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 says it's very possible
Speaker 1: he will have to jail President Biden.
Speaker 2: That's nice. We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin stops by to talk about the
Speaker 1: rights never ending aggression towards reproductive rights. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to the daily shows Jordan Klepper about what he sees
Speaker 1: when he attends those Maga rallies. But first we have
Speaker 1: the host of the Origin Story podcast and my personal
Speaker 1: friend Ian dunt Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Really one of my favorite guests, Ian, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Always an in Tadie show who you were referring to
Speaker 3: that Richardson.
Speaker 2: I'm very dopic for full disclosure.
Speaker 1: Before this we were talking, Jesse and I were both like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, something's happening in England.
Speaker 2: We can get Ian.
Speaker 3: Yes. Really in a way, that's the most president consequence
Speaker 3: of the general election here. So I'm glad we'll be
Speaker 3: satisfied that.
Speaker 1: Richie Sunak he has announced elections a little early, not
Speaker 1: like Nanya who was never going to have elections, but
Speaker 1: he picked July fourth because of how much he loves
Speaker 1: America discuss at certainly.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would predict that when he loses in
Speaker 3: a few weeks time, he will soon enough find himself
Speaker 3: on the shores of Silicon Valley, desperately hoping that one
Speaker 3: of the tech bros Will give him a job. That's
Speaker 3: clearly where he wants to be. In fact, genuinely, and
Speaker 3: I really didn't mean this, Some bills bandalists thought maybe
Speaker 3: he called the election for this period so that there
Speaker 3: was still time to get his kids into school in
Speaker 3: California when he ineveratively loses it, so it's better impossible
Speaker 3: in the one hundred percent, maybe as part of his
Speaker 3: great pr campaign for his next professional venturers to hold
Speaker 3: it on the fourth of July.
Speaker 1: It is a bit weird, right, I mean, is there
Speaker 1: something happening Underly fourth in the UK that we don't
Speaker 1: know about?
Speaker 3: No, I mean July fourth, you know, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 3: doesn't really mean anything over here at bathroom like an
Speaker 3: old Tom Cruise film, So I don't think I had
Speaker 3: much of a bell there. The timing of the election
Speaker 3: is just completely bizarre, and the first week of it
Speaker 3: we all just sat around being like, why what are
Speaker 3: you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you explain to us why? Because he could
Speaker 1: have kept this going for another like six months.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly. He can call the election whenever he likes.
Speaker 3: You have to have it within a five year period,
Speaker 3: like you can't just drag it on forever. It's still
Speaker 3: like just about kind of a functioning democracy over here.
Speaker 3: Within that you could just do what you like. Really,
Speaker 3: we expected him to call it late because he's going
Speaker 3: to lose, you know, and people are the prime minister.
Speaker 3: They usually like being prime minister, so they just wait
Speaker 3: as long as they now not.
Speaker 2: To put too fine a point on it, yes, go.
Speaker 3: On, exactly. This is my really deep, acute perceptive political
Speaker 3: analysis that you're getting right now. It's like they like
Speaker 3: not losing and so they do not put an election.
Speaker 3: So from that you can come to one conclusion, which
Speaker 3: is that imagine like the thought process that you have
Speaker 3: if you're in Downing Street, if you're the government, thinking
Speaker 3: when are we going to have the election? You're constantly thinking,
Speaker 3: we're waiting something to come along to improve our electoral prospects.
Speaker 3: And at the point that you think, you know what,
Speaker 3: nothing's ever going to come. Like, you know, the economy,
Speaker 3: biggs look bad, health figures look bad, finances look bad.
Speaker 3: Eventually you just think, well, we might as well just
Speaker 3: hold it now, because this is as good as it's
Speaker 3: ever going to get. So it wasn't so much a
Speaker 3: sort of confident announcement of an election. It was more
Speaker 3: of this sad song of defeat, like an admission of defeat.
Speaker 3: When he said we're going to have a general election now,
Speaker 3: it literally sounded like an animal dying on the side
Speaker 3: of a road.
Speaker 1: I laugh to keep from crying, and not because I
Speaker 1: find you're pain funny.
Speaker 2: But maybe a little. So he basically just gave up.
Speaker 3: I mean it really does feel like it. You should
Speaker 3: see the state of him. I mean, I have to
Speaker 3: say that I'm not going to deny any of this
Speaker 3: after you know, eight years or so of just acute
Speaker 3: political pain and disappointment. I've spent almost every day of
Speaker 3: the last two weeks laughing my ass off at what
Speaker 3: is going on here, because he is having one of
Speaker 3: the worst election campaigns I've seen in my life. And
Speaker 3: it started with the announcement.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about the rain?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the rain. I just I've never seen political ineptity
Speaker 3: on this scale, I think, for all of my days.
Speaker 3: So he comes out. It's been raining for days. You know,
Speaker 3: it's England, right, this is how it goes. So it's
Speaker 3: been raining just for days. Everything was sobtly onwear. He
Speaker 3: comes out of Downing Street. There's no reason to announce
Speaker 3: the election outside, except of course, for the fact that
Speaker 3: you know, he wants to have the image of the
Speaker 3: door behind it, you know, the door down the street,
Speaker 3: which really is just a prop at this point, just
Speaker 3: another part of our pathological national sentimentality. He needs to
Speaker 3: have that door behind him so he can look states.
Speaker 3: And yet it's raining and you're like, so the whole
Speaker 3: day and he's thinking like, you can't possibly, you can't
Speaker 3: do it outside because you know it's raining. For two
Speaker 3: or three minutes before he comes out, the sun emerges
Speaker 3: from the clouds like and suddenly I thought, oh no,
Speaker 3: this is it. We always lose, you know, the liberals.
Speaker 3: We always lose, as what we're used to happening in
Speaker 3: this country for the last few years. And now you know,
Speaker 3: the gods are going to shine on him. So he
Speaker 3: steps outside and that one second, as soon as he
Speaker 3: leaves the building, the rain begins and he just gets
Speaker 3: absolutely drenched out there. He goes and he makes his speech,
Speaker 3: and his speech is basically some total of all he
Speaker 3: has to communicate to people is I have got a plan.
Speaker 3: Trust my plan, Put your faith in my plan. And
Speaker 3: yet the spectacle of him, this man in an expensive suit,
Speaker 3: standing outside in the rain without an umbrella, drenched to
Speaker 3: the bone, telling you to trust him because he's got
Speaker 3: a plan, was one of the most preposterous sights I've
Speaker 3: seen in a very long time, and pretty much the
Speaker 3: perfect curtain opener to what has then gone on to
Speaker 3: be a disastrously inect campaign.
Speaker 2: Yes, it just kept raining and raining and raining.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the suit is basically ruined, and he looks like
Speaker 3: what he is, which is a very desperate, grasping man
Speaker 3: hoping for one final chance, which he's not really getting.
