Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie 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.
Speaker 2: Senator Bob Menendez has been charged with acting as a
Speaker 2: foreign agent. We have such an interesting show today. First
Speaker 2: we'll talk to Ruth ben Yacht about how all the
Speaker 2: criminals the republic Party play right into the authoritarian handbook.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to lawyer Josh Cosco who is suing
Speaker 2: gun companies in order to enact justice for shooting survivors.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of the time of Monsters,
Speaker 2: the Nation's Jeat here.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, frequent flyer, my close personal friend
Speaker 1: Jeet here.
Speaker 3: Good to be here in every sense of the word.
Speaker 1: Well, we're so happy to have you. Un fucking believable.
Speaker 1: What is happening right now? I'm going to read you
Speaker 1: a tweet Dave Wasserman, you may know him as mister
Speaker 1: I've seen enough.
Speaker 4: He is a pollster.
Speaker 1: This is his tweet which if I were a Republican
Speaker 1: donor or member of Congress, this would.
Speaker 4: Make my blood run cold.
Speaker 1: The reality may be that no r can get to
Speaker 1: two seventeen.
Speaker 3: That's quite a tweet, which I think. I think mathematically
Speaker 3: he's exactly right. In the sense of the candidates running
Speaker 3: for the position. There is enough like sort of never
Speaker 3: Scaliese people and enough never Jordan people that yeah, you
Speaker 3: don't get to the two seventeen that you need, So
Speaker 3: mathematically there can be no speaker. They cannot be a.
Speaker 1: SAP's right, well, there can be McHenry forever. So the
Speaker 1: story here is the Republicans in the House kicked out
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy under the arm of.
Speaker 4: My man, and he is neither mine nor man. Matt Gates.
Speaker 1: He opened the gates of hell, he got rid of
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, and he left his caucus in nowhere land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that is exactly what happened. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it's worth thinking about structurally, like why they can't
Speaker 3: get to seventeen. I always emphasizes, like Nancy Pelosi had
Speaker 3: a smaller majority than they have now. Not only was
Speaker 3: she able to like get elected Speaker and hold on
Speaker 3: to her position and not get kicked out, she was
Speaker 3: actually able to like legislate in a very fractured caucus
Speaker 3: with like you know, real political disagreements always like find
Speaker 3: the point of agreement that everyone could come around to
Speaker 3: and do the very essential skill which my girls are
Speaker 3: in grade three and learn I have been learning for
Speaker 3: the last few years. Counting. Addition, just be able to
Speaker 3: like like figure out like do I ask you have
Speaker 3: the votes for this? Or do I not have the
Speaker 3: votes for this, which is a much rarer skill than
Speaker 3: one would think. One can govern as long as you
Speaker 3: don't have like a caucus full of like really crazy people.
Speaker 3: I think the core problem, the further problem I think structurally,
Speaker 3: which I don't think we're talking about, is fundraising. One
Speaker 3: reason why Nancy Pelosi could hold things together was she's
Speaker 3: just she's just a monster. She still is, you know,
Speaker 3: she still has monster of fundraising and very useful for
Speaker 3: members of Congress. Well, it's happening about the Democratic on
Speaker 3: the Republican side, but you know, you get people who
Speaker 3: are like very good at working outside that as a
Speaker 3: stem and you know, fundraising through social media appeal and
Speaker 3: getting small donors. But on the Democratic side that people
Speaker 3: are really good at that, AOC being a primary example.
Speaker 3: They're pretty responsible. Like there's still party people and still
Speaker 3: understanding you have to work with in the party. On
Speaker 3: the Republican side, you have people who can fundraise and
Speaker 3: not be dependent on the speaker. And you get more
Speaker 3: fundraising if you stand up for the speaker because a
Speaker 3: problgram base is trained with this narrative that the establishment
Speaker 3: is bad. You know, whoever the speaker is, they want
Speaker 3: to like corral people for corrupt purposes. And here's that
Speaker 3: heroic Matt Gates. There are some pictures of him with
Speaker 3: the young women, but.
Speaker 4: The FBI had an investigation into him.
Speaker 1: They decline to press charges, which I guess in this
Speaker 1: Republican party is as good as having never had an
Speaker 1: FBI investigation into you, Bob.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, like because he is the the underdog,
Speaker 3: the maverick, the guy who's standing up to the established friend.
Speaker 3: He's getting like a ton of money, right, He's doing
Speaker 3: like fundraising all through this and becomes the big hero
Speaker 3: of the base by doing stuff that is destructive. So
Speaker 3: basically you have a fundraising model and a political model
Speaker 3: that is just works against governance the like leave idels aside,
Speaker 3: just works against the basic function of turning on the lights,
Speaker 3: you know, opening the door, turning on the lights, like
Speaker 3: getting the day started. They cannot sees all of that
Speaker 3: as a deep state plot. You know, like it's a
Speaker 3: deep state plot to have government.
Speaker 4: Yes, to have a government at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a very bad situation. And to have like,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the two major parties and the
Speaker 3: party that happens the whole by a slim majority of
Speaker 3: the House literally structurally incapable of governing at a time
Speaker 3: which you know, like I know we're not gonna talk
Speaker 3: about this, but which like very serious stuff is happening
Speaker 3: in the world right, like, like very serious life and
Speaker 3: death issues are happening at places like Ukraine and and
Speaker 3: in Gaza. You know, like it's actually good to have government.
Speaker 3: This is my bottom line. I actually believe it is
Speaker 3: good to have government. I am not an anarchist. I
Speaker 3: have friends that are anarchists, but certainly I think my
Speaker 3: anarchist friends don't want whatever the hell it is about
Speaker 3: pizza stag. It's bad that you have one party that
Speaker 3: cannot govern. And the other point I would make is
Speaker 3: I kind of wish Democrats would make that point a
Speaker 3: bit more.
Speaker 4: Oh man, me too.
Speaker 1: So right now we are in this republican Fuckeray. You
Speaker 1: got Steve Scullies, who the strike against him is that
Speaker 1: he compared himself to David Duke without the baggage and
Speaker 1: spoke at a white nationalist convention and is very much
Speaker 1: not on the right side of history when it comes
Speaker 1: to not being an enormous white supremacist.
Speaker 4: And you have him, so that's one side.
Speaker 1: But he is actually like a Republican sort of more
Speaker 1: despite his white nationalist forays, He's actually more of a
Speaker 1: traditional Republican than the guy he's running again. So I
Speaker 1: would like to take a moment to think about that
Speaker 1: for a second. And you know, we had a guest
Speaker 1: on here, really smart guy, Dana Milbank, who was saying
Speaker 1: that actually what you see with this Republican leadership contest
Speaker 1: is the party's move to the right. So you know,
Speaker 1: Scalice would have been just an inconceivable Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House ten years ago. Like that, every decade the party
Speaker 1: gets further and further to the right. But then Jordan,
Speaker 1: who has thought of as the insurgent, who has worked
Speaker 1: very hard to try not to get the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: election certified, big.
