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 Wyoming has purged twenty eight percent
Speaker 1: of its voting roll, kicking off anyone who didn't vote
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. It's not how any of this
Speaker 1: is supposed to work. We have such an amazing show
Speaker 1: for you today. Check my ads non Dinny Jommy stops
Speaker 1: by to tell us about her efforts to get the
Speaker 1: mega loving disinformation site the Gateway Pundit kicked off the
Speaker 1: ad exchanges. Then we'll talk to George Whitesides, who is
Speaker 1: running for Congress in California's twenty seventh district against the
Speaker 1: very vulnerable Mike Garcia. But first we have the host
Speaker 1: of the Origin Story podcast, Ian Dunt. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Ian Well, I thank you very much, thank you for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you like I am such
Speaker 1: a humongous fan of yours and I think are so funny.
Speaker 1: And also because your country doesn't matter at all, we
Speaker 1: can never have you on.
Speaker 2: It's extraordinary. There's a real pattern to your praise. I've
Speaker 2: noticed your praise as soon as it begins. I think
Speaker 2: there's a terrible black hole that's emerging in front of me,
Speaker 2: and I'm about to fall directly into it. And once
Speaker 2: again it's taken place.
Speaker 1: So just catch us up and what's happening in the
Speaker 1: most important European country after Germany.
Speaker 2: It's definitely not that. I mean, you certainly put France.
Speaker 1: I was going to save Germany and France.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I think Portugal arguably Spain. I mean I
Speaker 2: think we're still more important than Italy. I think we
Speaker 2: can make it.
Speaker 1: Congratulations, Yes, you you got Italy bead.
Speaker 2: We have decided to have as many prime ministers as
Speaker 2: Italy on a monthly basis, but now way through people
Speaker 2: at a kind of Italian pace really, so in a
Speaker 2: way we really emulated them, except for you know, for
Speaker 2: culture and the love of life, food yeah and the
Speaker 2: two yeah yeah, and the history yeah. So but apart
Speaker 2: from that, I think we're directing.
Speaker 1: Them exact good exactly, But so catch us up. I
Speaker 1: had the displeasure of seeing that your head of Lettuce,
Speaker 1: I mean, former Prime Minister Liz trust whatever fucker the
Speaker 1: that person was in America trying to sell a book
Speaker 1: written about her ten days as Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's taking a route that is actually fairly common
Speaker 2: for disgraced Brits, which is to see if they can
Speaker 2: go to the US where no one's really heard of
Speaker 2: them and stuff again. And the trouble is, there was
Speaker 2: no reason that she would be stopped by virtue of
Speaker 2: what she'd done in Britain. I mean that the main
Speaker 2: obstacles to her succeeding in the US were precisely the
Speaker 2: same ones that prevented her from succeeding in the UK,
Speaker 2: which is that she has no cognitative ability, she has
Speaker 2: no presentational ability. She's a kind of charisma black hole.
Speaker 2: So you watch her and you feel it's almost that
Speaker 2: you can feel your own will to live just soaking
Speaker 2: its way into the marrow of your bones. And there's
Speaker 2: an interview with her on Fox News that I saw
Speaker 2: actually because you you retweeted it, which tried to promote Yes,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for that. I really can't tell
Speaker 2: you how that's right.
Speaker 3: With the book where she had a backwards You think, well, look,
Speaker 3: so what you're going to do is you're going to
Speaker 3: say anyway, it's not classy to have an interview on
Speaker 3: a news channel and hold up your own book as
Speaker 3: you're talking, like, what do you think you are?
Speaker 2: Like pelling cars on a game, atrociously bad form, but
Speaker 2: to not even do that correctly, to hold up the
Speaker 2: book the wrong way, not once, but twice before succeeding
Speaker 2: in holding it correctly. Is there no end to your
Speaker 2: terminal inadequacy? And the answer back question is no, there
Speaker 2: is no end. She is now exploring because she's decided that,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe America is the forum for her particular
Speaker 2: set of skills, a much more kind of dubious politics
Speaker 2: even than the form that she used in the UK.
Speaker 2: So she's taken, now that she's crossed the Atlantic, to
Speaker 2: using phrases like the deep state, which are really not
Speaker 2: used in British politics and which are taken as a
Speaker 2: kind of red warning sign for the worst kind of
Speaker 2: political lunacy. So she's really dredging the depth over there
Speaker 2: in much the same way, but to a slightly more
Speaker 2: extreme degree than she did here.
Speaker 1: Right, So she's just trying to sort of find a
Speaker 1: second act. I guess, but you have a prime minister
Speaker 1: right now. You've told me he wasn't as bad as
Speaker 1: she was discussed.
Speaker 2: He isn't. He's just I mean, but you know, we
Speaker 2: need to be clear with I mean, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: still shit, He's just not as shit as she is.
Speaker 1: Yes, However, I have.
Speaker 2: To say that his recent behavior has been so obscene,
Speaker 2: so lacking in any kind of basic decency, that it
Speaker 2: really is becoming difficult to even hand him that level
Speaker 2: of credibility. The predominant form in which has taken place
Speaker 2: is on refugees.
Speaker 1: Jesse says mister Bean in a nicer suit.
Speaker 2: I think that's very unfair to mister Bean.
Speaker 1: Yes, mister Bean is a beloved hero of British culture.
Speaker 2: He is, He's loved by many cultures, you know, Yes,
Speaker 2: one of Britain's just the export. The exports quite well,
Speaker 2: mister Bean, because in that way, Richie Sunak really does
Speaker 2: not export very well, although we would really like to
Speaker 2: export him, but ideally Silicon Valley, which is clearly where
Speaker 2: he wants to be. So look, his recent activity has
Speaker 2: been with refugees, and this has been taking on a
Speaker 2: more stridently reactionary, i mean, really quite authoritarian, draconian streak
Speaker 2: in recent days. The policy is the Ruanda policy, and
Speaker 2: the Rwanda policy is basically to say we're going to
Speaker 2: send anyone that gets to this country, to Ruanda, we're
Speaker 2: not going to proce the asylum claim, so we're not
Speaker 2: even going to We have essentially shut down our entire
Speaker 2: asylum system and said, look, whoever comes, will send them
Speaker 2: to Rwanda. Rwanda can process them, decide whether they're real
Speaker 2: a refugee or a failed asylum seeker, and then they
Speaker 2: will stay in Rwanda regardless of the outcome of that process.
Speaker 2: So it's essentially giving up any kind of moral or
Speaker 2: national responsibility over people that come here. Now, the vast
Speaker 2: majority of people that come to the UK seeking asylum
Speaker 2: are given asylum because they are from Eritrea, from Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: from Syria, from Iran, from countries in other words, where
Speaker 2: you're very likely to have your asylum claim accepted, because
Speaker 2: they are war zones where you're very likely to be
Speaker 2: subject to persecution. He is entirely forsaken any kind of
Speaker 2: principle on this and decided to enact this policy this week.
Speaker 2: That yesterday, the Home Office put out a video of
Speaker 2: police smashing down the doors of asylum seekers, leading them
Speaker 2: away in handcuffs, taking them to detention centers in advance
Speaker 2: of a Rwanda export program. These are people who are
Speaker 2: some of the most marginalized and bud people on the
Speaker 2: face of the earth. They have committed no crime except
Speaker 2: to come to the UK seeking help and believing in
Speaker 2: its better nature, and that at the moment is the
Speaker 2: kind of treatment that they're being handed by. Rishi Suna.
