Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Governor Ron De Santis says he's
Speaker 1: moved on from the Disney lawsuit. Well that's enough for me.
Speaker 1: Today we have an incredible show. NBC News correspondent Ali
Speaker 1: Vidally gives us a ground report from the Iowa State
Speaker 1: Fair and all the shenanigans that are going on in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. Spoiler, there's a butter cow. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk to the Washington Post Caroline Kitchener about the horrifying
Speaker 1: aftermath of women's lives in a post row world. But
Speaker 1: first we have the host of the next level, your
Speaker 1: friend and mine the Bulwarks, Tim Miller. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Frequent flyer and real friend of mine.
Speaker 2: To Miller, Hey, Molly, I wish we can start doing
Speaker 2: this in person again.
Speaker 1: So me too, man, I mean you fly back and
Speaker 1: forth between our two. Yeah, I'll fight to New Orleans and.
Speaker 2: We'll figure something out.
Speaker 1: Carvel.
Speaker 2: It would be a great episode of Past Politics. Sorry,
Speaker 2: tender up to have you and Carvil and me, you know,
Speaker 2: live at Tippotina's or at Lafite's blacksmiths shop or something.
Speaker 2: I think that would make for some good listening.
Speaker 1: If you guys want that, text Jesse his phone number is,
Speaker 1: or just DM him Jesse Cannon. So anyway, four indictments
Speaker 1: plus the superseding, so it's actually five if we're going
Speaker 1: to get technical Georgia last night. This is airing on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: so it will we'll still be chewing on this. I
Speaker 1: mean again, imagine you were working for Jeb Bush. Imagine
Speaker 1: old Republican Party with this being the front runner.
Speaker 2: Forget Republican Party. I just imagine being a human and
Speaker 2: having this be our reality. I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 2: very strange. You know, those pictures are going around Monday
Speaker 2: Night of Rudy and Trump when Rudy's dressed in drag,
Speaker 2: and you know, from like the early oughts, and it's like,
Speaker 2: imagine going back to two thousand and two and having
Speaker 2: someone tell you that in twenty years, Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani are going to be indicted for trying to
Speaker 2: steal the election in Georgia. I mean, the whole thing
Speaker 2: is preposterous. It's like from a B movie, D movie.
Speaker 2: So it is kind of hard to wrap one's head around, though.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously the serious elements of this is just
Speaker 2: that again once again, the conservative media and the Republican
Speaker 2: Party have just are just utterly failing the tests that's
Speaker 2: put forth to them, and no one is moving off
Speaker 2: of their Donald Trump approved talking points about this increasingly
Speaker 2: vast deep state. In four different parts of the country
Speaker 2: now are that are now indicting and attacking and supposedly
Speaker 2: oppressing Donald Trump over his coup attempt and his porn
Speaker 2: star payoffs and all of his other crimes. So you know,
Speaker 2: they are going to continue to fall down on the job.
Speaker 2: And it's almost like that element of this is not new.
Speaker 2: I think that there are some elements of the Georgia
Speaker 2: thing that are new and important, such as the fact
Speaker 2: that it's going to be televised, the fact that he
Speaker 2: can't be pardoned for it, which brings up an interesting
Speaker 2: wrinkle to just think the strength of the Fonnie Willis
Speaker 2: indictment and just the expansiveness of it, how many other people,
Speaker 2: all of its co conspirators. I was mentally ranking which
Speaker 2: of the nineteen indicted people I'm going to enjoy their
Speaker 2: mugshot the most. I'm trying to. I was like doing
Speaker 2: a little mental rankings. I can't really enjoy Trump's mugshot
Speaker 2: until he's actually in jail. So I think that Rudy
Speaker 2: and Jeff Clark and Jenna Ellis are my top three
Speaker 2: and kind of just depending on my mood at the moment,
Speaker 2: I'm moving them around in my mental rankings.
Speaker 1: Those are the fan favorites. I think it's totally interesting
Speaker 1: because it's like he has all these indictments, all these
Speaker 1: different trial dates, then he has all these like civil cases.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing you forget about, like right,
Speaker 1: you know, these civil cases like the Capitol police officers families,
Speaker 1: the ones who died or you know, and you have
Speaker 1: Egene Carol. I mean, there's just a sort of sea
Speaker 1: of civil litigation too. And he is seventy seven years old,
Speaker 1: though he does look mirror seventy six with the implanted
Speaker 1: wig that does look like sponge sugar discuss.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing that is concerning to me that
Speaker 2: makes me think I'm becoming a boomer is that sometimes
Speaker 2: I don't even know what's real on social media anymore.
Speaker 2: So I don't expect to know how regular people can tell.
Speaker 2: But somebody sent a post that I that where Chris
Speaker 2: Christie said he looked like a cheap honey baked ham
Speaker 2: but I don't know if that's actually true or not,
Speaker 2: or somebody who is just doing a Chris Christie bitch,
Speaker 2: but he does look like a cheap honey baked haam. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, can you campaign from the courtroom? This is
Speaker 2: the thing that is crazy when you combine the old
Speaker 2: civil litigation on the next album interviewing Robbie Kaplan this week,
Speaker 2: who's Egene's attorney? Who I love? And these actual A
Speaker 2: list attorneys that are going at Donald Trump right now,
Speaker 2: both criminally and civilly. They're like dogs on a bone
Speaker 2: and they know what they're doing. And Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to
Speaker 2: his defense, and so he you know, he's going to
Speaker 2: be spending a lot of time in court. We are
Speaker 2: really an unchartered territory here, and how do you campaign
Speaker 2: this way? You would think going back to the Republicans,
Speaker 2: so there would be a practical case that somebody would
Speaker 2: try to make, which is just like, no matter how
Speaker 2: much you liked Donald Trump, we're not putting our best
Speaker 2: foot forward. If our nominee has like seven court dates
Speaker 2: over the course of the general election, and my pass
Speaker 2: will be imprisoned. I mean, you think, just practically speaking,
Speaker 2: they would think we should go a different direction. I
Speaker 2: was in Iowa last week, and I think it's funny
Speaker 2: and two on two parts. I was talking to an
Speaker 2: Iowa super a DeSantis super Pac staffer who said to
Speaker 2: me that they are that they're kind of okay with
Speaker 2: finishing second and third in some states and amassing delegates
Speaker 2: because who knows what will happen with Trump and court
Speaker 2: and maybe there'll be a convention fight. And it's like, boy,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty depressing situation for DeSantis that they're hoping
Speaker 2: that Trump is in jail and that they can win
Speaker 2: a convention fight. But it also speaks to kind of
Speaker 2: there's a non zero chance that that is a real possibility.
Speaker 1: Right, that there's a convention fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it's just it's both pathetic on the
Speaker 2: DeSantis part team to like say that they're considering that,
Speaker 2: but it's also, I mean not completely improbable at this point,
Speaker 2: given how many court dates, domney arrangements, what's going to have.
Speaker 1: What it seems to me like and you tell me
Speaker 1: if this is my own I feel like it's so
Speaker 1: easy to get into your own bubble with what you
Speaker 1: read and how you extrapolate, and I'm always like pretty
Speaker 1: trying to not do that, which is very hard. It
Speaker 1: seems to me like the situation is we have a like,
Speaker 1: if you are a Republican elite, if you are a
Speaker 1: person who is, you know, you're freaking out because you
Speaker 1: know this guy is not growing the electorate.
Speaker 2: Who is though, right, Molly, who is growing the electorate.
