Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Peter Navarro has become the first
Speaker 1: Trump White House official to report to prison. Over January sixth,
Speaker 1: we have such a great show for you Today, Congresswoman
Speaker 1: re Lisa Blunt Rockchester talks to us about her Senate
Speaker 1: run as well as being a co chair of the
Speaker 1: Biden campaign.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to former political reporter.
Speaker 1: Amy Chosek about her new MAC show The Girls on
Speaker 1: the Bus, which is inspired by her time on the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen campaign tail. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Bulwarks daily podcast, The Bulwarks, Tim Miller. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics, Tim.
Speaker 3: Miller, Boom, ready to be here. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because it's like I was thinking
Speaker 1: we're just chatting before, I was like, I really do
Speaker 1: like you so much. When I ever end up on
Speaker 1: a panel with you, I'm always just delighted to talk
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 2: But I also like, I think that watching the RNC
Speaker 2: be destroyed with a sledgehammer must be a little bit
Speaker 2: uncomfortable for you.
Speaker 3: No, it's a little satisfying actually, so thank you for asking.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love being on with you always too. You know,
Speaker 3: it's been nice to be doing the Board podcast where
Speaker 3: I'm asking people questions and it's, as you know, it's
Speaker 3: like a new skill. You're trying to draw people out
Speaker 3: and all that. But you know, sometimes I just like
Speaker 3: to let it rip, and you know, we can come
Speaker 3: over here and you can just put it on a
Speaker 3: tee for me and let me let it rip. And
Speaker 3: like in this situation, which is yeah, these fuckers are
Speaker 3: getting exactly what they've deserved for a long time now,
Speaker 3: and it's been a long time coming. And what they
Speaker 3: have done to the RNC during the Rona Romney years
Speaker 3: was absolutely shameful. They should all feel ashamed. And I'm
Speaker 3: glad that they're running out of money and I'm glad
Speaker 3: that they are now officially a cult to like the
Speaker 3: daughter in law of the president, which is a former president,
Speaker 3: excuse me, which is very bizarre and very freakish, and
Speaker 3: it's everything they deserve.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to me, and I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: think about this. Like, so Rona gets in trouble because
Speaker 1: she can't raise money, so they decide to put someone
Speaker 1: in there, who absolutely doesn't know any of the donors.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe she knows a few of them, but
Speaker 1: who does not have nearly the same kind of experience
Speaker 1: raising money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Rona was just a classic fall girl
Speaker 3: in this thing. The question is why it took so long, really,
Speaker 3: you know, because she had just had loss after loss
Speaker 3: after loss. You know how I monitor my MAGA Twitter
Speaker 3: feeds and all these guys, and I saw a funny
Speaker 3: quote from somebody where I guess my old boss, rites
Speaker 3: was on Sean Hannity saying, Okay, this is what Lauren
Speaker 3: Lara needs to do. It's easy. You just got to
Speaker 3: raise forty million in the first month, and then you
Speaker 3: do this, and then you do that, and then you
Speaker 3: do the other thing. And one of one of the
Speaker 3: MAGA guys I followed was like, well, maybe this guy
Speaker 3: should have been in charge, And I was like, yeah, exactly, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: good luck Lara. Just it's just gonna be so easy, girl.
Speaker 3: Well you just gonna have to RaSE forty million, No
Speaker 3: big deal. You've never done anything, You've never really had
Speaker 3: a job in your life. Here you go, good luck.
Speaker 1: You think about Mike Johnson, it's a similar situation. You know,
Speaker 1: Democrats are always like, we didn't put our fifth or
Speaker 1: sixth guy in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is similar situation.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I saw so they had this little confab
Speaker 3: out that the Greenbrier in West Virginia. Yeah, weekend. A
Speaker 3: lot of weird stuff was leaking out of that. Like
Speaker 3: Tom Memer was like, Joe Brden was too mean to
Speaker 3: us at the State of the Union. We shouldn't invite
Speaker 3: him back next year if he wins. I was like,
Speaker 3: what what is wrong with you guys? Okay, So that
Speaker 3: was one. Then Patrick McHenry, you know, the little guy
Speaker 3: at the bow Tie, who was the heir apparent to
Speaker 3: McCarthy that they passed over from being two establishment or whatever.
Speaker 3: He's been ripping Johnson ever since Johnson took over, and
Speaker 3: and you know, he was saying, reporter, it's like, well
Speaker 3: he's doing a little bit better.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like how you're talking about your kids.
Speaker 3: They're learning how to read, or learning how to ride
Speaker 3: a bike or something like, well, we're taking the training
Speaker 3: wheels off now. And uh, you know, he can go
Speaker 3: a full block by himself without any help. And so
Speaker 3: I guess I haven't seen a lot of evidence that
Speaker 3: he's doing better. You know, he hasn't had to actually
Speaker 3: make any of the hard decisions that he keeps kicking
Speaker 3: the can with these little mini extensions.
Speaker 5: For a few weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like eventually, you know, the rubber is
Speaker 3: going to meet the road and they're they're going to
Speaker 3: they're either going to have to vote to fund Ukraine
Speaker 3: and need Democrats to get it passed, or they're not.
Speaker 3: And they're gonna either have to vote to keep the
Speaker 3: government open and need Democrats to get it passed, or
Speaker 3: they're not going to keep the government open. And at
Speaker 3: those moments, we'll see how little Mike Johnson is doing,
Speaker 3: how much he's improved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't seem like he is still able to
Speaker 1: like he really is one of those people sort of
Speaker 1: thinking that he can pull the rabbit out of the hat.
Speaker 1: The good news is that they somehow managed not to
Speaker 1: shut down the government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess it's good news. So I just
Speaker 3: want to be abundantly clear about this and nobody misunderstands.
Speaker 3: And the crazy Nazi right, there's this thing since called accelerationism.
Speaker 3: They're accelerationists. They like want the race war. They're rooting
Speaker 3: for it. I am not rooting for the race war.
Speaker 3: I am kind of an accelerationist when it comes to
Speaker 3: the Republican's demise. So, you know this whole let's let's
Speaker 3: let them give him a little more leash, give a
Speaker 3: little more leash, give a little time, let's work with them.
Speaker 3: I interviewed a couple of weeks ago Jake Auchincloss from Massachusetts,
Speaker 3: So I really like and that guy is just a Democrat.
Speaker 3: He's basically just like I'm not voting for these little extensions,
Speaker 3: you know, like put up or shut up, like either
Speaker 3: let's either fund the government and fund Ukraine or not.
Speaker 3: And I kind of side with him on that. And
Speaker 3: so I guess it's good that the government hasn't been
Speaker 3: shut down, but I think it's time to put the
Speaker 3: screws to this guy and say, Okay, look, you're either
Speaker 3: going to be with the crazies in your caucus and
Speaker 3: you're gonna cut off your nose despite your face by
Speaker 3: shutting down the government, or you're going to be an
Speaker 3: adult and a grown up and you're gonna work with
Speaker 3: Democrats to fund our obligations and to support our friends
Speaker 3: in Ukraine and deal with the consequences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean those are the choices.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, Republicans are sort of hoping that there's
Speaker 1: some third choice. At the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: Republican Party is still very much run by Trump.
Speaker 3: Oh oh my god. Yeah, And obviously the party is
Speaker 3: still controlled by Trump. You can see it with Johnson,
Speaker 3: you can see it in all these primaries. I mean,
Speaker 3: maybe not every single one. There could be some weird exceptions,
Speaker 3: but look, I mean, Johnson can't do anything. None of
Speaker 3: these guys can do anything without knowing that Trump will
Speaker 3: have their back. And the TikTok thing will be an
Speaker 3: interesting another example of this, right, Like, it passes fifty
Speaker 3: to zero initially in committee, and then Trump comes out
Speaker 3: and is like, no, I'm not for it anymore because
Speaker 3: some billionaire that wants to give me money and I'm
Speaker 3: despert for money says I shouldn't be for it anymore.
