Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some.
Speaker 2: Of today's best minds.
Speaker 1: And now in Kentucky there's a new law that says
Speaker 1: you can't say puber day. We have such an interesting
Speaker 1: show today, Media Matters CEO Angelo Karrasona stops by to
Speaker 1: talk about the implications of this Fox News settlement with Dominion.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Jeff Charlotte about his latest book,
Speaker 1: The Undertow, Scenes from a Slow Civil War, about the
Speaker 1: real threats of creeping fascism. But first we have the
Speaker 1: host of the Time of Monsters, the nation's g tire.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, fand favorite git here.
Speaker 3: I'm here ready to serve.
Speaker 4: So here we are.
Speaker 1: We are at the end of the Desanta's news cycle,
Speaker 1: or perhaps we are at the beginning. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you since you are in can A where
Speaker 1: life continue is still sort of sane, right.
Speaker 3: A little bit, Yeah, yeah, I want to talk to.
Speaker 1: You about DeSantis quickly, because I think the top one
Speaker 1: on this is if you come for the mouse, you
Speaker 1: best not miss.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean for me, like you know, Disney versus
Speaker 3: Disantas is let them fight bit of business. One interesting
Speaker 3: thing I saw was that a lot of Florida Republicans
Speaker 3: are kind of mad at Dissantas because he's kind of
Speaker 3: like turning the entire state into a launching pad and
Speaker 3: making all state politics about stuff that will get him
Speaker 3: national prominence.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I don't think the Florida Republicans like that's high on
Speaker 3: their agenda, like getting into a fight with Disney, you know,
Speaker 3: which is a major employer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their largest employer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: The whole thing seems like very bizarre, except that, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the real story here is the sort of
Speaker 3: poverty of Republican politics that like a friend of mine
Speaker 3: who had been reading The Sentences campaign autobiography, which apparently
Speaker 3: has this line like, you know, like make America Florida,
Speaker 3: which is that's like a month less good version of
Speaker 3: makeup record great, make America greatest you know you did
Speaker 3: with great again is a catchy slogan. This is just
Speaker 3: makes no sense. But having said that, there is apparently
Speaker 3: like no economics in the book or hardly any you know,
Speaker 3: except for woke corporations so called and so like, I
Speaker 3: think it does sort of speak to a sort of
Speaker 3: poverty of agenda, which we see in other areas as well.
Speaker 3: I mean a lot of it, you know, the focus
Speaker 3: on social issues, but like what what social issues? Like
Speaker 3: all this stuff about like trans athletes, you know, like
Speaker 3: you're talking about in the Kansas school system where they
Speaker 3: recently passed a law against us. You know, you apparently
Speaker 3: had like three trans kids that would have been in
Speaker 3: programs except to them are like seniors. So even though
Speaker 3: the lot is a them, you know, it applied to
Speaker 3: like one student out of a school system that has
Speaker 3: more than one hundred thousand people. So it just like
Speaker 3: this desire to have like politics that like you know,
Speaker 3: gets you media attention, riles up the base, but actually,
Speaker 3: like it's so far removed from reality and from daily
Speaker 3: life of ordinary people, even of ordinary conservative people, Like
Speaker 3: I can't imagine the number of people that like wake
Speaker 3: up every morning like I freakin hate Disney. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: really don't want that trans girl to be like competing
Speaker 3: in my school races. To me, it seems it speaks
Speaker 3: to poverty of politics. I mean, I think this is
Speaker 3: like Trump's kind of advantage over Dysantis, that Trump is
Speaker 3: more willing, especially in twenty sixteen. But even now to
Speaker 3: actually like throw in like meat and potato issues to
Speaker 3: like try to reach a broader base. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I think a lot of liberals underestimate the
Speaker 3: fact that in twenty sixteen, Trump was the only Republican
Speaker 3: who's gone on stage says I'm not going to touch
Speaker 3: Medicare and Social Security. Now he's lying, right.
Speaker 2: Right, of course, I would hope.
Speaker 3: He said that. And he talked about you know, like
Speaker 3: redoing NAF done, and you know, he was offering something
Speaker 3: that someone who's not not a totally Fox News poisoned
Speaker 3: brain can like think is important. And this is true
Speaker 3: this year as well. Like if you look at Trump's
Speaker 3: ad against the Santas, which is a great ad, I
Speaker 3: gotta you know, you got to give the devil his due.
Speaker 3: Putting figures is very memorable. It's like Linda Johnson's ad
Speaker 3: against Fairy Goldwater with the girl counting off and the
Speaker 3: nuclear explosion and then the atomic bomb. It's like something,
Speaker 3: you know, you remember that ad and you're gonna remember,
Speaker 3: you know, the the nasty pudding figures. But what's also
Speaker 3: interesting is what is actually the voiceover where Trump says,
Speaker 3: you know, like he can't keep his hand off not
Speaker 3: just putting, but also Medicare and Social Security. And again
Speaker 3: this is something like if you're like, you know a
Speaker 3: lot of Republicans see the voter base exkews elderly, if
Speaker 3: you're gonna have a choice between some guy who's like
Speaker 3: going after Disney and some guy who's saying I won't
Speaker 3: touch your Medicare and Social Security, well, you know, like
Speaker 3: one is speaking to real stuff and one isn't right.
Speaker 1: The line you just said was the poverty of the
Speaker 1: Republican agenda.
Speaker 3: I mean, they do have an agenda, but they can't
Speaker 3: talk about it. Like they actually do want to cut
Speaker 3: Medicare and so security, but.
Speaker 2: It's wildly unpopular. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's what is the fuel for this focus
Speaker 3: on Disney and really evil, vicious attacks on trans people.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point about this idea
Speaker 1: that they really do have an agenda, it's not popular
Speaker 1: and it's it's what no one wants. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: like I think about Rick Scott in Florida and that
Speaker 1: one time he was like, no, we really do want
Speaker 1: to cut Medicare and Medicaid and you know, put poor
Speaker 1: people on the street.
Speaker 2: No, that's our plan, and everyone's like.
Speaker 3: Shh, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, And you know, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I mean I don't want to get into
Speaker 3: the prediction game, like you know, like Trump is very old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe he'll die, that's what all the Republicans want
Speaker 2: him to die.
Speaker 1: I mean, you read these pieces. We're hoping for the
Speaker 1: actual aerial tables. I mean, how do you become this
Speaker 1: kind of coward?
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think that's a fool's hope as well as
Speaker 3: we're thinking about, you know, the biggest predicator of long life,
Speaker 3: it was wealth and the how long your parents live? Right,
Speaker 3: Trump's parents like they had long lost their mind, but
Speaker 3: they're living in their nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Trump's father, I believe, died in ninety three. I think
Speaker 3: Trump losing his marbles would not unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Right, I have anything, it would help.
Speaker 1: There was a reporter for NBC News who was talking about,
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that this doesn't just keep going.
Speaker 3: That's why I believe you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: Was that Benji sa Sarlin?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3: I think he made the very good point which I
Speaker 3: had also thought, like like forget about Trump twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Right, start worrying about twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, from twenty thirty two, like you know,
Speaker 3: like if you actually do the math of how long
Speaker 3: people and his family live, this could be like we're
Speaker 3: just in the beginning of Trump's political career, right, and
Speaker 3: Trump is playing a little bit of the actuurial thing
Speaker 3: as well. He's basically he I needs a recent message
Speaker 3: to the Santas. He says. You know, you're a young man,
Speaker 3: you know, like you can right, yeah, it doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be twenty twenty eight, even you can run in
Speaker 3: twenty thirty two, you know, like the Santists. Even though
Speaker 3: he looks as old as Trump, he's actually in his forties.