Speaker 1: Or even trying? Like I mean, I think Biden is
Speaker 1: trying to appeal to more people, for sure.
Speaker 2: I met among the Republicans. Yeah, I'm met among the Republicans.
Speaker 2: Sorry that this is my point. Like DeSantis, and the
Speaker 2: whole theory of the case behind DeSantis, right, was that
Speaker 2: that there was this group of people. John Meacham coined this.
Speaker 2: I'm annoyed that he stole it, but so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give him credit and he didn't steal and I'm enjoyed.
Speaker 2: I'm annoyed that he came up with this, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to steal it and give him credit. You know,
Speaker 2: they called him the Peter malar Vest Conservatives, you know,
Speaker 2: people that never really liked Trump in the first place,
Speaker 2: and read the Wall Street Journal, like, the theory of
Speaker 2: the case for DeSantis was that he could keep all
Speaker 2: of the maga voters, you know, because of his culture
Speaker 2: war nonsense. But then add back in some of these
Speaker 2: like Atlanta suburbs dads who just like voted for Joe
Speaker 2: Biden because they couldn't listen to their wife talking about
Speaker 2: Donald Trump anymore, and it was just like the coup
Speaker 2: was too much for them, right the last the final
Speaker 2: switchers that it's like, can run to stand this win
Speaker 2: those people anywhere. It seems like he's doing worse in
Speaker 2: both counts, like there will be some magga dead enders
Speaker 2: who won't vote for him, and he's going so crazy
Speaker 2: on the culture war stuff that that kind of crowd,
Speaker 2: that suburban dad crowd is Is he that much even
Speaker 2: more appealing than Trump at this point? So Trump is
Speaker 2: not trying to expand, but nobody else is. So nobody's
Speaker 2: making the case that, oh but I can't, right like,
Speaker 2: and that was that was how somebody could be Trump.
Speaker 2: They're going to be able to say to the Republican voters,
Speaker 2: I can give you the maga stuff you like. And
Speaker 2: also get more votes, right, I mean, that's the path,
Speaker 2: and yet no one seems to be offering that.
Speaker 1: Or even trying to. Yeah, the trons right. For such
Speaker 1: a long time, since twenty fifteen, we've spent so much
Speaker 1: time like trying to figure out like what the future
Speaker 1: of the Republican Party would be, and especially for someone
Speaker 1: like you and Bill Crystal and Sarah like you guys
Speaker 1: are pretty focused on like how we could rebuild this,
Speaker 1: or at least I feel like for a while you
Speaker 1: were how you could rebuild this in a way that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just what it is right now. And it
Speaker 1: does seem like they they're just is sort of no,
Speaker 1: there are no ideas.
Speaker 2: Well, I think a rightas are just ones we don't
Speaker 2: like right right, And I mean like this is and
Speaker 2: this way you can get into you know, New York
Speaker 2: Times piece about you know, kind of the polling and
Speaker 2: where the Republicans are. But there was this push and
Speaker 2: pull with on the party, right, And I'm not going
Speaker 2: to give a full history lesson here on past politics,
Speaker 2: but you know, you go back to the to the
Speaker 2: autopsy which I worked on the JUBU, which was basically
Speaker 2: you know, trying to modernize and re skin compassionate conservatism.
Speaker 2: How can you do better in the suburbs, maybe soften
Speaker 2: the position on social issues, on immigration, on gay marriage,
Speaker 2: and broaden the tent appeal more to younger folks. And
Speaker 2: then there was this counter vision like, no, we can
Speaker 2: win by going full populist, by shedding all of the
Speaker 2: whole old you know, just going around Yeah, well, well Nazi, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe Nazis brought in the I'm going to
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give you the best spin on what they
Speaker 2: would say. I we would call it Nazi. They would say, no,
Speaker 2: we're going to give you true populist conservatism that gets
Speaker 2: rid of all of the trickle down economics stuff and
Speaker 2: appeals more to working class people of every color and
Speaker 2: every race. And we're still going to say racist stuff,
Speaker 2: and we're still still going to ban all, you know,
Speaker 2: like band Muslims and Latinos from entering the country. We're
Speaker 2: just gonna whisper that part and hopefully that they appeal
Speaker 2: to us because they also, you know, these working class
Speaker 2: you know, there's kind of a racist element to this
Speaker 2: case actually, that these working class Hispanic and Black folks,
Speaker 2: they're going to agree with us when we demonize trans people,
Speaker 2: and and you know, so maybe we can appeal to
Speaker 2: them that way.
Speaker 1: They are as discriminatory as we are, exactly, and so
Speaker 1: we can expand among you.
Speaker 2: Know, working class black and latinos and and you know,
Speaker 2: just ignore these the suburb moms and and you know
Speaker 2: who aren't hardcore enough for us. So like that was
Speaker 2: their case, and they won the argument. I mean not
Speaker 2: they haven't won many elections, so they have they haven't
Speaker 2: won the argument in the case they're not succeeding very well,
Speaker 2: but they they've won a lot of time the party. Yeah,
Speaker 2: within the party, they've won the argument. And there are
Speaker 2: now very few people even arguing that we, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of go back to a compassionate conservatism type. And
Speaker 2: this is now the accepted move is that somehow that
Speaker 2: the Republicans can win by this pivot towards Trumpian populism racism.
Speaker 1: So this leads to another question I want to ask you.
Speaker 1: There's a piece last week that David Brooks wrote about
Speaker 1: we the Elite, and it's funny because so basically that
Speaker 1: for those of you who are not extremely online and
Speaker 1: who might have missed this, the idea was, what if
Speaker 1: we the elites are the bad guys. What if we
Speaker 1: have ignored a populist sentiment. I think it was a
Speaker 1: little bit generous.
Speaker 2: That's a nice way of putting it right.
Speaker 1: It assumed that the Republicans were not running on this
Speaker 1: base racism, sexism, divisionism, which I think is wrong and unfair.
Speaker 1: But it's an interesting exercise to look at, like why
Speaker 1: is that group so angry? And again, we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about that, especially the New York
Speaker 1: Times does spend a lot of time talking about that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've read a lot about this, this
Speaker 1: idea that the left have come sort of Brahmins and
Speaker 1: that they are a sort of more educated class in
Speaker 1: a way that they've lost the working man. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's really true, but I'm just curious, like, ponder
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 2: For me, here's the generous part to David Brooks's argument.
Speaker 2: I think that there's something to be said about the
Speaker 2: fact that, you know, we have had this education polarization.
