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 political reports. Elon will be departing
Speaker 1: from DC soon. We'll see we have such a great
Speaker 1: show for you today. Civil Discourse substack author and close
Speaker 1: friend of mine Joyce Vance talks about constitutional checks and balances.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to Professor.
Speaker 1: Laura Gamboa about how to save a democracy and the
Speaker 1: lessons from other countries authoritarian crisises.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, I think we have pretty good news. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty excited to see that Elon couldn't buy and
Speaker 3: do his weird trickery that everybody believed won the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four election in Wisconsin last night. Since Dev's got
Speaker 3: a big win.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this was an interesting thing. You know again, Look,
Speaker 1: the trump Ism does not only Trump can defy political gravity.
Speaker 1: Everyone else has For whatever reason, it only works for Trump.
Speaker 1: It was the most expensive judicial race ever, about one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars all in, Musk spent twenty five million.
Speaker 1: I bet it's actually more than that. He has this
Speaker 1: America pack. But then all of the other Republican senators,
Speaker 1: so Republican senators, Republican donors, Elon Musk, Diana Hendrix, the
Speaker 1: U lines, Soros, Pritzker and Ricketts, you know, all the
Speaker 1: sort of people you would expect Rita Hoffman.
Speaker 2: But the right definitely overspent the left.
Speaker 3: With the right wing, saytes man Timothy Bellen, right.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to remember why this is important.
Speaker 1: First of all, it's good news because it means that
Speaker 1: our democracy, you know that you can't there's not just
Speaker 1: a straight line between how much you spend and what happens.
Speaker 1: That is good news. That's good news for any number
Speaker 1: of reasons. It means that voters still have autonomy. It
Speaker 1: means that they you know, you can advertise to them,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, they're going to
Speaker 1: do what they're going to do. And I think what
Speaker 1: is And you know, the other thing that Elon did,
Speaker 1: which was really sketchy, was he did these you know,
Speaker 1: he paid people, right, voters who signed the petition got
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars and then the key handed out million
Speaker 1: dollar checks for recruiting captains. None of that worked. So
Speaker 1: that's good news. That's good news for democracy. It's good
Speaker 1: news because you know, look, there's a straight line between
Speaker 1: Citizens United over durning Citizens United and the cluster fuck
Speaker 1: we find ourselves in today. And again, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to remember, like a lot of the stump Trump
Speaker 1: is doing is really unpopular. So going in and slashing
Speaker 1: the federal government, going in and making it so that
Speaker 1: you can't get help for Social Security on the phone,
Speaker 1: these are things that are actually quite unpopular, and we're
Speaker 1: now seeing that voters don't like it and they're swinging
Speaker 1: against it. And every election on Tuesday swung to the left.
Speaker 1: And that's a good sign for any number of reasons,
Speaker 1: and especially it's a good sign because, look, Trump is
Speaker 1: a Republican, but Trump is also an authoritarian, and that
Speaker 1: means he is trying to consolidate power. He is trying
Speaker 1: to do all the things Orbond died in Hungary.
Speaker 2: And to know that it's.
Speaker 1: Not politically popular, and so that means that Republican House
Speaker 1: members who are up for election in twenty six, and
Speaker 1: people like Tom Tillis, right, the Senator from North Carolina
Speaker 1: who's also up for reelection in twenty six, they're not
Speaker 1: going to necessarily give Trump the blank check that he wants,
Speaker 1: or if they are. Remember early on in this administration,
Speaker 1: Trump had won the popular vote and he had pretty
Speaker 1: good for him, still bad for everyone. Normal popularity numbers.
Speaker 1: Now those numbers are you know, were what eight nine
Speaker 1: weeks into this ten weeks into this presidency, and every
Speaker 1: sort of two weeks the number goes down by about
Speaker 1: two one and a half two points. So by the
Speaker 1: time we're one hundred days into this thing, the guy
Speaker 1: will be back in the high thirties. But the point
Speaker 1: is this is good because Republicans, acting in their own
Speaker 1: self interest, will at least do some kind of check
Speaker 1: on Trump. They don't want to lose the House. And
Speaker 1: I think we heard Musk say if Republicans lose the House,
Speaker 1: then Democrats can impeage, Democrats can run checks on Trump's power.
Speaker 1: Musk was saying that like that was a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of voters actually don't think
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think a lot of voters wouldn't think
Speaker 3: it's bad if the House goes home but does nothing.
Speaker 3: But I still find it quite disturbing since Mike Johnson
Speaker 3: just canceled votes after the Republicans rebelled against him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, so this is fascinating in the fact that
Speaker 1: it's just proof of my theory being correct.
Speaker 2: So I consider that to be fascinating.
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson cannot do math, and we have seen this
Speaker 1: again and again and again. The one time Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: was able to do math was for the cr that's
Speaker 1: a continuing resolution that passed last week.
Speaker 2: Or two weeks ago.
Speaker 1: It got out of the House and literally no one
Speaker 1: thought it would and then it got to the Senate
Speaker 1: and Democrats couldn't figure out what to do, and it
Speaker 1: was a disaster and it made everyone look bad. Now,
Speaker 1: this bill, bipartisan bill for women voting after having children.
Speaker 1: Johnson was absolutely allergic to it. But because he cannot
Speaker 1: he fundamentally cannot do math, he was not able to
Speaker 1: whip against it. Now he is the Speaker of the House,
Speaker 1: he should not lose on a bipartisan bill. First of all,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like, I wonder if what the
Speaker 1: president here is for this. I mean, it just sort
Speaker 1: of shocks me. I think there's probably very little president
Speaker 1: for this. So nine Republicans joined all the Democrats. Johnson
Speaker 1: lost right to to two to two oh six.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: He then freaked out. He was supposed to lead voting
Speaker 1: on this Save Act. The Save Act would have made
Speaker 1: it very hard to vote. It would have made it
Speaker 1: so if you changed your name as a woman. And
Speaker 1: because nobody wants women voting because they're you know, they
Speaker 1: don't know their place, that it would have made it
Speaker 1: harder for women to vote. But because the Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House, Mike Johnson, was so upset, he just canceled
Speaker 1: all the voting for the week and I guess went
Speaker 1: home to pray about it.
