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 Mitch McConnell warns of a future
Speaker 1: headline Russia wins, America loses some future. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today, Talking Points memo Josh
Speaker 1: Marshall stops by to survey the fallout from Signal Gazi.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to poet and writer Anthony Walton about
Speaker 1: his new book, The End of Respectability, Notes of a
Speaker 1: Black American, His life and his Nation. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So Bally, I think the buyer's remorse, even in the
Speaker 2: Republican Party, is starting to hit Trump's economic policies.
Speaker 1: Who could have seen it? Certainly not everyone.
Speaker 3: Certainly haven't been podcasting about this for weeks that this
Speaker 3: was going to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly not everyone. You'll be shocked
Speaker 1: to know that Republican Representative Bacon us that limiting Trump's
Speaker 1: presidential powers his tariff powers might have been a better idea.
Speaker 1: Congressman Don Macon says the president was never meant to
Speaker 1: have broad tariff power under the Constitution. I would add
Speaker 1: a normal president would have been fine with broad tariff
Speaker 1: power tariffs. Even Trump one point zero sort of figured
Speaker 1: out how to use tariffs. But Trump two point zero
Speaker 1: seems set to use tariffs in the most destructive way possible.
Speaker 1: And FYI, what did the Dow close down today? The
Speaker 1: markets hate this, right, this is it's in. Here's what
Speaker 1: markets hate, instability. Here's what Donald Trump is doing making
Speaker 1: them unstable?
Speaker 3: What is Donald Trump's brand? Instability?
Speaker 1: Stability? So the Dow is down about one one point
Speaker 1: six y nine percent, seven hundred points today. The SMP
Speaker 1: is down. SMP is down almost two percent today. Look,
Speaker 1: they hate it, right, they hate it. They hate the
Speaker 1: Nasdaq is down two and a half percent. People are
Speaker 1: worried about the tariffs. And I might add that Trump
Speaker 1: World is going about this as is typical, in the
Speaker 1: stupidest possible way, just completely ridiculous. So what they're doing
Speaker 1: is instead of they're raising these tariffs, and then they're
Speaker 1: saying you can't raise prices. By the way, when Harris
Speaker 1: talked about possibly doing some kind of price thing to
Speaker 1: make it so that companies couldn't gouge consumers, she was
Speaker 1: met with the pushback to end all pushbacks. So I
Speaker 1: think It's a bit interesting now that Donald Trump missed
Speaker 1: her Republicans. I thought Republicans believed in free markets, right,
Speaker 1: So here's Donald Trump saying you can't raise the price
Speaker 1: of cars even if they're more expensive for you. Pretty
Speaker 1: interesting stuff here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think the Heritage Foundation, they're a little project
Speaker 2: to have unitary executive theory, is going to be seeing
Speaker 2: a little bit of pushback now.
Speaker 1: It's like they knew that this guy was a complete lunatic.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's nobody remembered Trump's first administration. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm going crazy, like we are. So it's like
Speaker 1: the United States of Amnesia. Right. We have just completely
Speaker 1: completely gone down this rabbit hole. So now Trump has
Speaker 1: more power than he did the first time. The first time,
Speaker 1: when he had all this power, it was a complete disaster.
Speaker 1: Now he has all this power, and I guess what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Tell me it's gonna look a lot
Speaker 1: like the first time. A complete disaster.
Speaker 2: Oh there's some writing on the wall for how much
Speaker 2: sure worse this disaster is going to get. But another
Speaker 2: thing American economy depends on to stay strong is tourism
Speaker 2: and fight bookings from Canada to the US have pummeted
Speaker 2: over seventy percent.
Speaker 1: We have hit this. Look, there are things stupider than
Speaker 1: what's happening right now, but I can't think of them
Speaker 1: right now. So Trump is having a war with Canada.
Speaker 1: He's mad at Canada because Trudeau is handsome. He's not
Speaker 1: even the PM anymore, because the Canadians are smart. I
Speaker 1: don't know, because of fent and all whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is, this is all ridiculous. Trump is mad
Speaker 1: at Canada. So he has put in these tariffs. He
Speaker 1: has done all sorts of weird stuff to Canadians. Canadians
Speaker 1: have they have a thing now. They say elbows up,
Speaker 1: and it means that they're going to protect each other. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we are now in a hostile relationship with Canada.
Speaker 1: Canada the nicest people you've ever met, Canada. I mean
Speaker 1: it is. There are no words for how stupid this is.
Speaker 1: So as a result of our incredible stupidity, Canadians don't
Speaker 1: want to come here. So flights the US have fallen
Speaker 1: more than seventy percent. So this is April saw the
Speaker 1: steepest drop, with just two hundred thousand bookings seventy six
Speaker 1: percent from the one point three million bookings. This is real,
Speaker 1: This is gonna have real effects. Right, These are Canadians
Speaker 1: going to places like Detroit and New York and these
Speaker 1: are they're not coming terrorism terrorism, excuse me. Tourism will
Speaker 1: take a huge head. Our economy will suffer. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like the stupidest self perpetuating moronics ever known
Speaker 1: to man. And none of us should be surprised. And
Speaker 1: this is what you people voted for. So congratulations, Maga.
Speaker 1: You didn't need that tourism anyway, Ley.
