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. We're almost back from vacation, but we
Speaker 1: have some new material too. Author Brad Meltzer stops by
Speaker 1: to talk about his new book. But first we have
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Projects own Rick Wilson, and he is here
Speaker 1: to discuss Trump's insane takeover of Venezuela.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast or what is it good for?
Speaker 3: Well, it's good for little Marco to have the viceroy
Speaker 3: Ship of Caracas and to apparently pay off one of
Speaker 3: Marco's largest donors who's in this apparently in this deal
Speaker 3: to own all the oil fields out there. So what
Speaker 3: what shocks you about this?
Speaker 1: It should be nothing, Okay, So let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: Saturday morning, right after New Year's Gene's a sleepy morning.
Speaker 1: We wake up to find that Donald Trump has kidnapped
Speaker 1: the president. And it's a kidnapping, right, because even though
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically a kidnapping, you tend not to
Speaker 1: be okay to kidnap foreign leaders and their wives and
Speaker 1: take them.
Speaker 3: You know, we do it so rarely, and it happens
Speaker 3: so rarely in the world.
Speaker 2: That we've done it before, though.
Speaker 3: Yeah we have. But Noriego was a Although they pretend
Speaker 3: it's the same deal, Noriego was actually a different deal
Speaker 3: because there was a treaty obligation in Panama. A long story.
Speaker 2: Short, right, Panama's different.
Speaker 3: Here's something we know at this point in the game.
Speaker 3: Snatching a foreign leader should not surprise anybody. We can
Speaker 3: do it. We have the greatest military in the universe,
Speaker 3: and we are able to do magical things like that.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: However, if the story of Venezuela is a ladder, that's
Speaker 3: the first rung on the ladder. That's the easy one. Now,
Speaker 3: since Trump is basically said, we're doing this for the oil,
Speaker 3: how does people how do people think this is going
Speaker 3: to go? We left the Majiu regime in charge. It's
Speaker 3: still being run by the same people. The police, secret
Speaker 3: police are still there, military is still there, the Chavismo
Speaker 3: brute squads are still there. Nothing has changed. We basically
Speaker 3: told the people of Venezuela, hey, we took the big guy,
Speaker 3: but everything else is the same, except now we own
Speaker 3: your oil fields, that we're running your country. It's gonna
Speaker 3: go great. We're gonna be greeted as liberators.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that The New York Times
Speaker 1: had a really excellent article about how they had wargamed
Speaker 1: it out and every scenario ended with fucking disaster and discuss.
Speaker 3: Yep, no one should be surprised that a country that's
Speaker 3: been in the grip of this chavismo, bolevarian revolutionary, commie
Speaker 3: kleptocracy for a long long time, so I probably got
Speaker 3: close to twenty years now. Nobody should be surprised when
Speaker 3: they wake up in the morning and don't say, Wow,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm really looking forward to is American
Speaker 3: democracy and pluralism. You know, anybody who thinks that this
Speaker 3: is going to be some sort of of magical transformative
Speaker 3: moment when we do not have any intention or capacity
Speaker 3: to change what's happening there is on crack. This is
Speaker 3: madness and.
Speaker 2: Buty a scenario.
Speaker 3: You notice the one question they won't answer, The question
Speaker 3: is are there going to be American boots on the ground.
Speaker 3: You notice Marco was asked to yes, Trump said yes,
Speaker 3: But the rest of them are like ahamad ahmanahamana.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So let's say we decided we're going to put
Speaker 3: American contractors into the oil fields to rebuild the oil fields.
Speaker 2: What you're going to have to do, Just so folks.
Speaker 3: Know, in the world, in the entire global oil and
Speaker 3: gas industry, there are only two countries that really have
Speaker 3: the engineering speck and the ability. It's the Americans and
Speaker 3: the Brits. So we're gonna be sending Americans down there.
Speaker 3: At what happens when they start getting kidnapped or shot at,
Speaker 3: or disappeared, or sabotage starts happening. What happens then, Woh,
Speaker 3: we have to escalate, We have to put more boots
Speaker 3: on the ground. We have been to this fucking rodeo.
Speaker 3: I say this as a neocon. We have been to
Speaker 3: this rodeo and learned painful, painful, painful lessons not to
Speaker 3: do it this way right. But if you compare the
Speaker 3: ad hockery and the slab dasherie of our entrance into
Speaker 3: Afghanistan and Iraq, this is an order of magnitude more sloppy.
Speaker 3: This is like shit written on the back of an
Speaker 3: enhoop somewhere in mar Lago, compared to a encyclopedic scent
Speaker 3: of plans for a peaceful transition to democracy in Iraq.
Speaker 1: I got so excited that you said this that I
Speaker 1: dropped my pen and let the record show I have
Speaker 1: drop my pen. So what you're saying here, which and
Speaker 1: you are someone who has spent some time in Iraq,
Speaker 1: so and you know those people, and what you're saying here.
Speaker 3: Iraq Venezuela is the Iraq of Vietnam's okay.
Speaker 1: Right, it's not going to go It's not going to
Speaker 1: go well. And why is it not going to go well?
