Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well,
Speaker 1: we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's
Speaker 1: best minds, and sharks are swimming down the streets of
Speaker 1: Fort Myers, Florida. What an excellent show we have today. First,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and he's
Speaker 1: gonna talk to us about his concerns about authoritarianism on
Speaker 1: the rise in America and of course income inequality in America.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Susan Glazer and Peter Baker about
Speaker 1: their new book, The Divider Trump in the White House,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna talk about some of the more interesting
Speaker 1: things they found writing this book. But first we have
Speaker 1: the one and only Dhalia Lithwick, who's of course an
Speaker 1: editor at Slate and the author of her latest book,
Speaker 1: Lady Justice, Women, The Law and the Battle to Save America.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Best Politics, Dahlia. Thank you, Lolly, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. We're so happy to have you. The
Speaker 1: book is Lady Justice. We're gonna talk about other stuff too,
Speaker 1: but let's first talk about the book. So you sort
Speaker 1: of find the women who were the actual bulwark against
Speaker 1: Trump and his assault on democracy, right, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think I tried to. And there were, you know,
Speaker 1: thousands and tens of thousands of women lawyers who were
Speaker 1: kind of holding up the sky for the four Trump
Speaker 1: years and the years that have followed, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to tell the stories of a couple of them,
Speaker 1: both to say, holy cow, we sometimes don't take credit
Speaker 1: for the winds and all the ways in which Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was like trammeled in courts, but also to say
Speaker 1: we can keep doing this. It's hard, but these women
Speaker 1: are all around us. They're doing it every day. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different women in this story, but
Speaker 1: let's talk about Sally Yates because that is sort of
Speaker 1: one of the clearest moment of like the kind of
Speaker 1: a woman, you know, sort of doing what she could
Speaker 1: to try to stop Trump. Can you talk about that? So,
Speaker 1: Sally Yates was the acting Attorney General under Donald Trump
Speaker 1: in the first days of his administration. I think she
Speaker 1: knew she was just going to be a holdover from
Speaker 1: the Obama administration and a placeholder Jeff Sessions was going
Speaker 1: to take the job. She thought it would be just
Speaker 1: long lunches and not much action, and then just days
Speaker 1: out of the gate, she gets just shellacked with the
Speaker 1: travel ban, which was not sent to her for vetting.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew about it. She read about it on her
Speaker 1: phone like the rest of us. And she was supposed
Speaker 1: to be sending d o J lawyers into courtrooms to
Speaker 1: defend it. And she felt that it was rooted in
Speaker 1: religious animus towards Muslims, in violation of the Constitution. She
Speaker 1: felt that it violated due process protections of the Constitution.
Speaker 1: And she did the thing that not nearly enough people did,
Speaker 1: which is just say, oh, hell no, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to put the in perimeter of the Justice to partment
Speaker 1: on a thing that I think is unlawful. Most of
Speaker 1: the people either got fired, like from the toilet, or
Speaker 1: they you know, wrote bestsellers saying that they were heroes,
Speaker 1: or they slunk off into the night. But I think
Speaker 1: for me, she is kind of a emblematic of what
Speaker 1: rule of law actually means, which is protecting not just
Speaker 1: the law, but the integrity of the Justice Department, even
Speaker 1: at immense personal cost. Yeah, that is a really good point.
Speaker 1: I just am curious, like what did happen to her
Speaker 1: in the end, Like what does she do now? She
Speaker 1: in private practice? Yeah, she's at a firm, and she
Speaker 1: does a whole bunch of work on issues that matter
Speaker 1: to her, including mental health stuff and depression. But I
Speaker 1: think that she is another example of this phenomenon. I
Speaker 1: trace in the book Stacy Abrahams, who is the very
Speaker 1: last chapter in the book, you know, was asked if
Speaker 1: she wanted to be Biden's running mate. She refused, you know,
Speaker 1: asked if she was interested in a seat on the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Wasn't interested, Just kind of wants to go
Speaker 1: back and do her job. And Stacy Abrahams is that.
Speaker 1: And I think Sally Ates is that. And a lot
Speaker 1: of these people, like given the opportunity to scale up
Speaker 1: and get super famous and beyond mugs and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: topebags just chose to stay in the trenches and keep working.
Speaker 1: Would you go for the mugs and the toe bags
Speaker 1: or would you stay in the trenches and keep working.
Speaker 1: I'm quite leary of the bugs and the toe bag.
Speaker 1: I had an RBG advent candle, uh that someone had
Speaker 1: given to me that that I in facted um Burn
Speaker 1: when she died. But I think that the kind of
Speaker 1: mugs and the toe bags and the candles and the
Speaker 1: whole Robert Mueller is gonna save us. Now, Adam Schiff
Speaker 1: is gonna save us. Oh wait, Mark Garland is gonna
Speaker 1: save us. Is just a way of not like digging
Speaker 1: in and doing the work. I mean, I like mugs.
Speaker 1: I think they're good for coffee, But I just think
Speaker 1: democracy is not super well served by the top bag
Speaker 1: industrial row complex. Yeah. I think that's the last three
Speaker 1: five seven years have taught us anything. Right In this book,
Speaker 1: you grapple with your own I want to say kind
Speaker 1: of revelations about me too. Will you talk to us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that? Is that okay to ask
Speaker 1: you about it? Yeah? No, I wrote about it. I'm
Speaker 1: only sort of orthogonally talking about me too. I'm certainly
Speaker 1: in the chapter about it talking about a federal judge,
Speaker 1: Alex Kazynski, who was the chief judge of the Ninth
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals. He was a famous feeder judge.
Speaker 1: If you clerk for him, he had a really good
Speaker 1: chance of going on to clerk at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh was one of his clerks. And I just
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that you know, it was an
Speaker 1: open secret in the federal judiciary and law schools around
Speaker 1: the country. Everybody knew that he showed porn to his clerks,
Speaker 1: that he spoke inappropriately to female clerks, that he had
Speaker 1: this very hyper sexualized way of talking to women, and
Speaker 1: nobody did anything. For years and years. There was just
Speaker 1: this kind of culture of you know, oh, boys will
Speaker 1: be boys. And in seventeen, one of his former clerk's,
Speaker 1: Heidi Bond, came forward and finally on the record, said
Speaker 1: what had happened to her. Another woman who clerked for
Speaker 1: a different judge on the Ninth Circuit, Emily Murphy, came forward.
