaries,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of different, so we have to sort
Speaker 1: of use them. But they are sort of a blunt instrument.
Speaker 1: And what is sort of the state of modern polling
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 3: I think that the state of mone and polling is
Speaker 3: in plus right now. If you're doing a phone poll,
Speaker 3: response rates have never been lowered. This has been covered
Speaker 3: a ton, This has been a reason to criticize polls.
Speaker 3: You're lucky to get a one percent response rate, as in,
Speaker 3: if you contact one hundred people, you're lucky to get
Speaker 3: one person to actually answer and finish your holl You
Speaker 3: have to call people on their cell phones now, which
Speaker 3: is a better way of contacting them, but it's a
Speaker 3: lot harder to get a hold of folks because you
Speaker 3: call our ID show the unknown number. You're not really
Speaker 3: ever sure if the people who are answering those unknown
Speaker 3: numbers are representative of the broader population or if they're
Speaker 3: more engaged or kind of weirdos. It's a bit imprecise,
Speaker 3: and there's things you can do on the back end
Speaker 3: to try and retro sit them. People you're polling to
Speaker 3: be representative of the population. But again, you're making a
Speaker 3: lot of assumptions each time you're doing that. So each
Speaker 3: assumption that each polster makes and how much thought and
Speaker 3: rigor they put into it can affect the accuracy and
Speaker 3: can introduce bias. So, like you said, it's a blunk instrument.
Speaker 3: It's never been harder to pull than it is right now,
Speaker 3: there's online polls. Of course there's live texts, people are
Speaker 3: trying different things, But it was a lot easier to
Speaker 3: be a polster ten twenty third years ago than it
Speaker 3: is today.
Speaker 1: Explained to us sort of what we're seeing in these
Speaker 1: free Biden pre Biden Trump five months out polling.
Speaker 3: Let me step back for a second here, and I
Speaker 3: think that the rise of the five thirty eight in
Speaker 3: Nate Silver Next starting in two thousand and eight was
Speaker 3: great for visibility for polling, and then by thirty eight
Speaker 3: in particular and others as well had really good cycles
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight twenty twelve, and they're seen
Speaker 3: as like these oracles, people doing these models. But historically
Speaker 3: polling error is pretty high in one direction or another.
Speaker 3: So twenty sixteen and twenty twenty eight underestimated Trump twice.
Speaker 3: So there's this working assumption that because the polls underestimated
Speaker 3: Trump twice in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that they'll
Speaker 3: do it a third time. So to answer your question,
Speaker 3: right now, Trump leads Biden, maybe by a point, maybe
Speaker 3: it's tied nationally, that's depending on which aggregate you look at.
Speaker 3: That's kind of where we're at right now. Biden got
Speaker 3: a roughly two point bump after Trump's conviction or thirty
Speaker 3: four or felony convictions, and nationally we don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of state pulling. It's compared before and after right now,
Speaker 3: so things are tight nationally. But people assume that because
Speaker 3: Poles underestimated Trump in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, that
Speaker 3: they'll do it again in twenty twenty four. And that's
Speaker 3: not necessarily how polling error works. That's happened in both directions.
Speaker 3: In twenty twelve, underestimated Obama and this spill sally a
Speaker 3: much closer race than it ended up being against Smith Romney.
Speaker 3: It's tempting to say that again like Biden needs to
Speaker 3: be ahead by a lot more because the Poles will
Speaker 3: underestimate Trump again, But we just don't know that's the case,
Speaker 3: especially because I would bet good money that a lot
Speaker 3: of posters have made adjustments ince then.
Speaker 1: This is why I wanted to have you on this
Speaker 1: podcast because it strikes me and you and I can
Speaker 1: both go into this right now, that there may be
Speaker 1: and again we don't know because we don't have algorithmic
Speaker 1: transparency and this is obviously not an algorithm, but we
Speaker 1: don't have the transparency for the numbers to see exactly
Speaker 1: how they're waiting these numbers to try and create the
Speaker 1: sort of this is an electorate that is very difficult
Speaker 1: to predict, right, And so the question is they're trying to,
Speaker 1: yet again pull to explain an electorate that there is
Speaker 1: not a lot that you can't completely explain, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the challenge every year. It's always easier
Speaker 3: in retrospect to see what the errors were, and I
Speaker 3: think a lot of posters are trying in good faith
Speaker 3: to figure it out and to get it right, to
Speaker 3: learn from previous mistakes. There's also a reputational risk for
Speaker 3: getting it wrong in the same direction a third time.
