Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Donald Trump says Sidney Powell was
Speaker 1: never his attorney, and of course there's a tweet saying otherwise.
Speaker 1: We have such a fun show for you. Today, Semaphore's
Speaker 1: Dave Weigel drops by to talk about the hidden details
Speaker 1: in the latest FEC filing in the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential race.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to New York Times as Nick.
Speaker 1: Corus Santini about the really fascinating new political dynamic in
Speaker 1: the great state of Mississippi and how Democrats could finally
Speaker 1: change the tide there. But first we have the new
Speaker 1: weekly guest every single Monday. You may remember him as
Speaker 1: being the King of the Panhandle, the host of the
Speaker 1: Enemies List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome Enemies List,
Speaker 1: Fred Comrade.
Speaker 3: Oh, now you're going to trigger all the people on
Speaker 3: the Internet who don't know what comrade or communism or
Speaker 3: socialism really is.
Speaker 4: It's always my favorite. You're an authoritarian, Nazi, socialist crypto. Okay,
Speaker 4: shut up, people.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome Rick Wilson. Just for those the few who
Speaker 1: don't recognize your voice. My man, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: The band is back together.
Speaker 2: We're literally just here to gloat about Jim Jordan.
Speaker 3: You know, twenty five votes. We're recording this at just
Speaker 3: afternoon on Friday. Twenty five votes. Now, how's it going
Speaker 3: for you, Jim?
Speaker 4: You feeling good? Brother?
Speaker 1: My favorite moment was he decided I'm going to have
Speaker 1: a press conference where I use the bully pulpit bully,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to grind it out all weekend. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a lot of members aren't even there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, I call me crazy, but the
Speaker 3: application of the hot new political tactic of death threats
Speaker 3: to family members has somehow non worked out to Jim Jordan's.
Speaker 3: Somebody asked me this morning, like if you're met Jordan.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I met I'm a bunch of times
Speaker 3: back in the day. And they're like, what did you
Speaker 3: think of him? I'm like, he really is dumb. Now,
Speaker 3: don't mistake but Jim Jordan has a kind of like
Speaker 3: fairal animal cunning about him. But this is a guy
Speaker 3: who thinks he's smart. Because you listen to a lot
Speaker 3: of Rush Limbaugh in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: The last time we talked about Jim Jordan, which is
Speaker 1: you know, we talk a lot.
Speaker 2: You said, Jim Jordan looks like he has rabies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, I did not wrong. He is a guy
Speaker 4: who looks the part he's playing of Rabbid.
Speaker 3: He looks like a guy whose family engaged in generations
Speaker 3: of enthusiastic and breeding up in a holler somewhere in Pennsyltuckia.
Speaker 1: I feel think you're gonna get canceled for every word
Speaker 1: in that sentence pedicle, Tuckie, that's a real.
Speaker 2: Thing reading listen.
Speaker 1: I can't say it because I'm an elitist globalist quote unquote.
Speaker 3: I'm worse than an elitist globalist. I'm an elitist globalist neocon.
Speaker 3: I get a long email today about my sins as
Speaker 3: a neocon and that my thirty plus year career in
Speaker 3: politics had only been to serve quote the global Jew.
Speaker 2: The global jew. What about the military industrial comment.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to reveal more of my dirty laundry.
Speaker 3: This email is like fifteen pages long of like various
Speaker 3: links and the'm not going to click on and terrible
Speaker 3: memes and like your whole career.
Speaker 4: You should be ashamed. Your whole career has been in
Speaker 4: service to the global Jew. I'm like, like the local Jew.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I'm well, I'm in urga Jew as a rule, you know.
Speaker 1: But I mean I have to say, this is like
Speaker 1: this moment in American life where Jews we are popular.
Speaker 1: It's like the first time ever my whole life. I'm
Speaker 1: forty five years old, and like the polling is like
Speaker 1: Americans love Jews.
Speaker 2: I'm like, let's go.
Speaker 1: Man, this is her moment, soon to be eclipsed by
Speaker 1: another genocide.
Speaker 2: But we'll take it for now.
Speaker 4: You know, what's the downside? What could possible?
Speaker 1: So you're listening to this on Monday, but I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about the carnage of Friday because
Speaker 1: one of the amazing inadvertent laugh lines, and there were
Speaker 1: many Kevin McCarthy talking about what a great legislator Jim
Speaker 1: Jordan was.
Speaker 4: It was almost like borsh belt humor in the room.
Speaker 4: Take my wife place, who's cheering?
Speaker 2: They were cheering.
Speaker 3: The Democrats lost their minds correctly because there's a moment
Speaker 3: where look, here's the thing about politics. There are these
Speaker 3: formalities and these traditions and these sort of modes of
Speaker 3: speaking that are inherently political, and it's to say, my
Speaker 3: good friend, the honorable gentleman from the state of Arkansas.
Speaker 3: But when you say the words in a sentence in
Speaker 3: front of humans, who can think Jim Jordan is an
Speaker 3: effective legislator? Of course the reaction is people are running
Speaker 3: like like just dying, like howling with laughter, because it's
Speaker 3: like saying that I'm a terrific ballerina. It's like praising,
Speaker 3: you know, my ability to play the saxophone. These are
Speaker 3: things that I know what they are, but I couldn't
Speaker 3: do them. He had a gun to my head. And honestly,
Speaker 3: why would you pick Kevin McCarthy to endorse I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a guy who's like radioactive waste in the
Speaker 3: House of Representatives right now in the Republican caucus. The
Speaker 3: people who loved him are like, you idiot, but people
Speaker 3: who hate him are like, why is he endorsing Jim Jordan?
Speaker 3: And so Jordan's going backwards right now. There was a
Speaker 3: moment yesterday on well Thursday, where that Patrick McHenry boomlet happened,
Speaker 3: and I was told by a staffer, a Republican staffer
Speaker 3: interestingly in the House that they thought they were going
Speaker 3: to have a moment where they could get mckenry in,
Speaker 3: and then an article ran that said Wall Street.
Speaker 4: Joyous over possible McHenry, and it was like.
Speaker 3: All the money's like no, now we must now, we
Speaker 3: must purge the tiny wee fellow.
Speaker 1: By the way, I do want to say, he's adorable,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to make fun of the fact
Speaker 1: that he's short. We're going to make fun of the
Speaker 1: fact that he has looked like he was fifty since
Speaker 1: he was twenty nine years old.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is correct. He is an old man.
Speaker 3: He has always been an old man in a young
Speaker 3: man's body.
Speaker 2: But I don't find him unattractive.
Speaker 1: Well you know, I mean, I'm not going to ask
Speaker 1: you to weigh in as a very heterosexual man on
Speaker 1: whether or not you would would do McHenry.
Speaker 2: But I don't think he's going to tack.
Speaker 3: I wish the podcast viewers right now can see the
Speaker 3: fluttering of my eyes and the rolling back in my head.
Speaker 2: You really we need a visual for that.
Speaker 3: I really am a robustly heterosexual guy, regardless of what
Speaker 3: the magus think online.
Speaker 2: So would you No.
Speaker 3: I mean in the FMK game, he's kind of a
Speaker 3: Mary Yeah.
Speaker 4: More than any anything else.
Speaker 2: He's adorable.
Speaker 1: Can I just say, these Wall Street people, those are
Speaker 1: your donors?
Speaker 2: Maga, like they're your donors.
