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 Donald Trump says on stage again
Speaker 1: that he wants to be a dictator. Take him seriously
Speaker 1: and literally. We have such an interesting show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Intercepts Ryan Grimm stops by to tell us about
Speaker 1: his new book, The Squad, AOC and the Hope of
Speaker 1: a Political Revolution. Then we'll talk to Professor Steven Levitski
Speaker 1: about why Republicans have turned against democracy.
Speaker 2: But first we have.
Speaker 1: The host of the Enemy's List, the one, the only,
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project's own, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Mollie Jong Fast, How are you this fine day?
Speaker 2: Just keeping it going? Unlike the United States Congress, you.
Speaker 3: Know, well, unlike the United States Congress, and unlike so
Speaker 3: many arms of our government these days, you are the
Speaker 3: hardest working woman in show business.
Speaker 1: Well, the bar is very fucking low if we're going
Speaker 1: to come the Congress.
Speaker 2: I've started listening to a lot of podcasts, and I.
Speaker 1: Was listening to a podcast that specializes in Congress and
Speaker 1: is not very liberal. It's very striking them at all
Speaker 1: if even maybe a little conservative, and they were talking
Speaker 1: about how this Congress is the do nothing Congress.
Speaker 2: Do nothing.
Speaker 3: There is a meaningful number of actions Congress could be
Speaker 3: taking right now that would improve the lives of Americans.
Speaker 3: But why would they do that?
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, crazy talk.
Speaker 3: I heard this morning that they're trying to prepare hearings
Speaker 3: on the Taylor swift syop because you know, if you're
Speaker 3: the Republican Party and you want to cause yourself enormous agony,
Speaker 3: you could do one of three things. You could put
Speaker 3: your dick in a meat grinder, or you could attack
Speaker 3: this week.
Speaker 2: You get I love Rick.
Speaker 1: You cannot have Rick on the podcast without the superfluois
Speaker 1: dick meat grounder joke.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It wasn't superfluous though.
Speaker 2: I mean, right, just moving us right along.
Speaker 3: The attacking tailors is like you're shoving a live wolverine
Speaker 3: in your pants. It's going to be loud and messy,
Speaker 3: but it's also got to eventually into nothing but pain
Speaker 3: and suffering.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk about this for a minute. The
Speaker 1: Republicans in the House, you know, I think they have
Speaker 1: like a few days left and do nothing Congress before
Speaker 1: they go out for Christmas, because God forbid anyone should
Speaker 1: work during any holiday ever. But one of the things
Speaker 1: they're really working on is they want to open this
Speaker 1: impeachment inquoy. One of my favorite things is I don't
Speaker 1: know if you heard, because I have no life, and
Speaker 1: I listened to c SPAN.
Speaker 2: I heard what speaker Mike Johnson was trying.
Speaker 1: To get people to vote, and he said, don't vote
Speaker 1: for this because you believe in impeachment. Vote for this
Speaker 1: because you believe in the United States Constitution.
Speaker 3: So what I have questions? Yes, one of which is
Speaker 3: what the fuck? I was like, huh wait what.
Speaker 2: He's almost slick, that guy, but not quite.
Speaker 3: He imagines that he's slick. He imagines that he's some
Speaker 3: sort of like crafty rhetorical player. But let's be real,
Speaker 3: other than being inspired by God himself and being told
Speaker 3: that he's the Moses of our generation.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think God actually spoke to him.
Speaker 3: I think at least they were having a signal chat
Speaker 3: with God.
Speaker 2: Right exactly.
Speaker 3: When you look at Johnson's hubris and that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: it doesn't match up with his ability to move the
Speaker 3: ball at all. So far. He is a guy who's
Speaker 3: walking around with a target on his back. He knows it.
Speaker 3: He knows that the gates is and all the weirdos
Speaker 3: are ready to just leap on him and destroy him
Speaker 3: at the slightest provocation.
Speaker 2: But does anyone think that he would be good at this?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think he got the job because
Speaker 1: anyone thought he'd be good at it.
Speaker 3: Moly. I think that's a really good observation, is that
Speaker 3: in some ways he wasn't a compromise candidate. He was
Speaker 3: exactly who they wanted, was somebody who would not resist
Speaker 3: the train wreck, because remember, what they want is the spectacle.
Speaker 3: They want the collapse, the chaos, the ugliness, the train wreck,
Speaker 3: the bullshit. They want all those broken toy moments that
Speaker 3: you know, if you have a party that has been
Speaker 3: replaced by a cult run by mad men, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really good point. And that's
Speaker 1: where we're looking down the barrel of So I don't
Speaker 1: know where this goes next.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 3: Look, they have to do a few housekeeping matters before
Speaker 3: the end of the year.
Speaker 1: The enormous supplemental that would save U. Krayon just a
Speaker 1: few housekeeping matters.
Speaker 3: Whilst I am not a Jim Langford fanboy, he's actually
Speaker 3: dealing with the White House to work out a deal.
Speaker 3: The White House wants a deal too, and I think
Speaker 3: it's important that they try to land something. And believe me,
Speaker 3: Langford's not doing this without Mitch mca donald's blessing. They're
Speaker 3: teeing up something that will put Johnson in a very
Speaker 3: bad spot. But real talk, he has no choice. He
Speaker 3: have to swallow hard and vote for this because if
Speaker 3: he doesn't, the rest of the fund stops for the
Speaker 3: Republicans in the House. Because even those guys need the
Speaker 3: supplemental stuff. Even they need it, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: you don't just as like a like blow it off.
Speaker 1: At this point, there are three things in the supplemental
Speaker 1: that Ukraine funding, Taiwan funding, and Israel funding. So these
Speaker 1: are the three places where the world is on fire,
Speaker 1: except Taiwan is to stop the world from going on fire.
Speaker 3: If you're a Republican, do you want your Democratic opponent
Speaker 3: to say my opponent, Republican John Smith is soft on Jina. Yes,
Speaker 3: he voted also Chinese Communist Party in Jina, right, But.
Speaker 1: I also think an important data point here is that
Speaker 1: this is money that ultimately, right it goes to making
Speaker 1: more weapons in the United States because we're sending Ukraine
Speaker 1: our old stockpile, So it's actually money that's going into
Speaker 1: the American economy.
Speaker 2: So there's any number of reasons to do this.
Speaker 3: Two thirds of the spend on Ukraine aid so far
Speaker 3: has been to American defense contractors and American workers who
Speaker 3: are replacing the old crap we're sending over there. By
Speaker 3: old crap, I don't mean it's crappy. I think it's
Speaker 3: just it's stuff that you know. Look, the Abrams tanks
Speaker 3: were sending over there are things that were around during
Speaker 3: the First Golf War and they're perfectly good combat operations things.
Speaker 3: But now we're building new things to replace them. This
Speaker 3: is not a bad outcome for this economy, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, once again, the unemployment rate is now down
Speaker 3: to three point seven percent as of this Friday, and
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand jobs were created. Once again, the Biden
Speaker 3: economy is a healthscape for what's the living in the dead.
