Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have
Speaker 2: a great show for you today. Voter Latino President Maria
Speaker 2: Teresa Kumar steps by to talk to us about organizing
Speaker 2: Hispanic voters. But first we have the author of When
Speaker 2: the c Came Alive in Oral History of D Day,
Speaker 2: Garrett Graf.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Gart.
Speaker 3: Graft, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Garrett. Why is D Day relevant to where we are
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 3: I think last week's events in Normandy felt so poignant
Speaker 3: to the country because it's not just the eightieth anniversary
Speaker 3: of D Day, it's also in many ways the final
Speaker 3: passing of the greatest generation. And you know, we saw
Speaker 3: last week just how few of those veterans are left.
Speaker 3: You know, on D Day there were a million Allied
Speaker 3: personnel in movie movement across England and the English Channel.
Speaker 3: There are just a few thousand of them left. Great
Speaker 3: Britain estimates that there are just six living D Day
Speaker 3: veterans left in England and Great Britain. The reason that
Speaker 3: that sort of matters to us right now, and why
Speaker 3: we feel it so deeply is that this is the
Speaker 3: generation that you know, stood up against fascism and authoritarianism,
Speaker 3: you know, saved Western democracies, you know, preserved the freedom
Speaker 3: in the Second World War. And there has never been
Speaker 3: a major anniversary of D Day where democracy has felt
Speaker 3: so fraught and fragile in the world, both in Europe
Speaker 3: where we have a land war going on, as you know,
Speaker 3: Russia tries to end freedom in Europe's second largest country.
Speaker 3: Then here at home, where we're I think really struggling
Speaker 3: with this question of what are we here at home
Speaker 3: in the United States going to do with the legacy
Speaker 3: that that greatest generation delivered for us. Are we as
Speaker 3: willing now to fight for democracy here in the United
Speaker 3: States as that generation was to fight in World War Two?
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things about that speech at point
Speaker 1: to Hall is that it's a speech that every president
Speaker 1: has done, or every modern president has done. It is,
Speaker 1: with the exception of probably Donald Trump, because of course,
Speaker 1: can you explain to us why that speech is significant?
Speaker 1: And I know, what I think was very interesting about
Speaker 1: last week was that Biden, I think successfully made an
Speaker 1: homage to Reagan, because the idea here is that Biden
Speaker 1: is closer to Reagan than Trump is to Reagan. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're on the left like Jesse and I, we
Speaker 1: don't love Reagan, but the idea that MAGA is its
Speaker 1: own special thing is a pretty disturbing notion.
Speaker 3: Talk to us about that, yeah, and I think you're
Speaker 3: absolutely right. Which is part of what was remarkable in
Speaker 3: this political moment was watching Biden give that speech at
Speaker 3: Point to Hawk and realizing, you know, in many ways
Speaker 3: it is the same type of speech, the same version
Speaker 3: of the speech that Ronald Reagan did for the fortieth
Speaker 3: anniversary in nineteen eighty four. That's, of course, the super
Speaker 3: famous Peggy Noonan's speech, right that I think begins the
Speaker 3: transformation of D Day from history into American legend. And
Speaker 3: you stand there at Point to Hawk, you know, it
Speaker 3: is this moment of incredible bravery and heroism the two
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty American rangers who landed at the foot
Speaker 3: of those one hundred foot cliffs then scaled the cliffs
Speaker 3: to disable and capture a German gun battery in the
Speaker 3: opening hour of D Day. That in many ways is
Speaker 3: you know, one of the few central legends or even
Speaker 3: mythologies of D Day. I think what stands out for
Speaker 3: me in listening to Biden's speech was that Reagan could
Speaker 3: have given that speech forty years ago, and Biden today
Speaker 3: could have given Reagan's speech from forty years ago. What
Speaker 3: has changed is all of the political context around them.
Speaker 3: You know, in some ways that speech feels like it
Speaker 3: should be the opening ante of American patriotism, you know,
Speaker 3: like we will stand up to defend democracy and freedom
Speaker 3: against authoritarianism. That feels like the most basic pledge of
Speaker 3: civic virtue that a president can make. And he didn't
Speaker 3: have to mention anywhere by name in his speech, Donald
Speaker 3: Trump to know the contrast that he was drawing in
Speaker 3: Normandy last week by standing up and laying out such
Speaker 3: basic civic principles and honoring men that fought to defend freedom.
