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. We are on vacation, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we don't have a great show for you. Today.
Speaker 1: Journalist Ejeene Carroll stops by to talk about her new
Speaker 1: book Not My Type. But first we have New York
Speaker 1: Magazine's Bridget read on her new book, Little Boss Is
Speaker 1: Everywhere How the pyramid scheme shaped America.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Bridget.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me explain to us what
Speaker 1: you write on and where you got to.
Speaker 2: With this book and how you got here.
Speaker 3: I am a features writer at New York Magazine right now.
Speaker 3: I primarily write about housing for Curbs, which is part
Speaker 3: of New York mag I started this book when I
Speaker 3: was a writer at The Cut, which is New York
Speaker 3: magas women's vertical. That's how I sort of was introduced
Speaker 3: to this concept of multile marketing, which is very similar,
Speaker 3: if not the same, as the pyramid scheme. And I
Speaker 3: wrote a really short article in twenty twenty one about
Speaker 3: MLMs and just kind of being obsessed from there, and
Speaker 3: that's where this book was born.
Speaker 1: MLMs, I feel like they're tied to both women's entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: in a strange and destructive way and also to maga politics.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're really interesting because they are the sleazy
Speaker 1: foundation to many of the things we're looking at right
Speaker 1: now and right here. So i'd love you to talk
Speaker 1: first because you come from the cut about the women's
Speaker 1: ish world of MLOUS, and then I'm going to get
Speaker 1: you into maga worlds. But I could see how there's
Speaker 1: a sort of natural progression here, so talk us through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So MLM was invented by men in the post
Speaker 3: war era scammy salesman who decided that they were going
Speaker 3: to create this basically what functions as a Ponzi scheme,
Speaker 3: but within the sort of shell of door to door selling,
Speaker 3: which is like, you know, an age old American pastime.
Speaker 2: Give us an example of a company that does that.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, so the oldest one is Amway. The guys
Speaker 3: that invented MLM did it with a company and a
Speaker 3: vitamin company called Neutralite. Richard DeVos and Jamian andl who
Speaker 3: founded Amway. They started as Neutralite salesmen and then they
Speaker 3: did what always happens in MLM, which is they picked
Speaker 3: up all their distributors and started their own company, which
Speaker 3: is Amway. In the late fifties. Amway is the biggest
Speaker 3: and most influential MLM in the world. There's also herbal Life,
Speaker 3: There's Mary Kay, There's Shackley Tupperware. I could go on
Speaker 3: and on. There are hundreds thousands of MLMs now in
Speaker 3: the US alone. So even though it was invented by
Speaker 3: men very quickly five sixties, women who went to work
Speaker 3: in droves during World War Two, and then even though
Speaker 3: those levels fell back down after the war, steadily during
Speaker 3: the fifties and sixties, more women started going to work,
Speaker 3: and of course that rose from there. But what happened
Speaker 3: was women statistically went predominantly to industries where the work
Speaker 3: wasn't great right, work was insecure. They were secretaries, they
Speaker 3: were doing retails, the service sector where you're not big benefits,
Speaker 3: you're not doing typical wage work, and you are also
Speaker 3: in many respects still doing your childcare. So this need
Speaker 3: for flexible work and women being the primary recipient of
Speaker 3: a pitch for flexible work, which is what a huge
Speaker 3: part of MLM is. It's the idea that you're an
Speaker 3: independent contractor, so already by the sixties, women became predominantly
Speaker 3: the people who work in multiple marketing, and of course
Speaker 3: the industry all then began touting itself as like an
Speaker 3: opportunity for women, but always the conservative The industry is
Speaker 3: really conservative politically and in terms of its gender ideology.
Speaker 3: So from the get go, MLM is a type of
Speaker 3: flexible work where women can walk a line right where
Speaker 3: they're contributing to the household, but not in a way
Speaker 3: that threatens their roles as wives and mothers. Mary Kay
Speaker 3: is the most notable founder of an MLM, and she
Speaker 3: was a huge part in kind of selling that story,
Speaker 3: and there are many copies of it since, and we
Speaker 3: could trace a line all the way to current MLMs
Speaker 3: where women are girl bosses. They're wearing the oversized blazer
Speaker 3: and doing the TikTok videos, but they're also you know,
Speaker 3: it's all about, Oh, I retired my husband who's a
Speaker 3: Christian firefighter, and I serve him still.
