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 g DP expanded by two point
Speaker 1: six percent, reversing a six month slump. We have a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. Joining us is the host
Speaker 1: of Maya Colpa and the author of Revenge How Donald
Speaker 1: Trump weaponized the U. S. Department of Justice against his critics,
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen. And then we'll be joined by Parker Malloy,
Speaker 1: who writes the newsletter The present Age. But first we're
Speaker 1: joined by Greg Sargent, who writes the plumb Line blog
Speaker 1: for the Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Politics, Greg Sargeant,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on. We're seeing a lot of
Speaker 1: like really early voting and like crazy numbers of early
Speaker 1: voting in Georgia. You saw some numbers out of Nevada.
Speaker 1: But pundit Land is convinced that Republicans are going to
Speaker 1: have a red wave. What do you make of those? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't really like to speculate too much on the
Speaker 1: meaning of early voting because you can never really tell
Speaker 1: whether it's just cannibalizing the the election day vote, especially
Speaker 1: these days, right because after the pandemic. I think, well,
Speaker 1: in a way, this is really the first national election
Speaker 1: coming after we had an election in the pandemic, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we don't really know whether kind of
Speaker 1: new habits have set in where lots and lots of
Speaker 1: people are voting early who otherwise would have voted on
Speaker 1: election day. But either way, I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a positive to bank them. But pundit Land is
Speaker 1: very convinced that there's a red wave. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: They seem to be bending over backwards to portray Republicans
Speaker 1: as swaggering and confident. Yeah. I would love to talk
Speaker 1: to you for a minute about the difference between the
Speaker 1: pundit classes reaction to the Georgia Walk or Warnock debate,
Speaker 1: which was Walker are better than we thought? To the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania debate for Fetterman and Dr Oz. Can you talk
Speaker 1: to us about that? Well, the beauty of the expectations game,
Speaker 1: to use that awful pundit cliche, is that you can
Speaker 1: just twist it fit whatever narrative you want. Right if
Speaker 1: you say, okay, well I'm gonna say that expectations are
Speaker 1: low for this guy, then you know, if he doesn't
Speaker 1: vomit on the stage, you can say, well, he defied expectations, right,
Speaker 1: or conversely, you know, you can just sort of say
Speaker 1: that someone still fell short of the expectations even though
Speaker 1: I lowered them, so they're even worse, right, they didn't
Speaker 1: even worse than I thought. It's just I think we
Speaker 1: need to just end the expectations game entirely. It's an
Speaker 1: utterly useless construct for understanding debates, And and Fetterman is
Speaker 1: a really good example of this, right, Like you probably
Speaker 1: saw how there was a ton of punditry about how
Speaker 1: you know Fetterman. Oh, you know, voters aren't going to
Speaker 1: see this through quote unquote ablest MSNBC frames at all, Right,
Speaker 1: And they couldn't even fathom the possibility that maybe voters
Speaker 1: would see his difficulties through the prism of their own challenges,
Speaker 1: which made them into the ones who are in a bubble,
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of funny. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that it's so interesting because it's like, we talk so
Speaker 1: much about this idea that there's a bubble in this
Speaker 1: in these coastal cities, but then there is a sort
Speaker 1: of pushback to the like liberalism of coastal cities in
Speaker 1: the media, which is like to almost overcompensate to be conservative,
Speaker 1: to make it seem like they're balanced. Can we talk
Speaker 1: about that? That is really a serious problem, right, I
Speaker 1: think that reporters and pundits are heavily inclined towards believing
Speaker 1: Republicans when they say that they're confident that they're gonna win.
Speaker 1: And nobody is confident of anything, at least with the
Speaker 1: Senate map, I don't think right nobody knows what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. Democratic victory or Republican victory in the Senate.
Speaker 1: They're they're pretty much it's a toss up. No one knows,
Speaker 1: and yet the press is filled with Republicans are on offense.
Speaker 1: Republicans are confident. And the reason is, I think partly
Speaker 1: what you identified, which is when Republicans say that they're confident,
Speaker 1: reporters who are worried about being pasted as liberal kind
Speaker 1: of worry that, oh, no, I'm missing something. I'm missing
Speaker 1: something out there in real America, and I can't be
Speaker 1: seen to be missing something in real America. So yes,
Speaker 1: Republicans have good reason to be confident. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of I think the dynamic. We've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: that recently, Like you'll have a sort of bad face
Speaker 1: ploy from Republicans and reporters will go along with it,
Speaker 1: and then you'll have a sort of a certain kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, normal play from Democrats and it
Speaker 1: will be you know, democrats claim it's so interesting because
Speaker 1: it's like clearly everyone add some bias. Yeah, and also
Speaker 1: I think Democrats actually kind of lean in the other
Speaker 1: directions sometimes, right, Like you constantly see when the tiniest
Speaker 1: thing goes wrong, You constantly see anonymous Democrats getting quoted
Speaker 1: wringing their hands about this, that or the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they want to approval from the savvy,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. These reporters hold some sort
Speaker 1: of weird mystical power over some Democrats, where Democrats think
Speaker 1: they're in the club if they're seen to be not
Speaker 1: being in a bubble themselves. Right, Yeah, the realistic democrat
Speaker 1: recognizes that he's probably gonna lose. Okay, I approve, I mean, no,
Speaker 1: I think it's true. And it's funny because I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this because there's a guy who writes for Axios,
Speaker 1: who comes from right wing world, who was, you know,
Speaker 1: telling me that I was wrong about Fetterman and that,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the first people to tweet
Speaker 1: this is a disaster for Fetterman. Right. This was about
Speaker 1: that interview. They said that obviously Federman is very pain
Speaker 1: and I said, well, I interviewed him and he was fine.
Speaker 1: So and he got furious with me, and he was like,
Speaker 1: you can apologize now in the d m s. And
Speaker 1: I was like, go fund yourself. I didn't say, go
Speaker 1: fuckers up. And I said, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: apologize from what I saw, but you were attempted to
Speaker 1: say that though, aren't you. Oh my god, it was
Speaker 1: my dream is in the movie version, I said, go
Speaker 1: fund yourself, But in the real version, I said, you know, no,
Speaker 1: that's what I saw. And he blocked me. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: good for him, you know, you live in the reality
Speaker 1: you want to live. And he got furious. But he
Speaker 1: wanted me to apologize, you know, for what I saw
Speaker 1: for because he was like, well, this woman saw something different,
Speaker 1: so obviously you're wrong. Why don't you And it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, good for him, man, We're worth trying. Right.
