Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Trump was asked about raising his kids.
Speaker 1: He went on an eight minute rant calling for the
Speaker 1: death penalty, and actually I listened to that rant and
Speaker 1: it was wild. We have such a great show for you.
Speaker 1: TPMs Josh Marshall joins us to talk about the state
Speaker 1: of the race. Then we'll talk to the executive director
Speaker 1: of the West Alabama Women's Center, Robin Marty, about the
Speaker 1: horror she's seeing in post rural America.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, you and I have been pretty obsessed with
Speaker 2: the state of Florida not being able to be insured
Speaker 2: by many insurance companies. And after these foods this article
Speaker 2: today in The Times, it sent me what did you
Speaker 2: see here?
Speaker 1: So I just one of the big problems in Florida
Speaker 1: is inflation. And inflation in Florida is much higher than
Speaker 1: in other places. And part of that is because insurance.
Speaker 1: Housing insurance in Florida is insane, and that's because of
Speaker 1: climate change. Right, It's more and more expensive to ensure
Speaker 1: waterfront property or even property that's just in low lying
Speaker 1: areas because of flooding, and in North Carolina this has
Speaker 1: become such a big deal that a proposed forty two
Speaker 1: percent rate hike and then they just had another hurricane,
Speaker 1: Hurricane Helene, which was like this hurricane where you know,
Speaker 1: more than two hundred people died, major, major flooding, people
Speaker 1: you know, cut off from food and water and internet
Speaker 1: and power. What insurance is like the first canary in
Speaker 1: the coal mine when it comes to climate change, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing this firsthand. And now the question is will
Speaker 1: people vote on the fact that some of the inflation
Speaker 1: is actually caused by climate change? And the answers we
Speaker 1: don't know, but it certainly is an issue, and especially
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, which is a very tight state where
Speaker 1: it's possible that Vice President Harris could actually win that state.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon, I saw a movie this week.
Speaker 2: Let me guess it was Beetlejuice.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was Beetlejuice. That's a deep cut and a
Speaker 1: callback to Lauren Boeberg.
Speaker 2: That's not sure there's a new Beetlejuice in theaters. Lauren
Speaker 2: and I saw it the other night and it was great.
Speaker 1: Oh that is something.
Speaker 2: But what I think you went and saw is a
Speaker 2: movie that a lot of people are kind of pissed
Speaker 2: about because they thought that this was going to be
Speaker 2: like a big activism movie that changed the voting base,
Speaker 2: like it did when Michael Moore would put out movies
Speaker 2: before elections. Would you see here?
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's actually true.
Speaker 2: That's what my Twitter feed is saying.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well, then that's even more likely to be untrue.
Speaker 1: But The Apprentice is a movie about early Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and Roy Cone, and it's quite actually very interesting. It
Speaker 1: has a lot of very controversial stuff in it, including
Speaker 1: a rape sea in that again has been in books
Speaker 1: about Trump. Again, I don't know. I thought it was
Speaker 1: quite good and pretty interesting. It's going to open this
Speaker 1: week in seventeen hundred and forty theaters nationwide, so there's
Speaker 1: a real opportunity to see it if you want. It
Speaker 1: does not yet have a streaming service attached to it,
Speaker 1: but hopefully it will. Pretty interesting movie. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that it does anything for the selection, but it's still
Speaker 1: worth seeing Trump's origin story played out on the big screen.
Speaker 1: Interesting stuff. When it comes to weather, huh.
Speaker 2: Really, there was a weather event here, a thing that
Speaker 2: really seemed to scare everybody. This week. Aside from the
Speaker 2: impact of the storm, was just how crazy the reactions
Speaker 2: to Democrats could draw the weather and other things were.
Speaker 2: But there were some interesting details with this hurricane, Milton,
Speaker 2: what did you see?
Speaker 1: Okay, so Republicans doubled down, or at least Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green did on the idea that they quote unquote likely
Speaker 1: was Jews. Though then some of Maga world said that
Speaker 1: actually the government is doing cloud seating. Now, I just
Speaker 1: want to pause for a second to talk about cloud seating.
Speaker 1: That is something that exists, and it's in the very
Speaker 1: very early stages. Nobody is moving hurricanes around with it.
Speaker 1: They are able to do some very minor stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's anywhere near where it would need to
Speaker 1: be to be an active government controlling the weather. But
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of a like with so
Speaker 1: many conspiracies, a little bit of a gem of information
Speaker 1: here that is real and then a lot of bullshit.
Speaker 1: So Jews are not controlling hurricanes and Democrats are not
Speaker 1: controlling hurricanes. And by the way, hurricanes have always hit
Speaker 1: in places like Florida and North Carolina. I mean that
Speaker 1: is you know, that's where they hit. It's very unusual
Speaker 1: for them to hit places that are not where you know,
Speaker 1: where the water is warm enough to start a hurricane,
Speaker 1: and then for it to continue on and tends to
Speaker 1: be on the coastline. So this is pretty crazy. There
Speaker 1: are definitely Trump supporters who believe this, which is wild.
Speaker 1: And I would say there was also really some interesting
Speaker 1: stuff that there was a sort of reverse storm surge
Speaker 1: and the water was sucked out of Tampa Bay by
Speaker 1: Hurricane Milton. But in the end, the good news is
Speaker 1: that while there was damage, it wasn't nearly as bad
Speaker 1: as a lot of people thought it was. And while
Speaker 1: they got the path right and ended up being just
Speaker 1: a category three and not a category five. And while
Speaker 1: the storm storm surge was bad, it was not as
Speaker 1: bad as people had forecasted. So that's quite good news.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't have power, but they're getting their lives
Speaker 1: back to back on track, so that's great news. I
Speaker 1: want you to talk to us Jesse Cannon about Trump
Speaker 1: versus cities.
