Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Biden walk the picket line while
Speaker 1: Trump spoke to scabs at a Boss organized event supported
Speaker 1: by the National Right to Work Foundation. Because of course
Speaker 1: we have a great show for you today, Congresswoman Summerly
Speaker 1: tells us why we need to hold our corrupt government
Speaker 1: officials accountable. Then we'll talk to historian Heather Cox Richardson
Speaker 1: about her new book, Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State
Speaker 1: of America. But first we have the host of the
Speaker 1: Ali Velshi Show, the author of the Trump indictments, the
Speaker 1: ninety one criminal counts against the former president of the
Speaker 1: United States, and the host of the Banned book Club podcast,
Speaker 1: MSNBC's Ali Velshi. Welcome to Fast Politics, Ali.
Speaker 2: Belschi, always my pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: You are discussed. I want to talk about banned books
Speaker 1: because as I am the daughter of a writer who
Speaker 1: wrote a band book and the granddaughter of a writer
Speaker 1: who wrote a band book. So first let's talk about
Speaker 1: the band book club, and then we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about how normal everything is.
Speaker 2: Yep, the band book Club is probably the thing that
Speaker 2: I'm most fascinated by that we've done in the last
Speaker 2: year and a half. Because I didn't think it was
Speaker 2: going to be a thing. It was born out of
Speaker 2: a conversation that I had a really great conversation on
Speaker 2: air with Nicole Hannah Jones. She had just written the
Speaker 2: sixteen nineteen project, not the book, but the magazine's bread
Speaker 2: you know, the New York Times magazine story.
Speaker 1: Then inspired the book, and I.
Speaker 2: Didn't know anything about it, like I've just had no
Speaker 2: idea about the year sixteen nineteen, of why it was
Speaker 2: relevant and what it meant. And as we learned about
Speaker 2: it together, I remember thinking to myself how grateful I
Speaker 2: was to people like Nicole who write about things because
Speaker 2: I love histories that I don't know about. And I thought,
Speaker 2: you know what, my hard drives pretty full, but it
Speaker 2: can always take more good information. And I was so
Speaker 2: surprised by the backlash and targeting she had, including by
Speaker 2: the President of the United States, about this whole idea
Speaker 2: that by introducing the date sixteen nineteen when African American
Speaker 2: or Africans were first brought to American shores, it somehow
Speaker 2: undermines the history that we've already gotten that we've already learned.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just don't think about history in those
Speaker 2: terms right as absolute and being full already. So she
Speaker 2: was actually my first guest, but it fast became an
Speaker 2: interesting thing in which we were dealing with young authors,
Speaker 2: new authors, authors who didn't know, authors who were queer
Speaker 2: or hispanic or black or all three, or dead authors
Speaker 2: Tony Morrison who their stuff is still being banned, or
Speaker 2: Margaret Atwood, whose Handmaidsdale is playing out in the society
Speaker 2: in which we live right now. So A, it's become
Speaker 2: one of the most successful things we do, and b
Speaker 2: probably the easiest thing to book that I've ever been involved.
Speaker 1: In, because there's so many banned books.
Speaker 2: Every week, new material, new material being generated by authors
Speaker 2: and publishers, and new things being banned. So on all sides,
Speaker 2: this is a win win situation because every time we
Speaker 2: feature one of these books, they shoot up on the charts.
Speaker 1: It's so amazing though to me, as like someone who
Speaker 1: grew up in the eighties and nineties and thought this
Speaker 1: would not be a thing to be like, struggling with
Speaker 1: book banning in the year twenty twenty three is like
Speaker 1: beyond what I could have ever imagined.
Speaker 2: It's beyond what Margaret Atwood imagine because she wrote a
Speaker 2: Handmaid's Tale in nineteen eighty five. So remember in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five, we had all for several years been talking
Speaker 2: about the book nineteen eighty four, right, and how the
Speaker 2: world hadn't turned out to be what that book suggested
Speaker 2: it would. And so when Margaret Iwood wrote her book,
Speaker 2: people kept telling her, Margaret, this is stupid. That's not
Speaker 2: how the world's going to be. It's not going to
Speaker 2: end up being a theocracy, particularly in America, where they
Speaker 2: punish and execute people for crimes that were not crimes
Speaker 2: when they when they happened. I mean, she really wrote
Speaker 2: about all that stuff and that was actually happening in
Speaker 2: this day and age. So you're right, we grew up
Speaker 2: in a time where you couldn't have imagined this. There
Speaker 2: was a dystopian novels, but they were dystopian and they
Speaker 2: were novels.
Speaker 1: Right now we live exactly. I'm right. They were dystopian
Speaker 1: and they were novels. So we do live that world.
Speaker 1: And last week we saw some book burning from a
Speaker 1: gubernatorial can today.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he was mostly burning other stuff. He was
Speaker 2: metaphorically saying that he would burn books. I think you
Speaker 2: must have called them smut or pornography or whatever. It's
Speaker 2: all the same stuff for the last five hundred years
Speaker 2: they've been complaining about. But the imagery was remarkable. Flame throwers.
Speaker 2: He said he's going to burn them on his front
Speaker 2: lawn if he becomes governor, or maybe even if he
Speaker 2: doesn't become governor. There's a lack of sophistication here, Molly.
Speaker 2: There are real reasons to discuss whether or not high
Speaker 2: school kids should have access to mine COMF or the
Speaker 2: elders of the Protocol of Zion. I would argue that
Speaker 2: people should because how else would you become a scholar
Speaker 2: on the Holocaust or anti Semitism, more Third Reich or whatever.
Speaker 2: But that's a different discussion. Burning books as a whole,
Speaker 2: that's another thing. There's challenging books. There's not wanting them
Speaker 2: accessible to young people without a sort of a level
Speaker 2: of education. Then there's outright banning them. Then there's preventing
Speaker 2: them from being in school curricula like they do in
Speaker 2: Florida and Texas. Then there's arresting at team in Texas
Speaker 2: last week for teaching a version of Anne Frank And
Speaker 2: then there's the burning of books. And the next thing
Speaker 2: after the burning of books is the decline of democracy.
Speaker 2: It's really a very direct correlation. When you burn books,
Speaker 2: you are sending an instruction to the people of your
Speaker 2: society that you do not choose what to read. We
Speaker 2: choose what you read.
Speaker 1: Chilling, speed of chilling. This weekend the publican front runner,
Speaker 1: you may remember him, Donald J. Trump, may have bought
Speaker 1: a gun.
Speaker 3: Well on bail my word and make up up discuss Yeah,
Speaker 3: so very interesting because there were no reporters who saw
Speaker 3: said transaction.
Speaker 2: Is campaign team said he bought a gun, and then
Speaker 2: very quickly because there were a bunch of people around
Speaker 2: saying I don't think he can buy a gun if
Speaker 2: I've just been indicted bad Then there were some lawyers involved,
Speaker 2: and then suddenly he hadn't bought a gun. And so
Speaker 2: no one knows what's true. But that could be the
Speaker 2: tagline for the entire Trump administration, right, No one knows
Speaker 2: what's true. The ilridy, of course, is that the memes
Speaker 2: create themselves on this one. First of all, that the
Speaker 2: more serious ones are. This is the man who said
Speaker 2: I could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and nothing would
Speaker 2: happened to me. And you know, increasingly, Molly, we believe
Speaker 2: that to be true. These trials that are coming up
Speaker 2: with Donald Trump are going to be important to demonstrate
Speaker 2: whether or not he was right, or society and democracy
Speaker 2: and reasonable people were right. The other thing for with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump is you can't be that much of an idiot, right,
Speaker 2: You know that you can't buy a gun under bond.
