Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie 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 Sidney Powell has pled guilty for
Speaker 1: her efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election, but not
Speaker 1: her leopard print card. Again, I'm sorry. Trying to overturn
Speaker 1: elections as serious business, having bad taste is just a
Speaker 1: little levity. We have a really interesting show today. Israeli
Speaker 1: journalist Noga Tarnoposki joins us on the ground reporting from Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to former Louisiana State University Chair of
Speaker 1: Journalism Robert Mann about his classes with the newly elected
Speaker 1: governor Jeff Landry. But first we have the author of
Speaker 1: Lucky How Joe Biden barely won the presidency, NBC's John Allen.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics. My close personal friend who hopefully
Speaker 1: going to see next week.
Speaker 2: John Allen, Molly, John Guss. I hope that we see
Speaker 2: each other next week. I hope that we see each
Speaker 2: other every day. But for now, talking on I guess
Speaker 2: we'll have to do.
Speaker 1: Oh so sweet. This is Thursday, this episode where Friday.
Speaker 1: It was Wednesday for a year. But I'm happy to
Speaker 1: report that it is no longer Wednesday. I was actually
Speaker 1: reading this on the site formerly known as Twitter. There's
Speaker 1: so much pushback about Biden being old. You know, he's old.
Speaker 3: He's old. He's old.
Speaker 1: This is his second war zone visit. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: zipping around a lot for an old guy.
Speaker 2: It's a very different war zone than some of the
Speaker 2: other war zones the presidents have visited in the recent past.
Speaker 3: Right, he also went to Kiev, correct, And like.
Speaker 2: So Kiev when he went to Kiev was like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's pretty distant from the front line at that point.
Speaker 2: I mean, pretty much everywhere in Israel is close to
Speaker 2: the front lines. Compared to or say, like you know,
Speaker 2: when presidents have visited troops in Afghanistan over the course
Speaker 2: of that twenty year war. There's considerably more physical certainty
Speaker 2: of safety.
Speaker 3: Right in Israel than there is in well.
Speaker 2: I mean in Israel, there's everything's close to the front lines,
Speaker 2: and you know there obviously hasn't been enough time to
Speaker 2: establish certainty about security. I mean obviously enough to be
Speaker 2: able to get him in there.
Speaker 3: But I mean, I want you to give Biden credit
Speaker 3: here for a minute.
Speaker 1: I love you on your straight reporter, and that was
Speaker 1: a good straight reporter answer.
Speaker 3: But it is true. I mean, he went to Israel. Again.
Speaker 1: We can discuss the merits of that, but he went
Speaker 1: and he went to Kiev. Those are not such easy trips.
Speaker 1: If you compare him to his predecessor, Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 1: perhaps you remember him, Trump went to nowhere and then
Speaker 1: finally they got him to visit the troops once.
Speaker 4: But he did do that.
Speaker 2: And you know, that's not a huge validation of Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's desire to go into war zones. I don't think
Speaker 2: he had his desire to go in the war zones.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that any president has any big desire
Speaker 2: to go into war zones. Maybe some have. But I
Speaker 2: think what's really remarkable about the trip. One of the
Speaker 2: things is really remarkable about it is.
Speaker 3: How fast it happened, right right.
Speaker 2: It's announced on Monday, and then Biden's on a plane
Speaker 2: on Tuesday, and then he's in Israel speaking on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Presidential schedules are usually worked out and you know, long,
Speaker 2: long in advance, and it's remarkable for a variety of
Speaker 2: reasons that he jumped on a plane and went to
Speaker 2: go meet with then Yahoo. That's not normal, and I
Speaker 2: think it's to America's desire or the you know, the
Speaker 2: administration's desire, the administration representing the country to keep a
Speaker 2: lid on the Middle East right now and to get
Speaker 2: Israel to show more restraint in its counter offensive than
Speaker 2: Israeli leaders might like.
Speaker 4: What that did was buy.
Speaker 3: Some time, right, It slowed everything down.
Speaker 1: Right Now, we're a country that is evolved in Ukraine, right,
Speaker 1: and then we're also you know, we sent these three
Speaker 1: tankers to be outside the Middle East. I mean, is
Speaker 1: the goal here just to sort of throw anything America
Speaker 1: can at the wall to prevent war?
Speaker 4: So first of all, there is a war right going on.
Speaker 3: But to try to keep it from getting worse.
Speaker 2: Yes, it appears that the American goal. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's sort of it's multi tiered. But basically the goal
Speaker 2: is to try to give Israel the room to destroy Hamas,
Speaker 2: but without working a larger conflict in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: without drawing in the governments or populations of surrounding countries.
Speaker 2: And in order to do that, the US has to
Speaker 2: convince Israel to exercise that restraint I was talking about,
Speaker 2: and also convince Arab country the leadership and the population
Speaker 2: that Israel is doing that, which is deeply complicated by
Speaker 2: the fog of war, and as we saw with the
Speaker 2: explosion at the hospital earlier this week, so much information
Speaker 2: and disinformation and misinformation spreads quickly, and even in the
Speaker 2: best case scenarios, even when there are people who are
Speaker 2: sharing information or what they believe to be information in
Speaker 2: real time, all of that is complicated. Of everybody in
Speaker 2: that region is at extraordinarily high level of tension. It's
Speaker 2: the world's all this tinder box, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of people standing there with matches and the US is
Speaker 2: trying to blow them out.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's been really interesting is that
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan has used all of Trump's tactics to try
Speaker 1: to become speaker, and they haven't really worked.
Speaker 2: I mean, in some cases it appears to be backfiring.
Speaker 2: There's a member of Congress Don Bacon. Can we talk
Speaker 2: about Don Bacon's wife, right? Don Bacon's wife was being
Speaker 2: harassed by text She was pissed, Yeah, she was pissed.
Speaker 2: And also Mary net Miller Meeks from Iowa was, you know,
Speaker 2: getting threats. Apparently that's not working, right, it's not making
Speaker 2: them want to vote for Jim Jordan.
Speaker 4: The idea that you're going to you know.
Speaker 2: That you're going to scare people into voting for him,
Speaker 2: you know, with intimidation and harassment.
Speaker 4: I mean, maybe it works with a few of them,
Speaker 4: but it obviously has backfired with others. That Bacon's a general.
Speaker 1: Yeah, explain to us a little bit about Don Bacon.
Speaker 1: This is what I think is interesting and what we're
Speaker 1: seeing in Congress right now. And again, this is Thursday.