Speaker 3: So in the weeks that have followed from that, everything
Speaker 3: that could possibly go wrong for him has gone wrong
Speaker 3: for him. And I mean, the worst moment of all
Speaker 3: I suspect came a couple of days ago when Nigel
Speaker 3: Farage for the Reform Party announced that he was taking
Speaker 3: over the leadership and going to run for parliament. Now
Speaker 3: Nigel Farrage is extremely far to the right. He runs
Speaker 3: around you. You may have seen him as one of
Speaker 3: the sort of best friends of Donald Trump. He is
Speaker 3: entirely in that movel, just an extreme, venal, nasty, anti
Speaker 3: immigrant tos in in the political blood system. We thought
Speaker 3: that he wasn't going to bother He actually wrote a
Speaker 3: letter saying, I can't be bothered to run because I
Speaker 3: really should be off in the US doing something important,
Speaker 3: not dabbling around and let old Englin. This is the
Speaker 3: kind of patriotism that he supposedly espouses. Now he's decided
Speaker 3: to run, and that really is a complete disaster for
Speaker 3: the Prime Minster.
Speaker 1: I thought he was going to the States to help
Speaker 1: Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Yes, well that was his plan, and now apparently it
Speaker 3: turns out that he wants to run to become the
Speaker 3: Member of Parliament for a part of Essex. He may
Speaker 3: or may not get that seat, it's not entirely clear,
Speaker 3: but just by being there, I mean, he's charismatic in
Speaker 3: the way that you know, you can find some meaning
Speaker 3: in a really sodden ashtray. And what is exactly what
Speaker 3: he looks like. He looks like the smell of old
Speaker 3: cigarettes basically, and behaves pretty much with the same kind
Speaker 3: of moral substance to it. And yet nevertheless he is
Speaker 3: liked by about twenty percent of the population. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a pretty low ceiling on his support. But the
Speaker 3: people that support him really really like him. They are
Speaker 3: on the right, hard right, and they will lose those
Speaker 3: votes from the Conservative Party to the Reform Party. So
Speaker 3: not only is Richie Suena facing this really quite cataclysmic
Speaker 3: challenge from the center and the left and even arguably
Speaker 3: the center right, he's now also facing a separate challenge
Speaker 3: on the hard right, giving him almost no political sport
Speaker 3: whatsoever in which to operate.
Speaker 2: Right now, talk to me about milkshake Gate.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, right, Well, Nije Raj was out a couple
Speaker 3: of days ago.
Speaker 2: I have to hit on all the real highlights. By
Speaker 2: the way, I love that.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, you know, I had all
Speaker 1: these brotherish friends. They seemed so elegant, they had these
Speaker 1: great you know, you have this coalition government. You guys
Speaker 1: seem so smart. Not anymore talk about milkshake gay.
Speaker 3: No, we just have very good pr That is the
Speaker 3: sum koto of our image. So Nigel Farage is out,
Speaker 3: he's walking around a woman very sensibly sees him and
Speaker 3: thinks that the only rational thing to do is to
Speaker 3: get hem of Donald's banana milkshake and throw it all
Speaker 3: over him, which she did. Now this is actually it's
Speaker 3: almost like a British subculture. It started I think about
Speaker 3: five or six years ago when arasis far right figure
Speaker 3: was talking to some Asian guys and they were just like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I don't feel that we need to
Speaker 3: engage in the battle of ideas here. I think we
Speaker 3: should just engage in the kind of battle of milkshakes,
Speaker 3: and just started throwing their milkshakes at him. And then
Speaker 3: they started following other figures from the hard right around,
Speaker 3: people like Nigel far covering him in milkshake. So this
Speaker 3: old and I think, really, you know, other admirable British
Speaker 3: tradition has now emerged once again and he was covered
Speaker 3: in milkshake at that moment. She's now being charged with assault.
Speaker 3: Seems rather forl on to me. But nevertheless, it's a trope. Now,
Speaker 3: what are these elections going to look like?
Speaker 1: Now you basically have this coalition government, so members are
Speaker 1: running by different parties and then the numbers who get elected. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm explaining this explain it to us. Yes, I can't
Speaker 1: know what.
Speaker 3: I very much enjoyed listening to you. Try.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yes, I'm here for fun.
Speaker 3: There's six hundred and fifty seats and there's no sort
Speaker 3: of electoral college complications or any of that to this.
Speaker 3: There's basically just six hundred and fifty seats. Party that's
Speaker 3: got the majority. In other words, more than three hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five. There's some complications there, but basically more
Speaker 3: than three hundred and twenty five just gets to form
Speaker 3: the government. You know, you're not voting for the leader
Speaker 3: in any way. They just happen to be the leader
Speaker 3: of the party that start the seeds. We've never seen
Speaker 3: the Tories fall below a certain level, you know, below
Speaker 3: sort of two hundred or anything like that. The current
Speaker 3: projections of where they're heading to is sort of like
Speaker 3: under one hundred seats, just sort of EXI central that
Speaker 3: there's some projections that came out this week and look,
Speaker 3: this can't happen. I don't say that on the basis
Speaker 3: of calculation, but just by I can't believe that it
Speaker 3: would happen. You know, that puts them on things like
Speaker 3: sixty fives. That's the kind of numbers that could potentially
Speaker 3: be the extinction of the Conservative Body. Now, the Conservative
Speaker 3: Body is the oldest political party in the Western world.
Speaker 1: And basically has been empower our whole adult lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean or off. I mean, it's been in
Speaker 3: powered much more than Labour's been in power. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, we had the Tony Blair period and the
Speaker 3: Orden Brown periods, so Labor has these long stints in power.
Speaker 3: But the Tories have been around as a viable and
Speaker 3: extremely successful political party since the exclusion crisis in the
Speaker 3: sixteen hundreds. You know, this is a really, really old organization.
Speaker 3: And right now people who are typically quite cautious in
Speaker 3: that political analysis and don't like to appear hysterical or
Speaker 3: over excited, are talking very genuinely about what if this
Speaker 3: actually is the party? What if we are just seeing
Speaker 3: one of those moments I mean that are not that
Speaker 3: different to you know, Brexit and Trump, but you know,
Speaker 3: just these moments of like where it can't happen, can it?
Speaker 3: Until actually it does? That is perfectly possible from where
Speaker 3: we are right now, and it would happen because a
Speaker 3: mixture of factors, but at the heart of them, is
Speaker 3: the catastrophic and complete failure of populacey. You know, unlike
Speaker 3: in Europe where populist parties run against mainstream parties, Britain
Speaker 3: has functioned much like the US, where the mainstream center
Speaker 3: right party has absorbed populism whole set. I mean they
Speaker 3: have absorbed it entirely. And what have they done. They
Speaker 3: complain about immigrants, they complain about asylum seekers, they complain
Speaker 3: about trans people. But all the years that they've been
Speaker 3: doing that, the economy falls apart, the healthcare system falls apart,
Speaker 3: the schools, the prisons, the transport. It's just a sense
Speaker 3: that nothing works, Nothing in the country works. Last week,
Speaker 3: when our Equalities minister I mean named the best already
Speaker 3: in manner imaginable, spends an entire day of the election
Speaker 3: wanting to come out to talk about that policy on
Speaker 3: excluding trans people from toilets and from great crisis centers.
