1
00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:04,160
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

2
00:00:04,360 --> 00:00:07,120
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of

3
00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:13,480
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and an American Research Group poll has

4
00:00:13,600 --> 00:00:19,079
Speaker 1: Trump's disapproval on handling the economy at seventy percent. We

5
00:00:19,160 --> 00:00:21,079
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today. The New

6
00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:25,440
Speaker 1: Republic's Meridith Shiner stops by to talk about Trump's stupid

7
00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:29,840
Speaker 1: war driving down his popularity. Then we'll talk to historian

8
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,360
Speaker 1: Joseph Kelly about his new book, The Biggest Lie, The

9
00:00:33,560 --> 00:00:39,159
Speaker 1: Prehistory of American Fascism eighteen eighteen to nineteen fifteen. But

10
00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:41,640
Speaker 1: first the news Smike Arizona.

11
00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:44,199
Speaker 2: We call it a purple state, but one of the

12
00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:47,040
Speaker 2: reasons it's feeling more and more like a blue state

13
00:00:47,159 --> 00:00:50,559
Speaker 2: is Republicans there seem to drink from a watertap that

14
00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:52,440
Speaker 2: is absolutely fucking insane.

15
00:00:52,680 --> 00:00:56,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, this is such an interesting thing. Republicans

16
00:00:56,640 --> 00:01:00,720
Speaker 1: in Arizona cannot get out of their own way. So

17
00:01:01,120 --> 00:01:04,679
Speaker 1: they are a purple state. But they nominate people like

18
00:01:04,760 --> 00:01:10,280
Speaker 1: their Alabama, and it is true, right they do every candidate.

19
00:01:11,760 --> 00:01:14,399
Speaker 2: If you said to me, here's Teddany Biggs quotes, here's

20
00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:15,960
Speaker 2: Ted Tommy Tuberville quotes.

21
00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:16,880
Speaker 1: You couldn't tell the difference.

22
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:18,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, you and I would probably fail to dot I.

23
00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:22,200
Speaker 1: Noted Tommy Tuberville. I'm thinking Roy Moore here. I mean

24
00:01:23,120 --> 00:01:26,680
Speaker 1: Andy Biggs. He's a great candidate if you're in Alabama,

25
00:01:26,720 --> 00:01:30,840
Speaker 1: and if you're in a state like Arizona, which is

26
00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:35,200
Speaker 1: a state that is both really has a democratic governor

27
00:01:35,319 --> 00:01:40,520
Speaker 1: right now, is very blue, has this history of activism

28
00:01:40,640 --> 00:01:43,880
Speaker 1: because of Sheriff Joe of our PIO. It's just an

29
00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:49,720
Speaker 1: insane thing to nominate Andy Biggs, and especially when David

30
00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:55,320
Speaker 1: Schweiker is like actually a more normal candidate to run

31
00:01:55,360 --> 00:02:00,240
Speaker 1: against Katie Hobbes. So what do Arizona Republicans do? They

32
00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:03,760
Speaker 1: nominate Biggs. Biggs is a former chair of the House

33
00:02:03,800 --> 00:02:08,600
Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus. You may remember them as being that shittery anyone.

34
00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:13,200
Speaker 1: So now where he is going to run against Katie Hobbs,

35
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 1: this would be her second term. Katie Hobbs is now

36
00:02:16,040 --> 00:02:16,800
Speaker 1: in a munch better.

37
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:17,000
Speaker 3: You know.

38
00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:19,919
Speaker 1: This is one of those like moved the rating from

39
00:02:20,040 --> 00:02:24,360
Speaker 1: lean D to likely D. Again, anything could happen, but

40
00:02:25,280 --> 00:02:28,560
Speaker 1: he is an election denier, which it turns out is

41
00:02:28,680 --> 00:02:32,079
Speaker 1: also not so great for turnout when your candidate is

42
00:02:32,080 --> 00:02:35,080
Speaker 1: an election Denier Hobbs, you know, did not have a

43
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 1: primary challenge, and now it is. It's called it said

44
00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:45,440
Speaker 1: favored Democrats. Amy Walter this month from Cook Political shifted

45
00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,880
Speaker 1: the rating from toss up to lean Democrat. Let's get

46
00:02:49,919 --> 00:02:53,079
Speaker 1: Andy Biggs on the trail so we can go from

47
00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:55,400
Speaker 1: lean Democrat to l likely Democrat.

48
00:02:55,520 --> 00:02:57,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, or just like you know, give him the password

49
00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:02,400
Speaker 2: to his Twitter account. So yesterday we had these headlines

50
00:03:02,400 --> 00:03:05,520
Speaker 2: that Republicans were in disarray because Trump seems to have

51
00:03:05,560 --> 00:03:08,359
Speaker 2: no plan with this war. Today he kind of put

52
00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:10,440
Speaker 2: out his plan, which is I'm going to bomb bridges

53
00:03:10,480 --> 00:03:13,120
Speaker 2: every time you hold up a vote in the straight

54
00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:16,280
Speaker 2: of horror moves and everybody's going, oh great, that's the solution.

55
00:03:16,639 --> 00:03:19,680
Speaker 1: So here's the fundamental problem with this war is that

56
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:24,880
Speaker 1: Donald Trump thinks that Iran, which is a very religious country,

57
00:03:25,360 --> 00:03:27,760
Speaker 1: is going to operate the way that he operates. So,

58
00:03:27,919 --> 00:03:30,080
Speaker 1: for example, he offered them a lot of money last

59
00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:33,560
Speaker 1: week and they're like, no, go my dude. This week,

60
00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:37,240
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm going to just make things horrible for

61
00:03:37,440 --> 00:03:41,080
Speaker 1: your citizens. But what I think he doesn't understand is

62
00:03:41,080 --> 00:03:44,520
Speaker 1: that they don't have elections in Iran and making things

63
00:03:44,600 --> 00:03:48,480
Speaker 1: vulrrible for the Iranian people, is not a motivating factor

64
00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:52,640
Speaker 1: for this administration. And I think what's really scary about

65
00:03:52,640 --> 00:03:57,000
Speaker 1: this moment is that if you don't have much interest

66
00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:02,840
Speaker 1: in protecting civilians, and you're a country that doesn't really

67
00:04:03,080 --> 00:04:07,480
Speaker 1: I mean America now pretty clearly bombed to the school,

68
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,520
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of allegations that we've done other staff.

69
00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:16,400
Speaker 1: There is some evidence that this administration is misrepresenting the

70
00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:20,560
Speaker 1: number of casualties, you know, military casualties, or that some

71
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:23,119
Speaker 1: of the injuries they may have gotten on the field.

72
00:04:23,279 --> 00:04:26,480
Speaker 1: So there's a question of like, here you are. You

73
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:29,840
Speaker 1: have one country that doesn't care about civilians, and you

74
00:04:29,839 --> 00:04:33,120
Speaker 1: have bombing another country that doesn't really care about civilians.

75
00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:37,679
Speaker 1: Like this could get really really horrendous, really really quickly.

76
00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:40,359
Speaker 1: And I think that all of us need to worry

77
00:04:40,400 --> 00:04:43,840
Speaker 1: about the Middle East because this is the kind of

78
00:04:43,920 --> 00:04:48,599
Speaker 1: stuff that ultimately creates a very unstable region. And we

79
00:04:48,720 --> 00:04:51,880
Speaker 1: have benefited a lot from the stability in the Middle East.

80
00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:54,800
Speaker 1: And to watch this sort of go out the window

81
00:04:54,839 --> 00:05:00,599
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump doesn't understand second order effects is so bad.

82
00:05:00,720 --> 00:05:04,320
Speaker 1: And it's also like, you know, there's another story today

83
00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:08,320
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump wants to let Mohammed Ben Solman start

84
00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:13,000
Speaker 1: with a nuclear program, like this is insanity, okay, wants

85
00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:15,880
Speaker 1: them to be able to enrich nukes. This is a

86
00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:19,559
Speaker 1: guy who is bombing Iran because he doesn't want them

87
00:05:19,640 --> 00:05:23,680
Speaker 1: to enrich nukes. Like the difference in Saudi Arabia and

88
00:05:23,760 --> 00:05:29,039
Speaker 1: Iran is that Saudi Arabia funded the nine to eleven attacks, right, Like,

89
00:05:29,160 --> 00:05:31,880
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just an insane and MBS is

90
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:35,960
Speaker 1: known to be really unstable and really, you know, put

91
00:05:36,040 --> 00:05:38,840
Speaker 1: members of his own family in jail. So this is

92
00:05:38,960 --> 00:05:43,359
Speaker 1: a really, really scary moment. And remember what you're not

93
00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:46,280
Speaker 1: seeing when you read these news stories is all of

94
00:05:46,440 --> 00:05:50,440
Speaker 1: the double dealing and self dealing that this administration is doing.

