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 Governor JB. Pritzker says, you come
Speaker 1: for my people, you come through me. We have such
Speaker 1: a great show for you today. Semaphore's Dave Weigel tells
Speaker 1: us what he's found in his examination of the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four election. Then we'll talk to Michigan Secretary of
Speaker 1: State Jocelyn Benson how about how her state will fight
Speaker 1: back against Trump's next term. But first the news.
Speaker 2: By why don't you tell us where the House is
Speaker 2: at in the election? Right now?
Speaker 1: Right now, Democrats have two hundred and one seats and
Speaker 1: Republicans have two hundred and twelve seats. They flipped six seats,
Speaker 1: Democrats flip five seats, so there's at this point Republicans
Speaker 1: have a one seat net gain. There are still thirteen
Speaker 1: uncalled races to watch that are just not finished being counted.
Speaker 1: Some will go to recount, and so if Democrats can
Speaker 1: net seventeen of those thirteen seats, they will have the majority.
Speaker 1: That seems unlikely since that math is not mathing, but
Speaker 1: it will be a very slim majority. That Republicans will
Speaker 1: have in the House. So we'll see what happens, but
Speaker 1: it certainly Democrats will pick up a few seats, probably
Speaker 1: main second district, Washington's third district, a couple of seats
Speaker 1: will be picked up, so it will end up being
Speaker 1: very close. There's still a bunch of Senate seats that
Speaker 1: aren't caught, so there's one seat Nevada. Rosen is going
Speaker 1: to win Arizona. Ruben seems like he has it. In Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: There's a chance because it's point because the Republicans leading
Speaker 1: by point five, that there might be a recount, and
Speaker 1: there's a possibility that McCormick might end up. If they
Speaker 1: recount and they find enough ballots, it's possible that the
Speaker 1: case will keep his seat.
Speaker 2: Smile. This is what I'm coing the mask off section.
Speaker 2: It seems the Republican were so giddy about Trump's when
Speaker 2: that they're already showing exactly what many of us knew.
Speaker 2: They were already. But these attacks on women are really
Speaker 2: something else. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: White supremacist Nick Flint has said your body, my choice forever.
Speaker 1: He posted that before the race. We saw a text
Speaker 1: campaign of obvious hate crimes, issuing a threat to students
Speaker 1: of color across the nation, claiming they had been selected
Speaker 1: to be slaves and appear at plantations. Pretty horrendous, misogynistic
Speaker 1: claims of you know, wanting to do horrible things to women.
Speaker 1: It's really not surprising, but it's this is what trump
Speaker 1: Ism does.
Speaker 2: And then of course we have all the right wing
Speaker 2: influencers who are taking their mask off about Project twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five and other things. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So you'll remember that Trump said he had knew nothing
Speaker 1: about Project twenty twenty five and that Project twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five was not at all connected to him. So basically,
Speaker 1: mediately after Trump onon, Matt Walsh She's a right wing
Speaker 1: podcast host wrote on X now that the election is over,
Speaker 1: I think we can finally say that, yeah, actually Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five is the agenda. L ol.
Speaker 2: Matt waalsherre. You will all be know from making a
Speaker 2: documentary reason called Am I Racist? Where he shows how
Speaker 2: racist he is.
Speaker 1: Ex Trump White has advisor Steve Bannon praised Walsh and
Speaker 1: amplified his post during his war Room podcast Wednesday, telling
Speaker 1: his staff to promote Walsh's comments on social media. Right
Speaker 1: wing influencer Bennie Johnson also posted an on X it
Speaker 1: is my honor to inform you that Project twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five was real the whole time.
Speaker 2: He wrote, you may know Betty Johnson from the Justice Department,
Speaker 2: saying he was a recipient of Russian disinformation money.
Speaker 1: That's right, he got a lot of money from Russia
Speaker 1: to spread disinformation. Bo French, a Texas GOP official who
Speaker 1: came under fire recently for using slurs to describe gay
Speaker 1: people and people at this abilities, wrote on X Wednesday,
Speaker 1: so we can admit now that we're going to implement
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five. So there you go. They'll say
Speaker 1: they were kidding, but they always say they were kidding.
Speaker 1: But we know the truth. And you can see the
Speaker 1: documentary we did on Project twenty twenty five. It's on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Just google it. It's I think a very worthwhile use
Speaker 1: of your time, MILLI.
Speaker 2: So we have the first hint of at least what
Speaker 2: we'll start as a romance. Elon Musk was on a
Speaker 2: call with mister Trump and Zelenski today. What do you
Speaker 2: see here?
Speaker 1: Donald Trump won the presidency on Tuesday, and almost immediately
Speaker 1: the richest people sixty four billion dollar gain for the
Speaker 1: world's ten richest people, so Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry
Speaker 1: Allison all among the top gainers. US stock surge dollar
Speaker 1: gained on US election result. The net worth, led by
Speaker 1: Tesla's CEO, the world's wealthiest person, surged to sixty three
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars on Wednday Day. Musk added twenty
Speaker 1: six point five billion to his pot. Amazon's Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: Oracles Larry Ellison were all among the top gainers. It's
Speaker 1: the biggest increase since Bloomberg's Wealth Index began in twenty twelve. Look,
Speaker 1: Trump is going to pick the winners and losers in
Speaker 1: this economy, and he's going to make big tax cuts
Speaker 1: for very wealthy people. And I think that these people
Speaker 1: who decided to support Trump made a bet that he
Speaker 1: would deliver for them, and he already has. So it's
Speaker 1: pretty grim. Sometimes I want to just talk for a
Speaker 1: minute to our listeners about sort of where I am
Speaker 1: right now and just be honest. This was not the
Speaker 1: result I've talked about a little bit, and I really
Speaker 1: did think Harris was going to win, and I really
Speaker 1: was quite devastated and sad for what happened, but I
Speaker 1: want to just point out that it was really, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple one hundred thousand votes in a few swing
Speaker 1: states that did this for him, and a lot of
Speaker 1: us in this country don't agree with Trump or trump Ism,
Speaker 1: and at this moment, really the goal has to be
Speaker 1: to protect institutions, to protect the rule of law, to
Speaker 1: make sure that we continue to bring sunlight to the
Speaker 1: stuff that people aren't covering. Trump has a bold and
Speaker 1: deeply unpopular agenda he's going to try to implement, and
Speaker 1: the only way that it can be gummed up is
Speaker 1: by sunlight, is by talking about it, is by covering it.