Speaker 3: You know, this sounds to be like the temperamental thing
Speaker 3: people make a cliche of women being like to me, Molly.
Speaker 1: He cannot stand losing, so he should learn how to count.
Speaker 1: And you know Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who is, by
Speaker 1: the way, nobody is idea of a woke leftist, but
Speaker 1: she wanted to be able to volt remotely right after
Speaker 1: having a baby. I mean, this is really the bare
Speaker 1: minimum that these people can do. And she did it
Speaker 1: as a discharge position petition. I mean, it is really
Speaker 1: quite a fuck up for Johnson. It makes them look
Speaker 1: weak and it makes them look like you can't do math.
Speaker 2: And he said that it was unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: By the way, everything they don't like is unconstitutional and
Speaker 1: it could open up Pandora's box, Yes, a Pandora's box
Speaker 1: of like women working. So good to see this is
Speaker 1: like we can file this under one of the worst
Speaker 1: people you know getting.
Speaker 2: You know schooled.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it's not like these people are
Speaker 1: you know, the two people who came out against this bill,
Speaker 1: against Mike Johnson.
Speaker 2: These are all like real right wingers.
Speaker 1: So Max Miller, you'll remember, has had any number of
Speaker 1: problems because remember there was some allegations of domestic violence,
Speaker 1: but his statement was, I had a baby girl just
Speaker 1: over a year go. In the first weeks of her life,
Speaker 1: there were some complications. I can't imagine a mother who
Speaker 1: has spent nine months going through the ring are being
Speaker 1: told you can't be with your infant only because you
Speaker 1: are one of the four hundred and thirty five people.
Speaker 1: We are pro life, I mean ish pro family, not really.
Speaker 1: As a new dad, I just couldn't support it. Mike Lawler,
Speaker 1: who is you'll remember, running for governor. He's not going
Speaker 1: to win, but he's trying to present himself as not
Speaker 1: a complete psycho, as a father of two young children,
Speaker 1: including a daughter born eight days before election, day. This
Speaker 1: is a common sense solution. Looks learn math, Mike Johnson, learn.
Speaker 3: Math, Somali, Cory Booker, iron Man, just bladder control standing.
Speaker 3: You know, I know he played college football, was very good,
Speaker 3: so you know, he's a varied shape guy. But everybody's like,
Speaker 3: how did he do it? But what I'm wondering is
Speaker 3: how did this one action get so many Democrats to
Speaker 3: do the right things and start coming up the works.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who are mat at
Speaker 1: Corey Booker for any number of things and want to
Speaker 1: criticize this as performative. But you're going to hear an
Speaker 1: interview in this episode with Laura Gamboa who talks about
Speaker 1: how important it is when you're fighting authoritarianism for an
Speaker 1: opposition party to oppose, and that is what Booker is
Speaker 1: doing here. He's posing Another important part of it is
Speaker 1: he broke strom Thurman's record for a philibuster. Now, our
Speaker 1: philibuster is bad, I mean, is the way that the
Speaker 1: Senate works anti democratic? We can argue that all day long,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it is. But the point here is that
Speaker 1: what Corey Booker did was he said none of this
Speaker 1: is normal, and what we need from democratic representatives from
Speaker 1: senators and congress people, is we really need them to
Speaker 1: act in a way that makes clear what we all
Speaker 1: see with our own eyes, which is the richest man
Speaker 1: in the world taking a chainsaw to the federal government
Speaker 1: is not normal. And this is really, I think, an
Speaker 1: important point. So I think it's good interesting thing that
Speaker 1: Corey Booker said, which I think is really important to
Speaker 1: be candid Strom Thurman's record always kind of just really
Speaker 1: irked me. That would be the longest speech, longest speech
Speaker 1: on our great Senate floor, was someone trying to stop
Speaker 1: people like me from being in the Senate. And look,
Speaker 1: I always think that the worst thing, the biggest mistake
Speaker 1: we made in twenty sixteen was saying that America was
Speaker 1: better than trump Ism. And the reality is we're not right.
Speaker 1: We are a country that created Jim Crow. We are
Speaker 1: exactly this. We are divided, and we are capable of
Speaker 1: some really bad stuff. I think that it's really important
Speaker 1: that Booker talked about what the original sin of America is.
Speaker 1: And again, you know Thurman was he set this record
Speaker 1: philibustering against the Civil Rights Act of nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Now there's a new record, and it's by someone who
Speaker 1: is a black senator from the state of New Jersey.
Speaker 2: And I think that is exciting, and I think that.
Speaker 1: That is the kind of thing that rallies people and
Speaker 1: gets some serious about protecting armorms and institutions. So I
Speaker 1: was glad to see that. Good and good for Corey Booker,
Speaker 1: and millions of people watched it.
Speaker 3: More importantly, Yes, I thought it was really interesting too
Speaker 3: that a lot of senators put holds on different judges
Speaker 3: and really started to come up the works like we've
Speaker 3: been really pressing for on this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good for them.
Speaker 1: Joyce Vance is the author of the Substack Civil Discourse
Speaker 1: and co host of the podcast Sisters in.
Speaker 2: Law Welcome to Fast Politics. I think of you as
Speaker 2: my north star, Joyce Vance.
Speaker 4: But I'm your south star because I'm in the Deep South.
Speaker 4: I mean, can I really be a north star down here?
Speaker 2: That's right, good point, You're my southern star.
Speaker 1: Just legal Michigan's I want you to sort of outline
Speaker 1: the top lines here. It seems to me like Trump
Speaker 1: keeps just like Trump one point zero, losing in the courts.
Speaker 1: So can you give us a sort of summation of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, look, Molly, here's the way that I view
Speaker 4: it donald Trump is trying to seize power that the
Speaker 4: Constitution does not allocate to him, power that is specifically
Speaker 4: forbidden to him, like, for instance, the power of the
Speaker 4: purse that belongs to Congress. Every time he does one
Speaker 4: of these things, whether it's trying to change the Constitution
Speaker 4: with the stroke of a pen and write birthright citizenship
Speaker 4: out of the Constitution, or most recently, whether he's trying
Speaker 4: to tell the states who have the power to set
Speaker 4: the terms of their own elections, what the rules for
Speaker 4: those elections are. Lawyers are going to court, and lawyers
Speaker 4: are winning in court because Donald Trump is trying to
Speaker 4: collect power that the founding fathers did not want to
Speaker 4: have fallen into his hands. They understood that president who
Speaker 4: was too powerful could become a tyrant. And that's what
Speaker 4: our three branches of government checks and balances constitutional system.
