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 Democrats win landslide in safe Iowa
Speaker 1: State House seat. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. The weeknight host Simone Sanders Towns and stops
Speaker 1: by to talk to us about Trump's first one hundred
Speaker 1: days of lies. Then we will talk to Personhood author
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler about her amazing new book on reproductive rights.
Speaker 1: But first the news Somali.
Speaker 2: We throughout our time mister Trump being in our lives,
Speaker 2: have seen him do a lot of wacky interviews.
Speaker 1: I love when you call him mister Trump.
Speaker 2: I do it with the utmost contempt. Anyway, last night,
Speaker 2: though he decided to go I want to say the
Speaker 2: full Trump laid down the Trump card, just really leaded
Speaker 2: into all his worst instincts and uh, why don't I
Speaker 2: play you what many people are saying?
Speaker 1: To use his own words, many, many, many.
Speaker 2: One of his worst moments of an interview, which is
Speaker 2: really really saying something a member of the gang.
Speaker 3: And then they look at on his stoles.
Speaker 4: He had then.
Speaker 3: He had on his he had some tattoos that are
Speaker 3: interpreted that way.
Speaker 4: But let's move on.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I will tear it.
Speaker 4: He did not have the letter M S one.
Speaker 3: This is MS one.
Speaker 4: That was photoshop. Uh so let me do this.
Speaker 1: Photoshops had that.
Speaker 4: Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime.
Speaker 4: You know you're joined the interview.
Speaker 3: I picked you because, frankly, I never heard of the
Speaker 3: invidenia to you, and begin of being very nice, he had.
Speaker 4: Thirteen agree to disagree. I'll move on to something else.
Speaker 4: Do you want to show you the picture? I saw
Speaker 4: the picture.
Speaker 2: Well, I've dealt with less belligerent people after doing forty
Speaker 2: fireball shots.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but I picked you even though I had
Speaker 1: never heard of you.
Speaker 4: What of the old type of grades.
Speaker 1: I love that so much. What he was like, I
Speaker 1: picked you. I never heard of you, but I picked you.
Speaker 4: I have a feeling you said that on a lot
Speaker 4: of first dates.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I love it so much. Look, we
Speaker 1: have an administration where not just one person has a
Speaker 1: warm in his brain. I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: I picked you a major career. Again, I've said this before,
Speaker 1: I will say it again. Trump is doing a lot
Speaker 1: of media. This is the right thing to do if
Speaker 1: Democrats ever get back in power. We need Democrats to
Speaker 1: do a lot of media. I'm sorry to tell everyone
Speaker 1: here that is all I have, but I am correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, so molly, mister Trump also received.
Speaker 1: Some very when you call him, mister Trump.
Speaker 2: Go on, yes, very very very very bad economic news today.
Speaker 2: As you turned to me, you said that we are
Speaker 2: now in a recession. Well, he had a tweet that
Speaker 2: really really was chef's kiss.
Speaker 1: This is Biden's stock market, not Trump's. I didn't take
Speaker 1: over until January twentieth. By the way, let me just
Speaker 1: tell you what day it is for those keeping track
Speaker 1: at home. It is April thirtieth. Okay, So he has
Speaker 1: been president for a little more than one hundred days,
Speaker 1: which is a little more than three months. Okay, I
Speaker 1: just want to point this out. And then, by the way,
Speaker 1: this is I think really important. Tariffs will start kicking in.
Speaker 1: Tariffs are kicking in. That's why the economy is shrinking,
Speaker 1: is because tariffs are making things more expensive and they're
Speaker 1: keeping people from keeping businesses from expanding. So tariffs are
Speaker 1: kicking in. They won't start kicking in. They are kicking in,
Speaker 1: and companies are starting to move into the US and
Speaker 1: record numbers. Now that I think is probably just made up.
Speaker 1: Our country will boom, but we have to get rid
Speaker 1: of Biden's overhang. Okay, this will take a while. Has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with tariffs. Again, you can put it
Speaker 1: in all caps. But it's not right. He left us
Speaker 1: with bad numbers. That's not true. We know that the
Speaker 1: Biden economy was the envy of the world, but when
Speaker 1: the boom begins, it will be like no other. Be
Speaker 1: patient explanation point. Here's the thing. I just want to
Speaker 1: say this really important stuff here. Tariffs are bad. Trump
Speaker 1: things are good. They are keeping a lot of businesses
Speaker 1: from spending money. But also it's not just the tariffs,
Speaker 1: it's the instability. Trump is always back and forth. You know,
Speaker 1: the tariffs are on, they're off, they're this, they're that,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of worry. If you're going to
Speaker 1: build a factory, say you're a pants manufacturer. You manufacture
Speaker 1: in China. You decide to build a factory in the
Speaker 1: United States because you're worried about tariff, and you're worried
Speaker 1: about the one hundred and fifty percent tariff on Chinese manufacturing.
Speaker 1: So you decide to build a factory in Iowa. Now,
Speaker 1: the way these tariffs work, some of the tariffs actually
Speaker 1: punish you for bringing in things that are made in
Speaker 1: other countries to manufacture. So even if you're manufacturing, you're
Speaker 1: still paying China tariffs. I mean, they're just endless sort
Speaker 1: of unforeseen consequences to these TIFFs because they're radical, radical
Speaker 1: departures in the way America does business. And look, this
Speaker 1: is all this Trump plan to reshore manufacturing, and that
Speaker 1: is a long term play restoring manufacturing, and there is
Speaker 1: really no handbook for it, and it would take a
Speaker 1: long time. And so this is why this is so stupid.
Speaker 1: And it looks like Trump is really dug in on
Speaker 1: the terror and we're going to feel a lot more
Speaker 1: economic pain. Also, remember tariffs were responsible for smooth Hollie,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we went into the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no world in which tips are good
Speaker 1: for the stock market.
Speaker 2: I am with you, you know what, there is also
Speaker 2: no good for the country or anyone's confidence. Psychotic press conferences.
Speaker 1: I consider them to be like the North Korea, like
Speaker 1: a little bit of North Korea.
Speaker 2: I think this really was the week that we got
Speaker 2: the most Korean culture since k pop landed on our shores,
Speaker 2: right exactly, And yes, people.
Speaker 4: I know that's South Korea, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let me pull you some clips from this absolutely
Speaker 2: bonkers press conference, and I'm going to skip the one
Speaker 2: where RFK says, the more four eyed you have, the
Speaker 2: stupider you get, not doing business.