Speaker 3: And so now like the rubber is going to meet
Speaker 3: the road on that right, it's going to be like,
Speaker 3: are are these Republicans going to back down again? Just
Speaker 3: like they did on immigration, just like they did on
Speaker 3: all these other things, but to appease mister Trump, or
Speaker 3: are there any areas where he doesn't control it?
Speaker 2: Trump is having kind of an incredible cash crunch. I mean,
Speaker 2: and it's one thing not to be liquid.
Speaker 1: It's another thing, like so he owes half a billion
Speaker 1: dollars again. My favorite tweet of the week was that
Speaker 1: Republican from Fox, the guy Mark Levin.
Speaker 3: Like Leavin, Yeah, they call him the great one?
Speaker 2: Do they really? And why?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: They call him the great one. I don't know. Bar
Speaker 3: the bar is so well over there that you know,
Speaker 3: somebody can do four syllable words. They think they're a genius.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm going to read you this quote.
Speaker 1: I know you've seen it because I feel that you
Speaker 1: will have hilarious things to say about it. Why are
Speaker 1: there no Republican multi billionaires offering to lend President Trump
Speaker 1: the funds to file his appeal in the outrageous case
Speaker 1: in your state? And none of them liquid enough to
Speaker 1: help or join with others to help.
Speaker 2: This is an outrage.
Speaker 3: You first, Mark, Let's see how much you got here
Speaker 3: saving the coup. Let's put it up off a coup.
Speaker 3: I don't know, why not, Mark Levin? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I think that the obvious thing answer for the listeners
Speaker 3: of this podcast know is that generally rich people do
Speaker 3: not like to loan money to like one of the
Speaker 3: greatest welchers in the history of the world. So, you know,
Speaker 3: it's another example of the fuck around and find out
Speaker 3: principle of Trump, right, which is like eventually the build
Speaker 3: these bills come due in this case literally and a
Speaker 3: lot of these guys aren't don't want to give money.
Speaker 3: And it's astonishing, frankly, how much money he has got
Speaker 3: from Rubes to fund his various legal defenses, given his
Speaker 3: track record of scams and bankruptcies and screwing over people
Speaker 3: that loaned the money or did work for him. So no,
Speaker 3: I don't think that a couple of billions have come
Speaker 3: to his defense. But here's the thing I'm worried about,
Speaker 3: and I think everybody should be worried about, is who
Speaker 3: might come to his defense. Who might come to his
Speaker 3: aid here and give him some loans? Foreign interests, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: Saudis people with big deals before the government, you know,
Speaker 3: people that are going to want bailouts from the government
Speaker 3: on the back end. I don't don't know, Like I
Speaker 3: think that it's a big, big question and a big
Speaker 3: big vulnerability to have a presidential candidate that is like
Speaker 3: desperate for bond cash. You know. I think that there
Speaker 3: is just some potential leverages, you know, and this is why,
Speaker 3: like we have, if you want to go work in
Speaker 3: the White House, you have to have a background check.
Speaker 3: And let me tell you. If you want to go
Speaker 3: work in the National Security Agency, one of the NATSAC agencies,
Speaker 3: and you had hundreds of billions of dollars in leans,
Speaker 3: you know out against you, you're not going to get
Speaker 3: the job. All right. There's going to be concerns that
Speaker 3: you could be a right target for foreign influence operations,
Speaker 3: and so that should be concerning meut ofresidential candidates. So
Speaker 3: you know the types of Republicans that pretend to care
Speaker 3: about this stuff. Your Marco Rubio is, your Tom Cotton's,
Speaker 3: they've just been completely castrated and are just unwilling to
Speaker 3: say anything if it fit Boss Trump.
Speaker 2: Right again, I'm going to ask you an impossible question,
Speaker 2: but I'm just curious what you how if you'll answer it,
Speaker 2: and what you think about it. Do you think that
Speaker 2: in their heart of hearts, these people think this is
Speaker 2: going to work or do you think they know that
Speaker 2: they just have to go along with Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to tell you. I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 3: different for different people, but just as a broad brush,
Speaker 3: something that's been pretty alarming to me is I think
Speaker 3: that a lot of them have now gotten very deep
Speaker 3: into a bubble and a kind of resentment fueled bubble
Speaker 3: where they look out and they say, oh, man, you know,
Speaker 3: these media people are so unfair to us. The never
Speaker 3: trumpers are so unfair to us. And we survived the
Speaker 3: first Trump administration. Well there was the one that one
Speaker 3: day with the Capital starring, but if you just forward
Speaker 3: past that, like, most of it was pretty good, right,
Speaker 3: most of it was fine. We got our tax cuts,
Speaker 3: and you know that they've all just kind of rationalized this.
Speaker 5: I guess.
Speaker 3: One of the most revealing the insights into the mind
Speaker 3: of this crowd that I've listened to recently, which I'd recommend,
Speaker 3: is Jamie Weinstein over at The Dispatch interviewed Dan Crenshaw.
Speaker 3: And I would love to enview Dan Crenshaw, but he's
Speaker 3: too scared to come into Bolwerk podcast, But he was
Speaker 3: willing to do the Dispatch podcast, and it was like
Speaker 3: he has you could just hear him kind of convincing
Speaker 3: himself in real time that the never trumpers were overstating
Speaker 3: what happened on January sixth, and it wasn't really that bad.
Speaker 3: And Trump's sport policy was pretty good.
Speaker 5: It was just his.
Speaker 3: Words that were bad. And the words don't matter and
Speaker 3: the actions right, you can just and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: everybody's so mean to me for trying to apologize him,
Speaker 3: and I did my best. Like it's just you can
Speaker 3: just hear this real time rationalization happening. And I kind
Speaker 3: of think that is pretty representative of where most of
Speaker 3: these guys are. And I think they all have legitimate
Speaker 3: fears and concerns at some level, but they're more intense
Speaker 3: feeling is of resentment towards you know, DEM's libs sil
Speaker 3: eat the media however you ought to put it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe that's why they want to stick it
Speaker 2: to Dems and they feel that nominating Trump will do that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know some of these I wouldn't
Speaker 3: have wanted to dominate Trump if they could wave a
Speaker 3: wand but they just couldn't, didn't have any power to
Speaker 3: and didn't want to waste any more political capital. And
Speaker 3: their cowards. I think maybe last I was on this podcast,
Speaker 3: I was talking about how few of them had indorsed
Speaker 3: Nikki Alen, you know, and they'd all convinced themselves as like,
Speaker 3: there's no point, there's no point in tried the campaign,
Speaker 3: Why should I even do it? And so, you know,
Speaker 3: anythink if you gave any of them, you know, three
Speaker 3: magic beans, they would they would use the first one
Speaker 3: to get rid of Donald Trump, right, But they don't
Speaker 3: have magic beans, and so instead they coward, right, And
Speaker 3: I think that's basically their their mindset these days.
Speaker 2: One of the problems that Trump has that I have
Speaker 2: noticed is that he's really having trouble raising money. Right.
Speaker 2: He's got his donor numbers, he's hemorrhaged.
