Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Mega Mike Johnson brought all of
Speaker 1: the Congressional press Corps to the border.
Speaker 2: We're back from vacation with an amazing show for you.
Speaker 1: Today, Josh Green talks to us about his latest book,
Speaker 1: The Rebels Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the struggle
Speaker 1: for a new American politic. Then we'll talk to author
Speaker 1: Brad Meltzer about his latest in a series of children's
Speaker 1: books about ordinary people changing the world. His newest book
Speaker 1: is called I Am Ruth Badergensburg.
Speaker 2: But first we.
Speaker 1: Have the host of the Enemies List, the Lincoln Project's
Speaker 1: own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Hey, Molly, how are you. How was your
Speaker 3: new year?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: It was amazing. I just my life is just one
Speaker 1: high too of the next. But anyway, enough of a sad.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: First, I think we should talk about the American Media
Speaker 1: Industrial CONFLICTX, of which you and I are members. We
Speaker 1: are fucking up this election.
Speaker 6: Go look, I'm going to say there are three main
Speaker 6: groups fucking up this election, and those of us in
Speaker 6: the media enterprise broadly speaking, some of us are fucking
Speaker 6: up this election.
Speaker 2: Let us start with the Associated Press.
Speaker 3: Well, I was just getting to that.
Speaker 6: As my friend Stewart Stephen said, it's like saying Julia
Speaker 6: Child and Jeffrey Dahmer are both famous chefs with a
Speaker 6: different approach to ingredients. The competition for the dumbest fucking
Speaker 6: headline of the universe this week, it was really up there.
Speaker 6: That one really to me, especially when I read it.
Speaker 6: This frame of dislike of Joe Biden in the media
Speaker 6: is very clear. Now, yeah, I get it, he's not exciting.
Speaker 6: But when you see an article like that AP article
Speaker 6: that is like, oh, well, one guy is against terrorist
Speaker 6: attacks on the Capitol, that when overthrowing himocracy, but Republicans differ.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, that's not how this works. And the thing
Speaker 6: that makes me so angry about it is there's a
Speaker 6: frame and I've seen it now, I've started to notice
Speaker 6: it over and over and over again. It's former President
Speaker 6: Donald Trump did something outrageous, evil, cruel, and stupid today,
Speaker 6: but Republicans defended him and then and the flip.
Speaker 2: Of the frame is, but Joe Biden old.
Speaker 6: Hated ancient dodding fool.
Speaker 3: President Joe Biden, who is.
Speaker 6: Hated by all Americans with their hatred of him, today
Speaker 6: announced record job reports. Republican economists speculate it won't be enough.
Speaker 1: Come on, just for people to know that we're not exaggerating.
Speaker 1: I'm going to actually read the AP headline that came
Speaker 1: into my email box yesterday morning and enraged me. One attack,
Speaker 1: two interpretations. Biden and Trump both make January sixth riot
Speaker 1: a political rally and cry, and then it goes on
Speaker 1: with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump now
Speaker 1: heading towards a pop potential twenty twenty rematch. Both are
Speaker 1: taking the same event in a very different way. The
Speaker 1: dueling narratives. I swear to god, I'm not even making
Speaker 1: this up.
Speaker 6: They are going to fucking both sides us into the grave.
Speaker 1: It gets even worse, though, reflect how the capital attack
Speaker 1: is increasingly viewed differently along partisan lines, and how Trump
Speaker 1: has bet the riot won't hurt his candidacy, Like there
Speaker 1: you go. Biden has repeatedly characterized Trump as a threat
Speaker 1: to democracy.
Speaker 6: I'm just going to say this as bluntly as I
Speaker 6: can to the AP. There's a yoga move you might
Speaker 6: want to consider. It's called pulling your head out of
Speaker 6: your ass. And I'm sorry. You know, there are great
Speaker 6: reporters of the AP and I like a lot of them.
Speaker 6: And I know reporters don't write the headlines. I get it,
Speaker 6: I get it, I get it, I get it.
Speaker 2: They do write the first paragraphs.
Speaker 6: But the framing of all of these goddamn stories keeps
Speaker 6: coming back to the essential message of yes, Trump is evil, horrible, terrible.
Speaker 6: But that's not anything more than a simple political divide.
Speaker 3: It's the usual left versus right. No, it's not.
Speaker 6: It's an autocrat saying I'm going to burn the fucking
Speaker 6: country down versus a solidly center left.
Speaker 3: President in the great tradition of America.
Speaker 6: Now, I will tell you the other people who are
Speaker 6: fucking over this campaign on the Democratic side. They're Joe
Speaker 6: Biden's own staff.
Speaker 1: I know where you're going with this, because you know
Speaker 1: what a lot. But I'm not going to let you
Speaker 1: get there yet because I want to talk. I have
Speaker 1: another thing I want to talk.
Speaker 2: You, psycho.
Speaker 1: I have another thing I want to talk about, which
Speaker 1: is I listen to The Daily It's a podcast. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you've heard of it not as far as this podcast
Speaker 1: obviously now only listen to by millions and millions of people.
Speaker 2: The New York Times, which.
Speaker 1: We pick on because it's so famous and so many
Speaker 1: people read it. That's why we pick on you, not
Speaker 1: because we don't love you, but because you shape the
Speaker 1: news narrative in a way that a lot of places
Speaker 1: wish they could but don't. So New York Times, the
Speaker 1: Daily run by Michael Babaro, a person I like very much,
Speaker 1: had deals with him. Delightful. God, I'm actually not going
Speaker 1: to criticize an episode he was on. It was an
Speaker 1: episode with Sabrina Tabernisi Biden's twenty twenty playbook, So read
Speaker 1: Epstein and Sina Tabernici and in this episode read Epstein
Speaker 1: is like, Biden is not powerful, Biden is a terrible campaigner.
Speaker 2: To say, it is the most negative.
Speaker 1: Thing I've ever They were like, he's not popular, people
Speaker 1: don't like him, he can't galvanize, he has no message. Yes,
Speaker 1: he says the economy is good, but people feel the
Speaker 1: economy's bad, so it doesn't matter. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: the most negative and I was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't even pick Biden. Right in twenty fifteen, I wrote
Speaker 1: a piece in the Washington Post that.
Speaker 2: Said he should drop out.
Speaker 1: I am hardly like miss Biden Stan, but the reality is, like,
Speaker 1: if we look at just the last years of Biden,
Speaker 1: he has way overperformed, Like we don't even need to like,
Speaker 1: suppose we can just look at twenty twenty two, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: The primis when we founded the Lincoln Project in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: In December, Elizabeth Warren was leading Joe Biden by twenty
Speaker 6: six points and Bernie Sanders was ahead of Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 6: And at the time we were thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 6: what the fuck are we gonna do? And it turned
Speaker 6: out that Joe Biden was exactly the guy with the
Speaker 6: right message. He was exactly the guy who could beat Trump.
Speaker 6: And it turned out that he is the only candidate
Speaker 6: who has ever beaten Donald Trump, folks, the only one
Speaker 6: the idea that the critiques of the president are at
Speaker 6: this point going to change what's going on. There was
Speaker 6: somebody yesterday saying, well, you know, maybe he should drop
Speaker 6: out of the convention and then we could.
Speaker 2: Scramble the board.
Speaker 3: I'm like, scramble the board.
Speaker 6: Why don't you just roll out the fucking red.
Speaker 3: Carpet for Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: If you scramble the board, none of that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Did what happened in twenty twenty two not happened because
Speaker 1: that was like eighteen months ago.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and again you and I've talked about this. I
Speaker 6: will never forget it. In January of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 6: read Galen and I are on this call with all
Speaker 6: these big democratic activists and donors and operatives.