Speaker 3: This is the great part of this whole story is
Speaker 3: Wall Street and private equity and a lot of the
Speaker 3: tech people that are the bread and butter of Republican
Speaker 3: major donor world. Right now, they have been frozen for
Speaker 3: ten days, Yeah, they have been frozen, well twelve days now, really,
Speaker 3: and what have they seen from Joe Biden. They've seen
Speaker 3: an American president boldly striding the world foreign policy successes,
Speaker 3: going out there representing the country effectively and ably putting
Speaker 3: the lie to all this.
Speaker 4: Jose too old to even move out of his future
Speaker 4: in all that crap.
Speaker 2: This is second war zone visit.
Speaker 3: Right, second war zone visit, and once again, Donald Trump's
Speaker 3: last visit to a war zone was a disco in
Speaker 3: Turtle Bay in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: That's right, Studio fifty four was his Vietnam right. But
Speaker 1: it's a really good point they I have to say,
Speaker 1: like last night, I was listening to Lawrence's show this
Speaker 1: morning and Lawrence was like, I'm going to Africa and
Speaker 1: if I can get.
Speaker 2: My jet lag as well as Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I mean, the man has been crossing the globe again again.
Speaker 4: In my old life, I traveled a lot to a
Speaker 4: lot of places.
Speaker 3: And this guy is eighty years old, and he's up
Speaker 3: and going off the plane and rolling into diplomatic and
Speaker 3: political meetings with Beebee and his cabinet. He's talking to
Speaker 3: first responders in the families who've been injured by the
Speaker 3: Hamas terrorist attack. He is talking to American military forces,
Speaker 3: getting briefing from them on what's going on. This is
Speaker 3: a robust guy. He is a man in full and yes,
Speaker 3: part of this is I'm going to be sixty in
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Right right after Thanksgiving, right twenty first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and here's the thing. I have a demonic amount
Speaker 3: of energy. I am up early, I go hard, I
Speaker 3: am like always whatever damn thing is in my brain.
Speaker 3: But this guy is twenty years older than me, and
Speaker 3: he's killing it. He gets back off the plane, rolls
Speaker 3: into the Oval Office and delivers one of the best
Speaker 3: foreign policy speeches that I've ever seen. And I say
Speaker 3: that as a student of presidential rhetoric and speeches and politics,
Speaker 3: and people are going to look back on that and
Speaker 3: by the way if you blind if you did a
Speaker 3: blind listing to that and said, hey, did you hear
Speaker 3: the speech from Donald Trump where he said and you
Speaker 3: read them Biden's speech, Republicans would be like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a miracle. That's America. We're strong, We're toough,
Speaker 4: that's American values. There.
Speaker 3: If you told them that was Ronald Reagan, they go,
Speaker 3: of course, it was Ronald Reagan. It was inspiring, it
Speaker 3: was uplifting. It was the greatest, the greatest of America's
Speaker 3: values put on the world stage. But instead now they're
Speaker 3: going Joe Baden was drooling into his depends on the vision,
Speaker 3: the over office, the triggering he is imposing right now
Speaker 3: on people like Bongo and all the various weirdos. It
Speaker 3: has been magnificent to watch. It has been delightful to
Speaker 3: watch because he just won't die.
Speaker 4: He just won't fall over the dead. He just won't
Speaker 4: drool on himself.
Speaker 3: He's presidenting at a level that would make Donald Trump
Speaker 3: fan himself and call for or his fileo fish valet.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about Donald Trump's filet of fish valet. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think he had a diet coke button. But
Speaker 1: he didn't have a filet of fish valet. But back
Speaker 1: from the House to that speech, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about that speech. It was a short speech, but
Speaker 1: it was the traditional American values. Stop genocide are sort
Speaker 1: of American values since World War Two. Stop genocide. This
Speaker 1: is cheaper to do it now than later.
Speaker 2: What did you think?
Speaker 1: And also, I'm going to ask you a question here,
Speaker 1: what you're going to hate? This is going to make
Speaker 1: you crazy because this is the thing that makes you crazy.
Speaker 1: This is one of my I know, the couple things
Speaker 1: that really make you grez. Do you feel like there
Speaker 1: is a section of the Democratic Party that just could
Speaker 1: not hear what Biden had to say last night.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a small and frankly vocal. It's small, it's vocal,
Speaker 3: but it's frankly smaller than I expected it would be
Speaker 3: in the terms of the crisis we're watching right now.
Speaker 4: I think that.
Speaker 3: There is a near unanimity in the Democratic Party about
Speaker 3: what's at stake, because this isn't just sort of a
Speaker 3: reflexive anti Israel rhetoric. There are people who understand now
Speaker 3: that the stakes aren't the Palestinians protesting in the streets
Speaker 3: of London or Washington or New York. It's been made
Speaker 3: manifest now that Hamas will kill children and slit their throats,
Speaker 3: that Hamas will torture hostages and send the tapes to
Speaker 3: their families, that Hamas will hold Americans hostage. And the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party it has had, it's been dangling in front
Speaker 3: of them, and Joe Biden has taken it. They can
Speaker 3: recapture the position in the mind of the American people
Speaker 3: as a robust, moral foreign policy leadership role that they
Speaker 3: really had sort of lost Vietnam, sort of really polluted
Speaker 3: it because of Johnson. That's probably been since JFK or
Speaker 3: FDR or Truman, where they've had this sense of they're
Speaker 3: the strong foreign policy party because you know what, I
Speaker 3: don't see I see an eighty bit fraction of Democrats
Speaker 3: right now who are I don't even want to say
Speaker 3: pro Hamas, but so pro Palestinian that their anti Semitism
Speaker 3: is just starting to creep in. But what do you
Speaker 3: see in the Republican Party. You see an enormous well
Speaker 3: that too, but you see an enormous number of Republicans
Speaker 3: now who are out there tweeting Hamas propaganda just because
Speaker 3: it hurts Joe Biden. You're seeing an enormous number of
Speaker 3: Republicans in the last two years who have been fully
Speaker 3: on the side of Vladimir Putin and Russia, and this
Speaker 3: has put them in a really strange box politically. That
Speaker 3: box is very it's tighter now because there are two
Speaker 3: sides in this world right now. There are countries like
Speaker 3: Iran and Russia and groups like Islamic State and Hamas.
Speaker 3: They're on one side of the column and the rest
Speaker 3: of the world's on the other side of the column.
Speaker 3: And they're a much larger faction in the Republican parties
Speaker 3: supporting Putin and Hamas right now than there are in
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. And I find it really interesting how
Speaker 3: that inversion is going on in our culture and our
Speaker 3: political culture right now.
Speaker 2: The question also is where does this go?
Speaker 1: Right, Like, you have this Republican Party that's fractured, Is
Speaker 1: it two parties?
Speaker 2: Is it no party? You have nihilis? Who have? You know?
Speaker 1: Trump is going to be the nominee. It looks like
Speaker 1: that it's inevitable. There's going to be a reckoning, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, when does his reckoning happen?
Speaker 3: Well, the political reckoning, I think is going to start
Speaker 3: for anybody who's not on board with the President's position
Speaker 3: right now, which is by the way, as far to
Speaker 3: the right as humanly imaginable on Hamas and those who
Speaker 3: are engaging in terrorism, and is also about sending one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars of humanitarian aid to legitimate Palestinian relief
Speaker 3: efforts right outside of their control. But you're also going
Speaker 3: to see if the hostage story continues to develop, and
Speaker 3: we don't know the terrain of it yet, and the
Speaker 3: fact that we don't hear anything about it means there's
Speaker 3: something bigger than we're hearing about. I don't want to
Speaker 3: sound like Alex Jones just now, but that's sort of
Speaker 3: my experience.
Speaker 1: From what I've understood too the weeks.