Speaker 1: Right, he is our age. Yeah, yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: is incredible. I wanted to talk to you about the
Speaker 1: Fox settlement, the sound of a thousand journalists, the sighing
Speaker 1: that they want to spend six weeks in Delaware where
Speaker 1: everything is closed on both Sundays and Mondays discuss No,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you in my mind and again
Speaker 1: I'm coming to you, But in my mind, the top
Speaker 1: line here is that things like lawsuits will not save
Speaker 1: democracy from disinformation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think that's right. I know. I'm glad
Speaker 3: that the lawsuit happened. I'm glad that they're getting their money.
Speaker 3: I'm glad we haven't seen I guess the apology or
Speaker 3: there is probably some sort of agreement as to what
Speaker 3: Fox will have to say. But defamation suits are for
Speaker 3: a particular purpose, and their particular purpose is not necessarily
Speaker 3: to establish the total truth of a situation. It's to
Speaker 3: give people of an injured redress. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: it's a proader thing which I sort of have rittened
Speaker 3: about and tweeting about a little bit, which is I
Speaker 3: do think liberals would need to understand that you can't
Speaker 3: use prosecutors in the courts to do the work of politics. Now,
Speaker 3: am I glad that Trump was arrested, Yes, I am.
Speaker 3: I'm very glad. But actually, if you look at all
Speaker 3: the polling, his support in the Republican Party went up,
Speaker 3: and then maybe in the general it'll hurt him, but
Speaker 3: it's no substitute for politics, lastly, having to create a
Speaker 3: coalition that can defeat Trump again. And I think the
Speaker 3: same thing applies to Fox. And what I'm a bit
Speaker 3: sad about is that there's no policy discussions, because everything
Speaker 3: that Fox is is a creation of specific political choices
Speaker 3: that were made. And it could be that we're too
Speaker 3: far gone that you know, like you know, like hell
Speaker 3: is Truth seemed too late. But back in the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties, when Rupert Warnock first came to the United States,
Speaker 3: there was actually a lot of controversy should we allow
Speaker 3: this Australian maniac has a long history of like publishing
Speaker 3: dishonestabloids like a foothold in American politics, and there was
Speaker 3: like if you go back, there's actually like you know,
Speaker 3: like at every stage, you know, when he brought the
Speaker 3: New York Post later, you know, when he bought tried
Speaker 3: to start a cable news network, there were people saying, like,
Speaker 3: you know, like do we want to allow this? And
Speaker 3: unfortunately they allowed it, right Like there was his a
Speaker 3: year of deregulation. But there has any kind of political
Speaker 3: answer or political response to this. And I don't think
Speaker 3: we're gonna get the fairness doctrine back or any of
Speaker 3: the things that like prevented Fox from existing in the
Speaker 3: you know, sixties and seventies. But I think that one
Speaker 3: could delegitimize Fox much more than has been done and
Speaker 3: not treat it as a news thing. And I think
Speaker 3: you're seeing it only exists in the form of jokes,
Speaker 3: like you see people on CNN chortling like Fox is
Speaker 3: like complaining about their reputation or whatever. But I actually think,
Speaker 3: you know, it should be a top line thing, like
Speaker 3: this is a dishonest propaganda network. This is something that
Speaker 3: democrats should be saying, but not just democrats. I think,
Speaker 3: like you know, even media people consist themselves non parties,
Speaker 3: and like I would like to see it treated as
Speaker 3: a normal thing on the New York Times and on
Speaker 3: CNN that you know, this is reported from Fox, which
Speaker 3: we know is a dishonest propaganda network, And anytime anyone
Speaker 3: mentions or discusses Fox, that should be like how it's characterized,
Speaker 3: that should be its epithet. And I think we see
Speaker 3: some of that in how the Press Secretary has been
Speaker 3: treating Fox at press conferences. And unfortunately a lot of
Speaker 3: journalists like they tend to stick up for Boxing, like, well, no,
Speaker 3: we're part of a they're part of the journalistic community.
Speaker 3: I have to say, like we have to say, like, no,
Speaker 3: they are not part of the journalistic community. There's no
Speaker 3: reason to take them any more seriously than to say,
Speaker 3: you know, the National Inquirer, you know, which is also
Speaker 3: in bed with TROUBM. I honestly think the political work
Speaker 3: that needs to be done is to like really hammer
Speaker 3: in that this is a dishonest network and a propaganda outlet.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I mean again, this is the fundamental problem here, right,
Speaker 1: which is you have a problem with the company. You
Speaker 1: hope that a capitalist thing like and I'm not anti
Speaker 1: capitalist by any search. The imagination, but the idea of
Speaker 1: a defamation suit is ultimately, these people defamed my business
Speaker 1: and so I'm going to get them for the money
Speaker 1: they owe me, which is exactly what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But the I think the wish casting on all of
Speaker 1: our parts, or at least on mind too, was that
Speaker 1: from this there would be you know, a reckoning on
Speaker 1: Fox News. And that's not how any of this is
Speaker 1: going to work.
Speaker 3: That's house that's going to work. Although I do think
Speaker 3: that the discovery process and all the things that have
Speaker 3: come out have given valuable ammunition R that you know,
Speaker 3: should be used against Fox and like people you know
Speaker 3: are talking about it. But I honestly like want this
Speaker 3: to be like the kind of constant refrain whenever Fox
Speaker 3: has mentioned that, you know, like they it should not
Speaker 3: be seen as a journalistic entity. It is something else.
Speaker 3: It is a propaganda network. There's other work to be
Speaker 3: done in terms of creating alternative networks and like, but
Speaker 3: I mean, like we have to think of this as
Speaker 3: a political project and not see like the courts as
Speaker 3: a solution to this. I just I don't think the
Speaker 3: courts can can satisfy that that's not what they set
Speaker 3: up for do. And in some ways, like I think
Speaker 3: it hurts you politically, like if that's where your hope is, right,
Speaker 3: because like if it prevents you from thinking about like organizing.
Speaker 1: Right and the larger issues now, I want to get
Speaker 1: back to sort of what we're doing on this earth
Speaker 1: here and Democrats trying desperately to write the judiciary as
Speaker 1: much as possible. One of the largest issues now for
Speaker 1: Democrats is a Democratic senator. Yes, there's no plans on returning.
Speaker 1: Let's game this out for a minute here we have
Speaker 1: Diane Feinstein wrote a piece about this this week, eighty
Speaker 1: nine years old. Case of shingles. Not sure when she's
Speaker 1: going to return. Talk to me about what you see
Speaker 1: happening here?
Speaker 3: Well, unfortunately, I don't think that there's any good kind
Speaker 3: of scenarios. Like obviously the move to like, you know,
Speaker 3: just get her temporarily out of the judiciary and appoint
Speaker 3: someone else. The Republican is not going to allow.
Speaker 2: That, right Smartly, there's a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people calling for her to resign.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I also would kind of join just but not for
Speaker 3: the Judiciary comuraitty because but just because I think California,
Speaker 3: you know, is a state at you know, the biggest state,
Speaker 3: forty million people. They deserve representation. Yeah, there are people
Speaker 3: on her staff apparently who are telling reporters they don't
Speaker 3: know if she can ever return to DC. Right on
Speaker 3: the judiciary stuff, Like here's what can happen, Like, Okay,
Speaker 3: she resigns, a news senator is appointed, goes to d C,
Speaker 3: and then Schumer can try to put them on the
Speaker 3: Judiciary Committee. But again, you need Republican approval, which normally
Speaker 3: you would get. But I don't know if the Republicans
Speaker 3: might actually just say no, like because the judges are
Speaker 3: so important. This is like, unfortunately, because we got a
Speaker 3: situation where Congress can't do anything. Judges are where power
Speaker 3: lies in America, and if they do that, then you're
Speaker 3: gonna have a tit for tap. Because the one reason
Speaker 3: you can think you have some leverage is that Republicans
Speaker 3: also have old senators, you know senators, and you know,
Speaker 3: like in the next two years or next four years,
Speaker 3: easy to imagine them in the same seat. But they
Speaker 3: might just think, like, you know, no, no judges are
Speaker 3: so important, we don't care if they don't like return
Speaker 3: the favor for us, Like, and so you're gonna actually
Speaker 3: have not just the Judiciary Committee, but the Senate as
Speaker 3: a whole is going to be paralyzed, right, Like this
Speaker 3: is actually going to lead to further dysfunction. It's a
Speaker 3: kind of grim scenario. And that's why, you know, like
Speaker 3: I think the people there are people who been calling
Speaker 3: for Diane Feinstein to resign for a long time, and
Speaker 3: I think, you know, they're kind of been vindicated. Like
Speaker 3: I think this is something that was kind of foreseeable unfortunately,
Speaker 3: and I think we're in a kind of very grim situation.