Speaker 3: So in twenty sixteen, it was okay, we underestimated the
Speaker 3: turnout or the Trump percentage of non college educated white voters.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty kind of underestimated the Republicans kind of
Speaker 3: coming home to Trump. We've made it a lot closer
Speaker 3: than the polls and anticipated as a Biden one, but
Speaker 3: it was he's supposed to win by a lot more.
Speaker 4: And this time we don't really know.
Speaker 3: I mean, no polster is going to nor should they
Speaker 3: reveal their secret sauce in terms of all, right, we're
Speaker 3: going to comperment with this, but we are seeing some weirdness,
Speaker 3: historical weirdness in the polls. We're seeing Trump winning a larger,
Speaker 3: historically large number of people of color in the polls,
Speaker 3: the largest in some cases since the Civil Rights Act
Speaker 3: was passed, in which I find hard to believe. You
Speaker 3: never quite know, but that could be the artifact of
Speaker 3: them all changing their not all, but the way they're sampling,
Speaker 3: or a way to reaching people, or maybe they're trying
Speaker 3: something different, or maybe it's real.
Speaker 4: I have my doubts, right, I have.
Speaker 1: My doubts too, a lot of these. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about cross tabs for truth. A lot of these numbers
Speaker 1: look a little bit dicey. Explain to us like some
Speaker 1: of these sort of the things you've seen in the
Speaker 1: cross tabs. Besides this largest racial realignment since the voting
Speaker 1: right to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So every month I'm behind for May, but every
Speaker 3: month I put together of higher quality national polls. I
Speaker 3: dig through and manually enter all the cross that bindings
Speaker 3: to see where the trends are releatant to twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and what holes are showing are going to be the
Speaker 3: biggest shifts again, we'll be, but what polls are capturing
Speaker 3: right now? So this kind of smooths out any one
Speaker 3: polster who's finding something super weird and also solves the
Speaker 3: problem of looking at tiny sample sizes. This isn't a
Speaker 3: perfect way of doing this, but it is better than
Speaker 3: anything else that we have out there. So we have
Speaker 3: a lot of regular forecasts, right I'm like, like, here's
Speaker 3: the average of the polls. Here's real clear politics, here's
Speaker 3: five thirty eight. This is trying to go under the service. Okay,
Speaker 3: so Biden is down from four years ago. Where is
Speaker 3: it happening among So every single month we're seeing black
Speaker 3: voters shifting away from Biden and towards Trump by twenty
Speaker 3: plus points compared to twenty twenty. We're still looking at
Speaker 3: like a you know, eighty twenty type margin, but it's
Speaker 3: above ninety ten in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: That's a huge shift.
Speaker 3: And the polls right now are showing that Trump will
Speaker 3: get the highest share of black voters since before nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four, so in a very.
Speaker 4: Very very long time.
Speaker 3: Based on why, there's a bunch of theories as to
Speaker 3: why this is the case, one of which is that
Speaker 3: this is real movement. This is based off of frustration
Speaker 3: with Biden, based off of not following through on promises,
Speaker 3: or impact of inflation or et cetera. But that doesn't
Speaker 3: really explain why it's afecting black voters more than let's say,
Speaker 3: Hispanic voters are non college educated white voters. I don't
Speaker 3: find that super convinced it could be part of it.
Speaker 3: But there are also other theories too, right that there
Speaker 3: are just satisfaction with Biden is super high right now,
Speaker 3: and so black voters are just expressing their frustration. This
Speaker 3: is called expressive responding, where you're not really thinking about
Speaker 3: it as a binary election. You're kind of just like,
Speaker 3: I'm pissed at Biden, and you know what, I'm going
Speaker 3: to say, I'm undecided, or I'm going to say I
Speaker 3: vote for Trump, and.
Speaker 4: Maybe you will, maybe you won't.
Speaker 3: If we're using history as any guide, the base generally
Speaker 3: comes home. This is also weird election. My personal theory,
Speaker 3: the one I share with a few other polling nerds.
Speaker 3: It has to do and this might be getting a
Speaker 3: little in the weeds.
Speaker 1: Please get in the weeds with us.
