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 Joe Manchin says he may run
Speaker 1: for president in twenty twenty four, even though it chose
Speaker 1: he will hand the election to Trump. We have such
Speaker 1: a fun show for you. Today, we'll talk to Democratic
Speaker 1: primary candidate for governor of Montana, Ryan Bussy about how
Speaker 1: Democrats can win in red states. Then, live from this
Speaker 1: weekend's Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas, we will talk
Speaker 1: to the Washington Post Jason Resian on imprisoned journalists and
Speaker 1: he knows because he was imprisoned in an Iranian prison
Speaker 1: for five hundred and forty four days. But first we
Speaker 1: have Arizona Congressman Ruben Diego on his Senate run. Hello
Speaker 1: Ruben gayegout, Hello Molly, I haven't seen you in such
Speaker 1: a long time.
Speaker 2: Actually haven't seen you in a long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think we've everd in As the kids say,
Speaker 3: we haven't been in IRL in a while, right.
Speaker 1: We haven't, but we saw each other like a congressional
Speaker 1: d something fancy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Welcome back. They get the treatment fly.
Speaker 1: So you're running for the Senate in Arizona. Discuss, Well,
Speaker 1: it's going great.
Speaker 3: We kicked off about nine months ago and already we've
Speaker 3: you know, gone through the state up and down a
Speaker 3: couple of times to you know, the red states, red
Speaker 3: parts of the state, the bluest parts of the state,
Speaker 3: the states have been ignored, some of the hardest places
Speaker 3: to get to, like the Navajo Nation. Really, it's just
Speaker 3: been great meeting people and meaning people that remind me
Speaker 3: of me, Like and I what I, you know, wanted
Speaker 3: in elected officials when I was struggling to you know,
Speaker 3: figure out how to pay for school or trying to
Speaker 3: figure out how to help my family. And what we're
Speaker 3: hearing is a lot of people out there are excited
Speaker 3: about this campaign. Is they finally feel that there's someone
Speaker 3: running that understands what they're going through right now.
Speaker 1: One of the things I want to talk to you
Speaker 1: about was you were an infantryman, like that. I have
Speaker 1: a kid, Darwin, who's a Republican. Hopefully that he'll that
Speaker 1: he'll grow out of maybe not, but he's like obsessed
Speaker 1: with being an officer.
Speaker 2: Explain to us you went into the army sort of
Speaker 2: the American dream.
Speaker 4: Sure Marines.
Speaker 3: First of all, mari Marines take that very special. I
Speaker 3: joined the Marines because I wanted to give service back
Speaker 3: to my country. Yeah, this is before nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm the son of immigrants. I was able to,
Speaker 3: you know, really lived the American dream, go to college
Speaker 3: on scholarships, everything else. I felt, especially as you know,
Speaker 3: the son of an immigrant, that I owed something to
Speaker 3: the country, right, and as a young man at that
Speaker 3: point that what I knew I could do was service, right,
Speaker 3: and and I didn't.
Speaker 4: I never looked for war, never wanted war.
Speaker 3: I figured, you know what I could what I can
Speaker 3: do is I could be a reservist, a Marine Corps reservist,
Speaker 3: and if something comes up then the country to do
Speaker 3: a course, then then I'll go to war whatever they
Speaker 3: want me to do.
Speaker 4: So that's what it.
Speaker 3: I just went signed up. I wanted to be in
Speaker 3: the infantry because if you're going to join the Marines,
Speaker 3: might as well been the infantry. If not, then you know,
Speaker 3: go there for it's just something else. And I like
Speaker 3: the challenge. You know, it's tough. You know, for those
Speaker 3: that are Marine Corps infantrymen, they'll tell you the training
Speaker 3: and stuff, and even when you're in it's still tough.
Speaker 3: But the most important thing for me was I was
Speaker 3: I was, you know, returning service to my country. Now,
Speaker 3: unfortunately I got sent into Iraq, which a war that
Speaker 3: I disagreed with, and even there was even worse in
Speaker 3: terms of what happened with my men and me.
Speaker 2: And you lost a lot of your battalion, lost.
Speaker 3: My best friends, we lost a lot of in my company,
Speaker 3: we lost about twenty four marines. One third of everyone's
Speaker 3: either killed or wounded in that my company, it's a
Speaker 3: company base out of Lima Company three twenty five, Ohio.
Speaker 3: But you know, if people asked me, like would you
Speaker 3: do it again? Like absolutely do it again. Not because
Speaker 3: I like war, not because I even enjoyed that, but
Speaker 3: also I could not imagine not being with my men.
Speaker 3: I could not imagine not being there to do the
Speaker 3: things I did to make sure they stayed alive, or
Speaker 3: the opposite that they kept me alive. And I you know,
Speaker 3: as much as I still carry the wounds of war,
Speaker 3: I still have PTSD.
Speaker 4: I'll have that for the rest of my life. I
Speaker 4: don't regret my my service to the country.
Speaker 2: And you raised your siblings too, I mean like I
Speaker 2: got to get pay in my mouth. I helped yourself.
Speaker 5: She's like that.
Speaker 3: But you know, Mom, I had a single mom and
Speaker 3: she had a job. Got blessed her. She had a
Speaker 3: job and she had to work. And you know, when
Speaker 3: you have four kids, the only way you make it
Speaker 3: through that when you're poor is when you all pull together.
Speaker 3: And so once my father kind of stepped out of
Speaker 3: the picture, I had to come to the realization that
Speaker 3: I had to, as we say, you had to step
Speaker 3: up through the man of the house and being in
Speaker 3: being an Latino family.
Speaker 4: So that's what I did.
Speaker 3: I had to be like a father figure and a
Speaker 3: brother and a big brother, and so I had to
Speaker 3: do a lot of the stuff that I when you're
Speaker 3: at the age of fourteen that most men boys, they
Speaker 3: take on a little more responsibility than I think most
Speaker 3: boys are used to. And in some regard it probably
Speaker 3: was helpful for me because I had to skip stupid
Speaker 3: teenage shit, because I had to make sure that I
Speaker 3: couldn't mess up, I couldn't get arrested.