Speaker 4: That's the entire premise that it's set up around preventing tyranny.
Speaker 1: So this has sort of gotten the ire of one
Speaker 1: Elon mush and I want you to talk to us
Speaker 1: about what that looks like. He's sort of attacking the judiciary,
Speaker 1: hoping to set the you know, he said he would
Speaker 1: donate to people who were for judicial impeachment. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us about how unusual judicial impeachment is and
Speaker 1: how as a remedy. I really think Republicans are going
Speaker 1: to have a hard time getting that going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, an impossible time, right, because impeachment is not the
Speaker 4: remedy for a judge's decision that you don't like. As
Speaker 4: the Chief Justice most recently said, and you know John
Speaker 4: Robert's issuing of public statement is is rare, only the
Speaker 4: second time that he's done it, both times directed at
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. The remedy if you don't like a decision
Speaker 4: that a strict judge makes is to appeal it. That's
Speaker 4: why we have courts of appeals and a Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: We don't impeach judges even if we think they've made
Speaker 4: the wrong decision. And look, even if you can get
Speaker 4: articles of impeachment in the House, you're not gonna get
Speaker 4: a conviction in the Senate.
Speaker 1: Judicial impeachment is super unusual too, Like it hasn't happened
Speaker 1: since since the eighteen hundreds. I mean, Nick, really not
Speaker 1: a thing that's gonna work for them in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or for right.
Speaker 4: Well, there actually have been some more modern judicial impeachments,
Speaker 4: but they've involved, for instance, District Judge Alsey Hastings, who
Speaker 4: is impeached over alleged criminal conduct. It's extraordinarily rare, so
Speaker 4: rare that, although I know that there are one or
Speaker 4: two more, I can't give you even off the top
Speaker 4: of my head names of people who were involved.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: That one sticks with me. It's one of the more
Speaker 4: recent ones. I think that there might be one in Louisiana.
Speaker 4: It just is not something that happens because judges don't
Speaker 4: buy and large tend to commit crimes.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what it sort of looks like
Speaker 1: right now. A lot of these dose quote unquote cost
Speaker 1: cutting measures are getting rejected in the courts. We're seeing
Speaker 1: they're being forced to reinstate people they fired, they're being
Speaker 1: forced to sort of undo all of these broadcuts. Can
Speaker 1: you explain to us how and we're seeing a real
Speaker 1: conflict between Trump and the judiciary.
Speaker 2: The one I'm.
Speaker 1: Thinking of the most is this these deportations. How long
Speaker 1: can Trump World go against the forts before we start
Speaker 1: really getting into the meat of a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I mean, we're past talking about whether or
Speaker 4: not we're in a constitutional crisis. When you have a
Speaker 4: presidency that's engaging in the sort of behavior that we're seeing,
Speaker 4: we are already there, right, we have a president who's
Speaker 4: trying to assume the power of one, possibly two of
Speaker 4: the other branches of government. And the weird thing about
Speaker 4: living through a constitutional crisis I've been writing about this
Speaker 4: a lot lately, is it doesn't really feel all that different. Right.
Speaker 4: Nobody's out in the streets tearing up the constitution and
Speaker 4: so there's no real trigger, which is why we're still
Speaker 4: asking the question, right, is it a constitutional crisis yet?
Speaker 4: But let me tell you it is. And what we're
Speaker 4: increasingly seeing is that it will be up to the
Speaker 4: courts to fashion a remedy for a lawless president. Courts
Speaker 4: don't have armies, they can't send folks out to enforce
Speaker 4: their orders. Court orders are enforceable because as Americans we
Speaker 4: accept the power of the judicial branch, and although sometimes
Speaker 4: people push back a little bit, there is of course
Speaker 4: an appellate process. Sometimes judges have to issue orders directing
Speaker 4: parties to engage in better compliance with their orders than
Speaker 4: they have been. There has never been a moment in
Speaker 4: our history of this lawlessness where there's been open speculation
Speaker 4: that a president might simply ignore the Supreme Court. If
Speaker 4: that happens, we're in the soup, right.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's a real question for sort of what
Speaker 2: we're seeing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of Trump World wants
Speaker 1: to kick things up to the Supreme Court in the
Speaker 1: hopes that the Supreme Court will somehow grant him everything
Speaker 1: he wants in life.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's realistic?
Speaker 4: Well, look, we had the Attorney General saying that last week.
Speaker 4: You know, she was talking about the cases and losses
Speaker 4: in lower courts, and she spoke about getting to the
Speaker 4: Supreme Court in fond terms, almost as though they were
Speaker 4: a captive of the presidency. You and I both noted
Speaker 4: that moment following Trump's not State of the Union, but
Speaker 4: speech to the Joint Houses of Congress in session. We
Speaker 4: noted that really painful moment at the end where Trump
Speaker 4: walks down the line of Supreme Court justices shaking their hands. Thanks,
Speaker 4: Elena Kagan tells the Chief Justice. Thanks, I won't forget
Speaker 4: what you've done, you know, I mean, just like this
Speaker 4: abominable moment that should have never happened, where Trump tried
Speaker 4: to show the court that they were, in essence a
Speaker 4: part of his government, not an independent branch. I don't
Speaker 4: think that went down super well. I think that we
Speaker 4: will see I'm long past the point of hoping for
Speaker 4: nine zero decisions from the Supreme Court, but I think
Speaker 4: we will see seven to two decisions defining the power
Speaker 4: that a president can exercise and the power that a
Speaker 4: president cannot exercise.
Speaker 1: Speaking of that, they're setting up a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: to go to the Supreme Court. We saw I think
Speaker 1: a really major moment when the Supreme Court rejected Sullivan
Speaker 1: Vinior Times. Do you think that was a major moment
Speaker 1: that they decided not to take it on the docket.
Speaker 1: I feel like it was. And can you talk about
Speaker 1: why that's important?
Speaker 4: You bet. I'm one hundred percent in agreement with you.
