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 George Santos's campaign has refunded more
Speaker 1: money than it's raised. L By the way, would like
Speaker 1: to add that George Santos tweeted yesterday that Kellyan was
Speaker 1: right about me. Oh I bet she was. And I
Speaker 1: would like to say rent free in Kelly in Conway's head.
Speaker 1: That's where I live. We have a star studded show
Speaker 1: for you today. Congresswoman Mikey Cheryl updates us on the
Speaker 1: chaos in the House as the GOP props up. Congressman
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan Ben We'll talk to the Atlantics and Applebaum
Speaker 1: about the rare good news coming out of Poland's recent election.
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the new podcast,
Speaker 1: Contempt of Court, The Nation's Ellie Mastaal. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Ali, Hey, how are you?
Speaker 1: I am very excited to have you here because I'm
Speaker 1: a super fan, and also because we have these conversations
Speaker 1: and sometimes I think about them months and months later,
Speaker 1: which is usually like I have a brain, like I
Speaker 1: said so, and usually everything just goes right in and out,
Speaker 1: but for you, for some reason, the last time we talked,
Speaker 1: you told me so much stuff that sort of like
Speaker 1: permeated and was kind of going around my brain for
Speaker 1: months and months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of you Ever read the Greek myth
Speaker 2: of Cassandra, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, you feel you're a Cassandra.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bit like I feel like Apollo actually
Speaker 2: an assaulted me and now I am cursed to know exactly
Speaker 2: what the Supreme Court is gonna do, but has some
Speaker 2: difficulty getting, you know, especially the Democrats in Congress and
Speaker 2: running for office, to realize just how terribly screwed we
Speaker 2: are when it comes to the six Conservatives currently ruling
Speaker 2: the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: There are new cases this season, season two of the
Speaker 1: real Supreme Court justices of the Trump administration. I feel
Speaker 1: like the shit they did last season was like almost
Speaker 1: like now they're just taking it a little further.
Speaker 2: Well, the way that I would put it is this,
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court over the past two years has completed
Speaker 2: its generational goals.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, they wanted to end reproductive rights and send women
Speaker 2: back to second class. That is, they've done that. They've
Speaker 2: wanted to end affirmative action and make colleges and universities
Speaker 2: safe for mediocre white children. They've done that.
Speaker 1: Yes, Dianu. As my people say, from.
Speaker 2: Now, we're in the kind of spiking the football portion
Speaker 2: of the thing where they're not doing things that they
Speaker 2: have spent a generation doing, yes, saying that they were
Speaker 2: going to do. Now they're on their stretch goals extra credit.
Speaker 1: So if you're a domestic abuser and want to have
Speaker 1: a weapon, this Supreme Court is for you.
Speaker 2: This is the time for you. One of the biggest
Speaker 2: cases that they will hear later, I believe that scheduled
Speaker 2: for November now. It's called US v. Raheemi. That is
Speaker 2: a case where a person who was under a restraining order.
Speaker 1: Raheemi, not a good guy, not a good husband, and
Speaker 1: had you.
Speaker 2: Know, not only a restraining order for abusing his ex girlfriend,
Speaker 2: but was involved in multiple shootings over the course of
Speaker 2: his criminal career, including I think most hilariously and frighteningly
Speaker 2: shooting is gun into the air at a what a burger. Yes,
Speaker 2: when his credit card was declined.
Speaker 1: This is a person you should give more weapons to.
Speaker 2: Right, So they took his guns away, which makes sense.
Speaker 2: He said no, no, no, no, taking my guns away just
Speaker 2: because I have a domestic violigions training order is a
Speaker 2: violation of my Second Amendment rights. And the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 2: Court of Appeals said, yes, yes it is. And there
Speaker 2: was a concurrence from a judge named James Hoe, who
Speaker 2: is my pick for probably the worst possible person running
Speaker 2: to replace Cli Exladus, where he wrote a concurrence that
Speaker 2: was basically like, yeah, restraining orders, that's women are shrews.
Speaker 2: Just use for training orders to you know, as illegal,
Speaker 2: he said, as a tactical advantage or spurned lovers.
Speaker 1: Is this originalism?
Speaker 2: This is the winning argument? Molly like, I'm laughing because
Speaker 2: if you don't, you just cry cry.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just want you to explain to our listeners
Speaker 1: the thing that they're doing now, which is this idea
Speaker 1: that if the founders did not conceive of it, it
Speaker 1: is not real.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the current Supreme Court president on guns comes
Speaker 2: from ruin the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association,
Speaker 2: which Clarence Thomas decided, you know, right after Dobbs, and
Speaker 2: that says that if you have a gun regulation, it
Speaker 2: must be sourced in a gun regulation that existed at
Speaker 2: the time of the founding. In seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Right, right, we're seventeen eighty seven when women were property
Speaker 1: and right.
Speaker 2: So it's yer old George or Washington. I'm not making
Speaker 2: that up. If General George Washington and his merry band
Speaker 2: didn't come up with the gun regulation, you can't have it.
Speaker 2: If Lynn Manuel Miranda did not rap about it as
Speaker 2: Alexander Hamilton, you cannot have a gun regulation. It is ridiculous,
Speaker 2: right to say, just as many people will point out,
Speaker 2: the simple march of technology suggests that we might need
Speaker 2: different gun regulations than what we needed in seventeen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: where it took you know, ninety eight seconds to reload
Speaker 2: your super shop musket.
Speaker 1: Again, I want to point out, we are laughing because
Speaker 1: it keeps us from crying, because this is absolute and zanitay.
Speaker 2: And that's where we are. And you know, quite frankly,
Speaker 2: if we're if that's the standard, well you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell you something. They were not taking away
Speaker 2: guns from domestic abusers in seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Right, because domestic abuse was kind of just.
Speaker 2: Merit, because domestic abuse was on a crime in seventeen
Speaker 2: eighty ses, we'rever I said this before but let's remember
Speaker 2: mental rape did not become a crime in all fifty
Speaker 2: states until the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it is unfucking believable, and this Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is ready.
Speaker 2: Look, I actually think still think there's a chance that
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court overturns the Fifth Circuit on Rahimi. I
Speaker 2: don't think Raheemi is a completely lost cause yet for
Speaker 2: two reasons. One, the president that you can take guns
Speaker 2: away from domestic abusers is very long standing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so Roberts doesn't like overturning long standing precedents.
Speaker 1: Except when it comes to we're.
Speaker 2: Talking about a woman's toho ha in which case.
Speaker 1: Right, in which it's an open season, then.
Speaker 2: It's open season, right, So that's somewhere. Number two, Remember,
Speaker 2: a domestic violence of restraining order is a legal adjudication.
Speaker 2: It's not a mere allegation. It's not the same as
Speaker 2: an indictment or a charge. The law is not you've
Speaker 2: been indicted, so you can't have a gun. You've had
Speaker 2: a due process right. And so if they're saying that
Speaker 2: after a legal adjudication, you cannot have a fundamental right
Speaker 2: taken away, well, you know what they like to do.
Speaker 2: They like to take fundamental rights away when they are
Speaker 2: voting rights for people who have had legal adjudication against.
