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.
Speaker 2: And Trump VP contender Christy Nomes says there should be
Speaker 2: no rape or incest exceptions for abortion. We have such
Speaker 2: a great show for you today. Politico's Rachel Bade stops
Speaker 2: by talking about the chaos and the Republican Caucus. Then
Speaker 2: we'll talk to CNN climate reporter Bill Weir about his
Speaker 2: new book, Life as We Know It can be stories
Speaker 2: of people, climate and hope in a changing world. But
Speaker 2: first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Speaker 2: Wiki Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Welcome back.
Speaker 1: It's Monday and Mondays are for Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: They are for Rick Wilson. And therefore the great and
Speaker 4: true love that we share of mocking a certain lumbering
Speaker 4: orange criminal who spends much more of his time in
Speaker 4: courtrooms than any normal person would desire.
Speaker 1: This criminal trial has shown how bad politics' pundent brain is. Okay,
Speaker 1: like the people who are sitting in a criminal trial
Speaker 1: would help him.
Speaker 4: There were a lot, Lolly, there were a lot of
Speaker 4: people were like Trump's base will love this for him. Yes,
Speaker 4: that's right, because his base is completely disconnected from human reality,
Speaker 4: the idea that we're going to have weeks and weeks
Speaker 4: and months and months of this and it's not going
Speaker 4: to hurt him. Look, I get the natural desire not
Speaker 4: to get twenty sixteen Again.
Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen did not happen because Trump was prosecuted for
Speaker 1: crimes he did.
Speaker 4: Oh no, he got away with shit, and he got
Speaker 4: away with stuff in sixteen that these days no one
Speaker 4: would even consider the idea of ignoring it, even in
Speaker 4: you know, the both sides sections of the media. This
Speaker 4: is a guy who clearly is not in the position
Speaker 4: he was in even a few weeks ago. And part
Speaker 4: of it is because and I have this theory of
Speaker 4: the case, there are two big things going on, one
Speaker 4: of which is the court stuff, the other of which
Speaker 4: is he can't pretend anymore that he's some sort of
Speaker 4: like financial genius. His penny stock is cratering, he's out
Speaker 4: of money, he's broke every which way. The whole illusion
Speaker 4: of Trump right now has finally like faced up to
Speaker 4: the reality of his shitty life. And it's bad. He's
Speaker 4: in a bad place right now.
Speaker 1: Rip I did say last week, you're teflon until you're
Speaker 1: not right. You get away with it until you don't.
Speaker 4: You were immune from all consequence until the moment consequence
Speaker 4: comes and shows up. As they say in It's Unlooped Form.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is like so clear about
Speaker 1: when you look at Trump and you look at sort
Speaker 1: of his behavior pattern is there is no other person politician, Democrat,
Speaker 1: Republican for whom this works right, and it works Trump
Speaker 1: probably because he was very, very famous and people didn't
Speaker 1: really know his political background, so he was like a rorshack.
Speaker 1: He could be left, he could be right, he could
Speaker 1: be this, he could be that nobody knows because he
Speaker 1: was a TV star. But this is something different, right,
Speaker 1: This is something where it's like, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we know him. We've seen his voting record, we've seen
Speaker 1: his governing record, we know this guy.
Speaker 4: Right, there's no more illusion of Trump. There's no more
Speaker 4: there's no more imaginary version of Trump where they get
Speaker 4: to say, oh, well, you know, the grown ups around
Speaker 4: him will make sure that things will be so different
Speaker 4: this time. No amage that no one's ever buying that
Speaker 4: that cannot be sold to any rational person. No one
Speaker 4: accepts that that construction any further because we have seen him,
Speaker 4: we do know what he is, we do know what
Speaker 4: he does. And the behavior in court in the first
Speaker 4: week I think was very telling, the whining, the immaturity,
Speaker 4: the oh, I'm so cold, you know, all this crap,
Speaker 4: and is in the case of a couple of days
Speaker 4: of unhappiness in court. And we're not talking like weeks
Speaker 4: and months. We're talking about he's losing his mind after
Speaker 4: a couple days in the courtroom. I think we are
Speaker 4: watching Trump quietly decompensating at the moment, and it's going
Speaker 4: to get I think, quite a bit worse in the
Speaker 4: coming days and weeks, because Trump is pushing the judge's
Speaker 4: limits And while the judge I think has been very
Speaker 4: slow to react in some ways to Trump. There's no
Speaker 4: unlimited scenario where Trump gets to keep threatening jurors. There's
Speaker 4: no unlimited scenario where he gets to fart, fall asleep,
Speaker 4: skunky people act like an a hole in court every
Speaker 4: single day. None of that's a real scenario. And eventually
Speaker 4: every judge in a case is going to say, I
Speaker 4: get the celebrity status of this guy. But they also
Speaker 4: are going to say, but that celebrity status doesn't mean
Speaker 4: we have two systems of the law. This is a
Speaker 4: man who has over and over again proven he will threaten, intimidate,
Speaker 4: he will browbeat, he will attempt to suborn people. And
Speaker 4: I think Mershawn is actually kind of of the BS
Speaker 4: already and within the within the first week, the guy
Speaker 4: is tired of the play acting and the Trump Show
Speaker 4: and all the and all the garbage.
Speaker 1: I think that's absolutely right. And I also think that
Speaker 1: what you see is like he is really trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that it's done right. Like he kicked someone
Speaker 1: off the jury pool for having lied about having a
Speaker 1: very minor criminal charge for pulling down posters conservative posters, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, he realizes this is going to get appealed
Speaker 1: a million times and be scrutinized, and so oh.
Speaker 4: Of course he wants this case to be as bulletproof
Speaker 4: as he can. Yeah, that speaks well of him. That
Speaker 4: is what you want in a judge, what you want
Speaker 4: in a trial. You want a clean case that isn't
Speaker 4: going to get overturned, that isn't going to get thrown out,
Speaker 4: and that doesn't have some sort of like mechanical or
Speaker 4: structural defect in it that lets a guy like Donald
Speaker 4: Trump walk free again again.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will obviously want free you. Nope, he's not
Speaker 1: going to jail for those. Very unlikely he'll go to
Speaker 1: jail for this. But what's relevant and what is important
Speaker 1: is will he be held accountable? And that is the
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollar question, right it is.
Speaker 4: I still have my deep skepticism of you know, any
Speaker 4: system that lets Trump stay in the courtroom every day
Speaker 4: and do this stuff. I have some skepticism that it's
Speaker 4: going to work in that way. I do think he
Speaker 4: has a kind of horrible power to get to people,
Speaker 4: whether it's Jesse Waters getting a lot of whatever information,
Speaker 4: or whether it's these rumors about all the usual Trump people,
Speaker 4: like posting the names of jurors on telegram and discord
Speaker 4: all this sort of behavior. I do think at some
Speaker 4: point the judge will be obligated, in order to maintain
Speaker 4: the sanity in the courtroom and in order to maintain
Speaker 4: a trial that isn't decided by Trump being able to
Speaker 4: intimidate or browbeat jurors. At some point I think he's
Speaker 4: gonna have to at least put Trump in his in
Speaker 4: a cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center for a couple
Speaker 4: of hours and say, cool the hell off, and the
Speaker 4: tweeting and the using the phone in the court room
Speaker 4: and all that stuff. It's just a long running behavioral
Speaker 4: pattern that I can't see how a judge tolerates that
Speaker 4: over the length of this trial.