Speaker 4: You know, the Supreme Court rejected a case that had
Speaker 4: been widely viewed as an opportunity for them to overturn
Speaker 4: the precedent in New York Times versus Sullivan, an Alabama
Speaker 4: case near and dear to my heart because I started
Speaker 4: the practice of law doing a lot of defamation work,
Speaker 4: and what Times versus Sullivan does. I think we all
Speaker 4: know this at this point right. It imposes a very
Speaker 4: high burden on someone who wants to sue for death
Speaker 4: if they're a public figure, in order to recover, they
Speaker 4: have to prove that they were defamed by someone who
Speaker 4: showed actual malice, reckless disregard for the truth or falsity
Speaker 4: of the statements that they were making. And there's been
Speaker 4: a lot of suggestion that that standard is too difficult
Speaker 4: and public figures can't recover, and so we need to
Speaker 4: toss New York Times versus Sullivan out the window. Clarence
Speaker 4: Thomas has adopted that approach in a concurrence in one case,
Speaker 4: and there's been some sense that Justice Gorsich might be
Speaker 4: on board too. He also had made a speech, I
Speaker 4: think where he had sort of made those kind of comments.
Speaker 4: But the full Court did not take this case. It
Speaker 4: takes four votes for the Supreme Court to hear a
Speaker 4: case oncert Those four votes weren't there. This is why
Speaker 4: it matters Hungary. One of the first things that Orbond
Speaker 4: did in Hungary was he made it easier to sue
Speaker 4: the press for comments that they made about him, in
Speaker 4: an effort to shut them down, in an effort to
Speaker 4: make them afraid to say it, to make even modern
Speaker 4: commentary out of fear that they would have these incredibly large,
Speaker 4: damaging judicial judgments imposed against them. And you know this
Speaker 4: was no doubt a similar move. I mean, the free press,
Speaker 4: in many ways is what stands between you and me
Speaker 4: and Tyranny Molly, and so protecting the press at all
Speaker 4: costs is imperative. Apparently the Supreme Court, or at least
Speaker 4: enough justices, weren't interested in helping Donald Trump erode that either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I want to add an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about this is that the Sullivan New York Times case,
Speaker 1: this case that was brought up, was actually brought up
Speaker 1: by one of Trump's mega donners, Steve when Right.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, this challenge that Wynn brought trying to say
Speaker 4: that he could not be sued, it very much had
Speaker 4: the look of this is what litigants do. The lawyers
Speaker 4: among your listeners will know this. When there's precedent that
Speaker 4: the lawyers don't like, or that really not the lawyers
Speaker 4: but parties that they represent don't like, there will be
Speaker 4: an effort to seed test cases across the country to
Speaker 4: try to get rulings that can then be appealed to
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court. And lawyers like to say bad facts
Speaker 4: make bad law. Good facts make good law. So you're
Speaker 4: very careful about the facts in the case that you're
Speaker 4: trying to get up to the Supreme Court. You want
Speaker 4: good facts so that you can make good law, or
Speaker 4: at least good law for your client. And so this
Speaker 4: case very much had the flavor of something that was
Speaker 4: going to be used to argue that the standard in
Speaker 4: Times versus Sullivan was far too high, that parties couldn't
Speaker 4: meet it, and so it needed to be reversed, and
Speaker 4: of course that ploy failed. I don't think we have
Speaker 4: to look much further than the Egene Carroll case to
Speaker 4: see why this matters, right, I mean, Trump would have
Speaker 4: liked to win in that lawsuit, and he did not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to tell you, I always like, I
Speaker 1: find you to be so soothing and also just a
Speaker 1: wonderful person and also such a smart layer. But it
Speaker 1: sounds like I'm telling you we're done, but we're not done.
Speaker 1: But I just needed to tell you that right.
Speaker 2: Now before you hit me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Well I need to tell you that because whenever
Speaker 1: I'm talking to you, I feel a little better. And
Speaker 1: I think it's so important right now with all of us,
Speaker 1: you know, the people in this country who care about democracy.
Speaker 1: We are very stressed out, and for good reason. And
Speaker 1: when you talk about Hungary, I would love you to
Speaker 1: talk about the ways in which it feels like everything
Speaker 1: matters in order to not slide into autocracy.
Speaker 2: But I want you to.
Speaker 1: Talk about a little bit about how we really there
Speaker 1: are good things happening despite all of the sort of
Speaker 1: carnage that this administration is creating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, I mean, there are good things happening,
Speaker 4: and it's at the risk of being a little bit silly.
Speaker 4: I have this breakfast club that meets every Wednesday morning.
Speaker 4: It's met just forever, for decades. It's a small group
Speaker 4: of women, different backgrounds, doctors, lawyers, business people, educators, retired people,
Speaker 4: all different political stripes, just interested in getting together and
Speaker 4: learning and spending time with women who are interested in
Speaker 4: learning more about the world around them. I guess if
Speaker 4: we had a theme, it would be that. And I
Speaker 4: infrequently go these days because my Wednesday mornings are sort
Speaker 4: of bad. But I was able to go last week,
Speaker 4: and I was reminded that that's what democracy looks like, right,
Speaker 4: small groups of Americans getting together. And I was fascinated
Speaker 4: that this group that's so diverse, is completely united around
Speaker 4: the notion that democracy has to survive. And so I
Speaker 4: think this is what we all need to do. We
Speaker 4: need to hug the people around us. We need to
Speaker 4: spend some time talking about what matters. We don't live
Speaker 4: in an era where democracy gets fought for on battlefield
Speaker 4: in Europe. We live in this moment where we're fighting
Speaker 4: for democracy in our living rooms, in the stands at
Speaker 4: football games, across the counter at the grocery store. And
Speaker 4: it's a little bit hard to get used to that
Speaker 4: and to think that you're not being dramatic when you
Speaker 4: say things like that. But the reality is that the
Speaker 4: fight for democracy is happening at home, and it's happening
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think really great example is this race for
Speaker 1: Supreme Court in It was the most expensive judicial race ever,
Speaker 1: right this Wisconsin Supreme Court race. I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: so this is something that is sort of a factor
Speaker 1: of modern life, is that we have now and some
Speaker 1: states have it in some states don't. We have these
Speaker 1: sort of partisan judiciary elections. So I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: can sort of speak to us about sort of how
Speaker 1: this came to be and what it means to have
Speaker 1: partisan judicial elections, because we also don't have partisan judicial
Speaker 1: elections in some places.