Speaker 2: Well, previously he had said that San Francisco was great
Speaker 2: in a certain era. It happened to be with Gavin
Speaker 2: Dus some of his least favorite governor and Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: were both in charge of San Francisco, so that was funny.
Speaker 2: But now he's demonizing Detroit. He loves demonizing other places.
Speaker 2: He called Milwaukee a horrible city. You and I and
Speaker 2: Molly were just in Milwaukee. We thought it was a
Speaker 2: lovely city and had some great pizza there.
Speaker 1: We really had some good pizza there. And I want
Speaker 1: to point out this is his way of dog whistling. Right,
Speaker 1: He's saying that the cities are not good and that
Speaker 1: Harris will make all of your suburban areas cities. And
Speaker 1: what he's saying, right, is that he's saying that cities
Speaker 1: which where sometimes they have a larger black population, that
Speaker 1: if Harris it becomes president, then she will make your
Speaker 1: suburbs more black. And it's a racist dog whistle. It's
Speaker 1: totally just, but no one is surprised by it. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump this week went to the Detroit Economic Club and
Speaker 1: instead of talking about anything particularly relevant, he spent the
Speaker 1: time trashing Detroit. This is so much a part of
Speaker 1: his playbook. Molly.
Speaker 2: The election is a mere twenty five days away now,
Speaker 2: as I can see from the countdown clock on my desk,
Speaker 2: that I have here that counts down my anxiety. But
Speaker 2: this new pupil says that the election will probably come
Speaker 2: down to a mere thirty percent of voters who are
Speaker 2: still persuadable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know what, I'm going to say one thing.
Speaker 1: That's a tight election. And Pew found it eighty two
Speaker 1: percent of voters locked in forty two for Harris and
Speaker 1: forty for Trump, and there's five percent who has no preference.
Speaker 1: And you have about thirteen percent of voters who are
Speaker 1: still persuadable. Get out there, talk to your friends, talk
Speaker 1: to your kids, talk to your kid's friends. This is
Speaker 1: the moment. Twenty five days is a lot of days, right,
Speaker 1: you have a chance to go and talk to people
Speaker 1: and make the case and remind Americans what is at
Speaker 1: stake here. You know, a lot of people have mothers, daughters, cousins, sisters, aunts. Right,
Speaker 1: did they want to have children? Do they want to
Speaker 1: have medical care? Do they want to be able to,
Speaker 1: you know, if they are having a miscarriage, do they
Speaker 1: want to be able to take the medicine that they
Speaker 1: need for that? Because if they do, then they want
Speaker 1: to vote for the vice president. And twenty five days
Speaker 1: is a lot of days, so he's got to keep going.
Speaker 2: Agreed, Somali. You and I, between the two of us
Speaker 2: five dogs. We are very big dog lovers. Normally we
Speaker 2: would not devote time on the show to the story
Speaker 2: of a dog, but you pulled my heartstrings and I
Speaker 2: gave it.
Speaker 1: That dog situation is making me completely crazy. So in Florida,
Speaker 1: a state trooper found a dog that was tied to
Speaker 1: a pole. The dog is safe, he's been rescued. His
Speaker 1: name is now Trooper. He's at the Lyon County Humane
Speaker 1: Society in Florida, available for adoption. So whoever put him
Speaker 1: on that, whoever tied him to that, Paul, you know
Speaker 1: it's just a disgusting thing to do, and really atrocious,
Speaker 1: terrible stuff.
Speaker 2: Agreed that. I know you're trying to hedge here and
Speaker 2: not say something bad, but just know that every bad
Speaker 2: thought is in our heads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really true.
Speaker 2: We have even more tour dates for you. Did you
Speaker 2: know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have Fast Politics
Speaker 2: Maleijug Fast are heading out on tour to bring you
Speaker 2: a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join
Speaker 2: us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the
Speaker 2: Swedish American Hall or in LA on August twenty seventh
Speaker 2: at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
Speaker 2: We'll be at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 2: first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
Speaker 2: in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
Speaker 2: the East coast. September thirtieth, will be in Arts at
Speaker 2: the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be in
Speaker 2: affiliate City Winery, and then DC on the second at
Speaker 2: the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll
Speaker 2: be in New York on the fourteenth of October at
Speaker 2: City Winery. If you need to laugh as we get
Speaker 2: through this election and hopefully never hear from a guy
Speaker 2: who lives in a golf club again, we got you covered.
Speaker 2: Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh
Speaker 2: instead of cry your way through this election season and
Speaker 2: give you the inside analysis of what's really going on
Speaker 2: right now. Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics
Speaker 2: as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual dot bio.
Speaker 1: Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Josh thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: How worried are you about those elections?
Speaker 3: I would not say I am more worried than I've
Speaker 3: been at other points.
Speaker 1: Oh. Interesting.
Speaker 3: You know there's a thing that pilots, people who fly planes.
Speaker 3: I'm not a pilot, if anything, I'm a little I'm
Speaker 3: not a big fan of flying.
Speaker 1: But would you say you had a f are flying.
Speaker 1: I'll see myself as yeah.
Speaker 3: I know, but in fact I get the reference. But
Speaker 3: in fact, but in fact, I've been sort of an
Speaker 3: aerophobic my whole life. Actually I have it under control
Speaker 3: now I fly. But in any case, pilots are taught
Speaker 3: you have regular flying rules, then you have instrument flying rules.
