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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,

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Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of

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Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Representative Tim Burchett says we're not

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Speaker 1: going to fix it in reference to school shootings, but

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Speaker 1: of course he homeschools his kid. We have a fascinating

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Speaker 1: show today. Crooked Media editor in chief Brian Boittler stops

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Speaker 1: by to talk about the dangers of Trump's violent rhetoric.

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Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to the economic hardship reporting projects Alyssa Court,

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Speaker 1: who will tell us about her new book Bootstrapped, Liberating

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Speaker 1: Ourselves from the American Dream. But first we have the

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Speaker 1: Washington Post columnist, the one, the only, Dana Milbank. Welcome

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Speaker 1: back to you Fast Politics, Dana Milbank. Molly, it's always

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Speaker 1: a great pleasure. Thank you. Well, I'm interrupting you from

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Speaker 1: watching a certain committee hearing. That's the kind of hearing

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Speaker 1: that I watch and I want to throw stuff at

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Speaker 1: the wall. Tell us what committee hearing you were just

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Speaker 1: watching on c SPAN. There is just so many good

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Speaker 1: committee hearings going on all the time. I was like

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Speaker 1: toggling back and forth among six of them this morning

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Speaker 1: and now this afternoon, We're going to hear from a

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Speaker 1: subcommittee of James Comer's House Oversight Committee, and they are

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Speaker 1: talking about how the progressivism, basically the wokeness of the

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Speaker 1: military is preventing readiness of our troops. I love it

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Speaker 1: as a topic of a hearing, but the fact that

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Speaker 1: they're doing on the same day that over in the Senate,

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Speaker 1: Tommy Tuberville actually is compromising the readiness of our military

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Speaker 1: by refusing to approve any of the military promotions. So

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Speaker 1: everybody's actually stuck in place and is in fact not ready. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: You've hit on many subjects I want to talk about,

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Speaker 1: but the first is James Comer. I feel like he's

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Speaker 1: new this season of Our Republican House. Fockay he is.

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Speaker 1: They brought him up from Triple A. But I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure he can hit these pitches. No, I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: So he's a fascinating care because, like a Louie Gomer,

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Speaker 1: you look at that guy and you go, like, this

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Speaker 1: guy's an idiot, right, He's got crazy eyes. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's got crazy eyes. He sometimes loses a tooth story

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Speaker 1: a conversation, which, by the way, you know, I've had

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Speaker 1: many dental struggles, so I'm hardly casting aspersions here or

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Speaker 1: asparagus casting aspersions on his asparagus. I knew that's where

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Speaker 1: you were, not exactly. This is a real deep cut

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Speaker 1: for people. But Coomer looks normal, but then when you

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Speaker 1: get him going, he sounds yeah. The best I can

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Speaker 1: tell on Comer is he probably is or was normal,

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Speaker 1: and then he became chairman of this committee. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's not terribly unlike the McCarthy thing. It's like, you

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Speaker 1: have a choice. You can be normal or you can

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Speaker 1: have a job, right, and if you want to keep

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Speaker 1: your job, you gotta at least sound crazy. And of

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Speaker 1: course if you if you sound crazy long enough, well off,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's just cognitive dissonance. You've just become crazy.

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Speaker 1: You have to believe it, right, because he can't keep

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Speaker 1: saying it. This's got a long history of people in

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Speaker 1: this position, going back to Dan Burt shooting Warnermelons, and

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Speaker 1: darryl Issa was in this job, and Drey Gowdy the

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Speaker 1: Aghazi came out of this committee. He just doesn't seem

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Speaker 1: ready for prime time. You know, Like just a couple

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Speaker 1: of weeks ago he was going after Bo Biden, who

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Speaker 1: of course isn't alive to defend himself. He keeps contradicting

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Speaker 1: himself on the Hunter Biden stuff. Yeah, he just doesn't

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Speaker 1: seem like he's ready for prime time. And when he

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Speaker 1: goes on Fox News, he seems to operate as if

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Speaker 1: nobody's going to hear what he said outside the Fox

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Speaker 1: News echo chamber. And he's constantly getting in trouble for

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Speaker 1: those things because he's saying things that are not backed

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Speaker 1: up by reality. One of the incredible things that I

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Speaker 1: think about is on the Sunday Shows, Jake Tapper interviewed him.

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Speaker 1: He was so hot to defend Trump that he couldn't

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Speaker 1: figure out what he was defending Trump from. So Tapper said, well,

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Speaker 1: do you think business crimes are not really crimes? And

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Speaker 1: he was like, no, election crimes aren't really right, you

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Speaker 1: know what's like? And Capo was like, but the New

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Speaker 1: York state crime would be a business. Oh, yes. You know.

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Speaker 1: I feel like we haven't spent enough of this news

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Speaker 1: cycle talking about Republicans falling all over themselves to defend

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump when Donald Trump has still yet to be

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Speaker 1: actually indicted. Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, and

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Speaker 1: I know you're a big fan, right, a big fan

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Speaker 1: he's brilliant at this sort of thing. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: I wrote about it before he had a serious run

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Speaker 1: for the presidency. He would flirt with it each time,

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Speaker 1: and I noted he would do it often or at

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Speaker 1: least more than once when the Apprentice was up for renewal.

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Speaker 1: Then he'd starts teasing a presidential run, right, and at

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Speaker 1: one of these times, I don't know whether twenty ten

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Speaker 1: or something like that, I got a I wish I

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Speaker 1: had kept it. I got a clip out of the

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Speaker 1: article i'd written observing that from Donald Trump, in which

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Speaker 1: he circled that sentence and said, good point. He was.

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Speaker 1: He was happy to be copulating NBC or whatever it was.

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Speaker 1: But now he's doing the same thing to the House Republicans.

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Speaker 1: He had no idea that, you know, whether or not

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Speaker 1: he was going to be arrested, but he just went

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Speaker 1: out and said it because you know, what, does he care?

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Speaker 1: And you know, the fools, they fell for it completely,

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Speaker 1: uh it. You know, So it doesn't matter if he's

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Speaker 1: indicted now, or if he's not indicted, or if he's

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Speaker 1: indicted in Georgia or if he's indicted in New York.

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Speaker 1: He's back on top. Yeah, he's all everybody's talking about.

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Speaker 1: He's stealing all the oxygen in the room. They are

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Speaker 1: tripping over themselves to interfere in the American justice system, right,

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Speaker 1: weaponize the federal government, and even you know, in some

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Speaker 1: of the most absurd cases, they're even actually defending his

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Speaker 1: behavior with with Stormy Daniels, well the climbs or just

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Speaker 1: the tortry thing that started it. You know, do you

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Speaker 1: really want to really want to be defending him on Yeah? That,

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Speaker 1: Like Tucker Carlson said, come on, everybody pays hush money, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, who among us? Let me? The moment I

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Speaker 1: thought was the sort of most magnificent moment of this

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Speaker 1: whole experience was when Republicans were furious with de Santis

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Speaker 1: for not defending Trump. Yeah. I mean that shows you

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Speaker 1: know how it was so brilliant. It looked like Pence

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Speaker 1: was successfully getting or at least trying to get some

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Speaker 1: distance on Trump. It looked like De santists was cutting

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Speaker 1: him down quite nicely. And now everybody's back on their

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Speaker 1: heels either defending him or be quiet because he's the

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Speaker 1: only game in town again, and that's why many people

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Speaker 1: go through this. Yo, Trump's finished now, he's he's really done.