Speaker 3: One of the things I write about it in the
Speaker 3: book is, you know, it's an oral history, so it
Speaker 3: brings together seven hundred voices from across D Day and
Speaker 3: that conflict to try to tell the story of D
Speaker 3: Day in the first person. And one of the things
Speaker 3: that really comes through is the D Day invasion is
Speaker 3: among the most noble causes humans have ever fought. It
Speaker 3: is an invasion, unlike almost any other invasion in human history,
Speaker 3: an invasion launched not to seize or to conquer, but
Speaker 3: to liberate. You know, this was the Allies of the
Speaker 3: West coming together to try to free a continent from
Speaker 3: Nazi fascism. Again, that doesn't seem like that should be
Speaker 3: that revolutionary of a cause for a president to endorse,
Speaker 3: but there is to be always this like very telling
Speaker 3: moment in Maga politics where basically any time any president
Speaker 3: or political figure calls out for decency, honoring freedom and
Speaker 3: American pie, Maga feels guilty because they know that the
Speaker 3: contrast is being drawn against them and in contrast to them.
Speaker 3: To me, like the most remarkable part of Biden's homage
Speaker 3: at Point to Hawk last week was everyone in the
Speaker 3: world understood the incredibly basic contrast he was drawing, even
Speaker 3: though it should be, I would argue, the most simple
Speaker 3: thing in the world for an American president to endorse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so everybody is dead from D Day because they
Speaker 1: would be like one hundred and five, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there were a lot of soldiers there
Speaker 3: eight nineteen years old. You know, that's a big part
Speaker 3: of the World War Two story is how much of
Speaker 3: that war was fought by incredibly young Americans eager to
Speaker 3: sign up and fight people who were falsifying their birth
Speaker 3: certificates in order to get over there when they were
Speaker 3: sixteen seventeen years old. I think it speaks to that
Speaker 3: age of civic virtue and the contrast now that we feel,
Speaker 3: I think so uncomfortable with of you know, are we
Speaker 3: as willing to defend this moment in democracy as that
Speaker 3: generation was back then. But even those people are in
Speaker 3: their late nineties or you know, turning one hundred right now.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: the sort of lessons of D Day are like how
Speaker 1: Biden can use that to speak to voters. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it is this very simple contrast, which is
Speaker 3: is there is one American political tradition, Donald Trump and
Speaker 3: Maga stand outside of it. And you know the fact
Speaker 3: that forty four of forty five presidents can stand up
Speaker 3: and give the same speech that Reagan gave at point
Speaker 3: to Hawk and Donald Trump can't is the contrast. And
Speaker 3: then you know, you sort of saw Biden follow it
Speaker 3: up by going to visit that World War One cemetery
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump didn't bother going to visit when he
Speaker 3: was in Europe as president because he said, you know,
Speaker 3: he thought it was filled by losers, the people who
Speaker 3: had actually been killed. He doesn't understand why people would
Speaker 3: sign up to fight in the military, you know, as
Speaker 3: he has said, what's in it for them? The idea
Speaker 3: that there is ever any cause greater than sort of
Speaker 3: self aggrandizement and self gratific And it is just something
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump, you know, mentally and intellectually is unable
Speaker 3: to wrap his mind around. Again, this is like one
Speaker 3: of the most basic traditions of American politics and one
Speaker 3: of the most basic civic traditions that we celebrate and
Speaker 3: honor as a country. And Donald Trump couldn't be bothered
Speaker 3: to go out in the rain to a cemetery to
Speaker 3: honor those World War War One veterans and Joe Biden again,
Speaker 3: you know, simply by showing up to do so, is
Speaker 3: drawing this very strong contrast between himself and what MAUGA
Speaker 3: stands for, which is not what America is used to
Speaker 3: standing for.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that Trump's attacks on the military,
Speaker 1: they haven't gone unnoticed, but Republicans have put up with them.
Speaker 1: If anything, they've sort of gone along with them.
Speaker 4: Why do you think that is, I don't really.