Speaker 3: And this is something that pilots are taught that when
Speaker 3: you are in certain conditions, you are taught to ignore
Speaker 3: your sensations, what you think is up, what you think
Speaker 3: is down, all of that stuff. You look at your
Speaker 3: instrument pans, and your instrument panel tells you where you're going,
Speaker 3: tells you what is up, what is down. Because it
Speaker 3: is one of these established things over the century plus
Speaker 3: now of people flying that your perceptions in a storm,
Speaker 3: in bad weather, your perceptions get wrong. They're unreliable, and
Speaker 3: so they are taught to I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: a zen thing exactly, but to ignore completely nor your
Speaker 3: phenomenology of flying what you feel is happening, and you
Speaker 3: watch your instrument panel. And I have seen over the
Speaker 3: last you know, I think everybody has seen over the
Speaker 3: last week. The Democrats are really freaking out now about
Speaker 3: the election, and I am not immune to that. But
Speaker 3: I am looking at the instrument panel and I actually
Speaker 3: don't see much changing on the instrument panel. And I
Speaker 3: try to keep my eyes closely on the instrument panel.
Speaker 3: So that's that's where I am. I think we are
Speaker 3: basically in the same election that we were in two
Speaker 3: weeks ago. There has been some sort of fractional tightening
Speaker 3: in the polls tents of percentage points. When I actually
Speaker 3: look at the details, it's not clear to me. That's
Speaker 3: not noise in different polsters, you know, different posters polling
Speaker 3: more over the last week and stuff. So that's where
Speaker 3: I'm at, you know, I try to be an instrument
Speaker 3: panels guy precisely because there's so many inputs, there are
Speaker 3: so many sensations we are getting at this point in
Speaker 3: an election. I think what we have to hope, although
Speaker 3: I know from experience that this is not always the
Speaker 3: case that the people actually flying the plane. You know,
Speaker 3: we're passengers on the plane, right, you hope the people
Speaker 3: flying the plane are also going or doing instrument panels flight.
Speaker 3: I know from experience that is not always the case, right,
Speaker 3: they get freaked out themselves. But that is where I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's interesting. Polls are not really not
Speaker 1: a science, and then there are partisan polls getting added
Speaker 1: into the averages. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no question there's a few a few of
Speaker 3: the aggregators downweighth them more than others. But yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of there are a lot of partisan polls
Speaker 3: in the mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The fundamental truth here is that Harrison's campaign wants
Speaker 1: you to think she's losing and Trump's campaign wants you
Speaker 1: to think he's winning. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yes, that is basically correct. But I think there is
Speaker 3: a deeper sociological truth there. I've been doing this for
Speaker 3: twenty five years and I've seen this. I've been through
Speaker 3: this movie many times. Democrats always think they are losing
Speaker 3: and Republicans always think they're winning. It's a basic sociological
Speaker 3: fact that goes beyond what they want you to think.
Speaker 3: Like so, for instance, yes, Harris has made clear she
Speaker 3: wants to be running as the underdog for good reasons. Right,
Speaker 3: there's good reasons why they want to.
Speaker 1: Well, twenty sixteen is a good reason, right.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Well, twenty sixteen, twenty twenty. There's just a good
Speaker 3: logic there. You don't want to be sort of sitting
Speaker 3: on a lead. You don't want to be over comfortable.
Speaker 3: They want to be running in that way. They want
Speaker 3: their supporters to think they are running in that way,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of good reasons for running in
Speaker 3: that way. There's also unquestionably a Trump campaign thing to think, oh,
Speaker 3: we're doing a rally in New York Man, We're going
Speaker 3: to run this. You know, we're going to run the table.
Speaker 3: But what has always been the most interesting thing to
Speaker 3: me is that, by and large, whatever the reality on
Speaker 3: the ground, Democrats really think they are losing, or if
Speaker 3: there's any question, they think they're losing, and Republicans always
Speaker 3: think they're winning. It's not just a matter of what
Speaker 3: they want you to think. This is something in the
Speaker 3: mindset of both groups, and in a way it's not
Speaker 3: that surprising. It's the same story about you know, civic
Speaker 3: democrats and authoritarians. Authoritarians always think they're winning. It's the
Speaker 3: nature of the way you think about authority and power.
Speaker 3: It's all those things. It's all those things, you know.
Speaker 3: One let me just add one little thing here. People
Speaker 3: talk a lot about the twenty twenty two midterm and
Speaker 3: the red wave stuff and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Some of the people who were most bought into the
Speaker 3: red wave were Democratic campaigns. Oh yeah, it's a basic
Speaker 3: sort of sociological reality about the two big factions in
Speaker 3: American politics, right.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I think that's exactly right, and a big
Speaker 1: question So and then the larger question is like can
Speaker 1: this country understand sort of the danger that is Trump? Right,
Speaker 1: I mean the danger to democracy? I mean in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: part of what Biden did, which I think he did
Speaker 1: despite a lot of naysaying on the other side, was
Speaker 1: he made the case that Donald Trump was in fact
Speaker 1: a danger to democracy. And this was maybe not a
Speaker 1: four year election, you know, he did make that case.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the advantages that he had is that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump was president, right, he didn't have to like kind
Speaker 3: of jog people's memories. People were experiencing what Donald Trump
Speaker 3: was Like, I mean, in some ways Trump's twenty twenty campaign,
Speaker 3: the fact that he you know, that it remained close
Speaker 3: was that I think that case had kind of been made,
Speaker 3: and then Joe Biden was someone who was a particularly
Speaker 3: good person to make the case to reaffirm the case.
Speaker 3: The reason it was close is that the Trump campaign,
Speaker 3: I think, you know, sort of early in the pandemic,
Speaker 3: early in the campaign, whatever however you want to say,
Speaker 3: basically said I am an idiot and a big threat
Speaker 3: to democracy. But what about Antifa and what about the
Speaker 3: brown people riots that are tearing down our cities? And
Speaker 3: who's going to protect you from that? And so, yeah,
Speaker 3: of course IMO a threat. You know, in a way,
Speaker 3: they kind of gave up that argument and went with
Speaker 3: this other thing, and that's how they ran the campaign.
Speaker 3: So can people realize that it's a funny thing because
Speaker 3: forty percent of the country doesn't care. Forty percent of
Speaker 3: the country is on board, so it's not a matter.