Speaker 1: You know, there may be one hundred votes by f
Speaker 1: and Jim Jordan maybe Speaker of the House, though it's
Speaker 1: looking less and less likely.
Speaker 3: One of the things that.
Speaker 1: I was certainly struck by was these are all the
Speaker 1: tactics of trump Ism, right. You got Sean Hannity out
Speaker 1: there publishing members of Congress's phone number. You've got Don
Speaker 1: Bacon's wife getting text messages like if you went back,
Speaker 1: if you were to rewind the tape to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: This worked incredibly well on members of the Senate when
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was running, you know, you had he was
Speaker 1: able to take down party chairs this way. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: is it just that trump Ism doesn't scale? Is it
Speaker 1: just that Jim Jordan pretending to be Trump doesn't work
Speaker 1: for Jim Jordan, Or is it that Trump has diminished
Speaker 1: power in the party.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe all of the above, and then also
Speaker 2: at some level like so Number one, Jim Jordan definitely
Speaker 2: is not Donald Trump does not have that cloud ever.
Speaker 2: A Number two, I think that Trump does have diminished
Speaker 2: power within the party from where he was when he
Speaker 2: was president. I mean, he is running away with the
Speaker 2: Republican nomination right now, and at the same time, you know,
Speaker 2: a lower share of the Republican Party approves of him
Speaker 2: than did when he was president of the United States.
Speaker 2: I also think that these tactics are reflective of people
Speaker 2: in Trump world who aren't Donald Trump that kind of
Speaker 2: predated him, Like he hired a lot of people that
Speaker 2: did this kind of work on Capitol Hill and other places.
Speaker 2: So I think it's also important to remember the individuals
Speaker 2: like you talk about Don Bacon. He's a retired Air
Speaker 2: Force general, Brigadier general in the Air Force. He comes
Speaker 2: from a district that is politically swinging, and it is
Speaker 2: politically swinging not only at the congressional level, but that
Speaker 2: district because of an anomaly with how Nebraska does it.
Speaker 2: It's electoral votes is also swinging in presidential elections. He
Speaker 2: has a different calculation than many other Republicans just on
Speaker 2: the pure political level. And also he's a general who
Speaker 2: is being threatened by Jim Jordan's more right, It's just.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, Jim Jordan was, you know, a college wrestler,
Speaker 2: but that's not you know, that doesn't outrank the guy
Speaker 2: that survived in the military to get to the point
Speaker 2: of being a general. And by that, I mean, if
Speaker 2: you're a general, you're probably pretty good at internal politics.
Speaker 1: You do see though, like Sean hanned Ay, Tucker Carls
Speaker 1: and all the regular crew, Benny Johnson in Wokeness.
Speaker 3: You know, these sort of people who.
Speaker 1: Are real and imagined and hopefully more imagined than real.
Speaker 1: They have really like like doubled down on trying to
Speaker 1: bully these people, but it's not really working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it worked at some of them.
Speaker 2: You saw some flips into Jordan's direction over the weekend,
Speaker 2: and I think that was kind of the high water
Speaker 2: markt Well, see how it ends up. But I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of more globally, what you've got is
Speaker 2: this fight within the Republican Conference and the moderates or
Speaker 2: the normans or everyone want to call them, see right
Speaker 2: now like an existential threat to their influence within the party,
Speaker 2: and this is just sort of another thing that puts
Speaker 2: them that position of not being able to like kind
Speaker 2: of get things done within the party and to get
Speaker 2: done within Congress.
Speaker 3: Is that really what it is? Though?
Speaker 1: You really think that the moderates are seeing trump Ism
Speaker 1: as something that's preventing them from getting things done, or
Speaker 1: do you think that the moderates are finally like, and again,
Speaker 1: the moderates, a lot of these people are not really moderates,
Speaker 1: but they're not as demented. Do you think that it's
Speaker 1: really that these people are like, you know, actually we
Speaker 1: should fund the federal government and maybe we can get rid.
Speaker 3: Of trump Ism.
Speaker 1: Like, don't you think it might be that there are
Speaker 1: cracks in the ceiling here.
Speaker 2: Maybe some cracks in the ceiling, But these are people
Speaker 2: who do want to get things done, like the people
Speaker 2: that are fighting against the people that are fighting against
Speaker 2: the sort of Matt Gate's minority rule revolution in the House.
Speaker 4: Right, are people who want to continue funding.
Speaker 3: The government, right, They're not nihilists, correct.
Speaker 2: You know, arguably what we've seen is that there is
Speaker 2: an ability for a small handful of extremists within the
Speaker 2: Republican Conference to wag the dog because of their tactics,
Speaker 2: because of their extremism, because they would argue, and I
Speaker 2: think this is right in some cases, the constituents of
Speaker 2: the districts of some of the Republicans who are who
Speaker 2: are get stuffed done are not as interested in getting
Speaker 2: the things done as their members of Congress are. So
Speaker 2: all of this gets to this kind of broader battle.
Speaker 2: And if Jim Jordan is empowered or somebody like Jim
Speaker 2: Jordan is empowered effectively by mac Yates, that makes the
Speaker 2: side that is, you know, the sort of revolutionaries, much
Speaker 2: stronger than they have been in the past.
Speaker 4: The Trump side of the party stronger than it has
Speaker 4: been in the past.
Speaker 2: Right, you get all that more power to continue doing
Speaker 2: the kinds of things that Jim Jordan and his allies
Speaker 2: have been doing over the course of the last several days.
Speaker 3: It gives them more power, wouldn't it give them less power?
Speaker 2: If Jim Jordan becomes speaker, the Trump wing of the
Speaker 2: party is empowered.
Speaker 1: Right, But if he can't do it, then the Trump
Speaker 1: wing of the party is diminished.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that it's diminished from where it was
Speaker 2: before all of it started, you know, before this sort
Speaker 2: of speaker thing started, right, But I think that's why
Speaker 2: you're seeing whatever handful of members it is kind of
Speaker 2: put the brakes on Jim Jordan is because there is
Speaker 2: this kind of fight between the tr Trump wing and
Speaker 2: the non Trump wing, and there are members who don't
Speaker 2: want to continue to operate the way the Republican Party
Speaker 2: has been operating in the last half dozen years and
Speaker 2: would like to see it take a different direction.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about the people who have abandoned the
Speaker 2: Republican Party or will ever abandon the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: You're talking about people who don't mind a gas stove hearing,
Speaker 1: but would like also to cut social security in medicare.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about people who have an r neck to
Speaker 2: their name today, I will continue to have an R
Speaker 2: neck to their name tomorrow, regardless of who the.
