Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. After a long political season full
Speaker 1: of fundraising texts, constant campaign ads, and seemingly bottomless breaking news,
Speaker 1: the moment we've all been waiting for is finally hear
Speaker 1: it's election Day. I wanted to mark the occasion by
Speaker 1: speaking with someone who was also deeply invested in the outcome.
Speaker 1: Author and political pundit Malijiang Fast. As a member of
Speaker 1: the press, a profession that's often found itself attacked by
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, Chang Fast has been ringing the alarm bells
Speaker 1: loudly about the forty fifth presidents escalating extremism and authoritarian bent.
Speaker 1: She is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, political analyst
Speaker 1: for MSNBC, and host of the podcast Fast Politics with
Speaker 1: Malijang Fasts. She's also the author of the books Girl
Speaker 1: Maladjusted and The Social Climber's Handbook. This is my second
Speaker 1: opportunity to interview Mollie. I spoke with her and her mother,
Speaker 1: novelist Erika Jong, in twenty twelve on one of our
Speaker 1: very first podcasts. Her father is author Jonathan Fast. Growing
Speaker 1: up in a literary household meant that Jong Fast started
Speaker 1: in the family business at a young age. Her first novel,
Speaker 1: Normal Girl, was published when she was just twenty one
Speaker 1: years old, a fact made even more impressive when you
Speaker 1: learn she did not graduate from college.
Speaker 2: So my education is I went to high school, which
Speaker 2: was a win for may. I was never a student.
Speaker 2: I was dyslexic. I was like the first person in
Speaker 2: my family to not go to college, right, right. So
Speaker 2: I went and wrote a book, and then I got
Speaker 2: an MFA from Bennington.
Speaker 1: So because I'm igner written, meaning that you can get
Speaker 1: an MFA without having.
Speaker 2: A BA theoretically, yes, I mean.
Speaker 1: They made an exception for year, not a common pract
Speaker 1: I've never done this before.
Speaker 2: I think there are other people who've done it. I
Speaker 2: had written some books, so I was able to make
Speaker 2: a case that I add an equivalent to a college degree,
Speaker 2: which I did not.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's what happened to me with acting, where
Speaker 1: they said to me, we want you to come back
Speaker 1: and get your degree, and they said, we'll have you
Speaker 1: write a paper and we'll wave write a sixty five
Speaker 1: page thesis or whatever, but and will waive your studio
Speaker 1: acting class requirements in light of your experience professionally over
Speaker 1: the last like fifteen years.
Speaker 3: So I went back and we did that.
Speaker 2: That's what that's like.
Speaker 1: We were commenting about how some people work as journalists.
Speaker 1: I mean one shining example, like a says Woodward, where
Speaker 1: he evolves into a author and wat's books after years
Speaker 1: of journalism, and you're.
Speaker 3: Kind of the opposite.
Speaker 2: Yes, I very much said.
Speaker 3: Right, And how what do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2: Honestly, it's ignorance. I thought you had to be an like.
Speaker 2: I didn't understand how anything worked. I have these teenage
Speaker 2: kids now, and I'm always like, well, so you should
Speaker 2: do this, or you should do that, or you should
Speaker 2: talk to people who'll have the job that you want.
Speaker 2: Nobody ever explained to me that there were options. I
Speaker 2: thought you wrote novels and then you died.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that there were others, some awards, right,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe I had a bestseller, maybe didn't. But you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that you could like be a banker,
Speaker 2: go to law school. I mean, these things just didn't
Speaker 2: seem like things that people did or if.
Speaker 3: You had to do over again, is it something else
Speaker 3: you do?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, being a dentist is really hard, right,
Speaker 2: I have to say, like, there are certain things where
Speaker 2: I just don't have the brain for them, like being
Speaker 2: a waiter, Like when people start giving their orders, I
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you what they had said.
Speaker 1: The thing for me, though, was that when I think
Speaker 1: about you, I think about somebody who writing this is
Speaker 1: rather a solitary thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate it because you're there sitting around and
Speaker 2: basically you're just getting crazier and crazier. Oh, I'll go
Speaker 2: have a snack, yeah, maybe a nap. I don't come back,
Speaker 2: you know, and three days later. I mean, it's just no,
Speaker 2: it's so bad. It's a bad business.
Speaker 1: All the great writers' children, yeah, many of the great
Speaker 1: writer's children told me there was like a cheever or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, like Ben Shever or Ben Yeah,
Speaker 1: or Susan. They'd say, you know, dad just goes out
Speaker 1: to that cabin in the backyard and don't you ever
Speaker 1: knock on that door ever, Yeah, you never knock on
Speaker 1: that doorsturb him.
Speaker 2: That's the difference between male writers and female writers. For example,
Speaker 2: my mom too, actually, but that was because she was
Speaker 2: a little bit different. But like there are stories of
Speaker 2: I can't remember who it was a sort of famous
Speaker 2: female writer driving to the edge of her property, locking
Speaker 2: herself in the car so she could write. Well, the
Speaker 2: children were banging on the outside of the car, like
Speaker 2: that's the female writer experience, the male writer experience. And
Speaker 2: my mother dad, if that door, if you open that door,
Speaker 2: forget it. Yeah. My grandfather was the same way. Howard Fast.
Speaker 2: You'd wake up at five o'clock in the morning, you'd
Speaker 2: be out there on the type. He had a typewriter,
Speaker 2: and you'd hear it and you just knew.