Speaker 1: Yes, So let's talk about this. This is like, I
Speaker 1: feel like Republicans' new favorite thing is taking away. It's
Speaker 1: not their new, it's their favorite. It's a time honored
Speaker 1: Republican tradition of taking away the voting rights of people
Speaker 1: who probably aren't going to vote for you, right.
Speaker 2: Because the only way that they can win. Republicans have
Speaker 2: long unders that they can't win in a free and
Speaker 2: fair election, Like if everybody who wants to vote does
Speaker 2: vote and has their vote count it, Republicans can't win.
Speaker 2: They're a minoritarian, sectarian regional party at this point. They
Speaker 2: don't have massive popular appeal and they know that, and
Speaker 2: so one of their key or should they electoral strategies
Speaker 2: is to depress and make it difficult for people who
Speaker 2: don't like them to vote against them. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of a longstanding thing Republican party. What's kind of new
Speaker 2: at the Supreme Corps ish at the Supreme Court is
Speaker 2: there the Spring Court is one hundred percent all in
Speaker 2: on it and is doing things to make it harder
Speaker 2: for basically puts foot on the gas and allowed Republicans
Speaker 2: to jerry mander away minority voting power in any state
Speaker 2: that is controlled by Republicans. So we've already had an
Speaker 2: oral argument in a case brought by the South Carolina
Speaker 2: Chapter of the NAACP about South Carolina's District one. Now,
Speaker 2: according to the Federal District Court, South Carolina's District one
Speaker 2: is an unconstitutional racial jerrymander. They drew the district right
Speaker 2: through the city of Charleston, and they basically took all
Speaker 2: the black people that should have been in District one,
Speaker 2: which right now is Nancy Mace's district.
Speaker 1: The best you'll remember her from wearing a skin tight
Speaker 1: T shirt within a on it for adulterer when she
Speaker 1: was parading through Congress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I only remember her as the person who could
Speaker 2: not get through these spark notes on Nathaniel Hawk authorne
Speaker 2: Scarlet letter right after the first PARAGRAPHIC, that's right, that's
Speaker 2: District one in South Carolina. District six, which is the
Speaker 2: other district that has part of Charleston, is Jim Clyburns DISTC. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is already majority minority. And so what the Republicans
Speaker 2: did is basically take all the remaining black people that
Speaker 2: lived in District one and shoved them into Clyburn's district,
Speaker 2: creating a kind of super black district for Clydeburn and
Speaker 2: creating a very say white district for Nancy Mace.
Speaker 1: Right, well, she needs it, man, because she's not great.
Speaker 2: They said they were not doing this because of the
Speaker 2: race of the voters they were moving. They said they
Speaker 2: were doing a partisan jerrymander. They were only trying to
Speaker 2: move Democrats out of Nancy Mace's district, not black people.
Speaker 2: That's an important legal distinction because in twenty nineteen, John Roberts,
Speaker 2: with the help of his conservative buddies, said that you
Speaker 2: can politically jerrymander to your heart's content and the federal
Speaker 2: courts can't stop you. He called political jerrymander is non
Speaker 2: justicable by the Supreme Court, which basically means states do
Speaker 2: whatever you want. But he said that in the twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen a case is called Rucho be common Casts. He
Speaker 2: said that racial jerry manners were still totally bad. Well, obviously,
Speaker 2: and I said this in real time and functionally every
Speaker 2: single day's sence. Functionally, that makes no sense because all
Speaker 2: that's going to happen is that the people who are
Speaker 2: being racist are going to say, no, no, no, we
Speaker 2: were just being political.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You know something about racists that I've learned in my
Speaker 2: travels is that they don't often say, hey, I'm doing
Speaker 2: this the peoples, except.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in Maga world, but largely no, I agree.
Speaker 2: Trump does it. That's why they love them. But the
Speaker 2: ransom them, they don't. Right on their maps, I'm doing
Speaker 2: this to predact people, not much downright.
Speaker 1: Except they did in Alabama, which is why they lost,
Speaker 1: by the way, right exactly.
Speaker 2: But here in South Carolina, they just oh, no, no, we're
Speaker 2: just doing this politically. The district courts factually said that
Speaker 2: that was just wrong. One of the ways that we
Speaker 2: know they were doing it racially not played is that
Speaker 2: they left white Democrats and Nancy Mace's district right right.
Speaker 2: They didn't move them out, they moved out black Democrats,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, but the Spring Court, we had oral
Speaker 2: arguments on that two weeks ago. Feels like a lifetime ago.
Speaker 2: But two weeks ago I listened to them and it
Speaker 2: was just, there's no way that South Carolina NAACP is
Speaker 2: going to win this case. John Roberts is basically like,
Speaker 2: how can we know racism even exists? You didn't say they.
Speaker 1: Were racist, again laughing to keep from crying. Not laughing,
Speaker 1: because any of this is fine.
Speaker 2: And alleged attempt at rapist Brett Kavanaugh, he invoked his
Speaker 2: black friend Jim Kleiber because Cliber, I mean, and you
Speaker 2: can kind up be a I can criticize Cliburn for
Speaker 2: this a bit, but like I also can kind of
Speaker 2: understand it. You just told Jim Clyburn was told you're
Speaker 2: gonna your district is going to be unlosable by a
Speaker 2: black person, and Clyburn was like, yes, please, Yeah. So Clyburn,
Speaker 2: you know, tacitly signed off on the racist map that
Speaker 2: South Carolina used, and so then oral Argus Bett Capitol
Speaker 2: is basically like, well, Jim Cloyd weren't think it was racist.
Speaker 1: Right, and he's my best friend and best buddy.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just it's a it's a bad scene. And
Speaker 2: what it's going to mean is that, as I have
Speaker 2: predicted in twenty nineteen after Rucho, any racial jerrymander can
Speaker 2: just be called a political jerrymander, and these idiots on
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court will fall.
Speaker 1: For Yeah, so let me ask you, right, And they're idiots,
Speaker 1: they're useful idiots, right, they're not really they want to
Speaker 1: fall for it.
Speaker 2: Idiots is given is being too kind them exactly.
Speaker 1: Anyways, the last time you were on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: now I remember something you said, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: we do eighteen thousand interviews a day. So the fact
Speaker 1: that I remember something you said is I think it's
Speaker 1: the first time this has ever happened. But you said
Speaker 1: to me, Amy Cony Barrett is actually really smart yep.
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking to myself, really, you said, you hear,
Speaker 1: what are her oral arguments? And you hear, this is
Speaker 1: a person who is very smart working things out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's my question for you. Yesterday in Colorado, she
Speaker 1: said there needs to be an ethics code. We're all
Speaker 1: in on an ethics code. And then she declined to
Speaker 1: say why they hadn't had an ethics code before that.
Speaker 1: So she's playing three dimensional chess here, right.
Speaker 2: She understands, as I do believe John Roberts does, if
Speaker 2: you gave him truth zero, that the ethics concern are
Speaker 2: the only things that can interrupt their project, right, because
Speaker 2: I said, they're in the process of spiking the football.