Speaker 3: The response is at culture or response that she's looking for.
Speaker 3: It's more why in the name of God are you
Speaker 3: talking about this rather than talking about the fact that
Speaker 3: you cannot make anything in this country actually work. So
Speaker 3: what you're seeing is not just the death of conservative
Speaker 3: because it's really the death of a populist form of
Speaker 3: reactionary politics in the UK.
Speaker 1: It's so right and it's so interesting, but it's also
Speaker 1: what's happening with this Republican Party. I mean, we don't
Speaker 1: know if Trump is going to win. Obviously, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of machinations and inaccuracies in the polls. But we
Speaker 1: are in a moment in American life where thirty nine
Speaker 1: Republican Senators yesterday voted against the Right to Contraception Act
Speaker 1: so you can get birth control pills and condoms, and
Speaker 1: Republicans are like, oh, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, Oh my god. Although, by the way, it quite
Speaker 3: meaningful that even as I thought it really was the
Speaker 3: Right to Conception Act, it didn't necessarily seem like some
Speaker 3: three Republicans would oppose just on points of reason or practicality. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: why not? Why not that as well?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such an interesting moment because you do find,
Speaker 1: you know, these culture war things, punishing trans people, punishing
Speaker 1: gay people, punishing women who have abortions, those don't actually
Speaker 1: help the economy.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. It's as if there's two separate approaches now
Speaker 3: that you're seeing across Europe. In the US. I think
Speaker 3: so Kirstarma, the late Party leader, is really quite similar
Speaker 3: to Joe Biden, I think in his form of sort
Speaker 3: of centrist response to populism, which is just to try
Speaker 3: and kill those issues there and to position himself really,
Speaker 3: you know, in the middle of left and right. You know,
Speaker 3: very open state intervention in the economy, very open sort
Speaker 3: of borrowing money in order to spend, but at the
Speaker 3: same time obviously not socialistic or anything like that, and
Speaker 3: yet not allowing the culture war on open clothes, that
Speaker 3: secondary up down binary to define them, to just try
Speaker 3: and kill those cultural war issues. In Europe you often
Speaker 3: see a really different approach from people like Emmanuel Macron,
Speaker 3: where they're a centrist on left right issues on the
Speaker 3: economic issues, but when it comes to open clothes Racron,
Speaker 3: just like Tony Blair did before him, defines himself as
Speaker 3: an advocate for right. It's actually quite embracing many of
Speaker 3: the culture war distinctions, the sort of anti Trump, the
Speaker 3: anti Brexit. That's not really what we're seeing in Starmer.
Speaker 3: Stalmer's project is much more similar to Joe Biden's, and
Speaker 3: it's really an intend to just take all that culture
Speaker 3: war stuff and just bury it, just bury it in
Speaker 3: the earth. Look, what I pledged to you is a
Speaker 3: machine that works like competent government with people who've followed
Speaker 3: based moral instructs. You aren't ashamed to see who your
Speaker 3: political leaders are. They have a call social responsibility, and
Speaker 3: we'll just do the hard work to make society operate
Speaker 3: again in the way that it has failed to do
Speaker 3: when populace have been in charge.
Speaker 1: It's like they found the stupidest p people to run
Speaker 1: the government, right, I mean, and those people got together
Speaker 1: and came up with the stupidest ideas and then they
Speaker 1: were like, what's the harm? I mean, like Margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 1: I think so much about Margaret Thatcher. I remember growing
Speaker 1: up thinking that that was like pretty much the worst
Speaker 1: you could get. Or Ronald Reagan and those people are
Speaker 1: like geniuses compared to the Conservative Party of today.
Speaker 3: I completely agree. I completely agree, And like Thatcher had
Speaker 3: actually read Hayek, you know, she'd actually read the stuff
Speaker 3: I mean saying, by the way, for Ronald Reagan, they
Speaker 3: both read von Mises, like all of that stuff maybe
Speaker 3: just the most appalling laissez fair neoliberal clap trap of
Speaker 3: the highest order. And it is. It has failed every
Speaker 3: time it's been implemented. It's a lunacy that is exactly
Speaker 3: as insane as communism on the other side, just it
Speaker 3: happens to love the pre market instead of the state.
Speaker 3: But at least it has intellectual content to it, at
Speaker 3: least there's some kind of basis that a rational, intelligent
Speaker 3: person could grapple with it. The kind of stuff that
Speaker 3: comes out now from the people that consider themselves their
Speaker 3: political descendants, and it is stupid in ways that makes
Speaker 3: you think that your own brain is shrinking inside the
Speaker 3: inside of your skull rather than come into context. I mean,
Speaker 3: the other day, Richard Saying's current policy is basically to
Speaker 3: just throw any half hearted, half conceived idea out there
Speaker 3: as long as it seems upsetting to liberals and encouraging
Speaker 3: to some of the most venal and self interested people
Speaker 3: into South. The other day he popped up in his
Speaker 3: act of desperation and just said, you know what, We're
Speaker 3: going to bring back national service.
Speaker 2: I love national service, but go on, go on. I
Speaker 2: know no one else likes it, it's just me likes it,
Speaker 2: but go on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are countries in Europe, you know, in Scandinavia
Speaker 3: that have national service. Fine, if in a particular context,
Speaker 3: for a particular reason. You come up with this as
Speaker 3: an idea. That's a thing to be in the middle
Speaker 3: of a campaign where you're losing even majority support among
Speaker 3: the over sixty fives, the one group that could always
Speaker 3: be trusted. They can just think, you know what, after
Speaker 3: young people have been kept inside for two to three
Speaker 3: years over COVID in order to protect the disease, why
Speaker 3: don't we just plug into your emotional resentment of the
Speaker 3: young purely on the basis of their youth and really
Speaker 3: trigger that. And you're can just say, you know what,
Speaker 3: don't worry, We're going to send the eighteen year odds
Speaker 3: to walk. And of course, as soon as he announces it,
Speaker 3: outcome the questions, right, he says, look, you've got to
Speaker 3: do this. It's going to be for a year. You
Speaker 3: can of course do voluntary service or whatever, but also
Speaker 3: otherwise you get I'm going to do it the course
Speaker 3: of a year when you're eighteen, And then the questions start,
Speaker 3: what if someone's in university doesn't really have an answer that.