Speaker 2: Like for a while, there were working class Democrats, we
Speaker 2: working class Republicans, college educated class, college educated Republicans. Now
Speaker 2: it's like most of the college educated folks, particularly higher
Speaker 2: college educated folks, are Democrats overwhelmingly, and so the people
Speaker 2: that make up Democratic campaigns are overwhelmingly you know, college
Speaker 2: educated and socially and culturally liberal. And I do think
Speaker 2: that there are times when the way Democrats talk it's
Speaker 2: alienating to working class folks who don't you know, who
Speaker 2: don't like you know, all the more a's of you know,
Speaker 2: what the new you know, hot terms are in polite society, right,
Speaker 2: And so I think that there's something to be said
Speaker 2: for that. And I think that there's maybe been more
Speaker 2: an increase in focus on identity issues and a decrease
Speaker 2: sometimes on economic and class issues in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a fair discussion they have. Okay,
Speaker 2: but here's the thing that doesn't let these That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean you just let all these Trump voters off the
Speaker 2: hook for supporting a racist buffoon who tried to overthrow
Speaker 2: the government. And it's so condescending. In an article about
Speaker 2: how like elites need to be less condescending towards working
Speaker 2: class people, it's such a condescending notion that these people
Speaker 2: are so stupid that they can't figure out that Trump
Speaker 2: is a charlatan. Like they're not that stupid, Like there
Speaker 2: are other reasons why they're going with Trump. And the
Speaker 2: best way to prove this is there's a lot of
Speaker 2: working class people of color that don't seem to have
Speaker 2: been fooled by this. And so if the only reason
Speaker 2: that these guys are going to Trump is because the
Speaker 2: elites are whatever so mean to working class people, I'm
Speaker 2: looking down their nose at working class people. It's like, well, then,
Speaker 2: why haven't any working class black volks been fooled by
Speaker 2: this and gone along with Trump? They haven't, Like, there
Speaker 2: are other cultural forces at play here, And I think
Speaker 2: maybe this was a defensible argument in twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, my god, let's have a little
Speaker 2: bit of a higher standard for what we expect from people.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point, and I actually
Speaker 1: think it's not even that complicated. I think that the
Speaker 1: fundamental mechanics of presidential campaigns and presidential elections are the
Speaker 1: same as they have always been. Which is the candidate
Speaker 1: that is the most charismatic, the one that you feel
Speaker 1: like is talking to you, That's the one you vote
Speaker 1: for a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And that's the case for sure, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think that you know, there are other issues at play, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the folks that feel like Trump is talking
Speaker 2: to them, like, don't feel like Trump is one of
Speaker 2: them obviously, right, It's just he is channeling their grievances
Speaker 2: and concerns, right, And some of those are legitimate. You know,
Speaker 2: in some of these communities, you know they've been hollowed
Speaker 2: out and you know they know they were overserving in
Speaker 2: our wars, you know, and Iraq in Afghanistan disproportionately, right,
Speaker 2: Like they have some legitimate concerns, but you know there's
Speaker 2: a limit to that, right, I mean, like trumpkint chandily
Speaker 2: your legitimate concerns and then it's like okay, once you're
Speaker 2: charging the capitol. That's the other thing. The whole thing
Speaker 2: is preposterous that Trump cares about these people and cares
Speaker 2: about anything but himself. And that's the frustrating part about
Speaker 2: the David Bruks thing, right, is that like these people
Speaker 2: are in jail. Some of these people are in jail
Speaker 2: because of Donald Trump. I are dead because they didn't
Speaker 2: take the vaccine, you know what I mean. Like, the
Speaker 2: whole thing is silly.
Speaker 1: Kurt Anderson posted this yesterday and I just want to
Speaker 1: read it to you. It's from this Evan Osnos piece
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker from twenty fifteen. Trump has bequeathed
Speaker 1: a concoction of celebrity, wealth and alienation that is more
Speaker 1: potent than any we've seen before. If, as the Republican
Speaker 1: establishment hopes, the stargazers eventually defect, Trump will be left
Speaker 1: with the hardest core, the portion of the electorate that
Speaker 1: is drifting deeper into unreality with no reconciliation insight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good from Evan twenty fifteen, twenty fifteen, Very
Speaker 2: prescient there. Yeah, and it's got and that group has
Speaker 2: only grown since then. That's that's the scariest part about it.
Speaker 2: And the part that you know really when you when
Speaker 2: you need to really reckon with what's happening in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party. Like that group, the group that's drifted into unreality,
Speaker 2: has increased their share within the party. And you know,
Speaker 2: when I go to these Republican events is what you see,
Speaker 2: and I always go back to the and now they've
Speaker 2: almost recruited or groomed, if you will, a younger generation
Speaker 2: of Republicans into that disreality. You know, when I went
Speaker 2: to that Turning Point USA conference, the first question I'd
Speaker 2: ask every one of these college kids, was like, what
Speaker 2: do you care about?
Speaker 4: Why you hear?
Speaker 2: And it's all vaccine conspiracies, We're wasting money in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: trans stuff, culture, war stuff, election for a lout And
Speaker 2: it was none of the stuff that dorky Alex P. Keaton,
Speaker 2: you know, Republicans of my era cared about, right, It
Speaker 2: was a totally different thing. And so that's not every
Speaker 2: young Republican of course, but but it's.
Speaker 1: The ones who are showing up to go to the events.
Speaker 2: So that group in the this reality has just like now,
Speaker 2: has an even greater stranglehold within the party. And I
Speaker 2: think the one thing about that has changed since that
Speaker 2: quote from Evan is, you know he was talking about
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have the exact quote in front
Speaker 2: of me, but that core, you know that that was
Speaker 2: going to be left, that core is getting near to
Speaker 2: a majority within the party now and it's certainly a plurality.
Speaker 1: Really scary stuff. Talk to me about what yours this week,
Speaker 1: sort of what it looks like for you, what you're watching.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I'm doing after this, Molly, that's
Speaker 2: a hard question. I'm excited. Look, here's what I'm watching
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's going to get fingerprinted and treated like a
Speaker 2: real criminal in Georgia. And we've had this two tiered
Speaker 2: system of justice discussion, and like the real two tiered
Speaker 2: system of justice is in the way that Donald Trump
Speaker 2: has been treated. You know, I talked about this on
Speaker 2: the next level. I guess you know. I was arrested
Speaker 2: for minor and posis of alcohol a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Not exactly a hard and criminal, but I'll tell you
Speaker 2: I got put in the holding pen for a couple hours.
Speaker 2: You know, I got treated like an actual criminal for
Speaker 2: being under twenty one and having alcohol. Obviously, there are
Speaker 2: much worse criminals and much more worse treatment of our
Speaker 2: criminal justiceism that did you know, marginalized groups, how they
Speaker 2: get treated. Donald Trump hasn't been fingerprinted, he has been handcuffed,
Speaker 2: he hasn't had a mugshot. He's got to do all
Speaker 2: that sometime in the next ten days now. And so
Speaker 2: good on Fannie Willis and the Fulton County Sheriff for
Speaker 2: taking this seriously and actually treating him like they treat
Speaker 2: anybody else that came through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom spent a night in jail for DUI.
Speaker 1: Always good to work into conversations. Thank you, Tim Miller.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 1: Ali Vitally is an NBC News correspondent. She's adorable, and
Speaker 1: she is the author of Electable Why America hasn't put
Speaker 1: a woman in the White House yet? Welcome Too Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Aally Vitally.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm so happy to be back.
Speaker 1: You are here in Iowa, the center of everything, the
Speaker 1: place with a pork tent and a butter cow discuss.
Speaker 5: I mean, look the butter cow. Now, my first time
Speaker 5: seeing the butter cow. But I think here's the fun fact.
Speaker 5: Did you know that the butter cow is not like
Speaker 5: resculpted every year.
Speaker 1: You know, I've spent so little time thinking about the
Speaker 1: butter cow. But I would hope it's not your career.
Speaker 1: That would be such an old bunch of butter. I mean, eventually,
Speaker 1: do they know.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying, is it is an old bunch
Speaker 3: of butter.
Speaker 1: Oh it is.