Speaker 4: Right, and the only thing that's.
Speaker 2: Going to decrease their ability to spike the football is
Speaker 2: if people feel like the Supreme Court is corrupt, which
Speaker 2: it is, right. It's one of those things like, if
Speaker 2: you're winning, you don't need to commit a foul. You're winning, right.
Speaker 2: It's only if you start following the other teams and
Speaker 2: getting penalties and giving them free opportunities to score that
Speaker 2: you got any danger of losing. And that is what
Speaker 2: Keny Barrett is trying to say. She's all in on
Speaker 2: ethics because first of all, she's probably not nearly as
Speaker 2: corrupt as her colleagues, right, I mean, the bar.
Speaker 1: Is pretty fucking low, But yeah, she hasn't been zipping
Speaker 1: along on somebody else's jack.
Speaker 2: Nobody's buying her RV. Right, So there's probably that. But
Speaker 2: there's also the idea that, like, it's only through corruption
Speaker 2: can they lose their generational majority right to do whatever
Speaker 2: they want. And the thing about the and ethics reform
Speaker 2: that is led by the Supreme Court is going to
Speaker 2: be necessarily a lot easier, a lot more forgiving than
Speaker 2: an ethics reform led by kind of an angry Congress
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five. If things don't go Republicans' way
Speaker 2: in the next election, right, and again, this is what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. She's a smart lady. It's wise to get
Speaker 2: out ahead of this in fairness Elena Kagan, who is
Speaker 2: actually the only justice I believe is incorruptible. So I've
Speaker 2: got like I got Kegan stories. I had her for
Speaker 2: law school, and she was the dean of my law
Speaker 2: school eventually the year that I graduated. So one of
Speaker 2: my stories is she used to be a smoker. I
Speaker 2: don't think she has anymore good.
Speaker 1: We need her healthy.
Speaker 2: I a smoker. So I was in a store buying
Speaker 2: cigarettes and she was behind me, and I offer to
Speaker 2: buy her a pack of cigarettes, and she looks at
Speaker 2: me as she goes mister listall, would you offer any
Speaker 2: person in this store a free pack? Is not sure?
Speaker 2: There are people who would like to have a free package?
Speaker 2: Or are you only offering me a pack of cigarettes
Speaker 2: because i'm your.
Speaker 1: Law school dan m And the answer is yes.
Speaker 2: I think you have to examine your conscience, so why
Speaker 2: you would do that? And I was like, yo, right, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think Clarence Thomas is having that conversation. Okie, are
Speaker 1: you just flying me on your jet to talk to
Speaker 1: your donors? Because I'm a supreme Court justice with seemingly
Speaker 1: unlimited right.
Speaker 2: I was educated that day. Elena Kagan famously will not
Speaker 2: accept free locks on her Bagel okay, so she is uncorruptible,
Speaker 2: and she has also been out there in favor of
Speaker 2: ethics reform. We know why it's not happening because Clarence
Speaker 2: Thomas makes too much money off of it. And he's
Speaker 2: not the only one. He's the most kind of greedy
Speaker 2: and least tactful one, right, But Corsa is making money
Speaker 2: off the lands deals. Alito's getting a flown all around
Speaker 2: the country. Roberts, you know, we say that he maybe
Speaker 2: you don't give the money directly to him. But Roberts's
Speaker 2: wife is a big time legal recruiter. All she has
Speaker 2: is move lawyers from one firm to another. Makes millions
Speaker 2: of dollars doing that. And you know, one might ask, who,
Speaker 2: I wonder if you would be as successful of that
Speaker 2: if your husband wasn't on the Supreme Court. If you're
Speaker 2: a legal recruiter, you come to my prayers like I've
Speaker 2: got three lawyers that you should totally hire, and my
Speaker 2: practice involves you know, repellant law, and from the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: I'm going to listen to you John Roberts's wife, right,
Speaker 2: So most of them have dirty hands. And then there's
Speaker 2: the question of like, what's the actual punishment going because
Speaker 2: you can't have ethics reforms without ethical consequences, right, right,
Speaker 2: what's the punishment? First of all, who gets to decide
Speaker 2: that ethics have been violated? And once there is, what's
Speaker 2: what's the punishment for judges who violated ethical guidelines or
Speaker 2: refuse to accuse themselves from cases? Right now, it is
Speaker 2: up to each individual justice to consult their own conscience
Speaker 2: about whether or not they should sit for a case.
Speaker 2: Any real ethics reform changes that. That's where the fight is,
Speaker 2: right because like, who gets to tell Clarence no, you
Speaker 2: can't sit on this case? Is the ballgame?
Speaker 1: That's right? That's right?
Speaker 2: Absolution that way, I think it should be an independent
Speaker 2: panel of retired judges. I think that that's the simplest, easy, easiest,
Speaker 2: and most bear solution. You get a three judge retired,
Speaker 2: you can do a retired handle. The former Supreme Court
Speaker 2: justice is right, there are many of us are alive.
Speaker 2: David Suitor, Anthony.
Speaker 1: Kennedy, Oh, that's an amazing idea.
Speaker 2: David suit Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, all still alive.
Speaker 2: Put them on a panel, have them decide who asked
Speaker 2: the recuse move.
Speaker 1: Salved Ellie, I hope you will come back.
Speaker 2: Y, absolutely will. The world isn't completely on fire.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, it's so crazy.
Speaker 2: We still have things like radio programs. Then yes, I'll have.
Speaker 1: Congresswoman mikey Shall represents New Jersey's eleventh congressional district. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to fast Politics, Congresswoman.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: You're coming off these votes. What is happening with your
Speaker 1: branch of government?
Speaker 3: Wow, it might basier to track what's not happening in
Speaker 3: ibras government. I turned to back in January when we
Speaker 3: were having vote after vote after vote to get a
Speaker 3: new Speaker of the House, and it was sort of
Speaker 3: a historic moment, and I turned to a friend of
Speaker 3: mine on the floor and I said, you know, just once,
Speaker 3: I'd like to start a Congress not in a historic moment, because,
Speaker 3: as you recall my first session of Congress, we were
Speaker 3: facing the longest government shut down our nation had ever faced.
Speaker 3: Trump was in office. It was the first federal election
Speaker 3: after he had taken office, and so that was really
Speaker 3: an historic moment, and then sadly, the next time I
Speaker 3: got sworn in several days later, it was January sixth.
Speaker 3: It was horrible. So that was a historic moment. And
Speaker 3: then we had the speaker McCarthy vote a historic moment
Speaker 3: and she, my friend, turned me and said, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'd like to not be in a historic moment.
Speaker 3: She looked at me with this very skeptical look and
Speaker 3: she goes, really, and I said, no, not really. I
Speaker 3: mean that's why, right, we're in the transformative times. I
Speaker 3: believe a lot is on the line for our country,
Speaker 3: including at times the democracy itself. And so I'm really
Speaker 3: proud to be here and doing this kind of work.
