Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Governor Gavin Newsom says Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: is fundamentally authoritarian. It's like the understatement of the year.
Speaker 1: What a show. It's a show of shows we have
Speaker 1: for you today. Senator Chris Murphy will stop by to
Speaker 1: talk about why House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will be
Speaker 1: blamed for a government shutdown. Then we'll talk to neuroscientists
Speaker 1: and author of Weaponized Lies how to think critically in
Speaker 1: the post truth era, Daniel Leviton, about how to speak
Speaker 1: to Trump followers in a way they will listen to.
Speaker 1: But first we have Mother Jones, DC bureau chief and
Speaker 1: author of American Psychosis, which is now out in paperback,
Speaker 1: The One the Only. David Korn Welcome back, Too, Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: David Korn, glad to be with you, Molly. I feel like.
Speaker 1: I'm always delighted to have you on this podcast because
Speaker 1: you're my body and also because politically I feel very
Speaker 1: much aligned with you personally, and since we're both on
Speaker 1: the opinion side, we can share our opinions.
Speaker 3: It's nice to have freedom in America.
Speaker 1: First, let's talk. Paperback of the book is out right now,
Speaker 1: tell us the TLDR.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The book that I put out last year, American Psychosis,
Speaker 3: A Historical Investigation and How the Republican Party Went Crazy,
Speaker 3: is basically a narrative history of the relationship between the
Speaker 3: Republican Party and far right extremism over the last seven decades.
Speaker 3: The big takeaway it didn't start with Trump. From mccarthia
Speaker 3: to the New Right, to the Southern Strategy, to Sarah
Speaker 3: Palin to new Getridge to the Tea Party, all the
Speaker 3: way up to Trump. The Republican Party has long tried
Speaker 3: to exploit and encourage far right extremism, bigotry, paranoia, conspiracy
Speaker 3: mongering to get votes, to win over supporters. Trump just
Speaker 3: paid it cent a stage. A lot of this have
Speaker 3: been kept in the shadows for these decades, and established
Speaker 3: Republicans didn't want to really acknowledge this the way you
Speaker 3: don't want to acknowledge the crazy Uncle. Trump put it
Speaker 3: right center stage and made this the essence of the
Speaker 3: core of the Republican Party. You know, you had Fox
Speaker 3: and Rush Limbaugh and Tea Party and Glenn Beck and
Speaker 3: others who had been encouraging this for years and Trump
Speaker 3: was sort of the logical extension of that. And so
Speaker 3: the book is out in paperback this coming week and
Speaker 3: it's expanded and U this paperback so make you write
Speaker 3: another chapter or two to give more you to get
Speaker 3: it out there. It came out a year ago, and
Speaker 3: it's still, unfortunately more relevant than ever because it seems
Speaker 3: that Trump's hold on the party and this gravitational pool
Speaker 3: of right wing extremism and paranoia and conspiracy and grievances
Speaker 3: within the party has just gotten stronger and more intense.
Speaker 3: He lost selection into as well as they expected to
Speaker 3: do the Republicans in twenty twenty two, and still the
Speaker 3: extremism of the party is the driving force that you
Speaker 3: have people like round Dessantis, who thinks that you know,
Speaker 3: they can they can score a becoming even more extreme
Speaker 3: than Trump. The party can't break away from this because
Speaker 3: essentially this is where the base is. This is where
Speaker 3: the Republican Party is guided and been guided by its
Speaker 3: base over the last seven decades. People want to understand
Speaker 3: how we got to this point. And I think the
Speaker 3: depth of the problem it's not about Trump. Trump's a problem,
Speaker 3: but it's about the tens of millions of Americans who
Speaker 3: have reached this point that Trump can then exploit them
Speaker 3: and play them from Marx and Rubes. And they're not
Speaker 3: going away even if Trump were to drop dead tomorrow
Speaker 3: from too many big macs.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about this because this is
Speaker 1: the fundamental problem. I think that the Republican Party finds
Speaker 1: itself in right now, right and I mean they deserve it.
Speaker 1: They did it to themselves. I think it's an important caveat.
Speaker 1: They were so hungry for power they didn't care how
Speaker 1: they got. But what they did was they created this
Speaker 1: base that now has been tipped into unreality. And this
Speaker 1: unreality based finds itself, you know, so dug in and
Speaker 1: so committed to Donald Trump that they have decided. If
Speaker 1: you look at the numbers, they believe that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: won the twenty twenty election. They believe that he will
Speaker 1: win again. They are occupying Earth two. So here's a
Speaker 1: question for you. Let's just we have Donald Trump. Maybe
Speaker 1: no label succeeds in getting a third party on the
Speaker 1: ticket and Donald Trump wins. But if not, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is not going away. I mean, how will they ever
Speaker 1: get these people to vote for anyone else?
Speaker 3: More important Trump is isn't going right. It can continue
Speaker 3: even without Donald Trump. You know, conspiracy theories give me
Speaker 3: a good metaphor here. Don't like the tail chips can't
Speaker 3: just have one, They lead from one to the other.
Speaker 3: So you have Birtherism. With Trump, it turns into a
Speaker 3: variety of theories about you know, conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 3: deep state, and then it becomes an embrace of QAnon.
Speaker 3: And then it's the big lie of the election. You
Speaker 3: mentioned these people living on earth too, in a state
Speaker 3: of onreality. Yes, you know, once you believe all these things,
Speaker 3: once you've taken I don't know, the red pill, the
Speaker 3: blue people, whatever, and you end up on me. Yet
Speaker 3: up in the mainpix, you ain't coming back. I mean
Speaker 3: how a few people can. But by and large you've
Speaker 3: adopted a theology that unless you decide to break from
Speaker 3: that theology, which is like leaving the church, which is
Speaker 3: a hard thing for people to do, whatever their religion
Speaker 3: might be, you're stuck there. And these people are going
Speaker 3: to be stuck in this position of these Republican voters.
Speaker 3: And so whether Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy or any
Speaker 3: of these more responsible established Republicans think they can steal
Speaker 3: the party in another direction. They're wrong. They got here,
Speaker 3: you know, they rode this tiger, and now the tiger
Speaker 3: is running the asylum to mixed metaphors. And I think
Speaker 3: the only hope they have is in some ways demographics.
Speaker 3: You know, the Trump voters, you know, the seventy four
Speaker 3: million Trump voters from West election versus the eighty one
Speaker 3: million Biden voters are a lot older, they live in
Speaker 3: less healthy parts of the country. I mean, these people
Speaker 3: are not going to be persuaded to drop their position.
Speaker 3: They're not going to drop these views until they end
Speaker 3: up horizontal. And I think this is a long you know,
Speaker 3: it's going to be a long transition period for the
Speaker 3: Republican Party to basically burn out in a way on
Speaker 3: these fevered, conspiracy driven politics the Trump embodies and fuels
Speaker 3: and propels, and that there's no ways to sort of
Speaker 3: just pull up on the throttle and level the plane.