Speaker 3: I got bad news for you. There's more stupid to come.
Speaker 4: The House.
Speaker 2: Democrats are tearing it to the White House for citing
Speaker 2: you're a musk to the Signal Gate investigation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody better to solve crimes than people who are
Speaker 1: sell the mystery than people who are involved in the mystery.
Speaker 1: I feel like if you get Elon Musk investigating into
Speaker 1: Signal Gazi, here's what's going to happen. Musk is going
Speaker 1: to be like, why wasn't I at it? You added
Speaker 1: f Goldberg but not me. Yeah, Like this is again,
Speaker 1: this is they want to stop corruption with corruption, and
Speaker 1: none of us should be surprised. Elon Musk will exonerate
Speaker 1: everyone involved, because of course he will, because this is
Speaker 1: where we are right now, and none of us should
Speaker 1: be surprised. And this is Somalia.
Speaker 3: As we know.
Speaker 2: The Trump administration is very excited to annex Greenland so
Speaker 2: that they could turn it over to be a libertarian
Speaker 2: play state. And the Vances went there to try to
Speaker 2: scout things out and who it did not go well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, congratulations to all who celebrate. Vance went to Greenland.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of back and forth on this.
Speaker 1: Usha was going to go by herself, then she went
Speaker 1: with JD. Honestly, there was going to be a cultural visit.
Speaker 1: Then it was a real visit. Now they couldn't find
Speaker 1: anyone who wanted her to come to their house. The
Speaker 1: Consulate asked, I mean, this is so incredibly unsurprising.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's not a lot of people in Greenland.
Speaker 2: I looked it up. There's less people at Greenwood than
Speaker 2: fifty six. Yeah, there's barely more people than in my tiny,
Speaker 2: tiny neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I live in one of
Speaker 2: the smallest neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: What I think is interesting about this Greenland thing is
Speaker 1: that you saw Vance is interesting because he's so unpopular
Speaker 1: and he's so able to kind of transmit anything reasonable.
Speaker 1: So he goes to Greenland and he and he's not
Speaker 1: dressed up, he's not wearing a suit. He's wearing this
Speaker 1: weird black sweater like somethings really disrespectful. Yeah, and he says,
Speaker 1: he goes to this base space in Greenland and he
Speaker 1: speaks to troops Vance's military force. Is not necessary for
Speaker 1: the US to expand its presence in Greenland. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so menacing, like leave them a loan. And
Speaker 1: then he goes after Denmark. Denmark has not done a
Speaker 1: good job for the people of Greenland and the US
Speaker 1: needs to step in. Good luck to this. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is no mean we're going to go to war
Speaker 1: with Denmark. Now. This is so stupid. Everything is so stupid.
Speaker 1: He says it Russia and China increasing their footprints in
Speaker 1: the area. Look, he had remembered this was going to
Speaker 1: be a bigger trip and he had to scale it
Speaker 1: down because of this row with the governments of Greenland
Speaker 1: and Denmark over a lack of invitation. This is what
Speaker 1: we become, right, we are We're not even invited to
Speaker 1: places like Greenland and I think this has happened so quickly.
Speaker 1: We're like in we're like two or six weeks into this,
Speaker 1: and none of us should be surprised. Josh Marshall is
Speaker 1: the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Josh.
Speaker 4: Marshall, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: When Signal Gate happened, or as I like to call it,
Speaker 1: signal Gazi, I thought, yes, signal Gazi, I thought not.
Speaker 1: I stole it from someone on the internet. Obviously, when
Speaker 1: Signalazi happened, I thought, oh, this is going to be
Speaker 1: the beginning of what a Trump administration has historically been like.
Speaker 1: And I was not. I was not wrong.
Speaker 5: Discussed No, No, you weren't wrong. It definitely has. It's
Speaker 5: definitely broken through in a way that nothing else so
Speaker 5: far in this administration has broken through. And as always
Speaker 5: in the sort of the unique dynamics of press stories
Speaker 5: and stuff. As much as this is a big deal
Speaker 5: and a bizarre deal, like, it may be more a
Speaker 5: bizarre deal than a big deal, although it's both that
Speaker 5: it's not like other things haven't happened that were also
Speaker 5: really big deals, right and arguably much much bigger deals.
Speaker 5: But there are just dimensions of this story that it.
Speaker 5: You know, Wan dimension is that we've got this sort
Speaker 5: of like running twenty years thing about classified information, right.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's almost like a kind of a a
Speaker 4: A A A.
Speaker 5: A play trilogy that has all these little storylines in
Speaker 5: it and all these times when one thing happened or
Speaker 5: another thing happens, so everybody can say, well, I guess
Speaker 5: what about Hillary?
Speaker 4: And what about this person? About that? Every it builds
Speaker 4: in all that stuff.
Speaker 5: It obviously ties into the kind of political elites fixation
Speaker 5: on national security matters and and and and and classification.
