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 Senate Democrats have asked Clarence Thomas's
Speaker 1: close personal friend and benefactor, Harlan Crow to list his
Speaker 1: gifts to the Supreme Court Justices. We have a star
Speaker 1: studded show today The Daily Shows. Roywood Junior joins us
Speaker 1: to talk about how you roast the most powerful people
Speaker 1: in the world. The Washington Post Karen Tumulty tells us
Speaker 1: what's next in the debt ceiling showdown. The first we
Speaker 1: have the Bulwarks Tim Miller, who will be appearing with
Speaker 1: me in New York at the Peter J. Sharp Theater
Speaker 1: at Symphony Space on May eighteenth, which is next Thursday,
Speaker 1: along with Charlie Sykes, Jonathan Last, and Sarah Longwell. Welcome
Speaker 1: Tim Miller back to Fast Politics. You are my favorite.
Speaker 2: Going for the most guest louts. I'm competing. I want
Speaker 2: to be number one. We're going to look back at
Speaker 2: the end of the year. We're going to have a ranking.
Speaker 2: I want to be number one in quality and quantity.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to murder Rick Wilson. Okay, money's
Speaker 1: on Rick, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've matched to the death. Yeah, I would
Speaker 2: also I'd also choose Rick in that you know, there
Speaker 2: are other areas where maybe I would outshine him a
Speaker 2: height competition, for example, reaching apples out of a tree,
Speaker 2: but maybe not enough fight. I love you, Rick, Molly.
Speaker 2: We're going to see each other next week. We have
Speaker 2: a live Fast Politics Bulwark show in New York. And
Speaker 2: I have a big question for you. I know you're
Speaker 2: supposed to be asking the questions, but where is the
Speaker 2: after after party? The champagne room. That's what I want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: Where that's right, the after party?
Speaker 2: Okay. We are going to invite people in the crowd,
Speaker 2: the cool people that come to the event. You can
Speaker 2: get tickets at boorg dot com slash events, and the
Speaker 2: cool people we will invite and after after party somewhere
Speaker 2: not your home. There will be a champagne room. We
Speaker 2: need to I'm trusting you to pick up though this
Speaker 2: is your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And karaoke maybe karaoke.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see a.
Speaker 1: Champagne room in karaoke. Tim Miller, I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the death of democracy. It's puttering along
Speaker 1: Republicans looking for a candidate, seems like they're going to
Speaker 1: pick someone thoughtful and spiritual. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, based in deep ideological roots. You know,
Speaker 2: someone who cares about policy, you know, who wants to
Speaker 2: govern for all Americans. Asa Hutchinson. Liz Cheney isn't out
Speaker 2: in New Hampshire today and I saw her at four percent.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty good Asa plus Liz, and now we're up.
Speaker 2: We're up to five. Now we're getting there. We can
Speaker 2: round up to ten. No, it's not good the democracy
Speaker 2: can I just I like to be you know, at
Speaker 2: least the most in a in a room full of
Speaker 2: das our anti Trump you know kind of folks either
Speaker 2: never Trumpers or liberals, there's always a lot of doom casting.
Speaker 2: I would would like to shed a little bit of
Speaker 2: light here. I mean, we had a really nice mid
Speaker 2: terms for saving democracy, right, Maybe not a great mid
Speaker 2: term for protecting the full faith in credit of the
Speaker 2: United States, as we might be heading.
Speaker 1: Off the dead class.
Speaker 2: But see, we did have a good mid term as
Speaker 2: far as you know, the craziest lunatics loss. I think
Speaker 2: that there is a grow increasingly growing group of you know,
Speaker 2: the coalition of the of the normal, of the decent
Speaker 2: of Democrats who who There's certain people who go over
Speaker 2: a line, and we've seen that so far. Now there's
Speaker 2: some concerning things. I mean, nobody wants to fucking play
Speaker 2: fire with another coin foot with Donald Trump. And even
Speaker 2: if you think it's a seventy thirty, you know likelihood
Speaker 2: that Biden would beat him, which I do, thirty percent
Speaker 2: is still way way, way too high for like the
Speaker 2: end of the democratic experiment, you know, and all the
Speaker 2: other elections we've had before twenty sixteen. You know, neither
Speaker 2: candidate was proposing the end of the democratic experiment. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of how I so is a little too high.
Speaker 2: But you had some good news in the terms the
Speaker 2: primary stuff so far, and it's early, but it is
Speaker 2: you have to say, it's pretty disheartening. I mean to
Speaker 2: see a morning console pullout this morning with Donald Trump
Speaker 2: having a forty one point lead. I mean, I've left
Speaker 2: the Republican Party, but when something really bad happens to
Speaker 2: your family, even if you've had a falling out for him,
Speaker 2: it still makes you sad. And boy, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: pretty depressing to see that, Like, even after everything we've
Speaker 2: been through that, that's where things still stand.
Speaker 1: I'm right there with you. I think it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: I want to get high on the Bulwark supply that
Speaker 1: there are decent people who are going to keep our
Speaker 1: country from sliding into fascism or whatever this is. And
Speaker 1: I hope it's true. I mean, I do think that
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting to watch Trump. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: could get people together, you would be able to take
Speaker 1: back this Republican Party. I mean, the problem is I
Speaker 1: feel like he's got such a hold on the base
Speaker 1: that it's just untracked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And here's the biggest part of the intractability, and
Speaker 2: it's it's actually been even more. I was pretty pessimistic
Speaker 2: about somebody beating Trump in a primary, but I thought
Speaker 2: it was possible. For this reason is that, like you know,
Speaker 2: the Bullwark crowd, and like we said, we're about five percent, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and many of them and further the reason why, yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you. One of the reason why we're five percent
Speaker 2: and not twelve percent is like half of us left right,
Speaker 2: Like I'm gone now right, I mean, it's really more
Speaker 2: like the Dispatch crowd. That's the five percent sticking around
Speaker 2: holding us. Hope that the you know, great classical liberal
Speaker 2: white Knight will come back in the future and shape
Speaker 2: and save everybody. You know, Margaret Thatcher will arise from
Speaker 2: the dead. But I don't really, you know, see that happening.
Speaker 2: And the problem is that there's a group of persuadable
Speaker 2: folks in the Republican Party that like Trump but do
Speaker 2: see his flaws, do see that they've lost? Right, there's
Speaker 2: a cult. There's a cult forty five group that's about
Speaker 2: a third of the party, give or take. And then
Speaker 2: there's this big middle of the party that like him
Speaker 2: but see his flaws. Now I don't to me, that's insane,
Speaker 2: but these people exists, so we have to assess them
Speaker 2: as they're there. And I thought that Desantas would have
Speaker 2: a good chance with that group. The problem is that
Speaker 2: you get in this double bind if you're Ron de
Speaker 2: Santis to try to appeal to people that like Trump
Speaker 2: but might want to move on, which is, if you
Speaker 2: attack Trump, then all of a sudden they're like, ooh,
Speaker 2: he actually might be a list changey sympathizer after all,
Speaker 2: and they start to not like him. If you don't
Speaker 2: attack Trump, then it's like, ooh, this guy's kind of
Speaker 2: a pussy, like he's not up for the fight, right,
Speaker 2: Like he can't do it, and so you have to
Speaker 2: like walk this really fine line of criticizing him but
Speaker 2: not too hard but seeming strong but not too strong.