Speaker 3: This is a cruise missile that they've launched years ago,
Speaker 3: and it's past the fail safe point. Oh that was
Speaker 3: a good metaphor.
Speaker 1: I'm redirecting you here. No labels. They are responsible for
Speaker 1: some of these, maybe not all but some of these
Speaker 1: very junkie polls that we're seeing out there, the ones
Speaker 1: that say that people don't want Biden four hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty six days before the election. But let's talk about them.
Speaker 1: What is happening? Who are they, their donors? What is
Speaker 1: the plan here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, before we switched to no labels, I would
Speaker 3: be my polist would hate me if I didn't remind
Speaker 3: people to buy the paperback version of Americans like ostis
Speaker 3: and tell people that if you subscribe to my newsletter
Speaker 3: or land you can get the book at a discount
Speaker 3: if you go to Davidcorn dot com and sign up anyway,
Speaker 3: But no labels, there's a lot of I think it's
Speaker 3: fair to say, without being pejorative about it, hysteria. Sometimes
Speaker 3: hysteria is justified about no labels. This group, this dark
Speaker 3: money group, we don't know where all the money's coming from,
Speaker 3: that wants to put on a third party candidate on
Speaker 3: the ballot next year, with a lot of people, a
Speaker 3: lot of Democratic strategists, a lot of never Trump Republicans
Speaker 3: believing that this ticket, if led by Joe Manchin or
Speaker 3: somebody else, would draw more votes from Biden than Trump
Speaker 3: and could threaten Biden victory, particularly in key close swing
Speaker 3: states like Georgia, Arizona, and all the other ones that
Speaker 3: we know about. And so they say they're raising seventy
Speaker 3: million dollars. They're not telling us where the money is
Speaker 3: coming from.
Speaker 1: But we think it's coming from a lot of Republicans.
Speaker 3: I found a list of donors to this effort that
Speaker 3: accounts for a couple million dollars, and you know which
Speaker 3: I wrote about in Mother Jones, and that list leaned
Speaker 3: heavily towards Republicans, included even some Trump donors. There were
Speaker 3: some centrist, pro business type Democrats who have been funding
Speaker 3: No Labels for years, long before this third party project
Speaker 3: came along, and they're still giving money, some of these
Speaker 3: Democratic backers of the past, but by and large this
Speaker 3: group has been dominated by Republican funders. You have the
Speaker 3: two heads of No Labels, the state party chapter of
Speaker 3: No Labels in Colorado, both Republicans. One of them said, well,
Speaker 3: if this ends up helping Trump, I don't mind. People
Speaker 3: have been out there who are pro Trump. Even conservative
Speaker 3: right wing radio host Hugh Hewitt just the other day said,
Speaker 3: if No Labels helps Trump, which I think it is,
Speaker 3: that's a good thing. They keep insisting that they don't
Speaker 3: want to throw the election to Trump. And the person
Speaker 3: who runs No Labels is a woman named Nancy Jacobson,
Speaker 3: who used to be a Democratic fund under mainly for conservative,
Speaker 3: moderate pro business Democrats. She's married to Mark Penn, the
Speaker 3: former Democratic consultant who's been on the outs for the
Speaker 3: Democrats for many years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: They're sort of trying to get back at the Clinton.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of mini series subplots going on in
Speaker 3: all this. It's really hard to figure out if this
Speaker 3: is really what they're doing, if their aim is to
Speaker 3: elect Trump, or if they don't care and their aim
Speaker 3: is just to get in the mix and have influence
Speaker 3: and scare the pants off other people and as a
Speaker 3: form of revenge. That way, there's no logic to their math.
Speaker 3: They keep saying that most of Americans don't want Trump
Speaker 3: or Biden, but they think that most Americans want Joe
Speaker 3: Biden or Larry Hogan.
Speaker 1: Right, Joe Manchin. I mean what is interesting, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk for a minute about this idea that
Speaker 1: Joe Manchin is somehow more desirable than Joe Biden. Joe
Speaker 1: Manchin is this single reason along with Kirsten Cinema, that
Speaker 1: we don't have student loan forgiveness, right, we don't have
Speaker 1: the Freedom to Vote Act, we don't have I mean,
Speaker 1: those two are the reason why we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff we have, and we have a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court that is radically remaking this country. So I do
Speaker 1: think it's worth thinking about, like, who is the Democrat
Speaker 1: who would support Joe Manchin. Look, I think Joe Manchin
Speaker 1: is power hungry and wants attention and wants money and
Speaker 1: wants power, and that's where this is going, and that's
Speaker 1: why he's decided that he wants to flirt with this.
Speaker 1: Maybe he does it, maybe he doesn't. But I think
Speaker 1: a good point is, like, if you can live with
Speaker 1: being the person who re elects Trump and kills American democracy,
Speaker 1: ask yourself if you can be that person, because you
Speaker 1: will because history will look back on you, and they
Speaker 1: will look back on you not fondly. And you may
Speaker 1: be the thing that causes climate catastrophe that we are
Speaker 1: on the edge of. You may be the thing that
Speaker 1: ends American democracy And are you ready for that? And
Speaker 1: I think that's a question Joe Manchin needs to ask
Speaker 1: himself and Larry Hogan too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I broke the story, was it? I guess two
Speaker 3: years ago now that Joe Manchin was thinking of leaving
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. It told people that he was considering
Speaker 3: doing this, and then he denied that was the case.
Speaker 3: But I had solid evidence and he backed off. This
Speaker 3: is just purely a hunch.
Speaker 2: There is not.
Speaker 3: An uproar from the American public for Joe manchon presidency.
Speaker 3: Let us Mary Ogan or John Huntsman, who John Huntsman
Speaker 3: and who whoeverly is? People do these names that they're
Speaker 3: being raised, But to be named in this way keeps
Speaker 3: Manchin in the mix. He loves to be in the
Speaker 3: center of attention. And Evan and asked whether he would
Speaker 3: do this, he says, you know, he refuses to say
Speaker 3: yes or no, which is a smart thing for a
Speaker 3: politician to do, because if you were to say no,
Speaker 3: people would say, oh, now, we don't have to pay
Speaker 3: as much attention to Joe Manchin as Joe Manchin would
Speaker 3: like us to pay. So I still think at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, the end of this year, at
Speaker 3: the beginning of next year, into the spring, when you
Speaker 3: start doing these polls and you put Joe Manchin in
Speaker 3: and he polls nine ten percent, and it looks like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's clear that he'll take votes. You know,
Speaker 3: if anti Trump votes away from Biden, that you know
Speaker 3: he because of the reasons you just enumerated, maybe not
Speaker 3: so much climate change. He's not going to go out
Speaker 3: of his long storied political career as the guy who
Speaker 3: elected Donald Trump to a second term. There are very
Speaker 3: few people who run the third party here, a third
Speaker 3: party boy or independent who end up being well reguarded afterwards.