Speaker 4: Election liar, that guy, he can't get the votes.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of really bad behavior on both sides.
Speaker 1: And there are looking at a list here from Hallie
Speaker 1: Talbot from CNN who has listed the undecided big mads
Speaker 1: in the caucus, which includes some of the people you
Speaker 1: would think including Andy Biggs, a person who has also
Speaker 1: had four ways into why nationalism, and Ken Buck, who
Speaker 1: was actually a little bit more principled than a lot
Speaker 1: of those guys. So they are big mad.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I mean the party has definitely moved to
Speaker 3: the right, but it's been happening, as you unicated, for
Speaker 3: a long time, and I think there's you know, like
Speaker 3: some very good discussions about the sort of roots of
Speaker 3: all this. That a Scotch Ball who's like, you know,
Speaker 3: terrific political sociologist at Harvard did an interview with Political
Speaker 3: which she was pointing towards the Tea Party is a
Speaker 3: big inflection point. But I think actually, like, you know,
Speaker 3: my disagreement with that is I actually think Nuke Gingridge
Speaker 3: was the you know, like an equally important inflection point, right.
Speaker 4: No, No, I agree, Nu, ging Gridge was the moment.
Speaker 3: I think if you look at what happened to Gingridge,
Speaker 3: and I think it's worth recalling because a lot of
Speaker 3: what we're seeing now was innovated then, including the use
Speaker 3: of the government shutdown as a tactic when Republicans control
Speaker 3: the House and Democrats have the presidency. Ging Ridge, he
Speaker 3: wrote to Power, wrote to becoming the speaker through like
Speaker 3: riling up the most right wing members of his caucus
Speaker 3: against the so called corrupt establishment. Who are people who
Speaker 3: were like willing to make deals with Dilkminten or even
Speaker 3: willing to make deals with George W. Bush and side
Speaker 3: things like the Americans with Disability Act. And so there's
Speaker 3: a real faction in the nineteen nineties who are basically
Speaker 3: like loveries of militia. I don't know if you remember
Speaker 3: these these characters, but you know they were the ones
Speaker 3: who saw Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas as that, yeah,
Speaker 3: as heroic Americans, you know, like standing up to the
Speaker 3: evils of the federal government. Ging Ridge deliberately riled those
Speaker 3: people up and you know, use the power of agitating
Speaker 3: the base to like scare this existing Republican establishment, gemonize them,
Speaker 3: get them out, and then he became speaker. But then
Speaker 3: what he ended up with was, you know, like a
Speaker 3: caucas he couldn't control because it included like, you know,
Speaker 3: these riled up French characters who could use all the
Speaker 3: anger that they had that Gingridge had harnessed and use
Speaker 3: it against him, and then he, like you know, repeatedly
Speaker 3: had problems of like serve governance. So so the structure
Speaker 3: has been in place and built since the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: and we see it replicated time and again. You know,
Speaker 3: I think the only way to kind of break this
Speaker 3: structure is it becomes a political issue and it becomes
Speaker 3: not just treated as it is in the mainstream media
Speaker 3: like oh, look at those clowns in Congress, they're clouding again,
Speaker 3: and actually becomes what it is, which is that you
Speaker 3: have one party that is functionally unable to govern and
Speaker 3: it is very much in contrast to the other party.
Speaker 3: And again, I would want to have a democratic leadership
Speaker 3: that really makes this the issue that really like you know,
Speaker 3: says it's not the maga Republicans or the extreme Republicans.
Speaker 3: The Republican Party itself is functionally unable to govern, and
Speaker 3: you know, like, we'll give you a party that can
Speaker 3: govern and it be as ideologically diverse and will find
Speaker 3: this sort of median points. So if if you're more
Speaker 3: moderate voter and you want a party that can negotiate
Speaker 3: but also work with different factions, well there's only one
Speaker 3: party that does that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and it's not even close.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very stark difference. I think domestically it's
Speaker 3: a bad enough. I think the chances of another government
Speaker 3: shutdown are like huge, right, oh, no question. And then
Speaker 3: there's also you know, like stuff that's happening in the world.
Speaker 3: And again, you know, I mean, one can have disagreements
Speaker 3: with Biden about Ukraine, about handling Israel Palestine, but on
Speaker 3: some level you have to believe that the United States
Speaker 3: needs a government, so it actually needs like.
Speaker 1: I keep saying this, but I want to say it
Speaker 1: because I'm not laughing because it's funny.
Speaker 4: I'm laughing because it's horrific.
Speaker 3: Is it. Yeah? Yeah, So so you actually need ambassadors
Speaker 3: to these countries, right, right, And.
Speaker 1: That's a real fucking problem that we're having now, which
Speaker 1: is there's no ambassador to Kutar, there's no ambassador to Israel.
Speaker 1: All of these military posts are empty. You can't run
Speaker 1: a country this way, which is part of the point, right.
Speaker 3: You need that, you know, like a military where the
Speaker 3: officer class knows that there's a regular accepted pathway of
Speaker 3: like going up the ranks, and that you know, as
Speaker 3: people who get old and retire or move on. If
Speaker 3: you follow all the rules, you will arise and not have.
Speaker 1: Senator from Alabama who lives in Florida keep you from
Speaker 1: getting your job.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: These are all like important things, and like, I think
Speaker 3: the people who follow this program understand this, and you know,
Speaker 3: like you know, you and I understand it. But like
Speaker 3: to the degree that this is like being a message
Speaker 3: that's getting out there, I'm not sure about that. I
Speaker 3: know what you think.
Speaker 1: I think this is absolutely a democratic messaging problem. The
Speaker 1: truth is one party is normal and the other party
Speaker 1: is completely batchet and they want to destroy the federal government.
Speaker 1: And I mean I interviewed Randy Wineingarden yesterday. Andy Winegarden
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people. She's the head of the Teachers' union.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if she's the head of the
Speaker 1: idea for the UTA or she's stopped, you know, and
Speaker 1: she's taking a break. But the point is she has
Speaker 1: been demonized and Mike Pompeo made threats against her. And
Speaker 1: you know what she said, which is so true, is
Speaker 1: that these people want to end public schools because they
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of the government doing for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I mean that's exactly right. In some
Speaker 3: ways what has to understand for them to somebody be
Speaker 3: this is paid off. We kind of look at this
Speaker 3: freak show. But you know, if your goal is actually
Speaker 3: the fake, like every red the stunts at all, to
Speaker 3: destroy Steve Benda likes to say, the administrative state, then actually,
Speaker 3: you know, they're kind of winning. They're getting what they want.