Speaker 1: And last night Tucker Carlson did a whole segment of
Speaker 1: veteran This Well defending herschel Walker. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think he could ever expect anything remotely approaching much
Speaker 1: honesty or consists and see from Tucker Carlson. But that's
Speaker 1: pretty even, that's egregious even for him. I think because
Speaker 1: you write so much, and I appreciate it. You've written
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you wrote about the doctor Oz
Speaker 1: and Fetterman debate, and how this this idea of I mean,
Speaker 1: I actually think Oz looks bad when he attacks Fetterman's health,
Speaker 1: that he looks like kind of mean. Yeah, I agree
Speaker 1: with that, and I think it actually kind of resonates
Speaker 1: with another plausible understanding of Oz. You know, the kind
Speaker 1: of supercilious, smug, entitled elite type who swans him and
Speaker 1: thinks he can just sort of snatch a sentency. Look,
Speaker 1: I mean, Fetterman really did struggle. I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: gonna deny that. And we don't really know whether it
Speaker 1: will hurt him. It might, it really might, But you know,
Speaker 1: maybe something like that mitigates it a bit. Right. It
Speaker 1: kind of plays into Federman's narrative, right, like Edoman is
Speaker 1: trying to portray himself with good reason. I think is
Speaker 1: someone who over is trying to overcome something very difficult
Speaker 1: and telling voters that that shows that he's a fighter
Speaker 1: against diversity and so forth, and then he'll understand their struggles.
Speaker 1: And so to have Odz kind of sneeringly put him
Speaker 1: down kind of feeds into the larger story and larger
Speaker 1: contrast Federman is trying to draw. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it'll be enough. I think we just don't know, but
Speaker 1: it could be. It could help. I interviewed Fetterman pre
Speaker 1: stroke and post stroke, and Federman was always laconic, you know,
Speaker 1: he was never like a huge talker. Yes he's had
Speaker 1: a stroke, Yes he struggles, Yes there's auditory processing, but
Speaker 1: it's not like he was a huge talker to begin with.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, I do think of that a lot.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm defending him having a stroke. I don't
Speaker 1: want to seem like I'm saying anything nice about anyone,
Speaker 1: but I do think like it's not such a radical
Speaker 1: shift in my mind from the way he is before,
Speaker 1: at least speech wise, he wasn't like a super fast
Speaker 1: talk or anything. I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: this piece you wrote about the magabase Trump. Let's slip
Speaker 1: about the Magabase intas to Pete to explain to us
Speaker 1: because this is super interesting. Oh, this is the one
Speaker 1: about the phone call between Blake Masters and Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah. Fox News documentary has audio of
Speaker 1: a call between Donald Trump and Blake Masters after a
Speaker 1: Blake Masters debate in which Masters kind of surprised everybody
Speaker 1: by saying he didn't see evidence of election fraud. And
Speaker 1: Trump got on the phone and rebuked him and said, look,
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake's doing a whole lot better than you, and
Speaker 1: and she's absolutely a hundred percent behind the idea that
Speaker 1: the election was stolen from me, and so if you
Speaker 1: want to keep the base on your side, you've got
Speaker 1: to keep saying that as much as possible. And everyone
Speaker 1: had a good laugh about that for for good reason.
Speaker 1: But I think it's actually like it's it's like a
Speaker 1: pretty big confession about what's really happened to the Republican base.
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is actually right that that in order
Speaker 1: to energize the Republican base you have to say that
Speaker 1: the election is stolen from him. And I just thought
Speaker 1: that was pretty amusic. I mean, at this point we
Speaker 1: treated as ordinary, which is just kind of bizarre, right,
Speaker 1: which or maybe something a little bit more like Trump
Speaker 1: being Trump or crazy Trump beings any and crazy. But
Speaker 1: it seems like we should talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the fact that the front runner for the Republican
Speaker 1: nomination sort of said explicitly that the way to energize
Speaker 1: Republican base voters is to lie to them about what
Speaker 1: happened in the election. Yeah, I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: a really important data point. Ultimately the party has taken.
Speaker 1: Really the only thing that everyone agrees on in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party is that they won in which they didn't
Speaker 1: and that if they don't win in two it's somehow
Speaker 1: fraud Right. At this point, what they're saying to their
Speaker 1: voters is, if you lose, it doesn't count, right, But
Speaker 1: if you win, it does it does. Right. I've tweeted
Speaker 1: this a few times. But election integrity, which is the
Speaker 1: dumb phrase that Republicans used constantly, actually means elections only
Speaker 1: have integrity when Republicans win them. Right, That's literally what
Speaker 1: it means. I mean, that's not hyperbolic, it's actually what
Speaker 1: they believe. It's what they mean. Yeah. I do worry
Speaker 1: that we are not panicked enough about this. I actually
Speaker 1: went on medi show yesterday and Meddie talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot. He argued with this guy from Brookings about
Speaker 1: it on Morning Joe. There's a lot of like, don't
Speaker 1: say that this antidemocracy is the road to authoritarianism because
Speaker 1: it sounds bad, but that's what it is, right, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't understand how anyone can really deny that.
Speaker 1: I think you're talking about the exchange this morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it was this morning with med and uh, I
Speaker 1: can't remember the other guy's name from Brookings. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that that got a lot of Twitter buzz going and
Speaker 1: people were kind of dunking on. I guess his name
Speaker 1: is shod Yeah. But I side with media on this.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to look at the Republican Party
Speaker 1: today and deny that non trivial swaths of the base
Speaker 1: and even the elected officialdom are are moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can deny that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it is like you definitely are seeing there's a pushback,
Speaker 1: and again I think that's that normal. As a you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream media is very worried that they're going to call
Speaker 1: fire in a crowded theater, so they're you know, in
Speaker 1: a certain way they're kind of you know, slow rolling
Speaker 1: at Yeah. I mean, I guess it sort of depends, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the major news organizations are in some ways doing really
Speaker 1: great work, right in the sense that they're documenting a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff and and really grew some granular detail.