Speaker 3: It is really, really troubling as you try to find
Speaker 3: the best way forward for the country. And I can
Speaker 3: tell you with utmost confidence that Jim Jordan is not
Speaker 3: the best pathward for this country.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the understatement of the year for
Speaker 1: the people who are like keeping track at home and
Speaker 1: who for whom this is not their entire lives. Jim
Speaker 1: Jordan decided that he was going to be the nominee
Speaker 1: despite having less votes than Steve Scalise.
Speaker 3: Right, So my sense is that there are people within
Speaker 3: the Republican Conference who are incredibly worried about the institution
Speaker 3: of Congress. Not worth to actually, you know, work with
Speaker 3: Democrats at this point and get a new speaker elected.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, certainly not.
Speaker 3: You know, I think that there were people that were
Speaker 3: supporting Scalese who just really looked at the numbers and said, look,
Speaker 3: we're not going to make this happen. I think Jordan
Speaker 3: was putting out that he had more votes than he
Speaker 3: did and there were twenty thoats on the floor after
Speaker 3: the last vote that would not support him. I believe
Speaker 3: he can only lose four. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 3: see him closing that gap. I'm not saying impossible. I
Speaker 3: often complain that many of my colleagues seem to end
Speaker 3: up doing what I would suggest is the wrong thing
Speaker 3: for the country after suggesting they wouldn't. So we don't know,
Speaker 3: but at this point it doesn't look like he'll get that.
Speaker 3: So some of the things we're contemplating is whether or
Speaker 3: not it makes sense to empower Speaker pro Tem McHenry
Speaker 3: getting him.
Speaker 1: More power, and that could happen, right, yeah, but it is.
Speaker 3: It is really interesting because you know a lot of
Speaker 3: people were shocked at the twenty people who didn't support him.
Speaker 3: I was shocked at the over two hundred who did
Speaker 3: support him, or the almost two or two did support him.
Speaker 3: He has this history, I mean, even as far back
Speaker 3: is when he was a wrestling coach, kind of turning
Speaker 3: a blind eye to what kids on his team said
Speaker 3: were reports that they had reported to him of sexual assault,
Speaker 3: and then not passing any legislation in the seventeen years
Speaker 3: he's been in Congress, which oddly got some applause on
Speaker 3: the floor of the House from his colleagues, which I
Speaker 3: didn't understand. It just kind of showed you the chaos
Speaker 3: and the almost pride in not governing from some quarters
Speaker 3: of the you know, kind of the extreme members of
Speaker 3: that conference. But I guess we should be somewhat happy
Speaker 3: that he has not been effective, because he's also the
Speaker 3: chief author of the national abortion Bill with no exceptions,
Speaker 3: he's started numerous investigations that continue to lead to dead end.
Speaker 3: So he's just waiting a lot of taxpayer dollars, which
Speaker 3: you know, of all people, he should not be because
Speaker 3: he won't vote to fund the government, tries to and
Speaker 3: really you know, not pass the budget. So with all
Speaker 3: this as his record, it's hard to see that anything
Speaker 3: good would from having him as the speaker. Again, I
Speaker 3: would say another Underfaid, not sure.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you about this. The world is
Speaker 1: on fire right. We have mega crisis in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: we have mega crisis in Ukraine with Russia. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just really perilous moment. Tommy Tuberville is still holding
Speaker 1: up the appointments.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's shocking, it really is that he is now
Speaker 3: really imperiling some of what's going on in what we
Speaker 3: call SENTCOM, which is the Middle East Area of Operations,
Speaker 3: as we have seen those horrible attacks and we're attempting
Speaker 3: to support Israel in the region and get humanitarian aid
Speaker 3: into Gaza. We have military members who are now going
Speaker 3: to be statutorily required to leave in that area. And
Speaker 3: these are complicated issues that we're facing. We know that
Speaker 3: he's held up. I think by the end of the year,
Speaker 3: over two thirds of our flag opsters, which are admirals
Speaker 3: and generals, will be satutorily required to leave their posts.
Speaker 3: And you know, again, I think this is just tied
Speaker 3: to the chaos that you see on the far right
Speaker 3: and the fact that their constituencies do not hold them accountable.
Speaker 1: I think is the.
Speaker 3: Toughest pill to swallow, because you know, what I often
Speaker 3: say is, it's not the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 3: is in Congress. It's the fact that in a district
Speaker 3: of seven hundred and fifty thousand people, she's the person
Speaker 3: that they want representing them in Congress. That's what kills
Speaker 3: you about the whole thing, is that there are people
Speaker 3: that are so cynical that that's the representation that they want.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the sort of possibilities here they're going
Speaker 1: to be. I think they recess, they'll vote more, They'll
Speaker 1: just keep voting until people completely run out of ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, where does this go.
Speaker 3: I've heard we're going to go back and vote again
Speaker 3: in a little over an hour, which is a little
Speaker 3: bit surprising. Again, I have a hard time believing that
Speaker 3: in this show short period of time, he's moved the numbers.
Speaker 3: But maybe you know, here's what's different. Sometimes you move
Speaker 3: numbers on speaker votes because people want People hold out
Speaker 3: because they want to be named to a powerful committee,
Speaker 3: or they want some agreement on legislation that is very
Speaker 3: important to them, and so they negotiate. I am not
Speaker 3: getting a sense that some of the holdouts are holding
Speaker 3: out because they want anything from Jordan. I'm getting a
Speaker 3: sense that they're holding out because they specifically do not
Speaker 3: want Jordan to be the Speaker of the House, and
Speaker 3: that's different. So it's hard for me to see him
Speaker 3: moving the numbers very much. But we're going to go
Speaker 3: back and try again in about an hour, and then
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I mean, I have heard from a
Speaker 3: Republican colleague that they need to hit rock bottom before
Speaker 3: they've murmured.
Speaker 1: It's like the craziest thing. I need to hit rock bottom.
Speaker 1: It's like your junkie cousin.
Speaker 4: Why don't we think we're there?
Speaker 3: You know, like, what is what is it about this
Speaker 3: situation that doesn't scream rock bottom?
Speaker 1: You can get Jordan elected to the speakership that could
Speaker 1: be in many ways rock bottom right there.
Speaker 3: Right, you know. I just I remember when I was
Speaker 3: in the Navy, there used to be these performance reviews,
Speaker 3: and sometimes people would put snarky things in performance reviews,
Speaker 3: and one of them was this person it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: to have a real grasp of the matter, has hit
Speaker 3: rock bottom and continues to dig and that's sort of
Speaker 3: I keep thinking we've hit rock bottom, but we continue
Speaker 3: to dig.
Speaker 1: Is what is the plan here?
Speaker 3: So I do think though, that maybe it's time to
Speaker 3: really consider empowering mckenry so that we can just continue
Speaker 3: to run the government until the Republicans have a better
Speaker 3: path forward, because I really don't think that barring working
Speaker 3: with Democrats. And I'm not just saying this as a Democratic,
Speaker 3: I don't think any Republican can get the votes that
Speaker 3: they need right to become speaker in the Republican Conference,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, a remarkable thing to say.
Speaker 1: By the way, I love Republicans blaming Democrats for this that.
Speaker 3: Came out in nowhere right Kevin McCarthy, and it was
Speaker 3: the Republicans only it was some Democrats telling me about this.
