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 Diane Feinstein will retire from the
Speaker 1: Senate at the age of ninety. We have a fantastic
Speaker 1: show today the Washington Post. Jacqueline Alimony will join us
Speaker 1: to talk about the latest Republican congress person who has
Speaker 1: a fictitious past. Then we'll talk to Congressman Seth Malton
Speaker 1: about exciting things like high speed rail. But first we
Speaker 1: have the author of Lady Justice Slates, Dahlia Lethwick. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics. Dahlia. Hello, Molly, so excited to
Speaker 1: have you back. You know, I'm a huge fan Dahlia. First,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this idea. There's a lot of judicial
Speaker 1: factory going on in the wake of over to It's
Speaker 1: a very serious podcast. It's like MPR. Fuckery is in
Speaker 1: the constant tuition, my friend is definitely in the Bill
Speaker 1: of Rights. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of constitutional factory
Speaker 1: around abortion on both sides, many people, good people on
Speaker 1: both sides. And I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: these two pieces you wrote this week that are sort
Speaker 1: of different sides of a little bit the same coin, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think if you're going to play hardball,
Speaker 1: which is the first piece, then let's play hardball, which
Speaker 1: is the second. So I think you're right. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of when they go low, you
Speaker 1: don't walk away. I think it's what you're describing. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So the first piece I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: this idea, and it's not an idea. It's actually happening
Speaker 1: in Texas, which was the state that overturned Row. Before
Speaker 1: Row was even overturned with SBA, they now have a
Speaker 1: judge here who is I know you're shocked to hear
Speaker 1: this wants to outlaw the abortion pills. The read on
Speaker 1: it explain, that's the read. And it's not just that
Speaker 1: he wants to it's that we are all waiting because
Speaker 1: it's likely to come in the coming days, and I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be much like s b A
Speaker 1: where we're all shocked when it happens. But he is
Speaker 1: now poised to decide a lawsuit that would, if he
Speaker 1: does what we think he's going to do, create a
Speaker 1: nationwide injunction for the abortion pill. And just for folks
Speaker 1: who still think about Roe, v. Wayne in terms of
Speaker 1: surgical abortions, right, the majority of abortions now happen with
Speaker 1: medication abortion, and he is overseeing a challenge to the
Speaker 1: first of the two drugs in the abortion Protocol. And
Speaker 1: if the plaintiffs in this suit get their way, he
Speaker 1: will be able to enjoin the abortion pill nationwide. So
Speaker 1: I want you to explain this to me, because we're
Speaker 1: going to explain this for my dad and also for
Speaker 1: me because I don't quite understand this. Why does a
Speaker 1: judge in Texas get to stop people from getting abortion
Speaker 1: pills in New York State? Well, the fair minded answer
Speaker 1: is that you can always seek an injunction, and if
Speaker 1: you are in your ordinary kind of suit, when you
Speaker 1: seek an injunction, the party that has to stop doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing is the person who's on the other
Speaker 1: end of the suit. Right. If you think back to,
Speaker 1: for instance, the Donald Trump travel ban that also was
Speaker 1: enjoined by a single judge, right, a single district court
Speaker 1: judge initially, And so the idea is, when it's the
Speaker 1: government that is doing something unlawful, one single district court
Speaker 1: judge has the power to enjoy that project nationwide. That
Speaker 1: really was the travel ban and maybe you know because
Speaker 1: there isn't just like a guy to enjoin. Theoretically you
Speaker 1: enjoined the whole federal government. But I think the real
Speaker 1: answer to your question is why was this thing sued
Speaker 1: in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District of Texas
Speaker 1: that has no connection to abortion pills, is that they
Speaker 1: knew they would get only one judge. Donald Trump placed
Speaker 1: this judge on the bench, and he is the only
Speaker 1: aim in town. And so he has been involved in,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole series of like truly crazy crazy ruling.
Speaker 1: He sees control over the entire border policy himself. At
Speaker 1: one point, he has defied Donald Trump's decision protecting LGBTQ employees,
Speaker 1: and he has single handedly taking it upon himself to
Speaker 1: restrict the access of miners to birth control. So he's
Speaker 1: going to just do He's like a slot machine, right,
Speaker 1: you put in a quarter, He's going to give you
Speaker 1: what you want. And if he's the only judge, then
Speaker 1: you just keep going to him seeking relief. That's incredible,
Speaker 1: I mean incredibleory. So they really have found a judge
Speaker 1: who who's basically like the Supreme Court, right and and
Speaker 1: then to boot it goes no, it goes up to
Speaker 1: the Fifth Circuit, right, it goes up to the Federal
Speaker 1: like even no matter what he decides, this goes up
Speaker 1: to the Fifth Circuit, which is the most conservative federal
Speaker 1: appeals corres, and then it goes to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, who I suspect will have no problem saying
Speaker 1: that abortion pills can be regulated. And so this is
Speaker 1: kind of it's not just a slot machine. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like Russian dolls of slot machines, where every layer
Speaker 1: up continues to give you exactly the outcome you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll say, I mean just incredible stuff. So the piece
Speaker 1: that you wrote after that is a sort of the
Speaker 1: more is a sort of more normal judge trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to deal with this judicial overreach. Can
Speaker 1: you explain? Yeah, I mean, essentially, you know, just for
Speaker 1: one more beat on Texas, this is you know, these
Speaker 1: are plaintiffs who have no standing, right, It's a bunch
Speaker 1: of doctors who don't have any reason to be able
Speaker 1: to walk into court. But they're saying, someday I may
Speaker 1: give someone an abortion pill and I may hurt them
Speaker 1: because it's unsafe. Despite twenty three years of FDA approval
Speaker 1: and so enjoying the whole program. Stop the entire FDA
Speaker 1: approval right, every layer of that, three layers of insane overreach.
Speaker 1: None of these things are plausible. They have no merit right.