Speaker 3: The only thing I can maybe say is maybe it's
Speaker 3: good to have that clarity, like once you get a
Speaker 3: situation where the Senate is wholly paralyzed, and then you
Speaker 3: can take that to the next selection and tell people
Speaker 3: that you know, Republicans care about judges. They care about
Speaker 3: judges because they want to end abortion and this is
Speaker 3: like where they have the power, and like, you know,
Speaker 3: like make that an issue in like every state because
Speaker 3: I think this hurts them. And again, this is the
Speaker 3: political solution. If one could have a time machine, the
Speaker 3: better political solution would have been to the Democrats to think, like,
Speaker 3: are we a political party that's interested in power and
Speaker 3: in like doing things, or are we a job agency
Speaker 3: for the super annuated.
Speaker 1: The thing that I have been struck by, which I've
Speaker 1: really been disappointed by, is some of the Democrats, like
Speaker 1: people like Pierceton Jilibran from the state of New York,
Speaker 1: my senator who was very vocal about al Frankin resigning,
Speaker 1: has been very vocal that it's not fair to ask
Speaker 1: eighty nine year old Diane Feinstein to resign even though
Speaker 1: she has no plans of coming back and she's retiring
Speaker 1: at the end of her term, because it's sexism and
Speaker 1: we're in a very fucking sexist country. Our bodily rights
Speaker 1: are being stripped away from us. It's a terrible, very
Speaker 1: fucked up time to be a woman. To raise a daughter.
Speaker 1: Asking an eighty nine year old for whom there have
Speaker 1: been whispers of cognitive ability questions for the last five
Speaker 1: to ten years to resign is not sexist.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no, I would just add to that, like,
Speaker 3: like you know, like if we think about you know,
Speaker 3: there's a way with gerontocracy and feminism, we are also
Speaker 3: at odds with each other because like if she goes,
Speaker 3: you know, like she's going to be replaced by you know,
Speaker 3: someone like Barbara Lee or for her. Yeah, exactly. And
Speaker 3: it's always like you know, like younger women are not
Speaker 3: going to be able, not fartily able to you know,
Speaker 3: make their way up as one season. In other countries,
Speaker 3: you know, like you have like thirty year old women
Speaker 3: who are like leaders of big countries. Because in America
Speaker 3: you have this crazy gerontocracy. Now, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: all fairness, that gerontocracy is not just DYNINGE. Feinstein issue.
Speaker 3: It's a larger issue, and it's a structural issue because
Speaker 3: you have seniority, like you actually like have a system
Speaker 3: of rewards keeping senators in as long as power as
Speaker 3: you know, I just think, you know, it's just uh,
Speaker 3: I mean, I think these are like bigger issues. But
Speaker 3: right now, I actually I'm a lot more pressimistic than
Speaker 3: a lot of people are. Just I do actually think
Speaker 3: that if she does resign, which she should, and California
Speaker 3: gets a proper you know, senator who can serve, you
Speaker 3: could still have the Judiciary Committee not functioning or functioning
Speaker 3: in a way that serves Democrats. I just actually Republicans
Speaker 3: are so dependent on the judges they might actually, you know,
Speaker 3: like do something that is otherwise completely nuts and completely
Speaker 3: like an escalation of polarization and dysfunction.
Speaker 2: Gtier, we are out of time. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: A great talk.
Speaker 1: Angelo Kerasone is the CEO of Media Matters.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Angelo, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: It is the.
Speaker 2: Settlement that launched a thousand uh.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the dominion case and Fox naws.
Speaker 2: I mean they won, right Fox one, Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4: I mean they benefited from not having a trial. I
Speaker 4: mean having to pay seven eighty seven million dollars is
Speaker 4: not a good thing and it is going to hurt
Speaker 4: them in other ways, I think. And this is where
Speaker 4: it isn't satisfying because it's not over and these things
Speaker 4: have a long tail. But like they filed documents SEC
Speaker 4: documents SEC filings the eight individual times where they separately
Speaker 4: said that this was nothing, that there was no risk
Speaker 4: to shareholders, there was no risk to investors, there is
Speaker 4: no risk to the company, And they made those material
Speaker 4: representations knowing full well that there was evidence that specifically
Speaker 4: could actually create a risk, Like they have an obligation
Speaker 4: to at least tell people that, like they are going
Speaker 4: to get busted for what's come out and having to
Speaker 4: pay seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars, like the
Speaker 4: size of that it will affect those other lawsuits. But yes,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think to your point, they very much
Speaker 4: won because having Fox on trial and having Murdoch take
Speaker 4: the stand and Tucker and others would have been a
Speaker 4: level of scrutiny not just from the general public, but
Speaker 4: it would have hit their own audience in a way
Speaker 4: that would have would have weakened them substantially. And now
Speaker 4: they're not gonna be weakened substantially, at least initially, right.
Speaker 1: But it does open the door to shareholder lawsuits, right,
Speaker 1: can you talk about that?
Speaker 4: So basically share shareholders are suing right now, there's one
Speaker 4: lawsuit that's already underway. There's another group of shareholders that
Speaker 4: are basically operating together that have requested a bunch of
Speaker 4: sort of like pre trial materials.
Speaker 5: But they can get access and that information.
Speaker 4: As a result of the fact that they are significant shareholders,
Speaker 4: they are almost certainly to sue. And then there's another
Speaker 4: group of shareholders that in the process have put it
Speaker 4: together some kind of like a class action and they
Speaker 4: are basically suing for reachchre forduce shary duty and saying look,
Speaker 4: you messed up here and you cost us money. That
Speaker 4: will ultimately settle as well. The Murdochs will have to
Speaker 4: pay out more money there and it could be very substantial.
Speaker 4: I mean, the last time the Murdoch faced the shareholder lawsuit,
Speaker 4: it was because he overpaid to buy his daughter's company
Speaker 4: so that he could put her back into the company
Speaker 4: put her on the board. This was in the wake
Speaker 4: of the phone hacking sceddle. He needed another vote on
Speaker 4: the board and so what he did is he bought
Speaker 4: his daughter's company, overpaid for it so that she could
Speaker 4: join the board. Shareholders sued and he settled with them
Speaker 4: for a couple hundred million dollars just to make it
Speaker 4: go away, right, so he'll almost certainly settle here. The
Speaker 4: real problem here, and this is the thing that I
Speaker 4: think would have been amazing for the trial is that, yeah,
Speaker 4: it would have been great for the Fox people to
Speaker 4: see all this, and that's one whole important thing. But
Speaker 4: also as the trial would have been happening right now,
Speaker 4: Fox is currently renegotiating carriage face yes, and like uugh, First.
Speaker 1: I think you should do a two second explainer on
Speaker 1: what the carriage fees are, just for for anyone who's
Speaker 1: not completely read in on this.
Speaker 4: A carriage fee is what a cable company pays to
Speaker 4: have a TV channel available to its customers. So if
Speaker 4: you have a TV channel, I give you like a
Speaker 4: couple cents and then I get to offer it to
Speaker 4: my customers, and it's usually a nominal fee. Fox News
Speaker 4: is actually the second most expensive channel everybody's cable bill.