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Speaker 1: And you know, I admit it had looked that way

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Speaker 1: for a little while, but just because every time in

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Speaker 1: the past he's come roaring back. I mean I was

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Speaker 1: down at, you know, for his full start of a

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Speaker 1: presidential announcement in Marlago, and it really felt like the

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Speaker 1: guy was done. But he's Donald Trump. He'll destroy everything

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Speaker 1: around him, but he's going come crawling out of that

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Speaker 1: mushroom cloud. Yeah. I mean, that is the thing that

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Speaker 1: I'm so struck by, is it feels like, you know,

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Speaker 1: if he were a normal candidate, I mean, if he

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Speaker 1: cared about the Republican Party more than he cared about

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Speaker 1: his own bottom line, then perhaps, but that has never

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Speaker 1: been the case. Why would we expect it to start

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Speaker 1: now the whole notion for any anybody else and forget

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Speaker 1: about politics. But in the world, by and large, getting

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Speaker 1: indicted is a bad thing. Like you put that into

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Speaker 1: the negative in the negatives fall when you're listing positives

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Speaker 1: and negatives, all things being equal, you'd rather not be indicted.

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Speaker 1: But this is the thing that I think is sort

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Speaker 1: of mind blowing, is that there has been, up until

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump, a certain honor among thieves and by thieves,

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Speaker 1: I mean politicians that I mean, there was a certain

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Speaker 1: you know, if you lost, you would admit it. You

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Speaker 1: wouldn't lie, you know what I mean, Like you might

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Speaker 1: lie about whether or not you at a mistress, but

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't lie about whether or not you'd lost the election. Right,

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Speaker 1: Things that you would lie about, things that weren't demonstrably

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Speaker 1: false that you know, you could proto shade it or

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Speaker 1: people might not know the truth. But no, this is

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Speaker 1: a you know, I mean, there's there's the absence of shame,

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Speaker 1: but there's also the absence of fact. You know, as

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Speaker 1: we've discussed before, Trump didn't invent that it had gotten

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Speaker 1: a whole lot more brazen, going back to death panels, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was something about that war in Iraq, and then

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Speaker 1: of course, you know, the Birther thing, it had gotten

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Speaker 1: increasingly brazen. But now it's you know, it's it's sort

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Speaker 1: of stuff that can be disproven in real time. And

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Speaker 1: the whole notion is that the people doing the disproofing,

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Speaker 1: that people who are actually pointing out that it's false

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Speaker 1: are the ones who have an agenda. So that was

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Speaker 1: the genius here, right, I mean, it's like calling black

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Speaker 1: people racist right, yeah, no, right, it's it's the proverbial

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Speaker 1: jiu jitsu, and I mean the ruinous consequences of course.

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Speaker 1: So you now have the chairman of the House Administration Committee,

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Speaker 1: the House Oversight and the House Judiciary Committee casting doubt

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Speaker 1: on the justice system in America. Just as they made

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Speaker 1: people believe that the elections are are rigged, they're making

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Speaker 1: people believe that the justice system is rigged. In fact,

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Speaker 1: one of the many hearings I was listening to this

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Speaker 1: morning another effort just by the House Administration Committee to

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Speaker 1: say that our elections are all screwed up. This time

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Speaker 1: they're going after a Republican county of Luzerne County in Pennsylvania.

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Speaker 1: But doesn't matter, you know, just so doubts and say

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Speaker 1: the systems that you believed in are failing you, and

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Speaker 1: everybody's lying to you. Right. This sort of works until

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Speaker 1: it doesn't. Right, Well, I'm still waiting for that point.

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Speaker 1: Many points it seemed Trump had jumped the shark. It

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Speaker 1: keeps succeeding in the end. So you know, I agree,

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Speaker 1: theoretically there is a point at which even the thirty

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Speaker 1: percent or whatever of America, that sort of die hard

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Speaker 1: maga will say Okay, that's too much. I can't I

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Speaker 1: can't follow you there. But I haven't seen it yet, right.

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Speaker 1: I continue to believe that they're in a situation where

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Speaker 1: the only person who went who can win the primary

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Speaker 1: is Trump and the only person who can guaranteed to

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Speaker 1: lose the general as Trump. It certainly seems that way

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Speaker 1: to me, and you know, as the guy who had

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Speaker 1: to you know, physically eat a column. Wait which column

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Speaker 1: was that? Well, in twenty sixteen, I said Republicans are

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Speaker 1: better than this. They're not going to nominate Donald Trump.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's what you get for thinking they were

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Speaker 1: better than that. Yeah. I had a local chef, Victor Albisu.

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Speaker 1: He came into the post. I got the food critic,

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Speaker 1: Tom Seatso we had an entire spread of newspaper. They

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Speaker 1: made newspaper filtered coffee, they made newspaper filet of fish, tacos.

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Speaker 1: It was, and Trump wine to wash it all down.

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Speaker 1: It was a great culinary experience. That's amazing. But yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: but what were you saying. I'm not going to make

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Speaker 1: the mistake again of saying Trump can't win or Trump

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Speaker 1: can win, because who the hell knows. What I do

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Speaker 1: know is anybody out there is I doubt true. Last week,

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Speaker 1: anybody's still saying it, But anybody's saying it that Trump

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Speaker 1: can't be back on top again and that he couldn't

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Speaker 1: win the presidency again. They're just making it up because

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Speaker 1: we've seen it can happen. You know, in the long run,

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Speaker 1: the politics he's practicing our ruinous to his party and

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Speaker 1: to the country more importantly. But in the short term,

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't doubt that it can still work.

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Speaker 1: I mean, do you think, like the thing I always

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Speaker 1: think about is this idea that like you can't make

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Speaker 1: a Faustian bargain and then like have people just go

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Speaker 1: back to normal. There has to be some kind of reckoning.

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Speaker 1: Where is the reckoning? We keep thinking, well, all right,

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Speaker 1: they saw what all these you know nutters meant that

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Speaker 1: the Republicans didn't win the Senate. They very narrowly won

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Speaker 1: the House, went with George Santos. Yeah, right, with George Santos.

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Speaker 1: And you know, originally they were expecting a sixty seat

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Speaker 1: majority and wind up with five and said, you'd think

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Speaker 1: the reckoning would come after losing the twenty twenty election.

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Speaker 1: Losing I think it's eight of nine president of the

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Speaker 1: last presidential election popular vote. You'd think it would come

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Speaker 1: after the January sixth insurrection. There's a reckoning for like

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Speaker 1: a week, and then everybody just forgets that which is reckoning,

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Speaker 1: and we're right back in the same place. So I

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Speaker 1: don't necessarily believe that there is a reckoning for this.

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Speaker 1: I don't think they don't. I think being a maga

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Speaker 1: Republican means never having to say you're sorry. I think

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Speaker 1: eventually they decide they're sick of losing. The problem for them,

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Speaker 1: and again this is not a problem for me, because

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Speaker 1: I think they did this themselves, is that ultimately they

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Speaker 1: are being ruled by their base. So once the sort

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Speaker 1: of the powers that be in the Republican Party decide

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Speaker 1: they are sick of losing, they're going to have to

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Speaker 1: say goodbye to the base that has delivered them, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way to not alienate the base.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's all of this is about not alienating

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Speaker 1: that sort of despicable group that no Republican had ever dare.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know that they had quietly tried to

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Speaker 1: appeal quiet lead to the sort of deplorables, and then

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Speaker 1: you know, the very very small group of real people

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Speaker 1: that are beyond the pale. And I do think that

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Speaker 1: now they would have to reject that group by saying

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Speaker 1: they don't believe in these kind of very base things, right,

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Speaker 1: And how would you do that? Who would you? You know?

