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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some.

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Speaker 2: Of today's best minds.

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Speaker 1: And Tommy Tubervel called democrats as satanic cult.

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Speaker 2: We have such a great show.

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Speaker 1: Today, Pivot host Kars Wisher stops by to talk about

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Speaker 1: her new book, Burn Book, a.

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Speaker 2: Tech Love Story.

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Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Sarah McCammon about her new book,

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Speaker 1: The Ex Vangelicals, Loving Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church.

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Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,

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Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.

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Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Wally Jong Fast.

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Speaker 1: You know that I'm agitated because it is early in

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Speaker 1: the morning and we've already talked.

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Speaker 3: We talked this morning, like at seven o five. Good

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Speaker 3: morning this morning. But that's because you're the hardest working

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Speaker 3: woman in show business and you were up at the

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Speaker 3: crackass of dawn to do TV.

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Speaker 2: That's not even true.

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Speaker 1: But first I want to talk about this week. You know,

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Speaker 1: one of the things you and I were talking about

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Speaker 1: was whether the her hearing was this week or last week.

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Speaker 3: Because we now live in dog years and everything seems

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Speaker 3: to go so.

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Speaker 1: Fast, I just think there are certain things that are

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Speaker 1: getting covered and certain things that are not getting covered.

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Speaker 1: And so for example, this weekend, this is gonna air

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Speaker 1: on Monday, but on the weekend before Monday, when you

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Speaker 1: hear this podcast, there will be in White Sulfur Springs,

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Speaker 1: West Virginia, at the Greenbrier, which is owned by Jim Justice,

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Speaker 1: the governor of West Virginia, the richest man in West

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Speaker 1: or maybe there's someone richer in West Virginia, but one

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Speaker 1: of the richest men.

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Speaker 3: Was Blankenship Richard than Justice. I don't remember.

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Speaker 1: This is a rabbit hole I would love to not

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Speaker 1: go down. But this guy, he's the governor of West

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Speaker 1: Virginia running for the Senate. And there is a Republican

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Speaker 1: congressional retreat and only about half of the Republican congress

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Speaker 1: and went because they all hate each other.

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Speaker 3: It's the fire Festival of Republican retreats. It's a nightmarish healthscape. Look,

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Speaker 3: the Greenbrier has traditionally been where the caucus goes. They

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Speaker 3: work out any family business, and they plot and scheme.

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Speaker 3: There was a superpower of the Republican Party for a

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Speaker 3: very very long time, and that superpower was unity. They

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Speaker 3: would say, okay, we all want to get to ex goal,

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Speaker 3: and so we're all going to sit down, mid out,

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Speaker 3: plot it out. But now the few are normies are

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Speaker 3: confronted with the insane people like you know, Matt Gaates,

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Speaker 3: Rolaur and Bobert, Martorie Taylor Green, you know, all the

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Speaker 3: all the kooks, and they're thinking, is this worth my day?

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Speaker 3: Is this worth my time to go out there and

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Speaker 3: listen to these absolute morons rant about whatever they're going

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Speaker 3: to rant it? Okay, it just it makes no sense

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Speaker 3: to humans of a certain basic sanity level.

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Speaker 1: You know, Republicans have this very very tiny majority being

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Speaker 1: held together by.

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Speaker 3: A speaker and glue right.

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Speaker 1: And a speaker named Mega Mike Johnson, who has at

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Speaker 1: this point is decided that he's going to break up

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Speaker 1: all the spending bills into as many fragments as possible

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Speaker 1: in the hopes that it will distract people from.

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Speaker 2: What's actually in them.

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Speaker 1: But on Friday, Ken Buck from Colorado just left Congress

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Speaker 1: because he was like.

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Speaker 3: We're not listen if you're ken Buck. And by the way,

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Speaker 3: no one's going to wake up in the morning and

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Speaker 3: go that liberal soro shill ken Buck. Ken Buck was

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Speaker 3: a conservative stalwart as you get, but ken Buck has

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Speaker 3: realized something, something really important. These people are not conservatives.

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Speaker 3: They're insane. They're crazy. They're chewing up the scenery, batshit

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Speaker 3: nutbar and he just said I'm done. I'm not going

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Speaker 3: to play this game anymore. He doesn't want to be

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Speaker 3: associated with these idiots. That leaves them now down to one.

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Speaker 3: You got Santos saying he's going to get back in

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Speaker 3: and run in the primary against the LOTA in New

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Speaker 3: York one, which it's like, yes, Alexa, order all the popcorn.

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Speaker 3: Oh my god, in the other room, she's like evena

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Speaker 3: er popcorn. That also scares you how like sensitive those

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Speaker 3: microphones are because the Alexa echo is in like it's

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Speaker 3: like forty feet away anyway. But look, you are seeing

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Speaker 3: the devolution and death of the Republican Party. This week.

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Speaker 3: They put a bullet in the head of the RNC itself.

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Speaker 3: They only got rid of the important parts like the

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Speaker 3: political operation, the communications operation, the digital operation, the minority

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Speaker 3: outreach operation, and the early voting operation. And what's left

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Speaker 3: the money slews back to mar A Lago operation. It

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Speaker 3: is now basically an email list. I wrote a piece

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Speaker 3: yesterday for SUBSEC called the Maga mafia's bust out of

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Speaker 3: the RNC. They are going to strip it, desiccate it.

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Speaker 3: They're going to break it apart, suck the marrow out

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Speaker 3: of every bone that's left, grind the bones up, make

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Speaker 3: them into bread. And when it's done, they'll be selling

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Speaker 3: off the office equipment and the furniture in the front

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Speaker 3: of three ten South cap.

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Speaker 1: As they're stripping away the RNC. One of the things

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Speaker 1: that I think is real interesting is that one of

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Speaker 1: the people who is now in the employee of the.

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Speaker 2: RNC, Christina Bob from an.

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Speaker 1: So I mean, then get rid of everyone in fact,

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Speaker 1: and there was a really interesting article about this in

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Speaker 1: the New York Times this morning which was basically, they

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Speaker 1: have moved in this election integrity fiasco, right, And the

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Speaker 1: one thing that Trump did, or not the one, but

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Speaker 1: one of the many things that Trump did, was that

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Speaker 1: he is still trying to prevent free and fair elections.

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Speaker 3: What they're saying is that we're going to instead of

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Speaker 3: doing early voting and mail in balloting and absentee balloting,

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Speaker 3: we're going to focus only on election protection. Quote. What

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Speaker 3: that means is there going to become this mothership for

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Speaker 3: crack headed adult pated Republican lawyers like Christina Bob. No one,

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Speaker 3: Christina Bob is like the Michael Avinatti of Elena Habbas.

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Speaker 1: She was also involved in the actions that led to

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Speaker 1: the other indictment, signing a sworn Affidavid stating that the

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Speaker 1: former president had turned over all classified documents in his possession.

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Speaker 3: Uh huh. And somehow she missed the sanity check on

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Speaker 3: that one. And she missed the sanity check on that

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Speaker 3: one because she's part of Trump's concept of my attorneys

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Speaker 3: are here to lie for me. That's not how actual

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Speaker 3: legal representation works. As you may have.

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Speaker 1: Heard, in early twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, Bob

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Speaker 1: worked closely with Trump's top advisors on the hair brand.

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Speaker 2: And this is the New York Times Okay.

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Speaker 1: Fake electors scheme, which led to one of the two

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Speaker 1: federal indictments he faced. So she could actually be in

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Speaker 1: the RNC doing more crimes right now.

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Speaker 3: Listen, she has a proven track record. I would keep

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Speaker 3: an eye on her for matters of defamation from the

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Speaker 3: election machine, folks. Yeah, I just keep an eye out

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Speaker 3: for that. I don't think she's gonna have an easy

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Speaker 3: run of anything in the immediate future.

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Speaker 2: It's two things, right.

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Speaker 1: One is that she's a moron, and two is that

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Speaker 1: she's very embolden.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, she is like a lot of attorneys around

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Speaker 3: Trump that they believe that there is no consequence to lying.