Speaker 2: What's the first?
Speaker 4: ESPN?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that makes it which it makes sense right exactly.
Speaker 4: Everyone I say that too, like, oh that makes sense
Speaker 4: of course, Well yeah, but Fox News being number two,
Speaker 4: that does not make sense because that's not how it's
Speaker 4: supposed to work. But doesn't matter how they got here,
Speaker 4: but they really leveraged this as a revenue driver. And
Speaker 4: the part about it that's that's sort of wild is
Speaker 4: they are in the process of the negotiations right now
Speaker 4: and just to put a number on it, So there's
Speaker 4: three contracts that are up. If they were to get
Speaker 4: just the increases that they're looking for, it would be
Speaker 4: from the only these three, not even all of them.
Speaker 4: It would be an extra nine hundred and sixty million
Speaker 4: dollars in annual profit about two point nine billion dollars
Speaker 4: over the course of the contract.
Speaker 1: So which is and that's just that settlement plus plus.
Speaker 4: Exactly when you take out the fact that they're going
Speaker 4: to write off two hundred plus million dollars in you know,
Speaker 4: as a tax deduction, it really cost them five hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars and you know, it's basically twice what they
Speaker 4: ended up having to pay here. So if you're the
Speaker 4: murdock and you're sitting in court, the thing to keep
Speaker 4: in mind is like, yeah, we need to we have
Speaker 4: to be successful at our cable negotiations, and this having
Speaker 4: a trial unfold while we're in right taking a boardroom,
Speaker 4: it would have been really hard. And the one thing
Speaker 4: I'll say too that is I feel like it's just
Speaker 4: gotten totally buried. But I really think is a big
Speaker 4: deal is obviously they had gone back and forth and
Speaker 4: given each other some offers, but the very last offer,
Speaker 4: the final offer, came a few minutes after the judge
Speaker 4: appointed a Special Master to investigate Rubert Murdoch for withholding documents.
Speaker 4: You have to wonder what they didn't want everyone to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's a really good point,
Speaker 1: the special Master documents. I want to ask you, so,
Speaker 1: what are the three cable companies that they're negotiating with
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: Comcast, Charter, and Spectrum. And to put a number on it,
Speaker 4: there's a about ninety million cable customers in the country. Comcast, Charter,
Speaker 4: and Spectrum combined have about thirty six million customers.
Speaker 2: Wow, so this is about a third of all their people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a big deal for them. So the thing
Speaker 4: to also keep in mind is this is actually the
Speaker 4: first in a series of renegotiations, because they're actually going
Speaker 4: to renegotiate all of their contracts this year.
Speaker 2: Oh so this will set the bar for everything else too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, bingo, this sets the price, and so right now
Speaker 4: they get about two So everybody that has cable right
Speaker 4: now pays two dollars and eighteen cents a month to
Speaker 4: Fox News at least.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yes, And Fox News is opening requests a little more
Speaker 4: than three dollars wow right now. It would be the
Speaker 4: single largest increase in cable history. Nobody's ever gotten a
Speaker 4: dollar increase. It's just wild.
Speaker 2: And there's no way to opt out.
Speaker 1: So all of us who pay for a cable are
Speaker 1: paying two nineteen in to Rupert Murdoch.
Speaker 4: That's it every month, all of us, everybody. There's no
Speaker 4: way out of it. And you know, my point with
Speaker 4: the cable companies is, you know, they could drop the channel,
Speaker 4: which is incredible. They could offer a package that's Fox free.
Speaker 4: That's another possibility, the easiest thing to do. And I
Speaker 4: think this is the part that's that's sort of incredible,
Speaker 4: is that the cable companies are overpaying for Fox. Fox.
Speaker 4: The Fox's price is inflated, and even generously, I say,
Speaker 4: it's probably two times market rate right now. It should
Speaker 4: be about a dollar and change if we're being if
Speaker 4: we're being really generous.
Speaker 1: To Fox right because you could make a case that
Speaker 1: ESPN is offering things you couldn't get somewhere else whereas
Speaker 1: Fox as is similar programming to OAN and Newsmax.
Speaker 4: That's it. And like so you know, and like if
Speaker 4: you compare it to other similar situated news channels, and yeah,
Speaker 4: like you know, they should be probably more than CNN
Speaker 4: and MSNBC because they have a bigger audience and their
Speaker 4: audience is more passionate. But it's a really small audience
Speaker 4: compared to so for example, like basically, if you look
Speaker 4: at the totality of the universe of cable, only fourteen
Speaker 4: percent of cable customers like ever across the board of
Speaker 4: the ninety million ever actually even turn on Fox News
Speaker 4: like once in a blue mood. Obviously Fox's audience is
Speaker 4: only like three million. But like if you're saying, how
Speaker 4: many people ever touch Fox News at a given year,
Speaker 4: even just like stop on for five minutes, it's like
Speaker 4: fourteen percent, which if you compare that to like TBS
Speaker 4: and other channels, usually those are like fifty sixty seventy percent.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a very specific audience that it's popular with, exactly.
Speaker 4: And this is where the rubber beats the road. This
Speaker 4: is where real accountability starts, by the way, because like
Speaker 4: if the cable companies just give Fox a straight renewal,
Speaker 4: Fox basically becomes unprofitable in a couple of years because
Speaker 4: unless they could figure out a way to get their
Speaker 4: advertisers back. If cable companies actually reset Fox's rate and said, hey,
Speaker 4: we're not going to pay you two times their value anymore.
Speaker 4: We're just going to pay you market rate. We're going
Speaker 4: to give you a buck, Fox News all of a
Speaker 4: sudden goes from being profitable to not profitable overnight.
Speaker 2: I mean, is there any chance that this happens?
Speaker 4: Yes, So here's the good news. And you know, yah,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty realistic about this stuff, Like I always try
Speaker 4: to figure out, like what's the nuts and balls hat?
Speaker 4: Does it actually move? So every cable company has this
Speaker 4: thing called the demand score, right, and this absolute helps
Speaker 4: us explain why Fox is able to get their rates
Speaker 4: so high. So this thing called the demand score is
Speaker 4: like it's a formula that they figure out. Okay, how
Speaker 4: much do people really want this cable company of this case,
Speaker 4: this channel, So let's make sure we get in our package.
Speaker 4: Fox during their renegotiations, has all of their viewers call
Speaker 4: and basically they say, hey, you know your cable company
Speaker 4: is about to take Fox News away and you better
Speaker 4: call right now. So but just think about that, they
Speaker 4: have three million viewers at most, there's eighty seven million
Speaker 4: people that never watch Fox or want it, or certainly
Speaker 4: don't want to pay for it. So basically, if people
Speaker 4: call their cable companies and just say, don't pay for Fox,
Speaker 4: I don't want to pay for Fox, don't put over
Speaker 4: payer box, don't make me pay per Fox, that all
Speaker 4: gets factored into the demand score. And so when the
Speaker 4: cable companies are sitting at the table, they actually have
Speaker 4: some ability to negotiate and say, no, we know what
Speaker 4: we don't. We have the math here, we have, weait
Speaker 4: eclips to you, and I'll give you one bit of
Speaker 4: good news.
Speaker 2: So when does this happen?
Speaker 4: Right now? It's happening right now. We are calling and
Speaker 4: I'll give you a bit of good news to prove it.
Speaker 4: Right before Christmas, the Murdocks were renegotiating with one cable provider.