Speaker 1: Eventually Leah Lipman, a bunch of other women came forward.
Speaker 1: And I had to grapple with the fact that I
Speaker 1: had known all this. I'd known because as a clerk,
Speaker 1: I knew it on the Ninth Circuit, but I've known
Speaker 1: as a reporter and as somebody who sat next to
Speaker 1: him on panels. And I ended up writing a piece
Speaker 1: at the time putting my name on the list of
Speaker 1: women who were willing to put their names forward, but
Speaker 1: with just deep sadness about the fact that we keep
Speaker 1: these secrets and that years later people will still say
Speaker 1: to me, oh, everybody knew about him, and my responses
Speaker 1: will put why did it require a handful of women
Speaker 1: to do something? And so it looks like it's a
Speaker 1: meat to chapter. And at the time, I think it
Speaker 1: was perceived as a me too, and it was much
Speaker 1: more just me thinking through power structures in which we
Speaker 1: all become complicit and hope somebody else does the work
Speaker 1: to fix it. Right. No, it's true. I just relate
Speaker 1: to that so much. I mean, I think some of
Speaker 1: it too, as we were of a generation where we were,
Speaker 1: or at least I feel it was not clear to
Speaker 1: me that we had that kind of power. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. And at the same time, somewhere in my
Speaker 1: piece that I wrote, when I finally kind of put
Speaker 1: my name in as somebody who could attest to this behavior,
Speaker 1: I said, how is it possible that I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: almost fifty, I'm at the peak of my career, I
Speaker 1: get invited to brief Supreme Court justices and I still
Speaker 1: didn't think I had the power like who does. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot in the book about the failures of
Speaker 1: me too and how we need to have actual processes,
Speaker 1: not just for the Alex Kazynski's, but for the Brett
Speaker 1: Kavanaughs and everyone else. But I think that there is
Speaker 1: a piece of it that asking Christine Blasi Ford to
Speaker 1: all the work of coming forward, asking Anita Hill to
Speaker 1: do all the work, and then failing to support them
Speaker 1: because power structures won't change, is such a betrayal of
Speaker 1: what they tried to do. Oh yeah, I mean such
Speaker 1: a betrayal. And I think about that all the time.
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it, but I think there's more
Speaker 1: coming in the world of brick avanag that will that
Speaker 1: I think will bear out some interesting stuff. I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying is so important. Now talk to me
Speaker 1: about We are coming up on another fucking Supreme Court session. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be I think. I think that is the
Speaker 1: correct descriptor. I think that you've nailed it. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that went wrong. I feel like
Speaker 1: you and I talked about this in the summer, but
Speaker 1: Dobbs kind of took all the attention last term. It's
Speaker 1: not that Dobbs was inconsequential overturning Rope, but as a consequence,
Speaker 1: I think we missed that. Oh, they massively expanded gun rights. Oh,
Speaker 1: they massively shrank the wall between church and state. Oh,
Speaker 1: they tried to kneecap the e p A like it
Speaker 1: was such a bad terror. They were all terrible, and
Speaker 1: I think that all of the stuff they didn't manage
Speaker 1: to get to laster. They're doing this term and so
Speaker 1: affirmative action is on the docket in higher education, this
Speaker 1: voting rights case out of Alabama, the existential voting case,
Speaker 1: that is this independent state legislature doctrine that would give
Speaker 1: state legislatures complete and total, unchecked plenary power to decide
Speaker 1: election procedures. So all of this is, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a follow on to the Cake Baker case um of
Speaker 1: somebody different, a web designer refusing services to same sex marriages.
Speaker 1: So it's almost nothing that isn't on the table, and
Speaker 1: they have not by any means finished the docket. They're
Speaker 1: gonna take a run at the Indian Child Welfare Act,
Speaker 1: so there's very little, and the Clean Water Act. How
Speaker 1: much do you want to cry? It's terrible, And we've
Speaker 1: got this kind of six three supermajority juggernaut that I
Speaker 1: once believed, in error with approval rating might be a
Speaker 1: little reluctant to hit the gas and go. And I
Speaker 1: was wrong, and I will continue to be wrong because
Speaker 1: I don't think they care at all about approval ratings
Speaker 1: or what the rest of us say or think about them. No,
Speaker 1: I mean they're out of control. I'll be curious to see.
Speaker 1: And I think curious is not the right phrase because
Speaker 1: the stakes are so high. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: make it sound like I'm horse race journalism journalism ming
Speaker 1: here because I'm not. And I understand that people's lives
Speaker 1: and livelihoods and and all of their rights are on
Speaker 1: the table here for the Supreme Court to funk with.
Speaker 1: But I will be interested to see if Republicans get
Speaker 1: hurt in the mid terms by Dobbs, if then Roberts
Speaker 1: is able to take more control of the Court or not.
Speaker 1: You know, those guys know they have a lifetime appointment.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And I think the misapprehension we all have
Speaker 1: is that that John Roberts has some power to take.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think he's on the losing end. He's
Speaker 1: right on these five fours when there are big questions
Speaker 1: about the legitimacy of the court. Hillside with the liberals,
Speaker 1: but then he's lost. And I think that this five
Speaker 1: justice block, you know, with occasional defections from Amy Coney,
Speaker 1: Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh is completely unbothered by the things
Speaker 1: that worry John Roberts, these legitimacy questions, public opinion questions.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that Sam Alito flying out
Speaker 1: to Rome after Dobbs to spike the football is a
Speaker 1: pretty good and not to mention Clarence Thomas his wife,
Speaker 1: who is you know, apparently immune. I just don't think
Speaker 1: that even tiny adjustments to their conduct that they could
Speaker 1: make so as not to look like they're out of control,
Speaker 1: they don't make them, right. I mean, it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: to see. I mean, I think that if Democrats hold that,
Speaker 1: you know how Senate and the presidency, then Biden is
Speaker 1: going to have to do something about this court and
Speaker 1: he is going to hate it. I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because he convened his Blue Panel Court Reform Commission, and
Speaker 1: they met and they studied, and they produced an enormous
Speaker 1: and I think worthy piece of research about what could
Speaker 1: be done, and Biden still won't talk about court expansion,
Speaker 1: and nothing has been done with the recommendations. As best
Speaker 1: as I understand, I think it was just kind of
Speaker 1: an exercise in kicking the can down the road. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a meaningful exercise in now
Speaker 1: we are you know, there's some momentum in some public
Speaker 1: will to do something. Now we're going to seriously and
Speaker 1: meticulously have a conversation about what can be done. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be adding seats. There's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of you you could do, term limits, you can do.