Speaker 3: What if that person actually has kids themselves doesn't really
Speaker 3: have an answer to that. What if that person has
Speaker 3: a job doesn't have an answer to that it didn't
Speaker 3: even bother do we even I mean even to say
Speaker 3: we used to say that, you know, they'd write it
Speaker 3: on the back of a cigarette packet the policy. But
Speaker 3: the honest truth is a cigarette packet would offer far
Speaker 3: too much space for the degree of thinking that has
Speaker 3: gone into these policy.
Speaker 2: In thank you, you are just the best. I appreciate
Speaker 2: you so much.
Speaker 4: Now that's right, the best.
Speaker 3: Good luck, like even real need it.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Tammy Baldwin is the junior Senator from the state of Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Speaker 4: I am delighted to join you.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 1: Yesterday, thirty nine Republican Senators voted against this Right to
Speaker 1: Contraception Act.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about what was in the act.
Speaker 4: First, I'm going to say just what the necessity for
Speaker 4: the Act is. When the Dobbs decision came down almost
Speaker 4: two years ago, overturning rel versus Wade because the Court
Speaker 4: basically said it was wrongigh decided back in nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: three because there is no constitutional right to privacy. That
Speaker 4: drew into question, well, what other cases has the Court
Speaker 4: decided based on a constitutional right to privacy? And one
Speaker 4: of the key cases, a case called Griswold versus Connecticut,
Speaker 4: really revolves around access to contraception and basically makes it
Speaker 4: clear that states cannot ban access to contraception. And so
Speaker 4: if it weren't enough that the majority opinion implied that
Speaker 4: this could be next. Just as Clarence Thomas set it
Speaker 4: outright in his concurring opinion, he listed a bunch of
Speaker 4: cases that were decided based on a right to privacy
Speaker 4: and said, Wow, perhaps the US Supreme Court as it's
Speaker 4: currently composed should reconsider these cases, should bring them up
Speaker 4: anew And that's where the threat to our access to contraception,
Speaker 4: birth control, that's where that threat presented itself. You know,
Speaker 4: we never thought Row would be overturned. It was, and
Speaker 4: now we have to be very vigilant about these other
Speaker 4: rights and freedoms that are based on a constitutional right
Speaker 4: to privacy that this Supreme Court thinks no longer exists.
Speaker 4: And so one of the things that would help clarify
Speaker 4: things is if we were to pass the Right to
Speaker 4: Contraception Act, which we tried to do yesterday. And while
Speaker 4: there's eighty eight to ninety percent approval among the American
Speaker 4: people about access to contraception, apparently half the Senate, predominantly
Speaker 4: the Republicans save two of them, are not in favor
Speaker 4: of a right to access contraception.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an interesting bill because it's birth control
Speaker 1: pills and condoms and things that are pretty popular in
Speaker 1: this country. What do you think the thinking here is
Speaker 1: on the right.
Speaker 4: Well, we had a hearing in the Senate Help Committee
Speaker 4: earlier this week on basically access to reproductive rights across
Speaker 4: the country. It was focused as we approached the two
Speaker 4: year anniversary of the Dodge decision overturning Roe versus Wade.
Speaker 4: But we had some testimony from a couple of the
Speaker 4: Republican witnesses, one in particular, who were clearly opposed to
Speaker 4: the use of iud's, for example, contraceptive devices Plan B,
Speaker 4: which is called the Morning After Pill. It was very
Speaker 4: clear that despite the fact that nearly ninety percent of
Speaker 4: the American public supports access to contraception. That these Republican
Speaker 4: witnesses were saying, no, No, We're seeing this in the
Speaker 4: states play out. We've seen several state legislatures pass bills
Speaker 4: that would guarantee state right to access contraception, and then
Speaker 4: we've seen Republican governors of veto those bills. And in
Speaker 4: Wisconsin we have such a bill pending, but the Republican
Speaker 4: majority in the state legislature won't even bring the bill
Speaker 4: up for a vote.
Speaker 1: So part of this is this wildly anti science right
Speaker 1: wing transition from the quote unquote heartbeat bill, which again
Speaker 1: was it anything that looked like a heartbeat meant that
Speaker 1: the embryo was a person, to now this embryonic personhood.
Speaker 1: So basically the right is is shopping this notion that
Speaker 1: once an egg is fertilized, it is a human.
Speaker 4: Well, certainly you see that both among legislators who make
Speaker 4: those claims, but also we saw it in the Alabama
Speaker 4: Supreme Court which said that the use of in vitro fertilization,
Speaker 4: you know that that was a human and entitled to
Speaker 4: all the rights of humans. And so the implications are
Speaker 4: clearly that there's a group of folks who would like
Speaker 4: that to be the standard in the United States.
Speaker 1: So they are really painting themselves into a corner here though,
Speaker 1: on the right, because once you go down this road,
Speaker 1: you say the morning after pill you can't have that,
Speaker 1: iud eas you can't have that. And then IVF, which
Speaker 1: is wildly popular. It's miraculous you have people like Mike
Speaker 1: Pens talking about having done IVF.
Speaker 2: You close the door to IVF.
Speaker 4: Right, that would be the logical next step when you
Speaker 4: look at the claims that we've just been discussing. But
Speaker 4: we're talking about the ability of women in particular to
Speaker 4: control their own bodies and to decide when or whether
Speaker 4: to start a family. And we're talking both about access
Speaker 4: to abortion care, but we're also talking about, as you said,
Speaker 4: the miracle of IVF for couples who are trying to
Speaker 4: start a family and needing IVF to do so.
Speaker 1: So one of the things you have in Wisconsin, you're
Speaker 1: holding hearings with the Wisconsin doctor about working under this
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine criminal abortion ban. Explain to us what
Speaker 1: that is and what that means.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, when the Dobbs decision came out nearly two
Speaker 4: years ago, overturning roll versus way state law became the
Speaker 4: governing law. And so in Wisconsin we have a measure
Speaker 4: that was passed one year after statehood in eighteen forty
Speaker 4: nine that is widely viewed as a criminal abortion ban.
Speaker 4: When the Dobs decision came fourth, all access stopped in
Speaker 4: the state of Wisconsin. It was horrendous, and doctor Linton
Speaker 4: talked a little bit about some of the experiences she witnessed.
Speaker 4: There were people in the waiting room for appointments that
Speaker 4: morning two years ago and people were told, we can't
Speaker 4: provide you with services. And there were also harrowing stories
Speaker 4: that have been shared because the only exception for that
Speaker 4: eighteen forty nine law is the life of the mother.
Speaker 4: Women being left to suffer and suffer harm and not
Speaker 4: being provided care within the state of Wisconsin until near death.