Speaker 5: And then there's the other thing that you know, everybody
Speaker 5: people have a time when they're planning the keegger when
Speaker 5: parents are away on the weekend and you lit grandma
Speaker 5: in on the chat thread, right that kind of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this case, Jeff Goldberg would be grandma right.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: And and so that there are dimensions of it like
Speaker 5: that that are very relatable to people, or even the
Speaker 5: sort of there's a sort of a visual reference we
Speaker 5: all have with the screen capture of the embarrassing text
Speaker 5: back and forth or stuff like that, so everybody can
Speaker 5: kind of relate to that where everybody can't say, like,
Speaker 5: I remember the time you shut down my USA aid,
Speaker 5: what were you thinking?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: Right, So all of those things kind of play into
Speaker 5: it and and have made it break through. And one
Speaker 5: of the things that is like all, like all stories
Speaker 5: that have a lot of legs and a lot of traction,
Speaker 5: it is to use the fancy in the fancy graduate
Speaker 5: school sense of the term. It's a very complex text, right,
Speaker 5: There's a lot in there, and people keep fighting new
Speaker 5: layers of it.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's so interesting when we're talking about this
Speaker 1: because it is there were this administration. I feel like
Speaker 1: I think Benghazi Gate was the beginning of Benghazi. Signal
Speaker 1: Gate was the beginning. And then we had in rapid succession,
Speaker 1: Democrats winning that effort Marry Trumpy Pennsylvania. And then we're
Speaker 1: seeing the or we're seeing the polling from this this
Speaker 1: Wisconsin judgeship looks pretty good for Dems. Now, we don't
Speaker 1: know what Elon's going to do because he's he's going
Speaker 1: to ord twenty billion dollars to the person who manages
Speaker 1: to whatever anyone who registers to vote for this Trumpy
Speaker 1: judge in Wisconsin. And remember there's also this issue in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin where we have Elon has a lawsuit about Tesla
Speaker 1: dealerships being owned by the car manufacturer, and so you have,
Speaker 1: as with everything with the Elon Musk, he's conflicted up
Speaker 1: the wazoo, and he's also involved in politics, because really
Speaker 1: how we got here and I want you to talk
Speaker 1: about this because I think you and I both agree
Speaker 1: on this. There is just a straight line between Citizens
Speaker 1: United and where the fuck we are right now?
Speaker 5: Discuss Yeah, there's absolutely no question about the absolute no
Speaker 5: question about that.
Speaker 4: That it is.
Speaker 5: I think it's hard for certainly hard for young people
Speaker 5: to know, but it's even hard for us older people
Speaker 5: to quite remember that only about fifteen years ago. Obviously,
Speaker 5: obviously very wealthy people still had a lot of attraction
Speaker 5: in politics. But this this whole kind of like I'm
Speaker 5: putting fifty million in this year just wasn't the thing.
Speaker 5: You couldn't you could not do that. There are obviously
Speaker 5: things people could do at the margins, but the it
Speaker 5: it used to be for the the the ultra rich
Speaker 5: kind of like I'm gonna I'm gonna slurp up this
Speaker 5: swimming pool through a straw.
Speaker 4: There just wasn't that. It was too tight.
Speaker 5: You couldn't do it and now where obviously it happens
Speaker 5: every year. That's the key in every in every political cycle.
Speaker 5: You have the dynamics with Democrats about their small givers
Speaker 5: and all sorts of stuff. And obviously many wealthy people,
Speaker 5: very wealthy people also contribute to Democrats. But Republican campaigns
Speaker 5: now are real dominated by the decisions of twenty years
Speaker 5: thirty people. That's the funding base, the billionaires, and that
Speaker 5: is just that's just totally new and with and you
Speaker 5: have it even more with Musk, where obviously he's he's
Speaker 5: takes it to you feel bad for the people with
Speaker 5: two or three billion who are kind of cant keep
Speaker 5: up appearances around around the Bezoses and the Musks and stuff.
Speaker 5: But with Musk he also has because of the different
Speaker 5: holds he has in communication and technology and national security stuff.
Speaker 5: That there was that moment late in the twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four campaign where people were saying, like.
Speaker 4: Can he pay people to register?
Speaker 5: Is that like that can't That's not legal, right, And
Speaker 5: I think there was a moment of recognition where he's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: sue me, dude, or like charge me, but that's not
Speaker 5: gonna work because like.
Speaker 1: Good luck rich.
Speaker 5: I'm too rich, right, I will bet the I am
Speaker 5: like a black hole and the light is going to
Speaker 5: bend around me.
Speaker 4: Kind of.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a big moment when that happens somewhere.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 1: No, And I mean I think, like the clearly, lawlessness
Speaker 1: is how we got here, right, and lawlessness is how
Speaker 1: we'll stay here unless things get worse, which is real possible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, unquestionable.
Speaker 5: I think we are in many ways in the next
Speaker 5: year or so at this break point where we're gonna
Speaker 5: we're going to have a pivot in one direction or another.
Speaker 5: Like I think one of the dimensions of and you
Speaker 5: kind of alluded to it with these upcoming elections that
Speaker 5: are the Wisconsin one is is a is foundationally a
Speaker 5: big deal special election Florida may not be in itself
Speaker 5: the hugest deal in the world, but it may be
Speaker 5: a very big indicator. It may have a lot of
Speaker 5: political impact. And one of the things that I think
Speaker 5: I've heard a lot, I think everybody has heard this discussed,
Speaker 5: and it kind of spooks people is they don't seem
Speaker 5: they don't seem to be acting like they're worried about
Speaker 5: the next elections. That mean they have reason not to
Speaker 5: be kind of like what are we?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's happening here?