Speaker 3: They made a trillion dollars when you good buying a
Speaker 3: treation dollars, even a Tritian one. I'm selling us stuff,
Speaker 3: much of it we don't need, you know. Somebody said,
Speaker 3: all the sholves that are going to be opened, well
Speaker 3: maybe the children will have two dollars instead of thirty dollars,
Speaker 3: you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a
Speaker 3: couple of months more than they would normally. But we're
Speaker 3: not talking about something that we have to go out
Speaker 3: of our way.
Speaker 4: They have ships that.
Speaker 3: Are loaded up with stuff, much of which not all
Speaker 3: of it, but much of which we don't need.
Speaker 1: At Donald Trump, to end conspicuous consumption, congratulations, Americans are
Speaker 1: buying too much stuff. Let's stop, and this is why
Speaker 1: our economy is shrinking. I don't think Trump understands that
Speaker 1: consumer spending will mean less consumer spending which will mean
Speaker 1: an economy the drinks, which means that it's not just
Speaker 1: about having two dollars or five dollars, it's about having
Speaker 1: twenty jobs or four jobs. And Donald Trump again, it's like,
Speaker 1: what is so amazing about Trump and this has been
Speaker 1: true for him this entire time, is that he never
Speaker 1: is able to sink through what things will mean in
Speaker 1: the unintended consequences of things, and so you find him
Speaker 1: thinking it's about dolls and not that you know, consumer
Speaker 1: spending drives the economy and is an engine of the economy.
Speaker 1: And again this is their argument with immigration, right, you
Speaker 1: have a tight labor market to try to get people
Speaker 1: to have babies. They don't want to have babies, and
Speaker 1: you're kicking out immigrants, like, here's the deal man, you
Speaker 1: got to get those people from somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the craziness doesn't stop. Here's Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Speaker 1: We've recinded death penalty.
Speaker 5: We are now seeking the death penalty on cases. I'm
Speaker 5: signing dug warrance. We are going after tear, we are
Speaker 5: going after arsonist, whether you're burning teslas. We will be
Speaker 5: arrested nine people so far in seven jurisdictions, no negotiations,
Speaker 5: twenty years.
Speaker 4: And she's citing death warrants.
Speaker 1: For people burning Tesla's. That seems like a mistake.
Speaker 2: I think she kind of meant to say that it's
Speaker 2: for the people doing fens at all, but it really
Speaker 2: read that way, and I hope it's not the case.
Speaker 1: Personally, I don't think it's good to kill people, especially
Speaker 1: for cars, for burning cars. But you know, the thing
Speaker 1: about Tesla that's so interesting, besides the fact that this
Speaker 1: administration is completely unhinged, is that you saw last week
Speaker 1: Elon Musk hit an arnings call seventy one percent drop
Speaker 1: in Tesla's earnings. Elon said that, actually, Tesla's not the
Speaker 1: play anymore. It's these autonomous driving cars. Waimo is eating
Speaker 1: his lunch with the autonomous cars, right, so it's not
Speaker 1: going to be autonomous cars. So much of Elon's empires
Speaker 1: based on SpaceX and the satellites and the communication arm
Speaker 1: of it. Elon has really backed himself into a corner here,
Speaker 1: and his embrace of MAGA has really hurt his companies.
Speaker 1: And I'll be curious, you know, he said he would
Speaker 1: step back. I don't believe anything that anyone says, especially
Speaker 1: out of the admin. But it'll be interesting to see
Speaker 1: if he hits a moment work shareholders are like, this
Speaker 1: is enough. Simone Sanders. Townsend is the co host of
Speaker 1: the Weeknight along with Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez. Eric
Speaker 1: Monday is from seven to nine pm Tuesdays through Fridays
Speaker 1: seven to eight Eastern on MSNBC and in Premiers Monday,
Speaker 1: May fifth. Hi, I'm so excited to have you. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Samon.
Speaker 5: I'm happy to be here at Fast Politics. Mollie.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about where we are right now. One hundred
Speaker 1: little more than one hundred days. Oh, Mollie, you were
Speaker 1: listening to Trump's pressor he has now crashed the economy.
Speaker 1: How edgedy is he about having crashed the economy?
Speaker 5: You know, don't believe he crashed the economy. I say
Speaker 5: it was a press conference. He was taking questions at
Speaker 5: the cabinet meeting, which is something you know usually he
Speaker 5: has a lot of cadem meetings where he likes to
Speaker 5: come in and pray and take questions. I'm wondering how
Speaker 5: much work gets done at the cabinet meeting, give all
Speaker 5: the t and a that has happened, but he does
Speaker 5: not believe that he's crashed the economy. I say that
Speaker 5: because of what he said. He said, we're doing really well.
Speaker 5: The teriffs haven't even all the way been implemented, but
Speaker 5: we've gotten our numbers down. I'm using quotes about what
Speaker 5: we pay when it comes to other countries for tariffs,
Speaker 5: and I just cannot stress to people enough that a
Speaker 5: tariff is a tax and the people are paying the tax.
Speaker 5: And when other countries eliminate tariffs on us, meaning in
Speaker 5: the United States, that does nothing to help the United
Speaker 5: States economy. What it does cripple the economy of the
Speaker 5: home country because they have a tariff because we're I mean,
Speaker 5: look some things we just don't make in America, folks.
Speaker 5: There is not enough coffee in Puerto Rico and Hawaii
Speaker 5: to sustain American's coffee habits. Okay, more importantly, yes, it's
Speaker 5: just it just doesn't happen. So, yeah, we've got a
Speaker 5: trade deficit, if you will, with countries that make more coffee,
Speaker 5: for example, because we're importing a lot of coffee. And
Speaker 5: there's nothing wrong with that. But Donald Trump, I believe
Speaker 5: Miley is just banking on people just not knowing general
Speaker 5: economics and not thinking enough to care to google. He
Speaker 5: told lies about how much money the United States that's
Speaker 5: sent to Ukraine. It was just really crazy. But I
Speaker 5: listen because it's important for us all to be informed.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about something really
Speaker 1: important which I have noticed about Don Trump's beening office
Speaker 1: one hundred days. This man is doing interviews almost every day.
Speaker 1: He is doing interviews, he's doing television, he's doing Time magazine,
Speaker 1: he's doing pressors. He's doing these North Korean style televised
Speaker 1: cabinet meetings where everyone goes around the room and talks
Speaker 1: about how great he is, and he takes questions during them.
Speaker 1: And this is in no way a compliment of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And this is a real question to you because you're
Speaker 1: smart and also because you're honest. Do you think there's
Speaker 1: a lesson to be learned here for Democrats about this
Speaker 1: media accessibility? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Little?
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 5: First, you know, I think, is how secret what Donald
Speaker 5: tup does well? Is he is a master marketer. You know,
Speaker 5: whether he is telling the truth when he's doing this
Speaker 5: marketing is another question. But I think it is a
Speaker 5: valid thing to point out that, you know, he's a
Speaker 5: good marketer. That's how he made a lot of his money.