Speaker 1: Thoughts and prayers to Maria Bartaromo and all the people
Speaker 1: at Fox and Fox News are going to have to
Speaker 1: pretend that the economy is bad for another cycle.
Speaker 3: By the way, Mawi not to change the subject, but
Speaker 3: I don't know if you caught the Peter Deucy clip
Speaker 3: on Friday morning, where he on the White House lawn
Speaker 3: admitted to a shocked audience back on the Curvy Couch
Speaker 3: that they'd been seeking to try to impeach Biden for
Speaker 3: years and could never find any evidence. How did the
Speaker 3: deep state get to Peter Deucy? My god, does there
Speaker 3: reach no no limit?
Speaker 1: What I love about Peter Doocy is that he's just
Speaker 1: a fucking moron.
Speaker 2: There I said it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you could even call him a moron.
Speaker 3: It's like an insult to morons to call him a moron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a very very good point.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of hot take that we at fast
Speaker 1: politics here we really appreciate. So there's this like last
Speaker 1: dash to try to save Ukraine. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the stakes in Ukraine, I mean could not be higher,
Speaker 1: because I mean, this is what's keeping Russia from just
Speaker 1: taking over, right.
Speaker 3: The idea that we would abandon Ukraine at this point
Speaker 3: and hand Vladimir Putin to win in a moment that
Speaker 3: would destroy NATO, and look if you're a Trumper, maybe
Speaker 3: you want to do that. That would shatter America's reputation
Speaker 3: as an ally in the European battle against authoritarianism, that
Speaker 3: would reward Vladimir Putin's war crimes because jd Vance and
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and Steve Bannon want a side with Putin.
Speaker 3: If you're willing to do that, you're a loss. You're
Speaker 3: a lost cause, you're a lost soul. And the fact
Speaker 3: of the matter is the same people right now who
Speaker 3: don't want Ukraine aid. The minute the ukraineate stops and
Speaker 3: the tanks rolling the Kiev will be screaming Joe Biden
Speaker 3: so weak you couldn't stop Putin from advanting to you,
Speaker 3: this is a very dark group of people who who
Speaker 3: are completely in an alliance with Putin, whether they want
Speaker 3: to say it or not. And frankly, some of them
Speaker 3: were in a more there's a whole like weirdo Republican
Speaker 3: alliance with Alexander due getting all these strange Russian nationalist types.
Speaker 1: Even inadvertently or Edvertony, that crew probably would like to
Speaker 1: see Vladimir Putin win. But it's a lot cheaper for
Speaker 1: all parties involved for that not to happen. So the hope,
Speaker 1: I think is that that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: From what I'm hearing around the feed store, we're getting
Speaker 3: a lot closer than people want to admit. Which is fine.
Speaker 3: You know, it's fine. It's Washington doing what actually is
Speaker 3: supposed to happen in Washington, which is people are negotiating compromises.
Speaker 3: I know this is sort of an astoundingly dangerous concept
Speaker 3: for most people, but yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we have that, and then we have the
Speaker 1: incredible stuff happening with Hunter Biden.
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden.
Speaker 1: No one has ever been charged with more things for
Speaker 1: less stuff than Hunter Biden.
Speaker 3: I'm just really terri that this is going to cost
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden in the electoral swing states this year. Because
Speaker 3: Hunter's presidential campaign is just getting off the ground, and
Speaker 3: now that he's going to have these things hanging over him,
Speaker 3: I just don't know he's going to perform in Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Speaker 3: and Michigan. It's just a right.
Speaker 2: But we'll talk. Let's just talk about this. Does this
Speaker 2: hurt Biden?
Speaker 3: No, let me tell you it's already baked in the cake.
Speaker 3: The only people that are that would make a decision
Speaker 3: to vote against Joe Biden because of Hunter. Biden are Trumpers.
Speaker 3: They were never going to vote for Joe Biden in
Speaker 3: the first place. But of course I guarantee you we
Speaker 3: will see a New York Times story the next like
Speaker 3: seven days. These Democrats were considering Joe Biden, but now
Speaker 3: because of Hunter, they've dogged the red hat of Maga.
Speaker 3: We sat down, We sat down with four in cells,
Speaker 3: kind a Dungeon and Dragons party.
Speaker 1: Those dungeons and Dragons people are liberals. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think it is really interesting. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw polls this morning on how seventy
Speaker 1: percent of Americans want action on climate seventy percent, fifty
Speaker 1: percent of all Republicans. Okay, we're never going to see that, Poul, Right,
Speaker 1: We're only going to see the poll that says.
Speaker 2: Americans think Biden is too old. Right. That's the only
Speaker 2: pole you ever get to say.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. It's funny you mentioned that because I talked
Speaker 3: to a friend of mine who a very well meaning
Speaker 3: activist and a smart person the other day. We're talking
Speaker 3: about Trump and you know, Trump winning a second term,
Speaker 3: and she said, you know, my biggest worry is you
Speaker 3: know at that point, we'll we'll never get a climate bill.
Speaker 3: I'm like, let me tell you, I love you and everything,
Speaker 3: but uh, you see, the biggest problem of Trump's second
Speaker 3: term is not getting a climate bill.
Speaker 4: I have some news for you.
Speaker 3: You won't even know about it because you'll be in
Speaker 3: the camp.
Speaker 2: I mean really like, that's the biggest.
Speaker 3: That's your biggest source of worry about the second Trump term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean that, I think is a really
Speaker 1: good point. And do you think people wake up on
Speaker 1: January first? And I are like, oh fuck, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't think Trump's going to be the nominee.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was talking to someone who's a very
Speaker 1: fancy media insider who was saying, fifty to fifty, Nicki
Speaker 1: Haley is the nomination for focks.
Speaker 2: And I thought, what.
Speaker 1: Happen if the Republican Party were so normal that they
Speaker 1: would nominate someone like Nikki Haley despite the fact that
Speaker 1: she you know, her policies.
Speaker 2: Saw the chance of that are zero, Like, there.
Speaker 3: Is no universe. Let me just let me just go
Speaker 3: back to this again. There is not a universe in
Speaker 3: which Nicky Haley, even if she won. Don't like either
Speaker 3: Iowa or New Hampshire wins the Republican primary. She is
Speaker 3: behind Trump in the Super Tuesday states, which comprise over
Speaker 3: twenty five percent of the total on average, by fifty
Speaker 3: two points. Donald Trump could be caught in public fucking
Speaker 3: a live goat, and there is no scenario where Nicki
Speaker 3: Haley suddenly becomes like the anti live goat fucking candidate
Speaker 3: and Donald Trump loses. It's not going to happen. People,
Speaker 3: when somebody who is had by fifty points sixty days
Speaker 3: out from an election, it's not going to change. This
Speaker 3: is not how anything works. Nothing happens this way in politics.