Speaker 5: Like they why isn't gravity affecting them? Or why don't
Speaker 5: they think gravity will affect them?
Speaker 1: I mean, the good news, the good news is not
Speaker 1: to interrupt you, but the good news is they are
Speaker 1: worried because we because Trump would not have pulled the
Speaker 1: least of nominee nomination if he was not worried about
Speaker 1: losing that seed. So sank God, honestly he did that
Speaker 1: because had he not, I would have been like, why
Speaker 1: is he not worried about losing a seat when it
Speaker 1: looks like they might lose this Florida seed? And we're
Speaker 1: seeing right Trump's pollster Tony Fabrizio saying that he doesn't
Speaker 1: he sees this Florida seat, which isn't an R plus
Speaker 1: whatever our plus fifteen. I think it's yeah, first district,
Speaker 1: it's well, yes, the Macates.
Speaker 6: Or is it?
Speaker 4: There's at Gates.
Speaker 5: There's the Matt Gates district, which that election I think
Speaker 5: is the and then the Walls one is Florida six,
Speaker 5: and that's the one that's that seems the most. That
Speaker 5: one is very Republican. The Gates district is like triple Republican. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean it's literally like like, I mean, look if
Speaker 5: you have yes right right, So yeah, so that one
Speaker 5: is even in this climate, that would be hard. But
Speaker 5: I think I think people are wrong to be thinking
Speaker 5: there's some something up their sleeve that they might not
Speaker 5: have to worry about the next election. But what I
Speaker 5: do think you're seeing is a mix of hubris on
Speaker 5: Trump Trump and the Republican Party's part, but also a
Speaker 5: sense of kind of last chances and thinking that we
Speaker 5: are going to eighteen months is a long time and
Speaker 5: that maybe we can do so many things in eighteen
Speaker 5: months that even if we lose an election, we're going
Speaker 5: to have re you know, reoriented, retilted the game board
Speaker 5: enough that will that we can handle losing a few elections.
Speaker 5: So there's definitely a not just a sense, but a
Speaker 5: reality that everybody is everybody is doubling down, everybody's going
Speaker 5: double or nothing, and that creates this immense tension that
Speaker 5: we can all feel in American life right now.
Speaker 1: And actually, as we're talking about this, if you taught,
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone, a reporter, straight, a fancy
Speaker 1: straight reporter, who was talking to me about talking to
Speaker 1: some people from heritage who we're saying to her, we
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck. We're going to get enough stuff in.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: The whole goal here is, and this is not a
Speaker 1: state secret, they published it in Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: we're trying to flood the Supreme Court with stuff so
Speaker 1: we can radically remake the federal government. And that's what
Speaker 1: this is. Now. That said that, so they are like
Speaker 1: parallel destructive tracks. The thing as a journalist, I think
Speaker 1: you and I, at least I am the most pred
Speaker 1: out by is the disappearing grad student sending them to
Speaker 1: a detention center in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 5: To me, there's a lot of scary things, but that
Speaker 5: is that is one hundred percent one of them. And
Speaker 5: these things, there's so many levels of that. I think
Speaker 5: we've all now seen the woman who's a gradu student
Speaker 5: of Toughts being sort of kidnadnapped on the street. And
Speaker 5: what strikes me there though, is one thing is people
Speaker 5: who are here for educations, their lives are being their lives,
Speaker 5: their careers, et cetera, are being upended.
Speaker 4: But what strikes me there is that, first of.
Speaker 5: All the security you have as a as a student
Speaker 5: visa holder in the United States is thin. Right, You
Speaker 5: don't have a lot of rights as opposed to a
Speaker 5: Green cardholder or a citizen. But in that case, let's say,
Speaker 5: let's say we accept for the purposes of discussion that Okay,
Speaker 5: they decided that they don't want her anymore as a
Speaker 5: student in the United States.
Speaker 4: There is a simple way to deal with that.
Speaker 5: You call the person up that the United States has
Speaker 5: records of them, they know the phone number, they know
Speaker 5: where they're living, blah blah. That's part of having a
Speaker 5: student visa. You call them up and say you did X,
Speaker 5: Y and Z, and we're not comfortable having you here
Speaker 5: here anymore, notifying you that your visa is revoked and
Speaker 5: you have one month to leave the United States. And
Speaker 5: that's a bummer for her education and her professional future
Speaker 5: and her life in the United States. But that is
Speaker 5: an orderly thing, right, you get a flight, Okay. The
Speaker 5: point of doing this thing where you're walking down the
Speaker 5: street and a bunch of guys who look like they've
Speaker 5: just come over from the skate park grab you, some
Speaker 5: of them masked, that that is a spectacle of terror
Speaker 5: that is meant to terrify. Yeah, and lots of people
Speaker 5: in the country, certainly everybody here in a student visa,
Speaker 5: but also people who are here on green cards, because
Speaker 5: we know this other guy at Columbia was taken not
Speaker 5: quite in the same dramatic fashion, but relatively dramatic fashion,
Speaker 5: and then they're taken off to some other part of
Speaker 5: kind of intentionally getting them a couple thousand miles away
Speaker 5: from where they started. Just just there's a whole there's
Speaker 5: a whole drama to that, a whole terror to that,
Speaker 5: and that is that's not just meant for that person,
Speaker 5: that's meant for anybody who is looks at all like them,
Speaker 5: has a similar immigration status to them, to walk around
Speaker 5: in a real degree of terror. And if someone says, hey,
Speaker 5: you want to come to this meeting we're holding about
Speaker 5: about the West Bank, It's like, no, I no, I
Speaker 5: don't I believe me. I'm just focused on studying, right.