Speaker 4: I couldn't like go out and party. I had to
Speaker 4: take care of my sisters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had to go to work, I had to
Speaker 3: get good grades, like all these things that just I
Speaker 3: could not I did not have the luxury of doing.
Speaker 3: And you know that really kind of it's say, molded
Speaker 3: me for a while, but more importantly it me and
Speaker 3: my family's life easier, right, And that's you know, that
Speaker 3: was the whole But I guess my whole mentality as
Speaker 3: a young man then was like I just didn't want
Speaker 3: to be a burden to the family because there.
Speaker 4: Was just a lot going on right now.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that Democrats are struggling right now,
Speaker 1: and I was actually talking to Ron Brownstein about this,
Speaker 1: and I was talking as upholstered Ben Tulchin about that,
Speaker 1: is that Democrats are having trouble winning Latino voters.
Speaker 2: And that is a really important block here.
Speaker 1: You are very successful Latino congressional candidate finger on the pulse,
Speaker 1: tell us what we're doing, what they are doing, what
Speaker 1: we're doing wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll tell you this, Like Democrats look at the
Speaker 3: Latina vote and they think about them in the last
Speaker 3: two months of an election, right instead of thinking about
Speaker 3: them throughout the whole year.
Speaker 4: And what does that mean? Like, yeah, you should start
Speaker 4: running campaign commercials earlier, but.
Speaker 3: Also you should be going on the Luniviton, telemundos and
Speaker 3: the radio stations, am rail stations, and you should be
Speaker 3: talking to them ahead of time about what you're doing
Speaker 3: and why you're doing it. When we talk about Democrats
Speaker 3: representing the working class, Latinos are working class, right. The
Speaker 3: wealth of a Latinos decided about how many hours they work.
Speaker 3: That's something that we forget, right. And a lot of
Speaker 3: the politicians that go and talk to Latinos are very
Speaker 3: well spirited, they want to be helpful, but they don't
Speaker 3: truly understand, right, they don't understand how excited you get
Speaker 3: when you get overtime. Right For some people, especially like
Speaker 3: a lot of constituents of the Democrats, you know, they're
Speaker 3: salary workers.
Speaker 4: They don't get overtime.
Speaker 3: They're all salary, right, Like Latinos sometimes survive or not
Speaker 3: survive whether they get enough overtime, they financially survive. And
Speaker 3: so when we're talking to them, and actually when we're
Speaker 3: drawing and creating policies, we need to remember that.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So why does a minimum wage increase matter? Well, the
Speaker 3: difference between fifteen dollars an hour and nineteen dollars now
Speaker 3: is huge, right, Whether you're going to be poverty or
Speaker 3: successful if you're going to be able to have affordable healthcare,
Speaker 3: huge child tax credit.
Speaker 1: Right, I was about to ask you about the child
Speaker 1: Are you hearing from people on the ground you're going
Speaker 1: through Arizona?
Speaker 2: Are you hearing people missing that child tax credit?
Speaker 4: Absolutely they are.
Speaker 3: And the fact that we don't talk about it, we don't,
Speaker 3: you know, like I talk about it, acknowledge I'm on
Speaker 3: my camera because like number one, if you want to
Speaker 3: be Latino, it's always great to be pro family.
Speaker 4: There's nothing more pro.
Speaker 3: Family than a child tax man, a child and financial stability. Right,
Speaker 3: there's nothing more stressful to a family. It's unfortunately someone
Speaker 3: that grew up in a household with financial shows there's
Speaker 3: nothing that you know, can really tear a part of
Speaker 3: family more than trying to figure out where are the
Speaker 3: next shoes going to drop? And that's what a lot
Speaker 3: of people are feeling a lot of Latinos are feeling
Speaker 3: right now. They just don't know what's going to happen next,
Speaker 3: Like is my car going to bust? And if that
Speaker 3: car bust, can I pay? You know, I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to get to work. Am I going to
Speaker 3: be able to pay rent. I mean, it's all these
Speaker 3: things that's right, that's being that's being important. They're living
Speaker 3: that experience. Yeah, And the problem is that it's not
Speaker 3: that they haven't lived that experience, but right now they
Speaker 3: don't actually see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 4: And so that's even more just stressing.
Speaker 3: Like when ye as bad as things were when I
Speaker 3: was growing up, you know, like my first bad and
Speaker 3: I think seven or eight years was my college bad.
Speaker 3: My dormer bed, and I remember always thinking, like, you
Speaker 3: know what, just suck it up, put your head down,
Speaker 3: keep going. This will all get better, right. I can't imagine, well,
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what these families are feeling right now.
Speaker 3: Like wait, I got to keep working and working and
Speaker 3: working and nothing changes, right. That is that is I
Speaker 3: think you know that that is so psychologically damaging and
Speaker 3: it has an effect, and there's a reason why there's
Speaker 3: a lot of working class people that are giving up
Speaker 3: on Democrats, but I was just giving up in general,
Speaker 3: and Latinos aren't exempt from that.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the child tax credit, like Cinema
Speaker 1: was one of the people who was instrumental in having
Speaker 1: that fail, And you know, whittling down the Yeah Inflation
Speaker 1: Reduction Act. If you were elected Senator from Arizona, you
Speaker 1: would be a progressive vote.
Speaker 3: I would absolutely be pushing the child tax credit right away.
Speaker 3: I can't lay the ending of child tax credit entirely
Speaker 3: on cinema right now, But what I can't lay in
Speaker 3: the fact is like, when there was a time to fight,
Speaker 3: she chose to fight for hedge fund managers and private
Speaker 3: equity managers to get their tax supole instead of saying,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going to fight to bring the
Speaker 3: child tax credit. That's where her priorities are so messed
Speaker 3: up that instead of fighting for those that need it,
Speaker 3: the people that desperately need just a little help and
Speaker 3: just want to succeed, she went to help those that
Speaker 3: are already doing very, very well.
Speaker 4: And that's the diers between me and her, Like, the
Speaker 4: people that need.
