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Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Question.
Speaker 1: Wow twenty twenty four. What a year it's been. It's
Speaker 1: wrapping up and so is this podcast. At least this
Speaker 1: season of Next Question. To mark the end of this road,
Speaker 1: we gathered some of the brightest observers of politics, from
Speaker 1: journalists to consultants, from sociologists to former ambassadors, and looking
Speaker 1: back on all the conversations I had, there is a
Speaker 1: clear through line. We're in for an unpredictable, possibly perilous,
Speaker 1: and democracy shaking four years. There are some bright spots though,
Speaker 1: some ways forward, and we'll get to that too, But
Speaker 1: first let's revisit early November twenty twenty four, the day
Speaker 1: after Donald Trump was elected for a second time. I
Speaker 1: spoke with my good friend and former podcast buddy Brian Goldsmith.
Speaker 1: With Kamala Harris's defeat fresh on our minds, we tried
Speaker 1: to make sense of exactly.
Speaker 2: What happened. Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You
Speaker 2: had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating.
Speaker 2: You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying
Speaker 2: we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent
Speaker 2: more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly
Speaker 2: dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power,
Speaker 2: so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist
Speaker 2: would tell you that that is the most normal thing
Speaker 2: in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the
Speaker 2: least normal candidate, imaginable and given and all of the
Speaker 2: as he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into
Speaker 2: this race and now into the White House. I think
Speaker 2: a lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would
Speaker 2: be different, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Do you think that a lot of pundits and political
Speaker 1: experts such as yourself, Ryan thought that again his lunacy
Speaker 1: would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Speaker 2: Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the
Speaker 2: load was just too much for voters to bear at
Speaker 2: a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We saw a version of this in North Carolina, where
Speaker 2: people wanted to vote for change. The state voted Republican
Speaker 2: for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh Stein
Speaker 2: as governor by a pretty big margin because well, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, in fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson,
Speaker 1: if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a
Speaker 1: black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex,
Speaker 1: you know, that was part of his choice in pornography.
Speaker 2: Well that's just an example of the load is too
Speaker 2: much to bear. So the load was too much for
Speaker 2: voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought,
Speaker 2: just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on
Speaker 2: his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on
Speaker 2: his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi,
Speaker 2: but he did try to overturn a free and fair
Speaker 2: election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato, Patato.
Speaker 1: Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you just look at the last ten
Speaker 1: days of the campaign, and we've talked about this, Brian,
Speaker 1: it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd
Speaker 1: wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen
Speaker 1: the net, to get any voter he could, and he
Speaker 1: just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I
Speaker 1: can say anything and there are no repercussions. Unhinged kind
Speaker 1: of weird behavior from filating. I never knew that was
Speaker 1: the verb. By the way, I learned something this week
Speaker 1: filating a microphone. And you know, making all these disgusting,
Speaker 1: gross comments called us.
Speaker 2: Should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash,
Speaker 1: you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of
Speaker 2: illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step
Speaker 2: back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad
Speaker 2: dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had
Speaker 2: run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself
Speaker 2: as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap,
Speaker 2: a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that,
Speaker 2: just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
Speaker 2: of the Trump factor. And what I think we know
Speaker 2: pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political
Speaker 2: animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no
Speaker 2: matter what he says or does and brings out a
Speaker 2: pretty big coalition to the polls.
Speaker 4: No matter what.
Speaker 2: Now, his coalition this time is actually pretty different than
Speaker 2: his coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all
Speaker 2: of that. But to your original point, it was a
Speaker 2: broad based victory in the Swing States. It was a
Speaker 2: series of narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing states.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't winning the Swing States by five or
Speaker 2: ten points. He was winning them by one or two points.
Speaker 2: He had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't
Speaker 2: actually being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves,
Speaker 2: but the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
Speaker 1: A unique political animal. Wow, that's really an understatement. It
Speaker 1: seemed to me that change beat out any personality issues
Speaker 1: Trump might have exhibited. His fans just didn't care. And
Speaker 1: there's a certain authenticity to the man that seems to
Speaker 1: be appealing to a lot of his supporters. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget what he said when he was running the first time,
Speaker 1: I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter,
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. I think it's really true.
Speaker 1: Nothing he said, nothing he did or failed to do,
Speaker 1: seemed to impact voters. They just love the guy and
Speaker 1: some of those coalitions Brian mentioned well, Trump did increase
Speaker 1: his support among black and Latino men, young men, and
Speaker 1: with urban and world voters. Perhaps no issue other than
Speaker 1: inflation loomed larger in this election than immigration and Trump's
Speaker 1: vision on how to handle the border crisis. I spoke
Speaker 1: to MSNBC's Jen Soak about how we got to the
Speaker 1: point where mass deportations actually resonated with so many Americans.