Speaker 1: It was not invited to this call, by the way,
Speaker 1: yet another call or event or party or talk.
Speaker 2: That I was not invited to. But it's all good,
Speaker 2: it's all good.
Speaker 6: Well, a very prominent Democrat said, well, we're going to
Speaker 6: make this election about prescription drug coverage and gas prices.
Speaker 6: And you know, of course, because Reid and I are
Speaker 6: always like the skunks at the garden party, were like,
Speaker 6: the fuck are you you?
Speaker 2: We're invited to the guddap garden party? Continue?
Speaker 3: Sorry, go on, It's like, what the fuck are you
Speaker 3: talking about? That's crazy town, that's that's insane. What are
Speaker 3: you doing? It's about democracy?
Speaker 6: A year ago, today, the cap and this is again
Speaker 6: in early twenty two, a year ago, the Capitol is
Speaker 6: on fire. What is wrong with you? And Biden has
Speaker 6: an instinct right now that is the correct instinct. If
Speaker 6: you make the choice between going back to the past
Speaker 6: of Donald Trump, which involves all the insanity that people
Speaker 6: would like to forget about, all the madness that people
Speaker 6: would like to say, Ah, that day, I guess we're done.
Speaker 6: Now you will get it tenfold.
Speaker 3: People.
Speaker 6: If you think COVID was handled badly, imagine scaling that
Speaker 6: to the entire government for the next four years if
Speaker 6: you elect Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's no guarantee that's four years.
Speaker 1: Like I always say, this is.
Speaker 2: The do you want to have elections election?
Speaker 6: This is the last election. Either it's the last election
Speaker 6: for Donald Trump or it's the last election for America.
Speaker 6: And I say that without trying to be dramatic or
Speaker 6: over the top. This is a consequential and existential election
Speaker 6: for this country. It is in part we are amusing
Speaker 6: ourselves to death. In the media side of this, it's like, oh,
Speaker 6: it's so funny, Trump's so wild, ha ha, and it's
Speaker 6: it's just its madness.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me like the pundit industrial complex
Speaker 1: has gotten very far removed from the voters industrial complex
Speaker 1: for example, twenty twenty two midterms, our last big election.
Speaker 1: God forbid, we talk about it, but it feels like
Speaker 1: we spend so much time prognosticating in so little time,
Speaker 1: like looking back at things that just happened. So I
Speaker 1: want to go back there for a minute. Biden said,
Speaker 1: you'll remember, right before the election, you say is going
Speaker 1: to give these speeches. Pundits laughed at him, made fun
Speaker 1: of him. They said the speeches weren't good. They said
Speaker 1: the speeches weren't working. They said, people don't vote on democracy,
Speaker 1: they vote on the economy, which was teetering and.
Speaker 2: Inflation, which is a real problem.
Speaker 1: Even though again, and I want to say this because
Speaker 1: I feel like it doesn't get any credits, the rest
Speaker 1: of the world is struggling with inflation at much much
Speaker 1: more catastrophic levels, including the UK right, which did when
Speaker 1: we fucked up with Donald Trump. They fucked up with Brexit,
Speaker 1: which happened to actually be harder to reverse. But you know,
Speaker 1: I do think there's a certain extent in which this
Speaker 1: really did happen. You know, the pundits were like, Biden
Speaker 1: is wrong, and then Biden ultimately was right.
Speaker 6: Biden has something that a lot of people have missed
Speaker 6: out on. And this is a guy who's been around
Speaker 6: the block. Yes he is older.
Speaker 2: Like Moses.
Speaker 6: He knows how Washington works. He knows how the comings
Speaker 6: and goings of DC in governance and leadership work. And
Speaker 6: people who underestimate that and who you know. It's like
Speaker 6: Tom Nichols always says, people hate experts now in this country,
Speaker 6: and the cult of hating experts is very powerful thing.
Speaker 6: But actually Joe Biden's an expert at government. I say
Speaker 6: that in terms of the management of these things, of
Speaker 6: dealing with things as they happen, whether it's a pandemic
Speaker 6: or a foreign policy crisis, and that experience is something
Speaker 6: that we have undervalued and undercounted in this country. And
Speaker 6: the desire for novelty, the desire to watch the car crash.
Speaker 6: This is like those YouTube videos of people wrecking their
Speaker 6: motorcycles into a wall or screwing up on a gymnastics
Speaker 6: move and breaking their neck. People watch that shit all
Speaker 6: day long. It doesn't make it good. And what we're
Speaker 6: seeing right now is I think an addiction to the
Speaker 6: novelty of Trump. And Trump knows it. He is the
Speaker 6: master of the political spectacle. And the press cannot resist
Speaker 6: dragging themselves over and over again, like they're poking with
Speaker 6: a stick, like do something crazy, do something crazy, something crazy,
Speaker 6: and they're always going to get something crazy. He's always
Speaker 6: going to do something crazy. I think there's a certain
Speaker 6: degree of selfishness and immaturity about how we're talking about
Speaker 6: this politically, because, as I like, I'm going to say
Speaker 6: it again, this is a use it or lose it
Speaker 6: moment for American democracy if we do not stop him.
Speaker 6: All the people bitching right now about oh I didn't
Speaker 6: get everything I wanted in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you notice, I'm not letting you go down this
Speaker 1: road of you know what I'm laying to you. I no, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you. So what's happening here?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Rick and I know each other well enough that I
Speaker 1: know he's going to go on this carvel style rant
Speaker 1: about how progressives need.
Speaker 2: To get on board. And I'm going to tell you.
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about progressives, Molly, I'm talking about the
Speaker 6: entire democratic apparatus, from top to bottom. Progressives, moderate centrist traditionalists, Clintonites,
Speaker 6: Obama types, everybody needs to get on board with this guy.
Speaker 6: There is not going to be another fucking nominee for
Speaker 6: the Democratic president.
Speaker 3: There's not It's Joe Biden.
Speaker 6: And the fact that people still are stabbing this guy
Speaker 6: in the back who work in the White House and
Speaker 6: the campaign, it is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: And in part of like, y'all deserve Trump.
Speaker 2: If you keep this shit up, now, nobody deserves Trump.
Speaker 1: We're not going to say that, And like that is
Speaker 1: the thing. You know, now that we are here, people
Speaker 1: are allowed to be mad.
Speaker 2: You know, that's okay.
Speaker 1: I also think a really important thing is happening, which
Speaker 1: is that one of the things that Biden administration has
Speaker 1: been really good about is listening to people, really good
Speaker 1: about listening to people. So when they've said, when they've
Speaker 1: said we want student debt, he's gone and tried different
Speaker 1: creative ways to cancel student debt, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: we have a Supreme Court the very right wing, far
Speaker 1: to the right of the normal American human in the world. Sure, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know, they want to ban abortion,
Speaker 1: they want to ban abortion pills, they want to ban
Speaker 1: anything they don't like. They want to use the Comstock Act.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're basically the Heritage Foundation. If the Heritage
Speaker 1: Foundation were severely and terminally Christian in a way that
Speaker 1: is profoundly religious and cultish. Okay, is that fair when
Speaker 1: they're not having orgies, when we're not.
Speaker 6: Having orgies in Florida, I am not an orgy goer
Speaker 6: or a tender or viewer.
Speaker 3: Share share often.
Speaker 6: There was a bill apparently that even the Republican leadership
Speaker 6: in Florida in the House said no. Apparently one of
Speaker 6: these guys in the House said, we want to acquire
Speaker 6: data from apps about women's periods so we can monitor
Speaker 6: them m hm, And the House leadership is like.