Speaker 3: They do realize it. They want another serving, And so
Speaker 3: when we get into this conversation, you know, what can
Speaker 3: the country realize blah blah blah blah. You know, in
Speaker 3: some ways, we have a great consistency over these campaigns,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump gets about forty six forty seven percent of
Speaker 3: the vote, and it's what happens on the other side.
Speaker 3: And so to a great extent, an unfortunate extent, a
Speaker 3: sort of a frustrating or mind numbing extent, what you
Speaker 3: have is the people left over are the people who
Speaker 3: neither care about or know much of anything about politics,
Speaker 3: which puts us into this kind of Kafka esque political
Speaker 3: reality where it's sort of like, Okay, you people who
Speaker 3: know nothing about politics, you're truly ignorant.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm going to decide what happens to us.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you don't care to cease to be ignorant.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, Jamel Bouley has this. I think
Speaker 3: he's no longer on Twitter, he's on Blue Sky, so
Speaker 3: I see him talking about this sometimes, and I love
Speaker 3: how he has just a very frank way of putting
Speaker 3: it that you know, you see these panels of undecided voters, like,
Speaker 3: let's be honest, these are panels people who are just
Speaker 3: idiots about politics. They know nothing, right, And so you know,
Speaker 3: since I'm not running a campaign, and those people, since
Speaker 3: they don't care about politics, are not listening to this podcast, right,
Speaker 3: So we can make fun of them till the cows
Speaker 3: come home and it doesn't matter. But that is the reality,
Speaker 3: and that is what makes the whole thing a very weird.
Speaker 1: Kafka asks, yeah, because again, they don't follow it, but
Speaker 1: they're gonna decide it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about two hurricanes in the span of
Speaker 1: two weeks. Terrible damage, but not as terrible as some
Speaker 1: people had thought it might be. One of the things
Speaker 1: I'm struck by is I was listening to Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: de Santis's press conference on the hurricane, and it is
Speaker 1: a very hard circle to square when you have someone
Speaker 1: like rond Santis, who is largely known for don't say
Speaker 1: gay and going to war with New College and all
Speaker 1: sorts of authoritarian stuff. Is six week abortion ban, which
Speaker 1: is wildly unpopular in a state. This guy very partisan,
Speaker 1: very divisive. He's doing this presser on the hurricane, which
Speaker 1: is largely not meant to be partisan. It's meant to
Speaker 1: be just when I listen to it, I get a
Speaker 1: little bit of a set of what Maga must be
Speaker 1: feeling when Biden speaks to them, right, even though it's
Speaker 1: not the same at all. Right, Because you'll remember Biden
Speaker 1: has tried very hard to be nonpartisan, especially about things
Speaker 1: like a natural disaster. But there is a sense where
Speaker 1: it's the other side of the same coin. And I
Speaker 1: just wonder where that puts us in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things.
Speaker 3: Well, it puts us not in great place. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think you are right to the extent that it
Speaker 3: is helpful sometimes to think about perceptions. And when you
Speaker 3: are in a real public crisis, it is very unnerving
Speaker 3: to have someone who you perceive as untrustworthy and predatory
Speaker 3: calling the shots. You know, that's the person who's going
Speaker 3: to decide who the relief goes to and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and that's unsettling. And that's part of the political reality
Speaker 3: that we live in.
Speaker 1: And we saw Trump, right, We saw Trump say things like,
Speaker 1: you know, when he was in office that California had
Speaker 1: all these wild fires, he didn't want to give federal
Speaker 1: aid to California because they didn't support him. Those weren't
Speaker 1: his people, that kind of thing. We saw that, And
Speaker 1: I wonder how much when we thread the needle there,
Speaker 1: you know that people remember that. And also I want
Speaker 1: to like go back to COVID, which the massive pandemic
Speaker 1: which changed all our lives, but now none of us
Speaker 1: talk about anymore. The lesson that Right got from COVID
Speaker 1: was that healthcare workers are nefarious and don't have your
Speaker 1: best interests, which is an insane lesson to get right
Speaker 1: from a global pandemic, But it was very much influenced
Speaker 1: by social media and a lack of local news, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. We're coming down the barrel of another thing
Speaker 1: that is like the pandemic, which is climate change. Again,
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity for people to accept these things as
Speaker 1: what they are and see them clearly, or to see
Speaker 1: them politicized. And I'm just curious, is there any way
Speaker 1: to take any lessons from the pandemic and apply them
Speaker 1: to climate change or now?
Speaker 3: The real information is easy to get right. If you
Speaker 3: want the real information, you can find it in a second.
Speaker 3: Not everybody wants the real information. And I think what
Speaker 3: we're often really saying when we have that conversation is
Speaker 3: how do we help the people who don't want the
Speaker 3: real information to get the real information. That's challenging. How
Speaker 3: do you get the people who don't like spaghetti to
Speaker 3: go to the spaghetti restaurant?
Speaker 1: That's tough.
Speaker 3: We have seen over the last week the beginnings of
Speaker 3: a trajectory where we move seamlessly from enough of your
Speaker 3: George Soros back to fake climate science.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: That's preventing me from rolling coal to be mean to
Speaker 3: me and deny me my fun to George Soros is
Speaker 3: paying Peter Struck to kill genocide conservatives with hurricanes. And
Speaker 3: that's why we're seeing all these hurricanes because the Democrats
Speaker 3: are doing it because they're in league with the deep state.
Speaker 3: So you do have a sense of sort of like
Speaker 3: maybe there's always been this sense, kind of a grim
Speaker 3: sense for people who follow the trajectory of the global
Speaker 3: climate that at some point people are going to see
Speaker 3: that this is real. And I think what we're seeing
Speaker 3: the beginnings of is that people are seeing that the
Speaker 3: climate is actually changing, but they have come up with
Speaker 3: a new self referential story to explain it to themselves.