Speaker 1: So that's Texas. So exactly what you're saying, how do
Speaker 1: you answer for that? What is the district court judge
Speaker 1: on the other side who thinks maybe Rovie Wade shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been overturned? What are they to do? So this
Speaker 1: brings us to a Loane District Court judge in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. This past week who was like, okay, in
Speaker 1: a in a case by the way, that has nothing
Speaker 1: really to do with abortion rights, to be fair, but
Speaker 1: to do with somebody who, in violation of the Face
Speaker 1: Act blocked clinic access in Washington, d C. And was
Speaker 1: being sentenced over That. Explained to my dad what the
Speaker 1: Face Act is, because I am very well versed in
Speaker 1: the Face Act, obviously as a judicial scholar myself, but
Speaker 1: just for my dad and for my dad too, who
Speaker 1: also it's not well versed in the Face Act. It
Speaker 1: is a federal statute free of access to clinic entrances,
Speaker 1: and it essentially is just a statute that says, don't
Speaker 1: screw around with people seeking reproductive care. It was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the mechanism to protect folks from crazy people
Speaker 1: who were blocking clinic entrances and harassing patients at abortion clinics. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is a bunch of people who go they
Speaker 1: deliberately block access to a d C clinic in they
Speaker 1: use rope and chain, they terrorize folks inside. They're indicted
Speaker 1: in April of two for violating this statute that says
Speaker 1: you cannot get in the way of reproductive healthcare. And
Speaker 1: one of the defendants, Lauren Handy, somehow claims that because
Speaker 1: Dobbs overruled Rope, there was never a right to abortion
Speaker 1: under the fourteenth Amendment, and so the Face Act never
Speaker 1: applied to her because she's in a time machine and
Speaker 1: she can go back to and in her view, there
Speaker 1: was never a protected, constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy. Okay,
Speaker 1: So put aside space time continuum. Okay, because like you
Speaker 1: and your dad are going to have to just deal
Speaker 1: with the fact that she wants to say that row
Speaker 1: was never decided in nineteen seventy three. But the real
Speaker 1: issue here is that a judge, a Clinton appointee, is
Speaker 1: like cool. Cool, cool. If you're going to claim that
Speaker 1: the Face Act could never apply to you, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and look at Dobbs again and say, hey, they
Speaker 1: only looked at it through the lens of the fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: I bet if we look at it through the lens
Speaker 1: of the thirteenth Amendment, we could go ahead and fight. Right,
Speaker 1: which is the anti slavery Amendment? Right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the it's the amendment that was you know, that barred
Speaker 1: quote involuntary servitude, as you said, and she said, since
Speaker 1: this has applausible claim to also protect abortion rights, both
Speaker 1: parties should just go ahead and brief for me why
Speaker 1: the thirteenth Amendment doesn't protect abortion. So again, time space
Speaker 1: continuum problem, right, doesn't doesn't really solve the problem of
Speaker 1: somebody breaking the law in and then claiming it was
Speaker 1: never the law. But notwithstanding, it's hardball, Molly, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of cool. And what she does is she sort
Speaker 1: of surfaces this non trivial argument that the thirteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: really does for forbid force childbirth and that this is
Speaker 1: a serious argument and if we can't locate protections for
Speaker 1: reproductive freedom in the Fourteenth, let's go ahead and root
Speaker 1: around in the thirteenth. Then you're right, it's hardball, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely answering like for like, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of cool. It's better than wringing
Speaker 1: your hands right now. No, and look, if we're gonna
Speaker 1: go into weird ship, let's you know that it's only
Speaker 1: fair to do it that way. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about your podcast, guest. You have a Slate podcast
Speaker 1: that talks about very fun, very good talks, but also
Speaker 1: talks about the law, and you have on it a
Speaker 1: state Supreme Court justice from the state of Wisconsin. Now,
Speaker 1: the listeners of this podcast know that the state of
Speaker 1: Wisconsin Supreme Court election is coming up in April, and
Speaker 1: we are quite focused on it. So this adds another
Speaker 1: element of excitement. So talk to us about what's happening
Speaker 1: in this Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yeah, this was kind of
Speaker 1: a cool podcast. We had Justice Jill Karovski. She was
Speaker 1: as you know, there was a four three decision right
Speaker 1: before Stop Steele, right before the January sixth Capital insurrection,
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled four to three that they
Speaker 1: were not going to throw out votes that the Trump
Speaker 1: administration was claiming we're stolen and unlawful and blah blah
Speaker 1: blah and fraud and they were not going to throw
Speaker 1: away two seven thousand votes. And by the way, the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign only wanted to throw out votes in Dane
Speaker 1: and Milwaukee Counties, which were the of course most div
Speaker 1: verse racially diverse counties. For three the Wisconsin Supreme Court
Speaker 1: opts to say, no, we're not throwing out votes. They
Speaker 1: hand the election to Biden, as it should have been
Speaker 1: because that was in fact who won the election. And
Speaker 1: then she spent and this is really heartbreaking Molly. First
Speaker 1: of all, as she was hearing oral arguments in December,
Speaker 1: there were armed guys outside her chambers terrorizing them. Right,
Speaker 1: So she's hearing oral argument, Well, this is happening. We
Speaker 1: think about Ruby Freeman, right, and election workers who are
Speaker 1: being intimidated and chilled and terrorized. But it goes all
Speaker 1: the way up to a Supreme Court justice in a
Speaker 1: state and then once the decision comes down, she is
Speaker 1: just hit between the eyes. And she said this on
Speaker 1: the podcast with horrible misogyny, horrible anti semitism threats, and finally,
Speaker 1: a complaint filed by Trump's lawyers that they thought it
Speaker 1: was improper and she should be disciplined because during oral arguments,
Speaker 1: as we've both just noted, she observed that it seemed
Speaker 1: kind of racist to only throw out votes from the
Speaker 1: two minority heavy counties, and she said that she thought
Speaker 1: that smacked of racism. And later in the same moral argument,
Speaker 1: she told one of the Trump's lawyers, this felt very
Speaker 1: much in keeping with the Federalist papers, like they were
Speaker 1: trying to protect a king or a monarch rather than
Speaker 1: protect democracy. For that, they sought to have her disciplined
Speaker 1: on the Federal bench, and that complaint process lasted for
Speaker 1: sixteen months, so it was only just dismissed against her.
Speaker 1: And you know, what you're talking about and thinking about
Speaker 1: on the show, and what I'm talking about and thinking
Speaker 1: about on the show, isn't just you know that these
Speaker 1: races are consequential, that Leonard Leo at the Federalist Society
Speaker 1: has millions and millions and millions of dollars being poured
Speaker 1: into these state Supreme court races, right, but this effort
Speaker 1: here is to chill and terrorize people. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just really worth holding up, just as Rowski, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, having been you know, having had to
Speaker 1: pay out of her own pocket for lawyers to defend
Speaker 1: against this frivolous complaint, Right Jesus Christ. The first thing
Speaker 1: she does is say out loud, like, no, they cannot
Speaker 1: terrorize judges. We have to be able to ask questions
Speaker 1: in oral argument. We have to be able to use analogies.