Speaker 3: But suddenly McCarthy goes from being one of the worst
Speaker 3: speakers the House has ever known, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: his appeasement strategy got weirder and weirder because he kept
Speaker 3: giving up governance to trying to appease the Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 3: And then he finally says, you can start an impeachment inquiry,
Speaker 3: but he got nothing for it. That's when I knew
Speaker 3: we were at the beginning of the end, I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: if you're going to appease somebody, you know. I thought
Speaker 3: he was saying, you could do that and you then
Speaker 3: have to vote to fund the government or vote for
Speaker 3: a cr or something. But he just sort of gave
Speaker 3: that away and didn't ask anything in return. And I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, now we have somebody who's trying to be worse,
Speaker 3: who's trying to like out Freedom Caucus the Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 3: So things were going in a really, really bad direction.
Speaker 3: I know, his conference was furious with him, Moderates in
Speaker 3: everyone they thought he was really I mean, obviously, and
Speaker 3: then Democrats were furious with him. He you know, less
Speaker 3: than a week after he made a deal with the
Speaker 3: President of the United States, he then abended the deal
Speaker 3: and didn't follow it. So he was sort of at
Speaker 3: an all time low. And I said to a friend
Speaker 3: of mine and said, wow, we must just really love
Speaker 3: an underdog, because the minute that guy's out, suddenly everyone
Speaker 3: kind of reviews it and decides he should be speaker
Speaker 3: and Democrats should make him speaker.
Speaker 1: It was a really weird.
Speaker 3: Twist, and I've said to some people and a lot
Speaker 3: of the people that were most upset by this were
Speaker 3: members of Republican moderates. A lot of them were in
Speaker 3: the problem Solver's Caucus, and you know, they were furious.
Speaker 3: And I said to a friend of mine and said,
Speaker 3: you know, they have so convinced themselves that somehow, by
Speaker 3: doing every single thing they're far right extremist and base
Speaker 3: tells them to do, and just by doing that and
Speaker 3: just staying in their seats, that somehow they're doing the
Speaker 3: Lord's work and that they're the heroes in this narrative,
Speaker 3: and somehow we Democrats should now do that too. We
Speaker 3: should all just do whatever the Republican base needs us
Speaker 3: to do so we can stay in our seats because
Speaker 3: and this is what I hear all the time, because
Speaker 3: if I wasn't here, someone worse would be where I'm like,
Speaker 3: if you are voting to not fund government, if you
Speaker 3: are voting to you know, have a nationwide abortion ban,
Speaker 3: if you are voting not only if you are not
Speaker 3: voting on gun safety measures, but if you are voting
Speaker 3: to make guns more dangerous with pistol braces, for example,
Speaker 3: then why is that not the same as how the
Speaker 3: Freedom Caucus is voting. It is you know, that's no better.
Speaker 3: You're not making a difference. You're not moving this country
Speaker 3: in a good direction, and you're certainly not moving the
Speaker 3: Republican Party in a good direction. And we need the
Speaker 3: Republican Party to reform itself. We are two party system,
Speaker 3: and we can't have one party be the party that's
Speaker 3: trying to take down the government of the United States
Speaker 3: of America.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is the fundamental thing. Is like when
Speaker 1: people were like a Jim Jordan's speakership will be so
Speaker 1: much worse, part of me was like, really, because Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy held impeachment hearings, he had a cr that cut
Speaker 1: the government by thirty percent. I mean, these moderates are
Speaker 1: not really very moderates.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting because when people ask me who
Speaker 3: would Democrats support, there's a lot of members I think
Speaker 3: of the Republican Conference that Democrats would be willing to
Speaker 3: work with. And these aren't moderates. The bar has gotten
Speaker 3: so low. They're just people that I think a lot
Speaker 3: of us would term reasonable human beings, people that want
Speaker 3: to keep government open, people that want to support our
Speaker 3: allies across the world. It's really fascinating because in other
Speaker 3: times you would think that if Democrats were in any
Speaker 3: way going to you know, be helpful here, they would
Speaker 3: ask for the world right pro choice legislation, and gun
Speaker 3: safety legislation, assault weapons ban, and you know, different priorities
Speaker 3: that we have that we feel passionately about. And yet
Speaker 3: at this point, all we're trying to do is find
Speaker 3: a pathway towards keeping the government open and getting some
Speaker 3: really key bipartisan by the way, I mean, these are
Speaker 3: things that the Senate, you know, with almost with a
Speaker 3: very slim slimmer majority. I mean, the Senate passes on
Speaker 3: a routine basis, even though they have a filibuster. So
Speaker 3: we're not asking for anything that's not hugely bipartisan. We're
Speaker 3: just trying to get government to work. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a really important thing. And that's why, you know,
Speaker 3: when somebody called me to talk to me about Scalis,
Speaker 3: who I certainly not my first choice. But so the
Speaker 3: reason I'm having this conversation with you is because I
Speaker 3: really care about the House of Representatives, I really care
Speaker 3: about this country, and we've got to find a path
Speaker 3: forward here.
Speaker 1: And right now, you know, there just aren't.
Speaker 3: Serious people in the Republican Conference working to that end.
Speaker 3: And I hope they will soon because the country needs it.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about childcare, because you're working on childcare
Speaker 1: and this is a crisis for all of us who
Speaker 1: have children. Let me say, though, my children are too
Speaker 1: old for that now, but you probably remember what a
Speaker 1: debaclet was. Yes, it's a disaster. It's so hard. It
Speaker 1: was a disaster.
Speaker 3: And even if your children are older, I've got some
Speaker 3: really bad news, if you can believe it, it's worse now.
Speaker 3: So I remember with horror and all kinds of ajuda
Speaker 3: and stomach aches, and this when I think about trying
Speaker 3: to get childcare for my oldest, my daughter who is
Speaker 3: now eighteen, and the struggles I had with my other children.
Speaker 3: As you know, I kept trying to find quality and
Speaker 3: affordable childcare, and there were times when I was paying
Speaker 3: more than my paycheck to have my kids in childcare,
Speaker 3: which is crazy and doesn't make short term economic sense,
Speaker 3: which is why we see so many parents off in
Speaker 3: women dropping out of the workforce. But it doesn't make
Speaker 3: long term economic sense. And so making sure that you
Speaker 3: know people have access to good childcare is critically important
Speaker 3: for their economic wellbeing, for their children's economic wellbeing, for
Speaker 3: their future, for their retirement. But it's also really important
Speaker 3: for the economy, which is why certainly the New Jersey
Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce has talked to me about this. But
Speaker 3: I think there's you know, in Kentucky, I was reading
Speaker 3: about a group of businessmen coming to the state to say, really,
Speaker 3: you know, now that we've gone over this childcare clip,
Speaker 3: you've really got to support investment in childcare. I mean
Speaker 3: we have you know, we have workforce issues, and if
Speaker 3: we don't figure out childcare, we will continue to have them.