Speaker 5: So it's that aspect of it that is. The other
Speaker 5: aspects are very important. But Hill's speech.
Speaker 4: They want, they.
Speaker 5: Want the visuals that really make people feel like they're
Speaker 5: living in a police state, Like we have these metaphors
Speaker 5: in American political culture, knock on the door in the night, now.
Speaker 1: Did you get them? They ran the doorbell.
Speaker 5: Being disappeared, And in most of our lives, those those
Speaker 5: have been negative metaphors, right.
Speaker 4: Or no, it's.
Speaker 1: Right, right. I think it's also a couple of things
Speaker 1: that I'm struck by when we talk about this. It's
Speaker 1: obviously a war on free speech. But and I want
Speaker 1: since we're both Jews, and we're both liberals, and we're
Speaker 1: both I'm a little younger than you are, sorry, but
Speaker 1: we come from this similar we've seen and using the
Speaker 1: whole prep false premise of this is anti Semitism, that
Speaker 1: they're protecting Jews from anti semitism. This is a crew
Speaker 1: that does not give a fuck about Jews, but they
Speaker 1: want to protect us from dangerous anti semitism which is
Speaker 1: happening by students who are expressing their views on Palestine.
Speaker 1: I want to I mean, I want you to talk
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it's funny because I I have opinions about
Speaker 5: the about the protests that aren't the same as as
Speaker 5: as all of the American laughter, American liberals or whatever.
Speaker 5: I have kind of my my own, my own thoughts
Speaker 5: about this. But but it is absolutely the case that
Speaker 5: this administration is using Jews as a cudgel to attack
Speaker 5: other people. And sometimes it's attack other people, to basically
Speaker 5: attack anybody from an Arab or a a predominantly Muslim
Speaker 5: country who has who said anything about the situation in
Speaker 5: Gaza last year and and and the year before, but
Speaker 5: also in the situation at Columbia, again, we were the cudgel.
Speaker 5: You see, you know, you imagine them with like a
Speaker 5: little jew stick running up and hitting people with it.
Speaker 4: Right, which is really kind of what's happening here.
Speaker 5: But in Colombia they're saying, all right, we're hitting you
Speaker 5: with the jew stick and all of this this this
Speaker 5: this research you're doing on rheumatoid or arthritis, and it's
Speaker 5: this kind of cancer that's over And you're sort of.
Speaker 4: Like, wait, what you might say, because.
Speaker 5: It's not just that that Jews may be used as
Speaker 5: a cudgel. That goes back to the whole thing about
Speaker 5: the Muslim band nine years ago.
Speaker 4: Right, this is a long standing thing.
Speaker 5: But it's also to attack the whole university system and
Speaker 5: to attack higher education. And look, there's some there's some
Speaker 5: level of irony here because Jews are are not unrepresented
Speaker 5: in higher education and even in Colombia. I mean maybe
Speaker 5: not historically, but if you if you are from New
Speaker 5: York City or from Manhattan, Columbia is a pretty Jewish institution,
Speaker 5: it kind of is.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But so there there is this and look there there.
Speaker 5: You don't have to be there are there are There
Speaker 5: are certainly Jews, even even Jewish liberals who who felt
Speaker 5: some discomfort over some dimensions of the protest last year.
Speaker 5: But again there is we are a cudgel being used
Speaker 5: by people who are either very indifferent to the well
Speaker 5: being of Jews or actively hostile in a lot of cases.
Speaker 5: I mean we saw I don't. I just noticed it
Speaker 5: this morning. But they have Tim Poole, he's part of
Speaker 5: the press school. Now like what okay, like your your
Speaker 5: this isn't there's as in everything else with Trump, there's
Speaker 5: this this through line of gas lighting, through everything he does.
Speaker 5: We're kind of like, we're we're not going to take
Speaker 5: We're not going to take these these mean things to
Speaker 5: the jew to the Jews. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go grab
Speaker 5: a coffee with Nick Fuentes, you know, like what are
Speaker 5: we talking about here? So it's it's it's it's the
Speaker 5: whole it's the whole gas lighting of trump Ism. And
Speaker 5: again it's it's just the idea of kind of like
Speaker 5: we're a we're being you, we as Jews being used
Speaker 5: as a convenient battering ram by people who do not
Speaker 5: care about our well being but see us as having
Speaker 5: a certain tactical a certain tactical use in a much
Speaker 5: larger game that again is not tied to our well
Speaker 5: being or safety or anything.
Speaker 4: Else at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also it's just, yeah, they don't give
Speaker 1: a fuck about us.
Speaker 4: But that is a more distinct way of putting what
Speaker 4: I said, very worthily.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I just I just as it's just a fucking
Speaker 1: shit show. Sorry pride. But yeah, it's it's pretty dark.
