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 Justice Thomas has hired a law
Speaker 1: clerk accused of sending racist texts.
Speaker 2: We have such an interesting show for you today.
Speaker 1: Former US Attorney Barbara McQuaid stops by to talk to
Speaker 1: us about her new book, Attack from Within, How disinformation
Speaker 1: is sabotaging America. Then we'll talk to Carlos Lozada about
Speaker 1: his new book, The Washington Book How to Read Politics
Speaker 1: and Politicians. But first we have the host of the
Speaker 1: Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Welcome back, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong fasts.
Speaker 2: Whatever this show is called, nobody knows.
Speaker 4: Whatever, whatever it's called, whatever it is, whatever we do,
Speaker 4: We're back again for you.
Speaker 2: America, exactly.
Speaker 1: You and I here to dissect the Week of fuckery.
Speaker 2: And what week it was.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of stuff that got written about
Speaker 1: and talked about, and certainly the smeirnoff Right, the Russian
Speaker 1: asset who turns out the lead witness in the impeachment
Speaker 1: against Joe.
Speaker 4: Biden, the centerpiece of their entire Portshit, bullshit, weapons grade
Speaker 4: garbage pretend impeachment case against Joe Biden turns out to
Speaker 4: have not only been a criminal, but a Russian asset
Speaker 4: who was mean he was senior Russian intelligence officials. Did
Speaker 4: you read that charging document on the guy?
Speaker 2: No, but tell us what's in it, Folks.
Speaker 4: You've heard Jim Comer, Slow Jim and Jim Jordan over
Speaker 4: and over again talk about this gold plated class a
Speaker 4: witness who is a direct witness to seeing Joe Biden
Speaker 4: take sex of cash from the Barisma executives and his
Speaker 4: having his corrupt son Unter direct this gigantic international criminal scheme.
Speaker 4: And it turns out, I know you're going to all
Speaker 4: be shocked to hear this. It turns out the entire thing,
Speaker 4: every last detail of it, was completely made up. None
Speaker 4: of it was real. It was hot garbage from the
Speaker 4: very beginning. And now they're desperately trying to retcon this
Speaker 4: thing and like put it in reverse, like, well, we
Speaker 4: didn't really know who this guy was. He was an intern,
Speaker 4: a coffee boy. We barely knew him.
Speaker 1: My favorite was Jim Jordan saying that it doesn't change
Speaker 1: any of the fundamentals, right, which is we're.
Speaker 4: Gonna impeach Joe Biden because we're a bunch of assholes
Speaker 4: with nothing better than do es.
Speaker 5: It's all vibes, but we don't like this guy.
Speaker 1: We don't know why, but we know that's high vibes
Speaker 1: and misdemeanors.
Speaker 4: I that, my friends, is the episode title, high vibes
Speaker 4: and misdemeanors.
Speaker 2: That's right, misdemeanors.
Speaker 4: No. Look, and you and I were talking this earlier
Speaker 4: in the week. They're not going to stop doing this.
Speaker 4: They will continue this BS until the sun dies into
Speaker 4: a burt cinder because they have nothing else to offer.
Speaker 4: They have no other plan.
Speaker 1: Their boss told them to, right, I mean, they're all
Speaker 1: arms of the Trump campaign at this point.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: And look, the fact that in twenty sixteen the Russians
Speaker 4: had to kind of sort of maybe disguise their role
Speaker 4: in helping Trump was one thing. Right now, it's like, well, why, yes,
Speaker 4: I do enjoy taking Russian intelligence materials because, after all,
Speaker 4: who's our real ally in the world but Vladimir put
Speaker 4: Well that.
Speaker 1: Is thanks to Tucker Carls and also, you know, the
Speaker 1: far right industrial media complex has decided that authoritarianism is
Speaker 1: the way to go, and the democracies are for cocks
Speaker 1: and losers, and I think that's right. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because it's like this House impeachment inquiry. It
Speaker 1: comes from this Republican House who can control only the
Speaker 1: House right now, and they control it by two seats
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 4: And fewer every day.
Speaker 1: Right, and then they have a few like non voting seats,
Speaker 1: So the math is they actually have more than two seats.
Speaker 1: But what I think is really interesting about this is
Speaker 1: like next week they're probably going to shut down the
Speaker 1: federal government because the Speaker of the House had this
Speaker 1: like brilliant idea. Again, Mike Johnson, all he wants is
Speaker 1: to not be removed from this job, right, That's all
Speaker 1: he literally, he just wants to keep his job.
Speaker 4: I think there are other things he wants to but
Speaker 4: we're not going to discuss those on a family show.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, oh jesus.
Speaker 4: But anyway, while he's like, oh god, he's going to
Speaker 4: work blue, right, he's going dark.
Speaker 1: This is the problem is that like for Rick to
Speaker 1: talk about Mike Johnson and not talk about the porn accountability,
Speaker 1: it's like he just can't do it.
Speaker 4: I listen, who can blame me?
Speaker 2: I can blame you.
Speaker 5: But anyway, well you can't.
Speaker 1: I certainly I can, and I will. So Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: has this one. There's still in place, this one person
Speaker 1: motion to vacate. So it's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: Matt Gaates this time, but it could be any other
Speaker 1: member of Congress.
Speaker 4: A Chip Roy, Marjorie Taylor Green, could be anybody.
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green has already said she will do it
Speaker 1: if he funds the government, so he's.
Speaker 2: Sort of thrown out a bunch of things.
Speaker 1: I read in punch Bowl this week that maybe they
Speaker 1: would shut down the government a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: he cooked up this idea of a tiered CR. I
Speaker 1: want to just talk about it for a second. A
Speaker 1: CR is you fund the government temporarily. You did it
Speaker 1: as a tiar so that half would expire at one
Speaker 1: point and then half would expire three weeks later.
Speaker 2: No one's ever done this because it's a stupid waste
Speaker 2: of time.
Speaker 1: But I think in his like lizard brain, he was thinking, like,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll trick them into not thinking I'm funding the government.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's worth just pulling back here
Speaker 1: for a minute and realizing that this crew is really
Speaker 1: quite stupid.
Speaker 4: Well. I mean, look, let's be very very direct about
Speaker 4: who we're talking about here. These are people who have
Speaker 4: a very deliberate hatred for any kind of experience or
Speaker 4: knowledge or expertise. And the purpose of their position in
Speaker 4: Washington is not about serving their constituents or helping the
Speaker 4: country or passing legislation. Their entire purpose is chaos. That
Speaker 4: is the only reason they are there is to cause
Speaker 4: and stoke more chaos, and the only incentive they have
Speaker 4: is chaos. What do you get on Fox for? Do
Speaker 4: you get on Fox for saying why, yes, I was
Speaker 4: in the sub committee today and we worked on electric
Speaker 4: vehicle mandate standards or whatever. No, you get coverage on
Speaker 4: Fox by saying today I fought back against the pedocuck
Speaker 4: army of sorow Shills, and I burned it all down.
Speaker 4: And of course burning it all down is all they
Speaker 4: care about. So you got Mike Johnson clinging to power
Speaker 4: and political life by a thread. And look, no one
Speaker 4: in that organization, no one in the House, cares whether
Speaker 4: they keep the government open or closed. They want it
Speaker 4: to be chaotic. They want the problems of a shutdown,
Speaker 4: They want the chaos of a shutdown. And they all
Speaker 4: do it because they want to please Donald Trump and
Speaker 4: they want to get on Fox News. These are the
Speaker 4: only things that matter, and so that's what that's what
Speaker 4: we'll get more of.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about something that you,
Speaker 1: as a campaign guy, are going to.