Speaker 2: So right, I wish I had more good news here,
Speaker 2: but I'm afraid that I don't. It's just a moral
Speaker 2: chasm all the way down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sides being terrible that immigrants, you guys, also your
Speaker 1: economy is completely fucked right, this is correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, We've been in stasis now for really very
Speaker 2: long time. I mean really since the financial crash in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: And this happened because you guys, you sort of enacted
Speaker 1: republican part.
Speaker 2: That is entirely correct. Essentially, we had the same initial
Speaker 2: problem that you had, which was that we were massively
Speaker 2: exposed to the financial sector, and the financial sector was
Speaker 2: heavily underregulated when it came to glatteridized debt, obligations, to securities,
Speaker 2: to all sorts of dubious games that they were playing
Speaker 2: with their products. So we shared that problem. The difference
Speaker 2: is that after the financial crack, you guys did not
Speaker 2: pursue an austerity program. You know, interest rates were low,
Speaker 2: you were still able to borrow and to invest, and
Speaker 2: you pursued a pretty moderate form of Kynesian stimulus. You
Speaker 2: then pursued a much more substantial form of Kenjian stimulus.
Speaker 2: Under Biden, we did the exact opposite. So, even though
Speaker 2: interest rates were low, we brought in borrowing, we cut
Speaker 2: down on spending at the exact moment that the economy
Speaker 2: was in a moment of real difficulty of precisely the
Speaker 2: type that economists have understood since the nineteen thirties, since
Speaker 2: John Maynard Kines wrote the general theory of how you
Speaker 2: deal with this kind of situation, which is to borrow
Speaker 2: and spend to stimulate demand to get yourself over trouble.
Speaker 2: This country did the exact opposite, under a form of
Speaker 2: kind of Milton Friedman Frederick Hayek fiscal feticism, a kind
Speaker 2: of BDSM fiscal policy, eventually and punished and destroyed our
Speaker 2: own economy over and over again.
Speaker 1: Laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because it's tragic.
Speaker 2: No, I spent a lot of my life in a
Speaker 2: sort of you know, that great zone in between tears
Speaker 2: and laughter, wondering which it is I'm experiencing at any
Speaker 2: given moment. Now I would now done that, you know,
Speaker 2: really for about fifteen years, essentially for a generation. In fact,
Speaker 2: you could even say that's the entirety of my career
Speaker 2: has taken place in that period of economic stagnation. And
Speaker 2: instead what we get, instead of any kind of viable
Speaker 2: economic policy, which is just there to reach for if
Speaker 2: you want to, is this constant right wing populist victim
Speaker 2: game where someone else is always responsible for your own inadequacy.
Speaker 2: And it can be immigrants, it can be europe, it
Speaker 2: can be civil servants, it can be metropolitan liberals, but
Speaker 2: it's always someone else's fault rather than you, the people
Speaker 2: who have been in charge for the last thirteen years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think what happened in the States, which was smart,
Speaker 1: was that we had seen in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: what it's like to not fund your stimulus right, to
Speaker 1: only save the banks and the corporations, and so we
Speaker 1: did a much more false pumping into the economy, which
Speaker 1: ultimately ended up leading to a boom.
Speaker 2: The luck of the political cycle in the two moments
Speaker 2: that you really needed people in the white House who
Speaker 2: are going to stimulate the economy rather than put in spending.
Speaker 2: They're in place at the right time. You also had
Speaker 2: Keynesians around Obama, Roma in particular, and the same I mean,
Speaker 2: I think with Biden you've seen a really quite I
Speaker 2: mean from a European point. You know, back in the
Speaker 2: day when I was growing up, it was you guys
Speaker 2: that were the economically right wing guys, and Europe were
Speaker 2: the ones that were the you know, the much more spendy,
Speaker 2: you know, quasi socialists, left wing economic policy. Those roles
Speaker 2: have now completely reversed. And that is not just the
Speaker 2: UK US thing that that accounts for the continental Europe
Speaker 2: as well. I mean, Germany, despite the factor, has a
Speaker 2: center left government, is not expounding the kind of ideas
Speaker 2: that are anywhere near as left wing economically as that
Speaker 2: which is coming from the Biden White House. So I
Speaker 2: have to say some of that's quite confusing for us
Speaker 2: over here when we see the level of disenchantment, including
Speaker 2: on the left in the US with Biden, so we
Speaker 2: sort of think, you know, we wouldn't mind a bit
Speaker 2: of that. Actually, that looks pretty good for us right now,
Speaker 2: as do your economic res Yeah.
Speaker 1: You're going to be shocked to hear this. But you know,
Speaker 1: I do all these interviews I said with these people,
Speaker 1: they say, like the biggest environmental investment ever, right, climate investments.
Speaker 1: We're building chips, we're building chargers, We're building high speed trains.
Speaker 1: Well I don't know if they're going to be high speed,
Speaker 1: but we're having trains. I mean, we're doing all the
Speaker 1: stuff that should make everyone on the left happy. Now
Speaker 1: we have some other stuff going on. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know that's problematic in other ways, but I'm
Speaker 1: not even going to talk about it because I can't
Speaker 1: even talk about it. I do think that some of
Speaker 1: these investments are incredible, and I do think that they
Speaker 1: will ultimately get us where we need to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. I mean there is an international consequence,
Speaker 2: of course to what's happened in the US, and you
Speaker 2: feel that in Europe quite quite starkly, you know, And
Speaker 2: when we were brought up, you know, we were brought
Speaker 2: up in a US created international order after nineteen forty
Speaker 2: five with British contributions again from Mainard Canes. When you
Speaker 2: look at you know, the creation of the Breton Wood system,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But it was essentially a rules based order
Speaker 2: that said, look, everyone benefits from free trade. As long
Speaker 2: as we all stick to the rules and we do
Speaker 2: not discriminate in our trading arrangements with each other, then
Speaker 2: we will all ultimately benefit. Now that is not the
Speaker 2: program that Biden follows at the current White House follows.
Speaker 2: There's a much more. It's essentially a kind of left
Speaker 2: wing nationalist economic program in that it's about, you know,
Speaker 2: direct making sure that the supply chain is provided in
Speaker 2: the US and with its trading partners, it is discriminating
Speaker 2: in its trade arrangements, and it's freezing out China to
Speaker 2: create a kind of dual block in the world, dual
Speaker 2: trading blocks now in Europe, that obviously creates all sorts
Speaker 2: of sentiments and has created a tremendous amount of resentment
Speaker 2: of what Biden is doing, including among very reasonable and
Speaker 2: impressive politicians like Emmanuel Macron in France. And what it's prompted,
Speaker 2: and interestingly in a UK case, is having to think, well, actually,
Speaker 2: what do we do then? Because we cannot source all
Speaker 2: of our supply chain, we cannot secure it. Just in
Speaker 2: the UK, we cannot make a car in the UK,
Speaker 2: we make a car in the continents of Europe as
Speaker 2: part of that supply chain. So I see in a
Speaker 2: strange way towards Europe in a way that hasn't really
Speaker 2: been politically understood on the side of the Atlantic quite yet.