Speaker 3: Small dollar donors are even bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, small dollar donors a big dollar nobody's willing to
Speaker 1: write him a half billion dollar check.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm curious, Like I've argued. I have a
Speaker 2: friend who's a straight journalist who I like to argue with,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, Trump doesn't need as much money
Speaker 2: as by does, as a normal political candidate does. But
Speaker 2: don't you think this is a sign that MAGA they
Speaker 2: might be all tapped out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know, I've been spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: thinking about this, and I just I don't know that
Speaker 3: we're going to really know the answer for a few months.
Speaker 3: And at the one level, I just want to say this,
Speaker 3: I am not of the view that whoever raises the
Speaker 3: more money in presidential races like really matters. I think
Speaker 3: that there's a law of diminishing returns on presidential money,
Speaker 3: right that tv ads. There's a certain group of people
Speaker 3: can be reached with tv ads. These guys are bon
Speaker 3: the presidents. A lot of this stuff is kind of
Speaker 3: baked in with people, and so I think money matters,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it matters as much as some
Speaker 3: commentators do. Now. Having this big of a gap, though,
Speaker 3: is pretty noteworthy, and like it's one thing, it's like, oh, well, whatever,
Speaker 3: Biden raised fifty million more, and if you divide that
Speaker 3: between the five states, it's not really that munch on balance.
Speaker 3: But if it's like he's already raised fifty million more,
Speaker 3: that you know the gap is going to expand. And
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't have enough money to run his operations, and
Speaker 3: you know he's also stressed about the money in his
Speaker 3: personal life because he can't pay these bonds and he's
Speaker 3: redirecting money from the RNC that should be going to
Speaker 3: grassroots instead it's going to pay his lawyers. At some
Speaker 3: point that has to matter. And at some point, only
Speaker 3: raising three million online in the month of January or
Speaker 3: whatever it was has to show that, Yeah, some of
Speaker 3: these small dollar dollars are like they don't have any
Speaker 3: more to give. Eventually, you do run into a limit
Speaker 3: on this. So I'm not ready to kind of dance
Speaker 3: on his grave over it yet, but I do think
Speaker 3: it's a really concerning sign.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is just blewing on, but don't you think that.
Speaker 1: And again, like poor Jesse has heard me bring this
Speaker 1: up a number of times, and probably the most embarrassing
Speaker 1: time was when I brought up to Paul Krugman.
Speaker 2: But I do bring this up a lot. So, you
Speaker 2: have a million people who died of COVID right two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand before the vaccine. Approximately, These are approximate numbers
Speaker 2: because I don't have them in front of me. Then,
Speaker 2: significantly more after many of whom had been encouraged right
Speaker 2: wing media to take Horse de Warmer to not take
Speaker 2: the vaccine, you know, many of which were like really preventable, Dace,
Speaker 2: I had a theory that I could never prove that
Speaker 2: there was some economic fallout from that just having less people.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder, I mean, even though those people
Speaker 1: maybe didn't turn on Trump, there has to be some
Speaker 1: voter or the possibility of some voter fallout from that,
Speaker 1: don't you think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a complicated ecosystem, right like our politics, it's
Speaker 3: always evolving and changing a little bit. It's not a
Speaker 3: static as people want it to want to think it is.
Speaker 3: It's funny for the focus group podcasts so long while
Speaker 3: we're listening to like the twenty twenty focus groups of
Speaker 3: swing voters and COVID and just how terrible Trump was
Speaker 3: at handling that was so front of their mind that
Speaker 3: that's obvious now in retrospect, Like listening to it, it
Speaker 3: was pretty jarring to hear them talk about him then
Speaker 3: versus kind of how much you hear about it now
Speaker 3: with swing voters. So I do think that there was
Speaker 3: some impact there that it really hurt him in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: his mishandling. Then I think that pressing forward, you had
Speaker 3: the vaccine desks and how they were over indexed in
Speaker 3: red areas. That's been well documented or over indexed among
Speaker 3: older voters who Trump does better with. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I do think that there is potentially some impact about that.
Speaker 3: I know is just you know, thinking about Georgia for example,
Speaker 3: you know you've had still four more years of like
Speaker 3: people from blue states moving into Atlanta. You know, you
Speaker 3: had an over indexing of I think death rate. That's
Speaker 3: just something that we know happened. And the more conservative
Speaker 3: parts of Georgia. Now, how does all of that kind
Speaker 3: of demographic change, which like marginally accruised to Biden's benefit,
Speaker 3: is that offset by if there's some bleed among black voters, right,
Speaker 3: if he goes from ninety two to eight to eighty
Speaker 3: seven thirteen, right, is that more people than the demographic change.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: It's kind of tough to do the Ledger on all that,
Speaker 3: but I do think that it makes it made a
Speaker 3: marginal difference for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again like enthusiasm, with these elections we have are
Speaker 1: such small margins.
Speaker 2: The enthusiasm is so it's such an important element. Thank you,
Speaker 2: Tim Miller, Ollie.
Speaker 3: Jong Fast, thank you. I'm sure I'll be back soon.
Speaker 3: I'm still I'm waiting for that chart on who's been
Speaker 3: guests the most times. I just want to kind of
Speaker 3: see where I look where I am on the power rankings.
Speaker 3: That's some homework for ester.
Speaker 1: Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rothchester represents Delaware's first district. Welcome too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Congresswoman Lisa, Wait, do you say your whole
Speaker 1: last name?
Speaker 5: So a lot of times we go by LBR. Sometimes
Speaker 5: it's the ho Lisa Blunt Rochester.
Speaker 1: I feel like LBR is good because like when you're
Speaker 1: going by initials, you know you've hit the big time.
Speaker 5: Well, I definitely feel like an LBR. I love it.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You are the congresswoman from Delaware and running for the Senate.
Speaker 1: You will be This is like an obsession of mine.
Speaker 1: Will you only be the fourth black woman senator or
Speaker 1: the third?
Speaker 5: The fourth in the history of the country and insane? Yeah,
Speaker 5: like think about it, and only two of them have
Speaker 5: been elected. And then that would be Carol Moseley Braun
Speaker 5: who was the first, and then you've got the Vice
Speaker 5: President Kamala Harris as the second. And then the third
Speaker 5: is appointed and currently serving. That's Lafonza Butler, who was
Speaker 5: appointed after the passing of Dianne Feinstein by Governor Newsom
Speaker 5: So there's only been three in the history of the country,
Speaker 5: and you know, hopefully I will be number four.
Speaker 2: It's what my people call a Shonda. It's just so
Speaker 2: blatantly incredibly infuriating to me that you will be the
Speaker 2: fourth black woman ever to be in the Senate is crazy.
Speaker 5: It truly is mind blowing. I mean, even in twenty
Speaker 5: sixteen when I won my in Congress, I was the
Speaker 5: first woman and first person of color elected to Congress
Speaker 5: from Delaware, And so you know, you would think in
Speaker 5: this day and age, we wouldn't still be hearing about first.
Speaker 5: But it's all the more reason why we've got to
Speaker 5: keep going. It's all the more reason why you got
Speaker 5: to break those ceilings, bust down those doors. And is
Speaker 5: the late great Shirley chisen On, the first black woman
Speaker 5: in the House, said if they don't give you a
Speaker 5: seat a the table, we can bring a folding chair.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can we talk for two seconds about how inherently racist
Speaker 1: and sexist America is and how much harder black women
Speaker 1: have to work. You know, it's true for white women,
Speaker 1: but not the way it's true for black women. Like
Speaker 1: I just see KJP is judged just at a totally
Speaker 1: on a much harsher level than someone like Kirby. And
Speaker 1: I know that you have prevailed and you're, you know,
Speaker 1: now running for the Senate, but it just is so
Speaker 1: shocking to me how much it's so baked into everything.