Speaker 2: Be obsessed with because it's so stupid.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about Republicans and in
Speaker 1: vitro fertilization in the great state of Alabama. Third Hospital
Speaker 1: in Alabama said they're not going to do IVF the
Speaker 1: court ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court. They are taking
Speaker 1: this country back to the eighteenth century. They have decided
Speaker 1: that embryos are people discuss.
Speaker 4: I will say this, the most consequent and far reaching
Speaker 4: political moment of the last five years was the Dobs decision,
Speaker 4: in which the Republican Party, which they'd been telling Democrats
Speaker 4: for fifty years, this is what we're going to do,
Speaker 4: and this is how we're going to do it, and
Speaker 4: they did it. They woke up the next morning and said, wait,
Speaker 4: what a quarter of our female voter population the Republican
Speaker 4: Party is either actually like Roe v. Wade, pro choice
Speaker 4: or libertarian, state of the hell out of my business.
Speaker 4: Pro choice what's happening here. They were shocked that this
Speaker 4: suddenly bit them on the ass politically in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: and it bit them hard, and it's still hurting them
Speaker 4: right now. If you think that Dobbs blew a hole
Speaker 4: in the Republican Party's coalition, particularly with women who were
Speaker 4: more educated and affluent IVF, if Dobbs was a bomb,
Speaker 4: IVF is a nuclear war, you were going to see
Speaker 4: Republican women, Democratic women, independent women lose their damn minds
Speaker 4: over this for absolutely good reasons, because you know what
Speaker 4: if an embryo is a baby, if they're going to
Speaker 4: play this game. You know, Nicky Haley had a child
Speaker 4: by IVF, and Mike Pence and his wife and mother
Speaker 4: had a child by IVF, and I know people and
Speaker 4: you know people who've had children by IVF and it
Speaker 4: was a great blessing for them.
Speaker 1: Bet In Darwin, My twins were made in a lab
Speaker 1: in New Jersey. And I want to point out that
Speaker 1: like in New York, people are having IVF, they're having surrogacy,
Speaker 1: they're having you know, there's not this is this is
Speaker 1: there's no stigma about this. It's ridiculous. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can't have children there are we have science.
Speaker 1: That's what science is for. People don't die of the
Speaker 1: measles anymore. That's what science is for. I mean, this is, like,
Speaker 1: you know, as much as this is about the end
Speaker 1: of ree Vwaight, it's also about a Republican party that
Speaker 1: hates science. I mean, you watch these Trump rallies and
Speaker 1: they're advertising ivermectin next to Trump. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not just the end of women's reproductive freedom.
Speaker 1: This is the end of like legitimate science based freedom.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I'm so struck by is when
Speaker 1: you talk about the architect of overturning Rev. Wade, the
Speaker 1: guy who created SBA in Texas, which functionally overturned ROW
Speaker 1: a year before, a guy called Jonathan Mitchell has told
Speaker 1: The New York Times last week he said, we're.
Speaker 2: Not going to talk about this. We don't need a
Speaker 2: federal ban because.
Speaker 1: We have the Comstock Act and Act from the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds that prevents you from sending pornography in the mail.
Speaker 1: He's going to use that on abortion pills. And like
Speaker 1: even now the abortion pill case is about trying to
Speaker 1: overturn FDA approval. So this is not just about abortion pills.
Speaker 1: This is about a broad rejection of science more generally.
Speaker 4: Well, look, you've got Christopher Rufo, who is a famous
Speaker 4: right wing troll, but who also now is you know,
Speaker 4: Desanta's split on the board of New College in Florida,
Speaker 4: and he's a big influencer in the right wing space.
Speaker 4: Last night he's out basically saying, well, you know what's
Speaker 4: birth control is done away with for women, and we'll
Speaker 4: get back to the purpose of sex, which is procreation
Speaker 4: and creating families. This entire movement, they are so running
Speaker 4: into a gigantic cultural and social buzzsaw that they have
Speaker 4: not calculated yet how deeply they're going to break their coalition.
Speaker 4: You know what, if y'all want to go off and
Speaker 4: go to Alabama, Stan and have twelve kids, more power
Speaker 4: to you, God blessed, do your best.
Speaker 1: I want to pause for a second and talk about this.
Speaker 1: Alabama is one of the fifteen states that has rejected
Speaker 1: millions in federal dollars to promote food assistance. Right, they've
Speaker 1: rejected food assistance, They've rejected Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 4: Food is for cox Molly, It's week.
Speaker 1: This is a state where you're forced to have your baby.
Speaker 1: You can't have a baby you want, and you also
Speaker 1: are not going to feed for children like it's exactly
Speaker 1: the opposite of everything Christianity teaches.
Speaker 4: Sure, you've got a state that is determined to inject
Speaker 4: not just Christianity into its politics, but a specific, narrow,
Speaker 4: casted edge of Evangelical Christianity into its politics. And when
Speaker 4: you read that decision, it is these embryos are made
Speaker 4: in the image of the Lord, etc. Okay, you are
Speaker 4: free to believe that that is not law or jurisprudence.
Speaker 4: That is your faith. And if you believe that, more
Speaker 4: power to you great, go forth and conquer. But the
Speaker 4: brutal reality is we now have people who are overt
Speaker 4: theocrats seeking to impose a specifically narrow type of Evangelical
Speaker 4: Christianity on every single American. And we've both talked to
Speaker 4: Tim Alberta about his book about how politicized the MAGA
Speaker 4: religious movement has become, and how far it is from faith,
Speaker 4: and how much it is about a social and cultural
Speaker 4: rejection of modernity, and whether that's science or whether that's
Speaker 4: birth control, or whether that's medicine. They don't want to
Speaker 4: live in this century. They don't want to live in
Speaker 4: the last century. They want to live in the nineteenth
Speaker 4: century or before. And it's all because they believe at
Speaker 4: the fundamental underpinning of all this, when you get right
Speaker 4: down to it, is they're worried that the brown people
Speaker 4: are having more babies than they are. That's what's really
Speaker 4: underneath all of this, right, is racism. The white replacement
Speaker 4: theory informs so much of what's happening here.
Speaker 1: Biden HQ has been very smart about clipping things, and
Speaker 1: they clip this. Dasha Burns talking to Senator Tuberville, and
Speaker 1: she says, do you have a reaction it's the Alabama senator, right,
Speaker 1: do you have a reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling?
Speaker 1: Senator Tuberville, I'm all for it. We need to have
Speaker 1: more kids, Dasha. But IVF is used to have more children,
Speaker 1: and IVF services are positive some clinics. So there is
Speaker 1: a slim but real chance here that Tommy Tuberville the
Speaker 1: dumbest member of the United States Senate. And this is,
Speaker 1: by the way, the competition is stiff. Do we think
Speaker 1: he may not know what IBF is.
Speaker 4: He doesn't know what IVF is, and does he thinks
Speaker 4: them scientists and their coats are making the babies die.
Speaker 4: That's what he thinks. I look, there's a moral question
Speaker 4: underneath this idea that, Okay, we're going to ban IVF
Speaker 4: in order to promote what What does banning IVF actually do?
Speaker 4: The idea of fetal personhood is very central to all this.
Speaker 4: But once again, none of them are going to propose
Speaker 4: that we go out and provide any kind of family support,
Speaker 4: family leave, helpcare for any of these tens of millions
Speaker 4: of children who are yet born. I know people, you know,
Speaker 4: people who who have struggled to have children, who desperately
Speaker 4: want to have kids. And now what they're saying is,
Speaker 4: we're so afraid that there's some overlay with our anti
Speaker 4: abortion crusade with IVF, that we're going to ban IVF.
