Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie 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 Nancy Pelosi says the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is an embarrassment to our founders. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. The good Liars Jason Salvig
Speaker 1: stops by to tell us about what he saw on
Speaker 1: the road that made him predict the Vice President Harris
Speaker 1: would lose. Then we'll talk to Mother Jones's Anna Merlin
Speaker 1: about RFK Junior and what we can expect if Trump
Speaker 1: actually adds him to his administration. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Mollie, what are you seeing As we start to
Speaker 2: get numbers from the election now.
Speaker 1: In Arizona, Ruben Diego will in fact win the Senate
Speaker 1: seat that he has run for against Carry Lake. Thus
Speaker 1: perhaps now Carry Lake has been defeated in a gubernatorial
Speaker 1: and Senate race, so we'll see if that stops her,
Speaker 1: but Ruben will be heading to the Senate. Congratulations, Reuben.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has some truths he would like to tell us.
Speaker 1: He's he is tweeting on x now and he has
Speaker 1: some thoughts about Democrats and Kamala Harris's debt.
Speaker 2: I'm very surprised that the Democrats, who thought a hard
Speaker 2: and valiant fight in the twenty twenty presidential election. We
Speaker 2: should also add that seems pretty out of date raising
Speaker 2: a record amount of money, didn't have lots of money.
Speaker 2: He's left over now they are being squeezed by vendors
Speaker 2: and others. Whatever we can do to help them during
Speaker 2: this difficult period, I would strongly recommend we as a party,
Speaker 2: and for the sake of desperately needed unity, due we
Speaker 2: have a lot of money left over, and in that
Speaker 2: our biggest asset is the campaign was earned media and
Speaker 2: that doesn't cost very much. Make America great again.
Speaker 1: I assume he's being ironic here, right.
Speaker 2: I think this is trolling.
Speaker 1: Okay, just checking. That was my sense, but I wasn't sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that Lara Trump is stepping away from
Speaker 2: the microphone and the vocal booth she's in singing a
Speaker 2: song to go pay those bills right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of trolling.
Speaker 1: This is Donald Trump trolling. You know, here we go.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will get ready for more of this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But also I would add this as a
Speaker 1: person who really does not like to honor and pay
Speaker 1: his debts, So that does not totally surprise me that
Speaker 1: he feels that paying a debt is meant to be
Speaker 1: sort of ironic. The big excitement for Republicans is this
Speaker 1: leadership race that's happening right now. So Mitch McConnell, who
Speaker 1: has really been wildly love him, hate him. Most people
Speaker 1: who listen to this podcast are the ladder and not
Speaker 1: the former. But he got Donald Trump three Supreme Court seats,
Speaker 1: which have radically remade the country in ways that many
Speaker 1: of us we haven't even seen really how serious it
Speaker 1: will be. And so Mitch McConn is going to retire
Speaker 1: from leadership, though he will keep his Senate seat until
Speaker 1: his next election. There is a hotly contested race to
Speaker 1: replace him with a lot of Republicans, many of whom
Speaker 1: are very ambitious. Tucker Carlson, who is really a GOP
Speaker 1: kingmaker in a certain way, has endorsed Rick Scott, Florida
Speaker 1: Senator Rick Scott for GOP Senate leader. He ripped Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 1: He said, what the hell is going on in the
Speaker 1: US Senate? Tucker asked on X hours after Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wins the most cohesive mandate in forty years. Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: in engineers a coup against his agenda. So there are
Speaker 1: three Republicans flying for the top spot, John Cornin of Texas,
Speaker 1: Rick Scott of Florida, and John Thune of South Dakota,
Speaker 1: who is already the minority whip. Tucker Carlson took issue
Speaker 1: with both Foon and Cornyn. We'll see what happens. This
Speaker 1: is going to be a real fight to replace.
Speaker 2: McConnell I really like the galaxy brain take that some
Speaker 2: of them are doing that. Jdvans should be both vice
Speaker 2: president and set a majority leader. That's my favorite of them.
Speaker 1: Oh, I haven't seen that, but that's really scary.
Speaker 2: So Moley, what are you seeing here in the House?
Speaker 1: Though it's still very tight. I think right now Republicans
Speaker 1: have one two hundred and thirteen seats in the four
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five member House. We have Democrats. We
Speaker 1: got to get to sort of the number. But I
Speaker 1: think there are a bunch of California seats that are
Speaker 1: still being counted.
Speaker 2: I believe there's ten seats, with six of them looking
Speaker 2: good for us right now.
Speaker 1: Right so six seats looking good for Democrats ten seats,
Speaker 1: so that'll be four. It's going to be a very
Speaker 1: tight majority. Democrats have two hundred and three seats, Republicans
Speaker 1: have two hundred and thirteen seats, to eighteen will get
Speaker 1: the major. We'll see what happens. There are still a
Speaker 1: bunch of California seeds and we just have to see
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: So Maya, I was feeling good. I wasn't hearing from
Speaker 2: Jim Jordan for a while, and I had kind of
Speaker 2: forgot about the little JACKETLI was fella. Now I saw
Speaker 2: him creeping back onto Dana Bash's show this weekend. What
Speaker 2: do you see here?