Speaker 4: Leader of the party is.
Speaker 3: For John Allen, we do happen to be friends.
Speaker 1: So when I do really mean things to him on
Speaker 1: this show, it's okay.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: John Allen's were hurt in the making of this podcast.
Speaker 1: I do think it is an interesting idea here, and
Speaker 1: I want more importantly to bring up that this is
Speaker 1: all really out a Veep and Mat Gates is actually
Speaker 1: Jonah from Veep discuss.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that either Matt Gates or the actor
Speaker 2: who played Jonah on Veep would necessarily love the comparison. Also,
Speaker 2: I mean, Joonah and Veep, is I.
Speaker 3: Feel less less serious than Matt.
Speaker 4: Gates, Yeah, well, less effective.
Speaker 1: Matt Gates is a person who has basically blown up
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives. You notice he's like seeding into
Speaker 1: the background a little bit after doing this, Like, I
Speaker 1: do get the sense that he might be I mean,
Speaker 1: I think he probably enjoyed the media attention, but certainly
Speaker 1: there are people who are quite mad at him at
Speaker 1: this moment, right, I think that's true.
Speaker 4: He definitely enjoys the media attention. I also think that it's.
Speaker 2: Not helpful for the candidate that he supports at this point,
Speaker 2: who is Jordan or any other candidate that he might
Speaker 2: support at any point for him to continue to be
Speaker 2: the face of what's going on, because he has so
Speaker 2: irritated so many of his colleagues. So you know, he
Speaker 2: was valuable to anybody who wanted to be speaker who
Speaker 2: wasn't Kevin McCarthy getting rid of Kevin McCarthy. But he
Speaker 2: is not, as a result of that or the way
Speaker 2: he went about it, credible as a validator of the
Speaker 2: next speaker. It's a little bit of a tyrobin. I mean,
Speaker 2: Gates is in this, you know, sort of fascinating spot
Speaker 2: where I think certainly the vast majority of Congress and
Speaker 2: probably the majority of his own party in Congress would
Speaker 2: rather spit on him.
Speaker 3: It's pretty mad at him. Is he going to leave Congress?
Speaker 6: You think?
Speaker 2: I think if people believe that he's got something better
Speaker 2: that gives him a bigger platform, if he gets an
Speaker 2: hour on Fox or something like, I think it possibly,
Speaker 2: But also like the Congress gig isn't bad for him.
Speaker 2: I think we'll have to see what happens with the
Speaker 2: ethics investigation ongoing into him.
Speaker 3: Thank you, John Allen, Bye.
Speaker 4: I think they're.
Speaker 1: Nogat tarn Allposki is an Israeli based reporter.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Fast Politics. Noga.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Morrillie.
Speaker 3: Noga. Where are you?
Speaker 6: Bye? Am in Jerusalem outside the Jerusalem Theater where it's
Speaker 6: pretty empty.
Speaker 1: These days, give me like the TLDR about where you
Speaker 1: are right now? President Biden just laughed, what is it
Speaker 1: like on the ground in Israel?
Speaker 6: Everything feels like suspended animation. There's nothing normal about life
Speaker 6: right now. So, for example, in my neighborhood WhatsApp group,
Speaker 6: where normally you have people complaining about like the music
Speaker 6: from nearby concerts and that kind of thing, now you
Speaker 6: have neighbors posting who is in mourning for whom and
Speaker 6: could people come and make a shiva call for different neighbors.
Speaker 6: Some have sons or daughters dead or missing. I just
Speaker 6: today got a notification about a neighbor who's in her
Speaker 6: fifties I think, whose brother was murdered. They just found
Speaker 6: his body, so she's sitting shiva. So there's that. The
Speaker 6: streets are empty. Some of the restaurants after thirteen days
Speaker 6: of war started reopening. As you mentioned, Joe Biden was
Speaker 6: here yesterday. Today, the British Premi Rishi Sunak is here.
Speaker 6: But the visit that has had really massive impact is
Speaker 6: Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Explained to us why.
Speaker 6: I think there are several reasons. I saw a headline
Speaker 6: go by today on my screen that mentioned Joe Biden's
Speaker 6: bad polls in the States or something right. And it's
Speaker 6: interesting to me because in Israel I think he would
Speaker 6: be elected king right now. There are several reasons. One
Speaker 6: is that Biden has a set of skills that are
Speaker 6: exactly what Israel requires right now, which is both of
Speaker 6: this combination of tremendous and absolutely authentic empathy and also
Speaker 6: some tough talk. Israelis have really absorbed him, standing and
Speaker 6: talking about what it means to lose a relative, how
Speaker 6: you will survive, and at the same time saying that
Speaker 6: he supports the Israeli government's aim to destroy from us.
Speaker 6: He said something else, which is that he really made
Speaker 6: a demand that Israel acquiesced to certain humanitarian demands for
Speaker 6: the civilian population in Gaza. And that was I'd say ignored.
Speaker 6: My most Israelis just they didn't likely hear it, and
Speaker 6: has been i mean received with rage by many hundreds
Speaker 6: of people who have relatives who are presumed to be
Speaker 6: hostages in Gaza, the Israeli families who have hostages in Gaza.
Speaker 6: I don't know if everybody knows, but part of the
Speaker 6: Hamas attack on Israel and October seventh involved a very
Speaker 6: concerted plan to basically steal civilians and take them back
Speaker 6: to Gaza on motorbikes in minivans. And so we're talking
Speaker 6: about seven month old babies, we're talking about eighty seven
Speaker 6: year old grandma's. The families are panicking. The families are
Speaker 6: panicking about the infants. They're panicking about people who require
Speaker 6: daily medication, or who have chronic conditions like chromes. They're
Speaker 6: just panic. Now, the Israeli government hasn't said a word,
Speaker 6: but the assumption among these families is that they're being
Speaker 6: held inhuman conditions, and many of them are in underground
Speaker 6: tunnels that Hamas built so as to enable an invasion
Speaker 6: of Israel, and therefore that if the Israeli army acts
Speaker 6: against Hamas leadership that's hiding underground, it would also be
Speaker 6: massacring these estimated two hundred Israelis. So both families are
Speaker 6: enraged that Biden had the goal to ask Israel to
Speaker 6: make any kind of humanitarian gesture, even the most minimal,
Speaker 6: when they have heard nothing from their loved ones. The
Speaker 6: Red Cross isn't allowed to visit them, Hamas is not
Speaker 6: making them available to the Red Cross, and they have
Speaker 6: had no news of them, and they are panicking. They're
Speaker 6: counting the minutes, you know, until they think they're going
Speaker 6: to start dying.