Speaker 4: So the stories of a woman who was bleeding for days,
Speaker 4: a woman who's water broke at seventeen weeks and was
Speaker 4: sent home and not provided any life saving care until
Speaker 4: she had a fever that spiked and was facing the
Speaker 4: risk of sepsis. This is not healthcare. It is cruel
Speaker 4: and I will say, you know, What has happened in
Speaker 4: Wisconsin since then is that in three counties they have
Speaker 4: resumed providing abortion care because of a trial court judge
Speaker 4: determining that the eighteen forty nine statute in Wisconsin was
Speaker 4: never intended to apply to consensual abortion care. But only
Speaker 4: three counties out of seventy two can you get service,
Speaker 4: and that means there are many for who getting the
Speaker 4: cow brands of healthcare that they should get is out
Speaker 4: of reach, either financially or because of distances or all
Speaker 4: the obstacles that have been placed in people's way.
Speaker 1: It is like one of the things that for me,
Speaker 1: as someone who's forty five, it just blows my mind
Speaker 1: that we're here. But when you read Thomas's concurring opinion,
Speaker 1: he actually opens the door to birth control, gay marriage,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the things that were wins in
Speaker 1: the last couple decades. Overturning Row taking away that right
Speaker 1: really created a sort of sea change in the conservative playbook.
Speaker 1: You know, it does seem like they're going for more
Speaker 1: and more. What can you do as a as a
Speaker 1: senitor to try to slow this down, gum up the works,
Speaker 1: anything you can do.
Speaker 4: We read the decision carefully in Dobbs, and especially the
Speaker 4: concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas where he calls out
Speaker 4: the cases and we get to work. He went after
Speaker 4: gay marriage. You're right, he suggested we relitigate the Oberger
Speaker 4: Bell case from twenty fifteen, and I think about how
Speaker 4: hard fought that victory was over many, many years. So
Speaker 4: when that case came down, when Dobbs came down, we
Speaker 4: introduced the Respect for Marriage Act, which by the way,
Speaker 4: covers both interracial marriages and same sex marriages because both
Speaker 4: were based on this right to privacy that we were
Speaker 4: talking about.
Speaker 1: There's an opportunity here to point out something about justice Toime.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to, but I'm just going to say
Speaker 1: that he actually didn't mention interracial marriage.
Speaker 4: That is correct. He left that out of his list
Speaker 4: of cases that the Supreme Court might revisit. So anyways,
Speaker 4: we got to work, and I remember my conversations with
Speaker 4: Republican senators who I felt like wanted to get to
Speaker 4: yes to protect interracial and same sex marriages, and working
Speaker 4: over weeks and weeks and months, but we passed the
Speaker 4: Respect for Marriage Act, which your listeners should think of
Speaker 4: an insurance policy that your marriage will be protected in
Speaker 4: every state and by the federal government should a Supreme
Speaker 4: Court look at reversing either the Loving case or the
Speaker 4: Oberger Felk case in the future. And we passed that
Speaker 4: so that right now that freedom is protected. That's what
Speaker 4: we were trying to do yesterday with the Right to
Speaker 4: Contraception Act is make sure that we take the next
Speaker 4: step and protect another right and freedom that has been
Speaker 4: long standing in the United States of America because it
Speaker 4: is under threat. I hope. While only two Republicans out
Speaker 4: of the forty nine who serve in the US Senate
Speaker 4: voted for the Right to Contraception Act, we must pass it.
Speaker 4: We must continue working on this, and we must restore
Speaker 4: the rights articulated in Roll versus way, which means passing
Speaker 4: my Women's Health Protection Act. So we've got to keep
Speaker 4: this fight up.
Speaker 2: So you are running for reelection against someone a new Wisconsin, ight,
Speaker 2: I feel like he has failed to sort of catch
Speaker 2: on in the state. Can you do two seconds about
Speaker 2: your opponent there?
Speaker 4: I can so. My opponent, Eric Hovedy. While he was
Speaker 4: born and raised in Wisconsin, he spent his adult career
Speaker 4: living twenty four years in Washington, BC, running a hedge
Speaker 4: Fund and much more recently living in Laguna Beach, California,
Speaker 4: running a three billion dollar bank, and he is a
Speaker 4: multimillionaire who is self financing. He could not be more
Speaker 4: of a contrast in terms of the very issues that
Speaker 4: we're talking about now. He did return home once earlier
Speaker 4: to run for US Senate back in twenty twelve, so
Speaker 4: we have him on the record saying that he was
Speaker 4: a one hundred percent opposed to abortion rights and talking
Speaker 4: about life beginning at conception, and saying that he would
Speaker 4: repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, all these
Speaker 4: positions that he took. Now that he's running another time,
Speaker 4: he is trying to dance around his former positions, maybe
Speaker 4: sounding a little bit more moderate. But you know, as
Speaker 4: I watched Donald Trump and Eric Hovedy try to reframe
Speaker 4: their positions after celebrating the Dobbs decision and overturning Rovers's wait,
Speaker 4: they're fighting about, well, the federal government should decide no, no,
Speaker 4: the state government should decide Well, I say women should
Speaker 4: decide period no.
Speaker 2: And that's right.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people feel like that
Speaker 1: women and their doctors are not Republican politicians Wisconsin, there
Speaker 1: have been like huge strides, but you still are state
Speaker 1: that has very much struggled with jerrymandering and a state
Speaker 1: legislature that has been you know, you could have things
Speaker 1: like what Minnesota has for you breakfast, You have some
Speaker 1: things like that, but you could have more of that
Speaker 1: if you had a state legislature that was less right wing.
Speaker 4: I will say something very heartening, which is the governor
Speaker 4: signed into law a couple months ago a new map
Speaker 4: that is a fair map, a not je commanded map.
Speaker 4: And so this fall, the folks who are running for
Speaker 4: status SEM and state Senate are doing so in much
Speaker 4: fairer districts. And we have a record number, it seems,
Speaker 4: of candidates stepping up to run who just two years
Speaker 4: ago would have looked at the map and said, oh,
Speaker 4: I can't possibly win in this district and are now
Speaker 4: got on the ballot and they're now knocking on doors.
Speaker 4: And so I do see some real excitement at the
Speaker 4: grassroots level that we can have a much more representative
Speaker 4: state legislature than we have had for a decade and
Speaker 4: a half.
Speaker 1: That is so great. Thank you so much, Senator Baldwin.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4: I look forward to it. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Jordan Kuepper is a Daily Show correspondent and his special
Speaker 1: Moscow Tools is out on Comedy Central. Right now, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Jordan Klepper.
Speaker 2: Ami, Jordan, you did this special? Where did you go? Exactly?
