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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of

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Speaker 1: today's best minds and Mega Mike Johnson brought all of

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Speaker 1: the Congressional press Corps to the border.

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Speaker 2: We're back from vacation with an amazing show for you.

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Speaker 1: Today, Josh Green talks to us about his latest book,

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Speaker 1: The Rebels Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the struggle

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Speaker 1: for a new American politic. Then we'll talk to author

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Speaker 1: Brad Meltzer about his latest in a series of children's

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Speaker 1: books about ordinary people changing the world. His newest book

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Speaker 1: is called I Am Ruth Badergensburg.

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Speaker 2: But first we.

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Speaker 1: Have the host of the Enemies List, the Lincoln Project's

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Speaker 1: own Rick Wilson.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.

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Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Hey, Molly, how are you. How was your

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Speaker 3: new year?

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Speaker 4: Oh?

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Speaker 1: It was amazing. I just my life is just one

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Speaker 1: high too of the next. But anyway, enough of a sad.

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Speaker 5: No.

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Speaker 1: First, I think we should talk about the American Media

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Speaker 1: Industrial CONFLICTX, of which you and I are members. We

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Speaker 1: are fucking up this election.

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Speaker 6: Go look, I'm going to say there are three main

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Speaker 6: groups fucking up this election, and those of us in

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Speaker 6: the media enterprise broadly speaking, some of us are fucking

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Speaker 6: up this election.

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Speaker 2: Let us start with the Associated Press.

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Speaker 3: Well, I was just getting to that.

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Speaker 6: As my friend Stewart Stephen said, it's like saying Julia

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Speaker 6: Child and Jeffrey Dahmer are both famous chefs with a

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Speaker 6: different approach to ingredients. The competition for the dumbest fucking

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Speaker 6: headline of the universe this week, it was really up there.

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Speaker 6: That one really to me, especially when I read it.

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Speaker 6: This frame of dislike of Joe Biden in the media

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Speaker 6: is very clear. Now, yeah, I get it, he's not exciting.

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Speaker 6: But when you see an article like that AP article

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Speaker 6: that is like, oh, well, one guy is against terrorist

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Speaker 6: attacks on the Capitol, that when overthrowing himocracy, but Republicans differ.

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Speaker 6: I'm sorry, that's not how this works. And the thing

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Speaker 6: that makes me so angry about it is there's a

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Speaker 6: frame and I've seen it now, I've started to notice

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Speaker 6: it over and over and over again. It's former President

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Speaker 6: Donald Trump did something outrageous, evil, cruel, and stupid today,

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Speaker 6: but Republicans defended him and then and the flip.

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Speaker 2: Of the frame is, but Joe Biden old.

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Speaker 6: Hated ancient dodding fool.

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Speaker 3: President Joe Biden, who is.

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Speaker 6: Hated by all Americans with their hatred of him, today

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Speaker 6: announced record job reports. Republican economists speculate it won't be enough.

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Speaker 1: Come on, just for people to know that we're not exaggerating.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to actually read the AP headline that came

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Speaker 1: into my email box yesterday morning and enraged me. One attack,

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Speaker 1: two interpretations. Biden and Trump both make January sixth riot

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Speaker 1: a political rally and cry, and then it goes on

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Speaker 1: with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump now

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Speaker 1: heading towards a pop potential twenty twenty rematch. Both are

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Speaker 1: taking the same event in a very different way. The

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Speaker 1: dueling narratives. I swear to god, I'm not even making

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Speaker 1: this up.

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Speaker 6: They are going to fucking both sides us into the grave.

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Speaker 1: It gets even worse, though, reflect how the capital attack

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Speaker 1: is increasingly viewed differently along partisan lines, and how Trump

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Speaker 1: has bet the riot won't hurt his candidacy, Like there

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Speaker 1: you go. Biden has repeatedly characterized Trump as a threat

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Speaker 1: to democracy.

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Speaker 6: I'm just going to say this as bluntly as I

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Speaker 6: can to the AP. There's a yoga move you might

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Speaker 6: want to consider. It's called pulling your head out of

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Speaker 6: your ass. And I'm sorry. You know, there are great

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Speaker 6: reporters of the AP and I like a lot of them.

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Speaker 6: And I know reporters don't write the headlines. I get it,

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Speaker 6: I get it, I get it, I get it.

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Speaker 2: They do write the first paragraphs.

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Speaker 6: But the framing of all of these goddamn stories keeps

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Speaker 6: coming back to the essential message of yes, Trump is evil, horrible, terrible.

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Speaker 6: But that's not anything more than a simple political divide.

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Speaker 3: It's the usual left versus right. No, it's not.

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Speaker 6: It's an autocrat saying I'm going to burn the fucking

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Speaker 6: country down versus a solidly center left.

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Speaker 3: President in the great tradition of America.

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Speaker 6: Now, I will tell you the other people who are

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Speaker 6: fucking over this campaign on the Democratic side. They're Joe

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Speaker 6: Biden's own staff.

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Speaker 1: I know where you're going with this, because you know

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Speaker 1: what a lot. But I'm not going to let you

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Speaker 1: get there yet because I want to talk. I have

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Speaker 1: another thing I want to talk.

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Speaker 2: You, psycho.

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Speaker 1: I have another thing I want to talk about, which

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Speaker 1: is I listen to The Daily It's a podcast. Perhaps

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Speaker 1: you've heard of it not as far as this podcast

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Speaker 1: obviously now only listen to by millions and millions of people.

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Speaker 2: The New York Times, which.

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Speaker 1: We pick on because it's so famous and so many

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Speaker 1: people read it. That's why we pick on you, not

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Speaker 1: because we don't love you, but because you shape the

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Speaker 1: news narrative in a way that a lot of places

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Speaker 1: wish they could but don't. So New York Times, the

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Speaker 1: Daily run by Michael Babaro, a person I like very much,

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Speaker 1: had deals with him. Delightful. God, I'm actually not going

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Speaker 1: to criticize an episode he was on. It was an

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Speaker 1: episode with Sabrina Tabernisi Biden's twenty twenty playbook, So read

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Speaker 1: Epstein and Sina Tabernici and in this episode read Epstein

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Speaker 1: is like, Biden is not powerful, Biden is a terrible campaigner.

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Speaker 2: To say, it is the most negative.

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Speaker 1: Thing I've ever They were like, he's not popular, people

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Speaker 1: don't like him, he can't galvanize, he has no message. Yes,

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Speaker 1: he says the economy is good, but people feel the

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Speaker 1: economy's bad, so it doesn't matter. I mean, it was

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Speaker 1: the most negative and I was like, you know, I

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Speaker 1: didn't even pick Biden. Right in twenty fifteen, I wrote

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Speaker 1: a piece in the Washington Post that.

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Speaker 2: Said he should drop out.

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Speaker 1: I am hardly like miss Biden Stan, but the reality is, like,

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Speaker 1: if we look at just the last years of Biden,

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Speaker 1: he has way overperformed, Like we don't even need to like,

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Speaker 1: suppose we can just look at twenty twenty two, twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty twenty.

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Speaker 6: The primis when we founded the Lincoln Project in twenty nineteen.

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Speaker 6: In December, Elizabeth Warren was leading Joe Biden by twenty

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Speaker 6: six points and Bernie Sanders was ahead of Elizabeth Warren.

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Speaker 6: And at the time we were thinking, oh my god,

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Speaker 6: what the fuck are we gonna do? And it turned

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Speaker 6: out that Joe Biden was exactly the guy with the

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Speaker 6: right message. He was exactly the guy who could beat Trump.

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Speaker 6: And it turned out that he is the only candidate

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Speaker 6: who has ever beaten Donald Trump, folks, the only one

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Speaker 6: the idea that the critiques of the president are at

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Speaker 6: this point going to change what's going on. There was

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Speaker 6: somebody yesterday saying, well, you know, maybe he should drop

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Speaker 6: out of the convention and then we could.

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Speaker 2: Scramble the board.

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Speaker 3: I'm like, scramble the board.

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Speaker 6: Why don't you just roll out the fucking red.

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Speaker 3: Carpet for Donald Trump.

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Speaker 6: If you scramble the board, none of that makes any sense.

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Speaker 1: Did what happened in twenty twenty two not happened because

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Speaker 1: that was like eighteen months ago.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, and again you and I've talked about this. I

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Speaker 6: will never forget it. In January of twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 6: read Galen and I are on this call with all

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Speaker 6: these big democratic activists and donors and operatives.

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Speaker 1: It was not invited to this call, by the way,

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Speaker 1: yet another call or event or party or talk.

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Speaker 2: That I was not invited to. But it's all good,

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Speaker 2: it's all good.