Speaker 1: So as much as there's a feeling like we all
Speaker 1: want to just turn off the news, and maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a week or two to do that, but
Speaker 1: this is going to require vigilance on all of our
Speaker 1: parts in order to make sure that we do have
Speaker 1: elections in two years and we do have a functioning
Speaker 1: democracy and we do protect the rule of law. So
Speaker 1: I think every one of us, including myself, needs to
Speaker 1: watch some Netflix and eat some cookies. I'm planning on
Speaker 1: that later, But I feel very heartbroken for like a
Speaker 1: lot of young women in this country, But I feel
Speaker 1: more than ever that the importance is that we continue
Speaker 1: to not engage in false equivalencies, really give you the
Speaker 1: news as you needed, and try to do our best
Speaker 1: and be transparent with you as listeners. I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that you guys come to us four times a week
Speaker 1: or three times a week or no. I know, but
Speaker 1: you might not listen to every episode. But I'm really grateful,
Speaker 1: and I really feel that it's a responsibility of mine
Speaker 1: to try to do the best we can, including to
Speaker 1: be transparent, and to just continue to bring you things
Speaker 1: so you can really stay completely up to date with
Speaker 1: the news and to know what's happening. So we're really grateful.
Speaker 1: And I know you're hurting, and we're hurting too. I'm
Speaker 1: hurting too, and I know Jesse's hurting too, and it's
Speaker 1: really dark, but I do want you to know that
Speaker 1: there is hope here and that there are federal governors
Speaker 1: who are committed to taking care of their people and
Speaker 1: do not give up. Dave Wigel is a reporter at Semaphore.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Dave.
Speaker 3: It's going to be back. Thank you, under great circumstances.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk to us about what
Speaker 1: went wrong. First of all, my whole place is that
Speaker 1: I want I'm going to this is we're going to
Speaker 1: just do therapy for me.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 1: Now. My whole place is I want to know what
Speaker 1: happened in this election and how I got it so
Speaker 1: wrong in my mind, like, I just want as much
Speaker 1: information as possible. So I have seen that you have
Speaker 1: been sort of parson through what happened. So can we
Speaker 1: start at the macro and then go to the micro?
Speaker 1: So what happened in this election? Broadly?
Speaker 3: So I'll start by saying a lot of people are
Speaker 3: looking at the numbers on their screen and assuming, oh,
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris turned out fewer voters than Joe Biden. Therefore
Speaker 3: she didn't excite Democrats. It looks in the swing states,
Speaker 3: we already know she basically hit the Biden numbers. In
Speaker 3: the swing states, they executed their strategy, which was knowing
Speaker 3: that some voters were moving toward Trump, replacing them with
Speaker 3: other voters turning out as many persuadable people as possible.
Speaker 3: It was Consin's one example of this. Harris got more
Speaker 3: votes than Biden did in Wisconsin. She got almost as
Speaker 3: many votes as Barack Obama did in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: which was the biggest Democratic landslide in Wisconsin since the sixties,
Speaker 3: and the state's population's been pretty static. That's why I
Speaker 3: focus on that one. But she didn't win it. So
Speaker 3: what happened it was that Donald Trump was not discredited
Speaker 3: for ninety five percent of Republican votvoters, some had already
Speaker 3: left the party. He saw this at the convention, Right,
Speaker 3: They're just people who weren't for toront like Mike Bends,
Speaker 3: who were never a lot back in the tent. They
Speaker 3: left and he was replacing them with voters who he
Speaker 3: promised everything to. And I had This part is important
Speaker 3: because what Donald Trump does differently than other candidates, and
Speaker 3: he does it because of a very friendly mediate environment
Speaker 3: that he helped create but that he also lucked into,
Speaker 3: is just promising everything to everybody. So if he did,
Speaker 3: he's not hide bound by saying, well, if I get
Speaker 3: in there, I might have a deficit to deal with.
Speaker 1: Well he will.
Speaker 3: He's just not going to. He just will pretend that
Speaker 3: he's going to fix it all with terrors he appointed,
Speaker 3: the justices that were turned to row. He just says
Speaker 3: that he's actually not going to do anything else. On abortion,
Speaker 3: he proposed a suite of new tax cuts that are
Speaker 3: not paid for and that would shrink the lifespan of
Speaker 3: Social Security. But this came up with Democrats. I was
Speaker 3: talked to this week, just a narrow focus on this point.
Speaker 3: Trump proposed tax cuts that would make the Social Security
Speaker 3: Trust Fund run out faster. But because he said I
Speaker 3: want to cut taxes on social Security, lower information voters.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be too negative or insulting, but
Speaker 3: lot lower information voters back and said it sounds like
Speaker 3: I heard the word social security and I heard tax cut,
Speaker 3: and they just and I didn't really say, that's a risk.
Speaker 3: He is hard to run against. And Democrats went from
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen thinking this is a fluke, we never
Speaker 3: should have lost it to thinking a candidate this brazen,
Speaker 3: who doesn't care about being called out for criminal convictions
Speaker 3: or offensive things or not being honest. A candidate who's
Speaker 3: just that that brazen is very hard to run against.
Speaker 3: And they've now seen in two midterms. I would be
Speaker 3: surprised as the next midterm their coalition will turn out
Speaker 3: better than the Trump coalition. But when he is there,
Speaker 3: five hundred thousand worket pople come out of the woods
Speaker 3: and vote for Republicans.
Speaker 1: Explain this to me again, because this is so interesting.
Speaker 1: So let's just go back to Wisconsin. This is super interesting.
Speaker 1: So she actually did grow her coalition, but it wasn't enough.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the difference here is nate. If you look
Speaker 3: at swing states where all the money was spent, Harris
Speaker 3: is at above or right below the Biden numbers from
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. We haven't do We don't have this from
Speaker 3: Arizona and of Etiot and I think that like those
Speaker 3: might be outliers. Because of the shift in the Latino
Speaker 3: vote in states where the campaigns did not spend money,
Speaker 3: and New Jersey's one of these, New York is one
Speaker 3: of these, Florida is one of these. There were a
Speaker 3: huge shift towards Republicans of every vote, every group of
Speaker 3: voters except white women with college degrees, and even then
Speaker 3: that wasn't much of a shift. That is where the
Speaker 3: simple story of the election is. People were still angry
Speaker 3: that prices were up after twenty twenty, no matter what
Speaker 3: Democrats did on the economy, the fact that the economy
Speaker 3: had proved a lot, the fact it's very easy to
Speaker 3: imagine Donald Trump, if he had been president this week,
Speaker 3: would have said, no one thought I could do it,
Speaker 3: but we've beaten inflation, and strong men come up to
Speaker 3: me with tears in their eyes and say, it's the
Speaker 3: best economy we've ever seen. They know that he would
Speaker 3: have been able to sell that economy, but they couldn't.