Speaker 3: The child trade are not gonna be my afterthought, They're
Speaker 3: gonna be my only thought.
Speaker 2: Why do you think she was a progressive original?
Speaker 4: I look, it's not my place to psychoanalyze her.
Speaker 2: We'll do that later on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do we know is when we're out there
Speaker 3: talking to voters, they are done with hers they want
Speaker 3: someone that's going to fight for them. They want someone
Speaker 3: that they feel is answerable, that talks to them, someone
Speaker 3: that's understanding what they're going through. And that's that's all
Speaker 3: we have to do. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: we continue where we are in this campaign, continue having
Speaker 3: those conversations. We're gonna win. And you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter who's running.
Speaker 2: That's so important and good. What does your campaign look like?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: What's next for you?
Speaker 3: You know, we're continue to go where we are. We've
Speaker 3: built out a great team. We have more than one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty thousand individual donors. Average donation is thirty bucks.
Speaker 3: If you want to give money, go diego for Arizona
Speaker 3: dot com please. But we're gonna continue, you know, going
Speaker 3: out and meeting voters. A couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 3: drove six hours to the Navajo Nation Fair, you know,
Speaker 3: picked up my son after after school. I'm eventually going
Speaker 3: to work a policy on school pickup, school drop off,
Speaker 3: because that's mayhem, as you know aware.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it was.
Speaker 3: It's actually a five hour drive. It was forty five
Speaker 3: minutes to get out of the school. But we drove
Speaker 3: up there, got to gallop New Mexico, checked into La
Speaker 3: Quinta in at eleven am and woke up five am
Speaker 3: and drove an hour, another hour and a half to
Speaker 3: the novel Nation Fair, and we proceeded to shake, you know,
Speaker 3: thousands of hands and introduce ourselves to that community because
Speaker 3: they vote and they deserve representation.
Speaker 2: And they vote yeah Democrat.
Speaker 3: And we were the only Senate campaign that was there.
Speaker 3: And so that's the kind of attitude we're going to have.
Speaker 3: We're going to be moving around the whole state. You know,
Speaker 3: red red parts, been in red parts of towns and
Speaker 3: red parts. We had our townhalls and blue parts gone
Speaker 3: to the rural areas. We've gone to the Native areas,
Speaker 3: and we're just going to keep going.
Speaker 2: Ruben Diego, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Ryan Bussy is the author of Gunfight and a Democratic
Speaker 1: candidate for governor of Montana. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6: Ryan, It's so good to be with you.
Speaker 7: Molly.
Speaker 1: So you're running for governor of the great State of
Speaker 1: Montana as a Democrat because you've been on this podcast before,
Speaker 1: you've written a book, you are a friend of the Pods.
Speaker 5: Jesse is obsessed with you in a good way.
Speaker 1: In a good way. In a good and totally healthy way.
Speaker 1: Tell us your backstory and how you have gotten to
Speaker 1: this decision.
Speaker 6: Thanks Molly. I grew up on a ranch, very rural ranch,
Speaker 6: long ways from any pavement. A lot of the best
Speaker 6: times in my life were spent with guns in a
Speaker 6: healthy way. I think a lot of Democrats across the
Speaker 6: country struggle to understand the cultural connection to guns. For
Speaker 6: so many people across the country, well, I was one
Speaker 6: of those kids. I grew up hunting and shooting with
Speaker 6: my dad and my grandfather. I eventually got in the
Speaker 6: firearms industry. It was kind of like a dream job
Speaker 6: for me. And then I figured out that I was
Speaker 6: inside the industry that was helping radicalize the country. So
Speaker 6: the good parts for me of firearms ownership were being
Speaker 6: used and twisted into what I think became trump Ism.
Speaker 6: I wrote a book about that. I was in the
Speaker 6: firearms industry for twenty five years, but I wrote a
Speaker 6: book about that. That's why you and I have chatted before.
Speaker 6: And I'm highly critical of obviouslyized Republican politics. And I've
Speaker 6: been a Democrat for a long time, and I think
Speaker 6: we have to stand up and save the democracy.
Speaker 2: So here we are so let's talk about.
Speaker 1: What your what Montana looks like right now. You have
Speaker 1: a Democratic senator running for reelection. You're very small state,
Speaker 1: but a very red state.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't think it's as red as people think
Speaker 6: it is. Obviously, we have Senator John Tester. A lot
Speaker 6: of people know him, three finger dirt farmer right. He's
Speaker 6: a good guy and a good friend. But we have
Speaker 6: a very libertarian, kind of populist purple history in our state.
Speaker 6: Until just a few years ago, both of our senators
Speaker 6: were Democrats. We had sixteen years of Democratic gubernatorial rule.
Speaker 6: So I just don't think it's as red as it
Speaker 6: looks like. And I think, frankly, I think Democrats have
Speaker 6: kind of lost the ability to communicate with working folks.
Speaker 6: And I grew up as one of those folks, you know.
Speaker 6: I grew up on the ranch and in sale barns
Speaker 6: and driving tractors. It's time we figure out how to
Speaker 6: win again, and that's what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about blue governors winning in red states.
Speaker 1: Because from Kentucky's Andy Baschard to Kansas to right Laura
Speaker 1: Kelly to Pennsylvania not as red. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: this phenomenon is todd. We see red governors experimenting with
Speaker 1: their states, and they're pretty repressive rules. If you look
Speaker 1: at Florida and Texas, I mean, do you think that
Speaker 1: helps Democrats?
Speaker 6: They are experimenting, right, I mean, and it's borderline fascist,
Speaker 6: if not over the line fascist. This governor believes that
Speaker 6: humans and dinosaurs co existed and that humans basically farmed dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Wait, heylo, Hello, humans farmed dinosaurs.
Speaker 6: Yes, he's funded one of his pet projects, so to speak,
Speaker 6: is he funded a creation museum that shows humans and
Speaker 6: coexisting with t rex is out in the back forty
Speaker 6: and I'm not making this up. He has funded quite
Speaker 6: aggressively gay conversion therapy. I mean, you know, we want
Speaker 6: to take every gay kid in the country and convert
Speaker 6: them into something that they're not. I mean, it's detestable.