Speaker 1: And and I do want to say again, I do
Speaker 1: get a ton of strength from my grandfather who was
Speaker 1: jailed by who back I do. If he can do it,
Speaker 1: we can do it. Well.
Speaker 4: That's there are a lot of Look, there's a lot there.
Speaker 5: There's definitely stuff right now that is unprecedented in American history.
Speaker 5: But there are as you said, that is one of them.
Speaker 5: Late nineteen forties, early nineteen fifties, and threw it into
Speaker 5: the nineteen fifties with the kind of.
Speaker 4: Extended red scare.
Speaker 5: There are analogs in our in our past that people
Speaker 5: who feel frightened.
Speaker 4: Or a sense of we're in a new don.
Speaker 5: We're not totally in a new don, because there are
Speaker 5: the presidents and there are people.
Speaker 4: This is other people who.
Speaker 1: We'd lose our mind every couple decades.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well we have.
Speaker 5: It's good to have traditions, right, It's like everybody goes
Speaker 5: to the Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Josh, thank you, thank thank you. Anthony Walton
Speaker 1: is the author of the End of Respectability and Mississippi
Speaker 1: and American Journey Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics. Anthony Walton,
Speaker 1: It's great to be here.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to have you here. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the End of Respectability, Notes on a Black American reckoning
Speaker 1: with his life and his nation. You just publish this
Speaker 1: book and already the world is completely different, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: talk to me about why you decided to write this.
Speaker 6: First of all, I'd like to say that I think
Speaker 6: that actually the world has come more toward the book
Speaker 6: in the time since the publication and what's going on now.
Speaker 6: When I finished the book, I couldn't help but wonder
Speaker 6: is this too strong? Am I pushing too hard? And
Speaker 6: if anything, now I think folks would say that it's
Speaker 6: kind of timid, given what's happened in the last couple
Speaker 6: of months. To go back to your specific question, I
Speaker 6: wrote the book because I had started noticing things happening
Speaker 6: the last ten years that were starting to trouble me. Now.
Speaker 6: I have written a lot a long time about race
Speaker 6: in the United States and the various sorts of issues
Speaker 6: and contrademps things that come up, but I had had
Speaker 6: a view that things were kind of getting better and
Speaker 6: better and better. And with the election of Obama as
Speaker 6: we saw in two thousand and eight, I even thought, hmm,
Speaker 6: maybe we've turned a corner. And I should also add
Speaker 6: that I was someone that thought Obama could not win,
Speaker 6: so I was very pleasantly put in my place, and
Speaker 6: I thought that that was a kind of moment of
Speaker 6: achievement and even triumph that was a marker in American history.
Speaker 6: What I didn't understand at the time, and what I
Speaker 6: think a lot of Americans who would agree with me
Speaker 6: about various things didn't understand at the time, was that
Speaker 6: that would set off a backlash which would he have
Speaker 6: seen really since twenty ten and since the Tea Party,
Speaker 6: which has kind of snowballed since then into this what
Speaker 6: we see now, this kind of trumpest attempt to almost
Speaker 6: erase not only Black achievement, but in some ways black presence.
Speaker 6: So as I thought about that over time, I decided
Speaker 6: I wanted to gather my thoughts, and I gathered essays
Speaker 6: that I had written as early as nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 6: and then I coupled those essays in the way that
Speaker 6: say Joan Didion would with essays that I wrote just
Speaker 6: last year, and put them together in a book that
Speaker 6: I think kind of works as a narrative, even though
Speaker 6: it is individual essays, but it shows a progress of thinking.
Speaker 6: And one of the big ideas that I came up
Speaker 6: with was this idea of the title the End of Respectability,
Speaker 6: in which I thought that it was time for African
Speaker 6: Americans to begin to think about who they were, where
Speaker 6: they were, how things were working, including our history in
Speaker 6: a different fashion, and the kind of headline way of
Speaker 6: thinking of that is. I think in the past, particularly
Speaker 6: from Martin Luther King days, we thought achievement would equal acceptance,
Speaker 6: and I think that we are now seeing that that
Speaker 6: is not going to be the case, and that we
Speaker 6: have to decouple.
Speaker 1: Them so interesting and important and also just this idea,
Speaker 1: right that we could uncouple these two things. I'm using
Speaker 1: scare quotes here, but the quote unquote war on woke
Speaker 1: is actually just kind of a war on people who
Speaker 1: are not white men. Ultimately right, Yes, I would agree,
Speaker 1: and this orwellian removal of black people and people of
Speaker 1: color from history, from websites and books.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things I spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: thinking about is like, what are the historical parallels to this?
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, because you are an academic and a
Speaker 1: really smart writer, what you think the historical parallels.