Speaker 4: Everything butt Fox, and we ran a test campaign to
Speaker 4: get cable to call their cable company. In this case
Speaker 4: it was DirecTV and we said, look, I know it's
Speaker 4: Fox Sports, I know it's the other one, but like
Speaker 4: it still all goes to Fox. So just don't increase
Speaker 4: the rate we generated. There were like about thirteen thousand
Speaker 4: phone calls to the company that was more than Fox
Speaker 4: was able to generate. DirecTV did not agree to Fox
Speaker 4: Sports increases. Even conservatively, Fox lost anywhere between two and
Speaker 4: three hundred million dollars in anticipated revenue simply because the
Speaker 4: math was the math. People customers called and said, I
Speaker 4: don't want my cable bill to be raised, and so
Speaker 4: these are very winnable fights. It's just no one's actually
Speaker 4: done this ever except for Fox. Fox has actually done
Speaker 4: this every single renewal for the past ten years. That's
Speaker 4: why their rate is so high. This is one of
Speaker 4: those moments where if we want to actually have some
Speaker 4: accountability for Fox, the only way to really do that.
Speaker 5: Is to cut off their profit engine.
Speaker 4: And this is it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you're listening this podcast, you should call
Speaker 1: Fox News.
Speaker 4: Yes and iban you need one more incentive. Let me
Speaker 4: tell you this Fox. If you for the Fox was
Speaker 4: bad before, you ain't say nothing. Yet they are going
Speaker 4: to get worse than ever.
Speaker 2: After they negotiate their cable care.
Speaker 4: Right even during it. Because the cable companies don't really
Speaker 4: care about the content. All they care about is the
Speaker 4: math the phone calls to people, and so right now
Speaker 4: Fox just bought a license to lie. The settlement is
Speaker 4: behind them, and they need to resecure their footing with
Speaker 4: their audience because it's a little whoppoly. They need to
Speaker 4: get them to be fully passionate again. So they need
Speaker 4: to rebuild that relationship. They need to activate their audience
Speaker 4: ahead of the primaries, ahead of these negotiations, like they
Speaker 4: need to sort of stir the pot. And that means
Speaker 4: that anything that may have held them back because of
Speaker 4: how it could play in trial, they don't have to
Speaker 4: worry about that anymore. They don't have to worry about
Speaker 4: a jewelry, they don't have to worry about the uncertainty.
Speaker 2: What about the smart mat Fox's plan there.
Speaker 4: Is to draw that out until at least twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: which is conceivable because they haven't started discovery yep, right
Speaker 4: and they only need and really truly they Fox only
Speaker 4: needs to draw this out until you know, the end
Speaker 4: of of this year in order to get through all
Speaker 4: these contracts. Because the thing to keep in mind about
Speaker 4: the contracts is that it's guaranteed revenue. Once the contract
Speaker 4: is signed, there's no changing it. Until the next renewal.
Speaker 2: When is the next renewal.
Speaker 4: The next renewals won't start until at least twenty twenty six,
Speaker 4: but Fox is trying to get another year in, so
Speaker 4: maybe twenty six, twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, So
Speaker 4: by then Cable will be so small, and Cable's hemorrhaging
Speaker 4: three four five five million customers a year, it just
Speaker 4: won't be a significant of a revenue driver for Fox
Speaker 4: in the next round. Like this is really their last
Speaker 4: run at this, well at least.
Speaker 1: Right right, right right, and Fox is the second most
Speaker 1: expensive cable channel, which I think is just shocking to me.
Speaker 4: I know, it's just nuts. This is how they operate.
Speaker 4: The part about this that's so in upsetting and bothersome
Speaker 4: is that this is the result of actual accountability and
Speaker 4: then Fox adapting. So when Glenn Bett got fired, he
Speaker 4: got fired because he lost all of his advertisements and
Speaker 4: Fox couldn't keep him anymore. Right after that happened, Roger
Speaker 4: Als was like, you know what, We're done. This is
Speaker 4: never happening again. We are never going to be susceptible
Speaker 4: to like these little like like like these like you know,
Speaker 4: these people in the marketing industry. We are gonna our
Speaker 4: audience is rabid. We're going to turn our audience against
Speaker 4: the cable companies and and raise their bills with out.
Speaker 4: They're picking our pockets, and let's think there's their own
Speaker 4: audience too, like they're ripping everybody off. It's just the
Speaker 4: same way they shape politics, the same way they can
Speaker 4: turn CRT into like a thing. That's what they did
Speaker 4: with these cable fights, is they came up each time
Speaker 4: and they leverage their audience and some other properties to
Speaker 4: basically just keep jacking up these rates.
Speaker 1: So wild, I mean, it's not wild, it's just fucking crazy.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you now, so if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, you probably should call your cable
Speaker 1: company and tell them you.
Speaker 2: Don't want Fox.
Speaker 1: You don't want to pay two dollars and eighteen cents
Speaker 1: for Fox News.
Speaker 2: That right, That's it.
Speaker 4: That's the easiest way to do it. And if you
Speaker 4: don't know what to do, you can go to this
Speaker 4: website no foxfeed dot com. We know when the good
Speaker 4: and the negotiations are happening. We give you the contact information.
Speaker 4: It's not one of those like annoying things. We're not
Speaker 4: going to send you emails for three dollars. I just
Speaker 4: want to give you.
Speaker 5: A telephone number to call.
Speaker 4: I want to save you three dollars. I don't want
Speaker 4: you to give me three dollars. That's basically it. I
Speaker 4: know it's like it's annoying to do it, but it's
Speaker 4: it's actually worth it. It's like the one thing where
Speaker 4: we have the numbers on our side and if we
Speaker 4: generate more calls, we went. It's it's very simple.
Speaker 1: So you feel like, right now Fox is they are
Speaker 1: going to drag out the smartmatic. What about this other
Speaker 1: case with this woman who was fired Abby Grosberg.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit unclear. If they can get to
Speaker 4: some kind of discovery, then they'll probably settle quickly, right,
Speaker 4: But it's you know, Fox usually tries to win these
Speaker 4: things before discovery, or to limit discovery. I mean, they
Speaker 4: didn't even start talking about a settlement with Dominion until
Speaker 4: af after the court ruled that Rupert Murdoch was suceptible
Speaker 4: to discovery. Prior to that, they were like, nah, you
Speaker 4: were not even going to bother because as long as
Speaker 4: you can't get access to the real stuff, we don't care.
Speaker 4: So I think it'll depend on how they handle how
Speaker 4: Discovery handles, and if if Grosberg is able to get through,
Speaker 4: then they'll probably settle quickly.
Speaker 5: The Murdoch's typically settle.
Speaker 4: Obviously most places settle, but they usually wait until they
Speaker 4: think it could have an effect on them. And so
Speaker 4: that's my hunch, and I think they'll do the same
Speaker 4: thing with the shareholder lawsuits once they consolidate. They're going
Speaker 4: to wait until everybody plays their hand first. They're not
Speaker 4: going to do anything too early. They're going to wait
Speaker 4: until all the shareholders that are going to sue come forward,
Speaker 4: and they're letting that organizing happen behind the scenes. But
Speaker 4: if you notice, the thing they're very focused on right
Speaker 4: now is making sure their stock price doesn't decline. And
Speaker 4: that's why. That is why, by the way, Fox News
Speaker 4: went immediately to a right wing outlet, it was like, Hey,
Speaker 4: don't worry, we're going to write this off in our
Speaker 4: taxes last night, you know, like they made sure that.
Speaker 4: And that's also why that information about the carriage increase
Speaker 4: came out.
Speaker 2: It's so much money, it won't it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4: Right, That's right, it doesn't make any sense. And getting
Speaker 4: getting that out there for them is like it's all
Speaker 4: about making sure that they don't wopple the markets, because
Speaker 4: that's how you keep shareholders on the side, Right, is
Speaker 4: that shareholders what they think they can probably get most
Speaker 4: of these shareholder lawsuits to drop before they even start
Speaker 4: by basically saying, but do you really want to hurt yourself?