Speaker 3: And it's holding back the economy right now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, for sure. And also we have a
Speaker 1: labor issues. But no one ever will fix immigration.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because that is certainly a huge concern right now,
Speaker 3: is border security. I hear that from my collegues across
Speaker 3: the aisle all the time, and as we address that,
Speaker 3: we have to have comprehensive immigration reform. And get asked
Speaker 3: all the time about immigration and what's the solution. And
Speaker 3: the striking thing is I could have told you the
Speaker 3: solution five years ago when I started running for Congress.
Speaker 3: It is the same solution I have today, which is
Speaker 3: very rare. Right, normally that conomy changes the facts on
Speaker 3: the ground change. I am telling you we need security
Speaker 3: at the border. We need a pathway to citizen and
Speaker 3: ship for people who are here for GPS for Dhaka.
Speaker 3: We need to address some of the foundational reasons for immigration,
Speaker 3: which in some parts, like in the Northern Triangle area,
Speaker 3: can be international criminal syndicates. I think we're seeing shifts
Speaker 3: across the world now that are going to also cause
Speaker 3: huge immigration trends that we have to address. But this
Speaker 3: is not news, and I'm telling you I hear about
Speaker 3: the problems in our immigration system. I told you I
Speaker 3: was on the committee for Strategic Competition with Chinese Communist Party,
Speaker 3: so we talked to some really high end CEOs and
Speaker 3: technology who are lamenting our problems with high skill labor.
Speaker 3: And I can also tell you that the Republicans wanted
Speaker 3: to pass a huge anti immigration built and we're having,
Speaker 3: you know, just huge problems with it because their rural
Speaker 3: communities were concerned about immigrat I.
Speaker 1: Mean, people to work there. So it's been gamut.
Speaker 3: It is up and down the economic spectrum and it
Speaker 3: is harming our economy. And I would suggest to it's
Speaker 3: just contrary to the values of this country the way
Speaker 3: we treat people involved in this system.
Speaker 1: And it's also just like counter to capitalism, right, they
Speaker 1: just want to punish people. They need people to do
Speaker 1: the jobs. You have this population that is not growing,
Speaker 1: and I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: And yet instead of having a thoughtful approach to this,
Speaker 3: where we can determine the type of immigration that we need,
Speaker 3: how to have an orderly processing system, how to have
Speaker 3: people apply for legal immigration, instead we now have a
Speaker 3: severely broken system where we have people arriving and flooding
Speaker 3: different towns and areas that have no ability to handle this.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is across the board. We need
Speaker 3: more people involved in how to process people through. We
Speaker 3: need to determine with asylum seekers how to best handle
Speaker 3: that because again, this is the reason we have these
Speaker 3: asylum laws is in large part because we failed people
Speaker 3: fleeing the Holocaust during World War Two and you know
Speaker 3: Jewish people fleeing the Nazi So this is a huge
Speaker 3: issue that we've got to solve. It's a moral issue,
Speaker 3: it's an economic issue, and the way we are avoiding
Speaker 3: solving it now because it's a politically difficult issue for
Speaker 3: many members is really leading to worse and worse outcomes.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Congresswoman.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: And Applebaum is a writer for the Atlantic and author
Speaker 1: of Twilight of Democracy. Welcome back to Fast Politics, and Applebaum,
Speaker 1: thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: have you because this is a period in American life
Speaker 1: where everything is just so incredibly depressing and bleak, and
Speaker 1: you have a tiny sliver of hope, no pressure.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I write a lot about the bleakness, so
Speaker 4: I know what you're talking about. But part of my
Speaker 4: life is spent in Poland. I've lived here on and
Speaker 4: off for thirty years, as well as living in America
Speaker 4: and being an American. My husband is Polish. He's a politician.
Speaker 4: He was in the former Polish government, and we have
Speaker 4: just had an election here which was an emphatic rejection
Speaker 4: of an autocratic, populist, nationalist, far right political party, and
Speaker 4: it's really good news. Many of us were convinced that
Speaker 4: it wasn't possible that they had captured the state to
Speaker 4: such an extent. They controlled the judiciary, they controlled a
Speaker 4: lot of the media, they controlled the civil service, they controlled,
Speaker 4: you know, so many aspects of life that we weren't
Speaker 4: sure whether a free election was still possible and it
Speaker 4: turned out that it was that there was enough still
Speaker 4: left in the of democracy, in the system and of
Speaker 4: the people counting. The votes were carefully monitored by a
Speaker 4: big civil society project and so on, and we had
Speaker 4: a really big turnout. It was seventy four percent in
Speaker 4: the whole nation, which is very high for Poland. That
Speaker 4: seems crazy high for anywhere. It's crazy high. And actually
Speaker 4: in the city of Warsaw it was eighty four percent.
Speaker 4: And I have a friend outed in one district, in
Speaker 4: one particular Warsaw neighborhood, and at his polling station the
Speaker 4: turnout was ninety one percent. And that tells you how
Speaker 4: mad people were and how much they wanted the government out,
Speaker 4: and how worried they were that if they didn't get
Speaker 4: them out, that Poland would be an autocracy and there
Speaker 4: would be no more free elections. And that was really
Speaker 4: what was on the ballot here, you know, that was
Speaker 4: this was at the center of the conversation. There are
Speaker 4: other issues here too. There were a lot of women's
Speaker 4: rights issues. That we have a horrifically strict abortion law
Speaker 4: here that's resulted in the deaths of several young women,
Speaker 4: and so that was of course part of the conversation too,
Speaker 4: but it was also can we take back the country,
Speaker 4: can we have you know, normal institutions again, you know,
Speaker 4: can we avoid this process of state capture? And it
Speaker 4: turned out that we could. I mean, there's actually still
Speaker 4: a long way to go, and we haven't had the
Speaker 4: change of government yet, and the president who's from the
Speaker 4: or former far right ruling party, may try and block things,
Speaker 4: but this is a parliamentary system and hopefully sooner rather
Speaker 4: than later we will get a government. But we have
Speaker 4: a clear majority for the three democratic opposition parties, which
Speaker 4: all want to return Poland to democracy, and so that's
Speaker 4: good news.
Speaker 1: Could you sort of talk us through what the landscape
Speaker 1: is there, and also can you talk about your husband's
Speaker 1: experience a little bit, just because it shows what a
Speaker 1: sort of authoritarian bent and how insidious the far right was.
Speaker 4: So there are weird parallels between Poland and the US
Speaker 4: that for a long time what were just in my
Speaker 4: head And then when I wrote a book that was
Speaker 4: partly about this, and I realized that many of the
Speaker 4: patterns were the same. The Polish right was a kind
Speaker 4: of anti communist, you know, sort of vaguely Thatcherite, Reaganite right,
Speaker 4: you know, once in a potime. Then it essentially split
Speaker 4: and part of it went further to the right, became
Speaker 4: very extremist and became very and began this process of
Speaker 4: attacking Polish democratic institut much as Trump does in the
Speaker 4: United States. So if you think about attacking the media,
Speaker 4: attacking the cords, attacking the political system itself, that's what
Speaker 4: they wound up doing. We were at a funny position
Speaker 4: here because we knew some of them, because some of
Speaker 4: them had made this journey from the center to the
Speaker 4: far right, and that's something I've written about before. And
Speaker 4: when they took power, they immediately set about trying to
Speaker 4: undermine the state. So they immediately began to take over
Speaker 4: all the institutions. One of the things they took over,
Speaker 4: for example, with the security Services, the Prosecution Office, and
Speaker 4: one of the things they do is financial investigations of people,
Speaker 4: which are essentially a former harassment. You know, they will,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're somebody who bothers them.