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Speaker 1: Because of course we saw through the Fox News texts

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Speaker 1: coming out from the dominion suit that that's their base. Right.

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Speaker 1: They're out there worrying that if they don't tow the

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Speaker 1: extremist line, if they don't perpetuate the big lie, that

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Speaker 1: they're going to lose their people to news Max or

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Speaker 1: somebody else, and they will, right, How does an elected

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Speaker 1: official and McCarthy a comer disown that base without the

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Speaker 1: implosion of the party. There's nothing left if they were

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Speaker 1: to do that. So that's why I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: don't see how that reckoning comes about other than constant drubbings,

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Speaker 1: which will happen eventually, just not just not necessarily next year. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's ultimately their big problem. But

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Speaker 1: oh wow, they did it to themselves. I mean, and

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Speaker 1: they really did do it to themselves, I mean, just

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Speaker 1: in a spectacular fashion. So they're sort of in it.

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Speaker 1: And I think that this is what we're seeing in

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Speaker 1: this Republican House is a kind of you know, Trumpism

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Speaker 1: is a sort of you have a leader who has

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Speaker 1: a cult of personality, but you have no governing principles

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Speaker 1: except chaos. I mean, that's what we're seeing in the House.

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Speaker 1: Hey us, Yes, I was watching and Appropriations hearing where

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Speaker 1: they're talking about cybersecurity. Suddenly we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion,

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Speaker 1: and Hunter Biden. That's suddenly the topic. Here. They are

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Speaker 1: having another committee, I think it's the Energy and Commerce

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Speaker 1: Committee is having another hearing on censorship at Twitter. This

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Speaker 1: is after the Oversight Committee had a disaster of a

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Speaker 1: hearing on it. It's after Jim Jordan's Weaponization committee, and

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Speaker 1: now they're actually having some of the same witnesses back

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Speaker 1: again to chew over it again at Energy and Commerce.

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Speaker 1: It's you know, it's sort of it's like a fever

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Speaker 1: dream of Hunter Biden, woo politics, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

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Speaker 1: It's just an endless repeat here. And then you know,

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Speaker 1: in the background, you have very serious things like oh,

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Speaker 1: guys were about to default on the federal debt, and

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Speaker 1: you literally had the House Republican Caucus leaders out one time,

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Speaker 1: and then on a split screen. You had the House

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Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus this morning, and they're saying entirely different things

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Speaker 1: about what needs to happen with the debt limit. I

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Speaker 1: guess the only thing that you can agree on is

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Speaker 1: that Hunter Biden's laptop just keep saying it right exactly.

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Speaker 1: One last question for you. It seems like this Dominion

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Speaker 1: suit from what I'm seeing, you know now they want

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Speaker 1: these Fox personalities to testify. I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you saw the polling last week that Fox watchers

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Speaker 1: are aware of of what's happening. I mean, it does

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Speaker 1: seem like Dominion is a company with nothing left to lose.

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Speaker 1: Their whole brand has been savage. You see it at

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Speaker 1: the local level at election board meetings and then local testimonies.

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Speaker 1: That's why you file a defamation suit, because it's been

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Speaker 1: ruinous to your character. I mean, I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of smart people say it's it's really hard to prevail

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Speaker 1: in these kinds of lawsuits. But give them credit for

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Speaker 1: doing an enormous public service because maybe it is filtering

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Speaker 1: to Fox fears of some extent, but the rest of

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Speaker 1: the world is seeing what a connart this whole thing is.

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Speaker 1: That's just the knowingly feeding your audience lies over and

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Speaker 1: over again, even though you know it's wrong, even though

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Speaker 1: that people in the news division of your own organization

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Speaker 1: are fighting you. Yeah, it's crazy. Thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back. It was a delight Thank you, Mollie.

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Speaker 1: Brian Boittler is the editor in chief of Crooked Media.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Brian, thank you for having me up.

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Speaker 1: We're delighted. Our first topic of conversation must be a

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Speaker 1: meat ball ron. Here we are in a situation where

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Speaker 1: we have this Republican that all the kind of smart

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Speaker 1: Republicans have decided is their candidate right. He may lack charisma,

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Speaker 1: but they don't care. And then we have the probably

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Speaker 1: likely Republican candidate who is going to eat him. Is

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Speaker 1: that fair? I think so. I mean, I think that

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Speaker 1: you see in a lot of the recent coverage of

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Speaker 1: this sort of shadow campaign, the problems that the santiss

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Speaker 1: is going to have, which are really familiar because all

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Speaker 1: of the twenty sixteen primary candidates who tried to take

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Speaker 1: on Trump had the same problem, and that Donald Trump

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Speaker 1: doesn't have this particular problem, and you know, it's one

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Speaker 1: of the only admirable things about Donald Trump's, at least

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Speaker 1: to me, it's not in how he does it, but

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Speaker 1: that he's willing to do it. Is that when he

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Speaker 1: identifies an opponent, even if it's a Republican opponent, and

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Speaker 1: he wants to beat him, he just screams to the

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Speaker 1: eye heavens, but that person is beyond redemp just terrible

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Speaker 1: in all kinds of ways. Right when he puts out

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Speaker 1: statements about the Santists, they're withering. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: when the Santists punches at Donald Trump, you'll get the

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Speaker 1: New York Post talking about how the gloves are finally

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Speaker 1: coming off. But when you read the actual comments, it's

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Speaker 1: so tame and oblique, and he's just unwilling to confront

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Speaker 1: Donald Trump directly or say anything really very critical about him.

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Speaker 1: And it's hard to see how that's gonna lead him

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Speaker 1: to the nomination. Unlast, like Donald Trump gets in prisoned

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Speaker 1: or something. I even think Donald Trump running from prison

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Speaker 1: could probably still beat Roun de Santis. I don't want

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Speaker 1: to say this again because the last time I said this,

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Speaker 1: I got in trouble with actual members of the Dacaucus family.

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Speaker 1: And look, there are a lot of great things about

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Speaker 1: Decacus but he was not a brilliant political strategist, and

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Speaker 1: he also had a very sort of slightly run to santasy. Look,

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Speaker 1: there's a line from the tank image of Dacocus to

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Speaker 1: John Kerry saying reporting for duty and saluting at the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and four convention to meet ball Ron pretend

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Speaker 1: to flying in a plane and acting like he's top

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Speaker 1: gun Maverick. It's all one piece, right, and it's really corny.