Speaker 5: Well, this special, I went as far away as Estonia
Speaker 5: and as club as Pennsylvania for the special. So we
Speaker 5: were covering Russian misinformation and noticing it primarily at MAGA events,
Speaker 5: and so we went to like Green Bay and Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: and people were talking about Vladimir Putin. They were talking about,
Speaker 5: frankly parroting Russian misinformation, misinformation that we sort of connected
Speaker 5: to this Kremlin report that the Washroom Post reported on,
Speaker 5: and that took us a little bit around the country
Speaker 5: and then ultimately to the border of Russia and Estonia
Speaker 5: to talk to the Prime minister. So we you know,
Speaker 5: we put in some we put in some miles for
Speaker 5: this one.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting is like we in the
Speaker 1: sort of news bubble, we read pieces all the time
Speaker 1: that are like Kremlin influence campaigns. They're vague and they
Speaker 1: say things like, you know, there's a Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: account that's really run by the Kremlin, and there's also
Speaker 1: a White Lives Matter account that's you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like that they're they're trying to sew division, but this
Speaker 1: is really them trying to speak to a certain group
Speaker 1: of people and it's working very much.
Speaker 5: So I think one of their goals is to, yes,
Speaker 5: just flood it with misinformation to accentuate the divisions that
Speaker 5: are already there. And what we see when we are
Speaker 5: out on the road is we see these talking points
Speaker 5: being parroted, and again, some of those are homegrown American
Speaker 5: divisions that Russia just fans the flames of and some
Speaker 5: of the bs that is planted into the news cycle
Speaker 5: that a lot of the folks at these Trump rallies
Speaker 5: are ingesting, and then they're parroting, and then they're using
Speaker 5: as an example and a reason to support Vladimir Putin
Speaker 5: or to discredit what's happening in Ukraine. And I think
Speaker 5: this is where we were excited about doing this special
Speaker 5: because frankly, we can talk to journalists and talk to
Speaker 5: people who can articulate the desires and the wants of
Speaker 5: the Kremlin, and then we can actually go out into
Speaker 5: the field and show how that's having a very real
Speaker 5: effect on the conversation.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting is that we have had
Speaker 1: this problem probably since I mean maybe even before, but
Speaker 1: it's become a sort of pronounced problem since twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Right since twenty sixteen, we've seen like real concrete evidence
Speaker 1: of the Kremlin and you know, getting in there and
Speaker 1: influencing voters. But what I think is a little bit
Speaker 1: new is that the Kremlin has gotten in there and
Speaker 1: influenced lawmakers.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think we're seeing that, and this was the
Speaker 5: news story of the last couple of months, is that
Speaker 5: these Kremlin talking points are being echoed on the House floor.
Speaker 5: They're literally coming up works for funding for Ukraine. They
Speaker 5: have real world effects, and so yes, there's been a
Speaker 5: cat of mouse game between the US and Russia, and
Speaker 5: Russia has tried to influence talking points in America for years.
Speaker 5: I think the ground is right for its success, and
Speaker 5: we've seen very real, concrete examples of a success. I
Speaker 5: think another thing we noticed too is beyond the success
Speaker 5: it was having with Ukraine and the conversation around funding Ukraine,
Speaker 5: there's a larger, kind of darker question that it brings
Speaker 5: up is, yes, Russia feeds the far right and at
Speaker 5: sometimes also the left whatever they can to fuel the vision,
Speaker 5: they feed them the things they want to hear. But
Speaker 5: also there's something there and something new which feels like
Speaker 5: a true, earnest desire for autocratic methods. And I don't
Speaker 5: think the American public has a totally clear understanding of
Speaker 5: what it's like to live under an autocratic regime. That's
Speaker 5: part of the reason we went to Estonium. But I
Speaker 5: think there's a darker question. We need to ask ourselves.
Speaker 5: How much of this is Russia tampering with American sensibilities
Speaker 5: and how much of this is American sensibilities in the
Speaker 5: MAGA movement are really leaning and slouching towards Moscow. They
Speaker 5: want an autocratic, tough guy, white Christian nationalist leader will
Speaker 5: crack down on crimes and be socially conservative. That's something that,
Speaker 5: as we're articulating the special is a bit of a
Speaker 5: Republican white dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I mean it's funny because I just read this
Speaker 1: book all about the right love affair with autocracy, and
Speaker 1: how you know, you had Republicans talking about how much
Speaker 1: they love Pino set right, Like this is not a
Speaker 1: new phenomenon, But what is a new phenomenon is this
Speaker 1: fact that there seems to be some amount of people
Speaker 1: and again we can argue about how they've gotten here
Speaker 1: that actually do want this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a message that is sticky to a good
Speaker 5: portion of the populace right now. And again you look
Speaker 5: at the person there there to see at these MAGA
Speaker 5: events is going to not only echo some of these perspectives,
Speaker 5: but has been on the stage next to Vladimir Putin
Speaker 5: and essentially given the big thumbs up. So you know,
Speaker 5: we were surprised to see in the field. I talked
Speaker 5: to a woman who watched Putin fishing videos and got
Speaker 5: excited about that. People see this strong man image, which
Speaker 5: seems comical, is comical. It's pure propaganda. There's stock in lakes.
Speaker 6: With fish, so this guy can dive in all out
Speaker 6: a walleye and look like Kingdom the world and that plays.
Speaker 6: There are people in America who watch that like cute
Speaker 6: cat videos, and they see this as like a tough
Speaker 6: guy who's found success. Again, the digital age that we're
Speaker 6: in has only created a space where misinformation propaganda, where
Speaker 6: situations where you can embed stories and images and then
Speaker 6: erase the places that they came from and the people
Speaker 6: will do your bidding, they will send it out there.
Speaker 6: There's a little bit of and this Washington Post story
Speaker 6: that talked about the new form of propaganda and misinformation
Speaker 6: is to essentially to create a news story and then
Speaker 6: erase the place with which it came from and just
Speaker 6: bank on true social or x or people to tweet
Speaker 6: it out. And the fact that it has gained traction
Speaker 6: and gone elsewhere, you can't put the pieces back together.
Speaker 6: And so you see why Russia is having such success
Speaker 6: right now. It's a ripe not only political environment in
Speaker 6: America for these ideas to take hold, but it's a
Speaker 6: ripe media environment for these ideas to spread.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I talked to you about,
Speaker 1: which I want you to say on this podcast because
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important point that I have
Speaker 1: long believed that if you could explain to people this
Speaker 1: is how this is like being a stupid media bubble person,
Speaker 1: that if you could explain to people why it was wrong,
Speaker 1: they would like have a moment and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it now, But that doesn't ever happen, right,
Speaker 1: explain this to us.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think people often ask me how many minds
Speaker 5: do you change? Out there quite frankly, the answer to
Speaker 5: that is a zero.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh because it's so bleak, but basically they
Speaker 1: cannot be reasoned with.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, I mean, I think, like what you watch,
Speaker 5: the pieces that I do are not a blueprint for
Speaker 5: changing people's mind. It's more a diagnosis of the rot
Speaker 5: of the problem. Now, if you're approaching any kind of
Speaker 5: idea what I want to change that person's mind, chances
Speaker 5: are you're going to be met with resistance. That's not
Speaker 5: how people change their minds. And frankly, we are in
Speaker 5: spaces where they're being fed things they want to hear.