Speaker 1: Because I think it's important. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that I wanted to go back to, and I think
Speaker 1: that there's.
Speaker 2: Not been enough time spent on this, okay, is.
Speaker 1: That in nineteen ninety one, there was an action that
Speaker 1: caused the First Golf War. And I don't think that
Speaker 1: anyone is remembering. It may not have really caused it,
Speaker 1: but it was the excuse for it.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it caused it. I mean it caused it Kuwait. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Iraqi Army, the Republican National Republican Guards stormed into Kuwait.
Speaker 3: It is explicable that our allies in the Gulf and
Speaker 3: around the globe all said, holy crap, this isn't good. Right,
Speaker 3: that was a legitimate.
Speaker 2: Moment and then Europe remember, go on, go on.
Speaker 3: No, we built a global coalition and nations. Tony Blair
Speaker 3: jumped in and said this will not stand. Now. Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's initial excuse for blowing up all these Venezuelan fishing
Speaker 3: boats is oh, the fentanyl, the fentanyl, the fenterl Right.
Speaker 3: You notice the indictment of Maduro doesn't mention fentanyl.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: You know why because even this clownish administration recognizes that
Speaker 3: the freaking fentanyl comes from Mexico.
Speaker 2: And also China.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, well the precursors come from China and it
Speaker 3: smuggled in from Mexico. There is nothing going on here
Speaker 3: other than as what Donald Trump mentioned twenty one times
Speaker 3: in the Malogo press conference, the oil, the oil.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to to go for two
Speaker 1: point zero because that also was preceded.
Speaker 2: By nine to eleven. Yeah, so talk us through that.
Speaker 1: So we had I feel like it's so important that
Speaker 1: they were actual, they were reasoned or there was some yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, I mean not to spend too many hours on this.
Speaker 3: We had very bad wrong intelligence. Right, many people were
Speaker 3: inclined to believe because the intense trauma and paranoia.
Speaker 2: After nine to eleven after nine to eleven, we.
Speaker 3: Had bad intelligence, particularly from one source named Curveball, who
Speaker 3: turned out to be a fabulous and a lying liar
Speaker 3: who lies, and Curveball said Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 3: There was an inclination inside the government to believe that intelligence,
Speaker 3: even against intelligence that was contradictory to it. That led
Speaker 3: to the conflation of Iraq and al Qaeda. We invaded Iraq.
Speaker 3: Of course, we were successful in the initial invasion. But
Speaker 3: as I said to somebody yesterday or today who said, man,
Speaker 3: you know, I hate Trump, but my neo con heart
Speaker 3: was beating today, I'm like, dude, this is two thousand
Speaker 3: and three. Remember how we felt in two thousand and
Speaker 3: six when this shit had well and truly hit the
Speaker 3: fucking fan.
Speaker 2: We didn't get out for another decade.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, region, this is the problem of
Speaker 3: going in and doing regime change when you don't offer
Speaker 3: something based on values. Okay, and we're doing that in Venezuela.
Speaker 3: We're not saying we're going to help Venezuela improve the
Speaker 3: lives of its people, are bringing democracy or liberty or prosperity.
Speaker 3: We're saying, fuck you, you get to keep the Maduro regime
Speaker 3: without Maduro, you get to drill for oil and give
Speaker 3: us the money. Well, rerun your country. Anyone who wakes
Speaker 3: up and says, oh, murk first a log I don't
Speaker 3: want to do nation milder, No, no, that, and thinks
Speaker 3: this is the this is the way, this is the path.
Speaker 3: This is your neo isolationism playing out. Trump Fell Forward
Speaker 3: Again Award, Edition nine seventy two.
Speaker 4: For these people, it.
Speaker 1: Strikes me that there are not a lot of ways
Speaker 1: out now. Okay, so we're seeing Trump a lot of
Speaker 1: saber rattling now talking about Greenland, and certainly there's anxiety
Speaker 1: that that will be his next step. But I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that he gets out and just go pivots to
Speaker 1: something else.
Speaker 2: But maybe he does.
Speaker 3: But tak Us, well, I look this weekend. This weekend
Speaker 3: I was in a long text chat with a bunch
Speaker 3: of my Miami friends.
Speaker 2: Who are Venezuelan, some of them a right.
Speaker 3: Cubans Venezuelans, and some of them, I would I would
Speaker 3: say that a lot of them were passionately maga initially
Speaker 3: and now are like hands in the air like okay, whatever,
Speaker 3: he's crazy. Now They're like, well, maybe he'll take out
Speaker 3: Cuba next, and maybe he'll take out Columbia next. We
Speaker 3: do not have a national capacity to deal with the
Speaker 3: basket cases of those three economies by any stretch of
Speaker 3: the imagination, But yet that seems to be what is
Speaker 3: the desired outcome here is We're going to go and
Speaker 3: we're going to do a sweeping regime change.
Speaker 2: Through all of latinum out Latin America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, God bless them for ambition. But
Speaker 3: this is dumb.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk the political implications of this, because
Speaker 1: obviously this is it feels like a shit sandwich already,
Speaker 1: But what are the political implications? So you have January first,
Speaker 1: a lot of more health insurance premiums went way way up.