Speaker 3: There are the ways of putting guardrails demographically. When you're
Speaker 3: sealing the poll right, you don't want to get too
Speaker 3: many white people, you don't want to get too many
Speaker 3: college educated people. And there are some people that are
Speaker 3: just easier to reach when you're polling colled educated folks,
Speaker 3: white folks, women, people who lean more democratic. And those
Speaker 3: are people as well, whether you're doing phone or online now,
Speaker 3: because there much more inter as savvy than they used
Speaker 3: to be five ten years ago. So what happens is
Speaker 3: you put these guardrails up called quotas, make sure you're
Speaker 3: not getting too many of one group. So you fill
Speaker 3: up the easy buckets first, right, you fill up white voters,
Speaker 3: you fill up seniors you feel up called it educated
Speaker 3: and women, and then you're left with Okay, at the end,
Speaker 3: we're scrambling to get black, Hispanic or Republican leaning voters,
Speaker 3: younger voters, people who are much much, much harder to reach,
Speaker 3: and so then you're kind of left with this weird
Speaker 3: group or non representative group of young conservative people of
Speaker 3: color who are not representing population, but they're who you
Speaker 3: have left to reach, and so you get a couple
Speaker 3: of those to fill out your quotas. And then at
Speaker 3: the end, because you still don't have enough of them,
Speaker 3: because again, they're very very hard to reach, and it's
Speaker 3: very expensive to reach them, and you may not be
Speaker 3: able to hit your deadlines. If you're just keep trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, ram your head against the ball trying to
Speaker 3: reach them, you upweight them. So what that means is
Speaker 3: you make them basically worth more than one of themselves
Speaker 3: in the actual final pool. Right, you wait, but the
Speaker 3: entire sample to be representative of whatever you're trying to
Speaker 3: go for. Let's say Red's registered voters or likely voters
Speaker 3: in a particular state. So not only are you getting
Speaker 3: people who aren't representative, you're making them more impactful than
Speaker 3: they normally would be otherwise and you're down waiting. So
Speaker 3: basically early on you're getting all these like white seniors
Speaker 3: at college, which is maybe why you're seeing Biden holding
Speaker 3: up better among white voters and seniors and things like that,
Speaker 3: and while you see him slipping among young voters and
Speaker 3: people of color. The truth is it's probably somewhere in
Speaker 3: the middle of all these things. It's hard for me
Speaker 3: to believe based on that a rematch election in a
Speaker 3: very very long time. But it's hard for me to
Speaker 3: see like these massive, massive swings in a rematch election
Speaker 3: where people, most normal people don't want to think or
Speaker 3: talk about this election. People are upset with their choices.
Speaker 3: I don't know most of the conversations I've had with
Speaker 3: people who aren't politically engaged, or just like Okay, I
Speaker 3: guess we're doing this, or don't even know who the
Speaker 3: nominees are still in June. So in that case, you'd
Speaker 3: expect some movement on the margins, like yeah, okay, maybe
Speaker 3: Biden lou Is, you know, three or four percentage points
Speaker 3: among certain groups, gains, maybe some.
Speaker 4: Back here or there.
Speaker 3: But these twenty point swings, fifteen point swings would be,
Speaker 3: let's just say, unprecedented, especially when both candidates are such
Speaker 3: known quantities and very unpopular.
Speaker 1: One of the things you said, which I thought was
Speaker 1: very interesting, I'm doing this annoying thing that people do
Speaker 1: where they talk about a tweet. It's a very annoying
Speaker 1: thing when people do it. To me, I think they're stupid.
Speaker 1: But you had a tweet that showed subthlet the effect
Speaker 1: of so much anxiety on the left that Biden is
Speaker 1: losing this saying that he should be winning by fifteen points,
Speaker 1: but he's not actually in a terrible place right now,
Speaker 1: is hey.
Speaker 3: No, he's one, I mean historically normal pulling air away
Speaker 3: from winning fairly comfortably. But Trump's also was one pulling
Speaker 3: away from winning fairly comfortably too. But essentially we're looking
Speaker 3: at a I mean five thirty eight released their forecast
Speaker 3: today basically a coin flip, Biden as a fifty three
Speaker 3: percent chance of winning, Trump as forty seven, and that's
Speaker 3: been tightening since the last couple of months. And they
Speaker 3: incorporate fundamentals like economics, consumer sentiment in addition to polling.
Speaker 3: You know, if you look at polls today, Trump is
Speaker 3: likely to win. But again, polls are not this far out,
Speaker 3: are not meant to be predictive of what's happening in November.
Speaker 3: Thought like, okay, this is again an imperfect snapshot, but
Speaker 3: the best toool we had, as you mentioned earlier, of
Speaker 3: where the race is right now. But we also have
Speaker 3: these eyebrow race hitting shifts right and it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: which one of these are real? Are they canceling each
Speaker 3: other out? You know, is Biden doing as well among
Speaker 3: seniors as good polls are showing? Is that counteracting other stuff?
Speaker 3: So we don't really know.
Speaker 1: And that was why I wanted to have you on
Speaker 1: because the other thing I wanted you to talk about,
Speaker 1: which I am struck by, is that in almost all
Speaker 1: of these polls you have down ticket Democrats, namely senators
Speaker 1: in swing states. And I'm thinking about Ohio here and
Speaker 1: share odd is a once in a lifetime politician. But
Speaker 1: also so he's running about ten points ahead of his competition.