Speaker 5: That's how he fashioned himself for years as the apprentice,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. So people believe that he
Speaker 5: is a good businessman because he marketed himself as such,
Speaker 5: an because the numbers bored that out, and so there
Speaker 5: is a letton to take there. Look a lot of
Speaker 5: around one hundred days. I mean, what he has done
Speaker 5: in the last couple of days, I believe is very
Speaker 5: standard to past presidents. At one hundred day mark, you
Speaker 5: do have you would usually have one hundred day interview
Speaker 5: or two that drop. You will go and do a
Speaker 5: big event to mark your one hundred days. He did
Speaker 5: that in Michigan. You would have maybe a television interview
Speaker 5: or two to drop. He did one on Fox and
Speaker 5: then obviously he's now taking questions at the cabinet meeting.
Speaker 5: He could have also, you know, a president previously might
Speaker 5: have been a press conference. The level of accessibility that
Speaker 5: the president is offering I do think is important past presidents,
Speaker 5: but I think people would compare this to President Biden
Speaker 5: did not was not as accessible, if you will, in
Speaker 5: terms of wanting to do interviews. He didn't want to.
Speaker 5: And now I think if you talk to a lot
Speaker 5: of White House reporters, they would say, well, he didn't
Speaker 5: do the interviews because he couldn't. And I, you know,
Speaker 5: stand firmly that it is not that he couldn't, it's
Speaker 5: that he did not want to. But it seems like
Speaker 5: a distin distinction without a difference. But given some of
Speaker 5: the things that we know are come down the pipeline
Speaker 5: in terms of some of these books that are coming
Speaker 5: out about by an administration, I do think is a
Speaker 5: distinction that is quite.
Speaker 1: As important to mention.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you know, yes, Donald Trump is very accessible. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: I think that that's important. I think if you want
Speaker 5: to get your message out, the best way to help
Speaker 5: shape what people are saying about your message is in fact,
Speaker 5: to talk to them. It's to tell them what your
Speaker 5: message is. I think the biggest difference soul between Donald
Speaker 5: Trump and everyone else is literally the man could say
Speaker 5: I landed on the moon yesterday and they will move
Speaker 5: on to the next question. And you know, I've worked
Speaker 5: for candidates who are running for president. I worked for
Speaker 5: a president and a vice president while they're in office.
Speaker 5: That's just not usually how it works. I mean, the
Speaker 5: benefit of the doubt that Donald Trump is afforded oftentimes
Speaker 5: in these back and forth settings is insane. And I
Speaker 5: think that it's one thing to be Accessibility is important,
Speaker 5: but what you say when you are accessible should also matter.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, oh one hundred percent. But I do
Speaker 1: think there's more. Let's talk about Biden for a minute,
Speaker 1: because you and I.
Speaker 5: I both What do you think, Molly? What do you think?
Speaker 1: This is why I love you? There are these books
Speaker 1: that say whatever. I do not believe that getting old
Speaker 1: is a conspiracy. I believe getting old is getting old.
Speaker 1: As someone who has a mother who has actual dementia
Speaker 1: and a father who is just getting old, I actually
Speaker 1: know that getting old is just getting old. And the
Speaker 1: ways we feel about getting old are a lot about
Speaker 1: ourselves and not so much about conspiracies. So I have
Speaker 1: been really impressed with just how sleazy I think a
Speaker 1: lot of this is. And by the way, I still
Speaker 1: there is no one with all these books. And again,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something that will come out, but you know,
Speaker 1: everything I've read so far makes me think that it
Speaker 1: was a guy getting older.
Speaker 5: Look, I obviously did not work in the White House
Speaker 5: with the President the last you know, two three years.
Speaker 5: What I know about Joe Biden for what I saw
Speaker 5: for my own two eyes, and I mean I saw
Speaker 5: him about a week before inauguration. I was at the
Speaker 5: White House. I had a conversation with him, We spent
Speaker 5: some time together. I think the cognitive decline self is
Speaker 5: a bunch of bs. I really do. I think that
Speaker 5: there is a distinction between one being getting older in
Speaker 5: age and legitimately having a cognitive decline that there is
Speaker 5: something wrong with you up there. And I do not
Speaker 5: think the president President Biden was suffering from a cognitive decline.
Speaker 5: Now that being said, could you say that maybe he
Speaker 5: was in denial about the political reality of the situation.
Speaker 5: I think you can ask personally say that, Yeah, if
Speaker 5: we say he's in denial, then we have to ask, well,
Speaker 5: how did that come to be? Who were some of
Speaker 5: the people around him saying some of the things to him?
Speaker 5: But then that takes us to a deeper level, and
Speaker 5: that means some other individuals had to take some accountability
Speaker 5: for the advice, if you will, and counsel that they
Speaker 5: gave the president, and that's, you know, kind of hard
Speaker 5: to do. One could argue they don't want to do that,
Speaker 5: So it's very easier to just say, oh, blame Joe.
Speaker 5: I just you know, I think two things can be
Speaker 5: true at the same time. Was the President older? Absolutely? Also,
Speaker 5: I mean, well, we'll have to hear from Joe Biden
Speaker 5: on this, and I hope that he does decide to
Speaker 5: come out and say a little something. But knowing what
Speaker 5: I know about him, I believe one thousand percent that
Speaker 5: what was happening with Hunter and the target, that the
Speaker 5: Department of Justice and the Donald Trump and all this ally,
Speaker 5: all of the Trump, the President, president Trump's allies had
Speaker 5: on Hunter Biden specifically, I have to believe that that
Speaker 5: weighed on the President in an immense way that I
Speaker 5: do not believe he's adequately or he's articulated to us. Now,
Speaker 5: what happened to that debate, Molly, I don't know. The
Speaker 5: streets say the President was sick, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: if he's sick, y'all probably should have said that before
Speaker 5: the debate, not in the middle, and not after. But
Speaker 5: then you see the President go out on stage, President
Speaker 5: Biden with the then first Lady, doctor Joe Biden, and
Speaker 5: doctor Biden says, you did great, and then and the
Speaker 5: President gives a very rousing speech post debate to a
Speaker 5: crowd of folks and people are like, well, where was
Speaker 5: this man twenty minutes? And then he goes to what
Speaker 5: was it a wall house, and the reporters that are
Speaker 5: following him in the pool ask him, you know, how
Speaker 5: does he think he did? From outside look at him
Speaker 5: as the president? It was kind of not great. And
Speaker 5: Joe Biden, you know, it's kind of hard to debate
Speaker 5: a bully. No no, no, no, no, no no no no.