Speaker 2: So you're saying she has a chance.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, So oh no, let's be this way, okay, Iowa,
Speaker 3: New Hampshire, South Carolina. She's at a distant third in
Speaker 3: Iowa right now, her numbers are improving, the Santa's are
Speaker 3: slightly declining. She's still going to place second, only thirty
Speaker 3: five points behind Donald Trump. She's doing okay. In New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: she might play second, only twenty five points behind Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: She's thirty points behind Donald Trump. And her home state.
Speaker 3: She's at eight percent in Florida, which is a very
Speaker 3: big prize on March twelfth. She's sixty points behind Trump
Speaker 3: in Texas and California on Super Tuesday. Okay, sixty points
Speaker 3: behind Trump are in Texas and California, and all the
Speaker 3: Super Tuesday states except for like one or two, are
Speaker 3: winter take all and the big states are all winner
Speaker 3: take all. So if you have Trump winning Texas, California,
Speaker 3: and Florida in March, and if he wins nothing else
Speaker 3: right there, he's got thirty percent of the vote, this
Speaker 3: isn't gonna go like she thinks it's gonna go. You
Speaker 3: can put all the money into Nikky Hilly in the
Speaker 3: world you want right now, and I'm sorry, you have
Speaker 3: basically put your cash on a bonfire. Does it fuck
Speaker 3: with Trump? Great? Does it make Trump look a little weaker?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 3: Okay, none of it, at the end of the day
Speaker 3: is going to make this outcome any different.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Sorry. I'm passionate about the subject because I believe you
Speaker 3: have to hit the monster that's actually out there, and
Speaker 3: that's Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I feel like that's a good point.
Speaker 1: I also feel like the thing I'm I see so
Speaker 1: much is that there's so much like media on media violence,
Speaker 1: and so many of these news cycles are driven by
Speaker 1: like fantasy, wish cast god yes, holes that were direct
Speaker 1: by Republican pollsters. You know, I don't think much of
Speaker 1: the organic stuff, but I don't think much of the
Speaker 1: news cycle is organic right now.
Speaker 3: Oh No, As you pointed out in your article about pulling,
Speaker 3: I guess a week ago. Now, these are not real events.
Speaker 3: These are not real things driving the polls. And because
Speaker 3: reporters look at all the polling aggregation sides five point
Speaker 3: thirty eight real clear, all those places, Republicans learn you
Speaker 3: can dump a lot of junk polls into the system
Speaker 3: to get a media narrative running that every young motor
Speaker 3: is a band of Joe Biden over Hamas. No, not true.
Speaker 3: Every Hispanic voter, no, not true. Black men are all that. No,
Speaker 3: not true. All those things are happening in small numbers,
Speaker 3: and they should be concerning. But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: fundamentals out there right now that put Biden in a
Speaker 3: very strong position that is being underestimated and simultaneously underreported.
Speaker 3: But look, Biden is in the middle of a massive
Speaker 3: economic good news story. It's taking long time to trickle
Speaker 3: into the minds and hearts and brains of people. But
Speaker 3: it's happening. None of these things are easy. The facts
Speaker 3: on the ground are starting to make it harder and
Speaker 3: harder for Fox to portray the country as you know,
Speaker 3: an economic healthcape. It's harder and harder for them to
Speaker 3: deny that gas prices are down, interest rates are down,
Speaker 3: the labor market is booming, the retirements are booming, the
Speaker 3: stock market is booming.
Speaker 2: And now we are booming on too far. So Rick Wilson,
Speaker 2: thank you for joining us. You are the best.
Speaker 3: I do my very best each and every day to
Speaker 3: serve and protect this a great democracy of ours.
Speaker 1: Ryan Grim is the Washington Bureau chief of the Intercept
Speaker 1: and author of the Squad AOC and the hope of
Speaker 1: a political revolution.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Ryan, thank you for having me here.
Speaker 2: Molly, talk to me about this book.
Speaker 1: I want first explained to me why you decided to
Speaker 1: write this book. I'm not surprised about the topic and
Speaker 1: why you decided to write it, but I want you
Speaker 1: to sort of talk us through it.
Speaker 5: It's like a sequel kind of to my last book,
Speaker 5: which was called We've Got People, which ran from basically
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties up until twenty eighteen, tracing the kind
Speaker 5: of arc of the progressive movement. They like little underdog story,
Speaker 5: you know, originating with Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition
Speaker 5: fighting an outmatched battle against the kind of center left
Speaker 5: wing of the Democratic Party, and then running through Howard
Speaker 5: Dean really giving birth to the kind of online interaction
Speaker 5: and the ability to raise you know, small donors to
Speaker 5: counteract big money in politics, which then really gets turned
Speaker 5: into perfection by Barack Obama in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 5: But then Bernie Sanders in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen exclusively
Speaker 5: runs basically on the famous twenty seven dollars from his
Speaker 5: individual supporters, and the book finishes with the squad getting
Speaker 5: elected to Congress and AOC occupying Nancy Pelosi's office to
Speaker 5: call for a Green New Deal and strong action on
Speaker 5: climate change. So the book had a nice satisfying arc
Speaker 5: to it. The sequel, I think is much less satisfying,
Speaker 5: but I think even much more interesting, you know, in
Speaker 5: some ways, it goes back through the twenty fifteen twenty
Speaker 5: sixteen campaign to kind of find the origins of many
Speaker 5: of the debates that we seem to be stuck in
Speaker 5: a loop on now, and then ends with kind of
Speaker 5: the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the mid
Speaker 5: terms of twenty twenty two, and traces the way that
Speaker 5: the progressive wing of the party evolved and transformed over
Speaker 5: a very short amount of time. Like if you think
Speaker 5: about what things were like and who Bernie was in
Speaker 5: twenty fifteen and compare that to kind of where the
Speaker 5: squad is today, a lot has happened.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think a lot
Speaker 1: about is how progressives have actually infiltrated the Republican the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party oops the Democratic Party in lots of really
Speaker 1: important ways. And one of them was that Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: had real par in the Biden administration when it came
Speaker 1: to budget.