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Speaker 3: They believe that what matters is that they rev up

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Speaker 3: the adjic prop machine to keep the fraudental elections line running,

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Speaker 3: to keep the Trump was cheated line running. And all

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Speaker 3: of it is garbage. All of it is a product

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Speaker 3: of a Trump culture that has brought down so many

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Speaker 3: people who work for him. I mean, the whole making

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Speaker 3: attorneys get attorney's joke is real.

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Speaker 1: Let us take a moment to think back to your

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Speaker 1: former boss one, Rudolph Giuliani.

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Speaker 3: By the end of the year, Rudy's going to be

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Speaker 3: on the street in New York selling Lucy's We.

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Speaker 2: Don't do that anymore. If only we did.

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Speaker 1: But let's talk about this which I think is worth

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Speaker 1: talking about, which is Trump is effectively trying to delay.

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Speaker 2: All of his trials until after the election.

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Speaker 3: And this may have worked, it's not a pretty good

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Speaker 3: job of it.

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Speaker 2: And when we.

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Speaker 1: Talk about our institutions holding, this is a really good

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Speaker 1: case of where our institutions.

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Speaker 2: If you just push on them a little bit. They

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Speaker 2: really don't.

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Speaker 3: Hold Yeah, And this was something that one of the

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Speaker 3: National Review boys, Dan What's the baseball Crank said the

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Speaker 3: other day. You know, Trump and a secondary will be

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Speaker 3: constrained by guardrails and institutions. I'm thinking what guardrails? Exactly?

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Speaker 3: What guardrails? What institutions? The courts? You think it's going

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Speaker 3: to work out for you? And again, one of the

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Speaker 3: things that just continues to absolutely row is this concept

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Speaker 3: that we're both siding it still, the framing of this

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Speaker 3: of like low tax Republican Donald Trump and high tax

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Speaker 3: Democrat Joe Biden. Right, It's true that frame is poisonous.

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Speaker 3: That is a absolute fantasy. This is autocracy versus democracy.

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Speaker 3: This is insanity versus sanity. The coverage of this thing.

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Speaker 3: I tweeted this on Friday morning. The people who are

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Speaker 3: both sizing this do not seem to understand they're going

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Speaker 3: to be up against the wall, either metaphorically or literally

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Speaker 3: if Trump has a second term. They're not going to

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Speaker 3: get a pass from Donald Trump and Steve Bannon and

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Speaker 3: Stephen Miller and Cash Mattel and the rest of these people.

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Speaker 3: If they're in power again, they keep saying it out loud.

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Speaker 3: You know, well, democracy is nice, but we've got to

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Speaker 3: stop the left, whatever it takes.

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Speaker 1: So as Trump seeks to lay and your processeecutors offer

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Speaker 1: thirty day postponements. So that was the Alvin Bragg election

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Speaker 1: interference case.

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Speaker 2: That was the only case that was.

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Speaker 1: For sure going to happen before the election has now

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Speaker 1: been punted thirty days. Now again, we could argue as

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Speaker 1: to why it's not entirely clear, but no one is happy,

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Speaker 1: including Andrew Weissman and the marl Lago documents case.

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Speaker 2: We have Judge Cannon slow rolling it.

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Speaker 3: Nobody should be playing this game with Judge Cannon, where

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Speaker 3: they saw a couple little things in her latest judgment

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Speaker 3: that were like not completely in Trump's bag. Right, she

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Speaker 3: is still slow rolling this case. She is still delaying

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Speaker 3: this case. As we're recording this, we see that in

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Speaker 3: the Fanny Willis case she gets to stay on the case,

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Speaker 3: Wade has to go. This is just going to be

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Speaker 3: another delay in the Georgia case. Look, the audience may

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Speaker 3: not love this, but the Fanny Will's case was the

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Speaker 3: internal dynamics there were sloppy and they should have known

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Speaker 3: from the beginning that any kind of compromising information would

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Speaker 3: come out. I wish that case had been cleanly staffed.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but now is a great opportunity to fire the guy,

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Speaker 1: because a man is very much not a plan. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about what you're seeing. Ohio

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Speaker 1: is having a primary that is like again, these Trump

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Speaker 1: Trump has a slate of candidates and they all continue

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Speaker 1: to be some of the worst candidates you've ever seen

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Speaker 1: in your life. I want to talk about Ohio and

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Speaker 1: North Carolina. Both primaries have benefited from enormous APO dumps recently.

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Speaker 3: If you are a hyper maga, super right wing, hyper aggressive,

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Speaker 3: manly male human who thinks that we need to return

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Speaker 3: to traditional gender roles and all that, and your name

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Speaker 3: is Bernie Moreno, and your Trump's hand pick candidate, and

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Speaker 3: you suddenly are discovered in an OPO dump to have

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Speaker 3: been on a site called adult FriendFinder looking for hot

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Speaker 3: mail one on one action. It's all these guys. The

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Speaker 3: projection is unbelievable. It's never a drag queen. It's always

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Speaker 3: a Republican Trump maga dude, who's still you know, the

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Speaker 3: guy with the weird bats. You can't turn a rock

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Speaker 3: over on the internet without a Democrat or without a

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Speaker 3: Republican screaming that you're a pedophile or a groomor right

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Speaker 3: certains out. You know, the calls are coming from inside

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Speaker 3: the ouse. But yeah, look, Ohios had a couple surprises

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Speaker 3: in the last two years on choice and on redistricting

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Speaker 3: and some other things. And I have to tell you

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Speaker 3: the opening of Trump campaigning for a guy who turns

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Speaker 3: out to be another Republican weirdo. Take the win, have

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Speaker 3: some fun with it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, here's the big question is I

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Speaker 1: would say, does he still win the primary? And if

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Speaker 1: he does win the primary, do voters care? Like Ohio's

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Speaker 1: very red share, od Brown is running for reelection. He's

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Speaker 1: kind of once in a generation candidate that tends not

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Speaker 1: to be subjected.

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Speaker 2: You know, if anyone's gonna win that seat, it's going

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Speaker 2: to be shared on.

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Speaker 1: But like, I'm curious if you think this guy is

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Speaker 1: going to win the primary.

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Speaker 2: So the primary is Tuesday in Ohio.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, God forbid, it should be Saturday when people can

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Speaker 1: actually go.

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Speaker 3: Matt Dolan is as like a basic bitch, you know,

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Speaker 3: pumpkin spice, latte ug boot Republican that you know, Dwine

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Speaker 3: and Rob Portman and Mitch McConnell and all these other

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Speaker 3: guys want it okay, and he's rich, he's out spending

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Speaker 3: everybody else in the field. Club for Growth loves him,

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Speaker 3: but Trump loves Moreno. And as we've seen in a

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Speaker 3: lot of these primaries, you know you're gonna have Morenos

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Speaker 3: out with jd Vance and Donald Trump and all the

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Speaker 3: sort of maga world, all of our maga sort of

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Speaker 3: you know, coop demo of Maga activist types are out

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Speaker 3: there campaigning for Moreno. And if Dolan wins the primary,

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Speaker 3: somehow those people are gonna say, meh, maybe not. Because

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Speaker 3: Trump voters vote for the person Trump told them to

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Speaker 3: vote for. This is the same thing you're going to

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Speaker 3: see in Pennsylvania. You know, if Trump doesn't completely like

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Speaker 3: blow the horn for Dave McCormick, they may shrug. The

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Speaker 3: interesting part of this, there's an argument, not a big one,

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Speaker 3: but an argument that even though Ohio is a red state,

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Speaker 3: you end up if you've got Moreno on the top

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Speaker 3: of the ticket. Who is aside from just the adult

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Speaker 3: friend find herself who is a genuine whackad, He's a genuine,

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Speaker 3: genuine crazy person. You end up with a situation where

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Speaker 3: maybe Republican turnouts down a little bit in Ohio. Maybe

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Speaker 3: Trump has to start spending money in Ohio.

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Speaker 2: I like that math I like that too, and so

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Speaker 2: we'll see what happens.

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Speaker 1: But it is interesting to see this appo go out

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Speaker 1: right before the primary. There's some sort of whispers that

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Speaker 1: Joe Manchin is saying he might actually now run again

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Speaker 1: in West Virginia. We haven't talked that much about West Virginia,

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Speaker 1: but right now, don blanket shief, he is a Democrat.

