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 Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have
Speaker 1: lined up to kiss Trump's spring. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today, Slates Dalia Lithwick.
Speaker 2: Stops by to try to comfort us.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Media Matter CEO Angelou Kirasone about
Speaker 1: how MAGA outorganized Democrats and how Democrats can counter it.
Speaker 3: But first the news, Molly, how you doing here?
Speaker 1: I am just going to keep going. You know, we're
Speaker 1: coming off an election that a lot of people, including myself,
Speaker 1: not happy with the result. I want to say this
Speaker 1: because I feel like one of my best qualities is
Speaker 1: that I am able to admit when I am wrong.
Speaker 1: And I was really wrong about this election.
Speaker 2: You know, I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I thought for sure Donald Trump would not win. I
Speaker 1: thought there would be a mandate. I thought that Harris
Speaker 1: would win. I did not see any of this coming.
Speaker 1: And I'm really sorry to our listeners who I where.
Speaker 1: I told them that I knew when I didn't know,
Speaker 1: and I really do promise to try to stay out
Speaker 1: of the prediction market from now on. Because the reality
Speaker 1: is I'm not good at it. But there are a
Speaker 1: few bright spots. We're going to talk about them, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to talk about the news, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to keep going and going and going, and
Speaker 1: do the podcast and bring you guys the news and
Speaker 1: not do false equivalencies and just do what you guys
Speaker 1: need so we don't have to listen to fucking.
Speaker 2: Mag of people tell us that everything is fine.
Speaker 3: Somali Kamala just did her concession speech. What'd you see here?
Speaker 1: Harris did give a speech. She said something which made
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I agree, but I think is
Speaker 1: actually quite smart. I do not concede the fight that
Speaker 1: fueled this campaign. That's really true and right and correct.
Speaker 1: We all have to just keep going and that's where
Speaker 1: we are. Let's talk about the House of Representatives that
Speaker 1: Democrats would like to flip, and that is still possible.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Democrats still have a chance to take control of the House.
Speaker 1: The California races are going to take a while account.
Speaker 1: One hundred and ninety five races have been called for Republicans,
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy four for Democrats, but a lot
Speaker 1: of those remaining seats are in California, easy victories that
Speaker 1: the majority party needs. They need at least two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighteen seats. It is not impossible that they will
Speaker 1: get there. We have to see, but it's certainly not impossible.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things that make us really upset, I.
Speaker 3: Think this is the worst one for me, which is
Speaker 3: what happened in the vote in Dearborn, Michigan, which is
Speaker 3: the largest Muslim community in Michigan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this has been something that we had talked
Speaker 1: about a lot that seemed like a real possibility, really grim.
Speaker 1: We thought this might happen. And look, people were mad
Speaker 1: about Gaza and that is something that a lot of
Speaker 1: us understand. So in Dearborn, where fifty five percent of
Speaker 1: the residents are of Middle Eastern descent, Trump won with
Speaker 1: forty two point forty eight percent of the vote over
Speaker 1: Vice President Harris, who received thirty six point twenty six
Speaker 1: percent of the vote. Jill Stein also got eighteen percent
Speaker 1: of the vote. Dearborn went for Trump. They felt that
Speaker 1: Trump would be better on Gaza. I think that's pretty insane.
Speaker 1: But obviously they didn't and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3: Well. I think is really sad here too, is so
Speaker 3: few people came out to vote. It's staggering to look
Speaker 3: the around one hundred thousand people who live there and
Speaker 3: then just how few decided to cast a vote in
Speaker 3: the selection they did stay home. And this is they
Speaker 3: have been traditionally a place where Dems really run up
Speaker 3: the numbers in Michigan to win. And it's that.
Speaker 1: One bright spot in what otherwise is just a grim
Speaker 1: post mortem is North Carolina. In the state of North Carolina,
Speaker 1: Democrats have appeared to have broken the GOP supermajority in
Speaker 1: the state. They flipped a key seat an our east
Speaker 1: of Raleigh. Why it's important is because in January, Republicans
Speaker 1: won't have a supermajority and they will not be able
Speaker 1: to override the governor as they had. Remember in previously
Speaker 1: when it was now it's going to be this guy
Speaker 1: called Josh Steine.
Speaker 2: It used to be Roy Cooper.
Speaker 1: With Cooper they were able to really just sort of
Speaker 1: override things he wanted to do. Now joshtein the North
Speaker 1: Carolina governor, will have more power. I want to like,
Speaker 1: get on my soapbox here for a minute and just
Speaker 1: point out these races, these down ballot races, these little judgeships,
Speaker 1: these kind of things. They may seem like not so big,
Speaker 1: but they're really big.
Speaker 2: They're really important.
Speaker 1: Things like this can mean the difference between people having
Speaker 1: ten polling places in one polling place. It will mean
Speaker 1: the difference between you know, school you know, more money
Speaker 1: to public schools and more money to libraries. And it
Speaker 1: just is extremely good when when Democrats win on those
Speaker 1: down ballot races. So as much as there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to be really fucking depressed about, the black Nazi,
Speaker 1: the self proclaimed black Nazi in North Carolina did lose,
Speaker 1: and North Carolina will continue to have a democratic governor,
Speaker 1: and now it no longer has a state supermajority. Dahlia
Speaker 1: Leswick is a senior editor at Slate and the author
Speaker 1: of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and the Battle to
Speaker 1: Save America. Welcome back to Fast Politics, My buddy.
Speaker 4: Dahlia him Molly oh boy.
Speaker 1: So Vice President Harris has conceded has a conception speech coming.
Speaker 1: You know, while we're taping this. This will drop on
Speaker 1: Thursday morning. I got five hours of sleep last night.
Speaker 1: We are sort of here together because I know how
Speaker 1: bad I feel, and I have a sense on how
Speaker 1: bad Jesse feels and there are not that many people
Speaker 1: where they are really fucking smart and really know what's
Speaker 1: going on, but also make me feel better.
Speaker 2: And that's you.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that is a big, big siss even whip to.
Speaker 2: Let me say this, Molly. I feel like every time I've.