Speaker 1: That's how we do oral argument. If I can't say,
Speaker 1: you're treating Donald Trump like a king, what the hell
Speaker 1: am I doing on the bench? And so I just
Speaker 1: think it is of a piece with so much of
Speaker 1: the stuff we've been thinking about in terms of using
Speaker 1: and abusing legal processes in systems to subvert democracy rather
Speaker 1: than lift it up. Yeah, exactly, No, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just an absolute fucking nightmare. Excuse my friend. And
Speaker 1: she's up for reelection in April. She's not up for
Speaker 1: re election in this cycle because she was elected. Actually,
Speaker 1: she was one of the people elected in the pandemic.
Speaker 1: She's okay in this cycle. But I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons she wanted to speak out was to say, hey, world,
Speaker 1: look at this election system, because we think we're electing
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices, but behind the scenes, they're being terrorized
Speaker 1: for their decisions. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're seeing again and again. Here we
Speaker 1: are in this period. What is the Supreme Court doing
Speaker 1: behind our backs right now? I mean the big story.
Speaker 1: Sorry not to be paranoid, but you know they're you know,
Speaker 1: getting you know, doing lots of crazy ship for June
Speaker 1: so that they can leave it before they go on vacation.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there's two parts to that. One is
Speaker 1: stuff we've talked about before, which is this is a
Speaker 1: hugely consequential term. Right We've got affirmative action and higher
Speaker 1: education that I think is coming down. We have the
Speaker 1: Indian Child Welfare Act, I think, which is going to
Speaker 1: get eviscerated. We have the Clean Water Act, which is
Speaker 1: gonna get so like horrible things on the docket, nothing
Speaker 1: good and no reason to believe. And I know we've
Speaker 1: also talked about that independent state Legislature doctor in case,
Speaker 1: which would in fact give state legislatures completely unreviewable plenary
Speaker 1: power to set election procedure. It's all bad. So that's
Speaker 1: one bucket, the it's all bad bucket. But the second bucket,
Speaker 1: and I think it's important, is this ethic stuff that's
Speaker 1: going on right now. Where we are finding out day
Speaker 1: after day, week after week that like, oh, there was
Speaker 1: an investigation into the leak, but they forgot to put
Speaker 1: the justices or their spouses under oath, right, Oh we
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, listen, it's certainly not them. I mean,
Speaker 1: why would justices leak in opinion, especially one that they've
Speaker 1: spent their whole careers focused on. It's such like big
Speaker 1: Downton Abbey Energy right where the clerks and the elevator
Speaker 1: operators and the cleaners are forced to sign affidavits and
Speaker 1: get their phones searched like they're being shaken upside down
Speaker 1: by the ankles for like evidence untild. Their careers will suffer,
Speaker 1: and the justices are part of an iterative questioning process.
Speaker 1: It was iterative, it must be binding. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to worry about in terms of why is Clarence
Speaker 1: Thomas sitting on cases where his wife has material interest?
Speaker 1: Why is John Robert's wife getting you know, lots and
Speaker 1: lots of money to head hunt and place lawyers in
Speaker 1: big DC firms that argue in front of it. So
Speaker 1: all this stuff is going on, there is no reason
Speaker 1: to believe that the court is going to adopt and
Speaker 1: enforce a code of ethics as against themselves. And so
Speaker 1: we have a court with like twenty something per cent
Speaker 1: public approval writing and maybe that's where we started, which is,
Speaker 1: what do you do in a country predicated on you know,
Speaker 1: constitutional democracy and the rule of law when the institution
Speaker 1: of the judiciary is just punching itself in the face
Speaker 1: every single day. Yeah, exactly, wow, and punching us in
Speaker 1: the face more specifically well when it comes to certainly
Speaker 1: abortion and LGBTQ rights and punching not just punching us
Speaker 1: in the face, perhaps setting us on fire. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a problem, and I think, you know, at least
Speaker 1: in my lane, it is the existential problem we're going
Speaker 1: to have to pick our way through. But you know
Speaker 1: it's important. Yeah, yeah, no, it certainly is. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. I am such a fan
Speaker 1: and I feel like you're doing really important work that
Speaker 1: I am not at all capable of, and just so
Speaker 1: for that, I'm always just in complete all of you.
Speaker 1: So thank you for joining us. Oh right back at you,
Speaker 1: And I think that to your dad and mine, we're trying,
Speaker 1: we're doing we're doing the best weekend to explain crazy
Speaker 1: obscure technical ship and that too is in the Constitution exactly.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Alimony is a reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome
Speaker 1: too Fast Politics, Jackie. Thanks so much for having me, Molly,
Speaker 1: I was I did to see this story. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about the making of Anna
Speaker 1: Paulina Luna. Um. So, this is such an interesting So
Speaker 1: a member of Congress, she is newly elected. When did
Speaker 1: you start to think like, perhaps this person is not
Speaker 1: all she seems. Yes, so I have to give my
Speaker 1: colleagues credit for that. Someone had gotten a tip that
Speaker 1: we should look into her, but no one else in
Speaker 1: my team really had the bandwidth to dedicate the time
Speaker 1: needed for this kind of story. And I am, you know,
Speaker 1: coming off the tales of covering January six, then needed
Speaker 1: a new obsession. So happily picked this up and you know,
Speaker 1: quickly googled her, read her campaign biography and pretty quickly
Speaker 1: realized that her story was worth looking into. And from there,
Speaker 1: you know, as my my colleague p K tweeted, sort
Speaker 1: of dug into her her modern Dickens esque character that
Speaker 1: she described, But she didn't end up being very Dickens,
Speaker 1: did She not quite pseudo Dickens perhaps, yes, And I
Speaker 1: know we're all trying to make sort of these George
Speaker 1: Santos comparisons and her embellishments and the way that she
Speaker 1: sort of stretches parts of her bio are George Santos esque,
Speaker 1: but she's a bit more nuanced and subtle about it.