Speaker 1: Trump ran on affordability. Inflation is still a real and
Speaker 1: serious problem. We have a trade war with China. We
Speaker 1: have all of this underlying trade stuff. The real tariff
Speaker 1: numbers we discovered really good reporting the New York Times
Speaker 1: are lower than what Trump World has said about.
Speaker 3: You're not setting for trillion dollars and we're not going
Speaker 3: to all get a you mean we're not going to
Speaker 3: all get a tariff a tariff check after we get
Speaker 3: our doze checks.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly. The doge so Doze was a scam. Tariffs
Speaker 1: are not as bad as Trump is advertising.
Speaker 2: Them to be.
Speaker 1: What do you think, like, what is the political I mean,
Speaker 1: he's hurtling towards the mid terms. They've spent billions of
Speaker 1: dollars of ice. The deficit as big as it's ever
Speaker 1: going to be. Like do you think I mean, did
Speaker 1: they overplay their hand?
Speaker 3: Yeah, bio by a lot. Here here's the thing, the
Speaker 3: economic fantasy that has been empowered by getting rid of
Speaker 3: the bureau labor statistics. They're just making numbers up. This
Speaker 3: is all this is all five casting. You know, you
Speaker 3: had the president of Bank of America that they say,
Speaker 3: you know, an independent FED is necessary, independent data. We
Speaker 3: need it. They're not going to tell fewer lies going
Speaker 3: forward about the economy. But people, we are in a
Speaker 3: very bad job situation in the economy. This health insurance
Speaker 3: crisis is about to smack Trump's voters in the face
Speaker 3: with a with a you know, baseball bat. None of
Speaker 3: this is going to go None of the economic stuff
Speaker 3: is going to go smoothly, and that's when that's when
Speaker 3: you end up with mistakes in other domains causing greater
Speaker 3: political impact. For the President's party two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: The Republican has got blown the fuck out, not only
Speaker 3: because the war was unpopular, but because the economy was bad.
Speaker 3: So Trump is setting up the Republican Party for a
Speaker 3: historic wipeout in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, it's funny because I think so much about
Speaker 1: like George Conway, you send new congressional candidate, my congressional
Speaker 1: candidate in New York twelve or New York two or
Speaker 1: whatever I live in, said that the only way that
Speaker 1: Trump like that, Trump will in fact eventually destroy the
Speaker 1: Republican Party.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't true in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't true in twenty twenty because there was
Speaker 3: still a little bit of pre COVID, there was still
Speaker 3: quite a bit of economic optimism in the country, where
Speaker 3: that is now no longer present in the country at
Speaker 3: all at all. And there was a sense, I think
Speaker 3: of that that image Trump had that was so deeply
Speaker 3: embedded in America's psyche, that he was a good business dealer,
Speaker 3: a good negotiator, a good businessman. All that crap that
Speaker 3: nobody now buy is that at all. So I think
Speaker 3: we've ended up in a situation where where the Republican
Speaker 3: Party has gotten more obedient to Trump, more locked into Trump,
Speaker 3: and they have fewer options for escaping him. They don't
Speaker 3: there's not really a good pathway now where they can
Speaker 3: wake up in the morning and go you no, no,
Speaker 3: that I don't know that guy. They're stuck right right
Speaker 3: on the on the on the Venezuela question, Molly, you
Speaker 3: know you had Mike Lee initially like this is unconstitutional,
Speaker 3: and three hours later he's like, yes, master, I love
Speaker 3: what you did in Venezuela. All of them are sucking
Speaker 3: up on this thing like mad men.
Speaker 2: It ends up being there.
Speaker 1: There are very few members of the Republican Party who
Speaker 1: have sort of said note to Trump, and I think
Speaker 1: they are worth highlighting at this moment. Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: and Thomas Massey continues to be a pretty loud voice.
Speaker 1: You've got justin a mash. But the people a rampon, right,
Speaker 1: But the people that have really you know, Tom Cotton
Speaker 1: has never not loved a war. Mike Lee is like
Speaker 1: a pretend libertarian.
Speaker 3: He's a pretend pocket constitution guy, right, you know, during
Speaker 3: during during the Tea Party, air of those guys, I
Speaker 3: always carry the Constitution because that's all I care about.
Speaker 1: Okay, But here's a question and for you, and I
Speaker 1: think this is an important tension that I'd like you
Speaker 1: to talk through.
Speaker 2: In our last couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: It feels like Donald Trump is getting increasingly crazy and
Speaker 1: that he will not stop until some branch of our
Speaker 1: government stops him.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 2: So what does that look like?
Speaker 1: I mean, how far does Donald Trump go before the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court is like, no.
Speaker 3: I am waiting with no sense of patience or anticipation
Speaker 3: for the Supreme Court to find some courage and integrity.
Speaker 3: Every time I have counted on anything from them, it
Speaker 3: has turned out to be a crashing disappointment. They don't
Speaker 3: have the guts to say no to the guy.