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Speaker 6: Well, a very prominent Democrat said, well, we're going to

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Speaker 6: make this election about prescription drug coverage and gas prices.

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Speaker 6: And you know, of course, because Reid and I are

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Speaker 6: always like the skunks at the garden party, were like,

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Speaker 6: the fuck are you you?

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Speaker 2: We're invited to the guddap garden party? Continue?

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Speaker 3: Sorry, go on, It's like, what the fuck are you

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Speaker 3: talking about? That's crazy town, that's that's insane. What are

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Speaker 3: you doing? It's about democracy?

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Speaker 6: A year ago, today, the cap and this is again

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Speaker 6: in early twenty two, a year ago, the Capitol is

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Speaker 6: on fire. What is wrong with you? And Biden has

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Speaker 6: an instinct right now that is the correct instinct. If

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Speaker 6: you make the choice between going back to the past

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Speaker 6: of Donald Trump, which involves all the insanity that people

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Speaker 6: would like to forget about, all the madness that people

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Speaker 6: would like to say, Ah, that day, I guess we're done.

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Speaker 6: Now you will get it tenfold.

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Speaker 3: People.

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Speaker 6: If you think COVID was handled badly, imagine scaling that

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Speaker 6: to the entire government for the next four years if

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Speaker 6: you elect Donald Trump.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, there's no guarantee that's four years.

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Speaker 1: Like I always say, this is.

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Speaker 2: The do you want to have elections election?

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Speaker 6: This is the last election. Either it's the last election

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Speaker 6: for Donald Trump or it's the last election for America.

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Speaker 6: And I say that without trying to be dramatic or

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Speaker 6: over the top. This is a consequential and existential election

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Speaker 6: for this country. It is in part we are amusing

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Speaker 6: ourselves to death. In the media side of this, it's like, oh,

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Speaker 6: it's so funny, Trump's so wild, ha ha, and it's

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Speaker 6: it's just its madness.

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Speaker 1: It does seem to me like the pundit industrial complex

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Speaker 1: has gotten very far removed from the voters industrial complex

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Speaker 1: for example, twenty twenty two midterms, our last big election.

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Speaker 1: God forbid, we talk about it, but it feels like

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Speaker 1: we spend so much time prognosticating in so little time,

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Speaker 1: like looking back at things that just happened. So I

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Speaker 1: want to go back there for a minute. Biden said,

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Speaker 1: you'll remember, right before the election, you say is going

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Speaker 1: to give these speeches. Pundits laughed at him, made fun

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Speaker 1: of him. They said the speeches weren't good. They said

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Speaker 1: the speeches weren't working. They said, people don't vote on democracy,

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Speaker 1: they vote on the economy, which was teetering and.

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Speaker 2: Inflation, which is a real problem.

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Speaker 1: Even though again, and I want to say this because

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Speaker 1: I feel like it doesn't get any credits, the rest

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Speaker 1: of the world is struggling with inflation at much much

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Speaker 1: more catastrophic levels, including the UK right, which did when

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Speaker 1: we fucked up with Donald Trump. They fucked up with Brexit,

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Speaker 1: which happened to actually be harder to reverse. But you know,

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Speaker 1: I do think there's a certain extent in which this

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Speaker 1: really did happen. You know, the pundits were like, Biden

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Speaker 1: is wrong, and then Biden ultimately was right.

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Speaker 6: Biden has something that a lot of people have missed

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Speaker 6: out on. And this is a guy who's been around

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Speaker 6: the block. Yes he is older.

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Speaker 2: Like Moses.

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Speaker 6: He knows how Washington works. He knows how the comings

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Speaker 6: and goings of DC in governance and leadership work. And

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Speaker 6: people who underestimate that and who you know. It's like

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Speaker 6: Tom Nichols always says, people hate experts now in this country,

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Speaker 6: and the cult of hating experts is very powerful thing.

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Speaker 6: But actually Joe Biden's an expert at government. I say

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Speaker 6: that in terms of the management of these things, of

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Speaker 6: dealing with things as they happen, whether it's a pandemic

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Speaker 6: or a foreign policy crisis, and that experience is something

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Speaker 6: that we have undervalued and undercounted in this country. And

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Speaker 6: the desire for novelty, the desire to watch the car crash.

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Speaker 6: This is like those YouTube videos of people wrecking their

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Speaker 6: motorcycles into a wall or screwing up on a gymnastics

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Speaker 6: move and breaking their neck. People watch that shit all

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Speaker 6: day long. It doesn't make it good. And what we're

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Speaker 6: seeing right now is I think an addiction to the

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Speaker 6: novelty of Trump. And Trump knows it. He is the

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Speaker 6: master of the political spectacle. And the press cannot resist

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Speaker 6: dragging themselves over and over again, like they're poking with

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Speaker 6: a stick, like do something crazy, do something crazy, something crazy,

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Speaker 6: and they're always going to get something crazy. He's always

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Speaker 6: going to do something crazy. I think there's a certain

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Speaker 6: degree of selfishness and immaturity about how we're talking about

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Speaker 6: this politically, because, as I like, I'm going to say

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Speaker 6: it again, this is a use it or lose it

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Speaker 6: moment for American democracy if we do not stop him.

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Speaker 6: All the people bitching right now about oh I didn't

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Speaker 6: get everything I wanted in the Inflation Reduction Act.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you notice, I'm not letting you go down this

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Speaker 1: road of you know what I'm laying to you. I no, No,

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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you. So what's happening here?

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Speaker 2: Is it?

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Speaker 1: Rick and I know each other well enough that I

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Speaker 1: know he's going to go on this carvel style rant

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Speaker 1: about how progressives need.

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Speaker 2: To get on board. And I'm going to tell you.

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Speaker 6: I'm not talking about progressives, Molly, I'm talking about the

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Speaker 6: entire democratic apparatus, from top to bottom. Progressives, moderate centrist traditionalists, Clintonites,

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Speaker 6: Obama types, everybody needs to get on board with this guy.

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Speaker 6: There is not going to be another fucking nominee for

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Speaker 6: the Democratic president.

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Speaker 3: There's not It's Joe Biden.

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Speaker 6: And the fact that people still are stabbing this guy

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Speaker 6: in the back who work in the White House and

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Speaker 6: the campaign, it is unbelievable.

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Speaker 3: And in part of like, y'all deserve Trump.

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Speaker 2: If you keep this shit up, now, nobody deserves Trump.

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Speaker 1: We're not going to say that, And like that is

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Speaker 1: the thing. You know, now that we are here, people

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Speaker 1: are allowed to be mad.

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Speaker 2: You know, that's okay.

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Speaker 1: I also think a really important thing is happening, which

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Speaker 1: is that one of the things that Biden administration has

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Speaker 1: been really good about is listening to people, really good

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Speaker 1: about listening to people. So when they've said, when they've

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Speaker 1: said we want student debt, he's gone and tried different

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Speaker 1: creative ways to cancel student debt, despite the fact that

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Speaker 1: we have a Supreme Court the very right wing, far

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Speaker 1: to the right of the normal American human in the world. Sure, So,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know, they want to ban abortion,

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Speaker 1: they want to ban abortion pills, they want to ban

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Speaker 1: anything they don't like. They want to use the Comstock Act.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're basically the Heritage Foundation. If the Heritage

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Speaker 1: Foundation were severely and terminally Christian in a way that

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Speaker 1: is profoundly religious and cultish. Okay, is that fair when

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Speaker 1: they're not having orgies, when we're not.

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Speaker 6: Having orgies in Florida, I am not an orgy goer

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Speaker 6: or a tender or viewer.

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Speaker 3: Share share often.

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Speaker 6: There was a bill apparently that even the Republican leadership

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Speaker 6: in Florida in the House said no. Apparently one of

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Speaker 6: these guys in the House said, we want to acquire

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Speaker 6: data from apps about women's periods so we can monitor

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Speaker 6: them m hm, And the House leadership is like.

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Speaker 3: No, you're not bringing that bill forward.

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Speaker 6: Yeah, but the fact that that shit is out there,

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Speaker 6: it's the Overton window, Molly. They're going to shove it

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Speaker 6: and shove it, and they're going to keep doing it

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Speaker 6: because at this point there is no like sanctity of

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Speaker 6: life argument to be had here on their part. I'm

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Speaker 6: trying to give them even the most generous interpretation because

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Speaker 6: now it's down to little lady, I'm.

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Speaker 3: Going to tell you how to use that vagina of yours.

