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.
Speaker 2: And Tammy Murphy is dropped out of the New Jersey
Speaker 2: setate race. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 2: Democracy duckets Mark Elias stops by to talk the latest
Speaker 2: fuckery with our voting laws. Then we'll talk to New
Speaker 2: York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers about her new book,
Speaker 2: American Woman, the transformation of the modern First Lady from
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden. But first we have Media
Speaker 2: Matter CEO Angela Kirosne.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Angelo, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm really delighted to have you because I feel like
Speaker 1: the mainstream media world has caught up with just how
Speaker 1: important media matters is. It's sort of interesting, right, because, like,
Speaker 1: your organization is not new, right, No.
Speaker 3: No, we're twenty years old this year. We started right
Speaker 3: around the time of the swift boats attacks against John
Speaker 3: Carrey in two thousand and four, and that was like
Speaker 3: the first time that Democrats and the leftmore broadly felt
Speaker 3: like they needed to have a more structured and systematic
Speaker 3: response to conservative misinformation. It's talk radio and Fox News
Speaker 3: in the nineties and early two thousands, wasn't enough of
Speaker 3: a tell they needed something like really specific like that
Speaker 3: to kind of help focus it.
Speaker 1: Weirdly enough, Yeah, I mean, I think that's right, and
Speaker 1: I also think it's just really so interesting. So you
Speaker 1: see what the right is running with. And I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that you could talk a little bit about the Hunter Biden,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, James Comer, Jim Jordan, whatever that was yesterday,
Speaker 1: because it seems like it was meant to create content
Speaker 1: for Fox News, and yet Fox News did not cover.
Speaker 3: The part that's so interesting about what's happening right now.
Speaker 3: And it's worth you know, sort of taking a step
Speaker 3: back and just getting a little bit of context here,
Speaker 3: is that we are in this moment where, for the
Speaker 3: first time in thirty years, like the right wing media
Speaker 3: is not the way it's always been. You know, one
Speaker 3: of the things that you know, the right wing media
Speaker 3: has always functioned as is an echo chamber, and you
Speaker 3: sort of had, you know, two centers of gravity at
Speaker 3: Limbaugh and Vock Radio and then Fox News, and they
Speaker 3: would kind of provide agenda setting that would then get
Speaker 3: echoed into the larger, larger landscape. Then you'd have these
Speaker 3: political figures, as you noted, sort of take actions official actions,
Speaker 3: or say comments that would get them to help advance
Speaker 3: the story and then get them booked back on those
Speaker 3: programs or talked about on Limbaugh. And that was sort
Speaker 3: of the way the cycle worked, and you sort of
Speaker 3: just keep moving the story along and investing in it.
Speaker 3: And it was handing bluff as long as you know
Speaker 3: you and your official capacity or political capacity sort of
Speaker 3: picked up the right wing media narrative, typically Foxes, you
Speaker 3: would be rewarded with Fox's coverage and attention. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's honestly how Ron DeSantis went from the bottom of
Speaker 3: the pack during their theatorial primary in Florida the top
Speaker 3: of the primary when he was running for governor is
Speaker 3: that he picked up Fox's dog food and ran with it,
Speaker 3: and they kept giving him more bookings and that's how
Speaker 3: he ascend it. All. That's to say that cycle's basically
Speaker 3: broken down over the last year. Part of it is
Speaker 3: that there's no center of gravity. They're a course that
Speaker 3: a conductor. You know, Fox obviously on the heels of
Speaker 3: the dominion lawsuit and losing Tucker, they're sort of in
Speaker 3: this weird, wobbly place where they don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of clarities what they are. Trump is sort of essentially
Speaker 3: the assignment editor over there now and is kind of
Speaker 3: setting the tone for some of the programs. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of broken up into factions. So you have had
Speaker 3: a a you have sort of you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of the Day Side people, the Fox and Friends of Universe.
Speaker 3: It's just weird. And so one of the things to
Speaker 3: keep in mind is that things like yesterday is that
Speaker 3: you have people like Jim Jim Jordan who are still
Speaker 3: trying to play by old ruled where, you know, and
Speaker 3: it worked for them. I mean they you know, Fox
Speaker 3: News did hype up a lot of this impeachment stuff
Speaker 3: and they literally manufactured a lot of these impetriment narratives
Speaker 3: and some of the more specific claims, like you know,
Speaker 3: that informant Smirnoff who is claiming that, you know, there
Speaker 3: was a five million dollar to the Bidens that completely
Speaker 3: fell apart, turned out to use an informant that had
Speaker 3: ties to Russia. Hadley alone had hyped that particular claim
Speaker 3: eighty five times in his monologues, I mean, and that
Speaker 3: was just Handy's show. You know, the rest of the
Speaker 3: network is on board. So if you're a cultmbar and Jordan,
Speaker 3: you you're like, oh, this is it. We're still going
Speaker 3: with this. You sort of created the demand of the
Speaker 3: appetite for an impeachment. You built the wise of the
Speaker 3: narrative that we then used as justification for why we
Speaker 3: needed to move forward here. And we were responding to
Speaker 3: our right wing audiences. So we did this thing, and
Speaker 3: then Fox basically just kind of left him holding the bat.
Speaker 3: And one is that's the consistency is out there anymore.
Speaker 3: They're not functioning the same. And the second important point,
Speaker 3: and this ties into how Fox has been handling a
Speaker 3: lot of these things lately, is that they just stop.
Speaker 3: So this is not the only instance where Fox has
Speaker 3: really pushed something and then when it kind of got
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit of a hot potato, they
Speaker 3: completely and totally walked away from it. That has been
Speaker 3: broadly their m up for the last ten year or
Speaker 3: so is that whenever they push the story and it
Speaker 3: gets a little bit attraction, they're like, ah, you know what,
Speaker 3: We're done with this. So, you know, they helped push
Speaker 3: this idea of cutting of raising the retirement, it's just
Speaker 3: so security, and then Republicans go and do it. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and we're just not going to talk about
Speaker 3: it anymore. Or the Mike Pence thing right where they
Speaker 3: were hyping Trump's opponents and then Mike Pence goes on
Speaker 3: the network and says, oh, yeah, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: know just as weak it says, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: endorse Trump, and everybody else talks about it except for
Speaker 3: Fox Naps, even though they're the ones that broke the story.
Speaker 3: So there is this sort of weird thing where they
Speaker 3: just walk away from stuff. They're kind of like starting
Speaker 3: fires and walking away. And I think it is largely
Speaker 3: a reflection of that the landscape has shifted so much
Speaker 3: and they're just not as powerful and influential as they were,
Speaker 3: or rather, they're not as reliable of a partner as
Speaker 3: they had been, and that that's not going to go away.
Speaker 3: That's going to be the new norm and the default,
Speaker 3: and you're going to see a lot more Republicans kind
Speaker 3: of scrambling and getting embarrassed, like Jim Jordan was.
Speaker 1: Are they scared of like legal pushback? Is this Fox News'
Speaker 1: response to Dominion or is this something. Are the Murdochs
Speaker 1: playing three dimensional chess?