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Speaker 1: And people think think that people like that are dorks

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Speaker 1: and don't like them, right, And I mean I think

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Speaker 1: also like there's a real disconnect here between what Americans

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Speaker 1: have since in my incredibly long lifetime, because I'm incredibly old,

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Speaker 1: I have always elected charismatic leaders, often to their detriment, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, look, how many times do I remember people

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Speaker 1: being like, you can't elect this guy. With the exception

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Speaker 1: of WA's dad, I think largely Republicans, Democrats, everyone has

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Speaker 1: elected people they find charismatic. I think that's right. I

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Speaker 1: mean I think that at least in my also too

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Speaker 1: long of a lifetime, every presidential election has been won

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Speaker 1: by the more charismatic of the two candidas. And I

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Speaker 1: feel like every time I end up in a conversation

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Speaker 1: about this, some part of the Rick gets upset because

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Speaker 1: they liked the losing candidate, and in their mind there

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Speaker 1: was some element. You know, it's not like Hillary Clinton

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Speaker 1: lacks all charm in certain context, She's very charming. She

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Speaker 1: doesn't attract cameras the way Donald Trump does, obviously, right,

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Speaker 1: And I think it's the same thing was true between

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Speaker 1: Gore and Bush, and the same thing was true between

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Speaker 1: the first Bush and Clinton. And if it weren't for

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Speaker 1: the fact that Donald Trump had gotten hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of Americans killed and sank the economy in his last

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Speaker 1: year in office, I think Joe Biden would have had

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Speaker 1: a hard time beating him for the same reason. Even

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Speaker 1: though Joe Biden has a sort of like I grew

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Speaker 1: up in the nineteen fifties, like oh shucks, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: beat up the bullies persona, he doesn't command the cameras

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Speaker 1: the way Trump does, and I think absent those sort

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Speaker 1: of extraordinary circumstances, he might have lost two. And you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not like he won by a huge landslide either.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the only reason this is relevant is that

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Speaker 1: it looks like they're heading towards a rematch. But I

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Speaker 1: think with Biden there was a sense that they found

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Speaker 1: the kind least, you know, they found a Democrat who

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Speaker 1: could be palatable to a wide range of Republicans. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: I've been on television panels where people were conservatives have

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Speaker 1: said Joe Biden is a socialist, but they get laughed

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Speaker 1: off the panel because the guy is like the most

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Speaker 1: centrist guy on the entire phase of the earth. So

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Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, he's a white guy. I

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Speaker 1: mean he reads like old white guy, which you know,

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Speaker 1: I think to a certain I mean, there was a

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Speaker 1: certain sense. And again who knows if this is real

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Speaker 1: or if this was imagined. In the mind of many

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Speaker 1: of Democrats, including myself, was this sense that like America

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Speaker 1: was not ready to elect a woman, they really, you know,

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Speaker 1: for whatever reason, they needed an old white guy, and

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Speaker 1: we found them an old white guy. Biden has a

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Speaker 1: couple of assets, and you alluded to one of them,

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Speaker 1: I think, I mean, on top of being an old

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Speaker 1: white guy. The Santis said something really strange the other day,

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Speaker 1: or wrote something really strange where he said, geographically, I'm

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Speaker 1: from Tallahassee, but spirit I come from the Midwalk, come

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Speaker 1: from the Ohio, Pennsylvania partment, you know what I mean,

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Speaker 1: states that I need to win, Yeah, exactly. And the

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Speaker 1: and the and the thing is that Joe Biden actually

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Speaker 1: does right, like that's his actual heritage. And then the

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Speaker 1: other thing he's got going for him is this is

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Speaker 1: Biden I'm talking about again, is that something like fifty

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Speaker 1: five to sixty percent of the country just absolutely despised

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Speaker 1: Donald trum like they are. I mean, that faction has

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Speaker 1: been there since about twenty fifteen, and everything about his

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Speaker 1: presidency just intensified that distastet antimpathy. And it's really hard

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Speaker 1: for somebody who has to work with a maximum of

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Speaker 1: forty or forty five percent of the electorate to win

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Speaker 1: an election. Naturally, even with the electoral college, it can

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Speaker 1: be done. And that's why it's a it's still a

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Speaker 1: scary situation. But he's so toxic for so many reasons

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Speaker 1: that even Joe Biden, you know, with some of the

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Speaker 1: challenges he will have going into reelection, he'll be an

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Speaker 1: incumbent running against somebody who's widely, widely loathed in the country,

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Speaker 1: and that's our hope. Yeah, exactly. But it is a

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Speaker 1: totally fascinating phenomenon So first, let's talk about this. And

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Speaker 1: I wrote about this this I'm going to get jailed

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Speaker 1: and perp walked news cycle that has yet to materialize, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy. Look, I know there were machinations

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Speaker 1: from Alvin Bragg's office, and he did go on television

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Speaker 1: and say but ultimately that was it, right, I mean largely,

424
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 1: And even like two hours after Trump went on the

425
00:23:39,000 --> 00:23:43,080
Speaker 1: ironically named truth social his spokesman was like, he's not

426
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:46,160
Speaker 1: really going on anything. Yeah, I mean, I still don't

427
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: know what happened, and I'm not sure we ever will.

428
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:52,720
Speaker 1: There are definitely ways that Donald Trump could have gotten

429
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:54,879
Speaker 1: wind of a looming indictment, even if he got the

430
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: date wrong, right. Like, one thing that they did that

431
00:23:57,160 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: was suspicious to me is they immediately started hinting the

432
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 1: quote unquote news that he was going to be indicted

433
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:06,840
Speaker 1: to an illegal leak from the grand jury, And just

434
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 1: knowing the way that faction operates is that when they

435
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: say something like that, they're projecting. And so there could

436
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,680
Speaker 1: be a grand juror who got word to them that

437
00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: an indictment is indeed coming. It could have been communication

438
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 1: between the prosecutor's office and Trump's legal team to tell

439
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:25,560
Speaker 1: him to be prepared for this in the coming several

440
00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:27,440
Speaker 1: days or something like that, and then in the game

441
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:29,920
Speaker 1: of operator Trump turned it into Tuesday, I'm going to

442
00:24:29,960 --> 00:24:32,440
Speaker 1: get arrested. It hasn't happened, and maybe it won't, and

443
00:24:32,840 --> 00:24:36,160
Speaker 1: if it doesn't, we're going to be left to wonder

444
00:24:36,240 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: unless Alvin Bragg speaks up and explains himself whether Trump

445
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: successfully intimidated his way out of an indictment, because ever

446
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: since he said that, he's been essentially trying to incite

447
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 1: the same kind of violence we saw in January six,

448
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, against Alvin Bragg and the Manhattan Prosecutor's office.

449
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: So there have been death threats and you know, a

450
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: fake anthrax scare or some sort of poison powder scare,

451
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,320
Speaker 1: or they've had to erect security fencing around it. Trump

452
00:25:03,440 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: has threatened blood in the streets if he's indicted, and

453
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: he then held a rally in Waco, Texas, which is

454
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:14,240
Speaker 1: sort of like waving red flag in front of the

455
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:19,000
Speaker 1: bull of militia type Trump supporters who would happily take

456
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 1: up arms to defend him if they could. There's this

457
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,240
Speaker 1: ridiculous aspect to it, like there always is with Trump

458
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: just camp and just bullshit, and we can kind of

459
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:32,040
Speaker 1: laugh about it and misspellings in his truth social pseudo tweets,

460
00:25:32,160 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: and then there's this like undercurrent of real menace. And

461
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 1: it's a little bit dispiriting that I think that we're

462
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:40,800
Speaker 1: treating it as all kind of like, let's roll our

463
00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:44,400
Speaker 1: eyes at Donald Trump for being a clown again, instead

464
00:25:44,480 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: of sort of preparing for the kind of public resistance

465
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: push that you see happening like in Israel right now.

466
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 1: When there's like a frontal direct threat to rule of

467
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: law in other countries, there's an immediate backlash. And I

468
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 1: think that we're so sensitized to Trump behaving this way

469
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,719
Speaker 1: that we no longer interpreted as a literal direct threat

470
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,120
Speaker 1: to our ability as a people to hold correct public

471
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: officials accountable for anything. It's a problem. The one thing

472
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: I will push back on here, and I think you're

473
00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,520
Speaker 1: certainly right, is that Trump is a real threat democracy.