Speaker 5: You know, It's interesting, Molly. Years ago, I went to
Speaker 5: this black women's conference and I heard this term that
Speaker 5: like stuck with me. It's be conscious but not consumed.
Speaker 5: And what that meant, especially to me because even in Delaware,
Speaker 5: I was the first black woman Secretary of Labor. I've
Speaker 5: had these positions where you sometimes walk into a room
Speaker 5: and you are the only one. And in that conference,
Speaker 5: what they talked about is that you got to be
Speaker 5: conscious of it. Yeah, isms exist, racism, classism, sexismisms exist,
Speaker 5: but to the extent that I get consumed by that,
Speaker 5: I'm ineffective. I'm not breaking that door open. And so
Speaker 5: part of it is you got to be conscious of it.
Speaker 5: Because when it's time to do things, we do feel
Speaker 5: the difference, you know, whether it's walking into a room
Speaker 5: and feeling I'd better be ten times better or smarter
Speaker 5: or whatever. But at the same time, I'm knowing that
Speaker 5: I've got to be effective, and in order for me
Speaker 5: to be effective. I've got to be conscious but not consumed.
Speaker 5: And so for me, that's sort of how I operate,
Speaker 5: and I think it gives me a different lens for
Speaker 5: other folks that walk in the room, and maybe they're
Speaker 5: the only ones. I worked for a think tank that
Speaker 5: focused on the inclusion of people with disabilities, and you
Speaker 5: think about how, you know, we do things with bias
Speaker 5: that we don't even know sometimes that we have, or
Speaker 5: you know, I've lived in over thirty you know, and
Speaker 5: traveled and worked and played in over thirty countries in
Speaker 5: the world. My son was born in France, I lived
Speaker 5: in Shanghai. How it feels to be the other coming
Speaker 5: into a place, and so I think I try to
Speaker 5: bring those lived experiences with me to the work, you know.
Speaker 5: And that's so valuable about having representation in the Senate
Speaker 5: is that we have different lived experiences. I know what
Speaker 5: it's like to have a son who stopped by the
Speaker 5: police at night as a black mom. But at the
Speaker 5: same time, as a congresswoman, I helped to bring together
Speaker 5: community activists and law enforcement and get body war on
Speaker 5: cameras in my state. It's because I had those lived
Speaker 5: experiences and those relationships, so I always say conscious but
Speaker 5: not consumed.
Speaker 1: Really important point and I think that's so interesting. So
Speaker 1: now you are the national co chair of the Biden
Speaker 1: reelection campaign.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Are you a surrogate and are you out there and
Speaker 1: what does that look like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, this is actually my second time being a
Speaker 5: co chair of the Biden Harris campaign. It was so
Speaker 5: nice they asked me twice and so I am very
Speaker 5: excited about being on the campaign trail. As a co chair,
Speaker 5: I do a little bit of everything, you know, from
Speaker 5: providing advice. We have co chair meetings, to actually being
Speaker 5: in different parts of the country, whether it's being on
Speaker 5: radio or TV, or opening up a grand opening for
Speaker 5: one of our offices, you know, and kind of motivating
Speaker 5: those folks and also helping with fundraising and then just
Speaker 5: again giving advice on things that we see and you know,
Speaker 5: I will tell you when I first was asked by
Speaker 5: President Biden in the first term to come on board
Speaker 5: and be a you know and dorset them right out
Speaker 5: the gate, it was really after having a one on
Speaker 5: one conversation with him and you know, seeing and feeling
Speaker 5: and hearing what his motivation was and that motivation of
Speaker 5: you know, restoring the soul of this country, making sure
Speaker 5: that everybody gets a fair chance and gets opportunity. Those
Speaker 5: things are still relevant today. And as somebody who has
Speaker 5: lived through one term of Donald Trump and one term
Speaker 5: of Joe Biden, I can tell you there is a
Speaker 5: serious and real difference between the two of them and
Speaker 5: who they stand for and how they operate and how
Speaker 5: effected they've been. And so I am excited again to
Speaker 5: be a national CoA chair and we're doing and everything
Speaker 5: we can to make sure they are reelected.
Speaker 1: Do you think Black voters are still with Biden? Do
Speaker 1: you think it's a challenge to win them back? What
Speaker 1: are you seeing in that group? Do you think that
Speaker 1: he's speak enough to those voters?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that
Speaker 5: is important for us as a campaign, and is one
Speaker 5: of the hallmarks of who he is and who they
Speaker 5: are as a team, is that we don't take any
Speaker 5: vote for granted. And I think that's really important that
Speaker 5: we want to hear from people, want to We want
Speaker 5: them to see, feel and hear the things that we've accomplished,
Speaker 5: but also know that there's a vision for the future
Speaker 5: that includes things like voting rights, that includes reproductive freedoms,
Speaker 5: and you know, I had heard a recent data point
Speaker 5: that even for something like reproductive rights and abortion rights.
Speaker 5: The Ohio election, I had heard that black men showed
Speaker 5: up and voted in more in favor than any other group.
Speaker 5: Because I think sometimes people make assumptions about groups based
Speaker 5: on polls instead of really talking to people and the
Speaker 5: things that are important to our communities. First of all,
Speaker 5: we're not monolithic. Different people have, you know, different backgrounds
Speaker 5: and different motivations. But access to capital and the fact
Speaker 5: that we now have you know, the lowest unemployment rate
Speaker 5: in the Black community, the greatest investment in hbc US.
Speaker 5: My two kids and my daughter in law, they all
Speaker 5: graduated from HBCUs. And so to actually like put their
Speaker 5: money where their mouth is, meaning you know what the
Speaker 5: Biden Harris administration, that's important to people. And then in Delaware,
Speaker 5: we have a lot of people don't realize we're the
Speaker 5: lowest mean elevation state in the country, and so climate
Speaker 5: is important, and you know, like we got the beaches,
Speaker 5: but we also have farmers, we also have environmental justice communities.
Speaker 5: And so this president again has put his money where
Speaker 5: his mouth is and really invested in those communities, clean
Speaker 5: drinking water, air quality monitors. Those are two of the
Speaker 5: things that I've worked on personally because I heard it
Speaker 5: from my constituents. And so I think for us, we
Speaker 5: take nobody for granted. We're going to work hard for
Speaker 5: everyone's vote, and we're also going to like meet people
Speaker 5: where they are and that's important as well. You know.
Speaker 5: So I'm excited about being on the road and talking
Speaker 5: to people and hearing from them. And I'm really excited
Speaker 5: that President Biden and Vice President Harris have really listened,
Speaker 5: even on things like the Safer Community dropped. You know,
Speaker 5: I was able to get piece of legislation in that's
Speaker 5: called break the cycle of violence, which because one of
Speaker 5: the inspirations for me running in the first place was
Speaker 5: because my city of Wilmington was being called Murdertown because
Speaker 5: of gun violence. And so they're listening, and you know,
Speaker 5: like I said, for me, it was a weird situation
Speaker 5: that propelled me to run. But the inspiration and the
Speaker 5: ability to do the work makes me even more want
Speaker 5: to go to the Senate and do it on a
Speaker 5: deeper level.
Speaker 1: It is so interesting when we talk about climac and
Speaker 1: we talk about these little states because Rhode Island two
Speaker 1: Senator white House is one of the great I feel
Speaker 1: like a climate senators Rhode Island two has done a
Speaker 1: lot of really interesting stuff with climate. Gina Romando now
Speaker 1: and the Admin. But another person who I think of
Speaker 1: as someone who's very focused on this sort of transition
Speaker 1: to clean energy and a sort of more sustainable way
Speaker 1: of living.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious in Delaware, what is.