Speaker 1: You know, there there are very smart people who are
Speaker 1: making arguments about stripping the Court of the ability to
Speaker 1: for instance, you know, change voting rules. There are things
Speaker 1: that can be done up to and including I think
Speaker 1: some of the strongest material in the Commission report is
Speaker 1: about ethics reforms and transparency and not like doing crap
Speaker 1: on the shadow docket at midnight and not failing to explain.
Speaker 1: So this is all stuff that we should be seriously
Speaker 1: talking about, and we should have been talking about it
Speaker 1: ten years ago. But I really do hope that for
Speaker 1: people who feel as though, oh my god, we're just screwed,
Speaker 1: you know, we live in servitude to the six to
Speaker 1: three court for all time, can understand that there are
Speaker 1: really smart proposals out there that we're not talking about
Speaker 1: very much. Yeah, I hope that that is really number
Speaker 1: one on the agenda if Democrats can keep the branches though,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll say, I'm just curious what other sort
Speaker 1: of you know. I always ask people in this because
Speaker 1: I actually am really interested in this. As someone who
Speaker 1: has written books before. I was feel like, when you
Speaker 1: write a book, you have this, you kind of learn
Speaker 1: from it. I mean, what did you learn from writing
Speaker 1: this book? I think that when I started this book
Speaker 1: was seventeen and I just wanted to create kind of
Speaker 1: a historical record, right to say this happened. It was terrible.
Speaker 1: These amazing women fought back in one and I think
Speaker 1: in a sense, I thought I was just recording history,
Speaker 1: you know, putting down markers about some big legal fights
Speaker 1: that shouldn't have been one but were one. And then
Speaker 1: I think Dobbs happened, and I realized I wasn't just
Speaker 1: writing history. I was writing what I hope is a
Speaker 1: blueprint for going forward. And you know, each of the
Speaker 1: women that I profile, first of all, was not super
Speaker 1: confident she was doing the right thing, but didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of time to workshop. It just leapt in
Speaker 1: some of them. I mean Robbie Kaplan and Karen Dunn
Speaker 1: who fought the Nazis and white supremacists who invaded Charlottesville.
Speaker 1: It took them four years to get their case to trial,
Speaker 1: but they won and they got a twenty six million
Speaker 1: dollar judgment, and it was hard work. They dusted off
Speaker 1: the KKK Act, you know, which now as being used
Speaker 1: against January six insurrectionists. So I think that what I
Speaker 1: thought I was writing was history, and what I hope
Speaker 1: I am writing is some version of the playbook, which
Speaker 1: is we have power. Democracy is not without these amazing
Speaker 1: levers and that you know, the last three chapters are
Speaker 1: all about vote suppression and gerrymandering and all the things
Speaker 1: that we would need to fix to have a meaningful
Speaker 1: representative democracy. But they're all fixable. And I think what
Speaker 1: I was hoping is that folks would read it and say,
Speaker 1: it just is a choice to feel like you are
Speaker 1: powerless and that you've lost. It is also a choice
Speaker 1: to do what all these women did in the face
Speaker 1: of awful, awful you know, family separation policies and the
Speaker 1: Muslim ban, and they just were like, no, I went
Speaker 1: to law school, I'm super smart, I have a blue book,
Speaker 1: I have a pen, I'm going to court. And so
Speaker 1: I think I want this to be a book that
Speaker 1: kind of bolsters us in this moment of feeling really
Speaker 1: fragile and helps us look around at those women in
Speaker 1: Kansas and the women in Michigan who got abortion, you know,
Speaker 1: onto a ballot initiative. It's everywhere, and I want us
Speaker 1: to feel that before we make claims about being powerless
Speaker 1: under the law, we can realize it also could be
Speaker 1: an instrument for tremendous focus and power, and that we
Speaker 1: really have to pick it up and use it that way. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's really important. I have to say,
Speaker 1: as like the daughter of a feminist, it's fucking to
Speaker 1: say this sentence. Just every time, it just I die
Speaker 1: a little bit. So we're in post row America. There's
Speaker 1: no world we never get row back, right, there's never
Speaker 1: there's no way to unfunck this right, not unless we
Speaker 1: do some of that serious structural court reform stuff we
Speaker 1: talked about. But I think again, you know, in Michigan
Speaker 1: and California, in New York, I think we are seeing
Speaker 1: efforts to shore up reproductive freedom. And I guess I
Speaker 1: would also say, as long as we don't care about
Speaker 1: state houses and Jerrymander red states, and you know the
Speaker 1: fact that Alabama is on the docket this year for Jerrymander,
Speaker 1: all of these red states. Again, the stuff is fixable.
Speaker 1: It's just like structural democracy work. It's eye crossing, lee boring.
Speaker 1: But I think that putting all of our eggs in
Speaker 1: the i'man at Ruth Bader games were exchanged in a
Speaker 1: retired basket is like, not democracy work. It's just grumpiness.
Speaker 1: So I'm just for like, you know what, if you
Speaker 1: care about your you know, state houses in Michigan, now,
Speaker 1: that's a good time to vote like it. I think
Speaker 1: that that's how we get unfucked. And it's not glamorous,
Speaker 1: and there's no toepag. Well maybe there's a toag. I
Speaker 1: think we should we should brand the that's how we
Speaker 1: get unfucked toepag and then you and I can retire
Speaker 1: with millions in a beach house. Okay, yes, because because honestly,
Speaker 1: there's no better way to make money then through toad bags.