Speaker 1: I feel like we get so little news, like we
Speaker 1: don't get exactly the news that you have, if that makes.
Speaker 3: Sense, Sairn.
Speaker 1: I thought that before the hospital saying, wasn't it true
Speaker 1: that they were going to release that?
Speaker 3: They said they were going to release the hostages.
Speaker 6: No. Never, there was a single report made by a
Speaker 6: very good reporter, Richard Engel of NBC. Yeah, and he
Speaker 6: reported that a top Hamas official who he'd never named,
Speaker 6: had said to him that Hamas was willing to release
Speaker 6: all of the hostages within an hour. That's it. And
Speaker 6: for some reason, maybe because he's so renowned as a reporter,
Speaker 6: that one report has gotten an immense amount of echo, right,
Speaker 6: And it's never been confirmed by any Commas person, by
Speaker 6: any Kamas spokesperson, by any Hamas leader. It's not what
Speaker 6: either the American government or the Israeli government is hearing.
Speaker 6: And so I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about sort of the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: what's happening now.
Speaker 3: What is happening now?
Speaker 6: On one hand, what's happening is this massive diplomatic envelope
Speaker 6: around Israel. So a different head of state is arriving
Speaker 6: here basically every day with this double message. One is
Speaker 6: we're supporting you in your darkest hour and Israel will
Speaker 6: never walk alone.
Speaker 3: And the other is don't do it.
Speaker 6: You're right, you're exactly. You're a member of the democratic
Speaker 6: family of nations and you can't act like these terror organizations. Do.
Speaker 6: You have to keep to certain rules.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting because it's like the opposite.
Speaker 3: Of the Young Kipoor War.
Speaker 1: It was really Israel alone versus all of these Arab
Speaker 1: nations surrounding it, and America and the more European country
Speaker 1: is not interested in, you know, sort of having to
Speaker 1: kind of be brought in.
Speaker 6: Yes, absolutely that I can speak to. So Israel had
Speaker 6: to all but beg At that time, it was President
Speaker 6: Nixon and Secretary of State kissing your to send Israel
Speaker 6: an airlift of American weapons. Israel almost ran out of
Speaker 6: weaponry at that time. What's happening now is totally the
Speaker 6: opposite in a sense that President Biden has almost taken
Speaker 6: possession of this event. From the military point of view,
Speaker 6: the US sent two fighter jet carriers to the Mediterranean
Speaker 6: rough right off of the Israel's coast, and he has
Speaker 6: announced a massive package of military aid to Israel, which
Speaker 6: Israel did ask for, but he has declared that it
Speaker 6: will get And moreover, Joe Biden is perceived by Israelis
Speaker 6: as credible when he says that he will do everything
Speaker 6: he can to get the hostages back, and Nisania who
Speaker 6: is not. And so one of the headlines today in
Speaker 6: Israel and Yadiota who notes that's just like, you know,
Speaker 6: it's a very I think it's a top read newspaper
Speaker 6: in Israel. At tablet it was what if we're not Americans?
Speaker 6: In other words, there are a small number of families
Speaker 6: of people who have dual citizenship, where Gaza right and
Speaker 6: the other one is saying, what about us?
Speaker 1: So this is a really interesting tension here. Net Yea,
Speaker 1: who is not a beloved leader, He is not.
Speaker 3: Explain to us. This is like you have a president
Speaker 3: like Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have somebody where you feel like
Speaker 1: this guy is doing it. And in fact, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting right after the carnage that, in
Speaker 1: fact net Yea, who was not on the ball at all.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's even a question right now. Nasania
Speaker 6: is clearly not on the ball. He is clearly not
Speaker 6: at the height of this event. And there are a
Speaker 6: lot of paradoxes here absolutely so one is you're right,
Speaker 6: Nazaniello has not been a popular leader for a very
Speaker 6: long time. He's been tolerated by a large chunk of
Speaker 6: Israelis who I think are now paying i mean, an
Speaker 6: almost undescribable price for this sort of passivity for every
Speaker 6: time Nataniell who broke the rules, or broke protocol or
Speaker 6: did something else outrageous. Over the last certainly five six years,
Speaker 6: I think that both Israeli media and Israeli populous had
Speaker 6: this attitude of there he goes again, bad boy, bbe
Speaker 6: but whatever, you know, Like the economy was fine, life
Speaker 6: in Israel was good, and many issues, many deep problems
Speaker 6: in Nitzanelle's leadership that now have really i mean jumped
Speaker 6: to the four were viewed as sort of like ignorable,
Speaker 6: you know. And I'll give you some examples. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 6: Nitanielle found out that the police was investigating him for crimes.
Speaker 3: Right, never so bad, so bad.
Speaker 6: He's not only an unpopular prime minister, He's not only
Speaker 6: a prime minister who's polling before this war was like
Speaker 6: at twenty seven percent. But he's a prime minister who's
Speaker 6: done everything within his power to destroy the institutions of
Speaker 6: the state that he felt had no right to you know,
Speaker 6: quote unquote turn against him. So Natsanyahu did everything within
Speaker 6: his power to destroy the Israel police. That was like
Speaker 6: his first line of attack. Israel had no police commissioner
Speaker 6: for years. There's budgets for the police have been slashed,
Speaker 6: and I could go down the list. Nathaniel's latest government
Speaker 6: that he formed, you know at the beginning of this year,
Speaker 6: is to say it's extremist. Is it's sort of like
Speaker 6: the Tea Party part of the House of Representatives right now.
Speaker 6: His police minister, Itamar Benkvier, is a guy who never
Speaker 6: before has held public office. His official title is Minister
Speaker 6: of National Security. This is his first job in public office.