Speaker 1: The sort of what do you feel like are the
Speaker 1: priorities when it comes to climate.
Speaker 5: One of the great things that I was able to
Speaker 5: work on with my senior Senator, who is actually the
Speaker 5: Chairman of Environment and Public Works, Tom Carper, is a
Speaker 5: bill called the Shore Act, and it really is about
Speaker 5: the resiliency and protection of not just our shores, but
Speaker 5: our riverbanks. I mean, I went to towns like Inland
Speaker 5: that because of the flooding, they were feeling it not
Speaker 5: just on the beach but in off of riverbanks. And
Speaker 5: so part of what we are working on is legislation
Speaker 5: that deals with that, you know, making sure that we
Speaker 5: are looking at the prevention side of it, but then
Speaker 5: we got to mitigate the risks and so you know,
Speaker 5: we are doing I also am on the Health Subcommittee,
Speaker 5: so we have a health aspect to this as well
Speaker 5: when it pertains to clean air and clean air monitors
Speaker 5: to make sure you know that our air is okay.
Speaker 5: And then working with the administration, with the President. One
Speaker 5: of the bills I had was called the Alert Act,
Speaker 5: is that if there's an environmental spill, if there's something
Speaker 5: that happens, communities need to and have a right to
Speaker 5: be notified, notified of what happened, when it happened, and
Speaker 5: what the plan is for it. And so doing those
Speaker 5: kind of things I think is really important. But it
Speaker 5: kind of takes me back, like Molly when I first
Speaker 5: decided to run. It's kind of First of all, the
Speaker 5: guy that I just mentioned, Tom Carper, I worked for
Speaker 5: him back in nineteen eighty eight. I went to a
Speaker 5: town hall meeting with my two year old son on
Speaker 5: my head. I was a grad student and I didn't
Speaker 5: even realize that I was pregnant at the time, and
Speaker 5: he told me they had internships, and that internship turned
Speaker 5: into me being a caseworker in a congressional office, to
Speaker 5: being in his cabinet, his deputy Secretary of Health and
Speaker 5: Social Services and Secretary of Labor, and then going on
Speaker 5: to work for our first woman governor and you know,
Speaker 5: working for the Urban League. But it was really after
Speaker 5: this story, but after a twenty year marriage. And I
Speaker 5: always quote Beyonce because I love Beyonce. But in her
Speaker 5: song you Won't Break My Soul, there's a line that says,
Speaker 5: I just fell in love, I just quit my job. Well,
Speaker 5: in two thousand and three, I think it was I
Speaker 5: fell in love. I quit my job, I sold my
Speaker 5: house and sold my car, and I moved to Shanghai
Speaker 5: for love and love of my life a guy named
Speaker 5: Charles Rochester. And you know, Charles and I were living.
Speaker 5: I wrote a book with two other women. We came
Speaker 5: back to the States and he went on a business
Speaker 5: trip before his meetings. I'm sure his achilles ten then
Speaker 5: and blood clots went to his heart and lungs. And
Speaker 5: at fifty two, the love of my life passed away.
Speaker 5: I did not know what was next. I knew that
Speaker 5: I was, you know, sad and mad. And some days
Speaker 5: I tell people just getting up in the morning was
Speaker 5: a success, and I was. It was maybe eight nine
Speaker 5: months later. I was on autopilot in the supermarket and
Speaker 5: I saw a dad in front of me with two
Speaker 5: I think it was two or three kids, and he
Speaker 5: put back grapes because they were nine dollars, and it
Speaker 5: just snapped me out of my own pain. Like I said,
Speaker 5: I'm blessed. I'm okay. I got a house, I've got family,
Speaker 5: I've got mental health care. But a lot of other
Speaker 5: people were struggling, and it was like, I don't have
Speaker 5: anything to lose. My city was being called murdered child.
Speaker 5: I was like, I'm going to run. And I decided
Speaker 5: to run for Congress and I was in a six
Speaker 5: way primary debating lawyers. I had never even been in
Speaker 5: a debate before, let alone run for anything, and we won.
Speaker 5: And I guess part of my message is to me,
Speaker 5: the Senate is an opportunity to do all this work
Speaker 5: in an even deeper level, to be able to work
Speaker 5: on the planet, to be able to work on giving
Speaker 5: people jobs and making sure we have a strong economy
Speaker 5: and healthcare. It's also the police where I can fight
Speaker 5: for democracy. And that's to me, having been trapped in
Speaker 5: the gallery on January sixth, this moment is real, you know,
Speaker 5: And I want people to feel that sense of urgency
Speaker 5: about the choice that we have between Donald Trump and
Speaker 5: Joe Biden, this moment is real. Who you put in
Speaker 5: the Senate, who you put in the House, who you
Speaker 5: put on your school board. This moment is real, and
Speaker 5: we've got to make sure that we take advantage of
Speaker 5: it and that we use our power.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's such an important point.
Speaker 1: And also, you know something that I write a lot
Speaker 1: about this idea that it is one of the most
Speaker 1: important elections of our lifetime. I can't believe we keep
Speaker 1: having these elections. I just want to have normal elections
Speaker 1: where we beat Mitt Romney, you and me both, right,
Speaker 1: who is a very nice guy, but you know, right,
Speaker 1: talk to us about January sixth for a second, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it must be hard to be a member
Speaker 1: of Congress to have lived through this, to have seen
Speaker 1: Republican members run for their lives and then the cognitive dissidence.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so strange because that day, you know, as
Speaker 5: I shared, I have served as a co chair of
Speaker 5: the campaign. So for me, this was the culmination and
Speaker 5: of all that work on the campaign trail with you know,
Speaker 5: Joe Biden and Kamala and being a part of the team.
Speaker 5: And I was like, okay, I will be there to
Speaker 5: witness the certification, and Nancy Pelosi said, the members, you
Speaker 5: can volunteer to take ships up in the gallery, up
Speaker 5: like the balcony area, to watch what is going to happen. Well,
Speaker 5: we never got to shift number two because while we
Speaker 5: were up there, we could hear the banging. We could
Speaker 5: see people skirted off of the floor, all of the
Speaker 5: leadership first and then all of the members. And then
Speaker 5: I don't know if people forgot that we were up
Speaker 5: in that gallery, but we were trapped. We could hear
Speaker 5: the noises outside of those doors. We were told to
Speaker 5: put on gas masks, that the hoods that were under
Speaker 5: our chairs that we didn't even know were there or
Speaker 5: didn't even know how to open them. And we were
Speaker 5: crawling up and down, just trying to get to someplace
Speaker 5: that we thought was safe. And I will never forget
Speaker 5: it because I feel it like it was yesterday. It
Speaker 5: was I could look down and see guns being pointed
Speaker 5: at one door, and I could hear the gunshot at
Speaker 5: the other door, and you know, in that moment, and
Speaker 5: I tell people, it was almost out of body thing.
Speaker 5: I could feel history, I could feel our ancestors, I
Speaker 5: could feel like time going by, and all I could
Speaker 5: think to do. I was pray and I prayed for everybody,
Speaker 5: you know. I didn't just pray for one group of people,
Speaker 5: you know. And I could feel other members touching my
Speaker 5: back or touching my arm as I prayed. And then
Speaker 5: they let us out of that room. And I will
Speaker 5: tell you on the anniversary, it was important to me
Speaker 5: to not forget what happened, so to remember to reflect
Speaker 5: on how close we were to losing it, and then
Speaker 5: to recommit to our democracy. Like I felt more on
Speaker 5: fire to do the work than ever before. And I
Speaker 5: think that this moment again, it is important for people
Speaker 5: to know we were close. And when Donald Trump starts
Speaker 5: talking about words like blood bath, that ain't about cars
Speaker 5: as far as I'm concerned. I mean, he was talking
Speaker 5: about American carnage in the first one. And there's a
Speaker 5: great Maya Angelo quote, when somebody shows you who they are,
Speaker 5: we'll leave him. He's telling us who he is, he's
Speaker 5: telling us what he will do. We also know that
Speaker 5: Joe Biden is telling us what he would do in
Speaker 5: a second term, and so we just need to see
Speaker 5: what people have done. Think about it. I've been one
Speaker 5: president who talked about him for structure Joe Biden did infrastructure.