Speaker 1: I see that Dana Bash has had Jim Jordan on,
Speaker 1: and Jim Jordan has said, and I think this is
Speaker 1: really important that she did this. She said, do you
Speaker 1: think the twenty twenty election was free and fair? And
Speaker 1: Jim Jordan responded, I do, I do. And then Bash
Speaker 1: asked the question, which is a really good point, and
Speaker 1: why is it different from twenty twenty when Trump lost?
Speaker 1: Is that the only difference? Bash questioned, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: there were concerns with twenty twenty in the all Mantain voting.
Speaker 1: That happened Jordan said, what Pennsylvania had like two point
Speaker 1: something million mail in ballots come in without any single verification,
Speaker 1: which was required under the Pennsylvania statute. So there were
Speaker 1: all kinds of concerns without the twenty twenty vote was
Speaker 1: carried out. And then Bash says, okay, but there was
Speaker 1: absolutely no widespread fraud. There was also plenty of mail
Speaker 1: in voting taking place in Pennsylvania and the rest of
Speaker 1: the country in twenty twenty four. So look, Republicans are
Speaker 1: claiming that the twenty twenty election was stolen because of
Speaker 1: mail in voting. You'll remember that in twenty twenty we
Speaker 1: were in a pandemic, and in the pandemic, mail in
Speaker 1: voting was the way that we did it. Because of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, a lot of states did mail in voting.
Speaker 1: It was not fraud. And the fact is these guys
Speaker 1: are just saying it was fraud because Trump lost, and
Speaker 1: now they're saying it's honest because Trump won. Jason salviag
Speaker 1: is one half of the Good Liars. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Jason, thanks for having me. I apologize. I'm a little
Speaker 3: under the weather now. I don't know what it was
Speaker 3: that did it. Maybe it was traveling to uh six
Speaker 3: different states in seven days. But I'm not feeling great
Speaker 3: right now, So I apologize for how I sound right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you sound just all.
Speaker 4: Thank you appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Really you sound terrible. No, you sound good. And also
Speaker 1: I want you to so this you're coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm doing amazing, We're all.
Speaker 4: Just everyone's doing great.
Speaker 1: Sight Yeah, but I want you to talk about So
Speaker 1: I saw you a couple of weeks ago, and we
Speaker 1: had this conversation that I had with a couple of
Speaker 1: different people where I said she's going to win and
Speaker 1: you said, nope, she's not going to win. No, And
Speaker 1: I said, no, she's gonna win, and you said no,
Speaker 1: I have been talking to people across the country and
Speaker 1: I don't think she's going to win. And I said,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, and then you said, no, I think I'm right.
Speaker 1: So explain to our listeners and quite frankly, just to
Speaker 1: me what you saw that made you think that.
Speaker 3: Well, Okay, I'm going to talk about a couple of
Speaker 3: different things for it.
Speaker 1: And give us the backstory a little bit about what
Speaker 1: you do, just for the few people who don't know you.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'm in a group with de Ron Stifle
Speaker 3: are called the Good Liars, and we've been traveling the country.
Speaker 3: You know, we've been doing this for over a decade now.
Speaker 3: We've been going out for elections and recently we've been
Speaker 3: going to a lot of Trump rallies and going to
Speaker 3: a lot of swing states and we've interviewed the Trump
Speaker 3: supporters there. Maybe you've seen some of our videos online
Speaker 3: talking to people, sometimes catching the hypocrisies of some of
Speaker 3: the ways of thinking they're but also like a lot
Speaker 3: of it was just we were just traveling a lot,
Speaker 3: and we were going specifically to the swing states and
Speaker 3: what we saw on the ground just talking to normal people,
Speaker 3: not just just not people who are going and going
Speaker 3: to a Trump rally and waiting in line there, and
Speaker 3: they were huge, by the way, they were huge. Lots
Speaker 3: of people are going to them always and just talking
Speaker 3: to people. People were generally upset with the current administration
Speaker 3: and did not have a favorable opinion of Biden. And
Speaker 3: one story like sticks in my mind our travels, and
Speaker 3: ironically it was in Illinois. It was right after the DNC.
Speaker 3: We left the DNC, such a big party at atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Everyone was so excited and we got into a car
Speaker 3: to ram and I an Uber to go to the
Speaker 3: airport and we're talking about the DNC. We're talking about
Speaker 3: where we're going to film, our plans and all that
Speaker 3: this stuff. And the uber driver, who was like a
Speaker 3: woman in her maybe early thirties, I was like, did
Speaker 3: you guys were you guys at the DNC And we
Speaker 3: were like yeah, yeah, yeah, And she said, oh, oh cool,
Speaker 3: I'm voting for Trump. And we were like, oh, interesting,
Speaker 3: do tell And she had voted for Biden, and she'd
Speaker 3: voted for Obama twice and abortion was very important to her.
Speaker 3: But she did not like the direction of the country,
Speaker 3: did not like how much things cost, and it was
Speaker 3: a no brainer for her to vote for Trump. And
Speaker 3: like that always kind of stuck in the back my mind,
Speaker 3: being like, Oh, this person who you would think would
Speaker 3: be just like in the Democrats back pocket for the election,
Speaker 3: she is going to vote for Trump this time. We'd
Speaker 3: have a couple conversations with people like that, and they
Speaker 3: always were voting for Trump. No one who wasn't in
Speaker 3: like the Democratic circles really like excited about Harris.
Speaker 4: And being on the ground in the Swing States.