Speaker 1: Know, because it used to be that Republicans loved the
Speaker 1: military and that sort of ended with Trump.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's true though across a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: Republican virtues and beliefs. There is almost no one in
Speaker 3: American politics less conservative than Donald Trump. And you know,
Speaker 3: we don't need to rehash it all here, but this
Speaker 3: is the party that told us, you know, for generations
Speaker 3: that they were the party of family values. You know
Speaker 3: that they were the party of morality, and you know,
Speaker 3: all of that is out the window with Donald Trump
Speaker 3: as well. They told us that they were the party
Speaker 3: of law and order, and that's a tradition that goes
Speaker 3: back to Richard Nixon. That's out the window now. And
Speaker 3: so you have the Party of Richard Nixon and Ronald
Speaker 3: Reagan is now, you know, set to nominate a convicted
Speaker 3: felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who hates the military to
Speaker 3: be its standard bearer. For me, in my years of
Speaker 3: covering Republicans and Democrats in Washington, you know, the thing
Speaker 3: that I always thought was that there was going to
Speaker 3: be some principle that the Republicans would not be willing
Speaker 3: to compromise for money and power. And it turns out,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of year after year we get further
Speaker 3: down this road and the answer is there isn't that
Speaker 3: they will compromise every core belief in order to have
Speaker 3: the brain melt that is backing Donald Trump. And I
Speaker 3: think to me, you know, speaking as a historian, one
Speaker 3: of the things that I think will be hardest to
Speaker 3: explain to future generations.
Speaker 1: If there are futures and.
Speaker 3: We're allowed to tell them history, is why this entire
Speaker 3: generation of Republican leaders were so willing to compromise themselves
Speaker 3: and their values and everything that they care about and
Speaker 3: told us that they cared about for this guy. He's
Speaker 3: not someone that you know, anyone would sort of look
Speaker 3: at objectively and say, you know, yeah, this is the
Speaker 3: man that I want to follow into battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It seems believably amazing and strange. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not strange. We've been doing this for ten fucking years, right,
Speaker 1: It's not strange. It's just continually going. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about why Republicans have embraced isolationism. I mean, is it
Speaker 1: just because Trump likes it, or is there some other
Speaker 1: larger trope there.
Speaker 3: I think it's two things. One is the you know,
Speaker 3: sort of that Trump in it for me, not for
Speaker 3: the aspect of sort of everything that is, you know,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump just can't imagine why NATO would be useful
Speaker 3: to us or to the world. You know, he can't
Speaker 3: imagine why we would enter into any of these international
Speaker 3: alliances or partnerships with allies. But then I think the
Speaker 3: other thing which I think we need to reflect upon
Speaker 3: a name, is the white nationalism that underscores and undergirds
Speaker 3: so much of the modern Donald trump Ism, Maga far
Speaker 3: right politics, which is so much of I think this
Speaker 3: isolationism also stems from, you know, these white nationalist politics
Speaker 3: of you know, preserving America as a white Christian nation.
Speaker 3: And I think you see that in the anti immigration
Speaker 3: border politics. I think you see that in the trying
Speaker 3: to sort of lock down America for Americans. And I
Speaker 3: think you see that very explicitly in the sort of
Speaker 3: whole ideological underpinnings of you know, what they call America First,
Speaker 3: which is the only thing that America should care about
Speaker 3: are the white Christian Americans.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Garrett, that was great.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
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Speaker 2: Maria Teresa Kumar is the president of voter Lets you know.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Maria Teresa. Thanks for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 4: How are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm so excited to have you, always brill.
Speaker 1: I wanted to first start by getting you to talk
Speaker 1: about President Biden's announcement this week that spouses of people
Speaker 1: who are citizens are now sort of will you explain
Speaker 1: to me sort of the minutia of that.
Speaker 4: This is a perfect example of how archaa our current
Speaker 4: immigration laws are. The individuals right now, If you are
Speaker 4: married to an American citizen, have been living here for
Speaker 4: at least ten years, in order for you to apply
Speaker 4: for even a green car, you have to go back
Speaker 4: to your country of origin and wait anywhere from three
Speaker 4: to up to a decade. So imagine being a mom
Speaker 4: and you just had a one year old and now
Speaker 4: in order for you to be able to get your
Speaker 4: green card, you have to leave the child or potentially
Speaker 4: go with the child and leave the dad behind. And
Speaker 4: so what President Biden did was say you no longer
Speaker 4: have to go back and wait for your paperwork. You
Speaker 4: can parole in place and continue thriving with your family.