Speaker 3: No, you're not bringing that bill forward.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but the fact that that shit is out there,
Speaker 6: it's the Overton window, Molly. They're going to shove it
Speaker 6: and shove it, and they're going to keep doing it
Speaker 6: because at this point there is no like sanctity of
Speaker 6: life argument to be had here on their part. I'm
Speaker 6: trying to give them even the most generous interpretation because
Speaker 6: now it's down to little lady, I'm.
Speaker 3: Going to tell you how to use that vagina of yours.
Speaker 6: It is really getting to be very obvious and very
Speaker 6: ugly just how bad their attacks on women will be
Speaker 6: if they have full power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're seeing it happen firsthand, and it really
Speaker 1: is just profoundly disturbing. I'm going to ask you, now,
Speaker 1: this is going to be annoying to you, but it's
Speaker 1: something I've been wanting to ask you. The polls I
Speaker 1: touch to a lot of pollsters. They defend it. They
Speaker 1: say they are high quality poles, low quality poles, res
Speaker 1: mutant as I call.
Speaker 2: Them resputant poles.
Speaker 1: Those guys suck and their poles are low quality, but
Speaker 1: they're also created to help Donald Trump. But there are
Speaker 1: also high quality poles, which people point them out to
Speaker 1: me to show me that poles are not always wrong,
Speaker 1: and that this and that. But ultimately, all these poles
Speaker 1: are like a thousand people on the phone, right, Look,
Speaker 1: I mean it's all we have, so people are very
Speaker 1: attached to them. The methodology hasn't changed, right, it has changed.
Speaker 3: Actually, it's tough rabicuely. Now.
Speaker 6: Look, the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of polling in
Speaker 6: this country is hot garbage on top of a burning
Speaker 6: dumpster fire mountain filled with radioactive tires.
Speaker 3: It is terrible.
Speaker 6: It's terrible because back in the post Obama two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight era, we started thinking about how do you
Speaker 6: assess poles in aggregate, and we started assessing poles in aggregate.
Speaker 6: So you would have a low quality rest Museen pole
Speaker 6: and a high quality Mason Dixon poll or whatever. Okay,
Speaker 6: you'd add them all up and you do some mathematical
Speaker 6: jiggering on it, and you would end up with a
Speaker 6: polling average. Real Clear Politics does one. New York Times
Speaker 6: does one five point thirty a all. There are a
Speaker 6: lot of polling averages out there. The Republicans discovered. Okay,
Speaker 6: I can go and form the x y Z Patriot
Speaker 6: polling company. I can do a poll, an online poll,
Speaker 6: or I can do a robodial poll for pennies on
Speaker 6: the dollar. They do this to flood the zone and
Speaker 6: make the aggregate number of polls in the mix, draw
Speaker 6: the numbers back to the framing they want, e g.
Speaker 3: Pro Trump.
Speaker 6: So polling averages have been corrupted somewhat. There is an awful,
Speaker 6: awful amount of people who want to have the interpretation
Speaker 6: of you know, this six hundred person poll gives you
Speaker 6: an accurate national picture down into the weeds of every
Speaker 6: single demographic.
Speaker 3: It does not.
Speaker 6: It simply does not. You've got to do things. It's
Speaker 6: the Depeche mode rule. Everything counts in large amounts. So
Speaker 6: you've got to do really big surveys. You've got to
Speaker 6: dig dig deep into using surveys that are verified from
Speaker 6: the voter file. You have to weigh them appropriately. There
Speaker 6: are so many steps in getting it right that the
Speaker 6: people very few people actually take the time or spend
Speaker 6: the money to do it right and look. And also,
Speaker 6: most reporters are not mathematicians or statisticians or really first well, obviously,
Speaker 6: I mean your work that got you the field metal
Speaker 6: back in the days. But long story short, you know
Speaker 6: we're in a yeah, we're we're in a moment where
Speaker 6: polling is dubious and questionable. You have to do it
Speaker 6: in huge samples to get it right. You have to
Speaker 6: do it from the voter file.
Speaker 1: And with so a lot of these poles are wrong,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the averages are skewed.
Speaker 6: Yes, a lot of these poles are hot garbage. Yes,
Speaker 6: here's the other thing. If you have one rule, folks,
Speaker 6: if you have follow one single rule about polling, there
Speaker 6: are three tiers of indicative nature of polling. The best
Speaker 6: tier are likely voters, and the file is drawn from
Speaker 6: the voter file. Okay, not self identified likely voters, but
Speaker 6: actual likely voters. We know people, we can see your
Speaker 6: voter record, if you voted or not. We can't see the.
Speaker 2: How you voted, but we can see if you voted.
Speaker 3: How you voted.
Speaker 6: We can see if you voted or not. Right, So
Speaker 6: likely voter polls from the voter file. Second tier is
Speaker 6: registered voters. Okay, then you're much mushier, and the third
Speaker 6: tier is called all adults. Don't even look at all
Speaker 6: adults poll. Just stop, don't and don't infer too much
Speaker 6: of any demographic group from any single poll unless it's
Speaker 6: an incredibly large sample inside the poll of that group.
Speaker 6: So we see a lot of these polls. By the way,
Speaker 6: So you have a thousand person poll, okay, nationally, and
Speaker 6: you go out and they'll say, well, you know, voters
Speaker 6: eighteen to thirty they hate this or that. You're probably
Speaker 6: talking about sixty or seventy voters in that thousand person
Speaker 6: It's really hard for people to get the scale problem
Speaker 6: right when it comes down to that. So long story short,
Speaker 6: there are hot mess. They're all they're hot mess. We're
Speaker 6: in hell and we're all going to die.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson don't do drugs. I do not ever stay
Speaker 2: in school. Stay in school kids.
Speaker 1: If the lady is from what's it called to ask
Speaker 1: you to join their orgy, you say no.
Speaker 3: Never go to the Moms for Liberty orgy.
Speaker 2: That's right. Never go to the Moms for Liberty Orgy.
Speaker 2: That should be the name of this episode.
Speaker 1: Josh Green is a correspondent for Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the
Speaker 1: author of The Rebels Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC and
Speaker 1: the Struggle for a New American Politics.
Speaker 2: Josh Green, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming. How do you go from the
Speaker 2: Devil's Bargain to this question?
Speaker 8: So I spent twenty fifteen twenty sixteen embedded with Trump
Speaker 8: and Steve Bannon for the last book, which is all
Speaker 8: about the rise of right wing populism. But I actually
Speaker 8: kind of come out of the lefty policy world and
Speaker 8: had always been interested in kind of left wing populism,
Speaker 8: and so, you know, it occurred to me as I
Speaker 8: was looking for the next book and never wanting to
Speaker 8: go back into the kind of sewers of maga world
Speaker 8: that I've been reporting in that you know, the financial
Speaker 8: crisis which I think kind of produced the backlash that
Speaker 8: led to Trump, also produced this big backlash on the
Speaker 8: left that led to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren AOC and
Speaker 8: yet because it hadn't put anybody in the White House yet,
Speaker 8: it had really been written about and explored, And so
Speaker 8: that's what I wanted to do in this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're the same, but not at all
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 1: Though the financial populism stuff is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Who did you think was sort of the leader in that?