Speaker 1: And that's going to really be the big question is
Speaker 1: like how long can Trump behave badly?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: No, I think it is a key question. But I
Speaker 4: will also say this, I think there's a part where
Speaker 4: Trump maybe slightly overplaying it, this whole idea of my
Speaker 4: people love me no matter what, and yeah, his people
Speaker 4: do love him, but there's a point where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: stop being a whining bitch. Stop being by acting like
Speaker 4: this is the worst punishment anyone in history has ever received,
Speaker 4: because it is not by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 4: And as Trump continues to you know, I'm being persecute
Speaker 4: and it's the deep state. Joe Biden's here personally running
Speaker 4: the trial. The whining is just like it's not even
Speaker 4: on Trump's brand. He's whiny, but he's not a whiner,
Speaker 4: if that makes any sense. But right now he's just
Speaker 4: like sniveling all the time.
Speaker 1: And the thing that I have always argued with a
Speaker 1: number of like other pundits about in twenty sixteen, he
Speaker 1: really did run on like they weren't necessarily true, but
Speaker 1: he had promises, and those promises were like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to bring back your cold jobs, something he couldn't do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm going to restore the economy. I'm going to
Speaker 4: make great trade deals with Jina, you know all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were promises in there, right, And like as
Speaker 1: much as I really did respect HRC, you know, it
Speaker 1: was like I'm with her and he's with us, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you could see that there was a little bit smarter
Speaker 1: messaging going on on his side. I mean, they were lies,
Speaker 1: but they were smart, you know, it was smartly done lies.
Speaker 4: I think that there was a degree to which America
Speaker 4: was kind of to believe some of Trump's bs in sixteen,
Speaker 4: and it was we had had this long period of
Speaker 4: time where they had a black guy in charge. They
Speaker 4: didn't like it. A lot of Americans, Republican and Democrat,
Speaker 4: were very unhappy, feeling like from two thousand and eight
Speaker 4: on the middle class was getting fed. And they weren't wrong,
Speaker 4: by the way, in some real meaningful ways, but it's
Speaker 4: stacked and its stacked, and Trump was sort of the
Speaker 4: perfect avatar at the perfect moment for that attack. Now
Speaker 4: I don't think he is that guy anymore. Even if
Speaker 4: you make the argument that the economy is of, you know,
Speaker 4: a hellscape, which I don't I disagree with. Even if
Speaker 4: you make that argument, you know, the thing we used
Speaker 4: to see before I stopped believing in focus groups back
Speaker 4: in sixteen, before I decided that they were all just
Speaker 4: lies we used to see in focus groups. He's a businessman.
Speaker 4: He's going to run the country like a business. We
Speaker 4: need a businessman who knows how to manage. And what's
Speaker 4: the lesson they learned. They learned that that was the
Speaker 4: biggest lie of all, that the Apprentice was a TV show.
Speaker 4: Trump can't manage a waffle house. That Trump doesn't have
Speaker 4: the ability to manage his own emotions for twenty minutes,
Speaker 4: to say nothing of a country.
Speaker 1: He cannot manage a waffle house.
Speaker 4: That reset of people's perceptions of who Trump is, what
Speaker 4: he can actually accomplish us, what they thought he could accomplish.
Speaker 4: That is, there's a big delta there now and a
Speaker 4: lot of people still voting for him are the resentment types.
Speaker 4: You know, I just want to punish those lib hard
Speaker 4: educated people. I don't like them. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about something a little personal. Sure you
Speaker 1: had a parent who was very trumpy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're getting past that a bit. Yeah, it's gotten
Speaker 4: a lot better. It's not perfect, but I think I've
Speaker 4: come to the conclusion. And the fever can break, And
Speaker 4: in some weird ways, the fever breaks best after they've
Speaker 4: bought into like the craziest part of it, in a way,
Speaker 4: after they've bought into like it's all about the conspiracy
Speaker 4: of the cannibal pedophiles. Once once you take that apart,
Speaker 4: the whole thing starts to fall apart. Once you take
Speaker 4: a part the Hillary Clinton was secretly there by George
Speaker 4: Soros to take over the world and make us all
Speaker 4: eat bugs and become Muslims or whatever lunatic fringe thing
Speaker 4: there was. Once part of that breaks, and once part
Speaker 4: of that breaks at the most absurd point, it does
Speaker 4: become I think easier to say, Okay, well, the whole
Speaker 4: thing was a lot, you know that, right. All the
Speaker 4: artifacts of this insanity were always lies. None of it
Speaker 4: was real. I'm starting to see that a little bit more.
Speaker 4: And look, everybody has pride, and they get in a position,
Speaker 4: even if it's an irrational one. They have pride about
Speaker 4: their position, and it's hard to unclinch that fist. But
Speaker 4: he's making it harder now for even his most fervent
Speaker 4: supporters to pretend he's something he's not. They may still
Speaker 4: support it, and they may still love him, but it's
Speaker 4: harder and harder for them to pretend that he's not
Speaker 4: just Donald Trump, that he's not just that guy. We
Speaker 4: know who he is, we know what he is. We
Speaker 4: know he's not this super negotiator. We know he's not
Speaker 4: a business genius. We know he's not a particularly smart guy.
Speaker 4: All those things are sort of increasingly obvious to people,
Speaker 4: and it's harder to hold the lie in the same
Speaker 4: place in your head and your heart that you might
Speaker 4: have if it was just purely the partisan okay, yes
Speaker 4: or no. People are realizing also that Joe Biden is not.
Speaker 4: He has not plunged us into communism. Oddly enough, you
Speaker 4: know that idea of Biden will We'll all be eating
Speaker 4: bugs with Joe Biden not so much.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about like picking someone like Biden is
Speaker 1: that he's not very liberal. So what is good is
Speaker 1: that you can reach out to, you know, the never
Speaker 1: Trump Republican or really the very there's a huge part
Speaker 1: of this country that's just the middle.
Speaker 4: This country still has a lot of much more moderate
Speaker 4: Democrats than our friends on the coasts like to sometimes
Speaker 4: admit to themselves. A North Carolina Democrat outside of a
Speaker 4: city is basically like a moderate Republican in New York.
Speaker 4: But it's hard for them to admit that to themselves sometimes.
Speaker 4: And I get it, just like it's hard for Republicans
Speaker 4: to admit to themselves that not everybody in the country
Speaker 4: believes that that Donald Trump is here to save us
Speaker 4: from Klaus Schwab in the New World Order or whatever
Speaker 4: the hell is in their fantasy bubble.
Speaker 1: I mean, if Biden wins, which he may or he
Speaker 1: may not, we don't know. It's two hundred days out.
Speaker 1: You know, he certainly is running a very disciplined campaign
Speaker 1: that does not involve being a criminal defendant.
Speaker 4: Indeed, indeed, and you know, not being a criminal defendant.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say this in English sometimes, but it
Speaker 4: really is, you know, a political advantage to not be
Speaker 4: a criminal defendant.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that anyone has with a straight face
Speaker 1: told us and not even a nauseam that somehow being
Speaker 1: a criminal defendant would help Trump is just so completely brainworms.
Speaker 1: But he's running a very disciplined campaign and he really
Speaker 1: is like there's a lot of dotting the eye. And
Speaker 1: I was struck by that this week when the Kennedys
Speaker 1: went to Pennsylvania with Biden and gave really good I mean,
Speaker 1: I was surprised that really they gave really good speeches.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, only one of them is a
Speaker 1: career politician. You know, all of RFK junior siblings basically
Speaker 1: said they're voting for Biden and they disavow him. Not
Speaker 1: even basically, they said we're voting for Biden, and.