Speaker 2: We have judges who are appointed.
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping this was one hundred million dollar race
Speaker 1: for this seat, and I'm hoping you could sort of
Speaker 1: talk about it.
Speaker 4: Yes, So look, this isn't an eternal problem. How do
Speaker 4: we pick our judges?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: We expect our judges to be objective. We want them
Speaker 4: to be above party politics and personal grievances. How do
Speaker 4: we get them there? And there two primary ways. One
Speaker 4: is that they get appointed by somebody. That's the federal system.
Speaker 4: The other is that they get elected by the people.
Speaker 4: That's what a number of states have. And you know,
Speaker 4: there are problems both ways. Right to get appointed to
Speaker 4: be a federal judge, depending on the administration, you have
Speaker 4: to be more or less in line with what they
Speaker 4: think their long term policy goals are to get a seat.
Speaker 4: So there's that to get elected, and particularly states are
Speaker 4: really different about how they do this. In some states,
Speaker 4: mine is one of them. Judges just run for re
Speaker 4: election every six years. In other states, once you're in
Speaker 4: there's this sort of luke thumbs up, thumbs down vote
Speaker 4: where you only get booted out of office if the
Speaker 4: people think that you've really screwed something up, and so
Speaker 4: elections to have their problems. You know, sometimes you feel like,
Speaker 4: especially now that we live in this era where political
Speaker 4: money can be injected into races for judges, you sort
Speaker 4: of feel like the judges should take the bench with
Speaker 4: patches on their robes displaying their loyalty right to the
Speaker 4: big corporate donors that put them there. I think what
Speaker 4: you gotta do is you've got to hope that at
Speaker 4: some level you are selecting people of honor and integrity
Speaker 4: who understand the mission, and regardless of how they get
Speaker 4: on the bench, they will fulfill their duty to make
Speaker 4: decisions in their cases based on the facts and the law.
Speaker 4: That happens in a surprising number of cases every day,
Speaker 4: all across the country. But it's not a perfect system.
Speaker 4: I don't think we should pretend it is. It's the
Speaker 4: best way we've got to pick judges.
Speaker 1: We have definitely seen that happen, And a great example
Speaker 1: I feel like is that this Trump administration has lost
Speaker 1: with judges from five different administrations, right Republican judges, Democratic judges,
Speaker 1: Bush judges, Obama judges. Everyone has said that a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff Trump has tried to do as illegal.
Speaker 1: I have one last question for you, which is about
Speaker 1: Trump did this executive order which is meant to mass
Speaker 1: with elections socrats are suing him.
Speaker 2: Talk to me about sort.
Speaker 1: Of what this means, how this works, and also ourn't
Speaker 1: executive orders sort of toothless ultimately.
Speaker 2: But talk about it.
Speaker 4: Executive orders are powerful to the extent that they're ordering
Speaker 4: people in the executive branch to do something. And so
Speaker 4: when you write an executive order, I think Trump is
Speaker 4: particularly good at this. You tool it so that you're
Speaker 4: directing people that you have control over to do something.
Speaker 4: Executive orders don't have any force beyond maybe being a
Speaker 4: bully pulpit if you're, for instance, directing the states to
Speaker 4: do something. And so, to cut to the chase Molly,
Speaker 4: what Trump does in this executive order on voting is
Speaker 4: he tells states and by the way, if you don't
Speaker 4: do my bidding, no more federal funding for your elections.
Speaker 4: And that will be catastrophic in some places. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't have one national election. We don't even have
Speaker 4: fifty state elections. We have a series of elections being
Speaker 4: held across the country. Thousands of them local elections all
Speaker 4: across the country, and some of the counties that are
Speaker 4: running elections are largely dependent. The federal funding that they
Speaker 4: get is essential, particularly if they're going to take advantage
Speaker 4: of modern technology and keep it secure. So that's what
Speaker 4: Trump thinks he has the force to do. There are
Speaker 4: a couple of things going on in this executive order.
Speaker 4: One of course, is this demand that no one can
Speaker 4: register to vote unless they can prove their citizenship. And
Speaker 4: that's really sort of crazy what happens, And this is
Speaker 4: the long term theme. Right Republicans raise a lot of
Speaker 4: noise and dust claiming that there's voter fraud infecting our elections,
Speaker 4: and the reality is that that's not true. People who
Speaker 4: have looked at this and studied this, even Republican states
Speaker 4: that have tried to find evidence of people who aren't
Speaker 4: citizens voting in our elections come up largely empty handed.
Speaker 4: There's no evidence that voter fraud is impacting the outcome
Speaker 4: of elections. And the problem is that they then use
Speaker 4: those baseless claims of voter fraud to engage in voter suppression,
Speaker 4: to keep people who are entitled to vote from voting.
Speaker 4: That's what's happening here because if you don't have a passport,
Speaker 4: it can be really hard to prove that you're a citizen.
Speaker 4: And you know who has passports. It's people like you
Speaker 4: and me. It's people who are upper middle class people
Speaker 4: who are doing okay. And a move like this disenfranchises
Speaker 4: people who are older. A lot of elderly people, for instance,
Speaker 4: may have been born at home and don't have easy
Speaker 4: access to birth certificates, or they've lost the papers that
Speaker 4: they need in moves. It hurts black people in the South,
Speaker 4: and these voter suppression measures are always directed at keeping
Speaker 4: black voters from voting because Republicans fear that they will
Speaker 4: vote democratic. This is just more of that same and
Speaker 4: it's just really offensive to democracy. And I think something
Speaker 4: that we don't do because we've lived with eight years
Speaker 4: of outrage and we no longer have the capacity really
Speaker 4: to get super outraged about any one individual of this
Speaker 4: EO that is an effort to suppress the vote is outrageous.
Speaker 4: It's the dying gasp of a lame duck president who
Speaker 4: wants to try to have a legacy, and that legacy
Speaker 4: is taking away democracy from Americans.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Joyce Fance.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Molly. It's always good to be
Speaker 4: with you.
Speaker 1: Laura Damboa, it's a professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Laura, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: the invite.
