Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump has received yet another
Speaker 1: target letter.
Speaker 2: From the DOJ. We have a star studded show today.
Speaker 1: The shock Doctor and author Naomi Kwine tells us about
Speaker 1: how to counter RFK Junior's misinformation. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson about his new TV show
Speaker 1: with Fame director Steven Soderberg commands Z.
Speaker 2: But first we have the.
Speaker 1: Host of Showtimes the Circus, John Heilman.
Speaker 2: John Heilman, welcome right.
Speaker 3: Back, Hi, good, wanting to be back right.
Speaker 2: From Los Angeles, the City of Angels.
Speaker 1: You're joining us to talk about Donald Trump has gotten
Speaker 1: a target letter, another one.
Speaker 2: When I saw it at for I thought it was
Speaker 2: from last month.
Speaker 1: Why because he got to target letter last month too.
Speaker 1: I mean how most people only get one of those
Speaker 1: in their lives.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, look, what is constantly toggling in the
Speaker 4: age of Trump between wanting to express and apprehend the
Speaker 4: scale of what's going on and the unprecedented nature of it.
Speaker 4: And so when somebody says to me, you know, Donald
Speaker 4: Trump just got another target letter. And I think everyone
Speaker 4: who's close to this investigation assumes that Donald Trump doesn't
Speaker 4: get a target letter unless he's going to get indicted
Speaker 4: in that investigation. That's kind of the prevailing assumption. So
Speaker 4: is that a big deal? Obviously? Is it historic? Obviously? Yes,
Speaker 4: these are big things, And I'm not the thing I'm
Speaker 4: about to say, isn't it downplay them? It's only just
Speaker 4: to say that, like, it's just the reality that you
Speaker 4: molly me. Everybody who talks to anybody involved in this
Speaker 4: has expected this for some number of weeks, not necessarily
Speaker 4: some number of months. But I think that at some
Speaker 4: point in the last prior to the first target letter
Speaker 4: from Jack Smith and then the indictment in the document's case,
Speaker 4: at some point prior to that, a couple months prior
Speaker 4: to that, maybe it started to dawn on people that
Speaker 4: the special prosecutor is really fucking serious and he's going
Speaker 4: for Trump. Nobody knew who Jacksmith was when he got appointed.
Speaker 4: There was some chances that, like, you know, Merrick Garland's
Speaker 4: kicking the can down the road, Jack Smith's not going
Speaker 4: to do anything. We've had mixed experiences in this country
Speaker 4: with special counsels and special prosecutors and independent councils prior
Speaker 4: to that, but it suddenly became clear, and the closer
Speaker 4: you were to the investigation, the sources closer to the
Speaker 4: investigation of people who knew Jack Smith kept saying all along, no,
Speaker 4: this dude is a stone cold killer. If Donald Trump
Speaker 4: has broken the law, which it appears that he has,
Speaker 4: and in both of these cases, he's going to go
Speaker 4: for it. So on one level, today's news is historic
Speaker 4: and significant. It's also on some level shocking. A former
Speaker 4: president of United States, now indicted in a separate not
Speaker 4: about to be indicted, has a target letter in a
Speaker 4: separate federal inquiry into his mis deeds. Shocking, but like
Speaker 4: not surprising, Like I didn't wake up and when I
Speaker 4: saw this this morning and go, oh my god. You
Speaker 4: know Donald Trump's He's going after Jack Smith's going after
Speaker 4: in the one sixth case, Oh my god. Who thought
Speaker 4: that was coming. You know, most of us have thought
Speaker 4: this is what is the next shoot to drop? And
Speaker 4: now it's dropped. I think all the questions now are
Speaker 4: not is he going to get indicted? The only questions
Speaker 4: in both these cases are we don't know what the
Speaker 4: strength of the one six cases yet because it hasn't
Speaker 4: been laid out in an indictment. But at some point
Speaker 4: we will know how strong that case is, and then
Speaker 4: the questions will be when is he tried? And can
Speaker 4: he get the Republican nomination and potentially win the White
Speaker 4: House before those trials take place. That's like the to me,
Speaker 4: that's the whole ballgame.
Speaker 2: Right, can he run out the glock which he's going
Speaker 2: to try.
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean it's always trying to do, and it's
Speaker 4: always trying to do. I mean, his whole game. It's
Speaker 4: very simple and all the other discussions. To me, he
Speaker 4: is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee. And
Speaker 4: you know, one on one against Joe Biden. Anybody who
Speaker 4: says Donald Trump can't win is out of their mind. Like,
Speaker 4: is Joe Biden the favorite? He is? Is Donald Trump?
Speaker 4: Is it impossible for Donald Trump to win? We saw
Speaker 4: how close twenty twenty was. It was, you know, under
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand votes in three states. You know, it's
Speaker 4: not like a big deal. So it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: he could win. And if Trump can delay these two
Speaker 4: cases and he wins, it's a fucking you know, apocalyptic
Speaker 4: cataclysmic end of the Earth, existential horror show.
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer.
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody reasonably can tell you with any
Speaker 4: confidence whether or not he will be successful in running
Speaker 4: out the clock or not. I just I mean, people
Speaker 4: speculated about it all day long. What will the judges say?
Speaker 4: How long will it take? Everything in court takes longer
Speaker 4: than you think it's going to take. Everything takes longer
Speaker 4: than you think it should take, even if the judge
Speaker 4: isn't in the tank for Trump, and we know at
Speaker 4: least one of these judges is widely seen as being
Speaker 4: the one in the class by documents cases widely seen
Speaker 4: as being pro Trump. We'll see what happens in this case.
Speaker 4: If it gets filed in the one six case and
Speaker 4: gets filed in DC, that'll be a different venue and
Speaker 4: we'll see what we get as a judge there. But
Speaker 4: you know, that's to me, the ballgame right now is
Speaker 4: like what's the timing of these things? And then largely
Speaker 4: obviously questions about the jury is going to be and
Speaker 4: et cetera, et cetera, But the timing is really everything.
Speaker 1: And it is interesting because I want to like shift
Speaker 1: back to the Republican primary. Fuckeray, we can say fuckery
Speaker 1: because we're not on television.
Speaker 4: I say fuckery on television all the time, and just
Speaker 4: not on MSNBC.
Speaker 2: That you much cooler than I am, Molly.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you.
Speaker 4: The thing about premium, about premium cable and streaming is
Speaker 4: that the main reason to be on it is not
Speaker 4: about coolness but about the ability to use profanity at will.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I respect the hell out of profanity use. I have
Speaker 1: to say, as someone whose mother has trotted the path
Speaker 1: of using profanity as much as possible, I.
Speaker 2: Just want to keep along with it.
Speaker 1: But this Republican primary contest, I'm curious. You're quite young,
Speaker 1: but you've covered campaigns for a long time. You've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of Republican primary contests get going, and you've
Speaker 1: seen people get excited about a fresh faced, brown haired
Speaker 1: Do you know.
Speaker 3: Scott Walker, governor of a major governor of a swing state, that.
Speaker 5: Kind of thing?