Speaker 2: Will you talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: It was a surreal moment, I think for Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 5: somebody who had spent thirty years kind of shouting from
Speaker 5: the outside and ran a quixotic message campaign in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 5: Like eventually it caught fire and he started to believe
Speaker 5: that maybe he could actually win the nomination, And certainly
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty he was running to win. But he
Speaker 5: started out just as somebody needs to be out there,
Speaker 5: you know, making these points so that there's a national
Speaker 5: conversation about them. His idea was never that he was
Speaker 5: actually going to be in power, but to be the
Speaker 5: kind of chair of the Budget Committee while someone that
Speaker 5: he likes, John Joe Biden was ushering through one of
Speaker 5: the biggest transformative agendas at least since the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 5: perhaps since the New Deal was just a capstone moment
Speaker 5: for Sanders. For sure, he had never had the ear
Speaker 5: of a president before effort, and now he did. And
Speaker 5: at the same time, Yeah, the kind of rise in
Speaker 5: kind of celebrity of the squad at AOC in particular,
Speaker 5: gave progressives a purchase on kind of cultural power that
Speaker 5: they hadn't really had before either, and that translated into
Speaker 5: ron Klaan in particular. You know, the chief of staff
Speaker 5: for first two years really paying more attention to the
Speaker 5: left of the Democratic Party than basically any chief of
Speaker 5: staff ever probably.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I want to ask you about that, because
Speaker 1: it does seem like there were a lot of progressive
Speaker 1: piece of legislation. Progressors were able to influence the Biden
Speaker 1: administration in a lot of really cool ways.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like we talk about that that much,
Speaker 2: and I'm.
Speaker 1: Always kind of disappointed that progressives don't get more credit for,
Speaker 1: like we are reopening factors in the United States, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things people don't talk about
Speaker 1: because they think it's boring, so it's not a pole,
Speaker 1: so you're not allowed to talk about it on television
Speaker 1: is the Chips Act, right, which is like they go
Speaker 1: around the goal is you know, if something happens, you
Speaker 1: won't be getting all of your technological your chips, the
Speaker 1: stuff that runs your cell phone and your watch and your.
Speaker 2: Car from China. You'll be getting it from Ohio.
Speaker 1: And this is like really a kind of tenant of sanders'ism, right,
Speaker 1: is this fiscal populism where you say, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to bring jobs back, but.
Speaker 2: Then you actually just bring jobs back. R Trump who says,
Speaker 2: you know, we're going to put everyone from Mexico in jail.
Speaker 1: Is this not talked about because it's boring or is
Speaker 1: it not talked about because I always feel like democrats
Speaker 1: are a little scared to say, like we did this,
Speaker 1: and progressives wanted us to like that, they're worried that
Speaker 1: something's going to happen to them.
Speaker 5: There is still a kind of scared of the progressive
Speaker 5: shadow element to it.
Speaker 4: I think that is real. At the same time, cutting
Speaker 4: against it was you.
Speaker 5: Know, Ron Klayan and the Biden administration's real belief, particularly
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one, that the youth vote was very
Speaker 5: progressive and that the key to unlocking the youth vote
Speaker 5: was both the Squad and organizations like Justice Democrats, and
Speaker 5: particularly Sunrise Movement, which I write about in the book.
Speaker 5: Sunrise Movement had a shocking amount of access to the
Speaker 5: White House.
Speaker 2: Tell us what Sunrise Movement is.
Speaker 5: This was a group of kind of left wing activists
Speaker 5: who came together in twenty sixteen twenty seventeen around the
Speaker 5: issue of climate, but with a lens toward you know,
Speaker 5: economic and racial and social justice, believing that all of
Speaker 5: the kind of big green climate groups that had come
Speaker 5: before them weren't being confrontational enough, weren't aggressive enough, weren't
Speaker 5: taking it seriously enough, weren't taking seriously the deep anxieties
Speaker 5: young people around the world, and that somebody needed to
Speaker 5: channel that and their first cycle in business. You know,
Speaker 5: they endorsed all of the members of the Squad, and
Speaker 5: they were willing to take a very confrontational attitude toward
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party whereas the kind of big green groups,
Speaker 5: you know, the Serah Club and those in that ecosystem
Speaker 5: you have generally become kind of allies of the democratic establishment.
Speaker 5: And so when they decided to occupy Pelosi's office and
Speaker 5: AOC joined them in that protest, it was a global
Speaker 5: media sensation because you had the hallways just filled with
Speaker 5: these sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year olds, maybe some in their twenties,
Speaker 5: but it really symbolized the kind of rise of this
Speaker 5: of this climate generation and put the Green New Deal
Speaker 5: on a map in a way that we may not
Speaker 5: even fully understand, like Spain implemented a Green New Deal,
Speaker 5: like they took the name, Germany took it and called
Speaker 5: it a New Green Deal lost in translation and sheared
Speaker 5: of its connection to FDR. But there was a real
Speaker 5: excitement and energy around this idea that we're going to
Speaker 5: kind of transform our economy and get away from fossil fuels,
Speaker 5: and while we do that, we're going to bring jobs
Speaker 5: back on shore, and we're going to make sure that
Speaker 5: we created a more just society.
Speaker 4: In the process.
Speaker 5: And so you would not have expected when this small
Speaker 5: organization launched that just a couple of years later, they
Speaker 5: would constantly have the ear of the Biden White House
Speaker 5: in helping to shape what then becomes later the Inflation
Speaker 5: Reduction Act.
Speaker 1: But progressives have also been very patient with the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Like one of the success stories, were not allowed to
Speaker 1: talk about success stories ever in the mainstream media.
Speaker 4: But I won't tell anybody, it'll be our secret.
Speaker 1: But one of the success stories about the Biden administration
Speaker 1: has been that the Biden administration has not been out
Speaker 1: there fighting with Bernie Sanders or fighting with AARC. And
Speaker 1: in fact, I mean there have been moments certainly in
Speaker 1: this administration where Progressives have not been happy, but they've
Speaker 1: been able to sort of work with the administration as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, on the Republican side. And again
Speaker 1: I don't want to compare Republicans to Democrats because they've
Speaker 1: become authoritarian, many of them, so it's not the same.
Speaker 1: But you definitely see, you know, the Republicans recently got
Speaker 1: rid of their speaker, right, there hasn't been Dems in Disarrye.
Speaker 5: I tell an interesting story that wasn't reported at the time,
Speaker 5: of a rare way that the kind of you know,
Speaker 5: super angry the online left the squad and Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 5: the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and the party leadership kind of
Speaker 5: all worked in unison to make the American Rescue Plan
Speaker 5: as good as it was and beat back objections from
Speaker 5: Joe Mansion. Basically what happened was, if you remember, there
Speaker 5: was this ridiculous, outrageous thing where the parliamentarian comes in
Speaker 5: and says, ah, you can't do a minimum fifteen dollars
Speaker 5: minimum wage through reconciliation. Bernie holds a vote, you need sixty.
Speaker 5: At that point he doesn't get He only f forty eight,
Speaker 5: and so there's no fifteen dollars minimum wage.
Speaker 4: People are livid.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, you've got Joe Manchin coming in saying these unemployment
Speaker 5: benefits are too generous, These these checks are going to
Speaker 5: too many people. You know, we need to trim this
Speaker 5: back heavily or I'm out of here. Primila Jayapaul, who
Speaker 5: had developed a relationship with Chuck Schumer over the years,
Speaker 5: was able to go to Schumer and say, if you
Speaker 5: cave to Mansion on these demands, the squad is going
Speaker 5: to walk. They're out of here. And you see the
Speaker 5: pressure that they're under like they will walk. And it
Speaker 5: was the first time in decades that the left, the
Speaker 5: Progressive Caucus could deliver a credible threat from the left,
Speaker 5: because usually in the end, the left says, you know,
Speaker 5: if I don't have X y Z in this bill,
Speaker 5: I'm against it. But you don't get X y Z
Speaker 5: and it's still decent bill. So you're like, okay, find
Speaker 5: them voting for it. And so the left then has
Speaker 5: no leverage in any of these negotiations. Finally they had leverage.
Speaker 5: So Schumer went back to Mansion. He's like, Joe, I
Speaker 5: can't do this, Like this is what you have to
Speaker 5: take when it comes to unemployment, when it comes to
Speaker 5: these other things, or you have to take the whole
Speaker 5: bill down because we don't have the votes in the
Speaker 5: House if you get your way, and Manchin thought about it,
Speaker 5: any caved. And so there is a world in which
Speaker 5: all of these kind of forces within the Democratic coalition
Speaker 5: can work together against the kind of center right pro
Speaker 5: corporate wing of it. But it's very hard to keep
Speaker 5: that coalition together because there's so much suspicion. And I
Speaker 5: hope one thing that this book does is help readers
Speaker 5: across the kind of democratic spectrum get a better understanding
Speaker 5: of the kind of AOC wing of the party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is I think really such an important point.
Speaker 1: It's certainly what I think about when I think about
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's going on under the surface, like
Speaker 1: the docks paddling.
Speaker 2: So I wondered.
Speaker 1: Also, it does seem like this squad started as a
Speaker 1: group four had expanded in twenty twenty, added.
Speaker 4: Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Talk me through where they are now.
Speaker 5: In twenty twenty two, Summer Lee, who was elected in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen to the Pennsylvania State Legislature the same year
Speaker 5: the squad was elected nationally and she was a Pennsylvania
Speaker 5: wide story like, wow, look at Summerlee. And also she
Speaker 5: was elected with Sarah Enamorado, who is now the Allegheny
Speaker 5: County executive, so that they've both risen up together. And
Speaker 5: so summer Lee won despite getting hit with like three
Speaker 5: million dollars in APAC and DMFI Democratic Majority for Israel
Speaker 5: money telling voters that she wasn't a good enough Democrat.
Speaker 5: What I love about that criticism from APAK is not
Speaker 5: only that they supported one hundred plus Republicans you know,
Speaker 5: who were insurrectionists. And then after she wins the primary,
Speaker 5: apag turned around and spent money on behalf of the
Speaker 5: Republican so not just Republicans around the country. They even
Speaker 5: try to get a Republican to beat her in that
Speaker 5: very district where they were saying she wasn't a good
Speaker 5: enough Democrat. So none of this is on the level,
Speaker 5: but not that anybody thought it was to begin with.
Speaker 6: As a Jew myself, the whole idea that somehow Republicans
Speaker 6: are against anti Semitism while supporting a guy who told
Speaker 6: me I was a bad Jew for voting Democrat because
Speaker 6: he's an anti semi And that is one of the
Speaker 6: best anti Semitic tropes you know, is that you know,
Speaker 6: if you don't vote for Israel, you're not a good Jew.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just sort of mind blowing.
Speaker 5: But anyway, the level of anti Semitism that comes out
Speaker 5: of Trump's mouth is just startling. And when we almost
Speaker 5: like don't even hear it anymore, it's just so blatant
Speaker 5: to see them pretending out they're somehow concerned about that.
Speaker 5: But what Trump says is fine is yeah, it's a
Speaker 5: little bit too much to handle. Then you also had
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty two, Greg Kassar winning an Austin seat,
Speaker 5: and you know a lot of people consider him kind
Speaker 5: of squad adjacent or kind of a squad member, and
Speaker 5: maybe and maybe Becka Ballot, who would be I guess
Speaker 5: the first white member of the squad if you considered
Speaker 5: her and so. But now the question is do they
Speaker 5: shrink radically in size or do they expand in the
Speaker 5: face of this. So you've got APEX threatening to spend
Speaker 5: one hundred million dollars in the twenty twenty four race
Speaker 5: to knock out as many of these squad and squad
Speaker 5: adjacent members as they possibly can. That would be the
Speaker 5: by far, the biggest super Pac spend in congressional history.
Speaker 5: Though they did come in. You know, they and DMFI
Speaker 5: and another alley groups came over with forty plus million
Speaker 5: last time, so jumping to one hundred wouldn't be that
Speaker 5: out of it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of wanting to primary some of these
Speaker 1: Democrats because they did not vote.
Speaker 2: I mean, I thought it was interesting. I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about this.
Speaker 1: So there was a vote against anti semitism in the
Speaker 1: House last week and that vote there some people voted present,
Speaker 1: a lot of people voted yes. There were some I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly who voted what, but mostly people voted
Speaker 1: against anti semitism as well they should of course Thomas
Speaker 1: Massey voted now. But then there was another vote there
Speaker 1: Republicans brought up that said anti Zionism is anti Semitism.
Speaker 4: Just straight upset it, Yeah, because.
Speaker 1: The goal here is not about protecting Jews, right, The
Speaker 1: goal here is to get to try to make it
Speaker 1: look like some of these Democrats are anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: That's the goal, right, This is bullshit, And so in
Speaker 2: that vote, this was set.
Speaker 1: Up to make people who are progressives on the left
Speaker 1: look bad. And I just want to sort of speak
Speaker 1: to that for a minute, because you know these people,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very tough situation there in but
Speaker 1: this is just yet another target.
Speaker 5: Right, right, And you had people like Jerry Nadler coming
Speaker 5: out and helpfully explaining to the uninitiated it is just
Speaker 5: I think, as he put it, it's either it's either
Speaker 5: factually wrong or it's intellectually disingenuous to make this claim,
Speaker 5: and for some of them it might be both, Like
Speaker 5: you can't underestimate the amount of ignorance that there might
Speaker 5: be over on the other side of the Aisle. But
Speaker 5: for many of them, it's just completely disingenuous, and like
Speaker 5: you said, it's not about doing anything about anti Semitism.
Speaker 4: In fact, it probably.
Speaker 2: Trump voices.
Speaker 1: My word to the Proud Boys is stand back and
Speaker 1: stand by.
Speaker 2: Those are not ourn't people the Proud Boys. When you're
Speaker 2: telling the browd boys to stand.
Speaker 4: Books, yeah, you've kind of lost your privilege to say.
Speaker 4: I think at that point, right, those.
Speaker 2: Guys are not friends to the Jews.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's funny because it's like my grandfather, Howard
Speaker 1: Fast Jewish Communist House on American Activities, sent to jail
Speaker 1: fighting with the certain conservative Jew over like whether we
Speaker 1: get to be called Jews or not, because you know,
Speaker 1: we are not Zions. I mean, I believe in the
Speaker 1: State of Israel one hundred percent and I'm a Jew,
Speaker 1: but I.
Speaker 2: Do not believe that.
Speaker 1: Zionism should be connected to Judaism. It's not the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, it's conflating two totally different things. And so
Speaker 1: I just think that, you know, if I have to
Speaker 1: fucking fight with that same family for three generations, we're.
Speaker 2: Fighting with each other by dianu, as we say.
Speaker 4: Right, And so going back through the brief history.
Speaker 5: When I was read reporting this book, it was interesting
Speaker 5: to see, you know, how quickly and how dominant this
Speaker 5: issue became. In January twenty nineteen, that's when Mark Mehlman
Speaker 5: stood up Democratic Majority for Israel. And Mark Melmon's a
Speaker 5: long time kind of APAC advisor. He's also a consultant
Speaker 5: for the Yaye Lapede, prominent Israeli politician, and he told
Speaker 5: me that his work against the progressive left in the
Speaker 5: US was aimed at I'm curious for your take on
Speaker 5: his rationale was aimed at defeating that Yahoo and his
Speaker 5: argument was Netanyahu holds up the squad and people like
Speaker 5: them in America and says, you know, this is why
Speaker 5: we can't elect somebody like yere Lapede, and you have
Speaker 5: to stick with me and the far right over in Israel.
Speaker 5: This kind of interesting bank shot, which also is kind
Speaker 5: of an admission that the work he's doing in the
Speaker 5: US is on behalf of a foreign agent, which is
Speaker 5: completely another question. It's like, okay, well, that's interesting. They
Speaker 5: launched DMFI in twenty nineteen in direct response to Ylan
Speaker 5: Omar and Rashida Talib being sworn into Congress and josh Gottenheimer,
Speaker 5: who was kind of connected with no labels and founds
Speaker 5: the problem Solverri's caucus in the US House makes it
Speaker 5: his mission to kind of marginalize as much as possible
Speaker 5: to leave in omar, and so you saw that developing
Speaker 5: very early and really never taking a break from then
Speaker 5: up until now.
Speaker 1: This was so interesting. I really appreciate you, Ryan. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: I would love to.
Speaker 1: Steven Lebitski is a professor of government at Harvard University
Speaker 1: an author of Tyranny of the Minority, How to Reverse
Speaker 1: an Authoritarian Turn and Forge Democracy for All.
Speaker 2: Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Steve, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about what it means
Speaker 1: to have a political party that no longer believes in
Speaker 1: the tenants of democracy, because this is something I've observed
Speaker 1: casually and then I heard you talking about it on
Speaker 1: c SPAN because I'm very exciting, and it was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I have been casually observing in a
Speaker 1: more intellectual framing. So explain to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about what that looks like and what these tenants are.
Speaker 4: Sure. Well, first of all, I'm so excited that you
Speaker 4: heard about Sea spit At didn't begin any bit.
Speaker 2: It's me. It's just me.
Speaker 4: Secondly, this is a really big deal. Democracies cannot survive
Speaker 4: if one of two parties in a two parties system
Speaker 4: is not committed to democracy. This is a big problem
Speaker 4: that I think as a society we have not come
Speaker 4: to grips with because it's more than just Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: In our book Tyranny of the Minority, we argue, drawing
Speaker 4: on the Great twentieth century put beside this que lens
Speaker 4: that for a party to be committed to democracy, For
Speaker 4: us to be able to say that a party is
Speaker 4: committed to democracy, it needs to do three really basic things.
Speaker 4: First of all, the party needs to accept the results
Speaker 4: of elections, win to lose. Needs to unambiguous publicly accept
Speaker 4: the results of elections, win to lose. Secondly, party needs
Speaker 4: to unambiguously renounce and denounce the use of political violence.
Speaker 4: And third party needs to break completely and unambiguously with
Speaker 4: anti democratic extremist forces. So parties need to accept elections,
Speaker 4: they need to reject violence, and they need to break
Speaker 4: with anti democratic extremists. When Danie and I wrote How
Speaker 4: Democracies Died, I was public just twenty eighteen. We wrote
Speaker 4: it in twenty seventeen, we believed that the Republican Party
Speaker 4: was still committed to democracy. We thought it'd made a
Speaker 4: huge mistake in allowing Donald Trump to be their nominee,
Speaker 4: but that the party was committed to democracy. But since
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, it's become clear that that is no longer
Speaker 4: the case. The bulk of the Republican Party no longer
Speaker 4: checks off any of those three boxes.
Speaker 2: So interesting.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think enables people not
Speaker 1: to see this slide into autocracy that the entire party
Speaker 1: has engaged in or been victim to, however you want
Speaker 1: to give them credit, which I do not, is that
Speaker 1: I don't think and again this is like my own subpositions,
Speaker 1: but I don't think they got here because they were malevolent.
Speaker 1: I actually think they got here because they were cowardly.
Speaker 1: Not that that matters, but I mean, do you think
Speaker 1: that's true? And it's like, there's been an important slide
Speaker 1: since Trump was president, but then it's been worse since
Speaker 1: Trump has not been president.
Speaker 4: On Yeah, it has radicalized, it has gotten worse. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of us assumed that after the election,
Speaker 4: especially after January sixteentynty one, that the Republicans would sort
Speaker 4: of deradicalize or come back down to earth, and that
Speaker 4: has not happened. I think your basic pre subposition is correct, Molly.
Speaker 4: It's not malevolence on the part of most Republicans. I
Speaker 4: think Trump is a is an openly authoritarian figure. But
Speaker 4: most Republican leaders even today, don't want to kill democracy there.
Speaker 4: That's not what they're setting out to do. What they
Speaker 4: want to do is keep their careers golled. They want
Speaker 4: to get ahead in Republican politics. That's their job. They
Speaker 4: have calculated and this is a serious problem, but they've
Speaker 4: calculated that in order to get ahead, in order to
Speaker 4: keep their job, in order to aspire to a higher office,
Speaker 4: in order to maybe keep from getting shouted down by
Speaker 4: the base or Fox News, that they need to enable
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. They need to be complicit in this authoritarian urn.
Speaker 4: So in the book, in Tyranny of the Minority, we
Speaker 4: have a chapter on what is called semi loyal Democrats,
Speaker 4: and this is small D democrats.
Speaker 2: Can you explain the difference between small D Democrats?
Speaker 4: Just for my dad, A large D Democrat is a
Speaker 4: member of the Democratic Party. I'm not talking about the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party. I'm talking about democrats in the sense of
Speaker 4: are you committed to democracy or not? And a semi
Speaker 4: loyal democrat is someone who meets all three criteria that
Speaker 4: I just talked about. Always accept someone, always rejects violence,
Speaker 4: always rejects anti democratic extremists. Van Lenz, the Spanish political scientist,
Speaker 4: use the term semi loyal democrat to describe someone who's
Speaker 4: a regular politician, not someone storming the capital on January sixth,
Speaker 4: but rather one of the folks in a suit inside
Speaker 4: the capital on January sixth, looks, dresses, talks like a
Speaker 4: regular politician, but is willing to cooperate with condone enable authoritarians.
Speaker 4: Authoritarians like Trump cannot kill democracy by themselves. They require
Speaker 4: accomplices among mainstream politicians. And that is what the vast
Speaker 4: bulk of Republican leaders, from Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham
Speaker 4: to Kevin McCarthy to Alice stephonic and you can go
Speaker 4: down and down and down the line. That's what they've done.
Speaker 4: They have quietly enabled Trump in different ways. They have
Speaker 4: condoned his behavior, they have protected him. The Senate vote
Speaker 4: to acquit him after the second impeachment was crucial because
Speaker 4: he would not be a candidate today had they vote
Speaker 4: simply voted to convict him. It's that enabling behavior which
Speaker 4: is done. You could say it's political cowardice. There's also
Speaker 4: an increasing amount of information coming out, and we see
Speaker 4: this in both Admit Romney's biography that came out several
Speaker 4: months ago, and also in Chinese book is about to
Speaker 4: come out that many Republican leaders not only that they
Speaker 4: fear a primary, or that they fear you know that
Speaker 4: somebody on Fox News is going to criticize that they
Speaker 4: actually fear physical retribution if they they take god Trump,
Speaker 4: if they voted to convict Trump, for example, or voted
Speaker 4: to impeach him in the House, they feed, or that
Speaker 4: something would happen to them or their families, their kids.
Speaker 4: There is a level of violence percolating the Republican base
Speaker 4: that is affecting the behavior of Republican leaders. It's fear
Speaker 4: in a very real sense.
Speaker 2: So the original sin here is that quote from the
Speaker 2: Republican in the New York Times, the unnamed Republican who
Speaker 2: said in twenty twenty, he's just playing golf. Let's just
Speaker 2: humor him.
Speaker 1: It's not the original sin, but it's one of the
Speaker 1: later original sense.
Speaker 4: They've been committed a sin since he came down the
Speaker 4: Golden Escape. Yeah right, Oh, you know, take him seriously,
Speaker 4: don't take them literally. He'll grow in the office. It's
Speaker 4: not that ads doing this from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about sort of how
Speaker 1: you got into studying democracy, because it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: I'm a political scientist. At my day job is to
Speaker 4: study Latin American politics. I've been a student of Latin
Speaker 4: American politics since the nineteen eighties. And I got into
Speaker 4: this game as it literally as a teenager in college
Speaker 4: at a time when Central America was in civil war
Speaker 4: and when South America was just coming out from under
Speaker 4: the most brutal period of military deputation in that region's history.
Speaker 4: And so my introduction to democracy was studying the absence
Speaker 4: of democracy and the achievement of democracy at great cost
Speaker 4: in Latin America in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: And I learned my.
Speaker 4: Teachers, my professors, and their colleagues were people who had
Speaker 4: directly suffered at friends and cousins and brothers and sisters,
Speaker 4: who had been exiled and jailed and tortured, in some
Speaker 4: cases disappeared in life in America and I learned from
Speaker 4: them directly what it was like to lose a democracy,
Speaker 4: and that those lessons, for whatever reason, stuck with me
Speaker 4: my whole career, and I've been a student of democracy
Speaker 4: and committed to learning how to preserve a democracy, how
Speaker 4: to not lose a democracy again my whole career. What
Speaker 4: I did not expect was that I would be studying
Speaker 4: this in the United States and I would be talking
Speaker 4: about this in the United States. It's only in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, maybe a little early. I think we saw
Speaker 4: glimpses of this with the Tea Party, but really with
Speaker 4: the rise of Trump, I started to see my co author,
Speaker 4: who studies the breakdown of democracy in Europe in the
Speaker 4: twenties and thirties, we started to see and hear language
Speaker 4: and behavior in the United States in twenty fifteen and
Speaker 4: sixteen that we'd seen in our own regions, that I'd
Speaker 4: seen in Latin America. And I started to feel like
Speaker 4: I'd seen this movie before and that it doesn't end well.
Speaker 4: And so it was that that's what got me early
Speaker 4: on in twenty sixteen thinking about the coming crisis of
Speaker 4: democracy in the United States. We started to see the
Speaker 4: warning signs, And I never ever imagined that I would
Speaker 4: think about applying lessons that I learned in Latin America
Speaker 4: to the United States. But here we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you see similarities there?
Speaker 4: Sure, there are a bunch of similarities. First and foremost,
Speaker 4: I mean, Donald Trump would be a great tinpot dictator.
Speaker 4: We have in the United States, very many figures like Trump.
Speaker 4: Trump is a is an authoritarian through and through. He's
Speaker 4: someone who thinks that who thought when he came to
Speaker 4: the presidency that all of the machinery of government and
Speaker 4: the agencies of the state ought to be deployable for
Speaker 4: his own personal and political use. That's not not even
Speaker 4: addicted tinpot dictators like Somosa or Tohieu in mid twentieth
Speaker 4: century Latin America, they were able to use the entire
Speaker 4: state apparatus, the entire machine government for their own personal
Speaker 4: and political ends. And that's what Trump's instincts are. It
Speaker 4: took us a while to come to grips with that here,
Speaker 4: because most of our politicians, even our nastiest politicians, sort
Speaker 4: of respect that they can't do whatever the hell they
Speaker 4: want with the state. But that's not Trump. Another thing
Speaker 4: about Latin America is if you go back to the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies, we see what happens when politics becomes extremely polarized,
Speaker 4: when parties begin to see one another not as rivals,
Speaker 4: not as people they disagree with and don't like or
Speaker 4: don't like their policies, but when they see their rivals
Speaker 4: as an existential threat, as enemies, as forces that are
Speaker 4: so noxious that we need to use any means necessary
Speaker 4: to prevent them. American politics has been there before. We
Speaker 4: were there in the eighteen fifties. We were there in
Speaker 4: the seventeen nineties, but nobody alive in the United States
Speaker 4: remembers our parties being so polarized that they can no
Speaker 4: longer accept the other side winning that the nineteen sixties
Speaker 4: seventies he didn't and well, and in many cases in
Speaker 4: military dictatorship and heavy repression. And that's where we've gotten
Speaker 4: in the second decade of the twenty first century in
Speaker 4: the United States. I'm not predicting civil war or military too,
Speaker 4: but we are a polarization.
Speaker 1: One of the problems I've had throughout this period is
Speaker 1: that there has been on the left and the right,
Speaker 1: there has been a sort of hope wish casting, which
Speaker 1: hasn't worked of this fantasy that eventually things.
Speaker 2: Will go back to normal.
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe then there's a conversation about how normal was
Speaker 1: never good, but that eventually, you know, the norms will
Speaker 1: the guardrails. I mean that's my favorite. You know, the
Speaker 1: guard rails will hold. The guardrails have held. But we're
Speaker 1: looking down the barrel of a Trump nomination, right, I
Speaker 1: mean bearing some kind of media or Trump is going
Speaker 1: to be nominated, So we're going to have another year
Speaker 1: of real anti democratic speech and ideas. And so even
Speaker 1: if he doesn't win, and if he does win, I
Speaker 1: think we're all just completely fucked. But if he doesn't win,
Speaker 1: we still will be one step closer to autocracy, right,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: There's a slow process. So we do have a very
Speaker 4: strong constitutional order, a very stable democracy, strong institutions, and
Speaker 4: a strong opposition, all of which serves us well. So
Speaker 4: we're not immediately going to slide into Russia or Venezuela
Speaker 4: or even hungry. We do have a lot of guard
Speaker 4: but guardrails eventually wear down if you assault them over
Speaker 4: and over again. And we have both informal and formal guardrails.
Speaker 4: Informal guard rails are the norms of mutual toleration, and
Speaker 4: forbearans that we write about how democracies die, those have
Speaker 4: been pretty much beaten to smithereeds. We also have important
Speaker 4: formal guardrails the Constitution, a very strong independent judiciary, federalism,
Speaker 4: Bill of Rights. Those things, for the most part, have help,
Speaker 4: but we have tested them in ways that we never
Speaker 4: ever imagine. I'm considered a pessimist. Some people consider me
Speaker 4: an alarmist about the state of US democracy. I never
Speaker 4: expected that there would be a serious effort by an
Speaker 4: incumbent president that would almost succeed to overturn the results
Speaker 4: of an election. And yet there we were. We had
Speaker 4: in the summer of twenty twenty political deaths. People kill
Speaker 4: each other on the streets for political reasons. So the
Speaker 4: guardrails held at some level, but they clearly have been weakening,
Speaker 4: and they're continued to weaken. And another Trump presidency, it's
Speaker 4: impossible to predict exactly what would happen, but there's no
Speaker 4: question that Trump learned a bunch of lessons from his
Speaker 4: first presidency. He learned that he really needs to go
Speaker 4: out and purge and pack the administration in order to
Speaker 4: wield state institutions the way that he wants to, He
Speaker 4: will try to do that.
Speaker 3: He will throw.
Speaker 4: Many, many more punches at our democratic system than he
Speaker 4: did the first time around. The Republican Party, we know,
Speaker 4: very very clearly will back him with much greater loyalty
Speaker 4: than in the past, because all of the dissidents in
Speaker 4: the party have essentially left. There are very few remaining,
Speaker 4: and so you know how much damage will do, how
Speaker 4: many of those punches will land, how much damage will
Speaker 4: be done when he lands these blows very hard to predict,
Speaker 4: but I think the second presidency will be much much worse,
Speaker 4: much more dangerous than the first one.
Speaker 1: I think another year of Trump campaigning will further radicalize
Speaker 1: the Republican Party and make them more anti democratic.
Speaker 4: Think about what we're getting used to, right, it's now
Speaker 4: become socialized in the Republican subculture. Among two thirds of
Speaker 4: Republicans that the twenty twenty election was still and that
Speaker 4: it's okay to reject the results of elections again the
Speaker 4: cardinal rule of democracy. Only way democracy works is if
Speaker 4: all the major political parties accept the results of elections,
Speaker 4: whether they win or lose. And what Trump twenty twenty
Speaker 4: and subsequent has done is socialized within the Republican Party
Speaker 4: is break that norm right, is say that not only
Speaker 4: was the election stolen, but it's okay to reject the
Speaker 4: results of elections. And now the Republican Party is rallying
Speaker 4: behind his I agree with you. He is almost certain
Speaker 4: to nominate a president who tried to overturn the results
Speaker 4: in the election, who tried to effectively lead a whop,
Speaker 4: who says openly that he will use the Justice Department
Speaker 4: to go after his rivals. Let me smike a point here.
Speaker 4: I can't think of any candidate in any competitive political
Speaker 4: system since World War Two that is as openly nakedly
Speaker 4: authoritarian promising to engage in authoritary behavior as openly as
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. Not Victor Orban, not Air Towan, not open
Speaker 4: when he was first elected, not Ulu Chavez. None of
Speaker 4: these guys were as openly telling voters as openly as
Speaker 4: Donald Trump how authoritarian they're going to be. Most of
Speaker 4: them hight it. Trump doesn't even hide it. So Republicans
Speaker 4: are getting used not only to not accepting results, not
Speaker 4: only to not believing electual results, but they're getting used
Speaker 4: to backing a candidate who's openly authoritarian. You got to
Speaker 4: go back to the nineteen thirties to find this kind
Speaker 4: of behavior in Western democracies.
Speaker 2: And it's not good. I did not end well for
Speaker 2: my people. No, Steven, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me pleasure.
Speaker 1: No moment, Wick Wilson, our special guest for fuckery.
Speaker 2: Do you want to know what my moment of fuckery is?
Speaker 3: I do, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Mine is the Great State of Texas. I mean that ironically,
Speaker 1: Ken Maxton, he is suing a pregnant woman to make
Speaker 1: sure she doesn't have an abortion, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: her baby's going to die if he is about to die.
Speaker 2: Or maybe dead.
Speaker 1: Forcing a woman to carry a dead or dying baby
Speaker 1: because of life. Again, I could read this, but it's
Speaker 1: just Ken Paxton shoots back with more.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to have control of your own body.
Speaker 1: And for that, Ken Paxton and his band of Republicans
Speaker 1: in the gynecological chair, they are my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 3: And rightly so. My moment of fuckery are the college
Speaker 3: presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn. Now, look, I am
Speaker 3: not an e least stophonic fanboy by any stretch of
Speaker 3: the imagination. She's the Gretchen Wieners pick me girl, of
Speaker 3: Republican politics. But when she asked them this week, individually
Speaker 3: and collectively if calling for the genocide of the Jewish
Speaker 3: people violated their speech codes and their harassment codes on
Speaker 3: their universities, every single one of those people hemmed and
Speaker 3: hawed and smirked and gave smug, discursive, evasive answers. It
Speaker 3: weirdly united America in a weird moment, left right and
Speaker 3: center of absolute loathing of how these university presidents who
Speaker 3: if someone said I want genocide for all trans Americans,
Speaker 3: or genocide for all African Americans, or genocide for indigenous
Speaker 3: people or anything close to that, they would be expelled
Speaker 3: and thrown off campus in a hot second. But somehow
Speaker 3: it requires these elaborate, jesuitical answers so baroque and complex
Speaker 3: and evasive when it comes to saying it's not cool
Speaker 3: for anyone on our campuses to call for the genocide
Speaker 3: of the Jewish people. That's how you get the genocide
Speaker 3: of the Jewish people, you Fox, that's my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: A lot of fucks in the show today. Sorry about that, folks.
Speaker 2: People love it.
Speaker 3: I think, all right, guys.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.