Speaker 8: I think that the real leader, and that the real
Speaker 8: kind of historical figure. When people look back on the
Speaker 8: last ten to fifteen years of politics on the Democratic side,
Speaker 8: they're going to look at with Warren because when the
Speaker 8: financial crisis hit, she at the time was a fairly
Speaker 8: unknown Harvard professor who got appointed to oversee the bank
Speaker 8: bailouts after two thousand and eight and turned this backwater
Speaker 8: oversight gig that had no real power or responsibility into
Speaker 8: a public platform to kind of push this brand of
Speaker 8: left wing populism, economic populism that really hadn't existed in
Speaker 8: American politics in like twenty or thirty years. And I
Speaker 8: think she really sort of captured the dissatisfaction, the backlash
Speaker 8: that all sorts of people were feeling in the wake
Speaker 8: of a crisis where bankers got bailed out and folks
Speaker 8: on the middle class didn't. And you know, it seems
Speaker 8: like a million years ago now, but it turned her
Speaker 8: into this almost instant celebrity. I mean, she was a
Speaker 8: pioneer in how she used YouTube at Twitter, which were
Speaker 8: new tools back then. You know, it led to a
Speaker 8: grassroots movement to kind of pull her into the twenty
Speaker 8: sixteen presidential election. And only when she opted not to
Speaker 8: do that and kind of made way for Burnandie Sanders,
Speaker 8: did her star and her significance begin to dim a
Speaker 8: little bit. But I don't think that democratic politics would
Speaker 8: look anything like the way it does today. I don't
Speaker 8: think Joe Biden would be governing the way he's governing
Speaker 8: today if it hadn't been for Warren Bernie and then
Speaker 8: later on AOC Hmmm, that's so interesting you buy that.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, it sounds good, it's true.
Speaker 1: I'm not arguing, but I just wonder, like I think
Speaker 1: of Bernie as sort of the person who was there
Speaker 1: first and who had been.
Speaker 2: Preaching it the longest.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like Warren sort of made that
Speaker 1: kind of populism acceptable.
Speaker 7: I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 8: I mean, I've been in Washington long enough that I
Speaker 8: remember Bernie Sanders back before he was Bertie Sanders. I
Speaker 8: used to work for the American Prospect in the Washington Monthly,
Speaker 8: which you know are kind of small Washington lefty policy magazines,
Speaker 8: and so I was super tuned in to Bernie and
Speaker 8: what he was saying back then. But the fact is,
Speaker 8: like almost nobody else was back then. They thought he
Speaker 8: was kind of a gadfly, like a wee, or he
Speaker 8: just wasn't like the mean Bernie that he became once
Speaker 8: he started running for president. And I think that it
Speaker 8: took the financial crisis and the after effects the austerity
Speaker 8: and the job loss and the stress and the anxiety
Speaker 8: for people to kind of wake up and be open
Speaker 8: to a message, like an anti Wall Street message and
Speaker 8: even an anti establishment democratic message, because there really hadn't
Speaker 8: been one before. But then what he started started making sense.
Speaker 8: But I think Warren was really kind of the first celebrity.
Speaker 8: You know, she was the one that kind of broke
Speaker 8: through the popular culture. As I write in the book,
Speaker 8: you know, she became a regular on John Stewart on
Speaker 8: the Daily Show. Was an important mechanism of communication and
Speaker 8: then which she decided not to run. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 8: Bernie jumped in with, as you say, the same message
Speaker 8: she's been talking about for thirty years, only the difference
Speaker 8: was this time Democrats were primed to hear it. And
Speaker 8: you can see that in the way that his campaign
Speaker 8: just took off like a rocket ship.
Speaker 1: No, I agree, And it's so funny to me as
Speaker 1: someone whose grandfather was basically Bernie Sanders, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was older, but he was a Communist, he believed
Speaker 1: in you know, he went to jail for the House
Speaker 1: of Non American Activities. I mean, he had all those sames.
Speaker 1: So when I would watch Bernie, I would think, like,
Speaker 1: American people are going to elect a Jewish guy who
Speaker 1: basically has the exact same political I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: not a criticism. I meant I think my grandfather was
Speaker 1: in many ways ahead of his time, except when it
Speaker 1: came to Stalin.
Speaker 2: He had a real soft spot in his art for Stalin.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm very stuck on the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight financial crisis because I watched it happen. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't believe that they were bailing out the banks
Speaker 1: and not the people, Like I just was shocked.
Speaker 8: Well, to me, what you're getting at goes to sort
Speaker 8: of the context in which you're viewing Bernie. I mean
Speaker 8: I viewed Bernie before two thousand and eight the way
Speaker 8: a lot of people did, as just not an important figure,
Speaker 8: but that context and in the context for a lot
Speaker 8: of Americans I think changed radically, not just in two
Speaker 8: thousand and eight, but in two thousand and nine and
Speaker 8: ten and eleven, as these years of austerity kept.
Speaker 7: Kind of dragging out. And you know, it's not just for.
Speaker 8: Like college graduates who are graduating and do a shitty
Speaker 8: economy and thought, you know what, Bernie speaking truth, I'm
Speaker 8: going to get with that guy. It was a lot
Speaker 8: of blue collar workers too. I was in al Equippa,
Speaker 8: Pennsylvania last week reporting out a story basically like the
Speaker 8: iconic Pennsylvania steel town where the mill.
Speaker 7: Shut down in the eighties and now they're building a
Speaker 7: new one. It's thanks partly to the infrastructure law.
Speaker 8: But I was talking to these old steel workers there
Speaker 8: who are like, yeah, we were all for Bernie in
Speaker 8: twenty sixteen, because we're union guys, like he was the
Speaker 8: one speaking truth to power, like he was calling out
Speaker 8: the bullshit on Wall Street. And so I think that
Speaker 8: that had a kind of appeal post two thousand and
Speaker 8: eight that it might not have had two thousand and eight.
Speaker 8: I think, I think the kind of the weirdness and
Speaker 8: like the grandpa look and all that actually added to
Speaker 8: his credibility because people are like, all right, this is
Speaker 8: not some slick politician putting on airs. This is like
Speaker 8: a crazy guy with white hair flying around, and like,
Speaker 8: you know, he's not going to get bought off the
Speaker 8: way that the other people will.
Speaker 1: I really do, play deeply feel terrible about ask his
Speaker 1: But would Bernie have won?
Speaker 8: I don't know that he would have, and I tend
Speaker 8: to think, given how close the election wound up being,
Speaker 8: that he would not have won. But I think in
Speaker 8: a weird way, and I get at this at the
Speaker 8: end of the book that he has nevertheless sort of
Speaker 8: succeeded in in printing this like populous left agenda onto
Speaker 8: Joe Biden, who was a guy who could win, a
Speaker 8: safe guy, an old guy, a moderate, not somebody who's
Speaker 8: going to like scare the but Jesus out of Washington
Speaker 8: and not only got elected but was able to implement
Speaker 8: a lot of this stuff, some of it in a
Speaker 8: biportisan way. I talked to a top White House official
Speaker 8: ex top White House official for the book who said
Speaker 8: to me, I will never say this on the record,
Speaker 8: but Joe Biden won the nomination, but Bernie and Warren
Speaker 8: really won the presidency. Like if you look at what
Speaker 8: Biden has done, especially in the wake of COVID when
Speaker 8: it came to like the stimulus package, which differed like
Speaker 8: one hundred and eighty degrees from the stimulus package after
Speaker 8: the Great Financial Crisis, right, Biden put up a big stimulus,
Speaker 8: beefed up unemployment, aviction, free small business loans. You know,
Speaker 8: students didn't relieve all that kind of stuff. That didn't
Speaker 8: happen in two thousand and eight. It did happen when
Speaker 8: Biden got elected. And it only happened because this left
Speaker 8: populist movement had pushed over the intervening twelve years for
Speaker 8: it to happen, and people, even Joe Biden, who when
Speaker 8: I came to Washington in two thousand was still known
Speaker 8: as the Senator from corporate America. Because you represented Delaware,
Speaker 8: Like the Center for Corporate America is taking the Sandors
Speaker 8: and Warrant agenda uneconomic populism implementing the White House.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: I think that's a great victory for the left and
Speaker 8: even for Bernie Sanders, and I think that's one reason
Speaker 8: why you don't see Sanders anymore or warranting more out
Speaker 8: criticizing what Biden is doing, or running against him in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: They're behind it, right, No, No, it's a really good point.