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Speaker 2: I swear to God.

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Speaker 1: Jim Justice, who's term limited out as governor, is going

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Speaker 1: to run as a Republican. There's a world in which

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Speaker 1: Mansion gets in there and wins.

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Speaker 3: Right Listen, if there's a Democrat who can win West Virginia,

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Speaker 3: it is still Joe Manchell. Yeah, that's just real talk.

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Speaker 2: And he knows he's not going to be president.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, that's why he said no to the fraudulent

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Speaker 3: garbage from No Labels, Because e did Joe Manchin, a

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Speaker 3: guy not exactly what we think of as a paragody

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Speaker 3: moral virtue, looked at No Labels and said, Wow, this

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Speaker 3: drug deal is too skanky for me.

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Speaker 1: No, thank you do you think Rick Wilson that No

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Speaker 1: Labels like they clearly want all of us to think

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Speaker 1: they're running a candidate, But do you think they're They're

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Speaker 1: ultimately just can't find anyone.

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Speaker 3: They just can't find anybody. Everyone they've gone to and

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Speaker 3: they made a big mistake, like they would say, like, well,

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Speaker 3: Nikki Haley's getting out, so she's going to be a

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Speaker 3: No Label's candidate, And over and over people are like,

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Speaker 3: the fuck are you talking about. I have no interest

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Speaker 3: in getting involved with you. They are going to have

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Speaker 3: a candidate, and it's going to be some statewide official

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Speaker 3: somewhere who has been retired for twenty five years, heard

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Speaker 3: of no one's ever heard of in today's modern era.

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Speaker 3: These are really garbage people. They're really really bad people.

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Speaker 3: And you know what, the collapse of No Labels is

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Speaker 3: happening fast behind the scenes. We have three or four

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Speaker 3: people inside that world that are talking to us now

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Speaker 3: telling us how bad and how chaotic it is. And

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Speaker 3: no matter what Nancy Jacobson and Mark Penn believe their

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Speaker 3: revenge fantasy against the Democratic Party would be, it's not working.

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Speaker 3: It's just broken. Their whole thing is based on a

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Speaker 3: series of lies. If you look at their electoral map,

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Speaker 3: they say that the No Labels candidate will win in

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Speaker 3: Florida and also that the No Labels candidate will beat

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Speaker 3: Joe Biden in his home state of Delaware. And I'm like, y'all,

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Speaker 3: crack kills. You know this from the eighties and nineties.

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Speaker 3: Stop it. It's all based on a lie. It's all

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Speaker 3: based on an attempt to spoil the election for Trump,

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Speaker 3: and the up and that they will receive is coming

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Speaker 3: and coming quick.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Rick Wilson, You are welcome.

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Speaker 1: Kara Swisher is the host of Pivot and the author

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Speaker 1: of Burn Book, a Tech Love Story.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.

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Speaker 4: Kara Swisher, Hi, how you doing good.

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Speaker 1: There's a paragraph in your book that is like, you know,

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Speaker 1: I'm married to an ed tech VC, so I have

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Speaker 1: for a long time been exposed to the real stupid

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Speaker 1: side of Silicon Valley as well as the smart side.

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Speaker 2: So I wanted to read this paragraph. But then we

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Speaker 2: have a lot I want to talk to you about.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but I love this so much because it is

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Speaker 1: actually completely right. Over the years, Silicon Valley has become

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Speaker 1: full of smart people working on stupid things like online laundry,

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Speaker 1: food delivery apps, and weird hookup software, so much so

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Speaker 1: that I've taken to describing the world they're creating is

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Speaker 1: assisted living for millennials.

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Speaker 3: It's so true.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go. That's why I write, because I

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Speaker 4: write words that are true. I don't know what to say. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: they created a lot of apps. I got a little

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Speaker 4: tired of all the apps that were making like digital

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Speaker 4: dry cleaning, digital cleaning service, digital you know, kombucha delivery,

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Speaker 4: things like that. It's all whatever.

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Speaker 1: Good for them, but it is like PetFood, dot compats,

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Speaker 1: dot com. It was during the tech boom, but it

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Speaker 1: also that kind of like mushrooming continued and it still continues.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: No, Actually, they're working on some very significant things around

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Speaker 4: AI's it's a little more serious and so you're not

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Speaker 4: seeing that out of AI right now. You know, there

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Speaker 4: will be all kinds of applications and companies, but right

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Speaker 4: now it's rather serious stuff.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: No, I wasn't saying in AI, but I was saying

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Speaker 1: just in general. There's still like an idea is followed

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Speaker 1: and then there are multiple kind of echoes of it.

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Speaker 4: Yes, like you can see it in AI. Everyone's jumping

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Speaker 4: in they were in crypto and then they jumped to

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Speaker 4: this And that's the nature of Silicon Valley. You know,

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Speaker 4: it's a little like Hollywood. You know, suddenly everybody's doing

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Speaker 4: a monster movie or whatever happens to be what was successful.

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Speaker 1: So much of this book is about the sort of

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Speaker 1: rise of tech, right, this wave of tech. The thing

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Speaker 1: that I have, like as a bee in my bonnet,

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Speaker 1: is just how government has an American government because in

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Speaker 1: Europe there is more regulation.

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Speaker 2: You can like it or not like it.

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Speaker 4: There certainly is. I just interviewed my grade to Vestitur,

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Speaker 4: who just they just brought into effect two very important

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Speaker 4: acts around content moderation and also antitrusts that are very significant.

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Speaker 4: And she just find Apple over two billion dollars. Before that,

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Speaker 4: she had done a number of things as the competition

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Speaker 4: minister there in the EU. And so yeah, they've done

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Speaker 4: a ton of stuff. Europe's done a ton of stuff.

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Speaker 4: So of other countries, Canada, Australia, but except the US,

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Speaker 4: US has done none. So why money power influence the

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Speaker 4: fact that we have such a dysfunctional government at the

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Speaker 4: very time that tech becomes ascended. I suppose if this

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Speaker 4: had happened during I don't know. The railroad era be everybody.

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Speaker 4: Railroads would run everything in our country right because there

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Speaker 4: wasn't enough of a backbone by regulators to do something.

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Speaker 4: But right now they can't. You know, they can't do

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Speaker 4: anything with pass legislation to ban TikTok, although I support

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Speaker 4: it actually in some fashion, not the way they're doing it. Look,

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Speaker 4: they can't do anything, and this is important. The legislations

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Speaker 4: that are at an all time low ken Buck, very articulated.

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Speaker 4: Is nothing's happening up there. They just performative dunk artists.

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Speaker 1: That was something I've been thinking a lot about through

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Speaker 1: so many of these sort of hearings, it would seem

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Speaker 1: like there are easy places to start with tech regulation.

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Speaker 2: So if you were the American government, where would you start?

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Speaker 4: I wrote a column god back way long time ago

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Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, called it the Internet Bill of Rights and

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Speaker 4: put up ten ideas for it. One would be the

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Speaker 4: National Privacy Bill, it's almost too late now. The other

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Speaker 4: would be a bill to algorithm transparency and new antitrust regulations,

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Speaker 4: to update anti trust regulations, anti hiking disclosure laws, child protection.

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Speaker 4: There is one right now. We'll see where it goes.

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Speaker 4: It's been problematic, but a good one. Actually, we could

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Speaker 4: do one two a tax bill, tax the rich, that

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Speaker 4: kind of thing. There's a dozen that I would pass.

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Speaker 2: Explain does what the net issue here?

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Speaker 1: Is it privacy or is it protection for online people?

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Speaker 4: It's anything like what's the issue when you're regulating planes, radars?

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Speaker 4: It's safety, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's just everything.

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Speaker 4: Every other major industry is regulated in numerous aspects, and

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Speaker 4: this one is not at all. And the legislation that

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Speaker 4: does exist protects it Section two thirty for most of it.

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Speaker 4: You can't sue them either, so there's no liability. It's

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Speaker 4: a perfect storm in so many ways.

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Speaker 1: I mean two thirty is like one of these things

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Speaker 1: that is a constant, like talking about it forever. And

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Speaker 1: people on one side believe that if you repeal it,

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Speaker 1: then you have a shit storm that is created from that.