Speaker 4: They were aggressively direct about their belief that their cousin brother,
Speaker 4: et cetera is a crank and that his presence in
Speaker 4: the race will advantage Donald Trump. And I think the
Speaker 4: more you point out to the soft Democratic voters and
Speaker 4: some of these younger voters who are the people that
Speaker 4: don't want Biden or Trump, that picking RFK Junior is
Speaker 4: not selecting some shiny, young, interesting, moderate candidate. He's a nut.
Speaker 4: He's a weapons grade kook. Across the board. When they
Speaker 4: see that inverse validation of the family saying no, he's poisoned,
Speaker 4: run run away. I think that is going to help
Speaker 4: the president significant.
Speaker 1: It's kind of meaningful whether you're having your siblings being like,
Speaker 1: this guy sucks.
Speaker 4: Right, This guy is a nightmare fuel who will elect
Speaker 4: Donald Trump? Even if in the world that somehow Joe
Speaker 4: Biden and Donald Trump were both killed by a meteor
Speaker 4: the thought of that guy being president should still scare
Speaker 4: the hell out of people because he's insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rick Wilson, thank.
Speaker 4: You, Yes, thank you very much.
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Speaker 2: Rachel Bead is a senior Washington correspondent and call op
Speaker 2: of Playbook and author of Unchecked, The Untold Story Beyond
Speaker 2: Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. My one of my favorite
Speaker 1: congressional people. I mean, you are more than that, but
Speaker 1: you are especially that I always think of Rachel Baid.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Molly. I hope I number one on your list? Hello,
Speaker 6: now you are number one?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? You're absolutely no question when everyone
Speaker 1: else close your ears. So I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you because I was like, we got to get Rachel
Speaker 1: baid in here, because it's so interesting what's happening right
Speaker 1: now in Congress, and because there's so much else, there's
Speaker 1: so many other stories like happening in the Trump trial,
Speaker 1: et cetera. We're not getting the pure, unadulterated craziness of
Speaker 1: what's happening right now in Congress.
Speaker 3: So can you give.
Speaker 1: Us where we are, where we're going? What happened this week?
Speaker 1: A little bit?
Speaker 7: Well, sure, Bally, I mean the big headline of the
Speaker 7: week was the Speaker Johnson finally, after months and months
Speaker 7: and months of refusing to put this White House Born
Speaker 7: Assistant supplemental on the House floor, he finally caved and
Speaker 7: did it. And what exactly is this legislation? It is
Speaker 7: money for Ukraine in their war against Putin, it's assistance
Speaker 7: for Israel, assistance for Taiwan. And he ended up adding
Speaker 7: a few sort of like not super conservative provisions, but
Speaker 7: a couple of changes to what the White House wanted
Speaker 7: to do in an effort to sort of appease Republicans,
Speaker 7: and he tried to do that because a lot of
Speaker 7: Republicans don't support your green funding anymore. So that's why
Speaker 7: Johnson has sort of been sitting on his hands on this.
Speaker 7: But above all of this, and above the sort of
Speaker 7: headline of Johnson is finally going to.
Speaker 6: Allow the House to pass this bill.
Speaker 7: Is this notion that we could see a second historic
Speaker 7: ouster of a speaker.
Speaker 6: I mean, last fall, Kevin.
Speaker 7: McCarthy was ousted, first speaker in American history to get
Speaker 7: the boot. And now Marjorie Taylor Green, the mega Republican
Speaker 7: from Georgia, she's teamed up with you know, now two
Speaker 7: other Republicans to say Johnson, because he is working with
Speaker 7: Democrats to pass this massively important bill for national security,
Speaker 7: because he's working in a bipartisan manner, they're going to
Speaker 7: try to oust him. And you know, it started with
Speaker 7: Marjorie Thomas Massey, who is a sort of libertarian esque
Speaker 7: Republican from Kentucky joined her and actually point blank told
Speaker 7: Johnson in a closed door meeting, you will not be
Speaker 7: speaker long.
Speaker 6: You need to step aside. You need to resign.
Speaker 7: On Friday, we saw another Republican, Paul Gosar, come out
Speaker 7: and support their movement, and I actually caught up with
Speaker 7: Massi personally in the hallway for about fifteen minutes about
Speaker 7: his plan.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 7: He tells me that more Republicans are going to be
Speaker 7: coming out calling on Johnson to either resign or threatening
Speaker 7: to force him out sometime in the future. So the
Speaker 7: big sort of headline I guess for the world is
Speaker 7: that this bill is got filing out a pass. Ukraine's
Speaker 7: going to get their money in their ward against Putin.
Speaker 7: But here in Washington, we are all obsessed with this
Speaker 7: sort of like Republican infighting, Republicans eating each other. But
Speaker 7: there again, and the fact that we might see another speaker, Alston.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of like interesting mac and nations
Speaker 1: behind the scenes too. I'm hoping you could talk about
Speaker 1: the Fart Committee art.
Speaker 7: Yes, I really want to make a sound effect right now,
Speaker 7: but I will not do that for the benefit of
Speaker 7: your early listeners.
Speaker 1: That's very that's very good, thank you. That's how we
Speaker 1: roll here.
Speaker 6: I met with my mouth, not with other places.
Speaker 7: But anyway, this is actually a story my colleague Olivia
Speaker 7: Beavers broke yesterday. This is a group of Conservatives who
Speaker 7: think Johnson he's negotiating so much with Democrats that they
Speaker 7: don't trust that he and other members of House leadership
Speaker 7: aren't going to try to enact revenge on them for
Speaker 7: refusing to sort of fall in line on this foreign
Speaker 7: assistance package. So this group of Republican Conservatives who are
Speaker 7: worried about losing committee assignments, worried about being sent on
Speaker 7: the floor somebody bringing up something last minute, they sort
Speaker 7: of adopted this we're going to guard the floor mentality,
Speaker 7: where they're going to watch what's going on and make sure.
Speaker 6: Nothing sort of slips past them.
Speaker 7: Usually lawmakers know when something like this is going to
Speaker 7: come up, like by unanimous consent, meaning like somebody will
Speaker 7: stand and say, look, I moved to censure so and
Speaker 7: so lawmakers know somebody in jets and then there's a
Speaker 7: roll call vote in a fuller debate. Well, conservatives are
Speaker 7: now worried that the leadership is going to try to
Speaker 7: punish them without getting any notice, so they're guarding the floor. Yes,
Speaker 7: the acronym of this group is called FART or Action
Speaker 7: Response Team.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 1: It would have been so easy to have called a kart,
Speaker 1: which would have then not been nearly as embarrassing, like
Speaker 1: the Congressional Action Response Team, you know what I.
Speaker 6: Mean, like Conservatives Action respond Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Clearly nobody understands how acronyms work. But then there was
Speaker 1: also moment where conservatives got to put a lot of
Speaker 1: like really wild amendment in there. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I mean so Johnson said, since he unveiled his version
Speaker 7: of this Foreign Assistance bill, he has said that he
Speaker 7: was going to open it up to amendment. And what
Speaker 7: that means is like there are going to be amendments
Speaker 7: where conservatives are going to say, I want to strip
Speaker 7: all the funding out of Ukraine. I'm offering amendment to
Speaker 7: take all that money out. You know, in theory, Democrats,
Speaker 7: if they wanted to, could try to put up an amendment,
Speaker 7: say to require conditions on assistance for Israel, which is
Speaker 7: obviously becoming very popular in a Democratic party. But those
Speaker 7: conditions are not in this Foreign Assistant's package. So part
Speaker 7: of just sort of him being able to turn to
Speaker 7: his conservatives and say, look, I gave you a chance
Speaker 7: to amend the bill. That's sort of what this is
Speaker 7: to try to at least modify or mollify some of
Speaker 7: the anger and sort of tamp down, you know, those sentiments.