Speaker 5: That to me goes back to the advice and the
Speaker 5: counsel of the advisors, because I'd had to give advice
Speaker 5: and counsel before. And you have to be willing to
Speaker 5: tell the principle the hard thing. You don't want to crush,
Speaker 5: you know, their morale. But I mean, if you come
Speaker 5: off of stage and you sucked, you gotta be willing
Speaker 5: to tell the principle that, sir, the end, you ended
Speaker 5: stronger than you started. The beginning was rocky, and frankly,
Speaker 5: we are being lambasted on social and in the press
Speaker 5: giving your performance, and then we have to talk about
Speaker 5: a strategy. But I don't believe that that moment happened
Speaker 5: with President Biden. And I think there are many instances
Speaker 5: where the folks whose job it was to tell the
Speaker 5: president the truth, okay, they were not telling him the truth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I also think part of
Speaker 1: problem here, and I think this is a real problem
Speaker 1: with democratic politics. I'm going to tell you a story
Speaker 1: and you tell me what you think. So there is
Speaker 1: this question of who will be the ranking member on oversight.
Speaker 1: This gets me very agitated. I had a chance to
Speaker 1: elevate someone young with a bigger profile. Could have been AOC,
Speaker 1: could have been Jasmine Cracker, could have been Max well Frost.
Speaker 1: They'll probably not chance to elevate someone who has actually
Speaker 1: an ability to shine the spotlight on things right. Instead,
Speaker 1: they decide to elevate Jerry.
Speaker 5: Connolly that day. Let's be specific, good old speaker hearts
Speaker 5: on Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 1: Right. I think there's a straight line between elevating Jerry
Speaker 1: Connolly and Democrats not doing well in polls. Discuss yes
Speaker 1: and no.
Speaker 5: First of all, everybody has had a lot to say
Speaker 5: over the last couple of days in terms of the
Speaker 5: one hundred day polling around prevent Trump, and I always
Speaker 5: people their polls are a snapshot in time, so you
Speaker 5: cannot put all this stock in the polls when you
Speaker 5: like them, and then when you don't like the polls,
Speaker 5: it's like, oh, Poles, I'm at it. So I hope
Speaker 5: this and is saying they're a snapshot, So sure, the
Speaker 5: snapshot is saying right now that Americans don't like what
Speaker 5: is happening in the first one hundred days, but we're
Speaker 5: gonna remain to be seen. They don't like it, yet
Speaker 5: there's still people who support the president saying I don't
Speaker 5: like it, but I support the president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, got it. Disappear more grad students because that don't
Speaker 1: really help his poem.
Speaker 5: Oh, because that's what the American people want, and fringe
Speaker 5: love the process. They love that, they love lawlessness, feeling
Speaker 5: like they live in a third world dictatorship. That'll get them, yeah,
Speaker 5: I think. And first, you know, obviously, since Congressman Conley
Speaker 5: has been elevated, he has now said he's going to
Speaker 5: not only step back from the committee, but also not
Speaker 5: run for re election for Congress because his cancer has
Speaker 5: come back and he is a great public servant, he
Speaker 5: has served honorably and like many blessings and sending good
Speaker 5: prayers to him and his family. Correct, And I do
Speaker 5: though think that allowing and I mean it spinning Pelosi,
Speaker 5: who is not currently the speaker, still wields a lot
Speaker 5: of power and there are a lot of people that
Speaker 5: are very much so still allied with her within the
Speaker 5: ranks of the congressional Democrats on the hill in the House.
Speaker 5: I do think frankly, it was a mistake. I do.
Speaker 5: And it's not just about newer, younger people. It is
Speaker 5: about understanding and putting together a strategy and putting the
Speaker 5: people in place that is needed for time such as this,
Speaker 5: and in my opinion, with Democrats need to demonstrate because
Speaker 5: they are the minority, because there's little they can do
Speaker 5: to affect what is happening. Sands withhold their votes for
Speaker 5: a budget right or that ceiling which is coming up.
Speaker 5: Is demonstrate some fight that shows up in how you campaign,
Speaker 5: but also how you ask questions in your committee hearings,
Speaker 5: where you go, what you say, how you show up
Speaker 5: on television, and in this day and age, I think
Speaker 5: democratic elected officials need to put forward the people in
Speaker 5: the spaces and places that can demonstrate the fight and
Speaker 5: have the strategy there. So I think some of the
Speaker 5: polling is just supposed with not just this particular not
Speaker 5: lack of elevation of newer, younger members and the cementing
Speaker 5: of someone who is a more seasoned member. I think
Speaker 5: that polling is indicative of the fact that in the
Speaker 5: first couple weeks when Donald Trump was inaugurated, this second time,
Speaker 5: Democrats is just like, it ain't nothing we can do.
Speaker 5: Oh oh, we're large. There were a couple of people,
Speaker 5: the Democratic governors ready to fight. Democratic attorney generals literally
Speaker 5: had a plan. Democratic members of Conference and leadership was
Speaker 5: just kind of like they got caught flat footed, like
Speaker 5: they haven't known since November that Donald Trump was about
Speaker 5: to be president. And as someone that worked in Democratic politics,
Speaker 5: you know, for the entire first part of my professional life,
Speaker 5: for someone who grew up and worked for and advocated
Speaker 5: for the Democratic Party apparatus, I was definitely disappointed. And frankly,
Speaker 5: I think that if Democrats did not start to demonstrate
Speaker 5: some fight, there would not have been an argument to
Speaker 5: make for why they should be able to take back
Speaker 5: the House next year. But I do think what we've
Speaker 5: seen since that time is there's been some trial and error.
Speaker 5: Some of it has worked out, some of it hasn't,
Speaker 5: But the American people are at least seeing that there
Speaker 5: are members of Congress disproportionately Democrats and like three Republicans
Speaker 5: who are willing to stand up to the President, for
Speaker 5: their constituents, for what is right, for what is the law,
Speaker 5: and that will matter to voters come twenty twenty six.
Speaker 5: The last thing I'll say, Maley is I think that
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and the Republican Party apparatus read large,
Speaker 5: they are seeing the same you know, they know the
Speaker 5: same things I just said that you and I know
Speaker 5: to be true. They're seeing the same polling, They're seeing
Speaker 5: the energy that the opposition is fired up. And I
Speaker 5: do not believe that Steven Miller and Donald Trump are
Speaker 5: just gonna go quietly into the night and let the
Speaker 5: House slip through their fingers because of a little thing
Speaker 5: called public sentiment, between the Save Act, between these executive
Speaker 5: orders on voting, between what Republicans specifically in North Carolina
Speaker 5: are doing right now to steal an election from Alison Riggs,
Speaker 5: who was the duly elected member of the state Supreme
Speaker 5: Court in November. She won that race, and they've done
Speaker 5: everything in their power, the Republicans in that state, to
Speaker 5: change the vote. Okay, I think they're waiting un till
Speaker 5: twenty twenty eight to you know, implement a voter suppression strategy.