Speaker 5: I often tell the story of I was talking to
Speaker 5: a woman at a Trump rally at Trump's first impeachment
Speaker 5: who is insistent on Trump's innocence and talked about He's
Speaker 5: so innocent because he's letting everybody speak. He wants the
Speaker 5: truth to come out. And I said, well, if there
Speaker 5: was proof of him stopping somebody from speaking, that would
Speaker 5: be proof of guilt. She said, yes, of course. I
Speaker 5: pointed to the fact that he was stopping John Bolton
Speaker 5: from getting his story out, and she realized in that
Speaker 5: moment she said something perhaps incorrect. She took a really
Speaker 5: long beat, and she looked at me and she said,
Speaker 5: I don't care. And you realize in that moment, like
Speaker 5: we're talking about policy and I'm trying to give her
Speaker 5: piece of information that will break that bubble, but the
Speaker 5: magic trate already occurred. Trump was her identity and that's
Speaker 5: who she is. So what we're arguing are details of
Speaker 5: her policy. But she's not there because of the policies.
Speaker 5: She's not there to be fact check and believe something else.
Speaker 5: She's there because MAGA has our identity. She's put on
Speaker 5: the hat. Her neighbors see her with that hat, her
Speaker 5: neighbors know that she isn't what she believes in. It's
Speaker 5: at that point it's an act of faith. And if
Speaker 5: you think we're trying to change somebody's faith, good luck.
Speaker 5: People have tried that for a ance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talk so much about how there are these
Speaker 1: evangelicals who love Trump, but the reality is America is
Speaker 1: a country where religion is on the decline. But MAGA
Speaker 1: is really its own religion.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 5: It's something you can believe. I mean, you see, it
Speaker 5: provides a lot of the things that religion does provide,
Speaker 5: which is a sense of community, sense of ownership, a
Speaker 5: sense of purpose. It's quite the feeling to walk into
Speaker 5: an event and see twenty thousand other people dressed like
Speaker 5: you are dressed, and then a very powerful person comes
Speaker 5: on stage and tells you that you are a patriot,
Speaker 5: you can fight for them, your life has meeting. That's
Speaker 5: an evocative message. And I do think looking at some
Speaker 5: of these things as an act of faith, like perhaps
Speaker 5: believing that the election was stolen is more akin to
Speaker 5: believing that Noah had an arc that had every animal
Speaker 5: on the planet in two's on it. Even see some
Speaker 5: of these elected officials now who will argue over whether
Speaker 5: or not the election was stolen in a way that
Speaker 5: you're like, I know you don't believe it was stolen,
Speaker 5: but you have to have this act of faith, this
Speaker 5: show of faith. And to me it sounds like when
Speaker 5: you argue with that person, it's like, you know, Noah
Speaker 5: didn't bring two elephants and two. It's like, oh, we're
Speaker 5: having the wrong conversation. This is not an argument about
Speaker 5: whether that happened. It's an act of faith that I
Speaker 5: believe in the idea of this happening, and feels like
Speaker 5: that's where we are right now politically, it's.
Speaker 1: Funny because it's like some of these people and again,
Speaker 1: my dad listens to this podcast, so he's going to
Speaker 1: get mad at me, maybe, but a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are not a lot, but some of these people
Speaker 1: are the same people who like went to Grateful Dead concerts.
Speaker 5: Oh for sure. I talked to a man in the
Speaker 5: special who I've seen at many rallies. I think he
Speaker 5: was at a seventyeth something rally and he was a
Speaker 5: Barack Obama voter. He was a Grateful Dead supporter, is
Speaker 5: a rock and roll guy, and frankly I spent some
Speaker 5: time with him and we bonded over our love of
Speaker 5: a classic rock But you see that, what's the connection
Speaker 5: between the Grateful Dead, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It's like, man,
Speaker 5: those are the most fun show in town. And so yeah,
Speaker 5: Barack Obama, that was a big fun show that was
Speaker 5: inspiring to him and he got on board. And frankly,
Speaker 5: going to a MAGA event is a fun tailgating experience.
Speaker 5: You travel around the country, you see like minded folks,
Speaker 5: you put on your fun, crazy outfits, and you rock
Speaker 5: out to the hits. It does provide that for a
Speaker 5: lot of people.
Speaker 2: Are we too dumb for democracy?
Speaker 5: We're certainly testing that.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you have that.
Speaker 1: Thought as you driving around or in the private Comedy
Speaker 1: Central plane sipping along, or your personal helicopter, do you
Speaker 1: have the thought, like America, we may be too dumb
Speaker 1: for democracy.
Speaker 5: Right now, I'm thinking a lot about the buy in
Speaker 5: to democracy. I think citizenry should be work. And that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean we need to make it difficult for people
Speaker 5: to vote, but it should mean that you should understand
Speaker 5: the consequences of your vote. You should put in time
Speaker 5: and think about that. Citizenry involves thinking about choices you
Speaker 5: make and how it affects community. You are not acting alone.
Speaker 5: And I think politics has shifted to such an entertainment
Speaker 5: spectacle that no longer citizens engaging with politics were consumers.
Speaker 5: And so it's as easy as clicking retweet, as easy
Speaker 5: as liking like our support lacks any real depth. There's
Speaker 5: very little skin you have to put in the game
Speaker 5: to be a part of that democratic conversation. And again,
Speaker 5: I want the buy in to be for everyone. But
Speaker 5: I think people should understand that democracy has consequences, and
Speaker 5: right now we're treating democracy as if it's going shopping
Speaker 5: at Walmart or an Amazon binge, where we just clicked
Speaker 5: the things we like, we say the things we don't like,
Speaker 5: we spend money, and we move on to what that
Speaker 5: next thing is. And to me, that is part of
Speaker 5: the flaw right now, it's not that we're too stupid
Speaker 5: for democracy. It's that I don't think we understand the
Speaker 5: consequences of it, and we don't put enough effort into
Speaker 5: thinking that part of democracy is thinking about your community
Speaker 5: and not just yourself.
Speaker 1: One of the things that it's sort of part of
Speaker 1: this is Tucker Carlson, who is not maybe as powerful
Speaker 1: as he once was, but still for that group, has
Speaker 1: a lot of power.
Speaker 2: Is that fair?
Speaker 3: For sure?
