Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some.
Speaker 2: Of today's best minds.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump is back and he's using white supremacists,
Speaker 1: blood and soil rhetoric.
Speaker 2: We have a great show today.
Speaker 1: Tim Alberta talks about his new book The Kingdom, The
Speaker 1: Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals and the Age of Extremism.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Giraldo Cadava about the drifting political
Speaker 1: alignments of Hispanic voters. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List, the One, the Only, the Lincoln Projects,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Welcome back. It's a Sunday, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: I have a dog on my laps to keep her
Speaker 1: from barking.
Speaker 2: We got Rick Wilson here and baby Boosephalos.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, whatever the
Speaker 3: hell time it is. Right now, I'm on my third
Speaker 3: cup of coffee and I slept until nine o'clock, which
Speaker 3: is psychotic.
Speaker 2: What I myself have been up for fifteen hours.
Speaker 1: So Rick Wilson, it is a Shadenfreud Sunday right now.
Speaker 3: I'm just pouring one out for the late Desantas super
Speaker 3: pack head of Jeff Row. Jeff Row, the guy who
Speaker 3: had twenty twenty two, had eleven candidates and lost ten
Speaker 3: of them, who spent one hundred million dollars people's money
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two, And yet somehow Rod Dessanta's woke
Speaker 3: up and said, you know, this grifter from Texas seems
Speaker 3: to me like the guy who could take me all
Speaker 3: the way to the White House. And they got rid
Speaker 3: of him yesterday?
Speaker 2: Did they fire him yesterday?
Speaker 3: My understanding from the Tallahassee rumor mill is that they.
Speaker 2: I love that Tallahassee rumor mail.
Speaker 3: We grid baby, Oh, I know that they shitcanned him,
Speaker 3: fired him, kicked his ass to the curb, told him
Speaker 3: to get the fuck out, pack your shit, have a
Speaker 3: security guard walk him out of the building. Essentially, now,
Speaker 3: folks don't cry for Jeff Row.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he has millions of donor docu.
Speaker 3: Of the eighty plus a million dollars that have been
Speaker 3: spent by Ron de Santis, sixty seven cents of every
Speaker 3: dollar from what I am told, has run through the
Speaker 3: companies of Jeff Row. So Jeff is okay, He's going
Speaker 3: to cry his way all to go private jet shopping
Speaker 3: by the end of vest to Aspen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's incredible. Congratulations Jeff Row.
Speaker 1: You know, look, I am just happy that money didn't
Speaker 1: go to making Ron de Santis d president. I want
Speaker 1: to stop for a minute and just muse on Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis's bad judgment for two seconds, because Ron DeSantis, if.
Speaker 3: He had didn't have bad judgment, he had no judgment
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 1: Right, But I mean, I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: fact that he wore those cowboy boots to every event
Speaker 1: because they made him an inch and a half taller,
Speaker 1: two inches taller.
Speaker 2: Did he think that no one would ever notice that?
Speaker 3: Look, there's a lot of vanity in all political candidates,
Speaker 3: and I've seen it in various ways. And I will
Speaker 3: tell you one of the moments of vanity that is
Speaker 3: also relevant to another story this week. So, when I
Speaker 3: worked for Rudy in city Hall as a senior advisor
Speaker 3: to the mayor, whatever the fuck I did, I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, you mean America's mayor.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is in nineteen ninety nine. I remember one day.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just want to pause for a
Speaker 1: second and say that while you were working for Rudy,
Speaker 1: I was hating Rudy for arresting homeless people.
Speaker 2: Continue.
Speaker 1: I just want to put it out because I get
Speaker 1: so few moments right here.
Speaker 2: Continue.
Speaker 3: Well, he mostly wanted to stop pooping on your stoop.
Speaker 3: But Okay, long story short, right though, to the connection
Speaker 3: of Vanity to Rudy to DeSantis and Rudy off the
Speaker 3: Mayor's office. There was this little tiny like a mini
Speaker 3: kitchenette kind of like a refrigerator and a sink and
Speaker 3: a little thing, and the stairs that led down to
Speaker 3: his secret office in the basement, right And I remember
Speaker 3: one day I was talking to somebody and we stepped
Speaker 3: into that little cubicle because there was a big meeting
Speaker 3: going out of there in the room, We're figuring something out,
Speaker 3: and I looked over on this little like countertop and
Speaker 3: I see this thing called topic tpp IK and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck is that. I looked at it, and
Speaker 3: that was that spray on hair that Rudy Yes was
Speaker 3: using at the time, and that Stephen Miller showed up
Speaker 3: on TV using that one day, and as a bald dude,
Speaker 3: I started to laugh hysterically. But it really tells you
Speaker 3: what vanity does to these people. It fucks them up.
Speaker 3: They do things They're like, oh, no one will ever
Speaker 3: notice I'm wearing platform cowboy boots with lifts inside. No one,
Speaker 3: We'll never pick up on that.
Speaker 1: So let's segue from that to one Rudolph Giuliani.
Speaker 2: There have been a number of bad.
Speaker 1: Weeks in a row for Rudy, but I think this
Speaker 1: might be the baddest Rudy.
Speaker 3: As I have said for some time now, he is
Speaker 3: a proofcase for everything Trump touches dies. The rule never fails.
Speaker 1: So he owes Ruby, Moss and Shay Friedman one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight million dollars.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking right now that Rudy cannot do enough
Speaker 3: cameos at s seventy five bucks a whack in the
Speaker 3: remaining heres of his life to complete this assignment. My
Speaker 3: rough mathist that he's the actuarial tables will catch up
Speaker 3: before he gets do enough cameos to be hit the law.
Speaker 1: But again, I mean cameos as we've seen from this
Speaker 1: week from everybody's favorite George Santos, who has a lot
Speaker 1: of botox. But actually I think looks pretty good. Though
Speaker 1: I would have skipped out on the lip filler. He
Speaker 1: looks really good if he's eighty. He looks less good
Speaker 1: if he's actually.
Speaker 3: We're on fast cosmetics now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, I'm in trouble.
Speaker 1: Okay, we won't talk about his lip fillers anymore. But
Speaker 1: George Santos did prove that you can actually make quite
Speaker 1: a lot of money on cameo, but maybe not forever.
Speaker 3: Look, I think George Santos is you know, his fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes are just about up. The market for people buying
Speaker 3: ironic cameos is deminimous. I don't think we're going to
Speaker 3: end up with a an industry segment of former fabulous
Speaker 3: Brazilian criminal with a secret drag identity. But look, this
Speaker 3: idea that there's this alternate world on the far right
Speaker 3: or on the maga right, where they have an economic
Speaker 3: ability to support the madness of these people, it's just
Speaker 3: not there.
Speaker 1: I was actually thinking about that because this weekend there
Speaker 1: was a turning point.
Speaker 2: Usa.
Speaker 1: No, in your state, the great state of maybe it's
Speaker 1: time to move. And by the way, if I lived
Speaker 1: in the state where all the bad stuff was happening
Speaker 1: most of the time personally, you know, but anyway, where
Speaker 1: Roseanne gave quite a long speech that was quite crazy.