Speaker 5: This is happening right now, and I do think that
Speaker 5: people have to be vigilant and Democrats have to have
Speaker 5: a plan. You can't out vote voter suppression. It don't
Speaker 5: work like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. Let's talk about the CR.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's.
Speaker 5: Like, why do you keep this appointing me? What are
Speaker 5: going on?
Speaker 1: Right? So let's talk about the CR. There's a CR.
Speaker 1: It goes through Congress, it makes it through Congress, once
Speaker 1: it's in the Senate. Democrats have their names on it.
Speaker 1: It's hard. It's very hard to shut down the government.
Speaker 5: I don't think so at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about that. So what do you
Speaker 1: think should have happened? And what do you think? Talk
Speaker 1: to me?
Speaker 5: So, first of all, I understand the argument of well,
Speaker 5: if if we shut down, if we allow the government
Speaker 5: to shut down, then it is the executive branch that
Speaker 5: decides what things are, what functions are essential and non essential.
Speaker 5: And if the government deems something essential, it continues to operate.
Speaker 5: If you will, people don't get paid, they continue to operate.
Speaker 5: If the government deeds being something not essential, it does
Speaker 5: not continue to operate, and on top of that, you
Speaker 5: don't get paid. So I upset that argument. But they're
Speaker 5: doing it anyway right now. So I'm just kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 5: our is there. You're a cool like, he's not doing
Speaker 5: this right now. I could see. I could see if
Speaker 5: the United if the federal government was not arbitrarily picking
Speaker 5: and choosing what departments and agencies to shut down unconstitutionally
Speaker 5: because they don't have to power to do so. I
Speaker 5: can understand if they were not already doing that. But
Speaker 5: they were already doing it. And so the argument that
Speaker 5: Democrats were making are we don't want to show down
Speaker 5: the government because there's no way for us to ever
Speaker 5: get the government back open, and that is also not
Speaker 5: a true argument. I think that people that needed to
Speaker 5: see a fight, and frankly the same way that Donald
Speaker 5: Trump is that are about face on these tariffs, signs
Speaker 5: just sprun around. If I spent around in my chair,
Speaker 5: put a pause on those chairs and ninety day palls
Speaker 5: because people are like, this is too crazy. And the
Speaker 5: public outcry was in saying Democrats would not have been
Speaker 5: blamed for the government being shut out. It would be
Speaker 5: Donald Trump and the Republicans' unwillingness to negotiate with their
Speaker 5: Democratic counterparts. You have to be you have to stand
Speaker 5: for something in the face of lawless tyranny. You cannot
Speaker 5: roll over because of the procedure and process. And frankly,
Speaker 5: that was like the only time in the foreseeable future
Speaker 5: until it's a debt ceiling. And I think the debt
Speaker 5: seiling is a very different fight because the debt ceiling
Speaker 5: is about money that we already spent. It's not about
Speaker 5: how money that is to be spent. Dead ceiling is
Speaker 5: literally paying your credit card bill because you already spent
Speaker 5: the money, so you now have to pay the bill.
Speaker 5: It's like the ax every month that comes due. Honey.
Speaker 5: Then I plan about said thirty days. This was the
Speaker 5: opportunity to do something. The very little power that the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party operat has had, the elected officials and Washington,
Speaker 5: they squandered, at my opinion, that opportunity because there was
Speaker 5: a strategic divide in terms of what Democrats, particularly in
Speaker 5: the United States Senate thought was plausible. And frankly, Leader Schumer,
Speaker 5: I mean, on Wednesday, the man is like we're fighting
Speaker 5: and by Thursday, He's like, we must spawn the government,
Speaker 5: we must do our due diligence. I'm like, I'm got whiplashed.
Speaker 5: I don't know what is it?
Speaker 1: What happened? Simoan? I really appreciate you. You cracked me up,
Speaker 1: but you're also correct, you know.
Speaker 5: But can we end on a hopeful note because I
Speaker 5: think people hear like, well, dang, no hope. I believe
Speaker 5: as I like to have my deal in my hand,
Speaker 5: I believe that the people had the power. And if
Speaker 5: don't believe that the people have the power, look at
Speaker 5: what has happened in this country in this first one
Speaker 5: hundred days. Down't stop put the palls on the tariffs
Speaker 5: because people stood up, raised their voices, restored their discontent,
Speaker 5: called their elected officials, and the elected officials called the
Speaker 5: White House, Democrats and Republicans. People have really been in
Speaker 5: the streets protesting every single day of this presc it works.
Speaker 5: They tried to shut off the Medicaid portals in the
Speaker 5: first like two weeks, and people's outcry made them turn
Speaker 5: the portals back, going in and say it wasn't a
Speaker 5: So the people do have the power. And when we
Speaker 5: stand up, I know it doesn't feel it like we
Speaker 5: do some days. I know it feels like dark and
Speaker 5: hopeless some days, but truly we still live in the
Speaker 5: United States of America. We still live in the You know,
Speaker 5: this is the first multi racial democracy that has ever
Speaker 5: been tried in the history of the world. We are
Speaker 5: still in it. A segment of individuals, including the President
Speaker 5: of the United States, would like it to turn us
Speaker 5: into something else, but for now, we are still a
Speaker 5: democratic republic and we have to fight for our democracy
Speaker 5: as standing up and raising your voice, not rolling over,
Speaker 5: asking questions why how can they do that? No, I
Speaker 5: don't want this to happen, demanding that you're elected officials,
Speaker 5: whether they are Democrats or Republicans, speak up. Don Bacon
Speaker 5: of Nebraska is speaking up and out against people and
Speaker 5: his party president for what is right, because he himself
Speaker 5: knows it's correct to do, and his constituents have asked
Speaker 5: him to do so. The people have the power.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Simone.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Molly. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler is a legal historian and the author of Personhood,
Speaker 1: The News, Civil War over Reproduction. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 6: Mary, Thanks for having me Buck.