Speaker 3: And you know, like I think if it were put
Speaker 3: to the American public that this is actually what they want,
Speaker 3: It's not like lower taxes, you know, like a more
Speaker 3: streamlined government or things that you know, like a white
Speaker 3: spot of the population right agree with, is actually like
Speaker 3: government dysfunction and no government that would clarify a lot
Speaker 3: of things for voters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: Democrats have real trouble when they get this opportunity to
Speaker 1: message being able to do it.
Speaker 4: And I think part of.
Speaker 1: It is this fundamental belief that because Democrats are the
Speaker 1: good guys, they don't have to sell what they're doing
Speaker 1: the way Republicans do. And I think that's ultimately really wrong.
Speaker 3: I think that's part of it. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: the other part of it is that Biden has decided
Speaker 3: to go along with a kind of mixed message of
Speaker 3: like saying, you know some mega Republicans that are bad,
Speaker 3: but you know, like I'm a guy who's worked with
Speaker 3: Republicans before, I work with Starthurman to appeal to those
Speaker 3: voters that are still nostalgic that it is a sort
Speaker 3: of like restorationist vision, like you know, we can turn
Speaker 3: back the clock and like, you know, go back to
Speaker 3: like I don't know what, like nineteen eighty two or whatever,
Speaker 3: or like nineteen seventy eight pip Onneil would go have
Speaker 3: a beer with Ronald Reagan and things were good, and
Speaker 3: then we were all little children and happy. Like I
Speaker 3: don't think that I don't think it was that good
Speaker 3: to be good with, and I really don't think that
Speaker 3: we're ever going to go back. It's unwillingness to give
Speaker 3: up that illusion that that the older type of politics
Speaker 3: have we returned to. You have to have people that
Speaker 3: like see things. Clearly, there's a generational divide. I mean,
Speaker 3: one sees that in the way that people like Gretia
Speaker 3: Whitmer is governing, that the hardened Democrats who have been
Speaker 3: in the sort of trenches of these like purple states
Speaker 3: and have seen you know how extreme. The Republicans can
Speaker 3: be like they don't want to go back to that.
Speaker 3: They think, like we get a narrow majority, we govern
Speaker 3: and we give our people what they want.
Speaker 4: Like in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: One of the things I want to ask you, though,
Speaker 1: I'm going to push back for a minute.
Speaker 4: So I have this theory about Biden.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why Biden has continually overperformed at
Speaker 1: all his elections is because the voters are older than
Speaker 1: we think they are, and they vote in a sort
Speaker 1: of older way than we think they do. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I think that these Republicans need to lose until they
Speaker 1: understand that they're anti democratic ideas are a shanda, as
Speaker 1: we say in Judaism. There's no place for anti democracy
Speaker 1: in the United States of America. But there are older
Speaker 1: people who have a sort of like fantasy of harmony
Speaker 1: and that playing on that is actually good for good
Speaker 1: electoral politics. Yes, no discuss you have twenty seconds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are some truth to that, But
Speaker 3: I think it's the situations in flux. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think those older voters are getting older here and
Speaker 3: I think there's a generational divide, and I think going
Speaker 3: to the next election Biden's real weaknesses among young voters.
Speaker 3: They want more fight, Yes, they.
Speaker 4: Want more fight.
Speaker 3: Jeet here, thank you always great.
Speaker 2: Ruth Bengiatt is the author of Strongman Us Leading the
Speaker 2: President and the publisher of the Substack Lucid.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Ruth, thank you glad to be here.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about what you see
Speaker 1: going on right now. The fundamental thing that I think
Speaker 1: is so interesting, which you write about and talk about,
Speaker 1: is this idea that there is a real that we
Speaker 1: really have one party that no longer believes in the
Speaker 1: fundamental tenets of democracy.
Speaker 4: Can you talk about that.
Speaker 5: It's very shocking and it's a process, and it's been
Speaker 5: going on since. I mean, some people say Trump was
Speaker 5: able to kind of capture the party because it was
Speaker 5: ready to be captured by an authoritarian. It was already
Speaker 5: moving toward a kind of a liberal political culture, and
Speaker 5: the Tea Party was a big symptom. But Trump really
Speaker 5: accelerated that by being the charismatic demagogue and you know,
Speaker 5: shifting the political culture of the GOP to authoritarian methods
Speaker 5: and philosophy and the leader party relationship that he imposed,
Speaker 5: where loyalty was what mattered. Not expertise and no internal dissent,
Speaker 5: you know, follow him or else. Intimidation that kind of
Speaker 5: accelerated it and prepared it to participate in his attempt
Speaker 5: to overthrow the government and the election. So it's been
Speaker 5: a long process, but now we are in a stage
Speaker 5: where the GOP is an autocratic party quite openly, and
Speaker 5: its allies are other autocratic parties and governments around the world.
Speaker 5: It's quite open about that too. And it's the people
Speaker 5: who are finding favor the people who are rising to
Speaker 5: the top, as we saw in the GOP debates and
Speaker 5: the selection of the House Speaker, they are people who
Speaker 5: are believing in violence, who are identifying themselves as extremists,
Speaker 5: who don't believe in transparency, accountability, or any other democratic principles.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting and important point there,
Speaker 1: because this is sort of Trumpism continues, right, Yes, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it started before Trump, it sounds like from
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and that makes the most sense. But
Speaker 1: this kind of continuation of it is really this obsession
Speaker 1: with the kind of violence.
Speaker 4: Talk to me about that.
Speaker 5: Really what's happened is the GOP has kind of internalized
Speaker 5: the principles of the coup. What is a coup. It's
Speaker 5: a violent strike at a government. It says that we
Speaker 5: don't believe anymore in democratic methods of transitions of power.
Speaker 5: And Matt Gates said this at the Iowa State ferries.
Speaker 5: It only forces will bring change to Washington. And so
Speaker 5: violence becomes a kind of dogma. And that's also why
Speaker 5: you see number two contender Ron DeSantis, who really the
Speaker 5: guy is obsessed with violence. I mean, he loses no
Speaker 5: opportunity to talk about violence. And it's not just that,
Speaker 5: you know, he says, we're going to be slitting throats
Speaker 5: on day one. This is you know, gangster talk. This
Speaker 5: is how do Terte talks or terrorists talk. But you know,
Speaker 5: he just like it's the little things that show you
Speaker 5: that he feels he can only get ahead by his
Speaker 5: spousing violence. When Trump was being arraigned and the reporter asked, DeSantis,
Speaker 5: you know, what were you doing?
Speaker 4: Did you see it?
Speaker 5: Did you watch it? And he said he Now, he's
Speaker 5: a governor of a really large state. He has lots
Speaker 5: to do. What does he say? He said, I was
Speaker 5: overseeing an execution.
Speaker 4: So it's just this.
Speaker 5: Constant recall to violence, and like they're drunk on the
Speaker 5: power of being able to have the authority to order
Speaker 5: violence or encourage violence. So that's what I'm most worried
Speaker 5: about as a constitutive party of the j.