Speaker 3: They're definitely not playing three dim They don't know what
Speaker 3: game they're playing right now. And it's not so much
Speaker 3: about risk aversion for lawsuits that has affected some of
Speaker 3: the coverage a little bit, where they're a little more
Speaker 3: careful about claims they push. It's mostly that they don't
Speaker 3: know who they are. You know. When President Obama came
Speaker 3: into office in two thousand and nine, Fox declared themselves
Speaker 3: the voice of the opposition, and when Trump got into
Speaker 3: office in twenty seventeen, they very clearly became an organ
Speaker 3: of the administration, sort of an adjacent sort of you know,
Speaker 3: para communication structure, that's what they were, and you know,
Speaker 3: had a shadow chief of staff. They just don't know
Speaker 3: what they are anymore. They don't have the same influence
Speaker 3: over the rest of the right wing media now, so
Speaker 3: when they talk about something, not everybody will try to
Speaker 3: push it. They hadn't been able to tamp down a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, just look at the way the speaker fights
Speaker 3: have played out. That would not have happened five or
Speaker 3: six years ago because their Fox and the rest of
Speaker 3: the right wing media were in lockstep. They had some
Speaker 3: worder still. I mean, Fox has tried to make Jim
Speaker 3: Jordan the speaker this year, and that horrendeously blew up
Speaker 3: and was again really embarrassing for him. So I think
Speaker 3: it's that what they're trying not to do is lose
Speaker 3: any more of their audience, which they've lost about twenty percent,
Speaker 3: but they're also trying not to So they're trying not
Speaker 3: to lose their audience, but they're also trying to not
Speaker 3: have to be the sole entity responsible for carrying all
Speaker 3: of the weight of like the Maga world, because that's
Speaker 3: also not sustainable for them from a financial perspective. Either.
Speaker 3: They have to renegotiate these cable deals. They still need
Speaker 3: to have some political influence. The Murdocks are still kind
Speaker 3: of mad, so there's like, you know, then there's internal
Speaker 3: tensions too, whereas he's trying to jockey for who's going
Speaker 3: to be the real influential player.
Speaker 1: Get back to Petence for a second, because I think
Speaker 1: it's meaningful. Pence said he wasn't going to endorse Trump.
Speaker 1: This is like pretty big deal, even despite the fact,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, look, Trump had his supporters chanting hang
Speaker 1: Mike pens so again, it's not abnormal to not want
Speaker 1: to endorse that person, but for Trump world, it is
Speaker 1: actually abnormal. So is that not getting covered because it's
Speaker 1: such a paradigm shift and it could unravel the whole
Speaker 1: apparatus if you were to sort of look down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole of people who served in the Trump admin
Speaker 1: who now refuse to aendorse him, like they broke huge news,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the job of a news network.
Speaker 1: And not to put too fine a point on it here,
Speaker 1: but are they hiding it because they just think it's
Speaker 1: too detrimental to Trump or is there some other reason
Speaker 1: they're not covering probably the biggest scoop they've had in
Speaker 1: the last six months.
Speaker 3: I think it's two things. One is that they don't
Speaker 3: want to make Truck mad because he will then attack
Speaker 3: the network more, and that means that you'll they'll hemmrhage
Speaker 3: more of their audience. That is one part of it
Speaker 3: is that they just they don't want to inflame him
Speaker 3: as much as they because by extension, that's that is
Speaker 3: the equivalent of inflaming their audience, and they are pretty
Speaker 3: desperate to make sure that they at least keep whatever
Speaker 3: sort of soft datent exists between them right now because
Speaker 3: of the fact that they do need that audio. It's
Speaker 3: like that is important from a revenue perspective for them,
Speaker 3: and that is just and also a relevancy perspective. I
Speaker 3: think the second thing though, is that ultimately, at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, and this is I think the
Speaker 3: same thing with like the pop Pens endorsement stuff, is
Speaker 3: like they're all going to vote for Trump. What we're
Speaker 3: really talking about here is not as you ask, it's
Speaker 3: not a full paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shift in
Speaker 3: terms of like how they orient themselves publicly, at how
Speaker 3: much public you know, weight they're willing to carry. But
Speaker 3: ultimately they're going to vote for Trump then, and they
Speaker 3: want him to win reelection. That is the world that
Speaker 3: they want, and so they don't want to shoot themselves
Speaker 3: in the foot by advancing narratives that fundamentally or could
Speaker 3: could seriously wound Trump in any way amongst his audience.
Speaker 3: And that means you can't because again, this is still
Speaker 3: a bubble. The audience is still a bubble. And if
Speaker 3: you have Mike Pence, who even if they have issues
Speaker 3: with it's a different messenger. It's not just somebody who's
Speaker 3: running against him. It's like it's his former vice president
Speaker 3: who's making a rational argument. Trump is trying to make
Speaker 3: inroads and in the Christian spaces right now, Like there's
Speaker 3: real reasons why you just want to bury that.
Speaker 1: How could he make more inroads? I mean, doesn't he
Speaker 1: have all the way evangelicals.
Speaker 3: He basically does, Yes, totally. I mean he's got them
Speaker 3: and that is it. I mean they will all come home.
Speaker 3: And you know, what Fox has been doing though, has
Speaker 3: been bringing on more pastors in the last few weeks
Speaker 3: to speak to that, to that exact thing. So when
Speaker 3: I say, and I was like, guess what I really
Speaker 3: mean is locking it down. And Fox has been a
Speaker 3: conduit for that, where they have been bringing on promined
Speaker 3: evangelical pastors to essentially say, despite all of his flaws,
Speaker 3: like we still need to vote for Trump and that
Speaker 3: that's an important thing that Fox is doing is kind
Speaker 3: of helping make sure that they lock down that evangelical
Speaker 3: support for Trump now hence in a way can cut
Speaker 3: against that and that is you know, it's not going
Speaker 3: to be a game changer, but like they did want
Speaker 3: to put any more bananas on the fields, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't have to get let this guy potentially slip
Speaker 3: by anything. They know it's going to be a tight race,
Speaker 3: and and they get the fact that it's margins. So
Speaker 3: that's what I think is really motivating. This is they
Speaker 3: still want and that's why I think they held their
Speaker 3: punches when they supposedly turned on Trump. You know, two
Speaker 3: years ago and the murdocks were seeing all those stories.
Speaker 3: They never really hit up, you know, when all the
Speaker 3: indictment stuff came down, and every time there was a
Speaker 3: negative story, all they did was talk about Hunter Biden
Speaker 3: and Joe Biden every time those moments came up. They
Speaker 3: never actually tried to draw any blood from Trump. They
Speaker 3: never really tried to say this somehow changes his orientation
Speaker 3: into the space. They just did some passive aggressive like
Speaker 3: they're no longer allowed to come on the air or
Speaker 3: call in anymore for a little while. Ultimately, they still
Speaker 3: advanced what was a Prochrump position, which is to help
Speaker 3: make sure that he wasn't mortally wounded by these stories.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the TikTok legislation. It zipped through
Speaker 1: the House, it is in the Senate. They got they're
Speaker 1: having these security briefings. Clearly, whatever they're seeing in these
Speaker 1: security briefings is a big convincer, right, I mean, what
Speaker 1: do we think they're seeing in the security briefing and
Speaker 1: doesn't make it through the Senate.