Speaker 3: Those are the model causal things happening here. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of discourse which I'm listening and skimming, some stuff
Speaker 3: about how the party lost its lost its connection to
Speaker 3: working class voters culturally, and that's complicated. The one part
Speaker 3: I think the Democrats are actually moving towards agreement on
Speaker 3: is that for years they thought they had an emerging
Speaker 3: majority and they didn't need far right media or alternative
Speaker 3: media or offensive media. I'd say that they could take
Speaker 3: the high road. Well, then they didn't need to talk
Speaker 3: to those people. The Harris campaign, if they did some
Speaker 3: subtraction from the coalition, not totally intentional, but for example,
Speaker 3: the RFK thing, their bet was we are not going
Speaker 3: to be the party. We're going to lose people if
Speaker 3: we are the party that just will say, oh sure,
Speaker 3: we'll totally blow up public health because of conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: so they let him out of the coalition. The thing
Speaker 3: that is more fixable is they hadn't prioritize going on
Speaker 3: new media that people who don't trust the mainstream media
Speaker 3: listen to. Some Democrats did, and every diperary did, like
Speaker 3: Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, John Federando, I talk to you
Speaker 3: this week. All of them say you just need to
Speaker 3: do that, like you're not going to go in there
Speaker 3: and get eaten alive. If you're getting eaten a live,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't run for office because you should be better
Speaker 3: at talking. You can't live in the bubble anymore where
Speaker 3: some people are just beneath you. Maybe none of them
Speaker 3: vowed for you, but you need to try. Maybe they
Speaker 3: don't vote for you, but they don't hate you once
Speaker 3: you get.
Speaker 1: On there, right or they know you exist.
Speaker 3: Sure, because when they talk about messaging, the messaging means
Speaker 3: earned media, which is you doing interviews and speeches. It
Speaker 3: means paid media, which is you buying ads. And that's
Speaker 3: the thing where they're running ad That's why I talked
Speaker 3: about swinges stays where they're runing ads and people saw
Speaker 3: the ads they held a lot of ground and where
Speaker 3: people were just watching the news on their phones and
Speaker 3: tuning out. They lost a lot of ground, and that.
Speaker 1: Seems so important because there's so much blame going around,
Speaker 1: which is I think normal winn a party loses, But
Speaker 1: that is so important because it sounds like in a
Speaker 1: weird way, because Democrats probably held those Senate seats, almost
Speaker 1: all the Senate seats in swing states that were up,
Speaker 1: and it almost sounds like the campaign helped those down
Speaker 1: ballot races.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the thing in the Senate seats, the almost
Speaker 3: irony of this, just like I get I can see
Speaker 3: if the key like Montana is a testa ran ahead,
Speaker 3: bear around, right ahead. Well, I don't want to get
Speaker 3: it too over complicated about what happened, but it was
Speaker 3: Democrats were able to win and outperform Harris in a
Speaker 3: number of places, which suggests to me that Republicans less
Speaker 3: well owned than Trump, but running on the same stuff
Speaker 3: as in twenty twenty two, just do not have the
Speaker 3: same appeal. It's very clear.
Speaker 1: Trump Ism does not scale right.
Speaker 3: Not right now, And even JD. Vance is less popular
Speaker 3: than Donald Trump. He doesn't get the same crowd, he
Speaker 3: doesn't have the same peal. There are not people having JD.
Speaker 3: Vance voat grades, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now, can you imagine Not.
Speaker 3: Really, I can imagine a lot of things, but that
Speaker 3: it's kind of hard to imagine, but very a. Goosy
Speaker 3: is a unique candidate because he's a Latino veteran in
Speaker 3: Arizona and he spent three years moving to the right.
Speaker 3: He'd been much more progressive and he moved to the right.
Speaker 3: You can do that in three years. You can't do
Speaker 3: it in one hundred days. That's a harder test of
Speaker 3: this because Kerry Lake is pretty well lothed and known
Speaker 3: for trying to overturn elections and nothing else. But that
Speaker 3: was a good example where where Democrats kind of filled
Speaker 3: the soil for a long time, and by the time
Speaker 3: voters are paying attention, they had seen Ruben Gegel on
Speaker 3: Bill Maher and they'd seen him say that Democrats should
Speaker 3: stop saying LATINX, which he did three years ago. I mean,
Speaker 3: I did, like there, go I not been saying that,
Speaker 3: but he said three years ago, stop doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That example of a Democratic campaign that made some compromises
Speaker 3: and said hey, if you're a moderate voter, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to do anything super crazy that you hate. That
Speaker 3: was pretty successful and Harris did a lot of that,
Speaker 3: and again, we're voters saw her saying, here's my economic plan,
Speaker 3: and I'm supported by some Republicans, so I'm not actually
Speaker 3: at left winger. That was in competition with the ads
Speaker 3: about her being a crazy left winger and her letting
Speaker 3: the border explode, et cetera, et cetera. But that actually
Speaker 3: did move some people. Just they're missing the people who
Speaker 3: don't watch TV except for when they're seeing sports, they
Speaker 3: didn't hear that. And the messaging because there's so much
Speaker 3: of a post to discuss on messaging. That's where I've
Speaker 3: come down on this was seeing what they were actually
Speaker 3: spending money on in the States.
Speaker 1: So explain this to me. The messaging it sort of worked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why this gulf between On average, it hired
Speaker 3: you on average. But for example, Democratic support collapsed to
Speaker 3: New Jersey, it just didn't matter because they won their
Speaker 3: house seats. They could. They were's one they want to
Speaker 3: flip and they did. If that collapsed up around the country,
Speaker 3: Democrats would have lost New Mexico and Minnesota and Virginia,
Speaker 3: and it didn't. It was where they had targeted messaging
Speaker 3: to burnish Harris's image. It was pretty successful. Harris's favorability
Speaker 3: improved throughout the campaign. I think the issue here is
Speaker 3: that Democrats did not correct quickly enough, because these things
Speaker 3: move very slowly. I see news stories as a second
Speaker 3: hand on a clock, and campaigns as the as the
Speaker 3: hour hand. It's really what because they had done differently
Speaker 3: well given that they were running on we're going to
Speaker 3: kick out asylum seekers more than we were two years ago.