Speaker 1: Mary Ziegler I think of you as like the smartest
Speaker 1: person writing about the law and history right now, and
Speaker 1: also very smart law professor. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: this book and where you are right now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I wrote the book because after Dobbs,
Speaker 6: I think there was a moment when I started to
Speaker 6: have friends say, essentially, you know, what are you going
Speaker 6: to do now that it's over? And I think they
Speaker 6: meant it's over for conservatives. Obviously it was never over
Speaker 6: for people who supported reproductive rights, who aren't going to
Speaker 6: stop fighting. But I think they meant, what are you
Speaker 6: going to do now that people on the right got
Speaker 6: everything they wanted? And I thought, well, they didn't everything
Speaker 6: they wanted. It's not over for them either, and things
Speaker 6: can get a whole lot worse from the standpoint of
Speaker 6: reproductive rights. And I think that's something I knew as
Speaker 6: a historian that most people didn't have to know. So
Speaker 6: I wrote the book really about how it was never
Speaker 6: just about getting rid of row for people who oppose abortion,
Speaker 6: and how what it is about, which is this idea
Speaker 6: of fetal personhood could reshape, you know, the way people
Speaker 6: experience pregnancy and reproduction in all kinds of ways that
Speaker 6: I don't think we've been aware.
Speaker 1: Of Yes, So this is like an obsession of mine
Speaker 1: because I had seen the writing on the wall with
Speaker 1: fetal personhood. So this book is called Personhood the New
Speaker 1: Civil War over Reproduction, and it is I don't want
Speaker 1: to be nice, but I want to explain how important
Speaker 1: this is. It is the smartest thing conservatives have done.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk us through how we
Speaker 1: went from basically heartbeat laws to a nagism person Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, one of the things that I think people don't
Speaker 6: realize about personhood is it was there the whole time, right.
Speaker 6: So it's not new in the sense that these arguments
Speaker 6: have been in kind of in the hopper waiting to.
Speaker 1: Be brought out.
Speaker 6: They were developed. I think the initial personhood argument started
Speaker 6: in the nineteen sixties and they've never really gone away.
Speaker 6: A quick way to kind of find this is to
Speaker 6: look at old Republican Party platforms. They were there the
Speaker 6: whole time, right. So I think what's changed is the
Speaker 6: willingness of anti abortion groups to say this openly now
Speaker 6: that Roe is gone. I think a few things have changed.
Speaker 6: I think one, there's not as much fear about offending
Speaker 6: or pissing off voters.
Speaker 1: And two, I.
Speaker 6: Think there's a realization that the way to success really
Speaker 6: is through the federal courts, who are willing to do
Speaker 6: things that voters would not, And that means you can
Speaker 6: make arguments about, for example, constitutional fetal rights requiring the
Speaker 6: criminalization of abortion or severe limits on IBF that you
Speaker 6: know voters would hate, because you're not talking to voters anymore.
Speaker 6: So that transition has really been a visible since Stobs
Speaker 6: part of this much longer again, like a campaign that's
Speaker 6: been going on for over half a century.
Speaker 1: Now, explain what that means. You're not accountable to voters anymore.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, of course abortion opponents can be right, which
Speaker 6: is one of the reasons why we're seeing i think
Speaker 6: a little bit of slow walking from the Trump administration.
Speaker 6: We still obviously we're not that deep into the Trump administration.
Speaker 6: We could still see national limits on abortion, but we
Speaker 6: have seen Trump roll out one thing after another very
Speaker 6: very quickly, and not as quickly it comes to abortion.
Speaker 6: So Republicans are still accountable to voters, but anti abortion
Speaker 6: groups are relying less on Republicans who still have to
Speaker 6: run competitive races, and relying more and advancing personhood on
Speaker 6: people who don't so think the justices on the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court think other federal judges think state Supreme Court judges
Speaker 6: who either don't face election or have tremendous incumbency advantages,
Speaker 6: and sometimes even state legislatures in places like Missouri where
Speaker 6: people know that Republicans won't lose their kind of stranglehold
Speaker 6: on state government even if they do things voters explicitly
Speaker 6: already rejected, for example, in a ballot initiative. So the
Speaker 6: goal is to pursue personhood whether or not Americans want it,
Speaker 6: and to find ways where popular opinion is less important
Speaker 6: to advance that goal.
Speaker 1: First, tell me where person at laws are, where they're
Speaker 1: sort of in the hopper, where we're going to see
Speaker 1: more of that. Is it like a Texas thing the
Speaker 1: way it was with SBA, or sort of give me
Speaker 1: the state House personhood tour.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 6: One of the weird features of personhood is that personhood
Speaker 6: is there are a lot of laws that reflect the
Speaker 6: idea of a fetus or embryo having rights, and we
Speaker 6: just don't know how enforceable they are because a lot
Speaker 6: of these laws were passed when Roe was on the books,
Speaker 6: and they came across as kind of get out the boat,
Speaker 6: like feel good tools for conservatives that weren't really going anywhere. So,
Speaker 6: you know, for example, everybody probably remembers last year the
Speaker 6: Alabama Supreme Court said that state's froncful death law effectively
Speaker 6: meant IVF couldn't continue. That law had been around for
Speaker 6: a while.
Speaker 1: I remember that incredible moment.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so IVF had been around for a while. That
Speaker 6: law had been around for a while, and no one
Speaker 6: was ever using it to stop IVF. So that's kind
Speaker 6: of the state of play when it comes to laws
Speaker 6: already on the books. There are a lot of references
Speaker 6: to fetal personhood, and we don't know what the conservative
Speaker 6: state judges are going to do with them in terms
Speaker 6: of abortion and ida.
Speaker 1: When that happened, they phrased the IVF. Then they went
Speaker 1: up to the governor to indemnify against like if you
Speaker 1: wasted eggs, it wasn't murdering a person, right, Yeah, was
Speaker 1: that intentional? And I'd love you to talk more about
Speaker 1: the sort of legal nuance there too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, the Alabama legislature wasn't comfortable just saying yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, the Alabama Supreme Court was wrong. Embryos are
Speaker 6: not persons. Like that was an option table that wasn't
Speaker 6: what they wanted to do, so instead they just said,
Speaker 6: you know, we're going to protect all the people at
Speaker 6: all in the IVF process, providers, but other people too
Speaker 6: from criminal and civil liability, while still saying embryos are people.
Speaker 6: So that just shows you that Republicans are in a
Speaker 6: kind of sticky place when it comes to IVF in particular,
Speaker 6: but also person who more broadly, because they don't want
Speaker 6: to do things that are going to be profoundly unpopular
Speaker 6: and newsworthy, but they also don't want to contradict this
Speaker 6: idea of personhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Continue on the state laws though.