95
00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:53,200
Speaker 1: So like the point people in the Middle East, Jared

96
00:05:53,279 --> 00:05:56,719
Speaker 1: Kushner and Steve Wilkoff, are you know Jered Kushner is

97
00:05:56,720 --> 00:06:00,200
Speaker 1: involved in a bunch of different projects making money from

98
00:06:00,440 --> 00:06:04,120
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia. We're bombing one country in the Middle East

99
00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:06,840
Speaker 1: because we don't want them to have nukes, and then

100
00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:10,120
Speaker 1: we'll make you deal with another country in the Middle

101
00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:13,120
Speaker 1: East so that they can have nukes. Make it make sense.

102
00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:16,680
Speaker 2: I can't, And I'm going to continue with that stupidity.

103
00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:18,920
Speaker 2: If we remember back to the top of the year,

104
00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:22,839
Speaker 2: we went into Venezuela and kidnapped their leader. And so

105
00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:26,880
Speaker 2: now people are saying, hey, seems like you apparently seized

106
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:30,600
Speaker 2: billions of dollars of revenue of the oil from Venezuela.

107
00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:32,080
Speaker 2: That's what you were saying you were going to do.

108
00:06:32,400 --> 00:06:33,760
Speaker 2: Where the fuck is that money?

109
00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:39,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's thirteen billion dollars after taking over Venezuela's

110
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:43,440
Speaker 1: oil exports in the week of kidnapping its president, who

111
00:06:43,520 --> 00:06:46,279
Speaker 1: is still in jail in New York. According to a

112
00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:49,880
Speaker 1: Financial Times analysis, six months later, and one month after

113
00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:53,000
Speaker 1: two devastating earthquakes, that money is nowhere to be found.

114
00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:56,200
Speaker 1: So that is a real I mean, the idea that

115
00:06:56,240 --> 00:07:00,960
Speaker 1: we were stealing billions of dollars from Venezuela seems bad

116
00:07:01,040 --> 00:07:04,960
Speaker 1: to me. And you know, because we're our country is

117
00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:08,280
Speaker 1: such a banana republic right now, you know, there's no

118
00:07:08,839 --> 00:07:11,760
Speaker 1: rule of law. So who do you even go to

119
00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:14,800
Speaker 1: to get an accounting of this. I mean, certainly we

120
00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:19,160
Speaker 1: need hearings, and certainly we need to know what is

121
00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:24,320
Speaker 1: happening here. But like, clearly this is a big fucking problem,

122
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:27,320
Speaker 1: and like the idea that we went from the country

123
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:30,239
Speaker 1: that was you know, people would complain on the left

124
00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:34,280
Speaker 1: and the right about Americans being the world's policemen.

125
00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:37,080
Speaker 2: But I think I saw a movie about that once.

126
00:07:37,160 --> 00:07:40,040
Speaker 1: Right, but they did not complain about us being the

127
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:44,440
Speaker 1: world's robber barons. And this story is just insane, right

128
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:47,760
Speaker 1: that we are. The US took control of renezuel As

129
00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:52,400
Speaker 1: oil exports and suspended some sanctions after capturing Maduro in January,

130
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:56,480
Speaker 1: and it looks like we also stole some money from them.

131
00:07:56,600 --> 00:08:00,120
Speaker 1: I mean, just insane. The value of the barrels with

132
00:08:00,200 --> 00:08:04,200
Speaker 1: direct price estimates shifts since January comes to about eleven

133
00:08:04,280 --> 00:08:07,080
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars. And you know they have a

134
00:08:07,080 --> 00:08:11,520
Speaker 1: puppet regime right now, you know, so Dulci Rodriguez is

135
00:08:11,600 --> 00:08:14,960
Speaker 1: probably not going to tell us the real story. And

136
00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,240
Speaker 1: you know what's interesting about this is that you have

137
00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:22,640
Speaker 1: a Republican member of Congress, Maria Salzis are saying like,

138
00:08:23,120 --> 00:08:27,920
Speaker 1: where if the money? And that is a very strange

139
00:08:28,040 --> 00:08:32,840
Speaker 1: moment in our partisan America to have Republican members of

140
00:08:32,920 --> 00:08:35,360
Speaker 1: Congress calling out this administration.

141
00:08:35,840 --> 00:08:40,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is strange. So speaking of also strange, Democrats

142
00:08:40,280 --> 00:08:42,480
Speaker 2: are demanding a probe to the Ouster of the IRS

143
00:08:42,559 --> 00:08:44,360
Speaker 2: lawyer who clashed with the White House.

144
00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:49,160
Speaker 4: That's not so strange, that's that's that's a fair point.

145
00:08:49,600 --> 00:08:52,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, they fire everyone they don't like it.

146
00:08:53,080 --> 00:08:54,319
Speaker 2: I was going to say, it's strange in the way

147
00:08:54,360 --> 00:08:56,880
Speaker 2: that every other administration didn't have problems like this.

148
00:08:57,480 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 1: A dozen Senate Democrats demanded investigation Tuesday and to report

149
00:09:02,160 --> 00:09:04,640
Speaker 1: that a top IRS lawyer was forced out of his

150
00:09:04,720 --> 00:09:07,080
Speaker 1: job after telling the White House that could not pressure

151
00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:12,559
Speaker 1: the tax agency to go after specific taxpayers. I'm sorry,

152
00:09:12,679 --> 00:09:15,920
Speaker 1: but that is the critical sentence here, is that the

153
00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:19,480
Speaker 1: Trump administration cannot use the IRS to go after its enemies.

154
00:09:19,559 --> 00:09:22,600
Speaker 1: A White House official claimed on Tuesday that he was

155
00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:25,920
Speaker 1: asked to leave because he was not a team player

156
00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:31,680
Speaker 1: who was extremely difficult to work with. I don't think

157
00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:35,000
Speaker 1: that's why he was asked to leave. He was also like,

158
00:09:35,160 --> 00:09:38,120
Speaker 1: this is a trumpy guy, a one time corporate tax

159
00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:42,559
Speaker 1: lobbyist and former top congressional tax staffer. So he gets

160
00:09:42,559 --> 00:09:45,440
Speaker 1: the job because he's got trumpy bona FIDE's, but he

161
00:09:45,600 --> 00:09:53,760
Speaker 1: loses the job because he is not completely corrupt. Meredith

162
00:09:53,800 --> 00:09:57,840
Speaker 1: Shiner is a contributing editor. It's a New Republic Welcome welcome, Meredith.

163
00:09:58,360 --> 00:10:00,840
Speaker 5: I'm ollie. It's great to be back. Great to have you.

164
00:10:01,080 --> 00:10:03,720
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump had wildly unpopular war.

165
00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:05,640
Speaker 5: This week, we.

166
00:10:05,800 --> 00:10:10,400
Speaker 1: Have Pete heg Saith on the hill begging for billions,

167
00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:14,199
Speaker 1: trying to get more money to keep the war going,

168
00:10:15,120 --> 00:10:19,360
Speaker 1: very unpopular. We have senators trying to get him to

169
00:10:19,480 --> 00:10:23,880
Speaker 1: explain what the plan is. Doesn't seem like he has

170
00:10:23,920 --> 00:10:28,280
Speaker 1: a plan, what the money is going to. Not real

171
00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:32,480
Speaker 1: transparent on that. And then because Pete is such a

172
00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:39,239
Speaker 1: such a prolific talker, there are so many contradictory statements.

173
00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:41,000
Speaker 1: It's kind of incredible.