Speaker 4: OP and a scholar. Will you back up to tell
Speaker 4: the story of sort of.
Speaker 1: How you realized that this thing you studied was about
Speaker 1: to sort of become the central tenant of one of
Speaker 1: our political parties.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, you know, I was a garden variety academic.
Speaker 5: Let's say, I was already writing per CNN on like
Speaker 5: historical things. So I had started to do like, you know,
Speaker 5: opinion pieces. But I was a scholar of fascism and propaganda.
Speaker 5: And then Trump came on the scene and it all
Speaker 5: seemed so familiar from my studies of Mussolini. And again
Speaker 5: I wrote a book on film propaganda, so the visual
Speaker 5: was important. So I saw him doing the loyalty oath.
Speaker 5: And then the big red flag was his speech in
Speaker 5: January twenty sixteen that he could stand on Fifth Avenue
Speaker 5: and shoot someone and he wouldn't lose any followers. This
Speaker 5: is fascism because he was saying he was identifying himself
Speaker 5: with violence, saying he approved of violence. He was personally
Speaker 5: capable of violence, but he would also be.
Speaker 4: Loved if he committed violence.
Speaker 5: Yes, that led me to change my professional life. I
Speaker 5: had a book I was working on that was an
Speaker 5: academic book, and I put it aside and I started
Speaker 5: to I wanted to warn the American public of what
Speaker 5: was going on and that it could happen anywhere. And
Speaker 5: that was the genesis of deciding to write Strong Men,
Speaker 5: which goes over one hundred years of authoritarian history but
Speaker 5: has Trump in it, so Americans could see that this
Speaker 5: has a history and has a context.
Speaker 4: Such a good point.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about when we talk about this
Speaker 1: idea that criminals are needed in government if the goal
Speaker 1: is an authoritarian rule, what does that mean exactly.
Speaker 5: It's so strange because the concepts come from the corruption
Speaker 5: chapter of Strong Men, and it's like it's like the
Speaker 5: GOP is just bringing it to life. Incredible. So, if
Speaker 5: you are a party that's becoming autocratic and you are
Speaker 5: depending on corruption, which means both like defrauding people like
Speaker 5: George Santos is the embodiment of part of the GOP.
Speaker 5: It also means lying to the public institutionalized lying, where
Speaker 5: you have lying as dogma. That's the big lie and
Speaker 5: all the other things. If that's how you're going to
Speaker 5: operate and you're going to depend on that, then you
Speaker 5: need special kind of people with criminal skills as you're elite.
Speaker 5: So there's a kind of renewal of elites that goes on.
Speaker 5: And again this is not just us. Like in Modi's
Speaker 5: India in twenty nineteen, over a dozen legislators, like sitting
Speaker 5: parliamentarians had open like criminal charges against them, including murder.
Speaker 5: So and there are many other examples that give in
Speaker 5: my book. So I've been watching this with the GOP
Speaker 5: and who is you know? So there were people, for example,
Speaker 5: people who participate in January sixth were encouraged to run
Speaker 5: for office by Trump, or people who Another form of
Speaker 5: corruption is when you obstruct justice, and that's like Jim Jordan.
Speaker 5: He didn't want any investigation of molesters, that kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So the GOP now rewards people who are lawless or
Speaker 5: encourage lawlessness, and that's been like a renewal of elites,
Speaker 5: and it's terrible because the qualities that they want in
Speaker 5: a politician. That's also why the GOP candidates pose with
Speaker 5: assault rifles. You either have to be violent or corrupt
Speaker 5: or both.
Speaker 4: It's so amazing.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I'm struck by is just
Speaker 1: how good these people are at winning the information wars.
Speaker 1: I mean, talk to me about that. Some of the
Speaker 1: stuff is so simple, but it works so well for them.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 5: They are very skilled, and it's not just the Fox
Speaker 5: media machine. It's the individual politicians who kind of do
Speaker 5: this naturally. And in a sense, if if you have
Speaker 5: decided to just institutionalize lawing in the party, then you
Speaker 5: have to become information warriors. Of course we can poke
Speaker 5: fun at Mardrie, Taylor Green and others, but she's a
Speaker 5: very skilled information warrior. She knows what to say and
Speaker 5: how to say it, and she uses the classic techniques
Speaker 5: of smearing, innuendo, conspiracy theories and Jim Jordan's surprisingly people
Speaker 5: don't think highlie of him for many good reasons, but
Speaker 5: he's surprisingly skilled at defending Trump, which is also a
Speaker 5: sign of this. You must defend the leader. There are
Speaker 5: rules for these things. It's like they're innately good, but
Speaker 5: that's at it because they are invested now in lying
Speaker 5: as a party method of getting to power.
Speaker 1: I know we've talked about this before, but now I'm
Speaker 1: so stressed out.
Speaker 4: Will we talk about this?
Speaker 1: I get very stressed at I mean, how do we
Speaker 1: stop America from being the Philippines. It strikes me that
Speaker 1: one of the ways we would be so much safer
Speaker 1: is if we had a coalition government, which we don't.
Speaker 5: That's a huge problem that we've just got these two
Speaker 5: giant parties and so the people, the Republicans, who they
Speaker 5: don't identify anymore, they don't really have a place to go.
Speaker 5: And but the other part the reason they feel they
Speaker 5: don't have any place to go is the effectiveness of
Speaker 5: right wing media saying that Biden is a leftist, that
Speaker 5: we're all leftists, like I'm on you know, I'm on
Speaker 5: professor watch list. That thing of turning what is that?
Speaker 4: The Charlie Kirk one.
Speaker 5: Yes ibe was put on there and it says, not
Speaker 5: only for all of us on there, you're not only
Speaker 5: a radical leftist, you're also trying to like indoctrinate students
Speaker 5: into your like freedom. That's the polarization stuff. So in fact,
Speaker 5: there are lots of like moderates, and yet the people
Speaker 5: who don't identify anymore with Republicans are influenced so that
Speaker 5: they said, I'll never vote for Democrats and then they
Speaker 5: don't vote at all, perhaps and that helps the Republicans too.
Speaker 3: So that's one big problem.
Speaker 5: I think now is the time to everybody needs to
Speaker 5: reach out to people they know, including vets or people
Speaker 5: who care about national security, people who don't vote but
Speaker 5: should vote, and really use outcome arguments I call them, like,
Speaker 5: political violence is not good for business if you know
Speaker 5: business people. Political violence is not good for national security
Speaker 5: if you know you know those people in those sectors.
Speaker 5: We have to all reach out to those we know
Speaker 5: and do bridge building when there's lots of bridge building
Speaker 5: organizations in America. But we can do this too. That's
Speaker 5: one thing that we can do in our lives.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny because it's like Nan Yahoo
Speaker 1: and the far right Republicans which is basically all of them,
Speaker 1: but Tommy Tuberbil in this case both it's very critical
Speaker 1: of the military, feeling the military is too woke and
Speaker 1: not you know, racist, sexist, discriminatory enough, even though the
Speaker 1: military has through combat seen how important it is to
Speaker 1: have leaders that look like the people on the ground.