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Pete Wilson not a governor of a
Speaker 4: sting state.
Speaker 3: Jeb Bush, governor of a swing state. I've seen a
Speaker 3: lot of Republicans.
Speaker 4: People get excited about a lot of absolutely obvious front
Speaker 4: running Republicans who are going to clearly be the nominee
Speaker 4: who then turned out to be.
Speaker 3: A big fat goose egg.
Speaker 4: Yeah so yeah, Rob Destanta is not an unfamiliar story
Speaker 4: in Republican primaries.
Speaker 2: Do donors just say, like, this is our guy.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that he can't say nice to meet
Speaker 1: you back when he meets people.
Speaker 4: Well, I think first of all, i'd say a couple
Speaker 4: things just you know. Soyeah, I've been doing this for
Speaker 4: thirty years, and the truth is that all of that
Speaker 4: experience is in some sense helpful. Like I can tell
Speaker 4: you this when you read stories about the disarray inside
Speaker 4: the Dysantis campaign, right, and then you hear people push
Speaker 4: back on those stories. Here's a fundamental iron law of
Speaker 4: all campaigns, Republican Democrat. When you read stories about campaign disarray,
Speaker 4: it's three times worse inside the campaign. However bad the
Speaker 4: press is making it sound, it's three times worse inside
Speaker 4: the campaign. It's never like stories about campaign disarray are
Speaker 4: coming out and in fact everything's fine. It's never like
Speaker 4: that because when things are really fine, no one's going
Speaker 4: to the press and complaining about things. And when things
Speaker 4: are fucked is when people start to leak, because they
Speaker 4: start to go shit, this ship is headed for an
Speaker 4: iceberg or has already hit the iceberg, and I don't
Speaker 4: want to fucking go down with that ship. So I'm
Speaker 4: going to start to talk about how fuck the ship is.
Speaker 4: It's always worse inside, and so their hair is completely
Speaker 4: on fire, and the idea that like, they're that's all fine,
Speaker 4: We'll make a mid course correction, everything will be cool.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of time that is not what's being
Speaker 4: said in Ronda Santas's campaign right now. It's people are like, well,
Speaker 4: we're not really firing that person, We're moving them over
Speaker 4: the superPAC.
Speaker 3: Fucking bullshit. That person.
Speaker 4: Yes, we might keep them on the payroll so that
Speaker 4: we can claim that we didn't fire them, but that
Speaker 4: person has basically just been fired.
Speaker 3: So anyway, So there's one. That's one thing.
Speaker 4: The second thing is none of my experience is meaningful
Speaker 4: in the sense that like, I've never we've never covered
Speaker 4: anything like cover two Republican nomination contests in the age
Speaker 4: of Trump, but not one in the age of post
Speaker 4: insurrection Trump right, and the full cultishness of the Republican Party,
Speaker 4: the full personality cultureusness, and the full swing to what
Speaker 4: you know, people like Walter Russell Meade politely called like
Speaker 4: Jacksonian populist cultural populism and nationalist populism in the party.
Speaker 4: We've never seen the party be what it is like
Speaker 4: this now, And I think it's really important in the
Speaker 4: sense that like there are donors who are looking for
Speaker 4: alternatives to Trump, there are elites who are looking for
Speaker 4: alternatives Trump, media moguls looking for alternatives to Trump, a
Speaker 4: small faction of never Trump Republicans looking for alternatives with Trump.
Speaker 4: What there isn't is a critical massive Republican voters looking
Speaker 4: for an alternative Donald Trump. You know how long will
Speaker 4: this owner donors stick with DeSantis? You know they're already obviously,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know the way, with the way camping
Speaker 4: finance rules, a lot of these people are we the
Speaker 4: maxed out donors are already maxed out. The unmaxed out
Speaker 4: donors are looking at this thing and going, this is
Speaker 4: a cycle, a poop cruise that's on fire, like one
Speaker 4: of those carnival cruises where it terms of the toilets
Speaker 4: don't work.
Speaker 3: It's a flaming pop cruise. So no one's gonna write
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 4: So the donor the numbers start unless he does something
Speaker 4: dramatic soon, because donors are not that smart and they
Speaker 4: look up and they see what's on TV and they
Speaker 4: go okay. So if he does something dramatic to change
Speaker 4: the narrative, I mean dramatic something I think he's incapable
Speaker 4: of doing, maybe some other people will write checks to him.
Speaker 4: But a lot of the people who really believed in
Speaker 4: RNDO Santas as a Trump alternative have already written all
Speaker 4: their checks. They're done, they're out. And this is not
Speaker 4: the guy who's going to have a low dollar donor base.
Speaker 4: Like it's not like there's like a giant populist ups
Speaker 4: ground swell for him. They are all with Trump. They
Speaker 4: believe in Trump. And so the problem in this nomination
Speaker 4: fight is this race is I have never been less
Speaker 4: interested in doing all the stuff that I love to do.
Speaker 4: Like I love Iowa, and I love New Hampshire, and
Speaker 4: I love South Carolina and I love retail politics. I've
Speaker 4: spent years doing it, and I find I'm perverse, I'm weird,
Speaker 4: I'm kinky, I like that shit, and I look at
Speaker 4: this in this run and I'm like, this is just
Speaker 4: all a giant kabooki fest. This is ridiculous. All of
Speaker 4: the things these people are doing. Like here's Mike Pants
Speaker 4: at the make pens that the pancake breakfast, and here's
Speaker 4: Nicky Haley grill at a pork chop. It's like, like
Speaker 4: none of these people have a hope. Trump owns the party.
Speaker 4: He just owns it and everybody who wants to see
Speaker 4: an alternative there. It's not like there's no one, but
Speaker 4: the party doesn't want. The vast bulk of the nominating
Speaker 4: electorate does not want an alternative, And so how you're
Speaker 4: going to create that desire. I'm not saying it's impossible,
Speaker 4: but sitting here today, none of these people have a
Speaker 4: strategy for how you have a plan that seems plausible
Speaker 4: to me of how you're going to break his hold
Speaker 4: over the large plurality, if not the majority, over the
Speaker 4: Republican nominating electorate. It's like no one has presented a
Speaker 4: plan or a strategy that looks to me like plausible.
Speaker 1: Do you even wonder if Desanta's was sort of overplayed
Speaker 1: from the get go?
Speaker 4: Yes, I made a comment a second ago about I
Speaker 4: said something about Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Pete Wilson, Pete Wilson,
Speaker 4: I've seen candidate like I'm from California. When Pete Wilson
Speaker 4: ran for president nineteenninety six, they're a lot of people
Speaker 4: like Governor of California, far right. He's the immigration stuff,
Speaker 4: the public service stuff. He's going to carry the party.