Speaker 4: Come on your show, I have like taken us down
Speaker 4: the deranged wormhole of like structural democracy, minority rule. Right,
Speaker 4: I'm always like prectoral college this, and filibuster that and
Speaker 4: malaportion Senate and if we just had, you know, democracy,
Speaker 4: So this is like the first time I'm going to
Speaker 4: come on and be like, you know, I think democracy
Speaker 4: kind of did it flying. Like we can say that
Speaker 4: people like massive votes don't like the bomb threats in Georgia, Like,
Speaker 4: but this was not a failure of democracy. This was
Speaker 4: a failure of us. And that's like really really for
Speaker 4: those of us who've like had like sort of structural
Speaker 4: architectural reform on the brain for a long time, Like
Speaker 4: that's like to punch in the neck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it isn't. It isn't.
Speaker 1: Right, Like the good news is that voters were able
Speaker 1: to vote, elections happened, you know, like it's not the
Speaker 1: outcome that we wanted, but it is, you know, there
Speaker 1: is something to be said that you know, it's this
Speaker 1: opportunity to I mean I was thinking about it, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, protect norms, right, Protect norms has
Speaker 1: to be number one, right, protect the tenants, protect the
Speaker 1: norms of democracy, and then you know, because that has
Speaker 1: to be number one.
Speaker 2: Now, that's right, and I.
Speaker 4: And I really really do want to say rarely do
Speaker 4: I start crying two minutes into a conversation with you,
Speaker 4: but like I really want to say, like poll workers,
Speaker 4: election workers, like people who stood in line, like all
Speaker 4: the shit that you and I have been afraid of, right,
Speaker 4: violence at the polls, and people like roughing up you know,
Speaker 4: voters and you know, challengers and people with guns on
Speaker 4: the back of their trucks in Arizona, Like none of
Speaker 4: that happened. We're not going to have a bushfee Gore election.
Speaker 4: We're not going to have an election in which the
Speaker 4: systems didn't hold. And you're exactly right, like we should
Speaker 4: be so grateful that this like rickety crazy decentralized you know,
Speaker 4: archaic system held and yet any.
Speaker 1: Yah, and yeah, but it is it's this Joe Biden ism. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't only love democracy when you win, right. But
Speaker 1: that said, I do think like the structural problems of
Speaker 1: not being able to break through two voters, the lack
Speaker 1: of local news, the news deserts, the disinformation and misinformation,
Speaker 1: the fact that our like one of our largest news
Speaker 1: delivery systems is owned by the Chinese government. These things
Speaker 1: are all bad.
Speaker 4: Right, And you know it's funny because I feel like
Speaker 4: I've had, like I've been writing a series of like
Speaker 4: facts matter, and like the press is broken. Like everything
Speaker 4: I've written for the last month has been about you know,
Speaker 4: Trump essentially creating a permission structure to choose your own
Speaker 4: ending right and and to just create the reality you want.
Speaker 4: And You're exactly right, Like if if in a sane world,
Speaker 4: like would Elon Musk be able to pour you know,
Speaker 4: personal millions into the Trump campaign while running X while
Speaker 4: creating a quote unquote lottery for you know voter his
Speaker 4: wing states while having conversations with Putin, Like, maybe the
Speaker 4: way to tie together what you're saying and what I'm
Speaker 4: saying is like all of the systems held and there
Speaker 4: is a like oligarch industrial complex, tech bro other system
Speaker 4: that is largely invisible, I think to us, and that
Speaker 4: he'll do.
Speaker 2: That, He'll do Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, like, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are listening to this podcast, Like I was
Speaker 1: listening to podcasts in twenty sixteen, going what the hell
Speaker 1: am I going to do now? And let me tell
Speaker 1: you what I did in twenty sixteen. I changed my
Speaker 1: career and started doing what I do now. So, like,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, there is an opportunity here. Right,
Speaker 1: American democracy is teetering on the brink, but you know,
Speaker 1: we have been the you know, if you look back
Speaker 1: in history, we have been here before.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: You know what I did this morning, Molly, when I
Speaker 4: like couldn't move, was like reread that Langston Hughes poem
Speaker 4: about you know, all the ways in which America was
Speaker 4: never America to me and to think about, and folks
Speaker 4: should just read it because I think, like we're trapped
Speaker 4: between like a fever dream of you know, this is
Speaker 4: the perfect best you know, constitutional democracy ever in history,
Speaker 4: and it gets better every minute. And the fact that
Speaker 4: it never really was given a chance to soar right
Speaker 4: like that it was yeah, Jim crow Baby right for
Speaker 4: like reconstruction and and you know, the Civil War and
Speaker 4: on and on and the like very bones of a
Speaker 4: constitutional system that didn't prize equality and democracy the way
Speaker 4: you and I think about it. And I guess I
Speaker 4: would just say this, like it would be really nice
Speaker 4: if that Langston Hughes democracy had a chance, right, if
Speaker 4: America could be America. And I think in a weird way,
Speaker 4: the way I'm trying to mollify myself right now is
Speaker 4: to say that there is an electorate that is split
Speaker 4: between fully understanding that that promise was never realized and
Speaker 4: an electorate that like somehow convinced itself that like I
Speaker 4: saw it one time on leave it to Beaver, so
Speaker 4: it must be those were the good old days. And
Speaker 4: I think what's really painful, and like I want to
Speaker 4: center this is that you know, Donald Trump didn't hide
Speaker 4: who he was, Like he had a like full on,
Speaker 4: like weird creepy Ersatz nineteen thirty nine Madison Square, a
Speaker 4: Gordon Nazi rally, and I know you saw what I saw,
Speaker 4: like this was not the twenty sixteen, like here is
Speaker 4: my lovely family and they're all like in vasilene and beautiful,
Speaker 4: like it was just full on like engines his mind
Speaker 4: dictator for a day, putting people in camps, deporting everyone, right, like,
Speaker 4: he put it all out there, and the idea that
Speaker 4: that unfiltered thing is what people voted for and that
Speaker 4: they think that that will bring them to I don't
Speaker 4: know that perfected democracy or just straight up strong man
Speaker 4: illiberal hutocracy.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: But I think what's hard right now is not just that,
Speaker 4: like the system didn't fail us, it's that we saw
Speaker 4: exactly what he was and we chose it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, now, I would say it was pretty small numbers, right,
Speaker 1: It wasn't a huge I mean, it was not a mandate.