Speaker 1: You know, they've actually really like lived the importance of diversity.
Speaker 1: But Republicans have been very involved in criticizing the military,
Speaker 1: and Tommy Tuberville has stopped all military appointments because of
Speaker 1: choice talk to us about that.
Speaker 5: I think that's partially bs his excuse. I have a
Speaker 5: tweet that when viral it's still going on, that this
Speaker 5: is an attempt at sabotage and it has to be
Speaker 5: seen in a broader optic together with Rand Paul, who's
Speaker 5: very pro putent, his blockage of diplomatic appointments, so that
Speaker 5: the US remains singularly unprepared militarily, national security, diplomatically, and
Speaker 5: its influence is curbed in the world. So when we
Speaker 5: talk about corruption, there are some people commit corruption by
Speaker 5: doing you know, illegal things, and other people out obstruct
Speaker 5: processes from happening. And that's what those two are doing.
Speaker 5: So holding up so many military appointments, he knows what
Speaker 5: the outcome is and all, and that Millie has talked
Speaker 5: about it. It's very obvious. But the goal is to
Speaker 5: help America's adversaries who are autocratic by blunting the force
Speaker 5: of America in the world. And it's like it's a decapitation,
Speaker 5: Like we don't have ambassadors in a lot of very
Speaker 5: essential places, including many places in the Middle East right now,
Speaker 5: and we don't have heads of important military positions. This
Speaker 5: is sabotage and this is why I some people think
Speaker 5: this exaggerated, but they are saboteurs, and the goal is
Speaker 5: to take down American democracy, not only internally but as
Speaker 5: a force in the world. And it's exactly what the
Speaker 5: Chinese and Russians wanted in their joint statements in the
Speaker 5: fall of twenty twenty one when they didn't opid together
Speaker 5: the ambassadors and then Putin and Chi and they said
Speaker 5: we've got to take down essentially said we've got to
Speaker 5: take down American influence and that's their quote multipolarity, and
Speaker 5: Tubberville and Paul are contributing to this. That's really how
Speaker 5: I see it.
Speaker 1: Jesus, with this Israel conflict, how does this autocratic Republican
Speaker 1: party figure in, Well, maybe it doesn't.
Speaker 5: What we can see. And I just published this morning
Speaker 5: a substack, my substack Lucid, an essay on Nitaya, who's
Speaker 5: kind of what's his destiny going to be and how
Speaker 5: his autocratic overreach trying to have the that's called the
Speaker 5: judicial coup, contributed to an atmosphere that led Hamas feel
Speaker 5: it was propitious to attack, which is not to not
Speaker 5: blame Hamas for the atrocities, but to show that it's
Speaker 5: a lesson that Americans should take heed of. And what
Speaker 5: happens when you have somebody who only cares about staying
Speaker 5: out of jail, which is the whole reason for N'taya,
Speaker 5: who's actions for a year almost and is something he
Speaker 5: has in common with Trump.
Speaker 4: Can you say more?
Speaker 5: Nitagnanfum thought he had won the autocrats lottery because he
Speaker 5: was re elected as Prime Minister in December twenty two.
Speaker 5: Me too, with an ongoing corruption trial and multiple charges
Speaker 5: of fraud, bribery and more. This this is like again
Speaker 5: it since strong man. It's so crazy and the first
Speaker 5: thing you need to do, so you've got to get
Speaker 5: back into office if you have indictments, and then you
Speaker 5: need to fix the judiciary so you can't have to
Speaker 5: go to jail so nothing happens to you. So that
Speaker 5: was the reason he did the judicial reform, and it
Speaker 5: caused massive protests, including participation of military and security elites.
Speaker 5: And what we know from studies of how autocrats can
Speaker 5: fail is when military and security elites start to turn
Speaker 5: against you, that's really a problem for the autocrat and
Speaker 5: that was happening to Nitanyahu, So it left Israel much
Speaker 5: more divided and weaker. And yet he wouldn't give up
Speaker 5: an he allied with these right wing fanatics like Ben
Speaker 5: Vere who fanned the flames.
Speaker 4: So that's the lesson.
Speaker 5: So so my piece today that published just what could
Speaker 5: his death destiny b And he's not really the right
Speaker 5: person to solve the problem, the structural problems that Israel
Speaker 5: has because he's a strong man and he's only interested
Speaker 5: in himself.
Speaker 1: Really exactly, it's such an interesting I mean, it's such
Speaker 1: a I don't want to say interesting because it's horrendous.
Speaker 1: But we are in such a perilous time in American life,
Speaker 1: and I feel like the international conflicts actually somehow make
Speaker 1: domestic life more perilous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's all destabilizing because there are links with all
Speaker 5: these things. And that's why I'm always trying to stress
Speaker 5: that the GOP. You know, when Trump came in the
Speaker 5: first time, he had two goals. One was torect democracy
Speaker 5: at home, but the other was to detach America from
Speaker 5: what's called democratic international order right and put it in
Speaker 5: And that's why, Oh, I love I love North Korean
Speaker 5: leader love letters. You know, Putin is the greatest she
Speaker 5: and he's been trying through all his pronouncements about how
Speaker 5: great were to autocrats are to change the perception and
Speaker 5: get Americans to see Strongman as positive and that will
Speaker 5: benefit him and the GOP, even though so Trump's gone now,
Speaker 5: but the GOP is continuing this action. So it's all linked.
Speaker 5: It's what's happening here is very, very linked to developments
Speaker 5: and ontoprasies abroad.
Speaker 1: I wish this wasn't going to be our problem forever,
Speaker 1: and everybod I assume it will be.
Speaker 5: I see, I says, learning a lot from what is
Speaker 5: going on, and there's a lot of good things happening
Speaker 5: in America as a result of reaction to repression.
Speaker 1: From your mouth to God's ear. Thank you so much anytime.
Speaker 2: Josh coskop Is, a lawyer, was suing the gun company Rubbington.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh.
Speaker 6: Thank you. Mollie.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get you on the podcast because this
Speaker 1: is what happens. Everybody follows the New York Times. Of
Speaker 1: course we do our own stuff here, but also follow.
Speaker 4: The New York Times.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why I did why this
Speaker 1: story has been so interesting to me is because you know,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of senators on this podcast, a
Speaker 1: lot of congress people, and I had Chris Murphy on
Speaker 1: a couple times.
Speaker 4: And I always ask him about.
Speaker 1: The guns, and he had this hopefulness about it, and
Speaker 1: I was so shocked by that. You know, he had
Speaker 1: a certain sort of hope about changing things. And so
Speaker 1: when I read this story in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: the lawyer trying to hold gun makers responsible for mass shootings,
Speaker 1: I knew that I had to get you on this podcast.