Speaker 1: So if that happens, and if the Supreme Court at
Speaker 1: some point they make a calculation, either the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: does or the Congress does, that says something to the
Speaker 1: effect of we well, also, like he's polling at twenty percent,
Speaker 1: he's polling at there's a number where everyone stops doing
Speaker 1: what he wants.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's twenty percent. I think it's twenty six,
Speaker 3: twenty seven percent. We've already seen the beginning the MAGA
Speaker 3: crackup in the low thirties. In the mid thirties, let's
Speaker 3: say we've already seen that starting to fracture. Once it's
Speaker 3: in that twenty degree range, a twenty five degree range,
Speaker 3: twenty seven degree range, let's call it. At that point,
Speaker 3: obeying Trump is a political death sentence. We're not there yet,
Speaker 3: and all the incentive structures inside the MAGA media universe,
Speaker 3: the MAGA, the MAGA networks like Fox and Newsmax and
Speaker 3: CBS are increasingly.
Speaker 2: Was snuck it in, I'd snuck it in.
Speaker 3: They're increasingly going to have to play that tension. Do
Speaker 3: we want Trump to attack us and and be angry
Speaker 3: with us for telling the truth, or do we want
Speaker 3: to try to, you know, pacify him and not cover
Speaker 3: the people betraying him? Now Trump, Trump's political team, they
Speaker 3: make book on everybody. They're always monitoring every Republican. At
Speaker 3: some point, these guys in the in the twenty six
Speaker 3: or twenty eight seats that are going to be in play,
Speaker 3: they're going to have to make a moment after their primaries,
Speaker 3: most likely where they say no, sir, and Trump has
Speaker 3: a hissy fit and they try to convert on that
Speaker 3: and say I'm an independent Republican.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you go me.
Speaker 3: I don't think it helps them in the end, Molly,
Speaker 3: I think it still drags them. I think he's still
Speaker 3: dragging them under the under the water. I don't knowk
Speaker 3: there's any world in which where they get away clean.
Speaker 1: It is wild and you would not want to be
Speaker 1: any of these people right now. Who is it worse
Speaker 1: to be? One last question, who do you think is
Speaker 1: worse off at this moment? John Thune or Mike Johnson? Oh,
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, because he's just going to get fired.
Speaker 3: He's going to get fired. Look, let's just say hypothetically
Speaker 3: the Republicans somehow cling to power.
Speaker 2: It's not going to happen in that house.
Speaker 3: There's not going to happen in the house. But the haters,
Speaker 3: even in his own party, Mike Johnson's hated. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: got a majority, but they look at him as he
Speaker 3: is out. Yeah. MTG is out tomorrow. Yeah r I
Speaker 3: p MTG. Who. By the way, I don't know if
Speaker 3: you saw her this morning or that Sunday morning where
Speaker 3: she she sounded like a rational human again, Oh.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: Look, I'd rather have her in charge of the Republican
Speaker 3: Party right now and in her current iteration of Mike Johnson.
Speaker 3: But that ain't never going to happen. She's she's now,
Speaker 3: she's now, she's now an apostate. And once you're out,
Speaker 3: you're out.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, Mother John Fast Will you come back?
Speaker 3: You know I will.
Speaker 1: Brad Meltzer is the author of the books The Book
Speaker 1: of Fate, The President, Shadow, and his latest The Viper.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politic.
Speaker 1: Brad.
Speaker 4: Good to be back.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about this book.
Speaker 5: Yes, The Viper. I'm going to give you the quick
Speaker 5: version of it. It's a thriller. Basically, a guy walks
Speaker 5: into a funeral home carrying a blue suit. And that's
Speaker 5: what you do when you're sick and you have no family.
Speaker 5: You pick out what you're going to wear in your coffin.
Speaker 5: And funeral homes are filled with them. They have like
Speaker 5: closets full of them.
Speaker 2: They lot of them.
Speaker 3: Days.
Speaker 5: I saw when I was researching and I watched this
Speaker 5: mortician do and I said, explain it to me, and
Speaker 5: he said to me, it all happened in real life,
Speaker 5: but I used it as a book. Is if you
Speaker 5: go into a bank and you open up a new
Speaker 5: bank account paperwork, it's filed and the government can eventually
Speaker 5: track it. You go to the ups store, you open
Speaker 5: up a peo box, paperwork, it's filed. They could be tracked.
Speaker 5: There's like cookie jars now that have like Wi Fi
Speaker 5: and can tell you who in your family the last
Speaker 5: chocolate chip. But if you go to your local funeral
Speaker 5: home with the suit you're going to be buried in,
Speaker 5: and then you sew into the inside of that suit
Speaker 5: and a little secret compartment and you hide something in
Speaker 5: that suit and hand it to your local mortician, you
Speaker 5: have an untraceable hiding spot. And in the book, the
Speaker 5: guy drops off the suit, his local mortician says, thanks
Speaker 5: for holding this for me, goes back to his hotel.