Speaker 1: You know, there was an AP story about the insanity
Speaker 1: in Arizona. The Times on you know, the Post do
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff. I think maybe where we
Speaker 1: all struggle a little bit is in getting the language
Speaker 1: right to describe this, which is kind of a different
Speaker 1: matter from reporting in a granular way on it, which
Speaker 1: the news organizations are doing. It's hard to find the
Speaker 1: right language for this stuff, don't you think. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's twofold. It's hard to find the right languages
Speaker 1: for this. It's hard to write about it. And also
Speaker 1: you don't want to be wrong, right, And you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's probably a real, a widespread worry about
Speaker 1: appearing to alarmist and it appears partisans sort of automatically
Speaker 1: to just be saying that one party has gone off
Speaker 1: the deep end. And that's kind of a hard thing
Speaker 1: for news organizations that are nominally wedded to a kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know, not particularly well defined ideal of
Speaker 1: objectivity to do right right? No, No, I agree, I
Speaker 1: think it's really important. So what are you watching in
Speaker 1: this last eleven days or twelve days or thirteen days?
Speaker 1: I don't I want some good polls out of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Are there any polls that you trust? It's sorry to
Speaker 1: be unfun here. No, absolutely, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: I think we all know that the industry is in
Speaker 1: something approaching crisis and if something goes wrong, if there's
Speaker 1: a major miss this time, it's going to be even worse.
Speaker 1: But all we have are are the polling averages, right,
Speaker 1: And I'd like to see three or four quality polls
Speaker 1: out of Pennsylvania. Another thing I'm kind of looking out
Speaker 1: for is a surprise by Catherine Cortes Masto, who I
Speaker 1: think could conceivably survive against Adam Um. I had to
Speaker 1: use the word expectations. But this is why I'm paying
Speaker 1: attention to that one. If she can hang on, and
Speaker 1: I think it's possible, right, I think it's getting written
Speaker 1: off as being treated as she's being treated as the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable incumbent, and I can kind of see that.
Speaker 1: But if she survives and the Latino vote goes to
Speaker 1: her by size of little margins. I think people are
Speaker 1: gonna have to rewrite their front the narratives in a
Speaker 1: big way. Conversely, if she loses in the Latino vote
Speaker 1: is part of that, then I think we've got a
Speaker 1: really the Democratic Party is going to have some major
Speaker 1: reckoning to do. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean I
Speaker 1: think either way this could be a very bad night
Speaker 1: for polsters. Yeah, well, right, it will go the other way,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody, I mean, it's almost comical to
Speaker 1: watch some of the big data people kind of hedge
Speaker 1: their bets, and that I think of like in two
Speaker 1: sixteen they were wrong right with Trump, or they were
Speaker 1: off enough to really be wrong, and then they were
Speaker 1: wrong on all those Senate races like Sarah Gideon up
Speaker 1: by eight points or something. Oh yeah, no, that's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, the state polling is is a real mess.
Speaker 1: And then of course the House races. I have to say,
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what the prediction models were showing
Speaker 1: in the House, but I don't think anyone expected something.
Speaker 1: Democrats underperformed on the polling in right, They underperformed the
Speaker 1: polling right, so the polling didn't really capture the kind
Speaker 1: of the deterioration on down ballot for Democrats, which I
Speaker 1: guess is you know another that was a very challenging
Speaker 1: thing to get right though. I mean, you really had
Speaker 1: this kind of anti Trump majority across the country that
Speaker 1: was really hit unprecedented turnout levels both in and but
Speaker 1: in a weird dynamic kicked in where that anti Trump
Speaker 1: coalition wasn't entirely a pro democratic coalition, Right, Greg Sergeant,
Speaker 1: please come back. I will. I'm always happy to. Michael
Speaker 1: Cohen is the host of Mayakalpa and the author of Revenge,
Speaker 1: How Donald Trump weaponized the West Department of Justice against
Speaker 1: his critics. Welcome to Fast Politics, Michael Cohen. How you doing, Molly?
Speaker 1: Long time, long time. You have a new book and
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about it. It's called Revenge.
Speaker 1: Why did you write this book? And who's getting the revenge? Well,
Speaker 1: that's the interesting The revenge should really be considered as
Speaker 1: the revenge of the entire um country as against an
Speaker 1: individual who, for some unknown reason has decided that he
Speaker 1: was going to ignore what forty four presidents before him
Speaker 1: had done, and that is to protect our democracy, as
Speaker 1: opposed to trying to create an autocracy, something that our
Speaker 1: founding fathers were always always concerned about, that there would
Speaker 1: be a president that didn't really want to be a president,
Speaker 1: that wanted to be a dictator. But the reason that
Speaker 1: I wrote the book is I wanted people to understand
Speaker 1: the true story, the real story, the accurate story about
Speaker 1: me and what happened to me. So the way I
Speaker 1: look at revengees, it's really the dissection of the most
Speaker 1: corrupt investigation into a citizen of the United States, literally
Speaker 1: in American history. And the part I really want people
Speaker 1: to understand is what Revenge does. It demonstrates using my case,
Speaker 1: is the example what happens when you have an autocratic,
Speaker 1: fascist minded president who elects to weaponize the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice in order to silence a critic. Because I promise you,
Speaker 1: if we allow ever back into the White House, if
Speaker 1: we allow someone like Donald Donald Trump two point oh,
Speaker 1: that's the end of our democracy. So I want to
Speaker 1: push back on that for a minute, because do you
Speaker 1: think Trump will run again? No? No, But I'm not
Speaker 1: even worried about well, because, as I've been saying all along,
Speaker 1: this isn't a new common for me. I've said it
Speaker 1: all along. This is the big grift. The man has
Speaker 1: seen what he can do in terms of fundraising off
Speaker 1: of we'll call them the stupids of society that give
Speaker 1: to a billionaire money that he can keep and use
Speaker 1: of it as his at his total and soul discretion.
Speaker 1: They're giving their their needed money to him, and he's
Speaker 1: already raised what over a quarter of a billion dollars
Speaker 1: doing it. This is the greatest grip to him, and
Speaker 1: it's really only the remaining grif that he has. This
Speaker 1: all stops if and when he becomes you know, a candidate.
Speaker 1: Explain that to me a little more. What ends up
Speaker 1: happening here is he has this superpack while he is
Speaker 1: just the will call him power broker, which he legitimately is.
Speaker 1: While he's power broker, he has the super pact that,
Speaker 1: if you look at the fine print on it, he
Speaker 1: is permitted at his sole discretion to use of the
Speaker 1: funds that come in anyway that he wants. If he
Speaker 1: becomes a formal candidate, it has to go into a
Speaker 1: formal candidates coffers right, which then of course gets disclosed
Speaker 1: in the whole nine yards, But he cannot use it there.