Speaker 2: In Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: The reason that we're not hearing so much about that
Speaker 1: is because there is actually something going on there, and
Speaker 1: people's lives are in jeopardy.
Speaker 3: The political reckoning of this or the edge case and
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party right now, the Rashida ta Leaves and
Speaker 3: the small fraction. I mean, look, you could put these
Speaker 3: people around a table at a restaurant, but if you
Speaker 3: want to pro putin caucus in the Republican House, you'd
Speaker 3: have to get a dining hall.
Speaker 4: You have to have a big room.
Speaker 3: So the political reckoning of whether American voters want strength
Speaker 3: and stability over chaos and the spectacle of the Trumpian
Speaker 3: style foreign policy, they're going to answer with strength and
Speaker 3: stability every time.
Speaker 1: We got breaking news here, which by Monday will be broken.
Speaker 2: The cheese no longer stands alone Cheesebro, Cheesebro.
Speaker 1: It's Chesbro, but we call him Cheesebro because we love.
Speaker 2: Cheese and cheese.
Speaker 4: I love cheese.
Speaker 2: It's so good. So Cheesebro has taken the plea. Bro
Speaker 2: Jesse is like laughing to keep from crying.
Speaker 4: About these people.
Speaker 3: These people are so deeply in the shit that it
Speaker 3: is the It is one of the greatest proof cases
Speaker 3: of my political philosophy of everything Trump touches dies.
Speaker 4: Here's the other part of it. They're all dangling.
Speaker 3: Trump held them all out to dry, and these cases
Speaker 3: that that they're all fighting. They probably needed a couple
Speaker 3: hundred grand each to like get a mountain actual defense.
Speaker 3: But of course Trump had to repaint his plane and
Speaker 3: needs a new like Golden Bidet or mar Lago or something.
Speaker 3: And the idea that he left them hanging out to
Speaker 3: dry was was so on brand for Trump. You've got
Speaker 3: you know, Rudy shuffling around like selling cameo appearances now
Speaker 3: to try to cover his two million dollars of legal bills.
Speaker 3: Of course this is what was going to happen. And
Speaker 3: of course these little bitches are gonna flip. Do you
Speaker 3: think Kim Cheeseburrow could do a minute in the joint?
Speaker 3: That guy would be bait on the first day. He'd
Speaker 3: be in the infirmary the second he got there. These
Speaker 3: are not strong people. They are not tough people.
Speaker 2: Poor cheese brow. You've got Sydney Powell giving her.
Speaker 3: Appearing now at the Leopard Lounge at the time in
Speaker 3: the room, it's stay shady, Sydney Poll.
Speaker 4: One lap dance from her and your life will change.
Speaker 2: For Jesus Christ, you know she's seventy years old.
Speaker 4: Okay, she's sixty ye, I'm not agist.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, but she can drink her diet doctor peppers
Speaker 1: in freedom because she's not she's not.
Speaker 4: Working the pole, because easy, as.
Speaker 2: A feminist, I'm going to cut you off right there.
Speaker 2: She's not working the pole, and we're out.
Speaker 4: She's got legal bills today, we're out.
Speaker 1: So use let the record show I did not laugh
Speaker 1: at any joke I followed.
Speaker 2: She was working the pole.
Speaker 1: Dave Wigel is a political reporter at Semaphore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Dave, thank you going to be here.
Speaker 1: Great to have you so talk to us about a
Speaker 1: campaign filing.
Speaker 2: Finance Filing is FEC week. What did you.
Speaker 6: Learn, Well, it was kind of following a pattern we've
Speaker 6: seen all year. Just voters donators are not as engaged
Speaker 6: in this race, the race for president, the House races
Speaker 6: as they've been the last few cycles. I think that's
Speaker 6: still interesting and there's not a one unifying reason why.
Speaker 6: Because yes, there people have a little bit less disposable
Speaker 6: income than they did maybe ten years ago, but comparable
Speaker 6: to what they did four years ago. You have in
Speaker 6: the presidential race just Republicans who are not know from
Speaker 6: raising fairly little money, holding on to less than a
Speaker 6: lot of Democrats had this point four years ago. And
Speaker 6: in the House races, you have in the front line
Speaker 6: of the Republican conference, like the people who were the
Speaker 6: most jammed by what's happening right now with the speaker vote,
Speaker 6: you have those people raising pretty good money. They're not
Speaker 6: really being outraised, but nobody's having these blockbuster five million
Speaker 6: dollar quarters that we've used to see, except for Senate
Speaker 6: Democrats are doing quite well. I think maybe if there's
Speaker 6: one theme here, it's that this transition we've seen over
Speaker 6: the last few years of college educated voters who might
Speaker 6: have been Republican are not very engaged before Trump, They're
Speaker 6: very engaged. They're very amenable to throwing one hundred bucks
Speaker 6: to a Senate camp if they think that's the way
Speaker 6: to stop Donald Trump Mitch McConnel from taking over again.
Speaker 2: Is this just like.
Speaker 1: Pre election malaise or is this something larger.
Speaker 6: In in a Republican race. I think it is. Malay's absolutely
Speaker 6: Replican presidential race. Donald Trump is winning, has been winning.
Speaker 6: Nobody has has lit a fighter under small donors as
Speaker 6: an alternative Trump, nobody has his draw to your grassroots
Speaker 6: Republican donor. Those people really were willed into existence by
Speaker 6: Donald Trump, and not just his twenty sixteen campaign, but
Speaker 6: really twenty twenty. He was the best fundraiser in Republican history.
Speaker 6: He has raised money and this was note at the time,
Speaker 6: but then you confirmed it with the empty reports. You
Speaker 6: raised seventy million dollars in the days after his Georgia mugshot.
Speaker 6: Everything we've seen that seems to benefit Donald Trump with
Speaker 6: Republican primary voters shows up in these finance reports that
Speaker 6: it's the base that gives money. Dill sees this as
Speaker 6: Donald Trump primary to lose, that he was denied the
Speaker 6: presidency unfairly last time, and that anything that slows him
Speaker 6: down they need to come on and help them for
Speaker 6: with these other cadets. So Nicki Haley raised a bit
Speaker 6: more money, but it's comparable really to what Andrew Yang
Speaker 6: raised at this point four years ago. And I'm not
Speaker 6: trying to diminish Yang or diminish her, just this is
Speaker 6: a candid who's gotten a good amount of media attention,
Speaker 6: is getting the kind of crowds, and I've been in
Speaker 6: some where Republican voters who really don't want Trump back
Speaker 6: or excited about her. It's done her pretty well, but
Speaker 6: nothing like the Biden alternatives did four years ago.
Speaker 5: Same thing with DeSantis. I mean, DeSantis's numbers were much worse.
Speaker 6: The campaign tried to get ahead out of them and
Speaker 6: spend that he raised a record breaking some They really
Speaker 6: had to search around for a way to hype about
Speaker 6: a little bit less than twelve million dollars. Because he
Speaker 6: raised twenty million dollars his first his first weeks in
Speaker 6: the race. He clearly has been fading, the report suggests. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 6: he's fading. There's not a lot of vnors around the
Speaker 6: country who were so excited about him that they're kipping
Speaker 6: in to help him because they just think that this
Speaker 6: race is effectively decided already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting though he did raise a ton of money.
Speaker 1: This is common, you know, the excitement of the candidate
Speaker 1: doesn't match the candidate to actual you know, when you
Speaker 1: get them in the ring. But Nikki Haley sort of
Speaker 1: had the opposite. But it just was she just couldn't
Speaker 1: stand up against Trump.