Speaker 5: You know one president who talked about a fair tax code.
Speaker 5: Joe Biden really is doing a fair tax code, not
Speaker 5: just for rich people, but for all of us. Just
Speaker 5: look at the record, look at who they are, and
Speaker 5: look at how they even talk. I believe that as
Speaker 5: this election goes and the more people here and remember
Speaker 5: who Donald Trump is, they'll remember why they need to
Speaker 5: have that sense of urgency, not only for Joe's campaign,
Speaker 5: but even for people like me to support people like me.
Speaker 5: The theme of my campaign is Fright Hope, which was
Speaker 5: the church my grandmother attended for seventy years. And it
Speaker 5: is not just the church name. It is a way
Speaker 5: of being when you feel dark. And in this moment,
Speaker 5: people feel dark. But I'm like, look, if you just
Speaker 5: got to match side light, our match flights coming together
Speaker 5: can create something bright. And that's what I'm trying to
Speaker 5: bring to the Senate. Fright Hope and so so yeah,
Speaker 5: and hey, hey, if anybody out there likes with you here,
Speaker 5: go to least a Bluff Rochester dot com, Little shameless plug.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's good, that was great, Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: I hope that you will come back.
Speaker 5: I hope you will have me back, Molly. I really
Speaker 5: enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: Amy Chosen is the creator of the New MAC series
Speaker 1: The Girls on the Bus and author of the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller Chasing Hillary.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Amy.
Speaker 5: Chose, Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be.
Speaker 2: Here, delighted to have you so talk to us about
Speaker 2: how you got to this book and then to the
Speaker 2: show The Girls on the Bus.
Speaker 5: Sure Well, I was a political reporter for many years.
Speaker 4: I covered Hillary Clinton and Obama in two thousand and
Speaker 4: eight when I was at the Well Street Journal, and
Speaker 4: then when I was at the New York Times for
Speaker 4: many years I covered the twenty sixteen campaign Hillary Trump.
Speaker 4: All that, I wrote a book What came out in
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, a memoir about covering both of Hillary's campaign
Speaker 4: and how that sort of took over my life, that
Speaker 4: ended up.
Speaker 5: Getting optioned by Warner Brothers.
Speaker 4: Landing with the producer Grin Burlanti, and we got together
Speaker 4: and started scheming up a fictional backdrop that would be
Speaker 4: inspired by my book for female journalists covering a fictional
Speaker 4: Democratic primary. That became The Girls on the Bus, a
Speaker 4: Max series that came out last week. So that's a
Speaker 4: I guess a short version of how I came about
Speaker 4: that is like the dream having your memoir made into
Speaker 4: a television show.
Speaker 2: So explained to us, you covered the sort of campaign
Speaker 2: that broke all our brands twenty sixteen. How have you
Speaker 2: sort of moved on in your life from that moment? Because,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's one thing to have watched it from
Speaker 2: the outside. I can't even imagine the level of feeling
Speaker 2: you must have had from living it on the inside.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it is. It was hard to move on.
Speaker 4: And actually, I think one of the beautiful things about
Speaker 4: the process of turning it into fiction, turning in I
Speaker 4: know it's a TV show, but I you know, it's
Speaker 4: turning it into a form of art, like is cathartic?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: It was very cathartic for me, and I think being
Speaker 4: able to very initially from the very first conversation we said,
Speaker 4: nobody wants to really live the twenty sixteen campaign.
Speaker 5: This has to be fiction. But in a way I
Speaker 5: was able to kind of.
Speaker 4: Explore all of the themes, all of the things still
Speaker 4: kicking around in my head.
Speaker 5: Every day i'd come to the writer's room.
Speaker 4: A lot of people say like, what were you adamant
Speaker 4: about keeping in the book, And it was much less
Speaker 4: like this thing from the book has to be in
Speaker 4: the show, and much more my partner asking me, what's
Speaker 4: the conversation you wish you would have had, or what's
Speaker 4: the thing you wish you would have done that you didn't,
Speaker 4: And so being able to play in this fictional world,
Speaker 4: I got to have all of these. If you get
Speaker 4: to watch the whole season, in the finale that I wrote,
Speaker 4: in particular, there's a conversation between the journalist and a
Speaker 4: female candidate. You know, these are conversations you never get
Speaker 4: to have in real life. So it was actually very
Speaker 4: cathartic to be able to do that. We we created
Speaker 4: a democratic mash convention and I got some of my
Speaker 4: friends from real the real political world, Jen Palmery and
Speaker 4: Eric Schultz and some others to make cameos. It was
Speaker 4: so fun, but Jen Jen Palmery was like pretending to
Speaker 4: check pressing at the stake.
Speaker 5: It looks so real.
Speaker 4: Our production value was amazing, and we looked at each
Speaker 4: other and it was just like the weirdest, most meta
Speaker 4: feeling because I'm like, oh, the last time you were
Speaker 4: doing this, It was at the real one, and it's
Speaker 4: so strange, we like sort of rewritten history here in
Speaker 4: our in our fictional world.
Speaker 5: So it's been it's a great question, and it's been
Speaker 5: a pretty casartic process.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that readers always get upset about,
Speaker 1: and I say this is someone who's married to a normal,
Speaker 1: furious Democrat, is that they get mad at conventional political
Speaker 1: reporting because they feel that it doesn't necessarily meet the
Speaker 1: moment with journalism. What do you think about that now
Speaker 1: that you're not you're sort of in a completely different world.
Speaker 2: You live in La.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: I do live in LA. If you ask me about
Speaker 4: the specifics, I'll be like, I don't know. It was
Speaker 4: Barber's Market, Like you know that.
Speaker 1: I mean, but what do you think about the idea
Speaker 1: that normal political reporting can't meet the moment?
Speaker 5: I mean, that is something that I think so much about.
Speaker 4: And given we made a light dramedy, but this is
Speaker 4: sort of the central premise of what we were exploring.
Speaker 4: If we covered politics differently, would we have different politics?
Speaker 1: Right, that's a great line though, if we covered politics differently,
Speaker 1: would we have different politics?
Speaker 5: Well, what do you think would we?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's a great question.
Speaker 5: It's like I think that Genie's out of the bottle.
Speaker 4: So it's not like I'm gear professing to know the answer,
Speaker 4: but it is a great question. It's something I think about,
Speaker 4: whether it's the fact that you know, whether it's a
Speaker 4: false balance. Obama used to always complain about false balance,
Speaker 4: but I think those complaints have even gotten much more
Speaker 4: heightened when you're comparing of candidate to Tropsa or other Republicans.
Speaker 4: But so I think the fust balanced debate is And also,
Speaker 4: I you know, something that frustrated me. And by the
Speaker 4: way I'm taking I take responsibility for this. But the
Speaker 4: idea that like no policy, nothing that actually impacts people's
Speaker 4: lives ever broke through, And I don't you know, I
Speaker 4: would get I would like fly to Landsing, Michigan to
Speaker 4: cover a speech on economics or or a public private partnership,
Speaker 4: you know, some kind of interesting wonky thing that Hillary
Speaker 4: loves to talk about.