Speaker 4: I was like, Pete Wilson does not have the talent
Speaker 4: to hit major league pitching. Rick Perry, you know, Texas
Speaker 4: big blah blah blah, Like you know, there was a
Speaker 4: moment when people thought Rick Perry. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 4: see it. He'll have a donor base, There'll be people
Speaker 4: who'll be get behind him. But this guy, when he
Speaker 4: gets out there is just not He just doesn't have
Speaker 4: what it takes. I didn't necessarily say that was the
Speaker 4: case of Jeb Bush, and I still don't really necessarily
Speaker 4: believe Jeb Bush didn't have what it takes, but he
Speaker 4: got crushed by Donald Trump. He didn't know how to
Speaker 4: handle Trump. But I'm not sure Jeb Bush couldn't have
Speaker 4: been presidential. There are these other people, and I just
Speaker 4: always looked at the Santas and said, he looks like
Speaker 4: a paper tiger to me. And I'm on the record
Speaker 4: saying that from the very beginning, I thought, on paper,
Speaker 4: I understand why the donor class who's desperate for an
Speaker 4: alternative to Trump, and in his general election candidate he
Speaker 4: might be able to beat Joe Biden. But as an
Speaker 4: alternative to Donald Trump in the flesh on a debate
Speaker 4: stage in an ice cream shop in Iowa, this is
Speaker 4: not only not a Hall of Famer or an All Star.
Speaker 4: This is a guy who's like, you know, in terms
Speaker 4: of performance skills, candidate skills, He's like a double a
Speaker 4: triple A player, not a Major league player.
Speaker 1: I thought it was amazing that they thought they no
Speaker 1: one is going to notice the cowboy.
Speaker 3: Boots, well, all of it, all of it.
Speaker 4: And this the absolute in the absolute incapacity to relate
Speaker 4: in a normal human way. Now with with with voters.
Speaker 4: You know, people overdo how important retail politics is at
Speaker 4: the presidential level. It's obviously much more about national media
Speaker 4: and more about about the big moments on debate stages
Speaker 4: and about advertising and other things. But in the end,
Speaker 4: those those guys have to go. And I'll tell you
Speaker 4: one set of voters. They have to be able to
Speaker 4: be really good in a room with donors like you
Speaker 4: might not be great in an ice cream shop and
Speaker 4: you might really kind of hate having to go to
Speaker 4: the to the pizza ran in a Tumwa, But like,
Speaker 4: if you can't get in a room and work a
Speaker 4: donor crowd, this is the great genius of Barack Obama.
Speaker 4: Like when he first came on, the first thing you
Speaker 4: saw was this guy can be on we can be
Speaker 4: on with Oprah, he can be on Monday Night Football,
Speaker 4: he can be in a at the pizza rengein to Tumwa,
Speaker 4: and he can work a room of Wall Street CEOs
Speaker 4: and they all think this is one of us. That's
Speaker 4: a candidate who's like has somewhere not necessarily guaranteed victory,
Speaker 4: but that's like that's you're talking about someone who can
Speaker 4: hit major pitching. And like you look at at Disantas
Speaker 4: and donors started meeting him and going, he's weird. No,
Speaker 4: he doesn't talk like a normal person in this group
Speaker 4: where we're trying to like just sit around a little
Speaker 4: roundtable in private and a restaurant in a private room.
Speaker 4: He's like weirdo, that's what they said. And you're like,
Speaker 4: if he can't relate to those guys, And then you
Speaker 4: see him in these pictures when he's trying to do
Speaker 4: the pizza meta ranch. You're like, I'm sorry, this is
Speaker 4: let's just shut this thing down now. He won't for
Speaker 4: a while, but that's where it's going.
Speaker 1: I remember the scion of a big New York real
Speaker 1: estate family. The Republican came home and he was like,
Speaker 1: that's no money for me. Like, you're having that kind
Speaker 1: of visceral reaction to your guy, forget.
Speaker 3: It the guy you're looking for.
Speaker 4: Like the people walked into those rooms with Dissana's thinking,
Speaker 4: I really want an alternative to trump this guy. On
Speaker 4: the basis of his record in Florida. Some of the
Speaker 4: things I don't really love. I don't really love all
Speaker 4: this kind of you know, the punching down on the
Speaker 4: trans kids, whatever. But I like the economic record. I
Speaker 4: like the fact that his re election was incredibly impressive,
Speaker 4: you know, and expanded his margin and his strength with
Speaker 4: keik stituencies, including Hispanics. Like people wanted him to be
Speaker 4: what they wanted to like him. They walked in the room,
Speaker 4: not skeptical, but like this could be the guy. And
Speaker 4: then they walked out of the room going, eh huh,
Speaker 4: let's go talk to Tim Scott. Let's see what that's about.
Speaker 1: And now they've gone to Tim Scott just so much
Speaker 1: the reporting is about how the donor class has turned
Speaker 1: to Tim Scott. It seems impossible to me that you
Speaker 1: go from a racist to someone who is actually black
Speaker 1: as your nominee.
Speaker 2: But am I wrong?
Speaker 4: I mean, if your only objective is how do we
Speaker 4: stop Donald Trump? If that's your if that's what, if
Speaker 4: that's the category you're in, As I said, not what
Speaker 4: the party believes, but what some of the donor class believe.
Speaker 4: You don't really give a shit. Here's like, how can
Speaker 4: I be Trump? I've tried that guy. That's not going
Speaker 4: to work. I got to move on to the next
Speaker 4: best thing. And I think, I mean, Tim Scott gives
Speaker 4: Trump some problems that like Ron de Santis does. And
Speaker 4: I saw Stuart Stevens on TV yesterday saying, how does
Speaker 4: a guy who got elected governor by running an ad
Speaker 4: where he's talking to his little kids about how the
Speaker 4: little kids about building a wall? How you know, how
Speaker 4: does that guy to become Trump's the antidote to Trump.
Speaker 4: It's just such a fundamental problem, right, Like he's Trump's creation.
Speaker 4: And people in the Jacksonian populist, nationalist Republican Party do
Speaker 4: actually have they really value loyalty. Loyalty is a big
Speaker 4: thing in that in that Caudrid so the idea of
Speaker 4: like someone, hey, you know, Trump's was not being an
Speaker 4: idiot when he said over and over again I made
Speaker 4: Rond de Santis because he did to some extent, and
Speaker 4: he knew that his voters would be like, this is
Speaker 4: guy's an ingrade. You know, they don't want to see
Speaker 4: that kind of betrayal of Donald Trump. They want to
Speaker 4: see someone who and John Ellis of the Bush family
Speaker 4: and of the great News items substack letter Giles is like,
Speaker 4: you got to figure out a way to praise, to
Speaker 4: do the eulogy before you try to bury him. If
Speaker 4: you if you don't, people want to hear in the
Speaker 4: Republican nominating electorate. They want to hear about how Donald
Speaker 4: Trump made America great again. We thank him, We're grateful,
Speaker 4: he's a great man. And now I want to stick
Speaker 4: a ship in h Micheve and the and push him
Speaker 4: in the shallow grave. But like, you can't just try
Speaker 4: to kill him, and you can't kill him withology because
Speaker 4: it's not really about ideology. It doesn't have one. It's
Speaker 4: not about policy, it doesn't have one. It's not like
Speaker 4: I'm going to run to the right of him or
Speaker 4: I'm going to be more deregulatory than him. That's just
Speaker 4: not what the Republican Party's about anymore. And so Tim
Speaker 4: Scott gives him problems, potentially gives him problems in the
Speaker 4: way that Rod DeSantis doesn't. He doesn't have a lot
Speaker 4: of that complicated relationship with Trump. But I still, you know,
Speaker 4: look at him and say, Tim Scott donald Trump one
Speaker 4: on one debate, if.