Speaker 6: Yes, and she's not trying to so. Hailey, I think
Speaker 6: has run the sort of campaign that usually, if not
Speaker 6: prevails last she has run a very careful campaign. A
Speaker 6: few of her key issues. She has the foreign policy experience,
Speaker 6: for you, an ambassador that she leans on again not
Speaker 6: trying to be too negative. But that led to her
Speaker 6: last week saying that she was trying to worry the
Speaker 6: world about Hamasa's threat to Israel. And I saw her
Speaker 6: then said, I feel like a lot of people knew
Speaker 6: that Amas both the first Israel, but okay, we'll take it.
Speaker 6: She's not done a ton of media. That's risky.
Speaker 5: She's quite good at doing.
Speaker 6: Your Jake Tapper interview whatever, but she's not stuck her
Speaker 6: knock out as much. Her events have been pretty well controlled.
Speaker 6: She doesn't take questions from quarters after events, and she's
Speaker 6: impressed big donors who really frittered away the year thinking
Speaker 6: that Ron DeSantis rather was going to be the Trump alternative,
Speaker 6: and it isn't. I mean, one thing you saw at
Speaker 6: Santa's fundraising too, is that not just a gap in
Speaker 6: what he raised from quarter to quarter that he raised
Speaker 6: less money, but he had a ton of supporters in
Speaker 6: the first quarter in the second who maxed out and
Speaker 6: they're done and they can't give to him unless he
Speaker 6: makes it to the general election. He also has been
Speaker 6: and this is a common trick, they've been raising money
Speaker 6: for the general election, which you just have to even
Speaker 6: keep it if you don't make it there. But it's
Speaker 6: not you can't use it in the primary. And one
Speaker 6: thing we don't know yet because super PACs reporting on
Speaker 6: a different timeline, is he had through this transfer of
Speaker 6: wealth from his state pack to never back down the
Speaker 6: super Pac something that has been in the past illegal,
Speaker 6: but the FEC just doesn't care anymore. He had ondred
Speaker 6: million dollars in that pack that's been spent down to
Speaker 6: some extent.
Speaker 5: We don't know how much.
Speaker 1: One of the other things that was pretty amazing about
Speaker 1: DeSantis World was he spent an abnormal amount of money
Speaker 1: on private jets.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, that showed up again. He cut back a
Speaker 6: little bit. I mean he was wasting money. He also
Speaker 6: has been using and for them need to report this
Speaker 6: the same way being using state resources to travel. I
Speaker 6: mean you'll see his answer in the road and he'll
Speaker 6: have farda police ieu control something that his campaign I
Speaker 6: shouldn't say his campaign as governor, he signed a law
Speaker 6: protecting these records from Foyer. I mean, the only reason
Speaker 6: you can find out sometimes how much money was spent
Speaker 6: on his security paid for by taxpayers, is they'll get
Speaker 6: in a car crash and then we'll find out for
Speaker 6: the police who was with him. So he has been
Speaker 6: slightly more frugal. He's not been doing quite as many
Speaker 6: of these these flights. The problem is just the intake.
Speaker 6: He brought in less money than he needed. The lesson
Speaker 6: he was spending and none of the investments have paid off.
Speaker 6: So their campaign, Remember, has this bifurcated structure, that is
Speaker 6: the DeSantis campaign running his travel, the basics of what
Speaker 6: he needs to do to get around the country, not
Speaker 6: really any advertising. The field work, like the offices, the volunteers,
Speaker 6: people going door to door, that's all the super pack.
Speaker 6: He was wasting money with the confidence that the super
Speaker 6: Pac was going to be funding the ground game. It
Speaker 6: still is, but there are mixed results so far from
Speaker 6: that super Pac investment. Most notably they were organizing in Texas,
Speaker 6: which has a later primary, which won't matter unless he
Speaker 6: wins Iowa or comes close and they pull out of that.
Speaker 6: I mean, they were definitely blowing a lot of money
Speaker 6: on stuff that just didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super interesting, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the chances of someone not being Donald Trump as the
Speaker 1: Republican nominees seemed pretty low.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're not seeing interest from small donors in replacing him,
Speaker 6: and you're not seeing in polling or in excitement from
Speaker 6: voters local officials idea that he should be replaced. The
Speaker 6: premis for a lot of these donors, small and big.
Speaker 6: Was we need somebody more electable than Donald Trump. Two
Speaker 6: things that benefited Trump. One is that polling has shown
Speaker 6: he's doing fine. I mean, he's doing better than he
Speaker 6: did in head to head polling against Biden at this point,
Speaker 6: well not at this point, but in the general election
Speaker 6: twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Just is he winning.
Speaker 6: That's hard to say, but he was down sometimes double
Speaker 6: digits in swing state polls and then he did much
Speaker 6: better on election day. If you're a Republican voter, you
Speaker 6: look at the current polling and says, okay, Biden is
Speaker 6: tied with Trump. Biden is one point down on one
Speaker 6: point up. I'm not worried about Trump. Trump can beat him.
Speaker 6: You also have Ron de Santis for everything he's done
Speaker 6: in his campaign, becoming really unpopular, just scanning as a
Speaker 6: right wing guy and people don't want to who swing
Speaker 6: voters don't like, and he does worse. Mean, Dickie Hailey
Speaker 6: does a couple of points better, the Santa Suss a
Speaker 6: couple of points worse. If you're the kind of voter
Speaker 6: and donor who cares about that, it's just atch you're
Speaker 6: not in a panic to get rid of Trump. And
Speaker 6: this really mattered in twenty sixteen not enough to beat Trump,
Speaker 6: but polling was really divergent. Polling would find from losing
Speaker 6: states by six seven points that if you ask voters
Speaker 6: about a Rubio Hillary race or a Casic Hillary race,
Speaker 6: that they were winning and there's just not the gap.
Speaker 6: Now you have the entire Republican apparatus saying that Trump
Speaker 6: is innocent, and you have polling saying that Trump and win.
Speaker 5: So what's left if you want to beat the guy? Right?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 1: So pull this back from me for a second, try
Speaker 1: to like make it make sense.
Speaker 4: Does this mean.
Speaker 1: That Trump is powerful in the party but trump Ism
Speaker 1: is not? Does it not scale? Is that sort of
Speaker 1: what you extrapolate from this, or does it mean that
Speaker 1: it's just Trump just has such a hold that nothing
Speaker 1: else matters.
Speaker 2: I mean, is there more to pull from.
Speaker 6: This, depending on you to find Trump is. I think
Speaker 6: it suggests that it is locked into the party. Stepping
Speaker 6: away from the fundraising. The most interesting fight happening this
Speaker 6: week among the other candidates has been Rhonda Santis saying
Speaker 6: he won't take any refugees from Gaza. No aid to Gaza,
Speaker 6: no aid to the Palestinians. Two things about that One
Speaker 6: no one was suggesting it, so it's not actually happening.
Speaker 6: It's nothing to propose the refugee part of it. Two,
Speaker 6: everyone's agreed with him, and everyone has taken basically the
Speaker 6: position on both aid to Palestinians and on refugees that
Speaker 6: Donald Trump took in the twenty sixteen campaign. So the
Speaker 6: all parties moved along with him in significant ways. If
Speaker 6: you had this delinea the differences between Trump's alternatives and Trump,
Speaker 6: and you set aside electability, it's that Desantas says he
Speaker 6: can do what Trump promises, but more efficiently. It's that
Speaker 6: Haley would defend and continue to fund Ukraine's defense and
Speaker 6: Trump would not. You have every candidate saying they would
Speaker 6: cut spending all the Trump says that too, in same.