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Speaker 1: People on another side believe you have to repeal it.

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Speaker 1: Where do you come down on two thirday?

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Speaker 4: You can't repeal it. No, it's again, it's not reductive

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Speaker 4: like that. You can't like repeal it. It will cause

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Speaker 4: like unlimited damage, and so you have to figure out

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Speaker 4: a way to be able to sue these companies, like

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Speaker 4: those parents who show their pictures to Mark Zuckerberg can't

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Speaker 4: sue him. They can't sue them unless it's for copyright violation.

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Speaker 4: They should be able to sue him on something they

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Speaker 4: might lose. But there should be an ability to sue

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Speaker 4: these companies for their practices, just like you can sue

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Speaker 4: anybody else for their practices. And you might not like lawyers,

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Speaker 4: but they don't have to deal with them in any

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Speaker 4: way at all. I mean a little bit for things,

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Speaker 4: but not in the way other companies have to.

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Speaker 1: When it comes to the anonymity issue, do you think

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Speaker 1: trying to create less anonymity on the Internet it would

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Speaker 1: solve problems?

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Speaker 2: Or now?

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Speaker 4: No, you know, I don't think that's really at the

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Speaker 4: center of our problems. They're gonna have that on the

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Speaker 4: Internet no matter how you slice it, and it's already

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Speaker 4: baked in, so it doesn't matter at this point. I

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Speaker 4: guess real names are better. You know, we know Elon's

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Speaker 4: Musk's name on the Internet. He doesn't behave any better,

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Speaker 4: so I don't know why that would.

435
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,119
Speaker 2: Solve the problem.

436
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:09,639
Speaker 1: Are you surprised about what Elon Musk has become or

437
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:10,440
Speaker 1: not really.

438
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,879
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, of course I am. He was different and

439
00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 4: now he's not. You know, people change. I guess I

440
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:17,320
Speaker 4: don't know what to say. You know, I think incredible

441
00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:19,600
Speaker 4: wealth seeing him ounts of wealth and the kind of

442
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:23,200
Speaker 4: need for him to have affirmation in a quantum way

443
00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:25,919
Speaker 4: is and COVID and you know, you've read about some

444
00:23:25,960 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 4: of his issues at Wall Street Channel around drug use.

445
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 4: You know, I think it all comes together. When you

446
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:34,119
Speaker 4: get treated like he does, you're in desperate need of

447
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 4: that constantly.

448
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:41,200
Speaker 1: He has so much control, not just Twitter, but but SpaceX.

449
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:43,679
Speaker 4: And you know, yeah, he does, he has control. You know,

450
00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:45,800
Speaker 4: you know he's going to face real challenges at Tesla

451
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:49,159
Speaker 4: that's already're already seeing that because competitors and there's not

452
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:52,400
Speaker 4: enough consumer demand right now because given how many competitors

453
00:23:52,440 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 4: there are, there will be and he's far ahead, but

454
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 4: he's far had in the market that is slowing down

455
00:23:57,640 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 4: rather considerably. That's one SpaceX obviously is going to go public.

456
00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 4: That'll give him a lot of money. That said, there's

457
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:05,400
Speaker 4: going to be a lot more competition and some challenges

458
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:07,520
Speaker 4: from the government if he keeps, you know, up his

459
00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 4: antics and they determine that you know that he can't

460
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 4: have his clearances, but that's already it could be run

461
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:14,439
Speaker 4: by someone else, Fine, he'll still own it. And then

462
00:24:14,480 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 4: there's Twitter, which seems to occupy a lot of his time,

463
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 4: although apparently he doesn't sleep, which is another issue. He

464
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,399
Speaker 4: should sleep. And so you know, Twitter has really ruined

465
00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 4: his reputation in so many ways with people who really

466
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 4: were admirers.

467
00:24:26,960 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 2: It didn't solve anything. If anything, it made his life

468
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 2: much more difficult.

469
00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 4: He made his life much more difficult. It didn't make

470
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:37,399
Speaker 4: his life more difficult, but being famous, Yeah, no, I

471
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:39,320
Speaker 4: mean I think he's changed too. I think he's I

472
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 4: think people who know him. I just had an interesting

473
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 4: conversation with the Sam Altman at one of my book events,

474
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:46,119
Speaker 4: and you know, we talked about that. He said, I

475
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,440
Speaker 4: like the old Elon, and so do I. I didn't

476
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 4: like him as much as Sam did.

477
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: But it seems like a lot of people on the

478
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 1: Republican side would love him to get more into Yeah.

479
00:24:58,119 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 4: I don't think he cares about anything. He'll screw them

480
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:03,280
Speaker 4: just like he screws whoever. He just doesn't have any

481
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:06,240
Speaker 4: loyalty to any except himself. He's loyal to himself.

482
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,040
Speaker 2: You don't think he secures trump'sponder.

483
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 4: He might. He might, I don't know. If it amuses him,

484
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 4: he will. One of the things that was really interesting

485
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 4: was like, was he like this this right wing? I

486
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 4: was like, I didn't know what his politics were. I

487
00:25:18,560 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 4: honestly didn't. I did know what a lot of other people's,

488
00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 4: but he didn't know. You know, he had voted for

489
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:25,320
Speaker 4: I know, he liked Obama. He got mad at Biden

490
00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:27,919
Speaker 4: because Biden didn't invite him to some car contact that

491
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 4: he had, And that was the heart of this, that's

492
00:25:29,800 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 4: at the heart of this. He's Janesee and he got

493
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 4: picked last at basketball, you know, that kind of thing.

494
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 4: And he was pissed at this right word shift. You know,

495
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,360
Speaker 4: a lot of people have become especially mad, had become

496
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:43,880
Speaker 4: radicalized by online conspiracy stuffs, and there he is. He's

497
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 4: not like different than anybody else. I don't know. I

498
00:25:46,520 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 4: think he'd screw them just as much as joined with them.

499
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 4: Whatever he needs, he will do. That's what it is.

500
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 4: It is in his self interest. He will do it.

501
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 4: If he needs to use Trump to protect himself at

502
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,000
Speaker 4: SpaceX wherever, he'll do that. But he certainly he has

503
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:02,000
Speaker 4: no commitments to end eating that you would that are

504
00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:04,920
Speaker 4: actually principal. He says he does free speech, he's reach

505
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 4: free speech, but then he like bands people and stuff,

506
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 4: So honestly.

507
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:11,000
Speaker 2: It's not really about free speech, right or he thinks

508
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:11,320
Speaker 2: it is.

509
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 4: No, what's about Elon Musk. Let's just be clear, like

510
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 4: whatever's good for him is what he'll do. And he

511
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,199
Speaker 4: talks a big launchline on free speech and that he

512
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:20,720
Speaker 4: acts differently, so you know that's what he does. He's

513
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 4: not a serious person, as we say on succession, he's

514
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 4: not a serious person.

515
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the Claudian gay stuff

516
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: because that strikes short as like a moment when tech

517
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 1: bros decided It does seem to me like a lot

518
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: of these tech guys sort of feel that they know better.

519
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 4: Than they do that all the time they do that,

520
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 4: they talk about things they have no knowledge of. In

521
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,160
Speaker 4: this case, it was Bill Ackman, who's you know, right

522
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 4: up in the grill with them. You know, they're they're

523
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:54,200
Speaker 4: like in a cuddle puddle of toxicness together. Black's perfect.

524
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 4: He's a really rich guy who gave money to Harvard

525
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 4: and thinks he's an expert on diversity inclusion. Well, you

526
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:01,359
Speaker 4: know I has been joking on this book tour that

527
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 4: I'm going to do a ninety parts series on hedge

528
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 4: fund investing, about which I know nothing, But that does

529
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 4: not going to stop me from hang angry about my wife,

530
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 4: the hedge fun person whatever, I don't. You know they

531
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:15,400
Speaker 4: do that. They're like pontificating on Ukraine or you know, geopolitics.

532
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 4: It's laughable. It's laughable. There's ridiculous rich people who have

533
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:20,840
Speaker 4: a lot of time on their hands, who you know,

534
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:22,920
Speaker 4: because they're good at one thing, they think they're good

535
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 4: at another and they're not. They're just not. They're incompetent.