Speaker 1: So explain to our listeners how you got here, and
Speaker 1: just a little bit about your story.
Speaker 7: Sure, well, I started from a place of total ignorance
Speaker 7: about not just anything about guns or the gun industry,
Speaker 7: but about the law special protections that the gun industry
Speaker 7: has from our government from lawsuits. And I'm a lawyer
Speaker 7: but didn't know anything about it. So I was effectively
Speaker 7: a clean slate and less than zero. And of course
Speaker 7: initially thought of that as a handicap, but there may
Speaker 7: have been a silver lining in that. To your point
Speaker 7: about Chris Murphy, it probably made me more optimistic than
Speaker 7: I had any right to be. But I sort of
Speaker 7: stumbled on the case because being in Connecticut, of course,
Speaker 7: I wanted to do anything I could to help the families,
Speaker 7: and then happened to be getting a ride from somebody
Speaker 7: to an airport who knew one.
Speaker 6: Of the families. That's how I got the case in
Speaker 6: the first place.
Speaker 4: We're talking about the families of tell our listeners.
Speaker 7: So our farm represented nine families of the shooting. These
Speaker 7: are families who lost either children or adult loved ones
Speaker 7: and educators. And the nine families that brought the suit
Speaker 7: that we represented, this was the only lawsuit filed, so
Speaker 7: the balance of the families didn't participate in the lawsuit.
Speaker 7: The case that I was involved with was the case
Speaker 7: following in the Sandy Hook School shooting.
Speaker 6: And those of you were in Connecticut.
Speaker 7: And elsewhere, of course everywhere across the country probably knew
Speaker 7: where they were when they first heard of the shooting.
Speaker 7: And in that case, in that shooting, of course, there
Speaker 7: were twenty six people killed, twenty children and six adults.
Speaker 7: And in the aftermath of that shooting, as a Connecticut lawyer,
Speaker 7: I was consulted on by some of the families sort
Speaker 7: of by happenstance, and then to start developing ideas about
Speaker 7: how we could go about bringing them some measure of
Speaker 7: accountability and closure, if you will, although that's an elusive
Speaker 7: thing when you're talking about a mass shooting.
Speaker 1: I want you just to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about Sandy Hook because it is it was one of
Speaker 1: the sort of bleakest I mean, it's hard to pick
Speaker 1: the bleakest, but one of the bleakest mass shootings. But
Speaker 1: it also happened in a state where you had opportunities
Speaker 1: because of being in Connecticut that you might not have
Speaker 1: in a state like Texas.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 7: I think one of the sad truths is that there
Speaker 7: was also the apparent opportunity for essentially a child, although
Speaker 7: adult by legal definition, a child by evolution, to acquire
Speaker 7: an AR fifteen.
Speaker 1: But you had legal opportunities that you would not have
Speaker 1: had in a red state.
Speaker 7: In Connecticut, we had some advantage that other states might
Speaker 7: not have. So this big or some less disadvantage, I
Speaker 7: should say, because the federal immunity law, so the law
Speaker 7: that we were really confronted with in this case, applies
Speaker 7: to all states. So you've got to get through that
Speaker 7: regardless of what type of state you're in to bring
Speaker 7: a lawsuit in a case of a mass shooting, and
Speaker 7: Connecticut has some laws that you can work with, and
Speaker 7: the accomplishment I guess in our case was that we
Speaker 7: were able to use one of those laws to get
Speaker 7: us through this federal protection.
Speaker 4: So explain that a little more sure.
Speaker 7: All states have consumer protection laws that basically apply to
Speaker 7: businesses doing commerce in their state. It's a way for
Speaker 7: consumers to take on big corporate interests who are engaged
Speaker 7: in wrongdoing in your state. And typically or oftentimes, these
Speaker 7: consumer protection statutes are afforded and can be used by
Speaker 7: people who are in a business relation. So, for example,
Speaker 7: if somebody bought a gun in a state and there
Speaker 7: was unethical marketing and it caused somebody to buy a
Speaker 7: gun and the gun malfunctioned or the gun went off
Speaker 7: or whatever, but the purchaser of the weapon was injured
Speaker 7: in some way, the purchaser might be able to bring
Speaker 7: a direct cause against the gun company because they were
Speaker 7: in a relationship. A business relationship would also apply to
Speaker 7: competing gun companies. The question in our case was does
Speaker 7: it apply to third parties who were aggrieved in the
Speaker 7: way that these family members were aggrieved in the shooting,
Speaker 7: you know that were killed in the shooting, and in
Speaker 7: our state, there is no requirement that the law be
Speaker 7: limited to those who are in a direct business relationship,
Speaker 7: and that's what the Supreme Court Ofkinnecticut held. Now, other
Speaker 7: states written into these laws, these consumer protection laws, other
Speaker 7: states actually say in the law effectively that you need
Speaker 7: to be in a business relationship with the defendant. So
Speaker 7: that wouldn't work our theory arguably wouldn't want in those states.
Speaker 1: So what happens now, I mean, what are the larger
Speaker 1: implications of what you've done in this Sandy Hurt situation.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm a lawyer who represents people whose livesmen turned
Speaker 7: up to side down, and I'm not a politician, and
Speaker 7: I'm not in any kind of an advocacy or.
Speaker 6: Public interest type group.
Speaker 7: The hope of the tort system in general, in this case,
Speaker 7: specifically this case more than any other, is that as
Speaker 7: a result of having to be held accountable for the
Speaker 7: harm that was caused, that not only brings a measure
Speaker 7: of justice and accountability of the families, but it also
Speaker 7: has a substantial ripple effects within the gun industry in
Speaker 7: this case, or industries that serve as underwriters of the
Speaker 7: gun industry.
Speaker 1: You know, if you take a drug of medicine and
Speaker 1: it makes you sick, then you can often sue the
Speaker 1: company that made you sick. But if you are shot
Speaker 1: in a mass shooting, there isn't the same kind of
Speaker 1: consumer protection.
Speaker 7: For lack of a better word, I mean, be pretty
Speaker 7: much nailed at. I mean, that's the concept is that
Speaker 7: victims of mass shootings and other shootings for that matter,
Speaker 7: are not only aggrieved in the most horrific ways typically,
Speaker 7: but also are treated as second class citizens under the
Speaker 7: law because of the unique protections given to the gun industry.
Speaker 7: And as a corollary to that, the gun industry is
Speaker 7: treated with kid gloves, given special treatment and protections by government,
Speaker 7: which when I learned about this, I thought was super ironic.
Speaker 7: I mean, here's an industry that rails against the federal government,
Speaker 7: right you know, and they get a yet yet their
Speaker 7: biggest big buddy is the federal government.
Speaker 6: But that's the reality.