Speaker 4: It's a big deal because again, it is fixing a
Speaker 4: clerical error, and it changes the lives of five hundred
Speaker 4: thousand people overnight. It allows mommies to breathe more easy,
Speaker 4: and it lets children, American children not have to worry
Speaker 4: with this anxiety of will mom be back when I
Speaker 4: will mom be here when I get back home from school?
Speaker 1: So what does this do you think? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: been so much talk about Biden losing Hispanic voters, Hispanic
Speaker 1: voters liking Trump. I mean, do you think this helps Biden?
Speaker 1: Do you think that it makes in roads in why
Speaker 1: Hispanic voters? And I know it's not a monolith, and
Speaker 1: I know that there are different groups and different people
Speaker 1: have different wants and needs, But can you explain to
Speaker 1: us what the sort of electoral map looks like and
Speaker 1: if this helps him and all?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And first of all, I do want to use
Speaker 4: your podcast to really talk to your audience about when
Speaker 4: Republicans say that there's a right for its shift in
Speaker 4: the Latino voter, none of the data and none of
Speaker 4: the Latino voting behavior speaks to that. And it's a
Speaker 4: way just like you remember in the midterms, everybody was reading
Speaker 4: headlines that you know, there was going to be a big,
Speaker 4: massive red wave, Molly, and that never materialized. But the
Speaker 4: right is such a great job of gas slighting media.
Speaker 4: It's the same thing that's happening in the Latino vote.
Speaker 4: And I will share with you just to level set.
Speaker 4: We just came out of the field two weeks ago
Speaker 4: with the most comprehensive two thousand Latino voter analysis where
Speaker 4: in five battleground states where we learned exactly this that
Speaker 4: if the vote were to be held today, fifty nine
Speaker 4: percent of Latino voters would vote for Biden and thirty
Speaker 4: nine would vote for Trump. It becomes sticky, however, when
Speaker 4: there is a third party candidate that is on the ballot.
Speaker 4: In that scenario, Molly, seventeen percent of Latino voters go
Speaker 4: to a third party candidate and twelve percent of them
Speaker 4: go overwhelmingly to RFK specifically. So the danger right now
Speaker 4: is people going and moving to more of the left
Speaker 4: of Biden, and it's disproportionately Molly Latin now women. And
Speaker 4: that's what was surprising to our work. I mean, we've
Speaker 4: been doing this for twenty years. It's spoke to us
Speaker 4: when we said, wait a second, doesn't make sense that
Speaker 4: people that were so adamant about Bernie Sanders just five
Speaker 4: years ago, all of a sudden would go so extreme.
Speaker 4: And sure enough, what we're learning is is that it's
Speaker 4: they are going more left of Biden through undefined candidates.
Speaker 4: And so when we talk about the importance of what
Speaker 4: the Biden administration just did with the executive order, it
Speaker 4: allows the Latino voter to finally differentiate between a Republican
Speaker 4: and a Democrat. Because for a long time, the Republicans
Speaker 4: were separating families and the Democrats. All they had was
Speaker 4: rhetoric of what they would do if they were in power.
Speaker 4: And now this becomes material because now if you were
Speaker 4: to ask a Latino youth what they deeply care about,
Speaker 4: they deeply care about protecting their families. In fact, it's
Speaker 4: always one of the top to top three issues, number
Speaker 4: one being the economy, number two being abortion, and number
Speaker 4: three always how is the president going to provide protective
Speaker 4: status to my mom who's been here for twenty thirty years.
Speaker 4: And so this changes the game because now we're able
Speaker 4: to say, not only did the president do the decent
Speaker 4: thing to do, but he did the politically astute thing
Speaker 4: to do. Because it's not only the family members that
Speaker 4: are who are voters believe this is a good thing.
Speaker 4: Seventy five percent of independent white voters, even in Pennsylvania
Speaker 4: recognize the decency in allowing a family to stay together.
Speaker 1: There is polling, and again, polling, it's so stupid and
Speaker 1: a lot of it is wrong, and yet it's all
Speaker 1: we have. So there's polling that says that a lot
Speaker 1: of Latino voters they want immigration reform, but they also
Speaker 1: are that there's some anxiety about immigration from Latino voters.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's true? And if so, do you
Speaker 1: think that Biden's executive orders have satiated that? And also,
Speaker 1: can you just explain this to us?
Speaker 4: Sure? So, I think that what the Biden administration is
Speaker 4: finally doing is divorcing too issues that are completely different.
Speaker 4: What is happening, sadly at the southern border is really
Speaker 4: an international issue. It's a Western hemispheric issue, and it
Speaker 4: is really a result, Molly of the United States not
Speaker 4: having a Latin American policy for the last forty five years,
Speaker 4: and it's increasingly I want to alert to you know,
Speaker 4: to your listeners, is that it's increasingly while we have
Speaker 4: not been investing, China and Russia have and so there
Speaker 4: is mobility coming down in the southern border where there
Speaker 4: is absolute chaos coming from their countries of origin. And
Speaker 4: until the Biden administration, and we've seen it already with
Speaker 4: the Vice President going down there to Central America trying
Speaker 4: to find resource is from business to start stabilizing those countries.
Speaker 4: But this really is an issue that Congress needs to
Speaker 4: help solve through appropriations and really coming up with what
Speaker 4: is our Monroe Policy Marshall Plan for Latin America for
Speaker 4: the nine, ten, fifteen years, because you've better believe that
Speaker 4: Russia and China already have it in place. And so
Speaker 4: what the Biden administration is so definitely doing is really
Speaker 4: divorcing these two issues. That is international on one scope
Speaker 4: and then domestic immigration policy of the people that have
Speaker 4: been here for twenty thirty years. And that is really
Speaker 4: important to differentiate because when you pull and this is
Speaker 4: you know, you and I talk about this all the time.
Speaker 4: This is what happens when you have people pulling and
Speaker 4: not asking the right questions. When you ask every American
Speaker 4: should our border be safer? Every single American is going
Speaker 4: to agree with that, because we do want to know
Speaker 4: who's coming in and who's coming out. We do want
Speaker 4: to know that we are playing by the worlds, but
Speaker 4: more importantly, that we are being humane on how we're
Speaker 4: processing it and that we're being clear. But if you
Speaker 4: take a voter then and ask them, well, what do
Speaker 4: you think about your mechanic who's been here for twenty years,
Speaker 4: that's part of your community, all of a sudden that
Speaker 4: person says, well, Jose's a good guy. I know him.
Speaker 4: He coaches my daughter's soccer team. I think that you
Speaker 4: should figure out some sort of relief. And so with
Speaker 4: the Biden administration is finally having this conversation that we've
Speaker 4: been waiting for. How do you divorce an international crisis
Speaker 4: and issues that's impacting not just the United States but
Speaker 4: all of South America and abroad and the same time
Speaker 4: get our house in order at home so that people
Speaker 4: that have been paying taxes that are entrepreneurs that take
Speaker 4: care of us, that feed us, that are our teachers,
Speaker 4: finally are able to demonstrate that they have some sort
Speaker 4: of relief, especially in the case of there are bad
Speaker 4: actors who are constantly trying to divide America based on
Speaker 4: this idea of who is American or not. And this
Speaker 4: provides us with this opportunity to say we're actually creating
Speaker 4: smart changes to the law that are common sense and
Speaker 4: that are fair.
Speaker 1: A lot of Latino voters listen to the radio. Right,
Speaker 1: that's common I mean a lot of voters listen to
Speaker 1: the radio, local voters out of the Cella Corridor. Do
Speaker 1: you think that Latino voters are getting the Biden message
Speaker 1: and do you think Biden World is doing enough?
Speaker 4: I think that the Biden administration has been working so
Speaker 4: hard to get the country back aligned that they have
Speaker 4: not done as much communication up to this point. I
Speaker 4: do think that they're going to start doing more. But
Speaker 4: I also think that what we need are trust is
Speaker 4: sources that are advocates and representing the Latino community. And
Speaker 4: so one of the things that Motor Latino is doing.