Speaker 3: The photo of Roseanne and the QAnon Shaman together. As
Speaker 3: I tweeted at the time, Oh the hell mouth has opened.
Speaker 1: I mean, so those guys, I guess the QAnon. The
Speaker 1: headline here is the Qnon Shaman is out of check.
Speaker 3: He's out of jail, and he's apparently going to Congress.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's running for Congress.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 2: That's good. That's what you want. It's always good.
Speaker 1: When you do crimes to then try to build a
Speaker 1: political platform out of it.
Speaker 2: Though it has worked for Trump, So.
Speaker 3: There's no bottom in Florida, as you know. So essentially
Speaker 3: since the chairman of the Republican Party who is in Florida,
Speaker 3: who is still holding on to his job, Christian Ziegler
Speaker 3: and his wife Bridget, who is one of the founders
Speaker 3: of Mills for Liberty.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't think it's called Mills for Liberty. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's called Mom's for Liberty. Fact check, Jesse,
Speaker 1: we need a fact check.
Speaker 4: Hmmm.
Speaker 3: I like Rick's name better. I am fairly certain that
Speaker 3: I can get it to catch on where people say it.
Speaker 3: My job, Mollie is to be able to slip that
Speaker 3: in on the air somewhere in the next few days
Speaker 3: and I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I think that's coming. As long as it's you and
Speaker 1: not me, that's all I care. But Bridget Ziegler, very
Speaker 1: attractive involved in a threesome because everyone in Florida is
Speaker 1: into weird, sketchy sexual shit.
Speaker 2: Not that I'm casting aspersions.
Speaker 1: That's a throwback too earlier when I said dispersions and
Speaker 1: ever moon got out of me.
Speaker 2: Continue.
Speaker 3: We've rot Tenor with a friend a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 3: and we're talking about this big bathroom innovation we did
Speaker 3: this year, and he goes, oh, you have to watch
Speaker 3: this HBO series called How to Build a Sex Room.
Speaker 3: I'm like, do we though? Do we though?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a series on HBO. What is happening over
Speaker 2: at HBO?
Speaker 3: One of the streamers.
Speaker 1: What has happened is Florida is taking over all of
Speaker 1: my cable channels. You degenerates down in Florida. You guys
Speaker 1: have to clean it up so you can come to
Speaker 1: New York. But I do think a really good point
Speaker 1: here is that chair of the Republican Party of Florida
Speaker 1: trying to hold up the party for two million dollars, right,
Speaker 1: that's he wants two million dollars in order to leave right.
Speaker 3: Everyone in the state. Okay, how it makes my guts
Speaker 3: trying to do this. I will give Ronda Santis a
Speaker 3: tiny little shred of credit. The day the story came out,
Speaker 3: Ronda Santis or maybe the next next morning, said he
Speaker 3: should step down.
Speaker 2: He could actually make him step.
Speaker 3: Down, though right he actually he cannot. Oh, the governor
Speaker 3: does not have that power under the Florida Party bylaws.
Speaker 3: It has to be done by the Executive Committee. And
Speaker 3: here's why it hasn't happened, because Ziegler is now being
Speaker 3: advised by Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski, who are telling him,
Speaker 3: hold it up, you could be a maga hero. If
Speaker 3: you sustain this, you'll be a maga hero and everyone
Speaker 3: will believe that you are. So the next day Ziegler
Speaker 3: goes out and it's having.
Speaker 1: A threesome is wrong. Corey Lubandowski doesn't want to be right. No,
Speaker 1: indeed yes, continue.
Speaker 3: But with Corey's case and if no woman is wrong,
Speaker 3: I really have to advise Corey that under at least
Speaker 3: New Hampshire and Massachusetts law, the threesome cannot include a
Speaker 3: farm animal.
Speaker 2: Stop is Christ.
Speaker 1: I swear to God the degenerate in Florida. But yes,
Speaker 1: I agreed, And also I think really important just to
Speaker 1: take a moment here, as we are joking, we are
Speaker 1: also serious that there are real allegations of sexual assault.
Speaker 3: Yes, and actually wanted to get to that, Molly for
Speaker 3: one second. As you mentioned, this would be hilarious and
Speaker 3: hypocritical and dumb and funny if it was a case
Speaker 3: of a threesome that got experiensed.
Speaker 2: But right, that's not what this is.
Speaker 3: The reason the story came to light was that Christian
Speaker 3: Ziegler and his wife had been involved over a long
Speaker 3: period of time with a woman and I know who
Speaker 3: she is. I'm not going to reveal it. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: she is a much lower power status than they are.
Speaker 3: She's not a peer socially, politically, financially, any of that stuff.
Speaker 3: And they used her sexually. And then when his wife
Speaker 3: couldn't make it one day, he decided that he was
Speaker 3: going to go to her house, according to police reports,
Speaker 3: and he filmed himself in what is alleged to the
Speaker 3: police reports to be a sexual assault any rate, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the police have recovered the video.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think it's important to remember that, like
Speaker 1: a lot of these maga are really ultimately about misogyny
Speaker 1: and hurting women and not treating women. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a real kind of anti woman, pro violence, pro sexual
Speaker 1: assault kind of vein that runs through this Republican party
Speaker 1: that is really disgusting and also just morally beyond the pale.
Speaker 3: If this woman had somehow gotten pregnant, let me tell
Speaker 3: you something, Christian Ziegler would be raising her like a
Speaker 3: goddamn rocket sled to get an.
Speaker 1: Abortion right right, right exactly, and so hypocritical but also
Speaker 1: quite evil.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: But I do think as we're talking about this, the
Speaker 1: story is just a sort of a kind of horrendous
Speaker 1: and important and misogynistic story. But also Bridget was one
Speaker 1: of the founders and moms for Milks for liber Day,
Speaker 1: we can say it here, and she was trying to
Speaker 1: remove books from libraries, keep gay teachers from teaching about
Speaker 1: LGBTQ issues. I mean, really quite committed to misogyny and
Speaker 1: also you know, anti science, anti education, anti literacy.
Speaker 3: Well look, I mean this is a state where the
Speaker 3: Don't Say Gay bill had a much wider impact than
Speaker 3: people know. It also led to textbook publishers revising their
Speaker 3: textbooks to do things like adding a curriculum that says, hey,
Speaker 3: slavery had some benefits, and to textbook authors, removing the
Speaker 3: race of Rosa Parks from describing the actions of Rosa Parks,
Speaker 3: and removing books off the shelves about Hank Aaron and
Speaker 3: Rosa Parks and others. This is a state where the
Speaker 3: massive Republican power differential sale much and stupid.
Speaker 2: They're working hard to make the children stupid, like.
Speaker 3: All one party states. Okay, hey, man.
Speaker 2: Our kids read books here. We're a blue state.
Speaker 1: We may have our problems, but let's talk about Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis actually said something I agreed with this week.