Speaker 2: I mean I have been on a panel where.
Speaker 1: We've talked about how progressives are really supported because they're
Speaker 1: getting their legislative wins.
Speaker 2: I mean that's yeah, with the net net there they are.
Speaker 8: But the the thing that blows my mind is you
Speaker 8: look at Biden's support in like this latest mom Mouth
Speaker 8: poll and it's like creatoring and not just with Republicans independence,
Speaker 8: but Democrats like I think that they don't realize what
Speaker 8: a success Biden has been in terms of implementing the
Speaker 8: policy not just that he ran on, but that the
Speaker 8: progressive wing has been pushing all along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's true, they are.
Speaker 1: It is a real economic populist agenda, and I do
Speaker 1: think the reason Trump won was because he kept you know,
Speaker 1: he would just offer people whatever they wanted, right, I
Speaker 1: mean totally.
Speaker 8: And back then he was an economic populist. I mean
Speaker 8: it was rhetorical and it turned out to be bullshit.
Speaker 8: But if you go back to the twenty sixteen campaign,
Speaker 8: he talked as much about Wall Street and globalists and
Speaker 8: all that kind of stuff as he did about immigrants, right, exactly,
Speaker 8: like that stuff has power. Economic populism is the unifying thread.
Speaker 8: And you know, I argue that in the rebels is
Speaker 8: a unifying thread in democratic politics because it brings together
Speaker 8: not just moderates and liberals, but independence and even some
Speaker 8: of the Republicans, like the steelworker guys I was talking to,
Speaker 8: you know that are also Trump guys.
Speaker 7: And so that's why I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think if Biden is going to win, and if
Speaker 8: he's going to overcome these boll members and turn around,
Speaker 8: he's got to go full populist.
Speaker 1: Right, the fucking polls are bullshit, And you know, a
Speaker 1: thousand people who pick up their phone, I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to those people because I'm not picking up
Speaker 1: the phone if I don't recognize the number. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about AOC AOC was like capture the zeitgeist in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: I feel like she had that kind of news cycle
Speaker 1: where everyone got very excited about her and then they
Speaker 1: sort of got mad at her for not being this
Speaker 1: celebrity they fantasized she was. And now she's been a
Speaker 1: bit quiet. Talk to me about the AOC trajectory.
Speaker 8: See, I think in a lot of ways she's she's
Speaker 8: kind of one of the most interesting characters in the book,
Speaker 8: partly generationally because like if you look at her life story,
Speaker 8: which is in the book, she really is a product
Speaker 8: in a sense of the Great Financial Crash, Like she
Speaker 8: was the college graduate that graduated into like a shitty
Speaker 8: economy and was working a bunch of service jobs. It
Speaker 8: was burned by student debt. What was interesting about her
Speaker 8: and like her effect as a politician is yeah, like
Speaker 8: she came in with a head of esteem and occupied
Speaker 8: Nancy Pelosi's office. Like, to me, that was the first
Speaker 8: thing it really gripped kind of the Washington press corps.
Speaker 8: It was like, holy shit, Like not only did she
Speaker 8: knock off Joe Crowley who we all thought was going
Speaker 8: to be the next speaker, but like she's serious about
Speaker 8: she's occupying Pelosi's office. But I think what you saw
Speaker 8: happening over the next six months with AOC was, you know,
Speaker 8: she was in a new environment. She began to understand
Speaker 8: how Congress works, and being an effective congress person is
Speaker 8: completely different than being an effective activist. My first book,
Speaker 8: which nobody read, was a book I co wrote without
Speaker 8: Henry Waxman, the famous Democratic congressman who passed so much
Speaker 8: of the landmark legislation shapes our world in the country today,
Speaker 8: and so many of those stories were about him quietly
Speaker 8: working behind the scene to like diffuse this critic or
Speaker 8: that critic. And I think to AOC's great credit, even
Speaker 8: if it pisss off people on Twitter or Blue Sky
Speaker 8: or whatever who don't think she's being pure enough, she
Speaker 8: adjusted to being a congress woman in a way that
Speaker 8: has been like ridiculously effective. If you look at again,
Speaker 8: going back to Biden's record, AOC was all about a
Speaker 8: Green New Deal and climate legislation and lo and bold
Speaker 8: Joe Biden winds up passing like the biggest climate bill
Speaker 8: in American history, three hundred plus billion dollars. It just
Speaker 8: wasn't like packaged that way, and it wasn't delivered in
Speaker 8: a way that dunked on Republicans. And so I think
Speaker 8: for a lot of people who follow lefty politics on
Speaker 8: a kind of a surface level, it just didn't feel
Speaker 8: like a big win, and so they're not as excited
Speaker 8: about it as they should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I mean I also think that like, we don't really
Speaker 1: know how excited anyone is. And the thing that I
Speaker 1: keep coming back to and the why, you know, when
Speaker 1: I do I do this podcast, I interview with gazillion
Speaker 1: people a week, thank god, but you know the truth
Speaker 1: is that there aren't that many people that I interview
Speaker 1: who are actually like out there people. So I mean
Speaker 1: I had somebody on and she's talking to me about
Speaker 1: what it's like for poor women on the ground in Alabama,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of America that we are just not,
Speaker 1: at least I am not engaging with on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: And so you know, all we see are these like
Speaker 1: thousand phone calls, which maybe that is dispositive. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like it is. So who else in this book
Speaker 1: should we know about? Who's interesting? And who's the book is?
Speaker 8: It's really about these three characters, you know, Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 8: Bernie Sanders and AOC. But like what I've done, or
Speaker 8: what i've what I've tried to do is kind of
Speaker 8: smuggle in a history of the modern Democratic Party, like
Speaker 8: when it was that Wall Street first got its claws
Speaker 8: into Democrats, because you know, in the sixties and seventies, Democrats.
Speaker 7: Were the party of workers, were the party of unions.
Speaker 8: And then in beginning in nineteen seventy eight, which is
Speaker 8: sort of where the book starts, Jimmy Carter was having
Speaker 8: a terrible time with the economy. Kind of Wall Street
Speaker 8: slid in a side door and reshaped the party, giving
Speaker 8: rise to people like Bob Rubin, and all of a
Speaker 8: sudden you had Golden Sachs executives who not only ran
Speaker 8: the Republican Party but now had important positions in the
Speaker 8: Democratic Party too, And I think that helps explain why
Speaker 8: the party's values shifted in a way that ultimately wound
Speaker 8: up with a two thousand and eight financial crisis. And
Speaker 8: that backstory helps to explain why people like Warren and
Speaker 8: Sanders are so important because in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 8: like there really just wasn't a left populist wing of
Speaker 8: the Democratic Party. Democratic liberalism cared a lot about this
Speaker 8: stuff in the forties and the fifties, but beginning in
Speaker 8: the sixties, Democrats were more focused on women's rights, civil rights, environmentalism.
Speaker 8: It took the crash in two thousand and eight to
Speaker 8: kind of open up this new wing of the party
Speaker 8: that I actually think has been a great thing because
Speaker 8: I think, like I said, economic populism is the unifying
Speaker 8: thread in democratic politics, and it really has to be
Speaker 8: going forward because if we wind up with Donald Trump
Speaker 8: is for Republican nominee in twenty twenty four, Joe Biden
Speaker 8: is the Democratic nominee, then what we're really having is
Speaker 8: a ref random on whose version of populism does America want?