Speaker 2: And it's really challenging line to walk for even a
Speaker 2: talented politician. It's not that clear that Ron DeSantis is
Speaker 2: that talented.
Speaker 1: Right, this is talented now, I know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just want to say one thing about putting fingers, which.
Speaker 2: Is I first started as putting fingers, and I was like,
Speaker 2: where are we putting our fingers?
Speaker 3: Molly, okay, putting fingers? Yeah, I live in the South now,
Speaker 3: put in finger put fingers. One of the things that
Speaker 3: I was so struck by is like there was a
Speaker 3: real National Review crowd that was so excited about him,
Speaker 3: and they were just I mean, because I know because
Speaker 3: I wrote a piece that said about three months ago,
Speaker 3: I wrote a piece that said Rondasantis is as bad
Speaker 3: as Trump. And I've always thought he's actually quite scary
Speaker 3: because he's pretty good at what he does and pretty smart.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not good at being a retail politician,
Speaker 3: thank god, but he's very smart and he can get
Speaker 3: you know, if you're not, like you know, one of
Speaker 3: the great things about Trump was that he was a
Speaker 3: complete and abject more on so he would have and
Speaker 3: he also could not stop getting in his own way,
Speaker 3: thank god, right, So you know, he's you know, if
Speaker 3: he had been smart, he could have gotten a lot
Speaker 3: more scary stuff done.
Speaker 1: But you know, this National Review crowd, they were convinced
Speaker 1: that this was their savior, and they were so they
Speaker 1: based this on almost no evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they based on the fact that it
Speaker 2: is true about Ron DeSantis that floor went from being
Speaker 2: a pretty swingy state, like a very deep red state
Speaker 2: while he was there, governing in a pretty far right way.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So if you are extremely you know, to use mont
Speaker 2: Romney's very severely conservative, and you want severely conservative policies
Speaker 2: and you want to win on paper, you looked at
Speaker 2: him and was were like, oh, Okay, this guy really
Speaker 2: might be our savior. This guy might be our night
Speaker 2: and shining armor. Now the problem with that was there
Speaker 2: are a lot of things happening.
Speaker 1: People moved to Florida.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of things at play at the
Speaker 2: same time, right, Like COVID is happening, people are moving,
Speaker 2: like older people are more moving, more Republican. His opponents
Speaker 2: are like Tomato Can Charlie Christ and like Andrew Gillum
Speaker 2: who is like meth and doing meth and by and like,
Speaker 2: he didn't have the strongest opponents right in those two states.
Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with buye people. Sorry, that was not a
Speaker 2: you know, no assaulted me. If you're bisexual, that's great,
Speaker 2: but you know, doing meth and being by isn't isn't
Speaker 2: probably the best resume for governor of Florida. And so
Speaker 2: these were his opponents, and so like, there were a
Speaker 2: lot of things that were just kind of working in
Speaker 2: his favor that I think that people were assuming, or
Speaker 2: people were wish casting that there was some Ron Desanta's
Speaker 2: black magic, when in reality, you know, he just was
Speaker 2: the beneficiary of a wave, you know that was already
Speaker 2: moving his direction and he kind of just started to
Speaker 2: ride it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. You know,
Speaker 1: there was also a fair amount of wish casting, right yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, it'd be like me as a moderate, like
Speaker 2: being like, oh, I'm from Colorado, Like, oh, Colorado used
Speaker 2: to be a swing state and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it's a deep blue state, and that must have been
Speaker 2: John Hickenlooper's magic, you know, and like the nation is
Speaker 2: clamoring for centrist you know, capitalist liberalism like John Hickenlooper,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, no, actually, just a bunch of
Speaker 2: liberals moved into Colorado and he happened to be governor,
Speaker 2: you know, like he's a fine guy, but so pot Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's different than you know, saying, okay, he's ready to
Speaker 2: be the president. And I think that DeSantis, you know
Speaker 2: that this wish casting was like, you know, DeSantis happened
Speaker 2: to be in the right place at the right time,
Speaker 2: and people assumed that meant that he was doing something special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. It's pretty interesting to see
Speaker 1: how stuck this Republican Party is with Trump, and now
Speaker 1: we're going to see I mean, I don't think at
Speaker 1: this point we haven't had the primary, as we haven't
Speaker 1: even had the debates. But it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: imagine a world where what is happening right now doesn't continue.
Speaker 1: I mean unless the world clamors for a Chris Christy
Speaker 1: yet another go at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and I'm repetitive on this. I've probably said
Speaker 2: this in this podcast, but it's worth repeating the craziest
Speaker 2: part of it. And there's so much crazy stuff about
Speaker 2: all this, but the craziest part about all this is, like,
Speaker 2: besides four Republicans in Washington who are like in the cult,
Speaker 2: everybody just wishes it was Rond de sand It's not
Speaker 2: just the National Review crowd, it's every Republican in Washington
Speaker 2: wishes that was Rond Desanda's or somebody else. And there
Speaker 2: were ten votes away from doing it, had they just
Speaker 2: gotten had there had just ten people volunteered to convict
Speaker 2: him in that impeachment trial. They got seven arty, which
Speaker 2: was a lot. There'd never been any members of your
Speaker 2: of the own party in the Senate to convict, you know,
Speaker 2: a president of their own party in his There were seven.
Speaker 2: They needed ten more, and then Trump would have been
Speaker 2: barred from running all of this, you know, we'd be
Speaker 2: focused on all this other stuff. And yet they didn't
Speaker 2: do it. They didn't once again, they all just cowered
Speaker 2: when they had the opportunity to show a little bit
Speaker 2: of backbone. And now they're stuck with them. And you know,
Speaker 2: it really is when you kind of step back and
Speaker 2: think about that. I saw a tweet the other day
Speaker 2: that made me laugh Ma Cob laughing dark laughing about
Speaker 2: how like, imagine if a black man had spurred a
Speaker 2: riot at the Capitol building, was on truck, was on
Speaker 2: trial for rape, you know, and had been indicted for
Speaker 2: other issues and was investigated for multiple things, and people
Speaker 2: would be like, yes, we're ready for that person to
Speaker 2: be the president. Like never, it's it is just it's
Speaker 2: mind blowing that he can have a forty one percent
Speaker 2: lead and a party in the spite, in spite of all.
Speaker 2: You know, this is different than twenty sixteen. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: let's say a chance on the game show host guy.
Speaker 2: It's like we've seen it, they've seen it.