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Speaker 6: It is really getting to be very obvious and very

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Speaker 6: ugly just how bad their attacks on women will be

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Speaker 6: if they have full power.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're seeing it happen firsthand, and it really

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Speaker 1: is just profoundly disturbing. I'm going to ask you, now,

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Speaker 1: this is going to be annoying to you, but it's

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Speaker 1: something I've been wanting to ask you. The polls I

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Speaker 1: touch to a lot of pollsters. They defend it. They

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Speaker 1: say they are high quality poles, low quality poles, res

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Speaker 1: mutant as I call.

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Speaker 2: Them resputant poles.

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Speaker 1: Those guys suck and their poles are low quality, but

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Speaker 1: they're also created to help Donald Trump. But there are

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Speaker 1: also high quality poles, which people point them out to

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Speaker 1: me to show me that poles are not always wrong,

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Speaker 1: and that this and that. But ultimately, all these poles

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Speaker 1: are like a thousand people on the phone, right, Look,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's all we have, so people are very

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Speaker 1: attached to them. The methodology hasn't changed, right, it has changed.

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Speaker 3: Actually, it's tough rabicuely. Now.

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Speaker 6: Look, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of polling in

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Speaker 6: this country is hot garbage on top of a burning

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Speaker 6: dumpster fire mountain filled with radioactive tires.

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Speaker 3: It is terrible.

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Speaker 6: It's terrible because back in the post Obama two thousand

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Speaker 6: and eight era, we started thinking about how do you

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Speaker 6: assess poles in aggregate, and we started assessing poles in aggregate.

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Speaker 6: So you would have a low quality rest Museen pole

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Speaker 6: and a high quality Mason Dixon poll or whatever. Okay,

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Speaker 6: you'd add them all up and you do some mathematical

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Speaker 6: jiggering on it, and you would end up with a

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Speaker 6: polling average. Real Clear Politics does one. New York Times

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Speaker 6: does one five point thirty a all. There are a

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Speaker 6: lot of polling averages out there. The Republicans discovered. Okay,

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Speaker 6: I can go and form the x y Z Patriot

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Speaker 6: polling company. I can do a poll, an online poll,

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Speaker 6: or I can do a robodial poll for pennies on

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Speaker 6: the dollar. They do this to flood the zone and

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Speaker 6: make the aggregate number of polls in the mix, draw

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Speaker 6: the numbers back to the framing they want, e g.

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Speaker 3: Pro Trump.

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Speaker 6: So polling averages have been corrupted somewhat. There is an awful,

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Speaker 6: awful amount of people who want to have the interpretation

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Speaker 6: of you know, this six hundred person poll gives you

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Speaker 6: an accurate national picture down into the weeds of every

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Speaker 6: single demographic.

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Speaker 3: It does not.

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Speaker 6: It simply does not. You've got to do things. It's

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Speaker 6: the Depeche mode rule. Everything counts in large amounts. So

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Speaker 6: you've got to do really big surveys. You've got to

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Speaker 6: dig dig deep into using surveys that are verified from

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Speaker 6: the voter file. You have to weigh them appropriately. There

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Speaker 6: are so many steps in getting it right that the

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Speaker 6: people very few people actually take the time or spend

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Speaker 6: the money to do it right and look. And also,

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Speaker 6: most reporters are not mathematicians or statisticians or really first well, obviously,

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Speaker 6: I mean your work that got you the field metal

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Speaker 6: back in the days. But long story short, you know

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Speaker 6: we're in a yeah, we're we're in a moment where

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Speaker 6: polling is dubious and questionable. You have to do it

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Speaker 6: in huge samples to get it right. You have to

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Speaker 6: do it from the voter file.

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Speaker 1: And with so a lot of these poles are wrong,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of the averages are skewed.

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Speaker 6: Yes, a lot of these poles are hot garbage. Yes,

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Speaker 6: here's the other thing. If you have one rule, folks,

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Speaker 6: if you have follow one single rule about polling, there

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Speaker 6: are three tiers of indicative nature of polling. The best

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Speaker 6: tier are likely voters, and the file is drawn from

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Speaker 6: the voter file. Okay, not self identified likely voters, but

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Speaker 6: actual likely voters. We know people, we can see your

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Speaker 6: voter record, if you voted or not. We can't see the.

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Speaker 2: How you voted, but we can see if you voted.

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Speaker 3: How you voted.

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Speaker 6: We can see if you voted or not. Right, So

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Speaker 6: likely voter polls from the voter file. Second tier is

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Speaker 6: registered voters. Okay, then you're much mushier, and the third

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Speaker 6: tier is called all adults. Don't even look at all

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Speaker 6: adults poll. Just stop, don't and don't infer too much

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Speaker 6: of any demographic group from any single poll unless it's

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Speaker 6: an incredibly large sample inside the poll of that group.

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Speaker 6: So we see a lot of these polls. By the way,

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Speaker 6: So you have a thousand person poll, okay, nationally, and

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Speaker 6: you go out and they'll say, well, you know, voters

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Speaker 6: eighteen to thirty they hate this or that. You're probably

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Speaker 6: talking about sixty or seventy voters in that thousand person

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Speaker 6: It's really hard for people to get the scale problem

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Speaker 6: right when it comes down to that. So long story short,

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Speaker 6: there are hot mess. They're all they're hot mess. We're

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Speaker 6: in hell and we're all going to die.

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Speaker 2: Rick Wilson don't do drugs. I do not ever stay

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Speaker 2: in school. Stay in school kids.

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Speaker 1: If the lady is from what's it called to ask

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Speaker 1: you to join their orgy, you say no.

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Speaker 3: Never go to the Moms for Liberty orgy.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Never go to the Moms for Liberty Orgy.

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Speaker 2: That should be the name of this episode.

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Speaker 1: Josh Green is a correspondent for Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the

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Speaker 1: author of The Rebels Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC and

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Speaker 1: the Struggle for a New American Politics.

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Speaker 2: Josh Green, Welcome to Fast Politics.

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Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for coming. How do you go from the

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Speaker 2: Devil's Bargain to this question?

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Speaker 8: So I spent twenty fifteen twenty sixteen embedded with Trump

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Speaker 8: and Steve Bannon for the last book, which is all

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Speaker 8: about the rise of right wing populism. But I actually

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Speaker 8: kind of come out of the lefty policy world and

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Speaker 8: had always been interested in kind of left wing populism,

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Speaker 8: and so, you know, it occurred to me as I

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Speaker 8: was looking for the next book and never wanting to

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Speaker 8: go back into the kind of sewers of maga world

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Speaker 8: that I've been reporting in that you know, the financial

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Speaker 8: crisis which I think kind of produced the backlash that

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Speaker 8: led to Trump, also produced this big backlash on the

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Speaker 8: left that led to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren AOC and

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Speaker 8: yet because it hadn't put anybody in the White House yet,

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Speaker 8: it had really been written about and explored, And so

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Speaker 8: that's what I wanted to do in this book.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're the same, but not at all

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Speaker 2: the same.

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Speaker 1: Though the financial populism stuff is really interesting.

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Speaker 2: Who did you think was sort of the leader in that?

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Speaker 8: I think that the real leader, and that the real

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Speaker 8: kind of historical figure. When people look back on the

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Speaker 8: last ten to fifteen years of politics on the Democratic side,

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Speaker 8: they're going to look at with Warren because when the

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Speaker 8: financial crisis hit, she at the time was a fairly

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Speaker 8: unknown Harvard professor who got appointed to oversee the bank

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Speaker 8: bailouts after two thousand and eight and turned this backwater

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Speaker 8: oversight gig that had no real power or responsibility into

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Speaker 8: a public platform to kind of push this brand of

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Speaker 8: left wing populism, economic populism that really hadn't existed in

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Speaker 8: American politics in like twenty or thirty years. And I

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Speaker 8: think she really sort of captured the dissatisfaction, the backlash

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Speaker 8: that all sorts of people were feeling in the wake

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Speaker 8: of a crisis where bankers got bailed out and folks

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Speaker 8: on the middle class didn't. And you know, it seems

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Speaker 8: like a million years ago now, but it turned her

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Speaker 8: into this almost instant celebrity. I mean, she was a

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Speaker 8: pioneer in how she used YouTube at Twitter, which were

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Speaker 8: new tools back then. You know, it led to a

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Speaker 8: grassroots movement to kind of pull her into the twenty

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Speaker 8: sixteen presidential election. And only when she opted not to

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Speaker 8: do that and kind of made way for Burnandie Sanders,

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Speaker 8: did her star and her significance begin to dim a

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Speaker 8: little bit. But I don't think that democratic politics would

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Speaker 8: look anything like the way it does today. I don't

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Speaker 8: think Joe Biden would be governing the way he's governing

440
00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:13,959
Speaker 8: today if it hadn't been for Warren Bernie and then

441
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:18,159
Speaker 8: later on AOC Hmmm, that's so interesting you buy that.