Speaker 5: Someone's waiting with a gun and says, where it is,
Speaker 5: I don't know what you're talking about. They shoot him dead,
Speaker 5: and sure enough, in that funeral home is a secret
Speaker 5: item that I will not ruin what it is. But
Speaker 5: I just ruined chapter one of the Viper because you
Speaker 5: won't believe what's inside it. So the Viper begins. That's
Speaker 5: literally the prologue of the Viper, and it goes from there.
Speaker 1: The last time you Ron, we were talking about these
Speaker 1: kids books that you were writing political kids books.
Speaker 2: Explain to me how you make all this work?
Speaker 5: Yeah, how do you like murder people and then go
Speaker 5: to children's books to entertain people? Yes, listen, we're both parents,
Speaker 5: right like we both go from that in our moments
Speaker 5: where we're talking about like what's going wrong in America,
Speaker 5: what's going wrong with history, what's going wrong with how
Speaker 5: we document things, and then we have to go and
Speaker 5: put on that whole other outfit of parenthood. And that's
Speaker 5: all I'm doing. I'm like in the viper. I'm trying
Speaker 5: to show you the world of everything from witness protection
Speaker 5: to what's wrong with the culture right now, to what's
Speaker 5: going on in our military right now. And in the
Speaker 5: same breath, I'm going to race and do I am
Speaker 5: Princess Diana our next kids book, because I'm like, my God,
Speaker 5: the country doesn't have empathy, So both of them are
Speaker 5: just different delivery devices for me to try and bring
Speaker 5: empathy back. That's what I think books do. And if
Speaker 5: your kids read, I know this, Molly. I can't change
Speaker 5: the minds of adults. But for nearly a decade now,
Speaker 5: I've been arming an army of young kids with lessons
Speaker 5: of kindness and empathy. And I'll take that fight any day.
Speaker 5: This one, I'm in the viper. I'm just doing it
Speaker 5: with my thrillers.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that more in a technology world. Do
Speaker 1: you think that reading creates the empathy that is needed?
Speaker 5: I mean, I wish I could just say because it
Speaker 5: makes me feel good, but it's scientific fact. Okay, So
Speaker 5: today cruelty and venom and harshly judging those we disagree with.
Speaker 5: It's becomes sport in our culture. But cruelty and venomore
Speaker 5: and signs of strength, there are signs of weakness and
Speaker 5: petty and security. Right What takes strength is showing kindness
Speaker 5: and showing empathy. If you look at the social science
Speaker 5: for it, the science says that fictional books have more
Speaker 5: impact on people's lives when you ask them than real people.
Speaker 5: And the reason why, whether it's like you like Dumbledore,
Speaker 5: Atticus Finch, the reason it has such an impact, or
Speaker 5: Superman or anyone else is because your favorite stories, you
Speaker 5: don't like them because you like the plot. You don't
Speaker 5: even like them because you like the character. The reason
Speaker 5: you love your favorite book is because that story in somehow,
Speaker 5: some way says something about you, whether it's your dream,
Speaker 5: whether it's who you want to be, whether it's what
Speaker 5: you wish you had within you. And that's how empathy works, right,
Speaker 5: empathy right now and the culture look around like we
Speaker 5: get overwhelmed every day. We scroll and we look and
Speaker 5: we shut down. And you can't shut down, like we
Speaker 5: need you right now. If you shut down, we're in trouble.
Speaker 5: But here's the other thing about empathy is empathy is malleable.
Speaker 5: And if you look at the social science on that,
Speaker 5: you can see that if you want to have more empathy,
Speaker 5: the secret is you just have to want to have
Speaker 5: more empathy. It's like your freshman year at college. The
Speaker 5: reason you make so many friends is because you decide
Speaker 5: I'm open to making lots of friends and it happens.
Speaker 5: And that's how empathy is. So reading is just one
Speaker 5: of the greatest delivery devices of putting you in the
Speaker 5: eyes of someone else and you get to look through
Speaker 5: their eyes.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I will bank on that any day.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk to us about what
Speaker 1: you think the big problems right now that sort of
Speaker 1: historical delivery systems are facing, Like I feel like I
Speaker 1: spend so much time thinking about news and how local news,
Speaker 1: how hard it is to keep that going. But I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk to us about like the
Speaker 1: other ways in which you feel that people are having
Speaker 1: trouble keeping up with history.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, you know, in the Viper, one of the places
Speaker 5: I deal with is Dover Air Force Base. It houses
Speaker 5: the government's most secret funeral home for fallen soldiers and spies.
Speaker 5: It's where, you know, it's a solemn place. It's where
Speaker 5: all of our fallen soldiers go. It's where the astronauts
Speaker 5: go when the Space Shuttle blew up. It's where the
Speaker 5: Pentagon victims went on nine to eleven. All of our
Speaker 5: double oh seven spies they go there too. It's a
Speaker 5: place that's filled with secrets, and I love secrets, but
Speaker 5: it's also a place that's deeeped in tradition and history.
Speaker 5: And today we have a president who's literally plowing over
Speaker 5: those traditions. The White House, the East Wing being torn
Speaker 5: down is like the you know, the single greatest metaphor.
Speaker 5: You know, it's going to be the cover of someone's book.