174
00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:46,600
Speaker 5: I mean, yes, but also it is unsurprising. I think

175
00:10:46,640 --> 00:10:50,640
Speaker 5: that this administration has refused to put together a coherent

176
00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:53,400
Speaker 5: foreign policy other than the fact that they want more war,

177
00:10:53,520 --> 00:10:56,040
Speaker 5: which isn't in line with what they sold their own

178
00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:59,640
Speaker 5: base on. And you know, as we were talking about, Molly,

179
00:10:59,760 --> 00:11:02,559
Speaker 5: I think when you think about the upcoming midterms, when

180
00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:05,360
Speaker 5: you think about Democratic candidates who are still running in

181
00:11:05,360 --> 00:11:09,959
Speaker 5: primaries across this country, being fundamentally anti war has been

182
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:13,719
Speaker 5: something that has driven waves up and down almost the

183
00:11:13,880 --> 00:11:16,440
Speaker 5: entirety of my lifetime. Like when I think about Barack

184
00:11:16,480 --> 00:11:19,480
Speaker 5: Obama being in office and there's been a lot of

185
00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:22,200
Speaker 5: nostalgia around Chicago for the Barack Obama era with the

186
00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:27,479
Speaker 5: opening of the library. I think the defining the differentiator

187
00:11:27,520 --> 00:11:29,880
Speaker 5: for him was that he didn't vote for the Iraq war,

188
00:11:29,960 --> 00:11:32,160
Speaker 5: and a lot of his opponents and that primary did.

189
00:11:32,559 --> 00:11:35,439
Speaker 5: And so when we think about how the Democratic face moves,

190
00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:40,480
Speaker 5: they've been fundamentally anti war, and Republicans right now, Donald Trump,

191
00:11:40,559 --> 00:11:43,319
Speaker 5: right now, they're serving up nothing but war. They're serving

192
00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:46,120
Speaker 5: up nothing but debt and deficits to fund wars that

193
00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:49,880
Speaker 5: have no goals, no objectives, and are leading to not

194
00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:55,040
Speaker 5: just death of service members, but also just economic instability

195
00:11:55,160 --> 00:11:58,680
Speaker 5: across the country because prices are being driven up because

196
00:11:58,720 --> 00:12:01,200
Speaker 5: of what we're doing in Iran, and there's no envy

197
00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:04,200
Speaker 5: and there's no strategy. And so as we think about

198
00:12:04,440 --> 00:12:07,280
Speaker 5: elections and as we think about our politics in the

199
00:12:07,280 --> 00:12:11,480
Speaker 5: frame of reject or accept, I think people across the

200
00:12:11,480 --> 00:12:14,440
Speaker 5: country are rejecting what their foreign policy is, and that's

201
00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:17,760
Speaker 5: something that could animate candidates. And we're seeing that manifest

202
00:12:17,800 --> 00:12:20,240
Speaker 5: differently in racist across that country, which I know we

203
00:12:20,280 --> 00:12:22,680
Speaker 5: can get into, but so fundamentally it's bad.

204
00:12:22,800 --> 00:12:26,360
Speaker 1: Right, So let's just talk about the war for a minute, though.

205
00:12:26,520 --> 00:12:30,640
Speaker 1: Trump did in fact run on being an anti war Republican,

206
00:12:31,120 --> 00:12:33,440
Speaker 1: which was a lane that I think a lot of people,

207
00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:37,880
Speaker 1: even on the right like, because nobody liked these wars

208
00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:40,040
Speaker 1: we have been, you know, sort of endless wars in

209
00:12:40,080 --> 00:12:45,040
Speaker 1: the Middle East. And there's a really incredible David Kirpatrick's

210
00:12:45,040 --> 00:12:49,720
Speaker 1: story in The New Yorker just about how much net

211
00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:53,480
Speaker 1: Yahoo did really was able to get in there and

212
00:12:53,600 --> 00:12:58,079
Speaker 1: get both Biden and Trump to sort of do what

213
00:12:58,120 --> 00:13:01,800
Speaker 1: he wanted. When we're talking about this heg Seth hearing,

214
00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:05,079
Speaker 1: what I was struck by was a lot of these

215
00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:08,440
Speaker 1: people are gonna have to run very soon on this.

216
00:13:08,679 --> 00:13:11,600
Speaker 1: And so this is a hearing run by Susan Collins.

217
00:13:11,679 --> 00:13:13,800
Speaker 1: At the end of the hearing, we had Susan Collins

218
00:13:13,840 --> 00:13:18,480
Speaker 1: shaking hands with Secretary Pete Mayon has a new Senate

219
00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:22,160
Speaker 1: candidate who's going to run against her, called Troy Jackson. Like,

220
00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:28,280
Speaker 1: is just even shaking hands with Pete heg Seth enough

221
00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:32,679
Speaker 1: to help Troy Jackson win that main Senate race, Like,

222
00:13:33,280 --> 00:13:38,840
Speaker 1: is there enough of a real anti incumbent but also

223
00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:41,720
Speaker 1: anti war Further around the country.

224
00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:44,120
Speaker 5: I don't want to be in the prognosticating business right.

225
00:13:44,160 --> 00:13:46,520
Speaker 5: I don't want to say whether or not one handshake

226
00:13:46,679 --> 00:13:49,960
Speaker 5: is the difference between Susan Collins winning and Susan Collins losing.

227
00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:52,560
Speaker 5: But I do think the trajectory of where Trump and

228
00:13:52,559 --> 00:13:55,720
Speaker 5: the Republicans have been, even thinking back to Trump one,

229
00:13:56,040 --> 00:13:58,600
Speaker 5: is sort of notable and interesting. And I think if

230
00:13:58,640 --> 00:14:01,720
Speaker 5: you think about his first can paigns in twenty fifteen

231
00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:04,760
Speaker 5: leading to the twenty sixteen election, I think part of

232
00:14:04,840 --> 00:14:08,960
Speaker 5: his positioning or play acting of being anti war was

233
00:14:09,040 --> 00:14:13,040
Speaker 5: just taking up this lane that felt completely anti establishment

234
00:14:13,160 --> 00:14:16,400
Speaker 5: and anti the rules of decorum of all the Republicans

235
00:14:16,400 --> 00:14:19,640
Speaker 5: and suits that sat on the debate stage next to him.

236
00:14:19,920 --> 00:14:23,520
Speaker 5: And so part of being anti war spending or anti

237
00:14:23,560 --> 00:14:26,840
Speaker 5: war was saying everything that the Republican Party is doing

238
00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:31,320
Speaker 5: or has prioritized since the Bush era especially doesn't work,

239
00:14:31,440 --> 00:14:33,840
Speaker 5: isn't working for you. And I want to focus in

240
00:14:33,880 --> 00:14:39,040
Speaker 5: this very white nationalist coded America first kind of aliency.

241
00:14:39,720 --> 00:14:43,000
Speaker 5: But what he is in reality versus what he wist

242
00:14:43,000 --> 00:14:45,320
Speaker 5: to sells voters on is very different. And I think,

243
00:14:45,360 --> 00:14:50,520
Speaker 5: as you mentioned, has really transformed in this second administration

244
00:14:50,720 --> 00:14:53,080
Speaker 5: because he went from trying to say that he was

245
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:56,880
Speaker 5: anti establishment or separate from these other people to being

246
00:14:56,920 --> 00:15:00,560
Speaker 5: really emboldened by how his first term ended by not

247
00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:03,920
Speaker 5: having any accountability for January sixth, and not having an

248
00:15:04,040 --> 00:15:08,200
Speaker 5: accountability for the financial interest he has around the world

249
00:15:08,240 --> 00:15:11,680
Speaker 5: where he's been enriching himself through this position. And so

250
00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:14,040
Speaker 5: now you see him in this place where he doesn't

251
00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:15,840
Speaker 5: really feel like there are any rules for him and

252
00:15:15,960 --> 00:15:18,400
Speaker 5: he doesn't feel like there are any boundaries. And so

253
00:15:18,680 --> 00:15:22,440
Speaker 5: it was last about, you know, being anti war, but

254
00:15:22,560 --> 00:15:25,560
Speaker 5: all about a consolidation of power and what he could

255
00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:29,360
Speaker 5: do and get from that power. And so you mentioned

256
00:15:29,880 --> 00:15:33,800
Speaker 5: Benjamin nah who really being able to manipulate the president.