Speaker 1: So that's where I wanted to go with this. Always
Speaker 1: it's funny because it's like there's always this you know,
Speaker 1: quiet conversation that people have with each other on the
Speaker 1: left about what happens if Trump wins and New York
Speaker 1: State and California are not, you know, they have to
Speaker 1: then pay for Trumpism, right, So we're always there's always
Speaker 1: sort of a thought process which is like, can we
Speaker 1: get out? And the reality is this would be the
Speaker 1: same as brexit. You know, it's more taxes and more
Speaker 1: regulation put together. I mean, it's this same idea that
Speaker 1: you don't like where you are, so you make life
Speaker 1: much harder. And that's ultimately what's happened to you guys.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, except that there was nothing you know, the
Speaker 2: distinction there is that there was nothing wrong with where
Speaker 2: we were.
Speaker 1: No, no, certainly not yeah, yeah, no, no, We're much
Speaker 1: more found to than you guys. And it was also
Speaker 1: part of what happened was that the people didn't really
Speaker 1: know what they were voting for.
Speaker 2: They didn't really they did know that they wanted less immigration.
Speaker 2: They got the opposite. We now have more immigration, of course,
Speaker 2: because this country requires immigration in order to survive. It's
Speaker 2: just that instead of coming from Europe for immigration, those
Speaker 2: numbers have fallen catastrophically. They're now coming from India, from Pakistan,
Speaker 2: from all over the world. So I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 2: that the average Brexit voter was really really intending to
Speaker 2: swap Polish people for Indian people, but that's what they've
Speaker 2: got now. They were lied to, I mean, they absolutely
Speaker 2: were that. You know, the campaigns were all about you
Speaker 2: will take back control, you'll have more money for your
Speaker 2: health service. People have less control over their lives now
Speaker 2: there is less money for the health service. The crucial thing, though,
Speaker 2: is the pulling has changed on Europe completely. I mean,
Speaker 2: the level of support for rejoining Europe is now very
Speaker 2: very high, very very consistent play out over years. It's
Speaker 2: almost i mean, it's not far off double the level
Speaker 2: of support people saying that they want to stay out.
Speaker 2: That is a really different thing, I think, to actually
Speaker 2: being able to deliver on a referendum campaign. In which
Speaker 2: you rejoin. There's very little appetite for that. People are
Speaker 2: talking in abstract terms without the reality of it being
Speaker 2: presented to them, and most importantly, without having to emotionally think,
Speaker 2: oh fuck, we're going to have to have that conversation
Speaker 2: again for year after year after year, talking about tariff
Speaker 2: arrangements and customs checks and regulatory borders and all of
Speaker 2: the most tedious sentences that are potentially formulated in the
Speaker 2: human mind. But nevertheless, they are kind of open to
Speaker 2: the idea. And demographically, that's where the real change is happening.
Speaker 2: You know, young voters much more comfortable with multiculturalism, much
Speaker 2: more comfortable with wanting to travel, have a much more
Speaker 2: diverse sense of identity. They can be English, they can
Speaker 2: be a Londoner, they can be British, they can be European.
Speaker 2: All At the same time, those voters are obviously coming
Speaker 2: online every day more and more of them turn eighteen
Speaker 2: and older. Voters much more likely to be uncomfortable with multiculturalism,
Speaker 2: much more likely to have voted four Brexit, are going offline,
Speaker 2: shuffling off life's mortal coil every day time. So the
Speaker 2: demographics have completely shifted. And even that alone, even if
Speaker 2: no one had been convinced of the era, that alone,
Speaker 2: at the moment would be handing us a significant polling advantage.
Speaker 1: But you have an election coming up, Yeah.
Speaker 2: We do. We're going to come up sort of six
Speaker 2: months was so, and the Conservative government is about to
Speaker 2: get the most almighty biblical spanking of its very long life.
Speaker 1: So what does that look like?
Speaker 2: I mean at the moment, like there are polling forecasts
Speaker 2: of the moment that are properly old Testament. They're like
Speaker 2: the great the literally just the one that came out
Speaker 2: today put the Conservatives on eighteen percent. The Conservatives I
Speaker 2: don't think have been on eighteen percent at any point
Speaker 2: in my life. I'm forty two years and I think
Speaker 2: they've ever hit that number. Labor is currently polling between
Speaker 2: twenty and twenty five points above them, very very big
Speaker 2: gap between the two parties. To give you an impression
Speaker 2: of how that plays out, you would have a sort
Speaker 2: of as few as eighty to ninety Conservative MPs with
Speaker 2: the rest of the chamber. That's six hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: MPs in total, comprised of Labor and other parties. Let's
Speaker 2: say maybe four hundred and fifty five hundred labor MPs.
Speaker 2: The scale of it is so impossible to grasp. We
Speaker 2: don't know how to fit them in the room in
Speaker 2: the House of Commons. In our parliament. We have no
Speaker 2: system that because we have to have them sitting opposite
Speaker 2: each other. Right, if you have that few MPs in
Speaker 2: the opposition party, you just have to start populating their
Speaker 2: benches with the governing party's MPs. More than that, you
Speaker 2: need them to shadow government departments. You need at least
Speaker 2: one hundred MPs to be able to do that, and
Speaker 2: the current polling indicates that the Conservatives will not have
Speaker 2: that number. They are essentially polling so badly that they've
Speaker 2: broken the operating mechanics of British democracy at the moment.
Speaker 2: And unless something changes, and it may well change, but
Speaker 2: it hasn't changed for quite some time, it looks like
Speaker 2: that's the kind of really pulverizing result that they can
Speaker 2: look forward to when they do eventually go for a
Speaker 2: general election.
Speaker 1: This is like the greatest thing I've ever heard, And
Speaker 1: there's no way you can do that here. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, I mean, just transmit all of that sort
Speaker 1: of energy for or winning, can you?
Speaker 2: I would like to translate that you know what the
Speaker 2: key thing, the key distinction between us and you, And
Speaker 2: I think have noticed this a couple of times. It
Speaker 2: was like it's the moment the spell broke. And for
Speaker 2: a long time I thought Boris Johnson would have the
Speaker 2: same spell over people that Donald Trump had, and he doesn't.
Speaker 2: He didn't like when he in the end, when he
Speaker 2: had a scandal, you know, having parties in Downing Street
Speaker 2: during COVID going against the legislation he had himself written,
Speaker 2: something just snapped in people. The people that supported him,
Speaker 2: right wingers, reactionary you know, anti immigrant voters, they just
Speaker 2: turned against him. You know, they had this sort of
Speaker 2: innate sense of the injustice of that. Now I just
Speaker 2: don't I don't believe for a second that if Donald
Speaker 2: Trump had done that, had parties during you know, lockdown
Speaker 2: people his supporters would have turned against him in any way,
Speaker 2: There's something more profound in the link he has with
Speaker 2: his base that Boris Johnson was just unable to secure.
Speaker 2: And at that moment, the Tory polling died and it
Speaker 2: never came back. It just gets well, I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: it plummeted even further when Liz Trust came and catastrophically
Speaker 2: blew herself up, you know, over the space of forty
Speaker 2: one days. But nevertheless, it just got worse and worse
Speaker 2: from that point. That mythic link with your support Trump
Speaker 2: has it, Johnson didn't have it, and that is the
Speaker 2: core reason that we've managed to turn things around.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Not at all. I'm glad that for the first time,
Speaker 2: after talking to you for years, I finally have some
Speaker 2: good news to report about what's going on in this country.