Speaker 4: It's a fascinating and really dark place.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I really want you to weigh in on what
Speaker 1: this is like.
Speaker 2: Electorally for them. You're a campaign guy, bad.
Speaker 4: And also terrible, stupid and also idiotic, moronic, and yet
Speaker 4: blistering with stupidity and political consequences they have yet to reckon.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk about the birth control like that
Speaker 1: they're making overtures towards birth control devoters like that.
Speaker 4: If you want to try to find like a ninety
Speaker 4: five percent issue in American politics, you're going to struggle. Okay,
Speaker 4: Getting a ninety five percent issue is really, really tough
Speaker 4: in American politics, And I haven't pulled it yet this week,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to guess I'm just going to make
Speaker 4: a make a quick back of the envelope calculation that
Speaker 4: banning birth control is about a point zero one percent
Speaker 4: favorable you get right down to it, and the lack
Speaker 4: of understanding of political consequences in order to keep a
Speaker 4: narrow slice of the social conservatives happy. It may end
Speaker 4: up being the thing that legitimately kills the Republican Party
Speaker 4: in this country.
Speaker 1: As Lindsey Graham says, they will have deserved it right awful.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's funny because.
Speaker 1: It's like I grew up in the time when timber
Speaker 1: Gore was coming for pornography, and people gave up on
Speaker 1: that because I'm Americans love pornography.
Speaker 2: Here as the daughter of.
Speaker 1: An erotic writer, Yeah, love pornography.
Speaker 2: They love it.
Speaker 4: You may have noticed that Americans love pornography. They like sex.
Speaker 4: The idea you got Christopher Rufo, one of the biggest
Speaker 4: leaders in the social conservative movement, out saying we're going
Speaker 4: to get rid of birth control because the purpose of
Speaker 4: sex is procreation. Good luck, good luck in America, good
Speaker 4: luck in the anywhere in the world with that.
Speaker 2: As somebody tell that to Matt Schlaf.
Speaker 4: Matt's encounters are rarely going to result in children.
Speaker 2: Oh, did you know?
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for
Speaker 1: a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New
Speaker 1: York on March sixth. We're going to be chatting right
Speaker 1: after Super Tuesday about what's.
Speaker 2: Going on, and it is going to probably be.
Speaker 1: The one fun night the next eighty days. If you're
Speaker 1: in the New York area, please come by and join us.
Speaker 1: You can go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket.
Speaker 1: Barbara mccuad is a former US attorney and author of
Speaker 1: Attack from Within, How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Barbara.
Speaker 3: Mccuay Hi, Molly, great to be with you.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you. And first I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the book. So the book is called
Speaker 1: Attack from Within How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America? Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us about why disinformation and sort of why
Speaker 1: that was where you went with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, you know, my background is as a national
Speaker 3: security prosecutor. That's what I did for most of my career,
Speaker 3: and I watched the threat evolve from al Qaeda to ISIS,
Speaker 3: to cybers, to Russia, and finally to disinformation. And now
Speaker 3: I teach a law school class on the tensions between
Speaker 3: national security and civil liberties, and so in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: I started assigning our students to read Robert Muller's report
Speaker 3: about Russian disinformation. It's a bit of a distraction when
Speaker 3: people talk about it, as you know, what did he
Speaker 3: conclude with regard to Donald Trump. There's a fascinating discussion
Speaker 3: in there about Russian disinformation, about the use of social
Speaker 3: media to sew division, to influence voters in a really
Speaker 3: sophisticated propaganda campaign. And since twenty sixteen, I have seen
Speaker 3: those same tactics now being used by political operatives in
Speaker 3: the United States. And if you listen to the way
Speaker 3: Donald Trump speaks and talking about you know, January sixth
Speaker 3: insurrectionists as hostages, or saying we need to preserve presidential immunity,
Speaker 3: as if that is a thing. He is using some
Speaker 3: of those same tactics that we saw in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: by Russia, and frankly, once I started digging into it
Speaker 3: and studying the same tactics, we saw a boy Hitler
Speaker 3: and Mussolini and other authoritarians throughout history. And so my
Speaker 3: goal in writing the book is really to just share
Speaker 3: with the public in a readable and accessible way the
Speaker 3: things that I've learned in my research, the danger of
Speaker 3: disinformation and how it is being used against us to
Speaker 3: manipulate It's.
Speaker 1: Really interesting that you're talking about this because I've had
Speaker 1: people on this podcast like Jason Stanley. Jason Stanley is
Speaker 1: a professor at Yale who focuses on this sort of
Speaker 1: post reconstruction, anti democracy movement in the Republican Party, and
Speaker 1: I'm sort of mis explaining what he does, but we
Speaker 1: talked about how unusual it is Donald Trump is so
Speaker 1: gifted at misinformation and disinformation. Then right now he's on
Speaker 1: the stump talking about how.
Speaker 6: His opponent is a danger at a democracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, I mean. One of his most recent posts
Speaker 3: on the ironically named Truth Social talked about how the
Speaker 3: death of Navali and Russia makes him fearful of what's
Speaker 3: happening in our country by his opponents. I talk about
Speaker 3: a jiu jitsu move. Yet Jason Stanley is actually quoted
Speaker 3: in my book because he does talk about the use
Speaker 3: of propaganda really before, during, and since World War Two,
Speaker 3: about the way Hitler and Mussolini used propaganda to manipulate
Speaker 3: a population. And we see those same tactics used today.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: The methods of delivery are a little different with social
Speaker 3: media and cable news, but the tactics are really the same.
Speaker 3: So I talk about the history of disinformation, I talk
Speaker 3: about the cognitive forces that cause it to work, and
Speaker 3: then I talk about some of the tactics, and I'll
Speaker 3: mention just a couple of them, because they really are
Speaker 3: some of the things we are seeing Donald Trump and
Speaker 3: others used today. You know, he's not the only one
Speaker 3: referring to insurrectionists as hostages. We see a last Stephanic,
Speaker 3: the congressman from New York, repeating that phrase, or Marjorie
Speaker 3: Taylor Grain and Georgia repeating that phrase. And so one
Speaker 3: of the things that I learned that Adolf Hitler knew
Speaker 3: and wrote about in Mind comes and that Joseph Gerbels
Speaker 3: his propagandist talked about is that you must use simple
Speaker 3: messages understandable to the masses, and then repeat, repeat, repeat
Speaker 3: them over and over again, so that people hear them
Speaker 3: from so many different sources they begin to think, well,
Speaker 3: it must be true because I hear it all the
Speaker 3: time from so many different people. I see it from
Speaker 3: my friends, I see it on television, I see it
Speaker 3: on social media. That's one. Just repeat the simple message.
Speaker 3: So a stolen election in twenty twenty stop this deal.
Speaker 3: Everybody hears it and they begin to believe it. The
Speaker 3: other fundamental aspect of disinformation is that a big lie
Speaker 3: is ironically more believable than a little lie. Hit We're
Speaker 3: talked about this in nine Cobs. That's because all of
Speaker 3: us have experienced little lies. Most of us tell little
Speaker 3: lies because it's a kid thing to do. My husband
Speaker 3: might say to me, no, that dressed does a make
Speaker 3: you look fat, deer? He is being kind all of us.
Speaker 3: You know your hair looks just fine, I might say
Speaker 3: to my daughter. We're all accustomed to that. But what
Speaker 3: Hitler said is no one would have the audacity to
Speaker 3: tell a big lie. And because we think that, we
Speaker 3: think it would be so immoral to tell a big
Speaker 3: lie that most of us just can't even imagine telling
Speaker 3: a big lie, you know. Of course, for him it
Speaker 3: was that, you know, Jews were the source of all
Speaker 3: problems in our world, and we need a solution to them.