Speaker 3: I don't know what the good answer to that is.
Speaker 1: Were you surprised to see Marjorie Taylored Crane go for
Speaker 1: the jug or not and say, I mean, now, there
Speaker 1: is a substantial percentage of Republicans in this country who
Speaker 1: believe that the government can in fact control the weather
Speaker 1: and by the government. We all mean they, yeah, they.
Speaker 3: When I saw her tweet about that four or five
Speaker 3: days ago, I'm embarrassed to say I was a little surprised.
Speaker 3: But then I saw and I kind of dug into
Speaker 3: this a little that that thing has. Like when she
Speaker 3: did the Jewish space lasers thing. There, if you if
Speaker 3: you dug into that, there was not a Jewish space
Speaker 3: lasers ground swell. Right, there is a weather manipulation ground swell.
Speaker 3: It's it's actually a thing. I'm not saying it's up
Speaker 3: there with the big Lie yet, you know, in terms
Speaker 3: of being universal, but yes, it actually is a thing.
Speaker 3: And when you dig into it, people say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: what about seeding clouds, which obviously has been a kind
Speaker 3: of marginal thing for decades. Right, if you have if
Speaker 3: if there's a chance it might rain, if you put
Speaker 3: a little piper cub up there, and I don't know,
Speaker 3: there's some crystals you spread around, it might you know,
Speaker 3: marginally increase the chance of rain. And there is a
Speaker 3: new science of geoengineering, which is a controversial offshoot of
Speaker 3: climate thought of sort of like if we lose the
Speaker 3: battle on carbon emissions, are we going to have to
Speaker 3: come in here? And try to reverse it by some
Speaker 3: you know, risky the efforts. Can we use science to
Speaker 3: actually turn back the clock on climate change? So people
Speaker 3: are seeing these things and that's the evidence, Like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're saying we can't engineer the climate, then why are
Speaker 3: these conferences happening if this isn't real? So it's what
Speaker 3: are you going to say?
Speaker 1: It's not great?
Speaker 3: It's out there. No, it's not great. It's not great,
Speaker 3: not good, suboptimal, not.
Speaker 1: Great, suboptimal. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Josh absolutely always a pleasure to come on.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
Speaker 1: a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have just released the final episode of this five
Speaker 1: episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube And if you
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Speaker 1: to this country, So please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 1: Robin Marty is the executive director of the West Alabama
Speaker 1: Women's Center and the author of the New Handbook for
Speaker 1: a Post Row America. But first the news. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Robin.
Speaker 4: Of course, I am always always happy to fop you, moli.
Speaker 1: You are one of my go tos when I want
Speaker 1: to know what the fuck is really happening with reproductive
Speaker 1: rights in the Red States. Tell us what you were
Speaker 1: doing when we first met, before the post Row Handbook,
Speaker 1: when the salad days of women having some reproductive.
Speaker 4: Rights, well, I mean I wouldn't call them the salad
Speaker 4: days nice because it was still a really front lance.
Speaker 1: And you are in the state of Alabama, which is
Speaker 1: a red state, like a real red state.
Speaker 4: It is a real red state. I think that is
Speaker 4: like if you could get blood red, that is I
Speaker 4: mean literally our blood. At this point in Alabama, even
Speaker 4: before Row was overturned, there were three abortion clinics that
Speaker 4: were active, and the one that I had been working
Speaker 4: at was the West Alabama Women's Center, which was responsible
Speaker 4: for about half of the abortions in the state of Alabama,
Speaker 4: and what that meant in the pre road days was
Speaker 4: probably around three thousand people coming through in order to
Speaker 4: access abortion, mostly Alabamians, but some Mississippi people because there
Speaker 4: was only one clinic in Mississippi. Also Florida people because
Speaker 4: there weren't any safe clinics in the Florida Panhandle. And
Speaker 4: then in the year right before Row, that also meant
Speaker 4: Louisiana and Texas because Louisiana was losing its clinic access
Speaker 4: and also being overrun by tech sins because Texans had
Speaker 4: lost access in September of twenty twenty one for as
Speaker 4: early as anything after six weeks.
Speaker 1: That was state builite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were essentially there to take in the flood
Speaker 4: of people who needed care, and then Dobbs happened and
Speaker 4: we had to shut it off immediately, and ever since
Speaker 4: then we have been dealing with what I mean really
Speaker 4: feels like the aftermath. I think that we knew that
Speaker 4: bad things were happening. We knew them internally seeing the
Speaker 4: reports that are starting to come out through like say
Speaker 4: pro Public. Understand that these are reports that are coming
Speaker 4: out about death from people who were unable to access
Speaker 4: safe abortion care or safe follow up care. And these
Speaker 4: reports are coming out now because the reality is that
Speaker 4: for this population who's most affected, which is largely poor,
Speaker 4: largely black, there wasn't a sense of recourse for people
Speaker 4: to say something was not right here. We want an
Speaker 4: investigation or to go to the newspaper, like when we
Speaker 4: look at real time data and the people who are
Speaker 4: being turned away and the stories that we hear about
Speaker 4: this person couldn't get an abortion in the hospital even
Speaker 4: though she was getting sick. This person had to travel
Speaker 4: out of state to get an abortion even though the
Speaker 4: baby was non viable. These are almost all entirely privileged
Speaker 4: white women, and that's because they have since the injustice
Speaker 4: happening to them, but they feel like they have the
Speaker 4: ability to fix something, whereas these are families and women
Speaker 4: who honestly they have always been treated like shit by
Speaker 4: medical practitioners. Amber Thurman didn't just die because of lack
Speaker 4: of legal abortion. Amber Thurman died because an entire team
Speaker 4: of hospital people stared at her and watched her deteriorate
Speaker 4: and not only didn't intervene, but didn't think that anything
Speaker 4: that happened was wrong. Enough to report the doctor or
Speaker 4: go to the hospital board, or stay to the family.