Speaker 6: And before this, he's a convicted to terrorist, a right
Speaker 6: wing terrorist. The guy was convicted eight times of terror
Speaker 6: and hate crimes. That's who's in charge of these big
Speaker 6: national institutions and mechanisms that israelis now badly need. This
Speaker 6: government has transferred funds from welfare to Nitzaniao's ultra orthodox
Speaker 6: or settler West Bank settler adjacent coalition partners. To keep
Speaker 6: his government alive. This government transferred, they relied on technology,
Speaker 6: military technology. They transferred four military brigades from the border
Speaker 6: area to the West Bank in order to offer military
Speaker 6: support for illegal settlement settlements that are illegal even under
Speaker 6: Israeli law, as part of Nitzaniao's finance minister's plan to
Speaker 6: basically engage in a silent annexation of the West Bank,
Speaker 6: the Palestinian West Bank. So what's happening now is that
Speaker 6: all of these gimmicks and tricks and dirty tricks that
Speaker 6: nitzania was engaged in very naturally over many years, now
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, the feeling is there's no state,
Speaker 6: there's no emergency plan in place.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: I can't describe to you. It's like a howly vacuum
Speaker 6: in terms of the power of the state. And so
Speaker 6: when Biden comes in and he's something simply you know,
Speaker 6: he's tall, he's slim, he's dressed in a proper suit,
Speaker 6: and he walks in and he strings together coherent sentences
Speaker 6: and he embraces the families of the hostages or survivors
Speaker 6: or families of people who were killed like he means it.
Speaker 6: If you give me another minute, I want to tell
Speaker 6: you about an incident that happened here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So we're thirteen days into the war. Nataniellou has not
Speaker 6: yet had the guts to meet with Israeli public, not once. Crazy,
Speaker 6: it's two weeks. He hasn't taken one question from one
Speaker 6: Israeli journalist.
Speaker 5: Zero.
Speaker 6: Okay, So he appears to have simply vanished. The criticism
Speaker 6: against him is mounting, as you can imagine. And a
Speaker 6: few days ago I can't remember, but let's say three
Speaker 6: four days ago or so, his office announced that he
Speaker 6: was going to meet with five families who had hostages
Speaker 6: presumed hostages held in Gaza. Now, just to make it clear,
Speaker 6: these are people have no idea. Let's say their daughter
Speaker 6: and her boyfriend went to a music festival in the
Speaker 6: desert and they never heard from her again. Is she dead?
Speaker 6: Is she being held hostage? Are there any commas torture
Speaker 6: videos that show her like everyone is just in this terrible,
Speaker 6: terrible limbo.
Speaker 3: So are there videos out there?
Speaker 6: Yeah, send enormous amount and they are the worst thing
Speaker 6: you could ever see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So Nathaniel meets them in this super secure location
Speaker 6: in the middle of the country all of these conditions,
Speaker 6: and the families were like handpicked for being the kind
Speaker 6: of families who are not going to have, you know,
Speaker 6: a temper tantrum in front of him. And the whole
Speaker 6: thing is managed. And in the middle of this event,
Speaker 6: a bearded guy shows up. No one's ever met him
Speaker 6: four none of the found members have heard of him.
Speaker 6: And he's a bearded guy and he's wearing the a pipa.
Speaker 6: He's a religious Jew.
Speaker 3: Oh Jesus.
Speaker 6: He just shows up as if this were like at
Speaker 6: a cafe and anyone could drop it.
Speaker 1: It's not smoothly boutish, no, but they're not far off,
Speaker 1: molly right, because I see where this is going.
Speaker 6: That's right, Okay, so you see us is now? So well,
Speaker 6: what happens. I'll make it short. This guy stands there
Speaker 6: and he says that he has a twelve year old
Speaker 6: relative and unspecified relative being held in Gaza, and that
Speaker 6: he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so as
Speaker 6: to allow the Prime Minister to execute this war as
Speaker 6: it must be pursued, all right, So he's basically saying,
Speaker 6: you can kill her. And then he stands in front
Speaker 6: of the premierter and he starts heaping in with praise,
Speaker 6: and the families are there, and on the one hand,
Speaker 6: maybe this is a family, right, they don't know, they're perplexed.
Speaker 6: They don't say a word. Jump A day and a
Speaker 6: half later and an Israeli journalist called Aviad Glickman publishes
Speaker 6: that this entire mortifying farce was engineered by the Prime
Speaker 6: Minister's office. The guy has no relatives who have been
Speaker 6: affected in any way by the tragedy, no hostage, no death,
Speaker 6: no nothing. He's the CEO of one of these marginal
Speaker 6: weirdo right wing races groups called FONO, and he's like
Speaker 6: a die hard Nitzaniell fan.
Speaker 3: So he's just full of shed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I didn't know I could say that on your podcast.
Speaker 3: You can.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's full of shit. He just wants war. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have a relative, he just wants war.
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's worse again. I mean, forgive my
Speaker 6: language that I pick. What he wants is to kiss
Speaker 6: the Prime Minister's ass and to make sure the Prime
Speaker 6: Minister sees him kissing his ass. I think Natana, who
Speaker 6: over the years has nurtured this smallish group of fanatic
Speaker 6: like ultra fans, and they're willing to do anything, no
Speaker 6: matter how treasonous, and no matter how harmful, and no
Speaker 6: matter how humiliating, to make him happy. It astonishes even me,
Speaker 6: Like I've spent most of my career covering Natanielle, and
Speaker 6: I have to say I am left mute by the
Speaker 6: fact that his one encounter with a very small number
Speaker 6: of Israeli citizens in the last two weeks, his single encounter,
Speaker 6: in fact, was an attempt to nilate them and humiliate them.
Speaker 6: And that's it.
Speaker 3: That is pretty craven.
Speaker 1: It must be really scary to be Israeli and to
Speaker 1: not trust your government when you desperately need them.
Speaker 6: It's terrifying on every level. The army failed, military intelligence failed,
Speaker 6: the government has failed on every level, and so people,
Speaker 6: you know, you have people in Tel Aviv like scouring
Speaker 6: the black market to buy ceramic high tech ceramic flat jackets.
Speaker 6: People feel unsafe in the most basic physical level all
Speaker 6: over the country, not just where they're shooting. They're terrified.
Speaker 6: And in addition, there's this feeling that I'm trying to
Speaker 6: describe that is of a vacuum, like you look up
Speaker 6: and you look for where's the state, and there's nothing.
Speaker 6: And there's a huge irony behind this, which is that,
Speaker 6: as you and I have talked about, Natagnell Over last
Speaker 6: year was trying to basically perpetrate a coups de tat
Speaker 6: and pass a series of laws which would make Israel
Speaker 6: authoritarian and keep power forever. A huge protest movement arose
Speaker 6: against this, and a big chunk of that protest movement
Speaker 6: were military reservists who were saying, basically, We're not going
Speaker 6: to go to war for this son of a bitch.
Speaker 6: We have a contract with the army of a democratic state.
Speaker 6: This is over, and they organize these massive protests and
Speaker 6: what they have done is established a kind of shadowed state.
Speaker 6: So in Tel Aviv, the entire this huge convention center,
Speaker 6: the expo grounds are now this huge emergency services center
Speaker 6: run by these former protesters, and they're providing basic emergency services, transportation, food, clothing.