Speaker 2: And maybe, just maybe, in four years, we won't start
Speaker 2: one of these conversations with you telling me how catastrophically
Speaker 2: shited is here. We'll find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the dream spring is here. And I bet
Speaker 1: you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick
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Speaker 1: Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab
Speaker 1: some head to fastpolitics dot com. Non Denny Jommy is
Speaker 1: the co founder of check my at. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Non to me, Hi, mom, so excited to be here today.
Speaker 1: We're so excited to have you. What you guys are
Speaker 1: doing is amazing, So tell us about your organization and
Speaker 1: then we'll go from there.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, So check my Ads is the digital advertising Watchdog.
Speaker 5: We are a fully independent organization working to protect your
Speaker 5: right to an Internet free from scam, lives and manipulation.
Speaker 5: And we do that by working towards transparency and accountability
Speaker 5: in the Internet economy, which is basically ads.
Speaker 1: So walk us through the thinking here, because this started
Speaker 1: as people not knowing advertisers not knowing where their ads
Speaker 1: were showing up.
Speaker 5: Right, My work personally started in twenty sixteen with the
Speaker 5: launch of Sleeping Giants, which was looking to demonetize Brightbart
Speaker 5: and then after that was successful, we successfully lost them
Speaker 5: ninety percent of their ad revenue in just three months,
Speaker 5: just by alerting advertisers to where their ads were running.
Speaker 5: I started to look at other websites, and Gateway Pundit
Speaker 5: was one of them, and I found that interesting because
Speaker 5: the ad agencies and ad exchanges, which are basically the
Speaker 5: companies that run ads on behalf of advertisers, had been
Speaker 5: doing a lot of work to say and to convince
Speaker 5: their clients the advertisers that they were no longer running
Speaker 5: ads on websites like Bredebart, and I was seeing ads
Speaker 5: from big advertisers on the Gateway Pundit. That's kind of
Speaker 5: where where my work led to tell.
Speaker 1: Us what you did with the Gateway Pundit, This is a.
Speaker 4: Long time coming.
Speaker 5: In the summer of twenty twenty, the Gateway Pundit had
Speaker 5: a lot to say about the Black Lives Matter protests,
Speaker 5: and around this time I started checking into them more
Speaker 5: and I noticed that they were running ads from major
Speaker 5: ad exchanges, and I basically started to contact these companies
Speaker 5: which had previously dropped Breitbart, but we're still working with
Speaker 5: this website, so it made no sense to me. So
Speaker 5: what I did was I contacted each of these companies,
Speaker 5: in some cases publicly, in some cases privately, and sometimes both,
Speaker 5: and I asked them point blank, what are you doing
Speaker 5: running ads for this website? And once that's on the record,
Speaker 5: like once I've sent that email or that tweet.
Speaker 4: The balls in their court.
Speaker 5: And because ultimately they serve advertisers, they can't just ignore
Speaker 5: me when I point out one thing that is detrimental
Speaker 5: to their client, so they kind of have to respond.
Speaker 4: So pretty much all of.
Speaker 5: Them, one by one confirmed with me that they were
Speaker 5: dropping the Gateway Pundit.
Speaker 4: It was actually really easy.
Speaker 1: So the Internet sucks a lot of times because there's
Speaker 1: no government regulation.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Congress could have said, you have to have verified news sources,
Speaker 1: you have to have content that's vetted, you have to
Speaker 1: have Twitter can't link to sites that aren't true. They
Speaker 1: could have made checks and bounces, but they decided not to.
Speaker 1: But the only real ability that we have as a
Speaker 1: country and as citizens to fight back againstuff like this
Speaker 1: is legal, right.
Speaker 5: I would disagree that we want Congress to be the
Speaker 5: ones to decide what is.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not going to. I think they could
Speaker 1: have years ago stopped a lot of the junkie stuff
Speaker 1: on the Internet by saying that tech companies had to
Speaker 1: really pay for content for magazines and newspapers. I mean
Speaker 1: they didn't, but you you know, there's incentives for everything else. Right.
Speaker 5: I think it's a bit more complicated than that because
Speaker 5: a lot of these disinfo outlets that we see today
Speaker 5: kind of snuck into the advertising ecosystem, the media eCos
Speaker 5: by classifying themselves as the news and companies like Google
Speaker 5: and all the other exchanges face I mean, I don't
Speaker 5: want to speak on Facebook, but these companies just kind
Speaker 5: of are working at scale and they don't want to
Speaker 5: look into it both for you know, they don't want
Speaker 5: to put the resources into it and they don't want
Speaker 5: to have to make those kind of decisions.
Speaker 4: It was just kind of the result of I think
Speaker 4: it just kind of.
Speaker 5: Snuck up on the tech company well as as a society.
Speaker 4: But the thing that we can control.
Speaker 5: That's outside of the government that I think is very
Speaker 5: very key to solving this problem. I mean, ultimately, this
Speaker 5: problem is fueled by advertising. The Gateway Pundit was launched
Speaker 5: twenty years ago, almost twenty years and their rise was
Speaker 5: fueled by unbridled access to digital advertising revenues. We're talking
Speaker 5: The Center for Countering Digital Hate did a study and
Speaker 5: will never know the exact number, but they estimate that
Speaker 5: in the twenty twenty elections leading up to the insurrection
Speaker 5: that the Gateway Pundit made around one point one million
Speaker 5: dollars in revenue from Google ads alone.
Speaker 4: I mean, Jim Hoft lives in a very very nice house.
Speaker 5: So that is where we can make a difference, and
Speaker 5: we can do it because these ad exchanges all have
Speaker 5: supply policies, and these supply policies are essentially an agreement
Speaker 5: that they have with advertisers who do want to advertise
Speaker 5: in as many places as they can, but they don't
Speaker 5: want to end up on polices like Gateway Pundit. So
Speaker 5: these exchanges, the vendors have explicitly written out in their
Speaker 5: policies that they won't work with websites like the Gateway Pundit.
Speaker 5: And by the way, a lot of these at exchanges
Speaker 5: adopted this language after our Sleeping Giants campaign against Breitbark And.
Speaker 1: I want to just pause for a second and talk
Speaker 1: about Jim Hoff for one second. For people who are
Speaker 1: not quite as read in as we are, Jim Hoff
Speaker 1: is a guy who just basically makes stuff up and
Speaker 1: it's all very crazy, Republican, trumpy kind of Can you
Speaker 1: give us sort of an example of one of his stories.
Speaker 4: I mean, where do I even again? I mean, they're
Speaker 4: really really out there.
Speaker 5: He said a lot of stuff about I mean, he
Speaker 5: was one of the biggest voices against COVID vaccines. And
Speaker 5: the funny thing is he's now on the record thanks
Speaker 5: to a documentary from a French filmmaker which I do
Speaker 5: want to talk about shortly, that he doesn't believe anything
Speaker 5: that he said.