Speaker 5: It, and I would write like two thousand words on it.
Speaker 4: And then people would be like, oh, you write about
Speaker 4: his emails, and I'm like, I actually write about the
Speaker 4: other things.
Speaker 5: They just don't break through.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the Daily has done a good
Speaker 4: job of like biting off a policy thing going deep
Speaker 4: in it. So I really think the emphasis is on us.
Speaker 4: But that was a frustration, Like I did an event
Speaker 4: here for frank Yeah, Franklin Force's book is filled with
Speaker 4: policies that the Biden administration accomplished that And this is
Speaker 4: my own la ignorance.
Speaker 5: I guess. I'm like, I had no idea about the chips, So, like,
Speaker 5: how do we do that? How does that break through?
Speaker 5: I just don't know in this current ecosystem.
Speaker 1: That's a really good point about how important policy is
Speaker 1: and how how hard it is to get readers interested
Speaker 1: in it. But also I would say to cover it
Speaker 1: in a way that makes it feel germane to their lives, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the you know, for example, like people,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've talked so much about fucking chips, and
Speaker 1: it's because it's like it is a paradigm shift, right,
Speaker 1: the idea to bring that we're going to bring ship
Speaker 1: manufacturing back to the United States from Taiwan because of
Speaker 1: the danger of China.
Speaker 2: I mean, really that's what it is.
Speaker 1: So like it's two part right to bring American manufacturing back,
Speaker 1: but also because of the enormous threat that China poses,
Speaker 1: and because everything we own has got these chips. So
Speaker 1: I wonder though a lot about like the larger shift
Speaker 1: of chips, right, is that it will eventually if you
Speaker 1: live in a you know, a town in Michigan or
Speaker 1: Wisconsin or wherever it is they're putting the factories.
Speaker 2: I think some.
Speaker 1: Are in Ohio. You know that you now go work
Speaker 1: in a chip factory.
Speaker 2: It also a lot of this stuff has these very
Speaker 2: complicated tax incentive structures that are not something readers like
Speaker 2: can grasp a few lines, right, I mean that is
Speaker 2: a larger question is It's just hard to convey that,
Speaker 2: but it is interesting and I do think like how
Speaker 2: anxious do you feel?
Speaker 1: And now I feel like you're so are in a
Speaker 1: totally different world. So I feel like this is I
Speaker 1: think it's like actually quite.
Speaker 2: Useful to think of this stuff in hindsight sometimes how
Speaker 2: much anxiety did you feel about the worry of seeming partisan?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 4: I've The more I think about it, the more I
Speaker 4: feel like it's how many people really think that the
Speaker 4: New York Times or CNN reporters are running around and
Speaker 4: they're actually Republicans.
Speaker 5: Like I just don't know.
Speaker 4: I think we really, you know, it's very important as
Speaker 4: serious news people to project objectivity. I just think it's
Speaker 4: a it's sort of a false contra it's a contradiction
Speaker 4: in terms I just don't And you know what, partly
Speaker 4: that's because of the way.
Speaker 5: Newsrooms have been hiring for the last twenty years.
Speaker 4: When I started at the Wall Street Journal, as the
Speaker 4: news is, some of the best investigative journalists did not
Speaker 4: have a college, didn't go to college. It was still
Speaker 4: it was still sort of a trade, and it was
Speaker 4: still yeah, and it was still like a mid middle
Speaker 4: class trade, and it recruited from people from all over
Speaker 4: the country. I think mostly newsrooms are from elite universities
Speaker 4: now and anyway, I think that I think the structure
Speaker 4: of who populates the media has changed, and I think
Speaker 4: kind of pretending that you're not biased is actually sort
Speaker 4: of dishonest in a way.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's sort of the debate.
Speaker 4: That's a debate that we get into this kind of
Speaker 4: objectivity versus authenticity. But you know, in my and when
Speaker 4: I started at The Times, a lot of the senior
Speaker 4: political journalists didn't vote in elections they covered because you
Speaker 4: had to declare your party, and I understand, but I
Speaker 4: don't know.
Speaker 5: I just feel like now.
Speaker 4: To to pretend that you're going into a Trump rally
Speaker 4: and you're just as sympathetic to the people you're interviewing
Speaker 4: as when you're going to I just like, who are
Speaker 4: we kidding?
Speaker 5: That's kind of my.
Speaker 4: I don't know the answer, but I feel like there
Speaker 4: is something about being honest with readers.
Speaker 5: This is how I feel about women's rights, because I'm
Speaker 5: a woman. That's it.
Speaker 4: I'm still going to be tough on this candidate who's
Speaker 4: screwed up. Like I think you can be fair and
Speaker 4: still be honest that like you're a human being with opinions,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. It's really interesting to just
Speaker 1: sort of talk about this stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I wrote a piece about like the Autocrat stuff yesterday,
Speaker 1: and like my editor, who I love so much, was like,
Speaker 1: there are many many questions in this piece because like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to just do more opinion
Speaker 1: of your opinion and less of that, And it's like,
Speaker 1: because there are so many questions about like modern political reporting,
Speaker 1: there aren't like really clear answers for any of this, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the larger question is, how does a free
Speaker 1: press cover in autocracy and you know or want to
Speaker 1: be autocrat?
Speaker 2: And I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 4: We're all operating under the guys of objectivity because it
Speaker 4: makes us more trustworthy.
Speaker 5: Like, guys, it's not working, like we've never been trusted with.
Speaker 2: It's true, it's true, that's a good void.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't want everything to descend.
Speaker 4: I would hate for everything to descend into like a
Speaker 4: hot take opinion piece.
Speaker 5: I firmly believe in in journalism and reporting.
Speaker 4: I just think that this whole idea that I don't know,
Speaker 4: Like it's like it's the trust that they trust us
Speaker 4: less than they ever did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's the problem of American institutions, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's always a sense in which we're always having
Speaker 1: this argument like have the guardrails held? And like the
Speaker 1: reality is that, you know, you know, if you can
Speaker 1: work for different trials to put them off so you
Speaker 1: can run for president, then obviously the guardrails haven't held, right,
Speaker 1: And the question is, like, you know, our American institutions
Speaker 1: as as safe as we think they are, and obviously
Speaker 1: they're not, or they've always been, you know, a cryptocracy
Speaker 1: and the affluent white men will always be able to
Speaker 1: bend them to their will.
Speaker 5: Well that's dark, that's dark.
Speaker 1: Sorry, and it's always been that way. Now, should talking
Speaker 1: about your show?
Speaker 4: No, No, it's okay because in our show, you know,
Speaker 4: we wrote it for several years. We went and Julie
Speaker 4: Black and I created it with her. We went to
Speaker 4: the Caucuses in twenty twenty. We were on the Warren
Speaker 4: Boss bouncer around to Bernie and you know, we kept
Speaker 4: rewriting things. You know, it's fiction, but we still wanted
Speaker 4: to be a little bit you know, accurate, and.
Speaker 5: We were like, still, no woman president, that one. We
Speaker 5: don't have to rewrite. That's fine, that's all.
Speaker 4: We're like, like, the only thing that really fucks up
Speaker 4: our show is if they elect a woman.
Speaker 5: And they were like, no, it's fine, that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't laugh, but I laughed to keep from crying.
Speaker 5: It gott a laugh.
Speaker 2: It is so incredibly fucked up.
Speaker 1: How you know, We're gone through so many machinations and
Speaker 1: the one thing that Democrats seem to have agreed on
Speaker 1: is that it's just completely impossible to elect a woman president. Please,
Speaker 1: when you listen to this, please don't write me mean emails.