Speaker 3: I think it has a very good chance of getting
Speaker 3: through the Senate. But I also have real concerns about this.
Speaker 3: I think that assuming and this gets into your question
Speaker 3: what they're seeing in the security briefings, I think what
Speaker 3: they're seeing in the security briefings is a combination of
Speaker 3: the follower that TikTok has the enormous ability to influence,
Speaker 3: to saturate, and to change position and perspective quickly amongst
Speaker 3: an audience, in particularly young audience, so that it could
Speaker 3: be a beachhead for foreign attacks. But that's one extension,
Speaker 3: and two that it's already been deployed to clue great effect,
Speaker 3: in this case not entirely by the Chinese, but also
Speaker 3: by by Russian active measures, and the Chinese obviously let
Speaker 3: it happen, but that that it's already been deployed. We
Speaker 3: saw that it played out during the initial days in
Speaker 3: the Ukraine invasion and sort of helping see the ground
Speaker 3: there and changing some of opinions in Europe around this
Speaker 3: like it's been effective, it's consistently been a tool, and
Speaker 3: I think they're just seeing more about that and a
Speaker 3: little bit obviously about China's potential plans. Here's where my
Speaker 3: issue with the legislation comes in, and I think because
Speaker 3: they don't actually have to worry about the mess. This
Speaker 3: is what I don't think they're thinking about. So let's
Speaker 3: say everything that they're seeing without even knowing the specifics,
Speaker 3: is that this is a this is as some of
Speaker 3: the I think some of them described it as a
Speaker 3: gun to our head. Then all they've basically done, because
Speaker 3: of the way the legislation is structured, is make it
Speaker 3: so that either two things happen. Either China allows this
Speaker 3: ticking time bombs to be detonated right before the election,
Speaker 3: because at minimum we're talking about a six month period,
Speaker 3: so TikTok is going to be around. So there's our
Speaker 3: October surprise. It's already been demonstrated to be a useful
Speaker 3: tool for active measures, and the truth is is that
Speaker 3: we've relied on TikTok, the public has relied on TikTok
Speaker 3: to actually take away the active measures that have been
Speaker 3: deployed on the platform. There have been more active measures
Speaker 3: removed on the platform than allowed to proliferate, I would
Speaker 3: point out, and the leverage point there is not the
Speaker 3: goodness of China's arts, but that they still wanted the
Speaker 3: platform to exist and didn't want to elicit an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of or give any more fuel to the fire
Speaker 3: to sort of burg or undermine TikTok. But there were
Speaker 3: leverages and pressure points that were keeping TikTok to some
Speaker 3: extent constrained. And what they've basically done with this legislation,
Speaker 3: especially if it goes through, is say, oh, nope, you
Speaker 3: don't have those constraints anymore, because there's nothing in the
Speaker 3: bill that actually allows for what is essentially an event
Speaker 3: trigger or kill switch where the app stores have to
Speaker 3: act sooner. So there's nothing that says, oh, well, in June,
Speaker 3: if the platform suddenly becomes a cess pool of the
Speaker 3: verifiable fact foreign active measures and disinformation campaigns, that the
Speaker 3: app stores have to remove it immediately, which is a
Speaker 3: simple thing to add that's not in there right. So
Speaker 3: what they've basically done is say this time bomb go
Speaker 3: ahead and deignated right before the election. So independent what
Speaker 3: people think about the ban or not the ban, or
Speaker 3: trying to force it to spin off the way that
Speaker 3: it's structured right now, it basically creates all the incentives
Speaker 3: for trying to allow it to be used as a
Speaker 3: tool for disinformation and information warfare, and it doesn't give
Speaker 3: any meaningful stop gap, and it sort of hopes that
Speaker 3: some entity is going to fly out of the sky
Speaker 3: and buy this, and the reality is that entity will
Speaker 3: almost certainly be right wing. And so even on the
Speaker 3: other side of this, under the best case scenario, we
Speaker 3: are now dealing with a new right wing media outlet.
Speaker 3: And we saw how well that's worked out for X.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about what's happening with you guys and
Speaker 1: acts elon everybody's favorite billionaire, who richest man in the world,
Speaker 1: second richest man in the world, exact in now, I
Speaker 1: guess yeah, government subsidies. The irony is rich has become
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he got government subsidies, largely from
Speaker 1: Democrats trying to fight climate change, he's become a person
Speaker 1: who is I think the phrase is red pilled. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what he's declared war on media matters. Talk
Speaker 1: to me about what that looks like or whatever.
Speaker 3: You can say, yes, I mean what I can say
Speaker 3: is that he has sued us in the North District
Speaker 3: of Texas, but there's currently a lawsuit moving forward there,
Speaker 3: so exisuing us for accurate reporting. You know, we reported
Speaker 3: that there was an increase of ads or there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of high profile ads had been running alongside Nazi
Speaker 3: content and Hitler enthusiasm content. So we didn't even try
Speaker 3: to like debate, you know, the broader contours of white
Speaker 3: nationals or white supremacy. We just focused in on Hitler
Speaker 3: enthusiasm and Nazi accounts to show that these ads were
Speaker 3: running there contrary to what EX had been telling advertisers.
Speaker 3: They don't really dispute that, so that they're not saying
Speaker 3: that we define them. We're alive that there's something inaccurate
Speaker 3: in the boarding. They just don't like the reflection in
Speaker 3: the mirror, basically because it's not about the laws, it's
Speaker 3: about bearing us on legal fees. There also did lible tourism,
Speaker 3: so they're currently suing us in Ireland. X is currently
Speaker 3: suing us in Ireland and then threatening to sue in
Speaker 3: Singapore and the UK. But then aside from that, and
Speaker 3: I think this is the bigger warning sign for the
Speaker 3: media more broadly, and sort of where we're heading is
Speaker 3: that in response to Stephen Miller saying that state AG's
Speaker 3: Republican state AG's should go after media matters criminally for
Speaker 3: these reports, that they should use their power to investigate,
Speaker 3: you know, the underlying research and efforts that went into
Speaker 3: publishing these news reports. Ken Paxson was the first out
Speaker 3: of the gate to start that. The Missouri Louisiana kind
Speaker 3: of followed suit, and it was to launch a pretty
Speaker 3: broad scale investigation under his consumer fraud statute. That obviously
Speaker 3: is pretty destructive for news reporting because if you're going
Speaker 3: to go after every article you don't like, that could
Speaker 3: have a devastating chilling effect on news information. We sued KEM.
Speaker 3: Paxson in dc AF before a restraining order against it.
Speaker 3: We're still waiting on the decision there. But you know,
Speaker 3: he talks about us at least once a week or so,
Speaker 3: maybe more, calls us evil on a regular basis. I mean,
Speaker 3: in his mind, we are responsible for so much attack
Speaker 3: on free speech, and I think you know, if I
Speaker 3: take it the media matters pie sadicals is obviously it's
Speaker 3: having the efforts to barrier so that we can't be effective.