Speaker 5: It ever got to that, like, can you imagine.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I mean, Donald Trump's a freaking
Speaker 4: one man wheat thresher, you know, I just I just
Speaker 4: didn't imagine. I can't imagine Tim Scott, you know, coming
Speaker 4: out of that, not in like fifty seven pieces. But
Speaker 4: you know, who knows, we'll see. I mean, I continue
Speaker 4: to think it's very hard for me to see how
Speaker 4: many beats Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I don't want to watch. It'll stress me out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like watching Trump destroy the sky.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he's not necessarily what I believe,
Speaker 1: but you know, he seems decent enough and someone. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of sad when Trump destroys someone.
Speaker 1: The few decent Republicans laughed.
Speaker 4: I mean, I mean, I think, you know, again, many
Speaker 4: people will have a lot of you know people, If
Speaker 4: you say anything nice at this point about anybody in
Speaker 4: the Republican Party, people yell at you. But I mean,
Speaker 4: comparatively speaking, Santas and Tim Scott, Tim Scott is a
Speaker 4: far less objectionable branded vodka than Ronda Santasy is. I
Speaker 4: think it's on the level of him. You don't see
Speaker 4: Tim Scott doing some of the most egregious stuff that
Speaker 4: that's really offensive that Desantas has done. So Yeah, and
Speaker 4: you know, there's a little bit of a Bambi kind
Speaker 4: of a quality to like, you know, if Trump gets
Speaker 4: out there and has to like, well, I guess I'm
Speaker 4: gonna have to rip Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, you know
Speaker 4: in the little tiny pieces you're kind of like, oh,
Speaker 4: I mean, like, I don't really, I mean, I'm not
Speaker 4: a big fan of deer, but I don't like watching
Speaker 4: Bambi get like ripped into five thousand pieces. That's not fun.
Speaker 4: The deer crush the plants and stuff. I don't want
Speaker 4: them in my yard. But like I don't I also
Speaker 4: want to see them like put a put it in
Speaker 4: a wood schipper.
Speaker 3: You know it's not fun.
Speaker 1: And I think the top line today is don't put
Speaker 1: Bambi in the wood chipper.
Speaker 2: Thank you, John. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: Well, you're the greatest.
Speaker 4: I'm sometimes a useless piece of shit and I sometimes
Speaker 4: don't go to the schedule, but none of it has
Speaker 4: anything to do with me not ever wanting to be
Speaker 4: on your shy.
Speaker 1: Naomi Kline is the author of The Shock Doctrine And
Speaker 1: This Changes Everything, as well as a columnist for The
Speaker 1: Guardian and a professor of Climate Justice at the University
Speaker 1: of British Columbia.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Naomi Kline.
Speaker 6: Thank you. It's great to be with you.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to have you.
Speaker 1: Such a fan of yours for any number of reasons.
Speaker 1: So let us talk about I feel like he's like
Speaker 1: a blight.
Speaker 2: Let us talk about RFK Junior.
Speaker 6: Let us let us let us Oh, he's been making
Speaker 6: news lately. So I spoke you have.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like we have to, right, do we?
Speaker 1: I mean I think we do? So just give me
Speaker 1: the top lines here, I mean, what are we even doing?
Speaker 6: I think there was a tendency at the start to
Speaker 6: just ignore him and hope he would go away. And
Speaker 6: I think it's under because he is a you know,
Speaker 6: serial misinformer. He spreads medical misinformation I think has has
Speaker 6: caused great damage, and during COVID it made a lot
Speaker 6: of sense to just sort of tune people like that out.
Speaker 6: But Kennedy has been very clear in some of his
Speaker 6: interviews that the entire reason he's running is because he was,
Speaker 6: in his view, you know, silence censored. He said, it
Speaker 6: has felt like talking into I believe he said a
Speaker 6: fucking tin can. As a lawyer, he knows that when
Speaker 6: you you know, when you're when you're part of an
Speaker 6: official electoral process, there's a kind of duty to cover
Speaker 6: and that he would get more of a platform. So
Speaker 6: whether he's serious about, you know, his electoral prospects, or
Speaker 6: whether he's just doing this to get a platform, he
Speaker 6: is getting a platform. And so the question is now,
Speaker 6: what do we do with the fact that he is
Speaker 6: spreading quite dangerous misinformation on a much larger scale. And
Speaker 6: I argue that we have to engage with the misinformation,
Speaker 6: and we actually have to debunk it and don't just
Speaker 6: assume that people understand that what he's saying, for instance,
Speaker 6: about the link between vaccines and autism is a lie,
Speaker 6: or the link between COVID and now he's claiming it's
Speaker 6: a bioweapon that specifically leaves out Jews, and you know
Speaker 6: when he had Chinese. Yes, right, I mean it's not
Speaker 6: like you can just sort of sneer, right. I actually
Speaker 6: think these arguments have to be very effectively debunked. And
Speaker 6: I think there's been a little too x sneering and
Speaker 6: sort of assuming that people get it, and I'm not
Speaker 6: sure they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we are in this strange time of like peak disinformation, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's not true. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess there have been times when there's been disinformation like this,
Speaker 1: but it does seem unusual how much of I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's the death of local news. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a number of factors have contributed to that.
Speaker 1: But is there a way to sort of fight back
Speaker 1: against that? And how right? So, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories are not new. They always spread in chaotic times, right,
Speaker 1: because they offer these neat stories that claim to explain
Speaker 1: the world. They are also always tools for elites, particularly
Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theories have been used by going back
Speaker 1: to the first failed Russian Revolution in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 1: when you had this broad based working class coalition taking
Speaker 1: on Thezar and the landed elite, with the Jewish bound
Speaker 1: really at the center of this coalition but part of
Speaker 1: a multi ethnic working class coalition, and the response of
Speaker 1: the Czar what's twofold one to offer some their minor
Speaker 1: concessions and on the other hand to start spreading the
Speaker 1: protocols of the elders and zion and saying that this
Speaker 1: is you know, a plot by these stateless, rootless Jews
Speaker 1: to attack a Christian nationalist values.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So conspiracy theories, particularly antisemitic conspiracy theories, are just why
Speaker 6: we have to take it seriously that our kids now
Speaker 6: openly you know, flirting with them. This is why Bannon
Speaker 6: likes them, This is why Tucker Carlson likes them. Nothing
Speaker 6: blasts apart a coalition from below, like saying blame that
Speaker 6: guy over there, like not us, right, Or instead of
Speaker 6: having a structural critique of a system that is desiring
Speaker 6: to enrich and ewit and impoverish the masses, you say,
Speaker 6: oh no, there's a cabal of just like a small
Speaker 6: group of Jewish bankers who are plotting, like you, turn
Speaker 6: it into an aberrant part of the system as opposed
Speaker 6: to the system itself. You know, that's also what Hitler
Speaker 6: did when he when he when he talked about a
Speaker 6: form of Jewish capital, is that that was taking over
Speaker 6: the kind of wholestim capital. You know, this is the context.