Speaker 2: I swear to god he actually did. Trump will cry fraud.
Speaker 1: If he loses in early states, DeSantis warns, discuss.
Speaker 3: Listen, let's look get to warm and fozzy on Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 3: But he's not wrong. Okay, he's not wrong. By the
Speaker 3: end of the month, DeSantis is going to be facing
Speaker 3: up to the realities of what's ahead of him, which
Speaker 3: is and they already know they're about to get humiliated.
Speaker 3: That's why they fired their super pac director. That's why
Speaker 3: they're scrambling around trying to find, you know, brand new donors.
Speaker 3: All this other stuff.
Speaker 1: So they published a list of bundlers this week, which
Speaker 1: I've never ever seen except once with Mitt Romney, and
Speaker 1: I actually called you up on the phone to ask
Speaker 1: you what you thought was going on there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very strange. She's trying to build this like
Speaker 3: fake momentum and trying to reboot his campaign and to
Speaker 3: sort of pressure these guys into giving more a lot
Speaker 3: of them, and I know some of these people, and
Speaker 3: a lot of them are like, the fuck is this?
Speaker 3: They're not coming back in for multiple millions more for
Speaker 3: a campaign that is now pulling below ten percent.
Speaker 2: Maybe Chris Christy can give them some momentum if right.
Speaker 3: But the functional reality here of Ronda Santas is he
Speaker 3: is a young guy politically, he is going to have
Speaker 3: to make a very quick decision after Iowa when he
Speaker 3: gets blown the fuck out. Does he try to hold
Speaker 3: on until March twelfth in Florida where he's going to
Speaker 3: get blown the fuck out, or does he stop now
Speaker 3: admit that he's wrong, that he can't be Trump, join
Speaker 3: the Lincoln project. It was a good setup, you gotta
Speaker 3: say it was a good setup now, But look, he's
Speaker 3: a very stubborn guy. He's a very arrogant guy. And
Speaker 3: he's been told since he became governor of Florida that
Speaker 3: he's the tallest, handsomest, smartest man in the room and
Speaker 3: women want to sleep with him and men want to
Speaker 3: be him. And that problem in Florida is the governor
Speaker 3: is a very powerful position and they have a lot
Speaker 3: of control over money and appointments at every other thing.
Speaker 3: And he has used that to The reason Ronda Say
Speaker 3: has had so much money everybody is that he his
Speaker 3: staff used that to blackmail every lobbyist and major company
Speaker 3: in Florida. They're like, you know, I'm going to be
Speaker 3: Secretary of Commerce. Straighten up and fly right. Make sure
Speaker 3: the governor gets the maximum donation for his super pack.
Speaker 3: And that's why they raised eighty million dollars. It wasn't organic.
Speaker 3: People go, like, my god, he's the leader we've all
Speaker 3: been waiting for. He usually his Republican.
Speaker 2: Everybody.
Speaker 3: So he's so normal and natural and himself and human
Speaker 3: life human, His human ish characteristics are so amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he does. He seems like a real boy, a
Speaker 2: real human boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someday I'll be a real boy. Right, Casey, shut up, Ron,
Speaker 3: get back in your hole.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Pleasure as always.
Speaker 1: Tim Alberta, as a writer at the Atlantic and author
Speaker 1: of The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory of American Evangelicals,
Speaker 1: and an Age of Extremism. Welcome to fat Politics.
Speaker 4: Tim Alberta, thank you for having.
Speaker 2: Me delighted, really delighted.
Speaker 1: And you know that you have written so many things
Speaker 1: where I've wanted to talk to you about them.
Speaker 2: Today we're talking about your book.
Speaker 1: So I feel like it's so unusual that your whole
Speaker 1: life and also politics dovetails so neatly in an odd way.
Speaker 1: Did you think that twenty sixteen would be the beginning
Speaker 1: of a strange evangelical kind of decade.
Speaker 4: I guess, looking back at it, not really.
Speaker 5: My own concerns with the evangelical church in which I
Speaker 5: was raised date back quite a bit farther. But I
Speaker 5: think obviously a lot of the things that I was
Speaker 5: seeing and witnessing and worrying about suddenly began to snowball,
Speaker 5: and the problems accelerated when Trump came on the scenes
Speaker 5: in ways that I just don't think any of us
Speaker 5: totally foresaw.
Speaker 1: Will you tell us a little bit about your backstory?
Speaker 1: How did your father get involved.
Speaker 2: Was he born an.
Speaker 1: Evangelical born any You really have never found a thing
Speaker 1: that I know less about than Evangelical Christianity, So, I
Speaker 1: mean except for like Latvian Orthodox, I mean I really
Speaker 1: don't know any I mean anything. So I assume some
Speaker 1: of our listeners and probably my father as well, would
Speaker 1: love us sort of TLDR on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 5: So No, my dad was a fascinating, amazing character. He
Speaker 5: was not born into a Christian home. In fact, his
Speaker 5: childhood was pretty broken, had a pretty rough family life.
Speaker 5: He was brilliant, and he became very successful, and he
Speaker 5: was working in finance in New York in his mid
Speaker 5: twenties late twenties, and was married to my mother, who
Speaker 5: was working for ABC Radio in Manhattan, and they were
Speaker 5: sort of a power couple, and they had a big
Speaker 5: house and my dad drove a Cadillac, and they were
Speaker 5: sort of on top of the world. And neither of
Speaker 5: them were religious whatsoever. Despite all of those material successes,
Speaker 5: my dad felt just this gnawing emptiness inside of him
Speaker 5: that he could not explain, and he tried to see
Speaker 5: a shrink. He tried to read self help books. He
Speaker 5: sort of did everything that one might do searching for
Speaker 5: what was this thing missing in his life, and he
Speaker 5: considered himself an atheist. He had since college, he'd read
Speaker 5: all of the books on religion and decided that he
Speaker 5: was an atheist. And yet, for reasons that only God
Speaker 5: can truly explain, one day, my dad wandered into a
Speaker 5: church up in the Hudson Valley when he was visiting
Speaker 5: some family up there, and he heard the Gospel of
Speaker 5: Jesus Christ for the first time, and he that day
Speaker 5: became born again and gave his life to the Lord.
Speaker 5: And then that was pretty dramatic. That was pretty like
Speaker 5: upsetting in his family and with his friends and his
Speaker 5: social network. People thought he'd sort of lost his mind.
Speaker 5: And then what was much more dramatic was pretty shortly thereafter,
Speaker 5: he felt that the Lord was calling him to enter
Speaker 5: the ministry, to abandon his career in finance, and to
Speaker 5: go to seminary and preach. And at that point people
Speaker 5: were like actually worried about him, like thinking that he'd
Speaker 5: pretty much gone off the deep end. But that is
Speaker 5: sort of the origin story in many ways of my family,
Speaker 5: because my folks gave up everything there their very lucrative
Speaker 5: careers and they just followed God's calling to preach, and
Speaker 5: they traveled around the country and lived a very penniless,
Speaker 5: modest existence and eventually put down roots at a church
Speaker 5: in Michigan outside of Detroit.