Speaker 8: The right or the left, Trump's or Biden's. That's what
Speaker 8: I think is so important. And I try and spend
Speaker 8: a lot of time out talking to normal Americans to
Speaker 8: get out of Washington whenever I can. But I would
Speaker 8: say this, like, definitely what Biden has done is not
Speaker 8: connecting in a way that you would want it to
Speaker 8: if you're in the White House. But the other experience
Speaker 8: I have that might make me a little different than
Speaker 8: some of your guests. I work at Bloomberg, which is
Speaker 8: a financial news company. So I am like inundated with
Speaker 8: this stuff all day long. Talk to a lot of economists,
Speaker 8: talk to a lot of Wall Street people, and to me,
Speaker 8: there's this like crazy dissonance between what those people are
Speaker 8: saying and what the poll numbers are saying. Like, the
Speaker 8: fact is Biden's response to the COVID crash worked brilliantly,
Speaker 8: especially if you compare it to the Great Financial Career, right,
Speaker 8: and like that's not just partisan spent. If you look
Speaker 8: at the actual economics numbers today, we have record low unemployment,
Speaker 8: We've got record high stock market, We've got falling inflation,
Speaker 8: falling gas prices, consumer sentiment is turning around. Like everything
Speaker 8: in the economic numbers says it's about to be mourning
Speaker 8: in America again. The only thing it doesn't show is
Speaker 8: Joe Biden's poll numbers. And like, obviously Biden's not getting credit.
Speaker 8: Will he get credit? I think he actually might. I mean,
Speaker 8: there's a delay effect with these things. We've got almost
Speaker 8: a year, but I mean, looking at these numbers, I
Speaker 8: know there's TikTok, I know there's a lot of numerism,
Speaker 8: but it really does feel like a vibe shift is
Speaker 8: coming that is gonna benefit Biden, because all of the
Speaker 8: numbers that I see, like at Bloomberg all day longer
Speaker 8: pointing in that direction, even the crappy ones like mortgage
Speaker 8: rates and all the stuff that are like burdening. You know,
Speaker 8: younger people people want to buy house. Those are getting
Speaker 8: better too. Will they be better enough to get Biden reelected?
Speaker 8: You know, we'll see, but I kind of think they might.
Speaker 1: Vibe shift Biden. Joshua agree, And I hope you come
Speaker 1: back anytime.
Speaker 7: I would love to. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Brad Meltzer is the author of many many books, including
Speaker 1: the Latest Ordinary Peo Well Change the World.
Speaker 2: I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Brad.
Speaker 5: I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Your new friend.
Speaker 1: But I really like you, and you know, I hate Boston,
Speaker 1: So for me to make a friend in Boston, that's
Speaker 1: like a huge, huge deal.
Speaker 5: I started writing in Boston, but I don't live there anymore,
Speaker 5: so don't worry. You can hate Boston all you want.
Speaker 2: I thought you guys lived there still.
Speaker 5: We moved from there years and years ago, so we
Speaker 5: are now like every other Jew and here in Florida.
Speaker 2: Wow, Oh yikes.
Speaker 5: Trust me, Oh you know, by the way, the best
Speaker 5: thing about living in Florida is that when you travel
Speaker 5: the country like on book tour, is everyone gives you
Speaker 5: that look of like there was just a death in
Speaker 5: the family and says, how is it there? It's just fascinating.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about this book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, as you know, I usually write mysteries and thrillers,
Speaker 5: and I do nonfiction like the Nazi conspiracy and write
Speaker 5: about World War two and things like that. And there's
Speaker 5: no better segue than Nazis and murder to saying I've
Speaker 5: been writing children books for the past decade. And the
Speaker 5: truth was, Molly is I head kids, and my kids
Speaker 5: were looking at reality TV show stars and people who
Speaker 5: are famous for being famous and thinking that that's a hero.
Speaker 5: And I was like, I got to do better than that.
Speaker 5: So we started writing a lot of kids books with that.
Speaker 5: I am Amelia Earhart, I am Abraham Lincoln, I am
Speaker 5: Rosa Parks. We've done over thirty books now, we've been
Speaker 5: doing it for ten years. We've done everyone from Jane
Speaker 5: Goodall to Billy jing King to you name it in between,
Speaker 5: Jim Henson, mister Rogers, and now it's the ten year anniversary,
Speaker 5: and we're out with our thirty second book in the series,
Speaker 5: and it's I am Ruth Bada Ginsburg and it's just
Speaker 5: a hell of a fistfight of a book. Tell me why,
Speaker 5: because you know what our kids books do? You know
Speaker 5: their books for little kids you're like five years old
Speaker 5: to twelve years old, they are little cartoon versions of them.
Speaker 5: But what I do is I look for what my
Speaker 5: own kids need. And I have a daughter. The book
Speaker 5: asked the question how do you create change? Because one
Speaker 5: of the hardest things to change is what the world
Speaker 5: thinks of you. And when Ruth Bade Ginsburg has grown
Speaker 5: up up in Brooklyn, New York, which is where I
Speaker 5: actually grew up, she loved the things that all these
Speaker 5: kids like, roller skating, riding bikes, playing games like stup ball,
Speaker 5: and she loved to read. But when she would read books,
Speaker 5: all the boys in the books she would read would
Speaker 5: be climbing trees and riding bikes and having adventures, and
Speaker 5: all the girls would sit around in pink dresses. And
Speaker 5: she's like, this makes no sense, Like I'd rather be
Speaker 5: climbing trees than wearing a dress. It's her mother who
Speaker 5: saves her takes her to the library every Friday afternoon.
Speaker 5: They pick out five books and she loves you know,
Speaker 5: everything from like little women and obvious things to like
Speaker 5: Greek mythology. But she loves reading the kind of books
Speaker 5: that I now write, writing female heroes. She loves reading
Speaker 5: about Amelia Aarharp, Harriet Tubman, and she loves reading about
Speaker 5: Jewish heroes to kuno lam, you know, repairing the world.
Speaker 5: And her mother gives her this lesson is every year
Speaker 5: on her birthday. Ruth Bita Ginsburg is a little girl
Speaker 5: all true used to go. Mother used to take her
Speaker 5: to the local Jewish orphanage and they give away ice
Speaker 5: cream to everyone, so she doesn't have her own party
Speaker 5: as a kid, which, by the way, my kids would
Speaker 5: absolutely revolt. But her mother teaches her, listen, it's better
Speaker 5: to help other people and better to you know, to
Speaker 5: deal with being a nice person. Then that's how you
Speaker 5: really change the world. And Ruth Beta Ginsberg, when she's
Speaker 5: seventeen years old, her mother dies, but her mother gives
Speaker 5: her one of life's great lessons and there's nothing a
Speaker 5: woman can accomplish. And that's where we go in the book.
Speaker 5: You know the reason our books are become a fistfight
Speaker 5: for kids is I could tell my daughter, you know,
Speaker 5: you could be a Supreme Court justice one day, But
Speaker 5: that's a ridiculous, you know, it's like, how many kids
Speaker 5: are going to really think? You know, it's like being
Speaker 5: president or he who would even want the job these days.
Speaker 5: But knowing that you can make the world a better
Speaker 5: place by being kind to other people, knowing that, you know,
Speaker 5: having someone say to you there's nothing that a girl
Speaker 5: can do is valuable stuff. And the book ends with
Speaker 5: to me one of my favorite lines we've ever worked on,
Speaker 5: and it says, you know, today they call me a trailblazer.
Speaker 5: This all written first person. It says, but the best
Speaker 5: part of blaze in the trail is leaving tracks. And
Speaker 5: that means you're not just doing things for yourself. You're
Speaker 5: leaving a path for others to follow. So start with
Speaker 5: one voice and let it grow into a course. And
Speaker 5: it says, I'm Ruth Badeginsburg, Create a quality, create justice.