Speaker 6: But I think what's different, Molly about this moment, and
Speaker 6: it is a big difference. I thought a lot about
Speaker 6: this is that conspiracies are an industry in themselves now, right,
Speaker 6: because you have figures like Kennedy who are playing the
Speaker 6: personal branding game and the person and they've learned how
Speaker 6: to monetize their own identities. And so when they spread
Speaker 6: and when they spread a conspiracy that goes viral on
Speaker 6: these platforms that you know, just want whatever kind of
Speaker 6: engagement they can get, and this is a good way
Speaker 6: to get it. They're going to personally profit from it, right,
Speaker 6: They're going to get members on their sites, they're going
Speaker 6: to get donations, they're going to get book sales, they're
Speaker 6: going to get all of that. And so I do
Speaker 6: think that that is what makes this moment different, is
Speaker 6: the way that conspiracies are like directly monetizable on these platforms,
Speaker 6: and so you've got way more players.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it does seem like running for president
Speaker 1: and engaging in conspiracy theories both to have a kind
Speaker 1: of profit connection that they didn't necessarily have before, like
Speaker 1: you know, and so I mean it almost feels like
Speaker 1: and again I'm not being anti capitalist here, That's not
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, but I am saying that does seem
Speaker 1: like capitalism has bled into these two parts of political life.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think you know what you were saying
Speaker 6: about local media and just sort of a vacuum of
Speaker 6: trusted information, right, even of a kind of any kind
Speaker 6: of shared narrative that we might all be watching the
Speaker 6: same TV show or all. You know, we've all heard
Speaker 6: these arguments. But I do think that you can't really
Speaker 6: separate these forces around the ability to monetize conspiracies, the
Speaker 6: fact that people have these kind of niche information bubbles,
Speaker 6: which is where they're getting all of their information. Maybe
Speaker 6: it's you know, maybe it's Jordan Peterson, maybe it's Steve
Speaker 6: Benn and maybe it's Joe Rogan. You know, some mix
Speaker 6: and match of all the above, and they've all found
Speaker 6: each other and are all amplifying each other.
Speaker 5: There are much of.
Speaker 6: It around the RFK care. He's really kind of weaving
Speaker 6: together this network or coagulating it, or you know, whatever
Speaker 6: metaphor you know you want to use. It does bring
Speaker 6: us back to whether we believe, you know, whether whether
Speaker 6: you're a fan of capitalism or not. You know, if
Speaker 6: you're a reasonable person, you probably believe that there are
Speaker 6: some things that are a little bit too important to
Speaker 6: leave to the market. Maybe it's healthcare, maybe it's you know, schooling,
Speaker 6: and there are there are all kinds of things we've
Speaker 6: carved out of the market, and the US carves less
Speaker 6: of it out than most industrial economies. But you know something,
Speaker 6: if something is important enough, we can say, actually we're
Speaker 6: not going to let just the profit mode of govern here,
Speaker 6: and maybe information and media should be part of that
Speaker 6: so that we don't end up with this kind of
Speaker 6: free for all, which is I think a big part
Speaker 6: of the reason why somebody like the garf Cave has
Speaker 6: been able to find the audience that he's been able
Speaker 6: to find. You know, that said, and I think this
Speaker 6: is intimately corrected. I don't think you could understand the
Speaker 6: success of his campaign so far and I think somebody
Speaker 6: is pulling at around twenty percent. You know, at a
Speaker 6: lot of pulls, you have to admit that there's something
Speaker 6: going on that that isn't just kind of Facebook's fault
Speaker 6: that they are tapping into something real. They're saying things
Speaker 6: that a lot of people feel need to be said. Right.
Speaker 6: And so the piece I wrote for The Guardian, you know,
Speaker 6: I called him a counterfeit copy of a copy of
Speaker 6: a copy that it's tapping into a real need.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: And so when he talks, and this is really the
Speaker 6: centerpiece of his messaging, this merger of the multinational corporations
Speaker 6: and government kind of ganging up agatest to you, whether
Speaker 6: it's big farm or big tax, sells a little bit
Speaker 6: like Bernie Sanders, and frankly, he sounds a little bit
Speaker 6: like me. He sounds a lot like the left. But
Speaker 6: he is not offering any kind of left solution. This
Speaker 6: is why it's a bait and switch. If you listen
Speaker 6: to what he's talking about, he's like, no, I'm a
Speaker 6: hardcore free market here. I want to lead climate change
Speaker 6: to the market. He's not coming out in favor of
Speaker 6: universal public health care. He's not talking about raising the
Speaker 6: minimum wage, you know, so he sort of sounds a
Speaker 6: little bit like Bernie, but he is most definitely not Bernie.
Speaker 6: He won't even talk about a wealth past. You know,
Speaker 6: he's pandering to his Republican base and maybe who knows,
Speaker 6: positioning himself. So he denies it for a Trump Kennedy ticket,
Speaker 6: which I think is obviously very very unlikely to happen,
Speaker 6: but nothing can be ruled out in this day.
Speaker 1: I just want to, like, for a minute, talk about
Speaker 1: Kennedy as a I as a beneficiary of nepotism. Myself,
Speaker 1: coming from a famous mother and a famous grandfather, I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of advantages.
Speaker 2: Because of nepotism.
Speaker 1: So I always want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how people are born on third base and think they've
Speaker 1: hit a home run. The Kennedys have had very much,
Speaker 1: you know, a similar kind of probably much more than
Speaker 1: a kind of advantage like that. I wonder how much
Speaker 1: that shapes Rfk's belief that he is not I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if anyone should have impostors syndrome, it's RFK junior.
Speaker 2: But he's seems to be lacking it.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, I think it's a really good thing
Speaker 6: to bring up and I think that there's no doubt
Speaker 6: that it's more than just a family. It's more than
Speaker 6: just being born on third base and privilege though. It's
Speaker 6: all of that, and it's nit, right, it's the power
Speaker 6: of story and NIT. And he's really playing into this
Speaker 6: kind of destiny narrative, right, like he's going to avenge
Speaker 6: the death of his father and uncle and finally get
Speaker 6: at the truth. He's tapping into the energy around the
Speaker 6: unanswered questions, real unanswered questions and conspiracy theories swirling around
Speaker 6: the Kennedy assassinations and the fact that it's central to
Speaker 6: the Q and on world.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So he's not fully you know, he's not fully thrown
Speaker 6: in with Q andon, but he's dancing with them. He's
Speaker 6: dancing with them, right, because he knows how powerful the
Speaker 6: Kennedy name has become in the Q world. And for
Speaker 6: those of you who haven't followed this, I mean, it's
Speaker 6: so extreme, right, And they believe that Bobby Kenny Junior
Speaker 6: is still alive, did not die in the car crash
Speaker 6: in the nineties, And you know, I had a rally
Speaker 6: in Dallas waiting for his return, unveiling an announcement that
Speaker 6: he was Trump's running me. So this is sort of
Speaker 6: the energy that is swirling around the Kennedy name slash brand.