Speaker 1: That in podcasting, I think are the two sees the cornerstones.
Speaker 1: Please come back and join us soon. It's always a joy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Bernie Sanders is the senior
Speaker 1: Senator from Vermont. Welcome to Fast Politics. Senator Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: Great to be with you. I'm so excited to have
Speaker 1: you here. The first thing we have this midterm less
Speaker 1: than six weeks away, Republican Party seems to go have
Speaker 1: gone full on authoritarian. Can you talk to me about
Speaker 1: the anxiety that the rest of us have. Well, the
Speaker 1: anxiety is justified. I think you know, what we are
Speaker 1: debating right now in this country is not healthcare, education,
Speaker 1: or even climate change. What we're talking about, in the
Speaker 1: deeper sense is whether or not the United States remains
Speaker 1: the democracy and whether we continue having free and fair
Speaker 1: and open elections. And clearly our republic in colleagues are
Speaker 1: looking to countries like Hungary and other authoritarian societies to
Speaker 1: try to undermine the very foundations of American democracy. So
Speaker 1: if the question is should we be concerned, the answer
Speaker 1: is absolutely we should be. So this Electoral count Act
Speaker 1: is in the Senate right now. It has some Republican support.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that auto, Well, yeah, Look, I
Speaker 1: think the goal here is to prevent another January sixth,
Speaker 1: where you have you know, this this process by which
Speaker 1: the Senate has to confirm the election results state by state,
Speaker 1: and this hopes to address that. But why would say MAULDI.
Speaker 1: What is a deeper question right now is for us
Speaker 1: to ask a very simple question that is not asked
Speaker 1: often enough, and that is, how does it happen that
Speaker 1: millions of working class people used to support Democratic candidates
Speaker 1: back in f DRS time, Harry Truman's time, JF Case time,
Speaker 1: are now voting Republican And how does that occur at
Speaker 1: a time when you have Republican party which is pretty
Speaker 1: open say hey, we want to cut Medicare and Medicaid
Speaker 1: and the Affordable Care Act. We want to throw millions
Speaker 1: of people off of the health insurance. I haven't want
Speaker 1: to give huge tax breaks to the rich. We don't
Speaker 1: even recognize in some cases the reality of climate tention.
Speaker 1: How does it happen that you're seeing a significant number
Speaker 1: of white working class Americans supporting Republicans, more and more
Speaker 1: Latinos supporting Republicans, and a growing number of flax supporting Republicans.
Speaker 1: And I think that takes us to an area which
Speaker 1: again does not get the discussion that it needs, and
Speaker 1: that is who is speaking up for the needs of
Speaker 1: a declining middle class, who is speaking off for a
Speaker 1: struggling working class, who is speaking off with people in
Speaker 1: our society who has the guts to take on a
Speaker 1: Bigner class which is doing phenomenally well, which is bouring
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars intellecttions, where we are seeing
Speaker 1: an unprecedented level of concentration of ownership, where you've got
Speaker 1: three world ree firms that the major stockholders, and hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of American companies. So you're looking at an
Speaker 1: economy now, in a society in which the people on
Speaker 1: top of doing phenomenally well, ordinary people are falling further behind.
Speaker 1: And they look at Washington, d C. And no one
Speaker 1: is talking about their needs, not knowing, but you know,
Speaker 1: relatively few people. And when you have that kind of
Speaker 1: situation and you know, I'm second top of politics. Give
Speaker 1: me somebody who's gonna get something done, a strong and
Speaker 1: I don't care about the courts, I don't care about
Speaker 1: the law, I don't care about rules, I don't care
Speaker 1: about democracy. I want something money. And I think at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if we're gonna save American democracy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need to have a government responding to the
Speaker 1: needs of working people who today significant degree field ignoyed.
Speaker 1: One of the things you did really well with their
Speaker 1: presidential runs. Is that you were able to energize working people.
Speaker 1: How do Democrats win those voters? Well, you don't what
Speaker 1: They're gonna have to have the guts to tell the truth.
Speaker 1: That's the thought. And if you're going around thinking, what
Speaker 1: are the economy is doing really good and we have
Speaker 1: accomplished this and we have accompanied you know what, Molly,
Speaker 1: nobody believes that. What they see is they can't afford childcare,
Speaker 1: they can't afford healthcare, they can't afford to the college,
Speaker 1: they can't afford housing. Their jobs. You know, maybe they're
Speaker 1: making twelve fifteen dollars an hour. You can't live on
Speaker 1: that if you're old. You know that half of the
Speaker 1: people sixty five or older in this country are trying
Speaker 1: to get buying twenty dollars a year. Can't do that.
Speaker 1: So you gotta be honest and say, look, this is
Speaker 1: what is going on. We are the richest country in
Speaker 1: the history of the world, but it is not acceptable.
Speaker 1: You've got the three people are more wealth than the
Speaker 1: bottom half of American society. Yes, the Democratic body is
Speaker 1: prepared to take on the billionaire class and create an
Speaker 1: economy me that works for all. Now that sounds like
Speaker 1: simple rhetoric. It is not. What that means is think
Speaker 1: about what America would be like, Molly, if you had
Speaker 1: a healthcare system to guarantee healthcare to all people, that
Speaker 1: did what virtually every other major country does. When you
Speaker 1: go to a doctor, when you go to the hospital,
Speaker 1: you know what your bill is? In Canada right now,
Speaker 1: you spent two months in the hospital. You come out,
Speaker 1: do you know what your bill is? You know? Zero?
