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 one in eight women say they've
Speaker 1: secretly voted differently than their partners. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. Vice presidential nominee Minnesota Governor
Speaker 1: Tim Walls stops by to tell us what it's like
Speaker 1: in the home stretch. Then we'll talk to Yale professor
Speaker 1: Timothy Snyder about how the media is playing into the
Speaker 1: fascist handbook. Lastly, we will have a bonus conversation with
Speaker 1: the economists Stephen Mazie about the courts. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Mollie, I was scrolling through Twitter last night. I
Speaker 2: heard Donald Trump's talking to Tucker Carlson, which always fills
Speaker 2: my heart with sadness, and then I heard what they said,
Speaker 2: and it horrified me.
Speaker 3: Is it weird for you to see Liz Cheney? That'd
Speaker 3: be Dick cheney repulsive little daughter running against you with
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it hurts Kamala a lot. Actually, Look,
Speaker 4: she's a deranged person. But the reason she couldn't send
Speaker 4: me is that she always wanted to go to war
Speaker 4: with people I don't want to go to war. She
Speaker 4: wanted to go. She wanted to stay in Syria. I
Speaker 4: took him out. She wanted to stay in Iraq.
Speaker 5: I took him out.
Speaker 4: I mean, if we're up to her, we'd be in
Speaker 4: fifty different countries.
Speaker 2: She's a radical war hawk.
Speaker 4: Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine
Speaker 4: barrel shooting at her. Okay, let's see how she feels
Speaker 4: about it. You know, when the guns are trained in
Speaker 4: her face. You know, there were all warhawks when they're
Speaker 4: sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, oh, gee,
Speaker 4: you will, let's send Let's send ten thousand troops right
Speaker 4: into the mouth of the enemy. But she's a stupid person.
Speaker 4: And I used to have I have meetings with a
Speaker 4: lot of people, and she always wanted to go to
Speaker 4: war with people.
Speaker 1: So the point of that is that it certainly sounded
Speaker 1: to me like Donald Trump was musing about having the
Speaker 1: guns pointed at Liz Cheney's face and threatening her life. Now,
Speaker 1: Trump's defenders, which is everyone on Twitter and all of
Speaker 1: the conservative media, were furious because they said it was
Speaker 1: clipped and that the full context, which we actually played
Speaker 1: for you earlier, shows that in fact, he was not
Speaker 1: threatening Liz Cheney. He was talking about how much he
Speaker 1: hates wore. I don't know. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: you should just stay away from talking about killing people
Speaker 1: by a firing squad either way. And the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, again like so much Trump's plaining, he didn't
Speaker 1: really mean to say that, he said it this way. Also,
Speaker 1: I want to add that Trump has a group of
Speaker 1: really angry fans, many of whom have a lot of weapons.
Speaker 1: So when he muses about shooting people, it's not good.
Speaker 1: It's not good. That is this is my hottest take.
Speaker 1: He should not do that. It's not good. It's really scary.
Speaker 1: It feels like an invitation to something bad.
Speaker 2: Sure does, So what's shift gears too? Instead of bad? Too?
Speaker 2: Stupid as all hell. Trump loves filing lawsuits famously. He
Speaker 2: files more of them than almost anyone in public life.
Speaker 2: What do you see here, Molly?
Speaker 1: This is a little bit the same. Trump gets angry
Speaker 1: when his quotes are taken out of context. If he
Speaker 1: can take offense for something that he will, And he
Speaker 1: and his people are suing CBS for ten billion dollars
Speaker 1: in damages. It seems like a lot for alleged partisan
Speaker 1: and unlawful acts of election and voter interference. Now, Trump
Speaker 1: says everything that he doesn't like his voter interference, right,
Speaker 1: like the Russian investigation election interference, because that's sort of
Speaker 1: his thing. So he said that CBS, you know, they
Speaker 1: sort of edited a question in sixty minutes that Harris
Speaker 1: had a sort of snappier answer to. I don't even
Speaker 1: really get the drama here, but his people got very
Speaker 1: angry about this. He is suing in the North District
Speaker 1: of Texas, and he's alleging that there were two different
Speaker 1: versions of Harris's response to a question about the Israel
Speaker 1: Helmas War. He's suing in this North District of Texas
Speaker 1: because he knows he'll get a judge that is favorable
Speaker 1: for his rulings because Trump has Trump judges who do
Speaker 1: what he wants. The judges in Texas have done a
Speaker 1: lot for Trump. So you know, maybe this works, maybe
Speaker 1: it doesn't, but I don't think judge shopping is not
Speaker 1: how any of this is supposed to go.
Speaker 2: So we have some early voting data. You want to
Speaker 2: explain it to the listeners, Molly.
Speaker 1: I want to like caution on early voting data. All
Speaker 1: you can tell from it, and it depends on the states.
Speaker 1: Some states you can't even tell this, but a lot
Speaker 1: of states you can only tell the partisan breakup. And
Speaker 1: for example, some states like Nevada, if you have a
Speaker 1: driver's license and you're newly registered, now we have automatic
Speaker 1: voter registration with driver's licenses, a lot of times those
Speaker 1: kids get registered as independents. That doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: they're independent. It just means they don't have a partisan
Speaker 1: affiliation yet and maybe never well, so I would say
Speaker 1: it's too early to know anything. But one of the
Speaker 1: trends that we're seeing reported by NBC Newses Decision Desk
Speaker 1: is this that they analyzed this state voter data as
Speaker 1: of October thirtieth, and there are signs of an influx
Speaker 1: of new female Democratic voters in Pennsylvania. And this is
Speaker 1: the part that's not as good new male Republican voters
Speaker 1: in Arizona. So these are voters who did not show
Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty, so they would not have been
Speaker 1: polled for right, because this is shifting electorate. Remember they're
Speaker 1: basing their turnout model these posters on previous general elections,
Speaker 1: not midterms, previous presidential elections. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty electorate is what pollsters are using for
Speaker 1: this election, and these new voters would not necessarily have
Speaker 1: been pulled, so that may change the way the results
Speaker 1: turn out. And they so, and we don't know about before,
Speaker 1: So we'll see what happens. This could be a very
Speaker 1: good sign for Democrats because Harris has to win Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: but it could also be a good sign for Republicans
Speaker 1: because Trump needs to win Arizona. Now that said Harris,
Speaker 1: as long as she wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, she can
Speaker 1: lose either Arizona or Nevada. I think so. I don't
Speaker 1: think she has to win all the sun both states,
Speaker 1: but anyway, so we'll see what happens. But again we'll
Speaker 1: know soon.
Speaker 2: There is another horrible, horrible story in the aftermath of
Speaker 2: Donald Trump helping set up to have ro fall. What
Speaker 2: are you seeing in this horrible story that I wish
Speaker 2: I could forget?
Speaker 1: So? Pro Publica has been doing really great reporting on
Speaker 1: these women who have died in Texas because of the
Speaker 1: abortion ban. Remember the Texas abortion ban was enacted a
Speaker 1: year before the fall of row SB eight. State Bill
Speaker 1: eight was put into action in twenty twenty one because
Speaker 1: the Republicans in the state legislature were so hot to
Speaker 1: get it in there. And remember, it actually went to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court on the shadow docket and they let
Speaker 1: it stand. So there's just a lot more horror stories
Speaker 1: coming out of Texas because they've had a much longer
Speaker 1: abortion ban than other places. So this is another story
Speaker 1: of a woman. She's eighteen years old, pregnant, miscarrying, and
Speaker 1: she ends up dying of sepsis because she can't get
Speaker 1: treated and they finally admit her, and they wouldn't treat
Speaker 1: her because they thought that baby was still alive and
Speaker 1: they didn't want to go to jail, and it's just
Speaker 1: really dark. There's a really important point in this, which
Speaker 1: is if you're a woman in a state with a
Speaker 1: band like this, you end up getting bopped around from
Speaker 1: different hospitals and people don't want to treat you and
Speaker 1: you really don't get the care that you need, and
Speaker 1: now we're seeing women die from it.