Speaker 3: But what we're hearing today, of course, is this idea
Speaker 3: of a stolen election. And I think people think, I mean,
Speaker 3: it must be true because it would be so easy
Speaker 3: to disprove if it weren't stolen. But in fact it's not,
Speaker 3: because it's fifty individual state elections. And so if you
Speaker 3: throw that out there and say it enough, you could
Speaker 3: undermine people's confidence in the election. And that's a big
Speaker 3: part of it, you know. I've just occard in recent
Speaker 3: days Donald Trump telling people that voting by mail is unreliable,
Speaker 3: because he's already laying the groundwork so that when we
Speaker 3: see people in his own party choose to vote in
Speaker 3: person and people in the other party choose to vote
Speaker 3: by mail, and we see this red mirage, just as
Speaker 3: we saw in twenty twenty, where in the early returns
Speaker 3: he's winning, and then later as a mail in ballots
Speaker 3: are tonad he loses. He can say they flip the votes.
Speaker 3: It was fraud, you see. And so this idea of
Speaker 3: simple repeatable eyes about a big audacious fact is right
Speaker 3: out of being with you know, sometimes referred to as
Speaker 3: the authoritarian playbook.
Speaker 1: Now, I wonder if you could just explain a little
Speaker 1: bit about so this is like an obsession of mine
Speaker 1: right now. I have this theory that part of how
Speaker 1: we are here is that Congress refused to regulate social
Speaker 1: media at all, and had they been just a little
Speaker 1: bit more careful, had so, for example, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five or two thousand and six, when all this started,
Speaker 1: if they had said, you know, if you're going to
Speaker 1: link to a story, you have to pet you know,
Speaker 1: like made it so that these social media sites have
Speaker 1: to have editors or fact checkers, so that there was
Speaker 1: some sense in which, you know, if you just put
Speaker 1: up something that said, like the election was stolen, that
Speaker 1: there would be some kind of pushback from the platform.
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen, right, So I'm wondering, like, obviously this
Speaker 1: is tangential, but I'm wondering if you think regulation could have.
Speaker 6: Prevented some of this.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I also think it's not too late. I
Speaker 3: think we must regulate social media in this polarized world.
Speaker 3: There is this concept called the either or fallacy, and
Speaker 3: people want you to think that there are only two
Speaker 3: sides of every issue. You're either with us or against us.
Speaker 3: You're either a you know, a Republican or a democrat.
Speaker 3: You're red or blue. You favor free speech, or you
Speaker 3: want to be a censor. Is what it comes down
Speaker 3: to you when we start talking about social media. Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: any regulation is censorship, and of course that is not
Speaker 3: the case. There is far less restriction on social media
Speaker 3: than there is on televis and radio, where there are
Speaker 3: regulations that require disclosure of who paid for ads. For example,
Speaker 3: on social media, there is no requirement to disclose who
Speaker 3: pays for ads, So Russians could be paying for ads,
Speaker 3: or large corporations could be paying for ads, or one
Speaker 3: really rich guy could be paying for ads, and instead
Speaker 3: they use a name like the Red, White, and Blue
Speaker 3: Grandmothers of America. No requirement to disclose. You know, when
Speaker 3: you watch an ad on television or hear one on
Speaker 3: the radio, they'll say, I'm candidate so and so, and
Speaker 3: I approve of this ad because they have to disclose.
Speaker 3: That's not true on social media. So I think there's
Speaker 3: a lot we can do to regulate social media that
Speaker 3: would comply with the First Amendment and fall short of censorship.
Speaker 3: So one of the things we've learned about social media
Speaker 3: from the congressional testimony of that whistleblower named Francis Hougans
Speaker 3: was that it wasn't so much about the content but
Speaker 3: about the algorithms that so manipulative. So Facebook, for one,
Speaker 3: was using algorithms that was designed to push content that
Speaker 3: would outrage us. The more outrageous the content, the more
Speaker 3: it would get. They introduce the dislike and hate emoji,
Speaker 3: and the more that was attached to an article, the
Speaker 3: more likely that would show up in a prominent place
Speaker 3: in our feeds. And the reason was that kept you
Speaker 3: on the platform, it kept you looking at advertisements, and
Speaker 3: it made them money. Instead, we could require them to
Speaker 3: disclose their algorithms, maybe we don't prohibit them, or we
Speaker 3: could tell them you can't use certain algorithms that manipulate
Speaker 3: your users in this way. So there are a lot
Speaker 3: of things we can do, from requiring disclosure of the
Speaker 3: payment of ads to requiring some transparency around algorithms that
Speaker 3: would be very helpful. I think that could avoid arguments
Speaker 3: about content. Now, I'd go even further than that and
Speaker 3: say that when there is controversial content, they should push
Speaker 3: us toward other sources that even if they're not saying
Speaker 3: this is false, if it's about an election, maybe it
Speaker 3: gives us the website to our state secretary of state
Speaker 3: so we could read more about elections. I think we
Speaker 3: could do those things. Can we require it under the
Speaker 3: First Amendment? I don't know, but I think we can
Speaker 3: permit it. You currently before the Supreme Court, there are
Speaker 3: a couple of lawsuits pending, one out of Texas, the
Speaker 3: other out of Florida where they have statutes that have
Speaker 3: been passed that would prohibit content moderation as censorship, as
Speaker 3: violating First Amendment right. So those are a coup pair
Speaker 3: of cases I am looking for, and media companies have
Speaker 3: joined against those statutes to say, without content moderation, social
Speaker 3: media would be a toxic healscape. You think it's bad, now,
Speaker 3: just way do we stop moderating all the threats and
Speaker 3: harassment and other things we see there? You know, there
Speaker 3: is an argument on the right that social media platforms
Speaker 3: have a pro left bias in their censoring things. On
Speaker 3: the right, I think what the social media platforms would
Speaker 3: say is, well, we do take down things that threaten people,
Speaker 3: that harass people, that target groups, and so this Supreme
Speaker 3: Court decision will decide whether that is permissible. I shudder
Speaker 3: to think what social media will look like if those
Speaker 3: social media companies lose.
Speaker 1: I always think of this Supreme Court as doing the
Speaker 1: worst possible thing.
Speaker 6: But do you have some feeling that they might not.
Speaker 3: I have some feeling that they might not. I don't
Speaker 3: know that they always do the worst possible thing. I
Speaker 3: think that this Supreme Court is extremely conservative. I think
Speaker 3: they are exercising their power, even if it requires an
Speaker 3: overreach of the normal rules about when to overturn precedent.
Speaker 3: But I don't think they're magas, and I don't think
Speaker 3: they're in the bag for Trump. I think that that
Speaker 3: means that in some decisions we will see not the
Speaker 3: worst possible thing they can do. But you know, they
Speaker 3: also favor big business, and so the media giants are
Speaker 3: also a big business, and so I think they will
Speaker 3: look somewhat favorably there as well.
Speaker 1: So crazy, so we know so much more. Like in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, what happened we saw disinformation weaponized against Hillary
Speaker 1: Culton like I think about Hillary's emails.
Speaker 2: I actually it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was listening to on the media today and someone
Speaker 1: who is like a straight down the middle journal was saying, no,
Speaker 1: Hillary's emails was a great story and really important, and
Speaker 1: I think that we did the right thing by just
Speaker 1: endlessly rehashing them. But they really were set out in
Speaker 1: a way that was disinformation. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about wiki leaks.