Speaker 6: Yeah, on the new laws front, we're seeing part of
Speaker 6: this big strategy to establish that fetal rights and as
Speaker 6: many areas of the law as possible that are not
Speaker 6: not just abortion, but anything right so wrongful death, like
Speaker 6: in Alabama child support during pregnancy. The idea is to
Speaker 6: essentially make it look weirder and weirder to the justices
Speaker 6: on the Supreme Court that embryos and fetuses aren't constitutional
Speaker 6: rights holders too. So we're seeing some bills like that
Speaker 6: this legislative session in places like Kansas. We're also seeing
Speaker 6: a kind of fight and breakout within the anti abortion
Speaker 6: movement about what it would mean to enforce personhood. And
Speaker 6: there's always been fights about that, mostly behind the scenes.
Speaker 6: Now they're happening in the news end in public. So
Speaker 6: the most visible one is to fight about whether you
Speaker 6: need to punish women and pregnant people for having abortion
Speaker 6: if a fetus or embryo as a person. So we're
Speaker 6: seeing bills come up this legislative session in more states
Speaker 6: than ever before taking that position. We're also seeing abolitionists
Speaker 6: and places, as they call themselves, the pro punishing women
Speaker 6: in faction in places like Texas, negotiating to make bands
Speaker 6: even stricter. When they can't get the punishment of women
Speaker 6: they want, they managed to kind of push things in
Speaker 6: that direction in a more subtle way. So all of
Speaker 6: that is happening right now as we speak. In the
Speaker 6: name of the old person.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what you know personhood means in other
Speaker 1: state houses.
Speaker 6: Yeah, welluses, there's still I think a debate, right, So
Speaker 6: some states are doing the kind of disavowing that they
Speaker 6: have a big project and just moving the ball forward
Speaker 6: in incremental ways. So, for example, on the child support
Speaker 6: side of things in state houses right, and in theory,
Speaker 6: I think a lot of people could look at that
Speaker 6: and say, I don't really have a problem with somebody
Speaker 6: getting shild support during pregnant. See, I'd probably put myself
Speaker 6: in that category. But one of the weird features of
Speaker 6: our politics when it comes to this is that all
Speaker 6: of these laws, like supporting these laws then becomes a
Speaker 6: step toward recognizing constitutional fetal rights. And then it gets
Speaker 6: even weirder because, for whatever reason, not for whatever reason,
Speaker 6: because of decades of history, that's strange. In America, recognizing
Speaker 6: fetal rights means criminalizing abortion. And that's weird. Why it's
Speaker 6: weird is if you stop and think about it. I
Speaker 6: don't know if you remember, but in twenty not long
Speaker 6: after Dobbs, there was a woman in Texas who was
Speaker 6: pregnant and she wanted to drive in the HOV lane
Speaker 6: and she said, you know, if you're serious about this
Speaker 6: fetal person put thing, why can't I do that? And
Speaker 6: we've seen other moments like this where you see pregnant
Speaker 6: people saying, well, hey, if you're serious about fetal person,
Speaker 6: why aren't you treating me better? You know, why am
Speaker 6: I not getting better healthcare?
Speaker 5: Why am I not?
Speaker 6: And so, but the way we do fetal personhood here,
Speaker 6: which is not the way people think of fetal life,
Speaker 6: and a lot of other countries just punishing people. That's
Speaker 6: kind of where we've gone. And there's fights about who
Speaker 6: gets punished and how much they get punished, but there's
Speaker 6: no fight within the movement about the idea of a
Speaker 6: justice equals punishment. So the fight in state houses has
Speaker 6: been about that basically, like who gets punished, how much
Speaker 6: they get punished? Are their exceptions to when they get punished?
Speaker 6: But there hasn't really been this kind of broader debate
Speaker 6: about why it is that we think helping anyone, including
Speaker 6: a fetus, involves punishing someone else.
Speaker 1: So you have this fetal personhood, like so much in
Speaker 1: Republican Party life right now, it has all sorts of
Speaker 1: unintended consequences, right like child support and AHOV lines and
Speaker 1: IVY and mourning after pills and Republicans sort of understand this,
Speaker 1: but they sort of don't, right. I think they think
Speaker 1: they can thread the needle on this. Do you think
Speaker 1: that this is like just a step too far and
Speaker 1: that when it starts getting into like what I think
Speaker 1: has been interesting about this Republican Party is there's certain
Speaker 1: things that are wildly unpopular that they've kind of gotten
Speaker 1: to sneak in, but not the way they really want.
Speaker 1: Like I'm thinking about porn right, and but this Republican Party,
Speaker 1: Trump is so in bed with people who are like,
Speaker 1: you know, these young influencers, people for whom ending porn
Speaker 1: would really be a red line. Do you see, like
Speaker 1: does it feel like personhood bumps up against this? And
Speaker 1: if so, how and what do you think the play is? Well?
Speaker 6: I think one of the weird traits they are sort
Speaker 6: of features of the Republican Party now is what I
Speaker 6: sort of see is like outsourcing the deeply unpopular stuff.
Speaker 6: So Trump is I think, totally fine with there being
Speaker 6: deeply unpop popular things happening about a worshar ibf, but
Speaker 6: he doesn't want to be the one doing it. So
Speaker 6: how does he achieve that. One way he achieved that
Speaker 6: is by putting the people on the federal courts that
Speaker 6: social conservatives want and letting them do it. Often when
Speaker 6: they do it, it will be years later, maybe when
Speaker 6: he's not in office anymore. And even if he's in office,
Speaker 6: he can say, hey, you know, they're just interpreting the law.
Speaker 6: So I think that's how Republicans are trying to thread
Speaker 6: the needle. And I think Trump was kind of emboldened
Speaker 6: by that by Dobbs, because he sort of put the
Speaker 6: people on the Supreme Court who got rid of Row,
Speaker 6: which was deeply unpopular, and then got elected in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four. Anyway, Now, do I think he got elected
Speaker 6: because people were excited that Roe was gone, or even
Speaker 6: because people were okay with his role in Roe being gone.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 6: I think people voted for him because of inflation and
Speaker 6: they weren't.
Speaker 5: Happy about Roa being gone at all.
Speaker 6: He I think learned from that that there is a
Speaker 6: way to thread the needle, which is essentially to as
Speaker 6: much as possible shift responsibility for unpopular policy. He's like
Speaker 6: ones tied to personhood to other people. So I think
Speaker 6: that's really where the danger is, and the whole States
Speaker 6: rights idea right also is outsourcing some of those decisions
Speaker 6: because state Republicans have very different incentives when it comes
Speaker 6: to personhood.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: They're pretty much insulated from political competition. They're only feorially
Speaker 6: is getting primary or offending conservative donors. They're incentivized to
Speaker 6: do things like push for personhood. So we're in this
Speaker 6: weird situation where I think national Republicans don't want their
Speaker 6: fingerprints on this. State level Republicans and federal judges either
Speaker 6: don't care or are eager to have their fingerprints on this,
Speaker 6: and that means personhood could advance even if it's not popular.