Speaker 3: No, it is not resculpted every year.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really disappointing. So let's I thought Jesse. Jesse
Speaker 1: just texted me, and I thought he was going to say, like,
Speaker 1: stop talking about this stupid cow. But in fact, he
Speaker 1: was like a real dairy cow weighs more than a
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, but the butter version comes in at about
Speaker 1: six hundred.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that this one was sculptured in two
Speaker 5: thousand and six.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Iowa. I feel like I wanted
Speaker 1: to get you on because A, you wrote a lift
Speaker 1: on television and that was fabulous, But more importantly, here
Speaker 1: we are in Iowa, and it feels like a metaphor.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what happened. I think the key
Speaker 1: moment was this weekend when DeSantis was in Iowa trying
Speaker 1: desperately to sort of win this state, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the state they've been most focused on, and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump sort of flew in. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: that dynamic and what you saw.
Speaker 5: I mean, first of all, I think it's clear that
Speaker 5: Iowa always has outsize importance. But for anyone in this
Speaker 5: field who wants to try to show that they actually
Speaker 5: couldn't take a stand against Trump, I don't mean.
Speaker 3: That morally or rhetorically.
Speaker 5: I mean that electorally, because clearly they're not willing to
Speaker 5: do it the other way. Electorally, you have to win
Speaker 5: in Iowa, and I know that that's always the conventional knowledge,
Speaker 5: but it's so important now and poles have been pretty stagnant.
Speaker 3: So the fact I think that a.
Speaker 5: DeSantis and Tim Scott's here, and Nicky Haley is here,
Speaker 5: and Mike Pence is here, and everyone in the field
Speaker 5: is coming to the Iowa State Fair. It doesn't always
Speaker 5: matter where everyone in the field goes, because Trump doesn't
Speaker 5: always go there. But I do think it reminds how
Speaker 5: important an event like this is when Trump does show up.
Speaker 3: He was only here for about ninety minutes.
Speaker 5: He completely sucked all the oxygen out of the fair
Speaker 5: when he came in and made his rounds.
Speaker 3: Over the course of a small area of the fair.
Speaker 5: But it was less that Trump was here and more
Speaker 5: of the ways that he was trolling De Santis quite
Speaker 5: frankly to me right, the fact that he brought Florida
Speaker 5: lawmakers like Byron Donald mckaate others as a reminder of
Speaker 5: the fact that they're both from Florida and Desanti she's
Speaker 5: a sitting governor, but Trump still has all of their endorsements.
Speaker 5: And then I think the plane that was flying overhead
Speaker 5: all day on Saturday was just the constant reminder I
Speaker 5: think the banner behind the plane said be likable Ron,
Speaker 5: And you couldn't ignore the fact for those of us
Speaker 5: who covered twenty sixteen that the ron was in the
Speaker 5: style of Jem Bush's twenty sixteen logo down to the
Speaker 5: exclamation point. It was just troll on troll on troll
Speaker 5: for DeSantis, who's really trying to get like back under
Speaker 5: him after shake ups and stumbles, and they're trying to
Speaker 5: prove they can still do it. And look, they drew
Speaker 5: a crowd, but it doesn't mean he didn't also get hypple.
Speaker 1: Right, And I also think that this sort of way
Speaker 1: Trump was able to fly in. I mean DeSantis has
Speaker 1: been there all weekend, right.
Speaker 5: Yep, DeSantis was here all week They're all doing multiple
Speaker 5: events around this fair. They are sitting with the governor
Speaker 5: doing a fair side chat, they are going around to
Speaker 5: tent slipping pork chops. I mean, everyone here is doing
Speaker 5: the typical retail politics that you quote unquote have to do,
Speaker 5: except that Trump is preempted from that process because he's Trump.
Speaker 5: So yeah, they all have to putting the legwork, the
Speaker 5: sweat work, the Santa Pale everyone but Trump gets to
Speaker 5: literally fly in, spend ninety minutes and peace.
Speaker 1: So he did pay for a bunch of pork at
Speaker 1: the pork tent.
Speaker 3: I believe that's true.
Speaker 1: You know, he sort of bought some pork for people,
Speaker 1: and he may have bought some other stuff. But it
Speaker 1: is interesting to me. And he does not get along
Speaker 1: wow with Iowa governor right.
Speaker 5: Right, he has picked a fight with her, and it's quizzical,
Speaker 5: especially because you know, she is the sitting governor of
Speaker 5: a state that everyone agrees is important on this electoral map.
Speaker 5: She's a popular Republican and in any normal world she
Speaker 5: would probably be on a Beepsteak's list down the line.
Speaker 5: If you're Trump and you're leading the pack and you're
Speaker 5: likely to get the nomination, that's probably where your mind
Speaker 5: would go. And so the fact that he's picked a
Speaker 5: fight with Kim Reynolds, who is popular here, I mean, look,
Speaker 5: I don't know that it loses him at any points,
Speaker 5: but certainly it's it's odd, right.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot of the Republican elites, the
Speaker 1: people for whom you know, writing a check for a
Speaker 1: million dollars is not such a big deal. That crew
Speaker 1: has worked so hard to own the levers of power
Speaker 1: and now they know what right you're there? Even despite
Speaker 1: what happened last night in Georgia. I mean, doesn't it
Speaker 1: seem like he's got this nomination locked up?
Speaker 5: And look, I haven't talked to voters yet. I will
Speaker 5: be doing those conversations ahead of the Georgia indictment. But
Speaker 5: I mean, we all knew what this was, right and
Speaker 5: it's not surprising. So I did have some of these
Speaker 5: conversations over the weekend at the fair, and I think
Speaker 5: the one that strikes me the most. Yes, I found
Speaker 5: Republican voters who didn't want to vote for Trump, either
Speaker 5: again because of January sixth, or because they never wanted
Speaker 5: to vote for him in the first place, and they
Speaker 5: just really wish the party would move on. Those people exist.
Speaker 5: It's why Trump doesn't have one hundred percent in the roles.
Speaker 5: There are people who are looking for other options, but
Speaker 5: his core group of supporters are still with him. I mean,
Speaker 5: I this is the conversation that sticks with me. A
Speaker 5: man that I spoke with who said, where was the
Speaker 5: National Guard on January sixth?
Speaker 3: Why was there not more security?
Speaker 5: And I said, okay, I take that point, but did
Speaker 5: Trump have any role to play?
Speaker 3: He says, yeah, he was the president of the United States.
Speaker 5: I said, okay, so you think he has the part
Speaker 5: to play and blame to have on January six He
Speaker 5: said yes.
Speaker 3: I said, but you'd still vote for him? He said, yeah,
Speaker 3: he was a great president.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: I mean that to me kind of says everything, which
Speaker 5: is that It's why the indictment still moves the needle.
Speaker 5: It's why the January Stix hearings didn't necessarily move the needle.
Speaker 5: And I don't mean that broadly. I mean that among Republicans.
Speaker 5: I think that's the reality of this Republican primary. That's why,
Speaker 5: as frustrating as it is for all of us who
Speaker 5: asked these contenders time and again, hey, is the fourth
Speaker 5: indictment not.
Speaker 3: Enough for you?
Speaker 5: Like, it's why his rivals won't go after him. There's
Speaker 5: no political upside with their baits And they've.
Speaker 1: Seen polling which says there's no political upside.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 1: I mean the problem with Trump is that Trump occupies
Speaker 1: Earth too. So yes, all of these candidates who are
Speaker 1: like I need to run to the right on policy,
Speaker 1: they're on Earth wand like none of these normal rules
Speaker 1: apply here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would posit that we're all
Speaker 5: on Earth one, and that's the reality that Trump in
Speaker 5: habits and everyone else is in Earth too.