Speaker 3: And part of the way that we got here is
Speaker 3: that you basically had every right being media figure from
Speaker 3: Glenn Beck to Temper Carlson to Laura Wogan and you know,
Speaker 3: Meg and Kelly and then everybody truly messaging him basically saying,
Speaker 3: here's how media matters hurt me. They're the most destructive
Speaker 3: and evil organization in the country. Look how much damage
Speaker 3: they cause through these reports that they need to be stopped.
Speaker 3: And ultimately, I think it is a reflection of the
Speaker 3: work that we do. And I also think though that
Speaker 3: what we've seen with must not just with us, but
Speaker 3: also as you noted, this sort of red pilling was
Speaker 3: a process that happened over time as a result of
Speaker 3: his own social media interactions, like he became red billed,
Speaker 3: and he is just an example of what's happening across
Speaker 3: the board on x and on other platforms that I
Speaker 3: think make this a real, you know, a real threat
Speaker 3: beyond just like whatever whatever happens with us is that
Speaker 3: we are still going to have to grab them. The
Speaker 3: reality that our society right now, in a weird way,
Speaker 3: is kind of having a reset moment and instead of
Speaker 3: talk radio, which really transformed our politics, our culture, and
Speaker 3: our news in the nineties, We're going to be confronting
Speaker 3: a new reality, which I think is sort of akin
Speaker 3: to this new platform called Rumble, which is like a
Speaker 3: YouTube alternative, and I think it's going to similarly transform
Speaker 3: the country and our politics and our culture, you know,
Speaker 3: for the worst. And so I think that what we're
Speaker 3: seeing with Musk is just sort of a keyhold view
Speaker 3: as to where the rest of the landscape is going.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Hi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thanks yea good way.
Speaker 2: And Mark Oyas is the founder of Democracy Docket.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Mar thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1: We were on the show together this week and I
Speaker 1: just read what you wrote about. I'm just so struck
Speaker 1: by how incredibly important or what's happening right now. It's
Speaker 1: like the Trump RNC takeover. We covered it from the
Speaker 1: sort of it's an autocracy angle, but we haven't covered
Speaker 1: it from probably the most scary and disturbing angle, which
Speaker 1: is it's a voter suppression play. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, first of all, it was great seeing you earlier
Speaker 4: this week. I wish we could always be on together.
Speaker 4: Maybe if someone's listening with power. As you say, there
Speaker 4: was a lot of coverage of the takeover of the
Speaker 4: R and C that focused on the fact that Donald
Speaker 4: Trump might use it as a piggybank for his legal fees.
Speaker 4: That they got it a lot of people. But I
Speaker 4: think what was not focused on as much as it
Speaker 4: should was they actually added effectively for lawyers, right, Michael
Speaker 4: Watley himself the chair, is a lawyer from North Carolina, and.
Speaker 3: Then they hired three others.
Speaker 4: Charlie Spies, who is a professional Republican. Frankly, I would
Speaker 4: have said he was a never Trumper if you had
Speaker 4: asked me a a year or so ago. He worked
Speaker 4: for mid Romney and then DeSantis, and Jeb Bush is
Speaker 4: super packing in the middle, and Bill McGinley, who is
Speaker 4: much more maggot he was in the White House. Question
Speaker 4: I pose is that we know that they are launching
Speaker 4: now a new attack on voting because we see them
Speaker 4: filing new lawsuits. The question that we don't know is
Speaker 4: will it be more effective than it was in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty when they had the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Jenna
Speaker 4: Ellis and Sidney Palinchark.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean This is such a good point, which
Speaker 1: is the thing that saved democracy so far, is that
Speaker 1: most of the people who are doing this are very
Speaker 1: stupid and also not particularly well trained. You make the
Speaker 1: case here that the crew who were working on trying
Speaker 1: to overturn the election, we're largely not very good at
Speaker 1: this and not very smart. Your case here is that
Speaker 1: these people are actually good at this and smart.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, and I think you know you see this.
Speaker 4: I think one of the most underappreciated names in Trump
Speaker 4: world right now is Chris Lasovita, who is also himself
Speaker 4: a professional campaign operative who did not originate in the
Speaker 4: Trump be part of the Republican Party. He was frankly
Speaker 4: largely known for running races in Virginia, and I think
Speaker 4: he saw this opportunity to the RNC as not only
Speaker 4: to placate Donald Trump's wishes, but also to bring in
Speaker 4: a legal team that would not embarrass him and the
Speaker 4: RNC the same way. Now, that doesn't mean they'll have
Speaker 4: more success, by the way, I think it's an open
Speaker 4: question whether they'll have any more success because they still
Speaker 4: are dealt the hand that Donald Trump has given them,
Speaker 4: which is to oppose voting rights in Court and to
Speaker 4: poste by mail, I think those are ultimately losers of
Speaker 4: a position, But I do think we shouldn't gloss over
Speaker 4: the fact that they have added seemingly normal or formerly
Speaker 4: normal Republican lawyers to the mix.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: And I also think the point here is that you
Speaker 1: have one party that no longer believes in democracy, right,
Speaker 1: And so when you have people like Chris La Sevida,
Speaker 1: or you have people who are like guilled Republican operatives
Speaker 1: going like, this is our shot, let's go. Even if
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen this time, it could happen next time.
Speaker 1: And that was always my anxiety with DeSantis. I mean,
Speaker 1: he turned out to be a spectacularly terrible candidate, but
Speaker 1: he believed everything Trump believed, but was smarter and better organized.
Speaker 3: Right, And this is a great threat, Molly.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is what I think you and I
Speaker 4: and others have been talking about that I think people
Speaker 4: need to hear, is that, you know, we right now
Speaker 4: have a system in which essentially only one party can
Speaker 4: win or else we lose democracy. And that is just
Speaker 4: an untenable position because eventually, even if it's not Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, if it's Ron DeSantis, you know, or someone
Speaker 4: else in that same mold. The country's going to be
Speaker 4: in a world of hurt. So the question I always
Speaker 4: pose to some of the never trumpers, who I appreciate
Speaker 4: their work in some respects is how do we get
Speaker 4: out of this? Like how do we get to a
Speaker 4: place in which we are not careening from one anti
Speaker 4: democracy candidate to another? Because you know, Ron DeSantis opposed
Speaker 4: voting rights, he was in favor of book banning right
Speaker 4: in Florida. He's not exactly not exactly a pillar of
Speaker 4: liberal democracy.
Speaker 1: It does strike me, and again I'm being a Pollyanna
Speaker 1: and Charlie Sykes already just said that. I said as
Speaker 1: much as you would, But there is a sense in
Speaker 1: which Nikki Haley did not seem in my mind to
Speaker 1: be as anti democratic as the other ones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but she also didn't come very close to winning,
Speaker 4: Like this is this is the only place where I
Speaker 4: would be a little bit mildly critical.