Speaker 2: So Maali, one of the things we come to realize
Speaker 2: is a lot of the young voters in the selection
Speaker 2: were ten or eleven years old when the Access Hollywood
Speaker 2: tape first hit. So they were not aware that mister
Speaker 2: Trump talked of women in such a way of grabbing
Speaker 2: them by the pussy. But now TikTok is making them
Speaker 2: aware of this. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: I hate this story because it's like how anyone could
Speaker 1: forget this is just beyond me. But basically, Republicans, young people,
Speaker 1: you know it was eight years ago. The guy's been
Speaker 1: running for president for almost a decade. Now TikTok is
Speaker 1: resurfacing this video and the audio of Trump musing about
Speaker 1: if you're a star, they let you do it, you
Speaker 1: can do anything. We all know this sort of really
Speaker 1: dark and grim monologue about sexually assaulting women.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? It's just locker room talk, And.
Speaker 1: Now younger people know about it too because of TikTok.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to the Chinese government for allowing it to air.
Speaker 1: Tim Wallas is the governor of Minnesota and the vice
Speaker 1: presidential nominee Molly How are you, hi, Governor?
Speaker 5: I'm standing tall, steel, tons of energy, went out running
Speaker 5: in Detroit this morning already and ready to bring this
Speaker 5: thing home.
Speaker 1: What do you think about what Donald Trump said about
Speaker 1: Liz Cheney yesterday?
Speaker 5: Look, it's horrific. Not surprising. He's done this, whether it's
Speaker 5: subtly or backhandedly, his whole time chaos division, you know,
Speaker 5: violent rhetoric. We saw it, of course, what he did
Speaker 5: to our fellow citizens in in Puerto Rico over the
Speaker 5: over the weekend. But look, more than anything, I think,
Speaker 5: and I hope voters hear this. We don't have to
Speaker 5: live this way we have And you saw it on
Speaker 5: the National Mall with Kamala Harris. How a president talks,
Speaker 5: how a president talks about unifying us, How a president
Speaker 5: lays out plans to do list of things for the
Speaker 5: American public. How the grace and the dignity and the
Speaker 5: you know, the inclusiveness of that. So I think when
Speaker 5: Donald Trump says this, I think take him seriously, and
Speaker 5: I feel, you know, I feel the pain that comes
Speaker 5: with for Liz Cheney because this is dangerous rhetoric. But
Speaker 5: it also inspires us that the alternative is so much brighter,
Speaker 5: the alternative is so much more hopeful, And those who
Speaker 5: are just tired of this drama, just tired of seeing
Speaker 5: him on TV and doing these kind of things, the
Speaker 5: antidote lies right in front of us. In the next
Speaker 5: one hundred hours or so, to get out the vote.
Speaker 5: And let's just put an end this.
Speaker 1: I knew you when what's it like? You know, you
Speaker 1: are the governor of a big state, but now you
Speaker 1: are a phenomenon. What is it? Is it very different?
Speaker 1: What's it like?
Speaker 5: No, it's a privilege. And what it's done, Molly, is
Speaker 5: it just reinforced to me what I already knew. We
Speaker 5: have so much more in common. The Vice President says that.
Speaker 5: But I'm telling you, I've had the privilege of traveling
Speaker 5: to every corner of the country to get out with folks,
Speaker 5: to listen to them, to hear their hopes and dreams,
Speaker 5: to hear their frustrations. And this campaign is just in
Speaker 5: every corner. Our ground game is so good, the volunteers
Speaker 5: who are working on at the enthusiasm and the thing
Speaker 5: that I said, we talk about when we see our supporters,
Speaker 5: it is a sense of joy, It is a sense
Speaker 5: of hopefulness. And I feel like I'm the same guy.
Speaker 5: I got a few more miles on me, I know
Speaker 5: a few more people. But I think what I always
Speaker 5: believed is is that people just want the goodness of
Speaker 5: this country. And I'm really pleased about this that I
Speaker 5: won't lie The teachers have been showing up in pretty
Speaker 5: big numbers because they said, you know, it's only taking
Speaker 5: us two hundred and fifty years to get a public
Speaker 5: school teacher on a ticket, so they've been excited. But
Speaker 5: it's a lot of just regular folks that look, this
Speaker 5: can be this way. You got two middle class kids,
Speaker 5: one from Oakland, one from real Nebraska trying to take
Speaker 5: a positive message. So thanks for asking. It's been great.
Speaker 5: I think I'm the same guy, but I'm even more
Speaker 5: optimistic than I was before.
Speaker 1: How are the kids as distressful being on the trail?
Speaker 1: I mean, what is that like?
Speaker 5: Well, you are kind to ask. No, they are fantastic,
Speaker 5: and I appreciate justin the one thing I said was
Speaker 5: is especially like with Gus, this country's just wrapped their
Speaker 5: arms around Gus. I see people that they're like, I'm
Speaker 5: voting for Gus's dad, and you know, I still see
Speaker 5: them say that. And Hope has been a morale captain
Speaker 5: is what she calls. She took her to leave of
Speaker 5: absence to come with me. She's out on the trail.
Speaker 5: She keeps me grounded. I think you know she's connected
Speaker 5: with the twenty somethings, the gen Z. She's been along
Speaker 5: with this team. You know, these campaigns are run by
Speaker 5: youth because they have the ability to stay up all
Speaker 5: night and sleep on the floor. But my kids have
Speaker 5: been great. Gus is living a senior in high school's lives.
Speaker 5: He's playing varsity volleyball, trying to get through another algebra
Speaker 5: cloud and that kind of thing. But they've been great.
Speaker 5: But the American public has just been so great on
Speaker 5: how they embrace them. And of course Gwen is a
Speaker 5: phenomenon in herself out there just going everywhere across the country.
Speaker 5: I think she's really connecting.
Speaker 1: Are you scared? Does it feel scary? I mean there's
Speaker 1: like a part of this country that is really wants
Speaker 1: this other vision. Is it scary? No?
Speaker 5: And I said, for us, is that we know what
Speaker 5: our vision is. We know what the positive piece of
Speaker 5: this is. We feel confident in this and it's a
Speaker 5: privilege to be a part of this. Look, it's always
Speaker 5: going to be difficult, those who fought to protect this democracy,
Speaker 5: those who fought to form it. We're at a critical
Speaker 5: stage and I tell people the anxiety and I would
Speaker 5: encourage people of these next four days that the surest
Speaker 5: care for this anxiety is to go into action, even
Speaker 5: if it's right, you know, knocking on a door, making
Speaker 5: a few phone calls, if you can drive people to
Speaker 5: the polls, if you're there to do anything, that's action.
Speaker 5: And I think for me and my family, we have
Speaker 5: been in constant motion. You know, since early August on
Speaker 5: this we have been able to do things. And I
Speaker 5: have been in front of the American public that just
Speaker 5: inspires me. You know, we were in Asheville a couple
Speaker 5: of nights ago. We've been down there right before Helene,
Speaker 5: and you know, we waited and the community said, no,
Speaker 5: come back. They packed the Orange Peel, a music venue.