Speaker 6: And I realized how like dangerous this all was when
Speaker 6: I was working on this book that I've been that
Speaker 6: I've been working for the past few years about my
Speaker 6: own doppelganger conspiracy theorists. You know, it just sort of
Speaker 6: just using Naomi Wolf as a jumping off point. But
Speaker 6: I started listening to Steve Bannon's podcast because she was
Speaker 6: on it all the time. And then I just started
Speaker 6: listening to Steve Bannon's podcast because I was realizing the
Speaker 6: story like I was. I was realizing that we were
Speaker 6: at most people I knew were not keeping up with
Speaker 6: the stories that were really gaining resonance on the MAGA.
Speaker 1: Right should I be listening to Steve Benn I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess this is not an endorsement.
Speaker 6: I think it's worth listening now and then to keep
Speaker 6: up with the stories. He's listening to us. He is
Speaker 6: keeping track of who is being silent, what is being
Speaker 6: left unsaid, and he has the skill of tapping into
Speaker 6: the issues that the Democrats abandoned and the people the
Speaker 6: Democrats abandoned and saying, come on over here, We're going
Speaker 6: to solve your problems for you, and of course not
Speaker 6: doing so, that's what that's what he advised Trump to do.
Speaker 6: And Trump did, you know, to disastrous effect in twenty
Speaker 6: sixteen with white working class union members who felt screwed
Speaker 6: over by trade deals that the Democrats had supported, right,
Speaker 6: and now he's doing that with or trying to do
Speaker 6: that with white COVID moms, you know, anti backs, that
Speaker 6: sort of convergence of the wellness far.
Speaker 2: Out, so far right, you know, yeah.
Speaker 6: So so simply to say that Steve Bennon had our
Speaker 6: K on his podcast in December of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 6: and he gave RFK an entire show just to spout
Speaker 6: anti vax conspiracy theories, but he lavished praise on him
Speaker 6: and the Kennedy name, and he really carved it out
Speaker 6: as being different than the Democrat Like, you know, it
Speaker 6: was really interesting to hear Steve Bennon he praise on
Speaker 6: the Kennedys, which I'm sure it is not the league, right,
Speaker 6: but it was like the beginning of this story. It
Speaker 6: started in December twenty twenty one when Bennon realized that
Speaker 6: there was there was a powerful brand there that he
Speaker 6: could co opt into his project and use it against
Speaker 6: the Democrats. So that is happening. And look, I think
Speaker 6: there's no doubt that our kid Junior has this sense
Speaker 6: of destiny, has the sense that this is his birthright.
Speaker 6: But because he was a heroin addict for a long time,
Speaker 6: it was sort of pre Trump assumed that that meant
Speaker 6: you couldn't have a political career, and post Trump, basically
Speaker 6: anything goes. So now he's in.
Speaker 2: I think that's such an important point.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to having you back to talk about
Speaker 1: Double Ganger when it comes out in September.
Speaker 2: Until then, everyone should pre order it.
Speaker 1: Just delighted to get to talk to you, really appreciate
Speaker 1: you and excited for our September book launch interview.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Mollie. It's a real, real pleasure.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Mollie, and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right.
Speaker 2: Now, is going to have merch for sale.
Speaker 1: Over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com.
Speaker 2: You can now buy shirts.
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Speaker 2: We've heard your.
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Speaker 1: Kurt Anderson is the author of Evil Geniuses and the
Speaker 1: co creator of command Z. Welcome back to Fast Politics
Speaker 1: fan favorite, my actual friend Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 5: Hello, Molly John Fast.
Speaker 2: Delighted to have you. So let's talk about your show.
Speaker 5: I've got a show. A little show can tell us more.
Speaker 5: He once talked on this program, or maybe his predecessor program,
Speaker 5: about this book I wrote called Evil Geniuses, which was
Speaker 5: this history of the last fifty years and how the
Speaker 5: right wing hi jack our political economy and fucked everything up.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 5: One of the people who read and liked that book
Speaker 5: very much was my acquaintance Steven Soderberg, the filmmaker the Best.
Speaker 5: Started talking to me at the time, and so, what
Speaker 5: can we do? How can we make something out of this?
Speaker 5: How can I make something out of this that would
Speaker 5: sort of distill some of its messages and appeal to
Speaker 5: young people and get to people who don't care about
Speaker 5: politics and maybe nudge them towards civic engagement to try
Speaker 5: to fix things before they're unfixable, and so on and
Speaker 5: so on, and anyway, very long story, very short. Over
Speaker 5: the next two and a half years came to be
Speaker 5: this kookie episode show called command Z, which is this
Speaker 5: scripted satire involving time travel and brain implants and horrible
Speaker 5: Wall Street power brokers and right wing politicians and religious
Speaker 5: fanatics and all of those things that are part of
Speaker 5: what makes life in America not so great right now
Speaker 5: and how those people and things can be nudged. And
Speaker 5: it's kind of a fatal right, I mean, it's not realistic,
Speaker 5: and I think it's funny and that's what it's about,
Speaker 5: and that's what it is. And Stephen directed all light episodes,
Speaker 5: and it has movie stars like Michael Sarah and they
Speaker 5: have Schreiber and Roy Wood Junior from The Daily Show
Speaker 5: and a couple of dozen other great actors and it's
Speaker 5: just an amazing bit of fun that I'm very proud of.
Speaker 5: And it's out now and it's available only appropriately in
Speaker 5: this time of strikes for a pro union show, as
Speaker 5: it is on Steven Soderbrukh's own website, which is called
Speaker 5: Extension seven sixty five. And in this park place where
Speaker 5: it's available called commandz series dot com and all the
Speaker 5: proceeds go to charity. So you know, it's fun, it
Speaker 5: goes to charity. It's all good.
Speaker 1: Explain a little bit how you got from evil geniuses
Speaker 1: to brain implants.
Speaker 5: Well, at one point early on, actually Stephen said, Maple,
Speaker 5: we could do some He didn't use the phrase arty documentary,
Speaker 5: but he used I don't know if you know the
Speaker 5: work of Adam Curtis. He's a brilliant British documentarian. You
Speaker 5: know he's thinking of all kinds of things because he
Speaker 5: thinks in all kinds of ways. He's a brilliant, radiant
Speaker 5: thinking man. Anyway, So we talked through lots of things
Speaker 5: and what it could be and what it should be,
Speaker 5: and what we wanted to do, and really focused on, okay,
Speaker 5: how do we on this idea that I said before,
Speaker 5: How do you get people, especially people who aren't like
Speaker 5: you and me, for instance, politically obsessed, to watch a
Speaker 5: thing and have it maybe nudge them toward an understanding
Speaker 5: of how history works or doesn't work, and how things
Speaker 5: take a long time to fix and all those things.
Speaker 5: So we thought, okay, some kind of scripted things in
Speaker 5: the future when things are even worse. Was a good idea.