Speaker 4: Mollie.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk about this article you wrote
Speaker 1: in Foreign Affairs called how to Save a Democracy, But
Speaker 1: first I want you to tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about your field of study so that we can understand
Speaker 1: exactly why you are the person to make this case.
Speaker 5: I study democratic backslighting. I've been studying it for more
Speaker 5: than ten years. I particularly focus on what all positions
Speaker 5: can do to stop what I call potential autocrats. These
Speaker 5: are presidents or executive that are willing to undermine democratic
Speaker 5: institutions in order to get what they want, and so
Speaker 5: what I work on is what oppositions can do to
Speaker 5: stop them. I wrote a book that was published in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two called Resisting Backsliding Opposition Strategies against the
Speaker 5: Erosion of Democracy, in which I discussed how the strategies
Speaker 5: used by the opposition in Venezuela against Douguchavis failed, while
Speaker 5: the opposition the strategy is used by the opposition in
Speaker 5: Colombia against al Var u Riwe succeeded in stopping alvar
Speaker 5: Drive from undermining democracy, pretty much stopping him from staying
Speaker 5: in power after his second term.
Speaker 2: So you really know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: You have an example here, you've studied where where stopping
Speaker 1: autocracy has worked and where it hasn't worked.
Speaker 2: So first explain.
Speaker 1: To us why Donald Trump is an aspiring autocraft.
Speaker 2: What are the symptoms?
Speaker 5: So there are plenty symptoms. Autocrats or potential autocrats often
Speaker 5: come to power with an anti systemic discourse that attacks
Speaker 5: democratic institutions. It attacks Congress, it attacks the courts, it
Speaker 5: attacks opponents. It just takes away legitimacy from opponents. It
Speaker 5: supports or endorses violence against those that disagree with him.
Speaker 5: That is kind of discoursively. But more importantly, I think
Speaker 5: that because Donald trump property was present for four years,
Speaker 5: we had a pretty good idea of how authoritarian he
Speaker 5: could be. He pretty much broke the cardinal rule of
Speaker 5: the Marcusies, which is there is an election and you
Speaker 5: respect the result.
Speaker 2: And he did it. There was an.
Speaker 5: Election, he lost that election, and then he mobilized a
Speaker 5: group of people to attack the capital, to change the outcome,
Speaker 5: to to fail to certify the election, and he has
Speaker 5: refused to acknowledge the result of those elections ever since
Speaker 5: now as present, he has behaved. What we're seeing in
Speaker 5: the you as the closest example that I've seen is Guatemala.
Speaker 5: What you have is an elite coalition that seeks to
Speaker 5: undermine the state, pretty much carve away in this case
Speaker 5: of federal bureaucracy, in order to promote corruption and impunity.
Speaker 5: That's what we have seen in the past two months now.
Speaker 5: The problem with that is that when you do that, then,
Speaker 5: so first of all, is the way it has been
Speaker 5: done is done by violating or defying or ignoring the law.
Speaker 2: It has been done.
Speaker 5: In the mesifiic scores that attacks the courts, and very importantly,
Speaker 5: it has also been done with a discourse that pretty
Speaker 5: much claims that only those who support him are entitled
Speaker 5: to the rights that are afforded to all of us
Speaker 5: by the Constitution.
Speaker 1: And we're seeing that with the disappearing grad students. We're
Speaker 1: saying that with the fight with the sixty minutes in review, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that if you're not towing the party line,
Speaker 1: you're lying or you're doing something illegal. So the first
Speaker 1: part of this story of this idea of pushback against autocracy.
Speaker 1: It begins with don't throw away your shot. So explain
Speaker 1: to us what that means. And I think even more important,
Speaker 1: I think I just want to read one line because
Speaker 1: I think it's so critical. The erosion of democracy happens gradually.
Speaker 1: The opposition has ample opportunities to fight back.
Speaker 5: Yes, so before say the early two thousands, most democracies
Speaker 5: died via coups, right, And so the logic of a
Speaker 5: coup is you have usually a member of the armed forces,
Speaker 5: sometimes this a civilian leveraging weapons, and the armed forces
Speaker 5: takes over the presidential palace. And you know, immediately afterwards
Speaker 5: jail's opponents or persecutes them. Right, this happens in a
Speaker 5: matter of two or three days. So because coups happen
Speaker 5: like in one shot, the position really has no time
Speaker 5: to fight back, right Like, within three days, Congress is closed,
Speaker 5: the courts are closed, the military has controlled, the opposition
Speaker 5: is all in the embassies. That's kind of what we
Speaker 5: used to see in the past. But what we see
Speaker 5: today is a different form of democratic breakdown, is a
Speaker 5: slow form of democratic erosion that yes, eventually ends with
Speaker 5: the regime transforming into authoritarian into some form of authoritarian regime.
Speaker 5: But it happens over time, it happens very slowly. So
Speaker 5: if you think about I'm going to give you two examples.
Speaker 5: If you think about Venezuela, Uga, Chavis comes to power
Speaker 5: in nineteen ninety nine. Even by two thousand, after he
Speaker 5: had changed the constitution, the position had half of the
Speaker 5: seats in the legislature, had a significant influence over courts
Speaker 5: at significant influence over the military forces, and the main
Speaker 5: source of resources in Venezuela, which was the oil company. Likewise,
Speaker 5: if you think about the United States, yes, Donald Trump
Speaker 5: is the president, but Democrats have seats in Congress, they
Speaker 5: controlled governorships, they control majorships, they have seats in legislative assemblies,
Speaker 5: they have seats in council members. They have economic resources,
Speaker 5: they have media outlets. There's a lot of resources they
Speaker 5: can leverage to protect democracy. It is important to use
Speaker 5: those resources and to use them well. And what I
Speaker 5: have found in my research is that oppositions who use
Speaker 5: the resources and use them well are more likely to
Speaker 5: fit autocrats than those that don't. Now, Democrats, like many other,
Speaker 5: many many other oppositions in countries in processes of autoqualization
Speaker 5: are facing what we call regim uncertainty, so they are
Speaker 5: unsure of how serious is the threat. Right, So what
Speaker 5: you have is some people saying, you know what, we
Speaker 5: should just duck and wait and you know in the
Speaker 5: midterms this is all going to change. And then there's
Speaker 5: another group that is like a little bit more alarmed and.