Speaker 6: I don't know how to check off all the really horrific. Look,
Speaker 6: they want to completely upend abortion in a women's right
Speaker 6: to choose here, a women's right to choose our own healthcare.
Speaker 6: We have a right to privacy written into our constitution,
Speaker 6: which is a beautiful thing. But they literally want to
Speaker 6: call a constitutional convention to rip that out. Of our constitution.
Speaker 6: And so you're right, Republican weirdos and radicals across the
Speaker 6: country are trying to do things on a statewide basis.
Speaker 6: They're reprehensible. And if we run the right candidates and
Speaker 6: run to win, and if Democrats stand up and really
Speaker 6: espouse our values instead of being ashamed of them, which
Speaker 6: I think sometimes often happens, we can win these people back.
Speaker 6: I can tell you you know, reasonable Republicans are very
Speaker 6: worried about how far off the rails this thing is going.
Speaker 1: So how do you run in a state like Montana.
Speaker 1: You are on the ground talking to people, what are
Speaker 1: they saying?
Speaker 6: If you haven't watched it, you should. It's on Twitter.
Speaker 6: My launch video has been viewed over a million times,
Speaker 6: which is amazing. But we run just like the people
Speaker 6: we are right. I'm not some buttoned down coastal democrat.
Speaker 6: I'm not some attorney. I grew up on a ranch.
Speaker 6: I love to hunt and shoot with my boys. The
Speaker 6: video shows us shooting targets with despicable policies on them.
Speaker 5: We are who we are.
Speaker 6: We lean into freedom. I don't understand how Republicans have
Speaker 6: embraced both the word freedom and then all of these
Speaker 6: politicians who want to rip their freedoms from them. It's craziness.
Speaker 6: And so I think Democrats have to stand up and
Speaker 6: give the stark contrast, force the choice, because the choice,
Speaker 6: I mean it is, we're staring down the barrel of
Speaker 6: fascism here, and that's how I think we run. And
Speaker 6: I guess I most often am going to run as
Speaker 6: a Democrat who cares about winning, because winning this election
Speaker 6: against these sorts of Republicans it's a dire situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you talk to people, though, like what are
Speaker 1: they the most concerned about?
Speaker 6: Well, we've interestingly enough here and here's a path the victory.
Speaker 6: I know some of your listeners might think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: how are we going to win this? But these Republicans
Speaker 6: are so arrogant that the first thing they did with
Speaker 6: a two point eight billion dollar surplus in this state
Speaker 6: is gave it away to big corporations and tax breaks
Speaker 6: for the wealthy. And then they were foolish enough to
Speaker 6: institute a huge tax increase on every single Montana homeowner.
Speaker 6: Right when have you heard this? Republicans? What have they
Speaker 6: always said, we won't raise taxes we want Well they did.
Speaker 6: They raised taxes on every single homeowner and Montana's are
Speaker 6: pissed off about it. Lots of Republicans are pissed off
Speaker 6: about it, and that has opened the door to them saying,
Speaker 6: wait a second, we're just being lied to. Yes, yes
Speaker 6: you are. There really is a huge path to victory here.
Speaker 6: It's important though. This guy is a self under He
Speaker 6: flies around in his own private jets two thousand bucks
Speaker 6: an hour. You can't run a single Beterom apartment in
Speaker 6: Bozeman for two thousand bucks a month, but he flies
Speaker 6: around in a two thousand dollars an hour private jet.
Speaker 6: He's totally detached from the people. He's going to fund
Speaker 6: his own campaign. We're going to have to do it
Speaker 6: little pieces at a time, but we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: What are the most important things that you feel like
Speaker 1: people in Montana want from their governor? I mean, what
Speaker 1: are the things like do they want rural hospitals? I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the sort of needs in Montana?
Speaker 6: Molly, what's happened here? And it just happened here on
Speaker 6: steroids and this is you know, Montana is an important state.
Speaker 6: I know you said we're small, We're a big geographic state,
Speaker 6: but we're one point one million people. I know that
Speaker 6: sounds small, not.
Speaker 1: As small as Wyoming.
Speaker 6: Right, that's right, but we play a big, outsize role
Speaker 6: in national politics.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: There's famous TV shows as you know, John Betton running
Speaker 6: for governor there on Yellowstone, there's Montana is really important
Speaker 6: to people. And what's happened here is just good governance,
Speaker 6: good basic governance from our state government, which is what's
Speaker 6: supposed to happen. Fiscal responsibility, staying out of people's lives,
Speaker 6: not ripping apart our right to privacy or our right
Speaker 6: to a clean and healthful environment that's in our constitution.
Speaker 6: Keeping weirdos out of women's doctors' offices, trying to tell
Speaker 6: them what they can do with their bodies. It's really
Speaker 6: about that. It's also about keeping equal opportunity in public schools.
Speaker 6: These people want to trash our public schools and they
Speaker 6: want to create this kind of Betsy Devas for profit
Speaker 6: education network, and that's going to leave tons and tons
Speaker 6: of kids out in the open, you know, without good schooling.
Speaker 6: So they're defunding that, they're letting real health care fall apart.
Speaker 6: We are a rural state, yeah, we have, I mean
Speaker 6: we call it three or four cities, but they're not
Speaker 6: cities in the way you guys think our cities. Our
Speaker 6: rural healthcare across the eastern two thirds of our state
Speaker 6: is falling apart. Why because GM Forte doesn't care about that.
Speaker 6: He flies over that in his jet.
Speaker 1: You know, do you think that like there is a
Speaker 1: sort of libertarian play for Democrats, right, because, like the
Speaker 1: this new Republican party is very involved, and like if
Speaker 1: you look at these Republican governors, you look at DeSantis
Speaker 1: de Santis or Abbott in Texas has a bounty hunter
Speaker 1: thing he's trying to do when it comes to abortion.