Speaker 5: And then I've always been a fan of Time Trouble,
Speaker 5: and turned out he's interested in Time and Trouble as
Speaker 5: a as a fictional device. Brand implants are how our characters.
Speaker 5: I don't want to give too much away, right, there's
Speaker 5: a way that many, many millions of Americas got brand implants,
Speaker 5: which just coincidentally, of course, is one of Elon Musk's
Speaker 5: current businesses is to give people brain implants that can
Speaker 5: communicate with computers. And in twenty fifty three, this guy
Speaker 5: who was organizing this whole thing in our movie, Commandzie,
Speaker 5: played by Michael Sarah, has died on his way to
Speaker 5: Mars again could be a reference to some future Elon
Speaker 5: Musk's event has found this way to communicate with people
Speaker 5: back in twenty twenty three, and that's what that's what
Speaker 5: our team is doing to try to make people in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three do better than the evil than they
Speaker 5: are doing.
Speaker 1: You and I both I think of us as like
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties magazine people.
Speaker 2: That's my origin story.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if when you look at what's happening
Speaker 1: right now with sort of what's happening with TV and
Speaker 1: movies and cable. Do you think that that is a
Speaker 1: sort of similar phenomenon, this kind of business being totally
Speaker 1: changed by the internet.
Speaker 5: It is, obviously being has been totally changed very different
Speaker 5: way in that for the last decade because of streaming,
Speaker 5: suddenly the same industry, that is to say, the show
Speaker 5: business motion picture television industry, thought, oh my god, not
Speaker 5: only is this not killing us as it did magazines
Speaker 5: and newspapers and nearly did books, but it's a rebirth. Right.
Speaker 5: We have this new way of making money and streaming
Speaker 5: into people's homes. And by the way, we don't need
Speaker 5: to share anything with movie theaters, and by the way,
Speaker 5: and it's why. Of course, part of the reason writers
Speaker 5: and actors, including me I'm a remember the writer's guilt,
Speaker 5: are on strike right now is to say, oh, look,
Speaker 5: and if we get all this money from subscriptions, we
Speaker 5: don't have to give any of that to the actors
Speaker 5: and writers, all right, that whole half, this new half
Speaker 5: of our business model, we don't have to share it. Great,
Speaker 5: So it changed it until they overbuilt and overspent and
Speaker 5: over everything, as happens in business. It was a totally
Speaker 5: good thing for them, rather than in the case of
Speaker 5: magazines print like kind of a for anybody who was
Speaker 5: paying attention, you know in the late nineties, certainly in
Speaker 5: the odds, was like, uh oh, this is bad for us.
Speaker 5: Nobody ever had it right, I mean there was no
Speaker 5: serious like boom booh good the Internet. It's going to
Speaker 5: really help newspapers and magazines. I mean, you know, not
Speaker 5: for more than five minutes.
Speaker 1: Right, but it's quite interesting this sort of like, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think it's possible that with the magazine is
Speaker 1: what happened was that sort of a lot of magazines died.
Speaker 1: Some places were able to capitalize on it, but ultimately
Speaker 1: a lot of content ended up not being gated, going
Speaker 1: for free.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really been a constant crisis, right.
Speaker 5: And that information wants to be free thing which was
Speaker 5: said not in the way that was taken ultimately by
Speaker 5: the Internet, which is like hey I shouldn't have to
Speaker 5: pay for anything, was a problem. And in their excitement
Speaker 5: to be part of the new economy as it was
Speaker 5: called back then thirty years ago, all these newspaper magazine
Speaker 5: it's like oh yeah, we'll just like here take it
Speaker 5: and somehow advertise it will pay the day. Well, that
Speaker 5: didn't work out too well. Speaking of magazines, which is
Speaker 5: where your question began, because yeah, I too was a
Speaker 5: magazine person.
Speaker 2: Certainly you were more of a magazine person than I was.
Speaker 2: I was just older anything.
Speaker 5: You know, a magazine is this thing that can barely
Speaker 5: exist anymore in the Internet. I mean, which is to say,
Speaker 5: it's this fifty or one hundred or two hundred pages
Speaker 5: selected by an editor under a mission and a sensibility,
Speaker 5: and this is why we put these articles together this
Speaker 5: week or this month into this thing here. Enjoy it.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, Okay, the New Yorker may be kind
Speaker 5: of sort of great as it is, or the Atlantic
Speaker 5: kind of sort of great as it is. They still
Speaker 5: do that, They still put on the magazines's New York Magazine,
Speaker 5: many Fatty Fair, whatever. But the Internet has made magazines
Speaker 5: unable to effectively exist in that way that they did
Speaker 5: for the one hundred and two hundred years that they
Speaker 5: existed and were what they were, right where it's this
Speaker 5: package of things and you read it all together, and
Speaker 5: it's and and the mixes of the articles in that
Speaker 5: issue ideally are a thing that you enjoy. And you know,
Speaker 5: everything now is an individual article. Your article of Vanity
Speaker 5: Fair next month as great as I'm no doubt will
Speaker 5: be will be read by your.
Speaker 2: Readers, right right, right, right right.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, sure it's part of Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: But you know, and yet so you think that this
Speaker 1: is a movement from the platform to the person.
Speaker 5: Well yes, and again it's funny right about what we're
Speaker 5: doing with command Ze bye bye by Stephen who you
Speaker 5: know made his great breakthrough with sexualized and videotape, which
Speaker 5: was the ultimate beginning of the indie movement, effectively right
Speaker 5: thirty four years ago, you know, and surprised everybody and
Speaker 5: started turning over the ventional wisdom about how movies were
Speaker 5: made and distributed. Well, you know, we have Hulu and
Speaker 5: Amazon and and Netflix and these giant Peacock Disney, plus
Speaker 5: these giant streamers, some of which were not even in
Speaker 5: the entertainment business until a few years ago, now kind
Speaker 5: of running it, controlling it until now they feel like, uh, oh,
Speaker 5: we overdid it. And yet it's still just part of
Speaker 5: this you know, giant corporate thing of media and entertainment.
Speaker 5: And so to try in this one little small way
Speaker 5: to say no, you don't have to subscribe anything. You
Speaker 5: just come to this Filmmaker's site. Pay seven ninety nine
Speaker 5: and watch this show these eight episodes. Well cool, and
Speaker 5: so we kind of lucked into walking the walk in
Speaker 5: what this show is as well as talking to talk,
Speaker 5: because it's about how, you know, there's too much corporate
Speaker 5: dominance and everything is driven by you know, efficiency and
Speaker 5: largerness and money and all the things that are familiar
Speaker 5: to us about what's wrong with now and so here
Speaker 5: in this small way of not being on Max or
Speaker 5: Hulu or Netflix or any of the rest where so
Speaker 5: it didn't have to be that way. There's all kinds
Speaker 5: of ways to do this. And you know, if you
Speaker 5: can figure out if you can make a thing that
Speaker 5: people like and it's good and you like and put
Speaker 5: it up there the internet, I mean it's kind of
Speaker 5: a return to the original dream of the Internet in
Speaker 5: a way that like just stuff could be out there
Speaker 5: and you'd go fight it. Oh no, you didn't see
Speaker 5: the Soderberg has a series. I can go pay eight
Speaker 5: bucks and I don't have to buy a thousand shows
Speaker 5: and movies I don't care about.