Speaker 5: And I love the fact that, you know, I want
Speaker 5: my daughter to get that lesson. I want my sons
Speaker 5: to get that lesson. And we know have seven million
Speaker 5: people out there who have bought these books. Who have
Speaker 5: built libraries of real heroes for their kids, for their grandkids,
Speaker 5: their nieces, their nephews. And I love the fact we
Speaker 5: get to do that.
Speaker 1: What do you sort of think of for young girls?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think the sense with Ruth Bader
Speaker 1: Ginsburg is that she was sort of a created in
Speaker 1: existence that we didn't even know could exist.
Speaker 5: I listen, I always test the books on my own kids.
Speaker 5: I didn't have kids to have a free focus group,
Speaker 5: but they will never stop giving me their opinions and
Speaker 5: what they can understand. And what every one of us,
Speaker 5: boy and girl understands is someone telling you you can't
Speaker 5: do that and just going, man, I want to do that,
Speaker 5: you know, And I know that sounds silly, but not
Speaker 5: everyone has, you know, the family, the parents, the friends
Speaker 5: or whatever to let that happen. I think that's what
Speaker 5: books do you know. I was someone who grew up
Speaker 5: we didn't have many books in my house. My mom's
Speaker 5: only thing she read was the Star in the Inquirer
Speaker 5: because she thought that's where all the real news was.
Speaker 5: But you know, to me, there's a moment when you
Speaker 5: see Ruth bade Ginsburg in the book where she goes
Speaker 5: to Harvard into Columbia Law School, which is where I
Speaker 5: went to law school. And she said there were nine
Speaker 5: women five hundred men. There wasn't even a women's bathroom
Speaker 5: in the main building. And that's what kids understand, right,
Speaker 5: They understand that, like basic stuff. There's a point where
Speaker 5: she goes to get a job and everyone says, you
Speaker 5: see this, you know guy saying we don't hire women.
Speaker 5: Another guy says, we don't hire Jews. Not that says
Speaker 5: we don't hire mothers with kids, because she had a
Speaker 5: kid at the time. Telling these stories. When you say
Speaker 5: things like oh she did this and then she was
Speaker 5: nominated here and this, kids don't care. They zone out.
Speaker 5: But seeing when she was a little kid that she
Speaker 5: used to want to take woodworking in wood shopping when
Speaker 5: she was in school. But girls coudn't take woods shop.
Speaker 5: Girls had to take home ack. They had to do
Speaker 5: you know, the cooking class, and they had to do
Speaker 5: the sewing class. And she's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: I hate this. I want to do the woodworking class.
Speaker 5: Kids understand that, you know, I mean, I remember my
Speaker 5: daughter I had. My daughter was one of two girls
Speaker 5: on the little league team that I coached all boys,
Speaker 5: and I brought my daughter and I was like, look out,
Speaker 5: we're coming to play. And my daughter looked around and
Speaker 5: was like Dad. First she was the only girl, and
Speaker 5: then there was one of the girl who joined, and
Speaker 5: I said, get your bet, get your glove, let's go.
Speaker 5: And you know, it was important to me to just
Speaker 5: say that for some people, in some situations, you don't
Speaker 5: have that advantage. And what to me is this book
Speaker 5: is just to remind people of their power. The crazy
Speaker 5: part is, Molly is I researched these books and start
Speaker 5: writing them, you know, a year and a half ago.
Speaker 5: I don't know where the world's going to be. We
Speaker 5: just thought, you know, Ruth Beginsburg was the number one
Speaker 5: hero that kids were writing to me and begging for
Speaker 5: a book about number one bar nobody, and we've done
Speaker 5: obviously some of the big names, but she was number one,
Speaker 5: and so of course I included things about anti Semitism,
Speaker 5: how she faced anti Semitism when she was a little girl.
Speaker 5: She used to say that hatred is similar to injustice,
Speaker 5: that both are destructive fractures in our society we have
Speaker 5: to repair. And that's what our mother taught her, you know,
Speaker 5: repair those fractures, don't just complain about them. They'll just
Speaker 5: bitch and moan about heir of the world. And I
Speaker 5: don't know where we're going to be with anti Semitism
Speaker 5: a year and a half ago. And I think that's
Speaker 5: I'll include this part because I think it's important for
Speaker 5: my kid. But man, we're still fighting this worse than
Speaker 5: ever right now. You know, she's she's a hero always,
Speaker 5: but boy, right now, it seems like, you know, when
Speaker 5: we look at what's happening with abortion rights, when we
Speaker 5: look at what's happening with anti Semitism, when we look
Speaker 5: at what's happening with the way the country is divided.
Speaker 5: You know, she's someone who was confirmed with nearly one
Speaker 5: hundred percent vote in the Senate, and she's to me
Speaker 5: just a hero for perfectly where we are right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, she's also how we got where we are
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 5: But yes, I'm still mad at her for that. Listen,
Speaker 5: we've done. I am Billy jing King. Billy jing Ing
Speaker 5: spent two hours on the phone with me correct in
Speaker 5: her book. When we did. I am jing Goodall, Jing
Speaker 5: Goodall read the book, gave us all the things temper
Speaker 5: random book got on the phone with me, spend time
Speaker 5: correct and everything. Ruth Beginsburg is one of the few
Speaker 5: who I knew. I knew her a long time. Her
Speaker 5: daughter was one of my mentors in law school. I
Speaker 5: was a witness with with Justice s Ginsberg at a
Speaker 5: friend's wedding. We signed their coutuba together. And I'm still like,
Speaker 5: why didn't you just leave a little earlier? I love Rador,
Speaker 5: but of course that's where we are.
Speaker 2: So tell me the story of how you know my mom.
Speaker 5: This is a crazy story. So it must have been
Speaker 5: like nineteen ninety seven. But that first year I become
Speaker 5: a writer, my first book is published. It's a thriller
Speaker 5: called The Tenth Justice. I'm out of Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 5: And this guy waits to the end of the line
Speaker 5: and he approaches me and hands me a little card preprinted,
Speaker 5: but it's really nice and it has a nice font
Speaker 5: on it, and it says be a part of cinematic history.
Speaker 5: And it says the new Woody Allen movie is looking
Speaker 5: for special extras and you've been selected and we want
Speaker 5: you to be in this new Woody Allen movie. And
Speaker 5: my first thought is this is complete bullshit. This can't
Speaker 5: be real. Because when I used to work in the
Speaker 5: Senate Judiciary Committee, I was an intern. I used to
Speaker 5: take the Judiciary Committee station area. I used to use
Speaker 5: the pen sign and machine from the center. I write
Speaker 5: to my friends. I would tell him they were being deported,
Speaker 5: and you know, I thought, this is just someone you know,
Speaker 5: payback on me. And I'm like, it's got to be faked.
Speaker 5: So I call a buddy of mine who I know
Speaker 5: is doing legal works for Woody Allen's film crew, and
Speaker 5: he says, no, this is real. Woody Allen personally picks out.
Speaker 5: He told me is extras to all of his films.