Speaker 1: He's running like fifteen points ahead of Biden.
Speaker 3: And your friends, like the NPR Maris pulled up tea
Speaker 3: out today that had him.
Speaker 4: I think he was up five and.
Speaker 3: Biden was down seven. And that's the first poll we've
Speaker 3: had there in a while. That's actually the neat good quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this Biden down brought the rest of the ticket
Speaker 1: up for Democrats. See that in Pennsylvania, you see that
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. Saw that Michigan is seems a little tighter
Speaker 1: in the center race. But I mean, you're seeing that
Speaker 1: in a lot of these polls. So make that make
Speaker 1: sense for me.
Speaker 4: So I think there's two things going on.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of races and what you're referring to
Speaker 3: in those other states, So like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Right, Arizona.
Speaker 1: Ruben is running way ahead. Now I think Carrie Lake
Speaker 1: is her own problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she the unique case. Yeah, so talk about Arizona first.
Speaker 3: So that's an open seat. Here's the cinema about running
Speaker 3: for re election Carry Lake versus Ruben Geego. So Carry
Speaker 3: Lake is running way behind Trump and Geago is running
Speaker 3: a couple points ahead of Biden. That's a different situation
Speaker 3: because Carry Lake is very well known and not very
Speaker 3: well liked, and there's even been kind of whispers among
Speaker 3: Republican operatives that they might just triage that race, they
Speaker 3: might give up on her at some point, and that's
Speaker 3: too early to say, but the fact they're even talking
Speaker 3: about that in a state like Arizona is very telling.
Speaker 3: But these other races in Nevada, in Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: you have the Democratic candidacity incumbent running out evenly with
Speaker 3: Biden a little bit more, maybe a point or two
Speaker 3: ahead on average, but the Republican is way behind Trump.
Speaker 3: So a lot of that might have to do with
Speaker 3: name recognition. They're like, I don't really know this person.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to necessarily so that they'll probably, you know,
Speaker 3: come home and vote the Republican We don't really know yet.
Speaker 3: We don't really know if there's going to be we're
Speaker 3: going to see a big return to split ticket voting
Speaker 3: this year. It's been on the decline in recent cycles.
Speaker 3: We only have, I believe, two senators that represent states
Speaker 3: said the other party one in twenty twenty. That's Susan
Speaker 3: Collins and Maine and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 3: The other ninety eight senators represent states that they're party
Speaker 3: won at the presidential level in twenty twenty. So it's
Speaker 3: spliticket voting is not a big thing. The poles are
Speaker 3: showing that it might be, particularly in Ohio, where I
Speaker 3: think Sharon Brown's winning like ten percent of Trump voters,
Speaker 3: has a much higher favorability rating. And then there's also
Speaker 3: John Tester in Montana running in a deep, deep red
Speaker 3: state but has shown some resiliency in the past, even
Speaker 3: more so than Shah Brown. So they face uphill battles,
Speaker 3: particularly if split ticket voting does not increase. They need
Speaker 3: to win a bunch of Trump voters to have a chance.
Speaker 3: But what I'm seeing elsewhere is that it's not that
Speaker 3: Democrats are necessarily senate. Democrats are massively outperforming Biden. It's
Speaker 3: that Senate Republican candidates are massively underperforming Trump. I kind
Speaker 3: of expect a great convergence towards the end when people
Speaker 3: start paying attention to these races a bit more. But
Speaker 3: how much that converges, Like does Biden's numbers go up
Speaker 3: or did the Senate Democrats numbers go down?
Speaker 4: And that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: I've done some light covering of these Senate candidates and
Speaker 1: they are bad. Like you know, they tend to be
Speaker 1: a lot of rich people who can self fund and
Speaker 1: you know, may not be the best person for the candidate.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of carpetbagging going on. I'm thinking about Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: In Pennsylvania you have Dave McCormick, you have Eric Hovedy.
Speaker 1: In Wisconsin you have these rich white guys who you know,
Speaker 1: can sell fund but aren't necessarily even from the places
Speaker 1: they want to represent.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So in Montana you have Tim Sheehey grew up in
Speaker 3: Minnesota and so elsewhere, came back to Montana. As you mentioned,
Speaker 3: Dave McCormick's I still lives in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Westbark, Connecticut. Yes, we love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And running in Pennsylvania. I have Eric Hovdy in
Speaker 3: Wisconsin who was supposed to be campaigning in Wisconsin but
Speaker 3: instead was at the beach in the Beach in California
Speaker 3: where he I think spill whims Or has a house there.
Speaker 3: And even Sam Brown and Nevada ran for Congress in Texas.
Speaker 3: I believe this a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I love this so much so.