Speaker 1: I still believe that DeSantis has not rejected the fascism
Speaker 1: and the party of anything. He embraces it. So you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you're better off the democracy is
Speaker 1: better off with Iron DeSantis candidacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we disagreed on this last time. My
Speaker 2: final quick point on that is just simply, I want
Speaker 2: you to imagine. I just want you to really quick,
Speaker 2: I just want you to close your eyes. This is
Speaker 2: my only rebuttal. I want all our listeners to close
Speaker 2: our eyes, and I want you to imagine who is
Speaker 2: in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, and like what
Speaker 2: that team is going to be. I mean, it is
Speaker 2: the guy, Yes, it is the scum of the earth,
Speaker 2: the F minus list and DeSantis. You know, I think
Speaker 2: there'd be a lot of problems with the Santas administration,
Speaker 2: but I mean I think that it would at least
Speaker 2: be a different caliber of people running the government.
Speaker 1: Again, you criticize the my pillow guy, won't someone stand
Speaker 1: up for stupid people with ridiculous facial hair.
Speaker 2: Someone has to If it's not us, who.
Speaker 1: So the debt ceiling? Let's talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: As someone who's very cynical, it just feels to me
Speaker 1: like Republicans in Congress are trying to crash the United
Speaker 1: States economy to help their guy win in twenty four.
Speaker 1: But that's certainly not what's going on, right boy.
Speaker 2: There's always this question of motive, right, which is are
Speaker 2: they actually trying to tank the economy because they think
Speaker 2: it helps them, or do they want to tank the
Speaker 2: economy because they're anarchists, or do they want to take
Speaker 2: the economy because they're incompetent? And it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit of all right, and so you know,
Speaker 2: I think that our friend Ben Whittis, I think put
Speaker 2: this very well. He had a subject post. Let's just
Speaker 2: check out if you have a checked out his subject.
Speaker 2: But it was like the problem that Biden has in
Speaker 2: this is that we're in this game of chicken over
Speaker 2: the entire economy. And on Biden's side, it's like, obviously
Speaker 2: the best case in Republicans folding, right, and that's how
Speaker 2: you get out of the game of chicken. But the
Speaker 2: problem is the other guy in the game of chicken
Speaker 2: might actually benefit from crashing into you. Right, So's imagine
Speaker 2: you're in a car, you're going eighty miles an hour,
Speaker 2: the other person's going eighty miles an hour the other way,
Speaker 2: and their calculation is I have a better chance of
Speaker 2: surviving if I just do a head on crash with you,
Speaker 2: then if I give up, Because if I give up,
Speaker 2: then when I get back to you know, my team
Speaker 2: to in the pit crew to stretch his analogy as
Speaker 2: far as possible, like they're gonna kill me, Like they're
Speaker 2: going to scalp me, right, Like I have no choice
Speaker 2: but to crash this or else my party will scalp
Speaker 2: me and there'll be someone else speak in the speakership, right,
Speaker 2: McCarthy knows that he can't you know, fold or else
Speaker 2: the crazies and the MAGA Caucus will throw him overboard
Speaker 2: and replace him with Jim Jordan or whoever and so
Speaker 2: the best. So it's really hard to negotiate with terrorists, right,
Speaker 2: And that's the situation that you're in. And so I
Speaker 2: think that's why we're kind of inevitab heading for some
Speaker 2: really bad outcome or you know, a very long legal battle,
Speaker 2: which I think is probably where it ends up with.
Speaker 2: The Biden administration decides that they can just do this,
Speaker 2: you know, laterally, and then it's up to you know,
Speaker 2: the Trump Supreme Court to figure it out.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court to decide if they're going to crash
Speaker 1: the economy you're not. I mean, that's it seems like
Speaker 1: in my mind, let's just play this was the situation
Speaker 1: where reversed and we had a Republican president and a
Speaker 1: Democratic Congress that was willing to drive the economy of ecliff.
Speaker 1: You would never see that, But just say theoretical you
Speaker 1: were the Republican would just go ahead and circumvent them.
Speaker 2: You would think, so, yeah, I mean, you would think so,
Speaker 2: you know, or who knows, Like we're pretty far down
Speaker 2: a weird metaphor here, Who the hell knows Donald Trump
Speaker 2: might want to want to put on the suicide vest
Speaker 2: with them. I definitely don't want to model, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think that Democrats should model authoritarian Republican you know,
Speaker 2: governance when they're making it. So I think that sometimes
Speaker 2: you gotta do what you gotta do, and they're in
Speaker 2: certain times where I've I felt like Biden and Obama
Speaker 2: overstepped on executive order stuff. This might not be one
Speaker 2: of those occasions. I just you know, I don't I
Speaker 2: I was kind of always intrigued by the crazy online mint,
Speaker 2: the coin strategy. I'm open to creative solutions, creative trades
Speaker 2: here to get around this. But I think the reality
Speaker 2: is the Republicans aren't going to budge, and you know,
Speaker 2: they don't seem to even be trying. On the Next
Speaker 2: Level podcast of The boll Work, I interviewed Abigail Spamberger
Speaker 2: about this, and the most interesting thing in that interview, well,
Speaker 2: we did a lot of fun stuff, but about this
Speaker 2: topic was McCarthy hasn't even called her. I mean, she's
Speaker 2: like the great moderate Hope in the Democratic Congress, and
Speaker 2: she's like one of the most bipartisan people in the
Speaker 2: whole Congress. McCarthy hasn't even called her, so like that's
Speaker 2: like he's not trying to cut a deal here, like
Speaker 2: he's trying to crash when that's the reality. I don't
Speaker 2: know that the administration will have any other choice but
Speaker 2: to try to, you know, figure out how to go solo.
Speaker 1: The math is there, right.
Speaker 2: The math is there for what for raising the dead
Speaker 2: selling no.
Speaker 1: For a finding? I mean you only need Democrats, Keem
Speaker 1: Jeffrey only needs five votes, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the problem is then McCarthy bring this to the floor,
Speaker 2: and he never will. Macarthy will never do anything that
Speaker 2: gets all these Democratic votes. This is what got Bayner
Speaker 2: in trouble, right, Like we had the votes to solve
Speaker 2: the Dream Act problem, you know, fifteen years ago, but
Speaker 2: Bayner wouldn't bring it to the floor because there was
Speaker 2: a majority of his conference that wouldn't vote for it.
Speaker 2: So there are the votes there, Sure, you only need
Speaker 2: all the Democrats plus five, but there's no practical way
Speaker 2: you know, to getting there. I do think also just
Speaker 2: on the optimistic side of this, like the Democrats really
Speaker 2: can use this, I think as a political winner. You
Speaker 2: got to remember, like the shutting down of the government
Speaker 2: and stuff in the Obama era did not accrue to
Speaker 2: the Republican's benefit. Right, There's a lot of popular stuff
Speaker 2: in the kind of stupidly named in Fleisch and Reduction Act.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of popular particulars in there that, like
Speaker 2: the Republicans are trying to gut now, that I think
Speaker 2: really can be used against them, right.
Speaker 1: Right, for sure? For sure, Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you, I mean, what is the
Speaker 1: thing that's keeping you up right now?