257
00:15:34,040 --> 00:15:36,600
Speaker 5: I think that he sold him on this idea that

258
00:15:36,640 --> 00:15:38,720
Speaker 5: he too could be a strong man, right. I feel

259
00:15:38,720 --> 00:15:41,160
Speaker 5: like that's such an archetype that gets talked about with

260
00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:44,640
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, and Donald Trump wasn't really smart enough to

261
00:15:44,680 --> 00:15:49,240
Speaker 5: see how that would absolutely be a quagmire for him,

262
00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:53,440
Speaker 5: that wouldn't really work out for the American politics or

263
00:15:53,520 --> 00:15:57,560
Speaker 5: the American Republic, and that this would not be something

264
00:15:57,600 --> 00:16:00,600
Speaker 5: that he could sort of b s his way out

265
00:16:00,640 --> 00:16:02,640
Speaker 5: of that he was going to be stuck there. And

266
00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:04,720
Speaker 5: so when you think about what's happening in Iran, when

267
00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:07,440
Speaker 5: you think about all of the protests and the concerns

268
00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:11,160
Speaker 5: about what's happening with Gaza and Palestinians. All of these

269
00:16:11,240 --> 00:16:15,920
Speaker 5: things are intersecting, and it's not just informing that dynamics

270
00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:19,520
Speaker 5: between Democrats and Republicans, but I think you're also seeing

271
00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:22,880
Speaker 5: how it's informing the dynamics between Democrats and Democrats. When

272
00:16:22,880 --> 00:16:25,280
Speaker 5: someone like Bradlander could run in New York and defeat

273
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:28,720
Speaker 5: Dan Boldman by thirty points on the position that palestin

274
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:31,440
Speaker 5: And should be considered as people. That's sort of where

275
00:16:31,560 --> 00:16:35,280
Speaker 5: the anti war position is, and it was ignored in

276
00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:37,520
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four. It was largely shut out of the

277
00:16:37,560 --> 00:16:40,920
Speaker 5: Democratic Convention, and now you're seeing it being litigated in

278
00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:43,160
Speaker 5: these primaries and we're going to see what kind of

279
00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:46,400
Speaker 5: impact it has in November. But you're going to have

280
00:16:46,520 --> 00:16:50,920
Speaker 5: this natural midterm wave of being anti incumbent. And I

281
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:54,360
Speaker 5: think being anti war and anti incumbency has always really

282
00:16:54,440 --> 00:16:56,880
Speaker 5: driven results, especially on the Democratic side.

283
00:16:56,960 --> 00:16:59,320
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, you know, there are a lot

284
00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:01,960
Speaker 1: of things going on in the primary process right now,

285
00:17:02,040 --> 00:17:06,920
Speaker 1: and so Arizona had a primary and we saw it

286
00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:12,000
Speaker 1: there's a big candidate. We're still not totally counted. But

287
00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:15,800
Speaker 1: in this Arizona's first district, we have a D D

288
00:17:15,960 --> 00:17:21,640
Speaker 1: Triple C candidate who Galen Woods, who is trailing by

289
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:25,920
Speaker 1: ten and she has a ton more money versus doctor Shaw,

290
00:17:25,960 --> 00:17:29,680
Speaker 1: who was the candidate last time, and he is probably

291
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,360
Speaker 1: going to win. Now, that in my mind is kind

292
00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:35,240
Speaker 1: of shocking because if you think about it, they're not

293
00:17:35,560 --> 00:17:39,679
Speaker 1: so ideological, they're more of a there's more of a

294
00:17:39,760 --> 00:17:43,199
Speaker 1: financial difference, and I just want it's not more of

295
00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:47,280
Speaker 1: a it's their establishment backed or you know. Also, there's

296
00:17:47,320 --> 00:17:51,000
Speaker 1: just a ton of spending in that race, tons of packs.

297
00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:54,959
Speaker 1: Not ideological, right, not one candidate, not more lefty than

298
00:17:55,000 --> 00:18:00,000
Speaker 1: the other, more just like an anti incumbent fervor than

299
00:18:00,760 --> 00:18:03,680
Speaker 1: And I just wonder, I mean, look, you and I

300
00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:06,840
Speaker 1: have a similar ideology, but I just wonder if we

301
00:18:06,840 --> 00:18:10,240
Speaker 1: can look at these races and we see the sort

302
00:18:10,240 --> 00:18:14,080
Speaker 1: of tea party Democratic tea party, and I just wonder,

303
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:17,359
Speaker 1: that's a race where it really is a sort of

304
00:18:17,400 --> 00:18:18,600
Speaker 1: anti spend.

305
00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:21,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I think that there are always points

306
00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:24,679
Speaker 5: in like our political lifetimes that we look at and

307
00:18:24,720 --> 00:18:27,520
Speaker 5: we think about them as turning points in our politics

308
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:30,080
Speaker 5: and our inustry. And for me, I'm not sure that

309
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:34,080
Speaker 5: there is a bigger demarcation of before and actor than

310
00:18:34,080 --> 00:18:37,440
Speaker 5: Citizens United. And we've seen so many ways in which

311
00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:41,399
Speaker 5: unlimited money in politics has corrupted our system. But I

312
00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:45,280
Speaker 5: also think one of the more underdiscussed components of just

313
00:18:45,359 --> 00:18:49,560
Speaker 5: having all of these races that are multimillion, multimillion dollar

314
00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:53,640
Speaker 5: races is that money can't buy you authenticity. It can't

315
00:18:53,640 --> 00:18:56,520
Speaker 5: buy you connection with people. It can't buy you the

316
00:18:56,560 --> 00:18:59,119
Speaker 5: sense of being in touch with the electorate when you

317
00:18:59,200 --> 00:19:02,720
Speaker 5: aren't naturally oriented towards that, and when party leadership seems

318
00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:05,000
Speaker 5: to be not really in touch with the electorate or

319
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:07,200
Speaker 5: where people are. And so when you have all this

320
00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:10,600
Speaker 5: money come in from all different directions, it doesn't matter

321
00:19:10,760 --> 00:19:13,399
Speaker 5: exclusively that you have it. It's how you spend it

322
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:16,880
Speaker 5: and how you use it to amplify a particular message,

323
00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:20,479
Speaker 5: a particular objective, or a particular goal, especially when our

324
00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:23,640
Speaker 5: system is of latch with it, like at some point

325
00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:26,640
Speaker 5: it sort of gets neutralized when everyone has a lot

326
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:30,920
Speaker 5: of money to spend that if you're not actually striking

327
00:19:31,119 --> 00:19:33,600
Speaker 5: the right balance on what you're talking about, if you're

328
00:19:33,640 --> 00:19:36,560
Speaker 5: not really saying what you're actually going to do, you

329
00:19:36,680 --> 00:19:39,040
Speaker 5: reach this critical mass where money actually can't buy you

330
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:39,680
Speaker 5: that future.

331
00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:40,080
Speaker 3: You know.

332
00:19:40,119 --> 00:19:41,760
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that I thought about,

333
00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:45,679
Speaker 5: particularly on the Democratic side of the ledger, is you know,

334
00:19:46,960 --> 00:19:50,399
Speaker 5: what will what will you actually do if you are

335
00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:53,719
Speaker 5: able to take that power? You know, if Democrats can

336
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:56,480
Speaker 5: win back Congress, if they get a House majority, if

337
00:19:56,520 --> 00:19:58,919
Speaker 5: they're able to sneak away with the Senate. I think

338
00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,760
Speaker 5: voters want to hear what going to do with it,

339
00:20:01,119 --> 00:20:03,640
Speaker 5: how they're going to hold this administration accountable, how they're

340
00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:07,840
Speaker 5: going to potentially unline some of these like foreign policy blackmuyers.

341
00:20:08,040 --> 00:20:10,560
Speaker 5: And again, you could have twenty five million dollars in

342
00:20:10,560 --> 00:20:13,680
Speaker 5: your back pocket, but if you can't actually directly say

343
00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:16,280
Speaker 5: what you want to do with the public trust that

344
00:20:16,320 --> 00:20:18,639
Speaker 5: you're being given, I don't think that that's going to

345
00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:20,399
Speaker 5: break through that in this current element.