Speaker 1: And so essentially, as her cousin told me, she takes
Speaker 1: a grain of truth and makes a beach out of
Speaker 1: lies with it. And so we sort of found this
Speaker 1: pattern of her taking different parts of her upbringing her identity,
Speaker 1: her experiences, and kind of weeding together a political persona
Speaker 1: that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of these incidents and
Speaker 1: situations that she gets into. She's not a person who
Speaker 1: is a se real, fabulous, but she has one real
Speaker 1: similarity with George Santos, which as a Jew myself, I
Speaker 1: continue to find completely strange, which is she lied about
Speaker 1: being Jewish. Yeah, and this is actually a whole other
Speaker 1: story in and of itself, sort of this trend of
Speaker 1: Republicans claiming to be Messianic Jews. These are people who
Speaker 1: identify as Jewish and say they believe Jesus is the Messiah,
Speaker 1: but are not considered Jewish by Jews. Jews, my actual
Speaker 1: real Jews were Jewish. But yes, yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I communicated extensively with Congresswoman Luna's mother about this, because
Speaker 1: no one in her family were called her father dabbling
Speaker 1: in Messianic Judaism, Judaism, any anything of the sort. Remember
Speaker 1: him actually citing scripture from the Bible. And Luna's mother
Speaker 1: herself said that he was a Christian that embraced the
Speaker 1: Messianic faith. And she also said, you know, eventually down
Speaker 1: the line he started attending a Messianic Jewish church in
Speaker 1: Orange County. And I know it can kind of seem
Speaker 1: like we're sort of tracy flicking this that, like we're being,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit nitpicky with the language here.
Speaker 1: But all of these embellishments and sort of slight fabrications
Speaker 1: they all add up. And and not only is she
Speaker 1: was she not raised as a Messianic Jew, but it
Speaker 1: actually turns out that there's sort of a big gap
Speaker 1: in a part of her upbringing and her family history
Speaker 1: that she's she has conveniently skimmed over, which is the
Speaker 1: fact that her father's father, her grandfather, who actually played
Speaker 1: a significant part in raising her before he passed away
Speaker 1: because her father lived in his house when he couldn't
Speaker 1: get on his feet, and lived in the garage where
Speaker 1: Anna would come visit him. He was actually identified as
Speaker 1: a Roman Catholic and immigrated to Canada from Germany nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four and was part of the armed forces of
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany when he was a teenager in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: Now he was a Nazi. But we need to again
Speaker 1: provide a little bit of a nuance here. You know,
Speaker 1: if you were a Roman Catholic born in that time period, right,
Speaker 1: you probably didn't really a choice. You were forced to
Speaker 1: enroll in Hitler Youth the you know, the moment you
Speaker 1: turned a certain age. And then we obtained pictures of
Speaker 1: him in his Warmont uniform that were provided by members
Speaker 1: of Luna's family. We were told that he was actually
Speaker 1: held in a prisoner of war camp for an extended
Speaker 1: period of time and that this was a big part
Speaker 1: of his life. I mean, this is traumatizing for anyone. Oh,
Speaker 1: he was a Nazi held in a prisoner of war
Speaker 1: camp after he was captured. Okay, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: he wasn't participating with the Nazis, but now he was
Speaker 1: being held by the Americans. That is unclear. We were
Speaker 1: told that he went into battle and was pretty soon
Speaker 1: captured in France. And in these details we ultimately actually
Speaker 1: did not include in the story because they're they're sort
Speaker 1: of fuzzy. But what is not fuzzy is that he
Speaker 1: was in Hitler's army. We also reviewed these other indications
Speaker 1: of his family's associations and ties. You know, his mother
Speaker 1: was awarded this Cross of the Mother award that we
Speaker 1: reviewed that Hitler gives. Hitler gave at the time to
Speaker 1: women who had a certain amount of children. So there's
Speaker 1: there's no question about about that. I can only speak
Speaker 1: to my own experience, but if I were related to
Speaker 1: a Nazi, I would probably not lie about being Jewish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, look, there are politicians who have dealt
Speaker 1: with this before. You know, we should not bear the
Speaker 1: sins of our ancestors, and no, exactly, we shouldn't bear
Speaker 1: the sins of our ancestors. That said, you would think
Speaker 1: you would be a little more sensitive if you are
Speaker 1: related to an actual Nazi or sort of you know,
Speaker 1: pullin Arnold Schwarzenegger and just get it out there, address
Speaker 1: it and say that you don't affiliate with it, right?
Speaker 1: What she did not do? I want to just get
Speaker 1: a little bit on the background here. She is a
Speaker 1: Turning Point. She comes up to Turning Point right. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And for people like my dad who are not completely
Speaker 1: versed on the culture of Turning Point, you us say,
Speaker 1: can you explain to us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: it is and how it has created these many celebrities. Yea.
Speaker 1: So Turning Point USA is a conservative grassroots organization founded
Speaker 1: by this guy, Charlie Kirk to sort of appeal to
Speaker 1: young conservatives and disaffected white youth right and Kirk has
Speaker 1: developed a track record for recruiting, successfully recruiting candidates um
Speaker 1: and elect getting them elected to public office. And there
Speaker 1: seems to be a track record of the sort of
Speaker 1: a very specific type of candidate that he likes to recruit.
Speaker 1: There are a few people that have come up through
Speaker 1: Turning Point in USA, and like who I believe the
Speaker 1: most recent person would probably be louren Overt. Oh wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: so idiots, you can't say it, but I can. I
Speaker 1: do think that, you know, there's been an interesting and
Speaker 1: Jonathan Martin actually pointed to this out. I think you
Speaker 1: can they're a lot of takeaways from this piece on
Speaker 1: Anna Paulina Luna, but one of them could be sort
Speaker 1: of there is a new crop of lawmakers who are
Speaker 1: not you know, your student body presidents and valedictorians, but
Speaker 1: rather these sort of people in the mold of of
Speaker 1: influencers turned politicians like Candice Owens, who is a big
Speaker 1: Turning Point alum, and Luna is is the most recent example,
Speaker 1: and she was found by Charlie Charlie Kirk on Instagram.
Speaker 1: You know, she was someone who while she was in
Speaker 1: the military, she was doing a bunch of modeling. She
Speaker 1: was the Maxim hottie of the week at one time.
Speaker 1: She was trying to make a living off of modeling
Speaker 1: while in their force. And eventually this sort of turned
Speaker 1: into modeling with big guns a R fifteens and pulling
Speaker 1: off these sort of gadfly photo shoots and Berkeley's school
Speaker 1: campus and she she developed a legitimate following on Instagram
Speaker 1: and it caught the attention of Charlie Kirk, who reached
Speaker 1: out to her and ultimately brought her onto Turning Points
Speaker 1: as the director of Hispanic Engagement. She Ispanic, she is Hispanic. Yep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But what we gathered in our during our reporting journey
Speaker 1: about her was that she didn't really identify as Hispanic
Speaker 1: while growing up, and actually her name was Anna Paulina
Speaker 1: Mayer Hoffer, and when she signed on to work as
Speaker 1: the as Turning Points as director of Hispanic Engagement, she
Speaker 1: dropped her last name and eventually became Anna Paulina Luna,
Speaker 1: which is her grandmother's maiden name, and her mother actually
Speaker 1: just recently changed her last name to Luna as well.