Speaker 3: Yes, So this was an influence campaign, which is slightly
Speaker 3: different from a disinformation campaign, but it is still intended
Speaker 3: to influence the outcome of an election. So you may
Speaker 3: recall the timing of all of this. Russia steals emails
Speaker 3: from the Democratic National Committee, and you know that includes
Speaker 3: Hillary's emails that include the party chair, and they hold
Speaker 3: on to him for a little while, and then the
Speaker 3: day the excess Hollywood tape gets released in which Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is saying some disgusting things that is very likely
Speaker 3: to lose him a lot of voters, particularly women. Now
Speaker 3: is when Wikileiks decides is the time to drop these emails,
Speaker 3: and so they drop a lot of emails, including some
Speaker 3: that were actually that were unflattering to people in Democratic
Speaker 3: Party leadership, and so Russia is controlling the narrative. Instead
Speaker 3: of talking about access Hollywood, that gets pushed off the
Speaker 3: front page, and instead we're talking about palace intrigue in
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party, so that gets repeated. Of course, the
Speaker 3: other email scandal is a different one, which was Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton's use of a private email server. Certainly, Caroless, certainly
Speaker 3: is something that voters should have been thinking about and
Speaker 3: been aware of. But this idea that it was ever
Speaker 3: criminal was far fretch from the start. Ultimately concluded, the
Speaker 3: FBI concluded no crime, and then Jim call me, I
Speaker 3: think makes a real serious mistake.
Speaker 1: I do truly, truly hate Jim Camy. I'm sure you've worked.
Speaker 3: With him, and I think he's a decent person. But
Speaker 3: I think that he overestimated his own personal credibility when
Speaker 3: he thought that he needed to say some things. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it was to appease Republicans or because
Speaker 3: he thought he himself had such great credibility that people
Speaker 3: would accept what he had to say. I think when
Speaker 3: times are tough, it's best to follow DOJ policy and.
Speaker 1: Not just to go out on your own and throw
Speaker 1: the election to Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm both In July when he said the investigation
Speaker 3: was closed. You know, he made a lot of disparaging
Speaker 3: comments about Hillary Clinton that is in violation of DOJ policy,
Speaker 3: just as we have seen, by the way, with Robert
Speaker 3: Hurr and Joe Biden talking about you know, his memory
Speaker 3: and his elderly and other things. There is a DJ
Speaker 3: principle of federal prosecution that says the prosecutor should refrain
Speaker 3: from disparaging a person when charges will not be filed.
Speaker 3: And so back to twenty sixteen, I digress. And then
Speaker 3: when he reopens the case, you know, they discover a
Speaker 3: few more emails on I think it was Anthony Wiener's computer,
Speaker 3: and they realized that he look at some more and
Speaker 3: he didn't know how long it would take. In fact,
Speaker 3: it took a few days and they were done before
Speaker 3: the election, but he felt the need to report to
Speaker 3: Congress that they had reopened the investigation. I don't understand
Speaker 3: why there is a need to do that. Ordinarily, it
Speaker 3: is the policy of the Department of Justice to neither
Speaker 3: confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. I think
Speaker 3: at that point, if charges are merited, you file them.
Speaker 3: But to say we're going to be looking at these
Speaker 3: emails over the next few days. It just put the
Speaker 3: matter in the headlines again, stayed there for several days.
Speaker 6: And it lost her the election.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we know with mathematical certainty, but
Speaker 3: in light of how close that election was, it certainly
Speaker 3: had to sway voters to see those headlines. And the
Speaker 3: other data point I'll mention Molly is that there is
Speaker 3: I forget the statistic now, but more than any single
Speaker 3: policy issue, Hillary Clinton's emails dominated the news cycle by
Speaker 3: a factor of you know, I forget the number, but
Speaker 3: it's you know, sixty to one or some outrageous ratio,
Speaker 3: and so that became the narrative on Hillary Clinton instead
Speaker 3: of anything about you know, her experience or positions between
Speaker 3: the two parties, between the two candidates. And so I
Speaker 3: do think that that issue, both the way the Justice
Speaker 3: Department and Jim Comy in particular handled Hillary Clinton's email investigation,
Speaker 3: and the way Rush used WikiLeaks to drop these emails
Speaker 3: on the public in October close to the election, to
Speaker 3: push the EXUS Hollywood tape off of the headlines, I
Speaker 3: think those absolutely had some influence in the outcome of
Speaker 3: the election.
Speaker 6: Jesus such a nightmare.
Speaker 1: So if you were committed to trying desperately to stop
Speaker 1: foreign interference in our elections right now, what would you do?
Speaker 6: Give me one or two suggestions.
Speaker 3: Well, for foreign influence, I would say most importantly is
Speaker 3: to get transparency in advertising on social media. I don't
Speaker 3: know if we're going to see that change happen in
Speaker 3: time for the election. I would also eliminate anonymous users
Speaker 3: on social media. We know Robert Muller's report that there
Speaker 3: were account holders that had millions of followers that were
Speaker 3: Russian operatives. There was one called Blacktivist that spent many
Speaker 3: months gaining followers, saying things that seemed very mainstream if
Speaker 3: you were you know who, This person purported to be
Speaker 3: a black activist, lots of things that people would like
Speaker 3: and share and follow, and they believe this person to
Speaker 3: be a credible black activist. And then as the election approach,
Speaker 3: said things like, don't vote for Hillary, stay home, you
Speaker 3: don't have to vote for Trump, just don't vote for anybody,
Speaker 3: vote for Jill Stunt. Hillary doesn't care about the black vote,
Speaker 3: don't vote for her. And so that was made possible
Speaker 3: by anonymous accounts, by the ability to call themselves blacktivists,
Speaker 3: and so I think we should require social media companies
Speaker 3: to verify all of its users, and not by simply
Speaker 3: paying a fee, but by genuinely sharing identification documents so
Speaker 3: that people are who they say they are, because I
Speaker 3: think that is a really dangerous way that disinformers can succeed. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm more worried about attacks from within our own country
Speaker 3: that I am about foreign interference. I'm worried about political
Speaker 3: operatives now who have learned from the Russians how this
Speaker 3: game is played. And so Trump has truth social where
Speaker 3: he is posting all kinds of things that are trying
Speaker 3: to persuade voters that things that are not true are true.
Speaker 3: You know, he's been talking about we need to preserve
Speaker 3: our great presidential immunity, as if that's a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but people receive you see that and think, oh, it's
Speaker 3: Jack Smith is trying to change the status quo and
Speaker 3: we can our presidency, when that's not the case at all.
Speaker 3: There's no such thing.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Barb for joining us. I hope
Speaker 6: you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks Molly, it's been a pleasure talking with you.
Speaker 3: I'd love to do anytime.
Speaker 1: Carlos Lozada is an opinion writer at the New York
Speaker 1: Times and author of the Washington book How to Read
Speaker 1: Politics and Politicians. Welcome to Fast Politics, Carlos Losana.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime listener, first time caller. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: this book. You know, I was reading the excerpt in
Speaker 1: The New York Times yesterday and I'm hoping you could
Speaker 1: explain to us your theory of the case with this book.
Speaker 5: Sure. So, I've been a Washington journalist for about twenty
Speaker 5: five years. I'm like dating myself here, and in that time,
Speaker 5: I've read a ton of Washington books. You know, I
Speaker 5: define that very broadly. It's like, you know, presidential memoirs
Speaker 5: and biography, and you know, journalist books on campaigns and
Speaker 5: the like, but also commission reports and Supreme Court opinions,
Speaker 5: special Council investigations, you know, all the texts of official Washington.