Speaker 4: You know, you should file a lawsuit because something went
Speaker 4: wrong here. And so this is what we are seeing
Speaker 4: in Alabama, and this is what is coming out now.
Speaker 4: Imagine what is happening at this moment that is not
Speaker 4: being made public because it's to a community who thinks
Speaker 4: that there already is no hope.
Speaker 1: That's a really, really good and important point that you're
Speaker 1: talking about, Robin. So explain to us. The white women
Speaker 1: come forward because they're not afraid of being prosecuted too, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: And the black women or the women who don't have
Speaker 1: money or can't speak English, they sort of think this
Speaker 1: is normal.
Speaker 4: They think this is normal. And one of the things
Speaker 4: that we've become really incognizance of post ROW is that
Speaker 4: our community care, we are still treating the same patients
Speaker 4: that we always did. What we are doing now is,
Speaker 4: rather than being able to offer them access to an
Speaker 4: abortion that they want, we're primarily providing the prenatal care
Speaker 4: that happens because they weren't able to get an abortion
Speaker 4: and they weren't able to avoid pregnancy. And so we
Speaker 4: continue to hear from these patients how they're being treated
Speaker 4: by other obgyns, if we transfer their care over to
Speaker 4: a different doctor because we can't deliver, or if they
Speaker 4: move to a different doctor because they have complicated pregnancies
Speaker 4: that can't help with and we had a listening session.
Speaker 4: We are now part of the Maternal Health Task Force
Speaker 4: in Alabama, which makes perfect sense to me. But also
Speaker 4: if you went back like three years ago and told
Speaker 4: me that, I would have laughed in your face. So
Speaker 4: we hosted a listening session for them of our community
Speaker 4: members and what it's like to give birth in TUSCALUSLA,
Speaker 4: which has just two hospitals for two hundred thousand people,
Speaker 4: and primarily people who give birth in our hospitals are
Speaker 4: black because the women who have more means they go
Speaker 4: into to Birmingham. And we know our hospital's racist, and
Speaker 4: that's something that we hear a lot from our patients.
Speaker 4: But when we started hearing stories, like you know, one
Speaker 4: woman said, I had a really good experience actually giving birth. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it really sucked that when they had to do the
Speaker 4: C section, they didn't have time to give me anesthesia,
Speaker 4: but the rest of it went really what I know.
Speaker 1: Pain, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, And this is what I mean, and these are
Speaker 4: patients who they don't expect anything different, so they don't
Speaker 4: understand until they can talk to us that this is
Speaker 4: not how medical care is supposed to work. That is
Speaker 4: obsetric violence that was practiced on this person because of
Speaker 4: racist doctors who think that black women can't feel pain
Speaker 4: in the same way. And we're gonna go right in
Speaker 4: for the baby because that baby is the thing that matters,
Speaker 4: not the person who is carrying it. So this is
Speaker 4: about helping people undo I mean, centuries of violence to them.
Speaker 4: And that's why what we're hearing in real time is
Speaker 4: from white women who know that people should be treated better,
Speaker 4: but we're not getting that from our population. And so
Speaker 4: it's not just what charactern we provide, but it's also
Speaker 4: how do we teach people that they do have a
Speaker 4: right to bodily autonomy and that these doctors aren't They're
Speaker 4: not gods and they don't know everything. And you have
Speaker 4: the right to say this is not okay, or I
Speaker 4: need more care, or you're not listening to me.
Speaker 1: So I want you to explain to us about a
Speaker 1: phenomenon that has been going on. You explain this to
Speaker 1: me so well that has actually been going on for
Speaker 1: a long time, but that I just learned about because
Speaker 1: I live in a Blue state and have had this
Speaker 1: very privileged life, which is arresting pregnant women because they
Speaker 1: are endangering the life of the child. Explain to us
Speaker 1: what this phenomenon is. You saw it before row was overturned,
Speaker 1: you're seeing it now. Explained to us what it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there are organizations out there like Pregnancy Justice,
Speaker 4: which is a fabulous organization. Everybody should know everything about them,
Speaker 4: that have been trackingating the instances of people who are
Speaker 4: pregnant who are prosecuted and put in jail because of
Speaker 4: something that they would probably not have been prosecuted for
Speaker 4: had they not been pregnant. And so this is specifically
Speaker 4: out here. What we're seeing this mostly in regards to
Speaker 4: is chemical endangerment. And what happened is in two thousand
Speaker 4: and seven ish, I think the dates were before me,
Speaker 4: the states in legislature essentially passed a bill that was
Speaker 4: supposed to try to protect the abundance of meth labs
Speaker 4: that were happening in Alabama, and so in order to
Speaker 4: be able to do additional punishments for people who had
Speaker 4: meth labs in their home. The idea was that you
Speaker 4: could be charged with chemical endangerment if you had children
Speaker 4: in your home that was also discovered to be a
Speaker 4: meth lab, and so it was supposed to be extra
Speaker 4: extra deterrence.