Speaker 6: I don't know how many Israelis are displaced now. Anyway,
Speaker 6: the people have taken over are these same people who
Speaker 6: were trying to save the country from Nitaiao before, and
Speaker 6: now they've jumped in and taken his place, and they
Speaker 6: have all of these logistical and organizational abilities because these
Speaker 6: are people served in the army for decades and they
Speaker 6: have the experience.
Speaker 1: This is the coalition government. We're out of time. I
Speaker 1: hope you will come back. My heart breaks for your
Speaker 1: situation and for what's happening. And I really appreciate you
Speaker 1: your giving us news that we're not seeing anywhere else.
Speaker 6: Well. I really appreciate being able to talk with you.
Speaker 6: It means a lot.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Robert Mann is the former Louisiana State University Chair of
Speaker 1: Journalism and author of Kingfish, You, Huey Long and LSU.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics. Professor Robert Mann.
Speaker 5: Good to be with you, Molly.
Speaker 3: Explain a little bit what happened.
Speaker 5: Well, almost two years ago, in December of twenty one,
Speaker 5: I and some other faculty members were pushing my institution,
Speaker 5: Louisiana State University, to topping up its COVID policies. We
Speaker 5: had a lot of students and some faculty who were
Speaker 5: refusing to get the vaccine. We had been active in
Speaker 5: forcing the university to impose a vaccine mandate that really
Speaker 5: made Jeff Landry, then the Attorney general now the governor elect,
Speaker 5: pretty angry. And we were pushing to require those who
Speaker 5: didn't choose to get the vaccine, have to do weekly
Speaker 5: testing and go through jump through some other hoops to
Speaker 5: just keep us all safe. This was in the midst
Speaker 5: of a worldwide pandemic, so Landry sends a person on
Speaker 5: his staff to the faculty sent a meeting that day
Speaker 5: to read a letter that was full of misinformation and
Speaker 5: out write lies about the vaccine. And I was there
Speaker 5: and just tweeted that it's kind of ironic that he
Speaker 5: would send a flunky to read a letter full of
Speaker 5: lies about a life saving vaccine while he simultaneously calls
Speaker 5: himself a pro life politician. He took offense at that
Speaker 5: and went to the university president and demanded that he
Speaker 5: will At first, he called him and then wrote him
Speaker 5: a letter demanding that I be reprimanded or punished for that.
Speaker 5: And that's when I begin thinking that probably one day,
Speaker 5: not too far in the future, I might need to
Speaker 5: be planning my exit strategy. Because it's one thing to
Speaker 5: get a call from an attorney general who doesn't control
Speaker 5: your budget. It's another thing to get a call from
Speaker 5: a governor or a governor elect who very much does
Speaker 5: control your budget and a points reward. This was a
Speaker 5: decision that I feared that I might have to make eventually,
Speaker 5: and so when I saw that there wasn't even going
Speaker 5: to run off, it was pretty clear what I needed
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 1: What has happened to you is exactly what tenure is
Speaker 1: supposed to prevent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, tenure, And I think the First Amendment. A one
Speaker 5: thing that I believe is that even if I didn't
Speaker 5: have tenure, what people like me do and say is
Speaker 5: also protected by the Constitution.
Speaker 1: The whole point I mean, obviously the First Amendment protect
Speaker 1: your speech. I was married to someone who now works
Speaker 1: in business but was an academic. The whole point of
Speaker 1: tenure is to protect your academic speech right so that
Speaker 1: you can do the scary research. You can do the
Speaker 1: things that otherwise an untenured professor might not feel comfortable doing,
Speaker 1: and that cannot happen here right right.
Speaker 5: And I would argue that I was engaging more in
Speaker 5: political speech, which I probably would would rely more on
Speaker 5: the First Amendment than my tenure. But I think it
Speaker 5: kind of was double protection. But there are a lot
Speaker 5: of people on this, you know, on our faculty and
Speaker 5: other faculty around the state, who are doing the kind
Speaker 5: of research that I'm sure Governor like Landry would not
Speaker 5: approve and other Republicans in the legislature do not approve
Speaker 5: of climate change and other issues that will have fallen
Speaker 5: into disfavor with that side. And they're going to be
Speaker 5: I think, really careful, if not very fearful of speaking out,
Speaker 5: not nor only engaging in that resoarch, but just speaking,
Speaker 5: you know, just sharing it with the public or talking
Speaker 5: about it in forums like these, Worried that they're going
Speaker 5: to incur the wrath of the guy who sets their
Speaker 5: budget and provides the money for their research. And you know,
Speaker 5: a lot of them are just going to leave because
Speaker 5: they're not going to put up with that. Even if
Speaker 5: tenure is not destroyed or curtailed in this state, they're
Speaker 5: going to you know, they've got grant money, they've got
Speaker 5: NIF funds, so they can take other places. Other universities
Speaker 5: and free states will be happy to welcome them. So
Speaker 5: they'll they'll leave, and what will be left as a
Speaker 5: diminished institution that's just run by political whim.
Speaker 1: Now you know this governor, you have sort of seen
Speaker 1: who he is, So what what do you think this means?
Speaker 1: What do you think he's going to be like as
Speaker 1: a governor?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, he's a full blown culture warrior. People
Speaker 5: who asked me that question here, I said, just you know, look,
Speaker 5: look to Florida is what is cassandas done. I think
Speaker 5: you can expect Landry to probably do pretty much the
Speaker 5: same thing here. It's you know, going to be culture
Speaker 5: war twenty four hours a day, all day long. That's
Speaker 5: what he's done for the last eight years or so.
Speaker 5: And he toned it down a lot in the election.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, politically, that was a smart move
Speaker 5: because he didn't make that a big part of his election,
Speaker 5: and so people were kind of lulled in this ball security.