Speaker 3: They were running on expanding medicare in pretty incremental ways.
Speaker 3: They're running on fighting price gouging. Had Joe Biden said
Speaker 3: in June twenty twenty three, not twenty four, I have
Speaker 3: to pull the cord on this, and I think even
Speaker 3: Kamala Harris been the nominee, they would have had the
Speaker 3: time to do that. Inflation would have continued to be
Speaker 3: an issue for them. But every Democrat owned part of
Speaker 3: the inflation situation because they owned it. They didn't own
Speaker 3: all the immigration situation because that's controlled by DHS and
Speaker 3: the executive, so some of them took some damage over it,
Speaker 3: and the damage is usually you didn't stop Biden from
Speaker 3: making things worse. But I think inflation would have been survivable,
Speaker 3: and by survival I mean Democrats running one and a
Speaker 3: half points better in a few states, they would have
Speaker 3: narrowly won the election. They would sto would have lost
Speaker 3: the Ohio Senate race, in the Montana Senate race, like
Speaker 3: they were fighting for a very, very, very tough race.
Speaker 3: But I think could they have gotten over the line
Speaker 3: with a similar strategy that started a year earlier. I
Speaker 3: think they could have.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What's so interesting to me about all of this
Speaker 1: is that it seems to me like New York State
Speaker 1: Democrats won seeds, right, I mean, they flipped two seeds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there are the green shoots for Democrats in
Speaker 3: a lot of places that we're going to figure out
Speaker 3: more after the election. And this happens. For example, two
Speaker 3: thousand and four, Georgie Wish wins and Republicans win most
Speaker 3: of their closed races. And the exception is Colorado, where
Speaker 3: Democrats win a Senate seat they flipped it from Republicans.
Speaker 3: They do much better in local elections. They were hopeful
Speaker 3: maybe the whole country is like that. It turns out
Speaker 3: it's not. There's parts of the country that are like Colorado.
Speaker 3: The key it turns out in the long term is
Speaker 3: do people there have college degrees that is definitive. But
Speaker 3: there were going to be places where Democrats did. North
Speaker 3: Carolina is one where they lost the presidential election state wipe,
Speaker 3: but they actually picked up some lower offices and broke
Speaker 3: their replicans oup majority. Even in this electorate, they were
Speaker 3: able to make some gains. When I talked about this electorate,
Speaker 3: I mean just Trump persuading people and adding votes from
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. Had Trump gotten exactly as many votes as
Speaker 3: he got in twenty twenty, if you listen to him,
Speaker 3: he says he wonted because no one had ever won
Speaker 3: that many votes. He wouldn't have won. Harris got more
Speaker 3: votes in a couple key states, and she would have
Speaker 3: edged past him. He did more persuasion, And so that's
Speaker 3: part of it. Two Democrats are not the only actors
Speaker 3: of history. Trump made decisions, and I think I talked
Speaker 3: about lying, et cetera, but he made even other policy decisions.
Speaker 3: To this say, unlike every other Republican, and hey, maybe
Speaker 3: unlike what I'll actually do and I take the power.
Speaker 3: I'm never going to touch Obamacare, I'm never going to
Speaker 3: touch Medicare, I'm never going to touch Social Security. I'm
Speaker 3: going to defend them. All that does matter. I don't
Speaker 3: think even the exact same alignment. If Trump had said,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm bored about running and they had
Speaker 3: nominated run to Santus, I'm not convinced a Santus would
Speaker 3: have won because I think the rest of the Republican
Speaker 3: instinct is pretty tied to and we're going to get
Speaker 3: in there and shrink the deficit. Trump's decisions are very potent. Also,
Speaker 3: what was the story he's able to tell? Again, it
Speaker 3: involves some bs, which is when I was president, which
Speaker 3: a presidency that ended in February twenty twenty, and nothing
Speaker 3: else was my fault. The economy is really good. Well,
Speaker 3: another Republican couldn't have run on that. He ran a
Speaker 3: very good campaign with a combination of a record he
Speaker 3: could defend and some stuff he made up and could
Speaker 3: very easily defend.
Speaker 1: Right, I want you to put this together for me.
Speaker 1: In the states where they didn't have the campaign apparatus
Speaker 1: working as hard right, the non swing states like New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about New Jersey. How much do you think
Speaker 1: disinformation played a role.
Speaker 3: Well, depending on what type of disinformation. There are elections
Speaker 3: that happen in fairly tough circumstances, and one of them
Speaker 3: is which we all live through you and me, And
Speaker 3: I assume I was listening as twenty twelve and it
Speaker 3: objectively voters in October twenty twelve were paying more for
Speaker 3: gas than they had been four years earlier, based on time.
Speaker 3: Uneployment was not what it was four and a half
Speaker 3: years earlier. There wasn't a good You just have to
Speaker 3: stick through it. We are the party that's going to
Speaker 3: get you through it. Things are improving, keep trusting us
Speaker 3: message that was successful for Barack Obama. And I think
Speaker 3: you can disaggregate form that from even his own talent
Speaker 3: because Democrats across the klairemccaskill was winning and John Tester
Speaker 3: is winning, and for a lot of Democrats it's like, Yep,
Speaker 3: we didn't turn things around yet, but we're turning them
Speaker 3: around and those other guys are terrible. That's the part
Speaker 3: that I think Trump makes more complicated because he wasn't
Speaker 3: running on Paul Ryan saying we're going to shrink the
Speaker 3: deficit and black Art Medican and he might, he just wasn't.
Speaker 3: This was running on it. This is the success he had.
Speaker 3: This is why I not overwripe it but just really like,
Speaker 3: if this was Jdevan's running on the same campaign without
Speaker 3: that record, I don't think it would have worked. I
Speaker 3: don't think you would have the same people come out
Speaker 3: of the would work because the overall democratic message of
Speaker 3: returning the corner that has been successful before it was
Speaker 3: actually round Reagan in nineteen eighty four, things were in
Speaker 3: some metrics, including inflation, unemployment, things were worse in morning
Speaker 3: morning in America than they were right now. The final thing, though,
Speaker 3: the final thing, I'm adding like twenty to twenty things,
Speaker 3: this daisy chain of takes, but this media environment, when
Speaker 3: you have to be talking about disinformation, I'm cautious say
Speaker 3: what's different information? What it is? And I think what's
Speaker 3: important is not just people not quite getting what's happening
Speaker 3: in the economy. It's that there's no objective source that
Speaker 3: a lot of people trust that's telling what's actually happening.