Speaker 3: Where they're saying policy is going to win the day.
Speaker 5: You know, DeSantis thinks running on a six week fan
Speaker 5: as opposed to you know, just overturning Row is going
Speaker 5: to be the thing that helps him win and prove
Speaker 5: conservative credentials. I mean, I don't see it happening as
Speaker 5: of now, but the one lesson of covering fifteen and
Speaker 5: sixteen is that you don't make hard predictions because politics
Speaker 5: is strange. But yeah, I mean with Trump, it's clear that.
Speaker 5: I think that's why this primary feels so weird, and
Speaker 5: I think it's the thing that's been looming over the
Speaker 5: State Fair for me this entire weekend, which is usually
Speaker 5: you can feel like there's a little bit of a
Speaker 5: race going on, maybe someone can jockey for position, maybe
Speaker 5: something will resonate. Right now, it just feels so big
Speaker 5: and it doesn't have to do with policy. It has
Speaker 5: to do with political vendetta and finishing the score of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, and there's no amount of policy that changes that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I do you think there are so
Speaker 1: many people in this party who you're not hearing from
Speaker 1: who are so desperate for it to be of avac
Speaker 1: or in anyone right, And Nika tim Scott, I mean
Speaker 1: you're seeing mega donors try to convalesce around tim Scott.
Speaker 1: But doesn't it seem like they're making the same mistakes
Speaker 1: they made in fifteen, which was like if you think
Speaker 1: about Democrats, Democrats decided that Biden was their best shot,
Speaker 1: and they all got behind him like in a minute, right,
Speaker 1: like you saw Mayor Pete and now.
Speaker 5: With stretch a stunning moment. I mean, I don't that
Speaker 5: was wild, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean I was like, what is happening here? Like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, everybody else dropped out. It was just incredible.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of what's happening right now in the
Speaker 1: Michigan Senate race. Like Democrats got together, they were like,
Speaker 1: this is our person, this is where we're going. Really
Speaker 1: a stark contrast to what's happening in California, which is,
Speaker 1: let us burn all the donor money on a race
Speaker 1: that will have no impact.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a longer conversation about money and politics, right,
Speaker 5: But but the Republicans couldn't do it right, and it's
Speaker 5: very unrepublican of them in many ways. Right, Usually there
Speaker 5: is the passing of the baton to the person who
Speaker 5: came in second the last time around, Right, it was, Yes,
Speaker 5: it went to mcmaine, and then it went to Romney,
Speaker 5: and there was a little bit of sense that was
Speaker 5: made of the transition process in Republican politics previously. Of course,
Speaker 5: we know, and it's so trivial to say it now
Speaker 5: that Trump upended all of that, you know, quote unquote
Speaker 5: tradition within conservative ranks. But I actually think that this
Speaker 5: might be very republican of them to stick with the
Speaker 5: guy who was already there. In many ways, it doesn't
Speaker 5: make sense because of all the electoral problems that will
Speaker 5: come in the general. But from a primary politics perspective,
Speaker 5: you know, none of this is exactly shocking, given the
Speaker 5: way that we've watched Trump completely just recreate this party
Speaker 5: in his own image.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what's so interesting is that there
Speaker 1: is an enormous gulf between what happens in these GOP
Speaker 1: primaries and what will happen in the general in a
Speaker 1: way that I think is pretty much, again using this
Speaker 1: terrible word, unprecedented, But I think it's unusual to have
Speaker 1: a primary field that is occupying such a different reality
Speaker 1: than the general I mean, I don't know how you
Speaker 1: go to a soccer mom and say, like, Trump needs
Speaker 1: to be back in office so she doesn't go to jail.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there's a few things to that too, right.
Speaker 5: I remember in twenty twenty, during the few days after
Speaker 5: the election, when we were still figuring out what the
Speaker 5: results were, I remember someone on the Biden team saying
Speaker 5: to me, look, this coalition is fascinating. And I also
Speaker 5: don't know if it's something that ever can be replicated again.
Speaker 5: In part that was because of the pandemic, and part
Speaker 5: it was because of the Trump factor.
Speaker 3: All of those things were true.
Speaker 5: I think the thing that keeps for example, suburban moms
Speaker 5: in Georgia or suburban in Pennsylvania, all the areas that
Speaker 5: Democrats did better in than they were anticipated to do,
Speaker 5: the thing that keeps them is an issue like abortion.
Speaker 5: And I think it's less that's the idea of going
Speaker 5: to suburban moms and say, hey, vote for Trump because
Speaker 5: he has to stay out of jail, and more saying
Speaker 5: consider someone else. If you're Democrats, consider someone else. Because
Speaker 5: of this issue that has been very energizing and salient.
Speaker 3: Before I was in.
Speaker 5: Iowa, I was in Ohio, and I think that was
Speaker 5: my big takeaway. I've covered repro for ten years and
Speaker 5: it's always been an issue that I've felt never got
Speaker 5: the credit that it was due in terms of the
Speaker 5: ways that it could animate voters. I really am someone
Speaker 5: who doesn't want to underestimate the power of women and
Speaker 5: people who are allies to women in continuing to be
Speaker 5: angry about this because female rings you such a motivator.
Speaker 5: So there's that which which percolates completely outside the Trump stuff,
Speaker 5: like outside the Iowa State Fair all of that. But
Speaker 5: like that's royling for the general. That's not a now problem.
Speaker 5: That's a future problem. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 5: the legal stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh exactly. And I think and I think I
Speaker 1: agree with you, and I think it's been wildly underestimated
Speaker 1: because it's a quote unquote women's issue. But I think
Speaker 1: it's going to bite them, and well deserved. I might add,
Speaker 1: as I am on the opinion side, you do not
Speaker 1: have to say anything, but I do think it's it's
Speaker 1: a real problem for them.
Speaker 5: But I also think the primary point that you made
Speaker 5: right candidate recruitment has been an issue over the course
Speaker 5: of the last few midterms. I think, to go back again,
Speaker 5: Georgia is the place of the day, But I think
Speaker 5: about brschel Walker and the ways that Donald Trump has
Speaker 5: meddled in primaries to get his person to the front
Speaker 5: of the Republican pact, and then that didn't always work out.
Speaker 3: I mean, you look in Arizona.
Speaker 5: With the Lake Master, right, And it's why the electability
Speaker 5: argument is actually a good argument for any candidate not
Speaker 5: named Trump. We saw DeSantis kind of toy with this
Speaker 5: a little bit too, the idea that Republicans have not
Speaker 5: been winning in the Trump era when Trump himself is
Speaker 5: not directly on the ballot, and even then and even
Speaker 5: then right to sixteen of course being the outlier at
Speaker 5: least by Electoral College standards, But the electability argument is
Speaker 5: the salient one, and in part because of the primary
Speaker 5: problems of running in Republican primaries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, we do have this map.
Speaker 1: So one of the things about twenty four is it's
Speaker 1: a very bad I'm allowed to say is because it's
Speaker 1: true bad Senate map for Democrats, right, it's kind of terrifying.
Speaker 1: They really need to keep as many seats as possible,
Speaker 1: and there's West Virginia and Montana and Ohio is share Brown.