346
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:24,040
Speaker 1: Yes, but I wonder like if we could pull back

347
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:28,439
Speaker 1: and look at like, for example, we have Elon Musk,

348
00:20:29,119 --> 00:20:35,159
Speaker 1: who made that judicial contest in Wisconsin to be one

349
00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:37,879
Speaker 1: of the most expensive ever. I think it is the

350
00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:41,879
Speaker 1: most expensive ever and he lost right and that we

351
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:45,240
Speaker 1: we you know, we said ultimately that it was because

352
00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:48,080
Speaker 1: it was such a low turnout election that the money

353
00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 1: was not able to buy that election because it was

354
00:20:53,960 --> 00:20:58,560
Speaker 1: so low turnout. But what if there is a real

355
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:04,800
Speaker 1: like anti money, you know, goshtalt happening in the Democratic

356
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:09,320
Speaker 1: Party now and there, And that is why when voters

357
00:21:09,400 --> 00:21:12,359
Speaker 1: see someone like Elon Musk getting involved, or they see

358
00:21:12,359 --> 00:21:14,879
Speaker 1: someone like the D Triple C getting involved, or they

359
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:19,600
Speaker 1: see someone like apag getting involved, that they decide that

360
00:21:19,680 --> 00:21:22,560
Speaker 1: they don't want to vote for the candidate. I mean,

361
00:21:22,560 --> 00:21:25,399
Speaker 1: I just that, like, if you look at that Arizona

362
00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:29,719
Speaker 1: Congressional like it's hard to see how the you know,

363
00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:34,200
Speaker 1: the D Triple C candidate was maybe a little bit

364
00:21:34,200 --> 00:21:37,680
Speaker 1: more conservative, but not really and the emergency room doctor

365
00:21:38,160 --> 00:21:41,680
Speaker 1: who won, doctor Shaw, that just seems like a case

366
00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:47,840
Speaker 1: of really voters voting against the world that Citizens United

367
00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:48,520
Speaker 1: has created.

368
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:50,760
Speaker 6: I think that that's right, and I think that it

369
00:21:50,800 --> 00:21:53,400
Speaker 6: would be naive to think that the idea that all

370
00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:56,159
Speaker 6: billionaires are bad, or that billionaires are ruining our country

371
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:58,800
Speaker 6: or the economy or people's ability to get jobs would

372
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:01,640
Speaker 6: just be contained to that sphere and wouldn't all pople

373
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:03,800
Speaker 6: over into the explicit political sphere.

374
00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:04,240
Speaker 3: You know.

375
00:22:04,280 --> 00:22:06,480
Speaker 5: One of the things that I think about and love

376
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:09,639
Speaker 5: talking about is baseball, and in the context of the

377
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,359
Speaker 5: past like twenty years, something that's been so interesting to

378
00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:15,400
Speaker 5: me is that people always used to side with ownership

379
00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 5: over players because they're like, oh, these players are millionaires,

380
00:22:18,480 --> 00:22:20,920
Speaker 5: they have played millions of dollars just to play a game,

381
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:23,720
Speaker 5: like they don't actually deserve more money. And I think

382
00:22:23,720 --> 00:22:26,800
Speaker 5: about the last collective bargaining agreement and how people just

383
00:22:26,840 --> 00:22:29,680
Speaker 5: went into it and thinking that billionaires were actually bad,

384
00:22:29,800 --> 00:22:32,040
Speaker 5: that the players should get paid more and what they're

385
00:22:32,080 --> 00:22:34,880
Speaker 5: worth because they're actually providing the product, and to try

386
00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:37,920
Speaker 5: to nickel and dine the players would be wrong because

387
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:40,840
Speaker 5: it's the ownership that's really bad. It's the ownership that's

388
00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:43,919
Speaker 5: trying to change people's experiences. And to me, that's a

389
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,359
Speaker 5: really interesting barometer. Because people engage with pop culture or

390
00:22:47,359 --> 00:22:50,399
Speaker 5: sports culture and how they're viewing the overall dynamics of

391
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:52,919
Speaker 5: our society. We can view through that lens. And so

392
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,040
Speaker 5: when we think about politics or money being bad in politics,

393
00:22:56,400 --> 00:23:00,199
Speaker 5: I don't think that you can disambiguate that and say, well,

394
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 5: it's only a problem on one side, or it's only

395
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:06,159
Speaker 5: a problem in this area. I think that you have

396
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 5: to look at the full playing board and say, money

397
00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:13,879
Speaker 5: is grooting every single piece of this process, every single

398
00:23:14,000 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 5: political outcome that we have, and in this moment where

399
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 5: everything feels like it's truly falling apart, I don't think

400
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 5: we should be surprised that there's inherent skepticism or what

401
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 5: the establishment is putting forward, or the candidate that's supported

402
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 5: with the most money by some of these groups who

403
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:33,440
Speaker 5: have been aligned trickishly to the Democratic Party. I think

404
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 5: people are looking for answers, They're looking for people with

405
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 5: the courage to stand up for their convictions, and I

406
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:43,159
Speaker 5: think they're really exhausted by NA seeing that, and so

407
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 5: are taking a look with a much more critical life

408
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 5: about what incumbents have done for them and also like

409
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 5: what the party is doing for them. The last note,

410
00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 5: because we talked a little bit about New York before,

411
00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 5: is that I think that there are still fundamentals of

412
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 5: these jobs that people don't about, like in Congress, like

413
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 5: do you show up in your district, do you have

414
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:09,320
Speaker 5: solid constituent services? Because Dan Goldman, it was presented that

415
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:12,160
Speaker 5: he lost exclusively because of his position on Israel versus

416
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 5: Brad Alexander, But someone like Richie Torre is one in

417
00:24:15,320 --> 00:24:18,120
Speaker 5: a primary even though he was incredibly pro Israel, but

418
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:19,800
Speaker 5: people who were in New York talked about how they

419
00:24:19,840 --> 00:24:23,040
Speaker 5: see him everywhere, that he has good constituent services. There

420
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 5: are certain basics of this job, and if you are

421
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:27,959
Speaker 5: in a cumbent you have to show that you care

422
00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 5: about the people you're surveying, and that can look in

423
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:32,440
Speaker 5: a bunch of different ways. But we can't be surprised

424
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 5: that there's inherent skepticism about what the party is doing

425
00:24:35,560 --> 00:24:37,120
Speaker 5: or what the establishment is doing.

426
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:40,679
Speaker 1: Constituent services is such a good point and something we

427
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:44,560
Speaker 1: just don't talk about in political punnit world, and we

428
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: should because there are a lot of elections that I've

429
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:52,040
Speaker 1: seen go down where you're like, why the fuck are

430
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: these people voting for this person? And because I mean,

431
00:24:55,040 --> 00:24:57,199
Speaker 1: you see this a lot where if you're in a

432
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:01,679
Speaker 1: state where there's a conservative but it's like a liberal state,

433
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: or it seems, I mean a good example of Susan Collins,

434
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: like Susan Collins is really for no one, but the

435
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 1: reality is like there're every town she's Jesse just texted

436
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: me Susan Collins famous for good constituent services and there

437
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,920
Speaker 1: and you know that every town has like a bridge

438
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,479
Speaker 1: from that Susan Collins got from some bill or and

439
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:27,679
Speaker 1: it last is the same, you know, where you have

440
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: uh these where they feel their senator has been doing

441
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 1: for them, even if they don't appreciate her voting, you know,

442
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,199
Speaker 1: voting along whatever. So I think that's a really good point.

443
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 5: I mean, Molly, you're playing my music because I want

444
00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 5: to go back and teleport us to twenty nine and

445
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:47,560
Speaker 5: twenty ten, when Harry Reid, who was then the Senate

446
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,399
Speaker 5: Democratic leader, was fighting with Barack Obama over whether or

447
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 5: not your marks were good and Barack Obama pushed and

448
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:56,680
Speaker 5: worked with Republicans to get rid of congressionally directed spending.

449
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,800
Speaker 5: But that helped destabilize Congress, and it also meant that

450
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:01,920
Speaker 5: they're there is no congressional oversight on some of those

451
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 5: very projects that you described. You know, I've been thinking

452
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 5: a lot about the time I spent in eastern Kentucky

453
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen in Mitch McConnell's reelection campaign at that point,

454
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 5: just because I've been thinking a lot about Mitch mcconald

455
00:26:14,520 --> 00:26:19,199
Speaker 5: and one of the experiences. I mean, let's not go

456
00:26:19,240 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 5: down that wormhole, because I could spend an hour talking

457
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:24,719
Speaker 5: about that particular shooes. He's probably fine, right, He's fine,

458
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 5: It's all fine. But when you drive through eastern Kentucky,

459
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 5: which is which is really mountainous, it's basically West Virginia

460
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 5: in a lot of ways. It's cold country. Every single road,

461
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 5: every single building is named after Hal Rogers, who was

462
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 5: the longtime congressional appropriator. Like it started to wrnually downpouring

463
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 5: when I was in a rental car and I thought

464
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 5: that I was going to be a congressional correspondent who

465
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 5: died on how Rogers Parkway, which would be a very

466
00:26:49,040 --> 00:26:51,080
Speaker 5: ironic way to go. But when you're in some of

467
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 5: these places, you can see, especially in previous generations of Congress,

468
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:57,959
Speaker 5: people like the kind of direct impact that they were

469
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 5: able to have, and none of that happened anymore, and

470
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 5: so people aren't tangibly seeing what Congress can do for them.

471
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:07,360
Speaker 5: They're seeing that at a federal level they don't do anything,

472
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 5: and so it just creates this general sense of malaise

473
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 5: and rejection for everything that they stand for. And so

474
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 5: it's really playing out in ways that we can't fully

475
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:22,640
Speaker 5: predict in elections because we haven't lived through a time

476
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 5: like this, and there are just so many factors that

477
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 5: contribute to overall sentiment and are really informing how people

478
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 5: are thinking about this election, if they're thinking about this

479
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 5: election at all.

480
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

481
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. And we don't know.

482
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: There's no there is no precedent for any of this. Meredith,

483
00:27:41,400 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 1: please come.

484
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,880
Speaker 5: Back always and I'll see you in Chicago soon.

485
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: Nali Joseph Kelly is a professor of literature and history

486
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 1: at the College of Charleston and the author of The

487
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: Biggest Lie, The Prehistory of American Fascism eighteen eighteen to

488
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:02,719
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty. Welcome, Welcome, Joseph Kelly.

489
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 3: Thanks so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

490
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:10,440
Speaker 1: So let's talk about The Biggest Lie, the Prehistory of

491
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 1: American Fascism. Explain to us where you start this story

492
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 1: and sort of how you got here.

493
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 3: I originally thought I was writing a book about the

494
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:21,679
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties. I was. I was

495
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 3: kind of taken in and fascinated by that whole subgenre

496
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,680
Speaker 3: of you know what I would call fascist warning books

497
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 3: that started coming out in twenty sixteen, Madeline Albright's Fascist

498
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 3: of Warning. I think probably sums up the ethos behind

499
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 3: this whole subgenre of history. So I wanted to tell

500
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,959
Speaker 3: the story of you know, those sort of twentieth century

501
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 3: founding fathers and mothers who established a liberal democracy in

502
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 3: the face of the general drift of the country, which

503
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 3: is really towards authoritarianism, even fascism. And the first chapter

504
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 3: was going to be try to set the stage and

505
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 3: persuade readers that fascism was a you know, we are

506
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 3: really very danger becoming an authoritarian fascist nation in the

507
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties. And I started writing that chapter in a

508
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 3: you know, every day I got further and further away

509
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 3: from from the nineteen.

510
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 1: Twenties because you realized it started earlier and earlier than

511
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:15,400
Speaker 1: you thought it.

512
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, I started hugging on that route of the fascism

513
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 3: that we saw and what I discovered. Of course, it

514
00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 3: did not come from Italy, it did not come from Germany.

515
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 3: It came from the American.

516
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 1: South, the Jim Crow South.

517
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 3: The Jim Crow and then the Antebellum South. But I

518
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 3: think the Jim Crow South is probably a good way

519
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 3: to think about it. I mean, the name for American

520
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 3: fascism is Jim Crow. I think that's you know, one

521
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 3: of the main points of trying to make in the book.

522
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: So can you give us sort of a definition of

523
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow South and then sort of the difference

524
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: between that and the Antebellum South and where those two

525
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 1: time periods and places connect to fascism.

526
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe to take it chronologically the Antebellum South,

527
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,040
Speaker 3: you know. So, of course, you know, after the nation's

528
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 3: founding in seventeen seventy six, we had this lot on

529
00:30:02,640 --> 00:30:06,440
Speaker 3: the national character that was slavery. Everybody knew it contradicted

530
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 3: Republican ideals. The reason that you know, the Declaration of

531
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 3: Independence did not specifically address slavery as inherited evils because

532
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 3: delegates from South Carolina and Georgia insisted on cutting it out.

533
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 3: And that's the same reason we ended up with the compromise,

534
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 3: you know, living with slavery, living with the slave trade

535
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 3: till eighteen oh eight and not abolishing slavery across the

536
00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 3: nation was because of the influence of delegates in South Carolina,

537
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 3: North Carolina, and Georgia. So from the very beginning, you know,

538
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 3: the main nation and the national narrative was all men

539
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 3: are created equal. Slavery is a is a sin that

540
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:46,560
Speaker 3: we inherited, and we're looked forward to the day. The

541
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 3: day was always very conveniently a couple generations down the road.

542
00:30:49,880 --> 00:30:53,040
Speaker 3: But the national narrative was we're going to get rid

543
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:54,720
Speaker 3: of it someday. We don't know how we're going to

544
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:56,840
Speaker 3: solve it, but we have to solve it. That starts

545
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:02,080
Speaker 3: changing right around eighteen eighteen. New narrative that gets started

546
00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 3: in the South that what the Founders meant when they

547
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 3: said all men are created equal is that all men

548
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 3: are not created equal. It was that absurd, you know,

549
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,040
Speaker 3: when they first started playing with this, But very quickly

550
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,959
Speaker 3: you know that that idea was planted in the soil

551
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:17,920
Speaker 3: of the South, and by the mid eighteen thirties that

552
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 3: becomes an ideology that you cannot descend from the South,

553
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:26,320
Speaker 3: becomes a police state, It infiltrates education, the pulpit newspapers.

554
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 3: By eighteen forty, you cannot publicly be arguing that all

555
00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 3: men are created equal in the South. You are risking

556
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 3: extra judicial violence. You're risking getting lynched. Probably you'll get

557
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 3: exiled if you're lucky, if you're a white person. Obviously

558
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 3: for a black person, that consequences are far worse now

559
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 3: we see this happen. We see time and again these

560
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 3: you know pograms or you know lynchings that go on

561
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 3: in the Antebellum South, this sort of extra judicial thuggery,

562
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 3: if you will. And so we have an entire generation

563
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 3: that grows up there almost like Hitler youth, if they

564
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 3: grow up not knowing anything, not ever encountering any notion

565
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 3: that all men are created equal. Mark Twain talks about

566
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 3: this in his autobiography Growing Up.

567
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: Where did he grow up?

568
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 3: Mark twin Missouri? Okay? Yeah, So you know that's a

569
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:12,520
Speaker 3: consequence of that debate that happened in eighteen eighteen. Of course,

570
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 3: Missouri becomes a slave state, you know, and he's born

571
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:18,840
Speaker 3: right after. Eighteen thirty five is really the crucial year

572
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 3: where discent becomes impossible in the South, where free speech disappears.

573
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 3: So the Civil War's supposed to solve all this problem,

574
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 3: and you know, settle once and for all that all

575
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 3: men are created equal. That is the founding doctrine of

576
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 3: the nation. So we have the thirteen, fourteenth and fifteenth

577
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 3: Amendments that write it into the Constitution to make sure

578
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:37,920
Speaker 3: nobody can make any mistakes about it.

579
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: So the anteboleunce souths These has a lot of it

580
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of censorship right in both the

581
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: schools and the media.

582
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's virtually a one party state. It's a

583
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:53,959
Speaker 3: nation within a nation where we're experimenting with this this

584
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 3: different kind of nationalism that's very different than the republicanism

585
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 3: that was established in the seventeenth seventies and seventeen eighties.

586
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 3: And the dread Scott decision opens the floodgate to spread

587
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 3: this Southern version of ideology, which is an ethno nationalism,

588
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 3: a white nationals, white supremacy across the entire country. This

589
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 3: is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said to house

590
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 3: divided against itself cannot stand. He was not threatening the South.

591
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 3: He was warning the North that if we don't do

592
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 3: something now, the entire country is going to become a slaveocracy.

593
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,960
Speaker 3: That's what the danger was in eighteen fifty eight, eighteen

594
00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 3: fifty nine and leading up to the Civil War. But

595
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 3: then so then, you know, we experiment with this biracial

596
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 3: republic for ten years, in this period that we call reconstruction,

597
00:33:35,840 --> 00:33:38,880
Speaker 3: it was actually working wonderfully. Well. You know, there's obviously problems,

598
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,160
Speaker 3: but almost all the problems with reconstruction were due to

599
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 3: white Southerners who are unreconstructed, who are refusing. And it's

600
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 3: not all white Southerners. Some white Southerners signed on to

601
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 3: the new Biracial Republic. But by eighteen seventy six, that

602
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,920
Speaker 3: old playbook of thuggery comes back as we get the

603
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 3: Klan in the early seventies. Federal government puts the Clan

604
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 3: down for the election of eighteen seventy two. But then

605
00:34:05,960 --> 00:34:09,439
Speaker 3: the federal government signals, through Supreme Court decision and through

606
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 3: decisions by the President, that it's going to no longer

607
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 3: protect the civil rights of white Republicans and black people

608
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 3: in the South.

609
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:25,360
Speaker 1: What is the thing that triggers this post reconstruction relapse.

610
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,560
Speaker 3: Historians call it moral fatigue, So it might not be

611
00:34:28,640 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 3: one particular thing, but Northerners get sort of tired of

612
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 3: having to argue with white Southerners. White Southerners are, you know,

613
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,759
Speaker 3: have a great propaganda machine trying to demonstrate to Northerners

614
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 3: that black rule is misrule in the South, so that

615
00:34:42,320 --> 00:34:44,280
Speaker 3: the Biracial Republic is not working.

616
00:34:44,600 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: So like Fox News, Oh gosh.

617
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:50,520
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, that's an excellent parallel. This this is

618
00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 3: what you know was as I was tugging on the roots,

619
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 3: and you know, going decade by decade further back in history,

620
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 3: the parallels to contemporary times are you know, they just

621
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 3: jump off page. I don't talk about them in the book.

622
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 3: I want to leave the reader to make their draw

623
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 3: their own conclusions about these things. But you know, we're

624
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:11,840
Speaker 3: seeing now the same playbook being used. We're the beginnings

625
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 3: of the abrogation of free speech right now with what's

626
00:35:14,520 --> 00:35:18,960
Speaker 3: happening to the universities attacking academic freedom, what we see

627
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 3: attacking you know, the free press, what we see happening

628
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 3: in the Supreme Court, the Broadview six decision where Judge

629
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:29,760
Speaker 3: April Perry actually uses language that that echoes the dissent

630
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 3: and plus E b. Ferguson, she accusing the Department of

631
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:34,799
Speaker 3: Justice of a lack of candor, which you know in

632
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:38,840
Speaker 3: you know, judicial language is saying is really it's a

633
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:40,720
Speaker 3: dramatic word candor.

634
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 1: Well say more about plus E versus Ferguson for people

635
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:44,480
Speaker 1: who don't know so.

636
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 3: Plus E v. Ferguson was the eighteen ninety six decision.

637
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 3: This comes twenty years after the beginning of Jim Crow

638
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:53,839
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy six is really you know, historians look at

639
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:56,479
Speaker 3: that as the end of reconstruction, the beginning of Jim Crow,

640
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 3: where the federal government says, Okay, you guys in the

641
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 3: South thirteenth fourteen fifteenth amendments, they don't apply to you.

642
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 3: We might apply him in the rest of the country.

643
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 3: But you're a nation within the nation. You can re

644
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 3: establish your ethno nationalism eighteen seventy ninety six plus E v.

645
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 3: Ferguson was when Homer Plessy challenged separate but equal laws

646
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:20,760
Speaker 3: about riding and railroads in Louisiana, and the Supreme Court

647
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 3: determined that separate but equal was not establishing a cast.

648
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 3: It did not suggest that black people were inferior to

649
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 3: white people. Everybody knew they were lying.

650
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: So it's the same as dread Scott exactly.

651
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 3: Yes, very similar. As a matter of fact. The dissenter

652
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 3: in plus E v. Ferguson John Marshall Harlan, who made

653
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 3: the famous statement in that descent that the Constitution is colorblind,

654
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:46,280
Speaker 3: which becomes, you know, the rallying cry in the nineteen

655
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:50,040
Speaker 3: fifties and Brown versus Board of Education. What he says

656
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 3: in his descent is that this decision is going to

657
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 3: become as notorious as dred Scott has become. So he

658
00:36:56,239 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 3: recognizes that parallel. Now, if the Trump feebar decision that

659
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:02,879
Speaker 3: just came down, if that had gone the other way,

660
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,200
Speaker 3: that would have been our version of plus ev Ferguson

661
00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 3: and dred Scott. Luckily it did not, but it was

662
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 3: pretty close.

663
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: I mean a little scary to think that, like the

664
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: thing that derailed reconstruction was people just getting bored with that.

665
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's what the Northerners went along with it.

666
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 3: And there's another important motive that I'll get to in

667
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 3: a second. But I mean, the main trigger for it

668
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,760
Speaker 3: was violenced by white Southerners, other white Southerners, and especially

669
00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:32,879
Speaker 3: on black Southerners. The main case that tested all this

670
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 3: was a attack in Colfax, Louisiana, where maybe more than

671
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 3: one hundred black militiamen who surrendered to a white militia.

672
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,799
Speaker 3: You know, the black militia was the state militia. They were,

673
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 3: you know officially, you know, they were working for the

674
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 3: State of Louisiana, and a private army of white people

675
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 3: surrounded them in a courthouse. The black folks surrendered, They

676
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:00,400
Speaker 3: come out, laid down their guns and then and the

677
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 3: white militia lines them up and shoots them all in

678
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,279
Speaker 3: the back of the head, maybe more than hundreds. And

679
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,839
Speaker 3: this case gets up to the Supreme Court, and the

680
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:14,279
Speaker 3: Supreme Court decision in eighteen seventy six is this is

681
00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 3: not our business. If there's been an abrogation of civil rights,

682
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:19,640
Speaker 3: you have to go to the state government. So the

683
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:23,279
Speaker 3: Supreme Court essentially says white supremacists can do whatever they

684
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 3: want in the South and we're not going to get involved.

685
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,799
Speaker 3: So it was white violence on other white people and

686
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 3: on black people that really ended reconstruction. Now, the other

687
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 3: motive for Northerners was, of course, by the time we

688
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 3: get to the eighteen seventies and the eighteen eighties were

689
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 3: well into the Second Industrial Revolution, and those industrial cities

690
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 3: are sucking in immigrants from Europe. You know, the first

691
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 3: great wave was the famine refugees from Ireland and then

692
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 3: Germans coming into the country. But it's really you get

693
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 3: into eighteen eighties eighteen nineties and you've got Southern Europeans

694
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:59,960
Speaker 3: and Eastern Europeans, you know, Sicilians, Italians, Southern Italians, Russian Jews.

695
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 3: Who's coming in? And that for the elite in the North,

696
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:05,280
Speaker 3: the oligarchs of the North. We're talking about the Gilded

697
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 3: Age and the robber barons here. Their motivation to go

698
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 3: along with the South is Hey, they look at that

699
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:12,439
Speaker 3: and say, hey, that's a pretty good playbook. The great

700
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 3: danger up here in the North is giving the vote

701
00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 3: to Italians and to Jews. So we really like what

702
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,000
Speaker 3: you're doing in the South. That's how you control labor

703
00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 3: right is through these penal laws that you use in

704
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:28,000
Speaker 3: the South. So plus E. V. Ferguson opens up that

705
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 3: opportunity to the entire country of discrimination, yes, and cast society.

706
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:37,680
Speaker 3: And by this time it's not white supremacy, it's Anglo

707
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 3: Saxon supremacy, so certain whites are excluded from that. You know,

708
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 3: it's not quite as bad for Italians and Jews in

709
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 3: the North as it is for blacks under Jim Crow.

710
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 3: But that's where the country's headed, and the elites are

711
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,320
Speaker 3: going to get to decide who counts as an American

712
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 3: and who doesn't count. And that's where we were headed

713
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 3: in the early twentieth century. And the great you know,

714
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 3: sort of expression of this is the first big blockbuster

715
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 3: movie in American history.

716
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: D W.

717
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:08,240
Speaker 3: Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which is based on Thomas

718
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:12,399
Speaker 3: Dixon's The Clansmen, and this it is monstrously popular. I mean,

719
00:40:12,560 --> 00:40:17,359
Speaker 3: it is almost impossible for us to imagine the influence

720
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 3: of that film because it is the one. It is

721
00:40:20,520 --> 00:40:25,280
Speaker 3: the film that establishes feature film as a media. And

722
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:28,240
Speaker 3: when people go into the theater they are just blown

723
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 3: away because they have never seen anything like this. It

724
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 3: is a new media. And they've been seeing Nickelodeon's and think,

725
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,240
Speaker 3: you know, five minutes and eight minute films and stuff

726
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 3: like that, but nothing like the grand scale of Birth

727
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:42,240
Speaker 3: of Nasie. I mean it is. It's a brilliant film,

728
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:43,960
Speaker 3: a brilliant pieces of propaganda.