442
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:22,720
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, it sounds good, it's true.

443
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:26,280
Speaker 1: I'm not arguing, but I just wonder, like I think

444
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:28,920
Speaker 1: of Bernie as sort of the person who was there

445
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:30,840
Speaker 1: first and who had been.

446
00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:32,440
Speaker 2: Preaching it the longest.

447
00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:35,920
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like Warren sort of made that

448
00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:38,320
Speaker 1: kind of populism acceptable.

449
00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:39,639
Speaker 7: I think that's exactly right.

450
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:41,480
Speaker 8: I mean, I've been in Washington long enough that I

451
00:22:41,560 --> 00:22:44,200
Speaker 8: remember Bernie Sanders back before he was Bertie Sanders. I

452
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 8: used to work for the American Prospect in the Washington Monthly,

453
00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:51,159
Speaker 8: which you know are kind of small Washington lefty policy magazines,

454
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:53,480
Speaker 8: and so I was super tuned in to Bernie and

455
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 8: what he was saying back then. But the fact is,

456
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,720
Speaker 8: like almost nobody else was back then. They thought he

457
00:22:57,800 --> 00:23:01,040
Speaker 8: was kind of a gadfly, like a wee, or he

458
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,720
Speaker 8: just wasn't like the mean Bernie that he became once

459
00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:07,399
Speaker 8: he started running for president. And I think that it

460
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:11,480
Speaker 8: took the financial crisis and the after effects the austerity

461
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:13,879
Speaker 8: and the job loss and the stress and the anxiety

462
00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:16,080
Speaker 8: for people to kind of wake up and be open

463
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,520
Speaker 8: to a message, like an anti Wall Street message and

464
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:23,879
Speaker 8: even an anti establishment democratic message, because there really hadn't

465
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 8: been one before. But then what he started started making sense.

466
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 8: But I think Warren was really kind of the first celebrity.

467
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 8: You know, she was the one that kind of broke

468
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:33,640
Speaker 8: through the popular culture. As I write in the book,

469
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 8: you know, she became a regular on John Stewart on

470
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,679
Speaker 8: the Daily Show. Was an important mechanism of communication and

471
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:41,160
Speaker 8: then which she decided not to run. In twenty sixteen,

472
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:43,719
Speaker 8: Bernie jumped in with, as you say, the same message

473
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 8: she's been talking about for thirty years, only the difference

474
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:50,720
Speaker 8: was this time Democrats were primed to hear it. And

475
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:52,960
Speaker 8: you can see that in the way that his campaign

476
00:23:53,119 --> 00:23:54,400
Speaker 8: just took off like a rocket ship.

477
00:23:54,600 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: No, I agree, And it's so funny to me as

478
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 1: someone whose grandfather was basically Bernie Sanders, right. I mean,

479
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 1: he was older, but he was a Communist, he believed

480
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:06,960
Speaker 1: in you know, he went to jail for the House

481
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: of Non American Activities. I mean, he had all those sames.

482
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:11,879
Speaker 1: So when I would watch Bernie, I would think, like,

483
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:14,880
Speaker 1: American people are going to elect a Jewish guy who

484
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 1: basically has the exact same political I mean, and that's

485
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:21,760
Speaker 1: not a criticism. I meant I think my grandfather was

486
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 1: in many ways ahead of his time, except when it

487
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 1: came to Stalin.

488
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:27,200
Speaker 2: He had a real soft spot in his art for Stalin.

489
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,679
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm very stuck on the two thousand

490
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:34,359
Speaker 1: and eight financial crisis because I watched it happen. I

491
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe that they were bailing out the banks

492
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 1: and not the people, Like I just was shocked.

493
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:42,480
Speaker 8: Well, to me, what you're getting at goes to sort

494
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:46,080
Speaker 8: of the context in which you're viewing Bernie. I mean

495
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 8: I viewed Bernie before two thousand and eight the way

496
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:50,800
Speaker 8: a lot of people did, as just not an important figure,

497
00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:53,439
Speaker 8: but that context and in the context for a lot

498
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:56,479
Speaker 8: of Americans I think changed radically, not just in two

499
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 8: thousand and eight, but in two thousand and nine and

500
00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 8: ten and eleven, as these years of austerity kept.

501
00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,360
Speaker 7: Kind of dragging out. And you know, it's not just for.

502
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 8: Like college graduates who are graduating and do a shitty

503
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 8: economy and thought, you know what, Bernie speaking truth, I'm

504
00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 8: going to get with that guy. It was a lot

505
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:15,680
Speaker 8: of blue collar workers too. I was in al Equippa,

506
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 8: Pennsylvania last week reporting out a story basically like the

507
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 8: iconic Pennsylvania steel town where the mill.

508
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 7: Shut down in the eighties and now they're building a

509
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,440
Speaker 7: new one. It's thanks partly to the infrastructure law.

510
00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 8: But I was talking to these old steel workers there

511
00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 8: who are like, yeah, we were all for Bernie in

512
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:35,119
Speaker 8: twenty sixteen, because we're union guys, like he was the

513
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:37,679
Speaker 8: one speaking truth to power, like he was calling out

514
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 8: the bullshit on Wall Street. And so I think that

515
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 8: that had a kind of appeal post two thousand and

516
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 8: eight that it might not have had two thousand and eight.

517
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 8: I think, I think the kind of the weirdness and

518
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 8: like the grandpa look and all that actually added to

519
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 8: his credibility because people are like, all right, this is

520
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 8: not some slick politician putting on airs. This is like

521
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,919
Speaker 8: a crazy guy with white hair flying around, and like,

522
00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 8: you know, he's not going to get bought off the

523
00:25:57,600 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 8: way that the other people will.

524
00:25:58,880 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: I really do, play deeply feel terrible about ask his

525
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: But would Bernie have won?

526
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 8: I don't know that he would have, and I tend

527
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:09,880
Speaker 8: to think, given how close the election wound up being,

528
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,600
Speaker 8: that he would not have won. But I think in

529
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 8: a weird way, and I get at this at the

530
00:26:14,240 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 8: end of the book that he has nevertheless sort of

531
00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 8: succeeded in in printing this like populous left agenda onto

532
00:26:23,480 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 8: Joe Biden, who was a guy who could win, a

533
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 8: safe guy, an old guy, a moderate, not somebody who's

534
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,360
Speaker 8: going to like scare the but Jesus out of Washington

535
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 8: and not only got elected but was able to implement

536
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:35,280
Speaker 8: a lot of this stuff, some of it in a

537
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 8: biportisan way. I talked to a top White House official

538
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 8: ex top White House official for the book who said

539
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 8: to me, I will never say this on the record,

540
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:45,920
Speaker 8: but Joe Biden won the nomination, but Bernie and Warren

541
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 8: really won the presidency. Like if you look at what

542
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 8: Biden has done, especially in the wake of COVID when

543
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 8: it came to like the stimulus package, which differed like

544
00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 8: one hundred and eighty degrees from the stimulus package after

545
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 8: the Great Financial Crisis, right, Biden put up a big stimulus,

546
00:27:02,520 --> 00:27:06,199
Speaker 8: beefed up unemployment, aviction, free small business loans. You know,

547
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 8: students didn't relieve all that kind of stuff. That didn't

548
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,560
Speaker 8: happen in two thousand and eight. It did happen when

549
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 8: Biden got elected. And it only happened because this left

550
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 8: populist movement had pushed over the intervening twelve years for

551
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:21,880
Speaker 8: it to happen, and people, even Joe Biden, who when

552
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 8: I came to Washington in two thousand was still known

553
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:28,080
Speaker 8: as the Senator from corporate America. Because you represented Delaware,

554
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,320
Speaker 8: Like the Center for Corporate America is taking the Sandors

555
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 8: and Warrant agenda uneconomic populism implementing the White House.

556
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 3: You know.

557
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 8: I think that's a great victory for the left and

558
00:27:37,520 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 8: even for Bernie Sanders, and I think that's one reason

559
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:42,639
Speaker 8: why you don't see Sanders anymore or warranting more out

560
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,399
Speaker 8: criticizing what Biden is doing, or running against him in

561
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 8: twenty twenty four.

562
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 2: They're behind it, right, No, No, it's a really good point.

563
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 2: I mean I have been on a panel where.

564
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: We've talked about how progressives are really supported because they're

565
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:56,640
Speaker 1: getting their legislative wins.

566
00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,640
Speaker 2: I mean that's yeah, with the net net there they are.