Speaker 3: Some of that is people who'll say, oh, the TV
Speaker 3: told me to wear a mask outside, and I don't
Speaker 3: trust that anymore. Some it's that, but it's also just
Speaker 3: people have moved on other media sources and they just
Speaker 3: not only do they not hear positive democratic messaging, but
Speaker 3: when they hear Trum's messaging. No one's really pushing back
Speaker 3: some way. Am I the hardest interviewer in a world?
Speaker 3: Probably not, But I would notice when kamal Aris goes
Speaker 3: on MSNBC, the first question is why are you struggling
Speaker 3: on the economy? Why don't people trust you on the economy?
Speaker 3: When Trump goes on like Joe Rogan and the note Boys,
Speaker 3: that's not the question that it's a lot of let's
Speaker 3: talk about how cool and fun you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've really been.
Speaker 3: I don't think even the media environment of twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: hard to recreate all that stuff, but that one where
Speaker 3: just people who are still getting most of their news
Speaker 3: from newspapers and TV, local TV, cable. The political discourse
Speaker 3: is more shape by what's on the a one of
Speaker 3: the New York Times. That was tougher for him, and
Speaker 3: this is much easier.
Speaker 1: So interesting, I mean, that's a really important point that
Speaker 1: he has a sort of propaganda network that Democrats don't have, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, basically that's what you're saying, and that propaganda
Speaker 1: network pumps him up and makes him seem But I
Speaker 1: also think the secret sauce about Trump has always been
Speaker 1: that he is just a uniquely talented I mean, like
Speaker 1: him or loathe him, certainly, I am not a fan,
Speaker 1: but he is uniquely good at connecting with his people.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Trump did, which I thought
Speaker 1: would doom him but actually has really delivered for him,
Speaker 1: is that he was so laser focused on his base
Speaker 1: and Harris was more interested. Obviously, again it's not a
Speaker 1: fair comparison because she had three months and he had,
Speaker 1: you know, our whole lifetimes. But he was committed to
Speaker 1: just turning out his base and thinking and making the
Speaker 1: gamble that that would be enough, and she was trying
Speaker 1: to practice conversion and ultimately the bass play one out.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you talk about that?
Speaker 3: Well, I do not know if he was trying to
Speaker 3: reach his base. It's a very complicated question because I
Speaker 3: don't mind you in the word wrappaganda. But one thing
Speaker 3: I'll positive here is that whenever a democratic president, Fox
Speaker 3: News drives the truck down to Del Rio and Eagle
Speaker 3: Pass and covers people crossing the border. And when Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's president, they talked remov is present. So because there
Speaker 3: were illegal border crossings under Trump, and I'm not being
Speaker 3: good because there were policy changes, bind did that led
Speaker 3: to more people across the border. There also were just
Speaker 3: worse conditions in places like Venezuela and Haiti that led
Speaker 3: to more migration out of there and people trying to
Speaker 3: get into the country. But it was not false that
Speaker 3: the Trump policy was a very unsympathetic were full go
Speaker 3: away approach, including saying you're in a campaign that yes,
Speaker 3: there are people who have legal temporary status from Haiti
Speaker 3: that live in Ohio and we should take your status
Speaker 3: away and kick them out. The Trump approaches just kick
Speaker 3: them out. That is a policy difference. And the promise
Speaker 3: of instead of you coming across the country and getting
Speaker 3: a court date, We're going to immediately deport you, We're
Speaker 3: going to process you in Mexico, just get out of here.
Speaker 3: That is significant change. It just helps that even when
Speaker 3: border crossings are falling under a Democrat, the stories are
Speaker 3: still about who's coming across the border illegally. One thing
Speaker 3: that stuck with me it wasn't my reporting, it was politico.
Speaker 3: But one reason the Teamsters didn't endure in the presidential
Speaker 3: race and just stayed neutral, which actually was kind of
Speaker 3: victory for Harris not norsing Trump, was that there were
Speaker 3: some heads of locals who sorry, not the teasers, the firefighters, firefighters.
Speaker 3: There are some heads in their locals who blamed the
Speaker 3: border for fentanyl and said, fentanyl's coming over and it's
Speaker 3: putting our firefighters at risk. And there is an example
Speaker 3: of something because if you if you know about how
Speaker 3: drugs smuggling works, as everyone listen to this podcast does,
Speaker 3: that's not like somebody that comes from Haiti with a
Speaker 3: bag of fentanyl and crosses the border. Drug smuggling is
Speaker 3: very sophisticated. Happened everywhere. It happens on planes, like we're
Speaker 3: not stopping all flights through Mexico. This is this catch
Speaker 3: twenty two that Democrats are in. You would see Republicans
Speaker 3: every time law enforcement announced a fentanyl seizure and say,
Speaker 3: look at how much fentanyl they seized. This is not working.
Speaker 3: Whenever Republican is president, he goes down and says, look
Speaker 3: at this, we seized a bunch of fentanyl. The policy
Speaker 3: is working. I'm not convinced that Democrats wouldn't do that.
Speaker 3: I do think Democrats are going to start revisiting not
Speaker 3: just Bill Clinton's politics, with Barack Obama's politics and how
Speaker 3: you just need to actually one be tough on rule
Speaker 3: breaking and things that are disruptive to normal people's lives.
Speaker 3: And you need to say that you are all the
Speaker 3: time and show up all the time. Like the people
Speaker 3: that I think are most out of the conversation that
Speaker 3: Democrats want to have right now in every way are
Speaker 3: the people who in it. And I was there covering
Speaker 3: this for twenty four thirteen, fourteen fifteen, the Black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter movement and also crim adjuster performers on the libertarian
Speaker 3: left and right who were saying, we actually can start
Speaker 3: removing some people from prison and being more tolerant about
Speaker 3: getting people rehabilitated, maybe not doing as many homelessness sweeps.
Speaker 3: We can be less cruel because crime is down. And
Speaker 3: one thing to happen this election below blow the claridential level.
Speaker 3: Well at the presidential level. Kamala Harris is running as
Speaker 3: to talk about being a tough prosecutor and for one example,
Speaker 3: and how just they've a party abandoned the that approach.
Speaker 3: I keep want to say, soft on crime, just try
Speaker 3: not talk to cliches. But also just in her state
Speaker 3: where she lives in Los Angeles County, voters got rid
Speaker 3: of the Progressive DA where she was born in Alameda County.