Speaker 5: We had bands playing. We had that community turn out
Speaker 5: in huge numbers. A resiliency of Asheville is just the
Speaker 5: embodiment of what this country is. And Donald Trump wants
Speaker 5: to tell us his country broken. Donald Trump said, it's
Speaker 5: the garbage can of America. Donald Trump said, you know,
Speaker 5: we have to have him to make things great. Ashville
Speaker 5: doesn't need Donald Trump to make them great. They're great
Speaker 5: right now. What they need is federal government and others
Speaker 5: to continue to provide the resources necessary things that Donald
Speaker 5: Trump never did cut the funding, threatened to not give
Speaker 5: Blue States Resources. Kamala Harris has reinspired people that are
Speaker 5: our politics can be good, hopeful, joyful and effective. And
Speaker 5: that for me, that keeps me going. So anybody out
Speaker 5: there's got any anxiety, just go down sign up for
Speaker 5: a Shifted calling. It'll reinspire you.
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania is the most stay and they have more volunteers.
Speaker 1: In Pennsylvania they have I think six volunteers for every
Speaker 1: door that needs to be knocked.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's awesome folks that are out there.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like there's grounds well when you talk
Speaker 1: to people?
Speaker 5: I mean yeah, yesterday morning I was in Bucks County
Speaker 5: and stopped by Temple at de Vali with you know,
Speaker 5: some of our South Asian are Hindu American folks. Huge excitement,
Speaker 5: huge optimism, you know. I think it's the timing of
Speaker 5: that was right, that's the victory of lightness over darkness,
Speaker 5: of knowledge over ignorance. And they were there together. So
Speaker 5: I feel it out there Bucks Counties, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of ground zero. We all know about it. I'm just
Speaker 5: seeing the volunteers and it's the attitude of the volunteers.
Speaker 5: You can't fake this stuff. I've been doing this long
Speaker 5: enough that do you do rallies and things like that. Look,
Speaker 5: rallies don't necessarily win the election, but rallies are a
Speaker 5: place where people gather as community and express their joy
Speaker 5: and optimism. And these things are rocking. We're in ann Arbor, Michigan.
Speaker 5: I think there's about twenty thousand people. The other night,
Speaker 5: beautiful fall night. The trees are lit up, they're golden.
Speaker 5: Maggie Rodgers is singing that community is out, arm in arm.
Speaker 5: This is the way it should be. And the contrast
Speaker 5: to that, to Madison Square Garden. Man, it couldn't have
Speaker 5: been greater.
Speaker 1: When you got this job, you didn't know how to
Speaker 1: read a prompter. I spent a lot of time thinking
Speaker 1: about reading a prompter for obvious reasons, because when I'm
Speaker 1: on television, did you learn how to read the prompter?
Speaker 1: I mean, what did you find? You know? You were
Speaker 1: like thrown into the deep end a little bit. How
Speaker 1: do you do it? Well?
Speaker 5: I'll tell you. It speaks volumes to this campaign. And
Speaker 5: how quickly this is, you know, unprecedented, how it had
Speaker 5: to stand up. I'm surrounded by the best professionals that
Speaker 5: you could imagine. They had me ready, they taught me,
Speaker 5: they were briefing me and they let me be me,
Speaker 5: which caused them some headaches at times. I will acknowledge that,
Speaker 5: but it also gave them some of what you know,
Speaker 5: this joy that I think part of this is is
Speaker 5: the partnership. The Vice President and I have a good partnership.
Speaker 5: She's the thing I wish more people would know is
Speaker 5: she is so dang funny. I gravitate towards funny people
Speaker 5: because I think it speaks volumes, and she is and
Speaker 5: I just keep finding things about them. But no, I
Speaker 5: think this is a testament to the team. It's a
Speaker 5: testament to how they stood up a campaign in the
Speaker 5: shortest time in American history. I think, on the grandest
Speaker 5: scale at the most critical time, and here we set
Speaker 5: on the doorstep of now executing this campaign. I want
Speaker 5: to make that clear to everyone. We're going to win
Speaker 5: this thing. We've got the we've got everything ready, but
Speaker 5: we need to get the ball across finish line. Here.
Speaker 5: We got to get over the goal line. We got
Speaker 5: to finish this thing, and that means the boat. So
Speaker 5: I'm ready to go. I've learned a lot. I think
Speaker 5: I've gotten better at that prompter, but we can all learn.
Speaker 1: You have all of these kids that you have mentored
Speaker 1: and Fox knew is Wroten's story yesterday about how a
Speaker 1: kid was struggling with drugs and alcohol and you told
Speaker 1: them to play ball, and they misrepresented the story because
Speaker 1: the kid was actually saying that ball had saved his life,
Speaker 1: the sport had saved his life, and you had And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you can just talk about with these
Speaker 1: kids who aren't seem really committed to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this has been the I think the most gratifying
Speaker 5: part of this whole thing. These kids were very organic
Speaker 5: and came out. I know Dan who you're talking about,
Speaker 5: and I had lost touch with him, and he just reignited.
Speaker 5: This was before I was in on this. For whatever reason.
Speaker 5: Earlier in the year we reconnected and he told me
Speaker 5: for the first time. He came and got a meeting
Speaker 5: with me and said in there and he said, well,
Speaker 5: I just need to tell you this. I think you
Speaker 5: saved my life. When he came here. He was going
Speaker 5: to drop out of school and I brought him back.
Speaker 5: It wasn't about the ball, it was about not leaving school.
Speaker 5: It was about coming back. He turned out to be
Speaker 5: a fantastic football player. But that's not why I brought
Speaker 5: him back. I brought him back for him. He needed
Speaker 5: to be around those positive influences of other kids. He
Speaker 5: needed to not leave school. And he's successful now, you know,
Speaker 5: he's dealt with all of us deal doing these things.
Speaker 5: And I just, I mean, I did not see this story,
Speaker 5: but I don't understand why Box News. You know, they're
Speaker 5: always rooting for failure. This is a good story that
Speaker 5: transcends politics. Just a really good story that the kid
Speaker 5: was there, and I'm just glad there. And that's what
Speaker 5: we do. Someone told me, you know, the mister Rogers thing.
Speaker 5: We always try and find the helpers, and I hope
Speaker 5: my job was to be a helper and so excited
Speaker 5: about that piece of it.
Speaker 1: And these kids did campaign for you and helped you
Speaker 1: run when you ran for com gross right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some of them did. This kid. I think they're
Speaker 5: probably douking about didn't see the story, but it sounds
Speaker 5: like the one probably did. Some of them did. They
Speaker 5: helped me run the first time they came back. These
Speaker 5: were talented people. My first campaign was four young women,
Speaker 5: reaching college graduates who were from man Cato. They knew
Speaker 5: more about politics than I did. By far. They understood
Speaker 5: others work. They had worked on campaigns I had, and
Speaker 5: they just came back and help. They wanted to make
Speaker 5: a difference.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank you, Governor.