567
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:01,359
Speaker 8: But the the thing that blows my mind is you

568
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 8: look at Biden's support in like this latest mom Mouth

569
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:08,080
Speaker 8: poll and it's like creatoring and not just with Republicans independence,

570
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:11,119
Speaker 8: but Democrats like I think that they don't realize what

571
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,919
Speaker 8: a success Biden has been in terms of implementing the

572
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 8: policy not just that he ran on, but that the

573
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:19,159
Speaker 8: progressive wing has been pushing all along.

574
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's true, they are.

575
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:25,399
Speaker 1: It is a real economic populist agenda, and I do

576
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:28,719
Speaker 1: think the reason Trump won was because he kept you know,

577
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: he would just offer people whatever they wanted, right, I

578
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:33,119
Speaker 1: mean totally.

579
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:35,439
Speaker 8: And back then he was an economic populist. I mean

580
00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:37,440
Speaker 8: it was rhetorical and it turned out to be bullshit.

581
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 8: But if you go back to the twenty sixteen campaign,

582
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 8: he talked as much about Wall Street and globalists and

583
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 8: all that kind of stuff as he did about immigrants, right, exactly,

584
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 8: like that stuff has power. Economic populism is the unifying thread.

585
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 8: And you know, I argue that in the rebels is

586
00:28:51,760 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 8: a unifying thread in democratic politics because it brings together

587
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 8: not just moderates and liberals, but independence and even some

588
00:28:57,400 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 8: of the Republicans, like the steelworker guys I was talking to,

589
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 8: you know that are also Trump guys.

590
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 7: And so that's why I don't know.

591
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 8: I think if Biden is going to win, and if

592
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 8: he's going to overcome these boll members and turn around,

593
00:29:06,560 --> 00:29:08,080
Speaker 8: he's got to go full populist.

594
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: Right, the fucking polls are bullshit, And you know, a

595
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: thousand people who pick up their phone, I don't want

596
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:17,400
Speaker 1: to talk to those people because I'm not picking up

597
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: the phone if I don't recognize the number. Let's talk

598
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 1: about AOC AOC was like capture the zeitgeist in twenty eighteen.

599
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 1: I feel like she had that kind of news cycle

600
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: where everyone got very excited about her and then they

601
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: sort of got mad at her for not being this

602
00:29:35,040 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: celebrity they fantasized she was. And now she's been a

603
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 1: bit quiet. Talk to me about the AOC trajectory.

604
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 8: See, I think in a lot of ways she's she's

605
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 8: kind of one of the most interesting characters in the book,

606
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 8: partly generationally because like if you look at her life story,

607
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 8: which is in the book, she really is a product

608
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 8: in a sense of the Great Financial Crash, Like she

609
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 8: was the college graduate that graduated into like a shitty

610
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 8: economy and was working a bunch of service jobs. It

611
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 8: was burned by student debt. What was interesting about her

612
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 8: and like her effect as a politician is yeah, like

613
00:30:06,480 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 8: she came in with a head of esteem and occupied

614
00:30:09,800 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 8: Nancy Pelosi's office. Like, to me, that was the first

615
00:30:12,560 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 8: thing it really gripped kind of the Washington press corps.

616
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 8: It was like, holy shit, Like not only did she

617
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 8: knock off Joe Crowley who we all thought was going

618
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 8: to be the next speaker, but like she's serious about

619
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 8: she's occupying Pelosi's office. But I think what you saw

620
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 8: happening over the next six months with AOC was, you know,

621
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,240
Speaker 8: she was in a new environment. She began to understand

622
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 8: how Congress works, and being an effective congress person is

623
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 8: completely different than being an effective activist. My first book,

624
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:39,920
Speaker 8: which nobody read, was a book I co wrote without

625
00:30:39,960 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 8: Henry Waxman, the famous Democratic congressman who passed so much

626
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,440
Speaker 8: of the landmark legislation shapes our world in the country today,

627
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 8: and so many of those stories were about him quietly

628
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 8: working behind the scene to like diffuse this critic or

629
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 8: that critic. And I think to AOC's great credit, even

630
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 8: if it pisss off people on Twitter or Blue Sky

631
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 8: or whatever who don't think she's being pure enough, she

632
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 8: adjusted to being a congress woman in a way that

633
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 8: has been like ridiculously effective. If you look at again,

634
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,920
Speaker 8: going back to Biden's record, AOC was all about a

635
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,880
Speaker 8: Green New Deal and climate legislation and lo and bold

636
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 8: Joe Biden winds up passing like the biggest climate bill

637
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:22,479
Speaker 8: in American history, three hundred plus billion dollars. It just

638
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 8: wasn't like packaged that way, and it wasn't delivered in

639
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 8: a way that dunked on Republicans. And so I think

640
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 8: for a lot of people who follow lefty politics on

641
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 8: a kind of a surface level, it just didn't feel

642
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 8: like a big win, and so they're not as excited

643
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 8: about it as they should be.

644
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.

645
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: I mean I also think that like, we don't really

646
00:31:43,800 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 1: know how excited anyone is. And the thing that I

647
00:31:47,960 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 1: keep coming back to and the why, you know, when

648
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 1: I do I do this podcast, I interview with gazillion

649
00:31:52,880 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 1: people a week, thank god, but you know the truth

650
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: is that there aren't that many people that I interview

651
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 1: who are actually like out there people. So I mean

652
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:04,400
Speaker 1: I had somebody on and she's talking to me about

653
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: what it's like for poor women on the ground in Alabama,

654
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of America that we are just not,

655
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: at least I am not engaging with on a regular basis.

656
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 1: And so you know, all we see are these like

657
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,960
Speaker 1: thousand phone calls, which maybe that is dispositive. It doesn't

658
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: feel like it is. So who else in this book

659
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: should we know about? Who's interesting? And who's the book is?

660
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 8: It's really about these three characters, you know, Elizabeth Warren,

661
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 8: Bernie Sanders and AOC. But like what I've done, or

662
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:34,600
Speaker 8: what i've what I've tried to do is kind of

663
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 8: smuggle in a history of the modern Democratic Party, like

664
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 8: when it was that Wall Street first got its claws

665
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 8: into Democrats, because you know, in the sixties and seventies, Democrats.

666
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 7: Were the party of workers, were the party of unions.

667
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 8: And then in beginning in nineteen seventy eight, which is

668
00:32:49,320 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 8: sort of where the book starts, Jimmy Carter was having

669
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 8: a terrible time with the economy. Kind of Wall Street

670
00:32:54,240 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 8: slid in a side door and reshaped the party, giving

671
00:32:57,360 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 8: rise to people like Bob Rubin, and all of a

672
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 8: sudden you had Golden Sachs executives who not only ran

673
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 8: the Republican Party but now had important positions in the

674
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 8: Democratic Party too, And I think that helps explain why

675
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 8: the party's values shifted in a way that ultimately wound

676
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 8: up with a two thousand and eight financial crisis. And

677
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 8: that backstory helps to explain why people like Warren and

678
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 8: Sanders are so important because in the eighties and nineties,

679
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 8: like there really just wasn't a left populist wing of

680
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 8: the Democratic Party. Democratic liberalism cared a lot about this

681
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 8: stuff in the forties and the fifties, but beginning in

682
00:33:31,720 --> 00:33:36,720
Speaker 8: the sixties, Democrats were more focused on women's rights, civil rights, environmentalism.

683
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 8: It took the crash in two thousand and eight to

684
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:41,640
Speaker 8: kind of open up this new wing of the party

685
00:33:41,760 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 8: that I actually think has been a great thing because

686
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 8: I think, like I said, economic populism is the unifying

687
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 8: thread in democratic politics, and it really has to be

688
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 8: going forward because if we wind up with Donald Trump

689
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:56,720
Speaker 8: is for Republican nominee in twenty twenty four, Joe Biden

690
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 8: is the Democratic nominee, then what we're really having is

691
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,520
Speaker 8: a ref random on whose version of populism does America want?