Speaker 7: The problem is he's not giving them everything they want
Speaker 7: because he can't. A lot of these conservatives want to
Speaker 7: add what's known as HR two. It's this massively far
Speaker 7: right border crackdown that will never in any way clear
Speaker 7: the Senate slash make it to the White House. Biden
Speaker 7: would be toilt even if it did. But they want
Speaker 7: to amend it the bill to attach that album is
Speaker 7: if you do that, the foreign Assistance package dies. And
Speaker 7: you know, Johnson, to his credit here kept that in
Speaker 7: mind throughout.
Speaker 6: All of this.
Speaker 7: I mean, he met with a lot of these conservatives.
Speaker 7: He was getting tremendous pressure to sort of load it
Speaker 7: up with these partisan, toxic provisions that of course the
Speaker 7: right really wants.
Speaker 6: But then if.
Speaker 7: They get added, you can say bye bye to any
Speaker 7: Ukraine assistant. So ultimately he kept you know, the top priority,
Speaker 7: top priority in his mind, which is getting this Ukraine
Speaker 7: money and money to Israel passed. And so he told them, no,
Speaker 7: we're not going to allow those amendments. The bill is
Speaker 7: expected to clear, it's going to pass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this will mean finally money for Ukraine, money
Speaker 1: for Taiwan, and money for Israel.
Speaker 7: Al Right, yeah, I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 7: it's been more than six months. I'm trying to remember
Speaker 7: when the Way House first asked for this money to
Speaker 7: come through. The Senate didn't take it up till around
Speaker 7: a little after the new year. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 7: we have gone back and forth. It has been such
Speaker 7: a zig zagging pattern here. And remember back when the
Speaker 7: White House asked for this money, Johnson, Speaker Johnson himself
Speaker 7: was the one who said, look, I need the border
Speaker 7: addressed before we passed the supplemental bill that sent Republicans
Speaker 7: and Democrats in the Senate down this sort of negotiating
Speaker 7: rabbit hole for months, coming up with this bipartisan border deal,
Speaker 7: which was quite historic and you know, had it actually passed,
Speaker 7: might have actually done something, you know, for the situation
Speaker 7: at border. But then Johnson himself, getting pressure from Trump
Speaker 7: not to give Democrats a border solution, killed what he
Speaker 7: initially demanded. And now he's basically done what the White
Speaker 7: House has wanted all along, which has passed this Foreign
Speaker 7: Assistance bill that includes a couple of other provisions that
Speaker 7: he wanted, but mostly it's what the White House wanted.
Speaker 7: So it's a big victory for them.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this. It's what the White House wanted.
Speaker 1: It means that Ukin will be able to continue fighting
Speaker 1: this war. I'm curious now this leaves Johnson. One of
Speaker 1: the things somebody said to me. A friend of mine said, well,
Speaker 1: Congressional Aid has said that the Democrats are prepared to
Speaker 1: save Johnson. And then a member of Congress who I
Speaker 1: was texting was said, actually, Johnson doesn't want to be saved.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you think.
Speaker 6: I mean, he doesn't want to be saved.
Speaker 7: And the reason is because even if Democrats do save him,
Speaker 7: which all my Democratic sources I've talked to have told
Speaker 7: me they.
Speaker 6: Will, they will do it.
Speaker 7: And I know that the Democratic leadership right now is
Speaker 7: sort of they're not weighing in on this. But I
Speaker 7: think they're not weighing in on this because they don't
Speaker 7: want to make Johnson's life.
Speaker 1: Harder, right, which is what it would do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's this notion of you know,
Speaker 7: if Democrats are the ones who prop him up as speaker,
Speaker 7: you're going to see a whole bunch of conservatives, not
Speaker 7: just the three right now calling for him to go,
Speaker 7: but a bunch more saying he cannot be speaker. And
Speaker 7: the reason is because you know, if he's got to
Speaker 7: rely on Democrats to keep the gavel, there's going to
Speaker 7: be a mutiny. I don't know how fast it's going
Speaker 7: to happen, but like I even talk to leadership Republicans
Speaker 7: who'll back Johnson, and they are saying, even on the record,
Speaker 7: like this is not a tenable situation. So if the
Speaker 7: people Marjor Taylor Green's of the world try to oust Johnson,
Speaker 7: Democrats step in and save him, which I think, you know,
Speaker 7: there's a good chance that this actually happens. It's only
Speaker 7: a temporary solution because then you're going to have Marjor
Speaker 7: Taylor Green maybe on a daily basis, a weekly basis,
Speaker 7: a regular basis, filing motions to vaking, and every time
Speaker 7: they happen, the base is going to put pressure on
Speaker 7: Republican lawmakers to go against Johnson because they're going to
Speaker 7: start calling him a Democratic speaker, and it's just going
Speaker 7: to become this huge distraction in an election year when
Speaker 7: Republicans aimed to be united and Trump frankly doesn't want
Speaker 7: to talk about this so it's just it's not something
Speaker 7: he doesn't want Dems to save him. It's just a
Speaker 7: question does he resign before that happens, or you know,
Speaker 7: how does he sort of play this?
Speaker 1: How does this go? Yeah, and it's such an interesting
Speaker 1: situation because here you have this really like slim majority,
Speaker 1: the Ozambic Republican majority, right yeah, I like, and just
Speaker 1: getting smaller, and it's yours. It is an election year,
Speaker 1: like we keep forget, or at least I keep I
Speaker 1: mean I don't because it feels like, you know, every
Speaker 1: day is a year. There's a lot happening in an
Speaker 1: election year, when historically, usually you know, a well function
Speaker 1: in Congress would try not to have drama during an
Speaker 1: election year. Is that fair?
Speaker 7: Two points actually there, The first one being the fact
Speaker 7: that Congress is like a big story right now. I mean,
Speaker 7: usually in a presidential election year, all the reporters on
Speaker 7: Capitol Hills sort of lead their beats, they go to
Speaker 7: campaign trail, Congress sort of fads into the background. It's
Speaker 7: like a non story. That is not the case because
Speaker 7: of the Republican infighting. They just keep bringing it up,
Speaker 7: I mean, threats to Alice Johnson. Johnson responding like, is
Speaker 7: Johnson up put this bill on the floor. He put
Speaker 7: the bill on the floor. So what does this mean
Speaker 7: for his you know, his time as Speaker. So there's
Speaker 7: a lot of coverage and like a lot of significant
Speaker 7: legislation being passed right now, and it's you know, supplementally
Speaker 7: born assistance package that we talked about.
Speaker 6: But number two.
Speaker 7: So I have heard from Trump's inner circle that they
Speaker 7: were mad at murder Tayler Green when she first started
Speaker 7: talking about this.
Speaker 6: And the reason is what you just said.