Speaker 2: But I don't know where he was letting him putting
Speaker 2: in my mind went to plexico birth, like don't shoot yourself,
Speaker 2: don't shoot yourself. But the whole thing was a stupid conversation.
Speaker 2: But that's the stuff we talk about in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I also think, like, besides that, that was like this
Speaker 1: sort of funny, trumpy, crimey, sort of ilegal story. But
Speaker 1: there were other things that Trump did this weekend that
Speaker 1: were pretty hair raising, like musing about executing General Melody.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing with Trump, and as a student
Speaker 2: of history, I'm very concerned about it. Donald Trump is numbing, right,
Speaker 2: That's the net effect he has on people. He numbs you.
Speaker 2: You stop believing it, you think it's all conjecture, and
Speaker 2: so then he escalates what he does. It's very much
Speaker 2: like having a small child, except your small child can
Speaker 2: only do so much damage, right, They can mess up
Speaker 2: your furniture and your carpet and throw up on it.
Speaker 2: But Donald Trump is actually doing this thing with stuff
Speaker 2: with democracy. So every time he jokes about something that
Speaker 2: is extra judicial, we have to keep in mind that
Speaker 2: we have been living in a world of extra judicial
Speaker 2: bad things. Certainly, if you're a black male American, black
Speaker 2: female American, you understand the concept of extra judicial killing,
Speaker 2: George Floyd being a perfect example. But when we say
Speaker 2: this stuff's okay, think about the president of the Philippines,
Speaker 2: do territe right. He wanted to clear the streets of
Speaker 2: drug addicts. A lot of them just disappeared. There was
Speaker 2: no trial, Nobody got tried and convicted. People just disappeared,
Speaker 2: generally speaking, assumed to have been killed. We don't want
Speaker 2: to permission to that structure that Donald Trump is talking about.
Speaker 2: You can like Milly, you cannot like Milly. You can
Speaker 2: like the fact that Trump's fighting with Milly. None of
Speaker 2: it matters. Donald Trump suggested suspending the constitution. Then he
Speaker 2: said within twelve hours that he hadn't done that, except
Speaker 2: he does it on social media, so we all have
Speaker 2: a copy of it. He suggested suspending the Constitution of
Speaker 2: the United States. That's straight up dictator stuff. Recommending people
Speaker 2: get killed is straight up dictator stuff. Wanting to tear
Speaker 2: down institutions of government is dictator stuff. Complaining about your
Speaker 2: judges is dictator stuff. So we have to just remember
Speaker 2: not to be numbed by it. We have to remember
Speaker 2: this guy is seeing the quiet parts out loud, because
Speaker 2: you and I both know people who say things like,
Speaker 2: you know, Biden's really old, and I'm not sure he's
Speaker 2: going to make it now. You know, he's not really
Speaker 2: you see these polls, he's not really penetrating. He's not
Speaker 2: getting through to people. And I don't know. And then
Speaker 2: I know people who would like their taxes to be
Speaker 2: lower and want less regulation and really like these Supreme
Speaker 2: Court judges, and some people who like the fact that
Speaker 2: abortion has been bad. You have to be very careful.
Speaker 2: This is not about your personal choices. This is about
Speaker 2: democracy or not democracy. Unfortunately, these elections are binary choices.
Speaker 2: So you may not like all the choices you have,
Speaker 2: and you may think that in a country of three
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty million people, you should have better choices.
Speaker 2: That's not actually the discussion right now. The discussion is
Speaker 2: there's a guy who says out loud all the dangerous
Speaker 2: parts every day and he's asking for your vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's really really important. And something that
Speaker 1: kind of gets lost in all the drama is like
Speaker 1: you have this binary choice of like do you want
Speaker 1: to continue living in a democracy or do you want
Speaker 1: to spin the wheel again? With Donald Trump? And like
Speaker 1: the fact that he even like left the presidency, I
Speaker 1: thought that he might not one.
Speaker 2: Hundred percent agree with you. And now that we read
Speaker 2: those indictments, I've just written the most geeky book in
Speaker 2: the world. It's just a compendium of the indictments with
Speaker 2: a forward by Mean.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: I really want people to read it. I really want
Speaker 2: people to read Jack Smith's January sixth indictment and Bonnie
Speaker 2: Willis's Georgia indictments just as a enough. They're written as
Speaker 2: somebody like you would understand that. They're written as a knob.
Speaker 2: They're like a thriller. You almost read it and you
Speaker 2: think this can't actually be true, right, this didn't happen
Speaker 2: this way. But to understand the degree to which This
Speaker 2: was not a fool's errant. This was not Rudy Giuliani
Speaker 2: with makeup running down his face having a press conference
Speaker 2: at the Four Seasons Landscaping place next to a porn
Speaker 2: shop in Philly. We keep thinking of this as a
Speaker 2: clown car of idiots who will trying to change the
Speaker 2: result of the election. This was substantially more sophisticated. They
Speaker 2: almost did it. Our institutions did not save us, Molly.
Speaker 2: There were some people who either did the right thing
Speaker 2: or didn't do the wrong thing, and that's what saved us.
Speaker 2: And that is not enough for me in America in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, as this country contemplates two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years of its existence, this is not enough that
Speaker 2: a few people who generally did the right thing saved
Speaker 2: us from critical collapse. I think we need to take
Speaker 2: this much more seriously than many people do.
Speaker 1: So, since you've read these indictments and you've really studied
Speaker 1: them and written an introduction on this book, you really
Speaker 1: understand them. Tell me what were the things that really
Speaker 1: struck you.
Speaker 2: The thing that struck me was the fourth count in
Speaker 2: Jack Smith's January sixth indictment. It's the smallest one. I mean,
Speaker 2: out of the forty eight or forty nine pages of it,
Speaker 2: it's the last page. It's just a paragraph. But it
Speaker 2: is the idea that what Donald Trump did was he
Speaker 2: attempted to take away the right for people to vote
Speaker 2: and the right for their vote to be counted. Those
Speaker 2: are the two things upon which all democracies exist. If
Speaker 2: you believe that you have the right to vote, that
Speaker 2: your vote will be counted. So it was the simplest charge,
Speaker 2: but it was the idea that what he was doing
Speaker 2: was not simply underminy. And by the way, page two
Speaker 2: of that indictment says very specifically, donald Trump has First
Speaker 2: Amendment rights to lie about the election, to claim that
Speaker 2: he won the election, to do all that stuff. He
Speaker 2: has those First Amendment rights. What he did went far
Speaker 2: beyond that. It was a conspiracy to actually not have
Speaker 2: votes counted and not have votes cast. And that's the
Speaker 2: actual This is not an abstraction. The reason to read
Speaker 2: these indictments is that it is not an abstraction. They
Speaker 2: were actually aiming to do something very specific that would
Speaker 2: cause the person who did not win the election to
Speaker 2: win the election. And that is why we have to
Speaker 2: be alarmed about a lot of people say, well, there
Speaker 2: was an impeachment, it's done, he lost the election, he's gone.