Speaker 5: Me he said at twenty sixteen. But there's not that
Speaker 5: many differences. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: Had this been a normal cycle and Desanta's not been
Speaker 1: a complete like you know, non end today when you
Speaker 1: got him on the stomp, he would have been the
Speaker 1: heir of trump Ism, and that has not happened. So
Speaker 1: has that not happened because trump Ism dies with Trump?
Speaker 1: Or has it not happened because DeSantis.
Speaker 6: Was just so bad at this It's really the existential
Speaker 6: question this race. Could someone have beaten Trump? Did desantisis
Speaker 6: do a poor job? I lean more toward Trump having
Speaker 6: such a hammer lock on Republican voters that no one
Speaker 6: was in a position to beat him. I do think
Speaker 6: the defining moment, rarely on was the first indictment, Alvin
Speaker 6: braggt indictment in New York. The response of every Republican
Speaker 6: candidate was to get ahead of it and condemned except
Speaker 6: Arissa Hutchinson, who is barely in the race, you know,
Speaker 6: locked out of the debates at this point, every other
Speaker 6: Republican condemned it. DeSantis actually, who wasn't running yet, offered
Speaker 6: him ambitsty in Florida Saint Jury and Florida, but he
Speaker 6: wouldn't extradite and be or can take this. And I
Speaker 6: think Trump, who has a just a better political radar
Speaker 6: than this, I think DeSantis has a better radar for
Speaker 6: what conservatives care about. Trump has a better political radar period.
Speaker 6: Trump plain and Trump started to benefit from from the
Speaker 6: idea that he was so powerful that he was being
Speaker 6: brought down legally. Because this is the meta argument about
Speaker 6: all these Trump indictments, is not even that he is
Speaker 6: innocent it's that he's innocent and the only way Democrats
Speaker 6: can beat him is by dragging him down with lawsuits.
Speaker 6: That's hard to unstick. Once you will become convinced that
Speaker 6: there's one candidate is being dragged down by the legal
Speaker 6: system because Democrats can't beat him fair and square, even
Speaker 6: though they did that three years ago. Once the other
Speaker 6: guy's argument, it's like, well, I can also win and
Speaker 6: nobody hates me as much as they hate Trump. Well,
Speaker 6: maybe they don't hate you because they think you're a loser.
Speaker 6: This is a thing that's haunted the Santis, especially those
Speaker 6: polls came out just Trump and Democrats are in harmony
Speaker 6: on DeSantis, or they just kind of make fun of
Speaker 6: him as this gormalous charismalists drip and how many times
Speaker 6: do we elect to a drip of no charisma?
Speaker 5: Not often. Maybe there's somebody in like the eighteen forties.
Speaker 5: I'm less familiar with it.
Speaker 6: Millard Shillmore not the most charismatic, although he went on
Speaker 6: is out good point, but that I think has overwhelmed
Speaker 6: it any other arguments they can make about it. So, yes,
Speaker 6: it didn't help that Dysantis was pretty bad at this.
Speaker 4: I mean the pulling.
Speaker 6: I would I would pay attention to public and private
Speaker 6: was favorability of Trump, which was very high, hiring these
Speaker 6: other candidates, which dipped a little after the midterms, came
Speaker 6: right back and confidence that his electability and that just
Speaker 6: that didn't change. So what was going to happen. Who
Speaker 6: was going to come in and change that dynamic? If
Speaker 6: there was a candidate who was leading Joe Biden by
Speaker 6: twenty points, could that change things? Perhaps none of them
Speaker 6: exists to know when that popular exists in American politics
Speaker 6: right now, So they never had that fight.
Speaker 1: So now we have Trump has all these court appearances.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's using these court appearances, I mean
Speaker 1: not all of them, but he's certainly taking questions and speechifying,
Speaker 1: right he is after.
Speaker 2: Each earing, So I don't know if he's taken questions,
Speaker 2: but he.
Speaker 5: Certainly says yeah.
Speaker 1: It's sort of interesting if you think about other politicians
Speaker 1: who are in legal jeopardy, like think about Menendez, right,
Speaker 1: there's no like, you know, grand standing afterwards. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is so it's a pretty counterintuitive thing to do.
Speaker 2: As a politician.
Speaker 1: Though as Trump, remember it doesn't matter, I mean counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: He just does whatever the fuck he wants. But do
Speaker 1: you think this works? I mean, do you think that
Speaker 1: this is sort of the you know, if you're Trump,
Speaker 1: you can just use this as a campaign rally.
Speaker 5: Yes, he has been doing that.
Speaker 6: You don't need to convince most Republican voters any further
Speaker 6: than what he did with was so objectionable. As the
Speaker 6: Republican voters are there several million people who used to
Speaker 6: be Republican who aren't anymore because of this stuff. There
Speaker 6: are they're just not voting in the primary. There's a
Speaker 6: very good piece by Natalie Allison and Lusa Koshinski in
Speaker 6: Politico this week that captured what a lot of us
Speaker 6: who are on the trail that's seen, which is that
Speaker 6: Trump does not have to campaign that much and his
Speaker 6: opponents are out hustling him by just by default. They're
Speaker 6: showing up more than he is because he's not showing
Speaker 6: up that much. But it's not like previous cycles were
Speaker 6: like a and I was there with Pete Buddah Judge,
Speaker 6: where Peja Jesu was just endlessly in Iowa, going to
Speaker 6: every town, doing every county.
Speaker 5: DeSantis has done some.
Speaker 6: Of that to Mitch results, but he's the only one
Speaker 6: I think by the end of this primary, DeSantis, maybe
Speaker 6: Mike Pence, because he's put everything into Iowa, that'll be
Speaker 6: the only guys who do the ninety nine county Iowa tour.
Speaker 6: But beyond that, they're just not spending as much time
Speaker 6: as previous candidates did there.
Speaker 5: So this flows from Trump. Trump does not need to
Speaker 5: be there.
Speaker 6: He can have a press conference that gets just as
Speaker 6: much attention outside of courtroom.
Speaker 5: What did you get that day?
Speaker 6: If you organized rallies, flew your candidate out there, took
Speaker 6: a bunch of hands, took a bunch of photos, you
Speaker 6: got some caucus sign ups. Incrementally you're adding to it,
Speaker 6: But what earned me did you get?
Speaker 5: Often? Zero off?
Speaker 6: You're not getting any media pickup. You know, thank you
Speaker 6: for everyone who reads me. He reads blow of reporters
Speaker 6: every day. But for the average, the average voter, it's
Speaker 6: very clear they're bringing little attention to what these candidates
Speaker 6: are doing. And stepping back from all this, the thought
Speaker 6: a lot of these guys had is, well, one question
Speaker 6: you get asked is why are these guys run against Trump?
Speaker 5: How can they win?
Speaker 6: The answer that the campaigns would kind of say quietly
Speaker 6: but not broadcast, was well, we don't know what's going
Speaker 6: to happen if he's indicted, and if it looks if
Speaker 6: Republican voters look at this guy and think he's going
Speaker 6: to jail, will they be more up in minded the
Speaker 6: answer has been, or they won't. They will stick more
Speaker 6: to him more closely. So what's left? And once people
Speaker 6: tell you what their silver bullet is and then the
Speaker 6: silver bullet just pumps and flattens on the wall. Okay,
Speaker 6: what do you have left? Like, what is the next
Speaker 6: plan for beating this guy? They don't have a convincing one,
Speaker 6: And I think you're still worth covering because the way
Speaker 6: that they're running their campaigns. But nobody has figured out
Speaker 6: a way to beat him. Nobody has figured out a
Speaker 6: way to excite small donors, which was something that Bernie
Speaker 6: Sanders could do previously, andre Yanne could do.