Speaker 1: So who's to blame?
Speaker 5: Sort of everybody's at fault in Washington in some ways
Speaker 5: because immigration is such a politically charged issue that people
Speaker 5: are unwilling to compromise on it and have real negotiations
Speaker 5: and discussions about it. I mean, Biden proposed an immigration
Speaker 5: bill that included increased border security and a more humane
Speaker 5: asylum processing the first day, right, Right, No one would
Speaker 5: discuss it, No one would come to the White House
Speaker 5: and meet with him about it. I'm not saying that
Speaker 5: he's blameless. I'm just saying like that, right, tells you
Speaker 5: a lot about politics.
Speaker 1: Often brought that up during the campaign.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that is true. What is also true is that
Speaker 5: because the COVID restrictions were in place for so long
Speaker 5: that was in many ways artificially keeping the numbers lower
Speaker 5: until they were flipped back. And then during that period
Speaker 5: of time there was the negotiation with Mexico about re
Speaker 5: implementing the Remain in Mexico program, which was there was
Speaker 5: a lot of criticism of and a lot of people
Speaker 5: who hated that, especially from the left. So I think
Speaker 5: there was a delayed reaction to where clearly the country
Speaker 5: was moving on immigration by I actually not really Joe Biden,
Speaker 5: but a lot of people in the system and the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party within the caucuses, and it wasn't very clear
Speaker 5: to me that it had moved massively until that bipartisan
Speaker 5: border bill. So yes, hindsight's always twenty twenty. But I
Speaker 5: think looking now, there are aspects of how the party
Speaker 5: should proceed from here, which I think this election should
Speaker 5: be partly informative about, including acknowledging that the border and
Speaker 5: having a secure border is a part of what the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party messaging needs to be proactively, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, though, I think we should point
Speaker 1: out how Donald Trump and the party exploited the immigration
Speaker 1: issue with false information about the crimes that were committed
Speaker 1: and really misrepresented the fact that actually immigrants commit fewer
Speaker 1: crimes than native foreign citizens in this country. But I
Speaker 1: think it just got so twisted and exploited, and the
Speaker 1: fear and the fentanyl and all that stuff. I think
Speaker 1: it got mixed up in one big bowl and made
Speaker 1: people just terrified, and to the point where for a
Speaker 1: lot of Americans, rounding up people and having a mass
Speaker 1: deportation of thirteen million immigrants sounded like a good idea.
Speaker 1: Jen brings up I think an excellent point that's undeniable
Speaker 1: in this era of modern American politics, and that, of course,
Speaker 1: is misinformation. Trump's communication strategy has relied heavily on stirring
Speaker 1: up fear of immigrants, of trans people, of liberals, of
Speaker 1: high inflation, even as our economy was recovering. How can
Speaker 1: we actually break through the fear to have real conversations
Speaker 1: with people we disagree with to come up with some
Speaker 1: actual solutions. I spoke with Megan McCain about that, someone
Speaker 1: who really doesn't see the world the same way I do.
Speaker 1: But first I asked her about the stickiness of Trump's
Speaker 1: message and why it was so effective.
Speaker 7: One of the smartest things he's ever said is they're
Speaker 7: not after me either, after you I'm just in the way,
Speaker 7: And I think there's just a feeling of a lot
Speaker 7: of people in the country who you know, are living
Speaker 7: paycheck to paycheck, who have been screaming at the top
Speaker 7: of their lungs that inflation's killing them. I have a
Speaker 7: friend in my life who couldn't go on a summer
Speaker 7: vacation this summer because of the amount of money she
Speaker 7: was paying extra and gas and inflation and interest rates
Speaker 7: on her I believe health insurance, can't remember a health
Speaker 7: or car insurance, and her husband's gainfully employed. So I
Speaker 7: think there was just a feeling that people are not
Speaker 7: being heard, the needs of the lower middle class are
Speaker 7: not being addressed, and that Trump continues to say I'm
Speaker 7: an outsider, I am going to fight for you, and
Speaker 7: people believed it. And I just think there's been a
Speaker 7: lot of mistakes done along the way, but from Democrats
Speaker 7: running for office and governing in a world they want
Speaker 7: to see exist and not the one that actually exists.
Speaker 7: So I think for a lot of people, as James
Speaker 7: Carville says, it's just the economy stupid and they just
Speaker 7: want change. I also think people are like very scared
Speaker 7: about the border and very scared about a lot of
Speaker 7: these culture war issues and just seeing a world changing
Speaker 7: in a way that they don't like. And they've sort
Speaker 7: of come to terms with the fact that the person
Speaker 7: who's going to change it comes in this like really
Speaker 7: really corrupt and character flawed package.