Speaker 4: And that's that's where I grew up.
Speaker 5: So I grew up very much steep in the evangelical
Speaker 5: subculture as a result of my parents' own conversion experience.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and my parents just drank to fill the emptiness.
Speaker 1: But I do appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in the church. You had always
Speaker 1: sort of seen this coming. I mean, there's a story
Speaker 1: of you at your father's funeral. Would you tell us
Speaker 1: that story and explain a little bit about what happened there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I'd grown up in the church. I mean,
Speaker 5: like physically literally grew up inside the church because my
Speaker 5: mom was on the staff there as well, And you know,
Speaker 5: that was my tribe, it was my community, and so
Speaker 5: my my tired childhood, my entire adolescence was spent in
Speaker 5: the church. And I love a lot of the people
Speaker 5: there to this day. There are a lot of really wonderful,
Speaker 5: amazing people who do not fit the sort of ugly
Speaker 5: caricature of you know what, it means to be a
Speaker 5: sort of bloodthirsty, maga evangelical.
Speaker 4: But you know, as I said earlier, there were things
Speaker 4: that I.
Speaker 5: Saw that I observed as I was growing up that
Speaker 5: kind of I don't know, my antenna went up, and
Speaker 5: it just made me uncomfortable, and I wondered, like, what
Speaker 5: is the church really? What is it supposed to be?
Speaker 5: And are we being faithful to that? And so I
Speaker 5: sort of always kept those things to myself. But you know,
Speaker 5: I left and I moved to Washington, and I did
Speaker 5: my work as a reporter, and eventually I wound up
Speaker 5: writing this book a few years ago on Donald Trump
Speaker 5: and his takeover of the Republican Party. And I was
Speaker 5: very critical of Trump in that book, and critical of
Speaker 5: many of his sort of evangelical allies for selling out
Speaker 5: in support of him. And it just so happens, Molly,
Speaker 5: that right when the book came out, my dad died,
Speaker 5: like very unexpectedly, just a few days after the book
Speaker 5: came out. And so when I went back to Michigan
Speaker 5: to our home church where he you know, he had
Speaker 5: been the pastor of this church for more than twenty
Speaker 5: five years, I went back for the funeral, and because
Speaker 5: the book was in the news, and because Trump was
Speaker 5: tweeting about it and Rush Limbaugh was talking about it
Speaker 5: on a show, and all of this number of people
Speaker 5: at the funeral, at the visitation just they wanted to
Speaker 5: argue with me about politics. They just you know, they'd
Speaker 5: like they'd come up. And I kept thinking that they
Speaker 5: were coming up to, you know, give me a hug,
Speaker 5: or you know, give their condolences or whatever. And lots
Speaker 5: of people did do that. But then there are also
Speaker 5: others who sensed an opening there, saw an opportunity to
Speaker 5: try and kind of stick it to me, and it
Speaker 5: was beyond being just sort of gross and inappropriate. It
Speaker 5: was really eye opening because for me it was this
Speaker 5: kind of moment of clarity where you realize, oh, wow,
Speaker 5: like this has gotten like we are not just off
Speaker 5: the tracks. We are like we are like off the reservation.
Speaker 5: We've entered a completely different dimension here of what is
Speaker 5: the evangelical world doing? And have I willingly turned a
Speaker 5: blind eye to just how bad this has gotten? And
Speaker 5: I think the answer was yes. And so in many ways,
Speaker 5: this book is sort of my trying to make amends
Speaker 5: for that by really turning my attention to this and
Speaker 5: trying to answer these difficult questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. I mean, I just had a death
Speaker 1: in my family too. Is people say incredibly insane things
Speaker 1: to you, But I always think when people say insane
Speaker 1: things to you, it's always more about them than it
Speaker 1: is about you. I was listening to an interview you did,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, like, did they get a bad
Speaker 1: deal or did they get a great deal? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's an idea in Judaism and you know, I'm Jewish,
Speaker 1: but I'm not very religious. Shabiscoy can do stuff for
Speaker 1: you on the Sabbath that a religious Jew would not do.
Speaker 2: That's what a shabiskoy is.
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's a sense with evangelicals that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is that man.
Speaker 5: Well. I certainly think that Trump's superpower in many ways,
Speaker 5: as it relates to his ongoing alliance with the evangelical world,
Speaker 5: is that he is not bound by biblical ethic. That
Speaker 5: he is, you know, he doesn't have to play by
Speaker 5: the rules, which is I think the irony in this
Speaker 5: relationship is that what was once perceived to be his
Speaker 5: great weakness, you know, that he couldn't pronounce Second Corinthians
Speaker 5: and that he couldn't cite a single verse from Scripture
Speaker 5: and that he talked about how he didn't need to
Speaker 5: pray for God's forgiveness.
Speaker 4: He never had prayed for God's forgiveness.
Speaker 5: Why would he write like all of those things that
Speaker 5: were so cringe worthy to his Christian audience. Is at
Speaker 5: one point I think, in many ways, is now his strength,
Speaker 5: because yeah, he can do the dirty work. They can
Speaker 5: contract out some of the unpleasantness of politics to Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: things that they themselves might not necessarily want to do
Speaker 5: or say. He can do them. He can say them
Speaker 5: on their behalf, and they feel like their hands are
Speaker 5: clean in some way, which of course is not biblical.
Speaker 5: You are not given a pass for enabling and justifying
Speaker 5: that sort of behavior. And ultimately, I think the folks
Speaker 5: who have entered into this sort of mercenary con with
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, I think not only will they come to
Speaker 5: regret it, because you know the politically it will wind
Speaker 5: up backfiring and causing real distress for them down the road,
Speaker 5: But I think there will be a reckoning here where
Speaker 5: these people, sooner or later, I think, are going to
Speaker 5: have to come to terms with the damage this has
Speaker 5: done to the witness of Jesus Christ that if they
Speaker 5: truly are Christians, if they truly are followers of Jesus,
Speaker 5: then there's going to be a wake up call at
Speaker 5: some point here when they recognize how much damage they've
Speaker 5: done to the credibility of the Gospel.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you, because I'm going to push
Speaker 2: back on that a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, this is like this weird saying that people
Speaker 1: who are good people have where they feel like and
Speaker 1: I have it too, and I'm not even such a
Speaker 1: good person, but like where you know, you think, well,
Speaker 1: eventually this is gonna But so far, evangelicals have gotten
Speaker 1: a great deal out of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Like I think he's.
Speaker 1: Delivered more than he would have had he actually believed
Speaker 1: any of the stuff. So I wonder, like, will there
Speaker 1: be a reckoning? Like, you know, I always talked to
Speaker 1: George Conway and he's like, well, the Republican Party will
Speaker 1: eventually destroy itself. But right now they have an evangelical
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House who is probably the most evangelical
Speaker 1: House speaker ever, right, I mean, he's super super committed.
Speaker 2: They keep winning, don't they.
Speaker 4: It's a fair point. I mean I would answer it
Speaker 4: in two ways.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to be just seem like a jerk here,
Speaker 1: but I mean, my fantasy is that that happens. But
Speaker 1: I just if you're an evangelical, don't you just feel
Speaker 1: like we can't stop winning?
Speaker 5: Well, it's okay, No, it's a totally legitimate point. But
Speaker 5: I would I would say two things in response, one
Speaker 5: sort of focused on the short term earthly implications, and
Speaker 5: one on the much longer term eternal implications. I'll take
Speaker 5: the second part first. In fact, so mark chapter eight,
Speaker 5: verse thirty six. Jesus says, what doesn't profit a man
Speaker 5: to gain the whole world world yet forfeit his soul?
Speaker 5: And I think that that is the million dollar question
Speaker 5: that a lot of these folks, even if they're not
Speaker 5: grappling with it today, even if they're not grappling with
Speaker 5: it tomorrow or next year or next election cycle, they
Speaker 5: will sooner or later grapple with that question, even if
Speaker 5: they refuse to acknowledge that they are grappling with that question,
Speaker 5: because it is I think, in many ways the mirror
Speaker 5: that we hold up to ourselves as Christians to say,
Speaker 5: all of these pursuits in this world, are they of
Speaker 5: any eternal consequence? And if the answer is no, and
Speaker 5: even worse, if the answer is no, and these pursuits
Speaker 5: have taken me away from taking me farther away from
Speaker 5: my eternal identity, my true citizenship in heaven, and my
Speaker 5: relationship with Jesus Christ, then that is there's nothing worse
Speaker 5: than to come to that realization as a Christian. I
Speaker 5: think in terms of the ephemeral political pursuits. For fifty years,
Speaker 5: evangelicals poured themselves into the anti abortion cause. Now some
Speaker 5: people have been far more sincere and faithful and invested
Speaker 5: in that issue not just as a political wedge, but
Speaker 5: actually invested in it as a matter of believing deeply
Speaker 5: in the sanctity of human life, and have not just
Speaker 5: used it as a sort of lazy, lowest common denominator
Speaker 5: culture war battle, right, No, just taking abortion as an example.
Speaker 5: For fifty years, they fought this fight, and they finally
Speaker 5: get what they want.
Speaker 2: Roe v.
Speaker 4: Wade struck down. And what is the net result.
Speaker 5: The net result, according to the data we have now,
Speaker 5: is that the total number of abortions is higher than
Speaker 5: it was before. I cite that in answering your question
Speaker 5: just to say that there's this strange thing that we're
Speaker 5: warned about throughout scripture that like, the more you long
Speaker 5: after these things on earth, this political power, this influence,
Speaker 5: this fame, this self glorification, the more you seek after it,
Speaker 5: the less of it you actually get, and it becomes
Speaker 5: this sort of trap. Whereas if you do the opposite,
Speaker 5: as Jesus says, if you seek first the kingdom of God,
Speaker 5: make that your priority, then all of these other things
Speaker 5: that you think are so important they're really not, but
Speaker 5: they'll be added unto you. In other words, if you
Speaker 5: get your priorities straight, then suddenly you don't have to
Speaker 5: obsess over politics and over culture wars and over trying
Speaker 5: to dominate the country this way. And so I do
Speaker 5: hold on to this optimism that at least at some scale, Molly,
Speaker 5: that the tail will stop wagging the dog at some
Speaker 5: point here, and that people who have been engaged in
Speaker 5: this sort of reckless political idolatry will repent of it
Speaker 5: and will get their priorities back in order.
Speaker 1: Great, so you think that there'll be a moment where
Speaker 1: evangelic will be like, holy moly, what are we doing.
Speaker 5: Well, let's be clear, right like when we talk about evangelicals,
Speaker 5: when we talk about white evangelicals.
Speaker 2: I think we're only talking about white evangelicals here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And you know this is we're talking about
Speaker 5: tens of millions of people. The question for me isn't
Speaker 5: necessarily okay, does that small militant faction of hardcore Christian
Speaker 5: nationalists who are on the war path and who are
Speaker 5: hell bent on hijacking the institutions of government and the
Speaker 5: institutions of Christianity in this country, Like, are we going
Speaker 5: to convince them to stand down? Probably not, But I
Speaker 5: also don't invest a ton of my own time worrying
Speaker 5: about that click. I don't think that it is a
Speaker 5: huge percentage of the evangelical world. I think that they
Speaker 5: are really loud, and they're really well organized. But I'm
Speaker 5: much more concentrating on the masses of evangelicals who are sort.
Speaker 4: Of a little bit homeless right now.
Speaker 5: They're not people who are ever going to be like
Speaker 5: culturally and politically left, but they're also somewhere deep in
Speaker 5: their psyche and in their spirit, pretty unsettled by what's
Speaker 5: happened in Republican politics and by who Donald Trump is,
Speaker 5: and really questioning like, do they have any business any
Speaker 5: home in this Republican party. I think that identity crisis,
Speaker 5: that political and cultural identity crisis in the evangelical world
Speaker 5: right now. That's what I'm writing the book about. And
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about the many millions of people who I
Speaker 5: think are genuinely on the fence and who are in
Speaker 5: a place where they could sort of break either way,
Speaker 5: Like they could be convinced to sort of buy into
Speaker 5: the far right Christian nationalist stuff, or they could be
Speaker 5: sort of brought back a little bit and with the
Speaker 5: help of their pastors and with the help of a
Speaker 5: healthy church environment, could be reminded of where their priorities
Speaker 5: really should be. And I think that's the battle here,
Speaker 5: I really do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much. Tim.
Speaker 4: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on to talk
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: Giraldo Cadava is a contributing writer at The New Yorker
Speaker 1: and author of The Hispanic Republican, The Shaping of an
Speaker 1: American political Identity From Nisen to Trump.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics. About that.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I read your article in The New Yorker. I was like,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about this right away. So you
Speaker 1: are a professor of history and Latin studies at Northwestern
Speaker 1: and you've written books, but this story is really important,
Speaker 1: and you've been writing about the Donald Trump's push for
Speaker 1: Latino voters, So talk to me about this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it was a major story after the
Speaker 6: twenty twenty election. One of the main takeaways was that
Speaker 6: Latino's had different political ideologies that not all Latinos fought
Speaker 6: or believed the same thing. That was one of the
Speaker 6: big stories coming out of twenty twenty, I think, and
Speaker 6: ever since we've been kind of checking.
Speaker 4: The temperature of those stories for a while.
Speaker 6: With the twenty twenty two mid terms, how would that
Speaker 6: go special elections in California and elsewhere? And then I think,
Speaker 6: you know, we're gearing up for the twenty twenty four
Speaker 6: campaign and trying to see where that story will go.
Speaker 6: And you know, if it continues, it would be something
Speaker 6: in germ, represent a shred un court and shift I
Speaker 6: think in American politics, or a challenge to what many
Speaker 6: people thought they knew about Latino voters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have Latino voters in Nevada who are from
Speaker 1: where and where and what are they what's important to them?