Speaker 5: This is just a guy who cares about me and
Speaker 5: my family and helping me get a better job. But
Speaker 5: he's very very much a culture warrior. He's going to
Speaker 5: come after liberal faculty of quote unquote liberal institutions. I
Speaker 5: think that any hope that there would be any liberalization
Speaker 5: or any sensible movement back toward bodily autonomy for women
Speaker 5: in the state is gone. We've got one of the
Speaker 5: most draconian laws that was you know, ironically signed into
Speaker 5: law by a Democratic governor last year. That's going to
Speaker 5: make it really hard for women to have any assurance
Speaker 5: that they have control of their bodies. And I think
Speaker 5: it's going to make it hard for Landry to recruit
Speaker 5: new business into the state, and it's going to make
Speaker 5: it harder for institutis like LSU to recruit new faculty
Speaker 5: into the state.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that happened in Florida was
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis or Ron DeSantis depending on his whim, is
Speaker 1: that he turned New College, which was this jewel of
Speaker 1: an institution, into a kind of testing ground for a
Speaker 1: lot of really reactionary, kind of Hillsdale style education. Do
Speaker 1: you worry about the institutions in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: I do. And so constitutionally, the governor cannot just come
Speaker 5: in and wipe out the governing board of LSU, like
Speaker 5: I believe DeSantis was able to do in some way
Speaker 5: their staggered terms. So it would probably be halfway through
Speaker 5: his second term when he would have finally appointed every
Speaker 5: member of the LSU board. The reality is that what
Speaker 5: happened after Bobby Jendall, the Republican governor who proceeded John
Speaker 5: Bell Edwards. When Edwards came into office, about half of
Speaker 5: the Gendall appointees went to the new Democratic governor and
Speaker 5: switched jerseys and pledged their allegiance and got reappointed. And
Speaker 5: I suspect that a lot of these John Bell Edwards
Speaker 5: appointees to the LSU governing board are going to have,
Speaker 5: if not already, they will soon go and pledge their allegiance,
Speaker 5: been the knee and kiss the ring and become Landry
Speaker 5: people because they're just plumb appointments and people want them
Speaker 5: and they'll do whatever it takes to stay on the board.
Speaker 5: So at some point I think Landry, if he wants,
Speaker 5: could do very much like what DeSantis has done in Florida.
Speaker 1: Louisiana has had film companies boycott the state before, so
Speaker 1: there is a precedent for a kind of over zealous
Speaker 1: autocratic rule of the state.
Speaker 5: Yes, what troubles me a little bit is that, and
Speaker 5: I think we've seen it in other states that North
Speaker 5: Carolina before. You know, a few years ago, when they
Speaker 5: were on the cusp of passing the law to ban
Speaker 5: gender affirming care, they backed off because of those kind
Speaker 5: of threats. The same happened in Louisiana and then everything
Speaker 5: sort of collapsed and those laws went into effect, and
Speaker 5: there's been a few boycotts here in Louisiana, and I'm
Speaker 5: assuming places like North Carolina, but it kind of petered out,
Speaker 5: and you know, I worry that the energy on the
Speaker 5: other side for you know, making it painful for states
Speaker 5: that do that is kind of is kind of dissipating
Speaker 5: a little bit. I just don't see it here in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: Maybe it'll get a second win, but so far it
Speaker 5: hasn't been as pronounced as I thought it would be.
Speaker 1: You were worried that the sort of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: in Louisiana is.
Speaker 3: Sort of a little bit exhausted. Is that you're.
Speaker 5: Feeling exhausted would be a vast improvement. It's a corrupt entity,
Speaker 5: is a better way to put it.
Speaker 3: Even though they got John Bell Edwards elected.
Speaker 5: Well, that was probably more Edwards than the party. Edwards
Speaker 5: was a Democrat who was basically created in a lab
Speaker 5: to get elected in states like Louisiana. You know, had
Speaker 5: the perfect profile in every way. We'll never have another
Speaker 5: one like Kim any time soon. But he was elected
Speaker 5: in spite of the party. The party leaders were not
Speaker 5: all that particularly supportive of him because they didn't think
Speaker 5: he could win, and they tried to talk him out
Speaker 5: of the race. Because a lot of history you don't
Speaker 5: really want to know. But he came into office estranged
Speaker 5: from the Democratic Party and never spent any time trying
Speaker 5: to build it or even take it over. The previous
Speaker 5: party chairs in prison right now, and the current party
Speaker 5: chair is a quasi Republican who spent most of her
Speaker 5: time tried to undermine Democrats and install people that were
Speaker 5: loyal to her, and even at a brief dalliance in
Speaker 5: the spring with running for governor herself. It was just
Speaker 5: a cluster from beginning to end this year with the party,
Speaker 5: and it has no credibility and it needs to be
Speaker 5: blown up and destroyed and rebuilt on a firmer foundation
Speaker 5: because it just has no ability to get, no credibility
Speaker 5: to advance democratic causes in the state in his current iteration.
Speaker 1: You know, you see this in a lot of state
Speaker 1: party as Florida as a really problematic Democratic straight party,
Speaker 1: though supposedly getting better. This is not as unusual as
Speaker 1: you might want it to be. Is there other stuff
Speaker 1: you've seen that where you were like, this is going
Speaker 1: to be bad about this guy, or is it? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there anything that has really just sort of shocked you?
Speaker 5: It's more his style that I think has alarmed a
Speaker 5: lot of people. I mean, this is a pugnacious guy
Speaker 5: who plays hardball politics, and I think he is very
Speaker 5: much Trumpian in his in his approach to politics. So
Speaker 5: I think there's going to be a lot of bullying.
Speaker 5: And you know, I have people who have told me,
Speaker 5: don't worry. There's a lot of moderate Republicans in the
Speaker 5: legislature who are not going to go along with him,
Speaker 5: and it's not going to be as easy. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 5: you know, I don't think you fully appreciate what a
Speaker 5: bully this guy is and how he is willing to
Speaker 5: use the levers of power to punish his enemies. I
Speaker 5: think people are going to be surprised by just how
Speaker 5: authoritarian he's going to turn out to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've seen again and again more people have said
Speaker 1: don't worry, the guard rails will hold, and a lot
Speaker 1: of times that has really it's just been sort of
Speaker 1: bare lay holding.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that's right. And I think I think people
Speaker 5: are underestimating Landry. They've underestimated Trump, and Landry is a
Speaker 5: more disciplined, arder version of that.
Speaker 4: I think that is.
Speaker 1: Sort of the nightmare that was always in my night
Speaker 1: row with DeSantis when he was running for president, was
Speaker 1: here is Trump without the chaos? You know?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that Landry he really has lulled people
Speaker 5: into a false security and I think the election his
Speaker 5: campaign really I mean, he portrayed himself as this sort
Speaker 5: of moderate, mainstream guy and a lot of people felt
Speaker 5: for it. But that's just not him. And if anybody
Speaker 5: was paying attention to him in the last five or
Speaker 5: six years, they would know better. He's going to quickly
Speaker 5: revert back to form. This was just a facade that
Speaker 5: he had to create, and it worked really well. I mean,
Speaker 5: my god, no one thought he could get fifty two
Speaker 5: percent of the vote in the first primary.