Speaker 3: You know, the Howard Fast is your grandfather.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: Now, when did you decide, and I'm assuming this is
Speaker 1: obviously a decision you made with other people. What was
Speaker 1: the genesis of your on camera career? When do you
Speaker 1: decide you were ready to go on cast?
Speaker 2: So, I, you know, with everything it was like they
Speaker 2: asked me to do. So I started with the networks
Speaker 2: that are no longer in existence. So there was this
Speaker 2: network called chatter. You could never see it anywhere except
Speaker 2: in gas stations on the po the pump yes, and
Speaker 2: the pump chadder. So I would do chattering right vacation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Maria Mduno's right exactly. She is, By the way, the
Speaker 2: sort of, I want to say, the Walter Cronkite of
Speaker 2: this genre. So I started by doing chatter you know
Speaker 2: when you do at four am for the four to
Speaker 2: six window, we might need you twice for you know.
Speaker 2: And also another network that I just recently stopped going on,
Speaker 2: but I loved going on it because it was so insane.
Speaker 2: Was and I had to stop when I went down SNBC.
Speaker 2: But Great Britain News gb News is the worst. It
Speaker 2: is the dregs of society. So it's a cable network
Speaker 2: started to sell brexit. Okay, it's biggest star is a
Speaker 2: man called Nigel Farage, right right, who is just going
Speaker 2: right without any positive qualities at all. And you go
Speaker 2: on that show and they say to you, wow, you know,
Speaker 2: they do like that Foxy thing. But even worse, you know,
Speaker 2: well your many people are saying that that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: is a demented old man who doesn't know where he died,
Speaker 2: right exactly, and that the shadow Cabinet is now presidenting.
Speaker 2: Tell us is that correct? And why is it correct?
Speaker 3: And what can you shed on that? Right?
Speaker 2: There was a lot of that, like Pierce Morgan style
Speaker 2: stupid oh god.
Speaker 1: But to get back to something which is so your
Speaker 1: camera ready. When you decide your camera ready, you're you're
Speaker 1: guesting on show.
Speaker 2: Around twenty fifteen, I started writing political stuff and getting
Speaker 2: into that.
Speaker 3: Kind of a shift to political Yeah why.
Speaker 2: Because my career as a novelist died and it was
Speaker 2: actually yes or just having something for some purpose to
Speaker 2: my life. So I had written this historical novel. I
Speaker 2: can't it was Nazis or maybe it was something, and
Speaker 2: I this Nazias and everything. I had given it to
Speaker 2: this very fancy agent and he had said, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is unbelievable, and they got one person was like
Speaker 2: this is incredible, and then crickets and then it didn't sell.
Speaker 2: And at some point I was like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: over for me, Like I cannot write novels like this,
Speaker 2: and also I don't even know that I want to.
Speaker 2: I went back to a place that I had written
Speaker 2: for when I was like thirteen and the forward. I
Speaker 2: started writing these pieces about politics every week. I got
Speaker 2: better and better at doing it, and then I sort
Speaker 2: of went to better places. So I went from there
Speaker 2: to Glamour, and then I went to The Bulwark, and
Speaker 2: then I went to Vogue, and then I went to
Speaker 2: the Atlantic. They hired me at the Atlantic. That was
Speaker 2: not a match.
Speaker 1: Then I'll tell me why, because I subscribe to the
Speaker 1: Atlantic online.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of great writers, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of great writers. It was not a good place for me.
Speaker 2: They felt I was too left, which is, if you
Speaker 2: think about it, kind of hilarious because I'm actually not that,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean a pro democracy for sure, but
Speaker 2: ultimately a lot of people on the left don't think
Speaker 2: on and yeah, I would like us all not to die,
Speaker 2: you know, with the country getting hotter and hotter. So
Speaker 2: it just was not a match. And so I went
Speaker 2: to Unty Fair and that's where I've been for a
Speaker 2: couple of years. But I had to sort of work
Speaker 2: my way back into the career that I had wanted.
Speaker 2: And it was pretty interesting and it was a lot
Speaker 2: of humility, which was great, and a lot of just
Speaker 2: chopping wood and carrying water and like, there is a lot,
Speaker 2: I mean, what's cool about American life, And and this is
Speaker 2: obviously not as true as it should be. And you'll
Speaker 2: see people like who've been incarcerated, who aren't able to
Speaker 2: have these kind of revivals in their lives, which is
Speaker 2: why we have to work on you know, making the
Speaker 2: world better for people who have been incarcerated or people
Speaker 2: who have had I had a very lucky opportunity to
Speaker 2: sort of start over in the middle of my life.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people are able to do that
Speaker 2: in American life. And we're lucky, and that's why we
Speaker 2: have to make it so that other people can do
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that, because that's certainly something that
Speaker 1: is not a condition of life in other countries, even
Speaker 1: in the Western European country.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for you to start.
Speaker 2: Again, right, And that's another question, and it's really important.
Speaker 2: And like I mean, I have these three teenage children
Speaker 2: and my husband I always talking about like in France,
Speaker 2: if you don't get into the good schools, you're fucked, right,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a certain track and you're on it
Speaker 2: and that's it. And that's not how it is in
Speaker 2: American life.
Speaker 3: So you were guesting on shows, yes, and then you when.
Speaker 1: Did you decide or did somebody else decide to someone
Speaker 1: tap you on the show say let's go, or did
Speaker 1: you pitch to somebody.
Speaker 2: I don't have my own show. I'm still just a guest,
Speaker 2: but I'm a podcast. Yes, I have the podcast. I
Speaker 2: have the podcast at iHeart, and you know, I just
Speaker 2: am a contributor at MSNBC.
Speaker 3: You still are, Yeah, you're still a Vanity Fair and
Speaker 3: you're still at MSMB.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also do iHeart. I am a part
Speaker 2: of the gig economy, so I have these many jobs,
Speaker 2: but I got better at it. It was funny. I
Speaker 2: was actually talking to a TV executive who is now
Speaker 2: retired on the phone the other day and I was like,
Speaker 2: how do you get a show if you wanted to
Speaker 2: get a show theoretically, And he was talking to me
Speaker 2: about someone who has a very big show now and
Speaker 2: he said, you know, he just came for Christmas. He
Speaker 2: worked on Christmas and Thanksgiving at four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: and you know, and that's sort of what I've been
Speaker 2: trying to do, is just you know, working.
Speaker 1: The only one who I really watch with any REGULARIA
Speaker 1: is O'Donnell.
Speaker 2: He's so smart.
Speaker 3: O'donnald brings a sensibility to that that's really it's not
Speaker 3: about me white men.
Speaker 2: And I actually text him all the time. But you know,
Speaker 2: Lawrence has worked in the Senate, you know, he worked
Speaker 2: in the House. I mean, he just is really a
Speaker 2: lot of history. So you can talk to him and
Speaker 2: you can say you know what about 'LBJ and he'll
Speaker 2: be like, wow, da da da. And I think all
Speaker 2: any of us have is historical president, right, because especially
Speaker 2: when it comes to polling, we don't have great data.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the big lie now, if you're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about like them, this moment in American politics is
Speaker 2: right now. In this moment, we have polls which are
Speaker 2: highly speculative, a lot of voodoo math going on, and
Speaker 2: then we have early voting and that's it. So whenever
Speaker 2: you're listening to someone, always sort of think to yourself, like,
Speaker 2: what information is this person going on? And historical information
Speaker 2: is in itself at least it actually happened. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, which would you say is your favorite or preferred medium? Writing? Radio, podcast, television.
Speaker 2: So writing is the worst because you want to die
Speaker 2: and writing a memoir, right, writing a memoir effectiveness, effectiveness,
Speaker 2: I mean it's just different muscles. Writing is you get
Speaker 2: a great sentence, but you know, writing is hard because
Speaker 2: you are fighting, you're swimming upstream and this is like
Speaker 2: even saying this, I feel very depressed because it's something
Speaker 2: my grandfather used to say. But you know, it's hard
Speaker 2: to get people to read. Like, it's not it's not
Speaker 2: issues you right, it's not any lot of books out there, right,
Speaker 2: it's not anyone's preferred method of community, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: let me sit down and read a book. I mean,
Speaker 2: my husband reads like ten books a day, but I
Speaker 2: don't think that's the norm.
Speaker 3: That's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he's literally You're like, why are you staring
Speaker 2: at your phone and he's just reading?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they you know, you write what you
Speaker 2: say on television to a certain extent, and if you
Speaker 2: you know, and if you're doing a monologue on a
Speaker 2: show you write it.
Speaker 1: You actually looks like a movie in terms of you
Speaker 1: to predict that people are going to want to read
Speaker 1: that eighteen months from now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and nobody knows.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the answer. It's funny because I
Speaker 2: wrote this piece. I have a great editor of Vannie Fair.
Speaker 2: I'm obsessed with him. He's so wonderful. He really respects me,
Speaker 2: lets me write what I want to write. So I said,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write a piece about how no one
Speaker 2: knows anything. And he was like, yes, but you could
Speaker 2: tell he was just like, Oh, why are you gonna
Speaker 2: write a piece about how no one knows anything. And
Speaker 2: I wrote this piece which was basically nobody knows how
Speaker 2: it's going to play out, which is true, and we
Speaker 2: were all like, oh, this might be a little and
Speaker 2: then like, you know, a few days later, someone wrote
Speaker 2: in another magazine that I am not as fond of that,
Speaker 2: the same piece, you know that nobody knows anything, and
Speaker 2: I was like, yes, I was right, you know, so nobody.
Speaker 2: I mean, we know some things, but we don't know
Speaker 2: nearly as much as we need you to think in
Speaker 2: order for you to turn on the television.
Speaker 1: Well where I think that MSNBC. What bothered me when
Speaker 1: I was there was I was like, man, if you
Speaker 1: just had one writer on your staff could write because
Speaker 1: each segment I saw some of these people, even the
Speaker 1: highest rated people, that they say the same thing seven times,
Speaker 1: they cover the same ground seven.
Speaker 2: Times, and sometimes things like for example, there was this
Speaker 2: study published by Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns
Speaker 2: Hopkins about SB eight, which is this Texas abortion bell.
Speaker 2: So a year before the Supreme Court overturned Row, the
Speaker 2: Texas state legislature, which, by the way, in case you
Speaker 2: want to find a state where everything sucks in the legislature.
Speaker 2: It's Texas, I mean, followed by Oklahoma. Oklahoma with the
Speaker 2: legislation is just the things they're passing is just brainworms.
Speaker 2: I mean, trust me, in New York State looks like
Speaker 2: you know, Paris, France compared to this. So SBA comes
Speaker 2: out of Texas and it is no abortions after six weeks.
Speaker 2: So the state of Texas really had overturned ROW a
Speaker 2: year before the Supreme Court. And what this study found
Speaker 2: was that these women are walking coffins. That they were
Speaker 2: about two hundred and forty eight excess deaths of infants.
Speaker 2: You had babies born that were going to die. So
Speaker 2: women would carry these babies and then they would die
Speaker 2: or they would die within the first ninety days of life.
Speaker 2: And so and we're going to see much more of this,
Speaker 2: but this is like the first sort of.
Speaker 3: Because we're fantasy people to go through those.
Speaker 2: Three years out. Yes, and you see people on the
Speaker 2: right defending this, well, we've saved all of these embryos, right,
Speaker 2: all these women were forced to carry. You know, these
Speaker 2: fetuses survived, but these women were forced to carry these
Speaker 2: babies that were going to inevitably die. And that that
Speaker 2: is the legacy of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Author and correspondent Mali Jang Fast. If you enjoy conversations
Speaker 1: with dogged political writers, check out my episode with Jane Mayer.
Speaker 5: Just even the opening of it, where it's got the
Speaker 5: Money Money Song and him coming in on a helicopter
Speaker 5: and a limousine is meeting him and some beautiful girl
Speaker 5: gets out of it with a clipboard for him. It's
Speaker 5: like a fantasy of what being rich is. One of
Speaker 5: the stories I loved the most was interviewing Tony Schwartz,
Speaker 5: who wrote the Art of the Deal, and he said
Speaker 5: people think there's more to Trump and that there's another Trump,
Speaker 5: and when he gets elected, he's going to be different.
Speaker 4: He said, there is.
Speaker 3: No one Trump.
Speaker 5: It's all like, you know, a centimeter deep.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Jane Mayer, go
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Malli
Speaker 1: Joan Fast shares her perspective on the people that currently
Speaker 1: have Trump's confidences. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Mally jan Fasts novels and memoirs like
Speaker 1: Normal Girl and the Sex Doctors in the Basement, True
Speaker 1: stories from a semi celebrity childhood were inspired by her
Speaker 1: wild years as a young adult coming of age in
Speaker 1: New York City. I wanted to know if she was
Speaker 1: willing to share with me a little bit about the
Speaker 1: years since spent in sobriety.
Speaker 2: I'm always talking about it. I won't shut up about it.
Speaker 2: Like someone DM me the other day and was like,
Speaker 2: you know, we have this anonymity at Press Radio, but
Speaker 2: I break my anonymity. I'm sober since I was nineteen
Speaker 2: years old. The only reason I went to rehab was
Speaker 2: because I had seen a movie with that actress from
Speaker 2: the bus s. Yes, she's a coke iad no. She
Speaker 2: was in a movie about a rehab, right, And I
Speaker 2: was like, okay, I'll go to rehab. That was it.
Speaker 2: That's how you got Yeah. I thought, this looks okay.
Speaker 2: It's like a spa. I had a drug dealer called Felix.
Speaker 2: His He had an apartment on the Upper West Side
Speaker 2: and I would sit with his girlfriend and watch Baywatch.
Speaker 2: They had a pitfall, because you have to have people
Speaker 2: and you know, do cocaine and watch by Watch. That's
Speaker 2: how you know what EURO was.
Speaker 1: I had a woman who was a drug dealer whose
Speaker 1: husband was a dug dealer and he gets arrested. So
Speaker 1: the drug dealers come to her and they say, your husband,
Speaker 1: he owes us a lot of money, and you're.
Speaker 3: Going to pay us. Right, you're going to sell the coke.
Speaker 3: Now you're a coke dealer.
Speaker 1: Now you're gonna If you don't sell the coke and
Speaker 1: pay us back, we're not going to tell you to
Speaker 1: pay us. You sell the coke and pay us back,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, your husband's going to be killed
Speaker 1: in prison.
Speaker 3: We're going to murder him.
Speaker 2: And probably that's nice, but she was like, got it.
Speaker 3: God, I don't need to write anything down. No, I
Speaker 3: don't need a pen. I'm good.
Speaker 2: That's like the Donald Trump thing, though, don't ever write
Speaker 2: anything down. He doesn't write anything down, he doesn't send emails,
Speaker 2: and that is how he's managed to get away with us.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Donald Trump, yeah, I mean many of these people,
Speaker 1: particularly from a certain political stripe where they're relatively incurious people,
Speaker 1: so someone else is getting all the work done, George
Speaker 1: Bush Junior, and they're like a hood ornament, and then
Speaker 1: other people With Trump, I was always mystified, saddened, crushed
Speaker 1: by how many bad guys there were out there that
Speaker 1: were going to come and take over the government yea,
Speaker 1: and run everything for him. More now and even more now,
Speaker 1: I'm mortified. But who do you think has Trump's ear now?
Speaker 1: In a previous election in twenty sixteen, it was Bannon.