Speaker 1: In itself, not a terrible idea. You should probably not
Speaker 1: have children in your meth lab.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we always tell people if you're going to have
Speaker 4: a meth lab, keep your kid out. No, we don't
Speaker 4: actually say that, And I should probably be because I
Speaker 4: never know what could suddenly be used against me in literally,
Speaker 4: so that was a joke. We'll stop right.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was a joke, but it's not a legislation
Speaker 1: that seems like it should theoretically be anti WOMUT. Right,
Speaker 1: you could see where it might seem like a reasonable
Speaker 1: thing to vote on. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Inherently, what you can always assume in Alabama is that
Speaker 4: if there's a law that is passed, it will be
Speaker 4: used in some sort of way that is vaguely defined,
Speaker 4: so that anyone who wants to be able to misuse
Speaker 4: it in a way that will prosecute people that they
Speaker 4: either do not like or do not respect, or in
Speaker 4: some way they want to have power over. That's how
Speaker 4: every law in Alabama is every law is extraordinarily vague
Speaker 4: and vast so that prosecutors can use their discretion to
Speaker 4: let their friends off or attack the people that they
Speaker 4: don't like. Proniosm exactly. And this meth lab law ended
Speaker 4: up being used to say that if a person is
Speaker 4: pregnant and they use any sort of drug at all,
Speaker 4: and we're not even just talking like that means we're talking, okay,
Speaker 4: there is marijuana in her system, that person can then
Speaker 4: be put in jail for chemical endangerment and essentially held
Speaker 4: indefinitely because the rule for allowing the person out of
Speaker 4: jail is that they have to be able to sign
Speaker 4: into a residential treatment program, which are extraordinarily hard to
Speaker 4: get into. But also, nobody's going to put you in
Speaker 4: a residential treatment program because you smoke a join if
Speaker 4: you have no money.
Speaker 1: It's also a gazillion dollars.
Speaker 4: Billion dollars part is different because the reality is in
Speaker 4: my opinion and I have no empirical data to back
Speaker 4: it up. It's just what I've experienced down here. The
Speaker 4: idea is to put people into Christian based organizations, because
Speaker 4: Paul rehab is buying God, and then you will give
Speaker 4: up your drugs. So they're more than willing to pay
Speaker 4: money for anything that will help turn somebody into a Christian.
Speaker 4: So you put that aside, and so over the period
Speaker 4: of time, especially now since twenty eighteen, which was when
Speaker 4: Alabama had a vote that said that we were going
Speaker 4: to add the concept that life begins at the moment
Speaker 4: of conception, and that the state has the right to
Speaker 4: protect anything from the moment of conception and has interest
Speaker 4: in that potential life becoming life. And so these two
Speaker 4: things together made it so that inherently the legal system
Speaker 4: can step in at any point when they believe that
Speaker 4: a pregnant person is doing something that might endanger the
Speaker 4: fetists or the embryo, in order to protect that embryo.
Speaker 4: And that come to mean jailing people and keeping them
Speaker 4: in jail in order to keep them from potentially doing
Speaker 4: any sort of harm. Now, the reality is there is
Speaker 4: no situation in which a pregnant person in jail will
Speaker 4: be getting better medical care than a pregnant person who
Speaker 4: is not in jail. It's just not gonna happen. You
Speaker 4: got violence, you've got lack of medical care, You've got literally,
Speaker 4: as we have seen people miscarrying in the middle of
Speaker 4: their cells not able to get any access to help.
Speaker 4: So this is about punishing. Obviously, you were an unfit mother,
Speaker 4: you did not do things correctly. We are going to
Speaker 4: hold you here. But this is also about allegedly protecting
Speaker 4: the fetus so that it will be born. But then
Speaker 4: not only can that be taken away because okay, you
Speaker 4: are an unfit mother, you were in jail, so we
Speaker 4: are going to take your new born baby from you
Speaker 4: because you should not have it, but also any shouldering
Speaker 4: that you already had, they will be able to take
Speaker 4: that away too. And so one thing that I want
Speaker 4: to make really clear to everybody is that in the
Speaker 4: now we're starting to work on three years since Dobs happened,
Speaker 4: there has been nothing done in this state to actually
Speaker 4: improve conditions for pregnant people. The own laws that have
Speaker 4: passed are ones that make it easier to relinquish the
Speaker 4: rights of being a parent, so ending prints right so
Speaker 4: that you can take away children, and making foster care easier.
Speaker 4: And so what this is is there's been nothing to
Speaker 4: help people get access to contraception. So people are still
Speaker 4: getting pregnant just as often as they were before. There's
Speaker 4: just no ability to not carry that pregnancy to term.
Speaker 4: And what this is doing is this is essentially killing
Speaker 4: black women. We know it's killing black babies because our
Speaker 4: black infant maternal or our black infant mortality rate has increased,
Speaker 4: even though our white infant mortality rate has decreased. Since Dobs,
Speaker 4: I want you to explain into us, just for a second,
Speaker 4: what it means when you arrest a pregnant mother, because
Speaker 4: you're doing it for two reasons.
Speaker 1: Right, You're doing it because the fake reason, right, or
Speaker 1: the reason that they say they're doing it is to
Speaker 1: protect the fetus, right. But one of the other reasons
Speaker 1: they're doing it is because when you're pregnant, if you're arrested,
Speaker 1: the state is more likely to be able to take
Speaker 1: your children the next time. Explain that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, once you have been put into the Child
Speaker 4: Protective Services system at any point, every time you give birth,
Speaker 4: you will always end up being visited by a case worker,
Speaker 4: and so any child that you have from any point
Speaker 4: there on, you will still be on the radar. You
Speaker 4: will still be in the system. And what people don't
Speaker 4: understand is that CPS exists in a way that is
Speaker 4: targeted at communities, but also it is targeted at poverty,
Speaker 4: and so obviously the idea and it's like the meth lab,
Speaker 4: it's a good idea on the surface. Yes, we would
Speaker 4: love to see all children raised in homes where they
Speaker 4: have abundance and it can be given everything that they need.
Speaker 4: But that's not what homes are like.
Speaker 1: It's not what homes in very poor areas are like
Speaker 1: in Alabam.