Speaker 5: You're the best, Molly, thanks for having me. Let's win
Speaker 5: this thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, good luck. Are you concerned about Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well,
Speaker 1: so are we, which is why we teamed up with
Speaker 1: iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on
Speaker 1: what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for
Speaker 1: America's future. Right now, we have just released the final
Speaker 1: episode of this five episode series. They're all available by
Speaker 1: looking up Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and if you are more of a podcast person and
Speaker 1: not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put
Speaker 1: your phone in the lock screen and it will play
Speaker 1: back just like the podcast. All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 1: We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
Speaker 1: would or could do to this country, so please watch
Speaker 1: it and spread the word. Timothy Schnyder is a Richard S.
Speaker 1: Levigne Professor of History at Yale University and the author
Speaker 1: of On Freedom welcome back, Timothy Schneider. I think of
Speaker 1: you as like something happened and I knew there was
Speaker 1: only one person that I could talk to who would
Speaker 1: know exactly how to explain it. And you, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've been in such demands since then. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the Washington Post obeying in advance.
Speaker 6: Yeah, will you answer the question by asking it? I mean,
Speaker 6: obeying advance is the concept we need. It's that term
Speaker 6: which I put in on Tyranneus Chapter one comes from German.
Speaker 6: Comes from German for a reason, right, it's for AlSi ossam.
Speaker 6: It means running in German. It literally means like running
Speaker 6: in advance in order to be obedient. The reason why
Speaker 6: it's important is that it's a lesson that the Germans
Speaker 6: of the Austrians learned looking backward, which was, if we
Speaker 6: hadn't conceded in advance, Hitler would not have come to
Speaker 6: power in the first place. If we hadn't given our
Speaker 6: power away before we had to, we would have never
Speaker 6: ended up where we ended up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to like explain to us how
Speaker 1: you got here. Because you're a historian. You've come to
Speaker 1: this moment in American life through the past, and I'm
Speaker 1: hoping you could just give us a minute or two
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 6: I come to this American moment as a historian, which
Speaker 6: means that I know that lots of bad things are possible,
Speaker 6: and also lots of good.
Speaker 5: Things are possible.
Speaker 6: I know that every moment is pregnant with all kinds
Speaker 6: of things, imagined and unimagined, and some of them are
Speaker 6: very bad and some are very good. In any moment
Speaker 6: in history, there are things that are possible that people
Speaker 6: don't realize. And so that's like, that's any history. And
Speaker 6: can say that I come to the US as not
Speaker 6: an americanist. I come to the US as somebody who
Speaker 6: spends a lot of mental and physical time in Ukraine
Speaker 6: and other parts of Eastern Europe. I come to somebody
Speaker 6: who's thought a lot of written about, and written a
Speaker 6: lot about contemporary Russia. And one of my guiding lights
Speaker 6: is that Russia is not a foreign country. Russia is
Speaker 6: a place where we could go if we follow the
Speaker 6: same kinds of lines. And then I come to these
Speaker 6: US problems from the thirties and forties, which I've written
Speaker 6: about in other books, and I try to be lively
Speaker 6: to the notion that the thing that you can head
Speaker 6: things off, right, And I think historians ought to be
Speaker 6: talking about these things, not least because we can offer
Speaker 6: we can offer things, but also because it's not like
Speaker 6: everybody else is doing such a great job.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the thing that I'm struck by is
Speaker 1: we're in this moment right where we don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen in five days. But the scariest scenario
Speaker 1: to me is Russia, because there was a moment when
Speaker 1: Russia was pregnant with possibility. I mean, what didn't have
Speaker 1: the long history that America did, but it could have
Speaker 1: been something other than what it became.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it became It became a fake democracy surrounded
Speaker 6: where the president was surrounded by oligarchs who eventually took over,
Speaker 6: and then there was a weeding out of oligarchs and
Speaker 6: you end up with Putin. It became a ritualized system
Speaker 6: where everybody goes to the ballot box even though they
Speaker 6: know it doesn't make a difference. It came a place
Speaker 6: where there's only really one source of media. And you know,
Speaker 6: since that happened to Russia, we have basically moved in
Speaker 6: that direction on all of those fronts and That's why,
Speaker 6: like I think, Russia is not our opposite. Russia is
Speaker 6: this thing that we might become.
Speaker 5: I agree with you.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm always truck by with
Speaker 1: Trump is that he just says what he wants to do.
Speaker 6: I mean, from the Greeks forward, the argument has been
Speaker 6: put forth correctly that oligarchs in one country are going
Speaker 6: to have more in common with ali garks in other
Speaker 6: countries than they are going to have in common with
Speaker 6: their people. Trump and Musk are both obvious about this,
Speaker 6: like they and Putin are in some kind of you know,
Speaker 6: they're in some kind of boy scout troop where they
Speaker 6: climb up their own private and they have conversations which
Speaker 6: are about their own private fantasies. The thing is that
Speaker 6: their own private fantasies involve things like invading countries, destroying
Speaker 6: our minds social media, and creating an oligarchy. And naturally,
Speaker 6: though Trump is going to care more about what they
Speaker 6: think than he cares about what the rest of us think.
Speaker 6: And you're right, we just have to listen to him
Speaker 6: say it.
Speaker 1: It seems really clear to me that they've managed to
Speaker 1: get their supporters to embrace a lot of the anti
Speaker 1: democratic things that might have been harder to sell in
Speaker 1: previous generations.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it really helps that you brought Russian to the conversation,
Speaker 6: because what one thing Russia has done, which Vance and
Speaker 6: Trump are working on, is making people believe the government
Speaker 6: can't do anything. So fins believe, of course government can't
Speaker 6: do anything for you. Of course government is just there
Speaker 6: for the olive arcs, and we're just two or three
Speaker 6: steps away from that with Vance and Trump, you know,
Speaker 6: basically telling us that, especially Vance and government is totally impotent.
Speaker 6: It can't really do anything. And once you accept that,
Speaker 6: it's not like politics goes away. Altics just becomes purely horizontal.
Speaker 6: It's just a matter of us and them. And then
Speaker 6: you get used to the idea that you're going to
Speaker 6: be rallied against use Trump's term the enemy, the enemy
Speaker 6: with it. So that's where it goes, right, And the
Speaker 6: whole time, you think you're your own agent, you think
Speaker 6: you're being free, whereas in fact you're just being piloted
Speaker 6: along in this process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sort of when Putin came on the scene,
Speaker 1: he basically picked the winners and losers in the economy.
Speaker 1: He made billionaires, and he bankrupted the federal government. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a federal you know, the state government. That
Speaker 1: is I think the fantasy of Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is I'm coming out to Filler angle.
Speaker 6: This is one of the big things which I think
Speaker 6: no one is talking about because folks on the left
Speaker 6: don't want to talk about business, and folks don't quite
Speaker 6: grab this. But Putin was horrible for Russian business. He
Speaker 6: was moable for the Russian economy. Small and medium sized
Speaker 6: businesses can't make it in an extra legal, oligarchical type situation.
Speaker 6: It's only going to be, as you say, the winners
Speaker 6: that are picked. So, you know, unless your cousin is
Speaker 6: Jared Kushner, you're going to have hard time in a
Speaker 6: Trump economy because they're going to fire everybody who normally
Speaker 6: gives you the permits. You're going to be dealing with
Speaker 6: forty thousand civil servants who were loyalists and have been
Speaker 6: instructed only to help certain people, and things are going
Speaker 6: to stop working and so and this is something like
Speaker 6: those all those Republican admirers of Orbon and all those
Speaker 6: public admirers of Putin should remember those are poor countries,
Speaker 6: and they are poor countries. They're poor countries that should
Speaker 6: be rich countries, but they're poor because of the leadership structure,
Speaker 6: and that shouldn't be out of leadership structure.