Speaker 2: Be like, no, we need to react.
Speaker 5: I think both the streams are really bad. Right on
Speaker 5: the one hand, docking and changing and docking and waiting
Speaker 5: my meaning that you don't get a chance to protect
Speaker 5: democracy at this point in time.
Speaker 2: We don't know if the.
Speaker 5: Midterm elections are going to be free and fair, right,
Speaker 5: so there might not be midterm elections to win, or
Speaker 5: there might not be the ability to win midterm elections.
Speaker 5: But the only one the extremists, which is kind of
Speaker 5: what we sow early in Venezuela, is not necessarily good either.
Speaker 5: This idea that you have to go the extra institutional route,
Speaker 5: stop the present at all costs, violating the constitution, violating
Speaker 5: the rules is also about idea, because what ends up
Speaker 5: happening is you give the present sort of the legitimacy
Speaker 5: he needs, the cover he needs to further entrench autocracy.
Speaker 5: Now there is a way to do this that is
Speaker 5: kind of in the middle, which is being strategic, Yes,
Speaker 5: being worried of being concerned by being strategic about the
Speaker 5: resources you have, protect them and expand them. So use
Speaker 5: them biomis, use them, but also use them in a
Speaker 5: way that protects them without risking them.
Speaker 2: Give me some ways to do that.
Speaker 5: So there are various ways to do that. One way
Speaker 5: is to obstruct logization from Congress. In Columbia, they were
Speaker 5: incredibly successful in obstructing legization. U S low it down,
Speaker 5: you include amendments, you create procedure irregularities another way, and
Speaker 5: this has happening places in which sort of autocorization is
Speaker 5: a little bit further down the road, such as Hungary,
Speaker 5: Coland you can use these spaces as mechanisms to visivilize
Speaker 5: what is happening. So say, for example, in the speech
Speaker 5: Donald trumk Gate to both the Joint Session of Congress,
Speaker 5: it was a mistake to not coordinate and do something
Speaker 5: together right, So Democrats could have missed the speech altogether,
Speaker 5: and if they all miss it, it's a huge visible
Speaker 5: signal of rejection. Or they could have disrupted the speech
Speaker 5: one by one. Instead of having just one representative doing it,
Speaker 5: you could have added all of them doing it one
Speaker 5: by one, which would have been highly, highly disruptive and
Speaker 5: incredibly hard to stop. Or you could have leveraged the
Speaker 5: space to something else. I think what you cannot do
Speaker 5: is missed the opportunity to use those spaces.
Speaker 1: Right, a really good point, And I think about what
Speaker 1: Corey Booker has done last night, which is he feilibuster
Speaker 1: for fifteen hours. What you're saying, it seems to me
Speaker 1: is that Democrats need to do absolutely everything they can
Speaker 1: to transmit that this is not normal.
Speaker 5: Yes, and to slow down the agenda. They have their
Speaker 5: resources to do it. They might not succeed right because
Speaker 5: they're not the majority, but that doesn't mean they cannot
Speaker 5: delay it, or that they cannot leverage those spaces to
Speaker 5: send important messages to Americans, to their partisan members and
Speaker 5: to other still society organizations. At the end of the day,
Speaker 5: what we're seeing is a lot of responses, but they
Speaker 5: don't seem very coordinated. So you have a few members
Speaker 5: of the party, members of Congress doing their own thing,
Speaker 5: you have seal society organizations doing their own thing. And
Speaker 5: I think Democrats have the ability to use these resources
Speaker 5: to somehow create a more ordinated response.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, Okay, I want to keep going with this idea. Right,
Speaker 1: So they need a coordinative response. They need to transmit
Speaker 1: that this is not normal now, they need to use
Speaker 1: what they've got.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Go for that?
Speaker 5: I think about it in broader terms. Right, So, in Congress,
Speaker 5: for example, the last sort of critical juncture would have
Speaker 5: been the budget. They had the ability to slow down, stop,
Speaker 5: or leverage the negotiation over the continuing Resolution in order
Speaker 5: to send a message that this is not okay. I
Speaker 5: can see sort of the strategic calculations of not having
Speaker 5: a shutdown. I mean, there are arguments an argument for that,
Speaker 5: but they never made the argument. They did not leverage
Speaker 5: that unique opportunity they had to create a space to
Speaker 5: send a strong message to rally the troops to say
Speaker 5: this is not okay. Instead, they came out and said, well,
Speaker 5: you know what, a shutdown would be worse. And I
Speaker 5: think that that's a mistake.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 5: The second thing that I think could have happened is
Speaker 5: outside Congress. Really there is what we call a collective
Speaker 5: action problem. That is, it is really hard for individuals,
Speaker 5: So for instance, law firms or universities to protect themselves.
Speaker 5: So there is no gear agreement of how to fight together, right,
Speaker 5: and so universities or law firms or individuals being targeted
Speaker 5: by the government are scared, and so they're doing their
Speaker 5: very best to protect themselves individually. But what we have
Speaker 5: seen so far is that nobody is protected against a
Speaker 5: leader with authority and tendencies. So ultimately what needs to
Speaker 5: happen is some kind of coordination amongst these very powerful
Speaker 5: institutions and these very powerful elites to fight back.
Speaker 1: Right, you want something like a group to pay for
Speaker 1: legal fees or security or you know, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of saying Republicans in the Senate if you wanted
Speaker 1: them to stand up to trumpsm you would need to
Speaker 1: give them the infrastructure to do it.
Speaker 2: Is that, right?
Speaker 5: Exactly part of what needs to happen. I mean, I
Speaker 5: think sort of demonstrations and civil society out in the streets.
Speaker 5: Kinds of repertoires are incredibly useful, right, But as they
Speaker 5: stand right now, they're not necessarily long term, they're unsustainable
Speaker 5: over time. To have the kind of repertoires that we need,
Speaker 5: we need to provide resources to social movements, right, resources
Speaker 5: to organize, resources to protect their people, resources to create,
Speaker 5: to think creatively about different strategies, right, And so I
Speaker 5: think that's that's one of the things that needs to happen, right, Like,
Speaker 5: I think we need to figure out what is the
Speaker 5: long term organizational strategy outside of the regular institutions. Now,
Speaker 5: inside the institutions, I think you can leverage like politicians
Speaker 5: have a huge megaphone because they are occupying these seats.