Speaker 1: Right, she didn't come close to winning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeahs are mildly critical of the left on this around.
Speaker 4: Nikki Haley is Nicki Haley was never going to be
Speaker 4: the nominee. So it's all well and good to say
Speaker 4: she ran and she was the last one left. But
Speaker 4: she essentially was just a vessel for protesting Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: But she wasn't gonna win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she couldn't get the critical mass because her ideas
Speaker 1: were largely more jab than Donald.
Speaker 3: Right, right.
Speaker 4: And that's look, that's been the tension within the Republican
Speaker 4: Party now, going all the way back to their autopsy
Speaker 4: report after twenty twelve, when they said we need candidates
Speaker 4: to appeal more to young voters, women, Hispanics, and others.
Speaker 4: And Jeb Bush was intended to be that candidate, but
Speaker 4: he got thrashed by Donald Trump. And the problem, Molly is,
Speaker 4: ever since then, it's not clear that there is a
Speaker 4: majority of Republican voters who will vote for someone who
Speaker 4: is not in that Trump mold. So I don't feel
Speaker 4: like we're out of the box that we've all been
Speaker 4: put in where democracy is at stake, and it's just
Speaker 4: the Republicans are just circling around the various versions of Trumpiness.
Speaker 1: No, now, I think that's right. I also think when
Speaker 1: we are talking about this voter suppression stuff, Republicans have
Speaker 1: a long history of voter suppression. I mean, we did
Speaker 1: not Robert started stripping the voting rights act, you know,
Speaker 1: pre Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And look, this is one of the places where I
Speaker 4: think candidly some of the never Trumper's think I was
Speaker 4: too hard on some of them.
Speaker 1: They'll be okay, Yeah, they'll be fine.
Speaker 4: Like, the fact is that Republicans have been suppressing the
Speaker 4: votes of blackbrand and young voters for a very long time,
Speaker 4: and there is very little evidence that they are distancing
Speaker 4: themselves from that, even in the never Trump camp. I mean,
Speaker 4: let's not forget that Rusty Bauers, who is the guy
Speaker 4: from Arizona who everyone fawned over. He oversaw the enactment
Speaker 4: of all of the voter suppression legislation in Arizona. Brian
Speaker 4: Kemp and Brad Rothenberger oversaw and champion voter expression all
Speaker 4: the bad voter expression laws that we have seen in Georgia.
Speaker 4: So the anti voting ethos really stems in the Republican
Speaker 4: Party from the fact that they have been losing ground
Speaker 4: with the popular vote in America and they have internalized
Speaker 4: the need to limit who can participate in order to win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the last gasp of a dying party
Speaker 1: that cannot survive in a multiracial demand. Right because their
Speaker 1: policies are terrible, right, And.
Speaker 4: I think the place where I have taken it, probably
Speaker 4: a step further than maybe some others, is that I
Speaker 4: then point out when the Freedom to Vote Act and
Speaker 4: the Genre Lewis Vote as Advancement Act aim before Congress,
Speaker 4: every Republican voted against it. And I mean every Republican
Speaker 4: that includes as people a some on the right eight.
Speaker 4: When I point out that includes Ris Cheney and that
Speaker 4: includes Adam Kinsick, like, there is no constituency in the
Speaker 4: Republican Party to expand voting whatever else you may think
Speaker 4: about them for other issues. When it comes to voter
Speaker 4: supression of voting rights, there are no Republicans. There are
Speaker 4: more Republicans in the House who have it f rating
Speaker 4: from the NA than there are who would support a
Speaker 4: voting rights bill.
Speaker 1: So depressing, I mean, and really quite depressing, But I
Speaker 1: do think really an important point. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I read that really scared me last week was
Speaker 1: this idea that they are trying to purge the roles.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what that means, to purge the roles where it's happening,
Speaker 1: where it's that's not happening, and how many lawsuits you're
Speaker 1: working on right now about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a really good question. Voter purgase is
Speaker 4: one of the tried and true tactics that Republicans have
Speaker 4: used now for many decades. If you don't like who
Speaker 4: they vote against you, one of the things is you
Speaker 4: go and you try to remove people from being able
Speaker 4: to vote by having their voter registrations canceled. This was
Speaker 4: a big problem for many, many decades. You may remember
Speaker 4: the RNC found itself under a court order, a consent
Speaker 4: decree that prohibited them from engaging in certain activities. One
Speaker 4: of the reasons why they found themselves in that trouble
Speaker 4: was because of racially targeted voter purchase. Now, Congress addressed
Speaker 4: this in a couple of different bills in the nineties
Speaker 4: and in the early two thousands to try to curb
Speaker 4: the abilities of states to engage in these mass removal
Speaker 4: of voters in ways that were harmful and illegal. Obviously,
Speaker 4: states should be able to remove dead people, they should
Speaker 4: be able to remove people who moved out of the jurisdiction,
Speaker 4: they should be able to do listings. But the kind
Speaker 4: of the targeted purges really had to go.
Speaker 3: So we saw a quieting of voter purges. But what's
Speaker 3: interesting is we've now kind.
Speaker 4: Of seen it resurge, and I think there are a
Speaker 4: couple of reasons for it, which I'm happy to go into,
Speaker 4: but it's worth noting to answer your question. You know,
Speaker 4: the first two cases that were filed by the RNC
Speaker 4: after Mike Whatley took over, so I'm talking literally in
Speaker 4: the last ten days, they filed two voter purge cases,
Speaker 4: so it is very much top of their mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean the idea of a voter purge
Speaker 1: is you go to vote. You know, you are a
Speaker 1: voter in Georgia who has gotten the day off to vote,
Speaker 1: and you are not on the rolls anymore.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 4: And so what the Republicans are doing with their conservative
Speaker 4: allies is a two pronged strategy, and you neique to
Speaker 4: understand both of them to understand what we're in for
Speaker 4: this fall, because I believe this is going to be
Speaker 4: one of the, if not the dominant theme of this
Speaker 4: fall election when we get there. The first is that
Speaker 4: Republicans want to weaken the apparatus of the state to
Speaker 4: have accurate voter rules. That they do this Molly in
Speaker 4: both directions, both by trying to get them to purge
Speaker 4: voters who shouldn't be removed, right, But at the same time,
Speaker 4: remember they also pulled a number of their states out
Speaker 4: of ERIC, which is an interestate compact between blue, red
Speaker 4: and purple states to share information between them to allow
Speaker 4: them to remove people who should be The first step
Speaker 4: of this two prong is you both keep people on
Speaker 4: who shouldn't be on. You try to purge people off
Speaker 4: who shouldn't be off. Right, you basically create chaos, which
Speaker 4: won't surprise you since it's a Donald Trump inspired effort. Right,
Speaker 4: you create chaos at the state involving who is on
Speaker 4: the voter lists. And the second part of the program though,
Speaker 4: and this is the one that we have started to
Speaker 4: see more and more in the newspaper. The New York
Speaker 4: Times did a good story on this as well as
Speaker 4: some other outlets, is these private election right wing election
Speaker 4: agilantes who are basically engaging in private purges by compiling
Speaker 4: their own lists of voters who they think should be
Speaker 4: removed so and then submitting them to counties and insisting
Speaker 4: that the counties remove those voters. So, the first is
Speaker 4: the urge lawsuits we've been talking about are where the
Speaker 4: RNC and others sue the state and say, hey, state,
Speaker 4: you need to conduct a voter purge. But this second
Speaker 4: effort is where right wing organizations, using big data and
Speaker 4: using artificial intelligence generate their own lists of people who
Speaker 4: they say should be removed, and then they challenge those people.