Speaker 1: I mean they'll say it was a mandate, but it
Speaker 1: was not a mandate. The numbers, the voting numbers were
Speaker 1: I have to look now, but they were pretty small.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was not high turnout election. And also,
Speaker 2: you want to hear my worst.
Speaker 4: Yes, whatever it is, I want to hear your anything.
Speaker 2: The worst everything.
Speaker 1: So my I was talking to a Democratic congressman who's
Speaker 1: no longer an office, and he was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that Democrats do that's really bad
Speaker 1: is Democrats say this is what is good for you
Speaker 1: to voters, even if voters don't necessarily want it, even
Speaker 1: if it's good policy, even if it's good politics, even
Speaker 1: if it's something that seems like it should be popular.
Speaker 1: And if you think about that in that way, that
Speaker 1: actually makes a lot of sense, right, Like, think about
Speaker 1: all the things that Democrats have been like we're giving you.
Speaker 1: I mean, even a good example is like chips, chips,
Speaker 1: is this thing that is so good for the economy, right,
Speaker 1: building factories in America, employing people, economies booming. Voters didn't
Speaker 1: really get it right, And like there is a certain
Speaker 1: kind of there was a lot of like why can't
Speaker 1: democrats message on chips and science? Why can't they explain
Speaker 1: why building factories in the heartland is good?
Speaker 2: But in the end, like it just didn't connect with voters.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, that's just an example of a
Speaker 1: way in which there was so much money spent and
Speaker 1: it was not sort of aligned with what voters want. Now.
Speaker 1: Is it better for the environment, yes, is it better
Speaker 1: for manufacturing, yes, But like you only get so many
Speaker 1: of those when you're governing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's very depressing.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 4: Listen, you and I I think both talk to Tim
Speaker 4: Snyder on the same day last week right, did.
Speaker 2: We wow both podcasts with him and very possible.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think like one of the things he did was
Speaker 4: helped me think in terms of like sort of negative
Speaker 4: liberty and positive liberty, right, and like how like constrained
Speaker 4: our vision of freedom is because we only ever think
Speaker 4: in terms of freedom from right. That's what makes us free.
Speaker 4: And it's not chips, right, And it's not healthcare, and
Speaker 4: it's not you know, infrastructure. It's just I am free
Speaker 4: because they can't take my guns and you know, they
Speaker 4: can't tell me where to go in my car. Like,
Speaker 4: I think there is a deep, deep thinking that we
Speaker 4: have to do and messaging about helping people understand that
Speaker 4: like women dying in hospitals because of miscarriages, you know,
Speaker 4: sepsis preventable for decades, Like that doesn't make you free.
Speaker 4: And you know, sending your kids to school to get
Speaker 4: shot because like we want people to have guns, like
Speaker 4: doesn't make you free. And I think, like in a
Speaker 4: lot a lot of ways, what you're describing is a
Speaker 4: sort of a like a really capacious notion of like
Speaker 4: well being and liberty too, and freedom too, that is
Speaker 4: so not kind of the construct of how we think
Speaker 4: about freedom. We just think about it both in terms
Speaker 4: of you know, to again use Tim Snyder, like freedom
Speaker 4: from but also anything that anybody else gets makes me
Speaker 4: less free, right, And that's why like nonsitizen voting is
Speaker 4: an issue, and that's why immigrants taking your jobs is
Speaker 4: an issue. And so I think like we're a little
Speaker 4: bit in this moment that we're in where those are
Speaker 4: the constructs that we're given and it's really hard to
Speaker 4: think about.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I love the thing that he says, like, you know,
Speaker 4: what's not going to be like freedom from like climate change.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have to think right about that through this
Speaker 4: lens of freedom too. And so I think in a
Speaker 4: weird way, all of these policy conversations fizzle because they're
Speaker 4: part of a framing that is freedom too. That is
Speaker 4: just like kind of anathema to how we think about liberty.
Speaker 4: Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2: Yes? And also I mean we just have to keep.
Speaker 4: Going right, yeah, And I'm just reading Cherylyn Eiffel just
Speaker 4: sent round a note about you know, she's like my
Speaker 4: spirit guide about how we're going to get through the
Speaker 4: next couple of months, and she says, like, you know,
Speaker 4: our spirits are going to be assaulted we're going to
Speaker 4: have to see this person with the course language and
Speaker 4: the displays of violence and the privilege and the power,
Speaker 4: and we just have to, you know, make sure to
Speaker 4: spend time on those things that refresh our spirits. And
Speaker 4: then we just need to realize that there are just
Speaker 4: enormous vulnerable communities that are going to feel a world
Speaker 4: of pain. And you know, it's not it's just not
Speaker 4: an option to say that that's not the work. And
Speaker 4: it sucks because I think we're so sad and broken
Speaker 4: and I think you and I both feel like I've
Speaker 4: been doing this work for eight years, like I would
Speaker 4: like to stop. I guess I just think I've been
Speaker 4: sitting in this a lot, like the people who are
Speaker 4: going to be hurt, and we haven't even had the
Speaker 4: conversation about what the Supreme Court is going to do
Speaker 4: with that. You know, you know, Alita is going to
Speaker 4: retire and Thomas is going to retire, and we're going
Speaker 4: to have a six to three supermajority for like the
Speaker 4: rest of our lifetimes, and they're going to do com
Speaker 4: stuck and they're going to get rid of them of
Speaker 4: a prystal, like this is just going to be hell.
Speaker 4: You know, and our trans kids are going to suffer
Speaker 4: and our migrants, like this is going to be hell
Speaker 4: on earth, and like lifting up that is like even
Speaker 4: if we can't fix it, I think buffering it is
Speaker 4: like that's the mission.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah, and also know and also letting people know
Speaker 1: that they're going to be okay, right like that we're
Speaker 1: going to push back. We're going to do what we
Speaker 1: can do to make sure everybody is okay. We're going
Speaker 1: to take care of each other, and we're going to
Speaker 1: keep going. You know, I do think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who need to know they're going to
Speaker 1: be okay today, you know, I mean people with trans kids,
Speaker 1: or people who are trans, or people who are gay,
Speaker 1: or people who are here in this country and worried
Speaker 1: about being deported. Like we just have to be for
Speaker 1: them strong, you know, because of the privilege that we have.