Speaker 3: Voters got rid of the progressive DA Oakland, where she
Speaker 3: spent some of her life. Voters kicked out the mayor
Speaker 3: San Francisco, where she was DA. Voters kicked out from
Speaker 3: there and statewide, and she never said how she voted
Speaker 3: on this. There was a ballot measure to get rid
Speaker 3: of some of these primo dust reform. They're the ones
Speaker 3: that had passed and passed life, and the original one
Speaker 3: passed with Republican support. I remember I talked to Gingrich,
Speaker 3: who dedorsed it, for a story recently. Grige ten years
Speaker 3: ago was saying, Hey, Californians, we need to get people
Speaker 3: out of prison. Let's pass this bill, and people who
Speaker 3: are just doing teddy chocolate lifting will be clogging up
Speaker 3: the jails. And then ten years later people say, I
Speaker 3: am tired of watching videos on TV of guys walking
Speaker 3: out of stores with bags of goods. I'm tired of
Speaker 3: going to Walgreens and there is shampoo behind the lock gate.
Speaker 3: You might stop and say, like, is that really the
Speaker 3: most important thing happening? Look, quality of life matters.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you so interesting. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you. Jocelyn Benson is the Secretary of State of Michigan.
Speaker 1: Welcome to FoST Politics, Jocelyn Benson.
Speaker 4: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have you on the podcast because a
Speaker 1: lot of the listeners of this podcast, and by a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners this podcast, I mean myself, are full
Speaker 1: on freaking out about what this is going to look
Speaker 1: like another Trump presidency, and so I figure because you
Speaker 1: are part of the trifactor of fabulous women who lead
Speaker 1: the state of Michigan, you could talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about First of all, I want you to
Speaker 1: first talk to us about the election and what you
Speaker 1: saw on the ground and how that was, and then
Speaker 1: I have many, many, many other questions for you.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: I think what I saw on the ground in the
Speaker 5: lead up to the election and throughout was a lot
Speaker 5: of enthusiasm across the board. And basically the enthusiasm ended
Speaker 5: up truly being across the board because we had the
Speaker 5: highest turnout election in our state's history. Five point six
Speaker 5: seven million people voted, which blew through our past record
Speaker 5: of five point five from twenty twenty which and that
Speaker 5: one blew through our previous record of five million in
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight. And so we at the time
Speaker 5: when our state population has been decreasing, we've seen voter
Speaker 5: turnout increase and really just go through the roof.
Speaker 4: This past Tuesday. That's not a terrible thing, and that's
Speaker 4: sort of that's a good thing for our for our democracy.
Speaker 4: It really illuminates also the reality that the two party
Speaker 4: system or is perhaps not fully equipped to reflect the
Speaker 4: diverse perspectives in the electorate, in the electorate that large.
Speaker 4: What we also saw on Michigan were two things.
Speaker 5: One extraordinary celebration at the polls, more energy than I've seen.
Speaker 5: And this was in you know, I went to ham Tranmek,
Speaker 5: I went down river places where our Democrats lost. I
Speaker 5: still saw extraordinary turnout, extraordinary enthusiasm. People were really determined
Speaker 5: to vote. The second thing I saw in Michigan was,
Speaker 5: you know, other than that, the at the top of
Speaker 5: the ticket women Wan. Our entire congressional delegation on the
Speaker 5: Democratic side is almost entirely women. Now, we elected Alyssa Slack,
Speaker 5: We elected two women to the Michigan Supreme Court who
Speaker 5: ran as Democrats. So there's I wouldn't call it silver linings,
Speaker 5: but I would add that to the lessons that we
Speaker 5: need to take from this election to recognize that still
Speaker 5: it's clear that women voters have something to stay. They're
Speaker 5: supporting female candidates in our state. The women of Michigan
Speaker 5: continue to expand. But at the same time, we also
Speaker 5: have to listen to the economic message that voters who
Speaker 5: supported Trump in Michigan and throughout the country are sending
Speaker 5: to everyone. They are hurting and they are looking for
Speaker 5: someone to listen and hear them at least make them
Speaker 5: feel hard, and who can convince them rightly or wrongly,
Speaker 5: accurately or not that they have the plan to heal
Speaker 5: their pain.
Speaker 1: But Alissa's Slatkin is going to the Senate. She is
Speaker 1: that is particularly exciting. And there are other Democrats in
Speaker 1: you know, Jackie Rosen and rub and Diego and who
Speaker 1: did in fact overperform the top of the ticket and
Speaker 1: maybe also benefitted from the top of the tickets campaign.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. You can make that argument. Certainly,
Speaker 5: all throughout various local districts where we saw a high
Speaker 5: turnout that we otherwise wouldn't see. The West Side of
Speaker 5: Michigan is an example of that too. But you know,
Speaker 5: we're still picking a part all of those all of
Speaker 5: those things. The other piece we know protecting democracy was
Speaker 5: a critical factor for a lot of people who did
Speaker 5: show up, and I think it's important to know that
Speaker 5: that work is going to continue and the fact that
Speaker 5: democracy thrives when we demand that it does.
Speaker 4: And so for us to give up.
Speaker 5: In this moment, at a time where we do have
Speaker 5: someone who's an avowed authoritarian, you know, about to ascend
Speaker 5: to the highest office in the land, we're needed now
Speaker 5: more than ever to stand firm and speak out against
Speaker 5: anyone who tries to take away our voices and our freedoms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean we're already hearing, thankfully from Newsome
Speaker 1: and also from Governor Pritzker, these statements of like how
Speaker 1: federalism can in fact protect American citizens and blue states.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what that looks like in Michigan.
Speaker 5: The power of people to stay engaged and stay involved
Speaker 5: and to hold people accountable, no matter how powerful, is
Speaker 5: a critical component of what democracy is. And especially in
Speaker 5: this moment, we have to still wave that flag and
Speaker 5: march into battle with that as our charge. And so
Speaker 5: I think you'll see young people, women in Michigan, people
Speaker 5: of color, continue to lead that if we allow our
Speaker 5: grief and despondents in this moment to turn into an energy,
Speaker 5: just like it did after twenty sixteen, to push for freedom,
Speaker 5: to push for an expansion of freedom, and really again
Speaker 5: also take on that economic opportunity message as well that
Speaker 5: the vice president attempted to. But for various different reasons
Speaker 5: that we can unpack, I didn't resonate as strongly as
Speaker 5: the one her opponent and the ones in future president
Speaker 5: and was able to sell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually think this election was hardest on younger
Speaker 1: women because for some of these younger women, I don't
Speaker 1: know if they understood just how much America could reject them, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that was really certainly a message you
Speaker 5: could see. And yet, you know, we only lose when
Speaker 5: we allow others to make us believe that our voices
Speaker 5: don't matter, you know, and so to young women, to
Speaker 5: all women, our voices matter.
Speaker 4: And it's up to us.
Speaker 5: To continue to stand with these young women as well,
Speaker 5: who will inherit what we leave behind and ensure that
Speaker 5: they remain in a country that protects them and protects
Speaker 5: their freedom and protects their voices, protects their bodies, protects
Speaker 5: their safety. That work is still on us to do,
Speaker 5: and the loss of that work on Tuesday that we
Speaker 5: endured doesn't change that. It just in my view, makes
Speaker 5: it all the more urgent. And history teaches us every
Speaker 5: time we as a people have reacted to setbacks with
Speaker 5: a stronger organization, with a stronger determination to push forward.
Speaker 5: We have one and every advancement throughout our history has
Speaker 5: involved setbacks. So we have to see this as that,
Speaker 5: and not a lot not to see it as a
Speaker 5: reason to give up. I know a lot of people
Speaker 5: want to walk away. It's a lot easier to just
Speaker 5: least say I want to leave the country. You know,
Speaker 5: I'm done. It's okay to feel that in this moment.
Speaker 5: We all felt that in twenty sixteen. But we also
Speaker 5: have to at least and a lot of people I'm
Speaker 5: CaCu in Michigan are seeing this as an opportunity to
Speaker 5: say not on our watch.
Speaker 4: And this story is not over, you know, the story of.
Speaker 1: The Women of Michigan.
Speaker 3: It's not over.
Speaker 5: This maybe the sequel to twenty twenty, but it's not
Speaker 5: the end of the trilogy. And we're coming back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's really important, and I think it's
Speaker 1: important to be clear that it was the setback, but
Speaker 1: that also it is an opportunity to learn a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff and then to keep.
Speaker 5: Going right, Yeah, and to learn from everything. And we
Speaker 5: do this and on my team, whether it was the
Speaker 5: after math of the twenty twenty election, whether it's you know,
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four and the aftermath we're about to experience.
Speaker 5: Use everything to get stronger, use everything to get wiser,
Speaker 5: use everything to get to get better, because that's what
Speaker 5: the issues and the people that we fight for deserve
Speaker 5: and require. And so for me, it's really hard in
Speaker 5: moments like this. You want to give up, who want
Speaker 5: to walk away, You want to say this is too hard,
Speaker 5: and they ever go to win. I'm up against too
Speaker 5: many powerful forces. The richest guy in the world and
Speaker 5: soon to be, you know, one of the most powerful
Speaker 5: elected people in the world.
Speaker 4: How do we fight that?
Speaker 5: It's easy to feel small, But those forces that want
Speaker 5: us to feel small will win if we allow them.
Speaker 4: To make us feel that way.
Speaker 5: If we don't give up on the ideals that brought
Speaker 5: us to the fight to begin with, we can keep going.
Speaker 5: And I would argue that if we do give up
Speaker 5: on the ideals and the values of inclusion and equality
Speaker 5: and freedom and protecting the vulnerable, everything that that brings
Speaker 5: us to the arena. If we give up on that,
Speaker 5: then it's a guarantee that those ideals fail to define
Speaker 5: who we are as a nation. But if we stand
Speaker 5: in the arena and we keep fighting, that's our best
Speaker 5: shot and our only shot to ensure that we have
Speaker 5: a chance to ensure our nation and our republic reflects
Speaker 5: the best of what we've always been since our founding. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I have a book coming out in May. I'm not
Speaker 5: like saying this to promote it. I'm just saying that
Speaker 5: this is like for me. This is why I wrote
Speaker 5: that book after twenty twenty, is to say we all
Speaker 5: have to be warriors, and we can't allow setbacks or
Speaker 5: things out of our control or losses to do anything
Speaker 5: other than make us better warriors for who we are
Speaker 5: and the communities we fight for. So in this moment,
Speaker 5: we have to ask ourselves, how are we going to
Speaker 5: pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, keep going, and
Speaker 5: use this as a moment to build our stronger muscles
Speaker 5: to you know, just like athletes. I'm a marathon and
Speaker 5: we run long distances, our muscles break down and then
Speaker 5: they come back stronger. So this is a time in
Speaker 5: which we is a community, can feel that weakness, and
Speaker 5: let's use that weakness to come back stronger. And if
Speaker 5: we can focus our energy on that, then we can
Speaker 5: and will succeed. History teaches us that unequivocally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, the other or bright
Speaker 1: spot if we're gonna feel better about this rushing electoral
Speaker 1: shit show, is that the Republicans have controlled the House
Speaker 1: for two years and they have been absolutely awful at it,
Speaker 1: and every piece of legislation they've managed to pass has
Speaker 1: been they've had to have democratic help. So you know,
Speaker 1: they'll have an equally small margin if they don't lose
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives. So there is some bit of
Speaker 1: good news there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there is always reason to help, and there's always
Speaker 5: a reminder that the reason why these issues, whether it
Speaker 5: be reproductive freedom, or whether it be just sort of
Speaker 5: keeping our kids safe in schools, or you know, everything
Speaker 5: that making sure we can have clean water, drink, clean air,
Speaker 5: and a breathe, everything that we fight for, there's a
Speaker 5: reason we have to fight for it.
Speaker 4: It's because the infrastructure.
Speaker 5: Of the world is not set up to make those
Speaker 5: things automatic guarantees They're only given to us when we
Speaker 5: demand them. And just like democracy only survives when we
Speaker 5: fight for it. So this is an opportunity for us
Speaker 5: to all ask ourselves, you know, what are we going
Speaker 5: to fight for? What are we going to stand for?
Speaker 5: And the power of the people will always be more
Speaker 5: powerful and greater than the people in power, And we
Speaker 5: can't forget that in moments like this, Even though there's
Speaker 5: so many different reasons to forget it, there's many more
Speaker 5: reasons to remember the strength that we come when we
Speaker 5: come together and don't give up. And I think we
Speaker 5: can push forward with courage, with dignity and with grace
Speaker 5: and you know, living all of our values and fighting
Speaker 5: for what we believe in. If we continue to build solidarity,
Speaker 5: to build unity, and to be there for each other,
Speaker 5: to stand up for each other, that's when we as
Speaker 5: a country are at our best and no one leader
Speaker 5: gets to define us in a way that doesn't reflect
Speaker 5: those best ideals. We can still maintain the ability to
Speaker 5: show the world who we are. It's only if we
Speaker 5: give up on that then truly we have lost.