474
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 1: Is that I truly believe Ron de Santis is a

475
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: bigger threat to democracy. I mean, look, the Republican Party

476
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: is not a party of democracy anymore. We had somebody

477
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: on the podcast recently who talked about going to a

478
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,400
Speaker 1: federalist society event where the federalist society is not completely

479
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: sold on democracy anymore. You know, you're seeing this again

480
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: and again. Republican electeds. They want they want public schools gone,

481
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 1: they want they want government gone. This world that we've

482
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: been in all this time of democracy and government, they've

483
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: kind of turned against it. So in my mind, the

484
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:53,680
Speaker 1: only good news here is that they're going to nominate Trump,

485
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:56,960
Speaker 1: because I think that DeSantis is a much scarier candidate.

486
00:26:57,160 --> 00:26:59,120
Speaker 1: I go back and for I mean, I'm not sure

487
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:01,879
Speaker 1: I agree or know who'd be worse. De Santis is

488
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: competent in a way that Trump is absolutely not. Well,

489
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:08,119
Speaker 1: so what is true is that Donald Trump, I don't think,

490
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:12,080
Speaker 1: is any more philosophically supportive of or opposed to democracy

491
00:27:12,160 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: than he is anything else. Right, whatever the principle is,

492
00:27:15,119 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: as soon as it stands in the way of his

493
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: power and his wealth, it's got to go. And for

494
00:27:18,600 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: the last seven years that principle has been democratic forces

495
00:27:22,200 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: that don't want him to be in charge, or that

496
00:27:24,600 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: if he is in charge, you're going to push back

497
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: on the kinds of things he wants to do. Round

498
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: de Santis, if you read his first book, he is

499
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:33,159
Speaker 1: philosophically opposed to democracy the way a lot of right

500
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,680
Speaker 1: wing libertarians are, in that he thinks that when people

501
00:27:36,760 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: have the power to elect representatives, and those representatives have

502
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 1: the power through bare majorities, to pass laws and to govern,

503
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be too much distribution of wealth down

504
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: the income scale, and that's a huge injustice, and so

505
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 1: we need to have less democracy to prevent that from happening.

506
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:55,960
Speaker 1: And you can see in the way he governs Florida

507
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 1: that when he has power and consolidated power with the

508
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: loyal legislature, he can backslide democracy really fast. Yeah, so

509
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:07,800
Speaker 1: isn't that worse. On the one hand, if you if

510
00:28:07,800 --> 00:28:11,160
Speaker 1: you just look at like what Trump and DeSantis did

511
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:14,040
Speaker 1: around elections or whatever. Donald Trump are in this sort

512
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,560
Speaker 1: of clown judicial farce trying to get an election overturned.

513
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: Ron status actually put citizens who live in Florida in

514
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: jail for voting. When the law was uncleared, they were

515
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: totally were allowed to vote, and he set up a

516
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: whole unit to go hunt them down and turn them

517
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: into scapegoats. I don't think Trump ever did that. On

518
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: the other hand, Trump did jail and separate families at

519
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,000
Speaker 1: the border, even though in the borders I could, yeah,

520
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: but de Santis would have done that too. I mean,

521
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,880
Speaker 1: bad to immigrants is the brand. I think DeSantis is

522
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: scarier to the extent that he's scary. It's that he's

523
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: just less easily distracted. He speaks the language of official Republicanism,

524
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,080
Speaker 1: so they will do what he wants. And you could

525
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:56,360
Speaker 1: imagine him if he were to come into power with

526
00:28:56,440 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: a trifect of being worse than Trump. But Trump just

527
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 1: makes people ruler. He makes people nasty in a way

528
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: that has these sort of unintended and hard to define consequences,

529
00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 1: Like American society is a meaner place now than it

530
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 1: was in twenty fifteen. And I don't know if DeSantis

531
00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:15,440
Speaker 1: has the power to galvanize people in that way, right,

532
00:29:15,560 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 1: I mean, he's maybe not as popular, I would say.

533
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: The one thing that really strikes me. You know, I've

534
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: had Sarah Longwell on this podcast, and she made the

535
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: argument that by reelecting Trump, that that act is so

536
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: incredibly i want to say, perverse, and such an affront

537
00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: to democracy that by doing that, you have actually lessened

538
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: the power of the American government, and you have you

539
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: stuck your finger in the eye of the American system,

540
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: and I think that that percentage of the base that

541
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: has taken over the party doesn't necessarily think about the

542
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: consequences of democracy. They just like their guy. So here

543
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: is the word enervating. I think that if Donald Trump

544
00:29:58,320 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 1: would win again, particularly if he were to win again

545
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: without a popular vote majority, there would not be a

546
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:10,240
Speaker 1: second resistance movement like we saw take shape in early

547
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:14,960
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen or late twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, just because

548
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: I think that once the shock of it wore off,

549
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: the fact that this we would be living through a repeat,

550
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 1: that people could do everything right in the face of

551
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: a threat to civic life in America, like Donald Trump

552
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: beat him twice in the popular vote, only for him

553
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: to get elected twice. I guess he beat him three

554
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: times in the popular vote, but still he got elected twice.

555
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: That people would feel like rallying in the streets and

556
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: striking and using whatever power they have as a collected

557
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: mass just wasn't worth it. It didn't wouldn't do anything,

558
00:30:52,880 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: And I'd sort of worry about what like reconstituted Republican

559
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 1: majority could get away with in a climate where people

560
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: who have been exhausting themselves for the last seven years

561
00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 1: trying to push back on authoritarian authoritarianism in the US

562
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: just kind of said enough, like we tried, and the

563
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,120
Speaker 1: system is just set up for us to fail. Yeah,

564
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think people will be furious. Oh,

565
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: I agree, they'd be furious. I just don't know that

566
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 1: if we'd see like a mass repeat of you know,

567
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 1: when everyone was sort of taken by surprise, I mean,

568
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 1: who knows. And hopefully we'll never get there. But I

569
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: do think, I mean, we are all hostage to this

570
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: Republican Party's base, which is It's funny because it's like

571
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 1: from someone who came from such a liberal family, and

572
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 1: you know, I had this communist grandfather who would always say, like,

573
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: you know, it's the Koch brothers who are cooking the

574
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,800
Speaker 1: books and cooking the elections, and they're you know, the

575
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 1: Bushes and the Koch brothers, and they are out of

576
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 1: power in a certain way. It's true. Look, I'd love

577
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: to be wrong that there's a chance that Trump becomes

578
00:31:50,640 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: president again. If I'm not wrong about that, I'd love

579
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:55,600
Speaker 1: to be wrong that he would not be met with

580
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 1: such fierce pushback as he was when he won the

581
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,080
Speaker 1: first time. As you said, hopefully we'll never live to

582
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:02,360
Speaker 1: see either of those things. But I do worry. I mean,

583
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: I think that there's a lot of people out there

584
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 1: watching Trump not get charged with crimes he committed around

585
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: the election stealing classified documents. He got away with shaking

586
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: down Ukraine, he got away with cooperating with Russia in

587
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen election. And the one thing he didn't

588
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: get away with was stealing the election. But he tried,

589
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,600
Speaker 1: and he's not being charged for that either. And so

590
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: it's just like what good is showing up in the

591
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 1: street and like making our opposition to what he's up

592
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: to heard, when at the end of the day, it

593
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 1: doesn't actually work. Thank you, Brian, all right, thank you

594
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Alyssa Court is the executive

595
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 1: director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the author

596
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 1: of Bootstraft, Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream Welcome Too

597
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Alyssa Court. Oh, thank you very much. Molly.