Speaker 4: I mean, we've been negotiating with the White House for
Speaker 4: three and a half years I mean, to be frank,
Speaker 4: We've been negotiating this specific execative action a form of
Speaker 4: it since Obama, and so finally, a decade later, we
Speaker 4: are able to go back to our community and say, look,
Speaker 4: you you are not wrong that the difference between the
Speaker 4: Republicans and Democrats is the contrast of policy. The Republicans
Speaker 4: twice impeached candidate wants to double down on family separation,
Speaker 4: create a cottage industry of detention centers around the country,
Speaker 4: targeting people who don't look quote unquote American, meaning if
Speaker 4: you're not white, you can be caught in that drive day.
Speaker 1: Oh no question. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's so funny because people say, well, what is Saint
Speaker 4: Trump is going to do? I'm like, what do you mean,
Speaker 4: what do you do?
Speaker 1: You do you think that squads?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I believe him because he did everything
Speaker 4: he set out to do in his first administration except
Speaker 4: the promise of infrastructure. Talk about a massive failure, Talk
Speaker 4: about the fact that that was the only policy issue
Speaker 4: that was worth any salt. And you contrast that with Biden,
Speaker 4: who says we're going to provide relief to half a
Speaker 4: million individual spouses, and we're going to provide relief grandfathered
Speaker 4: into it a roughly fifty thousand children who are under
Speaker 4: eighteen that may qualify because of their parents. That is
Speaker 4: a family value, keeping families together. And so up to
Speaker 4: I will tell you there are all our pulling. Latinos
Speaker 4: were starting to lose faith with the administration. They were saying,
Speaker 4: all the Democrats are promising is that they're going to
Speaker 4: do something on immigration, but they don't understand the anxiety,
Speaker 4: the heartache, and the microaggressions that we have to face
Speaker 4: every single day, not knowing that if a Row agent
Speaker 4: is going to pull me over, that my family may
Speaker 4: not see me again. That's real. And now we can
Speaker 4: know you voted, you mobilized, and now we are able
Speaker 4: to deliver results on that. And you know what we
Speaker 4: need you to do again. If you want to finish
Speaker 4: the job on immigration, if you want to finish the
Speaker 4: job on protecting abortion care, we need to mobilize and
Speaker 4: organize and outvote just like you did last time. Because
Speaker 4: we're in this weird world, Molly, that you know, we
Speaker 4: see so many Democratic donors kind of letharging and saying, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know what to do, and I'm just like
Speaker 4: we actually have coalitions of organizations that know how to
Speaker 4: mobilize our voter And what we need you to do
Speaker 4: is to double down on us because we know how
Speaker 4: to do our work. And don't take my word for it.
Speaker 4: But in twenty eighteen, we put our heads down. As
Speaker 4: soon as Trump got into office, we put our heads
Speaker 4: down and a coalition of us made sure that we won.
Speaker 4: In twenty eighteen, we won, in twenty twenty, we won
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two. Let us do our work so
Speaker 4: that we could win again in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: We read so much about these nefarious billionaires who are
Speaker 1: donating money at a rapid clip to Donald Trump. There
Speaker 1: are some good guy billionaires on the other side, And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the women. Why do you think women
Speaker 1: the women billionaires and Michael Bloomberg. Let's give Michael Bloomberg
Speaker 1: credit where credit is due and read Hoffmann. But why
Speaker 1: do you think that all of these Loreen Powell jobs
Speaker 1: of the world are actually really involved in giving money
Speaker 1: and not in this like cheap fast Donald Trump need
Speaker 1: to keep the tack Scott.
Speaker 4: We have Louren Powell, who's always been a friend. We
Speaker 4: have Melinda Gates who is doubling down on women's leadership.
Speaker 4: McKenzie Scott, who gave a very generous donation to Vocal
Speaker 4: Latino six million dollars back in November, technically one of
Speaker 4: our very first pieces of political giving to any organization.