Speaker 1: How can we have more conversations like this? How can
Speaker 1: we have two people who disagree on a lot of issues,
Speaker 1: and how we approach and tackle some of the thorniest
Speaker 1: problems in our country and have civil, respectful conversations. How
Speaker 1: can we encourage other people to do this?
Speaker 7: Megan, I mean, I always lead with love in every
Speaker 7: part of my life that I'm capable of. I'm not perfect,
Speaker 7: and I certainly have still have a timber and I
Speaker 7: can still be like whatever. But I think age and
Speaker 7: having kids is I just want to have be in
Speaker 7: a world that I want my kids to be in,
Speaker 7: and this level of division is not tolerable or sustainable.
Speaker 7: And I think I'm open to I will talk to
Speaker 7: anyone as long as it's respectful. I will talk to
Speaker 7: anyone on any side, as long as I know that
Speaker 7: there's not going to be screaming and name calling or
Speaker 7: anything like that. And I just think you can only
Speaker 7: lead by example and control how you behave speak. And
Speaker 7: I also think we should reward platforms that have bipartisan
Speaker 7: conversations right in this moment. It's actually what I'm the
Speaker 7: most interested in listening to across the board. I'm interested
Speaker 7: in both sides coming together and discussing where we're at.
Speaker 7: And I think the reflection of how bad the ratings
Speaker 7: are on MSNBC and CNN right now show that maybe
Speaker 7: there's an appetite for more interesting converse, nuanced conversations.
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Speaker 1: start making progress today. So will Trump deliver on his
Speaker 1: campaign promises? I mean, he's already walked back as pledged
Speaker 1: to lower prices at the grocery store. So will his
Speaker 1: supporters ultimately feel betrayed?
Speaker 8: Now?
Speaker 1: By the way, they're not a monolith, as we mentioned
Speaker 1: Trump voters represent a broad swath of the country. If
Speaker 1: you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Brian Stephenson. And to have some
Speaker 1: of those nuanced conversations that Megan mentioned, you have to
Speaker 1: be proximant. He would say, you have to get out
Speaker 1: of your bubble and be exposed to people who live
Speaker 1: differently and may think differently. I had a fascinating conversation
Speaker 1: with someone who did just that. Sociologist Arley Hoakeshield, who
Speaker 1: teaches at Berkeley, of all liberal places, spend time in
Speaker 1: southern Louisiana for her first book, Strangers in their Own Land,
Speaker 1: and then in one of the poorest counties in the
Speaker 1: country in Kentucky for her second book, called Stolen Pride.
Speaker 1: Her goal was to better understand what was motivating a
Speaker 1: big segment of American voters.
Speaker 9: If we go back two decades and we look at
Speaker 9: three decades, look at nafta offshoring automation that has created
Speaker 9: the haves and the have nots of globalization, and so
Speaker 9: the haves who live in cities who have bas for
Speaker 9: whom new opportunities have opened up, aren't looking at the
Speaker 9: situation of loss. It's not just deprivation, but loss of
Speaker 9: actually the white blue collar class. So they feeling frightened
Speaker 9: them and a sense of loss. So they have turned
Speaker 9: to a charismatic figure who works through emotions. And that's
Speaker 9: that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that Donald
Speaker 9: Trump has I think actually as a person, he's experienced
Speaker 9: shame and very harsh father and that would be neither
Speaker 9: here nor there, except that it's given him enormous insight
Speaker 9: into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot of
Speaker 9: blue collar men who feel in free fall have felt.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate that Arley doesn't just drop into these communities.
Speaker 1: She really embeds in these different places and gains people's trusts,
Speaker 1: so they really open up to her about their life experiences.
Speaker 1: And that's something I talk with Jessica Tarlov about. She's
Speaker 1: the lone Democrat on the most popular show on Fox News,
Speaker 1: it's The Five, and she's learned that her co hosts
Speaker 1: who disagree with her passionately most things, have come to
Speaker 1: their views.