Speaker 4: They engage in what's called mass voter challenges, where they
Speaker 4: submit lists of thousands and thousands of people who they've
Speaker 4: never met and tell the companies these people are illegal
Speaker 4: and they have to be removed. And it is it
Speaker 4: is the interplay of those two things that I fear
Speaker 4: is going to really negatively impact voters this November.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems really bad. How can Democrats push back
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 5: And all?
Speaker 1: Also, I really need you to talk about this carry
Speaker 1: Lake Supreme Court madness, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Okay, So Democrats can to push back out a couple
Speaker 4: of ways. The first is every state that is controlled
Speaker 4: by Democrats should remove the ability from their state law
Speaker 4: for private individuals to challenge voters. There is no reason, Molly,
Speaker 4: why you should be able to go to a big
Speaker 4: data company and generate a list of ten thousand people
Speaker 4: you don't know and then submitted for challenge. Okay, so
Speaker 4: number one states controlled by Democrats should do awigh with
Speaker 4: private voter challenges. The second is that everyone listening should
Speaker 4: check their own voter registration and make sure they're properly registered,
Speaker 4: you know, but making sure it's going to be a
Speaker 4: part of good hygiene. This fall is for people to
Speaker 4: check with their counties and states to make sure that
Speaker 4: they have not been removed and that they are otherwise
Speaker 4: eligible to vote. Now on Kerry Lake, you know, Molly,
Speaker 4: so much of what I do is very stressful, and
Speaker 4: you know, and I feel, you know, under a lot
Speaker 4: of it's humorless. And then it is often Mike Lindell
Speaker 4: and Kerry Lake get together. If you think about it, Molly,
Speaker 4: it's kind of a match made inhabitat right, two of them.
Speaker 3: Curry Lake had run for governor.
Speaker 4: She lost. She brought a series of lawsuits over the
Speaker 4: fact that she lost, which she continues to litigate. One
Speaker 4: of them is to say that the voting machines in
Speaker 4: Arizona were you know, rigged against her. She and her lawyers,
Speaker 4: by the way, have already been sanctioned amazing. But yet
Speaker 4: she managed to find common ally ship with the pillow salesman,
Speaker 4: Mike Lindell the mast. Yeah, and they decided they were
Speaker 4: going to take you to the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: And so that circus has now come to town. If
Speaker 3: you live in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: That is amazing the Supreme Court, I mean, they still
Speaker 1: have a tiny tiny bit of dignity left, right or now.
Speaker 3: To go back to the first topic we talked about,
Speaker 3: you know about the lawyers.
Speaker 4: At one end of the spectrum, you have Rudy Juliana
Speaker 4: dripping hair dye office standing in front of a landscaping
Speaker 4: company between a porn.
Speaker 1: Shop and yes, right, right, go on.
Speaker 4: But like at one in those re interview of that,
Speaker 4: at the other end of the spectrum, you know, you
Speaker 4: have more respectable lawyers like the one you know, who
Speaker 4: just want to otherwise like undermine, you know.
Speaker 3: Abortion rights. But Mike Lindell, Kerry Lake, they're definitely in
Speaker 3: that first category. And the Springcourt Supremecourt will do will
Speaker 3: do business with the second group. You know, they're happy
Speaker 3: to undermine basic individual freedoms and democracy, but they're not
Speaker 3: here for the Kerry Lake hair you know, Rue Juliani Kroud.
Speaker 3: So this lass is not going anywhere but it does
Speaker 3: show that, you know, and I thought that Bill Crystal
Speaker 3: actually had an interesting article this morning in which he
Speaker 3: kind of says, you know, the RNC not only hired
Speaker 3: the people I was talking about, they also hired the
Speaker 3: for uh, you know, the former anchor from Owaan News, right,
Speaker 3: So they know how to play that sort of both
Speaker 3: sides of They want to play both sides of this,
Speaker 3: and there's no question. Mike Lindell and Kerry lak Aer
Speaker 3: in the circus side.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Mark, really fun to talk to
Speaker 1: you and also oh so worrying.
Speaker 2: Rogers is the New York Times White House correspondent and
Speaker 2: author of American Woman, The Transformation of the Modern First
Speaker 2: Lady From Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Katie Rogers.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: We're so happy to have you so talk to me
Speaker 1: about this book you write for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: You decided to sort of pause and take a minute
Speaker 1: to write a book. Why did you write this book?
Speaker 1: And explain to us a little bit about the origin.
Speaker 1: Are you still the White House correspondent the New York Times?
Speaker 5: I am. I've been doing that for six years which
Speaker 5: is everyone tells me is like a year longer than
Speaker 5: any sane person to do the Bob. So that tells
Speaker 5: you a lot about me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've really been through some of the Trump years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I kind of gravitated, I guess, going back
Speaker 5: to the Trump era. I got moved down from the
Speaker 5: New York newsroom the week of Donald Trump's inauguration. My
Speaker 5: assignment was to write features about like Washington, this very
Speaker 5: democratic city being like overtaken by the Trump presidency and
Speaker 5: the administration and all these conservatives of moving accounts. So
Speaker 5: I started with that, but I kind of gravitated toward
Speaker 5: malaniat Trump too, because she was such a mysterious figure.
Speaker 5: She hadn't moved to Washington yet, so really I started
Speaker 5: covering her right off the bat. I got named to
Speaker 5: the White House Beed a year later, covered President Trump,
Speaker 5: but also kept a pretty close eye on the first Lady.
Speaker 5: And I was actually on maternity leave and got approached
Speaker 5: to do a biography of Jill Biden and I had
Speaker 5: been approached to do Malania books, and I didn't really
Speaker 5: want to do anything that was about Jill because I
Speaker 5: didn't know her. I hadn't covered her I'd just stopped
Speaker 5: covering my Trump administration. I wasn't sure if there would
Speaker 5: be enough about her to even fill a book, just
Speaker 5: because I think to a lot of Americans, she's kind
Speaker 5: of like an opaque figure and she's been around a
Speaker 5: long time. People don't really know a lot about her.