Speaker 5: They have news outlets that interview them, and so they
Speaker 5: can leverage that megaphone to kind of coordinate or somehow
Speaker 5: organize these resources. I'm not sure if that's clear, but
Speaker 5: I'm happy to talk to say it again if needs be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's very clear.
Speaker 1: I want you to explain to us they kind of
Speaker 1: need institutional backing, they need some protection, right, Yes, and
Speaker 1: we can go to protect your own, which is one
Speaker 1: of your tenants here.
Speaker 5: Yes, So I think you need better organized movements because
Speaker 5: these kinds of movements help protect their own. Right Now, Again,
Speaker 5: individual law firms or individual universities or students or the
Speaker 5: federal workers that are suing the government are kind of alone,
Speaker 5: and there's a lot of costs associated with fighting an autocrat.
Speaker 5: So at the individual level, federal workers at the very
Speaker 5: least are losing wages, They're having to pay legal fees,
Speaker 5: they may be targeted by sort of supporters of the
Speaker 5: present online right, they might need somebody to take care
Speaker 5: of their kids, and then you have sort of as
Speaker 5: you go up, you have bigger problems.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: So again, universities, their funds are being cut off, law
Speaker 5: firms their clients are being threatened. I think that if
Speaker 5: you create a broader organization, an actual organization, not the
Speaker 5: very good and very important spontaneous movement protests that we
Speaker 5: have seen, but an actual movement, that movement should think
Speaker 5: about how to.
Speaker 2: Protect like the Tesla takeover. Right.
Speaker 5: The Tesla take over I think is creative, I think
Speaker 5: is good. I think it's important, but I don't know
Speaker 5: how sustainable over time it is, especially if the government
Speaker 5: decides to repress these people.
Speaker 2: Right, which is what it looks like they're trying to
Speaker 2: do exactly.
Speaker 5: And so what needs to happen is a more structured
Speaker 5: organization that can help protect people who are engaging in
Speaker 5: this fight against the government, that can help protect or
Speaker 5: help survive the institutions that engage the fighter against the government.
Speaker 5: And I think that can only happen in in better
Speaker 5: organized movements like Outport in Serbia, which is the example
Speaker 5: I give in the article. Right, what they say about
Speaker 5: is Outpor was a student movement, right, and they knew
Speaker 5: very well that the government was going to repress their activists,
Speaker 5: and so they created an in structure that protected the organization.
Speaker 5: But they also devoted time and resources to have lawyers
Speaker 5: at hand, to have people that would mobilize, to make
Speaker 5: sure that nobody was disappeared, that everybody knew which jail
Speaker 5: was these activists being taken to, you know, like, just
Speaker 5: ready to react because this is gonna happen. This is
Speaker 5: not a like in a democratic regime, you can assume
Speaker 5: that somebody who's gonna go to jail, they're going to
Speaker 5: follow the new process. But that is not what we're
Speaker 5: seeing here.
Speaker 1: No, certainly not tell me the last thing is get
Speaker 1: out in the streets. Can you explain to us what
Speaker 1: that looks like?
Speaker 5: In regimes where elections are not fair, sometimes just participating
Speaker 5: in a elections is not enough because the regime will
Speaker 5: not be likely to accept the electoral outcome. We saw
Speaker 5: that in Guatemala recently. And we have seen it in Venezuela,
Speaker 5: we have seen it in Eastern Europe, we have seen
Speaker 5: it across the world. So when elections are not free
Speaker 5: or fair and it is unclear whether the government is
Speaker 5: going to accept the result elections or participating in elections
Speaker 5: is not enough. It's important, it's essential because it vocalizes
Speaker 5: the attention, but is not enough. In order to actually
Speaker 5: succeed in these elections, you have to have a mobilization strategy.
Speaker 5: And again, this comes with organization. This comes with training,
Speaker 5: This comes with networks, This comes with information that can
Speaker 5: be provided so that you can mobilize people immediately after
Speaker 5: the results if the incumbent refuses to acknowledge the elections
Speaker 5: and decides to stay in power. Right, that's what happened
Speaker 5: in Guatemala lately in twenty twenty three. The government refused
Speaker 5: to accept the results, was trying to steal the ballot.
Speaker 5: And if it wasn't for a very will organize indigenous
Speaker 5: and peasant movement that had already strategies in place to protest,
Speaker 5: non violent, to mobilize, to reach the places they needed
Speaker 5: to reach, probably they would have gotten away with it.
Speaker 1: Laura, this is haunting, but also incredibly important.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Molly, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: No more fuck Jesse Cannon, Mali Jong past. Now let's
Speaker 3: let's hearken back to an era before Trump parkin.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is my influence on you. Yes,
Speaker 2: heark Yes, yes, we get Harold.
Speaker 3: Yes, So we're going back before the archbed dominated politics
Speaker 3: had ruled over the land from his castle and we
Speaker 3: were very mad as Democrats when Mitt Romney said that
Speaker 3: corporations are people, my friend.
Speaker 2: Yes, remember Mitt Romney.
Speaker 3: But now Trump has pardoned a corporation, which makes me
Speaker 3: think they may be people.
Speaker 1: They're definitely people and good for mid Romney. Remember when
Speaker 1: we thought Mitt Romney was the worst we could do. Oh, hilarious, hilarious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is not the worst we could do. You know,
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney was not the worst.
Speaker 2: We could do. He actually was the best we could do.
Speaker 2: So here we go.
Speaker 1: Trump has pardoned I think it's worth remembering that they
Speaker 1: have really like pardoned every criminal group. There have been,
Speaker 1: you know, people where they've said they've pardoned the people
Speaker 1: who the stuff where they were involved on the right
Speaker 1: wing side against the son of Joe Biden, Biden. There's
Speaker 1: just a lot of like, crimes aren't really crimes if
Speaker 1: you're our friends. So this was this idea that corporations
Speaker 1: that have created legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth
Speaker 1: that that's no longer a crime. None of us should
Speaker 1: be surprised by this. This crew is not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not good. Not good. That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.