Speaker 6: Honestly, I'm a proud establishment Democrat, very moderate by the
Speaker 6: party's standards, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, type of Democrat,
Speaker 6: not more AOC Bernie Sanders Mold And I think that
Speaker 6: that works better with the bipartisan conversation, because I mean,
Speaker 6: if you want to have a food fight, and you
Speaker 6: remember what cable news was like around once Trump announced,
Speaker 6: and like every night on CNN, it was like Anna
Speaker 6: Navarro losing her mind, right, and Kaylee Mcanenniy was on
Speaker 6: in those days, and Anderson Cooper is just kind of
Speaker 6: sitting in the middle petrified, right like that, That's what
Speaker 6: it was like. But you could have a more thoughtful conversation,
Speaker 6: and I found myself being able to do that more
Speaker 6: or less. And it always is embedded, at least for
Speaker 6: me coming from a place of understanding that I'm talking
Speaker 6: to people who generally come by their beliefs honestly. And
Speaker 6: I think that too many people suppose that folks who
Speaker 6: they don't agree with don't actually believe the things that
Speaker 6: they're saying. But most of the time they do, and
Speaker 6: a lot of that is due to circumstances how they
Speaker 6: grow up. Like I grew up here in New York City,
Speaker 6: I have had a charmed life. I know where my
Speaker 6: liberal politics come from and what my lived experience has
Speaker 6: been and going to work at a place like Fox,
Speaker 6: I now have people in my orbit who have a
Speaker 6: completely different set of backgrounds who when they talk about
Speaker 6: how they feel about the Second Amendment that comes from
Speaker 6: a place of growing up with guns and having hunters
Speaker 6: in their families, or when they talk about, you know,
Speaker 6: probably the toughest issue that I ever have to discuss
Speaker 6: on air being pro life or bringing pro choice, especially
Speaker 6: in the wake of the Dobs decision, that a lot
Speaker 6: of people's beliefs on that is rooted in their religiosity.
Speaker 6: Where I look at it as a policy issue and
Speaker 6: a scientific issue, and they're telling me about.
Speaker 1: It so a personal liberty issue.
Speaker 6: All of the things that we think about it versus
Speaker 6: this is what I was taught in Sunday School, this
Speaker 6: is what I know. I grew up in, meshed in
Speaker 6: an environment that feels really differently to that.
Speaker 1: That broader understanding of where people's beliefs actually come from,
Speaker 1: whether it's rooted in their upbringing, lived experiences, religious teachings,
Speaker 1: or culture, really shapes how we approach difficult conversations. And
Speaker 1: speaking of challenging topics, one area that has sparked significant
Speaker 1: debate in recent years is education, particularly around claims of
Speaker 1: so called woke indoctrination in schools. From critical race theory
Speaker 1: to gender identity, these topics have become political flash points.
Speaker 1: The problem is most of the arguments have no basis
Speaker 1: in truth. Remember the pet eating Haitian immigrants in Ohio,
Speaker 1: the claim that your son goes to school as a
Speaker 1: bod and comes home as a girl, or that infamous
Speaker 1: pedophile ring in the basement of the dcpiece of parlor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not true. I spoke with Miguel Cardona, the outgoing US
Speaker 1: Secretary of Education, about how these issues have reached a
Speaker 1: boiling point in our political discourse. But I wondered, have
Speaker 1: they really taken over our nation's schools. You mentioned political ideology,
Speaker 1: and I think there is also an undercurrent of anger
Speaker 1: that some voters apparently feel that somehow students are being
Speaker 1: indoctrinated with sort of a woke ideology, whether it's critical
Speaker 1: race theory or gender identity issues. And I'm curious if
Speaker 1: you could speak to that and sure separate fact from
Speaker 1: fiction and what's going on in classrooms across the country.
Speaker 8: You know those campaign strategies, Katie, I'm gonna be very
Speaker 8: frank with you. I have less say on what my
Speaker 8: children learn in the classroom now than I did when
Speaker 8: I was a classroom teacher. Every position I've had before
Speaker 8: Secretary of Education, I've had more authority to control the
Speaker 8: curriculum than I do now. So that's all misinformation, and
Speaker 8: I think it was done again an attempt to create
Speaker 8: dissonance and and really get people to believe something that's
Speaker 8: not accurate. So a lot of it was misinformation intended
Speaker 8: to create division in our in our schools. I do
Speaker 8: not control curriculum, you know. In terms of indoctrination, I
Speaker 8: think the closest thing we've seen to that is we
Speaker 8: have some states, you know, buying Bibles for every student
Speaker 8: in their school. I mean, and I'm a Christian, I'm
Speaker 8: I'm a God fearing man. I you know, was raised
Speaker 8: Christian and still practice and have strong faith. Faith has
Speaker 8: really driven me so much. And I don't talk a
Speaker 8: lot about it, but I know that I'm following God's
Speaker 8: plan and it's not my plan. I really can get
Speaker 8: into that, but I do believe in the separation of
Speaker 8: a church and state. So when I see those who
Speaker 8: are saying that we're indoctrinating students doing some of the
Speaker 8: things that really align with indoctrination. I get baffled, you know,
Speaker 8: but I never bet against America's schools and America's educators
Speaker 8: and parents to really separate fact from fiction and see
Speaker 8: what's happening. There is no indoctrination there. You know, there's
Speaker 8: a lot of this. I was at a at an
Speaker 8: event recently and I saw a friend of mine from
Speaker 8: high school. True story. He told me that his mother
Speaker 8: believed when it was said that, you know, you send
Speaker 8: your kid to school as a boy and then comes
Speaker 8: back three days later as a girl, and they changed
Speaker 8: them and they didn't know why she believed that. And
Speaker 8: this person that was telling me that said, you got
Speaker 8: to talk to my mom. I don't know how how
Speaker 8: the hell she believes that that's that's wild, But yet
Speaker 8: she believes it because she hears it being said. And
Speaker 8: that to me, is more of a political strategy than
Speaker 8: it is talking about education policy. And it was done
Speaker 8: to get people to believe what they hear. It's sad
Speaker 8: that it's gotten to that point of such misinformation direct
Speaker 8: lives being shared openly. There was a time where no
Speaker 8: party would ever stoop to that level of spreading lies
Speaker 8: just to get people to believe you so that you
Speaker 8: could vote a certain way. You know, I have confidence
Speaker 8: that our local educators and our local parents work well
Speaker 8: together and they're going to continue to evolve education to
Speaker 8: make sure that our students needs are being met. But
Speaker 8: it really it's sad in me how how much misinformation
Speaker 8: was being spread with the intention of dividing our communities
Speaker 8: for a vote.
Speaker 1: Well, when it comes to sort of educating kids about
Speaker 1: gender identity, are there certain guidelines or is it decided
Speaker 1: at the state and local level.
Speaker 8: Local level, I have not had any conversations in my
Speaker 8: time as Secretary of Education of how to teach any
Speaker 8: of that. As a matter of fact, I have not
Speaker 8: even weighed in on that my personal beliefs or my
Speaker 8: beliefs as a lifelong educator with degrees in education. Has
Speaker 8: never been heard on an airwave about how to teach that.
Speaker 1: The misinformation Secretary Cardona refers to is of course spread
Speaker 1: online via social media, and it's a huge problem that
Speaker 1: I think is behind our hardened positions and the polarization
Speaker 1: in this country that seems to be getting worse every day,
Speaker 1: polarization that is reinforced by our intensely partisan media landscape.
Speaker 1: Michael Tamaski, the editor of the New Republic, believes the
Speaker 1: conservative side is winning. He's covered the growing influence of
Speaker 1: the right wing media industrial complex, and I asked him
Speaker 1: about his diagnosis of where we are and how we
Speaker 1: got there. Can I quote your article? If they're done,
Speaker 1: you're in fantasy land. They're not happy with the rough parody,
Speaker 1: the slight advantage they have. Now they want media domination.
Speaker 1: Sinclair bought the once glorious Baltimore's son. Don't think they'll
Speaker 1: stop there. I predict Sinclair or News Corp. Will own
Speaker 1: the Washington Post one day, maybe sooner than we think.
Speaker 1: So I guess the question, Michael, is what can be
Speaker 1: done about this?
Speaker 10: Well, Liberals have to make a concerted effort, as Republicans
Speaker 10: did twenty and thirty years ago, to build their own media.
Speaker 10: And it has to be smart, it has to be good,
Speaker 10: it has to entertain, it has to get an audience.
Speaker 10: All those burdens will will apply to it, so you know,
Speaker 10: it has to be good and succeed. But they just
Speaker 10: have to start doing something about this. And they have
Speaker 10: to try to reach into Middle America and talk to
Speaker 10: people there because there are so many just vast swaths
Speaker 10: of the country where the idea of liberalism and the
Speaker 10: name of the Democratic Party are just dirt. And you know,
Speaker 10: I cited also in the piece an example, the voters
Speaker 10: of Missouri voted to protect abortion rights on one ballot initiative,
Speaker 10: and they voted for paid family leave in a higher
Speaker 10: minimum wage, and always they voted for these very democratic
Speaker 10: liberal things, right, and by reasonably comfortable margins on those
Speaker 10: But would they They wouldn't elect a Democrat in a
Speaker 10: million years.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 10: The Democratic candidate for Senate, Lucas Kons who ran against
Speaker 10: Josh Holly, ran a good race, had money won, the
Speaker 10: debate didn't come within fourteen fifteen points, So you know,
Speaker 10: work has to be done, especially in those parts of
Speaker 10: the country where Democrats used to win. Wasn't that long
Speaker 10: ago that there was a Democratic senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill,
Speaker 10: or Democratic senators from Iowa, even Arkansas, But it just
Speaker 10: seems inconceivable now. So the party needs to rebuild in
Speaker 10: those places. And part of that story is media rebuilding.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is that the Liberals or Democrats
Speaker 1: need to develop their own network, their own vast network
Speaker 1: of media entities. Does that mean sort of news that
Speaker 1: reported just the facts, that wasn't based in opinion, that
Speaker 1: let people know what was going on and tried to
Speaker 1: give context, is just a thing of the past.
Speaker 10: No, I don't think so. I think the facts. You're
Speaker 10: kind of on liberalism side. That's one thing. I mean,
Speaker 10: you know, and most people support a lot of things
Speaker 10: that liberals are for. Most people support a higher minimum wage,
Speaker 10: as that Missouri vote shows. Most people support paid family leave,
Speaker 10: Most people support a tax increases for the wealthy. You
Speaker 10: go down these issues in child tax credit, most people
Speaker 10: are for these things. So I don't think it means
Speaker 10: the end of It means the end of a certain
Speaker 10: kind of neutrality, but that neutrality has been disrobed. I
Speaker 10: think over the last twenty years. It's not enough to
Speaker 10: say this side says this, and this side says that,
Speaker 10: and we won't referee it. That hasn't worked. That hasn't worked.
Speaker 10: It means just refereeing it and telling people the truth,
Speaker 10: putting truth ahead of fairness. That's what I always say, Katie.
Speaker 10: There are these two values of the media, as you know,
Speaker 10: that are traditional values to be fair and represent both
Speaker 10: points of view or all points of view, but also
Speaker 10: to be truthful and tell the truth I think, and
Speaker 10: this is truth. I'm sad to say of The New
Speaker 10: York Times. In many cases, although the New York Times
Speaker 10: remains a great newspaper and does tons of great reporting,
Speaker 10: they sometimes when those two values clash, they sometimes put
Speaker 10: fairness ahead of proof. We've got to put truth ahead
Speaker 10: of fairness.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
Speaker 1: breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
Speaker 1: wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Speaker 1: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Truth
Speaker 1: ahead of fairness makes sense, right. Unfortunately, no one seems
Speaker 1: to agree on facts, and they're in life the rub. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Trump transition is well underway, and it's been kind
Speaker 1: of unhinged. Remember when Matt Gates was going to be
Speaker 1: Attorney General. Well, Gates might have been the craziest pick,
Speaker 1: but many of the folks Trump is selected for his
Speaker 1: cabinet are raising more than a few eyebrows. His supporters
Speaker 1: want him to really drain the swamp this time and
Speaker 1: disrupt the bureaucratic status quo. But his detractors compare this
Speaker 1: crew to the one you might find at the Star
Speaker 1: Wars CANTEENA. I asked David from a conservative writer from
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, to weigh in on how this transition differs
Speaker 1: from previous ones. So let's talk about cash fatal David.
Speaker 1: He is a MAGA loyalist to his core right.
Speaker 4: So at THEI directors have always been since the Darator
Speaker 4: who days people of broad and widely accepted reputation for
Speaker 4: political neutral people who sometimes didn't even vote and always
Speaker 4: did things presidents didn't like. And that was a job
Speaker 4: many many presidents and many FBI directors refused even to
Speaker 4: meet one another. I worked in a White House, and
Speaker 4: if you had anything you want to know from the FBI,
Speaker 4: including the President is going to decorate an FBI officer,
Speaker 4: and we need to know the names of the officer's
Speaker 4: children and make sure they're pronouncement spelled correctly so we
Speaker 4: can recognize them with the speech. If I wanted to say,
Speaker 4: what are the names of this hero's children? I went
Speaker 4: to the White House Council's office and said, would you
Speaker 4: make the call to the FBI to ask them the
Speaker 4: name of the hero's children so we can because I
Speaker 4: can't talk to them. I would be fired and or
Speaker 4: worse if I placed a direct call the FBI.
Speaker 1: There is no any any signal, event propriety, or any
Speaker 1: kind of pressure from the Executive Office to the FBI.
Speaker 1: Was absolutely for Boden, for.
Speaker 4: Boten, and that's how it's always always been. And now
Speaker 4: you're going to point this person who is one of
Speaker 4: these Watergate characters who will do anything for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: You commit and you know, when he was serving in
Speaker 4: the last year of the Trump administration as chief of
Speaker 4: staff in the Defense Department, the chairman of the Joint
Speaker 4: Chief said, jail is an uncomfortable place. So if you're
Speaker 4: thinking about doing something that will get you sent to jail,
Speaker 4: don't do. He had to caution people, do not break
Speaker 4: the law for Trump when he was working as a
Speaker 4: staffer in DoD Now he's offered for the head of
Speaker 4: the FBI. I think you can group the Trump appointments
Speaker 4: into three main categories. They're the people who you know,
Speaker 4: maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but their resume
Speaker 4: sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1: Right Marco for example.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and maybe you have a high opinion of him,
Speaker 4: maybe have a low opinion. But it's not crazy that
Speaker 4: the senior Senator who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Speaker 4: would become Secretary of State. Maybe he'll be a weak one,
Speaker 4: but he won't be an outlandish one. Then you have
Speaker 4: the people who where there's a serious personality problem of
Speaker 4: some kind or another, but where their ability to do
Speaker 4: harm is maybe limited, like Pete Heeksach. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: he's a crackpot, He's an ideological crank. His record with
Speaker 4: women is horrifying. His own mother thought so. But my
Speaker 4: guess is that Pete Hegsead just doesn't have the mental
Speaker 4: horsepower and the knowledge of the building and the Pentagon
Speaker 4: is organized in a way I don't know how much
Speaker 4: harm he's really going to be able to do. Then
Speaker 4: you have the Tulsa Gabbards and the cash Betels, who
Speaker 4: are going to smaller organize it where the boss is
Speaker 4: more powerful, and who have who are not just strange personalities,
Speaker 4: but are in the grip of really un American ideas,
Speaker 4: and they can do a lot of damage.
Speaker 1: Trump's nominees could in fact do a lot of damage
Speaker 1: as norms and institutions continue to be challenged. What will
Speaker 1: that mean for our country going forward? Democratic Senator Chris
Speaker 1: Murphy Ofnnecticut told me he's worried.
Speaker 3: So what I am really concerned is that we lose
Speaker 3: the rule of law. That's what happens in democracies that
Speaker 3: stop being democracies all of a sudden. You can't rely
Speaker 3: on a fair trial, you can't rely on a fair prosecution.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, You get favors and immunity if
Speaker 3: you are a political supporter of the person in power
Speaker 3: and you are specifically targeted, often very unfairly. If you
Speaker 3: are political opposition, you still have elections, right, but they
Speaker 3: don't matter as much because the opposition just disappears because
Speaker 3: most people, when faced with the threat of persecution or prosecution,
Speaker 3: decide to just lower their voice, recede into the background.
Speaker 3: So I am most worried about Pambondi and Cash Pattel,
Speaker 3: who are being picked because they are willing to turn
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice into a witch hunt operation for
Speaker 3: Trump's political opposition.
Speaker 4: And you already see.
Speaker 3: What's happening in the business right now. So the mega
Speaker 3: billionaires in this country who run the information system have
Speaker 3: already telegraphed that they are not willing to fight. Comcast
Speaker 3: has announced they're selling MSNBC they're getting out of the
Speaker 3: business of criticizing Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos did not make
Speaker 3: an endorsement in this last election, signaling that he does
Speaker 3: not want to fight either. Twitter is being run out
Speaker 3: of the Whitehouse right now. So you see signaling from
Speaker 3: very powerful people in this country that they do not
Speaker 3: want to criticize Donald Trump's they want to protect their billions.
Speaker 3: And you see a Department of Justice is about to
Speaker 3: be taken over by a crowd that may actually start
Speaker 3: locking up or threatening to lock up people in this
Speaker 3: country who try to oppose Donald Trump. That's the end
Speaker 3: of democracy.
Speaker 1: But he also says, in order to fight back, Democrats
Speaker 1: have some work to do. Let's talk about the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: It's been over a month since the election, and the
Speaker 1: inauguration is not too far away. Half of you seen
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party other than looking at itself and wondering
Speaker 1: where it went wrong? Change in the weeks since early November.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm deeply worried because I haven't seen the kind
Speaker 3: of introspection that I would have hoped. I think that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of folks who look at the race
Speaker 3: and say, well, Trump, you know, really didn't even get
Speaker 3: fifty percent it wasn't a landslide. We almost won the
Speaker 3: House of Representatives. We just need some minor adjustments. I
Speaker 3: don't look at it that way. I think we need
Speaker 3: to recognize how unbelievable it is that we keep losing
Speaker 3: to somebody as reckless as Donald Trump, a felon, somebody
Speaker 3: who openly supported an insurrection. Again, it's the United States government.
Speaker 3: We should not be satisfied to lose to somebody like
Speaker 3: that by such a slim margin.
Speaker 4: I also think it is morally.
Speaker 3: Unsustainable for our party to stand up and say we're
Speaker 3: the party of poor people, and poor people don't want
Speaker 3: to vote for us. Like, how do you sort of
Speaker 3: wake up every morning and say, well, we're the party
Speaker 3: of poor people, but poor people don't like us. We're
Speaker 3: not listening to the people we claim to represent. And
Speaker 3: even if you can sort of minimize the political jeopardy
Speaker 3: that we're in after this election, there's there's a moral
Speaker 3: jeopardy we're in as a movement that will just exacerbate
Speaker 3: and get worse if we don't look at square in
Speaker 3: the face. So I think the answer to your question case,
Speaker 3: I haven't seen a lot of things changing the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party yet I'm arguing for some major change. Maybe we
Speaker 3: just needed a month or so to lick.
Speaker 4: Our wounds, but like we got to get moving well.
Speaker 1: You wrote a memo to fellow Democrats a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks after the election, and you talked about winning back
Speaker 1: low income voters. You believe the key to doing that
Speaker 1: is taking on corporate greed. But with all key respects,
Speaker 1: Senator Murphy, hasn't the Democratic Party been talking about corporate
Speaker 1: greed and nauseum for decades?
Speaker 3: I don't, not in the way that translates to ordinary
Speaker 3: average voters. I mean, frankly, I think the Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: along with the Republican Party, has presided over an economy
Speaker 3: for the last forty years that has done really, really
Speaker 3: well for folks at the very top of the income threshold.
Speaker 3: I mean, people sort of look at the economy that
Speaker 3: Democrats constructed and it looks like it did really well
Speaker 3: for very, very rich people. And they look at who
Speaker 3: our coalition is, increasingly upper income individuals, and it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like we're sincere. When we talk about corporate power,
Speaker 3: we also talk about it generally. We don't necessarily talk
Speaker 3: about it specifically. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they will take
Speaker 3: on specific company specific CEOs. But people notice when ninety
Speaker 3: percent of Democrats when they talk about corporate greed don't
Speaker 3: actually name anybody, that doesn't sound real or sincere. So
Speaker 3: I don't think people really believe that we want to
Speaker 3: deconstruct concentrated power. And I think that you saw you
Speaker 3: saw the hesitancy of the Democratic Party to make that
Speaker 3: a ten poll. In the end of this last election.
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of really smart people, but
Speaker 1: I always turned to Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican campaign
Speaker 1: advisor who is no longer a Republican by the way,
Speaker 1: for his thirty thousand foot view of where we are
Speaker 1: in our nation's broader history.
Speaker 11: All I can say in this moment for any American,
Speaker 11: our country's going to outlive all all of us. We'll
Speaker 11: never see the whole. We're never gonna get to see
Speaker 11: the ending. We just won't, right. And I think this
Speaker 11: is like so deeply important to appreciate in the context
Speaker 11: of there are things bigger than us, and as an American,
Speaker 11: there is nothing bigger than us than the United States.
Speaker 11: And in our story, this chapter of it, I think
Speaker 11: it's exciting to be part of it, and to oppose
Speaker 11: something that I think is deeply terrible because on the
Speaker 11: other side of it is something a lot better. That's
Speaker 11: the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by the
Speaker 11: worst president in American history until Trump became president, and
Speaker 11: so I think Trump is going to be a disaster disaster,
Speaker 11: but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible
Speaker 11: consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will
Speaker 11: come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge
Speaker 11: from it, a greatness that didn't exist in the moment
Speaker 11: when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
Speaker 11: not shape the events at hand like that. So I
Speaker 11: think in this moment, opposing what is about to come
Speaker 11: is of deep importance, and I'm excited to have a
Speaker 11: small voice in that effort because for me, some people
Speaker 11: are great at sports and some people love music and painting.
Speaker 11: This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
Speaker 11: to me outside of my family than the country. And
Speaker 11: what that's come to mean to me over recent years
Speaker 11: is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning
Speaker 11: a campaign when I was a young man, but about
Speaker 11: the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country.
Speaker 11: That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the
Speaker 11: same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
Speaker 11: the table right now, that question. And I could not
Speaker 11: think of a better thing to do if I got
Speaker 11: a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left,
Speaker 11: than to talk about that right now, because what's been
Speaker 11: handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
Speaker 11: the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred
Speaker 11: and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have
Speaker 11: ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been
Speaker 11: seven hundred million people in all the history of the
Speaker 11: world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able
Speaker 11: to say these words that mean more to me and
Speaker 11: I think mean more to a lot of people in
Speaker 11: the country than any other association in their life.
Speaker 4: And it's this.
Speaker 11: I am an American.
Speaker 1: Everyone here at KCM and specifically next question hopes you
Speaker 1: will all be enjoying a much needed break and that
Speaker 1: you'll be spending the holidays with people you love and
Speaker 1: if you don't always agree with them, meanwhile, we'll see
Speaker 1: you next year. As we continue to try to understand
Speaker 1: and navigate the next four. Happy holidays everyone. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a
Speaker 1: subject you want us to cover, or you want to
Speaker 1: share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
Speaker 1: reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
Speaker 1: Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
Speaker 1: and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Speaker 1: Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
Speaker 1: or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
Speaker 1: go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
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