Speaker 1: And why you talk about Amy Cony Barrett because she's
Speaker 1: so interesting because she is absolutely not a friend of toys.
Speaker 1: She was one of the votes to over Ton Roe.
Speaker 1: I just want you to talk about her and where
Speaker 1: you see her in this court.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Amy Gunnon Barrett's fascinating because I think she's obviously
Speaker 6: deeply conservative, but I think she's also intellectually independent and
Speaker 6: I think has her own views on pretty much every issue.
Speaker 6: She tackles in on what the Constitution means so and
Speaker 6: I don't think she always does what would line up
Speaker 6: with her political preferences. I think she sees herself as
Speaker 6: doing law and sees law as distinct from politics. Now,
Speaker 6: I'm skeptical. I think everyone is skeptical that there's any
Speaker 6: way you could entirely keep your politics out of what
Speaker 6: you're doing with the law. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: I think there's a difference between judges who just don't
Speaker 6: try at all to do that and judges who do.
Speaker 6: So what that would mean with personad with Barrett is
Speaker 6: really complicated because obviously Barrett is probably the most sincerely
Speaker 6: opposed to abortion on the court, like I think actually
Speaker 6: cares about that in a way on religious basis that
Speaker 6: no one else on the Court probably does. On the
Speaker 6: other hand, I think that legal arguments for the recognition
Speaker 6: of personhood you know, aren't very good. So she maybe
Speaker 6: kind of pulled in two directions, one by her kind
Speaker 6: of faith commitments and personal beliefs, and another by her
Speaker 6: commitment to trying to interpret the law fairly when these
Speaker 6: arguments about fetal rights are, you know, not great. The
Speaker 6: argument essentially is that when the fourteenth Amendment was written,
Speaker 6: the word person applied the moment in egg is fertilized.
Speaker 6: And it's kind of a bizarre argument because no one
Speaker 6: involved with the fourteenth Amendment talked about abortion. None of
Speaker 6: the people who are trying to criminalize abortion talked about
Speaker 6: the fourteenth Amendment. None of the state's criminalizing abortions seem
Speaker 6: to think they had to criminalize abortion because of the Constitution.
Speaker 6: So there's just this complete silence that people have to
Speaker 6: work around to say this is what the constitution means
Speaker 6: that I think it'd be hard for someone like Barrett
Speaker 6: to ignore. But she's technically a wildcard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, She's such an interesting case of someone not being
Speaker 1: a partisan hack on the Supreme Court. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could talk about you are a legal scholar. Besides
Speaker 1: being a lawyer and a legal you know, you're also
Speaker 1: a historian. And I'm wondering if you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you see a sort of if
Speaker 1: there's a historical president for something like Row, for a
Speaker 1: law of the land overturned, and then if you wanted
Speaker 1: to bring it back, say you were able to elect Democrats,
Speaker 1: rebuild the country to get more people in the court,
Speaker 1: what would a what would that look like? What would
Speaker 1: be the move you would make?
Speaker 6: Well, I think what's happening now is actually good and
Speaker 6: it looks like experimentation. So there are things that are
Speaker 6: happening now I think are good, and things that are
Speaker 6: happening now that are where there's work to be done.
Speaker 6: The things that are good is that we're seeing a
Speaker 6: lot of experimentation in different states with different ways of
Speaker 6: thinking about what a constitutional reproductive right would look like.
Speaker 6: One of the downsides of having a kind of home run,
Speaker 6: big win in a case like Roe is that you
Speaker 6: don't really get to see if it has unintended consequences,
Speaker 6: or if it plays well with voters, or if people
Speaker 6: can interpret it in bizarre ways, like you don't really
Speaker 6: find any of that out until that's already the law.
Speaker 6: So we're seeing this kind of state by state experiment
Speaker 6: with ballot initiatives with existing state constitutions, and that kind
Speaker 6: of gives us data in real time about what arguments
Speaker 6: are the best when there is a court that.
Speaker 5: Would be ready to hear them.
Speaker 6: I think the other kind of lesson of history, though,
Speaker 6: is that constitutional rights don't really mean a whole lot
Speaker 6: if one you don't have a healthy democracy that's willing
Speaker 6: to back them up. So the demise of Roe was
Speaker 6: not just about conservatives making smart arguments to smart conservative justices,
Speaker 6: or Donald Trump happening to ain in election, or Ruth
Speaker 6: Bader Ginsburg happening to die. There was a lot being
Speaker 6: done behind the scenes to make sure that the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court was no longer worried about offending people or angering Americans.
Speaker 6: So there we was working done on voter idea, laws
Speaker 6: on vote by mail, laws on campaign finance laws. So
Speaker 6: I think getting back to something like Roe would require
Speaker 6: progressives to do all that work on the other side,
Speaker 6: in other words, to make sure that if Americans want
Speaker 6: there to be a right to a worship, that the
Speaker 6: system is responsive right and begain't just ignore what people want,
Speaker 6: which has been the reality for decades. So I think
Speaker 6: those are probably the two big pieces that remembering that
Speaker 6: this is not just what happens inside the courts or
Speaker 6: who's on the court. It's much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true and so incredibly important. And also
Speaker 1: just anyway, Mary, thank you, thank you for coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, anytime.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to come.
Speaker 5: As you know, always so fun.
Speaker 4: No Mo.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon, Smiley, junk Fast, gotcha Whipper governor of Michigan.
Speaker 2: We've been a fan in the past, but she's had
Speaker 2: some missteps with the base of the Democratic Party lately
Speaker 2: with her appearances around mister Trump, and yesterday she did
Speaker 2: what many are calling enabling behavior with mister Trump.
Speaker 1: Look, you can't have it both ways. I understand that
Speaker 1: she's trying to help her state. I understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's manufacturing, it's a purple state. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons to want to work with Trump. And look, sometimes
Speaker 1: people are able to manipulate manipulate Trump into good effect.
Speaker 1: We've seen that before, but that's not what's happening here.
Speaker 1: And this is the line I think is between being
Speaker 1: a captured institution like the law firms, like the billionaires
Speaker 1: like we're seeing with Amazon, and being really a you know,
Speaker 1: getting by. Gretchen is a captured institution of trump Ism
Speaker 1: at this moment, and the only person she is hurting
Speaker 1: is herself. Trump is going to continue on, He is
Speaker 1: going to do whatever he wants. She is being really
Speaker 1: just destroyed in the public in her image by her
Speaker 1: association with Trump. There is a way to do this
Speaker 1: where you don't have to squander your public credibility, and
Speaker 1: she is not able to spread the needle, And honestly,
Speaker 1: it makes me sad because I think she's really smart.
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