729
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,760
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, right, not for the good.

730
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 3: No, it's it's the birth of the Anglo Saxon right

731
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 3: right right, heron Vogue master race nationalism.

732
00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:57,439
Speaker 1: Sort of, what is the inflection point where things take

733
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: a turn towards democracy and away from the white supremacist Well.

734
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 3: You know, certainly nineteen thirty two, this is the sequel

735
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:07,600
Speaker 3: to my but this is the book I was supposed

736
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: to be writing. Right. The victory of the New Deal,

737
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 3: you know, is really going to completely change it. So

738
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 3: obviously there's a lot of people working for liberal democracy

739
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties, and nineteen thirty two is the

740
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:23,160
Speaker 3: key year. And obviously it's still work in progress. There's

741
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 3: still you know, Jim Crow is not outlawed until the

742
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,839
Speaker 3: mid nineteen sixties, so you know, it's not an overnight thing.

743
00:41:29,960 --> 00:41:31,480
Speaker 3: But by the time we get to World War one,

744
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 3: I mean, as a contrast, look at a film like Casablanca,

745
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 3: which is the anti fascist masterpiece of nineteen forty two.

746
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: So you think the depression to bail out and then

747
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 1: World War two are the things that make Americans turn

748
00:41:46,320 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: on fascism.

749
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's also you know, when you say make

750
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 3: Americans turn on it, that suggests, you know, we're talking

751
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:56,759
Speaker 3: about those mainstream Anglo Saxons changing their mind. But it's

752
00:41:56,800 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 3: also it's all all those immigrants and all those black

753
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 3: folks who are demanding their place in the democracy, and

754
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 3: they organize a succeed NAACP gets organized in nineteen ten.

755
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,840
Speaker 3: The Anti Defamation League is earlier than that kind of

756
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 3: a model for it. The ACLU gets organized during World

757
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,840
Speaker 3: War One. So these organizations really start pushing back. And

758
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 3: of course we are in our generation, we're the recipients

759
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 3: of this great inheritance, that we have these organizations that

760
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 3: are fighting for true democracy and as they see it eroding,

761
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 3: we have these structures already in place that are mobilized

762
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 3: to prevent it from happening. I kind of see us

763
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 3: right now. We are like at that moment, you know,

764
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 3: eighteen eighteen eight early eighteen twenties is when this new

765
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 3: narrative American history really gets going in the American South

766
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:52,840
Speaker 3: and then takes over the country and you know, the

767
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 3: Jim Crow era. But you see things like the attack

768
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 3: on the Smithsonian that I was just reading about in

769
00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 3: the New York Times this morning. What are they arguing about.

770
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,160
Speaker 3: They're arguing about different narratives of American history and the

771
00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 3: narrative that the Trump administration wants to promulgate. It's not

772
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,919
Speaker 3: just oh yeah, we love the Founding fathers in a way.

773
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 3: You know, my book is trying to at least to

774
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 3: some extent, redeem Thomas Jefferson or talk about how he

775
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 3: can be somebody that we can celebrate. But what that

776
00:43:17,840 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 3: narrative really is is that there's certain people who are

777
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 3: true Americans and there are other people who are not

778
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 3: true Americans. This is what Donald Trump said on January sixth,

779
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one. He said this to the crowd right

780
00:43:28,920 --> 00:43:32,080
Speaker 3: before they go to the Capitol. Not only did say

781
00:43:32,239 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 3: the election was stolen, but he also said, you are

782
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 3: the true Americans and the other people are trying to

783
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 3: steal the country from you. So that's the narrative that

784
00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 3: is being pushed. And you know, we have the whole

785
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 3: sort of professional historian class in in academia, we have

786
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 3: the museums, we have you know, these brave folks at

787
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:52,359
Speaker 3: the Smithsonian who are saying, no, we're going to We're

788
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 3: going to tell the true story. And the true story

789
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:57,799
Speaker 3: is that America is a multi racial democracy. It is

790
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 3: not a place where we have a cast society where

791
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 3: some people count and other people don't count.

792
00:44:03,160 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 1: What is the parallel here between this moment in history

793
00:44:07,440 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: if you look back on it, do you think that

794
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 1: the parallel is that eighteenth century.

795
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:13,359
Speaker 3: No, not eighteenth century, I.

796
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: Mean nineteenth century.

797
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would say eighteen thirties. That's when when

798
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:21,200
Speaker 3: the South, when descent becomes impossible. And this is because

799
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:25,760
Speaker 3: it increased abolition campaigns in the South. That's the moment

800
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 3: where you know, that's the real inflection point in the

801
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 3: South is eighteen thirty five. Then obviously eighteen seventy six,

802
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 3: when Jim Crow gets a wink in an odd from

803
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 3: the federal government. Then the Spanish American War, that's the

804
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 3: rhetoric about patriotism and the white man's burden and the

805
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 3: expansion of the Anglo empire oversees. That's where the entire

806
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 3: nation sort of buis into Southern brand nationalism. So that's

807
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 3: right after Plessy b. Ferguson eighteen ninety eight. Then that

808
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:59,680
Speaker 3: becomes the mainstream ideology of the country. To dissent from that,

809
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 3: say hey, wait a minute, maybe we're perpetrating crimes in

810
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 3: the Philippines. You know, that is unpatriotic, it's traitorous. That's

811
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 3: the rhetoric that is used. So that's another inflection point.

812
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 3: Then obviously nineteen thirty two is going to be an

813
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 3: inflection point going in the opposite direction. I think we're

814
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 3: at one of those inflection points. And the irony here

815
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:23,080
Speaker 3: is that it's the federal government that it's not giving

816
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 3: a wink and a nod. The federal government is actually

817
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:29,839
Speaker 3: actively endorsing and trying to foist upon the country this

818
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 3: narrative this heronvoke nationalism, master race nationalism, so that I mean,

819
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 3: it's kind of an inverse of what typically happens, where

820
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,879
Speaker 3: the federal government's role is to encourage it and play

821
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:43,440
Speaker 3: along and just let it go. But now we have

822
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 3: the resistance is actually we see state governments fighting against

823
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 3: the federal government in order to protect those civil rights.

824
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 3: Let me look at what's happening in Minnesota for instance.

825
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:57,279
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Joseph, thank you, thank you, thank you.

826
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:00,200
Speaker 3: This is great fun, privilege to talk to you. Dolly,

827
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 3: no moment.

828
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:07,480
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon Somali.

829
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 2: When I first saw these Trump accounts, I was like,

830
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 2: this doesn't feel right. You know, post Reagan Republicans, they

831
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 2: don't hand out things, you know, they're not giving out

832
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:18,480
Speaker 2: a handout and all that stuff. And it was like

833
00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:21,879
Speaker 2: something has to be fishy. And yesterday why and Ted

834
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 2: told the truth about it. Mister Ted Cruz basically said

835
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 2: that this is a way that they're going to use

836
00:46:26,840 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 2: to eliminate Social Security.

837
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 3: Who would have.

838
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 4: Seen the coming, Yeah, this is such a very very

839
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 4: very very trumpy way to do it.

840
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: Trump accounts could address the financial challenges of the current

841
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 1: pay as you go Social Security. So basically The idea

842
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:53,319
Speaker 1: here is that this money will make it so the

843
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:57,120
Speaker 1: people these trust funds are actually sort of trying to

844
00:46:57,200 --> 00:47:02,319
Speaker 1: bait and switch the Social Security so you would sort

845
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: of be able to say like, oh, you don't have

846
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:08,359
Speaker 1: Social Security, but you have Trump funds, Trump accounts. Oh yeah,

847
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 1: this money comes from Republican donors. The Dell's Michael Dell,

848
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:19,720
Speaker 1: soon after giving donating this money donating, look at the caps,

849
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:23,600
Speaker 1: I'm doing air quotes. Soon after donating this money.

850
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 7: Michael Dell got a ton of government contracts for Dell computers,

851
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:33,440
Speaker 7: which is just an odd little coincidence and probably just

852
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:35,800
Speaker 7: interesting and not corruption.

853
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:41,280
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in

854
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best

855
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If

856
00:47:51,280 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend

857
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.

858
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 3: Z