Speaker 6: Are to this. I think that first of all, we
Speaker 6: have to look at the history of our own country,
Speaker 6: and in some ways this has been going on in
Speaker 6: various manifestations since as early as, to use a buzzword,
Speaker 6: sixteen nineteen. But we certainly saw it in the time
Speaker 6: of the Revolution, when blacks were set aside and declared
Speaker 6: three fifths of a person enslaved people were We saw
Speaker 6: it all through the first half of the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 6: leading up to the sol War. We saw it particularly
Speaker 6: in the Crisis of eighteen seventy seventy eighteen seventy eight
Speaker 6: when Rutherford B. Hayes, in order to assume the presidency,
Speaker 6: agreed to take the Union soldiers out of the South
Speaker 6: and end Reconstruction what I and others would think of
Speaker 6: as the first Reconstruction, and let the forces of white power,
Speaker 6: white supremacy reassert themselves. And that led to what we
Speaker 6: commonly referred to as Jim Crow. We've seen, for example,
Speaker 6: just little things like the lack of acknowledgment of black
Speaker 6: soldiers in World War One and World War Two. We
Speaker 6: have seen denial of medals. That's one of the things
Speaker 6: that is most interesting to me, is trying to deny
Speaker 6: the heroism of black soldiers. We see this again. I mean,
Speaker 6: we kind of saw the preper of this the last
Speaker 6: four or five years with some of the things going
Speaker 6: on in places like Florida and Oklahoma, where that trumped
Speaker 6: up issue of CRT critical race theory was brought to
Speaker 6: four to try and say that black history couldn't be
Speaker 6: taught and in a different way and on a lower
Speaker 6: kind of intellectual plane, this idea that white children should
Speaker 6: not be made to feel guilty, so nothing should be
Speaker 6: taught about what happened in the past, because it's too
Speaker 6: distressing to young white children to look at a more
Speaker 6: broad issue. I mean, of course, you have saw that
Speaker 6: in the Soviet times, where people would be taken out
Speaker 6: of photographs, you know, if they fell a stray of
Speaker 6: Stalin or whoever was in power in the Communist Party.
Speaker 6: We saw the kind of actual physical erasure, not just
Speaker 6: cultural RACI physical erasure of people during the Holocaust. I mean,
Speaker 6: this is not anything new. I think that you even
Speaker 6: see it now in Hungary, for example, and I think
Speaker 6: that it's the sort of thing that it is really frightening,
Speaker 6: It's really kind of unfair. One of the things I'm
Speaker 6: talking about in the book The End of Respectability is
Speaker 6: what else could African Americans have done to illustrate their loyalty,
Speaker 6: their desire to participate, They're wanting to be part of
Speaker 6: the mainstream. In that title essay, I write about the
Speaker 6: story of my parents who did everything that they could
Speaker 6: do to participate in society and taught me and my
Speaker 6: siblings to do the same. And then my parents, I
Speaker 6: think that might be the event that got me most
Speaker 6: thinking about all of this was my parents both died
Speaker 6: in a two thousand eighteen and they died under Trump.
Speaker 6: And it particularly bothered my father because he was a
Speaker 6: Korean veteran Air Force he had been in a strategic
Speaker 6: Air command and he felt and this is someone that
Speaker 6: was born in Mississippi in a great depression and he
Speaker 6: had been very proud of his life and what he
Speaker 6: had done and then to be kind of psychically assaulted
Speaker 6: by the sorts of things that were going on even
Speaker 6: then that we now see a kind of full blossom
Speaker 6: that just got me thinking of this is not adding up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And it speaks very much to this idea that the
Speaker 1: game was always ragged, right, So it was always this
Speaker 1: thumb on the scale when it came to the African
Speaker 1: American experience in this country. What I'm struck by is
Speaker 1: this idea that we are living in these incredibly tight
Speaker 1: little back backlashes to periods. Right, so Trump gets elected
Speaker 1: me too, Like you could see how the second Trump
Speaker 1: administration is largely a rebuke of me too. Right. I
Speaker 1: think of the head of the Department of Defense, right,
Speaker 1: who had a subpoena from his sister in law, Right,
Speaker 1: his ex sister in law saying that the wife had
Speaker 1: a safe word, right. So we are in these accelerated
Speaker 1: cycles of backlash. I wonder if you could sort of
Speaker 1: talk through how you see that it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: there's a president For.
Speaker 6: That, I would have to know a little bit more.
Speaker 6: You'd have to tighten up a little bit on the
Speaker 6: word precedent, because I think there has always been backlash
Speaker 6: to any African American advance. I think of, for example,
Speaker 6: the backlash after the Civil War. You could look at
Speaker 6: things that were happening in Boston in the eighteen ten
Speaker 6: in eighteen twenties, things that have a kind of residence
Speaker 6: and residue until today. You could look at what happened
Speaker 6: right after World War Two. First of all World War One.
Speaker 6: Thus there was the riots and conflicts in nineteen nineteen
Speaker 6: in all the major cities. World War Two, an especially
Speaker 6: kind of plangent incident was Isaac Woodard, black soldier who
Speaker 6: had come back from World War to very proud wearing
Speaker 6: his uniform, and he was attacked and blinded by white
Speaker 6: supremacist as a kind of way of saying, no, we
Speaker 6: don't have to respect you, we don't have to honor you.
Speaker 6: I think that we saw it in the Nixon campaign,
Speaker 6: particularly of nineteen sixty eight. We saw it in nineteen
Speaker 6: eighty Reagan announcing his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. You know
Speaker 6: what happened there, Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman. So of all
Speaker 6: the places in the United States for Ronald Reagan to
Speaker 6: start a presidential campaign, why would he go there. We
Speaker 6: saw it with Willie Horton. We saw it certainly Charlottesville.