Speaker 5: You want.
Speaker 1: I think so much about Project twenty twenty five, and
Speaker 1: in it is this idea that the president will control
Speaker 1: the FED.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's one of that's one of the
Speaker 6: top five ways that Project twenty twenty five would.
Speaker 5: Destroy the American equiomy.
Speaker 6: But it touches on that the checks and balances right,
Speaker 6: of which we have ever fewer, but one of them
Speaker 6: is that the FED is pretty much still independent. If
Speaker 6: you make the FED just like a gas pedal that
Speaker 6: the president can push on, that'll be convenient for him,
Speaker 6: but it'll be a nightmare for everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a quick way to make the country in oligarchy, right,
Speaker 1: because if he says lower interest rates because I have
Speaker 1: an election coming, I mean, it is the quickest way
Speaker 1: to a banana republic.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's in a race with others because because
Speaker 6: if you also say I'm going to love to go
Speaker 6: after my political opponents, or I'm not going to use
Speaker 6: the irs to go after billionaires, or we're not going
Speaker 6: to enforce laws on banks, right, it's going to be
Speaker 6: a race, because, as we saw in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 6: there can be a banking crisis. We're very close to
Speaker 6: that time. Because the regulation is so flimsy. The stock
Speaker 6: market itself can lose credibility if too many favorites are played,
Speaker 6: Foreign investors can can go away. So there are a
Speaker 6: whole bunch of ways that twenty twenty five is actually
Speaker 6: inconsistent with the kind of market economy that we're used to,
Speaker 6: and is consistent with like what you say, a banana
Speaker 6: republic market economy where the few winners are our cousins
Speaker 6: and buddies and basically everybody else is losing.
Speaker 1: It's funny because it's like, we're having this conversation just
Speaker 1: a few days from the twenty twenty four election. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't know what's going to happen, but it certainly
Speaker 1: feels right now, and since this entire election cycle is
Speaker 1: based on vibes, it certainly feels like women are going
Speaker 1: to come out and hopefully save us all from the
Speaker 1: end of American democracy this cycle. And again, we don't know,
Speaker 1: we may not, we may all be you know, head
Speaker 1: in hands in a week, but you can't have a
Speaker 1: two party system when one party no longer believes in
Speaker 1: democratic norms.
Speaker 6: I'm trying to get the women part into that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think women voters that the thought is
Speaker 1: that there's such a gender discrepancy already. You know, it's
Speaker 1: ten points that it seems likely that women voters are
Speaker 1: secretly voting for Harris.
Speaker 6: Yes, I mean the thing you can't have is a
Speaker 6: party which thinks that voting is a ritual and it's
Speaker 6: or it's really limited to cert kinds of people, which
Speaker 6: is where their party is headed. Right Like, I'm from Ohio.
Speaker 5: I was just in Ohio.
Speaker 6: They've gerrymandered the hell out of the state so it's
Speaker 6: basically a one party state. And now they're trying to
Speaker 6: have a cons social referendum to undoer to undo the
Speaker 6: jerry vandering, which is being dealt with in all kinds
Speaker 6: of like fantastically ORWELLI in ways that I wish the
Speaker 6: oppressould write more about. You can get to a one
Speaker 6: party state this way, right like, step by step by
Speaker 6: step by step, because one party it never says like,
Speaker 6: oh we're against democracy or against voting. You just kind
Speaker 6: of chop chop, chop chop, chop. It's a shame we
Speaker 6: only have two parties. So that puts a Democrat in
Speaker 6: this really uncomfortable position that they have to simultaneously say, hey,
Speaker 6: we're the future, but also hey we're the ones protecting
Speaker 6: the system. That's uncomfortable. They've got to do both, whereas
Speaker 6: the Republicans can be like, hey, there's no future, and
Speaker 6: by the way, we're wrecking the system.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean eventually what happens. Like the thing
Speaker 1: that makes me feel a little opt you got me
Speaker 1: on an optimistic day, is so my sense is that
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley is trying to keep her powder drive for
Speaker 1: a race in twenty eight I could see a world
Speaker 1: where the party loses and Republicans decide that Nikki Haley
Speaker 1: could theoretically be the heir apparent. I have a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble imagining Nicki Haley ending American democracy, though, you know,
Speaker 1: in four years, who knows. But there is a world
Speaker 1: or is there a world? This is a question, And
Speaker 1: is there a historical precedent for this where things just
Speaker 1: sort of go back to sort of more normal, less
Speaker 1: precarious democracy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to say that.
Speaker 6: I mean, I agree with you that there are a
Speaker 6: lot of good things at work, and they're like, even
Speaker 6: though we're early a couple days away, there's still a
Speaker 6: lot of good things that people can do. And if
Speaker 6: people want to feel anxious, they should just go out
Speaker 6: and do those good things, because those things not only
Speaker 6: make a difference, but they make you feel a lot better.
Speaker 6: In terms of coming back, I mean, it would help
Speaker 6: if he got thumped, because the thing is that, I mean,
Speaker 6: what happens he's going to claim. You want, if Kamalis
Speaker 6: wins by twenty million votes, he's still going to say
Speaker 6: that he won.
Speaker 7: We can we can.
Speaker 5: Factor that in.
Speaker 6: There's almost certainly gonna be some kind of violence around
Speaker 6: election day, we can factor that in. You know, some
Speaker 6: crimes are predictable. But in terms of coming back, it's
Speaker 6: kind of important that it would be better if he
Speaker 6: lost in a clear way. It doesn't losing the clear way,
Speaker 6: there's going to be all there's going to be a
Speaker 6: mess between now in January and then a mess in
Speaker 6: the Republican Party indefinitely.
Speaker 5: But yes, you come back.
Speaker 6: I mean Germany came back in a very in a
Speaker 6: very impressive way. Japan came back in both of those cases,
Speaker 6: especially in Germany, there's some kind of recognition that things
Speaker 6: went wrong. And that's where I'm not sure Americans are
Speaker 6: so good is it recognizing prior mistakes?
Speaker 1: Say more about that, because the German personality is so different,
Speaker 1: I think, or the cultural personality a foray into autocracy
Speaker 1: is not the same as death cams. You know, part
Speaker 1: of how they came back was that things had just
Speaker 1: been so they just got beaten.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, And that's that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 6: you want to stop this process before it goes too far.
Speaker 6: Because fascism by nature can only be can only be
Speaker 6: defeated by some kind of higher force, Like it defines
Speaker 6: itself as will and force, and so it has to
Speaker 6: run into something. So you want to get to you
Speaker 6: want to stop it before you get to the point
Speaker 6: where you have to be that thing that it runs into,
Speaker 6: because that's terrible.
Speaker 5: That's a terrible solution.
Speaker 6: But what I meant was more like a lot of
Speaker 6: folks are committed to views in our country which are
Speaker 6: not true, like the system doesn't work, or that Trump
Speaker 6: one in twenty twenty. It's hard to do reconciliation without truth,
Speaker 6: and so I think it's going to be you know,
Speaker 6: it kind of requires eight or twelve good years, I
Speaker 6: think for people to ask all of this if he
Speaker 6: doesn't lose decisively.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I watched that Price presidential debate, the JD. Van's
Speaker 1: debate in horror because I thought there is a person
Speaker 1: who sells trump Ism in a way where you don't
Speaker 1: totally know it's Trump.
Speaker 4: Is.