Speaker 5: And I've covered these as as a book critic for
Speaker 5: The Washington Post and now as an opinion columnist at
Speaker 5: the New York Times. And when people hear that, this
Speaker 5: is how I spend my time, like you know, like reading,
Speaker 5: like Mike Pence's memoir, and you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: People say to me, like, Wow, I'm glad you're reading
Speaker 5: those books and telling us what's in them, but like,
Speaker 5: I would never read them, like you're reading that so
Speaker 5: that we don't have And the implication of like you
Speaker 5: read them so we don't have to is that these
Speaker 5: books are bad, right, they're self serving, boring, or their propaganda.
Speaker 5: But I am a real believer in the world Washington Book.
Speaker 5: I want to make the case for the Washington Book
Speaker 5: because what I've found, you know, for all these years
Speaker 5: of reading and writing about them, is that no matter
Speaker 5: how carefully these political figures, you know, sanitize their records
Speaker 5: and their experiences, or present themselves in the most you know, favorable, electable,
Speaker 5: confirmable light, they always end up revealing themselves right in
Speaker 5: some way, you know, they they end up telling us
Speaker 5: who they really are. And it could be like a
Speaker 5: little throwaway line here, a recurring phrase, something in the acknowledgments.
Speaker 5: The acknowledgements are by the way, like an amazing source
Speaker 5: of information about about these people. But it's in there somewhere, right,
Speaker 5: And that means that even books that are I grant
Speaker 5: you all of those things, right, propagandistic and self serving,
Speaker 5: are still really illuminating about our politicians, but also about
Speaker 5: our politics. And so my book, The Washington Book is
Speaker 5: a collection of my digging into my deep dives into
Speaker 5: Washington books over the past decade, basically starting from like
Speaker 5: this Town, you know, by Mark Lebovich, through to you know,
Speaker 5: the Trump indictments. That's the Washington Book. And I hope
Speaker 5: that once you get through it you will find that
Speaker 5: the case for the Washington Book is real and that
Speaker 5: these really are, you know, if you read it carefully enough,
Speaker 5: very revelatory texts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a really good point, especially when you
Speaker 1: talk about things like the Trump indictment or the Mahla Report,
Speaker 1: or these large reams of paper filled with information that
Speaker 1: may or may not be carefully combed through. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about other books like that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure, I mean there's just a slew of different
Speaker 5: examples before we get into like the big reports. I
Speaker 5: want to like one example of a book that maybe
Speaker 5: not a lot of people read, but that to me
Speaker 5: was incredibly useful to understanding Barack Obama. For instance. You know,
Speaker 5: he wrote Dreams for My Father and Audacity, The Hoope
Speaker 5: and now his first presidential memoir, you know, and those
Speaker 5: are those are those are good books to read to
Speaker 5: try to understand him. I read those, But I also
Speaker 5: read this book by Reggie Love, who was the guy
Speaker 5: who was his personal aid, like you know, the body
Speaker 5: man that you know, candidates and presidents have. He wrote
Speaker 5: a book called Power Forward, My Presidential Education. He was
Speaker 5: a basketball player, so that's how Power Forward, you know,
Speaker 5: makes it make sense. But there was one little detail
Speaker 5: in that book that for me, just captures Obama so well.
Speaker 5: It's the only thing I remember from this book, or
Speaker 5: the thing I remember best from this book, I should say,
Speaker 5: and that is that there was a moment when Reggie
Speaker 5: Love forgot to bring Obama's briefcase on the plane, and
Speaker 5: you know, he's like, oh my god, I'm going to
Speaker 5: get fired. You know, he's freaking out. Obama, you know,
Speaker 5: was annoyed but gracious, and you know, forgave him for it.
Speaker 5: And then Love explains, you know that Obama mentioned one
Speaker 5: reason he had been so annoyed about the missing bag,
Speaker 5: and he said he wanted to be seen carrying something
Speaker 5: off the plane because he said JFK carried his own
Speaker 5: backs and like that told me so much. That told
Speaker 5: me how so carefully Obama thought about his public image
Speaker 5: and how he was sort of hearkening back to perhaps
Speaker 5: our most mythologized former president to develop the image and
Speaker 5: story behind perhaps our second most mythologized who was Barack Obama.
Speaker 5: And so that's just one little detail in a book
Speaker 5: that did not make major waves. But if you read them,
Speaker 5: you find stuff like that. That's why I you know,
Speaker 5: sort of enjoy digging through these.
Speaker 6: Books really interesting.
Speaker 2: But talk to us about these.
Speaker 1: Huge government reports, because there is so much in there,
Speaker 1: and they're also I mean, certainly there are people who
Speaker 1: dig through them.
Speaker 2: But being someone who.
Speaker 1: Has all this knowledge from reading all these books and
Speaker 1: then is going into these reports, explain to me a
Speaker 1: little bit. I mean, do you ever find stuff in
Speaker 1: there that is like, holy shit, no one's seen this.
Speaker 5: There's two ways to kind of comb through these books, right,
Speaker 5: One is looking for that little detail that is, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of new and revelatory or sometimes ambiguous in a
Speaker 5: really fascinating way. So, for instance, you remember Cassidy Hutchinson's
Speaker 5: testimony in the January six hearings, right, and she was
Speaker 5: there the mourning of Donald Trump's speech at the Ellipse, right,
Speaker 5: and she's describing how he wanted them to take the
Speaker 5: magatometers away so that even if like his supporters were armed,
Speaker 5: he still wanted them to come through and be where
Speaker 5: he was because he wanted the bigger crowd. That was
Speaker 5: kind of a big dramatic.
Speaker 2: Moment, and they were his people.
Speaker 5: They were exactly, you know, let my people in. But
Speaker 5: there was one moment in Hutchinson's testimony that to me
Speaker 5: was so interesting because you know, she quotes him, you know,
Speaker 5: something along these lines. Right, she says that he said,
Speaker 5: you know, let them through. They're not here to hurt me.
Speaker 5: And depending on how you say that sentence out loud,
Speaker 5: it has two radically different meaning. Think about where you
Speaker 5: put the emphasis. Right, they're not here to hurt me, right,
Speaker 5: if it's unhurt and that means what that means. You know,
Speaker 5: he thinks they're here to praise me, they're here to
Speaker 5: support me, they're here to applaud me.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: If it's they're not here to hurt me, then it's
Speaker 5: suddenly far more nefarious. Right, it's they're here to hurt
Speaker 5: someone else. Right, I'm safe, but they might go after
Speaker 5: somebody else you know, And so I went back and
Speaker 5: I looked at the video of her testimony. I look
Speaker 5: to see how that quote was rendered in a few
Speaker 5: different moments in the January sixth Committee report.
Speaker 4: The way she.
Speaker 5: Describes it as kind of neutral, you know, in the
Speaker 5: they italicize one word versus the other in different parts
Speaker 5: of the report, and so it's not exactly clear what
Speaker 5: Trump actually said in that moment. But to me, that's
Speaker 5: one of the most fascinating moments in the entire report, right,
Speaker 5: Like it's like the stress that you put on a single,
Speaker 5: one syllable word can radically change the way you read
Speaker 5: what happened that day. So to me, that's like, that's
Speaker 5: one of the joys of reading these.
Speaker 1: The only thing I would say is that the context
Speaker 1: seems really important there, right, I mean, like if you didn't.
Speaker 5: Know, oh definitely, But you know, if this he do
Speaker 5: you think that the January sixth Report provides it is
Speaker 5: that context. The one thing that makes clearest of all
Speaker 5: I think is that Trump knew that all the things
Speaker 5: he was saying about the election were false, right because
Speaker 5: it you know, there's this wonderful, like two or three
Speaker 5: page chart in the middle of the January sixth report,
Speaker 5: where it shows like every time that he had been
Speaker 5: told by you know, the Attorney General, by a top eight,
Speaker 5: a D, a J. By one of his own campaign staffers.