Speaker 2: The main thing that keeps me up at night is
Speaker 2: just a too late to fix anything about it. Biden
Speaker 2: health issue. And you know, God love him. I'm as
Speaker 2: pro Biden as about anybody in the never Trump or Caucus.
Speaker 2: Maybe not JVL, who's like, you know, kind of bordering
Speaker 2: into Biden cult territory.
Speaker 1: But well, JVL and Biden are basically very similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Catholic, you know, institutionalists. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of things I like about Biden. There's some things that
Speaker 2: I don't love, but I think that he's done a
Speaker 2: great job. I think he's exceeded my expectations. So it
Speaker 2: isn't anything about his performance. It's just, you know, God,
Speaker 2: if we're heading down, I just I feel like we're
Speaker 2: in this in the horror movie. We're like, you can
Speaker 2: see what's going to happen, you know, you can see
Speaker 2: where ghost Face is gonna is gonna sneak in the window.
Speaker 2: And it's like Trump ends up winning a primary, he's losing,
Speaker 2: he's not popular, and we get into fall of next
Speaker 2: year and something happens, whatever it is. Anyone at any
Speaker 2: age can have a health event, but obviously the risks
Speaker 2: are much higher at Biden's age, and you know, we
Speaker 2: go into a chaos situation, and like that is that's
Speaker 2: the main thing that keeps me up at night. I
Speaker 2: just I would feel, actually, especially after the midterms, pretty
Speaker 2: damn confident about all this if Biden was sixty two.
Speaker 2: But he's not. That's just a risk we have to
Speaker 2: live with. And again, in a different world where Asa
Speaker 2: Hutchinson was the other candidate, it's kind of like, okay,
Speaker 2: well whatever, like this isn't this you know, like the
Speaker 2: light that the fate of democracy is not on the
Speaker 2: line here, but it is.
Speaker 1: Right, Asa Hutchinson isn't going to be overturning democracy. But
Speaker 1: good point.
Speaker 2: So that's what keeps me up at night.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that keeps me up at night too. All right, good,
Speaker 1: we can be anxious together. Thank you. Great.
Speaker 2: I love anxiety. Thank you. We'll see you next Thursday,
Speaker 2: New York City. Baby.
Speaker 1: Roy Wood Junior is a stand up comedian and a
Speaker 1: daily show correspondent Welcome Too Fast Politics, Roy.
Speaker 4: Would Junior, Hello, how are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm excited to have you. You are one
Speaker 1: of the few people who has survived White House Correspondence Dinner.
Speaker 4: I think we all survive. It's just a matter of
Speaker 4: the degree of criticism.
Speaker 1: No, but you what came out of that really having
Speaker 1: done an incredible job, And I would say that, you know,
Speaker 1: more than more than a few people have seen their
Speaker 1: career go up in flames because of that.
Speaker 4: I think there's definitely been comedians that have come out
Speaker 4: of it with varying degrees of criticism, you know, publicly
Speaker 4: for what joke you should or shouldn't do, you know,
Speaker 4: And even I got a little bit of that because
Speaker 4: of the school shooting joke. So I don't think any
Speaker 4: comedians immune to it to any degree. But I'm very
Speaker 4: thankful that most everything we wrote was received with the
Speaker 4: intention that we had hoped to be. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: in terms of just the intention of the joke. Okay, well,
Speaker 4: did you say Kamala does nothing or did you use
Speaker 4: sexism to point out that that's why that question is
Speaker 4: even being proposed in the first.
Speaker 1: Place, right, I mean, it is not the easiest time
Speaker 1: to be a comedian, No.
Speaker 4: To be a comedian who also wants access to mainstream
Speaker 4: media and opportunities. Yeah, it's probably some new guardrails that
Speaker 4: are up. But like the idea that you cannot go
Speaker 4: do fifty cities right now and sell a thousand seats
Speaker 4: in each city, or even three hundred and four hundred seats,
Speaker 4: which is a completely acceptable living, that still remains, that
Speaker 4: never left. That part of it, I think is still there.
Speaker 4: Once you find your audience and find the people who
Speaker 4: love you, everything else is just extra gravy. And I
Speaker 4: think the parameters upon which you can now is a
Speaker 4: terrible analogy. The parameters upon which you can now collect
Speaker 4: extra gravy as a performer, that's different.
Speaker 5: For sure.
Speaker 4: You know, you can say the wrong thing and they
Speaker 4: can get you fired from a TV show or get
Speaker 4: you pulled off of a late night show, which helps
Speaker 4: to drive your live ticket sales. So there definitely is
Speaker 4: a cause and effect to speaking your mind. But you know,
Speaker 4: it's just just in my experience in the comedians that
Speaker 4: I know, even the most canceled and most hated of comedians,
Speaker 4: they never stopped doing forty cities.
Speaker 1: Interesting. I wanted to ask you, we both have parents
Speaker 1: in the business, so to speak. Yes, many call me
Speaker 1: a Nefo baby, though I think when you're forty four,
Speaker 1: I'm a nepo oldie. But I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 1: Your father has this really cool legacy of being a
Speaker 1: broadcaster and covering a lot of you know, important historic events,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping you could talk about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean pretty much anywhere black people were getting
Speaker 4: beat up, he showed up with a tape recorder to
Speaker 4: tell the story. Like, that's probably the simplest summation of
Speaker 4: my father's time, you know, within journalism. You know, he
Speaker 4: at the time was working at WVO INN in Chicago,
Speaker 4: the Voice of the Negro. He volunteered to go with
Speaker 4: Chicago based Vietnam platoons to be embedded with you know,
Speaker 4: they were coming back and telling the stories of how
Speaker 4: racist it was over there and how they were getting
Speaker 4: mistreated by the American militaristic leadership over there. You know,
Speaker 4: there was you know, the black units were sent in
Speaker 4: first to be eradicated by the viet Cong and then
Speaker 4: the white unit would come in and kick ass and
Speaker 4: clean up. You know, it's saying they would take all
Speaker 4: the credit. And so you know, my dad was there
Speaker 4: to cover that. He went to Zimbabwe Rhodije at the
Speaker 4: time during their civil war, took sniper fire there, took
Speaker 4: sniper fire in Soweto, covering the riots in South Africa,
Speaker 4: and of course the old civil rights movement. Lots of bullets,
Speaker 4: dog bites flying there. My father was there for that
Speaker 4: as well. Somewhere in the middle of all of that.
Speaker 4: He still had a couple of kids, raised her family
Speaker 4: and also did a jazz show, right, just also jazz music.
Speaker 4: It wasn't all chaos.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you though, growing up in a
Speaker 1: house like that, and I mean I had similar My
Speaker 1: grandfather was more involved in civil rights, my mother was
Speaker 1: more involved in whatever that was. Do you feel a
Speaker 1: sort of like that this larger mission that your parents
Speaker 1: had was relevant to you or no?
Speaker 4: From the beginning, my father always did news commentary, a
Speaker 4: weekly news commentary like a black angry Andy Rooney, but
Speaker 4: about race. You know. He did a weekly news commentary show.