Speaker 1: It's regulated um More to um rules that don't permit
Speaker 1: this sort of we'll call it abuse, right, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of shocked because I always think of
Speaker 1: Trump as someone who, when there's a possibility to do
Speaker 1: the worst possible thing, he almost always does it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's probably true, But another reason why he won't run
Speaker 1: is because he knows statistically that he cannot win. Now,
Speaker 1: he may be successful, maybe successful in winning a primary,
Speaker 1: but he cannot win a general election. Even his support
Speaker 1: amongst the Republicans is waning. Now, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the fringe whackadoodles that have decided that he's the next
Speaker 1: coming of Christ. I'm talking about Republicans that voted for
Speaker 1: him the first time but are actually skids shitless that
Speaker 1: the guy could end up back behind the Lincoln desk,
Speaker 1: you know in d C. Let's not forget Molly. This
Speaker 1: this whackadoodle, and there's all the way to describe him.
Speaker 1: Took documents from the White House, top secret classified documents
Speaker 1: that we just learned our nuclear in nature, that deal
Speaker 1: with Iran, that deal with China. Actions of this man
Speaker 1: are so illegal. Immediately be indicted and incarcerated. Anybody else
Speaker 1: would have already had the full force of this government,
Speaker 1: you know, breathing down their neck and you know, kicking
Speaker 1: down their doors, as he likes to say. Except for him,
Speaker 1: he has no care in the world about what he
Speaker 1: does to this country, to our national security, to our relations,
Speaker 1: to our international relations, both positive and negative. He is
Speaker 1: a true menace to society. He is a menace. There's
Speaker 1: no other way for me to describe this. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know him better than probably ninety nine point nine
Speaker 1: nine nine presented population, right, Okay, I mean I think
Speaker 1: you know him pretty well. You work with him for
Speaker 1: a long long time. I do, accept Molly. Remember when
Speaker 1: I worked with him state company, there was media involved
Speaker 1: and so on. The Donald Trump that you are seeing
Speaker 1: now the worst version of himself imaginable. And it's a
Speaker 1: totally different Donald that we are now contending with versus
Speaker 1: what we used to deal with. Okay, he had fights
Speaker 1: with pain contractors, he fights with developers or with the
Speaker 1: carpet people. You didn't matter. That's the point I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make. Once he tasted the full power of the presidency,
Speaker 1: that's when he really became the worst version of himself.
Speaker 1: So so, now that he's not president and he's not platformed.
Speaker 1: Do you think he's gone back to sort of more
Speaker 1: of what he was like before, or do you think
Speaker 1: that the presidency is like a is sort of like
Speaker 1: a bell. They can't be unwrong. It is definitely the
Speaker 1: bell that can't be unwrong. The fact that this man
Speaker 1: was sitting with thousands of pages of documents that belonged
Speaker 1: to the National Archives. The fact that he got Christina Hobb,
Speaker 1: a lawyer, to sign a document to which was sent
Speaker 1: to the National Art Type stating that he does not
Speaker 1: have any more documents or he doesn't have any documents.
Speaker 1: Then they figure out that he does, then they raid
Speaker 1: the place. She's now in trouble. He should technically be
Speaker 1: in trouble. We're now learning that there are potentially additional documents.
Speaker 1: This man is completely uninged. So let's talk about those documents.
Speaker 1: Because you know him, So why do you think he
Speaker 1: took the documents? Like do you think because there's so
Speaker 1: many different theories and like I've heard very smart reporters
Speaker 1: say things like, well, he's just messy and disorganized. I've
Speaker 1: heard other theories. I mean, you know him. Do you
Speaker 1: think he took the documents because he was hoping for
Speaker 1: a black mail scenario, or do you think he took
Speaker 1: the documents because he was messy and disorganized in or
Speaker 1: in a hurry, or do you think there's some other
Speaker 1: reason that we are not fully processing. No, I've been
Speaker 1: very um consistent in my statement, which is he took
Speaker 1: them for money and power. This was his get out
Speaker 1: of jail free card. He would use these documents too,
Speaker 1: either extort the country in the event that an indictment
Speaker 1: was forthcoming, where he would state I have nucle ar
Speaker 1: secrets that I mean I in August thirty one, I
Speaker 1: had stayed several of these things, including my fear that
Speaker 1: he has additional documents that are being stashed in other places,
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe the kids houses, his apartment here
Speaker 1: in Fifth Avenue, wherever the man was and needs to look.
Speaker 1: But it's all about the money and the power. So
Speaker 1: you think he took those documents with the hope of
Speaker 1: blackmail in the United States government or blackmailing the the
Speaker 1: other governments. But well, we don't know the answer to
Speaker 1: that one. But it's definitively to blackmail the United States government.
Speaker 1: The statement that I can see someone like Donald saying,
Speaker 1: is really you want to indict me, You want to
Speaker 1: incarcerate me. I had documents that will destroyed the national
Speaker 1: security of the United States of America. Do you really
Speaker 1: want to take that risk to put a seventy nine
Speaker 1: year old guy behind bars. I think the answer is
Speaker 1: probably no. There's an alternative, and I have an alternative
Speaker 1: theory as well, which is that this is his four
Speaker 1: oh one K program right whereby he'll turn around and
Speaker 1: he'll have Jared or Um somebody on don or Eric
Speaker 1: go meet with, whether it's g Pain or whether it
Speaker 1: would be Pootin or whether it would be Mohammed Ben Salmon.
Speaker 1: Whereby he would say, look, we have these documents, want them.
Speaker 1: It's gonna question you xam amount of dollars. Just don't
Speaker 1: tell anybody you got him from me? Right. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because if you think about these tapes, what
Speaker 1: word has all these Trump tapes? And Trump gives Woodward
Speaker 1: some Kim Jong staff, and it's sort of like, isn't
Speaker 1: this cool? I mean so, I guess. I mean. The
Speaker 1: thing that I'm sort of impressive with the Trump is
Speaker 1: he's still kind of in awe of the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff he got to see when he was president. He
Speaker 1: has not come to the realization. Yet and this is
Speaker 1: where I state that I believe he is unhinged. Yet
Speaker 1: he is not the president of the United States anymore.