Speaker 5: But I think, to answer your question, the greatest problem
Speaker 5: we're having right now is when it comes to history,
Speaker 5: you can go and say no, no, here's what the
Speaker 5: real history says, or you can say here's the way
Speaker 5: when you can fight back in the ways we usually
Speaker 5: fight back. But the real problem now is you can't
Speaker 5: legislate empathy. You can't force someone to protect history. And
Speaker 5: to me, that's the problem we're facing right now is
Speaker 5: what's being torn down isn't just the East Wing. It's
Speaker 5: our norms, it's our empathy, it's our decency that is
Speaker 5: to meet the greatest problem we have. But the good
Speaker 5: news is, I think people on both sides of the
Speaker 5: aisle are tiring of it.
Speaker 4: It's just exhausting to all of us at this point.
Speaker 1: The best example of it is what we've seen with
Speaker 1: Trump's horrible, horrible tweet about what happened with Michelle and
Speaker 1: rob Ryiner. It strikes me that the breakdown of empathy
Speaker 1: has been pretty dark, and people are seeing that because
Speaker 1: he just, you know, this tweet he did, which ultimately,
Speaker 1: as Trump tweets go, I actually thought it's distasteful, but
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole plethora of distasteful tweets, but
Speaker 1: it does strike me that that one, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: crossed some people's red lines.
Speaker 5: I think the reason it hits so hard. And again
Speaker 5: we've seen a lot of like sloppy late night tweets
Speaker 5: that go out, but that one. Every person listening to
Speaker 5: us talk right now has someone who they wish could
Speaker 5: be with them today. Everyone has been through a loss.
Speaker 4: We may not be through.
Speaker 5: You know, hopefully you know whether if you're issue is
Speaker 5: whether it's immigration, or whether it's ice, or whether it's
Speaker 5: what like, some people have a personal tie to it,
Speaker 5: some people don't. It means nothing. Some people are always
Speaker 5: going to vote with their pocketbook, right. Some people are
Speaker 5: never going to be upset until it affects them at home.
Speaker 5: But burying your loved one, watching someone die just tragically,
Speaker 5: everyone knows what that's like. And everyone knows that even
Speaker 5: the worst person in your family still gets a nice
Speaker 5: word at their funeral. Right We may like under our
Speaker 5: breath and what our close friends be like, yeah, that
Speaker 5: person was you know this or that the other thing,
Speaker 5: but you got to show some respect and whether it
Speaker 5: was Charlie Kirk, whether it was Rob Bran, you show
Speaker 5: some respect to the dead. That is not just an
Speaker 5: American value, that's like a human built in thing that
Speaker 5: you can't argue with that show respect to someone who
Speaker 5: was murdered, so respect to a family that's suffering. And
Speaker 5: I think that's why it just struck so hard. But
Speaker 5: I think I actually think and as you as we've
Speaker 5: now seen in those weeks after, is that you know
Speaker 5: that stuff matters. I know we're all going to at
Speaker 5: the end of the you know, when it the midterms,
Speaker 5: everyone's still going to vote on where prices on eggs are.
Speaker 5: And it's always the economy stupid, I know all that,
Speaker 5: But you cannot have this race to the bottom of
Speaker 5: empathy and this race to the bottom of decency and
Speaker 5: say let's not have an impact.
Speaker 4: It just is.
Speaker 5: I think the numbers you're seeing in politics right now
Speaker 5: are a reflection of those. It's not just about the
Speaker 5: eggs this time. It's about something where people are like,
Speaker 5: I don't want to teach my kids that lesson. And
Speaker 5: that's what the White House is to me. The White
Speaker 5: House at the end of the day, the bully pulpit
Speaker 5: is not what it used to be. The bullet pulpit
Speaker 5: has changed, and I think the bully pulpit for all
Speaker 5: of us has become something of like, what do we
Speaker 5: stand for, and it's not about your politics always, you know, obviously,
Speaker 5: it's about you know, there are certain issues that are vital,
Speaker 5: but it's just about like turn it on the TV
Speaker 5: and wishing your kid didn't see it, and that hits people.
Speaker 1: It's certainly true. It's such a tough thing to watch
Speaker 1: and to be a part of. And so I wonder
Speaker 1: if we could talk about, like, I feel like America
Speaker 1: is kind of caught up in a conspiracy. They're a
Speaker 1: loop right now, you've written about this. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could talk about what you see there and how
Speaker 1: you see a way to.
Speaker 4: Get out of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know the thing about conspiracies, and listen, I
Speaker 5: make my living doing them. The Vipers, you know a
Speaker 5: book that has you know, this this lie at the
Speaker 5: at the center of it that people are trying to
Speaker 5: figure out is it true? Is it not? That that'll
Speaker 5: forever be the quest we're always on. But I think
Speaker 5: that you know, we all have the Library of Alexandria
Speaker 5: in our phones. Every day, we walk around with it.
Speaker 5: But the hardest thing to find right now is still
Speaker 5: the truth for so many people. Right it's just you
Speaker 5: were still looking for it, And I think when you
Speaker 5: when you really break down why conspiracies take hold. His
Speaker 5: conspiracies are just our fears being realized. That's all they are.