Speaker 4: That's just crazy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, a lot likely, Youngkin exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was hoping you could talk about he really
Speaker 1: did actually kind of overperform. He did really really good numbers.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious why you think that is.
Speaker 5: At least two things. I think one was that the
Speaker 5: Democrats just did not offer any coherent opposition to him,
Speaker 5: and I think part of it was because everyone assumed
Speaker 5: that there would be a runoff that would be the
Speaker 5: real engagement. Sean Wilson, the Democrat, was underfunded, so he
Speaker 5: wasn't going to spend a lot of money in the
Speaker 5: primary because he thought that the runoff spot was his
Speaker 5: for the asking, and it should have been. I mean,
Speaker 5: the state's thirty three percent African American. You should be
Speaker 5: able to get in a runoff without any problem, but
Speaker 5: I think there was. The other assumption was that on
Speaker 5: the Republican side that they would be fractured more than
Speaker 5: they were, and that Landry would Flandery and before other
Speaker 5: Republican opponents would split the votes, so Landry would come
Speaker 5: out ahead, but the others would get a pretty big chunk.
Speaker 5: No one else got over six percent of the vote,
Speaker 5: and Landry played it pretty smart because he only participated
Speaker 5: in one debate, so there was just no opportunity for
Speaker 5: anyone to personally attack him while they shared a stage,
Speaker 5: and so he really cleverly, I think, toned down the
Speaker 5: election and ran this front runner race, this sort of
Speaker 5: rose garden strategy from beginning to end, and it worked
Speaker 5: perfectly for him.
Speaker 3: What are you going to do now?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm.
Speaker 5: Fortunate that I have enough years that I can retire
Speaker 5: and not have to worry about feeding my family, and
Speaker 5: I write books, so I've got a bunch of book
Speaker 5: projects and the works and have more time for that,
Speaker 5: and I may, you know, I still think I have
Speaker 5: a few years of teaching in me, so I may
Speaker 5: go find someplace to finish out my career, not in Louisiana,
Speaker 5: but maybe somewhere else. But if not, I'm happy just
Speaker 5: focusing on my writing and hopefully spending a little bit
Speaker 5: more time doing fun stuff that I haven't been able
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 1: Would you just like tell our listeners what you think
Speaker 1: this sort of lesson year is.
Speaker 4: For people in Louisiana.
Speaker 5: The thing that I hope that my activism that I've
Speaker 5: engaged in for a long time, but the statement that
Speaker 5: my retirement makes is that we really need to care
Speaker 5: about these institutions. For a lot of people in Louisiana,
Speaker 5: when they hear a Louisiana State University, they think of football,
Speaker 5: and it seems that that is really the part of
Speaker 5: the institution that people really care about and demand excellence from.
Speaker 5: And I just feel that we don't begin to understand
Speaker 5: how important these institutions are to our state toward the
Speaker 5: future of our state. We've got tremendous brain drain here
Speaker 5: in Louisiana. The young people are fleeing and by the
Speaker 5: thousands every day. And I hope that at some point
Speaker 5: people begin to connect the failure of our education institutions,
Speaker 5: particularly our higher education institutions, with that brain train. And
Speaker 5: we're not going to build this a new state. We're
Speaker 5: not going to build a better state on the back
Speaker 5: of a football team. It's going to be on the
Speaker 5: on the back of a stronger economy, a stronger you know,
Speaker 5: more social capital. That it's going to come out of
Speaker 5: our universities, not only out of our universities, but it's
Speaker 5: going to come out of our universities largely. And we
Speaker 5: need to support those institutions. And if you want to
Speaker 5: support your college, you got to you want to support
Speaker 5: your local university. You've got to support the people who
Speaker 5: teach your young people. You got to give them the
Speaker 5: freedom to do their work. You've got to encourage them
Speaker 5: to do research without political interference. And I hope that
Speaker 5: that my retirement sparks the conversation about that, and and
Speaker 5: I also hope that it spurs the leadership of my
Speaker 5: institution to speak out and develop a spine and stand
Speaker 5: up and defend their faculty because I think faculty across
Speaker 5: the state in Louisiana need to know that the leadership
Speaker 5: of their universities have their back. And I don't think
Speaker 5: they know that or feel that today.
Speaker 3: Well they don't. They don't have.
Speaker 5: Right, they don't.
Speaker 4: It's just so politicized.
Speaker 5: I know realistically that the minute that the governor and
Speaker 5: the legislature come after these institutions, that they'll fold like
Speaker 5: houses of cards. And that's what's so painful about it,
Speaker 5: because I don't think there's much to stop them if
Speaker 5: they want to, if they want to do to Louisiana
Speaker 5: State University and other colleges and universities here, what Desanta's
Speaker 5: has done in Florida.
Speaker 3: This must be so heartbreaking for you.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 5: You know, I love the state. I love my university.
Speaker 5: Both my children are graduates of LSU, my wife is
Speaker 5: as well. My friend James Carville says it this way.
Speaker 5: No state university is more important to its state than
Speaker 5: Louisiana State University, and I don't know if he's right
Speaker 5: or not, but you know, I choose to believe that
Speaker 5: it is, and I just hate that it may be
Speaker 5: in store for some pretty rough seas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Molly, It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 7: There a moment full Jesse Cannon, Mirley Jong Fast the
Speaker 7: chaos in the House when we heard about like fighting
Speaker 7: on the four back of the day, this is like
Speaker 7: just like the new version in my mind, like this
Speaker 7: is We're just never gonna have speakers.
Speaker 4: It's going to be in disarray all the time, right well.
Speaker 1: Until Democrats when here's the deal Republicans are. They have
Speaker 1: a four seat majority and they are just absolutely destroying themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a tweet from a congressional
Speaker 1: reporter that I think is really kind of one of
Speaker 1: the smarter takes because I think it's a really good
Speaker 1: example of what's going on. This is a congressional reporter
Speaker 1: called Brian Meltzer. He writes for this is Insider goes
Speaker 1: without saying this chaos and the likelihood that the House
Speaker 1: goes at least three weeks without a speaker will have
Speaker 1: a significant effect on House Republicans prospects in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: You don't even need to do OPO, just replay the
Speaker 1: tape of the last couple weeks, and that, my friends,
Speaker 1: is our moment of But you know what, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say today, because this has been such a crushing
Speaker 1: couple weeks, It's our moment of Gleefolfacktory. It is our
Speaker 1: gleeful factory congratulations, Matt.
Speaker 3: Gates, you won.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.