Speaker 1: I mean I think of that so much. We have
Speaker 1: this opportunity to be able to be there for them
Speaker 1: and to you know, speak for them and to and
Speaker 1: to tell them that we will continue to work for them.
Speaker 4: And maybe just to add this, you know, the how
Speaker 4: democracy die. Guys like they keep saying that the you know,
Speaker 4: the academy, like the corporate world, like the entities. I
Speaker 4: think of them as the soft furnishings of democracy, like
Speaker 4: once the institution fail, right, like then you need the
Speaker 4: throw pillows of democracy, which it's like big business, and
Speaker 4: like they need to step up and you know, to
Speaker 4: quote Snyder again like in on tyranny, like if they
Speaker 4: comply in advance, if they buckle in advance, like, we
Speaker 4: don't have another bulwark. And so I think in addition
Speaker 4: to reassuring people they will be okay, like now is
Speaker 4: a really really good time for American medical associations and
Speaker 4: for colleges like the entities that just kind of muddled
Speaker 4: through in twenty sixteen and hope that somebody else would
Speaker 4: like put skin in the game, Like I think they
Speaker 4: need to show up now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. And I also think
Speaker 1: that we need our institutions and also our governors, right
Speaker 1: Like I'm in a blue state and I have a
Speaker 1: democratic governor, Kathy Hokel, And this is her opportunity to
Speaker 1: remind residents that there is federalism, right like Republican We
Speaker 1: saw in Texas that Republicans were very happy to enact
Speaker 1: federalism and I hope that we'll see Democrats do that too,
Speaker 1: in ways that protect you know, they are also a bullwark, right, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 4: And I think we're going to see like state supreme courts, right,
Speaker 4: We've seen it for years now, you know, state supreme
Speaker 4: courts that find in their state constitutions all sorts of protections. Like,
Speaker 4: I think we're going to have to see, you know,
Speaker 4: states stepping up. And at the same time, I think
Speaker 4: we really you know, and I'm so glad we're not
Speaker 4: doing it now. Like I think there's a lot of
Speaker 4: people who are going to say, like, oh, if only
Speaker 4: you know Josh Shapiro and if only you know Broker Convention,
Speaker 4: like all of the circular firing squad, and I I
Speaker 4: guess there's some utility, But I think like the better
Speaker 4: thing again to do the Lynston Hughes palm is to
Speaker 4: just say, like, democracy could be really amazing. Let's like
Speaker 4: take it out for a spin for the first time.
Speaker 1: Bin well, And I think I also think that we
Speaker 1: can look back on the opportunities that were missed without
Speaker 1: being craven to each other. Right, there is no reason
Speaker 1: to not have a clear eyed view of what happened
Speaker 1: so that we can all learn from it without saying
Speaker 1: that Vice President.
Speaker 2: Harris ran a nearly flawless campaign.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's okay just to sort of look
Speaker 1: back on why she didn't win, but also to appreciate
Speaker 1: she she absolutely she went, you know, she went to
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Michigan and all the places that you're supposed
Speaker 1: to go many many times, you.
Speaker 4: Know, Yeah, and to really think about you know, race
Speaker 4: and gender and all of the stuff that we don't
Speaker 4: necessarily you know, feel comfortable talking about in it or
Speaker 4: look at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is absolutely true.
Speaker 1: And that and the sort of unsparing look at ourselves
Speaker 1: as voters and our candidates and what the country looks
Speaker 1: like is absolutely true. But I do think, you know,
Speaker 1: for all those people who are despairing, this is what
Speaker 1: it is. This is democracy and action. And tomorrow we
Speaker 1: will wake up and we will keep going.
Speaker 4: Yep. My eldest son always reminds me of that like
Speaker 4: beautiful line from like Jewish texts that says, it is
Speaker 4: not incumbent on you to finish the work, but you
Speaker 4: can't desist from it either, right, Like we're going to
Speaker 4: find that scene between feeling all of us feel right now,
Speaker 4: everybody feels like I didn't do enough. If I had
Speaker 4: just like done, four more laters were written, two more
Speaker 4: pieces like no and at the same time, like we
Speaker 4: don't get to just fling our hands up and say
Speaker 4: we're done. And you find that scene and I think
Speaker 4: everybody needs to like drink a bunch of water and
Speaker 4: be in their little communities and were fuzzy sucks on
Speaker 4: their head for a couple of days and then like keep.
Speaker 2: Going and keep going, keep going. And the one bright spot.
Speaker 1: If you're listeners podcast, you are probably the group that did,
Speaker 1: in fact vote for Harris because.
Speaker 2: White college educated women, nobody else but you guys understood
Speaker 2: the assignment. Yep, thank you.
Speaker 4: Oh lots of love, Molly, thank you.
Speaker 1: Angelo Carrasone is the CEO of Media Matters. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Angela.
Speaker 2: I this will drop on Thursday, two.
Speaker 1: Days after yet another election that did not necessarily go
Speaker 1: the way that many of us hoped.
Speaker 2: I want you to talk to us about MAGA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you said this in your writing
Speaker 1: that MAGA may actually be not a transient thing but
Speaker 1: a real Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I think that there's sort of two things happening,
Speaker 5: and we can get into the why. But one of
Speaker 5: the things that people sometimes, especially because so much of
Speaker 5: our coverage after elections is driven by just like our
Speaker 5: coverage leading up to elections is driven by polls, the
Speaker 5: coverage after elections is sort of driven by a lot
Speaker 5: of sort of an amalgamation of micro trends, right, and
Speaker 5: tactical discussions, And what it doesn't do oftentimes is take
Speaker 5: a step back and look at the big trend line.
Speaker 5: And the effect of that, to your question, is that
Speaker 5: after twenty sixteen, any a little bit after twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: people sort of treated MAGA as something that was, as
Speaker 5: you noted, potentially transient, that it was this sort of
Speaker 5: weird flash point. I was so deeply connected to Trump.