Speaker 5: They're not doing it.
Speaker 6: Nikki Haley and Rod DeSantis raised more than your average
Speaker 6: senate candidate does, and that's it.
Speaker 5: The other candidates.
Speaker 6: Really, we're kind of up there with the guy running
Speaker 6: for Senate Montana and how much the money they're raising.
Speaker 6: They have just not lit Republicans on fire around the country.
Speaker 1: It's just such a crazy situation two seconds on RFK Junior.
Speaker 2: RFK Junior was thought to be.
Speaker 1: The sort of magic bullet against Biden and supported by
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, and now it's possible that he may actually
Speaker 1: be the magic bullet against Trump.
Speaker 2: Can you explain if.
Speaker 6: You look at who's funded his campaign, especially his super pac,
Speaker 6: which is again doesn't have to report for a little while.
Speaker 5: We're going to know more about the super back in January.
Speaker 2: Frankly right, But there's a Harlan Crowe connection.
Speaker 6: Yes, well around crow is a Cornell West. But when
Speaker 6: Kennedy got into the race, I think there are people
Speaker 6: who sincerely agree with him, and there are a lot
Speaker 6: of people who's cynically and Steve and I think both
Speaker 6: agree with him and cynically wanted to use him for
Speaker 6: this thought. This will be a problem for Joe Biden
Speaker 6: because he could lose these first two primary estates Iowa
Speaker 6: and New Hampshire. They're going to hold contests. He won't
Speaker 6: be on the ballot. It would be embarrassing to him
Speaker 6: if Kennedy pulls this. For a number of reasons, Kennedy
Speaker 6: and his campaign convince themselves that they were not dealing
Speaker 6: ground because the primary was rigged. They had this gambit,
Speaker 6: they left the party, and that was just less knowable.
Speaker 6: A gadfly primary opponent making forcing Biden to embarrass himself
Speaker 6: in an early state was one thing Independent Canada as
Speaker 6: an X factor and in polling. It's so I've seen
Speaker 6: all sorts of pulling on this. I've seen nothing that
Speaker 6: says that Kennedy disproportionately pulls from Biden. I have seen
Speaker 6: stuff that says it's about even and stuff that he
Speaker 6: pulls disproportionately from Trumps. He's very attractive relatively to voters
Speaker 6: under thirty five, who by every measure, just don't like politics,
Speaker 6: don't trust politicians. That is a cohort that was more
Speaker 6: interested voting for Trump or Martinkey voted for Kennedy down.
Speaker 5: So you've seen in the last week it's not definitive.
Speaker 6: Last two weeks since he announced, Kennedy did one Fox
Speaker 6: and for his interview, and he had a very hostile
Speaker 6: Sean Handy interview, and he kind of disappeared from conservative media.
Speaker 6: He has not had the same pickup in conservative media
Speaker 6: that he used to. I think there's several reasons for that,
Speaker 6: but it's also if it was just a news value
Speaker 6: news judgment thing.
Speaker 5: Kennedy is very pro Israel.
Speaker 6: Kennedy could be your guest attacking the left for not
Speaker 6: being part of enough of Israel's government. He's not, He's
Speaker 6: just fallen off the map a little bit. I think
Speaker 6: that is to tell that conservatives say this X factor
Speaker 6: at the moment is not helpful because Trump could win
Speaker 6: one on one against Biden.
Speaker 5: What is the point of throwing uncertainty into this mix?
Speaker 1: So interesting? Thank you so much, Dave. Really super fascinating.
Speaker 5: Oh it was awesome. Thank you for talking with me.
Speaker 1: Nick Corusantini covers domestic politics.
Speaker 2: For The New York Times. Welcome too Fast.
Speaker 1: Politics, Nick, Thanks for having me. So you wrote this
Speaker 1: piece about Mississippi. It's funny because as the first person
Speaker 1: to talk to us about Mississippi was James Carmel, who said,
Speaker 1: you know, don't sleep on Mississippi. This was maybe six
Speaker 1: months ago. So when I saw your ps, he didn't
Speaker 1: explain to me the very interesting underlying state legislatives struggle
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: Going on behind the scenes. And I read your piece
Speaker 2: and I still don't.
Speaker 1: Completely understand the interesting legislative struggles that are going on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes in Mississippi. So can you explain to
Speaker 1: us what is going on in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, we'll take a step back, We'll go all the
Speaker 6: way to eighteen ninety. So in eighteen ninety, at a
Speaker 6: constitutional convention by Mississippi Jim Crow era law was created
Speaker 6: literally with the phrase to secure the state of Mississippi
Speaker 6: white supremacy. And what they did, wow, was for any
Speaker 6: statewide elected official at the state level, so that's your
Speaker 6: governors and your attorney's general, you had to not only
Speaker 6: win the popular vote, but you had to win the
Speaker 6: majority of the vote in the one hundred and twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two state legislative districts for the state House. So
Speaker 6: it's basically an electoral college built for state elections within Mississippi. Now,
Speaker 6: the way that racial shorting has happened in Mississippi is,
Speaker 6: you know, black populations were much more densely populated into
Speaker 6: single districts. So by creating this electoral college aesque system,
Speaker 6: it drastically weakened the power of black voters in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: Now that law was on the books until twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: So this is going to be the first governor's race
Speaker 6: in Mississippi history where that law will no longer be
Speaker 6: on the books, so it's just a normal popular vote
Speaker 6: election in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: So how did that law affect elections?
Speaker 6: So it's kind of tough to say, just due to
Speaker 6: you know, kind of how a Mississippi is a deeply
Speaker 6: read state. B you don't really know the kind of
Speaker 6: psychological impact that has over decades on certain communities where
Speaker 6: you feel like you're putting in all the effort to
Speaker 6: turn out the vote, your community comes out to vote
Speaker 6: and you're still getting be by fifteen to twenty percent.
Speaker 6: So it's kind of hard to say. There have been
Speaker 6: close elections. You know, Jim Hood only lost by I
Speaker 6: think it was like six percent. He was a Democratic
Speaker 6: nominee a few years ago. So there have been close
Speaker 6: elections for governor and Mississippi recently, but it's tough to
Speaker 6: tell exactly how that has come into play, you down
Speaker 6: to say like a precinct or district or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Right, So this will be the first election without that exactly.
Speaker 5: And this is a very interesting election.
Speaker 6: We have a uniquely unpopular Republican incumbent in Tate Reed, Yes,
Speaker 6: who's been plagued vice scandals.
Speaker 1: I know there have been a lot of Tate reed scandals,
Speaker 1: but give us the TLDR on like your favor two.
Speaker 1: I know you're not on the opinion side. So two
Speaker 1: of them that you know of.
Speaker 6: One involves this kind of spiraling scandal with Brett farb
Speaker 6: the former NFL quarterback, and basically taking money from welfare
Speaker 6: institutions and other kind of social safety at things within
Speaker 6: Mississippi and giving it to a pet project of Brett
Speaker 6: Farven his wife. Not one hundred percent positive on the
Speaker 6: specifics of what it went to. I've heard it was
Speaker 6: a volleyball court, or it was some sports or athletic facility,
Speaker 6: but basically it was taking from Mississippi's very strapped welfare
Speaker 6: apparatus and moving it to places that wasn't necessary.
Speaker 2: It was like crony capitalism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: And so you layer in a you know, famous face
Speaker 6: who you know, got a lot of media attention brought
Speaker 6: on ESPN and everything to cover the Brett fav angle.