Speaker 1: This isn't a conversation really about questioning her Hispanic credentials.
Speaker 1: That's she's definitely Hispanic, but it's not something that she
Speaker 1: really publicly embraced and made central to her identity and
Speaker 1: to her political persona until she started getting involved in politics. Right.
Speaker 1: Did Charlie Cark have many comments on any of this.
Speaker 1: We had enough sourcing and people that we were speaking
Speaker 1: with it. We didn't speak with Charlie Kirk directly, but
Speaker 1: after the fact he sort of added to the pile
Speaker 1: on some of these extremists. I feel like the difference
Speaker 1: between Santos, where there are just constantly everyday stories and again,
Speaker 1: Anna Polina is not George Santos, right, Right, It did
Speaker 1: seem like the right, nobody sort of took a break
Speaker 1: and was like, oh, maybe this is not for us.
Speaker 1: They all just sort of doubled down, and we're like,
Speaker 1: she's our girl, and we're sticking with her. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I mean to be clear that people who were defending
Speaker 1: her are not the most popular members of the House
Speaker 1: GEOP conference. It was people like MATC. Gates, Thomas Massey,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bobert who have caused some major headaches already for
Speaker 1: the new House Leader, Kevin McCarthy. But what unfortunately happened
Speaker 1: was we made one tiny or that we ultimately had
Speaker 1: to correct about. We used, unfortunately an erroneous voter registration
Speaker 1: database and had said that that that Luna was registered
Speaker 1: as a Democrat when she was living in Washington State.
Speaker 1: But Washington State obviously only requires voters to declare their
Speaker 1: party affiliation when they cast a ballot in the presidential primary.
Speaker 1: And we think that potentially this database that we were
Speaker 1: using might have pulled some like predictive modeling. Anyways, we
Speaker 1: were wanted to be extremely transparent immediately corrected it. Also,
Speaker 1: it was not sort of the crux of the story
Speaker 1: or essential to the story. I mean, we had multiple
Speaker 1: people saying that that Luna what when they knew her
Speaker 1: pre running for Congress, that that she was pro Obama,
Speaker 1: pro choice, held liberal beliefs. But you know, this day
Speaker 1: to give some people to sort of attack the article
Speaker 1: in bad faith, including Luna, who just contined that we
Speaker 1: said that we're going to retract the whole thing when
Speaker 1: it's just not true. I mean, that is of corners.
Speaker 1: Like the typical tact of the far right is that,
Speaker 1: you know, a mainstream outlet will make a mistake and corrected,
Speaker 1: and then the far right will say, see, this was
Speaker 1: on purpose. There's never room for a mistake that's been corrected.
Speaker 1: These people live on the internet and are quite good
Speaker 1: at it. You know, they've come after me numerous times,
Speaker 1: and like they kind of do that in the hopes
Speaker 1: that you won't write about them anymore. I sort of
Speaker 1: just tried to put my phone down and yeah, there
Speaker 1: was really no touch of grating. But it's challenging when
Speaker 1: I'm sure you understand this when you've worked on something
Speaker 1: for a month, you've communicated extensively with members of her family,
Speaker 1: including her mother, and feel like you really did your
Speaker 1: best to be as fair and accurate as possible and
Speaker 1: Essentially every single sentence other than the one stupid error
Speaker 1: that we made, it has been fact checked to death.
Speaker 1: You can't really control the rest of the way it
Speaker 1: plays out after that, and so you know, I want
Speaker 1: to of course clarify every single I thought intellectually dishonest
Speaker 1: attack on the piece, but right, right, right, you can't
Speaker 1: do that. I know that our readers they're smarter than that,
Speaker 1: and they can have their ways. Look, this is the
Speaker 1: far right playbook, right. They don't want anyone in the
Speaker 1: mainstream media covering them because his scrutiny is, you know,
Speaker 1: exposes the corruption and or even not the corruption, but
Speaker 1: exposes the lawe. I mean, I think that ultimately is
Speaker 1: part of the reason that they pushed back so hard.
Speaker 1: And I know, I feel like I've gotten to this
Speaker 1: debate with a few people, um where we can get
Speaker 1: sort of cynical and feel like, well, you know, Luna
Speaker 1: is not that different from any other member of Congress
Speaker 1: who co opts certain part of her identity in order
Speaker 1: to be more appealing to certain groups or to and
Speaker 1: to win a seat and win over their constituents. I
Speaker 1: think she's pretty different though, even though she's not George Santos.
Speaker 1: I do think that voters deserved to know their lawmakers are,
Speaker 1: what their qualifications are, what their backgrounds are, and whether
Speaker 1: or not that is consistent with the person that they've
Speaker 1: been presented, right. I mean I also think ultimately Trump
Speaker 1: did this thing where he said, you know, you can
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to be governed by the
Speaker 1: normal tenants of truth at all. And so I do
Speaker 1: think it's really important for journalists to expose this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff when it happens, because otherwise everyone in office
Speaker 1: is going to be you know, some some shade of
Speaker 1: a fabulous I think something that this story also sort
Speaker 1: of raised with some of the gaps in local reporting.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Tampa Bay Times did an excellent first
Speaker 1: stab at this in when she first ran and ultimately lost.
Speaker 1: But I do think this is, you know, the textbook
Speaker 1: case for why local news is so important, because sometimes
Speaker 1: these people just slipped through the cracks of national news coverage,
Speaker 1: but it ultimately does affect those local communities. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also everyone because she is a member of Congress, do
Speaker 1: we think that there will be any I mean, certainly McCarthy,
Speaker 1: you know, with his five votes, is not going to
Speaker 1: touch this do you think that there will be any
Speaker 1: blowback that isn't just partisan. I think that GOP leadership
Speaker 1: treatment of George Santos and they're very hands off approach
Speaker 1: to him kind of I think says what we need
Speaker 1: to know about the way that they would they'd handle
Speaker 1: in a Paulina Luna, or whether or not they'll address
Speaker 1: this in any way. But what I'm on the lookout
Speaker 1: for now is sort of any follow ups to this.
Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes these kinds of stories, as we saw with Santos,
Speaker 1: people come out with more right. Yeah, the damn breaks
Speaker 1: and other things about their either their campaign, fundraising practices
Speaker 1: or other parts of their background get more scrutiny and
Speaker 1: come to light in the aftermath. So interesting. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
Speaker 1: you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
Speaker 1: pieces of pundentry each week. This is why every week
Speaker 1: I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
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Speaker 1: Congressman Seth Malton represents Massachusetts sixth district. Welcome to you,
Speaker 1: Fast Politics Congressman Seth Malton. That's great to be here.
Speaker 1: We are going to ultimately dork out on high speed trains,
Speaker 1: but first I wanted to ask you about a little
Speaker 1: bit about what you know. You were marine, You have
Speaker 1: done four tours in Iraq, you have a lot of perspective.
Speaker 1: Let's do like two minutes on the Chinese spy balloon, alright,
Speaker 1: because I hate myself and I haven't it just there
Speaker 1: hasn't been enough Chinese spy balloon coverage. We got to
Speaker 1: talk about the balloon. So it strikes me that the
Speaker 1: sense here is that as long as Biden, I mean
Speaker 1: Biden did say last Wednesday that he had said shoot
Speaker 1: it down and that the military had wanted to wait
Speaker 1: until it was over water, Republicans obviously have decided that
Speaker 1: this is that he should be impeached. I mean, what
Speaker 1: is your thinking here? My thinking is that the commander
Speaker 1: in chief should follow the best military advice he's given. Right,
Speaker 1: the last commander in chief used to go on Fox
Speaker 1: and Friends and get military advice. This Commander in chief
Speaker 1: actually listens to the Joint chiefs of staff and they said,
Speaker 1: wait until it's over water to shoot it down. They
Speaker 1: had to use a missile to shoot it down. We
Speaker 1: don't need a missile falling on somebody's head, right, That
Speaker 1: was my sense. It's twice the size of a seven
Speaker 1: four seven. You don't want, if you know, if you
Speaker 1: kill one person, game over. Actually someone said to me
Speaker 1: is if you kill somewhere, if you kill one person,
Speaker 1: it's like right out of Veep. But I feel like
Speaker 1: VP isn't quite that dark. But the sense I get
Speaker 1: is that the Chinese spy balloon, they have satellites that
Speaker 1: can do what this balloon did. Well, we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what the balloon capabilities are. That's why we're investigating it.
Speaker 1: That's why we're collecting the pieces to put it back together.
Speaker 1: So we don't actually know if that's true. But we
Speaker 1: do know for sure that there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of balloons floating around for a while. So the idea
Speaker 1: that leaving this up for an extra day or two
Speaker 1: is really going to make a difference in their intelligence
Speaker 1: collection just doesn't really hold water, right, And there have
Speaker 1: been balloons during different administrations and also across different countries.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about where we are
Speaker 1: right now with China because it does seem like much
Speaker 1: sort of more prepared, yes, than where we are with Russia,
Speaker 1: and a certain way, well, I think they're both somewhat precarious.
Speaker 1: Bows can be bad, but yes, both can be pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem with Russia. We're doing well in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Ukraine is pushing the Russians back, but we still have
Speaker 1: trouble answering that big looming question, the elephant in the
Speaker 1: room question, which is how does this end? How do
Speaker 1: we defeat Pudent? So we never tries this again without
Speaker 1: forcing him into a corner. So we does something really
Speaker 1: rash and stupid. And that's why the next year in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: This year could be much more difficult than the last,
Speaker 1: even though I think we're going to see the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: do well on the ground and have more victories city
Speaker 1: to city. But with China, look, tensions have been escalating
Speaker 1: for a long time, and for a long time, this
Speaker 1: just has not been on our radar. Pardon the pun.
Speaker 1: We've missed the balloons, but the American people have also
Speaker 1: just missed this threat, Like, we haven't understood why this
Speaker 1: is such a big deal. And yet if you spend
Speaker 1: some time looking at the classified intelligence, you realize, oh, whoa,
Speaker 1: this this is a big deal. We gotta watch out here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it seems like a very big deal. Also,
Speaker 1: I mean, i mean, again, there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: with China, but like, where are you with situations like TikTok. Well,
Speaker 1: this is what's so interesting about this new China Select
Speaker 1: Committee that was just stood up and I've been appointed
Speaker 1: to it, is that we're not just looking at the
Speaker 1: military side of things, the military deterrent side of things.
Speaker 1: How do we tell China militarily you don't want to
Speaker 1: have a war in the Pacific. We're looking at all
Speaker 1: the economic implications as well. Uh. And we're looking at
Speaker 1: social media all the different ways that we have daily interactions,
Speaker 1: not just with China, but with the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem with TikTok. If your kids are mine
Speaker 1: are on TikTok, then the Chinese Communist Party is collecting
Speaker 1: their information and influencing their behavior. I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: why I want for my kids. In fact, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: confident that I don't. But we can't just ban TikTok
Speaker 1: because then they'll be, you know, TikTok to uh next week.
Speaker 1: So we've got to have a comprehensive policy here to
Speaker 1: address this very real threat to the American people. But
Speaker 1: that's not going to be something we figure out overnight.
Speaker 1: That's why we've got some deliberations to come on this
Speaker 1: special committee. I mean, now we're in this Republican House now,
Speaker 1: I mean I watched the Weaponization Subcommittee hearing today. Some
Speaker 1: of these Republicans don't seem very interested in like actually
Speaker 1: finding solutions more just making content for Fox News, No doubt,
Speaker 1: absolutely that's what they're there for. But fingers crossed. The
Speaker 1: China Select Committee is actually different. They've they've appointed a
Speaker 1: whole different crop of Republicans and we have a very
Speaker 1: talented group of Democrats as well, who are going to
Speaker 1: take a serious look at this in as bipartisan a
Speaker 1: way as possible, because this is a massive national security threat,
Speaker 1: and it's in that anomics security threat, it's across the board.