Speaker 1: We have this very insane Supreme Court. Doesn't it seem
Speaker 1: like something that they are going to get involved in?
Speaker 4: Does that worry you?
Speaker 7: Well, I've heard people say that, and I think that
Speaker 7: with respect to that sort of thought, I think that
Speaker 7: just speaks to the ability of the public in general
Speaker 7: to distinguish between something political in terms of guns, and
Speaker 7: something commercial. One of the things that I was acutely
Speaker 7: aware of, because I've done it myself, is that once
Speaker 7: a year guns we're just programmed to go right to
Speaker 7: Second Amendment.
Speaker 6: You know, good guy with guns.
Speaker 7: Supreme Court, we've been so programmed, and it does have
Speaker 7: a political component.
Speaker 2: I was aware of that.
Speaker 7: But you know, there's also this separate thing, which is
Speaker 7: the obligation of corporate America to behave like adults and
Speaker 7: to show some concern and act responsibly with respect to
Speaker 7: the way they conduct business, and especially when it comes
Speaker 7: to matters that pose a grave risk to the public
Speaker 7: and public safety. And yes, it's true that guns may
Speaker 7: have enjoy this sort of what many of us feels
Speaker 7: a distortion of constitutional law and protection, but that doesn't
Speaker 7: alleviate the obligation of those that profit from guns to
Speaker 7: behave like responsible corporate citizens.
Speaker 6: If that makes any sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it does.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's funny because it's like we are
Speaker 1: in this period of a Supreme Court that is their
Speaker 1: whole idea of this sort of originalism is that if
Speaker 1: the founding fathers wrote the Constitution. If they didn't have
Speaker 1: gotten control in there, then it doesn't exist.
Speaker 4: And you know, you should be able to beat your wife.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know it's crazy, but it is.
Speaker 1: This idea of consistency in legislation and consumer protection is
Speaker 1: like one of the sort of things. I mean, American
Speaker 1: life is built on being able to sue people when
Speaker 1: they do something.
Speaker 6: You don't like to state.
Speaker 7: The obvious one that the common law upon which we
Speaker 7: inherited predated our constitution and was endorsed by our constitution.
Speaker 7: So there are lots of things in play here, and
Speaker 7: there's lots of you could spend I'm sure hours taking
Speaker 7: apart the reasoning of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Brewin,
Speaker 7: but you know, among many other things, I mean, the
Speaker 7: types of weapons that they're dealing with in cases today
Speaker 7: didn't even exist in those times, so that ought to
Speaker 7: right there invalidate any comparison my view.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think it is a really good point.
Speaker 1: The thing I'm struck by, why not when we cover
Speaker 1: things like this is and again it's not political, but
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 4: But everything is political.
Speaker 1: There are so many people on the conservative side who
Speaker 1: have been working on legislation via the Supreme Court, for example,
Speaker 1: I think of three h three creative right.
Speaker 4: You know she never made the websites. She probably never will.
Speaker 4: I mean, do you worry about that?
Speaker 1: And also are there reverberations from what you do that
Speaker 1: could be used in that way to shift legislation.
Speaker 7: If I put on my parent hat, I worry about it,
Speaker 7: and my love of America hat, I worry about it
Speaker 7: for all of us and especially you know, people I
Speaker 7: love and for my country. In terms of my lawyer,
Speaker 7: Laine Hat here, even for this Supreme Court, it would
Speaker 7: be it would be an extreme overreach to try to
Speaker 7: reach into litigation like that which we have in Sandy
Speaker 7: Hook and claim it as somehow impairing some constitutional right
Speaker 7: that they've made up to be fair. I think that
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court recognized that when they looked at the
Speaker 7: application to have this case heard by them and denied it.
Speaker 7: If I were you, I'd be asking me the same questions.
Speaker 7: But I think this discussion just is more evidence of
Speaker 7: how everything about guns ends up in the same place
Speaker 7: in these camps. You know, there's the pro gun, pro
Speaker 7: Second Amendment folks, and then there's the quote unquote common
Speaker 7: sense gun reform folks. Or as the other side says,
Speaker 7: the gun grabbers, or as the common sense side says,
Speaker 7: you know, the gun crazies or gun nuts. I mean,
Speaker 7: so it just it gets there and we all end
Speaker 7: up at the doorstep of the Supreme Court anyway. But
Speaker 7: if you think about it, well, in our case, basically
Speaker 7: we were saying, look, it's just wrong for any company,
Speaker 7: especially a company that sells AR fifteen's, to try to
Speaker 7: brand themselves with children and teenagers and work around the
Speaker 7: parents and get to their kids and establish a relationship
Speaker 7: that is built on solving their problems with violence and
Speaker 7: loan gunman assaults. That's wrong whether you're a Democrat or
Speaker 7: a Republican, or gun person or not. So you know,
Speaker 7: that should have nothing to do with the political questions
Speaker 7: that seemed to put us in this permanent state of
Speaker 7: really inability to move forward in any direction politically.
Speaker 1: So in these lawsuits you find a lot of times
Speaker 1: things in discovery. Talk to us about the discovery process.
Speaker 7: The big I guess achievement of the case was when
Speaker 7: the Supreme Court at Connecticut said yes, you can go
Speaker 7: forward with this case. Up until that and a lot
Speaker 7: of people who had looked at the case from the
Speaker 7: outside thought that the chances were virtually nil. They didn't
Speaker 7: see what we saw, but in any event, that was
Speaker 7: a prevailing view, and that was a prevailing view of
Speaker 7: the gun industry. So they've never really had to get
Speaker 7: to that next step. And I think your listeners may
Speaker 7: not be familiar with the sequence of things. It's complicated,
Speaker 7: you know. The first thing is you have to do
Speaker 7: is you have to gather information yourself what's publicly available,
Speaker 7: and you put together a story I always think of
Speaker 7: as a complaint, like the story of the case, and
Speaker 7: you'd find the law that fits with that story and
Speaker 7: the facts that you know them, and you file that lawsuit.
Speaker 7: And most lawsuits then go forward into what's called discovery,
Speaker 7: where you get the documents or information that you need
Speaker 7: from the person you're bringing lawsuit against. When it comes
Speaker 7: to guns ensuing the gun industry, they have this special protection,
Speaker 7: and this is the protection that was given by Congress
Speaker 7: in two thousand and five. And under the special protection,
Speaker 7: the gun industry is allowed to try to dismiss the
Speaker 7: case and shut it down right from the start.
Speaker 6: So right after you.