Speaker 4: You know, do you really want to knock bound the
Speaker 4: value of the stock by suing? Like that's sort of
Speaker 4: their strategy. And they run this strategy in the past
Speaker 4: and it works with mixed results, and then if it
Speaker 4: gets serious, they'll settle. But all those things will happen
Speaker 4: in a way so far removes from the spotlight that
Speaker 4: we've seen with Dominion that even if it does get
Speaker 4: a little further along, it will pay in comparison to
Speaker 4: what we we've experienced the last couple of months.
Speaker 1: Right, there's no way the Abbey grows for lawsuit is
Speaker 1: as big as the Dominion lawsuit.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: Even with the tape the tapes, look there, there's a
Speaker 4: couple of tapes that are significant clear how much more
Speaker 4: she has. I think that's where the special Master stuff
Speaker 4: would have came in, because what that basically provided was
Speaker 4: access to a real investigation of what material Fox held
Speaker 4: back during the discovery process, and it seemed like that
Speaker 4: really freaked them out, you know, they they were very
Speaker 4: engaged on that, even before a special Master was appointed. Fox,
Speaker 4: because I'd been tracking this, Fox sent a bunch of
Speaker 4: letters to the judge over the weekend. Like it's sort
Speaker 4: of like a bat, like when you're like having like
Speaker 4: a breakup or something kind of serious and you're being
Speaker 4: over dramatic. Like the amount of letters they sent to
Speaker 4: the judge over the weekend was kind of hilarious, Like
Speaker 4: they kept like some motions, but mostly letters like just
Speaker 4: Wiling's like please, we promised we weren't lying, like don't
Speaker 4: do this with the special Master. And then they added
Speaker 4: five attorneys the day of and it was all about
Speaker 4: this specific angle, which was we didn't mess up discovery,
Speaker 4: like don't do this special Master thing. And you really
Speaker 4: only respond that way if you actually did sort of
Speaker 4: withhold stuff in discovery, and right, that's the only way
Speaker 4: I think the Abby Grossberg stuff could have really really penetrated. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because it needed with the murdouts, it's always about can
Speaker 4: you start a cascade?
Speaker 5: So obviously we know it's rutten to the core.
Speaker 4: But the question is can you actually expose it enough
Speaker 4: that you actually get a full ish picture. And I
Speaker 4: just don't think anything else on the horizon has the
Speaker 4: potential to do that. Maybe Smarmatic, but I think once
Speaker 4: Smarmatic gets serious, they will settle. But it's so.
Speaker 1: Far right right, because it's too much money to turn down.
Speaker 1: And if you're a public company, you're not interested in justice,
Speaker 1: you're just interested in MANI ultimatelya right because.
Speaker 4: Again even from Dominion's perspective, and I totally understand this,
Speaker 4: you know, I never they've done a lot. I mean,
Speaker 4: what the discovery and getting you know, that motion for
Speaker 4: summary judgment basically laid out all the facts. Like the
Speaker 4: only thing that would have happened at trial is that
Speaker 4: they would have had to talk about these things. But
Speaker 4: there was no new information anymore. It's all out there
Speaker 4: between the stuff that's been exposed. It's available now, and
Speaker 4: so it's kind of on us to deliver the accountability
Speaker 4: even if they want. Let's even say they got a
Speaker 4: three billion dollar jewelry settlement, right, the headlines would have
Speaker 4: been here's why it doesn't matter for Fox because they're
Speaker 4: not gonna have to pay and they're gonna and it's true.
Speaker 4: Degree it's true. They would have bogged it down in
Speaker 4: appeals for years, right. I mean Alex Jones had as
Speaker 4: a billion dollar settlement a guide ward against him, and
Speaker 4: he's still in appeals and he's on an air every day.
Speaker 4: So it is. It's annoying and it's grating, but I
Speaker 4: understand why they took it, and I think obviously smarmatic
Speaker 4: would do the same thing.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, thank you, thank you, Angelo,
Speaker 1: thank you. Jeff Charlotte is the author of The Undertow
Speaker 1: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Speaker 2: Welcome Too Fast Politics. Jeff Charlotte, I'm Mollie.
Speaker 5: Good to be with you.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about The Undertow, which is a book.
Speaker 1: Explain to us a little bit about what this book
Speaker 1: is about and why you decided to write it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. The subtitle is Scenes from the Slow Civil War,
Speaker 5: which is is what I believe that we are in.
Speaker 5: I've been reporting on right wing movements for twenty years
Speaker 5: or across the United States and around the globe, and
Speaker 5: this book is in some ways, I don't want to
Speaker 5: say it's a summary. I mean its scenes, there's stories,
Speaker 5: but it's sort of coming from this moment of seeing
Speaker 5: changes that even given the sort of the depth of
Speaker 5: exposure I had to write wing movements, I recognized this
Speaker 5: is something new. I recognized it in twenty fifteen when
Speaker 5: Trump came down the Golden Escalator and I said, that
Speaker 5: is the fascist aesthetic. Will he find the movement which
Speaker 5: before that I had actually written, for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 5: probably wouldn't happen in the United States on a grand scale.
Speaker 5: I was wrong. This book is about being wrong. It's
Speaker 5: about chasing the kind of the formation of the fascist
Speaker 5: movement out of the fascist aesthetic around the country, looking
Speaker 5: at the martyr myths of Ashley Babbitt.
Speaker 2: So explain to us where you went and who you
Speaker 2: talk to.
Speaker 5: So the book cover is sort of ten years. The
Speaker 5: undertow is what I think of as the currents that
Speaker 5: some of us saw. I think you saw and some
Speaker 5: of us didn't, pulling us out to see. So it
Speaker 5: talks about we talk about the men's rights movement, the
Speaker 5: guys who brought to us that delightful metaphor of the
Speaker 5: red pill, and some of the churches, if we'd been
Speaker 5: paying attention, would have helped us understand why there would
Speaker 5: be an evangelical embrace of Trump, then through the Trump scene.
Speaker 5: The big part of the book begins January sixth, twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one, when I watched thirty five year old white
Speaker 5: woman Ashley Babbit air Force veteran, climb up through a
Speaker 5: window in the Capitol and get shot. And the officer
Speaker 5: shotter was a black man, and being a student of
Speaker 5: American mythology and American history, I knew what they would
Speaker 5: do with that, because that is the old lynching story.
Speaker 5: And sure enough she has become a martyr of the movement.
Speaker 5: So I flew out to Sacramento, California for a rally
Speaker 5: for Ashley Babbitt that turned into a brawl between Proud
Speaker 5: Boys and Antifa, and then drove east very slowly, just
Speaker 5: talking to people who dreamed they saw Ashley Babbitt, or
Speaker 5: believe they had met Ashley Babbitt, or thought she was
Speaker 5: a hero or an angel, or a leader in a
Speaker 5: spiritual sense of their movement. Who were the kind of
Speaker 5: people you talked to, every kind of person. And I
Speaker 5: think this is especially to you. Know. I live in Verona,
Speaker 5: very blue state, but I can drive ten miles in
Speaker 5: any direction I can find a Confederate flag, a Trump flag,
Speaker 5: or worst of all, the all black flag. If you've
Speaker 5: seen this flag out there, it's an American flag, but
Speaker 5: all in shades of black. It stands for no prisoners
Speaker 5: in the civil war that those who fly I believe
Speaker 5: has started or is coming. That means kill everyone on
Speaker 5: the other side. It's a genocide flag. These folks are everywhere.
Speaker 5: This is not a blue state, red state thing. And
Speaker 5: the people that I met rained from Rob Brumm, a
Speaker 5: leader of a militia and Marinette, Wisconsin, about six thousand strong,
Speaker 5: invited me into his arsenal with his little kids, to
Speaker 5: a delightful grandmotherly couple. I remember the guy said, oh,
Speaker 5: I can't wait to get my hands on a protest.
Speaker 5: I'm going to beat them up and get on CNN.