Speaker 1: Sort of give me the landscape of what the Latino
Speaker 1: voter block looks like, and it's not a block, But
Speaker 1: the diaspora is that the right word.
Speaker 4: I don't know it's a right word for some Latinos.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think that many Latinos are new or
Speaker 6: recent arrivals, and many others have lived in Texas or
Speaker 6: Arizona or New Mexico for hundreds of the years. So
Speaker 6: it's that already kind of suggests some of it is
Speaker 6: very compon I think it's become pretty customary to say
Speaker 6: Latinos are not a monool.
Speaker 4: But when people say that, I think they primarily mean
Speaker 4: that we come from different nationality groups. We're Colombia, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan,
Speaker 4: but we're also spread across the country. We're in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida,
Speaker 4: and New York Illinois, and what the community looks like
Speaker 4: in those different places is different. And I still think
Speaker 4: though that like mentioning the different places Latinos come from,
Speaker 4: mentioning the different nationality groups, that only really begins to
Speaker 4: scratch the surface of all of.
Speaker 6: The ways in which we're different. I mean, we're citizens
Speaker 6: and non citizens. That coulds to your point about diaspora
Speaker 6: versus people who've been here for hundreds of years. But
Speaker 6: we're also urban, rural, religious, non religious, Democrat, Republican. So
Speaker 6: all of these I mean, we're young, we're old, we're
Speaker 6: all over the place, I mean, which in a lot
Speaker 6: of ways makes us like any other demographic group in America.
Speaker 6: But I think it's still a process of continuing to
Speaker 6: persuade Americans that we really are different in ary and gosh,
Speaker 6: I didn't even mentioned like white, black, Indigenous, occupying every
Speaker 6: point along an ethnic and racial spectrum. So all of
Speaker 6: these are the ways in which Latinos are different. I
Speaker 6: think we do need to dig a little deeper than
Speaker 6: just noting that we're from different nationality groups and live
Speaker 6: in different parts of the country, because there are all
Speaker 6: sorts of occidents even within particular geographies and nationality groups.
Speaker 6: The important thing right now is that an unfortunate reality
Speaker 6: of our electoral system is that elections are decided in
Speaker 6: just a handful of states, right and those states now
Speaker 6: are like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And these are also
Speaker 6: places with large enough Latino populations to sway the elections
Speaker 6: that I'm still not convinced that like when a Democrat
Speaker 6: or Republican Caunadia goes to Wisconsin, that they realize that
Speaker 6: they're also talking to like Latino dairy farmers or Latinos
Speaker 6: who live their whole lives in the West, or when
Speaker 6: they go to central Pennsylvania, they're also talking to large
Speaker 6: Puerto Rican populations. And so I think, you know, the
Speaker 6: map of Latinos is expanding in places that are important politically.
Speaker 6: So who are the Latinos Trumps going for. I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure that in his own mind he's so
Speaker 6: sophisticated about how to micro target particular Latino groups. I'm
Speaker 6: not sure, but that's that's actually been true of many
Speaker 6: Republican candidates.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: I don't think like Mitt Romi even, for example, I
Speaker 6: don't think they were about picking apart the South Florida
Speaker 6: population compared with the Arizona or California population. I think
Speaker 6: what Republicans try to do is just kind of articulate
Speaker 6: these broad principles like anti socialism, anti communism, family values,
Speaker 6: religious liberty, pro business attitudes, those kinds of things, and
Speaker 6: they it's kind of like a blanket approach, which on
Speaker 6: the one hand, is sort of offensive in the sense
Speaker 6: that you know, they're not really trying to pay attention
Speaker 6: to what particular Latino communities believe. But on the other hand,
Speaker 6: I think they are tapping into something that many Latinos
Speaker 6: will leave across the country.
Speaker 4: So I would say, like the strongest suit for Trump
Speaker 4: when it comes to Latinos of all strike TuS to
Speaker 4: do with, you know, support for charter schools, support for
Speaker 4: religious liberty, support for slashing financial regulations giving small business owners,
Speaker 4: well those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: So, and the goal is to sort of get Latino
Speaker 1: voters in Nevada, Arizona, Florida.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, that is the goal.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, I think, you know, the approach for
Speaker 6: Republicans for a long time has really been to kind
Speaker 6: of like deal away just enough of the Latino vote
Speaker 6: to win narrow elections. I do feel like for Republicans
Speaker 6: generally now that calculus is shifting a little bit and
Speaker 6: it seems like they really are trying to make a
Speaker 6: play for Latinos everywhere. And you know, that's interesting because
Speaker 6: it has never happened. I mean, and that's important probably
Speaker 6: for listeners understand. I mean, the reason that there's so
Speaker 6: much attention to the stories that we're not we're not
Speaker 6: talking about Republicans winning the Latino vote. We're talking about
Speaker 6: Republicans just improving their performance among Latinos. You know, historically
Speaker 6: the average Latino support for Republicans has been somewhere between
Speaker 6: like a quarter and a third of the Latino population.
Speaker 6: And obviously that's not amazing. I mean, that's not something
Speaker 6: that any party trying to get to fifty percent would
Speaker 6: be doing somersaults about or anything. But like, as that
Speaker 6: number creeps up to thirty eight percent, which is what
Speaker 6: Trump won in twenty twenty, or if recent polls. Oh
Speaker 6: and by the way, Mali, I know how much you
Speaker 6: love polls I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: Because we should put we should.
Speaker 6: Put all of our stock in all of our hopes
Speaker 6: and dreams and Schudent's polls when we're talking.
Speaker 1: About polls, because I do want to like bring this
Speaker 1: up because I do hate poles. But in that last
Speaker 1: midterm election, there was a lot of polling that said
Speaker 1: that Democrats were going to lose the Latino vote, and
Speaker 1: they didn't.
Speaker 6: Right, right, absolutely, And you know, I think they're at
Speaker 6: has been a lot of arguing about exactly how Latinos voted.
Speaker 6: You know, I think from the Democrats perspective, between twenty
Speaker 6: and twenty twenty two. They had grown so tired and
Speaker 6: frustrated with this story that Latinos are weleeing from the
Speaker 6: Democratic Party and running toward Republicans that they were prepared
Speaker 6: to see even a stalemate as and by stalemate again,
Speaker 6: I don't mean fifty to fifty, I mean like holding
Speaker 6: stable between twenty and twenty twenty two, they were prepared
Speaker 6: to declare victory. Now, you did see a lot of
Speaker 6: like Latino advocacy organizations like Nidocus and the Latino pollsters,
Speaker 6: Democratic pollsters like Matt Barrettel and others talking about, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, Latinos came home in the twenty twenty two
Speaker 6: midterm election. They came back. We told you, I think
Speaker 6: this narrative was crazy. But the more analysis was done
Speaker 6: of actual voting results after the twenty twenty two mid
Speaker 6: terms by firms like ECHI Research, Catalysts and others. The
Speaker 6: picture that emerged was that, yeah, there was not a
Speaker 6: red waves as many had been fearing or anticipating. But
Speaker 6: Democrats or Latinos also did not come home to Democrats.