Speaker 1: Right, which is shocking because I always just thought he
Speaker 1: was really stupid. But yeah, me and a lot of
Speaker 1: just completely crazy just to have targeting people dominion staff
Speaker 1: the whole nine yards. He now has declared bankruptcy.
Speaker 5: In the summer of twenty twenty, I successfully managed to
Speaker 5: get Jim hoft Gateway Pundit kicked off of like three
Speaker 5: or four AD exchanges, which was awesome because someone was watching.
Speaker 4: And that someone was a woman named aud Favra.
Speaker 5: She is a French content creator, documentarian, filmmaker, and she
Speaker 5: contacted me to say that she was working on a
Speaker 5: documentary about AD funded disinformation and then she was specifically
Speaker 5: working on the Gateway Pundit. What I didn't know until later,
Speaker 5: until almost before this documentary aired, was that she managed
Speaker 5: to get a meeting with Jim Hoft, invited her into
Speaker 5: into his home, showed her all his giant, magnificent rooms
Speaker 5: filled with fancy chandeliers paid for by Google ads, where
Speaker 5: he told her I.
Speaker 4: Don't actually believe the stuff that I publish.
Speaker 5: In that same documentary, add also managed to get an interview,
Speaker 5: an on camera interview. This is so unusual and rare
Speaker 5: with a Google representative, and what she did was so smart.
Speaker 4: She took print outs.
Speaker 5: Of all the crazy stuff that that Gateway Pundit has.
Speaker 5: Maybe not all, because that would be a really big folder,
Speaker 5: but she got a really good samplus set of Gateway
Speaker 5: Pundits articles and confronted the Google rep on camera with
Speaker 5: printouts and says, don't these articles violate your policy your
Speaker 5: supply policy? And the Google rep was just clearly flustered.
Speaker 5: He was not expecting this. He thought this is going
Speaker 5: to be a softball interview. Basically didn't know what to
Speaker 5: say in the face of this clear evidence. There's no
Speaker 5: other answer to this other than you're right, they should
Speaker 5: not be monetized. And what happened was a few days
Speaker 5: before this documentary was set to launch in France on
Speaker 5: National TV, Google dropped the Gateway Pundit and flat out
Speaker 5: just devastated the Gateway Pundit.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 5: I can't speak to the numbers, but we do know
Speaker 5: for a fact that Google Ads is the biggest ally
Speaker 5: and funder of disinformation in not just in the United States, but.
Speaker 4: In the world.
Speaker 5: So when you have ads, when you have access to
Speaker 5: a Google Ads account, you have access to in theory,
Speaker 5: unlimited funds, which is one of the reasons why Jim huffed,
Speaker 5: you know, produces eighty one hundred articles per day, because
Speaker 5: each one of those articles is money. I mean, he's
Speaker 5: literally printing money. So getting him kicked off of those
Speaker 5: ad exchanges, particularly Google, was huge. And while it did
Speaker 5: not put him out of business immediately, what happen is
Speaker 5: when he was sued by the election workers who he defamed,
Speaker 5: he lost a lot of resiliency.
Speaker 4: That money isn't coming in anymore.
Speaker 5: I suspect that he can't afford to fight these lawsuits
Speaker 5: because the money isn't coming in. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean the Gateway Pundit was also like a favor
Speaker 1: of Trump. He fed a lot of the lawes that
Speaker 1: then we saw. I mean, these far right content creators,
Speaker 1: I feel like they are a mobius strip and one feeds,
Speaker 1: the next feeds the next, and it ends up on
Speaker 1: a way and right, I mean there's a whole sort
Speaker 1: of there's a way this works, right.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, They feed off of each other, they cross link,
Speaker 5: they feature each other on each other's videos. They're constantly
Speaker 5: cross pollinating. And this is frankly, it's very good marketing.
Speaker 5: And they're very smart and very good at what they
Speaker 5: do and That's why they need to be That's why
Speaker 5: these supply policies are so important because that because marketing
Speaker 5: is great, but if you're but if you're marketing in
Speaker 5: a way that is detrimental, dangerous, or derogatory, that needs
Speaker 5: to be nipped in the bud.
Speaker 1: Right and that is is the way to do it.
Speaker 1: So in this country, three hundred plus million people, what
Speaker 1: ten million read newspapers, I mean much less than that,
Speaker 1: but a couple million watch cable television. There's a majority
Speaker 1: of people in this country who are not getting their
Speaker 1: news from cable television or from newspapers or magazines. So
Speaker 1: are they getting it from these sites? I mean, what
Speaker 1: are the numbers on this sort of traffic on these sites?
Speaker 5: I couldn't give you an answer to that specifically, but
Speaker 5: but more generally, I would say that that the disinfo
Speaker 5: outlets that were the most prominent in twenty twenty and
Speaker 5: in the years before that are seeing a fairly significant
Speaker 5: decline in traffic. That is because Facebook has been deprioritizing
Speaker 5: news and political content in our news feed, so that
Speaker 5: has had a really strong effect on these outlets. It's
Speaker 5: unfortunately also had a strong effect on real news outlets.
Speaker 5: The fact is that the tech companies refuse to differentiate
Speaker 5: between disinformation and news. Let me tell you something that's
Speaker 5: really interesting. Samsung. So if any of your listeners have
Speaker 5: a Samsung TV and you watch Samsung TV live, turn
Speaker 5: that on. There is various categories of channels that you
Speaker 5: can watch, and one of those categories is New than Politics,
Speaker 5: and on News and Politics, you'll be able to watch
Speaker 5: channels like a cs NBC, ABC, and you'll also be
Speaker 5: able to watch Steve Bannon's War Room on Real Am.
Speaker 5: Really yeah, And what Samsung does is they bundle up
Speaker 5: all of these channels under News and Politics and they
Speaker 5: sell the bundle to advertisers to run their ads on.
Speaker 5: So two years ago, Bannon was bragging to the Atlantic
Speaker 5: about how he's doing so great that he's added another
Speaker 5: hour to his show to accommodate his sponsors. And I
Speaker 5: was like, what the hell is he talking about? So
Speaker 5: I turned on my TV. I saw ads for Edsy, Volvo, Audi, Nissan,
Speaker 5: and BMW. I mean, the biggest brands in the world,
Speaker 5: Procter and Gamble brands tied and that.
Speaker 1: I have Evolvo.
Speaker 2: Favo.
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 5: They don't want to be on there, and that's the
Speaker 5: thing these advertisers have already set. Etsy was one of
Speaker 5: the first companies to block Breitbart back in twenty sixty.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so these guys, they don't want their ads on here.
Speaker 5: What's happening is that their vendors are feeling them, and
Speaker 5: they do it through these sneaky, sneaky ways. So I
Speaker 5: have asked Samsung, why is it that you have bundled
Speaker 5: a news site with a disinformation outlet like Real America's Voice,
Speaker 5: I mean Bannon's on in the morning, followed by Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 5: followed by I don't know, Jack Pisobiac.
Speaker 1: This is not news. Whatever this is, it's not news.
Speaker 4: They just keep getting away with it.