Speaker 4: He took calls, he talked to the people in the streets.
Speaker 4: And there are a lot of times, especially during the summer,
Speaker 4: where I would just sit in a radio station with him.
Speaker 4: I'm drawing and just doing kid stuff, and he would
Speaker 4: just be going off about what's going on in this world.
Speaker 4: And here's where you need to keep your eyes open.
Speaker 4: So you know, that type of stuff eventually seeps in.
Speaker 4: It's inevitable. And then when I got I remember when
Speaker 4: I got my learners permit when I was fifteen, and
Speaker 4: my dad made me start driving him everywhere to speaking
Speaker 4: engagements on the weekend. So I would go with him
Speaker 4: to churches and community centers just around this, you know,
Speaker 4: anything three hours or less. We would immediately just I
Speaker 4: would just he would be swarm by people. Brotherwood, what
Speaker 4: you said about that thing?
Speaker 1: Man keep doing?
Speaker 4: And then I was sitting in the back of the
Speaker 4: church and just watch my dad just lay fire into
Speaker 4: America for an hour. And we get back in the
Speaker 4: car and stop at rallies for a Burger on the
Speaker 4: way home. I definitely didn't step into that into my
Speaker 4: thirties though. I went to journalism because I wanted to
Speaker 4: do sports. I didn't think that I at that side
Speaker 4: of me in me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, it's funny because it
Speaker 1: is to have people like that who are public facing
Speaker 1: and then you have this completely different private experience of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is odd in that way. But
Speaker 4: you know, for who my father was on the microphone,
Speaker 4: he definitely was that off the microphone in terms of
Speaker 4: what he believed and what he stood for. You know,
Speaker 4: traveled a lot, I got a lot of have siblings,
Speaker 4: so I probably didn't get as much of the full
Speaker 4: father experience, but I definitely got the full him as
Speaker 4: a businessman and a journalist experience that I for sure got.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about how you sort of
Speaker 1: set about these White House Correspondents jokes and more. Who
Speaker 1: did you take with you to write, and how did
Speaker 1: you decide and what were your sort of in your
Speaker 1: mind the possible pitfalls.
Speaker 4: The only pitfall that I really was thinking about was
Speaker 4: being misunderstood. I'm okay with somebody not laughing at a joke.
Speaker 4: I don't care. That's part of the game. But if
Speaker 4: you think I meant one thing, and then you take
Speaker 4: that and you make it seem like I meant the other,
Speaker 4: how can we change the verbiage of everything so it
Speaker 4: fits better, you know, like in that regard like That's
Speaker 4: something that I for sure was very paranoid about, you know,
Speaker 4: myself and my writers, my head writer Christiana and Bakoway Medina,
Speaker 4: who's a former Daily Show writers just how we connected.
Speaker 4: Christiana and I. We spoke about trying to figure out
Speaker 4: how to construct the set in a way where it
Speaker 4: introduces you to me as a performer, gets you to
Speaker 4: trust me, and then gain the equity to go at
Speaker 4: the president and the vice president all in six minutes,
Speaker 4: because I have I was given fifteen. I ended up
Speaker 4: doing about twenty twenty five, I think. But that first
Speaker 4: five minutes is so pivotal to the entirety of the performance.
Speaker 4: I've to introduced myself. I have to get you to
Speaker 4: trust me, which means I need you to make me laugh.
Speaker 4: Then the next two jokes that I do have to
Speaker 4: also be funny, but strategic and edgy so that we
Speaker 4: can establish the guardrails. That's why the school shooting joke
Speaker 4: is so high up in the set. And if you
Speaker 4: notice there isn't a groner joke after that. There's jokes
Speaker 4: people may not laugh at, but.
Speaker 1: In terms of oh wow, would you do that?
Speaker 4: There's no other jokes like that. But I have to
Speaker 4: give you the groaner just to know I have that
Speaker 4: in my back pocket if I want to use it.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to me a little bit about the
Speaker 1: vice president. I actually was on Bacari Seller's podcast today
Speaker 1: and I we were talking about her and just I mean,
Speaker 1: I've long believed that she is having the experience on
Speaker 1: a much larger scale than a lot of black women have,
Speaker 1: and that she's just working twice as hard, and I'm
Speaker 1: just curious, like she's such a meaningful elected in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, like if that wait on you and
Speaker 1: just to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, so then to the point of being misunderstood,
Speaker 4: right right, that was a joke that I wanted to
Speaker 4: make sure that we didn't misstep on because the first
Speaker 4: thing I have to do, I cannot avoid what people
Speaker 4: have been saying. People say the president is old. I
Speaker 4: have to have jokes on that. People say, Kamala doesn't
Speaker 4: do anything, I have to address that. But rather than
Speaker 4: just solely make jokes about it, I found it more
Speaker 4: interesting to continue following the thread like a journalist into why, well,
Speaker 4: why do people feel that way? Well, what has she done?
Speaker 4: Has she done anything? Okay, Well, let's find a joke
Speaker 4: or two that serves that, and then let's get into
Speaker 4: what she's done. Make jokes off of the policy, and
Speaker 4: then why Oh I bet it's because she's a woman
Speaker 4: and she's black. Oh wow, would you look at there,
Speaker 4: she's actually done stuff. Well, why are people talking about
Speaker 4: that stuff? Okay, well, then let's combine that blind spot
Speaker 4: with the feminism, I mean with the sexism, and then
Speaker 4: there's your joke. So then on the other side of that,
Speaker 4: the hope is that you understand that, Yeah, I made
Speaker 4: a joke about her not doing nothing, but let's also
Speaker 4: acknowledge that a lot of why y'all are even posing
Speaker 4: that question is because she's a woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And by the way, mister president, great job on being
Speaker 4: a vice president.
Speaker 1: I mean I also think like that that job is
Speaker 1: the job where if you're doing it too hard, then
Speaker 1: everyone's mad at you if you I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: your base, your job is understudy. I mean, that's never
Speaker 1: going to be something that makes people happy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's going to be people who are going to
Speaker 4: take that, you know. And there were people that said
Speaker 4: I attacked her, and then there were a couple of
Speaker 4: articles that came out that said that I defended her
Speaker 4: and you know, stood up for the vice president and
Speaker 4: saying that a lot of it is sexism. You know,
Speaker 4: some people, you can't Whether you agree with me is
Speaker 4: separate and apart from whether or not you understood. Everybody understood.
Speaker 4: Now you can disagree or not agree. I don't care.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to get into no back and forth
Speaker 4: and I'm not going to be doing a bunch of
Speaker 4: interviews explaining no jokes. If you're that stupid that I
Speaker 4: just got to leave you out there and stupid land
Speaker 4: and then with my next comedy special, then I have
Speaker 4: more time to play the game with a little more nuance.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about your show, what you're touring with
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right now? I mean, you know what's funny about
Speaker 4: this tour. They're happy to be here tour. What's interesting
Speaker 4: about it is that I think that a lot of
Speaker 4: people believe that who don't know my comedy. And here's
Speaker 4: the double edged sword of it all. Because you don't
Speaker 4: know my comedy, I have to introduce you to how
Speaker 4: I see the world within the Correspondence dinner. But within
Speaker 4: the Correspondence dinner, you have to take shots at people
Speaker 4: specifically I have to say Tucker Craus and I have
Speaker 4: to say Don Lemon. But in my actual stand up,
Speaker 4: I'm more of an issue driven person than I've ever
Speaker 4: been a particular person. Like I don't call out people
Speaker 4: by name on a regular basis. That's not my thing.