Speaker 5: You know that that you know, X, Y or Z
Speaker 5: thing was wrong, that actually we lost this stage, or
Speaker 5: you know, what you're saying isn't true. And then you
Speaker 5: know it shows how you know the exact you know,
Speaker 5: day later he's out, you know, repeating the same the
Speaker 5: same lie. But what I find I try to look
Speaker 5: at these all these reports as almost like speaking to
Speaker 5: each other, as as as chapters of a of a
Speaker 5: bigger story rather than his and his des greet individual moments. Right,
Speaker 5: if you read, say the Muller Report, and then you
Speaker 5: read the Special Committee report on Trump and Ukraine right
Speaker 5: on the perfect call, you know that thing led to
Speaker 5: the first impeachment, and then you read the January six report,
Speaker 5: you sort of see how they're talking to each other.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: The Mallor report very restrained. Right, the Mallor Report was
Speaker 5: recognizant of what it could and could not do. You know,
Speaker 5: we can indet a city president. It sort of bent
Speaker 5: over backward to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 5: But it kept saying, actually, this is for some future investigation.
Speaker 5: This is I don't want to preempt constitutional remedies. And
Speaker 5: so it kind of like glaid the groundwork for what
Speaker 5: future investigators could do. And you see how the Ukraine
Speaker 5: Report and the January six report, you know, completely picked
Speaker 5: up on the things that Mueller almost that the Mother
Speaker 5: Report wished it could have done but wasn't able to do.
Speaker 5: And so it's impossible for me to read these and
Speaker 5: isolation from one another, like that's that's the key, you know.
Speaker 5: When the January six Commity Report came out, I use
Speaker 5: that as an opportunity to write like one big piece
Speaker 5: about all three of these investigations together, because they really
Speaker 5: are talking to each other.
Speaker 6: It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So I want to go back to your case for
Speaker 1: like Mike Pence's memoir, because I remember seeing that and thinking,
Speaker 1: like I think about many political books like who is
Speaker 1: this for? Which again is not really Mike Pence's problem, right,
Speaker 1: that's the publisher's problem. But explain to us a little
Speaker 1: bit about the merits of Mike Pence's memoir. This is
Speaker 1: a hot take and perhaps contrarian.
Speaker 5: That's why you were having me on to talk about
Speaker 5: why Mike Pence's memoir reading.
Speaker 6: I read this and I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's kind of why
Speaker 5: these books exist at all. Right, I think published play
Speaker 5: a kind of sweepstakes. They think, you know, one of
Speaker 5: these people is going to be presidents of the United States,
Speaker 5: and when that happens, you know people are going to
Speaker 5: look alone this book or or one of them will
Speaker 5: become the nominee. And so that's why you end up
Speaker 5: with like the existence of like a Tim palente book, right,
Speaker 5: exactly like Tim Polenti's book was I Believe Courage to
Speaker 5: Stand an American story.
Speaker 2: I can't even.
Speaker 1: Remember who Tim Polenti is. Can you just remind us
Speaker 1: from my dad who was.
Speaker 2: Listening to this.
Speaker 5: Tim Polenti was running or president. He was governor of Minnesota.
Speaker 6: He was a Republican.
Speaker 5: Yes, Republican governor of Minnesota. Reef hot moment when people
Speaker 5: thought that Tipau was of presidential timber he was.
Speaker 1: He was running for the He had pomentum for the past.
Speaker 6: That's what Jesse just said.
Speaker 5: There was pomentum. Yeah, not to be confused with with with.
Speaker 2: Joeman or clomentum.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but he ran for president in twenty twelve, and
Speaker 5: there was, like reef brief talk that he might be
Speaker 5: a deep candidate for Romney, but that didn't go anywhere either.
Speaker 5: I used sort of Tim Polenti's book as an example of,
Speaker 5: you know, a book that someone published, but that that
Speaker 5: death maybe didn't pan out in the sense that he,
Speaker 5: you know, he did not become you know, either a
Speaker 5: me or a reep or a book that then someone
Speaker 5: is going to want to sort of go go back to.
Speaker 5: You know, these are kind of like a publisher's sweepstakes,
Speaker 5: you know, hoping that one of them pans out. Pence's book,
Speaker 5: he was already clearly a public figure. This was sort
Speaker 5: of looking back on his vice presidency, and it came out,
Speaker 5: you know, after he had distinguished himself by not being
Speaker 5: hung on January six and by not refusing to certify vote.
Speaker 5: In this book, he was kind of it was a
Speaker 5: bit of a victory lap about you know, what he
Speaker 5: had done on January sixth, that that was a lot
Speaker 5: of it. And so in that sense, is it incredibly
Speaker 5: revelatory on some of those basic elements. Maybe not. But
Speaker 5: just like the point I made with you know, JFK
Speaker 5: carried his own bags. You know, Like, there's one moment
Speaker 5: in the Pence book that I find so telling, and
Speaker 5: that is when he's looking back on January sixth, and
Speaker 5: he is talking about how he did the right thing,
Speaker 5: and then he mentions how Trump finally issued that video
Speaker 5: telling people to leave the cap after taking far too
Speaker 5: long to sort of make any effort in that regard.
Speaker 5: He then quotes Pence in his book quotes from Trump's
Speaker 5: video address, except he makes one omission in the quote.
Speaker 5: So here's what he quotes in the book. I know
Speaker 5: your pain, I know you're hurt dot dot dot, but
Speaker 5: you have to go home now. We have to have peace.
Speaker 5: So when I read that, I wondered, like, what was
Speaker 5: the dot dot dot? Like what did he skip with
Speaker 5: the ellipses?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: And so I went to the video right and what
Speaker 5: was gone?
Speaker 1: I should not laugh, by the way, because this is
Speaker 1: American democracy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but here's what was missing. We had an election
Speaker 5: that was stolen from us. It was a landline election.
Speaker 5: Everyone knows it, especially the other side. So what's remarkable
Speaker 5: to me is that even in this book, right written
Speaker 5: for posterity, telling your version of the story on the
Speaker 5: day when Trump supporters were calling for his hanging. Mike
Speaker 5: Pence is still covering for the boss. He is still
Speaker 5: omitting Trump's repetition of the election lie, right, And so
Speaker 5: to me, that captured everything, right, Like I think so
Speaker 5: much of Pence's vice presidency is captured in those three
Speaker 5: little DUTs. He would always say, I'm here to serve, right,
Speaker 5: that's his recraise, I'm here to serve. But who was
Speaker 5: he there to serve?
Speaker 4: Right? Was there to serve the people? Well?
Speaker 5: Like I was there to serve this one man. And
Speaker 5: so for me, that's why Mike Pence's memoir is illuminating.
Speaker 5: Even when he's trying to recreate himself, he still can't
Speaker 5: quite help it. He was still covering for Donald Trump
Speaker 5: on a day that Donald Trump did not cover for him.
Speaker 2: It's such a great and interesting point.
Speaker 6: He's still covering for Donald Trump, even on a day
Speaker 6: Donald Trump was not covering for him. It speaks in
Speaker 6: a larger way to the Republican Party too, weirdly, right, like,
Speaker 6: covering for him as he picks out on electable candidates,
Speaker 6: right like constantly they're an impossible situation which they put
Speaker 6: themselves in anyway explain to us now sort of what
Speaker 6: you're doing. You have a really interesting mandate. You come
Speaker 6: from the world of book reviewing.