Speaker 5: His wife looked at him and sort of frowned and said, ojeene,
Speaker 5: and then she cracks a smile. These are not the
Speaker 5: folks you would expect to hear this pleasure in violence
Speaker 5: from suburban folks. People of color too, I should say,
Speaker 5: and I write about that in the book The Ways
Speaker 5: in which Fascism has a gravity that can pull even
Speaker 5: people of color into its white supremacist vision what my
Speaker 5: friend Anthea Butler, in her book White Evangelical Racism, calls
Speaker 5: promise of whiteness.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Talk to us a little bit about
Speaker 1: David French, because that's pretty interesting. I read this interview,
Speaker 1: so you talked about no, but it's a you know, explain.
Speaker 6: To us a little bit about this, well, David Friends,
Speaker 6: the former National Review writer who has been sort of
Speaker 6: normalized by the New York Times, a man who not
Speaker 6: too many years ago was writing with the most venomous
Speaker 6: bile about the student pitity of feminism.
Speaker 5: A man it would have fit at that point right
Speaker 5: in with my chapter on the men's rights activists, who
Speaker 5: are not the most powerful movement I've ever written about,
Speaker 5: but are actually.
Speaker 2: The worst interesting Why every right.
Speaker 5: Wing movement is always more interesting than its caricature. Except them.
Speaker 5: They're dumber. They're just dumbered. They really are sitting around
Speaker 5: talking about their ex girlfriend's ex wives or the girlfriends
Speaker 5: they never had, but believe that they were entitled to you.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So, David French, there's that veneer. And I think this
Speaker 5: is a way that so many, so many sort of
Speaker 5: our peers in the media can't see. Well, David French
Speaker 5: is educating everything else. But there he is coming out
Speaker 5: of that now it is New York Times.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: The one thing I'll say that I think is interesting
Speaker 5: is that when I began the big piece of appointing
Speaker 5: for this book right after January six twenty one, that
Speaker 5: language of civil war, which I would have dismissed at
Speaker 5: one point, but I was noticing scholarly historians speak it,
Speaker 5: and I know that they are cautious and rightly so,
Speaker 5: and I was paying attention, but even my colleagues in
Speaker 5: the prey dismissed it. Now here we are with David
Speaker 5: French writing in the New York Times, like we've got
Speaker 5: to take this idea of the national divorce seriously. So
Speaker 5: there's a bunch of things going on there. There's that recognition.
Speaker 5: But yeah, implicit in this book is media criticism throughout.
Speaker 5: The subtitle has seen from a slow civil war, but
Speaker 5: it might be how to tell stories about fascism because
Speaker 5: I'll be the first to say that I don't think
Speaker 5: any of us have fully figured it out. If we had,
Speaker 5: we wouldn't be where we are.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no question.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about this global fascist movement
Speaker 1: because it's so interesting. So can you explain to us
Speaker 1: a little bit you did sort of infiltrate the ranks
Speaker 1: of Republican leaders leadership for C Street. Explain to us
Speaker 1: what those people think about the black flag people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was some earlier books of mine, the Family
Speaker 5: in C Street, and you can see a Netflix documentary
Speaker 5: about the family. These are the folks that bring us
Speaker 5: to National Prayer Breakfast every year, and they're the oldest
Speaker 5: and arguably most influential Christian nationalist organization. Back to nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty five. They thought the New Deal was of Satan,
Speaker 5: it was socialism, it was communism, and so they organized
Speaker 5: businessmen and they were interesting, partly because they don't fit
Speaker 5: the caricature of the Southern preacher and the two tight
Speaker 5: soup pounding as Paul Thump and his Bible. These were
Speaker 5: members of Congress, military leaders, business leaders, educated internationalists, and
Speaker 5: scope and they build up this international movement. And to
Speaker 5: be honest, I thought, despite all their problems they had,
Speaker 5: when Trump came down that gold Escalator, I said, oh,
Speaker 5: there he is the man that groups like the Fellowship
Speaker 5: have been supporting overseas, where they have embraced the worst
Speaker 5: dictators by their own admission, They're like, but this is
Speaker 5: part of God's plan here He is come home to roost.
Speaker 5: Would they actually accept that in the United States? They would?
Speaker 5: They did. And I think we know enough about the
Speaker 5: history of fascism. I don't use the F word lightly
Speaker 5: at all, and I and you know it's in fact,
Speaker 5: in my book about the Family, I wrote a chapter
Speaker 5: called BF word fascism back in the post war period
Speaker 5: when they were recruiting actual Nazi war criminals to advise congressmen,
Speaker 5: guys so bad that they weren't allowed in the United States.
Speaker 5: So this group, the Family had to fly the congressmen
Speaker 5: to Germany to take counsel with these figures. And even
Speaker 5: then I said, this isn't fascism. There's more than one
Speaker 5: kind of bad under the sun. This is horrible, but
Speaker 5: it is a different sort. Now Here we are with
Speaker 5: the real F word in action, which is the convergence
Speaker 5: of elite and popular movements. That's what we have when
Speaker 5: we have there's always right wing movements. But when groups
Speaker 5: that normally wouldn't talk to each other are aligned, then
Speaker 5: we're in trouble.
Speaker 1: So I want to push on this a little bit.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about fascism. My friend Tom Nichols, who
Speaker 1: I really like as a friend, did a whole thread
Speaker 1: about how we're over using fascism. That's not how you
Speaker 1: know how you do it. You don't say it like that.
Speaker 1: It's not accurate. It's this explained to us why he's wrong.
Speaker 5: Actually, Tom and I got into a very friendly and
Speaker 5: good discussion, and I like Tom Nichols's work too, And
Speaker 5: I should say the important point that Tom and I
Speaker 5: both recognized is I think we're both all hands on
Speaker 5: deck guys. We both recognize it. Whether you called authoritarianism
Speaker 5: or fascism, it is here. It is serious and a
Speaker 5: means making common cause with those whom you might not
Speaker 5: agree on other issues. On this one, I would argue
Speaker 5: with Tom. I think that the mistake that he and
Speaker 5: some others are making are there's some kind of ahistorical mistakes.
Speaker 5: And first we really need to look to understand fascism.
Speaker 5: We can't just look at the history of World War two.
Speaker 5: We need to go back to French nineteenth century fascism.
Speaker 5: We need to look at the scholarship on how the
Speaker 5: Nazis is a great book called Hitler's American Model. When
Speaker 5: I say history, and I do not mean popular writers.
Speaker 5: I mean kind of dense, hardgoing, scholarly writers. But what
Speaker 5: Tom is doing some who resisted their conflating fascist regime
Speaker 5: act government that is in place with a fascist movement.
Speaker 5: And Tom is right, we do not have and Trump
Speaker 5: was not able to achieve a Hitlarian or a Mussulinian government,
Speaker 5: although Tom was restricting himself to the European model.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel a lot better, right, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, let's talk about Saharto in Indonesia and ongoing fascism there.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about Deterurt and Marcos and Philippines. These are
Speaker 5: fascist regimes, some of them by name. Let's talk about
Speaker 5: Franco in Spain, which was a softer, very brutal fascism.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So there's these models, and so the question, and I
Speaker 5: think Tom and I are in the same footing. But
Speaker 5: I do say, look, mostly we shouldn't be quibbling over
Speaker 5: this fascism authoritarianism as long as you recognize that what
Speaker 5: so much of the media is doing now, which is
Speaker 5: replicating the horse race politics of twenty sixteen b to Santus,
Speaker 5: who the hell cares?
Speaker 2: But don't you think that the sort of road to
Speaker 2: hell is paved with that.
Speaker 1: Well, not fascism in the European definition, but fascism in
Speaker 1: the you know us definition. I mean, don't you think
Speaker 1: that's sort of how we got here is by this
Speaker 1: kind of very you know, specific, slightly over intellectual. I mean,
Speaker 1: isn't it sort of the road to fascism is filled
Speaker 1: with people telling you you're overreacting.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, those of us who've long been on the
Speaker 5: right wing beat story in my life. I remember when
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight the Family came out and interviewers
Speaker 5: would say, why are you talking about the Christian right
Speaker 5: now that Obama's been elected and the Christian right has
Speaker 5: gone forever? I'm not kidding you. Even now, even now,
Speaker 5: some unnamed producers are saying, oh, we're going to pass.