Speaker 7: File that complaint and tell your story based on what
Speaker 7: you understand the facts, to be, the gun industry then
Speaker 7: moves to shut it down and dismiss the case, and
Speaker 7: they were very, very successful at that up until the
Speaker 7: Sandy Hook lawsuit. The importance of that is if you
Speaker 7: shut down the case before you get to this second
Speaker 7: part where you get to find out and get information
Speaker 7: from the other side, it means you get to keep
Speaker 7: your secrets of how you do business hidden because this
Speaker 7: process gets shut down before you get there. So in
Speaker 7: our case, after the Supreme Court of Connecticut greenlit part
Speaker 7: of the case, and after the Supreme Court denied reviewing,
Speaker 7: after the United States Supreme Court denied reviewing the Connecticut
Speaker 7: short decision, we were then allowed to get into that
Speaker 7: second part of the process, which was discovery, which literally
Speaker 7: means discovering things from the other side. So in this case,
Speaker 7: what I knew, Molly, I didn't know what we were
Speaker 7: going to find. To be honest, all I knew is
Speaker 7: that we were headed into what I've described as like
Speaker 7: a dark, underground cave that nobody had ever been to before,
Speaker 7: and the only people who'd been there are people in
Speaker 7: the gun industry. What I knew we needed to do
Speaker 7: was to make sure that we drove a truck through
Speaker 7: that opening and try to find as much our way
Speaker 7: through that cave in as much detail as possible, and
Speaker 7: more to be less allegorical about it, like I just
Speaker 7: wanted to get all the stuff we could, right could
Speaker 7: because the family's case and to a person to a family,
Speaker 7: you know, amazing in the mass shooting. We tend to
Speaker 7: lump victims of mass shootings into one block like they're
Speaker 7: all that means they're all for gun reform or all
Speaker 7: for these was and that they're poltically different like the
Speaker 7: people they were before. But the one thing the families,
Speaker 7: the nine families shared was the goal of trying to
Speaker 7: learn as much as they could about this industry and
Speaker 7: shed light on it in order to hopefully prevent the
Speaker 7: next Sandy Hook. And so this was a critical part
Speaker 7: of the whole endeavor. And so you know, even if
Speaker 7: we had proceeded with the case and it didn't go
Speaker 7: anywhere after we were able to get through into this
Speaker 7: dungeon or this cave, it would have been a victory
Speaker 7: to get this information and to be able to share
Speaker 7: it with the public.
Speaker 4: So what was it?
Speaker 6: We now know?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 7: When I'm behind closed doors of what had become the
Speaker 7: world's biggest gun conglomerate for a period of time. You
Speaker 7: know the decisions that were made in the boardrooms in
Speaker 7: terms of how to market, how to expand the market,
Speaker 7: what techniques and schemes to use to bring in a
Speaker 7: younger and younger demographic. When they were facing increasing competition.
Speaker 7: We know that they pivoted towards AR fifteens because of
Speaker 7: the high margin and profit that they provided. We know
Speaker 7: that a private equity firm called Cerberus was heavily involved
Speaker 7: in the transformation of the American gun industry.
Speaker 6: We know that. I mean, you might have asked yourself,
Speaker 6: as I.
Speaker 7: Have as a parent, how come I never heard of
Speaker 7: an AR fifteen when I was growing up, right, But
Speaker 7: every twelve year old now knows what one is. It's
Speaker 7: not accidental, but that comes as a result of what
Speaker 7: was a very clever, very concerted, and very greedy effort
Speaker 7: to sell as many AR fifteens to as many people
Speaker 7: as they could.
Speaker 4: Jesus when you saw this where you just.
Speaker 7: Chalked, I mean I was, and I wasn't because frankly,
Speaker 7: I didn't expect much out of the gun industry after way,
Speaker 7: I mean, I didn't really know much about the gun
Speaker 7: industry again, because I didn't really know wasn't an area
Speaker 7: of focus in mind. But I learned that the gun
Speaker 7: industry in many ways was no different than any other
Speaker 7: industry that was profit driven, but in some way, in
Speaker 7: some critical ways, it was whereas if you got behind
Speaker 7: the doors of it, you went into a boardroom of
Speaker 7: a car manufacturer, car company like Ford, you know there's
Speaker 7: gonna be a safety division. There's going to be somebody
Speaker 7: in that in each meeting that's going to say, hey,
Speaker 7: can we do this? Is it really safe? What are
Speaker 7: the implications to public safety?
Speaker 6: Right? Cars can be pretty.
Speaker 7: Dangerous, you know, should we really be marketing them to children?
Speaker 7: To run over people? And you're going to get a
Speaker 7: more you're going to get a more diversity, and you'll
Speaker 7: have a ethical and moral governor on all kind of
Speaker 7: in the boardrooms that's utterly lacking in the gun industry.
Speaker 7: There's no pushback to anything. There's it's a no holds
Speaker 7: barred industry. That's what I learned. I guess because we
Speaker 7: could all see the finished product, like you probably saw
Speaker 7: the man card advertising that promoted masculinity and owning an
Speaker 7: AR fifteen. You know that doesn't happen by accident, So
Speaker 7: I didn't expect much, but I think that the extent
Speaker 7: I was shocked, it was the cognitive dissonance between what
Speaker 7: they were doing and the effects we're seeing in our communities.
Speaker 7: Number one and number two is just the utter lack
Speaker 7: of anybody or any even structural thing in place that
Speaker 7: looked at public safety or any implications of their scheme
Speaker 7: to make money. And the other thing is that, you know,
Speaker 7: whereas I think of greed and as a bad thing,
Speaker 7: this particular gun conglomerate, which was the brainchild of this
Speaker 7: private equity firm, existed for one reason and one reason only,
Speaker 7: and that was to try to build a billion dollar
Speaker 7: revenue company that they could then go public with a
Speaker 7: gun company. So that was their first, second, and third
Speaker 7: goal was to make money and buy their own testimony
Speaker 7: and admission. And do you know, bad things happen when
Speaker 7: people lose their way in an effort simply to accumulate
Speaker 7: wealth at the cost of everything else. And really bad
Speaker 7: things happen when those people sell ar fifteen's and other
Speaker 7: types of fire arms to children or try to brand
Speaker 7: themselves to children. But just it speaks to the desperation
Speaker 7: and the lengths of which people go to so I
Speaker 7: wouldn't point to one individual as being a bad person
Speaker 7: or their fathers and families. Everybody in the gun industry
Speaker 7: mostly has family members that they care about. There's just
Speaker 7: this cognitive dissonance and refusal to see or even evaluate
Speaker 7: the implications of what they're doing.
Speaker 4: Josh, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 6: I'd love to BALI thank you no moment perfectly.
Speaker 8: I it's Molly chm Thost and you're getting the moment
Speaker 8: of fuckoring on your nun today. I am can you
Speaker 8: use this moment to talk about the one soldierate Nancy
Speaker 8: Mays who told Jah temper on Celo that she knew
Speaker 8: funny As Democrats who trusted Jim Jordan, I promise you
Speaker 8: there's not a single Democrat who trusts Jim Jordan, and
Speaker 8: that incredible Nancy may Fly is your moment of suckery.
Speaker 4: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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