Speaker 1: Part of what has saved us is that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has been so profoundly you know, just can't stop blurting
Speaker 1: out the stuff he wants to do. Right. He's not
Speaker 1: dishonest enough to be able to make it sound like
Speaker 1: it's just you know, normal day in America. And I
Speaker 1: think that has actually ultimately hurt him, at least with
Speaker 1: the mainstream media.
Speaker 6: It may have hurt him with the middle but it
Speaker 6: helps him on the fringes. I mean, in twenty sixteen anyway,
Speaker 6: there are a lot of people who never voted before
Speaker 6: who voted because a Trump was saying those things, And
Speaker 6: so I think it probably cuts both ways. With Vants,
Speaker 6: I would agree in a general way, I think people
Speaker 6: generally underestimate Advance. I think Vance is directly hooked into
Speaker 6: the techno fascist world in a way that.
Speaker 5: Is not Trump.
Speaker 6: Vance is going to live for a while. Trump is not,
Speaker 6: and I think the people who are betting on a
Speaker 6: kind of techno fascist future, they're behind Vance rather than
Speaker 6: behind Trump. Trump is just kind of means to an
Speaker 6: end as far as they're concerned.
Speaker 1: I think of Elon Muss is so much like Henry Ford.
Speaker 1: Is there some kind of precedent for this.
Speaker 6: It's broadly the case that new communications technology cheese break
Speaker 6: up prior social orders and open up opportunities. Right, So
Speaker 6: there were a lot of crazy people around the printing
Speaker 6: press as well, although now we love books and radio
Speaker 6: and amplification gave opportunities to fascists which hadn't hear before.
Speaker 6: So in that sense, yes, but this is more powerful
Speaker 6: because it's harder to shut out, and it presents itself
Speaker 6: in many different guises, and in my view, the way
Speaker 6: that it makes you a fascist has less to do
Speaker 6: with the content and more to do with the medium itself.
Speaker 6: The way that social media works in us, this kind
Speaker 6: of call and response and the fear and approval. I
Speaker 6: think it works at a kind of lower neurological level
Speaker 6: than other stuff did, So in that sense, I think
Speaker 6: it's new.
Speaker 1: So do you think there is like the answer right,
Speaker 1: there's clearly some amount of radicalization that is connected to
Speaker 1: social media or to a sort of media that does
Speaker 1: not have any kind of fact checking, right that where
Speaker 1: things are were sort of in the truthiness era. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's specific to the genre or do you
Speaker 1: think that that is like, is there something to do
Speaker 1: to stop it? Is a government regulation? Is it? I mean?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I mean in the new book and on Freedom, I
Speaker 6: write about this a lot. It's I think, you know,
Speaker 6: we have to a be courageous enough to admit that
Speaker 6: we believe in truth, at least as a suit B.
Speaker 6: We have to think of factuality as something positive that
Speaker 6: you have to create to remember, it doesn't grow from
Speaker 6: the ground. There's no such thing as a free market,
Speaker 6: and this sort of thing you have to actually plan
Speaker 6: and you have to create it. You have to have
Speaker 6: a political infrastructure which is favorable to factuality, which means
Speaker 6: certain kinds of scives in schools and newspapers and so on.
Speaker 6: And it's okay to spend some money on that because
Speaker 6: we can't do democracy without facts and so like, there's
Speaker 6: all this positive stuff before you get to the thing
Speaker 6: which you said, which is that, of course these are monopolies, right,
Speaker 6: they should be broken up. That's what the Sherman Act
Speaker 6: is for. And even conservative economists like friedrypron Hayek would
Speaker 6: would advocate this. They have to be broken up, they
Speaker 6: have to be regulated, and there are all kinds of
Speaker 6: creative ways to do that. I mean, we should be
Speaker 6: applying our intelligence to the question of how to make
Speaker 6: social media work better for the freedom of the average
Speaker 6: American rather than standing back and marveling out of this
Speaker 6: high technology because it's not high technology. It's basically like
Speaker 6: beating pans together, just an incredibly high speed.
Speaker 1: So interesting. I want you to explain why it's so
Speaker 1: important to fight back, you know, at the personal level,
Speaker 1: but also at the corporate level, Like can you just
Speaker 1: because why what Bezos did is so dangerous?
Speaker 6: Yeah, the corporations in Nazi Germany got it wrong, that's
Speaker 6: an established fact, and they ended up where they did
Speaker 6: not want to be, some of them as criminals, but
Speaker 6: almost all of them at Hitler's mercy. And we know
Speaker 6: from the history of the decades since then that in
Speaker 6: coup attempts and things like this, the attitude of the
Speaker 6: corporations turns out to be very important. Approaching decisive, and
Speaker 6: so can't say we don't have responsibility because those people,
Speaker 6: in fact do we know historically have responsibility. What they
Speaker 6: do matters as far as individuals right now, it's pretty simple.
Speaker 6: The little things that we all are doing, like the canvassing,
Speaker 6: the phone banking, the keyboarding, meeting with people in real life,
Speaker 6: giving money, those things not only matter, but also they
Speaker 6: make us feel better. Right Like, it's okay to be
Speaker 6: afraid that Trump is going to win because bad things
Speaker 6: will happen if he wins, but it's not really okay
Speaker 6: to be anxious.
Speaker 5: The US.
Speaker 6: Anxiety is by making sure you're with somebody else and
Speaker 6: you're actually doing something, because then you will feel better
Speaker 6: and that'll be true no matter what happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so important. Thank you, Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: So interesting.
Speaker 6: Really glad we could do it.
Speaker 1: Stephen Mazie is a Supreme Court reporter at The Economist.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7: Steven, Thank you, Mollie. Great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that you can explain to us. You cover
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court for The Economist with very smart and
Speaker 1: you're very even, so I want you to explain to
Speaker 1: us what the Supreme Court just did. And what it means.
Speaker 1: Start with Virginia, then go to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7: Okay, so what is happening in Virginia is this. There
Speaker 7: was a voter purge that was instigated, that was ordered
Speaker 7: by the governor exactly ninety days before the election, which
Speaker 7: might have been symbolic because there's a federal law that
Speaker 7: says within ninety days of an election there can be
Speaker 7: no systematic voter purges. And the justification was that these
Speaker 7: were purportedly non citizens, sixteen hundred voters who had, according
Speaker 7: to the State of Virginia, had declared that they were
Speaker 7: not citizens and therefore should not be able to vote
Speaker 7: in this election. And of course non citizens cannot vote
Speaker 7: in American elections. It is a crime for them to
Speaker 7: do so. But there are at least a few dozen,
Speaker 7: if not more, of those sixteen hundred people who, it
Speaker 7: has been proven, made a mistake. They didn't check a
Speaker 7: box saying that they were citizens, or maybe they checked
Speaker 7: a box saying they were non citizens. One of the
Speaker 7: people who was found to be mistakenly taken off the
Speaker 7: roles by this voter purge said, you know, it sucks
Speaker 7: getting old, but I just, you know, missed it and
Speaker 7: so the argument from the Department of Justice. So what
Speaker 7: happened after the voter purge is that the Arn't of
Speaker 7: Justice stepped in and said, this is illegal under this
Speaker 7: federal law from nineteen ninety three, you can't, you know,
Speaker 7: systematically purge voters from the roles so close to an election.
Speaker 7: And a district court agreed and said, yeah, this is
Speaker 7: not okay. You can have an individualized removal of particular
Speaker 7: non citizens if you can prove that each one is
Speaker 7: a non citizen, but you can't just kind of blanket
Speaker 7: take off all these people and potentially catch eligible voters
Speaker 7: in that dragnet. So that's what the district court said,
Speaker 7: and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals then heard an
Speaker 7: appeal from Youngkin. The result was the same. The state
Speaker 7: was ordered to put all sixteen hundred voters back on
Speaker 7: the rolls. And then there was an appeal on the
Speaker 7: shadow docket, which is the emergency, quick acting lightning docket
Speaker 7: of the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court stepped in
Speaker 7: and said, we're going to side with Virginia here. We're
Speaker 7: going to reinstate the voter purge for those sixteen hundred people.
Speaker 7: So this happened on Tuesday of this week and when
Speaker 7: they issued this order, When the Supreme Court issued this
Speaker 7: order saying no, you need to keep those sixteen hundred
Speaker 7: people off of the roles, there were three justices, notably
Speaker 7: the democratically appointed.
Speaker 1: Justices, right on partisan lines.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they said they dissented from that order, which means
Speaker 7: it was a six to three decision along partisan lines,
Speaker 7: with NOx explanation of why they rejected the reasoning of
Speaker 7: the poor Circuit Court of Appeals and of the District
Speaker 7: Court that originally said you need to restore these people
Speaker 7: to the voter roles. So it was we're not talking
Speaker 7: about a huge number of voters, but it's a it's
Speaker 7: a highly partisan question in Virginia. And to have the
Speaker 7: justices divide along partisan lines without saying why, I think
Speaker 7: I said in the tweet that you were interested in
Speaker 7: that this was a little ominous to me.
Speaker 1: So part of the reason that they gave also was
Speaker 1: that same day voter rage in Virginia.
Speaker 7: Right, Yes, So if anyone has been taken off the
Speaker 7: roles and their citizen and they want to, you know,
Speaker 7: go on the day to the polls and show that
Speaker 7: they are citizens, they can do that. So there is
Speaker 7: a sort of backstop for those who have been unjustly
Speaker 7: taken off the roles. But you know, that's that's some work,
Speaker 7: and you have to bring your papers, and you have
Speaker 7: to be prepared to date officials.
Speaker 1: And it's also partisan interference on the shadow docket four
Speaker 1: days before an election, tell me about Pennsylvania.
Speaker 7: Pennsylvania, all right, So this is sort of like that
Speaker 7: jiff of the boyfriend looking, you know, back toward the
Speaker 7: woman and and ignoring is his girlfriend. Pennsylvania is when
Speaker 7: he's looking away from. But that's where we should be looking.
Speaker 7: Because of course, this presidential election is not going to
Speaker 7: be decided by Virginia voters. It very well could be
Speaker 7: decided by Pennsylvania voters. There's a case at the Serbine
Speaker 7: Court right now on the shadow docket, which we could
Speaker 7: have the results from any minute now. I think it
Speaker 7: will be probably today, although it could be a day
Speaker 7: or two from now. We're getting very close to Tuesday.
Speaker 7: So the Pennsylvania case affects potentially tens of thousands of
Speaker 7: ballots as opposed to sixteen hundred. And the question there
Speaker 7: is whether if you, as a Pennsylvania voter, mail in
Speaker 7: your ballot but you mess up. There are a series
Speaker 7: of envelopes that you have to put your ballot in
Speaker 7: and sign some of them and put others inside others. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so if you forget this secrecy ballot as it's called,
Speaker 7: and your ballot is called the naked ballot, even though
Speaker 7: it's closed in another envelope, it's considered naked and it's
Speaker 7: not eligible, it's not counted. So a few days ago,
Speaker 7: a week ago, the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled that
Speaker 7: under state law, if you send back one of these
Speaker 7: naked ballots, and the estimate is about one percent of
Speaker 7: mail in ballots will be sort of messed up in
Speaker 7: this way, you can go to your polling site and
Speaker 7: file a provisional ballot in person on election day, and
Speaker 7: if it's confirmed that your mail in ballot wasn't counted
Speaker 7: because it's not valid, then your provisional ballot will be
Speaker 7: counted and you'll get to vote. So that was it
Speaker 7: was a four to three decision by the Pennsylvania State
Speaker 7: Supreme Court, and I think it's it's a legitimate, difficult
Speaker 7: question of state law, whether you know, voters should have
Speaker 7: that opportunity under state law to make that change and
Speaker 7: vote in person. But what's happening now is that the
Speaker 7: RNC has petitioned, they has filed an emergency application to
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court saying, you need to correct this error
Speaker 7: of the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court. They have misinterpreted what
Speaker 7: the Pennsylvania legislature has said. And this is unconstitutional even
Speaker 7: under the federal Constitution, because the Federal Constitution says that
Speaker 7: only Congress and the States can determine election rules. It
Speaker 7: doesn't say that state courts can. This is a theory
Speaker 7: known as the independent state legislature theory that with very
Speaker 7: few exceptions, state legislatures get to call the shots irrespective
Speaker 7: of what any other state official or state court might say.
Speaker 7: And so they're asking the Supreme Court to kind of
Speaker 7: declare what Pennsylvania state law actually is and to throw
Speaker 7: out whatever ballots come in that are naked and not
Speaker 7: give those people who tried to be absentee voters but
Speaker 7: failed because they forgot one envelope prevent them from voting
Speaker 7: in person on election day. Could this change the outcome
Speaker 7: of the election, Probably not, because we're talking ten thousands,
Speaker 7: But we've seen in the polls how close Pennsylvania is, right,
Speaker 7: all right, And in.
Speaker 1: Fact Trump won by point seven two percent, Biden won
Speaker 1: by one point one seven.
Speaker 7: Percent, which is a lot of voters, even though the
Speaker 7: seems small, right, This is concerning a that it's happening
Speaker 7: on the shadow docket where.
Speaker 1: There's no accountability, right because we don't know who's seeing
Speaker 1: what on the shadow docket. Right.
Speaker 7: Well, we know that all the justices are seeing all
Speaker 7: the briefs that come in from both sides. But what
Speaker 7: we're not guaranteed, as we saw in the Virginia voter
Speaker 7: purge case, is an explanation of when they make their
Speaker 7: decision why they made it. And I think that was
Speaker 7: a real error on the Court's part in not at
Speaker 7: least giving some indication of why they reinstated that voter purge.
Speaker 7: And I think it would be horribly irresponsible if when
Speaker 7: they issue the decision the order in the Pennsylvania case,
Speaker 7: if they don't say something about why, especially if they're
Speaker 7: siding with the RNC and saying, yeah, these votes shouldn't count,
Speaker 7: because this could potentially flip the election. And everyone knows that.
Speaker 7: Even though Republicans are urging voters to vote by mail
Speaker 7: more this cycle than last cycle, Democrats tend to have
Speaker 7: the advantage with mail in ballots. We're more likely to
Speaker 7: mess up their ballots by not including a secretcy envelope
Speaker 7: and are more likely to gain by having an opportunity
Speaker 7: to vote with a provisional ballot on election day. So
Speaker 7: the partisan valance here is pretty clear. There's not a
Speaker 7: good sort of principled reason why they're siding with the RNC,
Speaker 7: if in fact that's what they do. Which I still
Speaker 7: have enough faith in the court and its decision making
Speaker 7: around elections that it's not going to make the extraordinary
Speaker 7: move of second guessing what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has said.
Speaker 7: But if they do, they better explain why and explain
Speaker 7: why clearly and persuasively.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, talk me through what your worries are. Now.