Speaker 5: We think Trump is over and Trump may be over right.
Speaker 5: I don't think he is, but trump Ism isn't. And
Speaker 5: that's the failure to understand social movements. I got into
Speaker 5: it with a senior New York Times political reporter, so
Speaker 5: we don't need to call this racist, and not only that,
Speaker 5: he went further, and if you do, you're not really
Speaker 5: doing journalism. I find this kind of normalization where we see.
Speaker 5: You know, I think a New York Times op ed
Speaker 5: Frank Luntz writing, how do we further the agenda of
Speaker 5: Trump without Trump himself? The agenda is fascism, So how
Speaker 5: do we find a more polite manifestation of that? I
Speaker 5: think Lunz is in the weeds. He doesn't understand that
Speaker 5: the appeal of fascism is not so much a set
Speaker 5: of policies. It's always been historically anesthetic, right.
Speaker 1: It always has been an aesthetic. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: But isn't Lunz ultimately he wants fascism. I mean, you
Speaker 1: may not. I mean, I was on a panel with
Speaker 1: him last week. He's a lovely guy. But like trump
Speaker 1: Ism to them is just a sort of a bunch
Speaker 1: of you know. I mean, what I think is incredible
Speaker 1: about about this sort of quote unquote good Republicans is
Speaker 1: they still believe in all of the quote unquote and
Speaker 1: again I don't think is a ton of policies, But
Speaker 1: I mean they believe in all of trump Ism. There
Speaker 1: are certain aspects of it they find slightly distasteful.
Speaker 5: They find it distasteful, which is a failure to understand
Speaker 5: the nature of the movement. It's because those guys don't
Speaker 5: go to Trump rally, so if they do, they sit
Speaker 5: in the VIP seats or with the press for the book.
Speaker 5: In my reporting, Molly, I've been a reporter for thirty years.
Speaker 5: I have used a press pass. I think exactly once.
Speaker 5: I'm not interested. Look, I've moved amongst the rich and
Speaker 5: the powerful for the family, but I'm not interested in
Speaker 5: that kind of access journalism. And when I go to
Speaker 5: a Trump rally, I need to stand in line for
Speaker 5: six hours like everybody else and listen to the playlist
Speaker 5: repeat over and over and feel the transgressive joy, feel
Speaker 5: people who would never have taken delight and what was
Speaker 5: again and again and again and here we are again,
Speaker 5: It's happening again, not reported on. You go to Trump rallies.
Speaker 5: He is a great performer. He is one of the
Speaker 5: two best orders I've ever heard live. But the reporters
Speaker 5: are even now still trying to talk about policy instead
Speaker 5: of say the twenty minute aria that he'll sing of
Speaker 5: decapitation's disembowelments, rapes and describing in detail and people who
Speaker 5: would have shivered at such things. It's corny, but really
Speaker 5: there is a sort of orgasmic element to it. Right
Speaker 5: down to when Trump imitates orgasms, which he does.
Speaker 1: I always think of this as like the bizarro grateful Dad.
Speaker 1: These people go to follow Trump wherever he goes.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I've met people who've been to sixty seventy rallies.
Speaker 5: You can hear grateful Dead in the parking pack dog
Speaker 5: good heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The middle section of the book. Each section of the
Speaker 5: book is named after the song. The middle section is
Speaker 5: named dream On, after the Aerosmith song, which I love.
Speaker 5: I was raised on classic rock. But to hear in
Speaker 5: rotation at Trump rallies and people spin and circles.
Speaker 2: Why why do you hear that song?
Speaker 5: Why? Why do you hear Lionel Richie? Why do you
Speaker 5: hear I mean you're hearing Trump's nineteen eighties playlist? Is
Speaker 5: why do you hear Pavaratti right?
Speaker 1: Just because he likes it or because it speaks to
Speaker 1: them in a certain way.
Speaker 5: Yes, so many of these things are. Yes, it's a
Speaker 5: little bit like right down to you. I can't believe
Speaker 5: we're still having the debate is this fascism? Is it
Speaker 5: about racism or is it about class? Or is it
Speaker 5: about gender? Yes, it is the intersectionality of the right.
Speaker 2: It strikes me though, that they just don't have the numbers.
Speaker 5: Ultimately, Oh oh oh no, no, Molly, you can tell
Speaker 5: me why I'm wrong. All right. So there's a couple
Speaker 5: of things here, and I hear this all the time,
Speaker 5: way doll, These militia guys get a load of an
Speaker 5: F sixteen, right, and that is correct. And I have
Speaker 5: I look, I mean, in for this book, I got
Speaker 5: more guns pointed at me than I had many. I mean,
Speaker 5: I've been on the wrong side of a gun, but
Speaker 5: never in a church before. This was something new for me,
Speaker 5: or never by the manager of Louren Bobert's diner, Shooters
Speaker 5: Hooters with guns. He didn't draw. He just sort of
Speaker 5: hovered like in the Old West and said I could
Speaker 5: not finish my walk nine that's what they call the
Speaker 5: all named after guns West and Wess. And so you say, oh,
Speaker 5: these guys, yeah, they don't have the numbers, and that
Speaker 5: is correct. What those guys are are they are sparks.
Speaker 5: We're in the slow civil war now, and their casualties
Speaker 5: already all around the country. What happens is and I've
Speaker 5: done a lot of reporting from the military too, and
Speaker 5: we saw in the Washington Post three generals and the
Speaker 5: most overlooked piece of the year. I think one like
Speaker 5: the military is not secure. And if we have a
Speaker 5: real chain of command crisis as in who's president, if
Speaker 5: we have one rogue based commander one, if we have
Speaker 5: a governor like DeSantis who wants to play chicken, then
Speaker 5: suddenly this can escalate into something much worse. But even
Speaker 5: before that, there's the Irish troubles, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean that seems like a more likely slow rolling,
Speaker 1: which is what you write about civil.
Speaker 5: War slow rolling. Look, my kid, I have a queer,
Speaker 5: non binary kid. They're criminalized in twenty States. People pregnant,
Speaker 5: people are dying for lack of reproductive rights. And we
Speaker 5: as reporters know that every one of those stories that
Speaker 5: you see is stands in for a hundred that we
Speaker 5: done right. There are casualties. Now, it's not enough for
Speaker 5: us to say, well, we'll never never get violent. The
Speaker 5: violence is here, So what are we going to do
Speaker 5: about it? Right?
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's completely right. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 5: Thanks Molly, I appreciate it. No moment.
Speaker 7: Jesse Cannon, Molly junk Fast down in Florida. They are
Speaker 7: making horrible laws at a speed that I never imagine
Speaker 7: was even possible with all the bureaucracy I hear about.
Speaker 1: Florida had passed a don't Say Gay law. It was
Speaker 1: for younger children. They defended it by saying that it
Speaker 1: was really just to protect little kids from over sexualized content.
Speaker 2: And that this was obviously we're all being hysterical.
Speaker 1: That is not true, and we learned that today, or
Speaker 1: we learned that a couple of days ago when Florida
Speaker 1: passed a Don't Say Gay law K to twelve, So
Speaker 1: high school games, it can't be taught about sex, they
Speaker 1: can't be taught about LGBTQ lifestyles. So imagine the world
Speaker 1: where you're in high school. You're trying to read Aristotle
Speaker 1: and you can't say that he's gay, or maybe you
Speaker 1: just don't read Aristotle.
Speaker 2: Yet again, another time.
Speaker 1: Where Florida is putting religion before science, and for that
Speaker 1: they are our moment of fuckering. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again thanks for listening.