Speaker 1: It's zero, not a nickel. All right. Half of the
Speaker 1: bankruptcies in this country are associated with healthcare. You have
Speaker 1: forty five million people, and I know if the president
Speaker 1: is trying to deal with dealing with student that kids
Speaker 1: can't afford to go to college. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: to answer your question, the Democratic Party has got to
Speaker 1: make a fundamental decision. Which side are they on? You
Speaker 1: really can't collect a lot of money from the wealthy
Speaker 1: and the powerful and super pecks, and let's say, on
Speaker 1: on the side of working class people. We haven't been
Speaker 1: able to raise the money minimum, which we haven't been
Speaker 1: able to reform at dysfunctional healthcare system. We haven't done
Speaker 1: zip on childcare, pre K pretty elderly, all right, So
Speaker 1: we in this country have the potential. This is not
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. You know, we have the potential to create
Speaker 1: a decent life for all people. But over the last
Speaker 1: fifty years, real wages for the arborage of American work
Speaker 1: are actually lower inflation accounted wages than they worked fifty years.
Speaker 1: So you wonder why people are angry where they're given
Speaker 1: up on government. I think it's not us a lot
Speaker 1: to do with it. You have done a lot though,
Speaker 1: especially right now. I mean, I think you've seen that
Speaker 1: that there really is a sort of ground swell towards
Speaker 1: that Democrats need to address these issues because Republicans have
Speaker 1: completely just it's not even clear what they're doing. But
Speaker 1: I'm wondering why Democrats are better at messaging this. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a question of you know, then you're dealing with
Speaker 1: the media out there, and you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: media which is owned by I think something like the
Speaker 1: media owned by eight large media conglomerates, and you know what,
Speaker 1: these media enomerates are not particularly interested in talking about
Speaker 1: lowering the cost of prescription drugs. They get billions of
Speaker 1: dollars and TV ads from you know, the pharmaceutical industry, etcetera. Etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's not only messaging, it's standing up and doing the
Speaker 1: right thing. In my view, if we had been able
Speaker 1: to pass Build Back Better, which would have been a
Speaker 1: transformative piece of legislation dealing with everything from childcare to
Speaker 1: the needs of senior citizens, what you would have seen
Speaker 1: is millions of people said, Hey, guess what I didn't
Speaker 1: know This government can actually do something for me. Now
Speaker 1: I'm an old person, I can go to the dentist
Speaker 1: and medicare covers that I'm a working person, and my god,
Speaker 1: I don't have to pay more than seven percent of
Speaker 1: my income on childcare. I'm a college student. I get
Speaker 1: free tuition at community college. I'm a senior citizen, and
Speaker 1: I can now stay at home, not be forced into
Speaker 1: a nursing home because we're dealing with home healthcare for
Speaker 1: I'm a young person, and find me. The government has
Speaker 1: got to create, you know, millions of jobs transforming our
Speaker 1: energy system away from fossil fuel. So what I am
Speaker 1: saying is these are really difficult and crazy times for
Speaker 1: this country in the world. I mean, if you're dealing
Speaker 1: with a never ending pandemic, you're dealing with you know,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine, with dealing with climate and people are very
Speaker 1: exacerbated and nervous, and they depressed in many ways. But
Speaker 1: what we need right now is a government that is
Speaker 1: clear about which side is on. And if you do that,
Speaker 1: I think there's a chance, a chance that we can
Speaker 1: get people involved in the political process, whether they're black
Speaker 1: or the white, or Latino or whatever they may be,
Speaker 1: and say, you know what government can work for me.
Speaker 1: I don't need, you know, to the way with democracy.
Speaker 1: When you saw this CBO report that one the richest
Speaker 1: one present now owns a third of the wealth in
Speaker 1: the US, you said it was scene. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about that a little more. I mean, I also think
Speaker 1: it's completely just beyond the well, you know, here's a
Speaker 1: funny thing. And you know, I look at the world
Speaker 1: a little bit different than many of my colleagues. If
Speaker 1: somebody walks into a store this afternoon today and shoot somebody,
Speaker 1: everybody says this is terrible. You say it's terble. I
Speaker 1: say it's terrible and terrible people around shooting people. And
Speaker 1: yet you have in an economic system in which, for example,
Speaker 1: you've got drug companies raising their prices so high the
Speaker 1: thousands of people die every other very conscious of that influence.
Speaker 1: Influence is one example, but there are many other examples.
Speaker 1: People die in this country because I can't afford prescription
Speaker 1: drugs while the drug companies make tens of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars in profit for you in terms of income and wealth.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, it is immoral and wrong for somebody
Speaker 1: to shoot somebody. Everybody agrees with it. Is it immoral
Speaker 1: or wrong that we have a system in which three
Speaker 1: people one to three literally own more wealth than the
Speaker 1: bottom half, with the top one percent now owns more
Speaker 1: wealth in the bottom holds one third of the wealth
Speaker 1: of America? Is that morally wrong? And the answer is yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. I just looked to somebody active in California,
Speaker 1: forty thousand people as we speak, homeless in the city
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, forty thousand people, and you've got the
Speaker 1: one percent owning, uh, you know, a third of the
Speaker 1: wealth of this country. That is immoral and that is wrong,
Speaker 1: and we've got to be clear about it. It is wrong.
Speaker 1: That's sixty thousand people every year die because they don't
Speaker 1: go to a doctor because they don't have health insurance,
Speaker 1: so they're under insured. That's morally unacceptable. But we don't
Speaker 1: talk about it in those terms, while the insurance companies
Speaker 1: make zillions of dollars every year in profit. So what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is you've got to talk truth to the
Speaker 1: American people. Not everybody's gonna agree with you. Some people say, well,
Speaker 1: that's the free emperprise system, that's capitalism. Isn't that great that?
Speaker 1: You know? Elon Musk is worth, you know, eighteen trillion
Speaker 1: dollars wherever he's worth. He's going off to in his
Speaker 1: spaceship in someplace. Fine, but got government subsidies, Ah, no kidding,
Speaker 1: And so do all of them. And they use some cases.
Speaker 1: You have billionaires not paying a nickel in federal taxes,
Speaker 1: you know, and they got lobbyist level capital hill youre
Speaker 1: trying to protect their interests. But you've got to be
Speaker 1: honest with the American people and say, look, the political
Speaker 1: system is clearly corrupt because billionaires. You know, recently, some
Speaker 1: Republican guy you announced he is giving the Republicans one
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars, yes, for the Judicial Action League
Speaker 1: or something, and that money is going to be spent
Speaker 1: all over the place. So you know, you have billionaires
Speaker 1: buying elections, billionaires becoming much ritual working people, pull up behind.