Speaker 3: What I saw like cause you know, if you just
Speaker 3: turn on the radio there you're gonna hear ads. You're
Speaker 3: gonna hear ads. And if you're driving like we would do,
Speaker 3: driving long distances in the highway, you'd see the billboards.
Speaker 3: And what I saw was the ad campaign from Harris
Speaker 3: did not seem very strong to us, just like listening
Speaker 3: to it on the radio, seeing the TV ads when
Speaker 3: we're at the hotel, and also like the billboards.
Speaker 4: I don't know who was in charge of it.
Speaker 3: The billboards, it was like they were blue and yellow
Speaker 3: and well there was a check mark that looks like
Speaker 3: a cigarette being ashed in an ashtray. The whole visual
Speaker 3: of all of it was not like super clear, and
Speaker 3: Trump was like a caveman wrote it. It was like
Speaker 3: Trump lower inflation, Harris higher, Trump safe, Harris dangerous, And
Speaker 3: it was very to the point and not like this
Speaker 3: is gonna sway everyone. You know, I'm just saying, these
Speaker 3: are just observations that we had there. And the biggest thing,
Speaker 3: the biggest thing of all, even if we didn't go
Speaker 3: to all the swing states, I probably still would have
Speaker 3: said I think Trump is going to win, just going
Speaker 3: by the blast two elections and looking at the polls.
Speaker 3: Because Trump always overperforms his polls, and by like two points,
Speaker 3: like it happened in twenty sixteen, and it happened in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty as well. He overperforms. And if you looked
Speaker 3: at what people the most, the two most important issues
Speaker 3: for people, it was always the economy and the border.
Speaker 3: Like for most people, that was it, not just the
Speaker 3: people we talked to Trump Trump brobaby, these are poles
Speaker 3: saying this. And I looked at that, and I looked
Speaker 3: at how unpopular Biden was, and then I looked at
Speaker 3: how Harris. You know, she's the administration, and she had
Speaker 3: not clearly defined herself in the polls. I'm just saying
Speaker 3: the polls now my own opinion. She had not clearly
Speaker 3: defined herself as different, separate, and just a totally different
Speaker 3: entity than Biden. So you look at that, and where
Speaker 3: everyone's saying it's a toss up election, I'm looking at
Speaker 3: it where it's like even in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and maybe
Speaker 3: she's ahead by a point in Michigan, and I'm saying
Speaker 3: Trump is ahead in all of those states. That's like
Speaker 3: the baseline of it. So watching the election, like from
Speaker 3: the very beginning the beginning being like one hundred days ago,
Speaker 3: because it's in this whole election was crazy this year.
Speaker 3: She was running almost like she was ahead, but in
Speaker 3: my mind she was always behind. And I know she said, oh,
Speaker 3: we're the underdog, We're the underdog, but she was not.
Speaker 3: Like they were not taking big swings that I wish
Speaker 3: that they had taken to try and win some of
Speaker 3: these other voters.
Speaker 4: And I could get into the like, what the real
Speaker 4: problem of it? If you want no, no, So I.
Speaker 1: Think these are all really important points and interesting about
Speaker 1: kind of what you saw on the ground. I want
Speaker 1: you to talk to us about. One of the things
Speaker 1: I'm struck by is when you look at the swing
Speaker 1: state numbers, you have a lot of states where Donald
Speaker 1: Trump does fifty percent, fifty one percent, and then you know,
Speaker 1: they leave the rest of the ticket blank. They don't
Speaker 1: vote for the Republican. It's too much work to fill
Speaker 1: in the bubbles for all the other candidates, so they
Speaker 1: just don't vote. And I'm wondering, you've spent years and
Speaker 1: years and now you will spend more years.
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know. I can't even think
Speaker 4: about that right now.
Speaker 1: Trump supporters in these at these events. What do you
Speaker 1: think those sort of the psychology there is when you
Speaker 1: vote for Trump but you don't vote for Kerry Lake
Speaker 1: for example.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think what you're probably referring to is North
Speaker 3: Carolina and Arizona.
Speaker 4: Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even Michigan right, bad, Right, all the swings,
Speaker 1: almost all the swings dates except maybe Pennsylvania we don't
Speaker 1: know yet, voted for Trump and then just left the
Speaker 1: bottom of the take a blank. And I want you
Speaker 1: to make sense with that with the people you've interviewed
Speaker 1: on the trail.
Speaker 3: Look, we spent a lot of time in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: and you know, we focused on Mark Robinson and Michelle Morrow,
Speaker 3: who both of them lost in North Carolina. She was
Speaker 3: running for superintendent of public education there and she's the
Speaker 3: one who like tweeted firing squad for Obama on pay
Speaker 3: per view. And we all know Mark Robinson, like the
Speaker 3: alleged porn site stuff and all the stuff that was
Speaker 3: out there about him. So people had seen that these
Speaker 3: were not great candidates, and I think Arizona had already
Speaker 3: kind of made up their mind.
Speaker 2: About Carrie Lake.
Speaker 3: But I think what people were doing is they were
Speaker 3: looking at the big issues to them, and they were thinking,
Speaker 3: I like Trump because I think he's going to be
Speaker 3: better for the economy, and I think they just voted
Speaker 3: with the you know, thinking.