Speaker 5: And so that's why what we do is so important,
Speaker 5: because we work with advertisers. We talk to advertisers, and
Speaker 5: we speak to marketing and brand representatives about what's happening,
Speaker 5: because a lot of the time they aren't aware of
Speaker 5: what is happening with their ads, and because there's constantly
Speaker 5: new places for these bad guys to be expanding their
Speaker 5: little empires into. Like Bannon is a great example. He
Speaker 5: went from websites to a TV show on streaming TV
Speaker 5: and streaming TV is like the wild West of digital advertising.
Speaker 5: If you talk to any advertiser, they're going to be like, God,
Speaker 5: I hope my ads aren't running on like it's on
Speaker 5: rushing state TV because it's impossible to know what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: I think that it's right. And I also think that,
Speaker 1: like what you're doing here, which I think is really important,
Speaker 1: is everyone is so busy and everything is expanded so
Speaker 1: quickly that there have to be people checking on what's happening.
Speaker 1: And because and again I know that I said this
Speaker 1: earlier and maybe you thought I was being a little
Speaker 1: bit nutty about this, but I'm actually right, I promise,
Speaker 1: because there's no regulation for any of this. There's no
Speaker 1: one to regulate it, right, there's no industry, there's no
Speaker 1: FDA for streaming.
Speaker 5: I do want to point out that regulation is very
Speaker 5: important and core to what we're doing at check my ads,
Speaker 5: but oura of regulation is slightly different.
Speaker 4: So we operate from the insight that I.
Speaker 5: Just said, which is that advertisers don't even know where
Speaker 5: their ads are running, and oftentimes, almost all the time,
Speaker 5: the ads that end up where they do happened without
Speaker 5: the knowledge or consent of the advertiser. So imagine how
Speaker 5: much money did Volvo fork over to Steve Bannon. I
Speaker 5: bet they're not happy about that. What this really comes
Speaker 5: down to is the fact that there is this six
Speaker 5: hundred billion dollar digital advertising industry that is operating under
Speaker 5: almost like just a cloak of darkness. We know how
Speaker 5: money is being spent, so when it comes down to
Speaker 5: an advertiser saying, or even if anyone ever mandated, you know,
Speaker 5: don't run your ads on X or Y, there's no
Speaker 5: way for us to verify that because the digital advertising
Speaker 5: vendors are keeping that information advertisers, they.
Speaker 1: Don't need to produce the transparency, so they're not going.
Speaker 5: To exactly And that's why this keeps happening. Because advertisers
Speaker 5: can't see where their ads are going. They don't have visibility,
Speaker 5: and so we're in a situation where billions of dollars
Speaker 5: every year advertisers are just basically handing them over to strangers.
Speaker 1: I think this and Congress could say that there needs
Speaker 1: to be clarity about that, and they could make finds,
Speaker 1: but god forbid, I'm sorry, everybody's off. It's a Thursday.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. This is so important. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back and talk more about all of your
Speaker 1: victories and what an important service you're providing.
Speaker 4: Oh well, thank you so much, Molly for letting me
Speaker 4: talk about this today. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: George Whitesidees is a candidate for Congress in California's twenty
Speaker 1: seven district. Welcome too, Fast Politics, George white Side, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Molly, it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what you're running for.
Speaker 6: So I am running for Congress, trying to bring a
Speaker 6: voice for pragmatic leadership out in California's twenty seventh congressional district,
Speaker 6: which is on the north side of La County, and
Speaker 6: I'm running against super Maga Mike Garcia.
Speaker 1: You are a congressperson from Los Angeles running for a
Speaker 1: seat that is occupied by a Republican make it make sense,
Speaker 1: and a Maga Republican.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely nuts.
Speaker 6: Right, So just a little bit about me. So, I
Speaker 6: am a space guy, right. I was chief of staff
Speaker 6: of NASA for President Obama. Grew up wanting to work
Speaker 6: in NASA and did that under the Obama administration absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 6: Then went on to move out to the district to
Speaker 6: run an aerospace company called Virgin Galactic did that for
Speaker 6: about ten years. Amazing experience and help the community in
Speaker 6: a lot of ways along the way, particularly in wilds
Speaker 6: in COVID And we can talk about those things. But
Speaker 6: you know, the crazy thing, Molly, is that on the
Speaker 6: door side of La County is arguably the best chance
Speaker 6: to flip a seat for the Democrats to help out
Speaker 6: and flip the House in the entire country. And it's
Speaker 6: this district that Biden won by twelve and a half points.
Speaker 1: Jesus, how did Democrats lose this district in Sanitay.
Speaker 4: Well, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: It's okay, we don't have to go back there. Yes,
Speaker 1: so explain to us how we got here, with why
Speaker 1: you decided to run, and also tell me some horrifying
Speaker 1: things about Mike Gercia.
Speaker 6: How we got here is we're in a purple district
Speaker 6: that's trending blue. All of the underlying indicators of this
Speaker 6: district are really heading in our direction, right, So voting
Speaker 6: for Biden by twelve and a half points Democratic registration
Speaker 6: advantage of twelve points. It's a district that voted for
Speaker 6: Prop One, which was this California amendment protecting reproductive freedom
Speaker 6: by almost twenty four points, right, and so all these
Speaker 6: things are sort of, you know, indications that this is
Speaker 6: a district that we should have, and yet we have
Speaker 6: this representative now, Molly, who is stridently anti choice. Right.
Speaker 6: He was one of the co sponsors of what we
Speaker 6: call the National Abortion Band Life of Conception Act. He
Speaker 6: was one of these guys who voted to you overturn
Speaker 6: the presidential election in twenty twenty. And he votes to
Speaker 6: cut the budget by thirty percent. It votes for Mike
Speaker 6: Johnson and Jim Jordan and all these things. And so
Speaker 6: we've got a great opportunity here to flip a seat
Speaker 6: because like, our district is pro choice, it's pro Biden,
Speaker 6: it's moving towards the Democrats, and it's kind of the
Speaker 6: perfect time to flip one of these four seats that
Speaker 6: we need in the country.
Speaker 1: So what is Mike Garcia like, he's embraced MAGA. Tell
Speaker 1: us more about that.
Speaker 6: Well, he's just going to do whatever Donald Trump wants, right,
Speaker 6: and so you know that's what he did back in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty when they wanted to overturn the election. And
Speaker 6: he's just really really out of touch.
Speaker 1: He also secretly sold Boeing stock ahead of a Dan report.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, you heard about that. Yeah, it's actually absolutely bonkers,
Speaker 6: right because you know, I worked in the Obama administration,
Speaker 6: which had these super high ethical protections and did very well, right, Like,
Speaker 6: we had very few ethics issues. If anybody had done
Speaker 6: anything even vaguely like what Garcia has done, they would
Speaker 6: have been so out during that time. But that's just
Speaker 6: an indication of how crazy it is. Let me just
Speaker 6: summarize what happens for your listeners. So basically, back in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty, my boning Garcia was on the Transportation Infrastructure
Speaker 6: Committee in Congress, which was investigating Boeing at that time
Speaker 6: for those terrible accidents that they had, and so they
Speaker 6: were about to come out with this very damning report
Speaker 6: on Boeing as a company, and so right before then,
Speaker 6: Garcia sold fifty thousand dollars worth of Boeing stock, And
Speaker 6: that in itself is like totally unethical and terrible. But
Speaker 6: more than that, he then didn't report it as he
Speaker 6: was required to under congressional rules until after the election.