692
00:34:03,560 --> 00:34:06,680
Speaker 8: The right or the left, Trump's or Biden's. That's what

693
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:08,919
Speaker 8: I think is so important. And I try and spend

694
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 8: a lot of time out talking to normal Americans to

695
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 8: get out of Washington whenever I can. But I would

696
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 8: say this, like, definitely what Biden has done is not

697
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 8: connecting in a way that you would want it to

698
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 8: if you're in the White House. But the other experience

699
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 8: I have that might make me a little different than

700
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 8: some of your guests. I work at Bloomberg, which is

701
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 8: a financial news company. So I am like inundated with

702
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:32,399
Speaker 8: this stuff all day long. Talk to a lot of economists,

703
00:34:32,400 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 8: talk to a lot of Wall Street people, and to me,

704
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 8: there's this like crazy dissonance between what those people are

705
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:41,880
Speaker 8: saying and what the poll numbers are saying. Like, the

706
00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 8: fact is Biden's response to the COVID crash worked brilliantly,

707
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:49,960
Speaker 8: especially if you compare it to the Great Financial Career, right,

708
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,959
Speaker 8: and like that's not just partisan spent. If you look

709
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 8: at the actual economics numbers today, we have record low unemployment,

710
00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 8: We've got record high stock market, We've got falling inflation,

711
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 8: falling gas prices, consumer sentiment is turning around. Like everything

712
00:35:04,520 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 8: in the economic numbers says it's about to be mourning

713
00:35:07,480 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 8: in America again. The only thing it doesn't show is

714
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 8: Joe Biden's poll numbers. And like, obviously Biden's not getting credit.

715
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 8: Will he get credit? I think he actually might. I mean,

716
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,760
Speaker 8: there's a delay effect with these things. We've got almost

717
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 8: a year, but I mean, looking at these numbers, I

718
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 8: know there's TikTok, I know there's a lot of numerism,

719
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 8: but it really does feel like a vibe shift is

720
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 8: coming that is gonna benefit Biden, because all of the

721
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 8: numbers that I see, like at Bloomberg all day longer

722
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:37,160
Speaker 8: pointing in that direction, even the crappy ones like mortgage

723
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 8: rates and all the stuff that are like burdening. You know,

724
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 8: younger people people want to buy house. Those are getting

725
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 8: better too. Will they be better enough to get Biden reelected?

726
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 8: You know, we'll see, but I kind of think they might.

727
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:51,399
Speaker 1: Vibe shift Biden. Joshua agree, And I hope you come

728
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 1: back anytime.

729
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:53,680
Speaker 7: I would love to. Thanks so much for having me.

730
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:58,640
Speaker 1: Brad Meltzer is the author of many many books, including

731
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,080
Speaker 1: the Latest Ordinary Peo Well Change the World.

732
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:04,880
Speaker 2: I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Brad.

733
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:06,800
Speaker 5: I'm so happy to be here.

734
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 2: Your new friend.

735
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 1: But I really like you, and you know, I hate Boston,

736
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,320
Speaker 1: So for me to make a friend in Boston, that's

737
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:16,479
Speaker 1: like a huge, huge deal.

738
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 5: I started writing in Boston, but I don't live there anymore,

739
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:20,640
Speaker 5: so don't worry. You can hate Boston all you want.

740
00:36:20,719 --> 00:36:22,360
Speaker 2: I thought you guys lived there still.

741
00:36:22,400 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 5: We moved from there years and years ago, so we

742
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:27,240
Speaker 5: are now like every other Jew and here in Florida.

743
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 2: Wow, Oh yikes.

744
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,399
Speaker 5: Trust me, Oh you know, by the way, the best

745
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 5: thing about living in Florida is that when you travel

746
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 5: the country like on book tour, is everyone gives you

747
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 5: that look of like there was just a death in

748
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 5: the family and says, how is it there? It's just fascinating.

749
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about this book.

750
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:51,320
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, as you know, I usually write mysteries and thrillers,

751
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 5: and I do nonfiction like the Nazi conspiracy and write

752
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 5: about World War two and things like that. And there's

753
00:36:56,320 --> 00:36:59,200
Speaker 5: no better segue than Nazis and murder to saying I've

754
00:36:59,239 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 5: been writing children books for the past decade. And the

755
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:05,279
Speaker 5: truth was, Molly is I head kids, and my kids

756
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 5: were looking at reality TV show stars and people who

757
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 5: are famous for being famous and thinking that that's a hero.

758
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 5: And I was like, I got to do better than that.

759
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 5: So we started writing a lot of kids books with that.

760
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:17,359
Speaker 5: I am Amelia Earhart, I am Abraham Lincoln, I am

761
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:20,880
Speaker 5: Rosa Parks. We've done over thirty books now, we've been

762
00:37:20,880 --> 00:37:23,760
Speaker 5: doing it for ten years. We've done everyone from Jane

763
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 5: Goodall to Billy jing King to you name it in between,

764
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:31,080
Speaker 5: Jim Henson, mister Rogers, and now it's the ten year anniversary,

765
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,760
Speaker 5: and we're out with our thirty second book in the series,

766
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,839
Speaker 5: and it's I am Ruth Bada Ginsburg and it's just

767
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:39,880
Speaker 5: a hell of a fistfight of a book. Tell me why,

768
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:41,960
Speaker 5: because you know what our kids books do? You know

769
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 5: their books for little kids you're like five years old

770
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 5: to twelve years old, they are little cartoon versions of them.

771
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 5: But what I do is I look for what my

772
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:51,479
Speaker 5: own kids need. And I have a daughter. The book

773
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 5: asked the question how do you create change? Because one

774
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 5: of the hardest things to change is what the world

775
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 5: thinks of you. And when Ruth Bade Ginsburg has grown

776
00:37:59,920 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 5: up up in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I

777
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 5: actually grew up, she loved the things that all these

778
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:07,359
Speaker 5: kids like, roller skating, riding bikes, playing games like stup ball,

779
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,280
Speaker 5: and she loved to read. But when she would read books,

780
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:12,680
Speaker 5: all the boys in the books she would read would

781
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 5: be climbing trees and riding bikes and having adventures, and

782
00:38:15,600 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 5: all the girls would sit around in pink dresses. And

783
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:20,360
Speaker 5: she's like, this makes no sense, Like I'd rather be

784
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:23,160
Speaker 5: climbing trees than wearing a dress. It's her mother who

785
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 5: saves her takes her to the library every Friday afternoon.

786
00:38:26,640 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 5: They pick out five books and she loves you know,

787
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 5: everything from like little women and obvious things to like

788
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 5: Greek mythology. But she loves reading the kind of books

789
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 5: that I now write, writing female heroes. She loves reading

790
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:40,640
Speaker 5: about Amelia Aarharp, Harriet Tubman, and she loves reading about

791
00:38:40,680 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 5: Jewish heroes to kuno lam, you know, repairing the world.

792
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,319
Speaker 5: And her mother gives her this lesson is every year

793
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:48,960
Speaker 5: on her birthday. Ruth Bita Ginsburg is a little girl

794
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 5: all true used to go. Mother used to take her

795
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 5: to the local Jewish orphanage and they give away ice

796
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 5: cream to everyone, so she doesn't have her own party

797
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:58,240
Speaker 5: as a kid, which, by the way, my kids would

798
00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:02,439
Speaker 5: absolutely revolt. But her mother teaches her, listen, it's better

799
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 5: to help other people and better to you know, to

800
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 5: deal with being a nice person. Then that's how you

801
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,600
Speaker 5: really change the world. And Ruth Beta Ginsberg, when she's

802
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:13,839
Speaker 5: seventeen years old, her mother dies, but her mother gives

803
00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 5: her one of life's great lessons and there's nothing a

804
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:19,000
Speaker 5: woman can accomplish. And that's where we go in the book.

805
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 5: You know the reason our books are become a fistfight

806
00:39:21,800 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 5: for kids is I could tell my daughter, you know,

807
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 5: you could be a Supreme Court justice one day, But

808
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 5: that's a ridiculous, you know, it's like, how many kids

809
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 5: are going to really think? You know, it's like being

810
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:33,440
Speaker 5: president or he who would even want the job these days.

811
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,239
Speaker 5: But knowing that you can make the world a better

812
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 5: place by being kind to other people, knowing that, you know,

813
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 5: having someone say to you there's nothing that a girl

814
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 5: can do is valuable stuff. And the book ends with

815
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 5: to me one of my favorite lines we've ever worked on,

816
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 5: and it says, you know, today they call me a trailblazer.

817
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 5: This all written first person. It says, but the best

818
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 5: part of blaze in the trail is leaving tracks. And

819
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 5: that means you're not just doing things for yourself. You're

820
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 5: leaving a path for others to follow. So start with

821
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:02,920
Speaker 5: one voice and let it grow into a course. And

822
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,040
Speaker 5: it says, I'm Ruth Badeginsburg, Create a quality, create justice.

823
00:40:06,239 --> 00:40:08,680
Speaker 5: And I love the fact that, you know, I want

824
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 5: my daughter to get that lesson. I want my sons

825
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,720
Speaker 5: to get that lesson. And we know have seven million

826
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 5: people out there who have bought these books. Who have

827
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 5: built libraries of real heroes for their kids, for their grandkids,

828
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 5: their nieces, their nephews. And I love the fact we

829
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 5: get to do that.

830
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:26,680
Speaker 1: What do you sort of think of for young girls?