Speaker 6: It was as Carlos Odio from Echi's Research and for
Speaker 6: your listeners, I mean, I think I would just say
Speaker 6: that Carlos Odio and Echis research, they do amazing work
Speaker 6: in there. Some Latino analysts high quality. Should you should
Speaker 6: be paying attention to them. Nonpartisan? I mean they're Democrats.
Speaker 6: They were, you know, I think definitely Byalentcia and Carlos Odio,
Speaker 6: they both worked in the Obama administration. Thing are Democrats,
Speaker 6: but they aren't I think partisan in their approach to
Speaker 6: reading data about Latinos.
Speaker 4: And you know, their.
Speaker 6: Conclusion was that the twenty twenty two mid terms largely
Speaker 6: offered a picture of stability and that yes, there wasn't
Speaker 6: further erosion, but nor was there kind of like coming
Speaker 6: back to the Democratic Party. That might look a little
Speaker 6: bit different in places like Nevada or Arizona, where Democrats
Speaker 6: were really eager to say that Latinos won the election there.
Speaker 6: But you know, I've also seen interesting analyses that have
Speaker 6: that the real difference in twenty twenty two in places
Speaker 6: like Arizona, Nevatta was you know, white liberals, white progressives
Speaker 6: kind of overperforming for Democrats, and that even in those places,
Speaker 6: the Latino vote was about the same as it was
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Right, so you didn't lose them you might not have grown,
Speaker 1: but you didn't lose them.
Speaker 6: If you're talking about Republicans, yes you didn't continue to
Speaker 6: win Latino support, but you didn't lose them. And if
Speaker 6: you're talking about Democrats, it didn't come home, but nor
Speaker 6: did they move further to the right.
Speaker 1: It is an off off your election too, which I
Speaker 1: think is an important data point. But can we talk
Speaker 1: about Univision? What's happened with Univision? Because this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: So what has happened with Univision?
Speaker 6: It's it is interesting, and you know, I think it's
Speaker 6: kind of indicative. The Democrats response to that, the liberal
Speaker 6: Latinos response to what happened at univisuals to my mind
Speaker 6: nobs like indicative of part of their problem. So basically,
Speaker 6: what happened is that Univision, for the first time in
Speaker 6: twenty two years, as their executives that pointed out, didn't
Speaker 6: interview with a current or former US president or who
Speaker 6: is a Republican, a former or a current Republican.
Speaker 4: Candidate or president.
Speaker 6: This is confusing when talking about Trump because he's both
Speaker 6: a former president and a candidate. So that's why I'm
Speaker 6: probably tripping over my words a little bit. But that
Speaker 6: felt to many Democrats and liberal Latinos like the network
Speaker 6: had taken a sharp turn to the right and it
Speaker 6: was now as like the actor John like Guizamo called
Speaker 6: it Magavision or something else I can't even remember, but anyway,
Speaker 6: liberal Latinos were like really frustrated, and you know, I
Speaker 6: talked to Republican strategists who are Latino who said things like, well,
Speaker 6: you know, their reaction is just because they have had
Speaker 6: Boonievcalan in their pockets for so long that any sort
Speaker 6: of move to the center feels like a betrayal, it
Speaker 6: feels like opposition. And I do think that Bunibcian also,
Speaker 6: you know, they began what seems like a pretty reasonable
Speaker 6: strategy to move to the center, as they claim to
Speaker 6: represent the interests of their viewers broadly. But they kind
Speaker 6: of like started that move to the center pretty boldly
Speaker 6: by having us sit down with Donald Trump and kind
Speaker 6: of letting him say whatever he wanted to say. And
Speaker 6: I also think that liberals have a point when they
Speaker 6: say that Enrique Acevedo, the anchor the Mexican Ankle from
Speaker 6: Pelavisa interviewed Trump didn't push back as hard as he
Speaker 6: might have when it came to, you know, spurious claims
Speaker 6: about winning the twenty twenty election. I mean a Savelo
Speaker 6: was not confrontational. Now Unison says that that is going
Speaker 6: to be their approach. They would let Biden do the
Speaker 6: same thing, and the point is to let their audience
Speaker 6: members hear from candidates themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly is this.
Speaker 2: A new tactic for Univision?
Speaker 6: So you know, Wion has explicitly said that in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty four they're going to not necessarily give equal airtime
Speaker 6: to Republicans, independents and Democrats, but they're going to I
Speaker 6: think they called it equity. They're going to certainly air
Speaker 6: programming with Republican, independent and candidates. I even read that
Speaker 6: they are next hoping to get Nikki Haley to sit
Speaker 6: down for so that that is a new approach for
Speaker 6: unibe stowne I think.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, are they getting pushed back and do
Speaker 1: you think there will be pushback and sort of talk
Speaker 1: us through that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, they've gotten an enormous amount of pushback. I mean
Speaker 6: John Leguizamo again like called for a boycott of UNIBC
Speaker 6: on much like Latinos called for a boycott of Goya
Speaker 6: Bean's after the CEO Robert and Menway, you know, gave
Speaker 6: gave kind of laudatory remarks about Donald Trump in the
Speaker 6: summer of twenty twenty. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 6: pushback in some local markets. You know, people have been
Speaker 6: told that you know, local networks that are unibc ON
Speaker 6: affiliates have you know, decided that they're going to kind
Speaker 6: of go against the broader company initiative to give kind
Speaker 6: of Republicans, independence and Democrats school air time. So there
Speaker 6: is there is pushback. I think personally, I think the
Speaker 6: pushback is is risky in the sense that unibcon is
Speaker 6: still going to be really important as as the network
Speaker 6: that kind of commands the largest Spanish speaking audience across
Speaker 6: the nation. I mean, by boycotting UCON, they would risk
Speaker 6: kind of losing this important platform that they've had for
Speaker 6: a long time. Personally, I'm also not convinced yet that
Speaker 6: the decision to have an interview with Donald Trump means
Speaker 6: that the network written large, is like moving hard to
Speaker 6: the right. Yeah, I don't. I don't think so. I mean,
Speaker 6: I think a lot to watch, a lot to see.
Speaker 6: I mean, the network had talked about how they had
Speaker 6: offered Biden an interview months ago and the details were
Speaker 6: still being negotiated. Now, Biden's team says that they were
Speaker 6: never offered an interview until right before Trump's interview, So
Speaker 6: you know, we'll see, I mean, we'll see. I think
Speaker 6: there's a lot of suspicion about Televisa, the Mexican company
Speaker 6: acquiring Unibcon. There's a lot of suspicion about how the
Speaker 6: head of televis side is a personal acquaintance of Jared Kushner,
Speaker 6: and Kushner helped arrange the interviews. So there's some suspicion there.