Speaker 1: But I think it is interesting, like when you think
Speaker 1: about this map and then you think about twenty two
Speaker 1: and twenty Trump being on the ballot likely, and again,
Speaker 1: we don't want to predict the future because who the
Speaker 1: fuck knows. It's such a great king curse because we're
Speaker 1: not on TV. It's such a volatile time in American politics,
Speaker 1: and we saw this with the Ohio vote right with
Speaker 1: the ballot initiative. Though ballot it's hard to extrapolate ballot
Speaker 1: initiatives to voting because there's not exact continuity. But I
Speaker 1: do think share Brown is feeling a lot better.
Speaker 3: I think you have to.
Speaker 5: I look at this Senate maps, and look, Democrats say
Speaker 5: this to me all the time.
Speaker 3: They say it's a bad map for them.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just objectively true because they have so
Speaker 5: many places to play defense, whether it's the rhetoric states
Speaker 5: that you're looking at, like Montana or Ohio where Brown
Speaker 5: and Tester I covered their reelection bids last cycle. They
Speaker 5: have very strong in state brands. I think that helped
Speaker 5: them in eighteen and will help them again now, But
Speaker 5: even look at places like Nevada, where you've brought Jackman
Speaker 5: Rosen playing defense Manson, who has always had weird reelection
Speaker 5: bid simply because he's a Democrat in a sea of red.
Speaker 5: I mean, we'll see what he ends up doing, but
Speaker 5: certainly that's going to be a weird race to watch.
Speaker 5: But it's just that they have to pray. We've been
Speaker 5: so many in so many places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's a rough map. But do you
Speaker 1: think that Mansion will run for reelection?
Speaker 5: You know, it's so hard to predict Mansion, especially because
Speaker 5: right now he's playing this tees game on two fronts.
Speaker 3: He's playing the tees game on.
Speaker 5: West Virginia Senate, and he's also playing the tees game
Speaker 5: on some kind of potential no labels the presidential run.
Speaker 1: I don't know who that's for, but.
Speaker 5: I take the groan as the person who was sitting
Speaker 5: outside of his office with a camera just waiting during
Speaker 5: Build Back Better and then the Inflation Reduction Act and all.
Speaker 3: Of the month in between.
Speaker 5: But Mansion is, though I've heard people say what they
Speaker 5: will about it, he is someone knows how to stay
Speaker 5: in the spotlight and leverage his power, and he knows
Speaker 5: that he has power right now, and you've seen the
Speaker 5: fruits of that in multiple pieces of legislation over the
Speaker 5: course of the last two years. And so there's no
Speaker 5: reason that I would think that he's not going to
Speaker 5: continue to leverage this weird will I run for president?
Speaker 5: Will I run in the Senate race? Will I not
Speaker 5: run at all? He's going to leverage that until he
Speaker 5: can't anymore.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a question about that. It
Speaker 1: definitely seems like he's good at capturing attention and power.
Speaker 1: It's very unfair for me to ask you to predict
Speaker 1: the future.
Speaker 3: Well, they said, I wreck my crystal ball in.
Speaker 1: DC, right, and if we can give with the toothpaste,
Speaker 1: if we can game this out. This is more of
Speaker 1: a broader question about no labels. I would say there's
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety about no labels going in and
Speaker 1: you know, being the four points that gives this selection
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump. I mean, does it seem like this
Speaker 1: anxiety is well founded?
Speaker 5: I think when you play a game of margins, every
Speaker 5: vote count, you just have to look at the ways
Speaker 5: that the states swung both in sixteen and in twenty.
Speaker 5: I mean, we watched the ways that third parties made
Speaker 5: it harder for the two proper parties in whatever the
Speaker 5: way that they wanted their turnout models to look. And
Speaker 5: I think that for Democrats who want to see a
Speaker 5: Democrat come out, there's a reason to be concerned. I
Speaker 5: don't know that these third party runs ever function as
Speaker 5: cleanly as you know, politicos might want to think, oh,
Speaker 5: it's all going to steal from Democrats, it's all going
Speaker 5: to steal from republic. We don't know where those votes
Speaker 5: they're going to come from, but we do know that
Speaker 5: it steals goats away from the two major parties.
Speaker 3: I don't mean steals, I mean these people have a
Speaker 3: right to be on the ballot.
Speaker 5: But I do think that if you're looking at a
Speaker 5: two party system, and that's how most of the country
Speaker 5: looks at politics, Yeah, when you play a game of margins,
Speaker 5: it matters who's splitting that ballot up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly in Iowa, just to get back to Iowa
Speaker 1: for a second, because you are there, God help you.
Speaker 1: For how long have you even been there?
Speaker 5: I've been there for five days, and you know what
Speaker 5: my goal to myself was on my last day, I
Speaker 5: got my Friday Oreo.
Speaker 3: So I'm doing that today.
Speaker 1: Oh good, good, good sense, just delightful. Trump is in
Speaker 1: much better shape in Iowa than he was last time.
Speaker 1: Two seconds on that.
Speaker 3: He's the front runner of the party. If she wasn't,
Speaker 3: then he wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: He has a real team this time.
Speaker 5: He does, and he's not putting it together in a
Speaker 5: shoe string fashion like he did in fifteen and sixteen.
Speaker 3: I was there for that.
Speaker 5: They had a competent team who knew Iowa, but it
Speaker 5: was still putting the plane together while they were hurting
Speaker 5: through the air at warp speed in that cycle. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you have the benefit of having done this before. I
Speaker 5: think that Trump just has the benefit of being a
Speaker 5: former president right now. Like, of course he is looking
Speaker 5: good in a place like Iowa. Definitely, of course he's
Speaker 5: looking good in a place like New Hampshire that was
Speaker 5: always a friendly.
Speaker 3: Place to him.
Speaker 5: In theory, he's not the right candidate for Iowa because
Speaker 5: of the way that the states he was more conservative.
Speaker 5: But no one else is mounting a challenge, and you
Speaker 5: can't vote for someone else if someone else isn't really
Speaker 5: making themselves a parent.
Speaker 1: Ali Vitally, thank you so much. This is so interesting.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. I will definitely come back, and
Speaker 5: I will bring more buttercawfec.
Speaker 1: Hi. It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, is going to have merch for sale over
Speaker 1: at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
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Speaker 1: Carolyn Kitchener covers abortion for the Washington Post. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Karen.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me Li.
Speaker 1: You are on the abortion beat. It's so incredibly depressing.
Speaker 1: It's not even the abortion beat. It's the not abortion beat, right.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 6: I spend almost well when I'm not in DC. I'm
Speaker 6: never in places where you can get abortions. I'm always
Speaker 6: in places where you can.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the landscape looks like right now,
Speaker 1: because it's been a little more than a year, and
Speaker 1: what does the landscape look like.
Speaker 6: We've sort of settled into this place where it's over
Speaker 6: a dozen states. It's been over a dozen states for
Speaker 6: a while now, where you know, almost all abortions are banned,
Speaker 6: and you know, it's just been feeling like, you know,
Speaker 6: every couple months it's another one. We just had Iowa
Speaker 6: wipe out most abortion access, and now I think everybody
Speaker 6: is looking to Florida. There's a big Supreme Court case
Speaker 6: that is going to determine the future of abortion access
Speaker 6: in Florida. That's in early September, and that would be
Speaker 6: the abortion band to date that affects the most people nationwide.
Speaker 1: One of the pieces that you wrote about was these
Speaker 1: teen parents two years later couldn't have an abortion. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of pieces. Yesterday there was a big
Speaker 1: piece in Time magazine about a seventh grader who had
Speaker 1: a child. This is sort of the future that a
Speaker 1: lot of these anti choice people want. I mean, what
Speaker 1: does it look like on the ground.