Speaker 5: The new movie is called Celebrity. They want real celebrities
Speaker 5: in the movie quote unquote celebrities in the movie. And
Speaker 5: they picked you because they're doing a book party scene
Speaker 5: and they want real authors in the background. So here
Speaker 5: I am. I'm twenty seven years old, and I'm like,
Speaker 5: Woody Allen has just picked me. And again this is
Speaker 5: pre Woody Allen where he is today, of course, and
Speaker 5: so I'm just like, I gotta go down there. So
Speaker 5: I was living in DC at the time. I fly
Speaker 5: to New York and the other person that they pick
Speaker 5: is Lorenzo Carcaterra, and they picked your mother and your
Speaker 5: mom and Lorenzo and I spend two days as extras
Speaker 5: in the Woody Allen movie Celebrity. We're hanging out with
Speaker 5: NOA Riot is there and Kenneth Brown is there, and
Speaker 5: they're now treating us like extras. They'reletting you know, they
Speaker 5: keep us inside. They take us. All the extras are
Speaker 5: outside and we're kind of inside, and you know, we're
Speaker 5: talking to all the stars and we're talking all the people,
Speaker 5: and we're watching I've never been to a film in
Speaker 5: my life, and I'm like, this is the greatest. We
Speaker 5: are clearly the most important writers on the planet Earth
Speaker 5: right now. We've been selected person by Woody Allen. So
Speaker 5: I'm sitting with your mom. We have these great two
Speaker 5: days together, and at the end of the two days
Speaker 5: we finally say something along the lines of like, so,
Speaker 5: how did you get the call to get here? You know,
Speaker 5: because we just started comparing notes and the one thing
Speaker 5: we realize is that I signed on that Barn's Noble
Speaker 5: where I got approached on like Tuesday. Lorenzo was there
Speaker 5: on Wednesday, your mother was there on Thursday. It had
Speaker 5: nothing to do with anything at all about if we
Speaker 5: were the three schmucks in the right place at the
Speaker 5: right time. Whoever was in that Barn's Noble that week
Speaker 5: got invited and we were just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: we were so self important, but your mom was super
Speaker 5: fun to hang out with. And that was literally the
Speaker 5: start of my career.
Speaker 4: That is a great story and also such a great
Speaker 4: explainer of what it's like to be a writer, right,
Speaker 4: you think you're so special and in fact, and also
Speaker 4: what it's like to.
Speaker 2: Be a human.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was it was the best lesson, right.
Speaker 5: It was like it was like it took all my
Speaker 5: ego and lifted it all up here. I am, I've
Speaker 5: been I'm the chosen one. It's been revealed. And then
Speaker 5: it was like listen, schmuck, here's how here go back
Speaker 5: down the planet Earth. Then it was fantastic. But anyway,
Speaker 5: I know you and I have gone back and forth
Speaker 5: on Twitter and threads and everywhere else, but I was like,
Speaker 5: I always promised I would tell you what when we
Speaker 5: finally got on there on podcasts together.
Speaker 2: It's a great story. Who's next? I am, Who's next?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So we just did mister Rogers, which is like
Speaker 5: mister Rodgers is the one you can't complain about. You know,
Speaker 5: we'll definitely take some complaints for every once in a
Speaker 5: while we'll get books. You know, we've had our Rosa
Speaker 5: Parks book and our Doctor King book were banned.
Speaker 2: That's insane from.
Speaker 5: What in Pennsylvania. They had nothing to do with the content.
Speaker 5: There were about one hundred, two hundred books that were
Speaker 5: selected as being good for talking to your kids about race.
Speaker 5: This is about a year and a half ago, and
Speaker 5: it was like the I Am books. It was Sonya Sodo,
Speaker 5: My Yours book, it was Malala's book. They were, you know,
Speaker 5: just kind of bread and butter. These were good books
Speaker 5: to teach your kids. And what the school board did
Speaker 5: is said, we want to read these books before we
Speaker 5: give them the kids and okay them, which to me
Speaker 5: is actually a fine thing. Go read the books, check
Speaker 5: them out and make sure they're you know, whatever they are.
Speaker 5: But what the fast one at the school or pulled
Speaker 5: is that they took a year and the books still
Speaker 5: weren't read. You can read I Am Rosa Parks in
Speaker 5: ten minutes. It's not like reading Warm Peace. And basically
Speaker 5: what happened was is they did it on purpose. They
Speaker 5: were What started as a little freeze to hold the
Speaker 5: books became a band because librarians couldn't get them. No
Speaker 5: one knew whether they could order them. And that's how
Speaker 5: they shut the books out without ever having to take
Speaker 5: a vote. It was such cheap politics. So I got
Speaker 5: a call from CNN, from MSNBC, even from Fox News
Speaker 5: called me and said this is nonsense. Can you come
Speaker 5: and talk about it? And when when CNN and Fox
Speaker 5: and MSNBC all agree, you know, someone screwed up right,
Speaker 5: Like it's one of the few times where you're like,
Speaker 5: this is you know, even even those three will agree.
Speaker 5: They asked me to speak at the special school board,
Speaker 5: meaning I, you know, it's part of the pandemics, like
Speaker 5: zoom in. I give my speech where I've convinced again
Speaker 5: I've saved democracy as we know it, and then all
Speaker 5: the students start speaking, and these students who start saying
Speaker 5: things like you know, how dare you ban these books?
Speaker 5: Holding up our books and saying, you know, these are
Speaker 5: books that we care about. How dare you ban these
Speaker 5: books of people that look like me? Because every book
Speaker 5: on the list was either by someone who had a
Speaker 5: brown or black face or was you know, written about
Speaker 5: someone who was and these kids were so impassioned. By
Speaker 5: the time they were done, they completely re voted. The
Speaker 5: school board had to take a vote right there. They
Speaker 5: shamed him into putting the books back on the shelves,
Speaker 5: and they saved the day. I had nothing to do
Speaker 5: with it, but we fought. You know, our Billy jing
Speaker 5: King book just got selected in Florida, of course in Florida,
Speaker 5: and we fought against it, and it's now back on
Speaker 5: the shelves. It got unanimously voted back on the show.
Speaker 5: So that's what we're fighting now. So we still keep
Speaker 5: that fight going. We am one of the people who's responsible.
Speaker 5: We're bringing pen America to open a Florida office to
Speaker 5: fight these book bands because I use the money that
Speaker 5: we make on these books, and I basically donated to
Speaker 5: these places that will fight book bands like this. So
Speaker 5: the next one that we're doing is in time for
Speaker 5: the Olympics. We wanted to do Jesse Owens and I
Speaker 5: decided this again a year and a half ago. Did
Speaker 5: not think we were still going to be fighting Nazis
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty four, but here we are still fighting Nazis.
Speaker 5: So Jesse Owens comes next. You know, we've done everyone
Speaker 5: from Free to Collo to Albert Einstein to you know,
Speaker 5: anyone you can name in between, and it's been one
Speaker 5: of those things for me. That's my way of fighting back.
Speaker 5: I think, as you know, it's sometimes so hard to
Speaker 5: change adults' opinions. But give me some kids. And we
Speaker 5: now have seven million kids who have read our books.
Speaker 5: And I love the fact that we're creating this little
Speaker 5: army of people who have values of perseverance and kindness
Speaker 5: and some compassion because God knows we need it right now.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Brad.
Speaker 5: No, thank you for finally doing this, and you got
Speaker 5: to send my love to your family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I definitely will.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No moment infect Hi.
Speaker 1: It's our moment of fuckery and it's just me all
Speaker 1: alone because I forgot to ask Rick to do it,
Speaker 1: but also more importantly, because I wanted to take a
Speaker 1: minute too. Thank you guys for listening. We had this break.
Speaker 1: It was probably the last break we're going to have
Speaker 1: before this election. I talked to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: I took a little trip, and a lot of you
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, and I'm really, really, really grateful.
Speaker 1: I think that we're doing really cool stuff, doing these
Speaker 1: local elections, trying to talk to people, trying to really
Speaker 1: get a sense of what's going on.
Speaker 2: And since we're back from.
Speaker 1: Vacation and I'm very introspective, I would like, instead of
Speaker 1: having a moment of buck gerty today, to just thank
Speaker 1: you guys for listening. We work really hard on this podcast,
Speaker 1: Jesse and I, and we do a gazillion interviews every
Speaker 1: week and it's really cool to know that you guys
Speaker 1: are listening.
Speaker 2: So thank you.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.