Speaker 1: So are you going to be able to push back
Speaker 1: on Project twenty twenty? And what does that look like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, we have to see how things play out,
Speaker 5: and I think there are a lot of entities and
Speaker 5: organizations planning out. We still need to yet see what
Speaker 5: Congress looks like. Here in Michigan, we still have the
Speaker 5: executive branch, we have the state Senate. So there's a
Speaker 5: lot we can do to define what that pushback should
Speaker 5: look like, you know, whether it's in the environment, whether
Speaker 5: it's in education. And then there's also, you know, a
Speaker 5: parallel track of just keeping notes and planning for the
Speaker 5: next opportunity to lead the country and what that's going
Speaker 5: to look like. And I'm sure there's again a lot,
Speaker 5: there's a whole cohort of people doing that. It's about
Speaker 5: staying vigilant, staying engaged, people who have scoured through Project
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five, scouring through it now on coming up
Speaker 5: with a plan in response for every action it telegraphs.
Speaker 5: That's the type of work we all need to be doing,
Speaker 5: and doing it together. You know, this is not the
Speaker 5: time to descend into our own disunity. I guess, for
Speaker 5: lack of a better word, this is not the time
Speaker 5: to point arrows at each other. This is not the
Speaker 5: time to say you did this wrong, or you did
Speaker 5: that bad and use that as a way to kind
Speaker 5: of demoralize us even more. This is the time for
Speaker 5: us to say, yeah, we all messed up, we miss
Speaker 5: the mark. These are the reasons why. This is what
Speaker 5: we're going to learn from it, and this is what
Speaker 5: we're going to come back stronger. That's what the winning
Speaker 5: team does, right every I've thought about this a lot
Speaker 5: over the last few days. Everyone who's ever accomplished anything
Speaker 5: has face setbacks. That's that's reality. The question is always
Speaker 5: what do you do next? And that's what we as
Speaker 5: a like as women, need to ask ourselves. What do
Speaker 5: we do next? That's really the question, And what do
Speaker 5: we do next? Given Project twenty five? What alliances we
Speaker 5: do we build, what solidarity do we build? And if
Speaker 5: we can stay in that space as opposed to space
Speaker 5: about tearing each other down or picking things apart, Like
Speaker 5: I'm not interested in that. Let's not waste understand that,
Speaker 5: let's learn together from our mishaps, show grace to those
Speaker 5: who perhaps fell short. But everyone still has to stay
Speaker 5: in the arena because if we leave, we lose. But
Speaker 5: if we stay in it and we fight, we can
Speaker 5: still win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 5: As the Vice President so beautifully articulated right in her
Speaker 5: concession speech, which was as much as a concessiant speech
Speaker 5: as it was a call to action for the nation
Speaker 5: to stay vigilant and stay engaged and stay in the fight.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's also just how I respond to things, like
Speaker 5: I take the hit, but then I say, Okay, how
Speaker 5: do I punch back stronger?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: Like, That's that's what being a warrior is than a fighter.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, I think, you know, there's
Speaker 5: a clear message that was sent in this election, which
Speaker 5: is that people are hurting and they're looking for people
Speaker 5: who will fight for them. And in this case, Trump
Speaker 5: made the case, even if it was disingenuous, even if
Speaker 5: we could pick it apart, they felt he would fight
Speaker 5: for them, and they showed up for him. And so
Speaker 5: how do we what lessons do we learn from that?
Speaker 5: That's the type of conversation we need to have right now. Yeah,
Speaker 5: are you feeling.
Speaker 1: I feel like shit? I don't know. I had the
Speaker 1: last episode. I apologize to everyone from getting the election
Speaker 1: so wrong. I personally just really like Vice President Harrison
Speaker 1: thinks she's smart and they did. Actually, I mean I
Speaker 1: was just talking to a straight reporter on this who
Speaker 1: was talking about how in many ways the campaign did
Speaker 1: a lot of very smart stuff which helped the Senate
Speaker 1: candidates in some of these swing states, which is really interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm very disappointed. I also think black women they did
Speaker 1: so much much for us, so it is very I
Speaker 1: feel like it's just a very bleak. It just feels
Speaker 1: very painful to watch the group that you put together
Speaker 1: who really did come out have to watch that disappointment
Speaker 1: is I hate. And then also it's just hard. I
Speaker 1: also am really scared because I've asked, like between feeling
Speaker 1: a little better because I know how bad Republicans are
Speaker 1: at governing, and also I know how wildly unpopular a
Speaker 1: lot of the ideas in Project twenty twenty five are,
Speaker 1: right like, you know, it's all fun and games until
Speaker 1: a concentration camp ends up on your block, right Like,
Speaker 1: So a lot of that stuff is not popular. And
Speaker 1: I know how ambitious a lot of this agenda is
Speaker 1: and how hard it is to implement. It's hard to
Speaker 1: implement good stuff, it's equally hard to implement bad stuff.
Speaker 1: So that makes me feel a little better, but you know,
Speaker 1: it does not feel good.
Speaker 5: I know, you know, I would say, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: it's and it's important. I think to give space to
Speaker 5: all that in this moment.
Speaker 6: I really appreciate you coming on yeah, onward, I think
Speaker 6: is the most important thing to feel to just, you know,
Speaker 6: make sure we don't give up and make sure we
Speaker 6: continue to fight.
Speaker 1: A moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon Somali, this is a sad story. What are
Speaker 2: you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Trump received forty six percent of the Latino vote
Speaker 1: compared to thirty five percent four years ago, and Associated
Speaker 1: Press poll shows, and that's the most support Latinos have
Speaker 1: ever shown a Republican presidential candidate. And this is Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who is calling for mass deportation, who is saying that
Speaker 1: Mexicans in many cases are quote criminals, drug dealers, rapists,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So he's also said that immigrants poison the
Speaker 1: blood of our kind. A lot of these Latinos will
Speaker 1: be targeted for deportation. So it's a pretty bleak thing
Speaker 1: to see people vote against their own interests so profoundly.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to bring it up, not because it's
Speaker 1: fuckery in the fact that it's funny, but fuckery in
Speaker 1: the fact that it's so dark and profoundly and disheartening.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.