Speaker 3: This particular story.
Speaker 6: I had never done this before, but I revisited a
Speaker 6: young woman that I wrote about a year ago because
Speaker 6: so much time has passed. So I wrote about her
Speaker 6: a year ago. Three months after she had twins as
Speaker 6: a result of the Texas abortion ban, which now I
Speaker 6: mean we're coming up on two years since Texas became
Speaker 6: the first state to ban most abortions. That was about
Speaker 6: nine months before rofell. So, you know, I think through her,
Speaker 6: I was really interested in revisiting her because you can
Speaker 6: really see quite a bit of time down the line.
Speaker 6: What does life look like? And you know the answer
Speaker 6: is that life for her is really hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let me ask you the thing that I'm
Speaker 1: struck by with a lot of this abortion coverage, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you have the same experience, and if not,
Speaker 1: why not what I had expected? When you know, I
Speaker 1: was raised by a second wave from us. It was
Speaker 1: obsessed with the fact that they had gotten us a choice.
Speaker 1: I mean obsessed. And she said, you know, if you
Speaker 1: lose choice, you have women trying to do abortions on
Speaker 1: themselves and they die. I'm sure that is some percentage
Speaker 1: of what's happened. But a lot of the stories we're
Speaker 1: reading or not about that, they're about pregnant women who
Speaker 1: cannot get treated. Can you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: I think that there was a lot of retrospective thinking
Speaker 6: zooming out that was done, you know, a year after Roechell,
Speaker 6: and a lot of sort of trying to crunch the
Speaker 6: numbers and see, you know, how many abortions are still
Speaker 6: happening and how many are not happening, And really the
Speaker 6: answer there is that it's extremely difficult to know because
Speaker 6: self managed abortion and by that I mean mostly abortion
Speaker 6: pills have become like such a massive thing that was
Speaker 6: not the case before Roe. Right, we just have this
Speaker 6: huge you know, what I think is is well, I
Speaker 6: mean we know, actually know, we know that these are
Speaker 6: numbering in the tens of thousands, but people just going
Speaker 6: going online and ordering pills and doing their abortions safely
Speaker 6: at home, and so you know, it is hard to
Speaker 6: know just how many people are not able to access
Speaker 6: it at all. Which is why I think those stories
Speaker 6: are so important because we know that that we know
Speaker 6: that not everybody knows what AID access is. You know,
Speaker 6: for listeners, that's like the kind of the biggest online
Speaker 6: place to get abortion pills.
Speaker 3: But you know, a lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 1: But we're seeing a lot of like lawsuits and litigation
Speaker 1: from women for whom they never thought the end of
Speaker 1: ROW would affect them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 6: I mean we're seeing, you know, in Texas, the big
Speaker 6: lawsuit in Texas, it's I believe it's over a dozen
Speaker 6: women who, you know, all of who like had pregnancies
Speaker 6: that they really wanted, you know, they were excited to
Speaker 6: have a baby, but they had some kind of pregnancy complication,
Speaker 6: and for all of them it was, well, it was
Speaker 6: either some kind of pregnancy complication that affected their own
Speaker 6: health or it was you know, something was very wrong
Speaker 6: with the baby. Before Roe, the standard for treatment that
Speaker 6: they would have received, would have been offered to them
Speaker 6: was an abortion. In all of these cases, that was
Speaker 6: just taken off the table. So you know, you had
Speaker 6: these these women bringing this incredibly just I mean, giving
Speaker 6: these incredibly powerful testimonies, you know, a Texas courthouse about
Speaker 6: you know, the way that these laws absolutely put.
Speaker 3: Them in danger, grave danger in many cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing I'm struck by is, like, clearly the
Speaker 1: reason that Roe was decided so broadly in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: Obviously it was because of women dying leading to death,
Speaker 1: you know, because of they did their own abortions. But
Speaker 1: I also think there's like a larger medical issue of
Speaker 1: doctors who you know. I mean, we've interviewed a lot
Speaker 1: of doctors on this podcast. We've I have talked to
Speaker 1: my own guynecologists who's involved in Physicians for reproductive health,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of anxiety. I mean, obviously not
Speaker 1: for the BLUESDAID doctors and not for these special trained
Speaker 1: doctors that are coming into planned parenthood to the very
Speaker 1: few clinics that are still exist in the rest of
Speaker 1: the country, but there's anxiety for normal you know, obgyns
Speaker 1: who signed up to deliver babies and not to make
Speaker 1: every medical choice a question of whether or not they
Speaker 1: were going to lose their license. Oh.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, It's it's terrifying. I talked to a lot of
Speaker 6: obigu i n's that are in that position, and you know,
Speaker 6: in many cases obiguis that feel just I mean many
Speaker 6: that are considering moving because they just feel so disheartened
Speaker 6: and you know, frankly depressed in some cases that they
Speaker 6: can't provide the care that they you know, they feel
Speaker 6: that they sign up to give.
Speaker 1: And I also wonder what it looks like a country
Speaker 1: that has such terrible problems with maternal fetal health. I mean,
Speaker 1: for a wealthy country, we have the kind of maternal
Speaker 1: fetal health you don't usually see in a wealthy country.
Speaker 1: And then for black women it's several magnitudes of mortality
Speaker 1: more than for white women. Right, So I just wonder
Speaker 1: if you could talk about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, that is the thing to watch over
Speaker 6: the coming year and the years to come. I mean,
Speaker 6: the you know, over a dozen states that have you know,
Speaker 6: near total abortion bands in effect, almost all of them
Speaker 6: are on the list of like top ten worse states
Speaker 6: from maternal mortality. There's just an incredibly there's an incredible
Speaker 6: overlap there. As a journalist, that's going to be probably
Speaker 6: the top thing that I'm going to be watching as
Speaker 6: time goes by. What is happening to those numbers. You know,
Speaker 6: unfortunately there's often kind of a lag in those numbers,
Speaker 6: but people really need to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, there's definitely a groundswell of voters are
Speaker 1: not happy with these fans. Again, this is not the
Speaker 1: first time Republicans of voters are not seeing eye to eye.
Speaker 1: I don't see a world where Republican politicians are going
Speaker 1: to change their you know, they're going hard on abortion.
Speaker 1: And I think Florida is a great example, with Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: who had a more reasonable bell and then because it
Speaker 1: was running for president, tightened it up. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: I Mean what happened with DeSantis and Florida in particular,
Speaker 6: I think just shows how between a rock and a
Speaker 6: hard place these Republican politicians are finding themselves on this issue.
Speaker 6: Because DeSantis, I mean, he went out and he backed
Speaker 6: the six week Man. It was very unclear to me
Speaker 6: for a very long time whether he was going to
Speaker 6: do that, but then he decided. He you know, he
Speaker 6: met with all these anti abortion advicates and he decided
Speaker 6: to do it. But the way that he did it
Speaker 6: was I think really revealing. He did it at like
Speaker 6: it was like it was like eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 6: There was no big like media thing. They took one
Speaker 6: picture and he put it on Twitter, you know, late
Speaker 6: late at night, and I think, like, I think that's
Speaker 6: really telling, especially in compared to the year before when
Speaker 6: he signed the fifteen Week Band. He did this huge,
Speaker 6: you know party at this church and everybody was invited
Speaker 6: and there were all these treatures and videos and and
Speaker 6: this time, I mean, he I signed this bill and
Speaker 6: then the next day he went to speak at Liberty University,
Speaker 6: which is like his people, yeah, extremely extremely religious and
Speaker 6: conservative and very very you know, anti abortion, and he
Speaker 6: didn't even bring it up the fact that, you know,
Speaker 6: just the day before he had done this.