598
00:32:56,720 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: I want to call you Malls. You can call me

599
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: whatever you want. A list, okay, our long time friends.

600
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you first, tell us

601
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 1: what the name of it. I don't want to Butcher

602
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: the name. This is my first goal, do no evil

603
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: to the English language. So explain to us what your

604
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: organization is called and what it does. Okay, so it's

605
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: called the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. And for a while

606
00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: I was like, we need to call this, you know,

607
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 1: the Opportunity Writing World or something, you know, incredibly optimistic

608
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: neoliberal name. But I actually think it's good that it's

609
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 1: truth in advertising Economic Hardship Reporting Project. It's exactly what

610
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 1: we do. It's a media nonprofit. More than a third

611
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:41,880
Speaker 1: of our contributors are financially struggling, and it was created

612
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,520
Speaker 1: by Barbara raw Reich. The late Great Barbara Erreich just

613
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 1: explained us a little bit. The idea was to like

614
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: get reporting from about economic hardship from people who are

615
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 1: actually experiencing economic hardship. Am I right, Yeah, I mean

616
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:59,960
Speaker 1: some of it is about that by people who work,

617
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 1: does you know, domestic workers and adjuncts and factory workers

618
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 1: and experienced homelessness. Right, So that's by me thirty seven

619
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: percent or so of our contributors, and then the rest

620
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:15,919
Speaker 1: are sort of midlisters, I say, like people who would

621
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 1: otherwise probably be unable to afford to write long form

622
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: journalism about inequality. But other than that, they're you know,

623
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: they've got us sort of middle class journalism, independent journalism

624
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:28,479
Speaker 1: practice going, right. That's like the majority of the people

625
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:30,880
Speaker 1: who write for us, And they also take photos and

626
00:34:30,920 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: they make films and de illustration. So I want to

627
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: ask you a little bit about Barbara Aaron Right, if

628
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: you just want to say like a minute or two

629
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: about Barbara Aaron Right. She just died. She was pretty

630
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 1: much one of the great writers on this topic. Would

631
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 1: you just like give us like a two second for

632
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,360
Speaker 1: those of us who are not completely writ in on

633
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: the history of Barbara Arnwright, a little bit about her legacy. Yeah. So,

634
00:34:56,520 --> 00:35:00,480
Speaker 1: Barbara Aaron Reich wrote twenty one books. She was one

635
00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:05,400
Speaker 1: of the first people to write about did wives and whiches.

636
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 1: She wrote about cancer culture and the way that women's

637
00:35:09,960 --> 00:35:14,280
Speaker 1: illness is commercialized, and she wrote about poverty and labor

638
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:16,279
Speaker 1: and that's what she's most famous for. But she was

639
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:22,240
Speaker 1: really a wild, wonderful mind and reporter and social critic,

640
00:35:22,560 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 1: and I was very close to her. So I was

641
00:35:24,560 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: very sad when she died. And we had worked together

642
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,279
Speaker 1: very closely for almost a decade on this project. Which

643
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 1: is sort of like, if you think of it, like

644
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: the Marshall Project does for the penal system, the prison system,

645
00:35:38,320 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 1: what this Hardship Project does for poverty. I think that's fair, right, yeah,

646
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,279
Speaker 1: completely or inequality, because yeah, in a quantity. The reason

647
00:35:46,280 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 1: I make that distinction is I think we need to

648
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: talk about financial struggle like up and down the gradient.

649
00:35:51,160 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: I mean, not all the way up, but not all

650
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: the up existed for a reason, right, I mean there

651
00:35:56,760 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 1: are people who are financially struggling who are making forty

652
00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in American cities, right right, right, right, No,

653
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. So now I

654
00:36:06,000 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about the book which is

655
00:36:07,440 --> 00:36:11,600
Speaker 1: called Bootstrapped, Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. A little

656
00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 1: bit counterintuitive, right yeah, because I see the American Dream.

657
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 1: First of all, I see it is something is different

658
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: than what is now understood to be the American Dream.

659
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: When it was coined in nineteen thirty one, it meant

660
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:28,160
Speaker 1: something more capacious, it meant something more collective the original

661
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 1: definition of it, and it's become over time. And I

662
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,400
Speaker 1: do this with many different terms that have to do

663
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,280
Speaker 1: with being self made or self actualized in this country,

664
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:41,000
Speaker 1: it's become bastardized. Its meaning has been in since lost,

665
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 1: and it's just all about financial success and gain and

666
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: doing it all on our own. So I'm trying to

667
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,840
Speaker 1: take that back, take the collective meaning of things like

668
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 1: the American dream back. So explained to me a little

669
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 1: bit about what the lie of the American dream is, right, Well,

670
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,320
Speaker 1: the American dream is you're going to be able to

671
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,439
Speaker 1: make it just out of hard work on your own,

672
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,920
Speaker 1: no matter what strata, and you're born to and all

673
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:12,880
Speaker 1: you have to do is you know, nowadays it's hustle

674
00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 1: or rise and grind and your thrive and prosper. And

675
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 1: it's wrong on so many levels. It's wrong in terms of,

676
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: you know, what people know about mobility and what it

677
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 1: takes to survive in terms of medical care and you know,

678
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 1: getting educated. And also it's wrong in terms of the

679
00:37:30,719 --> 00:37:33,040
Speaker 1: fact that we have to do it alone because everything,

680
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: as I write in the book, is everyone and everything

681
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: is dependent on something and someone else. And that's one

682
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:41,760
Speaker 1: of the great ways that the American dream has been distorted.

683
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: That's somehow we're supposed to do this either on our

684
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 1: own or just with our little families without help. I mean,

685
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: in some ways it's not unlike and again this has

686
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:52,839
Speaker 1: been widely made fun of, but it's true. I want

687
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 1: to bring it up because I think it's really, really true.

688
00:37:55,440 --> 00:37:57,800
Speaker 1: You know, Hillary Clinton talking about how it's hard to

689
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: raise a child alone. Yeah, it takes a village. I

690
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:03,759
Speaker 1: was trying with this book, honestly, to find language that

691
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: was less corny, right, you know, I mean I think

692
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: the village. You're like, oh gosh, it's also appropriative. It

693
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:12,239
Speaker 1: been aged well as a phrase, but I think the

694
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,360
Speaker 1: meaning of it aged well. I mean, I think the

695
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: meaning it's more truth than ever. It takes a village,

696
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 1: you know, in the pandemic, we saw that on a

697
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 1: grand scale, right, yeah, I mean that was my thinking

698
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: is like the lie of this is this idea that

699
00:38:26,280 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: a lot of people are self made, when in fact

700
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 1: they come from wealthy families, or not wealthy families, but

701
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,800
Speaker 1: families that were very upper middle class and would basically wealthy.

702
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 1: They came from families where parents were able, where grandparents

703
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: were able to give them money to start their businesses.

704
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: I mean, so many of these stories are like with

705
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,840
Speaker 1: a mere ten thousand dollars loan, and I was able

706
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:49,000
Speaker 1: to you know, and if you think about things like

707
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: that statistic where you see that the average black family

708
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:55,720
Speaker 1: has so much less money on hand than the average

709
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:57,920
Speaker 1: white family, I mean you see the sort of vestiges

710
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 1: of slavery in the To me continuing, yeah, I mean,

711
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 1: fewer than half of the American adults, like something like

712
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,360
Speaker 1: forty seven percent say they have enough emergency funds to

713
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: cover three months of expenses. And that this was in

714
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:14,760
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And the mobility numbers the same as study

715
00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:17,160
Speaker 1: is that you know, you had a ninety two percent

716
00:39:17,280 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: chance if you're born in the forties of sort of

717
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 1: meeting or exceeding your parents earnings and stature, and if

718
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:25,879
Speaker 1: you're born in the eighties, you had a fifty percent chance.