536
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: But Ackman created a belief among a certain group of people.

537
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: And again, I'm not at Harvard, and so I am

538
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: not read in enough.

539
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:37,439
Speaker 4: Look, they have problems at Harvard. We're not dismissing the

540
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 4: problems at Harvard. But honestly, why are we talking about

541
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 4: Harvard this much like everyone wants to get into Harvard

542
00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 4: and they hate Harvard, but let's stop talking about Harvard.

543
00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:47,680
Speaker 4: There are serious issues about speech on campus we should addressed,

544
00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 4: and it's an important issue. I'm not dismissing as an issue.

545
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,560
Speaker 4: It's just that you know, in this case. You know,

546
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 4: they had a gotcha on her and she had been

547
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 4: sloppy and she got caught. You know, she's in the

548
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,120
Speaker 4: wrong place at the right time, are the right place

549
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 4: at the wrong time. Whatever, you know, she got caught

550
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 4: in it and sort of was a mob. It was

551
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 4: a mob because she didn't answer it quite the way

552
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:08,199
Speaker 4: they wanted to, and she did answer badly. So if

553
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 4: you're at that high level, you have to answer well.

554
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 4: So that's too bad for her. I feel bad for her.

555
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 4: But honestly, if you take that job, you got to

556
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 4: really know how to do that job.

557
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: It was an interesting moment that testimony because it was

558
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:23,240
Speaker 1: one of the few times you really saw Republicans just

559
00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: get lucky, right, I mean, at least Stephonic.

560
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:28,919
Speaker 4: No, it wasn't lucky. They just well, yeah, she's a

561
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:30,200
Speaker 4: terrible person. Whatever.

562
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: But she had this moment where if she asked this question,

563
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: and obviously, you know, anyone who has a soul knows

564
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: that anti Semitism is bad, just like Islamophobia is bad.

565
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 4: And they just couldn't answer the question. They have been like,

566
00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 4: I don't know why they couldn't. I think they were trying.

567
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 4: They had been prepared from a legal point of view

568
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 4: and were trying to like cross all their t's. I

569
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 4: don't know, you know, they didn't understand that it was

570
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 4: a PR stunt by police, staphonic and they should have said,

571
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 4: of course, we hate hate just like you, at least

572
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,040
Speaker 4: not really. I might have made a reference to Donald

573
00:29:02,080 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 4: Trump at that moment, go well, at least just like

574
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 4: what he said about this, you know, just like we

575
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 4: don't think Mexican's are rapists, you know, like some people do.

576
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 4: Just like we don't think you know, this and this

577
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 4: and this, we think this is terrible too. That's would

578
00:29:15,920 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 4: have been the answer.

579
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: It did seem like corporate speak versus like just actual speak.

580
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 4: Right people in Congress have no interest in actually doing

581
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,320
Speaker 4: anything of significance right now. So that's where we are

582
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 4: with them, and so that's what they'll do. You know.

583
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 4: She's obviously trying out for vice president of the United States,

584
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 4: which let's let's see, she gets it. He's not.

585
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 2: She's not when you get she's a really low someme care.

586
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 4: She's you know, when they said, you know, you hate

587
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,479
Speaker 4: to say this, but she's really unpleasant, like as a person,

588
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 4: what man or woman, you know, she's you know, Barack

589
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,120
Speaker 4: Obama justifiably got in pillory for saying, you know, Hillary

590
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 4: Clinton was likable enough, but it struck home for some people,

591
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 4: of course, But she's just unlikable as a man or

592
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:01,320
Speaker 4: a woman. You can't be unlikable if you want to

593
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 4: have everybody vote.

594
00:30:02,560 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 1: When you look at this TikTok bill, basically they didn't

595
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:08,400
Speaker 1: have any lobbyists, right, And I mean that's what they know.

596
00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 4: They completely did, They completely did. It's it's just it's

597
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 4: an emotional argument, and it's actually a real one. Four

598
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 4: or five, six years ago, I can't remember, I wrote

599
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 4: a column saying I love TikTok. It's the best new

600
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 4: app right when it got started to get popular. But

601
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,520
Speaker 4: I use it on a burner phone because Chinese Communist

602
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 4: Party CCP, and it's there are national security concerns. They

603
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 4: just the government has to make the case for it

604
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 4: in that regard and then point out very pertinent things

605
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 4: is our social media sites can't operate in China. They're

606
00:30:34,360 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 4: not allowed there. It's a different site in China. We

607
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 4: have to be able not just to prove that they're

608
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 4: manipulating propaganda and they're doing surveillance or Propaganda's enough any

609
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:44,840
Speaker 4: one of them is enough, which they are. I'm sorry

610
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 4: they are, just you can see it on the site.

611
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:49,960
Speaker 4: But that they're doing it in a systemic way, that's

612
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 4: another issue, and that why should we let them do this.

613
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 4: We can't own the Washington Post, they can't own CNN,

614
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 4: they're not allowed. Why are they allowed to use a

615
00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 4: service that media media company. It's an entertainment company that

616
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 4: has one hundred and seventy million people using it. Just

617
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 4: we don't let foreign ownership, you know, neither can the

618
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 4: Germans own it whatever. So I don't know. I just

619
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 4: feel like it's kind of we sh have to focus

620
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 4: in on the fact that we're not allowed to operate

621
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:16,120
Speaker 4: in China in the same way they're allowed to operate here,

622
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 4: and it's a potential. I cannot imagine they're not using

623
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 4: it the way we think they're using it, and that

624
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 4: needs to be proven by our government.

625
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 2: Kar Swisher, thank you so much for joining us.

626
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 4: Thank you.

627
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: Sarah McCammon is a national political correspondent for MPR and

628
00:31:33,720 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: author of the x Vangelicals, Loving Living and Leaving the

629
00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: White Evangelical Church Welcome Too Fast Politics.

630
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 4: Sarah, thanks so much for having me.

631
00:31:46,200 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 1: Molly you're a politics supporter at MPR. Why did you

632
00:31:50,360 --> 00:31:51,600
Speaker 1: decide to write this book?

633
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:56,800
Speaker 5: Well, mostly because I had this weird and sometimes uncomfortable

634
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 5: and kind of unexpected clash rise between my personal backstory

635
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 5: as somebody who grew up in the evangelical movement in

636
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:10,840
Speaker 5: the eighties and nineties and my professional life covering the

637
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,520
Speaker 5: Trump campaign in twenty sixteen and everything since. You know,

638
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 5: in some ways I got into journalism to try to

639
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 5: get away from all of that. And that might sound contradictory,

640
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 5: but I didn't want to work in like an ideological space.

641
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 5: I really just wanted to be in a space where

642
00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 5: I could ask questions and it was okay to ask questions,

643
00:32:28,040 --> 00:32:30,200
Speaker 5: because growing up I felt like there were a lot

644
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 5: of answers but not a lot of questions.

645
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 4: So I covered all kinds of things.

646
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 5: I covered like water issues in Nebraska and wind farms

647
00:32:38,440 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 5: and the coast. And then all of a sudden, I'm

648
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 5: recruited to NPR in twenty fifteen to cover the twenty

649
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 5: sixteen campaign. I'm assigned to the Republican primary. And who

650
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 5: am I covering ultimately? But Donald Trump? And what's the

651
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 5: big story? It's what are white evangelicals going to do

652
00:32:54,760 --> 00:32:57,120
Speaker 5: about this guy. So I've spent a lot of time

653
00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 5: thinking about that ever since, and I get a lot

654
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 5: of questions about it, and I decided to write a

655
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 5: book to kind of try to answer some of those questions.

656
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 2: Talk to us about your own experience with the evangelical church.