Speaker 3: So I just think that's so taling.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of them are really struggling with
Speaker 6: how to you know, both like, do what the base,
Speaker 6: the sort of Republican base wants and these what these
Speaker 6: anti abortion activists are pushing them to do, but also
Speaker 6: reckoning with the fact that the vast majority of people,
Speaker 6: the vast majority of voters don't want these policies.
Speaker 1: The anti choice activists, they seem insatiable, they see, you know,
Speaker 1: like there is for them. In my sense of the
Speaker 1: reporting I've read, they are not happy with the six
Speaker 1: week band. They are not happy with it. I mean
Speaker 1: they really want to go for brogue.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I mean, they really are you know.
Speaker 6: They're also kind of I think, starting to zero in on,
Speaker 6: you know, pills that people are able to order, Like
Speaker 6: they know, they're realizing that, you know, the bands aren't
Speaker 6: having quite the effects that they imagine that they would,
Speaker 6: the magnitude of the effect that they thought that they
Speaker 6: would because you know, people are you know a lot
Speaker 6: of people, certainly not everyone, but a lot of people
Speaker 6: are able to travel out of state or they're able
Speaker 6: to go online and order pills, and they're really frustrated
Speaker 6: by that, and they do want to go further.
Speaker 1: Right, what I think is pretty interesting and I'm hoping
Speaker 1: we could talk about this for a second, is Judge Matthew,
Speaker 1: because Marek is is judge in Texas. He is if
Speaker 1: you take a case up in this particular part of Texas,
Speaker 1: he's the only judge who will get He is a
Speaker 1: mega judge put in by Trump, very ideological, very very ideological,
Speaker 1: wants to take the pills off the market. Talk to
Speaker 1: us about where we are with that.
Speaker 6: Well, we're kind of waiting for the Supreme Court to
Speaker 6: see if they're going to do sort of a full
Speaker 6: review of that case. So right now, you know, Matthew,
Speaker 6: I think it was what it was back in back
Speaker 6: in February, cos Merik did withdraw he he attempted to
Speaker 6: withdraw you know, FDA approval of this key abortion drug
Speaker 6: of mefi pristone, and you know, then it went up
Speaker 6: to the Fifth Circuit, it ended up at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court, you know, basically, you know, temporarily stopped
Speaker 6: it in its tracks. And so you know, MEPhI pristone
Speaker 6: is still widely available in states where abortion is legal,
Speaker 6: but it's not the end of the road for that case.
Speaker 6: So I think a lot of anti abortion activists got
Speaker 6: very excited by how are that effort went. I mean,
Speaker 6: when that case was filed. I mean legal experts, even
Speaker 6: you know, really conservative anti abortion experts that I spoke with,
Speaker 6: they did this, you know, on not putting their names
Speaker 6: to it, but you know, in conversations they would say, like,
Speaker 6: that's crazy. You know, that kind of case is just
Speaker 6: kind of nuts. But it went somewhere like it, you know,
Speaker 6: they they found a judge that was willing to kind
Speaker 6: of green light that. And so I do think that,
Speaker 6: you know, even if this particular case kind of flounders
Speaker 6: and doesn't go anywhere else, I do expect that we
Speaker 6: will see more efforts along these lines to kind of
Speaker 6: take a swing at particularly abortion pills on a national level.
Speaker 6: I think anti abortion activists are really realizing what a
Speaker 6: different world this is in pre row right.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, though, like with the abortion pills, because it
Speaker 1: opens the door to so many FDA problems, right, and
Speaker 1: it is absolutely just you know, once you start deciding
Speaker 1: that the drugs you don't like do things you don't like,
Speaker 1: and so you want to take them off the market.
Speaker 1: I mean pharmaceutical companies, which if last time I checked,
Speaker 1: we're sort of one of the major you know, rulers
Speaker 1: of this country and one of the larger benefactors of politicians.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to run into You're going to
Speaker 1: run smack into religion versus capitalism big time here.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, I mean a lot of people who, you know,
Speaker 6: people who don't usually weigh in on abortion issues around
Speaker 6: the Casmeric case were like, you know, they were really
Speaker 6: making their voices heard and saying like, look, this does
Speaker 6: not stop with abortion, and this is really opening as
Speaker 6: sort of dangerous canaisforms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it does feel like a Pandora's box
Speaker 1: right once you start saying this, I don't like what
Speaker 1: this does? You know, were you going to stop antidepress
Speaker 1: and so you're going to stop right alan, You're going
Speaker 1: to stop I mean cholesterol drugs. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: such an insane place to go. So right now we
Speaker 1: have a sort of like America is basically right states
Speaker 1: where you can get abortions, states where you can't get abortions,
Speaker 1: and then miles and miles and miles between them. If
Speaker 1: you live in Florida, Now, how far do you have
Speaker 1: to drive to get an abortion?
Speaker 6: Well, Florida right now is at fifteen weeks, so it's
Speaker 6: about like ninety to ninety five percent of abortions can
Speaker 6: still happen there. So right now, the farthest that you
Speaker 6: can get from a legal abortion in the United States
Speaker 6: is South Texas. But if Florida goes dark, then I
Speaker 6: mean it's just it's it's really hard to wrap your
Speaker 6: mind around. Just it would completely upend the landscape right now.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think there's sort of a tentative equilibrium
Speaker 6: that has been reached where, you know, the clinics that
Speaker 6: I'm talking to in North Carolina and Illinois, which are
Speaker 6: some of the big access points, like they are struggling
Speaker 6: to meet demand, really struggling to meet demand, but they
Speaker 6: are they are hanging on, you know, they're they're sort
Speaker 6: of they're they're they're figuring out ways to do it.
Speaker 6: But if you insert I mean Florida, I think I
Speaker 6: said this, but on a on a you know, average year,
Speaker 6: it's eighty thousand abortions that take place in Florida. You know,
Speaker 6: it's the third most populous state. So if you kind
Speaker 6: of add those eighty thousand two or some number of
Speaker 6: that eighty thousand, because it would be a six week
Speaker 6: band if you add that to you know, all of
Speaker 6: these places that are just barely you know, making it.
Speaker 6: It's just hard to see where people would go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't think they care. So interesting. I
Speaker 1: hope you will come back.
Speaker 3: I would love to come back.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Anna, thanks for caring about this issue.
Speaker 4: They're all pect Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast, mister trub
Speaker 4: Peece of having a rough week. So he claims he's
Speaker 4: got big claims coming Monday. And we know how on
Speaker 4: scar schedule he usually is for things. He's very good
Speaker 4: at that.
Speaker 1: So this is an incredible little bit of sorcery that
Speaker 1: we haven't seen since season one of The Trump Show.
Speaker 1: He's going to show us this irrefutable evidence that the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election was stolen. This is a page right
Speaker 1: out of the My Pillow playbook. Right, they're going to
Speaker 1: show us, They're going to prove it. You'll remember that
Speaker 1: My pillow guy did a lot of events that showed
Speaker 1: us that the election was stolen, except that he couldn't
Speaker 1: prove any of it because none of it was true.
Speaker 1: So mister Trump is going to do that in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and his golf club. The world weights and waits
Speaker 1: and waits and waits. That's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to
Speaker 1: hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
Speaker 1: this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
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Speaker 1: thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: Two