Speaker 1: So do you think there's a play to pick up
Speaker 1: those libertarians?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know libertarians in the state of Montana, we
Speaker 6: are in a lot of ways a libertarian minded state.
Speaker 6: We're a live and let live state. We always have been.
Speaker 6: I know, it seems to people like it's the wild
Speaker 6: wild West out here. We respect our neighbors. This bunch
Speaker 6: wants to make us hate our neighbors because apparently who
Speaker 6: they love or who they want to be, how is
Speaker 6: that freedom or liberty they want to be in you know,
Speaker 6: people's bedrooms, which kind of freaks me out a little
Speaker 6: bit when you look at greg Ganfote's kind of forced
Speaker 6: weird smile. I think about him being in bedrooms. It's
Speaker 6: a bit strange to me. They want to take away
Speaker 6: the liberty of women to make their own health care choices.
Speaker 6: They want to take away the liberty that comes from
Speaker 6: a good public school edge Oca, you know, the liberty
Speaker 6: to make your own way. Yeah, there's a libertarian play.
Speaker 6: You know, these radical Republicans that have leaned on this
Speaker 6: word liberty or freedom and then do exactly the opposite,
Speaker 6: just like you said, DeSantis or Texas Friends or here
Speaker 6: in Montana. There's nothing libertarian about it. So, yeah, there
Speaker 6: is a libertarian play.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what your primary looks like.
Speaker 6: My primary looks pretty good right now because I'm running
Speaker 6: a general campaign. I'm running against Janfote from day one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the great friends of this podcast is
Speaker 1: my friend Amanda from Run for Something, and she talks
Speaker 1: about how important it is the Democrats run in red
Speaker 1: states and that even if they don't win, which again,
Speaker 1: there's no evidence to support the idea that you won't win,
Speaker 1: right because you do have a Democratic senator on the ticket,
Speaker 1: which also helps. And also you have Jane Forte who
Speaker 1: has a history. I mean, do you want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about his history.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know how many governors, Well, actually I
Speaker 6: do know how many governors have body slammery play order
Speaker 6: for asking him about healthcare.
Speaker 4: It's one.
Speaker 6: It's this one. Ben Jacob just says, hey, can you
Speaker 6: tell me about healthcare? And gim Forte flips out and
Speaker 6: literally starts beating the hell out of him while there's
Speaker 6: Fox News reporters in the room, and then lies about it,
Speaker 6: and then the believe me if the Fox News reporters
Speaker 6: are saying you're wrong. The Fox News reporters then said, no,
Speaker 6: he's lying about it. He really did body slam the guy.
Speaker 6: That kind of tells you the sort of unbelievable arrogance
Speaker 6: of this guy. And again he's like, I told you
Speaker 6: he's funded gay conversion therapy.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised at how stupid he is.
Speaker 6: Well, they've misplaced this idea where we all know we
Speaker 6: had something kind of weird happened in our politics in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty, Right, there was a wave that washed over
Speaker 6: some parts of the country.
Speaker 2: We were one of them.
Speaker 6: COVID was involved, Trump was involved, All this stuff was
Speaker 6: involved that doesn't mean it's permanent here. In fact, it's not.
Speaker 6: I have Republicans all the time reaching out to me
Speaker 6: and saying, I can't take this guy anymore. I got
Speaker 6: to figure out a way out. My neighbor, he's probably
Speaker 6: got the world record for Trump flights. He's had one
Speaker 6: up since June of twenty fifteen. He came over to
Speaker 6: me the other day and said, Hey, man, I just
Speaker 6: want to tell you I'm so proud of you run.
Speaker 6: This is happening to me all the time. I think
Speaker 6: it's really important that Democrats be genuine and authentic and
Speaker 6: that we message to people where they are, and let's
Speaker 6: be square, like a lot of Democrats across the country
Speaker 6: haven't been very good at messaging our values, and we
Speaker 6: share so many values with so many Republicans that are frustrated.
Speaker 6: Right it's very difficult to live in Montana right now
Speaker 6: because it's so expensive. The average house is four hundred
Speaker 6: and sixty thousand dollars. Our starter teacher pay is thirty
Speaker 6: four thousand dollars or fifty. We've got one thousand teacher
Speaker 6: vacancies across the state. We're not educating our kids. Those
Speaker 6: are Republican kids too. So we can make a call
Speaker 6: to those Republican voters and we will and we can
Speaker 6: win this thing. I mean, I'm going to need help
Speaker 6: to do it, but we can win it.
Speaker 1: So, people listening to you right now, what would it
Speaker 1: mean to have a democratic governor in Montana?
Speaker 6: It's huge right first off, we would put a stop
Speaker 6: to so many of these crazy policies that are coming
Speaker 6: out of our Republican majority legislature. Up until Ganefte was elected, sadly,
Speaker 6: we had a democratic stop gap in Governor Steve Bullick
Speaker 6: and before him, Governor Brian Schweitzer, who vetoed that stuff.
Speaker 6: If we don't have a democratic governor, you're going to
Speaker 6: see you're going to people who are listening to this
Speaker 6: are going to click on the news or listen to you,
Speaker 6: and you're going to hear some of the most fascist, repressive,
Speaker 6: ugly book banning, anti gay like you name it. It's coming.
Speaker 6: They're going to go after our right to privacy in
Speaker 6: our constitution. You're going to read about it. So it's
Speaker 6: a stop gap here. This is a firewall for democracy.
Speaker 6: They've already tried to do the same thing. The other
Speaker 6: states have repress voting rights. They've done all the stuff.
Speaker 6: It's coming here, and it's really important Montana. If for
Speaker 6: no other reason, you know, people love Montana.
Speaker 5: It is the West.
Speaker 6: It's the thing that TV shows are made about. It's
Speaker 6: where you want a vacation. And it's important that we
Speaker 6: hold the line on democracy.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this podcast right now, what should
Speaker 1: people be doing if they want to support you?
Speaker 2: Well, I need help.
Speaker 6: And I know everybody gets tired of hearing about money,
Speaker 6: and I wish money wasn't in politics, but money is
Speaker 6: in politics. This guy is worth a billion dollars. He
Speaker 6: flies his jet around. Last election, he bought the seat.