Speaker 6: So this scandal's very well known. When you couple that
Speaker 6: with a very very unpopular policy stance Tate Reeves has taken,
Speaker 6: which is against medicaid expansion kind of solely on his
Speaker 6: you know, personal political beliefs that it's the wrong policy.
Speaker 6: This is exceptionally popular in poorer states, especially in Mississippi.
Speaker 6: It polls at like seventy five twenty five that was
Speaker 6: in favor of expansion. So he's already angered a lot
Speaker 6: of voters on that policy. And then you bring in
Speaker 6: this scandal, which is one of a few that have
Speaker 6: kind of, you know, really tarnished his first few years here,
Speaker 6: and you have a uniquely unpopular incumbent that, despite this
Speaker 6: being a deeply read state, you know, could be in trouble.
Speaker 6: Then as a challenger emerges, it's Brandon Presley, who's from
Speaker 6: the northeastern part of the state, which used to be
Speaker 6: a kind of traditional moderate Democrat stronghold that's solely eroded
Speaker 6: as the state's scotten better. So he's an interesting Democrat
Speaker 6: from that area. And he's also Elvis Presley's second cousin,
Speaker 6: so instantly there's some name identification.
Speaker 2: He's a big celebrity, but.
Speaker 6: He's an experienced politician. You know, he's been running for
Speaker 6: the Public Service Commission and serving on it for years.
Speaker 6: He's not necessarily raw by any means. He's a build
Speaker 6: on the stump, knows how to campaign, so Reeves drew
Speaker 6: a pretty tough challenger at a point where he's at,
Speaker 6: you know, maybe his most vulnerable politically. And then layered
Speaker 6: on top of that are these changes in how the
Speaker 6: state elects its governor. In a state with the biggest
Speaker 6: black voting age population in the entire country, it's about
Speaker 6: forty percent of the state, you know, that could be
Speaker 6: newly energized or at least feel you know, a little
Speaker 6: bit more free, and then the vote has more power
Speaker 6: than it used to with these new rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is technically right, So white non Hispanics in
Speaker 1: Mississippi are about fifty six percent of the state, right,
Speaker 1: so it really is a state where the black vote
Speaker 1: can actually, if enfranchised, if able to vote, can really
Speaker 1: decide their representation. And to think about the people that
Speaker 1: these Southern states have sent to the Senate and to Congress,
Speaker 1: they have not been people who really were standing up
Speaker 1: for black voters.
Speaker 6: No at allowed part that's also just due to the
Speaker 6: extreme dreamandering in a lot of these Southern states, right
Speaker 6: like the only Mississippi, despite having such a large black
Speaker 6: lining age population, only has one black representative in Benny Thompson,
Speaker 6: who also came out very early, which can done recently
Speaker 6: and endorsed Presley like Bright when his campaign was starting.
Speaker 6: But there is an interesting thing that Charles Taylor, who's
Speaker 6: the director of the local chapter of the end of
Speaker 6: ACP in Mississippi, told me, which is that despite at
Speaker 6: the state level and congressional level not having significant representation
Speaker 6: in terms of black elected officials, Mississippi actually has a
Speaker 6: very high number, if not the highest number of total
Speaker 6: black elected officials in the country. And that includes you know,
Speaker 6: town councils, school boards, district attorneys, a lot of local races.
Speaker 6: There is actually a lot of black elected officials in
Speaker 6: those positions in Mississippi. Charles said that it was about
Speaker 6: twelve to fifteen percent of the national number of black
Speaker 6: elected officials come from Mississippi, which is just one percent
Speaker 6: of the national population. So there is this, you know,
Speaker 6: pretty significant number of local black elected officials that I
Speaker 6: think people like Charles Taylor and then some Democrats are
Speaker 6: also hoping, you know, it's a sign that there is
Speaker 6: this strength there. And when you remove the Jim Crow
Speaker 6: era burdens of this fall electoral college thing, you might
Speaker 6: actually be surprised by how the how the vote turns out.
Speaker 1: It's so strange because it's like, if you think about
Speaker 1: how these black voters have really had their vote stolen
Speaker 1: from them for such a long time. So what we're
Speaker 1: seeing in Virginia as a certain amount of like hanky
Speaker 1: panky with the voter rolls not completely.
Speaker 2: To be shocked by.
Speaker 1: I guess there is a real anxiety at least on
Speaker 1: my part. These Republicans tend to really fight anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have Republican state parties in Alabama fighting the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, these people do not go quietly.
Speaker 1: So is there some worry on the state level that
Speaker 1: maybe Tate Reeves will do whatever is necessary to stay
Speaker 1: in office.
Speaker 6: I haven't heard any kind of January sixth level fears that,
Speaker 6: so I would just say I didn't lose and you know,
Speaker 6: refuse to leave. But to your point about, you know,
Speaker 6: consistently fighting voting access, there has been a pretty significant
Speaker 6: change that's put a significant amount of black voters kind
Speaker 6: of in limbo right now. And that's a few years ago.
Speaker 6: Mississippi had, back to that eighteen ninety convention, one of
Speaker 6: the most strident bands of formally convicted felons regaining their rights.
Speaker 6: They were automatically lost their rights for life, and so
Speaker 6: that was overturned by the Fifth Circuit, and so that
Speaker 6: would have given about one in six black adults in Mississippi.
Speaker 5: They're voting rights back.
Speaker 6: Now Mississippi instantly appealed, sued, and the initial decision was vacated,
Speaker 6: and now it's on appeal.
Speaker 5: So it's completely hung up in limbo.
Speaker 6: A lot of voting rights groups and black leaders in
Speaker 6: the state, you know, are kind of not sure exactly
Speaker 6: what voters should do. So their guidance has just been like,
Speaker 6: you know, don't test the system, don't go get arrested.
Speaker 6: So that's certainly something that could have a chilling effect.
Speaker 6: We haven't seen any evidence of the kind of more
Speaker 6: recent playbook of conservative groups looking under the banner of
Speaker 6: election integrity for fraud or things like that yet, but
Speaker 6: that doesn't mean it's not happening.
Speaker 5: I just you know, haven't personally seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just very complicated and all these state
Speaker 1: laws are different depending on the state. The phenomenon that
Speaker 1: I think is pretty interesting that I'm always sort of
Speaker 1: struck by is there are a lot of these red
Speaker 1: states that end.
Speaker 2: Up electing blue governors.
Speaker 1: Right, we just had someone on talking about how unfortunately
Speaker 1: John Bell Edwards was term limit but this is actually
Speaker 1: kind of not a completely unusual phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Will you talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's numerous examples of this kind of you know,
Speaker 6: across the South. Right now, you have Andy Basheer, who's
Speaker 6: up for re election in Kentucky, that's as deep a
Speaker 6: red state as you can get. You have a democratic
Speaker 6: governor in charge. Their same holds true in Kansas, one
Speaker 6: of the red estates that there's a democratic governor there,
Speaker 6: And it varies, as you were saying earlier, on the
Speaker 6: state by state basis as to the reason. I think
Speaker 6: one of the reasons that John Bell Edwards was able
Speaker 6: to remain so popular was he was a Democrat, but
Speaker 6: he was also very pro gun, pro Second Amendment, you know,
Speaker 6: fought any attempts to restrict it. What sets Brandon Pressley
Speaker 6: apart right now for national Democrats is he's pro life
Speaker 6: and is in favor I guess of the state's current
Speaker 6: you know, abortion laws. So a lot of these blue governors,
Speaker 6: you know, have found tailored messages different from national Democratic platforms,
Speaker 6: that appeal to the voters in their state. And then
Speaker 6: it often comes down to more pragmatic local issues, and
Speaker 6: I think the biggest one in Mississippi right now is
Speaker 6: what we're just talking about with Medicaid expansion. The biggest
Speaker 6: concern amongst all voters is Medicaid expansion, and among so
Speaker 6: many black voters in the rural South is rural hospital access.