Speaker 7: They know this is going to hurt him and it's
Speaker 7: going to be a destruction and you know it could
Speaker 7: spill over onto his campaign. So, like, I guess I'm
Speaker 7: curious to see if Trump actually steps out more to
Speaker 7: protect Johnson's job. I think it was pretty telling that
Speaker 7: he did this press conference with Speaker Johnson about a
Speaker 7: week ago, where Johnson came down to mar A Lago
Speaker 7: and they talked about you know, quote election integrity, they
Speaker 7: talked about another of issues, but the Foreign President clearly
Speaker 7: said I stand with the Speaker. But since then, he's
Speaker 7: been asked, does that mean white blank that you don't
Speaker 7: want Johnson to be ousted? And he says he said
Speaker 7: We'll see what happens, right, We'll see what happens. I
Speaker 7: also was talking to Thomas Messi, one of the Republicans,
Speaker 7: trying to ask him about this on Friday, and Nassy
Speaker 7: told me, like his understanding is that Trump is not
Speaker 7: going to weigh in and publicly say leave the speaker alone,
Speaker 7: that he's gonna sort of just set back and let
Speaker 7: them do the rebels sort of do what they need
Speaker 7: to do, which by the way, is a different read
Speaker 7: than I got from the Trump inner circle. But it
Speaker 7: just stands to show that, like the message about what
Speaker 7: Trump wants is not necessarily being sent to the people
Speaker 7: who perhaps need to hear it in terms of getting
Speaker 7: them to stand down. So that's one thing I'm going
Speaker 7: to be watching really closely over the next few days,
Speaker 7: because you.
Speaker 6: Know, obviously Trump's very influential with these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting, like there just
Speaker 1: isn't a clear plan. None of this is a plan.
Speaker 1: There is no three dimensional chests. I Mean, what I
Speaker 1: think is interesting too, is that you see Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green has benefited so much from this perverse incentive structure
Speaker 1: of being. You know, where you act out and you
Speaker 1: get rewarded with small dollar donations, that it would be
Speaker 1: hard to put the genie back on the bottle.
Speaker 6: Now, I totally agree with you.
Speaker 7: I've talked to some Republicans who have told me that
Speaker 7: they think this whole thing is a bluff that you know,
Speaker 7: Marjorie and Tom MASSI were sort of putting this thread
Speaker 7: out there to try to get Johnson to walk you know,
Speaker 7: the Ukraine land.
Speaker 6: Back, but I don't.
Speaker 7: It's hard for me to see, given how pointed they
Speaker 7: are and how like they've been on TV. They're talking
Speaker 7: to reporters and new interviews, like, it's hard for me
Speaker 7: to see them sort of walking this back. It feels
Speaker 7: like they're going to have to do this at some point.
Speaker 7: I did try to get Messy to give me more
Speaker 7: information about when exactly they're going to pull the trigger
Speaker 7: on this, and he told me that basically, the rebels
Speaker 7: are of the mind right now that they're going to
Speaker 7: give Johnson time. What they want to do is call
Speaker 7: he said, like a wrench. We're going to ratchet up
Speaker 7: the pressure on him by slowly building the number of
Speaker 7: Republicans who publicly come out and say he needs to
Speaker 7: step aside or I'm going to join in the motion
Speaker 7: to vacate, and Massey basically said, look, we hope that
Speaker 7: by we get to the time we get to about
Speaker 7: a dozen Republicans coming out and saying that that Johnson
Speaker 7: will quote, you know, see the writing on the wall,
Speaker 7: and we'll pull a John Bayner two point zero and
Speaker 7: step aside. And what I mean by that is when
Speaker 7: the motion to vacate was filed against John Bayner when
Speaker 7: he was speaker several years ago, Bayer basically decided to resign.
Speaker 7: He said, I'm not going to put the conference through that,
Speaker 7: and I'm going to leave. And so that's what Massey
Speaker 7: is hoping Johnson does. Johnson said he's not resigning. So
Speaker 7: it's a bit of a game of chicken right now
Speaker 7: to see who cave's first. But notably, Massey did not
Speaker 7: tell me when exactly they want him to step aside
Speaker 7: by Like I said, you know, if he doesn't do it,
Speaker 7: my next Wednesday or you gotta file the motion, what
Speaker 7: about next Friday? Like he wouldn't go there, which is
Speaker 7: interesting to me. So maybe they do blink. Maybe the
Speaker 7: Conservatives do blink and never actually do this. I don't
Speaker 7: know's it'll be interesting to watch.
Speaker 1: It is also true though, that they're not great options
Speaker 1: for the Conservatives, right. For example, I'm not convinced that
Speaker 1: Steve Scalise would give them more of what they want.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Conservatives met on Thursday night to discuss that in particular. Okay,
Speaker 7: so what's the succession plan here? If we get Johnson out?
Speaker 7: And you know a lot of people think Sclice would
Speaker 7: be the most likely to take over. He got the
Speaker 7: most boats.
Speaker 1: Him and Tom Emers, right.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, Tom Emmer and a lot of people think
Speaker 7: the same members who tried to get the gabble last
Speaker 7: time around, we'll try again. Jim Jordan, Tom Emmer, Steve
Speaker 7: Gleise and Splice got like the most votes out of.
Speaker 6: All those guys.
Speaker 7: So conservatives don't super love Steve gleae either. So like
Speaker 7: you got to ask, like, if it's not Johnson, who's
Speaker 7: it going to be? And so there are some conservatives
Speaker 7: who are upset with Johnson, but who will not join
Speaker 7: this movement because of that issue. I will say one
Speaker 7: other sort of bit of news that's first discussing is
Speaker 7: that like every Republican I talked to, from conservative to
Speaker 7: moderate to sort of more traditional Republican is telling me
Speaker 7: on background that Johnson and will not lead next year.
Speaker 6: They think that he's just and he.
Speaker 7: Sort of fell on his sword for this foreignersistence package
Speaker 7: to pass bipartisan government spending bills, and that after the election,
Speaker 7: even if Republicans keep the House, which they probably will not,
Speaker 7: that he's probably going to be booted and the rest
Speaker 7: are looking for another leader. So just a question of
Speaker 7: like when is that going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's just wild. I was really am glad you came
Speaker 1: and just talked us through it. Really appreciate you. And
Speaker 1: before we started recording, I did say that I really
Speaker 1: like the playbook. I know I'm not supposed to plug
Speaker 1: other people's podcasts on your podcast, but I really like
Speaker 1: the Playbook podcast. I listen to it all the time
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of really interesting inside baseball stuff.
Speaker 7: Well, thank you, Molly. I appreciate that it's a short listen. Yes,
Speaker 7: doesn't compete with you, doesn't compete.
Speaker 6: With you, Okay, best politics is king.
Speaker 1: Very well done, Thank you, Rachel. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 6: I will. Thanks Tonni.
Speaker 2: Bill Weird is a climate reporter at CNN and author
Speaker 2: of Life as We Know It Can Be Stories of people,
Speaker 2: climate and hope in a changing world.
Speaker 1: Welcome too fast politic spell.
Speaker 5: Molly, so great to be with you.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have you here. I think
Speaker 1: of you as the CNN climate guy.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry, that's perfectly fair. I think I'm going to
Speaker 8: change my business CODs to that.
Speaker 1: And this book is called Life as We Know It,
Speaker 1: And then in parentheses can be talk to me about
Speaker 1: why you decided to write this book and sort of
Speaker 1: how you got here.
Speaker 8: Well, first, Molly, I got to give props to your
Speaker 8: mom because I was a latch key sort of gypsy
Speaker 8: kid growing up, did a lot of reading, and my
Speaker 8: stepmother's copy of Fear of Flying taught me the birds
Speaker 8: and the bees at an impressionable age at least made
Speaker 8: it a lot more entertainment. So my literary influences are.
Speaker 5: And maybe began there.