Speaker 1: Like an audit, right, like an audit, or.
Speaker 4: Worse, you know, a bit nastier than that. They actually
Speaker 4: have the ability here to come and arrest you and
Speaker 4: put you in jail before you're indicted Jesus. It's happened
Speaker 4: to some of the people who got in their way
Speaker 4: or they who they didn't like. It happened to a
Speaker 4: colleague of my husband's who was a lawyer who had
Speaker 4: uncovered a really big corruption scandal to do with the
Speaker 4: ruling party and its leader.
Speaker 1: It's pretty scary.
Speaker 4: And these are things that are supposed to be for
Speaker 4: you know, terrorism or organized crime or something like that.
Speaker 4: And they began to you know, they exist in the
Speaker 4: in the system as a kind of emergency thing to
Speaker 4: deal with, especially dangerous criminals. They began using it a
Speaker 4: little bit against their political enemies and so and that
Speaker 4: became a thing that people were worried about. They used
Speaker 4: a form of spywaar called Pegasus, which I'm sorry to
Speaker 4: say is Israeli, which again is sold to be used
Speaker 4: against terrorism and sol and you could put it on
Speaker 4: people's phones and then you can hear everything they say,
Speaker 4: and they can use the phone as a recording device
Speaker 4: and so on. And that happened here too. And you know,
Speaker 4: we had the phenomenon in Poland that is reminiscent of
Speaker 4: the olden days when Poland was a communist country that
Speaker 4: you know, you would leave your phone in a different
Speaker 4: room when you would have a conversation that started wow here.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say that it was everywhere you know, or
Speaker 4: that it was I don't want to overplay it, but
Speaker 4: certainly if you were in politics, if you were someone
Speaker 4: who had a big public profile, you became very nervous
Speaker 4: about what the state could do to you. We hope
Speaker 4: that this election brings that to an end. But it's
Speaker 4: also a kind of warning sign. I mean, when you
Speaker 4: have a party which is that unscrupulous taking power, and
Speaker 4: when they have access to all these tools that modern
Speaker 4: states have, you know, investigations and wire tapping, it's on.
Speaker 4: It's not like it's unknown in American history, but it's
Speaker 4: essentially what the Nickson administration was right. And when you
Speaker 4: have access to all these tools, you know, they have
Speaker 4: a lot of ways to harass people. So pushing back
Speaker 4: against them, and as I said, this really big turnout
Speaker 4: was an important sign that people don't want that. I
Speaker 4: should say my husband was not a candidate in this election,
Speaker 4: but he did campaign on behalf of the opposition.
Speaker 1: And he was in the parliament before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was in the problem before. He was the
Speaker 4: Foreign Minister for seven years from twenty into twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: So he has a you know, he's associated and the
Speaker 4: person who's just was the leader of the opposition, he's
Speaker 4: very closely associated with his Donald Tulsk.
Speaker 1: Tusk was involved in the EU.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Donald, So the current leader was prime minister
Speaker 4: of Poland until twenty fourteen. He was appointed to a
Speaker 4: big European job. He was Chairman of the European Council,
Speaker 4: which means he was he presided over the body of
Speaker 4: prime ministers that meets periodict, which is a real leadership
Speaker 4: of the EU. And he did that for several years,
Speaker 4: and then he made a kind of momentous decision to
Speaker 4: come back to Polish politics, which was for him a
Speaker 4: real gamble because he could have gone off and you know,
Speaker 4: worked as a consultant or worked for a bank. There
Speaker 4: were a lot of lucrative jobs he could have had.
Speaker 4: And he decided to come back partly because of this
Speaker 4: fear that the name of the ruling party was law
Speaker 4: and Justice, and the fear that this party would take
Speaker 4: over the state and make Poland essentially into an autocracy.
Speaker 4: And so he believed very much in fighting back against that,
Speaker 4: and he came back and he reorganized the party and
Speaker 4: he you know, they ran a great election campaign, and
Speaker 4: I said, a lot of it was focused on getting
Speaker 4: younger people to vote, getting women to vote. A lot
Speaker 4: of it also they created these organizations to monitor elections.
Speaker 4: They got people to sign up and sort of work
Speaker 4: on behalf of democracy. I mean a little bit of
Speaker 4: that happened in the US in twenty twenty as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds a lot like the Biden coming back
Speaker 1: because he felt that it was you know, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some parallels.
Speaker 4: I mean to a slowly younger than Biden's I think
Speaker 4: he's six six, but the feeling that the election is existential,
Speaker 4: that it's about the nature of the country. I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people did agree with that, and the
Speaker 4: ruling party did absolutely everything they could to twist the
Speaker 4: election to do with funding and media, but also the
Speaker 4: way in which seats were proportioned, so you know, it's
Speaker 4: basically easier to get elected in the countryside, which is
Speaker 4: where their base is in rural Poland.
Speaker 1: Like jerry mandering.
Speaker 4: It's not exactly jerry mandering, but it's like j so
Speaker 4: you would find much of it familiar. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: like the politics of Tennessee. Frankly, how do you fix
Speaker 4: the system so that you don't lose? And they really
Speaker 4: did try to do that, but eventually they lost, and
Speaker 4: it was mostly thanks to this very large number of
Speaker 4: people who voted.
Speaker 1: Clearly, there's a lesson year for American politics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's not a precise lesson. Some of
Speaker 4: it is stuff we sort of know. But giving people
Speaker 4: something to do instead of everybody feeling hopeless, you know,
Speaker 4: the forces of darkness are coming. I can't do anything.
Speaker 4: Who am I? What is my one vote? You know,
Speaker 4: giving people a task, saying you can organize, you can
Speaker 4: be an election observer, you can run, you know that,
Speaker 4: And that I think was a really important element here. Also,
Speaker 4: the other thing that was really important was that the
Speaker 4: language of the opposition was a kind of civic patriotism,
Speaker 4: you know, against right wing nationalism. You know, we are Polish.
Speaker 4: All their big rallies, people waved the flag, everybody dressed
Speaker 4: in red and white, which are the Polish colors. Everyone
Speaker 4: talked about Polish history and Polish tradition and you know,
Speaker 4: and we're part of it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: They tried to take this idea that you know, only
Speaker 4: the real Poles are the you know, the right is
Speaker 4: somehow the real nation. They tried to end that mythology.
Speaker 4: You know, we are modern, forward looking Polish patriots who
Speaker 4: want our country to be great. But in a different way.
Speaker 4: There's some kind of lesson there. I think for Americans
Speaker 4: there are ideas particularly, you know, it works even better
Speaker 4: in America in a way. You know, there are ideas
Speaker 4: that we can unify around as Americans to fight against
Speaker 4: this kind of American nationalist extremism. You know, I think
Speaker 4: that's the way to beat it. Give people something to join,
Speaker 4: give them something to do, and give them, you know,
Speaker 4: a big, important, unifying national message, and that's the best
Speaker 4: way to fight the far right.