Speaker 1: And then you've got this technological revolution that we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of right now, and it's going to displace
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Does anyone care that somebody's gonna
Speaker 1: be replaced by a role but what happens does that
Speaker 1: work makes those decisions. So my point is that in
Speaker 1: this country, the truth is, Yes, you can provide a
Speaker 1: decent standard of living to old people. Yes we can
Speaker 1: have healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. Yes
Speaker 1: you can make public cologist and university's tuition free. Yes
Speaker 1: you can have a much much fairer level of income
Speaker 1: and wealth distribution than we currently have. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of where I'm coming from. Tell the truth
Speaker 1: to the American people about what's going on. Have the
Speaker 1: guts to stand up that the big money interests who
Speaker 1: today have enormous power, and the Democrats are gonna have
Speaker 1: to make that choice. And I think if you don't
Speaker 1: stand up with working people, they will see right through you,
Speaker 1: and uh, we've got to decide which side we're on.
Speaker 1: And if we do that, I think we develop good
Speaker 1: policy and it's good politics as well. This Global minimum
Speaker 1: corporate tax, which is now nowhere that seemed to me
Speaker 1: like a moment where we could really see corporations paying
Speaker 1: their fair share. Fuck, you got this scandal of situation
Speaker 1: that American corporations and corporations that every major country on
Speaker 1: Earth are parking their money in the Cayman Islands and
Speaker 1: Muta and in all the tax countries which allow them
Speaker 1: to do that. So all over the world, governments are
Speaker 1: searching for money to deal with the needs of working people,
Speaker 1: poor people, and you have these billionaires of talking that
Speaker 1: money in tax havens all over the world. And this
Speaker 1: is an issue that governments around the world are going
Speaker 1: to have to deal with. Absolutely. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Senator Sanders. I hope you'll come back all right, my pleasure, Molly,
Speaker 1: take care, keep up the good work. Susan Glasser and
Speaker 1: Peter Baker are the authors of The Divider. Trump in
Speaker 1: the White House. Welcome to Fast Politics. Susan Glasser and
Speaker 1: Peter Baker. Thanks for having us. It's great to be
Speaker 1: with you. Milly. Let's first talk about the book and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about how the world is ending.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Divider. Blame to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you decided to write this book. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the truth is is that everybody in some
Speaker 1: ways wants to move on, of course, from the Trump thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, Trump is not just history. He's our
Speaker 1: present as well as apparently possibly our future. And I
Speaker 1: think Peter and I felt like it was really important
Speaker 1: to establish as much of the historical record as possible
Speaker 1: Trump in the White House. You know, every presidency has
Speaker 1: a book like this, right, a sort of a definitive
Speaker 1: first draft account of the administration. Luke Canan great journalists,
Speaker 1: did that for the Ronald Reagan presidency. Our colleague John
Speaker 1: Harris did that after the two terms of Bill Clinton.
Speaker 1: And you know, in this case it seemed even more urgent. Right.
Speaker 1: We really felt that all of the catastrophic ending of
Speaker 1: the Trump presidency January six and like, had obscured that
Speaker 1: there was this four year history of building up to it.
Speaker 1: And we felt that if you really wanted to understand
Speaker 1: January six, you had to go back to January seventeen
Speaker 1: and all the days in between. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: some of the more shocking stuff that you you sort
Speaker 1: of knew but that you were I mean, the COVID
Speaker 1: stuff is really interesting. Do you want to talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit? You know, One thing is really
Speaker 1: interesting was, even though we spent four years covering this
Speaker 1: White House, I was a beat reporter, Susan as a colonist,
Speaker 1: we really want to go back and find out what
Speaker 1: we didn't know at the time. So this is three
Speaker 1: hundred interviews we did after he left office, and one
Speaker 1: of the things we discovered there was a whole lot
Speaker 1: more information about stories that we thought we knew, as
Speaker 1: well as stories that we didn't know. I mean there
Speaker 1: from the from the serious to the sublime. I mean,
Speaker 1: just this small example right is is the Green Landing.
Speaker 1: Remember when Trump talked about I was gonna buy again.
Speaker 1: Everybody sort of assume as kind of a one off,
Speaker 1: you know, random thought, But in terms, this has been
Speaker 1: going on for a couple of years by that point,
Speaker 1: because his friend Ron Louder, the billionaire from New York,
Speaker 1: planted this idea his head. It went so far that
Speaker 1: they even came up with an options memo for how
Speaker 1: to do it, maybe even the least back option or
Speaker 1: something like that. So there are things that we didn't
Speaker 1: know about, stories that we thought we knew in the
Speaker 1: story we had no idea about, you know, like how
Speaker 1: his own staff was so disturbed by him, that John Kelly,
Speaker 1: his second chief of staff, bought a book talk about
Speaker 1: how Trump's mental health was so unstable in order to
Speaker 1: try to understand the commander in chief he was serving,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty amazing thing. And then this lastly,
Speaker 1: list this letter that Mark Milly, the general who was
Speaker 1: a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote to
Speaker 1: resign at one point when he was so bothered by Trump,
Speaker 1: so disturbed by Trump that he said that you're doing
Speaker 1: great and irreparable harm to our country that's never been
Speaker 1: out before. So that's the value in going back and
Speaker 1: doing a book like this. In our view, Can we
Speaker 1: talk about the Avanka and Jared's story. Those two are
Speaker 1: the quintessential Trump characters, right, Uh, the grifters who present
Speaker 1: themselves at all times as sort of this, the children
Speaker 1: who passes the grown ups in the room, right, but
Speaker 1: at the same time somehow managed to absent themselves when
Speaker 1: Trump creates the biggest crisis you know, of his presidency
Speaker 1: in our lifetime of democratic legitimacy. Right. You know, there's
Speaker 1: just this incredible scene two days after the election when
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner wakes up and says, you have Anka, Hey, honey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna move to Florida. You know, we're done, We're
Speaker 1: out here. Never mind the whole election challenge thing. And
Speaker 1: they know full well, of course that there was no
Speaker 1: rigged election, that there was no massive voter fraud. But
Speaker 1: instead of doing what they claimed all along to be doing,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, being responsible at least semi responsible
Speaker 1: actress in the room with Trump, they just throw up
Speaker 1: their hands and say, well, you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to pick Rudy, that's fine. And it's just an incredible
Speaker 1: moment of the callousness. There's this. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the reporting I thought Molly in this book really underscored
Speaker 1: how how how the method worked. And and Jared Kushner
Speaker 1: used to brag to others, Uh, well, I know how
Speaker 1: to manage my father in law. And he even had
Speaker 1: a ratio that he talked about, uh, two to one,
Speaker 1: two to one good news for any little tiny bit
Speaker 1: of bad news that you had to give the boss. Uh.