Speaker 7: My worries are actually more about what's going to happen
Speaker 7: outside the courts than inside the courts. We saw in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty that the course did a pretty good job
Speaker 7: of taking garbage cases and throwing them in the garbage.
Speaker 7: Like sixty four out of sixty five Trump and Trump
Speaker 7: friend filed cases to try to overturn the election. We're
Speaker 7: tossed out or we're decided we're bad arguments, and I
Speaker 7: think that will hold again this time. As I said,
Speaker 7: despite what happened in Virginia, I have some confidence that
Speaker 7: there will be only maybe two or so justices who
Speaker 7: side with the RNC and this Pennsylvania case. And I
Speaker 7: don't think they want to, given how low their popularity is,
Speaker 7: given how angry so many Americans are about what they've
Speaker 7: done over the past few years, abortion rights, you know,
Speaker 7: being a chief reason for dismay. I don't think they're
Speaker 7: going to want to step into an election and you know,
Speaker 7: be the definitive thumb on the scale they were the
Speaker 7: way they were in two thousand with Bush versus Gore.
Speaker 7: That would be you know, if you think their popularity
Speaker 7: is low now and their credibility is low now, I
Speaker 7: don't think they could recover from that within a generation.
Speaker 7: If they end up being the deciding factor in this
Speaker 7: extremely contentious, extremely important presidential race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it's close, we know what they're going to do. Well,
Speaker 1: we hope they don't do what we worry that they
Speaker 1: might do, what I worry that they might do. I'll
Speaker 1: just use eye sentences here.
Speaker 7: I do think there's a scenario where I would be worried,
Speaker 7: which is, if it comes down to Pennsylvania, and if
Speaker 7: it comes down to like a few thousand votes, and
Speaker 7: if those few thousand votes are challenged on a not
Speaker 7: incredible theory of why they shouldn't count, then I think
Speaker 7: it's a close case. And in a close case, partisans
Speaker 7: are going to be partisan. That's what worries me. But
Speaker 7: the chances of all those empirical things happening at once,
Speaker 7: I think are still pretty low, even though the polls
Speaker 7: look so close. You know, we could have Trump landslide
Speaker 7: on Tuesday. We could have a Harris landslide on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not going to have a Trump land slide
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, but he could eke it out. I want
Speaker 1: you to sort of explain to our listeners what the
Speaker 1: next season of the Supreme Court looks like from what
Speaker 1: cases you're seeing them taking. Just a sort of like
Speaker 1: very kind of quick and dirty overview.
Speaker 7: Oh sure, we don't have the same density of blockbusters,
Speaker 7: thankfully we've had the past few years. We don't have
Speaker 7: gun rights or on the docket. We don't have abortion
Speaker 7: rights on the docket, although abortion could and probably will
Speaker 7: come back, like the abortion rulings from last spring. We're
Speaker 7: both kind of kicking the can down the road. There
Speaker 7: are already new attempts to challenge abortion pills by the
Speaker 7: Red States as opposed to doctors who claim standing, and
Speaker 7: that was shot down very easily by the court. So
Speaker 7: there will be more claims to standing to challenge abortion medication.
Speaker 7: I think emergency abortion will also probably come back. That
Speaker 7: was the case out of Idaho last year. But as
Speaker 7: to what's on the docket now, there are a few cases.
Speaker 7: One in particular that is a culture war, very important
Speaker 7: case that's going to be argued in early December, and
Speaker 7: I think people will turn their attention to it once
Speaker 7: the election gets resolved, whenever that is. And this is
Speaker 7: a case involving healthcare for or trans youth Tennessee. The
Speaker 7: case involves a law in Tennessee that basically bans gender
Speaker 7: affirming healthcare for trans kids. And there are some like
Speaker 7: there's something like eighteen other states that have similar laws.
Speaker 7: Where you know, if you have a trans kid and
Speaker 7: you're in Iowa, where I come from, which used to
Speaker 7: be a blue state when I was growing up there, anyway,
Speaker 7: you have to drive to Minnesota to get healthcare for
Speaker 7: your trans boy or trans girl. So the case out
Speaker 7: of Tennessee asks whether it's constitutional for states to ban
Speaker 7: healthcare in this particular way, and it does so not
Speaker 7: out of you know, is this upholding trans rights or not.
Speaker 7: It does so with sort of a neutral valance, which
Speaker 7: is under the protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment. Is
Speaker 7: it okay to ban the same kinds of healthcare provision
Speaker 7: for trans kids that cisgender kids get? No, no problem.
Speaker 7: So is it okay to ban parmone therapy for only
Speaker 7: for trans kids but not for cisgender kids. And that's
Speaker 7: going to be, I think a really interesting case and
Speaker 7: I'll be watching especially just as Core such because he
Speaker 7: sort of broke type a few years ago in another
Speaker 7: case involving trans rights and said that if you're discriminated
Speaker 7: against in the workplace based on your gender identity, that's
Speaker 7: illegal under the Civil Rights Act because that's under discrimination
Speaker 7: and you can analyze it that way. We'll see if
Speaker 7: he has a way of thinking differently about this healthcare case.
Speaker 7: But that's that's I think the biggest blockbuster out there.
Speaker 7: There are some interesting ones also about involving the EPA
Speaker 7: that have already been argued and rules that they issue
Speaker 7: in terms of waste water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us so important. Keep your eyes on
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court.
Speaker 7: I will and you're welcome all those times, and I'd
Speaker 7: be happy to come back. Thanks very much, Molly.
Speaker 2: No second Jesse Cannon by jun Fast One jd Vance
Speaker 2: dropped by The Joe Rogan Show for a three and
Speaker 2: a half hour talk with mister Rogan. He told the
Speaker 2: story of what he supposedly did when he heard that
Speaker 2: Trump had been shot out in Butler, Pennsylvania. I actually
Speaker 2: said it to the Didn't Happen of the Year Awards,
Speaker 2: a Twitter award show where they discuss who made up
Speaker 2: the biggest lie on the app each year.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very funny thing they do every year.
Speaker 2: The intries are absolutely hilarious because it's all people saying
Speaker 2: things that one didn't happen, like standing ovations and Walmarts
Speaker 2: for your baga hat. Yeah, so what are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: He just had trouble articulating things, right? What else did
Speaker 1: he do?
Speaker 2: He really like Joe Rogan did not give him hard questions.
Speaker 2: There'd be so many times he would just like drop
Speaker 2: the ball. But he claimed that he was at a
Speaker 2: Midi golf course and always thought was that Trump gotsche
Speaker 2: he did. He claims he didn't see him get back up,
Speaker 2: which uh huh, and uh that he went home and
Speaker 2: loaded all his guns and stood in the door like
Speaker 2: a quote unquote century.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 1: I don't know this fucking guy. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: one of the biggest lies is that jd. Vance is
Speaker 1: good at this. I don't think he's that good at this.
Speaker 1: He does all of these questions where he yells at
Speaker 1: journalists for asking him questions, and then he yells at
Speaker 1: them some more. The point is he's way more unfavorable
Speaker 1: than he is favorable. Jd. Vance. His unfavorability is about
Speaker 1: forty four point eight. He has been just wildly unpopular.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I mean, I guess they think
Speaker 1: he's very good at this because he does a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews, but there were certainly quite a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence to support the idea that he's really just not
Speaker 1: that great at this. That's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday
Speaker 1: to hear the best minds and politics make sense. Of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send
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Speaker 1: for listening.