Speaker 2: So you can do both.
Speaker 3: It's really a way to like sublimate women's ambition, sublimate
Speaker 3: their economic fears, but do it in a way that
Speaker 3: does it threaten the overall you know, nuclear family structure.
Speaker 1: Yes, So now get us talking about how these multi
Speaker 1: level marketing schemes have popped up in MAGA world.
Speaker 3: The roots of MLM in the Republican Party are beyond deep.
Speaker 3: Even before Rich DeVos and Javannandel. Rich Davas of course,
Speaker 3: being Betsy Davas's father in law, the founders of multi
Speaker 3: level marketing were connected to the Republican Party in California.
Speaker 3: They supported Nixon.
Speaker 1: A lot of Republican money comes from multi level marketing.
Speaker 3: Yes, That's really what I tried to emphasize in this
Speaker 3: book is the MLM money should be as scrutinized as
Speaker 3: the empires of the Kochs the Mercers. Right, the money
Speaker 3: that's actually been taken from these participants has powered the
Speaker 3: Republican Party for decades. I mean, Devas and Van Andel
Speaker 3: are the single biggest Republican donors. When Ronald Reagan is
Speaker 3: running for president, Ronald Reagan makes Devas a member of
Speaker 3: his kitchen cabinet. Javan Andl is the head of the
Speaker 3: Chamber of Commerce. They both give heavily to Heritage, And
Speaker 3: now right now the chairman of the board at Heritage
Speaker 3: is Barb Van Andl. Gabby javan Andl's daughter I mean,
Speaker 3: it goes on and on. They give heavily to the
Speaker 3: Council for National Policy Focus on the Family. So these
Speaker 3: are some dark money Christian groups. Betsy Debas, you know,
Speaker 3: very notably resigned in the wake of January sixth and
Speaker 3: made a big deal about it, but they continue to
Speaker 3: give to all the packs and organizations that helped re
Speaker 3: elect Trump, including the very scary Sheriff Fellowship, which is
Speaker 3: you know, at Claremont Institute, group that wants to essentially
Speaker 3: radicalize share its to use them to carry out Trump's
Speaker 3: deportation dreams, but also just like to stop enforcing law
Speaker 3: and order where Trump doesn't lot it to be enforced.
Speaker 3: They're huge on school vouchers. So there are major engines
Speaker 3: of both the economic forces of mega but also those
Speaker 3: culture war goals. They've been shaping it long before we
Speaker 3: even knew sort of Betsy Devas as a figure. You know,
Speaker 3: it's bigger than that. There are other figures in this
Speaker 3: industry that have been part of our political world, but
Speaker 3: the Amway founders are certainly the most influential.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk for a minute about what we have
Speaker 1: in the MAGA multi level marketing. What are they quote
Speaker 1: unquote selling like Mary Kay is makeup, Amway is agriculture.
Speaker 3: Amway is everything. In Amway, you're encouraged to replace your
Speaker 3: entire household products with Amway products. So they sell toothpaste,
Speaker 3: they sell an energy drink, Cold Access, they have their
Speaker 3: own makeup brand called Artistry, And like, the reason you've
Speaker 3: never heard of it is because MLMs are overwhelmingly closed
Speaker 3: systems where the participants are buying up this stuff, because
Speaker 3: that's how you really make the most money is just
Speaker 3: by buying and buying and getting people under you to
Speaker 3: be buying. And there are lots of people in my
Speaker 3: book who talk about how they're encouraged by this stuff.
Speaker 3: You're going to sell it. You have to like use,
Speaker 3: you know, use the products that you want to sell.
Speaker 3: They're encouraged to sign up for subscriptions, whether they're spending
Speaker 3: like four hundred dollars a month on an automated Amway purchase.
Speaker 3: The intersection of MAGA, especially the MAHA part of MAGA,
Speaker 3: the wellness part and MLM is really strong because many
Speaker 3: many of the products it's totally nonsensical MLM it makes sense,
Speaker 3: like why would you go buy a toothpaste from Amway?
Speaker 3: When you can go get it at Dwayne Reid for
Speaker 3: you know, half the price. It never has made any
Speaker 3: sense even when it was invented, So they really rely
Speaker 3: on a pitch that taps into your fears, It taps
Speaker 3: into your worries about your health, and it taps into these.
Speaker 1: MAHA makes a lot of sense for that, Yeah, exactly, like.
Speaker 3: You're you're sick in ways you don't even know, and
Speaker 3: here's the way we can fix your gut biome or
Speaker 3: all these you know, like pseudo science, untested science. MLM
Speaker 3: is a perfect vessel for that because it relies on
Speaker 3: this like over the top pitch that we're going to
Speaker 3: change your life, which the supplement industry also does, and
Speaker 3: so you know, the kind of Joe Rogan style supplement
Speaker 3: world also has a lot of overlap with MLMs, So
Speaker 3: they're the men's version as well, where men are you know,
Speaker 3: getting in into that. And then the crypto side of MAGA,
Speaker 3: so Trump's cryptoquin World, Liberty Financial, some of the guys
Speaker 3: involved in running that have dipped their toe in the world,
Speaker 3: but also just Trump in general, I mean, and Trump
Speaker 3: of himself of course, has been the face of two MLMs,
Speaker 3: one called Ideal Health and then ACN, which was the
Speaker 3: lawsuit against Trump that was dropped.
Speaker 2: Wait what ideal Health.
Speaker 3: In the early two thousands or mid two thousands, actually,
Speaker 3: Trump was tapped to be the face of an MLM
Speaker 3: called Ideal Health, and they sold supplements and they called
Speaker 3: it the Trump Network. It was literally described as like
Speaker 3: an emergency way that for people who were suffering in
Speaker 3: the financial crisis and the Great Recession to like become millionaires.
Speaker 3: He reaped a lot of benefit from it, and of
Speaker 3: course it collapsed and lots of people said they lost money.
Speaker 3: But Trump in general, the way he built his career
Speaker 3: is very MLM esque in that MLM relies on promotion.
Speaker 3: It's all about promoting the lifestyle that you have and
Speaker 3: making it sound like that's as if you're it's because
Speaker 3: Amway or whatever MLM you're doing is such a like
Speaker 3: incredibly special secret recipe for success. It can't be beat.
Speaker 3: It's almost you know, as it's a it's a revolutionary invention.
Speaker 3: But what you're really doing is just all you're making
Speaker 3: all your money from people other people buying in which,
Speaker 3: of course is what Trump has done his whole career. Right,
Speaker 3: He's never really been a successful businessman. He's a you know,
Speaker 3: a litany of real estate failures. He's propped up by
Speaker 3: his father, who himself is propped up by tax evasion.
Speaker 3: But he sells this idea that he's an incredible businessman.
Speaker 3: And so millions of Americans for decades have bought into
Speaker 3: the Trump thing, whether it's you know, buying his his
Speaker 3: success systems or going to his failed university. They are
Speaker 3: failing and they are losing their investments. But Trump is winning,
Speaker 3: and that's that's really the multiple marketing meachanism at its core.
Speaker 3: So it's incredibly trumpy. MLM is Trumpian, and Trump is
Speaker 3: very MLMI.
Speaker 2: With the MAHA stuff.
Speaker 1: Does RFK Junior benefit from my multi level marketing besides
Speaker 1: just being someone who is involved in it.
Speaker 3: RFK Junior, as far as ener, doesn't benefit directly from
Speaker 3: an MLM, but many of his prominence followers, especially online
Speaker 3: and especially these women who are in the anti vax world,
Speaker 3: also dabble in multi level marketing. They sell these products
Speaker 3: that claim to you know, these are these are people
Speaker 3: who got online during the pandemic and just like Trump,
Speaker 3: you know, said you can take these supplements, you can
Speaker 3: do these you know, additives to your water and they
Speaker 3: will keep you from getting sick. So so there are
Speaker 3: definitely promoters within MLM who are big RFK supporters.
Speaker 2: And you know, yeah, who are those people.
Speaker 3: They're not public figures, they're not people in that U no, no, no, no, okay.
Speaker 3: But I would say the number one MLM promoter within
Speaker 3: MAHA is doctor Oz. Doctor Oz has shilled for several
Speaker 3: m lms. He appears as as a speaker. You know,
Speaker 3: kaid probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that
Speaker 3: over the years, and doctor Oz has has certainly went
Speaker 3: his name to many MLMs in the past.
Speaker 1: So explain to us sort of what when you're looking
Speaker 1: at these mL they.
Speaker 2: Just the goal is just to keep going. What's the goal? Yes,
Speaker 2: just to keep going and to stay out of jail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that hasn't been that hard for them because really
Speaker 3: enforcement of any kind of I mean, they exist in
Speaker 3: a very deeply unregulated space. Mway essentially bought its political
Speaker 3: cover in the late seventies and those rules that have
Speaker 3: never really been tested are what allow companies to keep
Speaker 3: the business model. So as long as they sort of
Speaker 3: purport to be using these rules in place that keep
Speaker 3: them from being a pyramid scheme. There's virtually no enforcement
Speaker 3: of this that unless the FTC what they're doing is
Speaker 3: really really scammy. And the apt SEE has gone after
Speaker 3: certainly less than one hundred posibly even less than fifty
Speaker 3: MLMs since the seventies in terms of actually suing them
Speaker 3: and shutting them down. Yeah, I mean not one pyramid scheme.
Speaker 3: Multiple marketing company was shut down during Reagan and butsch
Speaker 3: one during Bush two they started up a little bit,
Speaker 3: and then in the Clinton administration. But even during the
Speaker 3: herbal Life lawsuit when the FTC suit urbal Life, and
Speaker 3: that was that whole Bill Ackman saga where Bill Ackman
Speaker 3: came out and wanted to short urban life. This is
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven, twenty twelve. When the FTC finally sued
Speaker 3: Herbalife in twenty sixteen, they immediately crafted a settlement with
Speaker 3: the company Erbalife had hired the Desta Group. This is
Speaker 3: a bipartisan situation where people you know, on both sides
Speaker 3: of the political spectrum have involved themselves with MLM Rbalife
Speaker 3: also or am why I believe us boys Schiller at
Speaker 3: one point. So you know, these are big corporate companies.
Speaker 3: Melan Albright was a spokesperson for Erbal Life for many years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that's so bad, bad and a good example
Speaker 1: of you can be on the wrong side of history
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter what party you're in. Right, there's
Speaker 1: no world in which any of this is opay.
Speaker 3: And MLMs get by because they're incredibly complicated in terms
Speaker 3: of the way they figured out how to talk with
Speaker 3: the business model. Like the way I explained the business
Speaker 3: model to you is not how they explain it, right.
Speaker 3: They make it sound the lot like it's door to
Speaker 3: door selling, which to a lot of people is very
Speaker 3: like old timey and American, and so you're like, how
Speaker 3: could there be anything wrong with this? And because they
Speaker 3: are old, they're from the early fifties, we are sort
Speaker 3: of trapped in the legal precedent that was set during
Speaker 3: the fifties and sixties and seventies, And so there's a
Speaker 3: lot keeping MLMs from being understood in the way that
Speaker 3: I think they should be understood, Like I think the
Speaker 3: Amway family should be treated like the Sacklers in terms
Speaker 3: of the harm that they've done on the world. Because
Speaker 3: the majority of MLM participants are worldwide. Most most MLM
Speaker 3: participants are not in the US anymore. So there's millions
Speaker 3: of people here, but there's many more millions around the world.
Speaker 3: And you can imagine how much if you're in a
Speaker 3: country with way, way less of GDP than the United States,
Speaker 3: the idea that you can buy in for a small
Speaker 3: amount of money and become a millionaire is is going
Speaker 3: to like sweep you up in India or in China
Speaker 3: or wherever you are. So yeah, I mean that there's
Speaker 3: a lot there's a lot of history that I tried
Speaker 3: to pull apart in my book to make people understand, like, yes,
Speaker 3: the Betsy Devas, we can critique a lot of her
Speaker 3: views right now, but nobody really talks about like where
Speaker 3: does her money come from? Betsy Devas's brother is Eric Prince.
Speaker 3: So these two kind of Michigan dynasties that are hugely
Speaker 3: influential in our modern far right party.
Speaker 2: And profoundly sketchy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and both really like what MLM does is it's
Speaker 3: an engine of propaganda that I really find, ultimately at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, anti democratic. It's all about
Speaker 3: enrolling people in an exploitative and harmful system and using
Speaker 3: basically cult tactics to keep their noses to the grindstone,
Speaker 3: keep telling them it's going to get better. Keep going,
Speaker 3: keep going. You know you're doing it. You want to
Speaker 3: do it by yourself. You can do it as an individual.
Speaker 3: You don't need government benefits. The government makes you a slave.
Speaker 3: And that capitalism works best with no regulation and no
Speaker 3: rules like that's what MLM you propagates on the on
Speaker 3: a grassroots level. And truly the aim of how MLM
Speaker 3: has operated in tandem with ideology is to get to
Speaker 3: a place where there really is no one keeping capital,
Speaker 3: the forces of capital corporations accountable, that they can truly
Speaker 3: do whatever they want. That is what MLM would love,
Speaker 3: because of course there's a lot of evidence that MLM's
Speaker 3: fraud and so they don't want the FTC, they don't
Speaker 3: want consumer protection, they don't want state ags to be empowered.
Speaker 3: You know, they would love to simply operate in a
Speaker 3: wild West, which, of course is like you can see
Speaker 3: it in Doge right now, right, you know, which of
Speaker 3: course is getting so much of it's blueprint from Heritage. Heritage,
Speaker 3: which is very much a project of multiple marketing. So
Speaker 3: not to sound like I have a tinfoil hat on,
Speaker 3: but it feels like a conspiracy, because it really is.
Speaker 3: If you look at the evidence.
Speaker 2: You don't sound tinfoil Hattie at all. Thank you, bridget Read,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: E Gene Carrol is a journalist and the author of
Speaker 1: the new book Not My Type. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Eagan Carroll, Molly my Darling, Hellottle friend. So let us
Speaker 1: talk about this book. I have it right here, Not
Speaker 1: My Type. It was a total secret, this book. No
Speaker 1: one knew about it. You kept it secret secret. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about how this happened and where you wrote
Speaker 1: this book.
Speaker 2: Also, I love Donald Trump's blurb.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got Donald Trump to blurb the book.
Speaker 2: I don't know who she is. So let's talk about
Speaker 2: this book.
Speaker 4: I love talking about the book. Molly. I'm eighty one
Speaker 4: and I'm been a magazine writer for the last fifty years.
Speaker 4: I was put into the middle of a highly comic situation,
Speaker 4: surrounded with characters that not even Molly John Fast could create,
Speaker 4: each one more surreal and more hilarious and more frightening
Speaker 4: and more stupendous than the last. And as an old
Speaker 4: time journalist, I could not help myself. I had to
Speaker 4: get it down now. It was saint Martin's who decided
Speaker 4: we will keep the book secret. And Molly, when you
Speaker 4: and I know that when we have a secret, we
Speaker 4: become very powerful. So we kept every sentenced secret. And
Speaker 4: I just I had that golden nugget inside of me,
Speaker 4: that secrecy. I knew stuff that he didn't know. I
Speaker 4: was going to explode what really went on behind the
Speaker 4: scenes and this, you know, the high comedy. He has
Speaker 4: never been treated this way, and we kept it under wraps.
Speaker 4: And that's what we did. And Molly, we pulled it off.
Speaker 4: I mean we pulled it off.
Speaker 1: I know because I was there on Morning Joe the
Speaker 1: day you revealed that you had done it.
Speaker 4: Did you anchor again? Today?
Speaker 1: I did the view today, I'm doing Morning Joe tomorrow.
Speaker 4: How was the view good?
Speaker 2: Those ladies are really cool?
Speaker 4: Now? How did I know you did TV today? Because
Speaker 4: you have on full makeup, full makeup. The lips give
Speaker 4: you away. I should have guessed the view, should have
Speaker 4: guessed the view. That's perfect for you. Well, the morning
Speaker 4: I did Morning Joe and you were the anchor, that
Speaker 4: was the morning you hit the best seller list. Yes,
Speaker 4: so I didn't even want to talk about my book.
Speaker 4: I was more excited that your book hit the best
Speaker 4: seller list. Yes, poor Molly, you look like you'd been
Speaker 4: hit by an arrow because your whole interview went south
Speaker 4: because I opened it by saying, you know, let's not
Speaker 4: talk about this my life. Congratulations for the best seller.
Speaker 4: So that's not my type. Just hit the best seller list,
Speaker 4: I know, number two. This is what happens when you
Speaker 4: keep something secret.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: It was during the trial that you decided you were
Speaker 1: going to write this down, right, Well, Molly.
Speaker 4: I was writing down the whole time. When I returned
Speaker 4: my hotel room during this day, I would open up,
Speaker 4: I'd take my phone and I'd open it and I'm
Speaker 4: just talking to it, every single detail. Everything we were eating,
Speaker 4: what Joe Takapina was, where hall Aleena Hobbs hair was
Speaker 4: that day? Was it long? Was it short? Was she
Speaker 4: wearing the huge diamond ring? Come on this detail? I
Speaker 4: could get down. And then I had the court transcripts.
Speaker 4: And if you talk about high comedy, I wish you
Speaker 4: could read the court transcripts from the two trump time.
Speaker 4: John Gresham could not have written drama that was like
Speaker 4: what was going on in this corp. So I had
Speaker 4: all the truth. Nothing could have stopped me nothing. You
Speaker 4: could have come to my house with all your children.
Speaker 4: You could have dragged your mother out of a nice
Speaker 4: place for shoes, put her in the car, and all
Speaker 4: of you could have come and yelled at me, and
Speaker 4: I would have written this book. I had to get
Speaker 4: it out. People have to know that he is just
Speaker 4: an old man in saffron colored makeup with his hair
Speaker 4: done up like Barbara Stanwy in Ballfire. That's who he is.
Speaker 4: That's it. And page after page and how he reacted
Speaker 4: and what he did in court and what he didn't do.
Speaker 4: It was. I was fascinated by it. I couldn't stop writing.
Speaker 4: Oh I was writing easy for you or hard?
Speaker 2: I find writing to be pretty hard.
Speaker 4: But when you write a piece, I can tell when
Speaker 4: you hit your stride. Tell me if I'm wrong. When
Speaker 4: you have that section about your Malijong fast and that
Speaker 4: you have been the receptacle of Erica Jong stories, that
Speaker 4: whoever meets you has an Erica Jong story. Do you
Speaker 4: remember that section? You hit your stride with that section?
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you?
Speaker 1: I mean you know that book was a lot of rewriting,
Speaker 1: was it, Yeah, A lot of rewriting and a lot
Speaker 1: of like paring it down and trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what went where I have organizational problems. But wait, I
Speaker 1: want you to explain to us sort of what it's
Speaker 1: like to have this book in the world, the trial,
Speaker 1: and also just like you've survived a very scary trial,
Speaker 1: you are now in the world. Just talk to us
Speaker 1: about sort of where you are right now writing it.
Speaker 4: Because I've never been to a therap just in my life,
Speaker 4: I'm fine. You know, my whole life has to spread
Speaker 4: sweetness in life, and I don't think about bad things
Speaker 4: that went on to me. That was terrible because you know,
Speaker 4: two official psychiatris hired, one by Trump, one by Robbery
Speaker 4: to plumb my depths and find out what really happened.
Speaker 4: Trump's psychiatrist was to prove that I was a gold
Speaker 4: bigger wire. Our psychiatrist was just to find out if
Speaker 4: what I think happened actually happened. And it turns out
Speaker 4: I did so as much as I was hiding that
Speaker 4: for myself. I suffered.
Speaker 1: And everything I've read that you've written has shown that
Speaker 1: you really did suffer, that it really changed the trajectory
Speaker 1: of your life that attack.
Speaker 4: I've never had a romance since nineteen ninety six. No romance,
Speaker 4: but I didn't organize my life around I went to
Speaker 4: work the next day. It was not the organizing principle,
Speaker 4: and I hid it from myself and writing about it,
Speaker 4: Mali brought it back in black and white in a
Speaker 4: way that helped me. It just made I ended up
Speaker 4: very happy. It was like I was on very high
Speaker 4: peak and I could see it all. And I think
Speaker 4: you probably feel the same when you finish the book
Speaker 4: about your mother. You could see it with new eyes
Speaker 4: because you actually right got it down on paper. It
Speaker 4: was a relief and I was happy afterwards. And the
Speaker 4: amazing to me because I would never, ever, never, and
Speaker 4: I don't think you would never in my life dream
Speaker 4: that anything I could write would ever get near a
Speaker 4: bestseller list ever in my life. And then when that happened, Well,
Speaker 4: how did you feel about it when you hit the
Speaker 4: best seller list?
Speaker 1: I was shocked, exactly, just shocked, shopped.
Speaker 4: One hundred thousand books are published every year, and here, Malija,
Speaker 4: you know it's not it wasn't surprising to me where
Speaker 4: you hit it. I mean I couldn't even eat.
Speaker 2: I eat a lot of ice cream.
Speaker 4: And that cake that you, oh, I love the cake
Speaker 4: that you order.
Speaker 1: It's a very scary time in American life, and Trump
Speaker 1: is pretty scary and he is really mad at you.
Speaker 1: So how do you not be scared? Because there are
Speaker 1: billionaires who are terrified of him.
Speaker 4: I don't give two shits. Do not give two shits.
Speaker 4: If somebody shoots me, it's fine with me. I don't
Speaker 4: want to feel anything. And shoot me in the arm
Speaker 4: or the leg. I do not care. I am not afraid.
Speaker 4: You cannot enter this world and be frightened about some
Speaker 4: stupid Trump or doing whatever. No, shoot me. Fine, I've
Speaker 4: done I've lived eighty one, my li, I've had a
Speaker 4: fabulous life. I mean, I have friends like you. How
Speaker 4: could I be happier? Fine? I can't live in fear?
Speaker 4: Do you live in fair? Are your mouth off every
Speaker 4: fucking day?
Speaker 2: No? But what do you think about?
Speaker 1: Like? They are all these very very rich men who
Speaker 1: are terrified of saying anything negative about Trump.
Speaker 4: You're talking about CBS, ab Hal, all those.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about corporations and people and Bill but even
Speaker 1: I actually think the most subversive are the billionaires because
Speaker 1: these are people who have unlimited funds. Right, they need security.
Speaker 1: It's surrounding error and those guys are terrified as Trump.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what do you have to say to
Speaker 1: people like Jeff Bezos, like Elon Musk, like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, Elon happens to be much his own thing.
Speaker 1: But to those men who live in who are cowering
Speaker 1: in front of Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Well, because Bezos has got you know, Lauren Sanchez boobs
Speaker 4: to protect him. He's not good because you know, those
Speaker 4: those boobs are gott to protect him and all their
Speaker 4: fucking wedding guests, so we don't have to worry about him.
Speaker 4: We don't have to worry about him. I think one
Speaker 4: of the reasons they're riches because they're well, you know,
Speaker 4: they're all in a you know, they're in a band.
Speaker 4: They all want to live forever. You know, they all
Speaker 4: they get the shots of the baby juice and all that.
Speaker 4: It's just a different tribe, Malie. We can't make them
Speaker 4: brave your podcast every single day, you are running your mouth,
Speaker 4: every single of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard because I think bravery is contagious,
Speaker 1: and I think that powerness is also contagious. And here
Speaker 1: we have, you know, a president who has said he
Speaker 1: will seekret retribution on his political enemies. I wonder if
Speaker 1: you could talk about like writing this book where you
Speaker 1: scared at all?
Speaker 4: Or now, Melie, I use humor, comedy, a laugh. If
Speaker 4: we can laugh, that is a great weapon, because when
Speaker 4: we laugh, we can rise above whatever the dark situation
Speaker 4: is that our brains are free for that minute. You
Speaker 4: use a lot, I use it. No, we've got to
Speaker 4: laugh at this darkness. It is a comical, horrible track situation.
Speaker 4: If we see the humor in it, we can move on.
Speaker 4: All The thing is we have to do, as you know,
Speaker 4: is get off our lazy asses and stop sitting in
Speaker 4: our houses and then go outside and start to organize.
Speaker 4: And we could also get together and control the economy
Speaker 4: if we wanted. We all women particularly had more money
Speaker 4: than you know, anybody. We could start pulling strings. But
Speaker 4: we just sit in our houses. I don't know what
Speaker 4: we're doing in there.
Speaker 1: There was a sort of reckoning about men and sexual violence.
Speaker 1: There was a moment of me too, and then we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of cycling about. You know, what was progress,
Speaker 1: what was push back? What was progress? What was push back?
Speaker 1: Have you felt that in the way people respond to you.
Speaker 4: No, I live in a huddle up in the country.
Speaker 4: I don't really I'm not really around people.
Speaker 1: Do you think now that Cuomo has lost that there's
Speaker 1: a bit of like, maybe it actually matters, Maybe victims
Speaker 1: stories matter.
Speaker 4: Women in New York they didn't forget, you know, unlike
Speaker 4: the Republicans who actually have never heard, you know, Molly,
Speaker 4: the NY people in the South have never heard that
Speaker 4: Donald Trump was held liable because there's a Berlin wall.
Speaker 4: I don't think they're listening to fast politics. Frankly, right,
Speaker 4: I know the poor souls. I mean they're deprived. They
Speaker 4: are deprived, but they don't know it. But in New York,
Speaker 4: everybody knew about Blomo. Every woman knew about Glomo, and
Speaker 4: she took that into the voting booth and she considered it.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, I think that's a real thing. So what
Speaker 2: are you going to do next? Are you writing? What
Speaker 2: is your next move?
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, I got a big plan. I'm coming to
Speaker 4: your house and we're going to eat cake and we're
Speaker 4: going to discuss how unusual it is to hit the
Speaker 4: best seller list, both of us who would never dream
Speaker 4: of ever achieving this. And we're gonna have cake, and
Speaker 4: we're gonna have milk, and we're gonna have ice cream
Speaker 4: and We're just gonna appreciate what we've done, and I'll
Speaker 4: appreciate you and you'll appreciate me. Or just well, just
Speaker 4: eat cake. We'll have crumbs everywhere, and we'll wear that,
Speaker 4: you know, you make up that you're wearing right now,
Speaker 4: and the lipstick. You know, we'll do that. I think
Speaker 4: that's a good plan. I think that's the plan. On
Speaker 4: we just enjoy ourselves. We kind of stop being so
Speaker 4: tragic and depressed, and we got to stand up, go outside,
Speaker 4: start to understand if we get together, that we can
Speaker 4: control the situation. We are his boss, not the other
Speaker 4: way around. And then we'll do this. You're Alder, I'm
Speaker 4: Alway's house for pay that, you know what? What else?
Speaker 2: Eg? And Carol? Will you please come back?
Speaker 4: Wait? I have to go now where do we come back?
Speaker 4: What the hell are you talking about? Okay, I'll come back.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: All right, I'll see you soon, Mali.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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