719
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: So just sheer mobility, you know, across it's gone down.

720
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:31,680
Speaker 1: I would love you to just talk a little bit

721
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: about that more because I think that's the largest complaint

722
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: that we see that I certainly see, is this idea

723
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: that you can't move in this world anymore. Yeah, I mean,

724
00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:47,800
Speaker 1: you know, intergenerational mobility is so much greater now in

725
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 1: countries that we would have expected there to be more

726
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,480
Speaker 1: limited mobilic We think of America again, This is part

727
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: of the American dream as a place where you can

728
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,080
Speaker 1: change where you're born, but that doesn't turn out to

729
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: be the k in many instances. And I mean part

730
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:03,920
Speaker 1: of what I tried to do in this book is

731
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:06,359
Speaker 1: also talk to people for whom that was true, because

732
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: I think it's really important for me. It's like real people, right,

733
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: like what's going on, what do they want to be

734
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,360
Speaker 1: and what has held them back? And tell us like

735
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: what their budget is, you know, what's their day like.

736
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: And that to me was it's always helpful to kind

737
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:25,919
Speaker 1: of wrap your arms around what ordinary people's experiences. Yeah,

738
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting. So tell me a little

739
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: bit about that. Yeah, I mean I talk to someone

740
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 1: who had to use a Go fund Me campaign to

741
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: raise money for he had renal failure. He was in dialysis, right,

742
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: And that's a very common story people needing to make

743
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,839
Speaker 1: to raise money for their their medical bills. Right. Yeah,

744
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,080
Speaker 1: it's one of the largest sectors of Go fund Me.

745
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like a go fund me has become

746
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: a social service provider, right, which is totally nuts. This

747
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: guy did this and so he could kind of pay

748
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: for ubers and stuff to get ambulance to get to

749
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: the facility and also to like not only do his

750
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: medical care, but fix his car and pay for help

751
00:41:08,000 --> 00:41:09,919
Speaker 1: pay for the small apartment he and his mother's share,

752
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,839
Speaker 1: and he's on disability. I also talked to another person

753
00:41:12,880 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: who had go fund me to raise money for school

754
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: lunches because extremely poor kids were able to get school

755
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: lunches without this thing called lunch shaming. I don't know

756
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 1: if you've heard about this, where they stamp something on

757
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 1: the kid's hands if their bills are unpaid. But in

758
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:30,719
Speaker 1: this community, these were working class people, so they may

759
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: just the parents may just a little too much for

760
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: the school lunches to be fully subsidized. And so this

761
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: lunch shaming was happening, and this woman is in Montana

762
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 1: had to create a whole go fund me to pay

763
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: for school lunches in her in her district. But you know,

764
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: I hope it isn't just depressing this book Bootstrapped. It's

765
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,800
Speaker 1: it's also filled with stories about people do overcome, but

766
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,399
Speaker 1: they almost always overcome through working with others, Like it's

767
00:41:53,480 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: not just going to be this boot strapping myth that

768
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,359
Speaker 1: that's getting them by, So that that's sort of the point.

769
00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: What would you say, if you were to say that

770
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 1: the sort of secret is here, of like, if you

771
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:08,680
Speaker 1: were to tell us what the lie was, the lie

772
00:42:08,680 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: of the American Dream, what is it? Well, some of

773
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 1: it is in the very origins of the people who

774
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: wrote some of the great texts of the American Dream.

775
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking you're Horatio Alger. Yeah, you've heard the

776
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 1: phrase Horatio Alger story, right, Yeah, explain to us what

777
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 1: that is and who that is and how he's relevant. Yeah,

778
00:42:26,320 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: So Horatio Alger story. I mean, look, Trump talked about

779
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: his father having a Ratio Alger story, like no, but

780
00:42:35,360 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: Michael Moore said, the Ratio Alger story was like the

781
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,520
Speaker 1: drug of our country. You know, people use it casually

782
00:42:41,560 --> 00:42:43,880
Speaker 1: all the time. But when I read the books, I

783
00:42:43,960 --> 00:42:46,600
Speaker 1: saw that the lie there was. First all, the Horatio

784
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: Alger story was always about they were novels. They were

785
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 1: really really bad novels. You wrote over a hundred of them,

786
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: wildly popular, and they always have this like handsome, very

787
00:42:56,200 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: young man, like teenager selling peddling ties or hats or

788
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: like kind of like a stock boy. And then he

789
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 1: always meets of a rich old man. And that is

790
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: the Horatio Alger story. And this rich old man helps him.

791
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: So basically it's a totally homosocial classic story, like it's

792
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: something out of the Victoria novel, except it would be

793
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 1: a marriage, right, or like a rich guy marries because

794
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 1: they can't be honest about the way power works, like

795
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: an old man who's probably whatever quite taken with these teenagers, right,

796
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:30,879
Speaker 1: these real teenagers. Instead, it becomes a story of hard work,

797
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: pluck and luck was the phrase they used. And so

798
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: it's like the Horash Algier story itself was a lie.

799
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 1: And then Horatio Alger was a pedophile, and so you know,

800
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:44,479
Speaker 1: this Horatio Alger prize was something that Clarence Thomas was into.

801
00:43:44,640 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: The Ratio Alger society re again was into it, I mean,

802
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:50,399
Speaker 1: and I was like, do they know that Harrash Alger

803
00:43:50,520 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 1: is a man who has chased out of the church

804
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:57,839
Speaker 1: because a minister for a sailing to boys. Wow? Yeah,

805
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: So the lesson here is if a rich guy is

806
00:44:00,520 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 1: coming to help you, he might have another motive. Yeah.

807
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: Is that fair? That's a fair assumption. Yeah. So your

808
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 1: thesis is that we need to move more towards community

809
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 1: and less towards a strange rich guy who gives you

810
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 1: money and then might want something in return, Yes, exactly,

811
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 1: a strangers guy who gives you money or takes up

812
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:25,840
Speaker 1: your time. We've seen in the last ten years in particular,

813
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:28,440
Speaker 1: where that leads us. How do we as a culture

814
00:44:28,520 --> 00:44:31,560
Speaker 1: start to get healthier. It's funny. A lot of books, right, Molly,

815
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:34,400
Speaker 1: have like chapter at the end where you're like, this

816
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 1: is my solutions chapters. Right. I fell in love with

817
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: these solutions and they became the sort of meat of

818
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:43,320
Speaker 1: the book. And some of them are kind of personal,

819
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 1: like things we can do within ourselves and in our lives.

820
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,399
Speaker 1: Some of them are who we vote forward, who we're

821
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: bringing in as political leaders, and some of them are

822
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: like mutual aid and workers cooperatives and kind of I

823
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,400
Speaker 1: guess spinachy solutions, but they're real. You know, there are

824
00:44:58,520 --> 00:45:00,799
Speaker 1: things that are happening now that are on the rise,

825
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: something called participatory budgeting, where people in cities are now

826
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 1: increasingly citizens increasingly talking about how their local city budgets

827
00:45:09,080 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 1: are spent. And you can do this if you're in

828
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: New York, if in your Seattle, you can join this thing.