Speaker 6: And this is an election that he won by three
Speaker 6: hundred votes, So like, it is absolutely insane that he's
Speaker 6: like essentially there because he was he seems to have
Speaker 6: been hiding unethical stock creating behavior.
Speaker 1: I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but again, if you do,
Speaker 1: when I'm going to make you promise me right now
Speaker 1: that you will that you guys will work on this.
Speaker 4: We got to fix this.
Speaker 1: Members should not trade stocks.
Speaker 6: It's just like bad idea jeans, you know, for your
Speaker 6: older listeners. It's just a terrible idea. We got to
Speaker 6: change that. We got to fix a lot of stuff.
Speaker 6: And I mean, like that's what I'm a pragmatist, right, I'm,
Speaker 6: you know, one of these guys who just wants to
Speaker 6: get stuff done. And I am so disgusted by what
Speaker 6: I see in Congress now under Republican leadership. It's just
Speaker 6: so it doesn't do anything. And like that is one
Speaker 6: of the things that we got to do. But I
Speaker 6: think we got to go under the hood in a
Speaker 6: lot lot of ways and really reform Congress because it's
Speaker 6: just not up to snuff to answer the challenges of
Speaker 6: you know, the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is sort of shocking to me. And there's
Speaker 1: so many things that this Congress does, like the Appliance
Speaker 1: Messaging Bill, the anti science rhetoric. So here you are,
Speaker 1: you were at Virgin Galactic, You've confronted science and you
Speaker 1: believe in it. Talk to me about this. You know,
Speaker 1: they want to make sure that Democrats can't ban gas
Speaker 1: stoves because God forbid anything that. And Democrats don't even
Speaker 1: want to ban gastobes. But the thinking mind this was
Speaker 1: at gastoves and I have a gastobe. They league, but
Speaker 1: the idea that this Congress would then run with it
Speaker 1: as a sort of like tenant of the new Republican
Speaker 1: Party seems nuts to met.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Part of the reason, a big part of the reason
Speaker 6: why I'm running, is that I think we need more
Speaker 6: people who are literate in science and technology in Congress
Speaker 6: to address these huge challenges we've got coming down the road.
Speaker 6: And so, like, what are those challenges, ai, you know,
Speaker 6: the social media and how it affects our kids. I
Speaker 6: have an eleven year old and a thirteen year old,
Speaker 6: and I am just absolutely terrified about what's about to
Speaker 6: happen over the next ten years in their lives. Climate change,
Speaker 6: you know, healthcare. We have to have people who understand
Speaker 6: this stuff, or at least understand it enough to like
Speaker 6: address the fundamental issues and you know, I like to
Speaker 6: say my favorite movie is Apollo thirteen, of course, and
Speaker 6: there's this great scene in Apollo thirteen where you know,
Speaker 6: the spacecraft is broken. It's out in lunar orbit or
Speaker 6: whatever it is, and back on Earth, they like get
Speaker 6: their smartest engineers together and they kind of throw on
Speaker 6: the table all the stuff that they think is inside
Speaker 6: the capsule and they say like, Okay, you got to
Speaker 6: fix it, you know, with this stuff. And I kind
Speaker 6: of feel like we're at that kind of moment with
Speaker 6: American democracy. You know, it's like a failure is not
Speaker 6: an option. We got to we got to take what
Speaker 6: we have, and good people have to you know, run
Speaker 6: towards the fire. Not to mix my metaphors, but I'm
Speaker 6: also really into the wheld fire challenge we can talk about,
Speaker 6: you know, like we have to have good people run
Speaker 6: towards this dumpster fire that is the Republican led Congress
Speaker 6: to fix it. Because these challenges that we've got, whether
Speaker 6: it's technology challenges or whether it's housing or you know,
Speaker 6: clean energy or affordable healthcare, Like we got to be
Speaker 6: smart about addressing these things. And if we ignore the science,
Speaker 6: if we ignore the facts, like we're just not going
Speaker 6: to solve this stuff. And so that's that's a big
Speaker 6: part of why I'm running it is.
Speaker 1: But the Biden administration, they've done sort of incredible generational
Speaker 1: climate change legislation.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I mean they have done amazing stuff, right and
Speaker 6: you know we should give them do credit for huge,
Speaker 6: huge things that they have done.
Speaker 1: Will be the only people doing it, but yes, we'll
Speaker 1: do it right now, very unshe.
Speaker 6: At least here you and I are going to give
Speaker 6: them credit. And so I do that. I give them credit.
Speaker 6: You know, I think back to the Obama instration administration
Speaker 6: it's very similar, you know, like amazing people going into
Speaker 6: work in the federal government. And by the way, we
Speaker 6: need more people like that, right, Like we have to
Speaker 6: inspire people that you can do good work inside the government,
Speaker 6: right that you you know that it's not this thing
Speaker 6: that you should burn down, because the government is going
Speaker 6: to be a key part of the solution. I'll give
Speaker 6: you an example at NASA, we really wanted to reinvigorate
Speaker 6: NASA in a lot of ways, and not just increasing
Speaker 6: the Earth Science budget, but also sort of like figuring
Speaker 6: out how we can interact with the private sector in
Speaker 6: ways that work better, and so we made some changes
Speaker 6: under the hood, and now like great things are happening
Speaker 6: in the American space industry. We're discovering all this stuff
Speaker 6: in space, and our companies are doing really well, generating thousands,
Speaker 6: tens of the thousands of jobs all across the country.
Speaker 6: And we took some tough decisions back there. And that's
Speaker 6: what we have to do, is we have to like
Speaker 6: really be smart about these big policy problems. Certainly, the
Speaker 6: Biden administration is doing awesome work in climate and healthcare
Speaker 6: and many other things. And I'm just like terribly worried,
Speaker 6: honestly about what this fall holds and the crucial importance
Speaker 6: of Tea taking back the House not just for these issues,
Speaker 6: but also for you know, the issues around democracy. Right,
Speaker 6: Like I say to everybody, let's keep in mind, you know,
Speaker 6: these are the people going to be certifying the election
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty four. Yeah, I didn't go so well,
Speaker 6: you know, I mean, it went fine, And imagine if
Speaker 6: some of these people are in charge of that when
Speaker 6: we get to that point, we can't have that right,
Speaker 6: So we have to flip the House.
Speaker 1: One of the things I was actually thinking about when
Speaker 1: we're talking was that if Democrats don't flip the House,
Speaker 1: the idea that Mike Johnson, who Trump decided he was
Speaker 1: his guy because of the briefs he wrote about the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election.
Speaker 6: Right, absolutely, this is what's so terrifying about this scenario. Right,
Speaker 6: I mean, you play it out, and I mean you
Speaker 6: are doing such a good job of exposing these issues
Speaker 6: because we have to be really honest and focus on
Speaker 6: the reality of what we're heading towards. We're heading towards
Speaker 6: a reality where if we don't flip the House, we
Speaker 6: have a bunch of election deniers in control of the House.