Speaker 2: You know, it's sort of the dream of all creators, right.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and my experience with this has been the
Speaker 5: dream that I was never counting on, yes, to have
Speaker 5: this person who is not easy. He's a very demanding,
Speaker 5: rigorous person in every respect. But it wasn't just some
Speaker 5: There was never some person, some suits, some whomever upstairs
Speaker 5: over there who says, oh what about this? Why oh
Speaker 5: do they have to be this? Oh can't you make
Speaker 5: her a man? Or can't you make him? You know this?
Speaker 5: There were none of those second guessings, and so yeah, no,
Speaker 5: it was. It was a very pure, which is not
Speaker 5: to say, easy thing to be able to do and
Speaker 5: then just put it out like here, people take a look. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was great.
Speaker 3: It is the dream.
Speaker 5: And it's a reminder that we all think of technology
Speaker 5: being bad. Yes it can be. It will be unless
Speaker 5: we control it properly, have the right guard rails and
Speaker 5: social systems. But here, look, this is what it was
Speaker 5: supposed to be. It's this amazing thing. Right you can
Speaker 5: you can put this thing out and on your phone
Speaker 5: or on your iPad or on your TV or whatever.
Speaker 5: You can can watch it. You don't have to go
Speaker 5: to a theater. You don't have to do it. I mean,
Speaker 5: it is, it is. It's a it's a taste of
Speaker 5: what the utopians back in the nineties were dreaming of
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's when little we're making it real at
Speaker 5: this time of concentration and monopoly. The technology can be
Speaker 5: great if you use it, right.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that could or still might happen
Speaker 1: with magazine writers?
Speaker 5: Maybe, I mean it does. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 5: mean look at substack, right, there are plenty of writers
Speaker 5: who are making a very good living doing that. You know,
Speaker 5: you could undoubtedly.
Speaker 3: Make a good living doing that, Malay Jones.
Speaker 5: Pass so sure, I personally to me again, there are
Speaker 5: ways to talk about magazines and print writing, pros writing. Obviously,
Speaker 5: technology has upended all of these worlds. However, yeah, one
Speaker 5: writer at a time, great earn a living writing articles.
Speaker 5: Fine on substack or whatever other versions of that they'll be.
Speaker 5: But I gotta say, the thing about shows and TV
Speaker 5: shows and movies that are very different from that is
Speaker 5: that they are collaborateive. They are in the doing of
Speaker 5: it and the making of it. Like old fashioned magazines.
Speaker 5: I mean, there is one commander, but of course, you know,
Speaker 5: Tina Brown was a commander, Brayden Carter was a commander.
Speaker 5: I mean, all great magazine editors are commanders in that
Speaker 5: movie director way. So the writer alone on her or
Speaker 5: his subseec is just a writer Laura her subsect, which
Speaker 5: could beautiful and wonderful and fantastic, but it's not the
Speaker 5: sheer team sport fun that magazines were and TV and
Speaker 5: movies that their best are.
Speaker 1: Kurt, we are in the dog days of summer, but
Speaker 1: we are in impeachmentville politically.
Speaker 2: I know what's keeping me up at night. But what
Speaker 2: are you thinking about right now?
Speaker 5: As we're recording, just literally, as the former president has
Speaker 5: announced that the Social Prosecutor has sent him a target letter,
Speaker 5: meaning his indictment is presumably imminent for being whatever he's
Speaker 5: going to be charged with for the January sixth events
Speaker 5: and surrounding crimes. So great is my reaction to that.
Speaker 5: But also, of course, the immediate Kevin McCarthy's of the
Speaker 5: world is people running against him for the nomination and
Speaker 5: Republican leaders. Oh this is terrible. This is a weaponization
Speaker 5: of the justice to warm and all that stuff he says,
Speaker 5: they say all the time. What I'm thinking is, I
Speaker 5: wonder if in all of history there's ever been such
Speaker 5: an intense disconnect between the public. Oh this is terrible,
Speaker 5: This is bad and the private Please God, let him
Speaker 5: be taken out. Let this finally take him out, so
Speaker 5: that we can go on and have our normal, awful
Speaker 5: Republican party without Donald Trump. You know that, it's so
Speaker 5: clear the hypocrisy and disingenuousness on that front. So I
Speaker 5: just wish I had all of them bug both in
Speaker 5: their private rooms and their hearts of hearts, to see
Speaker 5: the intense hope and pleasure they're taking in this. I
Speaker 5: think what could be the biggest and most damaging indictment
Speaker 5: politically for swing voters, which is really, you know, all
Speaker 5: you can really hope for if you're me or you
Speaker 5: I think they're like, oh God, no, this is too much.
Speaker 5: I really just can't hold my nose and vote for
Speaker 5: this guy. Yeah, once he's denominated, but certainly, I mean,
Speaker 5: the Rhonda Santus is the world. I just I find
Speaker 5: it so amusing that they have to say this is terrible,
Speaker 5: this is terrible. But his entire career at this moment
Speaker 5: depends on Donald Trump being somehow removed from the race
Speaker 5: during the next six months. You know, I mean, I
Speaker 5: will die politically if he doesn't die politically. But I
Speaker 5: have to say it's terrible. They're killing him politically.
Speaker 2: Kurt Anderson, tell us how we can stream this show.
Speaker 5: It's very easy to stream the show and it works
Speaker 5: just fine. And you don't have to be a subscriber
Speaker 5: to anything, and you don't have to just go to
Speaker 5: Command Disease Series dot com and take it from there
Speaker 5: and you say I want access, and they take a
Speaker 5: credit card and you pay seventy ninety nine and you
Speaker 5: can watch the whole ninety five minutes at your leisure
Speaker 5: as many times as you wish, and you subscribe to nothing,
Speaker 5: and that's what it is. You'll laugh, you may think
Speaker 5: a little bit. It's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, your
Speaker 5: former employer, Mollie the Daily Beast just ran a marvelous
Speaker 5: review of this show. Just couldn't be more of a
Speaker 5: rave yesterday. So there you.
Speaker 2: Go, fabulous, Kurt. I hope you will come.
Speaker 5: Back always and any time.
Speaker 3: No mo Jesse Cannon, Marley Jong fasta MTG.
Speaker 5: She's not really a student of history, it seems, because
Speaker 5: she kind of doesn't know what she's ever talking about.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such an incredible moment. Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: recently said at the Turning Points conference LBJ is similar
Speaker 1: to Biden. They are both Democratic socialists. Lbj's big socialist
Speaker 1: programs to address education otherwise known as public school, a
Speaker 1: medical care otherwise known as medicare, rural poverty. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, medicaid, food stamps, and welfare. So she's reading
Speaker 1: off those things. Little does she know that those are
Speaker 1: all wildly popular, and for that she is our moment
Speaker 1: of fuck Ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.