Speaker 6: But I'm not convinced yet that this symbolizes a sharp
Speaker 6: to the right for when neb see on. But the
Speaker 6: one thing I was going to say that's representative to
Speaker 6: me in the liberal Latino's reaction to the Universion interview
Speaker 6: is that their strategy right now seems to be to
Speaker 6: just express as much outrage as possible about Trump's immigration policies.
Speaker 6: The very fact that you are an interview with Donald Trump,
Speaker 6: and I think it's important for liberal Latinos instead of,
Speaker 6: you know, expressing outrage about immigration policies and making no
Speaker 6: mistake about it, these are horrific immigration policies, no doubt
Speaker 6: about it. I want to be clear about that. But
Speaker 6: it seems to me like the outrage of liberal Latinos
Speaker 6: about fronts lies and immigration policies has not really made
Speaker 6: a dent in his support from Latinos. And I would
Speaker 6: also like to say that, you know, I know, there's
Speaker 6: this whole debate, a really important bit about how to
Speaker 6: cover Trump and like, do we focus on the threat
Speaker 6: to democracy, the potential for authoritarian rule, or do we
Speaker 6: treat him like any other normal Republican candidate out there
Speaker 6: on the trail, talking about religious freedom and charter schools
Speaker 6: and pro business policies, things that Republicans have done for decades.
Speaker 6: And you know, that's something I wrestle with in my
Speaker 6: own writing too. But for me, the reason that that
Speaker 6: question is so important for Latinos is that Latinos are
Speaker 6: a group that for so long has been ignored and
Speaker 6: taken for granted that to me, it is important to
Speaker 6: talk about their kind of regular old policy views as
Speaker 6: a way of acknowledging that Latinos believe different things, like
Speaker 6: the fact that Latinos believe different things about charter schools
Speaker 6: and business and evangelicalism. That to me is an important
Speaker 6: part of recognizing their humanity and thinkers as political actors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though important to just say once.
Speaker 1: Again that Trump is not He's not a normal candidate,
Speaker 1: though neither is Ron DeSantis. They're both shopping that same
Speaker 1: anti democratic, terrifying vision, which is against everything the founders
Speaker 1: had intended. He yes, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Not to put too fine a point on it.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right, I mean it is thank you, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: of course, no moment, Rick Wilson, Yes, Wally drunk fast.
Speaker 1: It is time to do our favorite slash only segment,
Speaker 1: What is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery is the classic the returning champion,
Speaker 3: the douchebag Supreme, Donald John Trump.
Speaker 2: We call him El duche.
Speaker 3: L duche This week yesterday, in point of fact, he
Speaker 3: gave a speech because he can't stop himself in New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: the Great State of the Granite State, the Great State
Speaker 3: of New.
Speaker 2: Hampshire, where he's pretty convinced he might lose to Nicki Haley.
Speaker 2: He's always freaking out.
Speaker 3: He's a little worried about that. He's out of it.
Speaker 3: He's getting out of Iowa and going into New Hampshire,
Speaker 3: and he praised Victor orbon the best, who is a
Speaker 3: raging authoritarian, not a conservative, he is a dictator. And
Speaker 3: then he quoted approvingly and lovingly. I look, and I
Speaker 3: guess it's because the end of the quarter is coming
Speaker 3: up and he wants his performance. Bonus Vladimir fucking Putin, the.
Speaker 2: One international leader he loves.
Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin's critiques of America. Trump is reflecting and quoting them,
Speaker 3: and not in a way saying fuck you Putin, I
Speaker 3: will stand against you. It's more like, ooh, lad, can
Speaker 3: I rub your feet? They look so callous?
Speaker 2: Ooh the other thing.
Speaker 3: He did, And he's been doing this a lot lately,
Speaker 3: and I'm sorry, I do not give him a pass
Speaker 3: on this because he's an ignorant, a historical fuck wit.
Speaker 2: That's nice.
Speaker 3: He has been quoting a line where he says immigrants
Speaker 3: are poisoning the blood of our country. Oh really, Donald,
Speaker 3: is there something with the soil as well? Blood in soil?
Speaker 3: It seems to have a ring to it. I did
Speaker 3: not see that coming. Like God, listen, guys, everybody used
Speaker 3: to strap the fuck in because Trump is discovered.
Speaker 2: That he's going full Nazi, full Nazi thing.
Speaker 3: He's got the works out for him.
Speaker 2: White nationalists.
Speaker 1: Again, it was another week of people saying that Trump
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be Hitler, which again, if you have
Speaker 1: to specify, perhaps you might be in trouble.
Speaker 3: A lot of your close friends at an influential journal
Speaker 3: of opinion believe.
Speaker 2: That, called the National Review.
Speaker 1: We had Rich Lowry on his podcast, cut up and
Speaker 1: put on Twitter saying that he thought institutions would once
Speaker 1: again protect us from Donald Trump. And you know, he's
Speaker 1: saying the quiet part which everyone behind the scenes is saying,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: The Justice League right exactly.
Speaker 1: The people who are in the halls of power on
Speaker 1: the Republican side are trying to convince themselves that Trump
Speaker 1: won't be the end of democracy, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: all of us know, including Trump, who says I'm going
Speaker 1: to end democracy. You know, and then you ask his
Speaker 1: followers and they go like, oh, we need a dictatorship.
Speaker 2: It's time for a dictatorship.
Speaker 1: The only thing that will save us from Joe Biden
Speaker 1: wanting to make chips in the United States and giving
Speaker 1: poor kids free lunches will be a dictatorship.
Speaker 3: This is a moment where if our actual institutions do
Speaker 3: not wake the fuck up and recognize what is happening,
Speaker 3: it's going to be like Remember I was told very
Speaker 3: very confidently by many, many, many people in twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: though there's no way Trump could win. He's an asshole.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: I was one of those people for a while. But
Speaker 3: the fact that he is doing this openly now there's
Speaker 3: folks Google Red Caesar and you will go down the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole of what is going on here. They're prepping
Speaker 3: the battlefield not to have a Republican versus democratic fight,
Speaker 3: but a fight that is do you want a dictator
Speaker 3: or do you want an American president? And there are
Speaker 3: unfortunately seventy million Americans who want a dictator or they
Speaker 3: think it's going to work out for them right exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't think they want a dictator, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they understand what a dictator means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are not in a great spot right now
Speaker 3: as a.
Speaker 2: Nation, not in a great spot.
Speaker 3: We are not in a good place right now. And
Speaker 3: if people don't start I think the technical term is
Speaker 3: waking the fuck up, we are going to have a real, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: Very Unmarry Christmas Yeah, as many bibars.
Speaker 3: E Christmas twenty twenty four might not look like anything
Speaker 3: you've ever imagined before, because they'll be Yes, they'll be
Speaker 3: salivating to begin the thousand year Reich of Trump.
Speaker 2: The good news is we'll be in Gitmo.
Speaker 3: Well speak for yourself. I have a getaway plan. Thanks, Rick,
Speaker 3: all right, have a great one.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in pology makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.