Speaker 3: Their strategy Steam Days is the head of a seeing
Speaker 3: of recruit a lot of these candidates. Yeah, like you said,
Speaker 3: they want these self funding candidates. They think that a
Speaker 3: first time candidates for the most part, who don't have
Speaker 3: like a legislative baggage, which is theoretically a plus. But
Speaker 3: they're also pretty untested as candidates, which has not gone
Speaker 3: well for downballot Republican candidates in twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, and they coughed up some pretty winnable races
Speaker 3: with some pretty undisciplined candidates.
Speaker 4: I'll put it lately.
Speaker 1: That money is supposed to go to Trump's legal fees. Noah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for making this make sense a
Speaker 1: little bit. You know, I think that it's all we have,
Speaker 1: so we just have to make it fucking work. But
Speaker 1: we have to realize that it really is a blunt indicator.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would say that we still have a
Speaker 3: long way to go. I know polls are frustrating and confusing,
Speaker 3: and I totally get that. I would not overly focus
Speaker 3: on polls until we get to Labor Day, just for
Speaker 3: everyone's mental sanity. I'll be following it closely, but you
Speaker 3: all don't have to. It's okay. Things will become much
Speaker 3: clear after the conventions.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank Nally. Sarah Ellison is a reporter at
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. Welcome too Fast Politics, Sarah.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So one of the things you've been writing about, which
Speaker 1: is one of the many things that keeps me up
Speaker 1: at night. I have a couple. It's a teared system
Speaker 1: of things that keep me up at night. But is
Speaker 1: Trump was found guilty and immediately pivoted to trying to
Speaker 1: tear down the legal system, one of the last great
Speaker 1: sort of norms in our very kind of shaky American democracy.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us sort of what that looked
Speaker 1: like and what the consequences of it are?
Speaker 5: Sure he didn't even wait for the verse. What we
Speaker 5: were watching during that entire trial is that it was.
Speaker 5: You know, for months, his advisors expected that he would
Speaker 5: be convicted by a New York jury, and they were
Speaker 5: hopeful that he would not be convicted, but just in case,
Speaker 5: he and his team waged an all out war against
Speaker 5: the judicial system before the verdict even came in, hoping
Speaker 5: to whatever that verdict was going to be, he was
Speaker 5: going to blood the political damage and position himself as
Speaker 5: a martyr. And you saw that day after day, Trump
Speaker 5: attacking the judge, the judge's family, Trump attacking the gag
Speaker 5: order that the judge placed on him so he wouldn't
Speaker 5: intimidate witnesses in the case. But I think the thing
Speaker 5: that people really were struck by is that it wasn't
Speaker 5: just Trump. It was and it wasn't just Trump's surrogates,
Speaker 5: you know, the people that you normally see going on
Speaker 5: social media to repeat his attacks and amplify his attacks.
Speaker 5: You saw a totally different branch of government. You saw
Speaker 5: members of Congress show up to attack again, not just
Speaker 5: the judge, but the jury system. Like Tommy Tuberville said,
Speaker 5: these so called Americans who were serving on the jury, right,
Speaker 5: and like, we don't have anything better than the jury
Speaker 5: of our peers, Like that's as good as it gets,
Speaker 5: Like that's all we can offer. And so you know,
Speaker 5: what we were struck by is that it's all politics.
Speaker 5: It's all for Trump and his allies. There's no institution
Speaker 5: of our democracy that they are unafraid to attack, and
Speaker 5: these attacks on the judiciary, Like the judiciary is the
Speaker 5: most popular branch of government. It's something that people still
Speaker 5: have some faith in. And every academic we talked to
Speaker 5: said that this case felt a body blow to that trust.
Speaker 5: And so we're just sort of watching it degrade before
Speaker 5: our eyes.
Speaker 1: So why is it?
Speaker 5: A mean?
Speaker 1: I want you're on this straight news side, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to make you give an opinion here, but
Speaker 1: I'm curious. It's sort of if you try to make
Speaker 1: it make sense to me. Why is it that when
Speaker 1: Trump goes after a branch of government like he's doing
Speaker 1: with the judiciary right now, but he has done with
Speaker 1: Congress and with our elections are free and fair elections.
Speaker 1: Why is it that that works? And it doesn't work
Speaker 1: with everyone, It only works with his people. But why
Speaker 1: does it work with his people? And why is it
Speaker 1: why can nothing penetrate that?