Speaker 8: I always wanted to be an author, but too lazy
Speaker 8: and too busy, I guess to think about it until
Speaker 8: at the height of the pandemic in twenty twenty, I
Speaker 8: had been on the Climate Beak full time for about
Speaker 8: three or four years. Yeah, I guess four years, because
Speaker 8: I did the Wonder List. So for those I don't
Speaker 8: assume know me. But I was this sort of journeyman
Speaker 8: TV broadcaster at the different networks ABC for a while,
Speaker 8: but at CNN they gave me this the greatest green
Speaker 8: light in the history of TV news. I pitched a
Speaker 8: show called The Wonderlist, in which I get to travel
Speaker 8: to the wonders of the world and wonder what will
Speaker 8: be left of them for my daughter when she turns
Speaker 8: my age in the year twenty fifty and so I
Speaker 8: learned so much on that project. And then when she
Speaker 8: was sixteen years old, I did a pandemic world on Lockdown.
Speaker 8: I became a new old dad with my partner. Much
Speaker 8: to our delight and surprise, my partner got pregnant and
Speaker 8: brought our sun River into the world, which is a
Speaker 8: whole different perspective on parenting when they're sixteen years apart
Speaker 8: and I'm holding this little bundle looking out onto a dystopia. Basically,
Speaker 8: I was covering, you know, the protest after George Floyd's murder,
Speaker 8: and the pandemic was raging, and nobody knew what was
Speaker 8: happening politically, and so I started writing these sort of
Speaker 8: Earth Day letters to my newborn about the letters of apology. Sorry,
Speaker 8: we broke your sea in your sky, and you know,
Speaker 8: shortened the wings of the nightingale and all these other things.
Speaker 8: But I'm so glad you're here because we need all
Speaker 8: the help we can get.
Speaker 5: And these letters.
Speaker 8: Turned into end of a user's manual from my little
Speaker 8: boy to think about the planet we built for accident,
Speaker 8: for him, how to think about the basics that I took.
Speaker 5: For granted, like air and water and.
Speaker 8: Temperature and shelter and food and how we build and
Speaker 8: grow these things. They're hidden costs behind them, and I
Speaker 8: wanted to lay out sort of a clear eyed assessment
Speaker 8: of it's grim, it's going to get tough, but good
Speaker 8: thing you're tough. And here are some really, really inspiring
Speaker 8: folks I've met along the way who are trying to
Speaker 8: fix this, and they're trying to build us a better world.
Speaker 8: And life as we know it maybe over for better
Speaker 8: or worse, but life as we know it can be
Speaker 8: is full of potential and possibility. And there's so much
Speaker 8: of this glorious planet left to savor and save. And
Speaker 8: if we can just get our story straightened out about
Speaker 8: our relationship with each other and the natural world and
Speaker 8: all the great possibilities and hope. You know, doctor King
Speaker 8: didn't say I have a nightmare. They were living a nightmare.
Speaker 8: He said I have a dream. And it gave something
Speaker 8: people to work towards and struggle through to get to.
Speaker 8: And we don't have that conversation nearly enough in the
Speaker 8: climate space. All they were nearly enough. Climate conversations were
Speaker 8: at large. But the way we've talked about this story
Speaker 8: has been one of dread and fear and starving polar bears.
Speaker 5: I love s polar bears.
Speaker 8: But now the story is about future billionaires who are
Speaker 8: walking the streets right now in thermal battery companies or
Speaker 8: carbon capture companies and industries that you haven't heard of yet.
Speaker 8: It's that there are so many incredible ideas to just
Speaker 8: tweak and hack the comfortable lives we already have without
Speaker 8: noticing the loss and comfort, but our orders of magnitude
Speaker 8: better for life on Earth and create much health here,
Speaker 8: more resilient communities. And somehow I ended up with a book. Actually,
Speaker 8: I was actually supposed to turn this in two years ago,
Speaker 8: and it would have been a much darker book, honestly,
Speaker 8: because I was full time in the climate beat at
Speaker 8: that point, and it was just nothing but peer reviewed dread.
Speaker 8: But Joe Mansion changed his mind and the country passed
Speaker 8: the most ambitious sort of in more carrots than Stick's legislation.
Speaker 8: But it's still uncorked all of this energy, financially, intellectually
Speaker 8: innovation into figuring this out and reversing the damage right
Speaker 8: at the last moment.
Speaker 5: And so when I.
Speaker 8: Focus on those guys, the doers and dreamers, things got
Speaker 8: a lot more hopeful.
Speaker 1: So do you feel actually more hopeful about the climate now?
Speaker 8: I do, for and it's all relative, right, you know,
Speaker 8: before the Paris Agreements in twenty fifteen, we were on
Speaker 8: track for like ten degrees fahreneitam warmant, right, like literally
Speaker 8: making everything between the tropics unlivable and killing every reef
Speaker 8: and melting every glacier. In twenty twenty, that seems really bad,
Speaker 8: But so that was four to five degrees celsius of
Speaker 8: warmings where we were headed. By twenty twenty two, just
Speaker 8: as you know, renewables are hitting their stride and became
Speaker 8: super cheap or on track for two point seven degrees celsius.
Speaker 8: Still not great, Still losing a lot of reefs and
Speaker 8: a lot of mountain ice, and who knows about sea
Speaker 8: level rise, what that'll do, But it's a hell of
Speaker 8: a lot better than the hell we were headed towards.
Speaker 8: And right now we may be on track for two
Speaker 8: point four lower, you know. And these are things that
Speaker 8: the public were not noticing changes in energy streams.
Speaker 5: And for most of human.
Speaker 8: History we just burned whatever was cheap, you know, dung
Speaker 8: or whales or you know, sequoia redwoods. But now the
Speaker 8: two cheapest forms of energy Homo sapiens have ever created
Speaker 8: are sun and wind, sun plus battery storage and onshore wind.
Speaker 8: And that's why Texas leads the nation in renewable energy.
Speaker 8: A couple sundays ago, there was so much sudden wind
Speaker 8: in Texas electricity was free for six hours. And that reality,
Speaker 8: that economic reality, is strumping the ideology and the politics
Speaker 8: at that level. But of course, elections have consequences, and
Speaker 8: all of this sort of movement in the right direction
Speaker 8: could either be accelerated or stagnateated.
Speaker 5: It depends on how things go in November.
Speaker 1: If Trump winds were so profoundly fucked for a million
Speaker 1: different reasons. But I'm hoping you could talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how I mean, two and a half degree
Speaker 1: still seems like too much.
Speaker 5: It is too much.
Speaker 8: You know, we just had set another record. I live
Speaker 8: in the age of all I do is go on
Speaker 8: CNN and talk about broken records like I'm a broken record.
Speaker 8: And March we've yet another hottest month. Ever, every day
Speaker 8: from the last year has set a new record of
Speaker 8: you know that particular date in sea temperatures, the oceans
Speaker 8: are just boiling hot, and hurricane season predictions are off
Speaker 8: the charts. There's so much sort of baked in. This
Speaker 8: is a slow motion thing. We're paying for the sins
Speaker 8: of the fathers in many ways. But and so it
Speaker 8: sets up the greatest challenge human and you will ever face.
Speaker 8: It's like, how do we pull down literally gigatons of
Speaker 8: carbon from the sky that we've already put up there
Speaker 8: and pull it from the ocean. And you think about
Speaker 8: that vaguely, like, oh, I know COO two is a
Speaker 8: gas that can't see it or smell it. But imagine
Speaker 8: gigatons of any object. Brain cars full of them, guys
Speaker 8: in hard hats and boots moving them ships. That's how
Speaker 8: much carbon we need to pull out of the sky
Speaker 8: and lock underground back send carbon Godzilla back from whence
Speaker 8: it came, which is an exciting possibility if you think
Speaker 8: about it as a new industrial revolution and a way
Speaker 8: to gather around and really do this in a united front.
Speaker 8: It's also a scary proposition. It'll be resisted by the
Speaker 8: status quo.
Speaker 5: People will have no interest in that.
Speaker 8: But until that happens, until we get the parts per
Speaker 8: million of this planet cooking stuff in the atmosphere normalized,
Speaker 8: until we shut off the thing which is burping out
Speaker 8: of every natural gas well in the world, the temperatures
Speaker 8: are just going to keep going up. So we both
Speaker 8: have to adapt so that to the problems that are
Speaker 8: already happening hard in our cities. They're doing this piecemeal
Speaker 8: around the country. I kind of liken it to the
Speaker 8: five stages of grief. Elizabethkogle Ross was his genius who
Speaker 8: when she started practicing in Chicago in like the seventies,
Speaker 8: doctors didn't use the word terminal. They wouldn't tell terminal
Speaker 8: cancer patients that they were terminal.
Speaker 5: And when she.
Speaker 8: Started interviewing people and understanding how they were processing, going
Speaker 8: from denial to anger to bargaining to depression and acceptance
Speaker 8: and various stages and cycling in and out of hole.
Speaker 8: She created hospice care. Now doctors listen to their terminal
Speaker 8: patients for end of life decisions. I liken that to
Speaker 8: the climate crisis, Like you drive through this country, vast
Speaker 8: loss of denial in the Petro States for various reasons,
Speaker 8: bargaining in Charleston where they're building sea walls, in Miami
Speaker 8: where they're raising their streets, a lot of anger everywhere,
Speaker 8: a lot of depression everyone. But until you get to
Speaker 8: acceptance like this is a problem that we have to solve,
Speaker 8: and we can like aging, it can go well or
Speaker 8: it can go horribly. We have to tell that story
Speaker 8: and rally around those things. And this is why the
Speaker 8: longer we kick the can down the road, conversations about
Speaker 8: things like geoengineering, like putting a man made sunscreen a
Speaker 8: natural sunscreen in the sky to mimic the shading effect
Speaker 8: of a volcano just to buy us time because things
Speaker 8: are heating up way faster than even science predicted five
Speaker 8: years ago.
Speaker 1: Does that strike you as strange that you know we
Speaker 1: are in the minority, the two of us and Jesse,
Speaker 1: and you know people watch CNN, right and MSNBC. We
Speaker 1: all reading the New York Times, like We all get
Speaker 1: that it's the carbon, it's you know that that's what's
Speaker 1: heating the atmosphere, and we're on a collision course with disaster.
Speaker 1: But America is a country of three hundred plus million people.
Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to put this together? I mean,
Speaker 1: I when I grew up, we had snowstorms. We lived
Speaker 1: on a totally different planet. Like, why is it taking
Speaker 1: so long for people to connect with what's happening.
Speaker 5: A couple of things.
Speaker 8: The conversation has been politicized for most of my life
Speaker 8: by a handful of people. You could sit on a
Speaker 8: couple of greyhound buses. Honestly, the folks who belong to
Speaker 8: the petroleum club in Houston, like the fact that people
Speaker 8: don't equate the wildfire smoke that we saw summer with
Speaker 8: the invisible you know, plat cooking pollution that gets emitted
Speaker 8: from every tail pipe and smokestack, and so very vested
Speaker 8: interests from the most powerful industries humanity has ever created
Speaker 8: don't want things to change from the way they are
Speaker 8: right now. So there's that messaging battle and all the
Speaker 8: attendant political allegiances.
Speaker 5: That go with that.
Speaker 8: The media, if you could, you know, in a movie
Speaker 8: situation and create an evil plot from some genius. Climate
Speaker 8: change is pretty good because it's slow motion, and the
Speaker 8: people you need to warn to sound the alarms loudest
Speaker 8: are the most reticent, mild mannered, non alarmist people in
Speaker 8: our society. Scientists earth scientists by nature don't want to
Speaker 8: come off as being too alarmist, and so the messaging
Speaker 8: both from the people who understand the story and the
Speaker 8: people who want to bury the story have really clouded it.
Speaker 8: But Molly, here's the thing I thought the way you did,
Speaker 8: and here are the words that gave me the most
Speaker 8: hope and writing in writing this book a term called
Speaker 8: pluralistic ignorance, which is you think you're in the minority,
Speaker 8: you're not so big. Study out of Yale, Boston College,
Speaker 8: a bunch of universities ask people in twenty twenty two
Speaker 8: Americans and both parties just guess how many fellow countrymen
Speaker 8: and women care about climate and meaningful action, and both
Speaker 8: Bocans and Democrats guessed between thirty three and forty percent.
Speaker 8: And the reality is it's between sixty six and eighty percent.
Speaker 8: A majority of Republicans are in favor of things like
Speaker 8: the Civilian Climate Core that just started taking applications.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, the Civilian Climate Core. This is where
Speaker 1: I lose all voters in my presidential campaign. I am
Speaker 1: sessed with a year of public service, with mandatory public service.
Speaker 1: So it's actually happening. Wow, it's really happening.
Speaker 8: It's really happening. And the thing is that, you know,
Speaker 8: the Civilian Climate Corp. I have to be by nature
Speaker 8: as a journalist, anti non denominational on a lot of
Speaker 8: these policies. I don't have a dog in the fight
Speaker 8: on energy choices. But the idea that you could take
Speaker 8: the young people from Queens and al Passo and portly
Speaker 8: Love and put them together reviving mangroves if they love
Speaker 8: the outdoors, or learning how to install eat pumps if
Speaker 8: they're looking for another career, because it's about connection. It's
Speaker 8: about connecting with each other around nature, getting gen Z
Speaker 8: and theeds and fall in love with what is left
Speaker 8: of this beautiful planet and how much everything they have
Speaker 8: depends on her health.
Speaker 1: What is nice about this mandatory year of service and
Speaker 1: the Climate Corps is it's actually both Democrats and Republicans
Speaker 1: hate it. So it is you and I and Mayor Pete.
Speaker 5: You want to make it mandatory. I see, okay, that's.
Speaker 1: Oh, I want to make it fuck because I have
Speaker 1: three teenagers, so I totally get why it's a great idea.
Speaker 1: It's much better if it's mandatory. Like basically, my idea is,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm crazy, is that everybody has to
Speaker 1: do it because it should be like you know, in
Speaker 1: Israel they make everyone do the army. Here they make
Speaker 1: everyone do a year of service. It doesn't I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it shouldn't be the army. It should be like
Speaker 1: building heat pumps or you know, cleaning trash or doing whatever.
Speaker 1: But the truth is service is how we get out
Speaker 1: of ourselves. Service is how we we relate to others.
Speaker 1: I mean, loneliness is caused by isolation. You put every
Speaker 1: American kid who is you know, eighteen or seventeen, the
Speaker 1: year between seventeen and eighteen to work together, white, Black, Christian, Muslim, Jewish.
Speaker 1: I mean it's going to be amazing. I mean it
Speaker 1: will be a game changer.
Speaker 8: This is a climate book, but I have a chapter
Speaker 8: in this book addressed to my teenage daughter about social media,
Speaker 8: and I'd say social media that how I became addicted
Speaker 8: to a Twitter? How I gave her Instagram at ten,
Speaker 8: like I regret that with every cell of my body,
Speaker 8: and how he interacts with her tears and the natural
Speaker 8: world was completely altered by that decision to do that right,
Speaker 8: And so the more we can get and we live
Speaker 8: in the golden age of self isolation and addiction and
Speaker 8: depression and these beautiful, you know, frictionless interfaces where I
Speaker 8: can order my dinner every night and not even look
Speaker 8: the guy who brings it to me in the eye.
Speaker 8: He can leave it outside the door. Or I cannot
Speaker 8: see a friend from high school for decades and think
Speaker 8: we're connected because I like the picture of his kids.
Speaker 8: That's not how we evolve a humans. I need to
Speaker 8: go hug. I need to hold that kid. I need
Speaker 8: to you know, the healthiest, happiest societies that I visited
Speaker 8: on the Wonder List, from blue zones in Greece to
Speaker 8: the islands in the South Pacific. It was places where
Speaker 8: if you if you don't show up at church or whatever,
Speaker 8: people knock on your door to check out. It's where
Speaker 8: you can hand your kid off to as many different
Speaker 8: parents in an emergency, maximum sleepover possibilities for your kids.
Speaker 8: And we were losing that and so as hard as
Speaker 8: it is in these election years. I you know what
Speaker 8: I'm the message I'm trying to impart is you gotta
Speaker 8: hold your scorn for the storytellers, but the story believers
Speaker 8: in your neighborhood level, you can connect with them over
Speaker 8: you shared love of that hiking trail or the park
Speaker 8: or the fish and hole and get past, you know,
Speaker 8: the partisanship in a way that you can't with anything else,
Speaker 8: you know, and and if we can do it with
Speaker 8: our families, with our neighbors, multi generational together in real life,
Speaker 8: in the world. Oh man, the Civil War we stopped
Speaker 8: maybe our own right.
Speaker 1: I don't think most Americans want a civil war. I
Speaker 1: think most Americans want, you know, to look at their phones.
Speaker 1: But our launch are so convenient today. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think one hundred years ago you would have spent so
Speaker 1: much time doing And now you know, we write books
Speaker 1: and we do television shows and we you know, we
Speaker 1: get to do a lot of stuff that we might
Speaker 1: not otherwise do. Tell us just sort of one of
Speaker 1: the best places you went on the wonder List that
Speaker 1: really where you were like, wow.
Speaker 8: Uh, you know what's interesting is I went to I
Speaker 8: was flipping through Twitter one day and I saw a
Speaker 8: list maybe Ian Brower put it up like a demographer
Speaker 8: or something. It was a list of the countries that
Speaker 8: lead the world in unwed mother and ice Iceland was
Speaker 8: at the top of the list. Two out of three
Speaker 8: babies born in Iceland their parents aren't married. And I'm like,
Speaker 8: I wonder what that's about, and that like inspired the episode,
Speaker 8: and I ended up doing stuff on whaling, you know,
Speaker 8: the Last of the whale hunters and geothermal energy. But
Speaker 8: what I found to answer a little quie was this
Speaker 8: is one of the most feminist societies on the planet
Speaker 8: where there is no real financial or moral incentive to
Speaker 8: get married. Women start families when they're ready. They have
Speaker 8: shared family leave, I think like sixteen months or something
Speaker 8: that you can split between parents, and so if a
Speaker 8: couple's together for ten years and they want to throw
Speaker 8: a party.
Speaker 5: They'll get it. They'll get married for that reason.
Speaker 8: But it's flipped on its head, and so I was
Speaker 8: sort of exploring that they still have problems as the
Speaker 8: same problems women around the world deal with sexism and
Speaker 8: misogyny and those sorts of things. But the history there
Speaker 8: the Vikings were actually a matriarchical society who held things
Speaker 8: together while the men were off pillaging. That really small
Speaker 8: sense of community and the way that they are connected
Speaker 8: with each other and their natural environment. Being sort of
Speaker 8: on this desolate island in the middle of the North Atlantic.
Speaker 8: They're leading the charge when it comes to clean energy ideas,
Speaker 8: and they take care of each other in ways that
Speaker 8: I find really inspiring.
Speaker 5: So Iceland is one of my faves.
Speaker 8: Thank you Bell, Thank you Molly.
Speaker 3: No moment, oh fuck on, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Are you asking for a moment of fuckery, because I
Speaker 4: happen to have several. This week's moment of fuckery is
Speaker 4: the Fart the Floor Action Response Team, which is a
Speaker 4: group of House Conservatives now that Mike Johnson has decided,
Speaker 4: I want you to know how hard it is for
Speaker 4: me to have these words come out of my mouth
Speaker 4: to do the right thing on the foreign aid bills
Speaker 4: in the Ukraine. Legislation hasn't passed yet as we're recording this.
Speaker 1: But by passover, well, yes, continue.
Speaker 4: Look gonna it's gonna happen. In part because the fart.
Speaker 4: They lost their bet on Johnson. Their bet was he
Speaker 4: wanted to keep the speakership as much as Kevin McCarthy did,
Speaker 4: and that he wouldn't do anything to conceive upset large
Speaker 4: Marge and the rest of the crazies. And at some
Speaker 4: point Johnson did figure out. I don't know what moment
Speaker 4: in time it was, but at some point in the
Speaker 4: last seventy two to ninety six hours he decided that
Speaker 4: the intelligence community wasn't a group of deep state subversives
Speaker 4: lying to him, that Ukraine really is in desperate straits,
Speaker 4: and that if you really want world War three, let
Speaker 4: Russia win in Ukraine. That's how you get world War three.
Speaker 4: There's this still this caucus in the Senate and.
Speaker 5: In the House.
Speaker 4: JD. Vance is now leading the putin American boond in
Speaker 4: the Senate. He's become a guy who who like even
Speaker 4: David Sachs is to the point like, oh well he's
Speaker 4: up there. JD. You're too crazy, you know. Even the
Speaker 4: lunatics are like, wow, what happened to JD. Vance? But
Speaker 4: in the House, these like Freedom Caucus guys, they still
Speaker 4: believe they can exercise terror. They're failing, but it's really
Speaker 4: interesting to watch how broken they've made the whole house.
Speaker 4: People are quitting in droves. It's ugly. It's completely dysfunctional.
Speaker 4: Johnson may pass this, but he now basically governs at
Speaker 4: the grace of their Democrats, and I am fascinated to
Speaker 4: see how it turns out. And once again, I'm going
Speaker 4: to just say that no one in the Republican world
Speaker 4: should ever be allowed to do an acronym again after
Speaker 4: the name and organization the funt.
Speaker 3: This details with my moment of fackory GOP.
Speaker 1: Rep Jake Laturner says he won't run for reelection.
Speaker 3: He is retiring. He is thirty six.
Speaker 1: When you are thirty six, you tend not to retire,
Speaker 1: except if you are a Republican in Congress, And that,
Speaker 1: my friends, is our moment of fuckery.
Speaker 4: Hey listen, if you're that young in the house and
Speaker 4: he had a safe seat, by the way, wasn't really
Speaker 4: a particularly bad seat. Leaving power and walking away at
Speaker 4: this age is so against the traditional feel of Washington.
Speaker 4: And maybe that's a bad thing or a good thing.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to argue that. But most of the time,
Speaker 4: if you're in a decent seat, you're going to stay
Speaker 4: there until you find either a better seat to run
Speaker 4: for or until you're so old they carry you out
Speaker 4: like Diane Feinstein.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: You are welcome as always, have a great day.
Speaker 1: That's it for this