Speaker 5: It's just your your actual fears being manifest. So as
Speaker 5: a perfect example, like people always say, you know who
Speaker 5: killed JFK. And if you look in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 5: if you want to know who killed JFK, right when
Speaker 5: he was killed, it was we thought it was the Communists,
Speaker 5: We thought it was the Cubans, it was you know,
Speaker 5: the height of the Cold War. That's there are great enemies.
Speaker 5: That's who killed JFK. But if if you look in
Speaker 5: the seventies, as Watergate happens, we started not trusting our
Speaker 5: government anymore.
Speaker 4: So who killed JFK?
Speaker 5: Then well it was LBJ who did it was an
Speaker 5: inside job, the CIA did it was you know, our
Speaker 5: own government had to have had a hand in this.
Speaker 5: And if you look in the eighties, as the Godfather
Speaker 5: movies peak, who killed JFK? It was the mob. So
Speaker 5: decade by decade, if you want to who killed JFK,
Speaker 5: it's just whoever America is most afraid of at that
Speaker 5: moment in time. I think the problem with conspiracies now
Speaker 5: is I don't even think the word conspiracy applies anymore.
Speaker 5: That's just become our news. We just everyone. You know,
Speaker 5: conspiracies were the original thing that everyone did their own
Speaker 5: research on.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: You would have a group of people that would come
Speaker 5: together at some meeting place and say, here's all my
Speaker 5: UFO evidence, and here's my research, and here's my JFK evidence,
Speaker 5: and here's my research, and here's who killed Lincoln.
Speaker 4: It wasn't John molks Booth. Here's my evidence.
Speaker 5: And we've now turned into a culture that has applied
Speaker 5: that conspiracy theory modus opera hunda to our own lives.
Speaker 5: We've let that replace science. Everyone's got their own research
Speaker 5: on every topic, and that, to me is that's what
Speaker 5: the growth of conspiracy has done. Is it's turned everyone
Speaker 5: into a sudden expert, and that is where we get
Speaker 5: into that dangerous subject. The only good news is is
Speaker 5: that historians matter. I take my job, you know, I
Speaker 5: sit on the board of the National Archives the Foundation.
Speaker 4: I take that seriously.
Speaker 5: Luckily, there are places like that that are still there
Speaker 5: to remind people there are actual facts, there are actual
Speaker 5: things that can't be argued. I don't care what your
Speaker 5: Internet search says, but there are actual things that in
Speaker 5: the end you cannot argue, and as long as that
Speaker 5: fight continues, ho'py fighting it.
Speaker 1: Our conspiracy theory is real or not? I think like
Speaker 1: sometimes obviously people were much stupider than we were before
Speaker 1: because people don't read anything, and we all have our
Speaker 1: phones and we're getting misinformation or disinformation. But some conspiracies
Speaker 1: are real, Like probably JFK was not killed by one person.
Speaker 4: As that example.
Speaker 5: Right, I can tell you I still believe that Lee
Speaker 5: Harvey Oswald took that shot. But I also I'm like,
Speaker 5: why is Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia at the height
Speaker 5: of the Cold War marine and nobody knows about it?
Speaker 5: Nobody's looking into that. Who's backing this guy? When Lee
Speaker 5: Harvey Oswald was killed, we lost the person who could
Speaker 5: tell us that, which was Oswald himself. Right, what is
Speaker 5: Jack Ruby doing that It gets into a police station
Speaker 5: with a gun and shoots the only person who can
Speaker 5: finger everybody else who is involved. There are good questions
Speaker 5: that are still not answered even with all the files open,
Speaker 5: because the people who are there are gone. But you're right,
Speaker 5: there are things that are out there. Everyone always wants
Speaker 5: to say the government lies, the government's doing this. The
Speaker 5: government's doing that. The government, as anyone knows who's lived
Speaker 5: in DC, can barely handle a snow day. Okay, So
Speaker 5: the idea that they can make these grand plans and
Speaker 5: that they're running it in some odd way. The reason
Speaker 5: I always like kind of cock a skeptical eyebrow at
Speaker 5: that is that I don't think the government is some giant,
Speaker 5: massive organism. I think the government is made of people,
Speaker 5: and people lie. That's who I believe lies. People will
Speaker 5: do selfish, stupid things. They'll do things because whether it's
Speaker 5: money or power or sex. So you know, the original
Speaker 5: advices that people want to point out, People do that
Speaker 5: all the time. I can tell you that I once
Speaker 5: got a phone call from the family of John Wilkes Booth,
Speaker 5: who famously shot Abraham Lincoln. They called me up through
Speaker 5: their lawyer and they're like, listen, there's a ninety year
Speaker 5: old woman who was told she's on her deathbed right now,
Speaker 5: and when she was young, twelve years old or something,
Speaker 5: her family told her, Hey, listen, we have a family secret.
Speaker 5: We're related to John Wilkes Booth, who killed Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 5: He was supposedly shot in a barn a few days later.