Speaker 5: And the result of that is that it will sort
Speaker 5: of go away on its own. But in reality, and
Speaker 5: that's the thing that I know here, no matter there's
Speaker 5: obviously a lot of tactical things about the campaign, but
Speaker 5: there's a bigger macro trend that we have to sort
Speaker 5: of grapple with, which is that MAGA is growing. And
Speaker 5: that is independent of how and who and what the
Speaker 5: parts of it are. That is like and a fact
Speaker 5: that we have to internalize because I do think that
Speaker 5: so much of the discussion over the past few years
Speaker 5: and electropolitans has been about, well, everybody, we all agree
Speaker 5: on these things, right, and so once everybody sees or
Speaker 5: becomes aware of certain things, we're in alignment. And that's
Speaker 5: actually the wrong assumption. We're not in alignment. The notion
Speaker 5: that MAGA is growing reinforces that, and there's a lot
Speaker 5: more to unpack around it. But I do think that
Speaker 5: that is something we really do need to internalize very
Speaker 5: fast because it will affect how we respond and act
Speaker 5: when it comes to dealing with and and you know,
Speaker 5: addressing administration actions, and that's something that we just need
Speaker 5: to internalize now immediately.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. So what does MAGA look like.
Speaker 5: It's to something extent the discussion of like the manosphere
Speaker 5: is important, the acknowledgment of that. But one of the
Speaker 5: things that MAGA looks like, to sort of describe it
Speaker 5: is you have to go back to its roots. And
Speaker 5: one of the things, because it's it's all sort of
Speaker 5: an outgrowth of that. One of the things that Trump
Speaker 5: did when he started to run for office all the
Speaker 5: way back in twenty fifteen. Is he took portions of
Speaker 5: the large right wing constituency and he started to sort
Speaker 5: of knit them together. And part of it was that
Speaker 5: at the time, it wasn't the manosphere. Was the men's
Speaker 5: rights advocates and the prouds Boys were a part of it,
Speaker 5: but they really call themselves men's rights advocates. And there
Speaker 5: was a whole sort of universe around around that. There
Speaker 5: was the sort of the more conspiracy parts of sort
Speaker 5: of these, you know, there was sort of right wing.
Speaker 5: It was the traditional issue groups, which is anti choice
Speaker 5: and sort of and those those are pretty much the
Speaker 5: core components of it, and obviously the Christians. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that he did is sort of passed
Speaker 5: them together. And that's always a red flag, is that
Speaker 5: when you start to have cross pollination of communities, that's
Speaker 5: when you get something that is greater than the sum
Speaker 5: of its parts, because they all start to grow and
Speaker 5: the idea is cross pollinated. And that ever since then
Speaker 5: what got folded into that original coalition because he's sort
Speaker 5: of it's sort of like a poison pill, right, He
Speaker 5: injected that into the Republican Party and that sort of
Speaker 5: took over the Republican Party, you know, within a relatively
Speaker 5: short period of time. So MAGA really is not just
Speaker 5: all the components of the Republican Party. And we do
Speaker 5: need to stop pretending that there are I don't want
Speaker 5: to seem clib like sort of good Republicans. Of course
Speaker 5: they are good Republicans. But like, there was this notion
Speaker 5: in this cycle that a very large number of Republicans
Speaker 5: were going to defect because they believed in something greater
Speaker 5: than their party, and that just that turned out not
Speaker 5: to be true. Republicans are MAGA.
Speaker 1: Now say that again, because I haven't heard anyone say that,
Speaker 1: and I think that's exactly right this idea.
Speaker 2: Say it one more time and just go a little
Speaker 2: more with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not saying it to be mean. It's just
Speaker 5: we have to be realistic. Yeah, it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: there's this notion that Republicans and MAGA are distinct, and
Speaker 5: there's maybe some overlap and some loose you know, there's
Speaker 5: an uncomfortable affiliation, but actually Republicans are MAGA, and you
Speaker 5: only need to look at what happened this cycle. There's
Speaker 5: this notion that Republicans were going to defect from the
Speaker 5: party and vote for Harris, and at a greater number
Speaker 5: than they have historically. And that's not true. They did
Speaker 5: not switch. They voted for Trump, they voted for MAGA.
Speaker 5: And so MAGA is really all the traditional Republican ideas
Speaker 5: mixed in with this, this grander notion that those court
Speaker 5: constituencies that I talked about before and then updated for
Speaker 5: you know, the current version of it is sort of
Speaker 5: weaved in additional new layers. And this is the thing
Speaker 5: about MAGA that I really want people to take away.
Speaker 5: It's not oriented around a set of policy descriptions, but
Speaker 5: rather a set of approaches. One of the approaches is
Speaker 5: might mix, right. The other approach is that you organize
Speaker 5: and build power on what used to be considered the fringes.
Speaker 5: And so, just like in twenty.
Speaker 1: Fifteen, you organize again, this is all stuff I was
Speaker 1: not hearing. You organize and build power on things that
Speaker 1: used to be considered the fringes.
Speaker 2: Can you say more?
Speaker 5: That's right, and that's why MAGA is growing. So when
Speaker 5: I talked about MAGA one point zero, right, you know,
Speaker 5: the sort of the men's rights advocates and those groups,
Speaker 5: the conspiracy theorists that didn't just end there in twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: MAGA incorporated QAnon, and it incorporated the anti vaxx movements
Speaker 5: and sort of the larger wellness communities.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: One of the things that it did this time is
Speaker 5: it brought in some even scarier things. When Trump launched
Speaker 5: his campaign, he launched it in Waco, and that was
Speaker 5: a broadside against government that is reflected not only in
Speaker 5: the policy of Schedule F and the plans to sort
Speaker 5: of terminate tens of thousands of federal workers, but it's
Speaker 5: also in this sort of idea that Elon Musk is
Speaker 5: going to come in and cut the federal government by
Speaker 5: you know, a third. It is very specifically an anti
Speaker 5: government idea, So that's one part of it. Obviously, the
Speaker 5: RFK stuff is just an intensification of it and then
Speaker 5: more extremists, and that is a part of MAGA, is
Speaker 5: you build an organized power on the fringes or what
Speaker 5: used to be considered the fringes, and that they're front
Speaker 5: and center, or what we're seeing with these tradwives or
Speaker 5: these sort of cultural crossovers that are pretty far out there.
Speaker 5: There's the whole thing about childless cat ladies. You know,
Speaker 5: you can really start to unpack it, and you'll see
Speaker 5: that these are fringe ideas. I mean, Tucker Conson is
Speaker 5: out there talking about demons. We are very likely to
Speaker 5: have a US government demon cask force.
Speaker 2: Right, that is a fringe idea.