Speaker 5: I mean, one of the things. I just did a
Speaker 5: piece on the effort post January sixth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: to keep Trump's voice off of social media, right, like,
Speaker 5: there is this effort across the board Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
Speaker 5: after January sixth. The idea was that Trump's message needed
Speaker 5: to be curtailed because it caused violence right the IDAAE
Speaker 5: and violated you know, all these social media platforms had
Speaker 5: laid around with different standards and trust in safety teams
Speaker 5: and efforts to make their platforms quote unquote safer and
Speaker 5: more reliable, and then after January sixth, there was this
Speaker 5: across the board fear that Trump had used his platform
Speaker 5: to encourage violence, and that is a clear violation of
Speaker 5: everybody's policies. So he was taken off of social media
Speaker 5: and it was like banning him from a twenty first
Speaker 5: century town square. And the idea was, this is going
Speaker 5: to protect people from these harmful messages. And what we
Speaker 5: looked at was that three years later that had been
Speaker 5: an abject failure because Trump's message was as strong as effort.
Speaker 5: More people believe that January sixth was a peaceful protest
Speaker 5: than they did immediately in the aftermath of that case.
Speaker 5: And so Trump is a potent political force. His messages
Speaker 5: get out even though all he's doing is posting on
Speaker 5: true social And what we sort of dug into there
Speaker 5: was why is that This is a long way of
Speaker 5: answering your question, but why is that message so crucial
Speaker 5: for people to continue to get out there? It feels
Speaker 5: very obvious in some ways, but there are both political
Speaker 5: advantages to mimicking his messages. You see that with Elie Stephonic,
Speaker 5: you see that with Jim Jordan. There's a tremendous amount
Speaker 5: you can get out of Donald Trump if you are
Speaker 5: a Republican trying to advance your career. There are also
Speaker 5: great financial benefits for people people who have spread his
Speaker 5: messages and created mini media empires out of doing that.
Speaker 5: And that is you know, when Trump went to war
Speaker 5: with Fox News after the twenty twenty election, there was
Speaker 5: a whole outpouring of new conservative voices who were finding
Speaker 5: their way to make money off of election denialism and
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, and Steve Bannon told me for a story
Speaker 5: that I did recently that that's what the economy of
Speaker 5: the Internet relies on the Trumps of the world and
Speaker 5: the mini Trumps of the world to get that message
Speaker 5: out and to create clickbit content, to create viral content.
Speaker 5: So there's a real financial benefit to doing that, and
Speaker 5: then there's just the community benefit of you're with Trump.
Speaker 5: And a very strong message that I think people genuinely
Speaker 5: believe is that the federal government has been weaponized against
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. In all of these cases, whether they're state
Speaker 5: cases or federal cases, are being kind of manipulated by
Speaker 5: Joe Biden. I mean, this is the message and being
Speaker 5: weaponized against an opposition leader. And that is a strong
Speaker 5: message that Donald Trump has seeded, and he's done it
Speaker 5: with his allies, and people genuinely believe that. And now
Speaker 5: we're dealing Marco Rubio, who used to attack Trump pretty
Speaker 5: strongly in the twenty sixteen election, is sending a message
Speaker 5: to his followers on X that watching Donald Trump's trial
Speaker 5: was like watching a show trial in Cuba.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: That was insane, right, I mean, you can call it
Speaker 5: say a lot of things about that case, and I
Speaker 5: know a lot of people about the hush money case
Speaker 5: and their different views on the strength of the case
Speaker 5: and whether it should have been brought, But it wasn't
Speaker 5: a show trial.
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: No? No, I mean here's a question for you though,
Speaker 1: if you were looking at this sort of like, I mean,
Speaker 1: how much of Americans are in that information bubble? Right this?
Speaker 1: You know? I mean what seventy seven million, eighty million
Speaker 1: Americans voted for Donald Trump? When you look at there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of polling that came out last week about
Speaker 1: how like if you read the newspaper, you're like eighty
Speaker 1: percent more likely you vote for Biden, right if you
Speaker 1: just read any newspaper, right except possibly the New York Post.
Speaker 1: So is it, Joss? This information bubble is a just
Speaker 1: tech companies giving us sort of this pableum that isn't
Speaker 1: actual verified news sources. I mean, is that where this
Speaker 1: where the sort of echo chamber is being built?
Speaker 5: Or is there something I'm missing here? It's such a
Speaker 5: good question, and I've actually talked to a bunch of
Speaker 5: misinformation researchers about this, who say themselves that we have
Speaker 5: wildly over credited the power of social media.
Speaker 1: Oh good, thank you. You know, I ask everyone this
Speaker 1: question and most people either like, don't answer it or
Speaker 1: tell me I'm dumb. So to hear someone actually like
Speaker 1: address this is like probably the best interview I've ever done.