Speaker 6: He spent about five million dollars of his own money
Speaker 6: to buy the seat. He has no limits on his contributions.
Speaker 6: Montana has a very low contribution limit. It's one thousand
Speaker 6: dollars per person. We're going to have to buy back
Speaker 6: the state. It's going to be hundreds or one thousand
Speaker 6: dollars at a time. Believe me, we are going to
Speaker 6: do it. We're going to shop the system. We're going
Speaker 6: to be an incumbent Republican governor and that's going to
Speaker 6: be a huge, huge deal. But I need help, and
Speaker 6: my website's bussy for Montana dot com. Bussee for Montana
Speaker 6: dot com. But I need help, you know, I need
Speaker 6: a few dollars.
Speaker 1: I know this is like a little bit in the weeds,
Speaker 1: but your media market is actually cheaper than like a
Speaker 1: DC media market or a New York media market, so
Speaker 1: it ultimately will actually go far.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the money will go far. And also because
Speaker 6: we are this kind of small state. People joke like
Speaker 6: it's just a bunch of little towns with one big,
Speaker 6: long main street. That's kind of true. In Montana. You
Speaker 6: go from town to town and everybody knows somebody in
Speaker 6: the next town or several towns over. And so a
Speaker 6: lot of my expense in time is going to be
Speaker 6: on the road meeting people and I am I'm going
Speaker 6: to go to where they are. So, yeah, we're going
Speaker 6: to need media help. But it's not like your as
Speaker 6: you point out, it's not like you're buying ads in La.
Speaker 6: Thank god, we can really efficiently use the money, and
Speaker 6: we can use the money for staff and me traveling
Speaker 6: around and setting down in coffee shops and hopefully quite
Speaker 6: a few micro brews. I like to do that, or
Speaker 6: micro here joints, because we have a lot of them
Speaker 6: here in Montana. But those are the sorts of thing
Speaker 6: we're going to do, and that's why we're in the
Speaker 6: race early, because we're going to have to break it
Speaker 6: down and inspire people.
Speaker 2: Ryan, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back before your general.
Speaker 6: Well, I'll be on anytime you want. Thank you, guys,
Speaker 6: and I'll do everything I can to keep Jesse obsessed.
Speaker 1: Jason Resian is a writer for the Washington Post Global
Speaker 1: Opinion section. Welcome to Fast Politics Special Texas Tribune Festival Edition.
Speaker 5: Jason, wonderful to be here, Mollie. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you. And we just met
Speaker 2: this morning.
Speaker 1: We ran into each other at breakfast when I was
Speaker 1: regaling poor Margaret Sullivan with all of my many moral
Speaker 1: and ethical journalistic dilemmas. Actually not really, but so I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to you. You have been a foreign correspondent.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about your backstory. So I
Speaker 1: moved to Iran, of all places, in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: My father was from Iran. My mom is from the Midwest.
Speaker 1: I grew up in northern California.
Speaker 7: It's fascinated by travel and journalism from a very young age,
Speaker 7: and when I finally had the opportunity to travel to
Speaker 7: Iran in my twenties, fell in love with the place,
Speaker 7: fell in love with the culture, realized that this is
Speaker 7: a really incredible place that is backwards politically and really
Speaker 7: messed up in a lot of ways, but also has
Speaker 7: a lot to love about it, and that the way
Speaker 7: it was reported on in our media was not very insightful.
Speaker 7: Granular thought to myself, if I can get myself there
Speaker 7: in the capacity of a journalist, there's gonna be work
Speaker 7: for me to do.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 7: Fast forward to twenty twelve, the Post hired me to
Speaker 7: be there a bureau chief in Tehran. I did that
Speaker 7: for a couple of years until my wife and I
Speaker 7: she's Iranian, also a journalist, were arrested at gunpoint from
Speaker 7: our own home, accused of being spies for the US,
Speaker 7: thrown into one of the most notorious prisons in the
Speaker 7: world in solitary confinement, subjected to crazy, long interrogations over
Speaker 7: the most ridiculous allegations. Ultimately, I was held for five
Speaker 7: hundred and forty four days. My wife was held for
Speaker 7: about three months, all of them in solitary confinement. And
Speaker 7: when we were finally released and freed and the negotiated
Speaker 7: settlement between Iran and the US, I came back to
Speaker 7: the US and press freedom issues and issues around hostage
Speaker 7: taking globally have been main beats that I've focused on because,
Speaker 7: for better or worse, I know a thing or two
Speaker 7: about both.
Speaker 1: One of the things you were saying when we were
Speaker 1: having breakfast was just that you come out of spending
Speaker 1: five hundred and forty four days in imprisonment in a
Speaker 1: notorious Iranian prison a different person.
Speaker 5: First of all, I lost and you know we're doing
Speaker 5: audio here you can't see me.
Speaker 2: You look good.
Speaker 5: I feel pretty good.
Speaker 7: But you know I lost about forty pounds in the
Speaker 7: first forty days that I wasn't in prison. I kept
Speaker 7: that off throughout gained most of it back since my
Speaker 7: wife and I joke that the only thing that we
Speaker 7: miss about those days is Jason's prison body.
Speaker 5: And it's not too late. You know, I'm in Texas.
Speaker 5: Maybe there's the reason to lock me up, but no.
Speaker 7: But you know, I joke about these things because it's
Speaker 7: the only thing that I can do to kind of
Speaker 7: make it all acceptable. You know, as I mentioned to you,
Speaker 7: I feel like I've won the lottery of life experience.
Speaker 7: That's just one way to say that I've been through
Speaker 7: some really hard shit and it leaves a mark, and
Speaker 7: I could sort of wallow in that very easily.
Speaker 5: Some people do.
Speaker 7: For me, felt like they've taken enough of my time already.
Speaker 7: I got to move forward and use this thing to
Speaker 7: propel my life for the good of other people, which
Speaker 7: makes me feel good. So the short answer to your
Speaker 7: question is, yeah, it really messes you up, but you
Speaker 7: know I'm doing the best I can with it.
Speaker 2: When you were freed, can you just walk me through
Speaker 2: what that experience was like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So the day that I was freed, my captors
Speaker 7: had told me about ten days earlier that I was
Speaker 7: being freed and the negotiated deal with us. It's very
Speaker 7: difficult to believe anything that they told me because they
Speaker 7: told me so many different lives throughout the year and
Speaker 7: a half. They would tell me that I would spend
Speaker 7: the rest of my life in prison. Sometimes they would
Speaker 7: tell me that you're going to be freed this afternoon,
Speaker 7: and then nobody would show up for days on end.
Speaker 7: You just redeposited in solitary. They told me I'd be executed.
Speaker 7: I mean, so, you know, I just didn't know what
Speaker 7: to believe. And when it finally happened, they said that
Speaker 7: my wife would not be allowed to travel with me.
Speaker 7: I learned later at the airport on the way out
Speaker 7: that she had been a part of this negotiated deal
Speaker 7: from the very beginning. So she's an Iranian citizen as well.
Speaker 7: She had been released from prison on house arrest, but
Speaker 7: they weren't going to let her leave the country with me.
Speaker 7: And it turned out that the State Department and the
Speaker 7: Swiss government, who acts on the US's behalf, had, you know,
Speaker 7: from the very beginning of negotiations fourteen months earlier, included her,
Speaker 7: and the Iranians tried to pull a fast one right
Speaker 7: at the end, you know, presumably to try and keep
Speaker 7: me shut up when I when I got out, And
Speaker 7: the nuclear deal and all of this stuff was predicated
Speaker 7: on a whole bunch of things coming together, including this
Speaker 7: prisoner exchange, and it almost all fell apart in the
Speaker 7: last hours because the US said, no, Yeggy, resign, that's
Speaker 7: my wife, you know, no deal. So she's pretty precious.
Speaker 2: And then will you just talk me a little bit
Speaker 2: through getting on the plane, and.
Speaker 7: I think it's very difficult for people to put themselves
Speaker 7: in my shoes. I had chosen to move to this
Speaker 7: country that is our number one adversary. I had fallen
Speaker 7: in love with that place. I've met my wife there,
Speaker 7: I had deep friendships and connections, and my whole career
Speaker 7: was built in this place. And sitting on the runway
Speaker 7: in Tehran looking out at the city, you know, it's
Speaker 7: built on mountains.
Speaker 5: It can be sort of ugly city. There's a lot
Speaker 5: of smog, but there's also a beauty to it.
Speaker 7: On the one hand, there was a feeling of real
Speaker 7: relief and joy, but also of incredible loss closing a
Speaker 7: chapter in my life. My wife, who you know, almost
Speaker 7: didn't come on that plane, only had a couple of
Speaker 7: hours of notice, right saying goodbye to her parents, to
Speaker 7: her neighborhood where she'd lived her entire life.
Speaker 5: It was very, very, very difficult.
Speaker 2: It's never going to come back, no, you know.
Speaker 7: And the emotions are still seven and a half years later,
Speaker 7: very mixed. Right, We appreciate everything that was done for us.
Speaker 7: It never should have happened, though, right.
Speaker 1: So the five hostages who are just released, can you
Speaker 1: just talk about have you talked to them, and also,
Speaker 1: do you feel your experience can help.
Speaker 5: Three of them are.
Speaker 7: People who we know publicly. Two of them asked to
Speaker 7: remain anonymous for the time being. The three whose names
Speaker 7: were known publicly, I've been communicating with their families for
Speaker 7: quite a long time. As you can imagine, we're small
Speaker 7: community people that deal with this. There's several dozen American
Speaker 7: citizens who are being wrongfully detained in different countries around
Speaker 7: the world, and that's a pretty small community. Specifically to Iran,
Speaker 7: it's even smaller, and we were all taken by the
Speaker 7: same group within Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, probably the same
Speaker 7: people in some cases, the same cells. So I've tried
Speaker 7: to put the family members in the shoes of somebody
Speaker 7: who would be on the ground visiting as much as
Speaker 7: I could, And you know, I've reached out to them
Speaker 7: and for me, I've written about all of their cases.
Speaker 7: I'm not going to be the guy pounding on their
Speaker 7: door asking for an interview, because you know, people were
Speaker 7: pounding online and I didn't really appreciate that. So you know,
Speaker 7: I've just sort of said I'll be here for you
Speaker 7: however I can be. You know, these are some of
Speaker 7: the things that I dealt with in those first days
Speaker 7: and months. Here's some things that helped me. The truth is,
Speaker 7: they have a really long road to recovery, and they're
Speaker 7: going to need folks like me who've been through something
Speaker 7: similar to sort of be their friends. And the same
Speaker 7: goes for Evan Gershkovich Wall Street Journal's reporter and imprisoned
Speaker 7: in Russia. Right now, I try and make myself available
Speaker 7: to any family who's going through this, not just Americans,
Speaker 7: you know, you know, there's Brits and Canadians, Australians, other Europeans.
Speaker 7: If there's something that can be learned from from our
Speaker 7: horrific experience, I want to pass that along.
Speaker 1: Can you just talk for one second about the VA
Speaker 1: and the hospital, the army hospital and how it.
Speaker 7: Served So I ended up. I wasn't at the VA.
Speaker 7: I was in a military hospital in Germany Langtool, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: For me, that experience was very meaningful. You know, it
Speaker 7: was the first opportunity to talk to somebody who was
Speaker 7: not connected to the situation but had knowledge of this
Speaker 7: kind of trauma. I remember when I asked the doctor
Speaker 7: who I still communicate with, I said, Doc, am, I
Speaker 7: gonna be okay, right, And he told me, he said,
Speaker 7: you know, healing is possible, but it's not guaranteed. He's
Speaker 7: very honest, right, And I said, you know, how do
Speaker 7: you treat these cases? He said, you know, if you've
Speaker 7: seen one case, you've seen one case, right, you know,
Speaker 7: each one of them is different. And you know he
Speaker 7: might have been blown smoke, but you said, you know,
Speaker 7: feels like you have the sort of mental makeup to
Speaker 7: get past this. I encourage you to take time to
Speaker 7: go slow, to really process the experience before you go
Speaker 7: out and talk about it publicly, which is really sound
Speaker 7: advice on the sort of practical, sort of bureaucratic level.
Speaker 7: You know, there were parts of it which I didn't appreciate, right,
Speaker 7: I mean, you know these folks work for the FBI.
Speaker 7: You know, nobody kind of came out and told me
Speaker 7: that I was talking to FBI until I found that
Speaker 7: out separately, and then I confronted them and we dealt
Speaker 7: with it at the point. But it's like, hey, you
Speaker 7: know what I have just spent the last year and
Speaker 7: a half being lied to, relentlessly, being kept in the
Speaker 7: dark about so many aspects of my life being threatened.
Speaker 7: What I need from people right now is radical transparency.
Speaker 7: And I've sort of taken that into my livet with
Speaker 7: my employment situations, with you know, relationships.
Speaker 5: I just tell people, hey, look, you.
Speaker 7: Know, whatever this thing is that we're dealing with right now,
Speaker 7: let's just kind of cut to the chase and figure
Speaker 7: out what it is that you want from me and
Speaker 7: what I want from you, because otherwise you're putting me
Speaker 7: back in prison. Everybody feels really bad when I say
Speaker 7: that some negotiations actor Jessie.
Speaker 2: But it's also like the.
Speaker 1: Thing that seems and again, I haven't known you for
Speaker 1: three hours or something, but the thing that seems so
Speaker 1: striking about you is that you using this. Because I
Speaker 1: say this as someone who's been sober from addiction since
Speaker 1: I was a teenager for my life, like, the best
Speaker 1: thing I can ever do is share my experience.
Speaker 5: This is the way I feel about it.
Speaker 7: And you know, sometimes people are like, oh, okay, you know,
Speaker 7: Jason talking about prison again. I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 7: what the fuck else am I going to tell you about?
Speaker 5: Right right?
Speaker 7: I'm certainly not going to tell you how to keep
Speaker 7: the weight off, right, you know what I mean? Seriously,
Speaker 7: this is something that I know intimately that is going
Speaker 7: to be valuable for a select number of people who
Speaker 7: are going to need that help. Yeah, you know, at
Speaker 7: the beginning of the pandemic, a week into it, this
Speaker 7: is really sort of funny to say, but people will
Speaker 7: reaching out to me saying, Jason, you you know you
Speaker 7: were in captivity.
Speaker 5: How am I going to deal with isolating at home?
Speaker 7: Like, well, you still got your Internet, you still got Netflix,
Speaker 7: door Dash, I mean, all that still works.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be okay, nobody's trying to kill you.
Speaker 7: But I've had, like, you know, I had a series
Speaker 7: of these and I thought to myself, you know what,
Speaker 7: I'm gonna sit down and write a column about this,
Speaker 7: about the things that help, one of the one of
Speaker 7: the most trafficked pieces I've ever written. Right, because everybody
Speaker 7: has trauma, you know, there's gradations of it, but like
Speaker 7: we don't get to decide, you know, whose trauma is
Speaker 7: more than somebody else's. So if there's something that anyone
Speaker 7: listening can glean from my experience that makes me really happy,
Speaker 7: it makes me feel like, Okay, my time on Earth
Speaker 7: wasn't wasted, and that helps me sleep a little bit
Speaker 7: better at night. Yeah, and we could all use a
Speaker 7: little bit more sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean I really relate to that.
Speaker 1: As like I can tell you how to get sober
Speaker 1: and stay sober at nineteen, I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: to survive in Iranian prison. But it is when you're
Speaker 1: able to share your experience, it ends up giving your
Speaker 1: life purpose, I think.
Speaker 5: I think so. I try not to be a one
Speaker 5: trick pony.
Speaker 7: I like to write about things that I enjoy sometimes
Speaker 7: rather than all of this sort of stuff. And fortunately
Speaker 7: I have wise editors that allow me to explore different
Speaker 7: ideas and issues. But I keep coming back to this
Speaker 7: because it's an opportunity to put issues that most Americans
Speaker 7: don't think about very much on the forefront. I find
Speaker 7: that if you know, people can be drawn into a
Speaker 7: story and laugh about it a little bit, they'll remember it. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so the next time they hear about a journalist who's
Speaker 7: locked up in the other side of the world, they
Speaker 7: might give a shit, you know. And you know, it's
Speaker 7: just sort of this continuity of narrative and process that
Speaker 7: I've tried to bring to it.
Speaker 5: For a long time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jason, This was amazing.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me. I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: No moment, Jesse Cannon, Molly jung.
Speaker 3: Fast that Bet Gates is really been sticking to his
Speaker 3: thub in Kevin McCarthy's eye.
Speaker 5: Told me what you saw when he was talking to
Speaker 5: the buddy Huddy Maria Bartobo this morning.
Speaker 1: This morning on Maria Bartiromo's Fox Business show, we saw
Speaker 1: Matt Gates basically say that Kevin McCarthy hasn't done anything,
Speaker 1: and then Republicans in Congress are out of control and terrible.
Speaker 1: And then Maria was arguing that in fact, they had
Speaker 1: done all these things, which again they really hadn't done anything,
Speaker 1: but they had sort of passed some messaging bills or whatever.
Speaker 1: And Matt was like, no, haven't. And just to see
Speaker 1: a right wing opinion host who you know, we've seen
Speaker 1: that she you know, these are people who have some
Speaker 1: relationship with the Republicans in Congress and a Republican congressman
Speaker 1: fighting about the Republican GOP house GOP was really quite
Speaker 1: a moment of fuck Gray. And so for that the
Speaker 1: money honey and our favorite botox congressman, it's too much, Matt,
Speaker 1: It's just too much. And I say this as a
Speaker 1: frequent flyer. You don't want to have it look completely frozen.
Speaker 1: They are our moment of Fuckray. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: Two