Speaker 5: So that's what MAGA is.
Speaker 2: It builds out from the fringes.
Speaker 5: That's right. It builds an organized power on the fringes.
Speaker 5: And one of the things I used to talk about
Speaker 5: when Trump was first running for office is that, you know,
Speaker 5: when Obama was first elected, one of the things in
Speaker 5: right wing radio that the ideas, you know, they they
Speaker 5: were going through a trauma, you know, themselves back then
Speaker 5: when President Obama first came into office, and if you
Speaker 5: were a writ wing radio listener, one of the things
Speaker 5: that you heard over and over again was this idea
Speaker 5: of the ten percent theory, and it was this was
Speaker 5: sort of a romantic notion that all you need is
Speaker 5: ten percent of the population, and with ten percent of
Speaker 5: the population, as long as they're fervent and passionate and intense,
Speaker 5: you can do anything. And they used to tell all
Speaker 5: of this revision is history. All the great wars, the
Speaker 5: American Revolution, all the great moments in history, they always
Speaker 5: attributed back to this idea that it was just ten
Speaker 5: percent of the population at first. And one of the
Speaker 5: things that Trump's people really started to convince themselves of
Speaker 5: is that, yeah, it doesn't matter if for small we're intense.
Speaker 5: That idea has sort of translated into the current approach.
Speaker 5: That's where this idea about building power on the fringes
Speaker 5: comes from. Is that you bring in these really intense,
Speaker 5: scary people. And because there's so intense and scary, people
Speaker 5: are faced with the question. And for the most people,
Speaker 5: when it comes to confronting burgeoning authoritarianism or extremism, they
Speaker 5: break to the right. Most people duck and cover when
Speaker 5: they're confronted with scary stuff. That's why heroes are heroes,
Speaker 5: because that's not the norm, right, you know, And that's
Speaker 5: what happened with the Republican Party is that, you know,
Speaker 5: originally they sort of lost themselves because they were so
Speaker 5: hopped up on the means to an end that was
Speaker 5: getting rid of abortion and you know, and squlturing reproductive
Speaker 5: health that they you know, sort of started they took
Speaker 5: the poison pill somewhat knowingly in hopes that well, we'll
Speaker 5: just get through this and then you know, whatever, we'll
Speaker 5: consume them right, and that's it, and so this is it,
Speaker 5: this is they consume them, like you said, and this
Speaker 5: is what we have to deal with going forward. And
Speaker 5: it ties into so much and that's why I said,
Speaker 5: like we can get into the tactical stuff. But the
Speaker 5: truth is what my big takeaway from the last few
Speaker 5: weeks and obviously the results, is that there are some
Speaker 5: macro things here that we need to account for and
Speaker 5: understand and internalize fast, not only because that will help
Speaker 5: us develop strategies for responding, but we need to internalize
Speaker 5: it fast so that we are not disoriented. People are
Speaker 5: not disoriented. They're going to be disoriented unless they internalize
Speaker 5: that they need a decoder for what's about to happen.
Speaker 5: That is the first step to resilience, and everyone's going
Speaker 5: to need a heck of a lot of it, and
Speaker 5: not just our society but all the people that make
Speaker 5: up with it, because every day that people are disoriented
Speaker 5: and don't buttress themselves and sort of nurture that resilience,
Speaker 5: more and more people break toward the right. They duck
Speaker 5: and cover, because that is what happens when you infect
Speaker 5: now our government with what used to be people on
Speaker 5: the fringe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a hard question.
Speaker 1: You've already said more smart stuff than has occurred to me,
Speaker 1: Like I've been writing stuff down, which I never do
Speaker 1: because what you've said is so smart and so correct.
Speaker 2: But let's talk about growing power from the fringes. So
Speaker 2: does that look like McCarthyism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know what's so different about it, And
Speaker 5: that's one of the reasons why you mentioned McCarthyism as
Speaker 5: opposed to say, the John Birch society, right, because McCarthy
Speaker 5: actually was able to get some power, right, and whereas
Speaker 5: the John Birch society. Hey, yeah, they were influential, but
Speaker 5: they didn't. Here's the difference, and it gets it and
Speaker 5: there's a modern analog to it. The difference is that
Speaker 5: America has always had fringes, just like any society. We've
Speaker 5: had a little bit more fringes, and part that's what
Speaker 5: makes us a little spicy. Our fringes are kind of
Speaker 5: a feature in a way. But what we haven't had
Speaker 5: is the fringes being connected, right, and so you can't
Speaker 5: build power unless you connect otherwise disconnected audiences. That's where
Speaker 5: McCarthyism come in. Obviously, McCarthy was a demagogue, so the
Speaker 5: tool was demagoguery, but what it did was it connected
Speaker 5: otherwise disconnected audiences, and he used a platform that he
Speaker 5: had to do that. And what we have now the
Speaker 5: modern analog and like to your point about McCarthy as
Speaker 5: in a way, it's maccarthyism on steroids, because McCarthy still
Speaker 5: needed to rely on traditional means. And one of the
Speaker 5: things that we have now is that you have extremely
Speaker 5: powerful algorithms that connect otherwise disconnected audiences. If you like
Speaker 5: one piece of q and on content, or two pieces
Speaker 5: q and on content, even if you don't intentionally know
Speaker 5: it's q and on or not, the algorithms will feed
Speaker 5: you more and more and more of that and move
Speaker 5: you down a rabbit hole and move you and intensify
Speaker 5: or capture you. They will convert you, and they will
Speaker 5: connect you to new people. And so that is partly
Speaker 5: what we're dealing with now, is that we are dealing
Speaker 5: with a McCarthyism that does not need to dilute itself
Speaker 5: to speak to mass audiences. And believe the McCarthy thing,
Speaker 5: strangely enough, was diluted. It needed to be deluded in
Speaker 5: order to reach broader and broader audiences. What happens when
Speaker 5: you don't need to dilute to have the same reach
Speaker 5: and saturation because the tools that we're using, the tech
Speaker 5: platforms are automatically distributing that content to those individuals. And
Speaker 5: I just want to make one point on that because
Speaker 5: I think it helps tie into the outcomes here. The
Speaker 5: major platforms had put in place many safeguards since the
Speaker 5: last election about what was recommended, about who they were
Speaker 5: recommending content too, about not accelerating extremism, and in the
Speaker 5: last year most of those safeguards have all been systematically
Speaker 5: eliminated or reduced as a result of pressure from right
Speaker 5: wing influence. They work the refs at these platforms, so
Speaker 5: they knew what they were doing because they knew that
Speaker 5: in order to scale and execute organizing power on the fringes,
Speaker 5: you needed the runway and the tools that these tech
Speaker 5: platforms provided. So I would say it looks like Maccarthyism,
Speaker 5: but strangely enough, a more raw and non deluded version
Speaker 5: of Macarthyism. And I don't think we should joke about
Speaker 5: the demon thing I before. When I but I said
Speaker 5: that before, it's a joke. But think about it. There's
Speaker 5: the increase of Christian nationalists, the rise of this evangelical
Speaker 5: stral of, this intention religious strain, this idea that there
Speaker 5: are demons among us doing bad things, that is going
Speaker 5: to be something that they start to name, they're going
Speaker 5: to start identify. I'm not even joking when I when
Speaker 5: I talk about q Andon and like you know, back
Speaker 5: in twenty eighteen, people don't reporters. They really thought I
Speaker 5: was losing my mind. And I talk about demons now,
Speaker 5: not because it's a focused point of mind, but I
Speaker 5: look where they get their information, and it's like they're
Speaker 5: going to start screaming that person is a demon, that
Speaker 5: person's being motivated by demons. And that is a tactic
Speaker 5: of the same thing that MacArthur it is. They will
Speaker 5: have they will they will build up new boogeym in
Speaker 5: new labels that they can then apply to individuals in
Speaker 5: order to harass them, persecute them, and all of that
Speaker 5: is designed to sort of make examples out of people fast,
Speaker 5: so that more and more people duck and cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's just keep going with this for a minute.