Speaker 1: So explain to me why we're overestimating it because I
Speaker 1: love to hear it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, this is like I shouldn't be answering
Speaker 5: because I only really have half the answer, but I
Speaker 5: was fine. It's brilliant researcher from Harvard. His name is Johailer,
Speaker 5: he has one I mean, he's just so well regarded
Speaker 5: in the world of online disinformation, and he has been
Speaker 5: studying it for a quarter of a century. And he
Speaker 5: said to me in a relatively brief interview, although I've
Speaker 5: read his book and was asking about it, he was
Speaker 5: the person who said, we have focused too much on
Speaker 5: the impact of social media. And he's like, now I'm
Speaker 5: going to after a quarter of a century, I'm turning
Speaker 5: my research efforts into looking at the political economy of
Speaker 5: this country and the way that it has created. And
Speaker 5: he didn't use this term exactly, but I think it's
Speaker 5: such a relevant way for us to think about this.
Speaker 5: We talk about the supply of disinformation constantly and how
Speaker 5: to stem the supply of disinformation. We don't talk as
Speaker 5: much about the demand for it and how hotent that is.
Speaker 5: And I think that, I mean, it's that's more than like,
Speaker 5: let's not go sit in anymore diners and talk to
Speaker 5: people about why they might believe conspirac theories. But I'm
Speaker 5: going to piece together a few interviews that I've done
Speaker 5: with different people about this, which is that during COVID,
Speaker 5: there was a time where people felt like they were
Speaker 5: being fed information that turned out to not be true
Speaker 5: later right like at the beginning of COVID, Anthony Fauchu
Speaker 5: was saying, don't wear a mask. You don't need to
Speaker 5: wear a mask, and then the you know, the advice
Speaker 5: changed and people can find sort of real reasons in
Speaker 5: that moment to think that the authorities are telling you
Speaker 5: the truth, even though with such a fluid moment, people
Speaker 5: didn't really know what the truth was. Where did the
Speaker 5: virus come from?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 5: You know, the whole world was turned upside down, so
Speaker 5: that kind of put people in a frame of mind
Speaker 5: that you didn't know what to believe. And then on
Speaker 5: that year was just so nuts because then you had
Speaker 5: the election and you had the conspiracies about the election.
Speaker 5: And I think during that period the notion of when
Speaker 5: I talk to people about who know way more than
Speaker 5: I do and have studied this, they say that that
Speaker 5: was sort of the stew that led us it was
Speaker 5: such a disruption in society about what people believed was
Speaker 5: true and what they could rely upon that now we're
Speaker 5: in this moment where the demand for answers is so
Speaker 5: great and the supply of like definitive answers are sort
Speaker 5: of they're scarcer than the demand, so people sort of
Speaker 5: fill in the gaps in their own way. If that
Speaker 5: makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, it actually does. This is like I have to
Speaker 1: tell you sometimes I have a question and I just
Speaker 1: can't fucking get anyone to answer it. And this idea
Speaker 1: of and one of the reasons why I love having
Speaker 1: a podcast is because I get to ask people questions
Speaker 1: that I need to answer to, and you know, different
Speaker 1: kinds of people, et cetera. But this idea that the
Speaker 1: information we needed was not available and so bad information
Speaker 1: filled the void makes so much sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'll add one other like data point into
Speaker 5: this from again people whose job it is to study
Speaker 5: bad information and how it travels. And I think everybody
Speaker 5: understands this a lot better now. But we've we focused
Speaker 5: so much on like top down bad information, like what
Speaker 5: does the Russian government want to do? What does Iran
Speaker 5: want to do? What does China want to do? And
Speaker 5: that's all there still. But what these researchers have told
Speaker 5: me is that there's a much because we've established this
Speaker 5: and there's now a narrative and it's like the government
Speaker 5: is weaponized, or you know, the government is weaponized against
Speaker 5: its enemies, or the government is lying to you about COVID,
Speaker 5: the election was stolen. Those are big, big narratives. And
Speaker 5: you can have any random person on Twitter can take
Speaker 5: a photograph of, you know, a ballot in a trash
Speaker 5: can and say what is this? It looks like X
Speaker 5: is happening and then and that's like a bottom up
Speaker 5: effort as opposed to a top down effort. And you
Speaker 5: don't even need to want to be creating a different narrative,
Speaker 5: but that one data point of a random user on
Speaker 5: Twitter can get picked up and just spread around in
Speaker 5: a way that is sort of entirely divorced from the
Speaker 5: initial intent of that poster. But the idea being that, like,
Speaker 5: it's not just someone is feeding you a line of
Speaker 5: a created narrative. It is that the narrative is there
Speaker 5: and you can bottom up contribute to that. It's the
Speaker 5: old thing of like I'm just asking questions, what is
Speaker 5: this ballot? Doing here on the street, and then like, boy,
Speaker 5: are there going to be you know, ten other people
Speaker 5: who are going to pick that up and have their
Speaker 5: own answer, And then Gateway Pundit is going to come
Speaker 5: in and write a story about it, and then that's
Speaker 5: a headline that then can be picked up and kind
Speaker 5: of taken and done something else with. So these are
Speaker 5: I think it's it's people who study what we call
Speaker 5: dissem information and misinformation are moving away from those terms
Speaker 5: because they're totally ineffective. You can't ever convince anybody that
Speaker 5: they've fallen for a piece of bad information. It's just
Speaker 5: like a completely losing exercise, right, And it's also like
Speaker 5: it moves faster than you ever could try to tamp
Speaker 5: it down. So we talked to secretaries of State's office
Speaker 5: who say, well, last time we tried to have a
Speaker 5: strong social media policy where we would like knock down
Speaker 5: these false rumors, they don't even try to do it
Speaker 5: anymore because it doesn't work. And so I think that
Speaker 5: we're kind of moving into I don't know, is this
Speaker 5: like two point zero bad information studies where people are
Speaker 5: really realizing there's no putting the toothpaste back in the
Speaker 5: bottle or whatever, like the election was stolen in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty is a narrative that is out there. It doesn't
Speaker 5: matter how many court cases or how many Donald Trump
Speaker 5: appointed judges say that that wasn't the case. Like, it's there.