Speaker 1: And the problem is is he walks around his maral
Speaker 1: Lardo golf club and all that the social club people
Speaker 1: are calling him Mr. President, and they get up and
Speaker 1: they they clap for him, they chiff to him. So
Speaker 1: in his mind it's very Kim Jung nish. But I
Speaker 1: want to draw your attention to something that we don't
Speaker 1: need Woodwards tapes to know that Donald would show stuff
Speaker 1: like this, you know, to somebody else. We've already seen
Speaker 1: it happen. Did it happen when for some unknown reason,
Speaker 1: the Russian ambassador or the um, the the delegation that
Speaker 1: came to the United States, he showed um documents. The
Speaker 1: guy is a fucking moron. And he doesn't care about democracy.
Speaker 1: He doesn't care about process or protocol, None of that
Speaker 1: means anything to him. He just doesn't care, right, no question.
Speaker 1: But I mean, where does he go from here? Hopefully
Speaker 1: to prison or at least to some form of a
Speaker 1: home confinement, because unless we stop him, look it goes.
Speaker 1: Let me just take this back to revenge for a
Speaker 1: second and I say this, Molly, because you're probably on
Speaker 1: his enemies list. You really don't want to hope because
Speaker 1: the consequence is a very significant. It upturns your entire life,
Speaker 1: it destroys your family, it's financially destroys you. So you
Speaker 1: really don't want to hope. One of the reasons again
Speaker 1: why I wrote Revenge is I really wanted people to
Speaker 1: understand that what happened to me can happen to you
Speaker 1: if you allow somebody like Donald Trump into the White House,
Speaker 1: somebody that has no compunction use the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: as his hit squad in order to prevent people like
Speaker 1: myself from speaking out against him. This is again very dictatorial, autocratic, monarchical,
Speaker 1: supreme leadersh kind of stuff where he's something negative about Putin.
Speaker 1: We've seen what happened or what eight nine um oligarchs,
Speaker 1: negabillionaires that all of a sudden, you know, decided that
Speaker 1: they can fly and they start flying out of tents,
Speaker 1: you know, tent floor windows and so on, or have
Speaker 1: some sort of a suicide scenario. They realize what's going
Speaker 1: on in These are people that irked him by making
Speaker 1: statements that he didn't like, and the result is death now.
Speaker 1: I even say in the book, I believe if Trump
Speaker 1: had the opportunity for me to get killed, he absolutely
Speaker 1: would have liked that. However, he was unable to effectuate that,
Speaker 1: so instead he decided to settle for my incarceration not once,
Speaker 1: but twice. And what I do in revenge is I
Speaker 1: go through the entire case, from the fake steel dot
Speaker 1: cier to the unconstitutional remand. And I used that a guideline,
Speaker 1: a roadmap to speak where it's not me telling you
Speaker 1: that this is what happened. We speak to former FBI
Speaker 1: agents who you know and the current FBI agents would be,
Speaker 1: to former prosecutors, to judges, we speak to just a
Speaker 1: plethora of individuals that all turned around due to the
Speaker 1: same ultimate conclusion that this whole thing was concoct by Trump,
Speaker 1: you know. And again he used the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: in order to silence of critic. This is not the
Speaker 1: way that our forefathers ever expected. I'm not sure our
Speaker 1: forefathers were such fans of Jews, Listen, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I never asked any of them, you know, as you myself.
Speaker 1: I always think like these guys probably would not have
Speaker 1: been big fans. Michael Cohen The book is called Revenge.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it's always
Speaker 1: good to speak to you, Molly always. Parker malloy is
Speaker 1: the author of the newsletter at the present Age. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Parker malloy. Hey, how's it going, Molly good?
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you. First. Should we talk
Speaker 1: about Elon mush buying Twitter? I think we should? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably it's it's probably going to affect the whole world,
Speaker 1: so I guess it's worth mentioning. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: this because this is super interesting to me. We're we're
Speaker 1: sitting on this precipice. It's supposed to happen tomorrow, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's already happened. There a lot of conflicting reports,
Speaker 1: but you tweeted out something really interesting, which was that actually,
Speaker 1: already the Twitter algorithm has a right leaning bias, which
Speaker 1: is sort of hilarious because we always hear right wingers
Speaker 1: complaining about that. Can you talk us through that a
Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, sure, of course, you know, and this
Speaker 1: is something that conservatives have kind of done in every
Speaker 1: aspect of our lives. They've they've complained that there is
Speaker 1: a a liberal bias in whether it's mainstream media or
Speaker 1: whether it's Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, there is always
Speaker 1: this this sense that they are being discriminated against. And
Speaker 1: usually what it comes down to is that they just
Speaker 1: break whatever rules are in place, Like all of these
Speaker 1: platforms have rules, because you have to have some rules.
Speaker 1: Even Elon Musk the as we're recording this, tweeted out
Speaker 1: a note to try to keep advertisers from from leaving
Speaker 1: the site. That was the fakess note. Oh it's amazing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: also it doesn't help that he has a long history
Speaker 1: of just being a wild liar about all sorts of things,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean just just look at his uh
Speaker 1: his support for hyper loop, which was really just kind
Speaker 1: of a plot to to derail you know, to reinventing
Speaker 1: tunnels all the all the time. But with this, part
Speaker 1: of the argument has been on the right with Twitter
Speaker 1: is that it has an anti conservative bias, and by
Speaker 1: that they usually people will point to like, oh, look,
Speaker 1: this random conservative got their Twitter account suspended because they
Speaker 1: tweeted something that broke the rules or something that didn't
Speaker 1: break the rules, but it just got swept up, and
Speaker 1: so you get all of that kind of mixed in there.
Speaker 1: But the difference is when when a conservative account gets
Speaker 1: gets suspended by Twitter, what you then get the next
Speaker 1: days you get Fox News putting that person on and
Speaker 1: being like, tell me how Twitter persecuted you personally. And
Speaker 1: it's the same thing that they do with with Facebook too.
Speaker 1: In sen you kind of saw Facebook freak out because
Speaker 1: there was an article Gizmoto published that said the Facebook
Speaker 1: apparently sensors right wing content or a one of their
Speaker 1: former moderators said that, and so so you had that,
Speaker 1: and then immediately Zuckerberg freaks out invites like all of
Speaker 1: the worst people on the right to Facebook to find
Speaker 1: out what he can do to help them. You know,
Speaker 1: the rest is kind of history. They got rid of
Speaker 1: the people who were curating the trending section, so suddenly
Speaker 1: the trending topics ended up having totally fake stories. You know,
Speaker 1: back in the day when we used to when fake
Speaker 1: news meant like actual, fabricated, invented stories rather than just
Speaker 1: content we don't like. So yeah, you know, you had
Speaker 1: like stories that were like Megan Kelly endorses Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: the Pope endorses Donald Trump, like none of those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, Twitter is kind of the same. They
Speaker 1: do the same thing where they complain and they whine,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, it's biased against us because no one
Speaker 1: saw my my tweets this week. All that's going to
Speaker 1: happen here, I think, is that it's just going to
Speaker 1: kind of keep going more and more to the right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's just gonna slowly, I think, become unusable,
Speaker 1: especially if he makes the kind of cuts that he
Speaker 1: wants to make. Like people say they want total, unrestrained
Speaker 1: free speech, but if you actually look at like, you know,
Speaker 1: what Musk originally said was that he wanted speech that was,
Speaker 1: you know, in line with whatever the law says, so
Speaker 1: anything that you could legally say should be allowed on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That was his original point before we tried to walk
Speaker 1: it back earlier. And if you look at that, I
Speaker 1: mean that's four chan that which is kind of not
Speaker 1: kind of it is a cess pool, and it's okay
Speaker 1: for cess pools to exist on the Internet. I just
Speaker 1: don't you know, advertisers won't want to put their ads.
Speaker 1: You know, look, if you look at for Chance, they're
Speaker 1: not exactly getting the big brand names buying at space
Speaker 1: on there. It's so funny because it's like I think
Speaker 1: that Kanye is a really good example of this. So
Speaker 1: Kanye said something anti semitic, all his advertisers dropped him.
Speaker 1: A week before that, Donald Trump tweeted, Jews better watch
Speaker 1: out and be more grateful about what I've done for Israel,
Speaker 1: or out before it's too late, Right before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Pretty fucking anti semitic. Bardy was silent, like, so does
Speaker 1: that mean that corporations? I mean, obviously I understand this
Speaker 1: is about losing money, but like I felt like there
Speaker 1: were a lot of times in the Trump administration where
Speaker 1: the sort of third the only kind of third rail
Speaker 1: we had, was that corporations were worried about bad publicity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is something that I wrote about recently. You know,
Speaker 1: the past several years, there's been a big focus on
Speaker 1: cancel culture. That's been kind of everything everywhere. And it
Speaker 1: started when people started to talking about that. They were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: should someone be fired for a tweet they sent a
Speaker 1: decade ago? Probably not, you know, like that was kind
Speaker 1: of the original idea, but then it's sort of morphed
Speaker 1: into you know, this this belief that you should be
Speaker 1: able to say or do whatever you want not face
Speaker 1: any negative consequences. Now of course you could. You could
Speaker 1: receive positive consequences for something you say. You could gain
Speaker 1: followers and gain friends and gain endorsements. But oh no,
Speaker 1: nothing negative you say should ever hurt your career or
Speaker 1: anything like that. And so it just sort of functioned
Speaker 1: as a way for people to say and do whatever
Speaker 1: they want, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But you
Speaker 1: end up with Kanye West ranting and about all sorts
Speaker 1: of nonsense. I mean, I've been watching some of the
Speaker 1: Look Longer interviews he's done recently, and it's it's just
Speaker 1: all over the place, and he doesn't seem to get
Speaker 1: that what he's saying is wrong or bad. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this there there. There was this thing leading up
Speaker 1: to the twenties six team election. You had you know,
Speaker 1: remember when when the Access Hollywood tape came out and
Speaker 1: you had Tic TACs putting out a statement being like,
Speaker 1: we do not condone this. The tic Tac brand should
Speaker 1: not be associated with this, you know, which is hilarious.
Speaker 1: It's sad, but you know, and the same thing happened
Speaker 1: when Donald Trump Junior we did a meme that was skittles, yeah,
Speaker 1: comparing asylum seekers and and migrants to Skittles, you know, like, well,
Speaker 1: what if one of these skittles was was a terrorist
Speaker 1: and skittles had to be like skittles or candy, not
Speaker 1: not people. You know, so this sort of thing. Before
Speaker 1: Trump won, I feel like that brands were like, yes, this,
Speaker 1: we have a line. It's fairly clear. If you say
Speaker 1: something or do something that doesn't kind of that that
Speaker 1: hurts us in any way, we're going to cut ties.
Speaker 1: And that's that's why people who are spokespeople for organizations
Speaker 1: or companies tend to be fairly middle of the road,
Speaker 1: kind of non controversial type people, not like bomb throwers.
Speaker 1: They want to avoid controversy because no one wants you
Speaker 1: to go, oh cool those shoes, the ones that that
Speaker 1: that the Nazi promotes, you know, like like something like that.
Speaker 1: You know. I think trump selection kind of kind of
Speaker 1: changed the calculus there, and it maybe possibly is starting
Speaker 1: to come back in a in a small way. But
Speaker 1: obviously there was there was really great Washington Post column
Speaker 1: about this bike. Karen wrote it, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no I know her at yeah yeah yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm butcher her name. Yeah, I'm so sorry, Karen. I
Speaker 1: love your work. If you if you're listening to Yeah
Speaker 1: she's a genius. Yeah, but she had she had a
Speaker 1: great column that kind of talked about this about how
Speaker 1: what Kanye is seeing is one thing, but the fact
Speaker 1: that when a white dude will will say something that
Speaker 1: is racist or anti semitic, it's at a t t
Speaker 1: I h yes, continued, Sorry, yeah, so that you know,
Speaker 1: that's just kind of the I thought it was an
Speaker 1: interesting point she made that where it was like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone can kind of dump on Kanye. And part of
Speaker 1: it is that once one brand makes this sort of decision,
Speaker 1: the rest have the sort of cover they need to
Speaker 1: follow through. That's sort of what you saw like after
Speaker 1: January six when Twitter suspended Trump and then Facebook was
Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, we're going to do it too, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's it provides that sort of level of
Speaker 1: cover that they need to not do anything controversial to
Speaker 1: not alienate people. It's interesting to me because I feel
Speaker 1: like you have a situation where Jerry Fallwow is less
Speaker 1: moral right than skittles or tic TACs were a great
Speaker 1: example of tic TACs, right, Jerry Fallwell Jr. Was stuck
Speaker 1: with Trump after that Access Hollywood tape came out, but
Speaker 1: tic tax did not, right, So tic TACs have the
Speaker 1: moral high ground over a liberty university. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm let's give tax free status of a church. Incredible step.
Speaker 1: Part of that, I think has to do with, um,
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, it's not an entirely unreasonable
Speaker 1: view of politics to be like, hey, so and so
Speaker 1: did something that that I strongly disagree with. But I
Speaker 1: think that as far as policy is concerned, which is
Speaker 1: what elections are about, to me personally, used to be Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can understand why someone like Jerry fault Wall would
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I'm going to stick with Trump even
Speaker 1: though he's the he's a horrible person, because he'll get
Speaker 1: the policies that I want through, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think that that happens a lot in a lot of races.
Speaker 1: You know, That's why people justified voting for Roy Moore
Speaker 1: and herschel Walker and all of these. And it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a wrong way to think about politics as a whole.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's a little scary that
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be any real penalty for being
Speaker 1: horrible at this point, whereas like a business like Skittles
Speaker 1: doesn't have those sorts of political calculations involved. Doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be like, well, I don't know, we really care
Speaker 1: about abortion, you know, like that's just not something that
Speaker 1: factors in. So I kind of get that, But at
Speaker 1: the same time, yeah, it's kind of kind of a
Speaker 1: sad statement that that skittles me may have the moral
Speaker 1: high ground here. I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: one of the things that's happened in these mid terms,
Speaker 1: and it's become a big trope in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: is attacking trans people. I think a lot As a Jew,
Speaker 1: it strikes me as a lot like what happened is
Speaker 1: what happened with Jews, you know, where they've decided that
Speaker 1: there's a good group to target. And I'm curious we
Speaker 1: Abigail Spamburger. There was an anti Abigail Spamburger ad. I'm curious, Like,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it's like to live through this
Speaker 1: election cycle. Honestly, it's because you know, for anyone in
Speaker 1: the audience who doesn't know, I'm trance, So it's very
Speaker 1: difficult for me. So when I when I was working
Speaker 1: at Media Matters, which is where I was before I
Speaker 1: started started my newsletter, I would read through the transcripts
Speaker 1: of Tucker Carlson's show. Every night I would read through
Speaker 1: the transcripts of Sean Hannity Show, and a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff has been bubbling up on the right for
Speaker 1: a long time, and it was getting to me. It
Speaker 1: was eating away at me because you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: difficult to sit through, you know, all the segments where
Speaker 1: it's just people speaking to an audience of two or
Speaker 1: three million people telling them like, hey, this group, there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of freaks. They shouldn't be accepted in society,
Speaker 1: you know, which is essentially their their message. And in
Speaker 1: ten I was working on a on a story about
Speaker 1: what I called Tucker Carlson's local news Broadcast from Hell,
Speaker 1: and that was basically, he curates the weirdest stories from
Speaker 1: around the country and turns them into national news stories
Speaker 1: where it's just examples of of liberal overreach. That was
Speaker 1: kind of the the idea there. And so what he
Speaker 1: what he creates is like, it's an hour long of look,
Speaker 1: look look at what the liberals are doing in this country,
Speaker 1: look at all look at how how terrible things are.
Speaker 1: And no one in no one on TV talked about
Speaker 1: mentioned trans people more than Tucker Carlson. There's no no
Speaker 1: one on the left, there is no one in mainstream
Speaker 1: media who does that. Tucker Carlson talked about trans people,
Speaker 1: brought trans trans issues up more than any other person
Speaker 1: on TV in that year, and I haven't checked since,
Speaker 1: but he still covers this NonStop. And so part of
Speaker 1: his argument is the left is obsessed with this topic.
Speaker 1: The left can't stop talking about this topic. As he
Speaker 1: is single handedly fueling an international discourse. It's very frustrating
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult because after after the marriage equality
Speaker 1: decision by the Supreme Court, a lot of the anti marriage,
Speaker 1: anti LGBT groups kind of regrouped and they rethought their process,
Speaker 1: and they rethought their targets and they went trans people,
Speaker 1: we can go after trans people. And so they have
Speaker 1: and they've been aggressive with it. And it's scary because
Speaker 1: as they're going state by state passing laws, you know,
Speaker 1: and in various states banning trans people from participating in sports,
Speaker 1: making it so trans students can't have access to, you know,
Speaker 1: locker rooms, or won't be acknowledged by their their name
Speaker 1: or what have you, you know, and and all of
Speaker 1: these come with their own justifications to that make it
Speaker 1: hard to hard to argue with because back in the spring,
Speaker 1: it was no, no, no, no, Look, we don't have
Speaker 1: any problems with trans people. We just really care about
Speaker 1: the integrity of women's sports. One was sports that was
Speaker 1: the most Yeah, yeah, we just love We're so feminist.
Speaker 1: We just care so much about women's sports. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: someone wants to talk ab out trans people in sports,
Speaker 1: I think that that's actually something where there there is
Speaker 1: room for. And this is just my opinion, but I
Speaker 1: think that there is room for some sort of compromise
Speaker 1: on that. But it wasn't about sports. It It was
Speaker 1: never about that because the people who were saying, look,
Speaker 1: we don't have anything against trans people, We just we
Speaker 1: just have have an issue with sports. They were not
Speaker 1: like signing onto bills that protected trans people from discrimination
Speaker 1: and employment and housing in public accommodations. It's not like
Speaker 1: they were like, hey, we agree with this, but we're
Speaker 1: going to create a sports carve out Like that would
Speaker 1: be one thing. But I guarantee if you presented them
Speaker 1: with that bill, if you presented Ted Cruise with a bill,
Speaker 1: that would Although he's been pretty vocal about just not
Speaker 1: liking trans people generally, so he's a bad example, but
Speaker 1: you get the idea where where these are not people
Speaker 1: who otherwise support trans trans people. So it's shifted from
Speaker 1: you know, we're just really concerned about women sports and
Speaker 1: integrity of that and all of this stuff with when
Speaker 1: you think about the fact that they're applying that to
Speaker 1: bills that deal with kindergarten through twelfth grade, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one thing. If you want to talk about
Speaker 1: like hey, n C, double A, Olympics, professional sports, sure
Speaker 1: talk about those things. But when they're trying to apply
Speaker 1: it to like second graders, they really show their hand
Speaker 1: because at that point, no, no one in second grade
Speaker 1: has an advantage one way or another. But it's about
Speaker 1: setting up that wedge to to go, okay, now that
Speaker 1: we've now that we've moved them from from sports, now
Speaker 1: we need to find a way to remove them from schools.
Speaker 1: And so then they tell the students, you have to
Speaker 1: use the restroom that corresponds with whatever is on your
Speaker 1: original birth certificate. And that's another thing that they've been
Speaker 1: working in the word original into a lot of their
Speaker 1: legislation that they're trying to pass, because in some states
Speaker 1: it is possible to update your birth certificate. My my
Speaker 1: birth certificate says female, My driver's license says female, my
Speaker 1: passport says female. But that's not what my origin, no
Speaker 1: birth certificate said. It's a pain to update these things
Speaker 1: and no one's just like doing it for fun. And
Speaker 1: this comes a few years after their argument was no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't have anything against trans people, but we, uh,
Speaker 1: we worry about what happens if if people who aren't
Speaker 1: trans go in restrooms and attack people. You know, that
Speaker 1: was that was a big thing. So that's where the okay,
Speaker 1: well what about people who have who have gone through surgeries,
Speaker 1: been on hormone replacement therapy for years? You know what?
Speaker 1: What about this? And they've taken all these extra steps
Speaker 1: and it's not just someone busting into a bathroom to
Speaker 1: attack someone and they don't know. We don't like that either,
Speaker 1: right in my mind, as someone who's like comes from
Speaker 1: Jewish parents and grandparents, like, it just seems to me
Speaker 1: like a way to try to otherise a group in
Speaker 1: order to have something to run against, you know, and
Speaker 1: like it just strikes me that everything they've argued has
Speaker 1: always been in bad faith and it continues to be.
Speaker 1: It's so frustrating, and it's hurtful, and it takes a
Speaker 1: toll on me. I don't like writing about trans issues.
Speaker 1: I don't like writing about LGBT issues generally. I did
Speaker 1: that for a while when I was first trying to
Speaker 1: make a living as a writer. I wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about these issues because a there weren't many people doing that,
Speaker 1: and be when they were, they were writing in really
Speaker 1: insulting kind of ways. So my my goal was, like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to put things out there that
Speaker 1: the frame this in a more humane way. Then in
Speaker 1: the in the year sense, I tried to branch out,
Speaker 1: tried to kind of avoid being I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: typecast as as the writer who only covers this stuff.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I started pitching stories various places
Speaker 1: about politics or media, and media kind of became the
Speaker 1: the big focus for me, you know, analyzing media and
Speaker 1: trying to think about how to improve it and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But with the way things have been,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard not to see this through the lens
Speaker 1: of my own personal fears and frustrations, because that's what
Speaker 1: it comes down to. It's I'm really a afraid about
Speaker 1: what happens in the next five to ten years. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm personally safe. I live in Chicago. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's about as safe as can be. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Republican candidate for governor is probably going to lose, but
Speaker 1: he's pretty extreme. He's he's very anti trans, very anti
Speaker 1: LGBT generally. But you know, he's not going to win
Speaker 1: this time. What I worry about is what happens when
Speaker 1: the right keeps fighting this, this same culture war, keeps
Speaker 1: trying to essentially push trans people out of public life.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if you make it a law where
Speaker 1: trans people can't use restrooms that correspond with their gender identity,
Speaker 1: what you're telling them is that every time they're in
Speaker 1: public and they happen to have to use the restroom,
Speaker 1: they need to out themselves as trans to every single
Speaker 1: person who can see the restroom door. It's it's dangerous
Speaker 1: and it's it's scary, it's dehumanizing it. Yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: set up that way. Tell us what the name of
Speaker 1: the newsletter is and where people can find out. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So the newsletter is called present Age, and you can
Speaker 1: find that at read t p A. Read the present Age.
Speaker 1: So read t p A dot com. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Thanks so much for having me. Molly, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. No, I really appreciate you. And g
Speaker 1: d P expanded by two point six percent, reversing a
Speaker 1: six month slump. Molly Jung Fast, Jesse Cannon, this Rhona
Speaker 1: woman not a fan. And you may know this. There
Speaker 1: was a Pennsylvania Senate debate between Dr mehmet Oz and
Speaker 1: John Fetterman. And John Fetterman has had a stroke and
Speaker 1: has some auditory processing issues. He was on this podcast
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago. You know, he had some answers
Speaker 1: where he was stuttering. He had some answers where he
Speaker 1: wasn't stuttering. The same people who are defending herschel Walker
Speaker 1: as being completely fine are furious and believe that John
Speaker 1: Fetterman is not fit to serve in the United States
Speaker 1: Senate because they haven't seen the United States it But anyway, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the point. But yeah, Republicans are very mad
Speaker 1: at Fetterman and do not want him in the Senate,
Speaker 1: though they do think herschel Walker will be a fine senator.
Speaker 1: On the radio show of One Hugh Hewitt, he had
Speaker 1: Rona McDaniel on, and she is the RNC chair but
Speaker 1: she's also for those of you who remember she was
Speaker 1: forced to change her name, she is Mitt Romney's niece.
Speaker 1: So basically, she was making fun of Fetterman for his
Speaker 1: stroke and making fun of Biden because they all are
Speaker 1: very obsessed with this idea that Biden is not with it,
Speaker 1: and that her line was, I think all the candidates
Speaker 1: got together and said which one of us has to
Speaker 1: campaign with Biden? And Fetterman drew the short straw hilarious
Speaker 1: and then also she said, so Biden said, between the
Speaker 1: two of us, we may be able to finish a sentence.
Speaker 1: I want to point out this is a piece in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post that just sum this up. But my
Speaker 1: favorite part of this is in the second to final paragraph.
Speaker 1: The piece says, McDaniel is not the first prominent Republican
Speaker 1: to mock someone with a disability. During a two fifteen
Speaker 1: campaign appearance, Donald Trump mimicked a reporter with a congenital
Speaker 1: joint condition that limits movement in his arms. So, congratulations, Republicans,
Speaker 1: you have like a new brand. And for that making
Speaker 1: fun of people with disabilities, Rona Trump himself, all of
Speaker 1: them get our moment of fun. That's it for this episode.
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Speaker 1: to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you towards what you've heard, please
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening mm HM