831
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think the sense with Ruth Bader

832
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: Ginsburg is that she was sort of a created in

833
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: existence that we didn't even know could exist.

834
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 5: I listen, I always test the books on my own kids.

835
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 5: I didn't have kids to have a free focus group,

836
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 5: but they will never stop giving me their opinions and

837
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,399
Speaker 5: what they can understand. And what every one of us,

838
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:49,720
Speaker 5: boy and girl understands is someone telling you you can't

839
00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 5: do that and just going, man, I want to do that,

840
00:40:52,360 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 5: you know, And I know that sounds silly, but not

841
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 5: everyone has, you know, the family, the parents, the friends

842
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 5: or whatever to let that happen. I think that's what

843
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:02,319
Speaker 5: books do you know. I was someone who grew up

844
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 5: we didn't have many books in my house. My mom's

845
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 5: only thing she read was the Star in the Inquirer

846
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 5: because she thought that's where all the real news was.

847
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,400
Speaker 5: But you know, to me, there's a moment when you

848
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 5: see Ruth bade Ginsburg in the book where she goes

849
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:18,080
Speaker 5: to Harvard into Columbia Law School, which is where I

850
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 5: went to law school. And she said there were nine

851
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,760
Speaker 5: women five hundred men. There wasn't even a women's bathroom

852
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,520
Speaker 5: in the main building. And that's what kids understand, right,

853
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 5: They understand that, like basic stuff. There's a point where

854
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:30,239
Speaker 5: she goes to get a job and everyone says, you

855
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:32,399
Speaker 5: see this, you know guy saying we don't hire women.

856
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 5: Another guy says, we don't hire Jews. Not that says

857
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 5: we don't hire mothers with kids, because she had a

858
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 5: kid at the time. Telling these stories. When you say

859
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 5: things like oh she did this and then she was

860
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 5: nominated here and this, kids don't care. They zone out.

861
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 5: But seeing when she was a little kid that she

862
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 5: used to want to take woodworking in wood shopping when

863
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 5: she was in school. But girls coudn't take woods shop.

864
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 5: Girls had to take home ack. They had to do

865
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 5: you know, the cooking class, and they had to do

866
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 5: the sewing class. And she's like, what are you talking about?

867
00:41:57,719 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 5: I hate this. I want to do the woodworking class.

868
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 5: Kids understand that, you know, I mean, I remember my

869
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 5: daughter I had. My daughter was one of two girls

870
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,840
Speaker 5: on the little league team that I coached all boys,

871
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 5: and I brought my daughter and I was like, look out,

872
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 5: we're coming to play. And my daughter looked around and

873
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 5: was like Dad. First she was the only girl, and

874
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 5: then there was one of the girl who joined, and

875
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 5: I said, get your bet, get your glove, let's go.

876
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 5: And you know, it was important to me to just

877
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 5: say that for some people, in some situations, you don't

878
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:24,879
Speaker 5: have that advantage. And what to me is this book

879
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 5: is just to remind people of their power. The crazy

880
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:30,279
Speaker 5: part is, Molly is I researched these books and start

881
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,160
Speaker 5: writing them, you know, a year and a half ago.

882
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:33,840
Speaker 5: I don't know where the world's going to be. We

883
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:36,359
Speaker 5: just thought, you know, Ruth Beginsburg was the number one

884
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:38,799
Speaker 5: hero that kids were writing to me and begging for

885
00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 5: a book about number one bar nobody, and we've done

886
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 5: obviously some of the big names, but she was number one,

887
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 5: and so of course I included things about anti Semitism,

888
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 5: how she faced anti Semitism when she was a little girl.

889
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 5: She used to say that hatred is similar to injustice,

890
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,120
Speaker 5: that both are destructive fractures in our society we have

891
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:56,160
Speaker 5: to repair. And that's what our mother taught her, you know,

892
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:58,960
Speaker 5: repair those fractures, don't just complain about them. They'll just

893
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 5: bitch and moan about heir of the world. And I

894
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 5: don't know where we're going to be with anti Semitism

895
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 5: a year and a half ago. And I think that's

896
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 5: I'll include this part because I think it's important for

897
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,000
Speaker 5: my kid. But man, we're still fighting this worse than

898
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:14,239
Speaker 5: ever right now. You know, she's she's a hero always,

899
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:17,160
Speaker 5: but boy, right now, it seems like, you know, when

900
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 5: we look at what's happening with abortion rights, when we

901
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 5: look at what's happening with anti Semitism, when we look

902
00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 5: at what's happening with the way the country is divided.

903
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,160
Speaker 5: You know, she's someone who was confirmed with nearly one

904
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 5: hundred percent vote in the Senate, and she's to me

905
00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:32,799
Speaker 5: just a hero for perfectly where we are right now.

906
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,640
Speaker 2: I mean, she's also how we got where we are

907
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:36,240
Speaker 2: right now.

908
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,640
Speaker 5: But yes, I'm still mad at her for that. Listen,

909
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 5: we've done. I am Billy jing King. Billy jing Ing

910
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 5: spent two hours on the phone with me correct in

911
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,359
Speaker 5: her book. When we did. I am jing Goodall, Jing

912
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,839
Speaker 5: Goodall read the book, gave us all the things temper

913
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:49,839
Speaker 5: random book got on the phone with me, spend time

914
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 5: correct and everything. Ruth Beginsburg is one of the few

915
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 5: who I knew. I knew her a long time. Her

916
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:56,960
Speaker 5: daughter was one of my mentors in law school. I

917
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:59,279
Speaker 5: was a witness with with Justice s Ginsberg at a

918
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:02,640
Speaker 5: friend's wedding. We signed their coutuba together. And I'm still like,

919
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 5: why didn't you just leave a little earlier? I love Rador,

920
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:06,799
Speaker 5: but of course that's where we are.

921
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 2: So tell me the story of how you know my mom.

922
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,359
Speaker 5: This is a crazy story. So it must have been

923
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:14,479
Speaker 5: like nineteen ninety seven. But that first year I become

924
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:17,280
Speaker 5: a writer, my first book is published. It's a thriller

925
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 5: called The Tenth Justice. I'm out of Barnes and Noble.

926
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 5: And this guy waits to the end of the line

927
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 5: and he approaches me and hands me a little card preprinted,

928
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:27,760
Speaker 5: but it's really nice and it has a nice font

929
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:30,800
Speaker 5: on it, and it says be a part of cinematic history.

930
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 5: And it says the new Woody Allen movie is looking

931
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 5: for special extras and you've been selected and we want

932
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 5: you to be in this new Woody Allen movie. And

933
00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 5: my first thought is this is complete bullshit. This can't

934
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 5: be real. Because when I used to work in the

935
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 5: Senate Judiciary Committee, I was an intern. I used to

936
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 5: take the Judiciary Committee station area. I used to use

937
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:49,479
Speaker 5: the pen sign and machine from the center. I write

938
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 5: to my friends. I would tell him they were being deported,

939
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 5: and you know, I thought, this is just someone you know,

940
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:56,759
Speaker 5: payback on me. And I'm like, it's got to be faked.

941
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:58,719
Speaker 5: So I call a buddy of mine who I know

942
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,279
Speaker 5: is doing legal works for Woody Allen's film crew, and

943
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 5: he says, no, this is real. Woody Allen personally picks out.

944
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 5: He told me is extras to all of his films.

945
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 5: The new movie is called Celebrity. They want real celebrities

946
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:13,799
Speaker 5: in the movie quote unquote celebrities in the movie. And

947
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 5: they picked you because they're doing a book party scene

948
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 5: and they want real authors in the background. So here

949
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 5: I am. I'm twenty seven years old, and I'm like,

950
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 5: Woody Allen has just picked me. And again this is

951
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 5: pre Woody Allen where he is today, of course, and

952
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 5: so I'm just like, I gotta go down there. So

953
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:30,480
Speaker 5: I was living in DC at the time. I fly

954
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 5: to New York and the other person that they pick

955
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:36,879
Speaker 5: is Lorenzo Carcaterra, and they picked your mother and your

956
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 5: mom and Lorenzo and I spend two days as extras

957
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:42,800
Speaker 5: in the Woody Allen movie Celebrity. We're hanging out with

958
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 5: NOA Riot is there and Kenneth Brown is there, and

959
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 5: they're now treating us like extras. They'reletting you know, they

960
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 5: keep us inside. They take us. All the extras are

961
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:51,399
Speaker 5: outside and we're kind of inside, and you know, we're

962
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 5: talking to all the stars and we're talking all the people,

963
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 5: and we're watching I've never been to a film in

964
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:57,080
Speaker 5: my life, and I'm like, this is the greatest. We

965
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 5: are clearly the most important writers on the planet Earth

966
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 5: right now. We've been selected person by Woody Allen. So

967
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 5: I'm sitting with your mom. We have these great two

968
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 5: days together, and at the end of the two days

969
00:46:05,520 --> 00:46:08,000
Speaker 5: we finally say something along the lines of like, so,

970
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 5: how did you get the call to get here? You know,

971
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 5: because we just started comparing notes and the one thing

972
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 5: we realize is that I signed on that Barn's Noble

973
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 5: where I got approached on like Tuesday. Lorenzo was there

974
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,839
Speaker 5: on Wednesday, your mother was there on Thursday. It had

975
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 5: nothing to do with anything at all about if we

976
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:28,600
Speaker 5: were the three schmucks in the right place at the

977
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:30,919
Speaker 5: right time. Whoever was in that Barn's Noble that week

978
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 5: got invited and we were just like, oh my gosh,

979
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 5: we were so self important, but your mom was super

980
00:46:35,520 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 5: fun to hang out with. And that was literally the

981
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:38,240
Speaker 5: start of my career.