Speaker 5: And the truth is, and the family secret is they
Speaker 5: got the wrong guy. He actually escaped, he went on
Speaker 5: the run, and you can't ever tell anyone. And this
Speaker 5: ninety year old woman called me up her lawyer to
Speaker 5: tell me and show me all the proof she had
Speaker 5: from her family, because this conspiracy was real, and we
Speaker 5: looked at it, we dove into we tore everything apart,
Speaker 5: went through it. She had the will of John Wilkes
Speaker 5: Booth that she showed me, but the will was never signed,
Speaker 5: which was the only way any will back then was.
Speaker 5: And John Wilkes Booth's name was his fake name was
Speaker 5: John B.
Speaker 3: Wilkes.
Speaker 5: That's the worst fake idea I've ever heard in history.
Speaker 5: If your name is John Wilkes Booth, right. But I
Speaker 5: do believe that she believed that story when she was little,
Speaker 5: and I do believe there are questions to be asked
Speaker 5: if you want some funds, And I go look up
Speaker 5: the autopsy of John Wilkes Booth after he's gone. America
Speaker 5: needed someone caught for Lincoln's death. The autopsy is a
Speaker 5: giant mess full of bs, and it covered up one
Speaker 5: man's ability to say we got the guy. So is
Speaker 5: there a real conspiracy, is there not like those things
Speaker 5: are gone, like there's no way to prove them. So again,
Speaker 5: I feel like I'm giving you the long winded answer,
Speaker 5: but I think there are good questions to ask. But
Speaker 5: it doesn't mean everything is a conspiracy. It doesn't mean
Speaker 5: everything that happens in the government is. You know, they're
Speaker 5: all trying to get you and steal your car right
Speaker 5: now and make sure that you're you know, your kids
Speaker 5: eating bag candy on Halloween. So I believe like healthy
Speaker 5: skepticism is a great thing. You need that, but you
Speaker 5: can't turn everything into a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Wild Brad, thank you.
Speaker 5: You're like, what kind of crazy ass calls are you getting?
Speaker 5: Is what you're thinking right now?
Speaker 1: I was like, why do people call Brad and not
Speaker 1: May no moment?
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, moy drunk fast?
Speaker 2: It is that time for the moment of fuckery? Do
Speaker 2: you have a moment of rockery?
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery is a tiny colony of Denmark
Speaker 3: located in our Arctic regions, which Donald Trump would like
Speaker 3: to transform into another American dependency, and that is Greenland.
Speaker 2: My favorite part.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you the statement from the premiere
Speaker 1: of Greenland. Let me state this calmly and clearly from
Speaker 1: the onset. There is neither reason for panic nor for kinson.
Speaker 1: The image shared by Katie Miller depicting Greenland wrapped in
Speaker 1: the American flag changes nothing whatsoever. Katie Miller, area podcaster
Speaker 1: and right right that said the image is disrespectful, Like
Speaker 1: you know how bad it is for the president of
Speaker 1: Greenland to get on Twitter and it's not good, Like
Speaker 1: this is an international incident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an international incident. It is an absurd situation.
Speaker 3: And I really believe as Trump has distanced himself from NATO,
Speaker 3: no one ever thought NATO's Article five would have to
Speaker 3: apply to America attacking a NATO ally. But I think
Speaker 3: we are going to increasingly see them do things like this.
Speaker 3: I think they may well use military force against Greenland.
Speaker 3: It will shatter our greatest alliance in the world. It's
Speaker 3: a foregone conclusion. The Arkansas National Guard could take on
Speaker 3: the one hundred or so defense forces in Greenland and
Speaker 3: take control of it. But it is a madness, and
Speaker 3: it had been by the way, it emerged from a
Speaker 3: fucking Russian propaganda thing. As I recently read.
Speaker 1: Russia has turned out to have done really well with
Speaker 1: our politicians who are very stupid. The one last other
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to add is that just as like
Speaker 1: a ps for our moment of fuck Gray, is Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sharing a lie that Tim Walls somehow was involved
Speaker 1: in something that caused the murder of Melissa Hollman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was repulsive even for Trump.
Speaker 1: And the reality is that this is because there was
Speaker 1: this right wing influencer who exposed this fraud. Even though
Speaker 1: it had been exposed and actually prosecuted in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Two and eleven people had gone to jail.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a Somali who ran the fraud. It was
Speaker 3: a suburban Karen. It was a white woman from the
Speaker 3: suburb right.
Speaker 1: And they have rediscovered the you know, and they were
Speaker 1: all of these MAGA influencers. Why hasn't anyone covered it?
Speaker 1: The New York Times had written seventeen stories about it,
Speaker 1: CBS everyone had covered it, and it was just they
Speaker 1: hadn't read this stories. But this guy, Nick Shurley had
Speaker 1: somehow gotten the story to their attention.
Speaker 3: And he's increasingly being exposed as kind of a of
Speaker 3: a grifty little character in this whole film.
Speaker 4: I'm shocked.
Speaker 3: None of these people, grifty little mofo.
Speaker 1: Yes, but our moment of fuckery really goes on and on.
Speaker 1: And Rick Wilson, you'll come back.
Speaker 3: I hope it never ends.
Speaker 2: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make.
Speaker 2: Sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.