Speaker 5: When we were talking about Russia and Moscow, when I
Speaker 5: asked people at these events their images what they thought
Speaker 5: of Russia, so much of it was colored by that
Speaker 5: very specific special that Tucker Carlson had when he went
Speaker 5: to Moscow, when he sniffed some bread, he looked at
Speaker 5: the subway system, and he sat down with Putin, and
Speaker 5: you realize it's like, yeah, people didn't have images of
Speaker 5: what Moscow looked like the ways in which Tucker was
Speaker 5: framing it for the folks back here in a field
Speaker 5: in Pennsylvania. It was completely colored by Tucker Carlson, and
Speaker 5: so it really very much has has weight out in
Speaker 5: the magosphere.
Speaker 1: For example, there was a part of that where he
Speaker 1: was very impressed with putting the coin in for the
Speaker 1: shopping cart so you didn't steal the shopping cart, and
Speaker 1: that this was a great innovation. But the reality is
Speaker 1: this is a country where people steal shopping carts because
Speaker 1: they're so poor, right, I mean that you have to
Speaker 1: secure the shopping cart so that multiple people don't steal it.
Speaker 1: Did anyone put that together?
Speaker 2: Or now? I mean, is there any like I wonder
Speaker 2: why Russia is so shitty?
Speaker 5: Part of it has something to do with, you know,
Speaker 5: a lack of media literacy and understanding that these are
Speaker 5: storytellers and with every story, you go to point the
Speaker 5: camera the things you want to show and not the
Speaker 5: things you don't want to show.
Speaker 3: You're not pointing at the places in Russia.
Speaker 5: Where people don't have running water or toilets that work,
Speaker 5: the ways in which they're affected by the economy, or
Speaker 5: what's happening with the LGBTQ community. Those stories are left
Speaker 5: out of a Tucker Carlson special. What's put in is sexy,
Speaker 5: bread and fancy and so and again, what that gives
Speaker 5: the person in a field in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 5: what it gives them is a weapon to use an
Speaker 5: argument with me. And I get it. I get how
Speaker 5: everybody's got their eyr up and so they see that.
Speaker 5: They're like, this helps my worldview and what Tucker has
Speaker 5: given it to me in a package and that Bo
Speaker 5: says Moscow is good and you know what that means.
Speaker 5: It means that Biden is bad. It means that Craine
Speaker 5: has a waste of your money, and it means things
Speaker 5: could be good with a tough guy Christian white leadership.
Speaker 5: Here here it is. It's a beautiful bow. Unwrap it
Speaker 5: where you will. And people are unwrapping that and trying
Speaker 5: to piece apart, like oh what what? What is part
Speaker 5: of the story that I don't understand? They're like, oh,
Speaker 5: what's inside here is a weapon? I'm going to use
Speaker 5: that against family members or Jordan Klepper out in the field.
Speaker 4: Here you go.
Speaker 2: I know, you travel with security.
Speaker 1: Are they mostly chill or do you feel like sometimes
Speaker 1: going to do something violent?
Speaker 5: I will say things keep shifting after the last election.
Speaker 5: What was going to MAGA events and people were riled up,
Speaker 5: but not physical. After Trump quote unquote lost the last election,
Speaker 5: the tenor shifted. I noticed to change since this recent conviction.
Speaker 2: As well, more violent or less.
Speaker 5: There are more threats, definitely not less from the perspective
Speaker 5: of threats, and so I can't speak to violence. We've
Speaker 5: had a few incidents in the field where things have
Speaker 5: gotten tense and security has had to step in, but
Speaker 5: the threats are ratcheted. And again, it's so easy. It
Speaker 5: costs you nothing to be an asshole on the internet,
Speaker 5: and it feels good to be angry and anonymous and
Speaker 5: yell at somebody, but those things have real consequences. It
Speaker 5: riles people up. And I was there on January sixth,
Speaker 5: and I see what happens when you rile a bunch
Speaker 5: of people up. You put them in a group, and
Speaker 5: then you point them at a person and say they're bad.
Speaker 5: Bad things happen. And right now the riling up is happening,
Speaker 5: and right now the rhetoric is getting worse and worse,
Speaker 5: and it costs you nothing to be angry and public
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 1: Me something that makes me not want to go move
Speaker 1: into a pineapple under the city.
Speaker 5: Oh, I mean, are you into jazz?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: I mean the new Kumasi Washington Album's pretty darn love,
Speaker 5: the Vampire Weekend album.
Speaker 1: All right, gee, I mean, just give me something that
Speaker 1: is a little hopeful, Like you met someone who was like, Babe,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna vote for Biden even though I love fascism.
Speaker 5: I will tell you this, there's a misunderstanding when people
Speaker 5: watch my videos and it's that, oh, man, you talked
Speaker 5: to the crazies.
Speaker 2: Oh no, this is not gonna make me kill better.
Speaker 5: Go on, these are not the crazies. When I talk
Speaker 5: to Edward, I'll give you that guy. When I talked
Speaker 5: to Edward, who is the MAGA fan, the Obama fan,
Speaker 5: the grateful dead fan, who has been to over seventy
Speaker 5: plus Trump events. He's there for the show and we
Speaker 5: disagree about certain political things. But when you take the
Speaker 5: cameras away and when you sit and talk to that person,
Speaker 5: you can connect with them like human beings. And the
Speaker 5: clips that we see online in our media are not
Speaker 5: complete representation to the people who are out there. And
Speaker 5: so I do think it is a war perspective as
Speaker 5: to how people feel about each other. Now, I think
Speaker 5: that's detrimental to our democracy, and it's a cancer right now,
Speaker 5: and so that doesn't give me a lot of hope.
Speaker 5: But when I still connect with the people out in
Speaker 5: the field, when the cameras are down, and when we
Speaker 5: can talk without being defensive about the things that we
Speaker 5: believe like, we find that common ground. And I don't
Speaker 5: know how you generate that in a larger society in
Speaker 5: the media ecosystem we have right now, but all is
Speaker 5: not lost with the people. I think it's the platforms
Speaker 5: and the places we have our conversations that have the
Speaker 5: major problem right now.
Speaker 2: Thank you Jordan, Thank you Mollie.
Speaker 5: And maybe and try jazz. You'll mess up your brain
Speaker 5: for a little bit and that'll help you restart the moment.
Speaker 3: Jesse Cannon, My Jong Fast, the thinking man of the Setate,
Speaker 3: Tommy Tuberville has some thoughts on Putin.
Speaker 1: He's a scholar and a gentleman. Except for being a
Speaker 1: scholar and also a gentleman. Tommy Tubervil, the Senate stupidest man,
Speaker 1: says that Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 2: Perhaps you've heard of him, he doesn't want Ukraine, he
Speaker 2: doesn't want Europe.
Speaker 1: Hell, he's got enough land of his own. He just
Speaker 1: wants to make sure whatever. On this podcast, we have
Speaker 1: Jordan Koepper, who's talking about how Russian propaganda has infiltrated
Speaker 1: the GOP. Look no further than the stupidest man in
Speaker 1: the Senate, the one, the only, Tommy Tuberville.
Speaker 2: 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.