Speaker 2: We're moving on to other things. Uh, there is a
Speaker 2: deep scar and rip in our democracy that needs to
Speaker 2: be mended.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're also not moving on to other things
Speaker 1: because he's a Republican front runner. I mean you could
Speaker 1: maybe say that if someone else were that charge has
Speaker 1: historical significance, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Our entire civil rights movement is based on the idea
Speaker 2: that people tried to not have votes cast and not
Speaker 2: have votes counted. That is the statute against which that
Speaker 2: charge is made is a civil rights era and actually
Speaker 2: post Civil War era statute. You're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: You used to be allowed to do that. That's the
Speaker 2: basis of this country from the end of slavery sort
Speaker 2: of through to the early part of the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Was Okay, first we didn't allow black people and women
Speaker 2: to have vote votes. Then we let black people have votes,
Speaker 2: but we just want to make sure that they don't
Speaker 2: actually cast those ballots. So we had all sorts of
Speaker 2: ways of getting them not to cast it, and in
Speaker 2: the event that they managed to actually cast the votes,
Speaker 2: we could probably figure out a way to not have
Speaker 2: them count it. And that continues molly in sophisticated ways
Speaker 2: with gerrymandering things like that. We are still determined to
Speaker 2: not have a world in which everybody gets to vote
Speaker 2: and everybody's vote gets counted. There was somebody in one
Speaker 2: of the western states who complained that we've made it
Speaker 2: so easy to vote for a college kid that they
Speaker 2: can literally roll out of bed and cast their ballot.
Speaker 2: And I thought to myself, that sounds outstanding, right, that's
Speaker 2: the goal. That's the goal. I should literally be able
Speaker 2: to roll out of bed and cast my ballot. I
Speaker 2: understand for security reasons that can't happen. Everybody can't go
Speaker 2: beside everybody's bed to get their vote, But that's how
Speaker 2: easy it should be. Our goal should be everybody who
Speaker 2: can vote votes, and if you'd like to win the election,
Speaker 2: you campaign to get those people to vote for you.
Speaker 2: This trickery and bullshit about not having people vote. I mean,
Speaker 2: I live in a county outside of Philadelphia where if
Speaker 2: you want to do advance voting, it is such a
Speaker 2: complicated thing. You got to put an envelope inside an
Speaker 2: envelope with a photocopy of your it. It's designed that
Speaker 2: died out of ten people will get it wrong. And
Speaker 2: that's the point because they've figured out least in the
Speaker 2: last few elections. It's Democrats who have been voting early.
Speaker 2: So anybody who lives in those counties, they just make
Speaker 2: it hard for you to vote. Whether you're a Democrat
Speaker 2: or a Republican, the point is you're probably a Democrat,
Speaker 2: so we're going to make it hard for you to vote.
Speaker 1: Now you have segued here into Josh Shapiro talk.
Speaker 2: That's just fantastic. It was a tremendous attorney general. He
Speaker 2: took on the right issues. He was a real leader
Speaker 2: during COVID in a state that was, you know, had
Speaker 2: some problems with that. Pennsylvania is not understood to be
Speaker 2: Georgia or Michigan or Arizona. Right in terms of the
Speaker 2: craziness of the Republican Party. It's there. It's fully there.
Speaker 2: I mean, the head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, who
Speaker 2: by the way, was running for governor, he had gone
Speaker 2: to Arizona to watch that fraudut to see what he
Speaker 2: could learn from it. They had hearings in Pennsylvania. I mean,
Speaker 2: the thing about Josh Shapiro is that he not only
Speaker 2: won this election because he was Josh Shapiro, he won
Speaker 2: it because mainstream Republicans in Pennsylvania supported Josh Shapiro because
Speaker 2: they definitely didn't want the guy.
Speaker 1: The crazy guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's crazy like that stuff. You know in Arizona,
Speaker 2: we know that the people who ran for state wide office,
Speaker 2: the Republicans didn't want them either. I mean, Liz Cheney
Speaker 2: went down to Arizona to campaign for Democrats in Arizona. Michigan,
Speaker 2: same thing. The head of the Republican Party in Michigan
Speaker 2: was a woman who ran against the Secretary of State,
Speaker 2: a complete election denier, and they're a bit crazy. Same
Speaker 2: thing in Pennsylvania. So Josh Shapiro has returned normalcy to
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania for the moment at least.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that Jos Shapiro has done
Speaker 1: is he is now trying to enact automatic voter registration,
Speaker 1: which has gotten Donald J. Trump to give up the
Speaker 1: game once again. And Tim Hughes that automatic voter risk
Speaker 1: registration hurts Republicans discuss the truth.
Speaker 2: Is it doesn't. It don't hurt anybody in American history.
Speaker 2: Mail in balloting advance balloting, open balloting days where you
Speaker 2: can vote, you know, for many, many days. These, more
Speaker 2: often than not in America, were Republican inventions right back
Speaker 2: when the Republican Party cared about what democracy was. This
Speaker 2: I don't know if we can characterize it that way anymore.
Speaker 2: It's not a Republican or a democratic thing. It just isn't.
Speaker 2: Having everybody vote as easily as they can is a
Speaker 2: democracy thing. Now, Historically there have been groups, and in
Speaker 2: the past they have been Democrats, and now they're Republicans
Speaker 2: who have not wanted certain demographic groups who they thought
Speaker 2: would vote a certain way to vote as much. I'm
Speaker 2: generally talking about black people. And so wherever you are
Speaker 2: in America, if you live in a black enclave or
Speaker 2: an overwhelmingly black community or county or district, it's generally
Speaker 2: speaking harder for you to vote than not. And so
Speaker 2: we saw in Georgia, and we saw in Texas efforts
Speaker 2: to try and fix that through redistricting or ways in
Speaker 2: which you could get people to vote. You remember, there
Speaker 2: was a ban, I think in Georgia on providing people
Speaker 2: with water if they stood in line vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My father was first South Asian, first Muslim first South
Speaker 2: Asian to be elected to a level of parliament anywhere
Speaker 2: in Canada back in nineteen eighty seven, and Molly, we
Speaker 2: drove people to the polls, then we drove first if
Speaker 2: that needed, we drove them to campaign office first and
Speaker 2: we fed them. Then we drove them to the polls.
Speaker 2: Then we drove them back. They want to come back
Speaker 2: to the campaign office and have another meal, we'd serve
Speaker 2: them again, then we'd drop them home. That's what society
Speaker 2: should be. Feed everybody, give everybody drinks, drive them to
Speaker 2: the polls. Anything you can do to make democracy more robust.
Speaker 2: And by the way, we may have been driving people
Speaker 2: to the polls and feeding people who were not voting
Speaker 2: for my father. Who knows. I don't know, because nobody
Speaker 2: knows what happens in that polling booth. But that's what
Speaker 2: democracy should look like. And Donald Trump does give up
Speaker 2: the game. He does say the quiet parts out loud,
Speaker 2: but he's actually not correct. Republicans can simply campaign on
Speaker 2: the basis of the fact that there's lots more voting.
Speaker 2: You're automatically registered. Now all you have to do. It's
Speaker 2: way easier if you want to do elect Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: just go out there and.
Speaker 1: Vote right exactly. And I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: The one last question we've got. We've run out of time,
Speaker 1: but I have to ask you about this because it's
Speaker 1: about your own network. This weekend, Donald Trump truths that
Speaker 1: NBC MSNBC was guilty of treason discuss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not losing a lot of sleep over over that.
Speaker 2: I'm losing without Donald Trump becoming president again, because we're
Speaker 2: all guilty of treason at that ping you, Molly, I
Speaker 2: mean that I do worry about about this, this culture
Speaker 2: of retribution where he said I am your retribution, which
Speaker 2: is language that sounds very similar to what Mussolini used.
Speaker 2: Talk of revenge, is talk of being an avenger. All
Speaker 2: this nonsense that does scare me. The specific threat to MSNBC.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, get a lot Donald Trump's world. We're
Speaker 2: all treasoners and I'll wear that as a Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining me, Amiley, Always my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Summerly represents Pennsylvania's twelfth congressional district. Welcome to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Congresswoman in Summer late.
Speaker 4: Thank for having me, Molly. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: We're delighted to have you back at a really important
Speaker 1: moment pre shutdown. Tell me what it's looking like in
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives right now?
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 4: Honestly, it's not looking good. And I think it's very
Speaker 4: important that we say why is not looking good? Right?