Speaker 1: I want to have a woman president, probably more than
Speaker 1: anyone in the world. But the anxiety, I think is
Speaker 1: such that, you know, we're more likely to have a
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley candidate than.
Speaker 5: I was just about to say that.
Speaker 4: I've been saying that, like, if there's a first woman presence,
Speaker 4: she's probably gonna be a Republican.
Speaker 5: I kind of steel that way.
Speaker 2: It's so dark, or it isn't dark. It's subversive in
Speaker 2: a weird way.
Speaker 1: After twenty sixteen, there was a feeling that nobody ever
Speaker 1: wanted to relive it. And when you said that, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about it because like I've definitely heard from
Speaker 1: like publishers and this and.
Speaker 2: That, and the reality is like, yes, and we are
Speaker 2: still stuck re fucking living twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, So like nobody wants to relive it, and
Speaker 1: yet we.
Speaker 2: Are an ammobius strip of it discussed.
Speaker 5: Totally, totally, No, it's fascinating.
Speaker 4: It's actually like I think about that a lot because
Speaker 4: that was when I got out of political coverage, right
Speaker 4: see the book ends of My Little I was Ayeah,
Speaker 4: I went the poor reporter with Obama in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, so like we watched elections come in, we
Speaker 4: wrote into Grant Park, rode to Grant Park with him
Speaker 4: in the motorcade, like I just happened to be the
Speaker 4: pull reporter, and then the book and the Javit Center
Speaker 4: her her speech the next day.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, Okay, I'm good. Those are the bookends
Speaker 5: of my political coverage.
Speaker 4: But but no, I think it was such a watershed
Speaker 4: that it is still reverberating. I think that it's less
Speaker 4: reverberating like Hillary and Trump, and it's more reverberating of
Speaker 4: all of the themes that we did. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was such a wake up moment and nobody thought that
Speaker 4: was going to happen, right, and then it happened, and
Speaker 4: it feels like it's still happening, and there's still like
Speaker 4: a trauma associated with it. I think for a lot
Speaker 4: of people who didn't think this could possibly happen, and
Speaker 4: now it's happening, and it's going to happen again. I mean,
Speaker 4: so I think that it was such it was such
Speaker 4: a watershed moment that You're right.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to I didn't want.
Speaker 4: To do like game change the twenty sixteen version. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to like cat that makes.
Speaker 2: Me want to die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think primary colors and Emma Thompson like killed
Speaker 4: it as Hillary in that movie, and like I didn't
Speaker 4: want to cast tru like I don't want to. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to do that. But I think you're absolutely
Speaker 4: right that, like all of the themes that were exposed
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen are absolutely things that we're still thinking about,
Speaker 4: and you can't make a show about politics without leaving
Speaker 4: those in. And that's certainly kind of the underpinnings of
Speaker 4: our dramedy are the themes?
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I had somebody on this podcast who wrote a book
Speaker 1: about the election that ruined all our lives, and the
Speaker 1: hot take was it was two thousand oh that was
Speaker 1: the election that ruined all our lives. I was like
Speaker 1: waxes thing, what but it did? It ruined a different
Speaker 1: generation of lives.
Speaker 4: No, And certainly when people and I don't have a
Speaker 4: fast answer like some people like I've been asked like, well,
Speaker 4: why do you think people don't trust the Media'm like,
Speaker 4: oh God, where do I start? But I do think
Speaker 4: certainly the Bush years and the lead up to Iraq,
Speaker 4: Like I think all these things, I don't think twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen happened, and distrusting the media happened just because of
Speaker 4: Trump and a.
Speaker 5: Vacuum, right.
Speaker 1: I agree. I also think though that it's been covered.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's covered as causality as much as
Speaker 1: it should. Is that some of what happened to the
Speaker 1: mainstream media is that tech used us for free content
Speaker 1: and then got mad at us when they got so rich.
Speaker 2: You know, like Elon is a great example, Like.
Speaker 1: Twitter grows on free content and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: Elon's like, I don't like any of this, and just
Speaker 1: because I take a little kenemy and that's not a
Speaker 1: big story, and fuck the Wall Street journal.
Speaker 2: And then you know, he's like, we don't need journalists.
Speaker 1: We need random anonymous accounts on acts that post videos
Speaker 1: from two.
Speaker 2: Thousand and eight. You know. I mean that's some of it.
Speaker 5: Right, No, I A thousand percent.
Speaker 4: And that's what's kind of fascinating and terrifying, right, because
Speaker 4: the changing economics of the news business. I don't think
Speaker 4: it's a coincidence that the kind of different economic incentives
Speaker 4: that have really gutted newsrooms are coinciding with a feeling
Speaker 4: that media can be trusted and all of these things
Speaker 4: and allowing for, as you said, these right wing forces.
Speaker 5: To take hold.
Speaker 4: It actually gets back to our policy conversation. You're not
Speaker 4: going to write a story about the Chips plan if
Speaker 4: you're chasing clicks. And I don't think we're chasing clicks anymore.
Speaker 4: I think we've got to move past that because that
Speaker 4: doesn't even work.
Speaker 2: That's right, clicks have died, that's right. We are pivoting.
Speaker 2: We're pivoting to video.
Speaker 5: Again, We're a pivoting now. I've heard podcasts with video
Speaker 5: is the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, except you say this on a podcast with that video,
Speaker 2: thank god face.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: And I also feel for newsrooms that are incredibly understaffed,
Speaker 4: like I think that's you know, it's like it's all
Speaker 4: feeding into this. I mean I think about that sometimes
Speaker 4: because I do think there's like a nostalgia to the
Speaker 4: show in that it's like a robust press score following
Speaker 4: a you know, a crowded democratic primary, like oh, what's that?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: You know, I think post post COVID and now you
Speaker 4: have basically two incumbents running and it's still expensive to
Speaker 4: send reporters out in the road. That some of that
Speaker 4: traditional way of covering gut or bat traditional wave covering
Speaker 4: campaigns has changed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amy chose. The show is on Max. You can
Speaker 1: stream it right now. How many episodes?
Speaker 4: There's two episodes out now and another one drops on Thursday. Yes,
Speaker 4: all right, doing weekly weekly? How many have episodes all together?
Speaker 5: There's ten episodes.
Speaker 4: Oh fantastic, Yeah, thank you, thanks great target to you.
Speaker 3: Now, Jesse Cannon, Maley, Jung Fast I hear there's a
Speaker 3: whole lot.
Speaker 2: The fuck are you going on down in Louisiana? What
Speaker 2: are you seeing here?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this rh Impact report that
Speaker 1: has been released. It's been released by a think tank.
Speaker 1: It's from rh Impact and it is a report it's
Speaker 1: called Criminalizing Care How Louisiana's abortion bands in danger patients
Speaker 1: and clinics. And it's really important statistics about how the
Speaker 1: state of Louisiana has criminalized women's healthcare. They have made
Speaker 1: it more likely there are less hospitals, less doctors, less
Speaker 1: options for treatment, and one of the many findings they
Speaker 1: have found is that women are less likely to get treated,
Speaker 1: more likely to die, more likely to die in childbirth.
Speaker 1: They have theirs, basically existing federal statutes put in place
Speaker 1: to protect patient access to emergency care, including the federal
Speaker 1: law called m TALA, are being nullified by Louisiana's abortion bands,
Speaker 1: which means, if you are dying, you can die in
Speaker 1: a Louisiana hospital because they don't care.
Speaker 2: That is our moment of Fuckray.
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.