982
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 4: That is a great story and also such a great

983
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 4: explainer of what it's like to be a writer, right,

984
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 4: you think you're so special and in fact, and also

985
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 4: what it's like to.

986
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 2: Be a human.

987
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:52,879
Speaker 5: I mean, it was it was the best lesson, right.

988
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 5: It was like it was like it took all my

989
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 5: ego and lifted it all up here. I am, I've

990
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 5: been I'm the chosen one. It's been revealed. And then

991
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 5: it was like listen, schmuck, here's how here go back

992
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,480
Speaker 5: down the planet Earth. Then it was fantastic. But anyway,

993
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 5: I know you and I have gone back and forth

994
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:10,239
Speaker 5: on Twitter and threads and everywhere else, but I was like,

995
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 5: I always promised I would tell you what when we

996
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 5: finally got on there on podcasts together.

997
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,440
Speaker 2: It's a great story. Who's next? I am, Who's next?

998
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:20,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we just did mister Rogers, which is like

999
00:47:20,600 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 5: mister Rodgers is the one you can't complain about. You know,

1000
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 5: we'll definitely take some complaints for every once in a

1001
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:26,800
Speaker 5: while we'll get books. You know, we've had our Rosa

1002
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:29,440
Speaker 5: Parks book and our Doctor King book were banned.

1003
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:31,200
Speaker 2: That's insane from.

1004
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:34,040
Speaker 5: What in Pennsylvania. They had nothing to do with the content.

1005
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 5: There were about one hundred, two hundred books that were

1006
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 5: selected as being good for talking to your kids about race.

1007
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 5: This is about a year and a half ago, and

1008
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,439
Speaker 5: it was like the I Am books. It was Sonya Sodo,

1009
00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 5: My Yours book, it was Malala's book. They were, you know,

1010
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 5: just kind of bread and butter. These were good books

1011
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 5: to teach your kids. And what the school board did

1012
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 5: is said, we want to read these books before we

1013
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 5: give them the kids and okay them, which to me

1014
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 5: is actually a fine thing. Go read the books, check

1015
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 5: them out and make sure they're you know, whatever they are.

1016
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 5: But what the fast one at the school or pulled

1017
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:02,839
Speaker 5: is that they took a year and the books still

1018
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,920
Speaker 5: weren't read. You can read I Am Rosa Parks in

1019
00:48:06,080 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 5: ten minutes. It's not like reading Warm Peace. And basically

1020
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 5: what happened was is they did it on purpose. They

1021
00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 5: were What started as a little freeze to hold the

1022
00:48:13,680 --> 00:48:16,560
Speaker 5: books became a band because librarians couldn't get them. No

1023
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:18,799
Speaker 5: one knew whether they could order them. And that's how

1024
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:20,640
Speaker 5: they shut the books out without ever having to take

1025
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:22,879
Speaker 5: a vote. It was such cheap politics. So I got

1026
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:26,800
Speaker 5: a call from CNN, from MSNBC, even from Fox News

1027
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 5: called me and said this is nonsense. Can you come

1028
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 5: and talk about it? And when when CNN and Fox

1029
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,799
Speaker 5: and MSNBC all agree, you know, someone screwed up right,

1030
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 5: Like it's one of the few times where you're like,

1031
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 5: this is you know, even even those three will agree.

1032
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 5: They asked me to speak at the special school board,

1033
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 5: meaning I, you know, it's part of the pandemics, like

1034
00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:45,839
Speaker 5: zoom in. I give my speech where I've convinced again

1035
00:48:45,880 --> 00:48:48,200
Speaker 5: I've saved democracy as we know it, and then all

1036
00:48:48,239 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 5: the students start speaking, and these students who start saying

1037
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:53,440
Speaker 5: things like you know, how dare you ban these books?

1038
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:55,440
Speaker 5: Holding up our books and saying, you know, these are

1039
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:58,040
Speaker 5: books that we care about. How dare you ban these

1040
00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:00,359
Speaker 5: books of people that look like me? Because every book

1041
00:49:00,360 --> 00:49:02,400
Speaker 5: on the list was either by someone who had a

1042
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 5: brown or black face or was you know, written about

1043
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:08,359
Speaker 5: someone who was and these kids were so impassioned. By

1044
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 5: the time they were done, they completely re voted. The

1045
00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 5: school board had to take a vote right there. They

1046
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 5: shamed him into putting the books back on the shelves,

1047
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 5: and they saved the day. I had nothing to do

1048
00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 5: with it, but we fought. You know, our Billy jing

1049
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 5: King book just got selected in Florida, of course in Florida,

1050
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:25,839
Speaker 5: and we fought against it, and it's now back on

1051
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:27,879
Speaker 5: the shelves. It got unanimously voted back on the show.

1052
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:30,879
Speaker 5: So that's what we're fighting now. So we still keep

1053
00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:33,600
Speaker 5: that fight going. We am one of the people who's responsible.

1054
00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:35,880
Speaker 5: We're bringing pen America to open a Florida office to

1055
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 5: fight these book bands because I use the money that

1056
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 5: we make on these books, and I basically donated to

1057
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 5: these places that will fight book bands like this. So

1058
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,799
Speaker 5: the next one that we're doing is in time for

1059
00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 5: the Olympics. We wanted to do Jesse Owens and I

1060
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:49,799
Speaker 5: decided this again a year and a half ago. Did

1061
00:49:49,800 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 5: not think we were still going to be fighting Nazis

1062
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four, but here we are still fighting Nazis.

1063
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:56,800
Speaker 5: So Jesse Owens comes next. You know, we've done everyone

1064
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 5: from Free to Collo to Albert Einstein to you know,

1065
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:02,319
Speaker 5: anyone you can name in between, and it's been one

1066
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 5: of those things for me. That's my way of fighting back.

1067
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:07,759
Speaker 5: I think, as you know, it's sometimes so hard to

1068
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 5: change adults' opinions. But give me some kids. And we

1069
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 5: now have seven million kids who have read our books.

1070
00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 5: And I love the fact that we're creating this little

1071
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 5: army of people who have values of perseverance and kindness

1072
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 5: and some compassion because God knows we need it right now.

1073
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Brad.

1074
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:24,960
Speaker 5: No, thank you for finally doing this, and you got

1075
00:50:25,000 --> 00:50:26,160
Speaker 5: to send my love to your family.

1076
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I definitely will.

1077
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 3: No.

1078
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 2: No moment infect Hi.

1079
00:50:33,239 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 1: It's our moment of fuckery and it's just me all

1080
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: alone because I forgot to ask Rick to do it,

1081
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:40,640
Speaker 1: but also more importantly, because I wanted to take a

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Speaker 1: minute too. Thank you guys for listening. We had this break.

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Speaker 1: It was probably the last break we're going to have

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Speaker 1: before this election. I talked to a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: I took a little trip, and a lot of you

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Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, and I'm really, really, really grateful.

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Speaker 1: I think that we're doing really cool stuff, doing these

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Speaker 1: local elections, trying to talk to people, trying to really

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Speaker 1: get a sense of what's going on.

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Speaker 2: And since we're back from.

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Speaker 1: Vacation and I'm very introspective, I would like, instead of

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Speaker 1: having a moment of buck gerty today, to just thank

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Speaker 1: you guys for listening. We work really hard on this podcast,

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Speaker 1: Jesse and I, and we do a gazillion interviews every

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Speaker 1: week and it's really cool to know that you guys

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Speaker 1: are listening.

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Speaker 2: So thank you.

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Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in

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Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds

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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you

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00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend

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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.