Speaker 6: There is always a backlash to any kind of black advancement,
Speaker 6: and I would add women advancement. There's this kind of
Speaker 6: boiling hostility all the time against Jewish people that comes
Speaker 6: to the fore and recedes from time to time to time.
Speaker 6: And I think that in the end it becomes an
Speaker 6: indictment of the Republican Party Beyond Donald Trump. The Republicans
Speaker 6: have been doing this in a kind of organized manner,
Speaker 6: at least since nineteen sixty four, I would say, and
Speaker 6: you know, Rick Perlman has laid this out in his
Speaker 6: books great profound detail. I think that what we just
Speaker 6: have now is just kind of the apotheosis of this
Speaker 6: thing that has been growing. And I would direct folks
Speaker 6: to the last paragraph of my essay Willie Horton and
Speaker 6: me the first essay in my book, which was in
Speaker 6: the New York Times in nineteen eighty nine, where I
Speaker 6: talked about how if we don't do something about this,
Speaker 6: it is going to haunt us our dreams, referencing doctor
Speaker 6: King wherever. And I think that we've just seen this.
Speaker 6: I think it has political salience to the Republicans. There
Speaker 6: is a certain group and I don't know what percentage
Speaker 6: it is, but they're base, as they're always referred to.
Speaker 6: They want this, they need it, and it allows Republicans
Speaker 6: to kind of start with a certain amount of votes
Speaker 6: and they feed it and accelerate it. And it's just
Speaker 6: part of American society now, I should say. On the
Speaker 6: other hand, we can't oversimplify. And that's something else I
Speaker 6: talk about in a book that I I mean, the
Speaker 6: way I think of it is hashtag not all white folks,
Speaker 6: because I don't think all white people are part of that.
Speaker 6: But I do think the white people who are not
Speaker 6: part of that are kind of going to have to
Speaker 6: decide what side they're on and are going to have
Speaker 6: to join. And in some ways that's the Obama coalition
Speaker 6: if you think about it. And I think that might
Speaker 6: be part of the violence of the backlash after Obama.
Speaker 6: But it's something that's just kind of been there. I mean,
Speaker 6: one more thing, sorry to drone on about this pot.
Speaker 6: If we think about even going back to the thirties,
Speaker 6: the attacks on Social Security when it was put in
Speaker 6: the way that farm workers and domestic workers were left
Speaker 6: out of it, who was that In the thirties, we
Speaker 6: think about the various kinds of attacks on minorities and
Speaker 6: quote unquote foreigners by the Coughlin, the priests and Joe McCarthy.
Speaker 6: You know. I write about William F. Buckley in the
Speaker 6: book and talk about his thing, including some things he
Speaker 6: did in the fifties that were overlooked when he became
Speaker 6: the man about town of the seventies and the eighties.
Speaker 6: It's just kind of always been there. And what we
Speaker 6: see now, I think is Obama coupled with a sense
Speaker 6: of demographic change that is frightening to people who don't
Speaker 6: live it. If you're sitting out in a small town
Speaker 6: in Kansas, you don't see that what's going on in
Speaker 6: Chicago or New York City or Los Angeles for whatever.
Speaker 6: It is basically kind of working, you know, it has
Speaker 6: its problems, but folks are getting used to it and
Speaker 6: even kind of enjoying it. But you know the other thing,
Speaker 6: I would add Fox News, and so it's just kind
Speaker 6: of a perfect storm of jinning up this kind of backlash.
Speaker 6: And I'd also point to Professor Linda Anderson at Emory.
Speaker 6: Her book White Backlash goes into this in great detail
Speaker 6: and as a way of learning about it. It's just
Speaker 6: kind of always been there, and I think we've just
Speaker 6: come to a kind of crisis moment that is extremely difficult.
Speaker 6: I'd be the first person to admit that.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Anthony. I hope he'll come back.
Speaker 6: Oh, I'd love to. It's an honor to be here
Speaker 6: and a great pleasure.
Speaker 4: A moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon Molly, It's wild this type of stuff that
Speaker 2: Trump has gone after so early in his first one
Speaker 2: hundred days, and so much of it seems to be
Speaker 2: let the corruption run wild. And for some reason, also
Speaker 2: what the human trafficking run wild? I thought this was
Speaker 2: the Qann president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really do see me. Look in their defense,
Speaker 1: they're very into child labor, so they love to get
Speaker 1: kids working. So Trump cuts in sixty nine global programs
Speaker 1: tackling child labor and human trafficking. They are very unseerious
Speaker 1: about human trafficking, but they really do. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of Koch Brothers style companies that love to employed children.
Speaker 1: They're cheap, they're small, they can get in the chimneys
Speaker 1: really well. And so the Washington Post obtained an email
Speaker 1: detailing how the US Department of Labor Bureau of International
Speaker 1: Labor Affairs will immediately end grants totally more than five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars that support labor standard enforcement over forty countries.
Speaker 1: And again, these are like these dumb things where they're
Speaker 1: cutting money, just like with the NIH grants, they're cutting
Speaker 1: science that could help us later for a little bit
Speaker 1: of money for a tax cut for very rich people.
Speaker 1: And it's just dumb. It's full, it'll end up costing
Speaker 1: more later, and it's just exactly what you know. It's
Speaker 1: what these people do. It's who they are. You know,
Speaker 1: when people tell you who they are, believe them. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: Please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.