Speaker 1: What do we think that we do next. I was
Speaker 1: on a show this morning. It was on the Late
Speaker 1: Night MSNBC, and we're talking about like what went wrong
Speaker 1: which is what we're going to be talking about for
Speaker 1: the next five hundred until the midterms. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that you know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: like this and that, and this went wrong, this went wrong.
Speaker 1: But like one of the things that I think is
Speaker 1: that it seems to me like there is is a
Speaker 1: real information problem right like we there are parts of
Speaker 1: this country that don't have news.
Speaker 2: The news they're getting is read sludge.
Speaker 1: Remember how you know the thing that Elon shared and
Speaker 1: after Paul Pelosi has been you know, amien.
Speaker 2: So what's the solve there?
Speaker 5: I would say there are three sort of immediate things,
Speaker 5: and part of it's, you know, a lot of this
Speaker 5: all starts too with the recognition early on that it
Speaker 5: was describing about how they're organizing and building power, and
Speaker 5: because that then sort of then you're working towards countering that.
Speaker 5: I think there's sort of three things that are important
Speaker 5: in terms of the next step here. One is everyone.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of people talk about messaging and say, oh,
Speaker 5: we need better messaging. I look at it in a
Speaker 5: slightly different way. You know, there's three ways that you
Speaker 5: can talk to somebody. You can talk to their head,
Speaker 5: their heart, or their gut. That's it. It doesn't matter
Speaker 5: what the message is, it's either to their head the
Speaker 5: heart of their gut. And if you look at the
Speaker 5: bulk of Republican and conservative and right wing message messaging
Speaker 5: with what they're saying, it's almost all to people's gut.
Speaker 5: Sometimes it'll be to their to their heart, never to
Speaker 5: their head. If you look at democratic messaging, it's almost
Speaker 5: always to people's heads, sometimes their heart, never to their gut.
Speaker 5: And why that matters is that we live in a
Speaker 5: as you notated, we live in that we have this
Speaker 5: information asymmetry. But obviously people say, well, not that many
Speaker 5: people watch the news or read papers, sure, but they
Speaker 5: still live in an information world because you get it
Speaker 5: through word of mouth. You get an you don't get
Speaker 5: the individual facts with the threads, but you get the narrative.
Speaker 5: We all live in a narrative or narratives. And when
Speaker 5: that narrative, when the right wing has narrative dominance, and
Speaker 5: as you noted, that narrative dominance is really just a
Speaker 5: reflection of right wing sludge. You're just pickled in misinformation
Speaker 5: and right wing rage all the time, even if you
Speaker 5: don't consume a drop of it. They're still pickled in
Speaker 5: it because your friends are because indirectly you're getting it.
Speaker 5: It's on the television, you see the chiron, when you're
Speaker 5: picking up your bagel in the morning. You you form
Speaker 5: a narrative. That's what happens. And so I think we
Speaker 5: need to one think about how it is that we
Speaker 5: communicate and communicators need to write eyes that we need
Speaker 5: to rethink about that. The second there were two more
Speaker 5: structural pieces. One is that there's no shortage of creators
Speaker 5: on our side. But the one thing that the right
Speaker 5: wing does, and they've done this for decades and they
Speaker 5: do it better, is they invest in people. There's no
Speaker 5: reason why our content creators should not be getting what
Speaker 5: you know, have to have other jobs. You know, some
Speaker 5: of our best people are you know, it's not their
Speaker 5: primary position. They're not full time, you know, you know,
Speaker 5: video creators or podcasters. It's something they do on the side, incidentally,
Speaker 5: and we've never really made robust investments in them, whereas.
Speaker 2: They have, and they have a pipe which they have
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 5: You know, there are people on Instagram that got grants
Speaker 5: from Charlie Kirk years ago that will make their way
Speaker 5: to or have already made their way to daily wire
Speaker 5: podcasts after a few years, right, And that's how it works.
Speaker 5: And so you get the benefits immediately of you balance
Speaker 5: out the scales because you have your own people out
Speaker 5: there pushing information and it's authentic, you're not trying to
Speaker 5: command and control it. But then you're also building revolving
Speaker 5: capital and businesses that are designed to build and shape narratives.
Speaker 5: So unless that challenge is confronted, you know, and liberals
Speaker 5: are so burned by what by air Americas like, well,
Speaker 5: we tried to combat right wing radio in the ninety
Speaker 5: you know, in the late ninety other two thousands, and
Speaker 5: so let's give up forever, you know, And that's a mistake.