Speaker 1: Now you are on the opinion side, but sort of
Speaker 1: with a book caveagte a little bit and talk to
Speaker 1: us about what that means.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I still I still try to understand politics through
Speaker 5: the lens of books. I'm no longer a book critic.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: The New York Times has you know, a fantastic book
Speaker 5: review and outstanding book critics who do a great job
Speaker 5: and who cover books.
Speaker 2: In that way, like Dwight Garner.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, no, and Jens la on nonfiction.
Speaker 6: And Alexandra Jacobs.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Continue, Sorry, we should not now call out all the
Speaker 1: book critics we love.
Speaker 2: At all.
Speaker 6: Okay, continue.
Speaker 5: But so what I try to do in a sense,
Speaker 5: I'm sort of a political writer, I suppose, but who
Speaker 5: uses political books as my kind of reporting material. That's
Speaker 5: mainly what I do, so, you know, and it doesn't
Speaker 5: you know, it sort of transcends politics as well. Like
Speaker 5: one of the pieces that I wrote last year that
Speaker 5: I'm most you know, interested in or kind of happy
Speaker 5: that I did, was on this question of, you know,
Speaker 5: whether a US Chinese conflict is likely right, And so
Speaker 5: I read a bunch of different books, five or six
Speaker 5: books on that subject, just to try to figure that
Speaker 5: out for myself, and then you know, wrote about it
Speaker 5: for The Times. You know that that took a while.
Speaker 5: I'm really grateful to have editors who kind of let
Speaker 5: me take the time to do that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But you know, when Liz Chinese book comes out, when
Speaker 5: all these kind of prominent political books come out, now
Speaker 5: I get to pick my spots a little bit more,
Speaker 5: as opposed to when I was a book critic. I
Speaker 5: kind of had to review everything that came out. That
Speaker 5: part is enjoyable, but I you know, I fully recognized
Speaker 5: books as a way to understand politics is just my way.
Speaker 5: But there I mean, there are obviously so many different lenses,
Speaker 5: even if you look at different cultural artifacts. Like James
Speaker 5: pony Wasac, the TV critic at the Times, wrote a
Speaker 5: really good book about the Trump era through the lens
Speaker 5: of television, right, trying to understand Trumps as a product
Speaker 5: of television. And you know, that's an equally legitimate way
Speaker 5: to do it. Books just happened to be to be
Speaker 5: my way the way I'm comfortable doing that. I'm starting
Speaker 5: to look at some of these big kind of government
Speaker 5: in waiting policy books that are coming out on the
Speaker 5: Trump side, and that's my way of kind of reporting
Speaker 5: on what a future administration might look like, what a
Speaker 5: second Trump term might look like. But again like through
Speaker 5: through the lens of books.
Speaker 2: Carlos, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: I hope you'll come back anytime. Mollie, thank you.
Speaker 4: A moment.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, Yes, do you have a moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: I do have a moment of fuckery, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to condemn with all the fire and brimstone I can
Speaker 4: muster at the moment at Seapack, during one of the
Speaker 4: opening moments of.
Speaker 2: Seapack this year, you and I are both not.
Speaker 4: We are not. At Seapack, we had two of the
Speaker 4: most egregious, low scumbag, reprehensible people who I would gladly
Speaker 4: watch submerged in a blake of lava or eaten by wolves,
Speaker 4: Steve Bannon and Jack pisobiac. Jack Pisobiec went out and
Speaker 4: cheer led for the death of democracy, and he said
Speaker 4: we didn't finish the job on January sixth, and Bannon
Speaker 4: cheered him on, and they talked about how they were
Speaker 4: going to turn America into a nation where you know,
Speaker 4: Christ is first before anything else. I know that they
Speaker 4: will try to say, we're just trolling. Watch the Libs
Speaker 4: lose their minds. But what they're doing is try to
Speaker 4: shove the Overton window further to the right. What they're
Speaker 4: doing is trying to give themselves a permission structure and
Speaker 4: give their people a permission structure to say, yeah, now's
Speaker 4: the time, we're done with this, with this pesky constitutional republic.
Speaker 4: We want the autocrasy, we want the authoritarianism, and frankly
Speaker 4: Trump is reelected, they're going to get it. This is
Speaker 4: why I tell people that you cannot let these people
Speaker 4: pretend that they're joking, pretend that they're trolling, because they're not.
Speaker 4: They're deadly serious about it. This is what they want,
Speaker 4: this is what they're working for every single day. And
Speaker 4: the idea that these assholes, that these scumbags, that these
Speaker 4: vile low travelers in this grotesque movement think they're going
Speaker 4: to get away with this is astounding to me. And
Speaker 4: the fact that people still in mainstream journalism call Steve
Speaker 4: Bannon and Jack Bisobiak and talk to them and say, hey,
Speaker 4: what's going on in Trump World? Man how are you, buddy?
Speaker 4: When they are intention and their direction is incredibly clear.
Speaker 4: They are people that really deserve and need to be
Speaker 4: thrown as far out of the political process and mainstream
Speaker 4: in this country as you can imagine. So that's my
Speaker 4: moment of fuckery.
Speaker 1: That is a really good moment of fuck Gray. My
Speaker 1: moment of fuck Gray is I hate to do this
Speaker 1: because I feel like they get such a tough time,
Speaker 1: but and this is a terrible time in media, but
Speaker 1: you guys have to stop. Okay, Trump and Biden are
Speaker 1: not the same the idea, I mean, my new thing
Speaker 1: is that sometimes I'll go to a party and someone
Speaker 1: who's a conservative will say to me, Biden's going to
Speaker 1: drop out, right, And I'll be like, why would Biden
Speaker 1: drop out? And I realized that some of it is
Speaker 1: that there has been so much reporting about Biden's age
Speaker 1: versus Trump's ninety one criminal indictments that these people actually
Speaker 1: think that Trump is a more suitable candidate. And I'm
Speaker 1: saying to you mainstream media people, and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't even think it's the journalist. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: fair to blame the journalists, because you know, the truth
Speaker 1: is a lot of journalists don't write headlines. I know
Speaker 1: this myself, Like you know, you don't get to sign
Speaker 1: off on the headlines, especially at big places. So I understand.
Speaker 1: But if you are an editor right, ask yourself, what
Speaker 1: am I fucking doing here? For American democracy? You don't
Speaker 1: have to be for the left or for the right,
Speaker 1: but you do have to be for democratic norms. Having
Speaker 1: a pro democracy bias does not make you a partisan.
Speaker 1: And I think that is really important that these people
Speaker 1: ask themselves, like, what am I fucking doing? Why am
Speaker 1: I framing this in a way that both sides are equal?
Speaker 2: Because they are not. And even the right knows this
Speaker 2: very well.
Speaker 4: They are not equal. They are not equal. Molly. I
Speaker 4: couldn't agree more with you on this. This is a
Speaker 4: moment where if Donald Trump wins, they will be the
Speaker 4: first ones to say, oh my god, I can't believe
Speaker 4: these new assaults on press freedom. I can't believe that
Speaker 4: they're passing these new laws to undue Sullivan and to
Speaker 4: make us liable for every word we say. And I
Speaker 4: can't believe that they're banning reporters from government events and buildings.
Speaker 4: I can't believe that they are trying to lock up
Speaker 4: reporters for reporting things from whistleblowers. They'll be the first
Speaker 4: ones shocked as hell when people like Bannon and Miller
Speaker 4: and Patel and the rest of these people are in
Speaker 4: charge and running American media into the ground. They'll be
Speaker 4: the first ones to be like, I'm appalled by this. Well,
Speaker 4: don't say you were not warrant.
Speaker 2: That's right, Thank you, Rick.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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