Speaker 1: He would put five points on any pole that he
Speaker 1: told me about. Meanwhile, you know, Trump hands and responsibilities
Speaker 1: for such a wide ranging thing. They talk about him
Speaker 1: in Jared and the White House is the Secretary of everything,
Speaker 1: you know, and yet of course he had a background
Speaker 1: and nothing. Uh, And it's just it's it's extraordinary that
Speaker 1: these two were allowed to play the role they were.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump seriously considered putting Ivanka on the ticket. We
Speaker 1: just thought that was a joke, but he hed said
Speaker 1: it again and again to his advisors. In twenties. Sixteen later,
Speaker 1: he seriously thought about naming Ivanka ambassador to the U
Speaker 1: n or President of the World Brank World. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh everything, by the way, I keep saying,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh because people tell me horrible stuff. But wow,
Speaker 1: Ivanka Trump president of the World Bank. That is something
Speaker 1: Trump sometimes would undercut, Jarrett, Can you talk about that.
Speaker 1: That's sort of hilarious. Yeah, I know he did even
Speaker 1: and and he would just say barbed things about him
Speaker 1: and meetings in the wide houses and well, I just Jared,
Speaker 1: he only cares about his liberal friends, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So he really he had in his mind, Jared, you know,
Speaker 1: was very useful and I'm sure you know, as a
Speaker 1: member of family, they have some affection there. But he
Speaker 1: was also quite jaundice about his son in law, and
Speaker 1: there was a sort of constant refrain with his aids
Speaker 1: about wishing that they had stayed in New York or
Speaker 1: would go back to New York, and you know, some
Speaker 1: people try to spend that and saying, well, he was
Speaker 1: just concerned about them because they were being beat up
Speaker 1: by the system in Washington and the media and the Democrats,
Speaker 1: and how terrible it was for them. It wasn't that what.
Speaker 1: He just didn't want them there. He thought that they
Speaker 1: were causing issues for him. Every time he saw them
Speaker 1: on television, like Jared coming out after being for testifying,
Speaker 1: he just thought to himself, this is not, you know,
Speaker 1: what he wanted. And the aide took that to be,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a sign that they should try
Speaker 1: to encourage Jared and Ivanka to leave, which of course
Speaker 1: only got them in hot water because Trump would ever
Speaker 1: actually tell that to them himself direct. And the John
Speaker 1: McCain stuff continues to really haunt Trump. Can you talk
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, he really did have an obsession with McCain,
Speaker 1: And of course you go back to the sixteen campaign,
Speaker 1: and for many Republicans that was an initial gut punch
Speaker 1: when he savaged McCain, you know, and essentially said, you know,
Speaker 1: prisoners of war don't deserve respect because it's somehow they
Speaker 1: were taking a prisoner. And yet, nonetheless, of course, Republicans
Speaker 1: continued to support Trump, and that really was the story
Speaker 1: of McCain's final year of life and in office, that
Speaker 1: he became an increasingly marginalized opponent of Trump at his
Speaker 1: own party. And yet Trump was driven crazy by McCain's resistance,
Speaker 1: and when he died, of course, he refused to have
Speaker 1: the flags lowered, to have staff as would be customary
Speaker 1: in a situation like that. That was reported at the time.
Speaker 1: Trump and his people denied it, but our reporting for
Speaker 1: the book says that it was absolutely correct, and in fact,
Speaker 1: John Kelly, the chief of staff at the time, had
Speaker 1: to repeatedly go to Trump, uh and they had one
Speaker 1: chatting match in which John Kelly basically said to Trump,
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't do this, people will come
Speaker 1: to your grave and piss on it. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, can you imagine what what a toxic, horrible
Speaker 1: place that White House was to be? And I think
Speaker 1: it could come back. Yeah, I mean, look, let's be real.
Speaker 1: That is an amazing fact after January six. But it
Speaker 1: is nonetheless true that Trump has retained the support of
Speaker 1: a majority of the Republican Party. There are millions of
Speaker 1: people who continue to adhere to his lies about the election.
Speaker 1: In fact, he's made support for those lies a litmus
Speaker 1: test for the candidates he's endorsing this year, in a
Speaker 1: year that looks to be a Republican year in terms
Speaker 1: of the overall results. And so, uh, it may be
Speaker 1: an even more trumpefied party that emerges over time. It
Speaker 1: does certainly seem like that, right, yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you know, he has had every possible scandal and and
Speaker 1: and embarrassment and investigation and accusation and allegation any politician
Speaker 1: could ever have times ten or whatever rights on steroids,
Speaker 1: and yet he keeps surviving that Republicans have not broken
Speaker 1: with him. If they're not going to break with him
Speaker 1: as a party after January six, it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: what we'll finally do that they perceive him to be
Speaker 1: the power in their party in as long as they do,
Speaker 1: they're correct about that as a self fulfilling thing. There is, however,
Speaker 1: you know, the corrosion theory that over time people get
Speaker 1: tired of it, get tired of the you know, all
Speaker 1: of the hubbub that comes with him, all the investigations
Speaker 1: and so forth. There is a pole NBC does asking
Speaker 1: Republicans do they consider themselves more to be a supporter
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump or more support of the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: And the latest one said Trump, which is a large number,
Speaker 1: but the lowest since they started asking that question twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So it's the only you see what happens in the
Speaker 1: months to come. Susan, You've worked at political You've worked
Speaker 1: at so many nonpartisans, straight down the middle, non opinion places,
Speaker 1: and I know you're a columnist now, so you are
Speaker 1: more on the opinion side. But I think, right, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: although what I'm trying to do is really more rooted
Speaker 1: in in analysis, and you know, I don't see myself
Speaker 1: as a kind of ideological war warrior in the way
Speaker 1: that a lot of opinion columns are great, but it's
Speaker 1: just not my role. I feel like that's the thing
Speaker 1: about writing a history about Trump, Molly, you know, is
Speaker 1: that this is not about ideology. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: about what kind of healthcare you know, should we you know,
Speaker 1: details of legislation, trying to understand the ways in which
Speaker 1: this presidency, uh and the threat that it poses to
Speaker 1: American democracy is different than than any other presidency, not
Speaker 1: just of our lifetime. There has been in the history
Speaker 1: of the United States, never a president until Donald Trump
Speaker 1: who challenged the legitimate results of an elector, who refused
Speaker 1: to accept the outcome of a democratic, small d election.
Speaker 1: That's the basic social contract embedded in our constitution. And
Speaker 1: there's only one president in American history who has refused
Speaker 1: to accept that. And that is why I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask that question in that way, because I feel like
Speaker 1: I really trust you as a person who is not
Speaker 1: your problem with Trump is really this like anti democracy
Speaker 1: and it's a very important I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: historically very much a paradigm shift that is so important
Speaker 1: to talk about, and so I just find it very meaningful,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense. But what I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you with this sort of do you see a
Speaker 1: kind of shift in the Republican Party against democracy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that is one of the most striking aspects
Speaker 1: of the story that we've all been, you know, watching
Speaker 1: unfold the last few years, is is essentially the radicalization
Speaker 1: and the as Jared Kushner put it, hostile takeover. Quote
Speaker 1: unquote of the Republican Party and essentially turning it into
Speaker 1: a cult of personality. The data point that always sticks
Speaker 1: with me here is the Republican National Convention for the
Speaker 1: first time, almost certainly since the Republican Party was actually
Speaker 1: created in the nineteenth century, the convention did not have
Speaker 1: a policy platform, It did not have all those meetings
Speaker 1: and amendments in the lake. It declined to produce a
Speaker 1: Republican policy platform, and it simply passed resolution saying that
Speaker 1: the Republican Party was in favor of whatever Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was in favor of. That's right, extraordinary moment in the
Speaker 1: annals of American democracy, it seems to me. And there's
Speaker 1: been no indication in the subsequent two years of any
Speaker 1: break in in that shift. And so, you know, again,
Speaker 1: just just to your bigger point, the book The Divider
Speaker 1: is a narrative history of Trump in the White House.
Speaker 1: I felt that it was a very important act of
Speaker 1: taking testimony for history's sake. It is not a polemic.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people who have done, you know,
Speaker 1: great writing and thinking along those lines. But that the
Speaker 1: goal that Peter and I said for ourselves, it's really
Speaker 1: much more that of historians and you know, journalists writing
Speaker 1: a first draft of history. We conducted more than three
Speaker 1: hundred original interviews for this after Trump left office, in
Speaker 1: addition to trying to synthesize and understand the history as
Speaker 1: it had already been public. And to me, that's what
Speaker 1: we were doing is an act of recording this for
Speaker 1: for history's sake. I just think it's so important, and
Speaker 1: I just sai very much in awe of both of
Speaker 1: your writing and reporting, and and it's just a pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you both on this podcasts are a pleasure
Speaker 1: to be with you as you start off this new venture.
Speaker 1: We're so excited. Yeah, congre, thank you well. I hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll have you guys back on to talk about everything
Speaker 1: that's happening. I Molly, John Fast, Jesse Cannon, So tell
Speaker 1: me what's today's moment of Today's moment of fuckery involves
Speaker 1: a Republican in Texas. Maybe we should just make every
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery to involve a Republican in Texas because
Speaker 1: they're certainly Molly, you have to let Louie go. I
Speaker 1: know he's in your heart forever, but like he's gonna
Speaker 1: be gone. Suit, I feel like it might be good
Speaker 1: to start bntally preparing yourself for him not being everywhere
Speaker 1: all the time. I'm telling you, I don't even think
Speaker 1: Louie Gomert is the worst Republican in Texas. No. What's
Speaker 1: even a shocking thing to me sometimes is that there
Speaker 1: even do keep down some of their worst. Like Alan
Speaker 1: West was the worst congressman of his era. When you
Speaker 1: see him every time he's in the New is it
Speaker 1: is so insane what he says. But they had the
Speaker 1: sense to not vote for him this time around. It's
Speaker 1: amazing stuff. Good job Texas. So Ken Paxton is the
Speaker 1: long under indictment Attorney General of the state of Texas,
Speaker 1: and he has been under in diamond for seven years
Speaker 1: for securities fraud. You know, I feel like Republicans in
Speaker 1: Texas are just built different than the rest of them. Oh,
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that. That's the one way
Speaker 1: of putting it. They're just tougher, crazier, louder. What we
Speaker 1: just found out was that Paxton was served as subpoena.
Speaker 1: He got in his truck the wife was driving. By
Speaker 1: the way, I feel for these wives. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know they did this to themselves, but also, like you know,
Speaker 1: you still don't want to be like, get in the car, honey,
Speaker 1: you were driving for driving away? Do you really feel
Speaker 1: for them though? I don't know. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: think it's whatever anyway. So the lawyers for the eight
Speaker 1: argued they didn't know the attorney general would be served
Speaker 1: at home. Emails from opposing counsel show they tried repeatedly
Speaker 1: to serve him through his attorneys, and I guess the
Speaker 1: attorneys also got in their wives cars and drove away.
Speaker 1: And for that, I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: Texas Attorney General Kent Paxton, his wife, State Senator Angela Paxton,
Speaker 1: and his lawyers in the state of Texas all our
Speaker 1: our moment of Corea bounds. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Speaker 1: to hear the best minds and politics makes sense of
Speaker 1: all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.