Speaker 4: That's not what I do. I will call out gun control,
Speaker 4: I will call out women's rights. So you know, I
Speaker 4: think on tour it'll be a lot more leaning towards that.
Speaker 4: But you know, I just have fun talking about the
Speaker 4: nonsensical and the weird stuff, you know, Like I actually
Speaker 4: feel bad for Donald Trump, Like this dude doesn't have
Speaker 4: everybody he's snitched on him. Not a single person has
Speaker 4: not taken a deal. Right, anybody that's been arrested for
Speaker 4: dealing with Trump is singing, And that's sad. You're supposed
Speaker 4: to have at least one friend because people go, oh,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump, he's he's like a rapper, Not exactly. Rappers
Speaker 4: have people who don't snitch on them.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, but Donald Trump is probably going to
Speaker 1: be the nominee in twenty four.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure he'll run a great camp from prison.
Speaker 1: Who do you think is vice president is going to be?
Speaker 4: I think Tim Scott?
Speaker 1: Oh wow?
Speaker 4: You know Tim Scott tried to get a police reform
Speaker 4: bill passed that checked a lot of boxes that were
Speaker 4: very similar to the George Floyd Policing Act that the
Speaker 4: Democrats were trying to get through a while, you know,
Speaker 4: a few years ago, and it got filibustered. So the
Speaker 4: issue becomes, though, how do you have a vice president
Speaker 4: that's backing police reform coupled with a president who we
Speaker 4: know is going to say we got to get tough
Speaker 4: on crime, and we got to evict all the all
Speaker 4: the Mexicans, and we got to deport all the herbs.
Speaker 1: And you know, has your life changed since that White
Speaker 1: House Correspondent? Since you killed it at the White House Correspondent?
Speaker 4: I got a DM from a really nice furniture company.
Speaker 4: If you asked me if I wanted an end table,
Speaker 4: and it's changed for a Social posts.
Speaker 1: Most expensive ending.
Speaker 4: It was a really nice end table. But I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'm not a furniture influencer. That also means I have
Speaker 4: to show you the rest of my house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, I mean spu con. You know, we
Speaker 1: once got it when we were doing with this podcast.
Speaker 1: We sometimes get like the if we do an ad
Speaker 1: for someone, they'll send us the free staff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like every time then you get something like Okay, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's nice. I promote that else.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you now, I mean, what's
Speaker 1: sort of the future for you? Now?
Speaker 4: You know for me? You know, we just have to
Speaker 4: wait and see what happens on the other side of
Speaker 4: the writer's strike with regards to the Daily Show. But
Speaker 4: I am if it's two things I definitely had fun
Speaker 4: doing in the last month. It's guest hosting the Daily
Speaker 4: Show and doing the correspondent to Dinner, because those were
Speaker 4: two different opportunities for me to explore the things that
Speaker 4: I I'm curious about talking about and that was very,
Speaker 4: very intriguing to me and I had a very good time.
Speaker 1: How long do you think this takes?
Speaker 4: I do not know, and I'm not even going to
Speaker 4: remotely try to speculate on that. I just know that
Speaker 4: no matter what. On the other side of this, we
Speaker 4: got to have a system where writers are paid fairly,
Speaker 4: you know, and studios are open about who's watching what
Speaker 4: and where the money's coming in from, so we can
Speaker 4: split the pot properly. You know, this isn't about people
Speaker 4: wanting to bankrupt the studio. They're just tired of living
Speaker 4: one paycheck away from bankruptcy themselves. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think that no matter what. On the other side of it,
Speaker 4: Late Night is going to change as well, you know,
Speaker 4: and I think economics are going to change, because if
Speaker 4: you have to pay more money to the talent, then
Speaker 4: you're going to want to make your shows more cheaply.
Speaker 4: So you know, we might be this might be the
Speaker 4: end of the era I call it the shiny floor shows, right,
Speaker 4: you know, the shiny floor and then the big band
Speaker 4: and all of that. You know, But what does political
Speaker 4: satire look like? Because there will always be Americans who
Speaker 4: have a desire to laugh and a desire to make
Speaker 4: sense of a lot of the bs that's going on
Speaker 4: in the world. So you know, I want to be
Speaker 4: somewhere in the chair, you know, quarterback in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you. Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the
Speaker 1: first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now,
Speaker 1: is going to have merch for sale over at shop
Speaker 1: dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
Speaker 1: and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your
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Speaker 1: Karen Tumulty is a deputy opinion editor at The Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Karen. It's so great to be here.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to have you. I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about the debt ceiling fiasco. It feels like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know this is not the first time Washington has
Speaker 1: found itself here, but it does seem like the scariest.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely, because I think it's it's kind of an
Speaker 5: entirely different mindset in the House of Representatives than we
Speaker 5: have ever seen before. And the margins for Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 5: even if he were a sort of the shrewdest legislative
Speaker 5: tactician ever, which he isn't, it would be just a
Speaker 5: lot harder for him. But I mean, there are a
Speaker 5: lot of people in the House who believe that they
Speaker 5: were elected to burn the place down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's talk about that for a second, because
Speaker 1: I think that's really important, this idea that they were
Speaker 1: elected to burn the place down, because I do think
Speaker 1: that we haven't seen that phenomenon in a while.
Speaker 5: And also that these are you know, after we saw
Speaker 5: that kind of marathon of votes that it took for
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy to become the speaker. I mean, you look
Speaker 5: at the final holdouts that people he literally owes to
Speaker 5: speakership are of the again, you know, the we need
Speaker 5: to use this to get all the leverage we can.
Speaker 5: And of course, as it's become almost a cliche to
Speaker 5: have to explain to people, no, this is not the
Speaker 5: debt ceiling vote is not about controlling spending in the future.
Speaker 5: It's just about paying your bills from the past, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that I think is a real problem,
Speaker 1: and I mean that seems like a failure of democratic messaging, right,
Speaker 1: Like Republicans don't do this to Republican presidents. Well, that's
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 5: And also I think it's just kind of ay even
Speaker 5: as a political issue, it's a fake. My colleague Paul
Speaker 5: Kane did a terrific piece over the weekend where he
Speaker 5: looked back at the dead ceiling. Quote, it's not anything
Speaker 5: that ever comes up against people during election season. This
Speaker 5: is not a it should not be a hard vote, right.
Speaker 1: No, exactly. I mean again, this is not the time
Speaker 1: you negotiate a budget when you've already spent the money.
Speaker 5: Well, the other thing is, there is actually a budget
Speaker 5: process in Congress that they ceased to follow starting about
Speaker 5: a decade ago. In fact, has not actually passed a
Speaker 5: budget resolution since I think twenty sixteen. I mean, they
Speaker 5: don't even use the processes that they have. They don't
Speaker 5: pass appropriations bills the way they are supposed to. They
Speaker 5: just kind of ball it up in a big hair
Speaker 5: ball at the end. They don't even use the tools
Speaker 5: that they have had since the early nineteen seventies to
Speaker 5: bring spending under control. They just love to have these
Speaker 5: kind of near death experiences.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you, because I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: a lot about Nikki Haley's ill fated presidential run. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we can't call it ill fated yet, but
Speaker 1: it certainly does seem like she's not the things are
Speaker 1: not you know what I mean? Is she polling even
Speaker 1: as well as Mike Pence.
Speaker 5: It is sort of hard to see what at this
Speaker 5: point at least what the natural Nicky Haley constituency is.
Speaker 5: But you know, there may come a time during this
Speaker 5: campaign season, is during this primary season, where she has
Speaker 5: a moment.
Speaker 1: Right, No, it's true, but I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: about this because one of those central things she has
Speaker 1: focused on is the national debt, which is fascinating because
Speaker 1: that is something that almost no one else has had
Speaker 1: any interest in and has really fallen out of fashion
Speaker 1: on the right and on the left. So I you know,
Speaker 1: I try not to two sides, but on this one,
Speaker 1: nobody is pro paying down the debt except Nikki Haley.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I just it seems so antiquated when
Speaker 1: she brings it up. But that is ultimately what these
Speaker 1: House Republicans, that is their whole argument here, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And look, this is a real issue. The debt
Speaker 5: as a percentage of our gross domestic product is huge,
Speaker 5: and you know, it is something that we are going
Speaker 5: to need to grapple with if you know, we want
Speaker 5: to assure the not only the future, but the present,
Speaker 5: and also if we want there to be room for
Speaker 5: investments for things like dealing with climate change. And there are,
Speaker 5: by the way, some pretty obvious things to do about it,
Speaker 5: starting with somehow bringing in title and spending under control.
Speaker 5: But you start talking about that kind of stuff off
Speaker 5: and you know, everybody were uns.
Speaker 1: We could also cut the military. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying we're going to do things that make
Speaker 1: people crazy.
Speaker 5: Military spending though right now is as a percentage of
Speaker 5: economy is a pretty low percentage in historical terms. Plus
Speaker 5: we've got the fact that you know, we're essentially trying
Speaker 5: to help Ukraine fight World War one in Europe and
Speaker 5: facing the prospect of World War three in China.
Speaker 1: In China, yeah, no, I mean, it's definitely a real problem. Though.
Speaker 1: I still, you know, like with so many things, like
Speaker 1: with medicare, you could fix a lot of those by
Speaker 1: fixing immigration.
Speaker 5: Well, that's true, and that, you know, used to be
Speaker 5: something that the Republican Party was very much in favor of.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm showing my age.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, I just wrote a big piece on
Speaker 1: no fault Divorces comes out I guess today or tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and in it I talked about how, you know, the
Speaker 1: person who brought no fault divorces into being, which was
Speaker 1: a very fast, you know, ultimately a very feminist thing
Speaker 1: that prevented you know, a huge number of female suicides
Speaker 1: and caught you know, was very much a good, a
Speaker 1: good for women, was a certain divorce a named Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 5: That is exactly correct, And in fact, I deal with
Speaker 5: that just a bit in my biography of Nancy Reagan.
Speaker 5: That in the day when in the late nineteen forties,
Speaker 5: when Ronald Reagan was getting divorced from Jane Wyman, the
Speaker 5: grounds that people would cite was something called mental cruelty,
Speaker 5: and it really always bothered Reagan. I mean justifiably that
Speaker 5: you know, mental cruelty was you know, part of his record.
Speaker 5: So that is true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we see really in the many ways
Speaker 1: in which the right has moved in a strange way,
Speaker 1: there's just been such a sea change in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party in ways that are trump that are things that
Speaker 1: the differences between w and Reagan. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to say.
Speaker 5: Well, it's really part even to define anywhere what conservatism is,
Speaker 5: because for Donald Trump, that seems like conservatism is and
Speaker 5: patriotism are more a tone of voice than they are
Speaker 5: a set of principles.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's because Donald Trump was so charismatic
Speaker 1: And again this is not an endorsement in any way
Speaker 1: important to mention this, but he had this sort of
Speaker 1: political charisma that Republican politician hasn't had in a long time.
Speaker 1: And because he was so undisciplined and ultimately was very nihilistic,
Speaker 1: that was sort of he sort of abandoned all of
Speaker 1: the kind of pretensive principle.
Speaker 5: Well, I think he was just an incredible brander, right,
Speaker 5: I think that, you know, one of the most important
Speaker 5: things to know about Donald Trump was that he actually
Speaker 5: we trademark the phrase make America Great Again. Six days
Speaker 5: after the twenty twelve election, Mitt Romney had just surprised
Speaker 5: a lot of Republicans by losing. The Republican Party is
Speaker 5: embarking on this, you know now infamous autopsy where they
Speaker 5: were saying, oh, you know, in the future, we are
Speaker 5: just going to have to appeal more to women and
Speaker 5: to young people and diversity, and there is a guy
Speaker 5: sitting there on Sith Avenue calling up the Patent and
Speaker 5: Trademark Office. You can actually look this up and trademarking
Speaker 5: the phrase make America great again. And he trademarks it
Speaker 5: even in those block letters that you see on the hats.
Speaker 5: I mean, he sort of saw something, He saw an
Speaker 5: opening in the kind of aggrieved Republican base and a
Speaker 5: lot of other people that I think nobody else saw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty incredible and it's funny because right that,
Speaker 1: make America great again is his phrase?
Speaker 5: Well, that's at one point I was interviewing him that
Speaker 5: it and I pointed out that Reagan had also used
Speaker 5: make America great again.
Speaker 1: And didn't Lindbergh use it to that was America first? Oh,
Speaker 1: America first? Right? Right's right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well I pointed out to Trump that Reagan had
Speaker 5: also used make America great again. He said, yes, that
Speaker 5: he didn't trademark it.
Speaker 1: Jesus. Yeah, well there you go. I mean that is,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things as we continue on this,
Speaker 1: I was watching that deposition video from the Eugene Carol case.
Speaker 1: When you watch Trump during that deposition, you see a
Speaker 1: different Trump. You don't see the campaign Trump you see
Speaker 1: the kind of uh, I want to say, smug and
Speaker 1: self satisfied Trump that I thought was pretty interesting that
Speaker 1: you could be deposed for a civil case and to
Speaker 1: sort of have no remorse and not even pretend to.
Speaker 5: That that is also part of his immo. I mean
Speaker 5: he doesn't have remorse. I mean he just sort of
Speaker 5: keeps going, and in doing so, he has violated basically
Speaker 5: everything that we used to think, you know, all the
Speaker 5: laws of political gravity. But I think you see that
Speaker 5: a lot. You know, you see that now in a
Speaker 5: lot of the generation of politicians that trump Ism has spawned.
Speaker 5: I mean you see the same thing in a Marjorie
Speaker 5: Taylor Green or Lauren Bobert. It's just like, never apologize,
Speaker 5: just keep going.
Speaker 1: So here's my question, and this is not this is
Speaker 1: a question and nothing else. Does it work for them?
Speaker 5: Well, I think that as long as they are appealing
Speaker 5: to a hardcore base, if that is all they need,
Speaker 5: if that is all that it takes, say, to get
Speaker 5: you elected in Marjorie Taylor Green's district, yeah you can
Speaker 5: keep going. But the thing about Trump is what he
Speaker 5: has not done is expand his reach. So you think
Speaker 5: that as a political model at some point this has
Speaker 5: to collapse, and it did collapse in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Again, they won't acknowledge that, but I mean, you.
Speaker 5: Know, the Republican Party has only won the popular vote
Speaker 5: in a presidential election once since nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, Like, if you think about it, we're
Speaker 1: likely going to have Trump be the Republican nominee. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless something happens. We now have seen that indict being
Speaker 1: indicted is certainly not disqualifying to the Republican base. I
Speaker 1: think that's a fair thing to say. I mean, don't
Speaker 1: you Gray, Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this has become not a Shae, It's become a stigmata,
Speaker 5: right exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, so terrifying to think of it as a stigmata.
Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right. So if that is not disqualifying,
Speaker 1: then it seems that even the promise of more indictments
Speaker 1: will not necessarily change the calculus for Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: I am one of the you know, and again this
Speaker 5: has sort of become conventional wisdom, but I think that,
Speaker 5: you know, the indictment that we have seen thus far,
Speaker 5: you know, is not the strongest case, right that could
Speaker 5: be you know, set against him. Potentially the Justice Department
Speaker 5: could come up with something more serious, but it is
Speaker 5: not going to matter to his supporters, who are not
Speaker 5: a majority and not even close to her majority, and
Speaker 5: you know, is a smaller kernel of the electorate than
Speaker 5: it has ever been.
Speaker 1: Probably, Yeah, I mean the thing that I'm struck by
Speaker 1: is just how you know, if you were to just
Speaker 1: take a clear eye and look at Republican performance under Trump, right,
Speaker 1: you would see that they continue to underperform with Trump
Speaker 1: as the leader of the party. That twenty sixteen was
Speaker 1: an anathema, I think that's the right word or whatever
Speaker 1: it is. You know, something that was completely unexpected, but
Speaker 1: that since then they've tried to do, you capture that
Speaker 1: and have been unable.
Speaker 5: I think that is true. And so you know what
Speaker 5: we're seeing though, is they are nonetheless sort of increasing
Speaker 5: their leverage and their use of the tools within the
Speaker 5: political system. You look at these state legislatures where you
Speaker 5: know Republicans and twenty eight state legislatures now have super majorities,
Speaker 5: meaning they can you know, do whatever they want to
Speaker 5: override a governor's beach show. And of those twenty eight,
Speaker 5: all but nine are Republicans. So you see, you know,
Speaker 5: they are taking what are in their states and the
Speaker 5: minority positions on issues like guns and abortion, but they
Speaker 5: are nonetheless forging ahead.
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone yesterday about Antiu Cuomo, who,
Speaker 1: in one of the worst moments in my career, was
Speaker 1: focused around my worst pieces I've ever written that I
Speaker 1: continue to apologize for that at the do you know,
Speaker 1: years and years later was about him. But I just
Speaker 1: want to, you know, with with Andrew Cuomo. You know,
Speaker 1: here was someone who had a real Republican attitude for
Speaker 1: fighting dirty and he even he, you know, couldn't get
Speaker 1: the partisan redistricting the way you know a Republican might have,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being the reason that Democrats lost
Speaker 1: the House.
Speaker 5: Well, it's also they overreached and the court struck them down.
Speaker 5: I mean, and you know that is also part of
Speaker 5: our system that we should be grateful still exists in
Speaker 5: some place.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, not anywhere where it would, you know,
Speaker 1: not anywhere read But it is interesting And one of
Speaker 1: the things I wanted to ask you about is that
Speaker 1: in Mississippi, a good friend of this podcast, James Carville,
Speaker 1: who comes on here a lot, it's pretty excited about
Speaker 1: this governor's race in Mississippi with a candidate called Presley,
Speaker 1: who was related to the Elvis Presley, and he thinks
Speaker 1: that there's a world in which Democrats could take back
Speaker 1: Mississippi as they did with I mean and Kansas. I mean,
Speaker 1: does this seem like a pipe dream to you?
Speaker 5: I will believe it when I see it. And the
Speaker 5: one thing I think that is true is that the
Speaker 5: Democrats are going to have to get a lot more
Speaker 5: skilled and aggressive at their ground game, at things like
Speaker 5: voter registration, voter mobilization, you know, the kinds of things
Speaker 5: that we saw happen in Georgia are going to happen elsewhere.
Speaker 5: You're going to need more than just a charismatic, appealing candidate.
Speaker 5: And I do think that in a lot of places
Speaker 5: the Democrats have really neglected that they hadn't put the
Speaker 5: money in, they haven't put other resources in, they haven't
Speaker 5: paid the kind of attention to that stuff. But if
Speaker 5: you don't have you know, people registered, and if you
Speaker 5: don't have assurances that they're actually going to vote, it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Right, It's certainly true, and I think you're You're totally right.
Speaker 1: So what is I'm going to ask you the last
Speaker 1: question here, which is what is the thing that is
Speaker 1: keeping you up at night.
Speaker 5: Oh boy, so many things, honestly, and just afraid of
Speaker 5: the kind. And again, I mean November of twenty twenty
Speaker 5: four is a long long way away still, but there
Speaker 5: are just so many ways for people to get in
Speaker 5: and mess with the system, and you don't find out
Speaker 5: about it until it's too late.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, that'll keep me up tonight. Thank you, Karen.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 5: I'd love to thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: No moment Thick Jesse Cannon Eye junk Fast. There are
Speaker 1: some big news in a trial that you were mentioned in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try to stay out of trials, but somehow you're
Speaker 1: not doing a good job. We not doing a very
Speaker 1: good job. Turns out that lawyer ROBERTA. Capwin you may
Speaker 1: know her from arguing the Defensive Marriage Act. She's a
Speaker 1: pretty good lawyer, perhaps a better lawyer than Donald Trumps
Speaker 1: mafia lawyer Joe Takapina. Either way, Egen Carol has won
Speaker 1: her case against Donald Trump to the tune of five
Speaker 1: million dollars. Again, anyone knows. I'm sure that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: will try desperately to not pay it, but she did it.
Speaker 1: She wins five million dollars. Congratulations to Egen, Carol, and
Speaker 1: to ROBERTA. Kaplan. It's not fuckery, it's just great. Congratulations. Guys.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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