Speaker 4: This is a Republican shutdown. This is Kevin McCarthy's shut
Speaker 4: down because he can't control right, the rowdiest, the most extreme,
Speaker 4: the worst of his caucus. This has been the case
Speaker 4: since day one. This is our third crisis, our third crisis.
Speaker 4: This this man has tried to become speaker. So with
Speaker 4: that in mind, right, I just think it's really clear
Speaker 4: that he is one not capable of leading. He is
Speaker 4: not capable of leading our caucus. He's not capable of
Speaker 4: leading our government. And two he is still not willing
Speaker 4: or able to put the needs of our country above
Speaker 4: his knee. Had his name on the sign right above
Speaker 4: the door, that's where we are. However long that lasts, right,
Speaker 4: whether it's one day or a half a term, that
Speaker 4: man wants his name on that sen I.
Speaker 1: Feel like sometimes we ignore these democratic victories because we're
Speaker 1: so busy talking about the Republican dysfunction. I want you
Speaker 1: to talk for a minute about this Office of Gun
Speaker 1: Violence Prevention bill that you were involved in with Maxwell Frost.
Speaker 4: Kudos not just to Maxwell Frost, but really really kudos
Speaker 4: to the organizers, the activists who had been working on this,
Speaker 4: like who had been really truly leading the charge nationwide.
Speaker 4: I want to start by saying it's important to know
Speaker 4: that all of the victories we get, right, however big
Speaker 4: or small, you know whether or not their first steps
Speaker 4: are one of the really big ones.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: These victories are because people have been organizing, especially young
Speaker 4: people who had been on the frontline, to bring attention
Speaker 4: to gun balance, to bring a really sad perspective to
Speaker 4: this right that just couldn't be ignored. And it's that persistence,
Speaker 4: right that led Maxwell to team up with those of
Speaker 4: us who are here in the House with them serving
Speaker 4: this year to start to do something about it where
Speaker 4: we can. Right, we recognize that with the Republican majority, right,
Speaker 4: we recognize with the stranglehold of the NRA and other
Speaker 4: Republican and just dark money lobbyists groups, that it's going
Speaker 4: to be very difficult to get some of the big
Speaker 4: things that we're looking for, like the soul rifles bands,
Speaker 4: things of that nature. But This Office of Gun valid
Speaker 4: Prevention at the White House really is a testament to
Speaker 4: that movement's ability to move the Biden administration in the
Speaker 4: direction that we need to go and to start to
Speaker 4: look at to really put resources into programs, into efforts
Speaker 4: to start to stem the tide of gun violence, to
Speaker 4: start to address some of the more pressing needs that
Speaker 4: we have, even as we're kind of working around, right,
Speaker 4: this NRA majority or this NRA choke hold that they
Speaker 4: have on our government right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I feel like that was a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. We've never had a president start in
Speaker 1: office of I mean, like that's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 4: And it is so right moldy, like we really are
Speaker 4: not talking about these things when we do get a victory.
Speaker 4: And what that ends up doing is it makes us
Speaker 4: think that our organizing efforts that are rallying to the
Speaker 4: polls have no effect. That's it's not always true, right,
Speaker 4: Sometimes it is slow, sometimes it is a slow slog.
Speaker 4: But to see the President move on an office gun
Speaker 4: balnce permission, that is such a big indication that this
Speaker 4: is an important issue, right that he sees, that the
Speaker 4: administration sees and Congress see that our nation can't go
Speaker 4: on like this anymore. That this is going to be
Speaker 4: a cultural shift that we have to make. Right. Gun
Speaker 4: balance isn't just going to be a gun safety laws right,
Speaker 4: gun balance prevention and addressing some of these issues around
Speaker 4: gun balance, school shootings, my shootings. Right, this is a
Speaker 4: cultural issue and getting to it and really digging in
Speaker 4: or recognizing that there's no short term fixed But this
Speaker 4: is going to be a persistently chiffing away and persistently
Speaker 4: working on it, persistently directative resources to write the folks
Speaker 4: who are doing you know, gun balance, interrupt the folks
Speaker 4: who are on the ground doing that work, letting them
Speaker 4: know that there is a place that is focused on
Speaker 4: getting resources for that. Its important.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this Senator Menande's indictment. It is
Speaker 1: his second indictment. There's a lot of fire. Democrats are
Speaker 1: really working hard to be the party of anti corruption.
Speaker 1: I think your thoughts on why Menendez must step down
Speaker 1: are really important in germane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what, I think that sometimes those of
Speaker 4: us in these positions that we forget that we serve
Speaker 4: at the wheel and the trust of the people. These
Speaker 4: are not jobs that we are guaranteed it is a privilege.
Speaker 4: We are not owed it. But also part of that
Speaker 4: privilege to serve in this job is to maintain that trust.
Speaker 4: It is to maintain the trust of the people who
Speaker 4: have sent us here, the trust of people truly, honestly right,
Speaker 4: who are struggling with government, who are struggling with the
Speaker 4: royal of government. Right now, we're looking at unprecedented amounts
Speaker 4: of flagrant corruption from the Supreme Court. We're looking at
Speaker 4: people like George San Tos not just get to be
Speaker 4: able to conn their way in here. Donald Trump conned
Speaker 4: his way into the presidency, but we're looking at to
Speaker 4: be able to keep their jobs. And then when we
Speaker 4: see one side of the out a freasingly becoming fascist,
Speaker 4: increasingly becoming just blatantly really I would say uncaring about
Speaker 4: the perception of corruption, the perception of you know, the
Speaker 4: illegitimacy of our offices, our institutions. We can't afford to
Speaker 4: play into that at all. Right now, where we are
Speaker 4: dealing with democracy versus fascism, where we're going into election
Speaker 4: cycle where everything is at state right, we've already lost
Speaker 4: right for the first generation to lose rights, and right
Speaker 4: now we're one in the twenty twenty four, and we
Speaker 4: have folks who are playing around. We are playing around
Speaker 4: with the trusted, the American people. This isn't a job
Speaker 4: where you are able or supposed to come in here
Speaker 4: and take corrupt deals. You're not supposed to be able
Speaker 4: to enrich yourself today. We have to get to the
Speaker 4: correct for that. Right, American people do not want their
Speaker 4: politicians to go into this role and enrich themselves while
Speaker 4: the community is being suck dry, while student loan did
Speaker 4: is starting back up, right, while women in birthy folks
Speaker 4: are worried about being able to get either abortion care
Speaker 4: or be able to deliver safely. Right while you know,
Speaker 4: our ways is are stagnant. A corporate bossing are taking
Speaker 4: in more and more money. Right, we see corruption at
Speaker 4: the corporate level, we see corruption at the government level.
Speaker 4: We're seeking coruption at the court. And then what that's
Speaker 4: going to do is going to depressed turnout, is going
Speaker 4: to make American people feel like this is not worth
Speaker 4: you know, investing in, participating in, and it's going to
Speaker 4: really cause a hopelessness that we just cannot afford to
Speaker 4: have right now. It is disempowering and disenfranchising, and.
Speaker 1: I think when we talk about like every day is
Speaker 1: more corruption from Clarence Thomas. But we just learned recently
Speaker 1: that he was involved in being at least at at
Speaker 1: least two different Koch Brothers, donor Summits. This is a
Speaker 1: member of the Supreme Court. I mean, if we are
Speaker 1: going to have the moral high ground as Democrats, we
Speaker 1: must stay on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have to speak truth to power, even when
Speaker 4: that power is our friend, even when that power is us.