Speaker 1: Competition with the Chinese Communist Party is a very real thing,
Speaker 1: and we've got to have a better strategy to deal
Speaker 1: with it. To make sure we win well. It does
Speaker 1: seem like the Biden administration is pushing back a lot
Speaker 1: when it comes to manufacturing and the chips America's problems
Speaker 1: with China that aren't necessarily will China take Taiwan though
Speaker 1: that is obviously an anxiety that I think most of
Speaker 1: us have, but more problems of you know, like they're
Speaker 1: beating America and manufacturing in ways that America can't keep up,
Speaker 1: and so some of that is being addressed with this
Speaker 1: Chips Act, which is in some ways is sort of
Speaker 1: it's kind of I mean, it's kind of strange to
Speaker 1: see that we now have two parties that are sort
Speaker 1: of working on trying to sort of figure out trade
Speaker 1: in a way that fixes America's deficit. I mean, isn't
Speaker 1: it crazy and strange that two parties could work together
Speaker 1: on the something like that? Right? I mean, because that's
Speaker 1: where we are in our politics. But after the stuff
Speaker 1: Ice today, I have a hard time imagine that these
Speaker 1: Republicans are serious about doing anything. But I do hear
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and the truth is both Democrats and
Speaker 1: Republicans have a very similar are both on the same
Speaker 1: page when it comes to China. Really ultimately, I mean,
Speaker 1: Republicans will say like it's because Biden has some kind
Speaker 1: of relations, you know, some kind of lie about Hunter Biden,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, really they're quite aligned. I mean, let's not
Speaker 1: forget that Trump also asked Sijing ping for help winning
Speaker 1: his election so well, and Trump has a Chinese bank account.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of problems with with Trump and
Speaker 1: the extreme Republicans here, and you're not going to see
Speaker 1: the extreme Republicans in the House be helpful on any
Speaker 1: of these efforts. They're just trying to score political points,
Speaker 1: for sure. But there are serious Republicans working with a
Speaker 1: lot of serious Democrats on this challenge. And you're right,
Speaker 1: it's so many different things. It's how do we deal
Speaker 1: with TikTok, It's how do we deal with the fact
Speaker 1: that we're trying to develop a green energy grid and
Speaker 1: we seem to be buying all our green energy supplies
Speaker 1: like solar panels from China. Doesn't make sense. I want
Speaker 1: to be buying solar panels. They're manufactured in America. So
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of work to do. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of climate change implications, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of economic implications. There are implications to how we live
Speaker 1: our lives every single day on social media. It's a
Speaker 1: real serious challenge, but there are also some exciting opportunities.
Speaker 1: And and and I do think that there's at least
Speaker 1: some hope that on this committee we can do things
Speaker 1: in a bipartisan way. But we'll see. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because there's such like an appetite for bipartisanship. And
Speaker 1: one of the things Biden has really done is a
Speaker 1: lot of passing, a lot of bipartisan administrator you know, infrastructure,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The chips ack you mentioned, that's that was
Speaker 1: toy bipartisan, right, But I know that the reproblicanveys loves
Speaker 1: this kind of craziness. They do. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: the trains. Let's do the trains. I want to hear
Speaker 1: about the trains. I love the trains, big train person.
Speaker 1: I took a train to die. It's crazy that we
Speaker 1: don't have high speed rail in America. And look like
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks we had six thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred flights canceled. I think flights were canceled on the
Speaker 1: Monday after Christmas alone, Southwest canceled sevent of their flights
Speaker 1: and Every country in the world is developing high speed
Speaker 1: rail except US. Look at Morocco. Morocco has a half
Speaker 1: a percent of our GDP okay, so they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of money to waste, and they just invested
Speaker 1: two point two billion dollars in a two high speed
Speaker 1: railroad because they get a better return on investment. It's
Speaker 1: better for the environment, and it's cheaper, and it's less
Speaker 1: weather dependent, all those things. Imagine, you know, So think
Speaker 1: about this. The busiest high speed rail line in the
Speaker 1: world right now is actually a pretty new one is
Speaker 1: from Beijing to Shanghai. That's about the same distance as
Speaker 1: Chica Ago to Atlanta. So imagine being able to go
Speaker 1: from Chicago to Atlanta with never a weather delay, train
Speaker 1: every thirty minutes, don't have to go through arduous security,
Speaker 1: you don't have to wait in lines forever. Your seats
Speaker 1: about three times as big as a seat on on
Speaker 1: an airplane, bigger than first class on an airplane. How
Speaker 1: long does it take? Four or five hours? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: pretty good. And not only is that great for Chicago
Speaker 1: and great for Atlanta, it's great for all the cities
Speaker 1: and states in between that are totally left out of
Speaker 1: air travel between those two cities. High speed rail is
Speaker 1: not just a better, faster, cleaner option for Americans as
Speaker 1: opposed to traveling by plane. It's also a way to
Speaker 1: knit together this country, right and we need that right now.
Speaker 1: We need people in rural America to have access to
Speaker 1: jobs in the city so they can get those jobs
Speaker 1: if they want them. That We need parts of America
Speaker 1: that are just in you know, what we call flyover
Speaker 1: country to actually be connected to the coast. That's one
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things about high speed rail. But a
Speaker 1: lot of Americans just don't know how nice it is
Speaker 1: to get on a train that's going to be smooth
Speaker 1: and fasten Aurora and arrive on time. And in Spain,
Speaker 1: if your train is thirty minutes late, you get a
Speaker 1: full refund. Imagine that from any American airline. Imagine the
Speaker 1: Southwest said, oh, you have any plane that's thirty minutes late,
Speaker 1: You're gonna get a full refund. That's just unimaginable for
Speaker 1: us today. Yeah, that's amazing. This is what we're missing.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there appetite for this? There absolutely is.
Speaker 1: I mean everywhere I go in America, people who have
Speaker 1: written high speed trains anywhere else in the world say
Speaker 1: we need this here. The problem is a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of my colleagues even have never been on
Speaker 1: a high speed train, so they don't know what they're missing.
Speaker 1: I believe that if we get one good high speed
Speaker 1: rail line built in America, it will start to change
Speaker 1: things completely. There was actually a lot of opposition to
Speaker 1: building high speed rail in Spain. It's it's it's a
Speaker 1: very provincial country. The provinces didn't want a tentacle from Madrid,
Speaker 1: they called it. But one high speed rail line was built.
Speaker 1: Every other province wanted one. So I think if we
Speaker 1: get one good high speed rail line built in America,
Speaker 1: it could literally set off a revolution. What is the
Speaker 1: high speed rail line you're trying to get built right now?
Speaker 1: I actually think that the best one to build. And
Speaker 1: I'm biased here, I'll admit that because I worked on
Speaker 1: this project in the private sector. Oh, I see where
Speaker 1: this is going. Yes is Texas and good for you?
Speaker 1: And here's why. The reason why it's in and and look,
Speaker 1: I don't represent Texas in case you haven't figured that out.
Speaker 1: But the reason why Texas is important is because all
Speaker 1: the environmental approvals are done it's ready to go. It
Speaker 1: just needs an infusion of capital, and it will show
Speaker 1: America that this isn't just an East coast thing. This
Speaker 1: isn't just a sella corridor thing. This is something that
Speaker 1: can work in all parts of America, including Red America.
Speaker 1: And once you get Republicans behind high speed rail in
Speaker 1: Washington like Democrats already are, then you could see high
Speaker 1: speed rail all over this country. That's totally fascinating. One
Speaker 1: of my kids is very into the Marines and being
Speaker 1: of service, and I'm just curious, are you tight with
Speaker 1: the other serviceman Congressman. Yes, we have a great veterans caucus.
Speaker 1: It's somewhat selected. We've actually kicked out some veterans who
Speaker 1: were just two parts of it and were working across
Speaker 1: the Yeah. So, I mean, it's not like a rule
Speaker 1: that every veteran in Congress uh is a good guy
Speaker 1: or or you know, a good woman. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is it's a select group. But the veterans that are
Speaker 1: part of this caucus we work together, we meet together,
Speaker 1: we find places where we can come together, and we've
Speaker 1: done some good things. I mean, it was my bill
Speaker 1: to establish nine eight eight as the National Mental Health hotline,
Speaker 1: and it's made an incredible difference. Calls are up. Forty
Speaker 1: thousands of lives are being saved today that weren't being
Speaker 1: saved a year ago because this hotline exists. And I
Speaker 1: passed that with the Republican veteran with a veteran who
Speaker 1: understands mental health issues because of dealing with friends and
Speaker 1: colleagues who've had post traumatic stress as I have myself.
Speaker 1: And so we got this past. We got it done,
Speaker 1: and that's what Democrats and Republicans coming together can actually do.
Speaker 1: That makes the different American people. So who got kicked out?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't say, Oh, you should
Speaker 1: definitely say now, I don't want to say, actually I
Speaker 1: had to ask, So anyway, that's fine. It's entirely up
Speaker 1: to you to tell our listeners who was kicked out
Speaker 1: of the Veterans Caucus. We will all just go online
Speaker 1: and try to figure it out. You can probably figure
Speaker 1: it out. But the point is to know that we're serious,
Speaker 1: we want to work together, and we want to get
Speaker 1: things done. Yeah. I mean, I've asked you this question
Speaker 1: during our interview in a couple of different ways, but
Speaker 1: I really do I just you know I was at
Speaker 1: this event last night, this congressional event where Nancy may
Speaker 1: escape this speech. She was funny. She was not fun night.
Speaker 1: I am telling you I have now heard her twice,
Speaker 1: and she may be a friend of yours. I know
Speaker 1: she went to the citadel. I know she was of service.
Speaker 1: But like the first time I heard her, I thought,
Speaker 1: this will and is really smart. Like she may have
Speaker 1: views I don't agree with, but this time I thought,
Speaker 1: this woman is this is really inappropriate? Like there were
Speaker 1: a lot of really inappropriate jokes. I thought. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a little beyond the pale. Honestly, sorry I do,
Speaker 1: but I was curious, like so I have just been
Speaker 1: struck by and you know, Marjorie Taylor Green was there.
Speaker 1: There were so many Republicans who who made their stick,
Speaker 1: you know, the attack on democrats. I mean, how are
Speaker 1: you guys going to be able to work with these people?
Speaker 1: You don't work in Marjorie Taylor Green? Right, you don't
Speaker 1: know When I first ran for Congress, I mean back
Speaker 1: in the heavy days of which it feels like a
Speaker 1: long time ago politically because things have gotten so much worse.
Speaker 1: I ran on a platform of bipartisanship, but people would
Speaker 1: ask me, Seth, like, how are you going to work
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz, And the answer is simple, I don't
Speaker 1: work with Ted Cruz. I've never even met Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: in in in eight years in Congress because he's not
Speaker 1: interested in working with anyone across the aisle. And he's
Speaker 1: frankly a jerk, to put it politely, and everyone who
Speaker 1: knows them agrees with that. Right. I think he'd delight
Speaker 1: in the descriptor he'd take that as a compliment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've got to find Republicans you can work with,
Speaker 1: like Chris Stewart in Utah that I teamed up with
Speaker 1: the PASS, Like Mike Gallagher on the Armed Services Committee,
Speaker 1: fellow Marine veteran who I'm working with on the Select
Speaker 1: Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. So there are Republicans
Speaker 1: you can work with, but you've got to find the
Speaker 1: ones you actually can. Republicans have until George Sandos gets arrested,
Speaker 1: they have a five seat majority. I mean it's close, right,
Speaker 1: it could be closer, and so that means that you know,
Speaker 1: they kind of either just continue barely passing legislation that
Speaker 1: means nothing and is obviously not going to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: In the Democratic Senate, or they can decide, hey, Speaker McCarthy,
Speaker 1: let's actually get something done. And that means they're going
Speaker 1: to have to find some Democrats to come on board
Speaker 1: and do things that are actually reasonable. So look, I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of hope. We all know that
Speaker 1: McCarthy got elected by pandering to these extremists on the right.
Speaker 1: But there is a chance, and if there's a chance,
Speaker 1: it's worth trying because the American people need us to
Speaker 1: get things done. Seth Malton, thank you so much, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me on. It's an honor. Jesse Cannon. So
Speaker 1: the Republicans would really really like to pretend that they
Speaker 1: don't want to cut Medicare and fake out their voters,
Speaker 1: but one Russia, Ron Johnson is not having it. He's
Speaker 1: holding the line and saying, cut it, baby, cut it.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen again. It is a legal Ponzi scheme. Yes,
Speaker 1: I got accused in two thousand and ten that I
Speaker 1: called a ponzi scheme. I admitted it. Yes, it's a
Speaker 1: legal Ponzi scheme. It operates the same way as any
Speaker 1: other Ponzi scheme, except that this is sanctioned by the government.
Speaker 1: But it's no, it's no more uh, it's no less
Speaker 1: irresponsible than a Ponzi scheme. From that stampoint, I love
Speaker 1: Ron and On. He is the dumbest member of the Senate.
Speaker 1: And actually that two of her would like a word well.
Speaker 1: And also, I mean there's a Cindy Hyde Smith who
Speaker 1: once dressed in a Confederate uniform. So I don't wanna
Speaker 1: leave out some of the other Republicans, but she is
Speaker 1: really a stupid idiot. And Republicans have been pretending that
Speaker 1: they don't want to cut social Security. After Biden said
Speaker 1: they wanted to cut social Security, they went after him
Speaker 1: and we're like, Biden is a liar, this isn't true.
Speaker 1: We don't want to cut social security. Here's Ron and
Speaker 1: Non saying that social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and
Speaker 1: for that, that is our moment of fuy. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
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