Speaker 6: So if you have a governor who's not talking about
Speaker 6: that and not necessarily doing as much at least service
Speaker 6: level that they can see to address it, and you
Speaker 6: have this candidate who's coming on and saying I will
Speaker 6: bring back you know, two one hundred and fifty million instantly,
Speaker 6: we can address the royal hospital crisis. I'm going to
Speaker 6: keep asking for more. The parties start to fade away
Speaker 6: and the instant needs of a state or of a
Speaker 6: voter takeover. And you've seen that, and you know select states.
Speaker 6: There also has been you know, somewhat of a democratic
Speaker 6: resurgence across the South. You know, Georgia, I think is
Speaker 6: the is the first and most specific example, but there
Speaker 6: have been small gains felt I think kind of across
Speaker 6: the South. You know, a lot of leaders in Mississippi
Speaker 6: don't feel like they're nearly at Georgia's level. Right, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of other things beyond just simply getting a
Speaker 6: black voting its population engaged. You had a bunch of wealthier,
Speaker 6: college educated white people voting moving into Atlanta and Georgia,
Speaker 6: some crossover libertarian votes, things like that that haven't happened
Speaker 6: in Mississippi. But they still feel like it's the long path, right,
Speaker 6: and so this could be the start of that, or
Speaker 6: they feel like they could be Georgia, you know, ten
Speaker 6: years from now, that kind of.
Speaker 2: Thing, right.
Speaker 1: I have to say, like, I was completely shocked that
Speaker 1: Georgia went before North Carolina, where North Carolina seemed like
Speaker 1: it would be quicker, kind of bluining. So I just
Speaker 1: want to ask you, sort of for our listeners, what
Speaker 1: does it sound like sort of your takeaway is from
Speaker 1: the story in Mississippi? I mean, what would need to
Speaker 1: happen for Presley to become governor?
Speaker 6: So Pressley as he campaigns, he talks about this broad
Speaker 6: coalition of black Minsipiens, White Misissippians, Republicans, Democrats, independence, everyone,
Speaker 6: and for him to win, he does truly need to
Speaker 6: build that coalition. As we said earlier, it's a state
Speaker 6: with the highest black voting edge population, but that's still
Speaker 6: not a majority by any means, So he'll need to
Speaker 6: pull away some moderate Republicans, some independence, maybe trying to
Speaker 6: rebuild those northeast part of the state Democrats, and build
Speaker 6: this coalition.
Speaker 5: To be Tate Reeves.
Speaker 6: And it seems like, you know, the way he does
Speaker 6: that is focusing on an issue that is so sailing
Speaker 6: among the voters.
Speaker 5: Have to keep coming back to it. But it's that
Speaker 5: medicaid expansion.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 6: If he were to have a chance, it would mean
Speaker 6: that he really connected on that issue and was able
Speaker 6: to kind of build this coalition that's necessary to win there,
Speaker 6: because while Georgia might seem purely purple, Mississippi is still
Speaker 6: purely red. So it would have to be an upset
Speaker 6: where you do build a surprising keep using the word coalition,
Speaker 6: but you do build as a coalition of voters that
Speaker 6: will include, in fact, some Republicans who are just either
Speaker 6: furious about the scandals, furious about medicaid, or some other issue.
Speaker 1: Nick, thank you so much for joining us. Super interesting.
Speaker 1: We will be watching Mississippi.
Speaker 6: Thanks for remy a moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: My great moment of fuckery this week.
Speaker 3: Ah yes, my moment of fuckery is Dean fucking Phillips.
Speaker 3: Dean Phillips is a suicide bomber who is going to
Speaker 3: primary President Joseph Robinette Biden. He is the Pat Buchanan
Speaker 3: of this cycle. Anybody that would advise him to get
Speaker 3: into this race is the same kind of person that
Speaker 3: would have selected Sarah Palin as a vice president.
Speaker 2: Wait, who could you mean?
Speaker 3: I'm not saying a damn thing right now, but I
Speaker 3: will soon. This is a spectacularly moronic, amoral, stupid, politically corrosive,
Speaker 3: and harmful decision by a bunch of people who are
Speaker 3: sniffing Dean Phillips asks for money. Because certain consultants in
Speaker 3: the world have a gift for whiffing around the backsides
Speaker 3: of candidates who have a lot of money and giant egos,
Speaker 3: and Dean Phillips has both. They're going to put this
Speaker 3: guy in the race. They're going to try to make
Speaker 3: him into a New Hampshire story. And so he got
Speaker 3: twenty four percent or whatever it turns out to be
Speaker 3: in New Hampshire, it means Biden should step down.
Speaker 4: It ain't gonna happen. People.
Speaker 3: Dean Phillips is Look, they failed to get JFK Junior
Speaker 3: and the Democratic ticket and this is their.
Speaker 4: Next This is the dollar store. Excuse me.
Speaker 3: JFK Junior is, of course very busy right now, secretly
Speaker 3: run in the country.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: I'm working with the military. Of course, he is RFK Junior.
Speaker 3: But this is like the dollar store RFK Junior.
Speaker 2: RFK Junior without the steroids, r f.
Speaker 4: K Junior without the without the dulcet tones and the HGH. Right.
Speaker 3: But this guy is he's my moment of fuckery this week.
Speaker 3: There's a bunch of stories that are broken now about
Speaker 3: the people around him. I'm going the same about it
Speaker 3: as it develops. But i will tell you one thing.
Speaker 3: This guy can do nothing but hurt Joe Biden. All
Speaker 3: he's gonna do is get the Republicans talking points and
Speaker 3: say see even Democrat Dean Phillips says that Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: too old to be president, because that's their whole strategy.
Speaker 3: By the way, they're gonna say, Joe Biden's a nice
Speaker 3: old man, but he needs a gold watch and a
Speaker 3: retirement plan, and we're going to be the young, vital
Speaker 3: voice of America. Let me tell you some this guy
Speaker 3: when it's over. I promise you this, personally and politically,
Speaker 3: this guy he's going to want to be in the
Speaker 3: witness protection program with when people are done with him,
Speaker 3: because it is deeply, deeply destructive. The only thing that's
Speaker 3: going to lead to is Pat Buchanan style division inside
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party, and they know it.
Speaker 1: But who even is a Dean Phillips candidacy for besides
Speaker 1: someone who needs to buy a boat?
Speaker 2: Who picks Sarah Palin.
Speaker 3: Well, he's a green room candidate and people in the
Speaker 3: media world will love to book him because it's like
Speaker 3: more red meat and more more spectacle. But he has
Speaker 3: no predicate for running other than the fact that he's
Speaker 3: not eighty years old. That's his entire argument for election.
Speaker 3: I'm not eighty. This is a backbencher. He's never set
Speaker 3: the world on fire in any way politically or in
Speaker 3: terms of ideas. I don't think he particularly has any
Speaker 3: ideas other than his name is Dean Phillips, and he's
Speaker 3: very wealthy and he wants to run for office.
Speaker 1: But he does love ice cream, and the ven diagram
Speaker 1: of Democrats who love ice cream who don't love Joe
Speaker 1: Biden is very small, and so for that Dean Phillips
Speaker 1: is our moment of fuckeray. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Speaker 1: to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.