Speaker 5: And then the last thing I'll say is, so one
Speaker 5: is we need to grapple with that, and that's not
Speaker 5: We'll spend one point five billion dollars on ads that
Speaker 5: we know don't work, but we won't spend one hundred
Speaker 5: million dollars to incubate and seed a new generation of
Speaker 5: creators and talkers and storytellers. That's ridiculous, that's stupid, and
Speaker 5: that's a mistake. And then the third thing I'd say
Speaker 5: is that the tech platforms are going to kill us.
Speaker 5: They are and we need to deal with that. And
Speaker 5: the Democrats Republicans work the refs in newsrooms, and then
Speaker 5: they took the same strategy. Yes, and it worked, and
Speaker 5: they did it again here. You know, every time Democratic
Speaker 5: YouTube or another major platform rolled back another election policy
Speaker 5: and the result of right wing pressure, there was no
Speaker 5: Democratic counter response. There was no talk of them cheating
Speaker 5: or yelling and screaming. I wasn't surprised by what happened
Speaker 5: with Jeff Bezos or what we saw in Silicon Valley
Speaker 5: as the spring rolled by, because those seeds were so
Speaker 5: months ago. They were scared from Republican pressure that they
Speaker 5: were getting. And that needs to be something that Democrats
Speaker 5: really grapple with. And it's not only because that will
Speaker 5: help again balance out the scales, but it's also that
Speaker 5: they'll maybe get some insights into that the political landscape
Speaker 5: is realigning. They need to be more responsive to what
Speaker 5: is happening, and that political landscape is actually a reflection
Speaker 5: of what the larger information landscape is.
Speaker 1: You know, I a.
Speaker 5: Mediumized whenever I talked about the media, people say, well,
Speaker 5: not that many people watch CNN or read the New
Speaker 5: York Times. Sure, but they get a podcast. Secondarily, they
Speaker 5: sit online, they get push alerts on their phones. All
Speaker 5: these things add up.
Speaker 2: Right, it's downstream, yes, and that's it.
Speaker 5: And Republicans understand, and Trump in particular, you know, I
Speaker 5: think we need to internalize the lesson. He's a media
Speaker 5: creature and he was able to do a lot because
Speaker 5: he is a media creature. And part of what allowed
Speaker 5: people to say, oh, he doesn't really mean it is
Speaker 5: a thing called k fabe, which exists in WWE. It's
Speaker 5: a wrestling things. It's a character, and people sort of
Speaker 5: all the stuff that people that really has turned him
Speaker 5: off to people they say, oh, but it's just a character. No,
Speaker 5: No one thinks the Undertaker really murders their villain and
Speaker 5: the you know, their opponent in the ring and brings
Speaker 5: them underground. It's a joke. And I think a lot
Speaker 5: of times what Trump was able to do was not
Speaker 5: only manipulate the media to have narrative dominance and to coordinate,
Speaker 5: you know, take advantage of this massive right wing megaphone
Speaker 5: that they've had, but also rely on the benefit of
Speaker 5: the doubt and the sort of the way that consumers
Speaker 5: engage with those characters, and in particular him and we
Speaker 5: need to recognize that that that is a thing that
Speaker 5: we're going to have to grapple with as well, because
Speaker 5: he won't be the last. That's the scary thing. Tucker
Speaker 5: will be a rising political force and we need to
Speaker 5: accept that as as a thing that it's true. We
Speaker 5: will have to accept that. Look out the trail and
Speaker 5: look who performed in terms of engagement. Very few people
Speaker 5: cut across the right wing landscape in the way that
Speaker 5: Trump does, and Tucker is one of those few figures.
Speaker 5: Obviously Musk as well. That's it. That's the next step
Speaker 5: and doesn't solve everything. But I don't think circular firing
Speaker 5: squad or trying to figure out some of the micro
Speaker 5: things that would have been different are going to be
Speaker 5: helpful because what took place here is macro and we
Speaker 5: need to think about it at a bigger level. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I agree, I agree, I agree, Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. No, no moment perfectly, Jesse Cannon, my Jung Fast.
Speaker 3: This will be a not bittersweet, but bitter moment of fuckery.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: We didn't even need to say it. Our moment of
Speaker 1: fuckery is is fucking election. It's twenty twenty four. It's
Speaker 1: eight years later, and we have learned nothing. Another low
Speaker 1: turnout election. Some states did better than others, but ultimately
Speaker 1: it wasn't like Donald Trump grew MAGA.
Speaker 2: It was that Democrats did not show up.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to spend the next two years
Speaker 1: blaming people, but I am going to spend the next
Speaker 1: two minutes complaining about the result of this election. You
Speaker 1: can't give people something they don't want. But it hurts
Speaker 1: to think that Republicans waived signs that said mass deportation. Now,
Speaker 1: mass deportation was not a vibe, it's a plan, And
Speaker 1: I just want to say that I hope that all
Speaker 1: of us, as citizens of this great country, will in
Speaker 1: fact try as hard as we can to protect the
Speaker 1: vulnerable and to keep our democracy safe. This is going
Speaker 1: to be a slog and we're going to have to
Speaker 1: stay and fight and defend democracy. And look, I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of factors here that happen that
Speaker 1: are just important to think about and muse about. But
Speaker 1: what's most important is that we're here and we're going
Speaker 1: to keep going, and that's it. So I really want
Speaker 1: to thank all our listeners. We need you more than
Speaker 1: ever and I feel connected to you guys, and I'm
Speaker 1: just grateful that you listen to us, and you know,
Speaker 1: and we're going to get through this, just like anything
Speaker 1: else we're going to you know. I want to say
Speaker 1: one last thing. I wrote this book that's coming out
Speaker 1: in June about the year I had when my husband
Speaker 1: got cancer.
Speaker 2: I didn't talk about it.
Speaker 1: Here, and my mother got dementia, my stepfather died, and
Speaker 1: my father in law died, and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: stuff happened, to believe it or not, and it was
Speaker 1: really fucking hard, and I had a really tough time.
Speaker 2: But you know what I did.
Speaker 1: I just did the next thing and I got through it.
Speaker 1: And I know that we can get through this and
Speaker 1: the next thing and the thing after that, and we
Speaker 1: will together. And I'm grateful for all of you. So
Speaker 1: thanks awesome. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
Speaker 1: the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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