Speaker 4: And I think it's because they understand the stakes that
Speaker 4: Trump represents. If we were to take the helm again,
Speaker 4: we have under his tutelage, I guess, I mean, I
Speaker 4: hate to say leaders but against you know, under his
Speaker 4: platform a promise to eradicate women's access to our agency,
Speaker 4: not just through abortion, but through IVF. They are trying
Speaker 4: to upset public education in this country in ways that
Speaker 4: become unrecognizable that you start privatizing them. The Republicans are
Speaker 4: trying to lower the working age for children now to
Speaker 4: work in factories until four or five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 4: And I think that these women understand, because all of
Speaker 4: them have dedicated their philanthropy from the very beginning. They're
Speaker 4: true north to addressing women and girls, and women and
Speaker 4: girls are absolutely on the agenda, the most marginalized are
Speaker 4: absolutely in the agenda. And by its core, the Republican
Speaker 4: Party is trying to redefine what a fair, free democracy
Speaker 4: means where it's not where meritocracy, you know, can rise
Speaker 4: up to the top. It's whoever actually kisses the ring
Speaker 4: of an effective dictator. And when you when I talk
Speaker 4: to folks, you know, these billionaires talking about how you know,
Speaker 4: they're afraid of their taxes. It's almost as if they
Speaker 4: don't understand how a bill becomes a law. Right, It's like,
Speaker 4: this is a platform and you need to have a coalition,
Speaker 4: you actually need all branches of government.
Speaker 1: They don't, right.
Speaker 4: But I keep thinking of that, you know, that little
Speaker 4: song that we all grew up with, Schoolhouse Rock. Every
Speaker 4: time I thought to them because I'm like, come on, guys,
Speaker 4: you know better. But then at the same time, it
Speaker 4: was like, it's almost as if they've forgotten how they
Speaker 4: became billionaires. It's because they lived in a free, democratic
Speaker 4: society that had a thriving middle class, where the roads
Speaker 4: were already built, their workforce was educated, where they didn't
Speaker 4: have to worry about food in their belly, and they
Speaker 4: were able to think big because they didn't have government
Speaker 4: cronies trying to take money off the top from them.
Speaker 4: I had this really curious conversation, Molly, where someone was like, well,
Speaker 4: you know China has more billionaires now, I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: but think about Jack Maw and Ali Baba. Ali Baba
Speaker 4: was supposed to be the competitor to Amazon. It still is.
Speaker 4: His founder, Jack Maw has gone into the sunset because
Speaker 4: no one knows what happened to him, because he got
Speaker 4: too big for China. And that's an example for us.
Speaker 1: Cryptocracy is not good business.
Speaker 4: No, no, because all of a sudden, your great ideas
Speaker 4: don't go to the top. It's a matter of it's
Speaker 4: on the side of government. And if the government decides
Speaker 4: that you are sanctified to actually enjoy their riches and everything,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden becomes attacks because the corruption doesn't
Speaker 4: go from the just from the top, it bleeds down
Speaker 4: all the way to having For example, if the cable
Speaker 4: guy comes over and wants, you know, wire you up,
Speaker 4: are you going to have to pay him fifty bucks
Speaker 4: so that you can do it? Because that's what happens
Speaker 4: in Latin American democracy, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right right, And that I think that's a really
Speaker 1: really good point. I was interviewing an economist who was
Speaker 1: talking about how one of the many reasions why Trump
Speaker 1: is so scary is because he wants to put his
Speaker 1: finger on the fad and make them, you know, lower
Speaker 1: interest rates when he feels like it, to choose the economy.
Speaker 1: And you know that is how you get to Argentina.
Speaker 4: Right well, and this is you know again for for
Speaker 4: Allie's business, folks. One of the reasons we enjoy such
Speaker 4: a roaring economy is because people trust our system. They
Speaker 4: trust it to be fair. They understand that there are institutions,
Speaker 4: there are rules, there are laws that they know how
Speaker 4: to abide by. And in other places, again, people become
Speaker 4: democracies on paper if you actually look at the economies
Speaker 4: that thrive. Where capitalism thrives, it is under a sacred
Speaker 4: institution of democracy. That is where it thrives. The moment
Speaker 4: that you allow this evil corruption, it doesn't stop there.
Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, who wants to invest
Speaker 4: in a country if you don't know if your savings
Speaker 4: are quitte, you know if your investments are actually going
Speaker 4: to pialize because you don't know who the players are anymore.
Speaker 4: This way, we actually have codes of condact for conducting
Speaker 4: business exactly.
Speaker 1: Maria Theresa, thank you. I'm such a fan. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Or you're fabulous Molly.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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