Speaker 5: And I was just like, I don't know if I
Speaker 5: want to do that. But I saw her story as
Speaker 5: kind of modern because I I think it's you know
Speaker 5: anything about her and Joe Biden, it's that like he
Speaker 5: lost his first wife in a terrible tragedy right in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy two, and it's his youngest daughter, and the
Speaker 5: woman who came in and fixed all that and needed
Speaker 5: that family back together was Jill Bidden And I was
Speaker 5: I really thought that was karad of a modern thing, right,
Speaker 5: Like she has a non traditional family, Like it was
Speaker 5: a really singular story in American politics, and so I
Speaker 5: just really was like, who is this woman who would
Speaker 5: A do that and b be it her husband's side
Speaker 5: for decades as he pursued this presidency. So really like
Speaker 5: I kind of thought about her as I guess a
Speaker 5: really modern figure, which is kind of not what you
Speaker 5: would think of her. I think at First Blood she
Speaker 5: kept her job. She's the first first lady to keep
Speaker 5: her job, And then I kind of thought it's probably
Speaker 5: easier for her to have gone to work because her
Speaker 5: predecessor kind of unraveling the role completely, yeah, run of
Speaker 5: everyone and showing everybody that it was optional. Well, then
Speaker 5: I kind of thought of this as sort of a
Speaker 5: scare slop. So every first lady kind of has changed
Speaker 5: the role in her own way. So I kind of
Speaker 5: decided to do first Ladies back for Return of the Century,
Speaker 5: and it was Hillri Clinton, of course, and she really
Speaker 5: was the most ambitious, the most educated, the most able
Speaker 5: to sort of be a policy partner for her husband,
Speaker 5: and she got a lot of scar to shoot from that, right,
Speaker 5: she got a lot of pushback from what she tried
Speaker 5: to do. So I kind of started with hers as
Speaker 5: the first bookend and focused on each first lady since
Speaker 5: and kind of culminated with Jill's story, which is a
Speaker 5: very long winded answered to your question, But yeah, it
Speaker 5: got more competuated as I worked on it. But I
Speaker 5: think it really tells the story of this role that
Speaker 5: has kind of stayed preserved in Amber as the culture
Speaker 5: around it begins to have these, like, you know, pretty
Speaker 5: fulsome conversations about what women's roles are in society and
Speaker 5: in marriages.
Speaker 1: Such an interesting experiment, and it is. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you do really see with Hillary that she took a
Speaker 1: lot of abuse for her trying to use the role
Speaker 1: to enact policy, right, and then Michelle Obama takes a
Speaker 1: lot of abuse for being black and everyone being racist.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of pressure, right, but she didn't
Speaker 1: do anything policy wise. She was, you know, did much
Speaker 1: more of the traditional first lady job. I have a
Speaker 1: theory that black women just get the most abuse from
Speaker 1: the mainstream media and there's so much inherent racism and sexism.
Speaker 5: I think there is some truth to that, and I
Speaker 5: think people had to learn in real time how to
Speaker 5: write about a woman who has a completely different set
Speaker 5: of experiences that she is bringing to not only the
Speaker 5: role but as a candidate's wife, as a politanential candidate's wife.
Speaker 5: I write in the book that you can sort of
Speaker 5: see she has a really dry sense of humor, right,
Speaker 5: and she would make sort of one liners or craps,
Speaker 5: you know, wise packs on the campaign, and people just
Speaker 5: would take that like in the media, you're right, would
Speaker 5: take it completely differently than if it were white woman
Speaker 5: candidates spouse saying these things. And I think she learned
Speaker 5: on the campaign trail that she had to be really
Speaker 5: buttoned up, the perfect wife, be a supportive wife. She
Speaker 5: actually considered not moving to Washington right away too, which
Speaker 5: is an interesting sort of recal.
Speaker 1: To pull the girls out of school, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, And then so like she had to not
Speaker 5: only be this sort of perfect, you know, spouse, she
Speaker 5: gave up her career, she also had to readjust like
Speaker 5: two young girls to Washington. So she was up against
Speaker 5: a lot. She had a lot to prove. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I think that the media had to sort of much
Speaker 5: like I think a lot of the covered around Kamala Harris,
Speaker 5: the vice President, has sort of gone a little bit
Speaker 5: harder and harsher at times because she is the first
Speaker 5: to ever have this role and have background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting and important thing. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you did see that President Obama had to be ten
Speaker 1: times more careful about everything because of that inherent racism.
Speaker 5: And Harris's advisors tell us all the time, you know,
Speaker 5: former and current advisors of hers say like she asked
Speaker 5: to be better all the time, Like black women have
Speaker 5: to work twice as hard. So we have somebody in
Speaker 5: public life right now, one of the highest offices of
Speaker 5: the land, who is dealing with the same kind of
Speaker 5: thing in a different role, but you know, in the
Speaker 5: same sort of close circle of principles that Michelle Obama
Speaker 5: dealt with, same thing she dealt with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. And then you get to Milania. Did
Speaker 1: you feel there were hopes that Milania might be I mean,
Speaker 1: I know there were so many times during the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration where there was a hope that
Speaker 1: someone would be a moderating force that never really happened.
Speaker 1: But can talk about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I remember, I'm sure you do too.
Speaker 3: Like that.
Speaker 5: People, well maybe it's Ivanka. Maybe it'll be it'll be Ivanka,
Speaker 5: and maybe you'll be Jared. And then finally was you know,
Speaker 5: maybe Milania, maybe Millennia will do something. She slaps his
Speaker 5: hand away. She sent a tweet out after the Charlottesville,
Speaker 5: you know, that horrible white nationalist rally that ended up
Speaker 5: with a woman being killed. She you know, sent a
Speaker 5: tweet to you know, calling for an onto violence while
Speaker 5: her husband praised people were on both sides of the issue.
Speaker 5: So I think there was a lot of hope basically
Speaker 5: that first year that she dared views that were different
Speaker 5: from her husband and maybe would have an ability to
Speaker 5: mediate him, as you say. But the more I covered her,
Speaker 5: and I think the more she showed as time went on,
Speaker 5: she was much more willing to kind of like channel
Speaker 5: what he was mad about. I would learn that she
Speaker 5: would oftentimes be the person saying, you know, well, if
Speaker 5: they're punching my husband, he's going to punch back, which
Speaker 5: is kind of rooted in both how both Trumps feel
Speaker 5: about being attacked and being scrutinized. Really, she wasn't a
Speaker 5: moderating force. You know that the Charlottesville tweets, you know,
Speaker 5: things like that amounted to kind of ephemeraa and we're
Speaker 5: done at the suggestion of AIDS. It wasn't a reflection
Speaker 5: of her having any sort of moderating influence on him,
Speaker 5: at least not in a regular way in the way
Speaker 5: that critics of the Trump administration would hope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to me because it's like, as someone
Speaker 1: who has known maybe not women exactly like Milania, but
Speaker 1: you know, had certainly known trophy wives. And I mean
Speaker 1: that not in a sexist way, but in a majorative way,
Speaker 1: but not in a sexist wife. I thought she had
Speaker 1: a little more or I hoped she had a little
Speaker 1: more agency than it turned out she did.
Speaker 5: What's interesting, though, is like I talked to Stephanie Gersham
Speaker 5: for this book, and you know, she wrote that sort
Speaker 5: of tell all about her time there, but I had
Speaker 5: talked to her about a year after that book came out,
Speaker 5: and there was still so much more to share. I
Speaker 5: think about the East Wing that I kind of picked
Speaker 5: up my book. And it's funny that you say agency though,
Speaker 5: because Stephanie pointed out that so many times Milania would
Speaker 5: tell her this is our East Wing. We do what
Speaker 5: we want. We don't pay attention to what they're doing
Speaker 5: over there. So her point was that this is the
Speaker 5: first time that she had ever had like a buffer
Speaker 5: from him and from his world. Yeah, and she would
Speaker 5: just she enjoyed that. And Stephanie Grisham kind of said
Speaker 5: to me, she said to me that toward the end
Speaker 5: of the first term, she said this realization quin of
Speaker 5: sudden with Malania Trump, that she was going to go
Speaker 5: have to live with her husband again and she wouldn't
Speaker 5: have this buffer, and her behavior kind of change she
Speaker 5: got more closed in, she became a little bit more
Speaker 5: chucked out. It was a really interesting like this was
Speaker 5: one of the closest people to her. Not that Lalania
Speaker 5: Trump really lets anybody in, but Stephanie Gersham was certainly
Speaker 5: a loyalist and was certainly you know, around for almost
Speaker 5: all of it until January sixth, and just watched that
Speaker 5: behavior change from you know, when the story Daniel's Story's
Speaker 5: published in around twenty eighteen, you know, we recorded she
Speaker 5: just took off tumor labia for a weekend and nobody
Speaker 5: knew what she was doing. And Stephanie Gresham was like,
Speaker 5: that was to embarrass him. She was pissed off and
Speaker 5: wanted to humiliate him, is what she told me. But
Speaker 5: toward the end of that term she then sort of
Speaker 5: reverted back into this sort of quiet, insular figure. It
Speaker 5: was that was an interesting trajectory to hear about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so interesting and also so disappointing in
Speaker 1: my mind. So now we have this current administration. One
Speaker 1: of the things I'm struck by with the first lady
Speaker 1: at ChIL Biden and I don't know her, never have
Speaker 1: met her, but here she is. She comes in with
Speaker 1: the boys, they end up having their own child together,
Speaker 1: so they raised the three kids. Biden was sort of
Speaker 1: grown into the presidency in a certain way in my mind,
Speaker 1: because he had run many times, but he was never
Speaker 1: sort of the right person for the moment. And then
Speaker 1: it became like very clear to a lot of Democrats
Speaker 1: that he was the only person who could beat Trump,
Speaker 1: and when things look darkest, he is the most committed
Speaker 1: to just you know, sort of this singular vision of
Speaker 1: just beating Trump. Right. You know, Obama was the dream candidate, right,
Speaker 1: gifted orator, just so smart, and he's incredible writer.
Speaker 5: He represented the future for people finally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like Democrats that were just like,
Speaker 1: we just need a white guy to run against the
Speaker 1: other white guy. You know, he's not a gifted orator,
Speaker 1: he's not a genius, but he's functional.
Speaker 5: And he's decent.
Speaker 1: But I also think ultimately, and again, there certainly have
Speaker 1: been things that anyone could be not happy with, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the legislation has been kind of incredible.
Speaker 1: But I'm hoping that you could talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about where her places Joe Biden, because she
Speaker 1: is more of a traditional first lady role of the
Speaker 1: sort of fifties, but she still teaches. And then also
Speaker 1: she has this incredible stressor of having one son who
Speaker 1: was sober and then having this right wing media monster,
Speaker 1: this machine that is obsessed with those of her children. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping you talk about that, because that is
Speaker 1: an unusual dynamic.
Speaker 5: I think, yeah, I mean, I think everything you just
Speaker 5: laid out, I think one of the main things to
Speaker 5: understand about her, and I love that the idea of
Speaker 5: pixotic because she shares that same nature, whether she had
Speaker 5: it when she married him or developed it over time,
Speaker 5: she developed this sort of I think I call it
Speaker 5: her in a book, like she's not a Biden by blood,
Speaker 5: but over time she has come to represent the family's
Speaker 5: defiant backbone. And I think that both of them are
Speaker 5: driven by being talented out and even being attacked at
Speaker 5: some rate by the right and it kind of creates
Speaker 5: this mentality where they view even criticism from their own
Speaker 5: party as an attack. Though like that, it can create
Speaker 5: this sort of trench mentality that isn't necessarily helpful helpful exactly,
Speaker 5: they're incredibly defiant. They're likely to dig in against adversity
Speaker 5: and see the misinformation from the right that he's got dementia,
Speaker 5: that the attacks about Hunter's business dealings and how enmeshed
Speaker 5: Joe Biden is with that, and there is mussiness there,
Speaker 5: but not to the degree of course that the right
Speaker 5: has claimed. So I think all of it creates this
Speaker 5: like very closed, insular trench kind of mentality, and she
Speaker 5: is at the center of that, right alongside her husband.
Speaker 5: The one thing he didn't say about her, which I
Speaker 5: think is important and interesting, is and this is kind
Speaker 5: of like one of my story obsessions, but I don't
Speaker 5: know that I'm going to get around to it or
Speaker 5: if my editors like it. But she's the most successful
Speaker 5: surrogate he has. Oh interesting, She's also the only one
Speaker 5: in the family who is wearing and or able to
Speaker 5: do that right. Like if you think about the Bidens,
Speaker 5: they think of themselves or thought of themselves as the
Speaker 5: political dynasty, you know, back to the seventies when his
Speaker 5: first wife was telling reporters that the Kennedys would have
Speaker 5: nothing on the Bidens. They believed that their family has
Speaker 5: something special to offer American life, right, and Bo was
Speaker 5: really the heirs to that. And when Bo died in
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen, there was just Hunter and Ashley, as you said,
Speaker 5: I have had their own issues. They've both dealt with substance
Speaker 5: addiction and problems to that effect. And really, at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, Jill Biden is the only one
Speaker 5: who is able to go out there and put this
Speaker 5: sort of lens on Biden and sort of bring him
Speaker 5: out and bring him back amidst all of this criticism
Speaker 5: as the man that he believes he is. Tells the
Speaker 5: story that the Bidens want America to know about them,
Speaker 5: which is that he is resilient. He has been through
Speaker 5: so much tragedy in his life, he understands what that's like.
Speaker 5: He has passed legislation that is bipartisan, that is you know, expansive,
Speaker 5: and was meant her all Americans, not just some of them.
Speaker 5: She's incredibly effective at that. And she's also attacking Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: you know, by name, about his track record, particularly on
Speaker 5: women's rights and reproductive rights. And people think of her
Speaker 5: as a helpmate, maybe in a housewife or somebody who
Speaker 5: is you know, just there to support her husband, and
Speaker 5: she she truly is that. But she's also a tireless
Speaker 5: campaigner and we've never really seen a first lady like
Speaker 5: that who is willing to sort of get into these
Speaker 5: political fights. And that is because she believes that her
Speaker 5: husband is the only one that can beat Trump. And
Speaker 5: she doesn't like Trump at all. She you know, has
Speaker 5: a deep dislike for him and she's alarmed by his policies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean she's not the only one. Katie Rogers,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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