Speaker 1: The far right in America and awesome in Poland rode
Speaker 1: into favor because of a certain kind of frustration among
Speaker 1: the voting public and maybe also racism and xenophobia. Did
Speaker 1: this sort of solve that problem or was there just
Speaker 1: a sense like globalization is happening? I mean, did people
Speaker 1: get less racist in your mind? Was there a sea
Speaker 1: change there or did people just decide that the darkness
Speaker 1: was too much for them?
Speaker 3: Here?
Speaker 4: The issues were never exactly economic. A lot of it
Speaker 4: was cultural, you know, there was sort of a part
Speaker 4: of Poland that felt left behind, not so much economically,
Speaker 4: but culturally. You know, the world that we grew up
Speaker 4: in in which everybody went to church is changing, and
Speaker 4: our young people are moving to the cities, or they're
Speaker 4: moving to Paris, or they're moving to London. And there
Speaker 4: was some sense of cultural loss that I think was
Speaker 4: was actually real, and the far right kind of echoed
Speaker 4: that and amplified it and then turned it into this
Speaker 4: often very racist language about immigration. You know, actually Poland
Speaker 4: has no big immigration problem. They're basically they know there
Speaker 4: are a lot of Ukrainian refugees here and Biel Russian refugees,
Speaker 4: and there's just this you know, smattering of people from
Speaker 4: outside Europe. And ironically, and that's a whole nother story.
Speaker 4: This government, the far right government, turns out to have
Speaker 4: let in quite a lot of them because they were
Speaker 4: selling visas.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Well, another thing that happens when you have a government
Speaker 4: that pushes back on the rule of law, undermines the judiciary,
Speaker 4: and takes over the police is that you get corruption.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll do it'll this.
Speaker 4: And so there's there's always this link between autocratic populism
Speaker 4: and corruption, and that's been you know, and we had
Speaker 4: that here as well. And here, I think it was
Speaker 4: the combination of, first of all, seeing that some of
Speaker 4: the hysteria around immigration wasn't real. It's not happening, it's
Speaker 4: not it's not a real thing. I think some of
Speaker 4: it was, you know, as I said, this creeping sense
Speaker 4: of them taking over everything. Some of it was the
Speaker 4: corruption scandals. Some of it was I think, you know,
Speaker 4: they almost overdid their propaganda. You know, their language about that.
Speaker 4: You know, they basically described task because you know, he's
Speaker 4: just a German agent and you know my husband is
Speaker 4: a Russian agent, and everybody's foreign. That of course, is
Speaker 4: so in contrast with reality. Whereas you know, doesn't speak German,
Speaker 4: he speaks Polish. You know, he was prime minister here.
Speaker 4: Their extremist propaganda hit some reality measure at some point.
Speaker 4: I think it was part of that too. You know,
Speaker 4: there was a combination of you know, they went too far,
Speaker 4: they did too much, They became to corrupt, They weren't
Speaker 4: good managers. They screwed up a lot of you know,
Speaker 4: projects and investments. Things aren't working very well here. That
Speaker 4: healthcare system is beginning to fall apart. You know, the
Speaker 4: whole series of oh education, you know, they wanted patriotic education.
Speaker 4: You can imagine what that was.
Speaker 1: I cannot and don't want to You don't.
Speaker 4: Even want to know. And people his kids were in
Speaker 4: school who came home complaining about stupid things they've been taught.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a cumulative effect of a series of
Speaker 4: not very well fought out plans and projects that they
Speaker 4: did that failed. That I think also helpful. You know,
Speaker 4: it's important or they still have a big base of support.
Speaker 4: I mean, third of the country still voted for them,
Speaker 4: so crazy, and they will still be there and they're
Speaker 4: still they're still running all the institutions and getting rid
Speaker 4: of them is going to take a long time. You know,
Speaker 4: it's going to be a big project. I mean it's
Speaker 4: almost comparable. I mean, I don't want to overdo it
Speaker 4: is almost comparable to when communism fell in Poland in
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty nine. You know, then there was a big
Speaker 4: project of reform. You know, how do you unpick that regime?
Speaker 4: And this isn't quite at that scale, but I mean
Speaker 4: there's you know, we have to somehow undo the illegal
Speaker 4: judges they appointed. You know, they tried to politicize the
Speaker 4: court system. You know, have to undo all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: It will take a long time. I mean, By the way,
Speaker 4: one of the interesting parallels for Americans is one of
Speaker 4: the things Trump has said he wants to do, and
Speaker 4: I think some of the people around him even have
Speaker 4: pretty concrete plans about it, is fire all the civil
Speaker 4: service and replace them with loyalists.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Heritage Foundation put out a thing about that,
Speaker 1: the Heritage Foundation, which I used to think of as evil,
Speaker 1: but in a different, more traditional way, right traditionally.
Speaker 4: Well, that happened here, and let me tell you it
Speaker 4: was a real disaster. Think about it. You know, do
Speaker 4: you want people measuring the pollution in your water who
Speaker 4: are actual experts in science or do you want them
Speaker 4: to be someone's cousin don junior or got the job
Speaker 4: because you know he's related to somebody. And we had
Speaker 4: like the wholesale replacement of the civil service, right down
Speaker 4: to weird things like the Forestry Service, which is a
Speaker 4: what does that have to do with politics? And various
Speaker 4: state institutions were taken over by the party by this
Speaker 4: it's called the law and justice parties, I said, and destroyed.
Speaker 4: Poland is a smaller place and there's maybe less damage
Speaker 4: you can do. Imagine that happening in the United States.
Speaker 4: What kinds of catastrophes there could be. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: the people who are in charge of burying nuclear waste,
Speaker 4: or the people who run I don't know, funding for
Speaker 4: you know, underfunded schools, or there are all kinds of
Speaker 4: programs that are run by the federal grav that if
Speaker 4: you destroyed them by destroying the civil service, you could
Speaker 4: do a lot of damage. Michael Lewis wrote a good
Speaker 4: book about that. Actually at the time of the first
Speaker 4: Trump administration, it was called the Fifth Risk. But we
Speaker 4: had that in Poland and there was a you know,
Speaker 4: and there was this series of you know, calamities, you know,
Speaker 4: screw ups in one institution, in one area of life
Speaker 4: after the next, and it was it was going to
Speaker 4: get worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just incredible stuff. And Applebaum, I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you joining us. So interesting and so important and also
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully a model for what happens here let
Speaker 1: us pry, yeah, or what continues to happen here.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you, No moment, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: My John Fast I think you want to talk about
Speaker 2: the man that we're all laughing at today.
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan, listen. It turns out that math is not
Speaker 1: just a woke construct. You need votes to win as speaker.
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan is not convinced, and so he will again
Speaker 1: and again do votes until everybody goes home. When you
Speaker 1: listen to this tomorrow, very very very very likely Jim
Speaker 1: Jordan will not be the Speaker of the House. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.