Speaker 4: Well I mean, and honestly, that's not what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's a judgment of who is a good and bad
Speaker 4: based on physical resources. One example that I can give
Speaker 4: you is so we had a patient who came into
Speaker 4: our clinic. She actually didn't come to our clinic. She
Speaker 4: reached out to our doulas. And doulas they are birth
Speaker 4: workers that help a person while they're giving birth, but
Speaker 4: they do not do delivery. Just be clear when people
Speaker 4: get midwives confused. This woman reached out because she wanted
Speaker 4: a doula to come to her home where she wanted
Speaker 4: to do an unassisted home birth. And what that means
Speaker 4: is she wanted to do a home birth, just go
Speaker 4: into labor with absolutely no medical professional whatsoever around. And
Speaker 4: it was because both as someone who had been violated
Speaker 4: by the medical system before and also somebody who was
Speaker 4: pregnant because of a sexual assault. She did not trust
Speaker 4: any member of the medical community, absolutely not because this
Speaker 4: was a black woman. Ourdula was a black woman. If
Speaker 4: anything went wrong, everybody would end up in jail because
Speaker 4: this is highly, highly illegal thing. And then our Doullah
Speaker 4: talked her into since she was already in labor, into
Speaker 4: going into our local hospital and that she needed to
Speaker 4: be seen, that she needed to be evaluated, she needed
Speaker 4: to go into labor at a place where she could
Speaker 4: safely deliver. This patient went into the hospital with our doulas,
Speaker 4: and the first thing that happened was she was berated
Speaker 4: by the ogyn that was on call for not having
Speaker 4: had any prenatal care, which the patient avoided prenatal care
Speaker 4: because she did not want to have any interaction with
Speaker 4: the medical system because she was scared of it. She
Speaker 4: was told that her baby was likely to do and
Speaker 4: it was her faults. This was all done without any
Speaker 4: actual evaluation, and then they induced her labor because they
Speaker 4: wanted to make sure that she had that baby right
Speaker 4: then while she was being seen by everybody, so that
Speaker 4: she couldn't disappear again. They induced her labor with what's
Speaker 4: known as a catheter balloon, which is a very invasive process,
Speaker 4: which did that after they heard that she had been
Speaker 4: a victim of sexual assault. So that was a punishment.
Speaker 4: This is what I mean by obstetric violence. And then
Speaker 4: after the labor, which ended up being completely fine, and
Speaker 4: the baby came out beautiful baby boy. Everything was utterly fine,
Speaker 4: and the doula tried to get them to allow her
Speaker 4: to do skin diskin contact and start breastfeeding right away,
Speaker 4: and the nursers were like, no, we have to take
Speaker 4: this baby and make sure everything's okay. And they drug
Speaker 4: tested in because that's what happens with any child that
Speaker 4: comes in and happens with an unattached patient. They are
Speaker 4: automatically drug tested. If they have no doctor, they're automatically
Speaker 4: drug tested. They're on medicaid, they are drug tested without
Speaker 4: any sort of consent. And the assumption was, well, if
Speaker 4: she was hiding and not doing prenatal care, she must
Speaker 4: have been doing something that she wanted to hide that
Speaker 4: was hurting the baby. There was nothing, There was no
Speaker 4: drugs in the system. Nothing had happened. It was just
Speaker 4: a mother scared the system, and they liked to take
Speaker 4: the baby, and she was sent home and then they
Speaker 4: called Child Protected Services on her. Wait why because the
Speaker 4: act of not having prenatal care while pregnant, they said,
Speaker 4: was violence to the baby and that as such, she
Speaker 4: needed to be monitored because clearly she was an unfit.
Speaker 1: Parent, right, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: You had to help make sure she had legal coverage.
Speaker 4: We had to make sure that she had everything that
Speaker 4: she needed in the house, because you could have your
Speaker 4: child taken away if you don't show that you have
Speaker 4: a specific place where that baby to be sleeping, if
Speaker 4: you your home is too dirty, like all of these
Speaker 4: things that are just poverty workers. We had to make
Speaker 4: sure that everything of a set for this visit so
Speaker 4: that we could be certain that her baby would not
Speaker 4: be stolen from her. And the reality is she is
Speaker 4: probably going to get pregnant again at some point, and
Speaker 4: she is never going to go near a hospital again. Never.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much, troubin. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: I need to even want me at this point.
Speaker 1: I do want you're back because we need to know
Speaker 1: what's happening, right, I mean, just because it's dark, just
Speaker 1: because it's the reality of what it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: living in a red state when you don't have money.
Speaker 1: I mean, we need to know, right, there are people
Speaker 1: on this podcast, myself included, who don't know what it's
Speaker 1: like to be poor and a woman of color in
Speaker 1: Alabama and have no one advocating for you. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate you a lot.
Speaker 4: And I will never stop comunicating. So anytime you need me,
Speaker 4: I'm back.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Robin No No Jesse Cannon smiling.
Speaker 2: Last night I was scrolling the interwebs and I saw
Speaker 2: Roger Stone saying some pretty fucked up things about how
Speaker 2: they're plotting to steal this election over in Maga world,
Speaker 2: and I was like, is this bluing on? Is this bullshit?
Speaker 2: And then this morning I woke up to see that
Speaker 2: this is all true, and it's pretty scary. What do
Speaker 2: you see gear?
Speaker 1: Roger Stone said that he wants to send armed guards
Speaker 1: to dispute the election in Detroit and imprison former Attorney
Speaker 1: General Bill Barr if Donald Trump returns to power. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if he wants to imprison Bill Barr, I don't have
Speaker 1: a horse.
Speaker 2: That was not the part I found horrifying. I was
Speaker 2: kind of like, yes, that's good.
Speaker 1: To be I'm okay with that. I mean, Bill Barr
Speaker 1: said he's going to vote for Trump. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know that's what Bill Barr wants.
Speaker 2: Make your bed lie in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I would be really surprised if they
Speaker 1: weren't playing real bad stuff. I think we all know
Speaker 1: that Republicans are going to do anything they can to
Speaker 1: try to win this election or steal this election, so
Speaker 1: none of the surprises me. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Speaker 1: Saturday to hear the best minds in politics make sense
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