829
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:16,960
Speaker 1: It's called PV. And you know, there's found a bunch

830
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 1: of maybe five more of these kind of things, But

831
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: the personal part of it was something that I had

832
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: started trying to do, almost like a mantra, which is

833
00:45:24,719 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: saying who helped me? Who made me who I am?

834
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: What forces have gone into everything, even this book, you know,

835
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 1: And but in my life, like what is helping me?

836
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:36,800
Speaker 1: Instead of being like grateful in this kind of hashtag

837
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: grateful way that doesn't seem to really go anywhere. It

838
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: can be kind of deeply individualistic too. I feel like

839
00:45:43,760 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: attributing is more of an important thing to do in

840
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:49,359
Speaker 1: one's life, right. I think that's a really good point.

841
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, for me, I got sober when

842
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:55,840
Speaker 1: I was nineteen, and one of the things that I

843
00:45:56,640 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: saw in my own life was that you really can't

844
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: get sober with that our community, right, Like I got

845
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 1: to burn a twelve star program, which I continue to

846
00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 1: be in today, an anonymous program, but we won't worry

847
00:46:07,719 --> 00:46:10,479
Speaker 1: about that. I think that there really is a sense

848
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 1: that a lot of the community that saves us is

849
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:17,320
Speaker 1: not part of the American ideology absolutely. I mean, there is,

850
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: of course this alternative American story that does stress community.

851
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: And I mean some of it's related to the church,

852
00:46:23,960 --> 00:46:26,360
Speaker 1: but some of it's think and like barn raising and

853
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: you know that kind of thing. But some of it

854
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: is the history of mutual aid, which you know what

855
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 1: mutual aids are, right, Can you talk about that for

856
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 1: a minute. Sure, So mutual aids, especially during the pandemic,

857
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 1: became really popular. If you live in a city, you

858
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:41,920
Speaker 1: may have seen, you know, or anywhere, you may have

859
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:46,080
Speaker 1: seen signs or like oh, come, you know, bringing groceries

860
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 1: to your elderly neighbor, you know, and people would just

861
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 1: do that, and just many sprouted up, like immediately after

862
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: the lockdown started, and I looked into a few and

863
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: hung out with some of the people who work in

864
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: the global one in my neighborhood. And so that mutual aid, though,

865
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: that structure where people help each other thought a charity

866
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: because maybe it is a little like your twelve step program.

867
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:11,320
Speaker 1: Each person's helping each other, even though it may go

868
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: one way. Mostly where the elderly neighbors are the ones

869
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,239
Speaker 1: mostly being helped supposedly, right, the person who's bringing that

870
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:20,360
Speaker 1: food in those medications or whatever can get that themselves

871
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,279
Speaker 1: too if they need it. So that rearranges charity, so

872
00:47:23,360 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: it's not just like top down where you have some

873
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:31,080
Speaker 1: you know, noddle person benefactor rolling out soup. But you

874
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 1: have people really on the ground helping each other. And

875
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:36,240
Speaker 1: it turned out what I looked into the mutual aids

876
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:38,879
Speaker 1: were popular in the nineteenth century, but it was all

877
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 1: almost on the black community, and that was a history

878
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:43,680
Speaker 1: that I was like, verities to be a hidden figure

879
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,719
Speaker 1: about this, you know, if it had figures seriously, right, Yeah,

880
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:52,239
Speaker 1: this is incredible. They're all over the South and even

881
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 1: in California. I found that really interesting and inspiring and

882
00:47:55,800 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 1: that this was an alternative American dream that again we

883
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:02,960
Speaker 1: fard to little about. Yeah, I'll say, I mean, that's

884
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:07,399
Speaker 1: really interesting. So, Alyssa, if you have one last sort

885
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 1: of line, a sort of selling line for the book,

886
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 1: tell us why people need to read this book? Well,

887
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:17,399
Speaker 1: can I give you two? Yeah, you can give me ten. Yeah,

888
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: all right, Well you can't give me ten, but you

889
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,879
Speaker 1: can give me two. Well, one thing that I'm trying

890
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: to teach people about is what I call the art

891
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 1: of dependence, and that it dependence is something that can

892
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:31,440
Speaker 1: be a craft and a skill and an ability and

893
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,359
Speaker 1: something we should cherish and we shouldn't just be trying

894
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: to be independent all the time and muscling through and

895
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:40,879
Speaker 1: siloed in our families. But that dependence is actually something

896
00:48:40,960 --> 00:48:44,320
Speaker 1: to be honored and dependence pride, if you will. And

897
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: that's kind of the through line of this book, like

898
00:48:46,560 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: let's stop this Horatio Alger story which was allied to

899
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 1: begin with, and you know, let's praise the ways that

900
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: we need help from other people and the ways that

901
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: we give help. So that's one thesis and then the

902
00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 1: others that we have to go into the past to

903
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 1: get to the future. And what I mean by that

904
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 1: is that we actually had, as I said, this alternative

905
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 1: American dream that existed in different forms, that existed in

906
00:49:08,239 --> 00:49:11,000
Speaker 1: these mutual aids and workers' co ops in the black

907
00:49:11,040 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: community in the nineteenth century and some of the early twentieth,

908
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: and then it existed in the Homestead Act in eighteen

909
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: sixty two, which was the biggest land giveaway in American history.

910
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 1: And that is that was a complete kind of moment

911
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:28,600
Speaker 1: of beneficence right from the state and people were getting

912
00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: things for free. Right. People have conveniently forgotten that the

913
00:49:31,360 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: same the same people who are saying, oh, you please

914
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:37,760
Speaker 1: don't get college debt relief right, their families probably benefited

915
00:49:38,040 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 1: from the Homestead act right the GI bill, we're returning

916
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 1: veterans after World War Two would get housing and education. Like,

917
00:49:47,000 --> 00:49:48,359
Speaker 1: I think we need to look to some of these

918
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:53,399
Speaker 1: earlier forms of what the American dream meant and reclaim them. Yeah,

919
00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:57,279
Speaker 1: so interesting, Thank you so much. Let's accord. Oh, you're

920
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:07,720
Speaker 1: so welcome all Molly Jung Fast Jesse Cannon. That Rick Scott,

921
00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: he's still fighting to be the thought leader of the

922
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 1: Republican Party, which you would think would be an easy

923
00:50:12,840 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 1: race to win, but he still fails at it. A

924
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: lot of quotes around thought and leader. This is not

925
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 1: a visual medium, but if there was, if you could

926
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,640
Speaker 1: see me quote treating like mad. Yes, let me just

927
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:30,400
Speaker 1: say Rick Scott wants the death penalty for school shooting

928
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,759
Speaker 1: because how better to prevent killing than with more killing? Yes,

929
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,440
Speaker 1: especially when most of the people who do these shootings

930
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: have a suicide mission and they want to die during

931
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:43,640
Speaker 1: it really is going to help the turret right exactly. Again,

932
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 1: Let's never deal with the AR fifteenth. Let's never deal

933
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: with the gun that's used in all the mass shootings.

934
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 1: Let's deal with everything else. Stupid, but what we should

935
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 1: expect from a politician from the Great State of Florida.

936
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: That's not true. There are some very smart politicians in Florida,

937
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: like our friend Maxwell Frost, friend of the pod, but

938
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:09,920
Speaker 1: dear God, they are not sending their best that Republican Party.

939
00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:14,279
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in

940
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds

941
00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:20,759
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you

942
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend

943
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.