Speaker 4: Of their their pocketbooks, the thinking of the wallet.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I think when the candidates were that bad, like they
Speaker 3: were in North Carolina and there was that much money
Speaker 3: spent against them, like, I think that is going to
Speaker 3: translate to people being like, I'm going to vote on
Speaker 3: the economy for Trump, but not for some of these
Speaker 3: down ballot people. But in Pennsylvania, I think it's going
Speaker 3: to be like a Republican's gonna win there, like in
Speaker 3: the Senate. So I think it depends on the state
Speaker 3: and like how bad the candidate is, because I think
Speaker 3: some of them, like Kerry Lake and Mark Robinson there
Speaker 3: it's two of the worst candidates in the history of
Speaker 3: American politics.
Speaker 4: Like they are that bad.
Speaker 3: And you could throw Michelle Moro in there too, even
Speaker 3: though it's a you know, a smaller office, but like
Speaker 3: the baggage they had is terrible. Like I would make
Speaker 3: the argument that it's not worse than denying the election
Speaker 3: results and having a mob of your sports store in
Speaker 3: the Capitol and refused to accept their election results and
Speaker 3: all the other stuff that Trump did. But that's just
Speaker 3: not how everyone saw it in the country, which is
Speaker 3: really obviously disheartening.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I mean, I'm trying to sort of understand.
Speaker 1: You've talked to the people, you know these people as
Speaker 1: much as anyone does, and I'm just trying to understand,
Speaker 1: like how a Donald Trump not Carrie Lake voter exists
Speaker 1: because there are thousands, tens of thousands of them.
Speaker 3: We talked to numerous people on the road in a
Speaker 3: bunch of different swing states, and like we would ask
Speaker 3: him about abortion and like what they thought about Roe
Speaker 3: v Wade being overturned, And then we heard this multiple
Speaker 3: times people say, like I didn't know Roe v Wade
Speaker 3: was overturned and their pro choice.
Speaker 4: Or what they didn't know it. They didn't know it.
Speaker 4: So like they know Trump.
Speaker 3: He's this guy, He's the reality show guy who was
Speaker 3: president who like tells it like it is. They know
Speaker 3: who that is, so they're going to vote for him
Speaker 3: and then they could leave everything else blank. That's part
Speaker 3: of the mentality, is just like not knowing. But I
Speaker 3: think also the bad candidates has a lot to do
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 1: Right, But they wouldn't be bad. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: Carrie Lake isn't a bad candidate compared to Donald Trump, right,
Speaker 1: because they're the same. You know, ultimately she ran as him.
Speaker 1: But I think that's a really good point about not
Speaker 1: knowing things. And I'm wondering if you can just let's
Speaker 1: just drill down on that for a minute. So you're
Speaker 1: interviewing people and they sort of know Trump, like him,
Speaker 1: hate him, but know him, and they don't know other
Speaker 1: stuff about American politics. Can you have a story to
Speaker 1: explain this phenomenon.
Speaker 3: I talked to a woman in New Hampshire during the
Speaker 3: Republican primaries this year who was pro choice and said,
Speaker 3: I really believe that a woman it should be.
Speaker 4: Up to the woman to make that decision. I really
Speaker 4: do believe that.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, how do you feel about
Speaker 3: Trump appointing the Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade And she's like, I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 3: I have to do my own research and figure out
Speaker 3: that that's true. I'm like, no, that is true. That
Speaker 3: is a fact. Like Trump will not deny that fact.
Speaker 3: So there's something about, you know, just not being informed.
Speaker 3: But like if you just take a step back and
Speaker 3: you look at this people knew Trump and like if
Speaker 3: just imagine, like you live and breathe politics, and like
Speaker 3: now I do. I've questioned my own life choices, but
Speaker 3: now I do as well. You live and breathe politics.
Speaker 3: Imagine like taking in about zero point one percent of
Speaker 3: what you currently ingest from politics.
Speaker 4: That is the amount that people are.
Speaker 3: Some of these people, like some people are die hard
Speaker 3: Trump and they, like I've said before, like they get
Speaker 3: their news from truth social from Trump's posts. But like
Speaker 3: some people are just like I like Trump. He tells
Speaker 3: it like it is and he's my guy, and I
Speaker 3: don't like read the news like January sixth is.
Speaker 4: Like, oh yeah, that thing happened. I remember that a
Speaker 4: little bit. What was that about?
Speaker 3: Well, whatever, whatever, And they just go about their lives
Speaker 3: like Roe v. Wade being overturned was not a big day,
Speaker 3: like with you. They didn't have a pit like their
Speaker 3: stomach fallout, you know, and feel sick from it.
Speaker 4: They just were like, oh did that happen?
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
Speaker 3: Just imagine you're getting in that much and you are
Speaker 3: just worried about I mean, it actually sounds wonderful doesn't it.
Speaker 3: You just you're just worried about like the sports team playing,
Speaker 3: or the reality show you're watching, or whatever the hell
Speaker 3: you're doing, or the TikTok videos.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the dream.
Speaker 3: They're living the dream, and maybe that's what we're waking
Speaker 3: up to. This is the American dream is being ill informed.
Speaker 3: But that I think is the major thing. It's just
Speaker 3: like people not not being informed, and where they're getting
Speaker 3: their news is not necessarily it's not the New York Times,
Speaker 3: you know, Like some people we talk to are like
Speaker 3: the I watched mainstream news sometimes, like always turn on
Speaker 3: Fox News every once in a while, but you can't
Speaker 3: trust everything they say, and that they're getting it from podcasts.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's not because not because of the election, not because
Speaker 3: of I mean maybe the other side of that. Not
Speaker 3: because they like settled a lawsuit with dominion. It's for
Speaker 3: totally different reasons that they don't trust it. So I
Speaker 3: do think Democrats, like there's so many different ways they lost,
Speaker 3: and like how the biggest thing to me though, And
Speaker 3: maybe you don't want to talk about this day maybe
Speaker 3: you already talked about this. I mean, you've got to
Speaker 3: go back to Biden not dropping out sooner and giving
Speaker 3: a possibility for somebody to define themselves in less than
Speaker 3: one hundred days, let them have debates. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: I thought Harris did a great job considering the amount
Speaker 3: of time she had. But to introduce yourself and to
Speaker 3: make it seem super organic.
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't impossible. It was a herculean task. And
Speaker 1: what we saw was the down ballot candidates. She saved
Speaker 1: a lot of Senate and House seats that would have
Speaker 1: otherwise been lost. But I agree, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of blame to go around, and as Democrats, we
Speaker 1: tend to love to blame. But I'm more just trying
Speaker 1: to understand what happened before I get prescriptive on what
Speaker 1: should happen. I also think that one of the things
Speaker 1: that happened when a party loses an election is that
Speaker 1: people use that failure to confirm their own priors. So
Speaker 1: if you're person who believes that the left has abandoned
Speaker 1: the base, then you are going to look at the
Speaker 1: low turnout and say the Left has abandoned the base.
Speaker 1: And if you are a person who believes that financial
Speaker 1: indicators are key in an election, you are going to
Speaker 1: look at that election, but I just sort of want
Speaker 1: to understand what I missed more than anything.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the poll numbers that everyone should have
Speaker 3: been looking at from the very beginning, and.
Speaker 4: Which it's why like I feel like.
Speaker 3: I feel strong about the Biden and just his accomplishments
Speaker 3: getting things passed, which I think were great, the good
Speaker 3: things that were done. His failure as a president, I
Speaker 3: think is as a communicator, and he could never articulate
Speaker 3: his wins and he could never spin his losses.
Speaker 1: And that's a larger macro problem of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: not being good enough at you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things Trump does is he spends almost ninety percent of
Speaker 1: his time communicating right right.
Speaker 3: And Biden he couldn't form the thoughts. He couldn't do
Speaker 3: it in a successful way. He couldn't take up the
Speaker 3: oxygen when inflation is really affecting people's lives. He was
Speaker 3: not able to spin it in a way somebody else
Speaker 3: could have where it's either like go look at this
Speaker 3: other shiny thing that we're working on here, or that
Speaker 3: like that we're doing better than Europe and we're actually
Speaker 3: like coming out of a pandemic without like a terrible recession,
Speaker 3: that is like crippling the whole economy. We're actually doing
Speaker 3: a pretty good job. He could not articulate it. And
Speaker 3: because of that, his approval ratings were just as bad
Speaker 3: as Trump. And that's not just Republicans saying that.
Speaker 1: And that's a communication problem, and we kept seeing that
Speaker 1: throughout the election. The problem he had communicating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the only news thing he had that broke through
Speaker 3: was he put on a Trump hat and he called
Speaker 3: trump'spports garbage. Those are the two things that broke through
Speaker 3: besides dropping out of the race.
Speaker 2: That he did.
Speaker 4: That's not a good thing. Now, is that sway the election? No?
Speaker 3: I think that like you're playing like I said, those
Speaker 3: the polls are two percent off, and it turned out
Speaker 3: to be true that you're playing behind. That puts you
Speaker 3: more behind. So if there was a primary or something,
Speaker 3: I feel like things could be different, you could define
Speaker 3: yourself in a different way.
Speaker 4: But again that's Monday morning quarterback.
Speaker 1: The real lesson here, in my mind, is that Trump
Speaker 1: is a uniquely good politician, good at politics in a
Speaker 1: way that other Republicans are not, and most Democrats are not.
Speaker 1: Right like I mean the end, Perhaps it's because he
Speaker 1: was a celebrity for twenty years. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: any number of theories of the case. But like the
Speaker 1: people you talk to, they're not necessarily committed Republicans as
Speaker 1: much as they're committed Trump is.
Speaker 3: We talked to lots of people who voted for Obama
Speaker 3: twice who are Trump supporters now, Like that's very common,
Speaker 3: and that's very common.
Speaker 1: So this is not ideological at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a little bit of the personality.
Speaker 3: But I think it's also like I think there's a
Speaker 3: it's anti establishment, and the Democrats did not run as
Speaker 3: anti establishment. They were saying we got Dick Cheney as
Speaker 3: an endorsement, thinking that that sways the suburban vote, when
Speaker 3: that is just it. Maybe in two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: or something, maybe there was a time that that would
Speaker 3: be helpful. And I don't think that's like the straw
Speaker 3: that broke the Campbell's back. I'm just saying it doesn't
Speaker 3: sound like it's even though the policies help the working person,
Speaker 3: the messaging is never that. And even if it's the
Speaker 3: mess not the messaging, it's the visual of who you
Speaker 3: see out there for campaigning with the people. So I
Speaker 3: think there was a failure with that and it was
Speaker 3: playing it safe in a race when you're down was
Speaker 3: a mistake too, but also your delta really bad hand
Speaker 3: because Biden didn't get out of there sooner.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Jason Anna Merlin is a reporter and Mother
Speaker 1: Jones and the author of Republican Lies, American Conspiracy Theorists
Speaker 1: and their Surprising Rise to Power. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: You've been here before, Anna.
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I feel like you've been here before
Speaker 1: in my night Goldfish Brain. So you you have this
Speaker 1: piece you write for Mother Jones, and you have his
Speaker 1: piece about RFK Junior is going to be a member
Speaker 1: of Trump's presidency. Let's talk about RFK Junior.
Speaker 5: Sure we should note though that as we're talking, we
Speaker 5: don't actually know if he's going to be part of
Speaker 5: Trump's cabinet. They've been very nonspecific about it, so who knows.
Speaker 1: Though Trump has sort of made a lot of overtures
Speaker 1: towards him.
Speaker 5: Yes, definitely has is unclear in what role he will
Speaker 5: actually serve in the Trump administration, but he's definitely a
Speaker 5: part of his transition team and has been a pretty
Speaker 5: big face of the last days of the Trump campaign.
Speaker 1: Right give us a sort of sense of what he is,
Speaker 1: sort of what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: Robert F.
Speaker 5: Kennedy Junior, obviously is an environmental attorney turned anti vaccine activist.
Speaker 5: He's been an anti vaccine activist for quite a long
Speaker 5: time at this point and ever since he suspended his
Speaker 5: independent residential run.
Speaker 1: Can I just pause you for a second. Why did
Speaker 1: he take this?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Did he have a child with a lot of times
Speaker 1: people become anti vacs because they have a child with
Speaker 1: autism or something to that effect.
Speaker 6: The story that mister Kennedy has told is that he
Speaker 6: started looking into the connection between vaccines and autism, which
Speaker 6: there is no connection that has been debunked many times over.
Speaker 6: But he became.
Speaker 5: Curious about this issue because a mother of a child
Speaker 5: with autism begged him to get involved and look into
Speaker 5: whether vaccines were causing it. So this is his kind
Speaker 5: of self stated origin story. So in two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: he published a piece that ran in both Rolling Stone
Speaker 5: and Salon called Deadly Immunity, making a bunch of false
Speaker 5: claims about vaccines and their connection to disease. It was
Speaker 5: eventually retracted by Rolling Stone after a series of errors.
Speaker 5: But yeah, his claim is that it came out of
Speaker 5: parents asking him to get involved.
Speaker 1: Okay, so all right, sure, so talk to me about
Speaker 1: this piece.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign a while ago
Speaker 5: and endorse President Trump. Started using this slogan a make
Speaker 5: America Healthy Again, which is meant to kind of illustrate
Speaker 5: the polices where Trump and Kennedy's agendas overlap, and is
Speaker 5: meant to be a promise about what mister Kennedy will
Speaker 5: do under a second Trump administration. But the reality is
Speaker 5: that a lot of what they are talking about is
Speaker 5: rooting out supposed corruption in public health agencies by essentially
Speaker 5: dismantling them. Kennedy, as part of his anti vaccine activism
Speaker 5: for a long time, has implied not just some kind
Speaker 5: of connection between big pharma and public health agencies, but
Speaker 5: also a sinister level of collusion hiding all these things
Speaker 5: that he believes are happening behind closed doors where public
Speaker 5: health is concerned. Project twenty twenty five has called for,
Speaker 5: for instance, breaking up the sea into two smaller agencies.
Speaker 5: So what both of these guys agree on and what
Speaker 5: they are proceeding together with is this idea that public
Speaker 5: health agencies, as they exist right now in the United
Speaker 5: States shouldn't and that scientists, for instance, should be investigated.
Speaker 5: He's made a lot of promises about, you know, quote
Speaker 5: unquote cleaning up medical journals, which are of course not
Speaker 5: under the offices of the federal government.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot going on here.
Speaker 1: Wait, can I ask you a question as a baffling aside.
Speaker 1: Sure you've written about him a bunch. Is he not smart?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 6: I don't know. I wouldn't. I wouldn't be comfortable saying
Speaker 6: whether anybody is smart or not smart?
Speaker 1: Right. What do you think drives some of this? So?
Speaker 5: I think that he specifically has always proceeded under the
Speaker 5: kind of assumption that every kind of like public health
Speaker 5: agency is corrupt and that it has to be like
Speaker 5: rooted out. This is a claim that he makes not
Speaker 5: just about vaccines, but about things like you know, five
Speaker 5: G technology, GMOs, and so I think if you proceed
Speaker 5: with kind of like an overwhelming sense of everything being
Speaker 5: deeply corrupt, then you tend to kind of make sweeping
Speaker 5: statements like this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that answers
Speaker 6: your question.
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying, which is important, is that
Speaker 1: it's paranoia on some level, or it's being convinced that
Speaker 1: these people are not on the level.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that is definitely a claim that he's made for
Speaker 6: a long time, sometimes in more extreme forms than he
Speaker 6: is right now, for instance, when he's speaking to sort
Speaker 6: of like friendlier anti vaccine audiences. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: I think it's sort of important to.
Speaker 5: Point out here that there is a pretty high degree
Speaker 5: of distrust and paranoia in against the medical establishment in
Speaker 5: the United States. Like, you know, conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 5: medical establishment are incredibly common.
Speaker 1: And especially after COVID.
Speaker 5: Sure, especially after COVID, people feel disaffected by the medical system.
Speaker 5: They feel like it is not there for them. And
Speaker 5: so his kind of line about rooting out supposed corruption
Speaker 5: in those agencies probably finds more of a receptive audience
Speaker 5: than it would have before COVID.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. And I think that's a really important
Speaker 1: point because I think that that's absolutely one hundred percent
Speaker 1: true anyway, So continue.
Speaker 5: So, Yeah, the MAHA agenda is basically about all of
Speaker 5: these ways that they are going to dismantle these agencies investigate, Yeah,
Speaker 5: the editors of medical journals. But you know, in the
Speaker 5: midst of all of this, as I said, we don't
Speaker 5: actually know where exactly Kennedy fits into a Trump administration.
Speaker 5: They've been pretty vague about it. But the thing that
Speaker 5: both Trump and Kennedy have said over and over is
Speaker 5: that Kennedy is going to be responsible for curing what
Speaker 5: they both call the chronic disease epidemic. Kennedy also told
Speaker 5: a group of MAHA supporters that Trump quote promised me
Speaker 5: control of the public health agencies, including AHHS, the CDC, FDA, NHUSDA,
Speaker 5: and a few others.
Speaker 6: So that is the claim that he's made.
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot.
Speaker 6: It seems like a lot.
Speaker 5: It doesn't really make a lot of sense, though I
Speaker 5: guess it doesn't have to. But the one other thing
Speaker 5: we should have known here is that in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: Kennedy claimed that Trump had asked him to be on
Speaker 5: a vaccine safety commission looking into, you know, whether anything
Speaker 5: about the vaccine kind of administration system needs to be
Speaker 5: overhauled or whether vaccines are unsafe, which is of course
Speaker 5: a belief that he has, and that didn't happen, right
Speaker 5: Like the Vaccine Safety Commission didn't happen.
Speaker 6: Kennedy did not play any role in the first Trump administration.
Speaker 5: So there is a little bit of a question here
Speaker 5: about whether or not this is like a promise that
Speaker 5: will be appalled.
Speaker 1: That sounds like it makes a lot of sense, as
Speaker 1: much as any of this makes sense, which is not
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the same as like Elon Musk, Right, you know,
Speaker 5: we don't actually know to what extent any of these
Speaker 5: guys are going to be involved in the Trumpet administration
Speaker 5: in an ongoing way, because what we know from a
Speaker 5: previous Trump administration is that it had really high turnover,
Speaker 5: a lot of people had the same jobs for a
Speaker 5: very short period of time.
Speaker 1: So we'll see, yes, exactly. So anyway, continue on with
Speaker 1: this story. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that Kennedy has said about
Speaker 5: the supposed like Maha agenda is that he's going to
Speaker 5: end what he's called the FDA's war on public health.
Speaker 5: But then when he lists things that he considers to
Speaker 5: be tenets of public health, a lot of them are pseudoscience.
Speaker 5: So he tweeted this includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides,
Speaker 5: stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ibermectin, hydroxychloroquin vitamins,
Speaker 5: clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals, and anything else that advances
Speaker 5: human health.
Speaker 6: And can't be patented by pharma.
Speaker 5: He also added, if you work for the FDA and
Speaker 5: or part of this corrupt system, I have two messages
Speaker 5: for you. One preserve your records and two pack your bags.
Speaker 5: So it would take us too long to get into
Speaker 5: each of those things individually.
Speaker 1: Hit sunlight. Let's start with sunlight.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but
Speaker 5: this was a pretty widespread claim during the start of COVID,
Speaker 5: is that sunlight was if.
Speaker 1: You bring it into the body, Yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a literal disinfectant and maybe that would cure COVID,
Speaker 5: which it turned out it didn't. Hyperbaric therapies I have
Speaker 5: to assume there he means hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which are
Speaker 5: a debunked and very dangerous fake treatment for autism. Hyperbaric
Speaker 5: oxygen chambers are used for deep sea divers who are
Speaker 5: suffering from the bends. That's their actual use. There has
Speaker 5: been at least one death from a family who is
Speaker 5: using a hyperbaric chamber to treat their suns autism.
Speaker 6: Same with kylating compounds kulation.
Speaker 5: Again as the practice of drawing heavy metals out of
Speaker 5: the body. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff in
Speaker 5: here that suggests again again raw milk.
Speaker 1: Raw milk seems to be like a real maga thing, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think it. It connects a few
Speaker 6: different things, right.
Speaker 5: One is government regulation because there are a lot of
Speaker 5: places where you can't legally sell raw milk. The second
Speaker 5: is this idea that anything quote unquote natural is better,
Speaker 5: you know, that pasteurization does something bad, which it doesn't.
Speaker 5: And the third is sort of a belief in I
Speaker 5: guess food born illness not existing.
Speaker 6: I mean, we have.
Speaker 5: Really good data about what raw milk does or can do,
Speaker 5: and it's not great.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like there are so many problems in
Speaker 1: this world that it seems hard to imagine that you
Speaker 1: need to get involved in unpasteurized milk. But I guess
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: It's been a really big thing lately with sort of
Speaker 5: wellness influencers online, as I'm sure you've seen, any of
Speaker 5: whom were also pretty enthusiastic Kennedy supporters. I think it's
Speaker 5: kind of symbolic of a bigger set of approaches towards
Speaker 5: towards health and sort of an individualized view of health
Speaker 5: as opposed to a kind of public or systemic view
Speaker 5: of health.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think that's right, So continue on this road.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, the big thing here that Kennedy has
Speaker 5: talked about a lot is that there is a chronic
Speaker 5: disease crisis that poses like an existential threat to the country, which, like,
Speaker 5: I don't think anybody would dispute that Americans suffer from
Speaker 5: some chronic diseases at higher rates. That is a thing,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean when we're talking about stuff
Speaker 5: like cancer, diabetes, asthma. But there doesn't tend to be
Speaker 5: And I spoke to an immunologist and public health expert
Speaker 5: about this named doctor Andrea Love, who talked about this
Speaker 5: a lot, which is essentially that there doesn't tend to
Speaker 5: be a discussion of like we have chronic diseases like
Speaker 5: asthma that affect kids because of air quality, we should
Speaker 5: focus on cleaning up air quality instead, it tends to
Speaker 5: be about kind of individual approaches and cures, like you know,
Speaker 5: future kids around milk. And so there's an interesting thing
Speaker 5: that's going on here where fundamentally what Kennedy is talking
Speaker 5: about here and what Trump has thrown his support behind
Speaker 5: is an atmosphere of less oversight, less regulation, less regulation
Speaker 5: of food, of medicines, of supplements, and so to a
Speaker 5: lot of public health experts that I've spoken to, it
Speaker 5: doesn't really seem like a environment that would actually make
Speaker 5: Americans healthier, but it would certainly let people sell stuff
Speaker 5: and market stuff that they can't right now.
Speaker 1: Right, And that makes a lot of sense, right, because
Speaker 1: that is sort of the thought of Trump world, right,
Speaker 1: selling things that might not necessarily be good for people, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah. And also just a belief in deregulation.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is something that we see in Trump
Speaker 5: World and also on the rite more generally, this belief
Speaker 5: that government agencies are too big, that they exercise too
Speaker 5: much control, but in the case of things like food safety.
Speaker 1: They actually don't because we haven't had a food regulation
Speaker 1: change in a long time anyway. Sorry, I actually know
Speaker 1: about tho.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's sort of interesting, right because also
Speaker 5: most Americans in our lifetime, pretty much everybody who's alive today,
Speaker 5: does not remember a time before we had food regulations.
Speaker 5: You know, we don't remember a time when you might
Speaker 5: be fed a patent medicine concoction that was made entirely
Speaker 5: of cocaine and laudanum that would kill your baby, Like
Speaker 5: we don't actually have a living memory of those things,
Speaker 5: which can be super persuasive for some folks who feel
Speaker 5: just sort of ambiently like something's wrong in our health
Speaker 5: system and are attracted to mister Kennedy's kind of proposals
Speaker 5: of how to fix it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is there any bright spot here?
Speaker 5: Well, I guess it depends on who you are, right,
Speaker 5: I'm sure some people are. I wrote another piece this
Speaker 5: week about mister Kennedy's anti vaccine organization, Children's Health Defense,
Speaker 5: which used to be called the World Mercury Project back
Speaker 5: when he was claiming that a form of mercury in
Speaker 5: vaccines was making kids sick, and then he switched to
Speaker 5: a different set of claims and changed the name. Those
Speaker 5: people are really excited, obviously they see this there a
Speaker 5: big moment for them and their movement. I think for
Speaker 5: the rest of us, it is helpful and useful to
Speaker 5: know what these folks are proposing and what their vision
Speaker 5: is for how public health should look in the United States.
Speaker 6: This would be a.
Speaker 5: Great time to have a conversation with your doctor. If
Speaker 5: you have a trusted healthcare provider and make sure if
Speaker 5: you personally are somebody who gets vaccinated, that you were
Speaker 5: up on your shots and things like your tetanis booster,
Speaker 5: which is good practice always right but especially especially right now.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think that in this area is with so many
Speaker 5: other things about the impending Trump administration, it's great to
Speaker 5: have information. It's great to just know what is going
Speaker 5: on and what the proposals are, and people can choose
Speaker 5: how to respond to them in their own lives in
Speaker 5: kind of productive ways as opposed to just feeling a
Speaker 5: sense of doom.
Speaker 6: If that's how you feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. Thank you so much, Anna,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: All Moon Jesse Cannon I joined fast. When I think
Speaker 2: of the things that are most distressing about Trump's when
Speaker 2: there's many, but I continually get very depressed about this
Speaker 2: very subject. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said he's going to leave the Paris Climate Accord.
Speaker 1: His transition team is preparing executive orders and proclamations on
Speaker 1: shrinking the size of some national monuments to allow more
Speaker 1: drilling and mining. The New York Times said on Friday,
Speaker 1: Trump is expected to end the pause on permitting new
Speaker 1: liquefied natural gas exports to big markets in Asia and
Speaker 1: Europe provoke the waiver that allows California and other states
Speaker 1: to have tighter pollution standards. This is going to be really,
Speaker 1: really depressing and really sad to watch, and this is
Speaker 1: where it's going to go, and there's really.
Speaker 2: Nothing we can do, especially when it's eighty and November
Speaker 2: in New York.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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