Speaker 3: Ross pro was a crazy person, John Anderson his career
Speaker 3: and never went anywhere after nineteen eighty when he is
Speaker 3: a modern Republican Iran and that so, I think Manchin
Speaker 3: cares a lot about his reputation and his image and
Speaker 3: may not go.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Will they find somebody else, some other person out there will.
Speaker 3: Maybe they'll go to the rock, right.
Speaker 1: The real problem with Nancy Jacobson and Mark Penn is
Speaker 1: that they just want attention and money, and this is
Speaker 1: a very good way for them to get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's very dangerous though. It is playing with
Speaker 3: fire because I'm not getting overwhelmed or upset by the
Speaker 3: polls coming out now, but they do show that Trump
Speaker 3: has a chance of regaining the wordhouse, and that there
Speaker 3: is a great Graham Green line that it is nothing
Speaker 3: like a hanging to concentrate the mind. That should parcentrate
Speaker 3: our collective mind. Anybody who's not living in the unreality
Speaker 3: of Trump world should recognize that Trump poses a profound
Speaker 3: threat to American democracy. He's already told us the plan
Speaker 3: to implement authoritarianism should he get back in. He wants
Speaker 3: to pardon the January sixth insurrectionist writers and therefore encourage
Speaker 3: more political violences embraced QAnon. I mean, it's all out there,
Speaker 3: and so it seems to me.
Speaker 5: That the number one priority now is to make sure
Speaker 5: that doesn't happen, because if it does happen, then American
Speaker 5: democraty can't deal with the student debt crisis, can't deal
Speaker 5: with healthcare, can't deal with the product.
Speaker 1: Can't deal with anything. All Right, So let's talk about Georgia.
Speaker 1: Grand Jury says, perhaps we should indict David Purdue and
Speaker 1: Kelly Laffler and Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is good. We'll seeing how the
Speaker 3: system works. Trump and all his henchmen and hensch women
Speaker 3: are out there always saying it's a deep state conspiracy.
Speaker 3: It's against me, they're rigging the system, all these all
Speaker 3: this bs. Well, now we see in Georgia there's a
Speaker 3: two grand jury system. There's first a grand jury that
Speaker 3: investigates and recommends possible indictments. Then there's a grand ury
Speaker 3: that actually votes on these indictments. And so we're seeing,
Speaker 3: well with the release right before we started recording this
Speaker 3: of the recommendation that that first grand jury made of
Speaker 3: people of persons who they thought should be indicted, and
Speaker 3: it turns out, well, you know what, Fannie Willis, who
Speaker 3: the Trump is attacking as a wild woman for going
Speaker 3: for this case, decided not to take or the next
Speaker 3: grand jury as well, not to take all these recommendations
Speaker 3: and put forward an even more modest you know, it's
Speaker 3: a sweeping indictment, but it's less sweeping than what this
Speaker 3: first gen grand jury recommended and voted for. So Lindsey
Speaker 3: Graham they thought they recommended and they voted to recommend
Speaker 3: that he'd be indicted. Well, the second grand jury and
Speaker 3: Fannie Willis is not. They have not indicted him. They
Speaker 3: did not indict David Perdue and Kelly Leffler, who senators
Speaker 3: at the time it seems well, great, this is how
Speaker 3: it's supposed to work, and there was some degree of
Speaker 3: prosecutorial grand jury discretion here. It wasn't that they just
Speaker 3: took this long list and just got you know, put
Speaker 3: out a wide net. We don't know what the reasoning
Speaker 3: is behind the decision not to indict these people who
Speaker 3: were recommended, and it could be a good case, it
Speaker 3: could be a hard case to bring, but we do
Speaker 3: know that she and the second grand jury would not
Speaker 3: held bent to include everybody in everything that the first
Speaker 3: jury recommended that and I think that shows some degree
Speaker 3: of discretion, maybe modesty, and that the system is working
Speaker 3: at as it should work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's certainly an important data point
Speaker 1: that this is a real serious case that people are
Speaker 1: taken very seriously and rico as a real charge that
Speaker 1: we've seen Fanny Willis use before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not going to convince Donald Trump or
Speaker 3: anyone else, or is you know, millions of could followers
Speaker 3: that this is a legitimate enterprise. But I think he
Speaker 3: can reassure the rest of us that, you know, the
Speaker 3: system is working somewhat judiciously here. As an aside, it
Speaker 3: is interesting to go back to twenty sixteen, and this
Speaker 3: wonderful tweet on Lindsey. If we don't get rid of Trump,
Speaker 3: he will destroy us all. And it seemed that there
Speaker 3: are many people around Trump who are being destroyed, I
Speaker 3: have been destroyed, and who are being indicted because they
Speaker 3: followed him as dear leader. It seems for the time
Speaker 3: being that Lindsey Graham has just escaped by his whiskers
Speaker 3: on the same fate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and for that, you mean, well deserved, David corn.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back.
Speaker 3: I will come back whenever you ask.
Speaker 1: Chris Murphy is the junior senator from Connecticut. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Senator Chris.
Speaker 2: Murphy, thanks for having me. Glad to be back.
Speaker 1: We're back. It's the fall. The House is coming back.
Speaker 1: They're led by incredible Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has plans
Speaker 1: to impeach Biden on what. He's not sure, but he'll
Speaker 1: think of something. I mean, what is it like to
Speaker 1: be a Democratic senator in whatever this is.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and we don't have enough time.
Speaker 2: Let me say this, I am glad to be a senator,
Speaker 2: not a congressman, because well, we have deep disagreements in
Speaker 2: the United States Senate with our Rebelican colleagues. There are
Speaker 2: fewer total complete jackasses in the Senate than there are
Speaker 2: in the House, and few are arcifists. Right, So we
Speaker 2: passed all the budget bills out of the Appropriations Committee
Speaker 2: before the recess. We had pretty broad Republican and Democratic
Speaker 2: buy in on all of them. And now we're faced
Speaker 2: with this House of representatives who see to kind of
Speaker 2: change their ransom demand every day. We'll pass up if
Speaker 2: you let us impeach Joe Biden, will pass a budget
Speaker 2: as long as we abandon Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: We don't really know what they want, but it's something
Speaker 2: really reckless and irresponsible, and we will hopefully once they
Speaker 2: get back into town, flesh out a little bit more
Speaker 2: as to what they need in order to just keep
Speaker 2: paying the bills of the federal government. Past September thirtieth, one.
Speaker 1: Of the things I wanted to ask you about was
Speaker 1: we have Mitch McConnell. He is again not my choice,
Speaker 1: but is probably the most effective majority leader Republicans have
Speaker 1: ever had in the Senate. Right, he got three Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justices where he really only Donald Trump really should
Speaker 1: have only had won, which is a life to which
Speaker 1: has radically remade our country and the image of terrifying
Speaker 1: Handmaid's tail esque dystopia. Republicans have decided that even though
Speaker 1: they are furious with Joe Biden for being eighty, they
Speaker 1: are are and not having any health issues. Particularly, they
Speaker 1: are totally set with McConnell, who seems to have quite
Speaker 1: serious health issues, because he's probably better than anyone else
Speaker 1: they can replace him with.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, first of all, is you know this.
Speaker 2: They are furious with Joe Biden because he's actually enacting
Speaker 2: progressive priorities. He is a lethally effective United States president
Speaker 2: who has defeated some of the most significant, most powerful
Speaker 2: interests in Washington, the drug industry, the oil industry, the
Speaker 2: gun industry, and has set Republicans on their heels. Republicans
Speaker 2: know they can't complain about those things because passing gun
Speaker 2: safety legislation and lowering prescription drug costs and doing something
Speaker 2: about climate are really popular, so they try to invent
Speaker 2: other things to be mad about, like his age. But yes,
Speaker 2: it is true, mister McConnell is of similar age and
Speaker 2: is actually showing signs of decline. Video McConnell is pretty scary,
Speaker 2: but I interact with him and see him interact with
Speaker 2: others on a pretty regular basis. My sense is that
Speaker 2: those are pretty isolated incidences, and he still remains pretty
Speaker 2: effective in the Senate. But I generally don't give my
Speaker 2: Republican colleagues advice on who should leader. They'll make that themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true, but you know it is just to
Speaker 1: take a moment here to talk about this idea, Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot of talk about like how
Speaker 1: I mean, she really was. I feel I don't see
Speaker 1: enough talk about how effective she was. And you see
Speaker 1: all of the potential pitfalls that she avoided, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: stepping into each one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's easier to avoid those pitfalls when you're
Speaker 2: working with a caucus, the Democratic caucus that believes in
Speaker 2: small D democracy and our serious human beings. Like these
Speaker 2: guys are not serious human beings like people the speaker
Speaker 2: McCarthy are leading. They're basically just interested in being Twitter
Speaker 2: celebrities and owning the Libs and going out drinking at
Speaker 2: night with their buddies, like they're not actually interested in legislating.
Speaker 2: So basical BIZZI is an exceptional leader, and she did
Speaker 2: things that nobody expected, so she deserves all the ploducts
Speaker 2: she gets. But it also is easier to run the
Speaker 2: Democratic caucus than it is to run the Republican caucus.
Speaker 1: So you are in a period that we're Democrats are
Speaker 1: passing a ton of legislation right, and we're ships has
Speaker 1: incredible tentacles, from prescription drug negotiation, to credits for evs,
Speaker 1: to building bridges. I mean that's inflation production. Then you
Speaker 1: have the Chips Act. You have all sorts of really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I've been really impressed to the Biden administrations
Speaker 1: trying to get have meetings with Japan in South Korea
Speaker 1: to try to prevent China from being able to sort
Speaker 1: of do what they do. Talk to me about where
Speaker 1: this is and is there a place for other stuff
Speaker 1: that you guys can get through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the list of accomplishment is so long when it
Speaker 2: comes to the legislative victories of this administration and the
Speaker 2: previous Congress that we start to forget some of the
Speaker 2: most significant ones. You named many of the highlights, but
Speaker 2: on that list is also the protection of gay marriage
Speaker 2: from judicial fiat. On that list is one of the
Speaker 2: most significant investments in veterans care in the history of
Speaker 2: the country, making sure everybody was exposed to toxic chemicals
Speaker 2: gets veterans and it fits the burn pits, right, do
Speaker 2: you also reference there's just a long series of pretty
Speaker 2: significant foreign policy victories here as well, and the really
Speaker 2: important subtle work of building our allies in Asia, not
Speaker 2: just Japan in South Korea. But it's also the deeper
Speaker 2: partnership we now have with Australia does isolate China and
Speaker 2: make it a little bit more likely that we would
Speaker 2: be able to win a conflict or more importantly, prevent
Speaker 2: a conflict with China. So it's just nice to have
Speaker 2: an adult in the White House, and sometimes we don't
Speaker 2: do a good enough job of explaining everything that has happened.
Speaker 2: So what can we do moving forward? I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a limited list because you've got these arsonists in charge
Speaker 2: of the House of Representatives. So it seems like these
Speaker 2: days our work is basically just trying to keep the
Speaker 2: lights on, don't default on the debt, don't shut down
Speaker 2: the government. Are there maybe some areas of overlap on
Speaker 2: the next iteration of industrial policy? Maybe could we do
Speaker 2: something on social media regulation? Possibly there are some narrow
Speaker 2: areas of agreement potentially with the House. But man, they're
Speaker 2: unfortunately pretty narrow because those guys are literally not interested
Speaker 2: in governing. They just like to kind of show up
Speaker 2: and have the trappings of the office some very little
Speaker 2: else intrigued step.
Speaker 1: So let's talk for a minute about this incredible Tommy
Speaker 1: Tuberville situation. I have a Republican kid. I have one
Speaker 1: kid as a Republican. I think we actually dropped him
Speaker 1: when he was little, and that he should be okay
Speaker 1: if but we did actually drop him.
Speaker 2: But he's I don't know what my kids are yet,
Speaker 2: so I'm not well.
Speaker 1: Prepare yourself emotionally. But my one Republican kid, very involved
Speaker 1: in the Civil Air Patrol, very involved in the Armed services,
Speaker 1: wants to be ROTC. And he went to encampment this summer,
Speaker 1: which is like a sort of military training camp that
Speaker 1: the military runs and on an Air Force base. He
Speaker 1: became friends with a lot of kids whose parents are
Speaker 1: the military. But anyway, the net net of the story
Speaker 1: is the military is really mad at Tuberville and that Tubervil.
Speaker 1: They really see that this is Tuberville's doing. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us about this?
Speaker 2: So this is really messing with the security of the country.
Speaker 2: By the end of the year, if Tubberville's conduct continues unabated,
Speaker 2: you will have ninety percent of all military promotions having
Speaker 2: been blocked, meaning you will have hundreds, close to maybe
Speaker 2: one thousand senior military members in the wrong jobs. That
Speaker 2: really messes with your ability to run the military. If
Speaker 2: everybody is stuck in the wrong job and you have
Speaker 2: all sorts of leader ship positions that are vacant. This
Speaker 2: is not philosophical, This is practical in terms of the
Speaker 2: impact it has, especially if we.
Speaker 3: Were to get into a conflict.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe now, given that we are mainly supplying
Speaker 2: arms to the Ukrainians, you can find a way to
Speaker 2: manage this, but who knows when the next sort of
Speaker 2: crisis begins Republicans can stop us. I mean, the fact
Speaker 2: of the matter is, not a single Republican the Senate
Speaker 2: has come out and openly criticized Tuberville. There's no evidence
Speaker 2: that McConnell nor any of these lieutenants have put the
Speaker 2: screws to Tuberville and said, hey, there's going to be
Speaker 2: consequences if you keep this up. And so my hope
Speaker 2: is that Republicans start to put pressure on him, or
Speaker 2: choose to join us in changing the rules of the
Speaker 2: Senate so that we can move some of these promotions
Speaker 2: through budged together. The rules now require you do every
Speaker 2: promotion separately, and right now we have what four hundred
Speaker 2: of these things pending. Every promotion takes two or three days.
Speaker 2: There's just no way we can do that. So maybe
Speaker 2: we can budge them all together, but that takes Republicans
Speaker 2: to agree with us, and it's up to them whether
Speaker 2: they want to allow Tubberville to put the national security
Speaker 2: of the country in continued jeopardy.
Speaker 1: It's a really good point that Mitch McConnell. I mean,
Speaker 1: we know that Mitch McConnell can pretty much make these senators,
Speaker 1: especially people like Tommy Tarberville, who has not much upstairs,
Speaker 1: and that guy, they can make him do whatever they want.
Speaker 2: He's on TV every night with a cheshire Cat grin
Speaker 2: because he knows not only is he not getting pressure
Speaker 2: from Republicans, he's getting pats on the back from Republicans.
Speaker 3: And why is that right?
Speaker 2: We should have said this at the outset, But what
Speaker 2: is Tubberville's motivation here? He is he's holding all these
Speaker 2: promotions hostage to try to force President Biden to an
Speaker 2: act an anti abortion, anti choice policy in the military
Speaker 2: deny the ability of women in the military to be
Speaker 2: able to access full reproductive health care services. And the
Speaker 2: reason that he is not getting pushedback from his Republican
Speaker 2: colleagues is because their number one priority is not the
Speaker 2: security of the nation. It is banning abortions nationally. Their
Speaker 2: number one agenda item is to tell women what healthcare
Speaker 2: they can get and what healthcare they can't get, and
Speaker 2: they are willing to do any in order to enact
Speaker 2: that anti women agenda. And so that's what you're seeing
Speaker 2: here is that Tommy Jabberville is getting away with this
Speaker 2: because he is fronting the number one priority issue for Republicans,
Speaker 2: which is banning abortions nationwide.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. And what I think is so amazing about that
Speaker 1: issue is that it is wildland popular. Speaking of wildly
Speaker 1: and popular Republican policies. Where are we with the guns?
Speaker 2: I mean, we're making really important progress. And I got
Speaker 2: to tell you, having been a part of this movement
Speaker 2: for ten years, embarrassed that I didn't work on this
Speaker 2: issue before Sandy Hook. But I've been at the center
Speaker 2: of it since Sandy Hook, and there were a lot
Speaker 2: of days during those last ten years where I generally
Speaker 2: wonder are we ever going to be the Internet right?
Speaker 2: Thirty years since we passed anything the INTERRA opposed is
Speaker 2: that our future. And last year we proved in fact
Speaker 2: that we've built movement that is now more powerful than
Speaker 2: the NRA, and that we have the ability, when the
Speaker 2: time is right, to get just enough Republicans to pass
Speaker 2: laws that crack down on illegal gun ownership, even if
Speaker 2: those laws are opposed by the NRA. And what we're
Speaker 2: seeing is the Biden administration not surprisingly do the right thing.
Speaker 2: So there's a really small change that we made in
Speaker 2: the BILLI passed last year. It just updates the definition
Speaker 2: of gun dealer because what we found there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are selling guns but are not licensed,
Speaker 2: and that means they're not doing background checks. We updated
Speaker 2: that definition, and the Biden administration just implemented that change
Speaker 2: last week in a way that is pretty expansive. That
Speaker 2: is likely going to require thousands, tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people who are right now selling guns online and a
Speaker 2: gun shows who don't do background checks to now do
Speaker 2: background checks, and that is an absolute game changer. The
Speaker 2: administration could have just sat on the sidelines and kind
Speaker 2: of milk toast implementation, but they did. They went as
Speaker 2: far as they could legally go in putting out a
Speaker 2: rule that updates the definition of what it means to
Speaker 2: be a gun dealer. And the result is going to
Speaker 2: be a lot less homicides because a lot less dangerous
Speaker 2: people are going to own weapons. So obviously, the bill
Speaker 2: we passed last year's not everything they need to do,
Speaker 2: but the Biden administration is doing as much as they
Speaker 2: possibly can do with the legislation that we passed, and
Speaker 2: that's great news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is great news. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: great to hear some optimism from you about this because
Speaker 1: it does feel like just pretty scary. Do you think
Speaker 1: there's any chance of raising the purchase age?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I think the short answer to what
Speaker 2: is possible is pretty easy. We are going to pass
Speaker 2: the universal background checks, we are going to increase the age,
Speaker 2: and we are going to eventually ban assault weapons, and
Speaker 2: all of that is going to happen. We are marching
Speaker 2: inexorable direction towards tougher gun laws. Maybe it's going to
Speaker 2: take five to ten years to complete that attenda going
Speaker 2: to complete it. And I know that because I've just
Speaker 2: seen the way that Republicans have changed their behavior. Not
Speaker 2: all of them, but now ten or fifteen of them
Speaker 2: in the Senate, including Mitch McConnell, are more afraid of
Speaker 2: Mom's demand action than they are of the NRA because
Speaker 2: they look at these cities where they get ten percent
Speaker 2: of the vote and the suburbs where now they're getting
Speaker 2: forty percent of the vote, and they realize that if
Speaker 2: they don't start showing that they're not Neanderthals on the
Speaker 2: issue of gun violence, they are going to continue to
Speaker 2: lead votes in really important places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it does seem like that the public
Speaker 1: sentiment is with Democrats on those.
Speaker 2: And it's slower than it should be. But if you look,
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to these presidential elections, at what
Speaker 2: are the motivating issues that turn out low propensity voters,
Speaker 2: guns is at the top of the list. So why
Speaker 2: is Joe Biden talking about assault weapons all the time,
Speaker 2: even though it's really unlikely that we're going to pass
Speaker 2: an assault weapons ban during his first term. It's because
Speaker 2: he knows. It's because he's the smartest politician in the party,
Speaker 2: and he knows that being clear that a democratic priority
Speaker 2: is passing in the sault weapons ban is what will
Speaker 2: turn out a lot of young voters in the upcoming election.
Speaker 2: And Republicans know that too, They've seen the polling. It
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that they're going to get right on assault weapons,
Speaker 2: but it does mean that when the opportunity presents itself
Speaker 2: on something like the bipartisan Safer Communities act, more of
Speaker 2: them than ever before are likely at to sign up.
Speaker 1: Now you're sort of in this period. Do we think
Speaker 1: there's going to be a government shutdown? I mean, is
Speaker 1: right to be anxious about this, And historically these government shutdowns,
Speaker 1: I mean, two of the things that are on the
Speaker 1: Republican House agenda right now, a government shutdown and an
Speaker 1: impeachment for seemingly no reason, are pretty unpopular.
Speaker 2: I love these interviews. I don't even know this guy,
Speaker 2: but I see him on like my news clips occasionally.
Speaker 2: Cala Murray's like the head of the Oversight Committee, right,
Speaker 2: He's like awesome. It's like he gets repeatedly asked, have
Speaker 2: you found any evidence of wrongdoing by the President Biden?
Speaker 2: And every single time he like he takes a little
Speaker 2: while but I ma interers and know we found nothing.
Speaker 2: Do you still want to impeach him? Absolutely? So yeah, I
Speaker 2: think everybody should be worried about a shutdown because this
Speaker 2: is just a nightmare of a ruling coalition in the
Speaker 2: House of Representatives. I think the one silver lining here
Speaker 2: is the fact that everybody in America knows who would
Speaker 2: be at fault if the government shut down. In previous
Speaker 2: shutdown prices, it was kind of up for grabs.
Speaker 3: Is going to be starting gonna get blamed?
Speaker 2: Is it Republicans? No? Now everybody knows that McCarthy's in
Speaker 2: charge of a bunch of lunatics, and so McCarthy knows
Speaker 2: that he knows that if the government shuts down that
Speaker 2: he'll get blamed and that that'll hurt them politically. And
Speaker 2: that's in part I think why he cut a deal
Speaker 2: on the debts, feeling that was pretty weak. I mean,
Speaker 2: at least when it comes to the priorities that he articulated,
Speaker 2: because he knew if we defaulted on the debt, nobody
Speaker 2: would be clout about who was responsible. They would know Republicans.
Speaker 2: So that's the one silver aligning is that ultimately McCarthy
Speaker 2: may agree to a continuing resolution because he knows, so
Speaker 2: get blamed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that definitely does seem like how it's
Speaker 1: going to go. And I mean, who knows if he's
Speaker 1: smart enough to know that.
Speaker 2: And it helps also, Molly, that we have been working
Speaker 2: together in the Senate. So the Senate, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: has passed all the appropriations bills in a bipartisan way,
Speaker 2: lots of Republicans supporting these bills. So he doesn't have
Speaker 2: the excuse that, oh, Democrats aren't coming to the table
Speaker 2: or nobody's listening to Republicans. No, in fact, the Senate
Speaker 2: has shown that, like, we can do this. It's just
Speaker 2: your Republicans the ones that are being obstinate Chris.
Speaker 1: Murphy, Senator Murphy, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back always fun. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Thanks. Daniel Leviton is a cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, and author
Speaker 1: of Weaponize Lies, How to Think Critically in the Post
Speaker 1: Truth Era. Welcome to Fast Politics, Daniel.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This is like you are Jesse, our producer's absolute sweet
Speaker 1: spot in the world. Cognitive psychologist neuroscientist writes on move
Speaker 1: on music comes into the Trump era and you are
Speaker 1: writing about Trump, so talk to us about how you
Speaker 1: made this evolution.
Speaker 4: Oh, what an interesting question. I don't think of myself
Speaker 4: as writing about Trump per se. I try to walk
Speaker 4: the line of being a political in that I think
Speaker 4: science should be a political I think that science exists
Speaker 4: in the public trust. It should be free. Everything I
Speaker 4: say in my books I put out there in interviews
Speaker 4: and in other ways so that people don't have to
Speaker 4: buy the book if they don't want to. I used
Speaker 4: nice to have it all collected one place. But I
Speaker 4: think that science should exist outside the realm of politics.
Speaker 4: But you're right, it's hard to not get political when
Speaker 4: you talk about news these days. It's almost inescapable. And
Speaker 4: the way I got into this was that I had
Speaker 4: read a book when I was in school called How
Speaker 4: to Lie with Statistics in the forties. I just loved
Speaker 4: that book. It's a short, little book and it's irreverend.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like if Kurt Vonnegut had been a statistician, right,
Speaker 4: And I started teaching a course back in nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: nine on critical thinking to my college undergraduates, the seniors
Speaker 4: who are about to go off of the world. We
Speaker 4: used that book and part of their assignment was to
Speaker 4: collect examples from newspapers and then later on social media
Speaker 4: where if people were really using statistics or making claims
Speaker 4: that were distorted or just flat out wrong, but maybe
Speaker 4: in a sneaky way so that the average person might
Speaker 4: not notice it.
Speaker 1: Oh, that is interesting thread, that needle for me.
Speaker 4: Well, so from that, you know, I had this big box,
Speaker 4: this archived file box, full of these wonderful examples that students.
Speaker 3: Had given me.
Speaker 4: In my book The Organized Mind, which came out in
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen, I devoted a chapter to critical thinking. By
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, when the election cycle was starting and we
Speaker 4: first started hearing about and encountering fake news. That is,
Speaker 4: I should define that prior to that, there was the news.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like an alternative news.
Speaker 4: There was the news. I mean, I grew up in
Speaker 4: the era of Huntley Brinkley and Cronkite, and you got
Speaker 4: the news, and an opinion was something different. Around the
Speaker 4: time that cable news channels came to be, an opinion
Speaker 4: was broadcast on news channels or ostensible news channels. It
Speaker 4: became difficult to separate opinion from fact and opinion from news,
Speaker 4: and that led to something of an emerging crisis in
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen about what is news? And
Speaker 4: so I wrote this book called A Field Guide to Lies,
Speaker 4: which was basically me wanting to write how lie was statistics,
Speaker 4: but that had already been written.
Speaker 2: And that's where I.
Speaker 4: Try to package together a lot of strategies might aim there,
Speaker 4: Molly was. I wanted the average person, you know, well,
Speaker 4: like an eighth grade education, to be able to know
Speaker 4: how to make sense of competing claims. I didn't want
Speaker 4: to be in the business of telling people what to think, right.
Speaker 1: But just sort of how to be able to see
Speaker 1: what's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Another way to look at it was there's some professions
Speaker 4: that train people in how to sort out the truth
Speaker 4: from the bs. One of those is in as to
Speaker 4: give a journalists, which is a profession with training. Another
Speaker 4: is police detective, another is lawyer, another is scientist. And
Speaker 4: we spend a lot of time training people in these
Speaker 4: professions to be able to sort through and figure out, well,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, that doesn't add up. The average person
Speaker 4: doesn't get that, and I think they should. I think
Speaker 4: starting in eighth grade, the average person should have that
Speaker 4: same training. That's what it means to have an informed electorate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is the problem here that we are not thinking clearly?
Speaker 1: Or is the problem here that we are just not thinking,
Speaker 1: or what is our problem here?
Speaker 2: What is your problem?
Speaker 4: I would say, however we wanted to find the problem.
Speaker 4: It's exacerbated by the fact that the Internet gives us
Speaker 4: easy access to lots of stuff. And on the Internet,
Speaker 4: as that old New Yorker cartoon goes, nobody knows if
Speaker 4: you're a dog.
Speaker 2: Right right. So on the Internet it's hard to.
Speaker 4: Know whether something is actually verified or not. You put
Speaker 4: something into a search engine, you google it as it were,
Speaker 4: and the answers you get maybe true, they may not be.
Speaker 4: And that puts a big burden on all of us.
Speaker 4: Not proposing the Internet should be regulated necessarily, I'm just
Speaker 4: saying that we now have a burden. We didn't have
Speaker 4: a generation a go, and so the problem is most
Speaker 4: of us are unprepared to evaluate every claim that comes
Speaker 4: in in a systematic fashion and try to figure out
Speaker 4: if it's true. We tend to use shortcuts like, well,
Speaker 4: my friend told me that, or I read it on
Speaker 4: the internet, or they couldn't publish that if it wasn't true.
Speaker 4: There's a naivety there. And also, you know, to our defense,
Speaker 4: it's burdensome to have to question everything. It's no fun.
Speaker 4: It makes you the DeBie down or at a party.
Speaker 1: H that's true. It's funny because my husband sent me
Speaker 1: this photograph he took of a raccoon eating pizza out
Speaker 1: of the trash in the park, and I was like,
Speaker 1: is that real?
Speaker 3: Right? Maybe it was Nate.
Speaker 1: That was my first comment.
Speaker 2: I was, because that real.
Speaker 1: So here's my question for you along this line. So
Speaker 1: I believe nothing is real because I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time on the Internet. Will the next generation, or
Speaker 1: these slightly savvier people who are just slightly younger than us,
Speaker 1: or the ones that grow up on the internet, will
Speaker 1: they just be like that? Will they just believe nothing
Speaker 1: is real? As opposed to the older generation, which believes
Speaker 1: that everything is real.
Speaker 4: Oh well, what a horrible dichotomy.
Speaker 1: Not to paint such broad strokes, But it doesn't it
Speaker 1: seem like that's where this is headed.
Speaker 4: Hopefully, I would say the bigger problem isn't that we're
Speaker 4: going to have a generation of people who believe that
Speaker 4: nothing is real. I fear a generation of people, half
Speaker 4: of whom will believe things that ain't so right and
Speaker 4: they will believe them.
Speaker 3: Further.
Speaker 1: Well, that's where we are now, right, Yeah, there is.
Speaker 4: No talking to people you disagree with. It doesn't matter
Speaker 4: if you're a publican or a Democrat, far left, far right, centrist,
Speaker 4: even off that two ended spectrum. You know, you're a libertarian,
Speaker 4: what your Green Party, whatever it is. If you disagree
Speaker 4: with somebody, it's very difficult these days to have a
Speaker 4: productive conversation because we don't even agree on the facts.
Speaker 4: And it's become kind of a tired trope that I
Speaker 4: keep coming back to. But as Senator Daniel Patrick moynihan said,
Speaker 4: you're entitled to your own opinions, you aren't entitled to
Speaker 4: your own facts.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I think that this gets back to
Speaker 1: this idea of the death of institutions. Right, So you
Speaker 1: have a percentage of this country that does not believe
Speaker 1: in elections, or in government, or in teachers. There is
Speaker 1: this sense in which part of this country, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't believe doctor right, they don't believe they have
Speaker 1: no trusted members of the community. So where does that go?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you get facts if you just.
Speaker 4: Know one I am on the left side of the
Speaker 4: political spectrum unabashedly. I worked for the election of Ted
Speaker 4: lu and for Rocata and Adam Schiff in California. I
Speaker 4: worked the campaign for Jerry Brown for president. I'm just
Speaker 4: putting out there where I sit so that your listeners
Speaker 4: can evaluate what I have to say with for knowledge.
Speaker 4: But I would differ with you. I don't think that
Speaker 4: half the country doesn't believe in elections. They believe very
Speaker 4: much in elections, right, they just don't believe in the
Speaker 4: outcome of elections. The outcome they don't like. It's not
Speaker 4: the outcome they don't like necessarily, they just don't believe
Speaker 4: that the outcome that we got was honest and fair
Speaker 4: and just and to their credit. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: it's demonstrably true that Trump lost the election. There's no
Speaker 4: legal room there. But our country has been in this
Speaker 4: situation before. You may remember that Democrat Samuel Tilden led
Speaker 4: to Republican Rutherford Hayes by a quarter of a million
Speaker 4: votes nationwide, but a special commission awarded their electoral votes
Speaker 4: to Hayes in eighteen seventy seven. You had cases between
Speaker 4: eighteen seventy four and nineteen oh four where sixty two
Speaker 4: times the House majority of either party phonied up a
Speaker 4: challenge to a member the opposition who'd won by a
Speaker 4: few voights votes, and they tossed them out, and Representative
Speaker 4: William McKinley of Ohio was expelled by the Democratic majority
Speaker 4: after winning reelection. So this kind of stuff has happened before.
Speaker 4: I don't mean that that's a good thing, but we've
Speaker 4: somehow managed to recover. The difference is everything seems more
Speaker 4: fast paced. In the eighteen eighties, it took days or
Speaker 4: weeks or months for these things to people to form opinions.
Speaker 4: Now we formed them in seconds, and we've got ar
Speaker 4: Fifteen's right. I don't but I mean, yeah, right, I.
Speaker 1: Mean no, I think that's a real problem. And again,
Speaker 1: I mean there have been times in American life when
Speaker 1: we have seen problems that we could not solve, right
Speaker 1: the post Civil War times when Americans were really a
Speaker 1: country that needed to unite, or even I think about
Speaker 1: like after the murder of JFK or MLK. I mean
Speaker 1: there were times, or the Vietnam War. But this feels
Speaker 1: a little bit different because it's like this sort of
Speaker 1: power vacuum where Republicans are just sort of giving all
Speaker 1: the power to Trump, and Trump seems completely uninterested in
Speaker 1: any kind of harmony. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think you're right in that there have always been
Speaker 4: politicians who are out for themselves. Yeah, and there were
Speaker 4: sometimes presidents who put their interests ahead of the interest
Speaker 4: of the country in small ways. Nixon, Yeah, but Nixon
Speaker 4: ultimately resigned, Gore ultimately decided not to fight for the
Speaker 4: sake of harmony of the country. You know, the word
Speaker 4: decorum keeps coming up in these conversations. There was a
Speaker 4: level of decorum and civility that is missing in the
Speaker 4: Trump campaign, which is a kind of take no prisoners.
Speaker 4: And the thing that disturbs me about the Trump presidency
Speaker 4: is all norms went out the window. And of course
Speaker 4: you can say, well, you know, politics has become corrupt,
Speaker 4: we need to shake things up. But I mean, this
Speaker 4: is a whole other level of insanity. Clearly, to my mind,
Speaker 4: if he were to win again, would be emboldened to
Speaker 4: really press every possible button to self destruct government and
Speaker 4: any kind of regulation or constraints. I think he's a
Speaker 4: kleptocrat at heart and an unprincipled one, and it worries me.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm just saying stuff that a lot of
Speaker 4: other people have said, and you didn't have me on
Speaker 4: to talk about that.
Speaker 1: I think, no, no, right, all right.
Speaker 4: I think the question is, you know, where do we
Speaker 4: go from here?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: How do we get back to that? I mean, how
Speaker 1: do we get these people back?
Speaker 4: Have you ever read any Lee McIntyre.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: He's a wonderful philosopher who has written a series of
Speaker 4: books on the post truth era and what led to it,
Speaker 4: and he traces the current predicament we're in back to
Speaker 4: the tobacco companies with their false information campaigns in the fifties,
Speaker 4: hiring their own scientists to say that tobacco was harmless,
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. And so he's one of many
Speaker 4: voices saying that Trump is not the problem per se.
Speaker 4: Trump is the symptom of a generalized mistrust of scientists
Speaker 4: and of facts and fact wielders. And part of the
Speaker 4: problem is that people who are college educated democrats like
Speaker 4: me are often perceived by the UnCollege educated members of
Speaker 4: the right as disrespectful towards them, as finger wagging, and
Speaker 4: as elitist. And what McIntyre McIntyre actually went to a
Speaker 4: conference of the flat earthers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 4: He writes about it, and he's wonderful if flat earthers
Speaker 4: they really exist, and there's a lot of them, and
Speaker 4: they really believe that the rounders is the government conspiracy.
Speaker 2: And apart from that.
Speaker 4: They don't seem to hold any other weird conspiracy beliefs.
Speaker 4: It's not like they're all tin foil hat feet people.
Speaker 4: This is this one thing they can't let go of.
Speaker 4: And actually they had a website for a while that
Speaker 4: said uniting flat earthers from around the globe, but I
Speaker 4: think somebody hipped them to that that was not the right.
Speaker 1: These people do get discredited. I mean a great example
Speaker 1: is COVID, Right, they said COVID is going to go away.
Speaker 1: It's going to be rocking and rolling by Eastern you know.
Speaker 1: But what I think is interesting is that despite this
Speaker 1: evidence that these people are not telling the truth, their
Speaker 1: followers continue following.
Speaker 4: Why is that, Well, I think the followers dispute the evidence,
Speaker 4: and so I think there are two things. One of
Speaker 4: the things I appreciate about Lee McIntyre's approach, which gets
Speaker 4: back actually to Reagan and Tip O'Neil. You have conversations
Speaker 4: with people you disagree with, and the way to do
Speaker 4: it is to not start by saying you're wrong, but
Speaker 4: to listen to them and hear what they have to
Speaker 4: say and try to find some common ground. I've sat
Speaker 4: down with people who I think hold views that will
Speaker 4: harm this country imminently, in the process of talking to them,
Speaker 4: just calmly and not allowing it to devolve into name calling,
Speaker 4: I find that in many cases we want the same things.
Speaker 4: We want the same things with the country. We want
Speaker 4: we want security, you know, again outside aggressors. We want
Speaker 4: a better life for our kids. We want healthcare for everyone.
Speaker 4: We want you know, equality. What we disagree about is
Speaker 4: how to get there right. But we don't disagree on
Speaker 4: our values. We disagree on the tactics or the strategies.
Speaker 4: And that's a starting point. It's a wonderful starting point.
Speaker 4: I was making calls for the Democratic Party for the
Speaker 4: last presidential election, and you know, I would call people
Speaker 4: and say, do you know where your precinct is or
Speaker 4: you know you're voting place and such. I got this
Speaker 4: one guy in Florida and he says, oh, you're calling
Speaker 4: me because I'm on the Demo. I'm registered as a Democrat.
Speaker 4: I said, well, that's right, I'm calling I got the
Speaker 4: list from the Democrats. He says, well, I'm voting for Trump.
Speaker 2: So I said, all right, that's fine.
Speaker 4: You know where to go to vote? Do you know
Speaker 4: what hours it's open? And he says, you understand I'm
Speaker 4: voting for Trump, don't you? And I said that is
Speaker 4: your right as a citizen. I'm not here to tell
Speaker 4: you who to vote for. I just want to make
Speaker 4: sure that you get to the polls, that you get
Speaker 4: to vote, and that your vote is counted, because if
Speaker 4: you're going to complain about things and you didn't vote,
Speaker 4: you're kinda the ice and we're not talking. We talked
Speaker 4: for forty minutes, and my supervisor was going nuts because
Speaker 4: I'm supposed to make, you know, like a call every
Speaker 4: ninety seconds, right. I just heard what he had to say.
Speaker 4: And it turns out his whole family are Democrats, large family, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, kids.
Speaker 4: None of them would listen to him. They just all
Speaker 4: thought he was a crank. And I said, I see
Speaker 4: your point. Yeah, there's dysfunction here.
Speaker 3: This is bad. This is bad. At the end of
Speaker 3: the call, he.
Speaker 4: Said, Wow, nobody has listened to me. I'm going to
Speaker 4: go vote and I'm going to vote for bide. We
Speaker 4: listen that we don't make them feel stupid, because they're
Speaker 4: not stupid. You know, a lot of times they want
Speaker 4: to find common ground.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly self destructive. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: There a moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon joined.
Speaker 3: So, mister Trump, Ronald Decantis, and Vivike the Fake all
Speaker 3: went down to an Iowa football game and was that fun?
Speaker 1: So when I saw this, I thought that it wasn't
Speaker 1: real because it seemed too good to be true. Basically,
Speaker 1: the Vake, ron de Santis, and Donald J. Trump all
Speaker 1: went to an Iowa football game together and there they
Speaker 1: discovered that there are some people in Iowa who love
Speaker 1: them and some people in Iowa who are just desperate
Speaker 1: to give them the finger. We saw lots of pictures
Speaker 1: of Trump getting the finger and also De Santis getting
Speaker 1: the finger, and we also saw some iconic booing. So
Speaker 1: U that is our moment of fuckery. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds and politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: Please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again thanks for listening.