657
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 5: I was born about two weeks after Ronald Reagan was

658
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 5: first sworn in, So I'm like an old, old millennial

659
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 5: when I was growing up, you know, I was not

660
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 5: everybody's evangelical experience is the same, but for me, I

661
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 5: was absolutely ensconced in an evangelical world. And I think

662
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 5: a lot of the evangelical kids of my time were

663
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 5: two because you know, this was a time when the

664
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 5: moral majority was rising, when the sort of political machine

665
00:33:30,600 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 5: was being built around the evangelical Christian movement. There were

666
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 5: Christian schools and homeschooling were huge trends, and you know,

667
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,400
Speaker 5: I was educated entirely in Christian school. We went to

668
00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 5: church every Sunday. Most of the entertainment and information that

669
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 5: came into our house, much of it was curated through

670
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 5: an evangelical lens. So we're talking like a special teen

671
00:33:53,160 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 5: magazine for evangelical kids. Produced by Focus on the Family,

672
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 5: Christian Radio Christian TV. I had some exposure to the

673
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,840
Speaker 5: outside world, but it was all kind of carefully curated,

674
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 5: and I was protected from a lot of things. A

675
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 5: lot of things were seen as bad influences, and we

676
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 5: were also taught that we were expected to try to,

677
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:13,839
Speaker 5: you know, save the world and evangelize with that. There

678
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 5: was a clear sort of political project that was increasingly

679
00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 5: aligned throughout my childhood with that theological belief system.

680
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:21,760
Speaker 1: God.

681
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:24,440
Speaker 2: Did your parents grow up that way or did they convert?

682
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:25,839
Speaker 4: Neither one of them really did.

683
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,359
Speaker 5: I mean, my mom was raised Lutheran, like all of

684
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:32,040
Speaker 5: her ancestors. Her people were like German Lutheran immigrants, and

685
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:35,319
Speaker 5: so that was a pretty conservative tradition. But like it

686
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,800
Speaker 5: was also just kind of the culture. My dad's family

687
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:40,320
Speaker 5: was really not very religious. I think they sometimes attended

688
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 5: like a mainline church on occasion, but it wasn't a

689
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 5: big part of their lives. I think they both kind

690
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 5: of got caught up in the Jesus movement in the seventies,

691
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 5: and you know, this was a time when young people

692
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 5: who were you know, baby boomers were young at the time, right,

693
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 5: were really influenced by the Jesus movement.

694
00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 4: There was a lot of sort of youth group activity.

695
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:02,440
Speaker 5: From what I understand of their story, they had an

696
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:06,280
Speaker 5: experience that evangelicals describe as getting saved, giving their lives

697
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:10,360
Speaker 5: to Jesus through experiences they had with other Christian teens

698
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 5: in youth groups and Bible studies and things like that,

699
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 5: and it totally changed the direction of their lives and

700
00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,880
Speaker 5: shaped everything about the way that they would raise their family.

701
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:19,720
Speaker 2: Wow.

702
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:22,359
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really common story, but it is

703
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 1: just really meaningful.

704
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 2: Tell our listeners a little bit.

705
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: About how you kind of came away from that and

706
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 1: broke out of that, and do you have siblings and

707
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 1: are they still in it.

708
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 4: I do have siblings, They're in or out to various degrees.

709
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,439
Speaker 5: And I interviewed my brother for the book, who talked

710
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 5: a lot about just the stress that we both felt

711
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 5: because of this pressure to sort of convert everyone make

712
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 5: sure everyone was saved. A central character in the book

713
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:52,080
Speaker 5: is my grandfather, who was one of very few people

714
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 5: we knew who wasn't an evangelical, wasn't a Christian of

715
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,520
Speaker 5: any kind, and we would pray for his soul at

716
00:35:58,640 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 5: dinner almost.

717
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 4: Every night before we as we prayed over the.

718
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 5: Spaghetti or the lasagna. We'd also pray that Grandpa would

719
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 5: get saved. And you know, for me, that was a

720
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 5: huge source of cognitive dissonance. It was something that always

721
00:36:10,239 --> 00:36:12,919
Speaker 5: presented a real foil to the things I was being

722
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 5: taught and forced me to reckon with the fact that

723
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,360
Speaker 5: there were people who were different. I talk about learning

724
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 5: a little bit later in my childhood that my grandpa

725
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:23,400
Speaker 5: also had come out as gay after my grandmother passed away,

726
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,760
Speaker 5: and so that added an extra layer of excitement tension

727
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:30,000
Speaker 5: to the family dynamic. But you know, one of the

728
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 5: things I sort of discovered and that prompted me to

729
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:34,400
Speaker 5: write this book was that there were lots of people

730
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 5: sort of of my generation, a little older, some a

731
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 5: little younger, some who had grown up in this evangelical world,

732
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 5: had been shaped by this subculture and were also in

733
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 5: many cases in the wake of sort of the Trump

734
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 5: moment that forced such a reckoning with what it meant

735
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 5: to be an evangelical. But there were other people who

736
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 5: were having conversations about these experiences. Many times in social

737
00:36:56,560 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 5: media spaces, in podcasts, people were using hashtags like exvangelical

738
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 5: to describe you know, what it was like to once

739
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 5: be part of that subculture and then to in one

740
00:37:05,719 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 5: way or another sort of reckon with it and deconstruct it,

741
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:12,560
Speaker 5: think it through and come out the other side.

742
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 1: Do you think that Trump made a lot of evangelicals

743
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 1: leave the party or Now.

744
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:20,759
Speaker 4: That's hard to say.

745
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,279
Speaker 5: I mean, there are so many different things happening at

746
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,320
Speaker 5: once when I look at the data around that question.

747
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:29,680
Speaker 5: On the one hand, white evangelicalism is shrinking and has

748
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 5: been for a long time, and so you can't attribute

749
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 5: all of that to Donald Trump. The country is becoming

750
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:38,440
Speaker 5: less religious overall, the group of people. You probably saw

751
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 5: that study that got a lot of attention, and it

752
00:37:40,160 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 5: should because it's important. You know, the Pew study recently

753
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 5: that found that people who identify as nothing at all,

754
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 5: the nuns in onees are now a larger share of

755
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 5: the population than white evangelicals, which some of those I

756
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,879
Speaker 5: guarantee were once white evangelicals or came from a white

757
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 5: evangelical background when you consider just the size of that

758
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 5: demographic in the country, So there's a lot of shifting

759
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,440
Speaker 5: going on. There's also some interesting data from a few

760
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 5: years ago that suggests that some people, even as you know,

761
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 5: white evangelicalism in white Christianity decline as a share of

762
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 5: the population. That some people are newly identifying as evangelical

763
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 5: because of Trump, because they like that message. And so,

764
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:21,600
Speaker 5: you know, from my research and from talking to people,

765
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:24,319
Speaker 5: the sense that I come away with is that evangelical

766
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 5: increasingly has It's always had kind of a political connotation

767
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 5: my whole life, but increasingly that is front and center.

768
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:33,839
Speaker 5: And so if people use that word more often than not,

769
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 5: that means they are, you know, fairly right wing Republican.

770
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 5: There are exceptions, It's not one hundred percent, but there's

771
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 5: just an increasing alignment between those terms.

772
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,480
Speaker 4: And so I think for people who who retain.

773
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 5: Some kind of faith or Christian belief or what have you,

774
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 5: who don't subscribe to the rest of that, you see

775
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:52,759
Speaker 5: people the people I've talked to sort of wrestling with

776
00:38:52,760 --> 00:38:54,840
Speaker 5: what to call themselves and where they go next.

777
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,359
Speaker 1: There aren't a critical mass of white evangelicals who were

778
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: so turned off by Trump that they became Biden voters.

779
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:05,400
Speaker 5: I think that people tend to not call themselves evangelical

780
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 5: anymore if that's where they're at. I mean, there's always

781
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,520
Speaker 5: been about twenty percent of the white evangelical base that

782
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 5: hasn't voted for Trump. But I think you know, I

783
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 5: covered the Nicki Haley campaign, so I met some people

784
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 5: in that category. I mean, all sorts of religious backgrounds

785
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:23,839
Speaker 5: or otherwise. But there's just not a huge market for it.

786
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,439
Speaker 5: But you know what I think is interesting is as

787
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 5: we go forward and we see these shifts continue to happen,

788
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 5: where the country becomes more diverse and also less religious,

789
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:37,120
Speaker 5: which are two separate trends. I should be clear not

790
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 5: to say that more diverse people are religious, because often

791
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:41,799
Speaker 5: some of the growth in Christianity is really in the

792
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 5: more diverse churches. I'm really curious about what that means

793
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 5: for our politics, right because of white evangelicalism has been

794
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 5: such a huge voting block for the Republican Party. You

795
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:52,160
Speaker 5: know what I say in the book is we're seeing

796
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 5: a lot of shifts, a lot of cross currents, shifts

797
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:58,799
Speaker 5: in the way that people describe themselves, shifts in religious identification.

798
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 5: And you know, at some point, I don't think that

799
00:40:02,440 --> 00:40:04,279
Speaker 5: the white, even deelible base is going to be the

800
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 5: reliable mobilizing force for the Republican Party that it has

801
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:08,960
Speaker 5: been in the past.

802
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 4: When that tipping point occurs.

803
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:13,680
Speaker 5: I don't know, but I think that, you know, some

804
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 5: of these conversations are part of that picture, that bigger picture.

805
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 1: A lot of times we'll talk about white evangelical voters

806
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: voting for Trump, and we'll talk about how they kind

807
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: of made a deal with Trump for the judges and

808
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:36,360
Speaker 1: the policy right, that they took policy over personality versus

809
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 1: everyone else who voted for Trump who took personality over policy. Also,

810
00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 1: do you think that a that that's true and b

811
00:40:44,560 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: that they feel they got a good deal.

812
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 5: I think it's true that they made a deal with Trump,

813
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:51,440
Speaker 5: but I think the reluctance with which that deal was

814
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:56,160
Speaker 5: made has been somewhat exaggerated. I think there's a misconception that,

815
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 5: you know, Trump sort of hijacked the evangelical movement, that

816
00:40:59,719 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 5: it's like this host parasite relationship. But I think it's

817
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 5: much more of a partnership than that. I mean, I

818
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:09,799
Speaker 5: certainly met many conservative Christian voters in twenty sixteen who

819
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:11,680
Speaker 5: would say things like I'm going to have to hold

820
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:13,560
Speaker 5: my nose and vote for Trump.

821
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:15,760
Speaker 4: You know, I don't really like the way he tweets.

822
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 5: I wish he wouldn't tweet so much, but you know,

823
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 5: he's the guy who aligns with my policies.

824
00:41:21,680 --> 00:41:24,319
Speaker 4: And I get that. I mean, there's a logic to that, I.

825
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 5: Suppose, But I think when you fast forward and you

826
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,719
Speaker 5: see in twenty twenty four that white evangelicals were a

827
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 5: huge force once again in the Republican primary, and I'm

828
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 5: sure you saw the same exapoles I did, instrumental in

829
00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:39,360
Speaker 5: the early voting states and making Trump the presumptive nominee.

830
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 4: I don't get the sense that there.

831
00:41:40,800 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 5: You know, there have been so many articles written about like,

832
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:45,200
Speaker 5: when is the evangelical movement going to move away from Trump?

833
00:41:45,280 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 4: Is there a fracturing? There's really not.

834
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 5: I think all that's happened is that the people who

835
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:51,320
Speaker 5: aren't of that mindset just don't use that label anymore.

836
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,439
Speaker 5: And that label just means increasingly it means Trump isn't.

837
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 5: I don't think it's what a lot of people would

838
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 5: like it to mean, but it does increasingly have that association.

839
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 5: Do they like the deal that they got? I think

840
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 5: by and large yes. I mean, the reality is that

841
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,879
Speaker 5: Trump made promises. Trump needed a voting block, he needed

842
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 5: a base. Evangelicals needed someone to carry forward their agenda.

843
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 5: It was kind of a match. I don't want to

844
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 5: say made in heaven.

845
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 2: No, but I get it.

846
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying that it was as much

847
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 1: they are doing as it was his.

848
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:24,799
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, he crafted his messaging to them,

849
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:28,160
Speaker 5: He courted evangelical leaders, and he made promises, which many

850
00:42:28,239 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 5: of which he kept to evangelicals. Right, he was instrumental

851
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 5: in the overturning of Roe Vade. So I think they're

852
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 5: by and large very happy with that. And again, I

853
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 5: think that's reflected in the in the exit polling we've

854
00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 5: seen so far this year.

855
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, who knows, but yes, they definitely are

856
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 1: an exit polls I do think are way more accurate

857
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 1: than regular polls.

858
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:51,240
Speaker 2: But I do think that's a really good point.

859
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: And I always sort of think of evangelicals as having

860
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: a little less agency, But what you're saying makes a

861
00:42:58,040 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 1: lot of sense.

862
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 2: And look, I mean they want right. I mean, a.

863
00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:04,959
Speaker 1: Very small group of the country decided that they got

864
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 1: real overturned and now they control the Supreme Court.

865
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,359
Speaker 2: So that is kind of amazing.

866
00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 5: And what I try to show in my book is

867
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:15,120
Speaker 5: that it's it shouldn't really be a surprise. This was

868
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 5: part of a longstanding effort to build a political coalition

869
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 5: around these issues, and Trump was sort of the vehicle

870
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 5: for it, and I think continues to be. But to write,

871
00:43:25,680 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 5: evangelicals are a shrinking minority of the country, and you know,

872
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,240
Speaker 5: one of the things that Polster, Robbie Jones and others

873
00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 5: have argued really well is the idea that that those

874
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,839
Speaker 5: two ideas are correlated. That the fact that white evangelicals

875
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 5: see their cultural power on the decline as their numbers decline.

876
00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:43,359
Speaker 5: And I've been seeing that for decades, but it's very

877
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:47,439
Speaker 5: precipitous today. That in part explains the alliance with Trump,

878
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 5: because you know, Trump talked about when he said make

879
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:53,360
Speaker 5: America great again, in some ways that sounded like things

880
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 5: that evangelicals were hearing from their pastors, this idea that

881
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:58,759
Speaker 5: you know, the country was once great and is now

882
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 5: in moral decline as it becomes more secularized and more

883
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,680
Speaker 5: diverse and more progressive. And so I think in many

884
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,040
Speaker 5: ways he was speaking, though he did it in a

885
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:11,480
Speaker 5: way that maybe evangelicals wouldn't have chosen, he was nonetheless

886
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:14,000
Speaker 5: speaking to something that they felt right.

887
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 1: That's such an interesting point as you look towards this election,

888
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: what do you think the lesson that can take from

889
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 1: Trump's relationship with the evangelicals.

890
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,320
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that they.

891
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: Are as energized to vote for him as they were before?

892
00:44:31,239 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 1: Do you think that having gotten what they wanted now

893
00:44:34,120 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: means they're less committed? Do you think they feel they

894
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: owe him for this? I mean, do you think they're loyal?

895
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: I mean, what's your sense of this voting block which

896
00:44:43,680 --> 00:44:46,759
Speaker 1: is really his base, and they really do at this

897
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 1: point control a lot of the legislature that we're legislating

898
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: that Republicans are doing.

899
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 5: It seems like the sort of Christian, nationalist minded portion

900
00:44:56,160 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 5: of the evangelical movement, which I don't think is everybody,

901
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 5: but they seem to feel in and empowered. I'm seeing

902
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 5: more and more rhetoric around people openly saying, yes, this

903
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:07,520
Speaker 5: should be a Christian nation. Yes, Christianity is right, so

904
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:10,719
Speaker 5: let's let's make laws based on it, rather than, you know,

905
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 5: a commitment yeah, rather than a commitment to pluralism.

906
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 4: I don't think that's everyone, though.

907
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 5: I mean I talked to some pastors in Iowa when

908
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 5: I was there covering the caucuses, you know, one of

909
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,279
Speaker 5: whom was really concerned about what he described as kind

910
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:25,440
Speaker 5: of a messianic language around Trump, and he said, you know,

911
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 5: the people talk about Trump like he's a chosen one.

912
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 5: And this was a conservative guy, conservative Christian pastor, but

913
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:32,560
Speaker 5: he just said, you know, I don't like hearing that

914
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,800
Speaker 5: kind of language applied to a political leader.

915
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 4: And another pastor I talked to, who's also a state.

916
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 5: Lawmaker there, talked about, you know, the idea that we

917
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 5: have to have a commitment to pluralism. People have to

918
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 5: choose religious ideas for themselves and it can't be imposed

919
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:48,760
Speaker 5: through the government. That can get really dangerous for everybody

920
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,239
Speaker 5: really fast. Right when you start saying my religion is

921
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 5: right and I'm going to use the government to implement it, Well,

922
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:55,439
Speaker 5: all you have to do is get on the wrong

923
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:58,160
Speaker 5: side of that, and it gets nasty really quickly, which

924
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 5: history teaches us, and which are Founding fathers, for all

925
00:46:01,080 --> 00:46:04,440
Speaker 5: of their imperfections recognized when they set up this country

926
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 5: with freedom of religion. So I don't think that all

927
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:09,560
Speaker 5: evangelicals want that, but I think there is sort of

928
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:12,799
Speaker 5: a growing extremism on the right wing, and a lot

929
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 5: of it has religious I don't even want to say undertones.

930
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:17,320
Speaker 4: A lot of it is pretty explicitly religious.

931
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:22,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, there definitely was a thinking that when these people

932
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:26,239
Speaker 1: got what they wanted, they wouldn't be so embold in.

933
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: But in fact they're ten times more embold than.

934
00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 5: It's hard to say for sure, I mean, look at

935
00:46:32,680 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 5: what happened with IVF right in Alabama. There are certainly

936
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:38,839
Speaker 5: many people who oppose abortion who believe quite literally that

937
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 5: life begins at conception, that embryos have moral significance. At

938
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 5: the same time, most Republicans don't support banning IVF, and

939
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 5: people I've talked to some of them have kind of

940
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 5: complicated feelings about the morality of all of that, but

941
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 5: they generally want people to be able to get in

942
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 5: vitro fertilization. But there is a segment of the Christian right,

943
00:46:56,719 --> 00:47:00,520
Speaker 5: and that this exists within evangelicalism and catholosis. I should

944
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:03,360
Speaker 5: say that does see IVF at least the disposal of

945
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 5: embryos is morally equivalent.

946
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 4: To and don't want it now. I think it's a

947
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 4: small percentage.

948
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: But the problem is the legislation they do is so

949
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,480
Speaker 1: poorly written that even in a state like Alabama, which

950
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:20,640
Speaker 1: then wrote legislation to protect IVF, they still ultimately all

951
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: of this is written with this idea of embryonic person.

952
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 3: Huh.

953
00:47:23,640 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 5: And it's a real problem for Republicans politically, and it's

954
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 5: also seems to be a challenge legislatively because, as you said,

955
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,799
Speaker 5: once you start legislating around some of these issues, it

956
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:36,000
Speaker 5: gets really messy, really fast. And I don't think that

957
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,759
Speaker 5: the majority even of Republicans want to ban IVF, but

958
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 5: as we have seen, a small minority, because of the

959
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,920
Speaker 5: way our system is set up, can sometimes gain power

960
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 5: and achieve more than you would expect.

961
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's what we're living through right now. Sarah,

962
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, so interesting.

963
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.

964
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 3: Were no spone.

965
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, My moment of fuckery involves the incredible inability

966
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:12,720
Speaker 1: of the mainstream media to fucking cover the vice president. Okay,

967
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: she went to Planned Parenthood in Minnesota on Thursday. It

968
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: was the first time that a president or vice president

969
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: has ever gone to a clinic that performs abortions. What

970
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 1: I think is meaningful is that a Planned Parenthood is

971
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:32,520
Speaker 1: a huge network of clinics right that does everything from

972
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:38,280
Speaker 1: STI care to pre cancer screenings for some people.

973
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 2: It's a primary care place. It's really important.

974
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 1: I think to take a moment to compare them to

975
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 1: like pregnancy crisis centers that religious organizations prop up to

976
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:49,680
Speaker 1: try to trick women.

977
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 3: The ones that the Cate of Florida pays thirty million

978
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:52,120
Speaker 3: dollars a year.

979
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 1: Two Right, the ones that where you go for a

980
00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:56,760
Speaker 1: pregnancy test and they tell you you need Jesus.

981
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:58,719
Speaker 2: This is the opposite of that. Right.

982
00:48:59,080 --> 00:49:01,359
Speaker 1: You go in there and they say, let's scan you

983
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,799
Speaker 1: for STDs and let's check you for get a papshmir

984
00:49:04,960 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 1: so we can make sure you don't have cervical cancer.

985
00:49:07,719 --> 00:49:08,600
Speaker 2: This is the opposite.

986
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: Right, This is like doctors treating women for health problems.

987
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,279
Speaker 1: And again, like what we see again and again is

988
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 1: that abortion is healthcare. Right, tell the woman who has

989
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: been sent to sit in her car to bleed out

990
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:26,040
Speaker 1: her miscarriage that abortion isn't healthcare. So we have the

991
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:30,760
Speaker 1: highest elected woman, black, white, or you know, of any

992
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:34,400
Speaker 1: race or ethnicity, she is going to an abortion clinic

993
00:49:34,719 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: and healthcare clinic. To highlight the Republican war on choice.

994
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: And and by the way, in Iowa, they're shopping another

995
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:50,279
Speaker 1: embryonic personhood bill. So the legislation these Republican legislators are

996
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: not stopping right. They are going to make IVF completely impossible,

997
00:49:54,520 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 1: legally impossible, because if you kill a frozen embryo, you

998
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: are a murderer. And here we have this really good

999
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: historic vice president going to highlight it and it gets

1000
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 1: very little coverage. And that is my fucking moment of fuckery.

1001
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 3: You know what, Molly, that is a pretty damn good

1002
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 3: moment of fuckery. The moment of fuckery for me this

1003
00:50:18,040 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 3: week is one of the secret sugar daddies of the right.

1004
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 3: It's a guy named woe Win Yee. This guy is

1005
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:30,240
Speaker 3: a Chinese billionaire who has spent years and years now

1006
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 3: shoveling tens of millions of dollars into the law of

1007
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 3: every eager little bird in the right wing Steve Bannon,

1008
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 3: Jason Miller, Getter, all these scams, all these people that

1009
00:50:45,080 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 3: are out there in the right wing media space are

1010
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 3: dependent on the largesse not of the Koch brothers, but

1011
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 3: of a Chinese billionaire.

1012
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 2: Because there's only one Coke brother. Now it's Coke.

1013
00:50:56,880 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 3: Well, that's true, I know, rip all that, but this

1014
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:03,680
Speaker 3: guy is the sugar daddy's It was his yacht on

1015
00:51:03,719 --> 00:51:06,840
Speaker 3: which Steve Bannon was arrested right, this is a guy

1016
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:10,000
Speaker 3: who is a figure in American political wife without you

1017
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 3: knowing it. And if your podcast or my podcast was

1018
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 3: being underwritten by a Chinese billionaire, what do you think

1019
00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 3: the reaction would be on Fox? What do you think

1020
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,440
Speaker 3: the reaction would be in the Wall Street Journal? What

1021
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 3: do you think the reaction would be across the whole

1022
00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:27,320
Speaker 3: maga social media world? And this guy has funded all

1023
00:51:27,480 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 3: of these weird ass epic times hype epoch epoch excuse me,

1024
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 3: epic epocha. It's not apic, it's epic bullshit. But he's

1025
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 3: just somebody nobody knows, and he's declared bankruptcy now. And

1026
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 3: this entire Rosetta Stone of all these things he's done

1027
00:51:46,160 --> 00:51:50,560
Speaker 3: inside the Republican universe is coming to fruition, and God

1028
00:51:50,560 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 3: bless people who want to use their money for things.

1029
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 3: But as usual with the Republicans, it's the weird hypocritical

1030
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 3: nature of the thing. Where you got Steve Bannon out

1031
00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 3: screaming about influence from foreign powers on American elections, and

1032
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 3: yet here he is taking money from a guy who

1033
00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:07,640
Speaker 3: is a turns out to be kind of a weird

1034
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 3: pyramid skene grifter. But b also turns out to be

1035
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:14,200
Speaker 3: the sugar daddy of some of the craziest right wing

1036
00:52:14,239 --> 00:52:15,280
Speaker 3: crap that's out here.

1037
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in

1038
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,760
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds

1039
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you

1040
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:28,800
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend

1041
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.