Speaker 4: Speaking truth is an important charge when you are in leadership,
Speaker 4: and all of us are in leadership. Right if we
Speaker 4: are elected by the people of audition, we are in
Speaker 4: some form of leadership and we have to take that
Speaker 4: incredibly seriously. So yeah, right, we can't call out Clarence
Speaker 4: Thomas to be clear lagrant lagrant corruption. There is no
Speaker 4: world in which Clarence Thomas believed that what he was
Speaker 4: doing was the right thing. In fact, if you were
Speaker 4: at other levels of the judiciary, a local level magistrates,
Speaker 4: court of common please, state level courts, they all know
Speaker 4: and they all have codes of conducts that say they're
Speaker 4: not allowed. Not only are you not allowed to be
Speaker 4: the draw at a fundraiser for a donor, for a
Speaker 4: donor base that has business before the court. The we
Speaker 4: know that, but also know, I know judges who are
Speaker 4: actually elected, unlike our Supreme Court right appoints it. I
Speaker 4: know judges who are elected, they have to run for office,
Speaker 4: and they're still not even able to ask for money
Speaker 4: for themselves, Like they're not allowed to fundraise for themselves.
Speaker 4: So in no world should a Supreme Court justice be
Speaker 4: able to fundraise on behalf of organizations, on behalf of politicians,
Speaker 4: all behalf of donor networks, all behalf of dark superbacks.
Speaker 4: Right that had business before the court. Right, we have
Speaker 4: to then at our level. Right, we now because we
Speaker 4: see and because we're in an era where we recognize
Speaker 4: that this Supreme Court and the Conservative members have no shame,
Speaker 4: They abide no unwritten code of content. That means we
Speaker 4: need to write some codes of content. That means that
Speaker 4: we need to start to move on transparency acts. We
Speaker 4: need to ensure that we are creating accountability mechanisms through
Speaker 4: our body to hold them accountable, to make sure that
Speaker 4: there are codes of contents that reflect the same codes
Speaker 4: of ethics and contents that every other profession has. There's
Speaker 4: no reason, in fact, it is dangerous you know in
Speaker 4: any other body there are codes of ethics. This is
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court. They've literally just made it unsafe and
Speaker 4: even deadly for women and birthing people to become pregnant.
Speaker 4: They took away rights for black and brown people to
Speaker 4: get educated.
Speaker 2: This is the group.
Speaker 4: These three folks, more than anybody, need overs.
Speaker 1: They certainly do. Are you disappointed that more dumb grunts
Speaker 1: in the Senate haven't called for Menendez to step down?
Speaker 1: Or are you confident like I am, that they will
Speaker 1: today and tomorrow.
Speaker 4: I've been seeing some more. I think I just saw
Speaker 4: both of my senators have now called for resignation, and
Speaker 4: I think that more people will. I don't think disappointed
Speaker 4: is the right word, because you kind of have to
Speaker 4: have an expectation of something to be disappointed. I think
Speaker 4: that what people really underestimate is that these books are
Speaker 4: serving with their friends. They're serving with their friends or
Speaker 4: good or for bad. And when your friend does something wrong,
Speaker 4: your first, asthink does not always to call it out again.
Speaker 4: I think Dumbledore said right, not shouting out the person
Speaker 4: who creates double doore, but Dumbledore himself.
Speaker 1: Yes, an important cavit.
Speaker 4: Important gobby, not a shout out not a shout out
Speaker 4: of the person who created But Baba Dumbledore once said
Speaker 4: that it's difficult to call out your enemies, and sometimes
Speaker 4: it's even more difficult to call out your friends, but
Speaker 4: we still got to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting because it's like, you think about
Speaker 1: all the Republicans who refused to call out Donald Trump
Speaker 1: again and again and again, and it is really so
Speaker 1: important because part of how Donald Trump was created was
Speaker 1: because of a weak Republican party that refused to hold
Speaker 1: him to account for the things he did.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I think that he was a perfect store.
Speaker 4: We have a Republican Party that has increasingly shameless in
Speaker 4: their pursuit of power, power by any means. Right, That's
Speaker 4: where we are. This is the ongoing insurrection. But also
Speaker 4: there are other institutions that have colluded. The Democratic Party
Speaker 4: played a role in this because as long as we
Speaker 4: as Democrats are failing to realize the ways in which
Speaker 4: the two party duopoly has played into the polarization, has
Speaker 4: played into even the bollying that we have of going
Speaker 4: back and forth between administrations, the fundraising that goes into it,
Speaker 4: all of that. And I'm not this is not a conspiracy.
Speaker 4: This is not to say that this is the both said.
Speaker 4: I don't want anybody to think that the Republicans that
Speaker 4: the Democrats are the same. My goodness, they are not.
Speaker 4: They're absolutely not. But even we Democrats have to realize
Speaker 4: that sometimes the call out has to be swiftter and
Speaker 4: harsher when people are doing things, when Republicans are doing
Speaker 4: things that they should not be doing, things that are
Speaker 4: harming our nation, harming our democracy, harming the economy, which
Speaker 4: means not just our local and our and our national
Speaker 4: kind of our global economy. We need to have harsher
Speaker 4: words than we need a robust Republican party, right. We
Speaker 4: need to have harsher word than bipartisanship by any means.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: We need to say that, you know what, this is
Speaker 4: a part that is increasingly illegitimate and we will not
Speaker 4: stand to legitimize it. We need a media that understands
Speaker 4: its role, right, a media that where Donald Trump grew, right,
Speaker 4: that man grew and said off of the unearned media
Speaker 4: or the earned media that he got throughout his election.
Speaker 4: What lessons have been learned from that? And I'm not
Speaker 4: seeing lessons learned. I still see the Republican Party that
Speaker 4: is committed to its pathway, a democratic party that's adjusting
Speaker 4: in real time, which is important that we are making
Speaker 4: the adjustment, but a media that's still trying to grapple, Well,
Speaker 4: what is its role in unwap laying or challenge democracy.
Speaker 4: When we report every single thing that VI that Ramaswami
Speaker 4: says that's racist and harmful, or everything that Donald Trump
Speaker 4: says that is insurrection minded, without any coveyats, without any
Speaker 4: fact checking, sometimes without any context, we're perpetuating it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a really important point. And we
Speaker 1: all have to, especially in the mainstream media, adjust to
Speaker 1: this sort of brave new Republican world. So you are
Speaker 1: in this ground zero for Republican Fucktory right now, which
Speaker 1: is the United States Congress. Kevin McCarthy. He is clearly
Speaker 1: does not have control of his caucus. Matt Gates is
Speaker 1: clearly doing the will of Donald Trump. I mean, where
Speaker 1: do you go from here? And that is the sixty
Speaker 1: four million dollar question? Is that the number that it
Speaker 1: really is? We talked about a lot. Donald Trump wants everyone.
Speaker 4: He said, you know, he could pull a gun out
Speaker 4: if that noon shoots some let and that's proven to
Speaker 4: be true.
Speaker 1: And he may have bought that gun this weekend, out
Speaker 1: the gun this weekend.
Speaker 4: Which charges we're being in charges right is that we
Speaker 4: have existential crises that we're working through right now. I
Speaker 4: think the first thing that we're working through, obviously is
Speaker 4: the government shut down. Right there are a role like
Speaker 4: people who are going to be harmed at every level
Speaker 4: of the federal government, and then the trickle through their families,
Speaker 4: through their communities, right through our schools. We're going to
Speaker 4: see that trickle as we have in it passed. We
Speaker 4: got to sort that out come hell, how water we
Speaker 4: have to sort this out for working class people. The
Speaker 4: long retim question is is what are we going to
Speaker 4: do about this part? What are we going to do
Speaker 4: about the Republican Party? And they're just shame with power graphs,
Speaker 4: And again, I think that goes back to the way
Speaker 4: that Democrats interact with them, the way that we talk
Speaker 4: about them honestly, the way that we start to reflect
Speaker 4: on how we navigate right That goes back to dealing
Speaker 4: with not just me nindads, but everything that we do.