Speaker 6: We're controllingscation, we have the possibility of a president who
Speaker 6: could be the end of American democracy. I wrote a
Speaker 6: note as I have a good friend of mine in
Speaker 6: Congress today, a guy named Derek Kilmer. He's a really
Speaker 6: amazing guy, represents Washington State, and he was, you know,
Speaker 6: in Congress in twenty twenty. And I remember sending him
Speaker 6: a text message in the middle of the afternoon on
Speaker 6: January sixth, and I said to him, and we were
Speaker 6: texting back and forth, he was alone in the Capitol,
Speaker 6: and you know, of course number one, I was like,
Speaker 6: you know, are you o pay. But number two, he
Speaker 6: and I were talking about the importance of getting back
Speaker 6: into the capital, you know, and certifying the presidential election.
Speaker 6: Think of you know, if we had a Republican controlled
Speaker 6: Congress or House at that moment in time, you know,
Speaker 6: and how catastrophic that would have been at that moment.
Speaker 6: So you know, this is really existential. Every election is
Speaker 6: the most important election, Molly, right, but this really really is,
Speaker 6: I think, and that's why I ran, you know, like
Speaker 6: in twenty sixteen. It was so existential, right, We all
Speaker 6: felt that concern and worry when Trump was elected, and
Speaker 6: I didn't feel like I was at a point where
Speaker 6: I could exactly step back from the company and stuff,
Speaker 6: but I knew like I had to step up. That
Speaker 6: we all have to step up. I mean, you step
Speaker 6: up every week or you know, all the time. We
Speaker 6: all have to do that right now because if we're not,
Speaker 6: but we have serious problems if we don't flip the house.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like such an existential threat. But
Speaker 1: there really are people on the other side who really
Speaker 1: believe in Trump and trump Ism And can we do
Speaker 1: two seconds on climate change? Because you worked at Virgin
Speaker 1: Galactu and you are coming from Los Angeles. Are you
Speaker 1: shocked and how quickly it's happened around us? And also
Speaker 1: are you shocked by how little people have admitted that
Speaker 1: it Like there's a sense in which there's like a
Speaker 1: faked in fatalism about it that I'm very surprised by.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I have a degree in remote sensing, you know,
Speaker 6: which is like satellite imagery of planet Earth. And you
Speaker 6: have worked at NASA, and the data that we're getting.
Speaker 1: Right now, Molly is very scary.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: You look at the temperature of the oceans and they're
Speaker 6: literally off the charts, like literally that is not an exaggeration.
Speaker 6: They are off the charts of what they have been
Speaker 6: over the last you know, ten twenty thirty years. And
Speaker 6: that's where a lot of the heat you know, of
Speaker 6: our planet is absorbed in the oceans. And if those
Speaker 6: are now shooting up. But it's methane, right, It's a
Speaker 6: lot of things. But the point is that the scary idea,
Speaker 6: and it's not yet confirmed, but the scary idea is
Speaker 6: that we may be on a new curve for warming
Speaker 6: for planet Earth. And this is the way that I
Speaker 6: bring it home for voters in my district. Because climate
Speaker 6: change can seem sort of, you know, abstract to some people.
Speaker 6: In our district, we have a huge threat from catastrophic wildfires,
Speaker 6: which of course have you know, swept the American West
Speaker 6: over the last five or ten years. And people are
Speaker 6: worried about two things. They're worried about their homes burning
Speaker 6: down and their commune unities burning up. My wife, by
Speaker 6: the way, grew up in Santa Rosa where they had
Speaker 6: a terrible fire where five thousand homes were burned. They're
Speaker 6: worried about that catastrophic risk, but they're also worried about
Speaker 6: the financial risk embedded in their insurance policies. So hundreds
Speaker 6: thousands of Californians in our district are currently getting kicked
Speaker 6: off their insurance because these private insurers are basically just
Speaker 6: leaving the state or they're refusing to write new coverage,
Speaker 6: and so what they're what our voters are being forced
Speaker 6: to do is to get on a state backed plan
Speaker 6: which costs thousands of dollars more. And what I say
Speaker 6: to folks is like, this is really climate risk becoming
Speaker 6: very real for all of us, and so we need
Speaker 6: to have smart people who can actually address these climate
Speaker 6: risk related issues. Like wildfires, like hurricanes, like other things,
Speaker 6: and you look at the other side and they don't
Speaker 6: take any of this seriously. My opponent doesn't think that
Speaker 6: climate change has anything to do with wildfires, and that
Speaker 6: kind of attitude, that blindness to the reality of our
Speaker 6: world is really catastrophic and presents huge, huge problems for
Speaker 6: our ability to use solve these issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, what do you think those numbers are?
Speaker 1: When you look at the new climate change track percentage warming?
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, it's it's quite clear we're going to exceed this
Speaker 6: one point five degree celsius thing. You know, by the way,
Speaker 6: we have got like a tactical mistake that we made
Speaker 6: was to present all these numbers in celsius. It's really
Speaker 6: like a three degree thing. But that's just like global average.
Speaker 6: A lot of places will be looking at you know,
Speaker 6: you know, ten degrees fahrenheit, fifteen degrees, twenty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: I live in New York. It goes from sixty to eighty.
Speaker 1: You know, it goes from forty to eighty. I mean,
Speaker 1: none of that is normal. We don't have snow anymore.
Speaker 6: It's really scary and so but we need to have hope,
Speaker 6: right and This is not just in the area of
Speaker 6: climate change. It's in the area of like democracy, it's
Speaker 6: in the area of all these things that we need
Speaker 6: to be thinking about. Like we need to have the
Speaker 6: hope that we can solve these challenges. And I do
Speaker 6: believe that we can, like if we get good people
Speaker 6: into government, if we get good people into Congress, you know,
Speaker 6: if we keep the White House, like we have the
Speaker 6: capacity to solve these problems nationally, globally and locally. Like
Speaker 6: you know, I talked to a lot of young voters
Speaker 6: in our districts. It's just over at community college College
Speaker 6: of the Canyons, and you know, some kids are really
Speaker 6: bummed out now and I try to get them excited
Speaker 6: that like, no, we can solve these problems, but we
Speaker 6: got to address them honestly. We got to like look
Speaker 6: at the facts and if we do that, we can
Speaker 6: we can have a positive impact.
Speaker 4: We just can't lose hope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really true. Thank you so much, George, and
Speaker 1: good luck.
Speaker 6: Thanks Molly, it's great to speak with you.
Speaker 2: A moment.
Speaker 7: Jesse Cannon, Mally Jung Fast Trump particular with the Roe
Speaker 7: versus weight, he really likes to pretend that public sentiment
Speaker 7: is something that's not what are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Trump says that a lot of people like it
Speaker 1: when he floats the idea of being a dictator, again,
Speaker 1: I don't like it. It's bad. American democracy is fragile.
Speaker 1: Trump said that a lot of people like it, he
Speaker 1: told the Times. This is from this Time magazine article
Speaker 1: which has Trump talking about deportation camps. They're not for you,
Speaker 1: or maybe not for you yet. And if states want
Speaker 1: to monitor women's cycles, he's okay with that. Well. He
Speaker 1: also wants you to know that people love his authoritarian rhetoric.
Speaker 1: And not since the Civil War have freedom and democracy
Speaker 1: been under insult at home as they are today because
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. Trump is willing to throw away the
Speaker 1: very idea of American democracy and we're seeing it right here.
Speaker 1: And for that Trump's authoritarian leaning and his belief that
Speaker 1: people like it, that is our moment of our gray.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics, and every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening,