Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and the anti trans Missouri ag can
Speaker 1: now access trans people's medical records. We have such an
Speaker 1: interesting show for you today. Cereals co hosts Sarah Koenig
Speaker 1: and Danish Shivis join us to talk about their newest
Speaker 1: season on Gwintanamo Bay. Then we'll talk to Chief Medical
Speaker 1: Officer for Planned Parenthood Arizona, doctor Jill Gibson, about women's
Speaker 1: reproductive health in the state of Arizona. But first we
Speaker 1: have the host of the Enemy's List, the One, the Only,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson. Welcome back, my friend, the Monday Special with
Speaker 1: the Rick Wilson.
Speaker 2: Happy Monday to everyone, and happy Donald Trump's squirming like
Speaker 2: a miserable worm in court all day to those who celebrate.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this week. The thing I'm so
Speaker 1: incredibly irritated with is the people are like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is the least good case. You know, it's his state
Speaker 1: case that goes up to a federal case. Right. The
Speaker 1: idea is that when you pay off the adult film
Speaker 1: star that you're having an affair with after your third
Speaker 1: wife is delivered your fifth child. If you do that
Speaker 1: in the hopes of keeping it from coming out right
Speaker 1: before in a presidential election, that's technically a campaign finance violation,
Speaker 1: which I mean, the problem is it's just like the
Speaker 1: idea of like Trump having to technically follow a lot
Speaker 1: like the rest of us is kind of like not
Speaker 1: how we do it.
Speaker 2: It irritates him greatly, but also like.
Speaker 1: The whole country has been set up to like, let
Speaker 1: Trump do what Trump does.
Speaker 2: You know. That's one of the things that we keep
Speaker 2: under counting I think in our politics right now is
Speaker 2: that we hear this all the time talking to reporters,
Speaker 2: Like I'll call reporter and say, you know, this thing
Speaker 2: is that it's like, oh yeah, everybody knows. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody knows that bad that's what he is. It's just
Speaker 2: Trump being Trump, and they have wired it so far
Speaker 2: into their discount rate of Trump that the horror of
Speaker 2: these things, which should horrify people, people should be like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, not whoo who weird. Yeah, they should be
Speaker 2: shocked about these things. They just don't seem to have
Speaker 2: a reaction to them that is merited by the extremity
Speaker 2: of the criminality that he engages in all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost as if like this sort of DC
Speaker 1: intelligentsia has overthunk Trump. I mean, part of it is
Speaker 1: that none of us are over twenty sixteen, right, And
Speaker 1: so you know, in twenty sixteen, we all thought we knew,
Speaker 1: I mean, talk about that.
Speaker 2: So twenty sixteen, I think there were three mental breakpoints.
Speaker 2: This is not particularly a novel thought. The first was, ha,
Speaker 2: Trump could never win the general, never could win the
Speaker 2: primary a true conservative like Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz.
Speaker 2: That Republicans would never accept a profligate, morally bankrupt, lifetime philanderer, adulter, scumbag,
Speaker 2: weirdo former Democrat Hillary donor You feel like.
Speaker 1: He's listening, right. I feel like when you go in
Speaker 1: these tangents, it's because you know someone from the RNC
Speaker 1: is listening to this, and you just want them to
Speaker 1: hear every.
Speaker 2: Pope poke poke any way. Yeah, no, but we thought that,
Speaker 2: you know, initially in sixteen, everyone thought that Trump's absurdity
Speaker 2: and lack of conservative credential would disqualify him. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Then they thought all the things people were discovering about
Speaker 2: Trump and that Trump was doing and saying John McCain
Speaker 2: wasn't a war hero, suckers and all the you'll pile
Speaker 2: it up, pilot up. And then there was like that
Speaker 2: disqualifies them. And then and this was on the media
Speaker 2: and on the Democratic side, why no one could ever
Speaker 2: defeat the great Hillary Clinton, the best candidate ever?
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, you're so naughty, because it's like, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: she was not a good Yeah.
Speaker 2: She's not a good candidate. Set aside her other merits
Speaker 2: and virtues. I think even she would tell you she's
Speaker 2: not a natural at the politicking. Part.
Speaker 1: Part of it is that part of it is that
Speaker 1: America just is not ready to have a woman president
Speaker 1: at least well.
Speaker 2: And part of it was that Roger Ails and Rupert
Speaker 2: Murdock had spent thirty years turning her into the demonic
Speaker 2: Queen of Hell and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Right, a really good point she had, and that really
Speaker 1: did work.
Speaker 2: It worked at scale. So what I'm saying is the
Speaker 2: misapprehensions of twenty sixteen led reporters to say, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: you know what, everybody knows that about Trump. Everybody gets
Speaker 2: it about Trump. But people didn't. They did not get it,
Speaker 2: They did not know it. These were things that they
Speaker 2: still haven't internalized, and that today the Republicans work the
Speaker 2: refs better than any anything else. They work the rest,
Speaker 2: They worked him for years now, and they're desperately afraid
Speaker 2: to not platform and to not salute, and to not
Speaker 2: treat the fraise out of Trump's mouth as if they
Speaker 2: are uttered by a normal, sane candidate. Now, I think
Speaker 2: we all know by now that Donnie is not normal.
Speaker 2: He is not sane. He is not a candidate or
Speaker 2: a man who plays by the rules that the press
Speaker 2: seems to think he's playing by. He doesn't play by
Speaker 2: any rules, and that for his people they love that.
Speaker 2: But for reporters and for political establishment types and for
Speaker 2: everyone else, they think, okay, well, someday he'll be under control.
Speaker 2: Why a second term can't possibly be as crazy as
Speaker 2: the first. But they keep platforming the guy in a
Speaker 2: way that doesn't treat the madness in his front and
Speaker 2: center away as it legitimately deserves to be treated. So
Speaker 2: what we're going to do again is act like these
Speaker 2: cases are just baked in the cake, that they're normal,
Speaker 2: that the things that Trump gets away with he gets
Speaker 2: a special dispensation for, and honestly, right now people in
Speaker 2: the media that are you know people you and I
Speaker 2: both know they struggle with it, and yet at the
Speaker 2: end of the day they still write the same attenuated
Speaker 2: deferential stories. And look, I have seen some improvement lately
Speaker 2: MSN and seeing in both this week I went at
Speaker 2: Trump's lying really well, like leading out, like Trump lied
Speaker 2: today about his position on abortion, his lie about this
Speaker 2: This is a false statement by Trump, But there's still
Speaker 2: too much of quoting the madness as a fact. Trump
Speaker 2: today reported that Biden was conspiring against him in the courts,
Speaker 2: and the courts are run by Joe Biden. They still
Speaker 2: don't frame it legitimately as journalists and say this colossal
Speaker 2: lie by a criminal who is lying. No criminal has
Speaker 2: ever not been in court willing to say no. I'm
Speaker 2: being framed by the bad people. And that's what Trump's doing.
Speaker 2: And there's a degree to which He's getting away with it.
Speaker 1: The problem with pundit world, the pundit industrial complex of
Speaker 1: which we are ones is part of it, is that
Speaker 1: there's like a feeling that you have to be right
Speaker 1: and you have to know so when you approach this case,
Speaker 1: you say, wow, it's not as strong a case as
Speaker 1: the documents case, which is there's not much to prove, right.
Speaker 1: He took the documents, he kicked the documents. They asked
Speaker 1: for the documents back, he said, no, thank you, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give them back. But you know, you
Speaker 1: have a trumpy judge. And like this is the thing
Speaker 1: about you know, we talk so much about like the guardrails,
Speaker 1: and these guardrails were really set up for politicians who
Speaker 1: were willing to sort of say, oh this is enough,
Speaker 1: you know, who were able to self regulate, which Trump cannot.
Speaker 2: My favorite cope right now that I'm watching come out
Speaker 2: of like the National Review, guys like Dan McLaughlin and
Speaker 2: Rich Lowry, it's like the guardrails and institutions of America
Speaker 2: will Trump bounded? He's certainly not going to violate the
Speaker 2: sacred constitutional order of America?
Speaker 1: Right, Like the.
Speaker 2: Fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck are you
Speaker 2: talking about? You're talking about Donald J. Trump? And anyone
Speaker 2: who tells you, folks, is a really simple test. Anybody
Speaker 2: who says to you, America's institutions are so resilient that
Speaker 2: Trump would never even dream of violating the right. Have
Speaker 2: you been asleep or in a coma or drunk for
Speaker 2: the last eight years. He is always going to do
Speaker 2: what he tells you he will do. He's going to
Speaker 2: violate the law, the constitution, is.
Speaker 1: Going to be a dictator on day one.
Speaker 2: He's going to be a dictator. And by the way,
Speaker 2: I've defied people, like, give me an example of someone
Speaker 2: who was a dictator for only a day. The allure
Speaker 2: of power is too strong.
Speaker 1: Well, also, first of all, I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: dictator on day one and get us drilling. We're the
Speaker 1: largest exporter. We don't need to drill anymore. In fact,
Speaker 1: we drill so much, you know, and that. But also
Speaker 1: it's bullshit. Of course he's going to be He's gonna
Speaker 1: do dinner on day one and day two and day three.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no What I'm like irritated by is
Speaker 1: that everyone's like, well, we got to give Donald Trump
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. No we don't.
Speaker 2: No, no, no benefit of the doubt is required for
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. We know what he is. He is telling
Speaker 2: us what he will do. And the idea that anyone
Speaker 2: at this point in our history in this country has
Speaker 2: a doubt about what this will look like. And anyone
Speaker 2: who's giving you excuses like he's learned his lesson. You know,
Speaker 2: this is Hitler Tamed by Prison New York Times headline,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six. It doesn't work that way with this guy.
Speaker 2: And I know people are like, how do you compare
Speaker 2: Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler?
Speaker 1: He hasn't started a camp yet.
Speaker 2: He hasn't actually put an anybody in a box car
Speaker 2: to a death camp yet.
Speaker 1: But it is like very annoying to me too, that,
Speaker 1: like we don't ever talk about that. Donald Trump decided
Speaker 1: to declare his presidential run because he was hoping it
Speaker 1: would prevent him from being indicted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't want to go to prison. He doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be indicted. We really now have seen what
Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars will do to throw sand in
Speaker 2: the gears of the oh of our resilient laws and
Speaker 2: institutions and systems. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And imagine when he's president again, what happens to all
Speaker 2: of those cases that are out there? You know what happens?
Speaker 2: They go away. We're lucky Merrick Garland hasn't pulled the
Speaker 2: plug on how the federal cases already.
Speaker 1: I'm reading this book America first. You know about this book?
Speaker 2: Yes, I have it.
Speaker 1: The history of the right. Yeah, I know you'll be
Speaker 1: shocked to hear this, but a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, like, there were periods before World War Two
Speaker 1: where the right was pretty aligned with Hitler and said
Speaker 1: things like, you know, the America First Movement. The name
Speaker 1: America First came from a group that supported this Isola
Speaker 1: Wang and Charles Lindberg.
Speaker 2: Look, the German American Bund was an incredibly broad and
Speaker 2: powerful political force that was growing in influence in this country.
Speaker 2: They were outright seditionists, and before that it was friends
Speaker 2: of the New German Order or something like that. These
Speaker 2: were people, by the way, tell me if this rings
Speaker 2: a bell, who were right leaning Americans who were deeply
Speaker 2: enamored with a strange model of an authoritarian in an
Speaker 2: overseas nation. And today those same people are the America firsters. Look,
Speaker 2: you've got JD. Vance writing in the pages of the
Speaker 2: New York Times like, dear mister Putin, may I come
Speaker 2: and give you a foot massage? And by the way,
Speaker 2: I know the Times has had plenty of moments where
Speaker 2: it is questioned whether it should be platforming certain people.
Speaker 2: And you know what, if they want to platform Jada
Speaker 2: Vance that's fine, but they should have people who are
Speaker 2: putting forth actual, true statements as opposed to what Jade
Speaker 2: Vance did in The Times this week, which was to
Speaker 2: lie repeatedly about Ukraine and about the American role in Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and to lie repeatedly about the consequences of giving up
Speaker 2: and allowing Vladimir Putin to roll up in the streets
Speaker 2: of Europe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the New York Times, I would just say,
Speaker 1: and I know everyone's going to get mad at me
Speaker 1: for saying this, but you know, they are the biggest newspaper.
Speaker 1: They set the tone for a lot of the conversations
Speaker 1: we have, and so they sometimes people get mad at them.
Speaker 1: And they are a big enough, strong enough institution where
Speaker 1: they should be able to handle that.
Speaker 2: You know, they should have, and unfortunately, I think that
Speaker 2: they have not learned their lesson about when you platform
Speaker 2: a Tom Cotton or a platform a JDA events. At
Speaker 2: this moment in our history, they're not honest brokers. They
Speaker 2: are people who are defending an emergent global fascist movement
Speaker 2: in our century and not in the nineteen thirties. And
Speaker 2: there were plenty of people in the nineteen thirties who
Speaker 2: were willing to defend Hitler. In America, there were plenty
Speaker 2: of people in this moment who are willing to defend
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin and any other authoritarian that comes down the block.
Speaker 1: But the rights love of authoritarianism has been around for
Speaker 1: a long time. That's what I'm saying. It's not oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And over the weekend you had this moment of utter
Speaker 2: confusion among a lot of people on the far right
Speaker 2: who are like, Okay, wait, so Russia is Iran's ally,
Speaker 2: but Iran is attacking Israel. But we don't really like
Speaker 2: the Jews that much, but we don't like the Iranians,
Speaker 2: but we love the Russian And you could hear like
Speaker 2: the gears in their heads going and the machine blowing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very hard for them, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a very simplistic view on the world.
Speaker 2: It is a sad view, I think in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways in the world. It is a view that
Speaker 2: diminishes the sacrifices of Americans over the last eighty years
Speaker 2: since World War Two, when we fought the Long War
Speaker 2: against the Nazis and against German and authoritarianism, and then
Speaker 2: we fought the Long War against Sylviet communism, and now
Speaker 2: we've sort of unwound that with this amazing emergence of
Speaker 2: affection and love for a new strain of authoritarianism in
Speaker 2: the world. It's bad right now, but if Trump is
Speaker 2: returned to power by some misfortune, it will be utterly
Speaker 2: catastrophic because, as we've seen the reporting in the last
Speaker 2: few days, Trump's quote unquote great plan to end the
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine is to give Russia Ukraine.
Speaker 1: That is true, but that's to.
Speaker 2: Cut them off and to give them Ukraine. Oh well,
Speaker 2: that's gonna work out great for everybody except you know, Ukraine. Wow,
Speaker 2: and Europe and NATO Poland.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Poland would like a word, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to watch American conservatives love affair with Putin and earn
Speaker 1: On continue. This is not so different than they were
Speaker 1: with Hitler. So the point is now we wait.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Maga's if you're listening and you're
Speaker 2: not happy with what we're saying about comparing Trump and
Speaker 2: Putin to Hitler, then they should be less like Hitler.
Speaker 2: Then they should be less affectionate towards Hitler.
Speaker 1: I think that Putin certainly does kill all his enemies. Trump,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different for now right. Well, and also,
Speaker 1: this authoritarian style of leadership is not how we do
Speaker 1: it in this country.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not how we have done it in this country.
Speaker 2: If we re elect Donald Trump, that is how we
Speaker 2: do it. That is how we will be doing it
Speaker 2: in this country. If we reelect Donald Trump, that is
Speaker 2: what will happen in this country. They will engage in
Speaker 2: use the use of authoritarian power because they've justified it
Speaker 2: in their minds by saying, well, we're in a generational
Speaker 2: civilizational battle and unless we win now by whatever means necessary,
Speaker 2: then the white race will die out right.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's what this is. It's the last gasp
Speaker 1: of racism and the sort of death now of I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, Molly, I wouldn't say it's the last gasp, you
Speaker 2: know why. I think they're breathing pretty easily. I think
Speaker 2: they've got a pretty comfortable feeling right now that they
Speaker 2: have managed to mainstream a lot of things that twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago we would have said. Twenty five years ago,
Speaker 2: conservative Republicans would have said, f out of here, you're
Speaker 2: too racist.
Speaker 1: Well, the right has moved to the right, but the
Speaker 1: left has moved to the center at least for now.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 2: You are very welcome and I will talk to you
Speaker 2: again next time.
Speaker 1: Spring is here. And I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Sarah Koenig and Danish Shivs are the co hosts of Cereal.
Speaker 1: Welcome Sarah, Hello, thank you, and welcome Dana.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's the most famous podcast in the world,
Speaker 1: but I guess it's probably not right, or is it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're asking wrong people, obviously, No, I mean
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know it not Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: You know that, right, right, Okay, you're right, all right,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Joe Rogan is serial. It's important. Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh this is Cereal. I'm introducing you guys. We are
Speaker 1: going to talk about this incredible podcast that really did start.
Speaker 1: I mean, there have been movies made of it, but
Speaker 1: it is true. All of us are much poorer and
Speaker 1: less famous than Joe Rogan. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: take a moment too. Though he did eat a bug
Speaker 1: on television and he was the host of Fear Factor. Ergo,
Speaker 1: I take all my health advice from him. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about what this season of Cereal looks like.
Speaker 4: This season of Cereal, we devoted the whole podcast to
Speaker 4: stories about Gantanamo, and each episode food is a different
Speaker 4: story that has taken place over the course of Guantanama's
Speaker 4: twenty two year history. But the thing we were trying
Speaker 4: to do was actually go to the individual stories, so
Speaker 4: story the people on the ground at Guantanamo who have
Speaker 4: sort of been put through that very weird system there
Speaker 4: and spat out the other side for the most part,
Speaker 4: and so sort of look at Guantanama through the lens
Speaker 4: of the individuals on the ground who have actually had
Speaker 4: to deal with the place as part of their lives.
Speaker 4: So that includes plenty of Americans personnel, interrogators, guards, commanders, lawyers,
Speaker 4: but also a bunch of former detainees as well.
Speaker 3: It's nine episode. We hope we're still working and it's
Speaker 3: like a weird personal history. We wanted to call it
Speaker 3: people's history in the in the first episode, but then
Speaker 3: I got embarrassed. I thought people would think we were
Speaker 3: ripping off Howard's in because we were, by the.
Speaker 1: Way, In case you're wondering, nobody's thinking that, like you know,
Speaker 1: you're like in the sort of intelligentsia when that's your aside.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of what it is. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a human scale, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, a small scale history, personal personal history of what
Speaker 3: this place has been like for people who have experienced it,
Speaker 3: either from the working their side or running it and
Speaker 3: also locked up.
Speaker 1: There is the theory here that it says a lot
Speaker 1: about America this site.
Speaker 3: Yes, of course it does. Of course it does.
Speaker 4: I know it's hard to start talking about.
Speaker 3: What Guantanamo means and then it starts to get very
Speaker 3: ponderous and kind of sad. But you know, if you're
Speaker 3: asking yet. I was talking to a sort of colleague
Speaker 3: in the audio world recently and he put it so nicely,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, I'm going to steal that.
Speaker 1: Which was I don't know.
Speaker 3: He was just saying, like, we have actually a really
Speaker 3: high tolerance for abandoning our ideals and our views in America,
Speaker 3: and we.
Speaker 1: Sort of hide that most of the time.
Speaker 3: But Guantanamo it was like it seems like Guantamau's this
Speaker 3: place where we stored all of that.
Speaker 4: It was like, it's like a.
Speaker 3: Repository for our tolerance for aberration in our criminal justice
Speaker 3: system or and in the way that we prosecute war
Speaker 3: and crime.
Speaker 1: I think about, you know, I lived in New York
Speaker 1: during nine to eleven, and so I feel like that
Speaker 1: was the sort of excuse we used to sort of
Speaker 1: betray all of these American values. It was such a
Speaker 1: long time ago, it is burned into my brain, like
Speaker 1: my experience is during nine to eleven, like the people
Speaker 1: that I knew who died, the like seeing the plane
Speaker 1: fly into the towers like it is for years when
Speaker 1: I would hear ambulances, I would think like, oh, they've
Speaker 1: got there. It's another one, like you know, because the sounds,
Speaker 1: the smells like it did birth this shadow world, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, And that's the thing that you know
Speaker 3: that's been interesting in reporting. It is just having to
Speaker 3: really contemplate the different points of view and some of
Speaker 3: which you you know, I as a reporter, and maybe
Speaker 3: data too, like we don't agree with and so you
Speaker 3: can kind of walk through life for a long time
Speaker 3: being like well, that's bullshit. But you talk to these
Speaker 3: people and they really are, like, my job was to
Speaker 3: protect the American people. We didn't know what was coming next,
Speaker 3: and like you're saying, like you sort of have this
Speaker 3: expect you're bracing for the next attack, kind of for
Speaker 3: the next crisis at that time, and that was It's
Speaker 3: easy to forget that that was real, that feeling and
Speaker 3: that fear, and that there were a bunch of people
Speaker 3: whose job it was to like run it down and
Speaker 3: make sure it doesn't happen again.
Speaker 1: That is an impossible job.
Speaker 3: And so they were trying to do it.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't excuse.
Speaker 3: You know, some of the terrible things that happened, but
Speaker 3: you have a greater understanding, I think for that pressure
Speaker 3: and what that pressure felt like for people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we were talking about it, I mean, we
Speaker 1: were all in an impossible situation, but it ended up
Speaker 1: being made so much worse. What is this status of
Speaker 1: GETMO right now? And what is because I know there,
Speaker 1: I mean, and what about this sort of like interesting
Speaker 1: legal kind of nuance of where these people went and
Speaker 1: what happened to that give me sort of the some
Speaker 1: of the sort of interesting through lines.
Speaker 4: While you were bringing up like nine to eleven was
Speaker 4: so long ago, And in one sense, it was like,
Speaker 4: in doing this podcast, one of the things we debated
Speaker 4: a lot is like how much of this era do
Speaker 4: we have to explain, Like do we have to explain
Speaker 4: to people who the Taliban are? What's the difference between
Speaker 4: the Taliban and al Qaeda? And then in another sense,
Speaker 4: like it wasn't actually that long ago.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot.
Speaker 4: Of people have sort of relegated Guantanamo to history, but
Speaker 4: the fact of the matter is there are still thirty
Speaker 4: men locked up at Guantano today. The prison is still open.
Speaker 1: It's a quarter of a century later and they're still there.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, not all at one time, but seven hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty prisoners have been held there over time, so
Speaker 4: it's obviously vastly reduced from the population that.
Speaker 1: It used to be.
Speaker 4: But just to say, like, it's not a thing that's
Speaker 4: that is relegated to history yet, because it's it's actually
Speaker 4: still like right there, Like yeah, theoretically you could go
Speaker 4: to the prison right now and visit it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: For a lot of the prisoners who have been released,
Speaker 4: they really struggle because they were at Guantanamo and what
Speaker 4: people know Guantanamo to be is a prison for terrorists, right,
Speaker 4: Like that's sort of how we all sort of shorthand
Speaker 4: the place. And so it's really hard to be released
Speaker 4: from a place like that and try to go back
Speaker 4: into society and restart your life when you're coming with
Speaker 4: the sort of like taint of a place like that.
Speaker 5: A lot of them really really struggle having left.
Speaker 1: But also, what were no rules? Right? Some people were
Speaker 1: sent there first one reason, some were sent there for another.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, there was a certain like sort
Speaker 1: of constitutional pause, right that you could be sent there
Speaker 1: if you were I mean they weren't even all American citizens, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean they weren't not American citizens. And basically Guantanamo
Speaker 4: originally was meant to be, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 4: basically a prisoner of war camp. But the Bush administration
Speaker 4: did not want to have to follow certain rules Geneva conventions, namely,
Speaker 4: and so didn't work around Basically, they worked around that
Speaker 4: by not ever calling it a prisoner of war camp,
Speaker 4: not ever calling the prisoners prisoners of war. They were
Speaker 4: unlawful enemy combatants, which their lawyers interpreted to me, and
Speaker 4: they could treat differently than we sort of would normally
Speaker 4: quote unquote normally. That's really like the point at which
Speaker 4: everything kind of went awry and started to go awry,
Speaker 4: and it's just you know, it's lasted now for twenty
Speaker 4: two years, and so from that sort of original aberration,
Speaker 4: now you have like just this sort of like aberrations
Speaker 4: in all the other normal systems that should have followed,
Speaker 4: and most expressly the justice system that they built there,
Speaker 4: which is sort of looks like a justice system but
Speaker 4: does not act like a normal justice system.
Speaker 1: You know, what does it look like?
Speaker 3: So Guantanamo is it's a bunch of things, but principally
Speaker 3: it's two things. There's this what we casually call a prison.
Speaker 3: They don't call it a prison, they call it a
Speaker 3: detention facility. But so there's this prison that operates kind
Speaker 3: of like a prison you would recognize in the United
Speaker 3: States at this point.
Speaker 5: It didn't in the beginning, but now it does.
Speaker 3: And then there's a court. There's a special court there
Speaker 3: that is functioning incredibly slowly in some cases. But the
Speaker 3: case that most people have heard about it, if they've
Speaker 3: heard about any of them, is the case against the
Speaker 3: men accused of planning nine to eleven, the nine eleven attacks,
Speaker 3: and that case has been There have been various versions
Speaker 3: of this court that get stood up and then declared
Speaker 3: not okay, and then they get revised and stood up again.
Speaker 3: The current court that's functioning I think has been going
Speaker 3: since twenty twelve, and so that case of the nine
Speaker 3: to eleven defendants, I mean in other cases as well,
Speaker 3: but that's sort of the one that most people are
Speaker 3: aware of, has been in pre trial more than ten years,
Speaker 3: twelve years, something like that, and it is nowhere near
Speaker 3: going to trial, and it could get settled by a
Speaker 3: plea agreement, and that is maybe the more likely thing
Speaker 3: that would happen. That's been up in the air now
Speaker 3: for a while. But the core issue there, and this
Speaker 3: is across a couple of the other cases as well
Speaker 3: that are being considered in the Military court, there is
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of men who are at Guantanamo
Speaker 3: now who were held in secret CIAUS Tody what we called,
Speaker 3: you know, known as the black sites for about four years,
Speaker 3: most of them, and they were tortured there and held
Speaker 3: in communicato and then in two thousand and six they
Speaker 3: were brought to Guantanamo and that's when we kind of technically,
Speaker 3: you know, are we're trying to sort of try them
Speaker 3: based on evidence gathered from the point when they got
Speaker 3: to Guantanamo's forward.
Speaker 5: And that is the fight, that's.
Speaker 3: The essential fight, is a bunch of people saying, you know,
Speaker 3: on the day fence side saying you cannot, these might
Speaker 3: have been tortured. Therefore there is no evidence really that
Speaker 3: you've gathered since then, or the evidence that you've gathered
Speaker 3: since then is all tainted by the way in which
Speaker 3: they were held and tortured in CIA custody, and the
Speaker 3: government saying no, no, that's a distinct period that was over,
Speaker 3: and then moving forward, we can use the evidence that
Speaker 3: we have gathered since then. I'm simplifying it, but that
Speaker 3: is the afferential dating is like, can we prosecute these
Speaker 3: men who we tortured in CAA custody?
Speaker 5: And the answer is kind of like not, really, it's
Speaker 5: not working.
Speaker 1: I mean, we shouldn't laugh because it's horrendous and it's
Speaker 1: such a miscarriage of justice, and also it's just so disturbing.
Speaker 3: It's horrible what we did to these men. In a way,
Speaker 3: it's also so so horrible for the families of the
Speaker 3: people who died in that attack.
Speaker 1: Yes, they haven't gone away.
Speaker 3: They are watching and waiting and agonizing. And this has
Speaker 3: now been for them literally more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, they are in this sort of suspended
Speaker 1: animation waiting for this trial that some of them may
Speaker 1: be called to testify in.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, but you know, lor it's you know, people are.
Speaker 1: They want to move on, or not even move on,
Speaker 1: but they want just they want answers.
Speaker 5: People who have like spoken out in the past.
Speaker 3: They're just like they're old, you know, and some of
Speaker 3: them have died before they're able to kind of anyway.
Speaker 3: So it's that part is also I think doesn't get
Speaker 3: talked about that much that our treatment of those defendants
Speaker 3: has denied the families any closure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if.
Speaker 3: Closure is the word I would use. I think that's
Speaker 3: sort of a personal word to you. I just mean
Speaker 3: any don't resolution, any resolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So what do you think the next season is
Speaker 1: going to be And do you feel like this is
Speaker 1: such a different what's a departure from how you've done
Speaker 1: it in the past, this story, Yeah, well this season.
Speaker 5: Not really, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I think all of our seasons have been in about
Speaker 3: ish the same thing, which is oh interesting, judgment and
Speaker 3: punishment of each other, and what are the systems that
Speaker 3: we have to meet that out. So I actually don't
Speaker 3: think of it as very different. I think the locus
Speaker 3: of the stories is certainly different, and it is a
Speaker 3: different world, and Guantanamo is truly its own world. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's fascinating, and I didn't really get it till a
Speaker 3: little more recently, but then I started thinking about it,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, this is really quite similar to
Speaker 3: season three, where we just spent a year and a
Speaker 3: half or so inside a felony courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 3: just to say like, Okay, here's how your average felony
Speaker 3: courthouse works in America. Let's see what goes on inside
Speaker 3: and how our systems are working. It's not that different
Speaker 3: this series. It's structured kind of similarly. I mean that
Speaker 3: one is that historical in the way that this one is,
Speaker 3: but the questions are sort of the same. It's like,
Speaker 3: how do regular people inside these systems? How do they
Speaker 3: make decisions? And what are the pressures on them? And
Speaker 3: how do they function inside a thing that's kind of broken?
Speaker 1: Do you guys feel that you've learned anything about sort
Speaker 1: of criminal justice reform or any of this sort of
Speaker 1: larger law and order or stuff that you think is
Speaker 1: important or relevant from your experience doing this.
Speaker 4: I think the main takeaway for me is like, we
Speaker 4: have a justice system and it's not perfect, but it works,
Speaker 4: and we should rely on it and not just throw
Speaker 4: it out the window when we get scared. And that's
Speaker 4: basically what happened. You know, after nine to eleven, we
Speaker 4: got scared, we threw our systems out the window. We
Speaker 4: tried to rebuild something that we thought would be more
Speaker 4: amenable to our end goals. And now here we are
Speaker 4: twenty two years later, and we're still caught in the
Speaker 4: muck of it all.
Speaker 1: And you know, as you.
Speaker 4: Guys were talking about a minute now, the guy who
Speaker 4: is accused of being the mastermind of nine eleven is
Speaker 4: still in pre trial hearings.
Speaker 5: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: And it happened because we just decided to circumvent our
Speaker 4: you know, imperfect but time testing systems.
Speaker 5: So I think that's kind of my takeaway from it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: i'd agree with that.
Speaker 3: I Mean what's hard for me is is that I
Speaker 3: think the criminal justice system that the like the normal
Speaker 3: one we had of that we have on the mainland
Speaker 3: is so messed up that it's hard for me to
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, that would use that one. But I
Speaker 3: will say Guantanamo really makes it look good, and so like.
Speaker 1: That is the most terrible. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, I mean there's so many
Speaker 3: there's so many technical things that I could say.
Speaker 5: About you know, reform that I think should happen.
Speaker 3: I think in a more philosophical way, I just wish
Speaker 3: we were all had a lot more humility about things
Speaker 3: we think are true and right.
Speaker 5: It just I think we as a.
Speaker 3: Culture have just a very hard time questioning ourselves. And
Speaker 3: I don't know why that is, but that's what it
Speaker 3: all needs more of. And I think disturbingly what I
Speaker 3: see happening in this country and in a lot of
Speaker 3: you know, so called democracies now is less and less
Speaker 3: of that questioning and in fact sort of being more
Speaker 3: categorical and more sure of ourselves and our opinions than
Speaker 3: we used to be.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sarah and Dana, Thank you for having me us.
Speaker 1: Doctor Joe Gibson is the chief medical officer for Planned
Speaker 1: Parenthood Arizona. Welcome to Fast Politics, Doctor Joe Gibson.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Tell us what you do and what your title is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I My name is Til Gibson, and I am
Speaker 5: the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthead Arizona, and that
Speaker 5: means that I get to oversee all of our whole
Speaker 5: host of services, all components of sexual and reproductive healthcare
Speaker 5: we offer, but I specifically head up our abortion service line.
Speaker 1: Where are we right now? Like, there's been so much drama,
Speaker 1: so much legislation, and so much lack of legislation. What
Speaker 1: does the country look like right now when it comes
Speaker 1: to abortion.
Speaker 5: It is a complete mess. It is complete chaos. It
Speaker 5: is confusion, it is panic In Arizona. We have literally
Speaker 5: been on an emotional roller coaster since months before the
Speaker 5: Dobs decision, since the leak of the dab's decision, when
Speaker 5: we were recognizing that we were needing to prepare to
Speaker 5: pause and then eventually halt abortion services, restart abortion services,
Speaker 5: halt abortion services, restart again. And then I have to
Speaker 5: say there was a period of time after we had
Speaker 5: a rightfully decided Court of Appeals decision that enabled us
Speaker 5: to safely provide abortions with still many restrictions, including a
Speaker 5: really agreeous fifteen week ban, but we felt comfortable. We
Speaker 5: started rebuilding, we started reinvesting. We made the decision that
Speaker 5: even though there was still the threat that this case
Speaker 5: could be heard by the Arizona Supreme Court, that our
Speaker 5: community deserved it for us to continue to work towards
Speaker 5: providing them access to abortion services. And you know, in
Speaker 5: my heart of hearts, I just couldn't understand a world
Speaker 5: where a law from eighteen sixties, before Arizona was a state,
Speaker 5: before women had the right to vote. I just couldn't
Speaker 5: understand a world where that could be applied into this
Speaker 5: modern society. And so I let that drive my operations.
Speaker 5: I let that lead me to continue to grow my
Speaker 5: abortion program even though this looming thread has existed, and
Speaker 5: so we built. We got new doctors, we brought in
Speaker 5: new nurses, we started a whole entire volunteer doula program
Speaker 5: to support our patients as they're having their abortions. And
Speaker 5: even when the Areaona Supreme Court decided to hear this case,
Speaker 5: I still in my naivete despite having my heart broken
Speaker 5: over and over again by the government and the politicians
Speaker 5: and the legislators who think they can tell what to
Speaker 5: do with our bodies. I still didn't think it would happen,
Speaker 5: And on Tuesday morning, the same thing happened as happened
Speaker 5: on June twenty fourth of twenty twenty two, when the
Speaker 5: dob's decision was announced. I had the wind knocked out
Speaker 5: of me, and I still showed up to the exact
Speaker 5: same health center ready to take care of patients, and
Speaker 5: I still was able to provide services luckily this Tuesday.
Speaker 5: We weren't able to provide services in the days immediately
Speaker 5: after the DB's decision. But this feels infinitely worse because
Speaker 5: in the days after the DABS decision, there was just
Speaker 5: a sense that we just needed to clear this up,
Speaker 5: that no one would expect that any sixty four men
Speaker 5: would be enacted. But here they are, for justices in
Speaker 5: today's society telling us that we cannot provide abortions. And
Speaker 5: so this feels gut wrenching in a different way.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at the Arizona State House, Democrats
Speaker 1: are still trying despite the fact that politically going back
Speaker 1: to an eighteen sixties law will probably help Democrats in
Speaker 1: the state, which is if you think about it like Trump.
Speaker 1: Remember Trump didn't want to pass this immigration bill because
Speaker 1: he wanted to be able to run an immigration But
Speaker 1: Democrats in the state House are trying still to get
Speaker 1: this bill repealed and Republicans won't let them.
Speaker 5: I'll say two things. The first is that I still
Speaker 5: have hope right because I have to have hope right,
Speaker 5: like hopelessness is a luxury that we do not have
Speaker 5: when we have a need that is this acute to
Speaker 5: take care of our patients. And the second part is
Speaker 5: that this is not about politics, Like, this is real
Speaker 5: people's lives, and it is just disgusting to me to
Speaker 5: see the way politicians are now jocking and jostling for
Speaker 5: the sole goal of using this as a means to
Speaker 5: get themselves a different position within some election. Like there
Speaker 5: are real women who I am taking care of in
Speaker 5: my clinic as early as yesterday who are telling me
Speaker 5: that they cannot be pregnant, and these lawmakers down at
Speaker 5: the Capitol with this ridiculous chaotic are these stunts that
Speaker 5: they're playing because so literally they are jeopardizing the lives
Speaker 5: of their constituents. And how this disconnect could still exist
Speaker 5: is truly baffling to me. You know, I've sat with
Speaker 5: thousands of women and pregnant people as they have described
Speaker 5: to me why they need abortion. We never ask patients
Speaker 5: to justify their abortions, although the state does require that
Speaker 5: we ask them why they're seeking their abortions. And so
Speaker 5: I have been privileged to understand the real need for abortion.
Speaker 5: And we know that these bands don't decrease the number
Speaker 5: of abortions to create who gets the abortions right, people
Speaker 5: who have means, people who are privileged will still be
Speaker 5: able to travel out of state and secure their abortions.
Speaker 5: And black and brown communities, rural communities, LGBTQ plus folks,
Speaker 5: These are the people who are already marginalized in our
Speaker 5: health care society. These are the folks that are at
Speaker 5: higher risk oritual mortality because of systemic racism that exists
Speaker 5: in our healthcare system. These are the people who are
Speaker 5: going to be left behind. That's only shameful, Like, there's
Speaker 5: no other way to describe that.
Speaker 1: I've been reading reports out of Louisiana seeing this another
Speaker 1: red states Texas too. It changes the way people are
Speaker 1: obgyns in states with bands, right, Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That is absolute true. We saw this play out
Speaker 5: in the days after the DABS decision, when our Attorney
Speaker 5: General was saying one thing, lawyers were saying something else,
Speaker 5: the governor was saying something else. We saw the real
Speaker 5: life consequences of that. I'm trained as an obstriction gynocologist,
Speaker 5: work delivering baby for ten years, and I had a
Speaker 5: friend and colleague who told me that she had a
Speaker 5: patient who came in presented to labor and delivery, who
Speaker 5: was having what we call like a precipitous delivery of
Speaker 5: a pre term and pre viable fetus. Right, so this
Speaker 5: was a delivery that was inevitable, it was could not
Speaker 5: be stopped, and the fetus was not to survive. And
Speaker 5: the content was, you know, in agony in her labor
Speaker 5: and her contractions. And the standard of care is that
Speaker 5: in that circumstance you expedite the delivery so that the
Speaker 5: pregnant person is not agonizing in labor. And the way
Speaker 5: you do that is you break the bag of water.
Speaker 5: It's a story, a simple procedure and when that happens,
Speaker 5: generally the fetus will deliver shortly thereafter. And provider, who
Speaker 5: is a trusted colleague who she basically felt like she
Speaker 5: could not do this simple procedure to help this person
Speaker 5: get out of agony because her actions could have been
Speaker 5: construed as breaking the law and participating in an abortion.
Speaker 5: And I mean that's like one example. You know, I've
Speaker 5: worked in hospital systems where patients come in with their
Speaker 5: bag of water already ruptured and they're pre viable. This
Speaker 5: fetus is not going to survive, and we're not allowed
Speaker 5: to induce her abortion until either the fetus doesn't have
Speaker 5: a heartbeat and or the mom is so sick that
Speaker 5: then there's justification. And let me tell you that usually
Speaker 5: the justification is only when the fetus doesn't have a
Speaker 5: heartbeat anymore, because who's going to determine how sick that
Speaker 5: pregnant woman has to be before I can induce her abortion.
Speaker 5: And so absolutely we see this. We see this in
Speaker 5: the way patients are cared for in our emergency department.
Speaker 5: They when they're presenting with miscarriage, when they're present with abortions,
Speaker 5: but have you know the rear few that have complications.
Speaker 5: We see the way they're treated, and we just see
Speaker 5: a hesitancy to provide these patients with dignified care.
Speaker 1: It's a problem that we saw this coming and it
Speaker 1: really is like the same problem that it's why they
Speaker 1: decided row in the first place, right, was because the
Speaker 1: idea that doctors would need to be dictated by Republican
Speaker 1: politicians is so insane. It seems to me also that
Speaker 1: there's like anxiety about providing like a DNC for a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you talk a little bit about anything
Speaker 1: else you're seeing on this front? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think the point that you're making care is that
Speaker 5: the ripple effect of this singular decision, like it's going
Speaker 5: to impact individual lives, it's going to impact the people
Speaker 5: who are providing this care now, right, Like, how are
Speaker 5: we going to keep our health care, our healthcare clinics
Speaker 5: open so that when the intereritahip passes and we can
Speaker 5: again have permission to not be thrown into jail for
Speaker 5: providing abortion care, that we're still in place, ready to go.
Speaker 5: But also so many additional ripples, like just the societal
Speaker 5: and the systemic and the cultural implications. What's going to
Speaker 5: happen to these people? And also one of the points
Speaker 5: that I like to talk about is the fact that
Speaker 5: if we don't provide abortions in this state, how are
Speaker 5: we going to train future doctors to know how to
Speaker 5: safely empty a uterus for whatever reason, for metscarriage management,
Speaker 5: for a DNC, for an elective abortion for the life
Speaker 5: of the mother. There will be no one here who
Speaker 5: knows how to do that because the residents that are
Speaker 5: training right now in family medicine and obstetrics and gynecology,
Speaker 5: although they have requirements to have abortion training, if there's
Speaker 5: not the clinical practice on the ground, they will not
Speaker 5: have the skill set necessary to save people's lives. And also,
Speaker 5: who would come train here. I would never go train
Speaker 5: at a program where I couldn't get the full set
Speaker 5: of skills that I needed to be able to compet
Speaker 5: take care of my patients holistically and throughout all components
Speaker 5: of their reproductive life. This is essential health care and
Speaker 5: the fact that abortion has been carved out as something
Speaker 5: unique and different is mind boggling to me. One out
Speaker 5: of every four people of reproductive potential will have an
Speaker 5: abortion at some point in their lives. This is incredibly common.
Speaker 5: This is basic medicine. And the fact that politicians and
Speaker 5: ideology have decided that they're going to interfere and try
Speaker 5: and dictate how we control our lives and how we
Speaker 5: practice medicine. You know, I went to school for a
Speaker 5: lot of years so that I can safely take care
Speaker 5: of my patients. And the fact that someone who has
Speaker 5: no basis of understanding of any of this is dictating
Speaker 5: what I can do. Where have we gone wrong? I
Speaker 5: know how we got here, and still every day I
Speaker 5: say how did we get here? Because when I started
Speaker 5: my career and dedicated my life to taking care of
Speaker 5: pregnant people, and then my career evolved into providing solely
Speaker 5: abortion service, I never, in my heart of hearts, because
Speaker 5: I think I have an understanding, right, I have listened
Speaker 5: to my patients, and I have an understanding of why
Speaker 5: abortion exists and why it's essential and why it will
Speaker 5: always be essential regardless of what these politicians do. And
Speaker 5: in my heart hearts, I could never go down that
Speaker 5: road because I know the ill that it's going to
Speaker 5: cause so nuts.
Speaker 1: One of the things in Texas you see these abortion deserts,
Speaker 1: and more broadly you see oh b guyn deserts. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean there must be real time information about this happening.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean so one of the things that you know,
Speaker 5: there's so much discussion now like well, how long are
Speaker 5: you going to be able to provide abortion and how
Speaker 5: many more days? And like the point is is, we
Speaker 5: weren't even meeting the need before we had a total
Speaker 5: abortion band, and if we got to provide for another
Speaker 5: sixty days and other one hundred days, it's never enough.
Speaker 5: You know, we had some choice, but we didn't actually
Speaker 5: have real access, right And that's because we don't have
Speaker 5: enough providers. My nurse that helps me that provided abortion
Speaker 5: services yesterday, provided sedation for abortion services yesterday. She drives
Speaker 5: an hour and a half each way. We are in Phoenix,
Speaker 5: one of the largest metropolitan cities in the country. And
Speaker 5: the nurses that I find who are so incredibly good
Speaker 5: at their jobs and so compassionate and so passionate about
Speaker 5: this work that they're willing to drive three hours away
Speaker 5: from their family. You know, this is not time that
Speaker 5: they're compensated. They drive three hours round trip to provide
Speaker 5: abortion services. And so it's absolutely true, and it's only
Speaker 5: going to get worse. Like I was talking about, those
Speaker 5: residents are not going to come train at the programs
Speaker 5: in Arizona, and then if they're not training at the
Speaker 5: programs in Arizona, they're not going to stay in Arizona.
Speaker 5: So where are the doctor's going to be who's going
Speaker 5: to be taking care of people. I want to tell
Speaker 5: you about a couple of patients that I've been thinking about. So,
Speaker 5: the state of Arizona requires that we ask patients why
Speaker 5: they're seeking an abortion, and it's part of the whole
Speaker 5: host of information that I have to report to the
Speaker 5: state after e abortion is performed, including like really personal
Speaker 5: information about patients about how many times they've been pregnant
Speaker 5: and what the outcomes of those pregnancies were, and you know,
Speaker 5: what their ethnicity is, and what their marital status is,
Speaker 5: and all this information that the state is compiling for
Speaker 5: what purposes We don't know. But one of the questions
Speaker 5: we have to report why they're having their abortion. And
Speaker 5: I never ever ask a patient to justify their abortion
Speaker 5: abortion as elective, but patients so often, I think, for one,
Speaker 5: because we have to pose this question field that they
Speaker 5: need to justify their abortion. And having sat through you know,
Speaker 5: I provide at least twenty five of these physician abortion
Speaker 5: counting sessions before a patient has to wait than the
Speaker 5: twenty four hours before they can have their abortion per clinic,
Speaker 5: and so I hear these stories twenty five times a day.
Speaker 5: And you know, I had a patient last week who
Speaker 5: told me that she walked on foot from Venezuela. She
Speaker 5: was reaped multiple times along the way. She realized as
Speaker 5: she was approaching the United States that she was pregnant,
Speaker 5: and she was literally this person was trying to make
Speaker 5: ends meet here in this country by cooking food out
Speaker 5: of a one room bedroom, impregnated as a result of
Speaker 5: her rape. Like, who's going to take care of that person?
Speaker 5: Why on earth are we sentencing that woman to have
Speaker 5: a forced pregnancy that was a result of assault as
Speaker 5: she walked on foot across literally all of Central America.
Speaker 5: I think I want to express to you, like, the
Speaker 5: most common reason that people tell me they're having an
Speaker 5: abortion is because they're already moms, and they have families
Speaker 5: that they love and that they're caring.
Speaker 1: For, and they can barely afford.
Speaker 5: I had one patient tell me that she was so
Speaker 5: sick with nausea and vombing of pregnancy, she wasn't able
Speaker 5: to work, and she was so close to losing her apartment,
Speaker 5: and if she didn't have her abortion, she missed more work,
Speaker 5: she would be homeless with her family, with her children
Speaker 5: that she loves. How are we sentencing women and pregnant
Speaker 5: people to this fate when we know we know from
Speaker 5: the data from the Dovs decision what happens to them.
Speaker 5: We know that women and pregnant people in states where
Speaker 5: abortion is banned are more than three times as likely
Speaker 5: to die during pregnancy, childbirth, and after delivery. We know
Speaker 5: that they're more likely to be economically unstable, that they're
Speaker 5: more likely to stay with abusive partners, that they're more
Speaker 5: likely to be unemployed. How can we have this information
Speaker 5: and acknowledge it and still be an abortion What is
Speaker 5: wrong with people? Shame on them? Like, what is wrong
Speaker 5: with them?
Speaker 1: My mom, Erica Jong was a feminist author in the
Speaker 1: seventies and and my whole life. You know, they were
Speaker 1: just so pleased that they had made it so that
Speaker 1: women weren't going to die back alley abortions. It's not
Speaker 1: just these abortions, it's the pills. It's you know, you
Speaker 1: see Republicans so much chatter about the dangers of birth
Speaker 1: control pills. I mean, are you shocked as a doctor
Speaker 1: the whole The Supreme Court is hearing a case on methapristone,
Speaker 1: which is trying to undo the FDA approval of a
Speaker 1: drug that's been on the market for twenty years. I mean,
Speaker 1: are you shocked at sort of the on science of
Speaker 1: this or are you not that surprised? And can you
Speaker 1: just talk about that for a MENA?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think we saw this when Trump
Speaker 5: came into office, right, we saw that fact is no
Speaker 5: longer fact and science allegedly isn't science. And we saw it.
Speaker 5: We saw a movement I think in our society and
Speaker 5: our culture that could get behind that idea, right that
Speaker 5: whatever someone says can be fact, despite if it's if
Speaker 5: it's true or not, that the truth is not truth.
Speaker 5: I think we're living in this world now. It seems
Speaker 5: to be just irrational. It seems to be not I
Speaker 5: can't understand it, I really can't. But I think that
Speaker 5: we saw this starting when we had, you know, a
Speaker 5: president who told lies and a president who that it
Speaker 5: was okay to not believe doctors and to not trust science.
Speaker 5: And you know, our society is founded on these principles
Speaker 5: of medicine, and the practice of medicine prides itself on
Speaker 5: doing what we know based on scientific, rigorous research. There
Speaker 5: are gold standard studies that have to be performed and
Speaker 5: they have to be peer reviewed, and they have to
Speaker 5: be published, and they have to be repeated. We as
Speaker 5: physicians have OSTs not harm our patients, and so we
Speaker 5: follow the evidence so closely to ensure that we're doing
Speaker 5: what's right for our patients. And when someone opened a
Speaker 5: different narrative, it tore open this rip in our society
Speaker 5: that has allowed us to get to this point where
Speaker 5: no matter what people with education and training and expertise
Speaker 5: are saying, if there's a louder, more boisterous voice that
Speaker 5: people want to listen to, we're being drowned out.
Speaker 1: Thank you, doctor Gibson, Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2: No, hard Rick Wilson, Yes, small, drunk fast.
Speaker 1: What is your moment of factory?
Speaker 2: My moment of fuckery is Mike Johnson going down to
Speaker 2: mar A Lago to Kevin McCarthy himself in front of
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. What we have seen is these guys are
Speaker 2: going to go down to Trump when they're in trouble.
Speaker 2: And McCarthy knew he was in trouble right after January
Speaker 2: sixth because he had not properly respected Donald Trump's needs, desires,
Speaker 2: and wishes, and he went down there to kiss his ass.
Speaker 2: But that was a poison pill Once you go down there,
Speaker 2: you kick off the timer. For everything Trump touches dies,
Speaker 2: and Mike Johnson has been living on a razor's edge.
Speaker 2: He's not really gained anything from going down there. He's
Speaker 2: not really gained anything, But he went down there to
Speaker 2: do this unbelievably bogus liathon about non citizen voting. It's
Speaker 2: already illegal in all fifty states and the territories. It's
Speaker 2: already illegal in state law in every state. It doesn't
Speaker 2: happen at any detectable number, including people like Cato Institute
Speaker 2: said Nope, non citizens aren't voting. But you know who
Speaker 2: is voting illegally. You know, if you want some voter fraud,
Speaker 2: go down to the villages in Florida, go down to
Speaker 2: Hyaliah in Miami. I can give you lists of places
Speaker 2: all over America in red states where there is voter
Speaker 2: fraud in detectable numbers. But that was what they went
Speaker 2: down there to pretend was the urgent national crisis of
Speaker 2: our time, and it was a moment of pure pathetic fuckery.
Speaker 2: I will say this, it's hard to respect you, Mike Johnson,
Speaker 2: to begin with. It's even harder when you see somebody
Speaker 2: as absurd as Mike Johnson trying to kiss ass to
Speaker 2: Donald Trump to preserve a job that he's already a
Speaker 2: dead man walking.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. Basically, Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: needs Marjorie Taylor Green to stop saying that she's going
Speaker 1: to raise a motion to vacate and kick him out
Speaker 1: of his job. So we went down there in the
Speaker 1: hopes of Trump will tell Marjorie Taylor Green what to do,
Speaker 1: which means that Marjorie Taylor Green is basically the de
Speaker 1: facto speaker of the House.
Speaker 2: Well, oh she is. I mean, that's no question.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to use that as my moment of
Speaker 1: prockery too. And I'm just going to add that Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy had a chance on January seventeenth, had he not
Speaker 1: gone down tomorrow a lago. I mean, there were like
Speaker 1: a lot of things happened that January, But had the
Speaker 1: Republicans voted to convict or Kevin McCarthy not gone down
Speaker 1: there and the Republicans had left him alone, today the
Speaker 1: Republicans would be running Nicki Haley, and Nicki Haley, I
Speaker 1: don't agree with everything she says, but she would not
Speaker 1: be trying to overthrow democracy. It would be much harder
Speaker 1: for Biden to run against Nicki Haley, and you know,
Speaker 1: our democracy would be in a much safer place.
Speaker 2: She would have reset a lot of the perceptions of
Speaker 2: the Republican Party among elite media, they'd say, Okay, Trump's
Speaker 2: in the past, it's gone. Now trump Ism would still
Speaker 2: be there. It would be the easiest lift for them
Speaker 2: in the world to jump to that.
Speaker 1: That's right. And you'll notice Nicki Haley still has an
Speaker 1: endorsed Donald and for that that is both of our
Speaker 1: moment of fuckerries.
Speaker 2: It is indeed, it is.
Speaker 1: Indeed, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune
Speaker 1: in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a
Speaker 1: friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.