Speaker 4: The way that we navigate the way that we interact
Speaker 4: with money and politics. Systems have to shift right now.
Speaker 4: If we're going to if our the markets is gone
Speaker 4: to sur bath, systems have to shift. Means that even
Speaker 4: things that Democrats are advantage that get an advantage from, like,
Speaker 4: we're gonna have to start to reassess that because anything
Speaker 4: you know, that breathes life into this monster that the
Speaker 4: Republican Party is becoming has to be nipped in a
Speaker 4: butt right now. And that's gonna be tough, right, That's
Speaker 4: gonna be tough, but it's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a really important point. There are all
Speaker 1: these Republicans that very likely will lose their seats or
Speaker 1: can lose their seats, you know, if Democrats play their
Speaker 1: cards right. I mean, do you think that it's possible
Speaker 1: that those Republicans join together with Democrats to get us
Speaker 1: out of the shutdown.
Speaker 4: I think that those are the conversations that are happening.
Speaker 4: It's I'm reading the room correctly. I don't feel like
Speaker 4: the majority of Republicans e didn't necessarily want this shutdown,
Speaker 4: but it's a train that's going off the tracks right.
Speaker 4: This isn't the reilment that we're watching in world time.
Speaker 4: So even if they don't want the shutdown now, there
Speaker 4: are ways on which they've empowered the freedom cack is,
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, the freedom clocks might be a gnat
Speaker 4: to them right now, right, they might just be an
Speaker 4: annoying slat of them, But listen, they helped to position
Speaker 4: them to where they are. So we're going to need
Speaker 4: a little bit more to talk. Right. What we need
Speaker 4: them to do is to take them on head on.
Speaker 4: They got to take them on head on, and that
Speaker 4: might mean that they need to start to reclaim their
Speaker 4: little conference. That might mean that, like, whoever these folks are,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna need them to have some energy clip behind
Speaker 4: and getting rid of them. Then, right, if they are
Speaker 4: working out to how dangerous they are, and this is
Speaker 4: not the direction they want to go in, and they
Speaker 4: have to put their money where their mouth is. So
Speaker 4: the first thing that they have to do is to
Speaker 4: team up with Democrats to get a deal of that
Speaker 4: saves the American working families, that just keeps the light
Speaker 4: on for the government, keeps light on for poor working
Speaker 4: class people. Right first. The second thing they need to
Speaker 4: do is that they need to be committed to replacing
Speaker 4: these people. They got to be committed to using their platforms,
Speaker 4: using their pocketbooks to readirect this Republican movement because this
Speaker 4: is not going to be the last time they do this.
Speaker 4: It's the third time this in the one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighteen that's right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to laugh because people are being hurt, right,
Speaker 1: veterans and you know, disabled people, people are not going
Speaker 1: to be able to get healthcare. I mean there will
Speaker 1: be huge real world reverberations for working people.
Speaker 4: All right, ch out here, yeah, baba formula you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, food stamp. So I do think it's really
Speaker 1: important that we take this very seriously. But it really
Speaker 1: is true. They waited for I mean, Republicans really wanted
Speaker 1: Democrats to handle those well.
Speaker 4: Republicans wanted to be in the majority. Right when you're
Speaker 4: in the majority, and you you were in the gay
Speaker 4: on governor, you know, you can't want somebody else to
Speaker 4: come and do it for you. You got to make
Speaker 4: the hard decisions, and the hard decisions right now are
Speaker 4: getting this deal done, keeping his promises and holding McCarthy
Speaker 4: accountable not to the Freed and Caucus, but to the
Speaker 4: American people. So they got to redirect this one. They
Speaker 4: have to. What did Matt Gates say, we can't blame
Speaker 4: Joe Biden, we can't blame the Democratic Caucus for not
Speaker 4: moving their bills and not voting up. They can't blame
Speaker 4: even Chuck Schubert, and he said it's on him. He
Speaker 4: say him, but he said it's on Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 1: Representatively. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back.
Speaker 4: I would love to come back. But listen, the only
Speaker 4: way that can come back, I'm gonna do this shamelessly,
Speaker 4: as shameless as the Republicans.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's go.
Speaker 4: If I want to come back, right, I got to
Speaker 4: beat back against the exact same forces that we're seeing
Speaker 4: right now corrupted on our Supreme Court. Yeah, no, that's
Speaker 4: not even hot proberly. Literally, the same folks who are
Speaker 4: buying out our Supreme Court, right singer, the folks who
Speaker 4: are flying you know, a leito out having them on
Speaker 4: a shot, those are also the same people who are
Speaker 4: funding my opposition, even million to the folks who they
Speaker 4: put in five million against me last time. Those same
Speaker 4: folks promising millions and millions of dollars. Literally right now
Speaker 4: you can read the articles. They are promising millions to
Speaker 4: defeat me because I'm fighting back against corruption in the court, right,
Speaker 4: because we're calling out their dark Dono net who are
Speaker 4: just harming and keeping black women and progressive women out
Speaker 4: of Congress. But they're also buying our courts to erodear
Speaker 4: rights to abortion care and healthcare and so much more.
Speaker 4: Right so, right now, I'm going into a primary, and
Speaker 4: it's going to be early. It's probably going to be
Speaker 4: as early as mark, which means we're months away, and
Speaker 4: we still have to raise so much money. Black women
Speaker 4: are the most underfunded candidates in our country. So there
Speaker 4: are people who appreciate the voice that I have, the platform,
Speaker 4: the way I use my platform, the way that we
Speaker 4: stand up for working class people, for workers, for labor,
Speaker 4: you know, for our environments, for gun safety, for schools,
Speaker 4: for health care. But we have to have a funded
Speaker 4: campaign to fight back against these very people because they're
Speaker 4: coming for me. They're coming far. So please send you folks, please,
Speaker 4: if you appreciate the work that we're trying to do,
Speaker 4: the work that we are doing, the movement that we
Speaker 4: are keeping alive, go to Summer FORPA dot com. Anything
Speaker 4: any amount helps us five dollars, ten dollars, but also
Speaker 4: the max of the thirty three hundred dollars. Right, all
Speaker 4: of that helps us to keep this movement alive. And
Speaker 4: this is not a selfish ask. This is a selfless
Speaker 4: ask because our movement depends on it. So where they
Speaker 4: attack black women in distress like Pittsburgh, we know that
Speaker 4: they're going to then take that and expand that and
Speaker 4: stop our movement in its track. Wherever we show up.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Summer, Thank you, Mollie. Heather Cox Richardson is
Speaker 1: a historian and author of Democracy Awakening, Notes on the
Speaker 1: State of a America. Heather Cox Richardson, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's such a joy to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to have you. So let's talk about Democracy
Speaker 1: Awakening Notes on the State of America. What are your
Speaker 1: notes on the statement? Give us the elevator pitch.
Speaker 6: Well, the elevator pitch is. This is a book about
Speaker 6: how we got here, where here is, and how we
Speaker 6: get out of it. But the idea of Notes on
Speaker 6: the State of America is this is intended in a
Speaker 6: way to be a snapshot of this particular moment in America,
Speaker 6: which I really think is a moment in which we
Speaker 6: are transitioning from one kind of country to another, and
Speaker 6: what that might look like, especially if everybody puts a
Speaker 6: shoulder to the wheel.
Speaker 1: Kind of country were we before? And what kind of
Speaker 1: country are we now?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 2: Before?
Speaker 4: And now is?
Speaker 6: I mean now is pretty easy. Before is a little
Speaker 6: bit sweeping. But the argument in the book is that
Speaker 6: the modern day political situation in which we find ourselves
Speaker 6: began in nineteen thirty seven when a group calling themselves
Speaker 6: conservatives coalesced around the idea of essentially taking the country
Speaker 6: back to the era before the New Deal, and they
Speaker 6: called themselves conservatives, although one of my big arguments is
Speaker 6: that they were not, that they were in fact radical activists,
Speaker 6: and that from nineteen thirty seven to twenty sixteen they
Speaker 6: managed to convince a number of people to give up
Speaker 6: on democracy. And then Donald Trump entered the scene in
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen and took office in twenty seventeen. And actually,
Speaker 6: one of the things I found most shocking about writing
Speaker 6: the book, because I know that Trump presidency so well,
Speaker 6: was that when you strip the noise out of it,
Speaker 6: the piece is about oh so and so got fired, Oh,
Speaker 6: this letter was sent, Oh Congress did this? When you
Speaker 6: strip the noise out, the Trump presidency was really a
Speaker 6: very concerted move toward authoritarianism in this country. But then
Speaker 6: instead of throwing up our hands and saying we're all
Speaker 6: going to hell in a handbasket. The final third of
Speaker 6: the book, to me is the most interesting one, and
Speaker 6: that is is sort of a blueprint for how in
Speaker 6: the past Americans, of all people, but really led by
Speaker 6: marginalized Americans, have reasserted the principles of the Declaration of
Speaker 6: Independence and have managed increasingly over time to expand that
Speaker 6: definition to include more and more people. So it ends
Speaker 6: up on a very hopeful note.
Speaker 1: When you think about this idea of authoritarianism. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many times does Trump need to be defeated before
Speaker 1: we get out of this thing.
Speaker 6: I think it's crucial to remember that Trump is not
Speaker 6: himself alone meteor coming from nowhere, that in fact, he's
Speaker 6: a really interesting historical figure because in a way, he
Speaker 6: was never a politician. He was a salesman who could
Speaker 6: read a certain part of the US population and see
Speaker 6: exactly what they had been primed to want. So it's
Speaker 6: not a question of simply defeating Trump. It's an issue
Speaker 6: of defeating the entire movement Conservative project, which, as I say,
Speaker 6: began in nineteen thirty s. But then even before that,
Speaker 6: the United States has always had one strand of its
Speaker 6: history that was supportive of authoritarianism. I mean, it's a
Speaker 6: truism at this point that Hitler got some of his
Speaker 6: key ideas from the United States Jim Crow laws and
Speaker 6: Indigenous reservations. So there is this whole, long strand of
Speaker 6: American history and American thought that says some people are
Speaker 6: better than others and have the right to rule and
Speaker 6: should rule. So it's not just a question of getting
Speaker 6: rid of Trump himself or even of the manipulation of
Speaker 6: our political discourse to give us an authoritarian like Trump.
Speaker 6: There is really a need to grapple with that whole concept,
Speaker 6: which is so antithetical to the genius idea on which
Speaker 6: the United States was founded, which was that everybody has
Speaker 6: created equal and as a right to say in their government.
Speaker 6: That's a principle that defined the United States but has
Speaker 6: never actually been realized.
Speaker 1: Right, let's talk about what it means to sort of
Speaker 1: defeat this kind of authoritarianism. Okay, how do.
Speaker 6: You want how do you want to get into this?
Speaker 1: I mean, is that no more republican party?
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 6: Well, so in the theoretical vision is to recognize as
Speaker 6: the Republican party of today did early on that the
Speaker 6: way you change people's minds is through the way you
Speaker 6: talk about things is through rhetoric, and that you can
Speaker 6: use the history of America and the rhetoric of authoritarianism
Speaker 6: to convince people to give up on their democracy, which
Speaker 6: a lot of Americans have at this point. And one
Speaker 6: of the key pieces of that is to convince people
Speaker 6: that somewhere in the past there was a magical moment
Speaker 6: in which your country was whole and perfect, and that
Speaker 6: kind of history, I think, is an authoritarian history. And
Speaker 6: you can argue this through Hannah arent and Eric Hoffer
Speaker 6: and all the people who grappled with what it looked
Speaker 6: like to convince people to embrace authoritarianism. But once you've
Speaker 6: recognized that, it's a pretty simple matter and a pretty
Speaker 6: easily accessible matter for everyone to refuse to use that language,
Speaker 6: to use instead a different kind of language that the
Speaker 6: United States has used over time at different periods, to say, no,
Speaker 6: that's not what we stand for. We don't stand for
Speaker 6: the idea of a few people ruling over everybody else.
Speaker 6: We stand for the idea of equality. And crucially, when
Speaker 6: we have done that, we have altered our laws in
Speaker 6: such a way that it broadened economic opportunity, it decreased
Speaker 6: the extremes of wealth in this country, and invariably, when
Speaker 6: we did those things, racial and gender equality got significantly better. So,
Speaker 6: in a way, a very simple formula, and it sounds
Speaker 6: like that I'm looking at and it sounds like almost
Speaker 6: too easy, but it is theoretically informed both with the
Speaker 6: stories of how authoritarians rise, but also with our own history.
Speaker 6: I mean, you look at moments when this country has
Speaker 6: made huge strides, both in economic equality and also racial
Speaker 6: and gender equality, and they are always ones in which
Speaker 6: leaders have wreckedize that our democratic system has been taken
Speaker 6: over by a small group of people, an oligarchy or
Speaker 6: in this case, an authoritarian figure, and have said, wait
Speaker 6: a minute, no, no, no, no, this is not who we
Speaker 6: stand for. And we know that we don't stand for that,
Speaker 6: because this is not what we stand for. And we
Speaker 6: know that we don't stand for that because look at
Speaker 6: our history, look at our documents, look at the Declaration
Speaker 6: of Independence, look at Abraham Lincoln, look at the Civil
Speaker 6: Rights movement, look at all these different moments in American
Speaker 6: history where we have been much better than we are today.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that is a really important point.
Speaker 1: So those times when Americans have sort of come together
Speaker 1: and been less terrible to each other, Like, are you
Speaker 1: thinking of as sort of a Lincoln? Who are the
Speaker 1: historical figures that fit well.
Speaker 6: Lincoln is an easy one to point to because most
Speaker 6: people know who he is, and he very much was
Speaker 6: the person who articulated that in his era, Southern enslavers
Speaker 6: and the large Southern enslavers had come not only to
Speaker 6: dominate the Demmocratic Party, but through at the American South
Speaker 6: and then through at the American nation by taking over
Speaker 6: the White House and the Supreme Court and the Senate,
Speaker 6: leaving only the House of Representatives to stand against them.
Speaker 6: And of course he built a movement behind that. But
Speaker 6: one of the points of Democracy Awakening is that it's
Speaker 6: a real mistake to look at our history and see
Speaker 6: just those shining figures, who are individuals, That these movements
Speaker 6: have always come from the bottom up. They have always
Speaker 6: been characterized by a community, and they have always been
Speaker 6: characterized pretty seriously by shifting political alliances. So while you
Speaker 6: want to look at somebody like Abraham Lincoln, because he's
Speaker 6: an easy figure, people know who he is and you
Speaker 6: can point to his record, which is pretty complete. You know,
Speaker 6: you think about people like doctor Hector Garcia, who recognized
Speaker 6: after World War Two that it was really important that
Speaker 6: Mexicans and Hispanics be recognized as equal American citizens, and
Speaker 6: how that gradually snowballed into a movement that includes then
Speaker 6: Senator Lennon Bains Johnson and later President LBJ that later
Speaker 6: on becomes things like the Civil Rights Act of sixty
Speaker 6: four and later on the Voting Rights Act of sixty five.
Speaker 6: You know, it's a mistake, I think, to start at
Speaker 6: the end. Similarly, if you look at black rights. One
Speaker 6: of the things that really jumped out to me about
Speaker 6: this book and that I really loved about it, was
Speaker 6: that the way we have told the Second civil Rights
Speaker 6: movement in the nineteen fifty, sixties, seventies and on has
Speaker 6: been to focus on a few really shining examples. And
Speaker 6: there are examples of people like Bob Moses and Fanny
Speaker 6: Luhaim are people who are in the pantheon, Emmett Till
Speaker 6: or Rosa Parks. But if you actually move back, the
Speaker 6: group that really informed all Americans about the unequal conditions
Speaker 6: under which African Americans lived was the NAACP, which is
Speaker 6: out there publishing the crisis, and it is publicizing lynching,
Speaker 6: and it is going around to places like around the
Speaker 6: South where Rosa Parks was electing stories of sexual assaults
Speaker 6: and lynching long before anybody knew that she was not
Speaker 6: going to sit down on a bus. So that community
Speaker 6: organizing in that sense of taking back your government to
Speaker 6: be what it says it could be in the Declaration
Speaker 6: of Independence is a really important part of the piece,
Speaker 6: rather than simply looking at the Abraham Lincolns of the world.
Speaker 1: Right a really good point. So give me sort of think,
Speaker 1: if you are a person who listens to this podcast
Speaker 1: and you're worried about democracy, what are the things you
Speaker 1: should be doing well.
Speaker 6: So everybody always asks that, and there's the obvious thing.
Speaker 6: You should vote, and you should get people to vote,
Speaker 6: and you should donate to the causes that you care about.
Speaker 6: But one of the things that I really wanted to
Speaker 6: do with this project was to make people feel empowered.
Speaker 6: Because if you are an idealist as I am, which
Speaker 6: means that we believe that ideas change the world, we
Speaker 6: know the most effective way to change the way people
Speaker 6: think is to take up oxygen to re assert a
Speaker 6: vision in public discourse. And I just made that sound
Speaker 6: really fancy, but what I really mean is take up oxygen.
Speaker 6: Talk to people. When somebody says something that is inaccurate
Speaker 6: about the way the United States works, correct them, make it.
Speaker 6: The same way that the radical right managed to take
Speaker 6: over our political discourse was simply by repeating garbage again
Speaker 6: and again and again. There is no reason that we
Speaker 6: can't reassert a reality based community by simply speaking up.
Speaker 6: And that's something you can do at the supermarket without
Speaker 6: feeling like you have to go be a hero. That
Speaker 6: is precisely the way that people like the John Birch
Speaker 6: society corrupted the country to begin with, and it's precisely
Speaker 6: the way that we as people who care about the
Speaker 6: values of this country, could take it back.
Speaker 1: So you think this is a propaganda war.
Speaker 6: Yes, except my big thing is that what we have
Speaker 6: lost really in America, very deliberately since the nineteen fifties
Speaker 6: on the part of the right, is a reality based community.
Speaker 6: This actually happened. And if you're on Twitter right now
Speaker 6: or any of the social media sites and you look
Speaker 6: things like Senator Marshall Blackburn is spewing on Twitter, or
Speaker 6: Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. It's just not reality based.
Speaker 6: And that idea of flooding the zone with shit, as
Speaker 6: Steve Bannon put it, is a really very effective propaganda tool,
Speaker 6: but it's not real. I mean simply reasserting reality, which
Speaker 6: I think at the end of the day most people
Speaker 6: actually want, is a really effective way to stand up
Speaker 6: for the kind of you know, enlightenment based community, reality
Speaker 6: based community on which this country was founded.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you think that it's just people, when they
Speaker 1: get more reality, will come back to reality. I mean
Speaker 1: some of that polling sort of says that these people
Speaker 1: support Trump. I mean Trump supporters support Trump over their family,
Speaker 1: over their religion, over this, over the That is your
Speaker 1: supposition here that this crew is will come back to
Speaker 1: reality if offered it or now.
Speaker 6: No, I think that the real Trumpers are gone. And again,
Speaker 6: when I say that, it's not simply my opinion. If
Speaker 6: you actually study the theories of authoritarianism and how the
Speaker 6: political belief systems work, you know there's a significant portion
Speaker 6: of people who are just going to follow an authoritarian
Speaker 6: down whatever road that person goes. And there are really
Speaker 6: interesting studies of why that is the case and the
Speaker 6: degree to which people's identity gets wrapped up into an
Speaker 6: authoritarian in part because of how badly that authoritarian acts.
Speaker 6: That is, once you have said okay, I'm along for
Speaker 6: the ride on this, it's very hard then to say, okay,
Speaker 6: but I'm not on the ride for this, because you
Speaker 6: have to admit that you were wrong before, and by
Speaker 6: the time you've gone a long way down that road,
Speaker 6: it's too much work to come back from that. And
Speaker 6: interestingly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really interesting video about this,
Speaker 6: I think it was about a year ago, in which
Speaker 6: he actually directly addressed people who were embracing Donald Trump
Speaker 6: and authoritarianism in this country. It's the only time I've
Speaker 6: actually seen somebody directly embrace them and say, that's going
Speaker 6: to be really hard to get out of where you are.
Speaker 6: But even if they are lost, the real issue in
Speaker 6: a democratic society are those people in the middle, the
Speaker 6: people who aren't really paying very much attention. And that's
Speaker 6: why I talk about taking up oxygen. I know a
Speaker 6: lot of people who vote Republican because their parents did
Speaker 6: and their grandparents did and whatever. As long as it's
Speaker 6: gotten our by it, they're going to, you know, because
Speaker 6: they're really not paying attention and how bad could it be?
Speaker 6: Those people are reachable, and that's when I talk about
Speaker 6: taking up oxygen. That's when somebody's saying, you know, that's
Speaker 6: not really what's happening has the potential to make a difference.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Heathery, so interesting and so important.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure
Speaker 6: to talk to you.
Speaker 2: They're no more.
Speaker 1: We're changing up the format today because we have been
Speaker 1: at trip Fest together. We are now we've survived the
Speaker 1: RFK Junior interruption, are comrades in arms, and so this
Speaker 1: moment of fuckeray is a special one for you. I
Speaker 1: know that you've seen it because I texted it to
Speaker 1: you earlier. Our ex mayor, one of the few mayors
Speaker 1: that we really one of the few Democrats that has
Speaker 1: really gotten our ire one, Bill de Blasio.
Speaker 5: That's kind of funny how they're always New York mayors.
Speaker 1: It's only it's called the Curse of the New York Mayor,
Speaker 1: and we are truly cursed. We now have the New
Speaker 1: York Post, which is our local paper, but it is
Speaker 1: owned by Rupert Murdoch, so it tends to run a
Speaker 1: little fascist. But they tweeted out and again I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read it to you because it's so upsetting. And
Speaker 1: then I want your first your first thought, horn dog,
Speaker 1: horn dog. They of course they're so excited anytime they
Speaker 1: can use that horn dog.
Speaker 4: X his honor.
Speaker 1: Bill Deblasio caught in heated makeout session with mystery woman.
Speaker 5: Discuss as a twenty plus year reader of page six,
Speaker 5: there's part of me that admires the headlight, but the
Speaker 5: other part of me is like, oh, I need a shower,
Speaker 5: build a Bungler, big bird.
Speaker 2: No one wants that.
Speaker 1: The groundhog killer. He is our moment of suffering. Don't
Speaker 1: say Democrats never get it on this podcast. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right, Fuck you, Bob Mendez. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.