Speaker 5: And so the question is, now, what does society do
Speaker 5: with that information? And it all comes back to the
Speaker 5: original Donald Trump verdict story, which is that there are
Speaker 5: a lot of people. I mean, you can have that
Speaker 5: that is a fact that had happened. There was a
Speaker 5: guilty verdict thirty four counts, a jury of his peers.
Speaker 1: And if you want to you know, if you do
Speaker 1: crimes in New York, you got to sit in front
Speaker 1: of a New York jury. If you do crimes in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't necessarily care. If you do crimes or
Speaker 1: Palm Beach. Maybe he'd get a better, more partisan jury
Speaker 1: that would let him off in Palm Beach. But look,
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden just got found guilty, and he had a
Speaker 1: jury of his peers in the state of Delaware where
Speaker 1: his father is pretty much Elvis, and he got found
Speaker 1: guilty too, which means the law is the law for
Speaker 1: everyone and is a real win for our justice system,
Speaker 1: and we should all be celebrating it because this is
Speaker 1: what we want, is a blind justice system that looks
Speaker 1: set the facts and that does what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, your weight is very apt here, and
Speaker 5: it was, you know, I was talking to people before
Speaker 5: the Hunter verdict came down, obviously because it just happened.
Speaker 5: But the lesson there was exactly what you just said,
Speaker 5: which is that the justice system is not captured because
Speaker 5: the president's own son was just found guilty of felonies.
Speaker 5: So the justice system itself is sort of standing standing
Speaker 5: up for democracy. And that was the sort of split
Speaker 5: headline that we had the day after Trump's hush money
Speaker 5: verdict was the justice system worked, and it's been really
Speaker 5: harmed by all of the attacks. And the vast majority
Speaker 5: of Republicans felt that that jury was corrupt and that
Speaker 5: the case was wrongly decided, and that is due to
Speaker 5: Donald Trump's very concerted effort to discredit that jury and
Speaker 5: that entire proceeding. But if you look at the facts,
Speaker 5: the justice system sort of did its job, and it
Speaker 5: did its job again with Hunter Biden. And so it
Speaker 5: takes a long time to have these verdicts come out,
Speaker 5: but they do, and just to add one other thought,
Speaker 5: which is when you talk about you know, that's why
Speaker 5: Jack Smith brought his case in Florida, and he didn't
Speaker 5: even want to fight over the venue. He just went
Speaker 5: directly to Donald Trump's backyard to bring that case and.
Speaker 1: It happened to work out very well for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate you. Really great
Speaker 1: to have you. Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: It was a pleasure a moment.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon by John Fest I got to tell you,
Speaker 3: after hearing these recordings of mister and Missus Alito, I
Speaker 3: don't want to hang out.
Speaker 1: With them, Alito, no go. There were some recordings of
Speaker 1: Missus Alito, mister Alito and also Justice Roberts. They were
Speaker 1: done by a woman who that's sort of her thing.
Speaker 1: She does these tapes. I thought that they said pretty
Speaker 1: much what we thought they would say, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's still kind of striking. The woman who recorded her
Speaker 1: as a woman called Lauren windsor Missus Alito. I want
Speaker 1: a sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to
Speaker 1: look across the lagoon at the Pride flag next month.
Speaker 1: So Missus Alito, she wants to let her freak flag
Speaker 1: fly and for that she is our moment of Buckray.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.