Speaker 2: So certainly there's some dynamic where Don Junior has really
Speaker 2: got a you know, because it used to be a
Speaker 2: Vanka And now I think because remember Don Junior, at
Speaker 2: least he claims to have been really instrumental in the
Speaker 2: Jadie Vance pick, right, which was I think if we
Speaker 2: go back and look at this election, and again no
Speaker 2: one knows what's going to happen, but if he loses,
Speaker 2: I think that picking jd Vance will certainly have been
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why, because it's just he's not
Speaker 2: for anyone. You added Nikki Haley to that ticket, and
Speaker 2: you say, well, he's you know, he overturned Vy Wade,
Speaker 2: he's bad for women, he's the quote unquote father of IVF,
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck that means. But he's at least trying
Speaker 2: to grow his electorate. Right. One of the things about Trump,
Speaker 2: which has been true since twenty sixteen, has never tried
Speaker 2: to grow his electorate. He's only ever been a bass play.
Speaker 2: So for example, he'll go on these interviews. You know,
Speaker 2: even there was a Sean Hannity interview where Sean Handy said,
Speaker 2: you know, you said you wanted to be a dictator,
Speaker 2: but we all know, right, Fox is trying to get
Speaker 2: him to pivot to a general election, right to this strategy. Right,
Speaker 2: the strategy is always you pivot to the general election.
Speaker 2: You say, you know, I'm not gonna actually do these
Speaker 2: death camps. I'm just gonna have you know. It was
Speaker 2: just as right exactly, We're not gonna have you know,
Speaker 2: mass deportation now, which were the signs, you know, because
Speaker 2: we want to appeal to the people who just want
Speaker 2: tax cuts, so we're gonna have minor deportation, easy, right,
Speaker 2: We're gonna lie a little bit. And at every point
Speaker 2: he said no, you know. So so Sean Hannity says,
Speaker 2: you say you want to be dictator on day one,
Speaker 2: but you don't really want to be dictator on day one,
Speaker 2: And he said, I want to be a dictator ater
Speaker 2: on day one. Drill baby dreft. Right. And by the way,
Speaker 2: where you know, America's never produce more oil and gas
Speaker 2: than it does right now, so.
Speaker 3: More than they told in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and more than any of us need, is than
Speaker 2: none of.
Speaker 3: Us money to be made by people who hate the Yeah,
Speaker 3: who hate the future.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: They don't want the future to cover that's right.
Speaker 1: The reason I asked that is because and I love
Speaker 1: your answer that he does. He never changes, he never grows.
Speaker 1: It's the same spiel now as it was eight years ago.
Speaker 1: There's one pile of these things, and there's one that
Speaker 1: stands alone of my greatest fears if he gets elected.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that I fear will happen.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that jumps to my mind
Speaker 1: is are we gonna have a war with China over Taiwan?
Speaker 1: I was reading a great article, but it was a
Speaker 1: Kirkpatrick in the New York or somebody here, what about
Speaker 1: this issue about You know, this is a lot of
Speaker 1: military watchers, Pentagon level veterans are sitting and saying.
Speaker 3: This is very real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could we could end up in a war
Speaker 1: with them over this because they've announced they want to nationalized.
Speaker 1: You know, it's one of this guy who's in there
Speaker 1: now in China says he wants to bang wants to
Speaker 1: unify everything and Taiwan back.
Speaker 2: But Trump is not going to protect Taiwan. I think
Speaker 2: you'll be like she didn't. You know, you want Taiwan,
Speaker 2: what's it worth is.
Speaker 3: You're going to have it? Nobody wants Nobody wants it.
Speaker 2: I mean, the reason America started manufacturing chips, right, even
Speaker 2: Biden World, they brought manufacturing chips because all the chips
Speaker 2: are ring made in Taiwan, and they were like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: this could really be a problem.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But my other thing, aside from a pile of specifics
Speaker 1: like the environment and military conflicts and so forth, my
Speaker 1: biggest thing is that the left, liberals, progressives, democrats, whatever
Speaker 1: word you want to use, I don't really don't give
Speaker 1: a shit anymore.
Speaker 3: And I'm too old to care. Ye now, I'm too tired.
Speaker 3: They're going to give up. They're going to give up.
Speaker 1: They're going to sit there and look at the system
Speaker 1: and say, any country where you voted for this guy
Speaker 1: the first time and you didn't know who he was
Speaker 1: and you got cajoled into doing this, but now you
Speaker 1: know who he is and you had four years of
Speaker 1: somebody who really did a fairly good job. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Biden is somebody who doesn't get enough credit
Speaker 1: for what he did. Things are certainly going to be
Speaker 1: better with her in terms of her level of experience.
Speaker 1: Another guy who when he ran the first time had
Speaker 1: no political record, Now he's running again and learn nothing
Speaker 1: on the job for four years.
Speaker 3: He came out the same way. Right. But my point is.
Speaker 1: Is that I think that not everybody, and not even
Speaker 1: a majority, but a significant number of people are gonna
Speaker 1: sit they're and go write checks for these campaigns for congressmen,
Speaker 1: congress women, senators and other states to try to keep
Speaker 1: the whole system in balance, to try to deal with
Speaker 1: the frailty of liberal politics in this country.
Speaker 3: Fuck that. I don't want to bother anywing. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work. If he wins again, I think there's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of people who are just
Speaker 1: politics is going to go off their list of concerns.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't even watch TV anymore news?
Speaker 2: I mean or the answer is that the country is
Speaker 2: too big to govern and not a country that includes
Speaker 2: ALLMA and New York is not the right. You know
Speaker 2: that you sizing here right well, that we have something
Speaker 2: that's a little bit off because for example, and I
Speaker 2: actually think, and again this is there's a number of
Speaker 2: reasons why this could actually be quite bad. But one
Speaker 2: of Trump's things is he's going to you know, like,
Speaker 2: for example, with California with the fires, California needed federal money,
Speaker 2: forest fires horrible. He was like, are these my people?
Speaker 2: Are these my voters or are these you know, Democrats?
Speaker 2: Because I'm not going to give money to people who
Speaker 2: don't like transaction. Right, If you're in a state that's
Speaker 2: run by a guy like Avenuwsom, where you're the fifth
Speaker 2: biggest economy in the world, and you're paying into a
Speaker 2: federal government that won't fucking give you money for forest fires, like,
Speaker 2: there's a moment where you think like, oh, we're not
Speaker 2: doing this anymore. So, I mean I could see a world,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know that New York figures this out,
Speaker 2: but I could see a world where California is like,
Speaker 2: fuck you, you know, if we're going to pay billions
Speaker 2: of dollars in federal taxes and you're going to tell
Speaker 2: us we can't do what we want and not give
Speaker 2: us disaster relief, you know. So I think there are
Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy things that could happen if Trump
Speaker 2: wins that are not necessarily.
Speaker 3: Good, Well I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not endorsing them in any way, but
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, like, this transactional way of running the
Speaker 2: federal government sooner or later will end with states being like,
Speaker 2: why should I pay into this if I can't get out? Right,
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: Which gets what is the over under? It's thirty billion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dollars a year goes to other states to fund things
Speaker 1: that doesn't come back. How much do we send to
Speaker 1: Washington comes back from Washington? The number is like hideous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the question is why do it? And I
Speaker 2: think that's a real question. I mean that, by the way,
Speaker 2: is not good. I mean Brexit was terrible for the
Speaker 2: British economy because they did this. It is sort of
Speaker 2: the same thing, right they said, I don't want to,
Speaker 2: you know, have Polish plumbers coming here, so we're going
Speaker 2: to just sanction ourselves. I mean, that's it is a self.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not good economically for the country. It's
Speaker 2: not good. But you know, if you have a president
Speaker 2: who is playing that game with federal funding, I think
Speaker 2: you're going to see more of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm somebody who I can't help but see things
Speaker 1: in the plainest terms. I'll sit there and go what
Speaker 1: is going on with the political consensus, the political organism
Speaker 1: in the state of Arizona. Where you see that Phoenix
Speaker 1: had one hundred degree whether for one hundred days in
Speaker 1: a row, they never had that performance. Isn't this of
Speaker 1: any concern to you? You can't vote for one person
Speaker 1: in a political office in the whole state. Forget about
Speaker 1: federal election. We include the federal But who doesn't offer
Speaker 1: you some ideas to address that issue? And they don't
Speaker 1: bring it up. If you're living in Phoenix, Arizona, are
Speaker 1: you insane that you know what you are?
Speaker 3: You insane that you don't want this struve?
Speaker 1: If it was one hundred degrees in New York for
Speaker 1: one hundred days in a row, yeah, you bet, people
Speaker 1: would be flipping out and screaming.
Speaker 3: Yeah. People say to me, why do you live in
Speaker 3: the people care?
Speaker 2: But Arizona has a democratic governor, and I would say that,
Speaker 2: like one of the weird things about climate if you're
Speaker 2: just going to be a little optimistic, I hate being
Speaker 2: the optimist here, but okay, is that Texas has this
Speaker 2: climate problem, right, it's very hot. They have this shitty
Speaker 2: grid that is decentralized, not attached to the federal because
Speaker 2: they are Texans, so they don't want to be on
Speaker 2: the federal they don't want to hear that federal But
Speaker 2: also energy from the grid, and they've had to go
Speaker 2: largely solar because the renewables are a better bet, right, right,
Speaker 2: because right, and they also just work better. And so
Speaker 2: you know, the good news is that renewables are cheaper
Speaker 2: and they're better, and they work better, and we're on
Speaker 2: the edge of them being cheaper than you know, they're already. Like,
Speaker 2: the reason that coal is going away is not because
Speaker 2: people love the earth, it's it's so expansible, exactly.
Speaker 1: Author Mallijang Fast. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Mallyjang Fast shares the endgame of
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five and how it could affect the
Speaker 1: next generation of Americans. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. I spoke with Malijang Fast in
Speaker 1: late October leading up to election day One of the
Speaker 1: more alarming factors of the twenty twenty four election is
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five, a nine hundred page manifesto of
Speaker 1: radical proposals from a conservative tank that outlines plans for
Speaker 1: a second Trump administration. Mali Jiang Fast is one political
Speaker 1: writer well versed in this subject.
Speaker 2: I did a YouTube series on Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: a couple months ago, where I interviewed a lot of
Speaker 2: academics who are not necessarily television people. I mean, some
Speaker 2: of them are.
Speaker 3: But where can people find them?
Speaker 2: It's on If you google YouTube Malli Jong Fast, Project
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, it comes up. Yeah. Basically, what I
Speaker 2: did was I talked to like this woman, Theedra Scott Pell,
Speaker 2: who is an academic who studies at Harvard who studied
Speaker 2: the advent of the tea party and sort of the
Speaker 2: outgrowth of it, and she's talked to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: I talked to a guy called Thomas Zimmer from Georgetown
Speaker 2: and we talked about what it would look like and
Speaker 2: what Project twenty twenty five does, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: I want to say.
Speaker 3: Those are the details. It was authored by, who it
Speaker 3: came if, it was.
Speaker 2: Honored by, it's from the Heritage Foundation. It was published
Speaker 2: on the Heritage Foundation site. Donald Trump disabout it even
Speaker 2: though like fifty people who wrote it worked in his administration,
Speaker 2: or maybe more it's you know, the president of the
Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation had his introduction of his book written by
Speaker 2: Jadie Vance. Kevin Roberts is his name, the president of
Speaker 2: the Heritage Foundation. There are so many This thing is
Speaker 2: like interconnected, like you can't believe. So the idea that
Speaker 2: somehow Donald Trump is not connected to Project twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five is complete lie. And even more so is that
Speaker 2: today this morning when he was on the curvy couch
Speaker 2: on Fox News, Fox and Friends with his sycophantic minions,
Speaker 2: he said, we're going to get rid of the Department
Speaker 2: of Education, which is one of the tenants of Project
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five is to end the federal Department of Education.
Speaker 2: So that means pelgrants. That means money for the red
Speaker 2: states where the education is not funded as well comes
Speaker 2: from federal money. It will know more, what do.
Speaker 1: The advertise is the benefit of that. They want to
Speaker 1: will limit the Department of Education for what purpose?
Speaker 2: They hate the federal government to make a jumbise soillienaires
Speaker 2: can have tax cuts. They're selling Christian nationalism, right, They're
Speaker 2: selling you know, you don't want the government involved in your.
Speaker 3: School forcing your kid to mean to kill a mocking.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly. You don't want the federal government. You just
Speaker 2: want the state. By the way, let me just add
Speaker 2: the end game with all of this is to get
Speaker 2: people out of public schools and into religious schools. That's
Speaker 2: the school voucher thing, right. The goal here is to
Speaker 2: end public schools because public schools are non denominational. And
Speaker 2: when you look at a lot of the Project twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five stuff, it's to really get religion into teaching.
Speaker 2: And in fact, in Oklahoma, which we talked about before,
Speaker 2: Oklahoma is a place where they've sort of been trying
Speaker 2: out at the state level a lot of the Project
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five fantasies including Bibles and schools, the Ten
Speaker 2: Commandments and schools reuniting or perhaps putting church and state
Speaker 2: back together again as reassembling, right exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean what I.
Speaker 1: Find is that when people say to you, when one party,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, seems to want to dumb down the
Speaker 1: electrode as much as possible, I think those are easier
Speaker 1: to manipulate fear. You want to inject as much fear
Speaker 1: into all.
Speaker 3: Of the discussion about big government.
Speaker 1: And what I also noticed the Republican Party the party
Speaker 1: of the wealthiest people.
Speaker 3: In this country for the most part.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean people who are giants in my business
Speaker 1: are Republicans who own the companies.
Speaker 2: And you know the Trump tax cuts. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is like the unwritten story of this whole election is
Speaker 2: the Trump tax cuts expire in twenty twenty five. So
Speaker 2: some of them are just like a Nelson poultse is just.
Speaker 1: Don't care about right, right, They don't care about abortion
Speaker 1: or gay marriage or whatever. But the thing is is
Speaker 1: that these people they want to dumb it all down
Speaker 1: and they want to inject that level of fear in there.
Speaker 1: And it's working in this country where you see that
Speaker 1: this guy could have run in twenty sixteen and fooled people, right,
Speaker 1: and he's close to fooling them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's very close.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact that this race is even this
Speaker 1: close at all. Can you imagine if Biden didn't jump
Speaker 1: drop out, imagine we'd be dead. Yeah, So for that,
Speaker 1: I want to thank her, even even though I have
Speaker 1: my criticisms of her. Yeah. I mean, as Democrats, we
Speaker 1: have nothing but criticisms of our own party, criticize everybody,
Speaker 1: whereas the other side just they just circle the wagons.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But my biggest fear in this election is that an
Speaker 1: enormous swath of people will give up on.
Speaker 3: Politics in this country. Right. They may not move out
Speaker 3: of the country, although I know some people were contemplating that.
Speaker 3: Yeah they might.
Speaker 1: They might sit there and say, I'm going to give
Speaker 1: myself a couple of years to get away from it.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to watch it burn down. The
Speaker 1: only thing, off, of course, that I worry about is
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, worry about a couple of people are going
Speaker 2: to go right.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: I mean it's October eighteenth, and I'm still very optimistic
Speaker 2: about this election. So I'm very optimistic. I'm seeing early
Speaker 2: numbers out of Pennsylvania. They look good. I think that
Speaker 2: the fact that the bottom of the ticket has the
Speaker 2: Democrats so ahead and the top of the ticket is
Speaker 2: so tight is some kind of math. I just think
Speaker 2: this is going to go better than we think.
Speaker 3: What do you think Trump's gonna do if he loses Marlago?
Speaker 2: Selling States water watches? I mean, I think he'll try
Speaker 2: to keep as much power as he can, and you're
Speaker 2: gonna have ultimately, you will have Republicans say, you know
Speaker 2: they're gonna have a reckoning. Right this whole time they
Speaker 2: have refused to. I mean in twenty twenty four, we
Speaker 2: knew that he wasn't the best candidate for them and
Speaker 2: that if they and picnicky Haley they could have won, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe they still win with him, but he's
Speaker 2: certainly not a great candidate, and they're gonna I think
Speaker 2: they'll have a reckoning and they'll have to figure it out.
Speaker 3: What do you think the chances are he'll be in jail?
Speaker 2: You know, the federal cases are really bad. Like you
Speaker 2: don't want everyone saying me, like, once you get indicted
Speaker 2: in a federal case, because we're talking about the mayor
Speaker 2: who has numerous federal indictments and more comings supposedly a
Speaker 2: superseding indictment or something else, once they get you on
Speaker 2: a federal indictment, that's no good. You really don't want that.
Speaker 2: So I don't know that he goes to jail. I
Speaker 2: feel like there's more of like a house arrest scenario.
Speaker 2: You know something right, ankle basic right, I mean, what
Speaker 2: are you going to send the Secret Service to jail?
Speaker 2: That doesn't make a lot of sense. I think that's
Speaker 2: more likely than just I think that's.
Speaker 3: A great essay. You should write, Secret Service in Jail.
Speaker 1: I think it described to describe Trump's Trump walks into
Speaker 1: the cafeteria and they all have their arm around their
Speaker 1: meat loaf or whatever, and then the secrets It was like,
Speaker 1: could you clear this table place President's citting there for
Speaker 1: his meat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I think he won't go to jail.
Speaker 2: But federal cases really, I mean you you know, and
Speaker 2: the fundamental thing which we should be saying every day
Speaker 2: is that Donald Trump is running for president, so he
Speaker 2: doesn't go to jail, which is yeah, absolutely, and because
Speaker 2: he can pay his legal fees.
Speaker 3: What are you working on now? You're gonna write another
Speaker 3: book or no?
Speaker 2: So I have this book coming out in June about
Speaker 2: a memoir called How to Lose Your Mom, about my
Speaker 2: mom having dementia and my husband getting cancer and my
Speaker 2: year where everybody kind of imploded and your.
Speaker 1: Husband had cancer, your mom's dementia, and your kids are teenagers. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the free lemons across the board in the slot
Speaker 1: machine here.
Speaker 2: They're fun though way, and one of them's in college.
Speaker 1: When you say how to lose your mom, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how one would lose their mom. When your mom
Speaker 1: is your mom, you figured she was never going to
Speaker 1: stop talking for the rest of her life. And if
Speaker 1: so fact, we're going to play a clip here from
Speaker 1: the last show we did, which was back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: On the one hand, you're supposed to look like a
Speaker 4: fashion model retouched, and on the other hand, you're supposed
Speaker 4: to claim to a sophistication you don't and cannot have
Speaker 4: at that age. And I think that women who are
Speaker 4: fourteen fifteen are in the most difficult position they have
Speaker 4: ever been in modern society.
Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree, I think there's a lot of sexuality.
Speaker 2: I think it's not explained to young girls in a
Speaker 2: way very confusing, Molly. But I think that's a legacy
Speaker 2: of the family movement. I mean, we said we.
Speaker 4: Want a legacy of the feminist movement. It is a
Speaker 4: legacy in here, I really feel fierce. It is the
Speaker 4: legacy of a distortion of women's desire for equal rights.
Speaker 4: Equal rights are not platform shoes. You can't and naked
Speaker 4: clothes equal rights.
Speaker 2: But you can't blow up an atom bomb and then
Speaker 2: choose how it's going to go.
Speaker 3: But we.
Speaker 4: We did not blow up that atom bomb. The media
Speaker 4: took our legitimate desire for equality and turned it into garbage.
Speaker 2: But they turned it into what the people wanted. First
Speaker 2: of all, I don't think they wouldn't exist.
Speaker 3: People the media what the people want.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment from a response to
Speaker 1: Victoria's secret. Let me ask you something which is And
Speaker 1: of course there's many many possibilities here. It goes without saying,
Speaker 1: but pick one of the things that your fondest of
Speaker 1: that your mother taught you.
Speaker 2: Everything very fabulous about me comes from my mom. Know,
Speaker 2: every weird French word I've worked into my right, my oubra,
Speaker 2: every you know, fabulous trip, every city that I know,
Speaker 2: I know it because she showed it to me. Right,
Speaker 2: Every beautiful piece of jewelry was hers. Everything that is
Speaker 2: glamorous and fabulous and ephemeral comes from my mom, and
Speaker 2: a lot of the intellectual stuff too. So I'm very
Speaker 2: I owe her a great dedication.
Speaker 3: She gave the world.
Speaker 2: She really did, and she was and my mom was
Speaker 2: so struggled with alcoholism her whole life, and if anything,
Speaker 2: I am just so lucky that I was able to
Speaker 2: get sober. And I am not in any way better
Speaker 2: than she is. And I have the exact same disease
Speaker 2: and our grandmother, my grandmother had it too, and it's
Speaker 2: just it is just the legacy of alcoholism. So I
Speaker 2: am forever grateful and also forever said about how hard
Speaker 2: it's been yeah for her.
Speaker 3: One of our favorite episodes, Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: My thanks to Mali jang Fast And just a reminder,
Speaker 1: if you haven't yet had the opportunity to do so,
Speaker 1: please vote today. You can go to vote dot org
Speaker 1: to check your registration status, see who is on the ballot,
Speaker 1: and find your polling place. That's vote dot Org. Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing is recorded at CDM Studios. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hobin. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio.