Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: And RFK Junior staged a bike accent that involves a
Speaker 2: dead bear.
Speaker 3: Cub.
Speaker 2: What are we doing here? We have such a great
Speaker 2: show for you today. Pro Publica's Andy Kroll stops by
Speaker 2: to tell us about the latest shady right wing group
Speaker 2: coming up the works You've never heard of before, and
Speaker 2: boy is it's scary. Then we'll talk to former besser
Speaker 2: Norm Eisen about the impact of presidential debates. But first
Speaker 2: we have the host of the Enemy's List, the one,
Speaker 2: the only, the Lincoln Project's own, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson, Molly.
Speaker 3: John Fast, as always a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: I feel like the top line needs to be Joe
Speaker 1: Biden arranged a prisoner swap that was confirmed minutes before
Speaker 1: he dropped out of his re election bid.
Speaker 3: You know, Molly, this to me is the difference between
Speaker 3: serious people and trivial people, between serious people and unseerious people.
Speaker 3: Trump is a fundamentally unseerious person. I think we all
Speaker 3: know that, and Joe Biden is a fundamentally serious person.
Speaker 3: The idea that you were going to have this prisoner
Speaker 3: swap that was kept totally secret, completely on the down low.
Speaker 3: Nobody was leaking it, nobody's bragging about it, nobody was
Speaker 3: talking about it. It was just happening. They just did
Speaker 3: it under the radar screen, just took care of business.
Speaker 3: It reminds me that when you have serious people doing
Speaker 3: serious things, they can really accomplish important stuff. And a
Speaker 3: person like Trump would never have pulled this deal off.
Speaker 3: It would have been too much like what's in it
Speaker 3: for me? What am I getting personally from it? With
Speaker 3: lads to like me? I want him to like me.
Speaker 3: Do you think he thinks I'm cute? You know?
Speaker 1: I also think he might have gotten the deal done,
Speaker 1: but god knows what he would have offered and return.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll give you all of our spies in Russia. Lad,
Speaker 3: it's only fair.
Speaker 4: You were more and more likely you could take you kraying, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well there would always be that, wouldn't it. You know?
Speaker 3: But look, I mean, Molly, I really believe this was
Speaker 3: something that it shows you that Joe Biden is going
Speaker 3: to go down. He may be a one term president,
Speaker 3: He will be remembered as a great one for a
Speaker 3: lot of reasons. This aspect of Joe Biden right now,
Speaker 3: where he gives a damn about his people, he gives
Speaker 3: a damn about the American people. He gives damn about
Speaker 3: the people who were counting on him to spring them
Speaker 3: from a Russian captivity. I keep coming back this, this
Speaker 3: is what a president should do. And I also think
Speaker 3: that it showed some good things about Vice President Harris,
Speaker 3: not just political for the campaign's sake, but as a leader.
Speaker 3: She was also involved in this. She was brought into
Speaker 3: it during the NATO security conference, met with Navalney's widow
Speaker 3: was very moved by it, became fully engaged in the process.
Speaker 3: If anyone here thinks this was not a universally good operation,
Speaker 3: I have news for him. They are mistaken. Delighted by
Speaker 3: the way that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris got to share
Speaker 3: with those families and with America a moment of joy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was really incredibly beautiful and just moving. And his speech,
Speaker 1: Biden's speech, You know, poor Biden has had so many
Speaker 1: you know, for a person with a stutter to have
Speaker 1: every fucking thing he says.
Speaker 4: You know, God, that's gonna sell it's got us suck.
Speaker 1: But that was a really good speech, and it showed
Speaker 1: that he really is in foll command of what he's doing,
Speaker 1: and I really was moved by it. I also was like,
Speaker 1: very happy that you and I have never said that
Speaker 1: Biden should drop out. Now, even though I'm thrilled with
Speaker 1: how this has it's been better than I think any
Speaker 1: of us could ever have dreams. And she is become
Speaker 1: the incredible orator that I had been saying she was
Speaker 1: for the last two years. But I still am grateful
Speaker 1: for his service, and I'm grateful that he was allowed to.
Speaker 4: Come to that decision on his own, and I.
Speaker 1: Am grateful that there were three weeks where he was
Speaker 1: able to really process it and that he didn't drop
Speaker 1: out right after that debate.
Speaker 3: I think the urgency of staying in command of this
Speaker 3: negotiation is the secret piece of the history. Now, this
Speaker 3: explains a lot. It wasn't just Joe Biden being a
Speaker 3: stubborn old coop and saying I'm not laving God dammit.
Speaker 3: It was Joe Biden with an agenda item that required
Speaker 3: presidential leadership at a high level, that required attention and
Speaker 3: focus at a level that only the president was credible
Speaker 3: on and the fact that he did this. I cannot
Speaker 3: express it more fully how impressed I was with how
Speaker 3: solid the negotiations looks like they were, how carefully it
Speaker 3: was crafted, how smart the multilateral diplomacy with multiple foreign
Speaker 3: governments that was required to pull this off. This is
Speaker 3: not trivial. None of this was easy. And there's no
Speaker 3: world where Donald Trump gets this steal done. None, none, whatsoever?
Speaker 1: No none. I think there's no world where Donald Trump
Speaker 1: gets his steal done. And I also think this is NATO.
Speaker 1: This is the power of NATO and two countries working
Speaker 1: together to solve problems and prevent wars. This is the goal, right,
Speaker 1: is to prevent wars, strengthen relationships, have these countries talk
Speaker 1: to each other so things, I mean remember, like so
Speaker 1: that things like World War one never happen.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: The ideas behind NATO that Trump is very cavalier about
Speaker 3: and very dismissive of.
Speaker 1: And Trump's people, every one of Trump's followers, believe in
Speaker 1: this sort of anti right.
Speaker 3: We can do it about ourselves. Merca, Merca, fuck you.
Speaker 4: And you know.
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell gave an interview today to punch Bowl News
Speaker 1: and he was talking about just how dangerous. And again
Speaker 1: I am fan of Mitch McConnell, Nora, are you no,
Speaker 1: I think that's fairy.
Speaker 3: I think that's a that would be an accurate statement.
Speaker 1: As an understatement maybe, but he was talking about how
Speaker 1: dangerous the ethos of this project twenty twenty five trumpy
Speaker 1: view of foreign policy.
Speaker 3: Is the ideas behind twenty twenty five. They were not
Speaker 3: trivial ideas. They were incredibly dangerous ideas. And folks process
Speaker 3: this When you have a person like Mitch McConnell saying, hey,
Speaker 3: not so much on this, not a great plan, you
Speaker 3: should really pay attention. There is like a weird vestigial
Speaker 3: part of Mitch McConnell that I heard out in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere this week, because as Trump has continued to decompensate
Speaker 3: and get crazier and crazier, McConnell is telling his candidates, now,
Speaker 3: if you have to back away from him, back away
Speaker 3: from him, if you have to run away from and
Speaker 3: run away from him. Now. I know that that is
Speaker 3: pissed off Trump, and it is off the Trump.
Speaker 1: Team, and he's going to get a lot of death
Speaker 1: threats from that because that they don't like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, they're out. And I was saying, like,
Speaker 3: you know, we hear one thing about you not being
Speaker 3: loyal to the president, and you're done. It's over. And
Speaker 3: I believe them, you know what, they will They will
Speaker 3: go out. They would rather lose than have Trump feel
Speaker 3: like his little, tiny, delicate feelings are hurt for even
Speaker 3: one second.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, I mean, I just want for
Speaker 1: two seconds, and you and I both agree.
Speaker 4: By the way, we are going on tour, Yes.
Speaker 3: Folks, we're going We're going on tour.
Speaker 1: On tour, and we are going to many many places.
Speaker 3: We are going to so many damn places. It's absurd
Speaker 3: and it's going to be fucking fun. So many activities. Yeah, folks,
Speaker 3: We're going to be going all over the country. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: But so just back to actual normal American life for
Speaker 1: a second. Rass Mutant or as I call them, brass
Speaker 1: Smutan kind of poll that ended up in my group
Speaker 1: chat today that I would like to read to you
Speaker 1: because Rusmuton has blocked me on Twitter.
Speaker 3: Let's not put you find a point on it. They're
Speaker 3: rather trumpy.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're rather trumpy.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty four General election Harris forty seven, Trump forty two,
Speaker 1: and Kennedy six.
Speaker 4: That's three thousand registered voters.
Speaker 3: You know, Kennedy is dropping off the radar one day
Speaker 3: at a time. Okay, I mean remember this was a
Speaker 3: guy who was at twenty percent for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and now he's at rounding error.
Speaker 4: Well the picture of him eating that's not a.
Speaker 3: Dog, right, It wasn't a dog. It was actually I mean,
Speaker 3: it was actually a goat, which makes it much better.
Speaker 4: By the way, if you.
Speaker 1: Are part of a discourse that involves he was eating
Speaker 1: it wasn't a dog.
Speaker 5: You lose.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, It's like today's discourse with did Trump take
Speaker 3: a ten million dollar bride from the Egyptians? If you're
Speaker 3: debating whether or not you took a ten million dollar
Speaker 3: bride from the Egyptians, you're already losing the discussion.
Speaker 4: But can we have.
Speaker 1: Two seconds on the Egyptian's incredible bipartisanship.
Speaker 4: Way to go.
Speaker 1: Egyptians they bribe both the left.
Speaker 3: And the right and the right. Yep, God bless them.
Speaker 3: They're not shy about it.
Speaker 1: Why are the Egyptians trying to bribe all of our politicians.
Speaker 3: Because they're bribeable.
Speaker 4: That is not a good answer.
Speaker 3: I'm aware that is not an answer that you wanted
Speaker 3: to hear, but that is the answer.
Speaker 1: Why Egypt, Like there are so many countries that it
Speaker 1: would seem.
Speaker 4: Like need more from America than Egypt.
Speaker 3: Do you think Egypt is the only one?
Speaker 4: Right? That's a good point.
Speaker 3: Corruption is an equal opportunity to disease, right. And you know,
Speaker 3: as Robert Menindez just abundantly show. Yeah, and God bless
Speaker 3: many of the Democrats with a certain high level exception
Speaker 3: who basically came out and said, this guy's got a
Speaker 3: fucking go No, we can't have this. If you're debating
Speaker 3: with people like did you take a ten million dollar bribe?
Speaker 3: Did you eat a dog? A sign you are not
Speaker 3: I'm the up end of you're not on the upside
Speaker 3: of the political argument.
Speaker 4: It's really bad.
Speaker 1: I have to say, like things have really degraded in
Speaker 1: this selection cycle. Let's talk about where Trump is right now.
Speaker 1: He still has Chris la Savida, who is supposedly really
Speaker 1: good ran swift Boat Veterans, ruined John Kerry's career, so as.
Speaker 4: A longtime lib I'm not a fan.
Speaker 1: And you have Susie Wiles, who is like kind of
Speaker 1: incredible Florida political operative.
Speaker 3: She's currently spending a lot of her time waging a
Speaker 3: war with Kelly and Conway.
Speaker 1: Explain, and you are in Florida as opposed to me,
Speaker 1: who is not in Florida.
Speaker 3: Thank god, I am the Florida man. All the rumors
Speaker 3: that you're hearing about unhappiness with Jade Vance have been
Speaker 3: really pissing Trump off, Okay, like I mean a lot, okay,
Speaker 3: pissing him off. And Susie Wiles has identified that Kelly
Speaker 3: and Conway is one of the sources of those rumors.
Speaker 4: Oh, and that's why that story leaked.
Speaker 3: That's why that story leaked. And if Susie wants to
Speaker 3: prove me wrong, have at it. Come to Daddy. I
Speaker 3: know the style, and I know who she's talking to,
Speaker 3: and I know the way the story got covered was
Speaker 3: as Susie Wilde special, Chris Losovita is trying to save
Speaker 3: himself because Trump's mad at him. But Chris Lolsovita is
Speaker 3: now out bragging I'm the one who killed Project twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five.
Speaker 4: But it's still going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, our sources said that was a lie. It's still going.
Speaker 3: Chris is swinging at defenses. He's mad because We're running
Speaker 3: an ad right now down in mar A Lago and
Speaker 3: at Bedminster saying to Trump, Wow, you really think that
Speaker 3: Chris Losovita and Susie Wilds are doing a good job
Speaker 3: for you. They helped you pick Jad Evans. He's so
Speaker 3: embarrassing Donald. They keep making mistakes Donald. That's why, of
Speaker 3: course Trump is tweeting that the perverts at the failed
Speaker 3: Lincoln Project are taking me. Yes, I'm you and.
Speaker 1: George Conway have been doing these audience of one ads
Speaker 1: right yep, in order to completely freak out Trump and
Speaker 1: make him lose his mind and lose and it works.
Speaker 1: I was peeking out about something and I'm talking to
Speaker 1: George Conway, and George Conway's like, you know, he's tweeting
Speaker 1: about me and saying terrible things, and I was like,
Speaker 1: how does this not freak you out? I'm like, when
Speaker 1: one person hates me, I believe my life is over.
Speaker 3: I know. But for me and for George, we have
Speaker 3: a certain like political combat sensibility about this guy. I
Speaker 3: always tell people like the Lincoln Project, Wes, we do
Speaker 3: these viral ads, we do these anti Trump ads, and they're
Speaker 3: all fine and good, right, They're exciting people like them
Speaker 3: gets Trump crazy. But every second he's not attacking Kamala Harris,
Speaker 3: he's losing. Every second he's paying attention to me or
Speaker 3: George or anybody else, he's losing that sense of being
Speaker 3: out of control, not having the campaign that he wants.
Speaker 3: We're all building up this matrix of ideas around him
Speaker 3: in his brain that he can't trust anybody, that he's
Speaker 3: got to go out and do his own thing, play
Speaker 3: it his way. For instance, this week at the National
Speaker 3: Association of Black Journalists, he thought, I'm going to go out,
Speaker 3: I'll show those colored people, I'll tell how it's going
Speaker 3: to be. And sure enough, he completely fucked it up.
Speaker 3: And he fucked it up in part because all of
Speaker 3: us were in his brain all week, making him not
Speaker 3: trust the professionals around him, and so now he's panicked.
Speaker 4: There was a scoop from Axios.
Speaker 1: Basically, Trump said that the reason he was thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes late was because the equipment wasn't working on stage, which,
Speaker 1: of course, because I'm a complete moron and don't assume
Speaker 1: that everybody is lying, I have believed. But then just
Speaker 1: now a scoop from Axios yesterday Trump didn't want to
Speaker 1: be fact Check live at the NABJ refusing to go
Speaker 1: on stage, a stalemate so prolonged NABJ leaders were prepping
Speaker 1: a statement to say why.
Speaker 4: Trump wouldn't show yep.
Speaker 1: As ken Lemon was preparing it, Trump walked on stage.
Speaker 3: The idea that it was a technical problem. The minute
Speaker 3: it came out of Trump's mouth as an answer, Paul
Speaker 3: just of Trump, I was like, that is a lie,
Speaker 3: and we all knew it was a lie.
Speaker 4: I was sure it was true.
Speaker 3: Oh god, No. Trump can't stop himself, Molly. Yeah, his
Speaker 3: impulse control is zero. He cannot control himself to take
Speaker 3: the opposite of anything the guy ever says. And this
Speaker 3: was exactly that it was a complete lie. And the
Speaker 3: idea that it was technical problems. You know, they they
Speaker 3: already started, like you could see the look on their
Speaker 3: face when he said it, because they were like, the
Speaker 3: fuck is this right?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Nothing about Trump should ever be taken seriously. It's just
Speaker 3: the way it is. The guy is always going to
Speaker 3: lie because he can't do anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is why autocrats hate journalists so much. Just
Speaker 1: because this was a lie. This journalist from Axios just
Speaker 1: went and talked to the people who run the organization,
Speaker 1: and they were able to explain that that wasn't true.
Speaker 1: And I think that you really do see why there's
Speaker 1: so much hostility and animus towards journalists.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, as Donald Trump has consistently in his entire
Speaker 3: time in public life, not only while when he ran
Speaker 3: for office, but well before, nothing for Trump is real
Speaker 3: unless he makes it so in his head. Nothing for
Speaker 3: Trump is legitimate unless he makes it up and turns
Speaker 3: it into a story about him. And this was a
Speaker 3: really strong case to show that. As much as people
Speaker 3: have always thought a lot of reporters, particularly oh, Trump
Speaker 3: is such a brilliant operator. He's so good on his feet.
Speaker 3: He manipulates everybody. Honestly, that performance was sad. He was
Speaker 3: a broken toy on that stage. He had five or
Speaker 3: six of his little shticky answers he wanted to use,
Speaker 3: and none of them were working. Harris Faulkner may be
Speaker 3: an ally of Trump, but he was on that stage
Speaker 3: embarrassing himself almost from the first moment he walked out.
Speaker 3: You could see it in his body language, this sort
Speaker 3: of like hands between the knees bent over. He was
Speaker 3: not confident, he was not happy, he was not ready
Speaker 3: to go in there and answer questions. None of it.
Speaker 3: The illusion of Trump's keeps getting shattered more and more
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely true.
Speaker 3: Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast, a pleasure as always, and
Speaker 3: I will see you on the road.
Speaker 2: Yes, did you know Bally, John Fast and Rick Wilson
Speaker 2: are heading out on tour together to bring you a
Speaker 2: knight of laughs, to bring some lightness to our dark
Speaker 2: political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth in San
Speaker 2: Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on
Speaker 2: August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we'll hit
Speaker 2: the Midwest at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 2: first of September, and the twenty second we'll be in
Speaker 2: Chicago at City Winery. Then we'll be on the East
Speaker 2: coast September thirtieth, in Boston at the Armory the first
Speaker 2: of October and Philly at City Winery, and then DC
Speaker 2: on the second at the Miracle Theater, with a few
Speaker 2: more dates to come. If you need to laugh as
Speaker 2: we get through this election and hopefully never hear from
Speaker 2: this guy who lives in a golf club again, we
Speaker 2: got you covered. Join us along with some surprise guests
Speaker 2: to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
Speaker 2: this selection season and get the inside analysis of what's
Speaker 2: really going on right now. Buy your tickets now by
Speaker 2: heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as
Speaker 2: Unusual dot bio. Andy Kroll is a reporter at Pro
Speaker 2: public O.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Andy Kroll. I'm Mollie John Fust
Speaker 1: and I run a kennel.
Speaker 6: Happy to be guests here at your beautiful kettle.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: We occasionally interviewed journalists when not running the kennel. Andy,
Speaker 1: You've done such incredible reporting Leonard Leo all of the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court craziness. But now you have found yet another
Speaker 1: Republican secret society discuss.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we just can't get enough of the religious right
Speaker 6: secret donor Shenanigans. Can we glutton for whatever that is?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 6: Our latest story of Pro PUBLICA it's a joint effort
Speaker 6: with myself and Nick Sergey at this website documented. It's
Speaker 6: about a group called called Zicklag. Zicklag is basically trying
Speaker 6: to do for evangelical conservative Christians what the Koch Brothers
Speaker 6: did for, you know, billionaire industrialists who just wanted to
Speaker 6: get rid of government regulation and defeat Obama. This group Zicklag,
Speaker 6: which your listeners probably haven't heard of, because we're kind
Speaker 6: of the first big story about it. They have brought
Speaker 6: together all these ultra wealthy Christian families, some of whom
Speaker 6: folks have probably heard of, the U Line family out
Speaker 6: of Wisconsin, the hobby Lobby family, and the folks actually
Speaker 6: who are the Jockey apparel company. So for all you
Speaker 6: jockey underwear buyers out there, tune in, I guess. So
Speaker 6: we've written about this group that is planning to spend
Speaker 6: more than twelve million dollars at least this year trying
Speaker 6: to help the Republican sile the Ledger, trying to help
Speaker 6: the Trump campaign, and they're doing it with this very
Speaker 6: sort of Christian right, Christian nationalist point of view, where
Speaker 6: basically they think they want to elect Republicans because this
Speaker 6: is how you quote take dominion over the seven Mountains
Speaker 6: of Influence, which is a Christian sort of ideology. Basically
Speaker 6: basically how you take dominion over all the big industries
Speaker 6: that matter at American life. So it's very very modest stuff,
Speaker 6: as you can tell, but it's an interesting project that
Speaker 6: they're doing.
Speaker 1: So first stop and explain to us about and most
Speaker 1: seners of this podcast, if you listen to every episode
Speaker 1: like my dad does, you will know what seventh dominion
Speaker 1: is the call to have in all of this craziness.
Speaker 4: But give us the sort of TLDR on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Hi, Molly's dad.
Speaker 6: So the Seven Mountain Mandate is this way of thinking
Speaker 6: for the Christian right about how do you return the
Speaker 6: country to what they believe is the sort of true
Speaker 6: Christian origin or Christian identity of the United States of America.
Speaker 6: I remember, Christian nationalism at its core is a belief
Speaker 6: that everything should flow downhill from biblical teachings and quote
Speaker 6: unquote biblical truth that if the US becomes a less
Speaker 6: Christian country, it ceases to be a country that the laws,
Speaker 6: the culture, education, and everything about our everyday lives should
Speaker 6: flow from a Christian worldview, that is Christian nationalism. Then
Speaker 6: this Seven Mountain Mandate is this way of trying to
Speaker 6: take that kind of amorphous ideology and put it into action.
Speaker 6: And so the Seven Mountains are these basically stand ins
Speaker 6: for the things that matter in American culture. So we're
Speaker 6: talking about arts and media, education, family, religion, government, business,
Speaker 6: all of the things that shape what American society actually is.
Speaker 6: They want to in this seven Mountain mandate, get Christians
Speaker 6: to the top of the mountain, hence the mountain metaphor,
Speaker 6: and have Christian ideas, Christian teachings. Biblical truth. Again, this
Speaker 6: phrase that keeps coming up in our reporting, dictate what
Speaker 6: education should be and all that.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us what biblical truth means. That's
Speaker 1: like the truth in the Bible, right and not like
Speaker 1: the real truth or like no dinosaurs, just.
Speaker 4: Moses or what.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a little hard to do because you have
Speaker 6: to kind of habit that world view, but basically it is,
Speaker 6: you know, marriage is between a man and a woman,
Speaker 6: and the Ten Commandments is a not just a sort
Speaker 6: of historical artifact in a religious text, but a way
Speaker 6: to very discreetly shape your life. And yes, you start
Speaker 6: to get into things of changing how education is taught.
Speaker 6: You know, talking about evolution versus intelligent design, or you know,
Speaker 6: the sort of biblical story of creation. Imagine all of
Speaker 6: the the stories, all of the lessons of the Bible,
Speaker 6: but applied pretty explicitly to whatever they applied to in
Speaker 6: real life. So, for instance, this group Ziglag we got
Speaker 6: this document that talks about their thirty year vision and
Speaker 6: it breaks out all the things they want to do
Speaker 6: for the different mountains. And so, for instance, in arts
Speaker 6: and entertainment they think that eighty percent of movies coming
Speaker 6: out of Hollywood should be g or PG rated, or
Speaker 6: in education, homeschooling and parochial schools should be the order
Speaker 6: of the day. You can imagine how this biblical truth
Speaker 6: in this seven Mountain ideology lays out in all these
Speaker 6: different ways.
Speaker 3: Those are just a few tastes of it.
Speaker 1: I'm hoping you could explain the connection between Catholicism in
Speaker 1: this group and the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6: There are interesting connections. There are a few beats here.
Speaker 6: So this group Zicklag that we're writing about night, encourage
Speaker 6: all the followers out there to check out our story
Speaker 6: at Republica. They are Evangelical Christians, but their interests aligned
Speaker 6: with the conservative Catholics like Leonard Leo and his milieu
Speaker 6: in a bunch of different ways. So for instance, obviously
Speaker 6: reproductive rights, the lawyers that helped bring the case that
Speaker 6: took down Row were on the one hand, products of
Speaker 6: the Federal Society pipeline that Leonard Leo helped build. But also,
Speaker 6: according to the reporting that we've done, the Zicklag provided
Speaker 6: the Christian group now provided funding, provided sort of strategy,
Speaker 6: gave the lawyers for groups like Lines Defending Freedom and
Speaker 6: First Liberty, these Christian legal advocacy groups that have been
Speaker 6: so influential at the Supreme Court. Likely they gave them
Speaker 6: a place to come together and raise money and plot
Speaker 6: their strategy and so on. So there is an overlap here.
Speaker 6: They're not the same obviously, but they march in lockstep
Speaker 6: on issues like reproductive rights, ending reproductive rights at the
Speaker 6: Court on education.
Speaker 3: You know. Another big one was the case.
Speaker 6: Out of Colorado that struck down non discrimination laws for
Speaker 6: LGBTQ people. That also had its roots in both the
Speaker 6: sort of conservative Catholic legal world and the Ziclag even
Speaker 6: yo Christian world as well.
Speaker 3: They are allies on the.
Speaker 6: Big policy issues that are changing America as we speak
Speaker 6: and affecting millions of people's lives. But they are not
Speaker 6: one and the same. They're kind of part of the
Speaker 6: same larger movement.
Speaker 3: If you will, can.
Speaker 1: You explained to us sort of what this group has planned?
Speaker 4: And also again.
Speaker 1: You know this is like my stupid naivete but how
Speaker 1: do all these people sell them. They're so Christian, they're
Speaker 1: so Catholic, and they're supporting a guy who's a thrice
Speaker 1: married adulterer who paid off an adult film star. I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody ever pauses and is like, perhaps this isn't what
Speaker 1: Jesus wants from us.
Speaker 6: Well, having just spent a week at the Republican Convention,
Speaker 6: I could tell you chapter and verse about that, just
Speaker 6: real quick, what SIG has planned, and then we'll come
Speaker 6: back to that. But so I mentioned the big thirty
Speaker 6: year plan that this Christian group has, but they also
Speaker 6: believe that none of their long term objectives like making
Speaker 6: more movies g rated or making sure that all the
Speaker 6: executives in Hollywood have a biblical focus, these are actual
Speaker 6: things in their thirty year vision. None of that they say,
Speaker 6: can be accomplished if they don't win in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 6: For them, the quote unquote government mountain is sort of
Speaker 6: one that looms over all the others in the selection year.
Speaker 6: And this group has again this thirteen million dollar though
Speaker 6: could possibly grow budget very specifically targeting battleground states and counties,
Speaker 6: try to turn out conservative voters, try to knock more
Speaker 6: than a million people off the voter roles, and I'm
Speaker 6: pretty confident in saying that they're probably not trying to
Speaker 6: knock their own Republican conservative.
Speaker 3: Voters off the roles.
Speaker 6: The catch here, too, is that this group is a
Speaker 6: five HO one C three tax exempt charity. Know that
Speaker 6: sounds wonky, which is wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that may sound wonky.
Speaker 6: Legally to listeners, but this is like what the United
Speaker 6: Way is in the Boys and Girls Club. These groups
Speaker 6: cannot get involved in politics. They're absolutely prohibited, that's the
Speaker 6: language or the irs from getting involved in politics. And yes,
Speaker 6: this group is doing that. All the tax experts we
Speaker 6: interviewed in our story, tax experts are they exist to
Speaker 6: be very circumspects in their conclusions, and for this story,
Speaker 6: they were not circumspect. They were very clear that, I,
Speaker 6: it's not testing the law, it is violating this prohibition.
Speaker 6: So I thought that that was an important part of
Speaker 6: our story. Now, how do these people justify supporting Trump
Speaker 6: means to an end is obviously a big part of it.
Speaker 6: What's really interesting about zik LAG is that the sort
Speaker 6: of main spiritual advisor, or one of the main advisors
Speaker 6: in this group is a guy named Lance Wallnow, if
Speaker 6: you haven't heard of him. You should definitely read up
Speaker 6: on him with a strong cup of coffee. And he
Speaker 6: is the guy in twenty fifteen who's one of the
Speaker 6: first evangelical Christians to endorse Donald Trump when no one
Speaker 6: else would, when the Christian right was like, ah, all
Speaker 6: the things you just said by you the writ's Mary,
Speaker 6: you know, adulterer, porn star, like New York billionaire businessman,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah, Like how could we support this guy?
Speaker 3: Sky?
Speaker 6: Lance wallnow comes up with this idea that Trump is
Speaker 6: a quote unquote modern day Cyrus. If you don't know
Speaker 6: the Cyrus reference, you know Cyrus, I don't know.
Speaker 4: What Cyrus is. Please explain. Actually, I really.
Speaker 1: Don't want you to explain, but I guess for the
Speaker 1: sake of those who have to.
Speaker 3: Gone no, no, no, it's okay.
Speaker 6: I mean, basically, the short answer is that flawed leader
Speaker 6: who we may not agree with, but who will deliver
Speaker 6: us to the Promised Land. That is what Cyrus. I
Speaker 6: mean I'm really summarizing here. Lance Wallow pioneers this idea
Speaker 6: modern day Cyrus, and it catches fire on the Christian
Speaker 6: right and it remains a talking point, a touchstone for
Speaker 6: religious voters in the Republican Party to this day.
Speaker 3: I heard it in Milwaukee.
Speaker 6: I swear people are talking about him as Cyrus, though
Speaker 6: now they're talking about him as a sort of living martyr.
Speaker 6: Of course, because you know, the evil Left or the
Speaker 6: evil whatever tried to assassinate him and he survived thanks
Speaker 6: to the hand of God. So that belief in him
Speaker 6: on the Christian right has just deepened with the assassination attempt.
Speaker 6: But this guy in Ziglag was one of the earliest
Speaker 6: people to give that kind of permission structure, to give
Speaker 6: that language to Christian voters to support Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rip Mike Pence, the evangelical who did it too.
Speaker 4: Well. This money is it's not that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's more money than I have, but it's
Speaker 1: not that much money in the light of like Elon
Speaker 1: Mush giving him forty billion dollars a week or whatever.
Speaker 1: Elon Mush always does what he says he's going to,
Speaker 1: so obviously Trump will.
Speaker 4: Get that money.
Speaker 1: But is the play here to sort of influence certain
Speaker 1: to use that money smartly or what's the play here,
Speaker 1: because that's like Trump's lawyers bills for an app for
Speaker 1: a weekend.
Speaker 6: You know, yeah, totally right, in the context of I
Speaker 6: mean the big money donors on both sides of the aisle.
Speaker 6: Thirteen million dollars is not a whole lot of money,
Speaker 6: but you got to look at how it's being spent.
Speaker 6: So it's being spent in a very very micro targeted way.
Speaker 6: And we're talking about not just focusing on battleground states,
Speaker 6: but battleground county is so Fulton County in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 6: Mayer Copa, the Phoenix area, in and around Philadelphia. These
Speaker 6: are like Clark County, you know, Vegas. These are places
Speaker 6: where again you know, Joe Biden won these counties and
Speaker 6: that's the states and thus the presidency in twenty twenty
Speaker 6: by tens of thousands of votes. So we're not talking
Speaker 6: about a huge swing one way or the other. A
Speaker 6: sizeable amount of money, a few million dollars spent in
Speaker 6: the right way can actually move the needle. And the
Speaker 6: other part of it is they're spending this money not
Speaker 6: on billboards or TV ads or YouTube video preview ads
Speaker 6: where you know you can click past it. They're spending
Speaker 6: this money on mobilizing voters where they know are conservative,
Speaker 6: but you don't maybe vote all that often. These quote
Speaker 6: unquote low propensity voters, and they're spending in more critically, and.
Speaker 4: That's Trump's secret sauce those voters.
Speaker 6: Right exactly, getting these people to come out when Blake
Speaker 6: Masters or whoever else down the ballot can't motivate them.
Speaker 6: But the other key element here is they're spending some
Speaker 6: of this money on laying around with and not turning
Speaker 6: out voters, but knocking people off the roles. All the
Speaker 6: experts I talked to, strategists, et cetera, the lawyers, a
Speaker 6: little bit of money can go a very long way
Speaker 6: in challenging whether people can vote, their registrations, their ability
Speaker 6: to just be on the roles.
Speaker 4: It's cheating. I mean, let's say the truth here. It's cheating.
Speaker 6: You're not competing on the playing field of ideas or candidates.
Speaker 6: You're competing by trying to change the denominator, by trying
Speaker 6: to remove people, challenge their ability to vote. I mean,
Speaker 6: this takes you back to the Jim Crow era. But again,
Speaker 6: it doesn't take a lot of money to have a
Speaker 6: big enough impact that you can start changing how elections
Speaker 6: turn out. When you remove tens of thousands or hundreds
Speaker 6: of thousands of people from.
Speaker 1: The rules, Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, so fuckings Gary,
Speaker 1: So who runs this group and why.
Speaker 6: The group interestingly comes out of Silk Valley. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's a couple of sort of like nineties era Silicon
Speaker 6: Valley investors and VC types who also happened to be
Speaker 6: pretty you know, devout Christian right people, you know, conservative
Speaker 6: Christians in their sort of personal religious beliefs, who have
Speaker 6: just felt that evangelical Christians, in their view, weren't active
Speaker 6: enough in politics and needed to be. And then eventually
Speaker 6: this Ziklag group gets formed because one of these investors,
Speaker 6: a guy named Ken Eldred, again a Silicon Valley type,
Speaker 6: he thinks that wealthy Christians aren't pooling their money enough
Speaker 6: in the way that Democrats are, but even the way
Speaker 6: that the people the Supreme Court apparently not, because he's
Speaker 6: doing this around twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen getting this group
Speaker 6: off the ground. And there's a recording that we got
Speaker 6: our hands on for the story of Charlie Kirk, someone
Speaker 6: who imagine listeners of this podcast will definitely know Turning
Speaker 6: Point USA. He is at one of these Ziglag events
Speaker 6: last year, I believe, and he's basically saying to these
Speaker 6: wealthy Christians in the room. You need to be like
Speaker 6: George Sorols, or you need to be like luring pow jobs.
Speaker 6: You need to be like wealthy liberals who are giving
Speaker 6: billions and billions of dollars. This is the place, sicklag,
Speaker 6: this is the place where you're going to do it.
Speaker 6: And so they want to be the vehicle for those
Speaker 6: billions and evangelical Christian dollars going into politics. But again
Speaker 6: also this whole seven Mountain mandate thing.
Speaker 4: Wild wild stuff. Can you just give me a minute.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Supreme Court and how they feel about all
Speaker 1: the reporting about Clarence Thomas and all the free trips,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 6: I think they see this court as the possibly the
Speaker 6: greatest Supreme Court in their lifetime. This is a court
Speaker 6: that has ruled in favor of conservative Christian plaintiffs.
Speaker 3: Over and over and over again.
Speaker 6: It has obviously struck down Row and has ruled in
Speaker 6: favor of the sports co football coach I think he was,
Speaker 6: who wanted to prey on the high school field. Ruled
Speaker 6: in favor of the cake owner and then the website
Speaker 6: designer Colorado who basically want to have the ability to say, oh,
Speaker 6: you're a trans person. I'm not going to allow you
Speaker 6: to patronize my business. I won't make that cake for you,
Speaker 6: I won't make that website for you. I think they
Speaker 6: see this court as a culmination of decades of work
Speaker 6: on their part, of activism, of kind of intellectual churn,
Speaker 6: getting the right people in the right place to elevate
Speaker 6: them to the court. In fact, ZIKLAG, in its own
Speaker 6: sort of internal documents, says that it played an instrumental
Speaker 6: role getting Amy Coney Barrett on the bench, helping elevate her,
Speaker 6: nominate her, get her through the confirmation, then get her
Speaker 6: on the court, and so that move, coming right at
Speaker 6: the end of Trump's presidency, I think was really a
Speaker 6: crowding moment for them. If they see the reporting that
Speaker 6: we've done about Justices Thomas and Alito in the late Antoniscalie,
Speaker 6: I mean, from what I've seen, what I've heard, you know,
Speaker 6: they see this reporting as trying to delegitimize the court
Speaker 6: in some way, or a kind of ad hominem attack
Speaker 6: on the justices because we somehow disagree with their rulings.
Speaker 6: None of that, of course, is even remotely true. The
Speaker 6: reporting speaks for itself. Justice Thomas, these trips you know,
Speaker 6: totally like I think this latest Senate report, the value
Speaker 6: of the trips here totals millions of dollars that he's
Speaker 6: received over the years from the businessman Harlan Crow and others.
Speaker 6: So they've kind of reached for straws to try to
Speaker 6: undermine the reporting. But I honestly don't think any of
Speaker 6: that has really sunk in with the larger public. Larger
Speaker 6: public sees it for what it is, a justice who's
Speaker 6: supposed to be a disclosing and not indulging in these
Speaker 6: kind of free goodies instead doing the opposite over a
Speaker 6: period of decades.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank.
Speaker 3: You, thank you, pleasure as always. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed with iHeart to make a
Speaker 1: limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five would be for America's future right now.
Speaker 1: The first four episodes, with the final episode coming next week,
Speaker 1: are available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five on YouTube. If you are thinking you are
Speaker 1: more of a podcast person and not a YouTuber. You
Speaker 1: can hit play when you get to the video, put
Speaker 1: the phone on lockscreen and it will play back. New
Speaker 1: episodes are dropping in the next week as well. We
Speaker 1: need to educate America on what Trump's second term would
Speaker 1: do to this country. Please watch and help us spread
Speaker 1: the word.
Speaker 2: Normaisen As a former investador to the Czech Republican for
Speaker 2: Deputy Council to President Barack Obama.
Speaker 4: Welcome Too Fast Politics normalizen.
Speaker 5: Molly jog Path. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Well, very excited to have you. It's such a weird new.
Speaker 1: World that we are in right now, but it does
Speaker 1: feel like a completely different Democratic Party in three days,
Speaker 1: for four.
Speaker 5: Days or whatever. As you know, my entree from being
Speaker 5: a run of the mill law firm partner and campaign
Speaker 5: lawyer every presidential cycle to being invited onto Molly's podcast.
Speaker 5: My pivot point in my life was when my law
Speaker 5: school classmate and friend, Barack Obama called me and said, Hey,
Speaker 5: I'm going to run for president. Are you in?
Speaker 4: What'd you say?
Speaker 5: What I actually said to him at some point, I
Speaker 5: don't know if it was the first conversation. I was like,
Speaker 5: you know, this is kind of a suicide mission because
Speaker 5: Hillary has sort of locked everything up, but of course
Speaker 5: I'm in.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 5: Those conversations blur together a little bit in the early days,
Speaker 5: so I was all in. I aggravated my Hillary friends.
Speaker 5: But the reason I was in. Look, I've known the
Speaker 5: guy since nineteen eighty eight, since our first year at
Speaker 5: Harvard Law School, and I've loved him since then. I
Speaker 5: always liked to joke with Baraka. You wanted to hate
Speaker 5: the guy because he was so smart, so good looking,
Speaker 5: such a good basketball player, but you couldn't because he
Speaker 5: was so terrific. And that energy and excitement is what
Speaker 5: I have been feeling for the first time since those
Speaker 5: Obama days. Like I was in des Moines, That's when
Speaker 5: I met Kamala Harris, going door to door with her
Speaker 5: family des Moines, the snows of des Moines, Iowa in
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven, with the step kids. I don't
Speaker 5: think the kids are.
Speaker 3: Dug We're there.
Speaker 5: Was Kamala, it was her sister Maya, was her brother
Speaker 5: in law Tony. Those are the three I remember from
Speaker 5: Team Kamala at those early like Obama des Moines, like
Speaker 5: we were totally bedraggled. All of us are going door
Speaker 5: to door and then we'd have dinner together, and I
Speaker 5: knew Tony already and Maya. They're like, hey, this is
Speaker 5: Maya's sister, Kamala. This is two thousand and seven.
Speaker 4: So she was attorneys general or she was DA.
Speaker 5: No, this was before she was AG. This was when
Speaker 5: she was a DA. She was the DA in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: That's the excitement. To answer your question. I know it's
Speaker 5: only a few days, it's only since Saturday. It's not
Speaker 5: you know, it's five days. But oh my fucking heavans.
Speaker 5: It is a surge of excitement. You know. We had
Speaker 5: a call last night of all the original Obama adopters,
Speaker 5: like they were in they were helping. After the debate,
Speaker 5: after Jeane twenty seventh, We're like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 5: probably gonna lose it. Just it's like it is the
Speaker 5: end of the world if Trump wins. It's not a
Speaker 5: Trump specific thing. I am not a never Trumper. I
Speaker 5: worked on his transition for God's sakes, right.
Speaker 1: But the Supreme Court has laid the groundwork to give
Speaker 1: Trump even more power.
Speaker 5: It was immediately apparent when he said he's gonna take
Speaker 5: constitutionally forbidden foreign government cash emoguments like it's been clear
Speaker 5: for years that the guys fraudster, a criminal look crooked
Speaker 5: thirty four times convicted for what Molly twenty sixteen election
Speaker 5: tampering and twenty seventeen cover up. Saturday morning, I got
Speaker 5: up and we were looking at a very high risk
Speaker 5: of the end of the American experiment of a dictatorship
Speaker 5: Victor Warbon or the worst dictatorship in America. Dunday morning,
Speaker 5: I got up and it was a new ope. I'm
Speaker 5: a star wars nerd it was a new ope. So
Speaker 5: I think it's like those Obama That's the feeling I
Speaker 5: have and the organizing that's happening thousands of people I'm
Speaker 5: talking to, like everyone I know, is so terrific.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Obama coalition is all in for the vice president.
Speaker 5: Yes, we are all in. We were in. I guess
Speaker 5: all in is a bit much. We were in, and
Speaker 5: some of us were all in. Some of my Obama
Speaker 5: friends were doing everything they could for Biden. You know,
Speaker 5: I have some limitations. I can't formally affiliate with the
Speaker 5: campaign because of some of the places that I work.
Speaker 5: But I can write a check.
Speaker 3: I can.
Speaker 5: You know, there's certain things I can do I'm not hiding,
Speaker 5: which candidate I support. I've been very outspoken. I can
Speaker 5: do policy stuff, but I felt a surge like I'm
Speaker 5: going to do everything in my power that I'm allowed
Speaker 5: to to every waking minute. It's not just a pro
Speaker 5: Kommala knowna forever. I love her. I know Doug. I
Speaker 5: met him.
Speaker 3: He's terrific.
Speaker 4: Everybody loves Doug.
Speaker 5: That's why he's a wonderful second gentleman. It's not just
Speaker 5: that I know them, it's they are wonderful. They have
Speaker 5: a lot of energy, they have a lot of youth
Speaker 5: that they bring to it. But it's that there's all
Speaker 5: for democracy. We've gotten from age, an age versus autocracy
Speaker 5: referendum in twenty twenty four, where you know, age was
Speaker 5: looking like it was going to be the winning issue.
Speaker 5: Trump is also old, and he's nuts, and he's a dictator.
Speaker 5: He's a self confessed want to be dictator and a liar.
Speaker 5: Like his performance was worse than Biden on June twenty seventh.
Speaker 5: Everything was a lie, but Age that bucket was winning
Speaker 5: out over autocracy. Now it's a referendum on freedom versus dictatorship,
Speaker 5: on dictatorship versus democracy. I think freedom and democracy are
Speaker 5: going to beat out dictatorship an autocracy, and that's the
Speaker 5: excitement is about there's hope for America again. I called
Speaker 5: bullshit on JD Vance when he says, Oh, calling Trump
Speaker 5: out as an autocrat created the climate of violence for
Speaker 5: the shooting. Trump created a climate of violence. And We're
Speaker 5: not going to be silenced JD You Project twenty twenty five, Accoalt,
Speaker 5: We're not going to be silenced by you in saying
Speaker 5: American democracies on the line.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about is you are the ethics czar under Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: and you had a line, and maybe you didn't really
Speaker 1: say this, but your line was, if it sounds fun,
Speaker 1: you can't.
Speaker 5: Go It's in Barock's book. The exact line is, if
Speaker 5: it sounds fun, you can't do it. Yeah, and he
Speaker 5: writes he has a whole section of his book because
Speaker 5: he's proud of it. And I'm proud of it, and
Speaker 5: every Obama person is proud of it. And Kamala, by
Speaker 5: the way, Kamala and Doug have been very good at this.
Speaker 5: Doug quit his law firm. He's not like Trump. It's
Speaker 5: not like Trump keeping his businesses. Obama I wouldn't even
Speaker 5: let as ethics are, I wouldn't even let him have
Speaker 5: an investment. He had to just invest in diverse bied
Speaker 5: mutual funds, right, which is.
Speaker 1: What Kamala and Doug him too. They just have mutual funds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what we've seen from Trump and Trump world is
Speaker 5: so ridiculous. The first thing they did when they got
Speaker 5: in office was changed that ethics agreement that Obama and I.
Speaker 5: Obama wrote the thing with me, everybody had decided I'm
Speaker 5: illegally binding ethics agreement when you came in the Obama
Speaker 5: administration one page declaration of you know, you won't take gifts,
Speaker 5: you won't own businesses, such no conflicts. So Obama's very
Speaker 5: proud of this. He writes in his book that one
Speaker 5: of the real accomplishments was eight years no scandals.
Speaker 4: Well except for the Tan suit.
Speaker 5: The Tan suit that was the worst scandal. Unlike Trump,
Speaker 5: we didn't have to parton a bunch of White House
Speaker 5: campaign and finance bundlers who were associated with us. We
Speaker 5: didn't have any Special Council investigations, we didn't have prosecutions,
Speaker 5: we didn't have convictions.
Speaker 4: But what about impeachments?
Speaker 5: There were no impeachments. I mean the contrast between probably
Speaker 5: the most corrupt president in American history. That's one of
Speaker 5: the reasons they rate Trump worse and Obama. And now
Speaker 5: Kamala is a similar person. She's a prosecutor taking on
Speaker 5: a perpetrator. And that's true in ethics too. I was
Speaker 5: the impeachment prosecutor. My other nicknames were mister No and
Speaker 5: the fun sponge, not just the ethics are like, I
Speaker 5: know a straight shooter when I see one. That's Kamala.
Speaker 5: There's no issues about this with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's talk about the way that Obama won
Speaker 1: and how that was different than the way that Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton lost.
Speaker 4: Was there a campaigning difference too.
Speaker 5: In the Obama Hillary campaign. Yeah, yes, but actually people
Speaker 5: forget this. They don't talk about this. We had a
Speaker 5: surge of energy. Like I was there with Obama from
Speaker 5: the very beginning the whole campaign. Molly was a little
Speaker 5: bullpen of like a small room above the subway shop.
Speaker 5: That's how the campaign started, above the subway shop on
Speaker 5: Capitol Ale, so Senator Obama could get there or it
Speaker 5: was like four walls like a studio apartment, and there
Speaker 5: was a long trestle table on each wall with computers,
Speaker 5: and that was where the pluffs and the axle rods
Speaker 5: and the early campaign people would sit and work when
Speaker 5: we were just starting up the campaign. And then there
Speaker 5: was a little side room which was actually a storage room,
Speaker 5: and we had shelves in that storage room of Obama's
Speaker 5: books and a small table like a small dining table,
Speaker 5: and that's where Obama candidate. Obama would have his meetings
Speaker 5: like and I would bring my friends, policy friends, finance friends,
Speaker 5: whatever to come and sit in the room, and Obama
Speaker 5: would talk to him, give him a book. And two
Speaker 5: thousand and seven was after a big surge of energy.
Speaker 5: At the beginning of the year was flat. Obama would
Speaker 5: go to these candidate events and he'd be debating Hillary
Speaker 5: or speaking after Hillary, and they were not uniform and
Speaker 5: Hillary was actually after an Obama surge. At the beginning,
Speaker 5: Hillary was ahead in a critical polling, including in Iowa.
Speaker 5: Iowa was huge for us. We had to win Iowa.
Speaker 5: I guess we could have won Iowa or New Hampshire,
Speaker 5: but Iowa was big, big, big, and if we'd lost
Speaker 5: Iowa and then lost New Hampshire would have been game over.
Speaker 5: We had a meeting in des Moine of the top
Speaker 5: campaign staff, the finance committee, and a candidate in October
Speaker 5: I think late in October of two thousand and seven,
Speaker 5: just a couple months before the Iowa caucus since January
Speaker 5: two thousand and eight, and the Des Moines Register poll
Speaker 5: came out that day and Obama was well behind Hillary
Speaker 5: and that's the definitive poll in Iowa. And he spoke
Speaker 5: to us, all we had a bunch of meetings and
Speaker 5: like people were wringing their hands, and Larry David he
Speaker 5: wasn't there. But I don't know if I've ever told
Speaker 5: this story on a podcast because it's such a Larry
Speaker 5: David herb story. He's like, I thought I was getting
Speaker 5: chocolate ice cream with Obama Rocky Road with everything in it,
Speaker 5: and it's vanilla. It's a vanilla campaign. Tell him I
Speaker 5: saw him right before that Des Moines think. He's like,
Speaker 5: tell him, he's got to shake things up. This isn't
Speaker 5: what I signed up for. So we had this meeting
Speaker 5: and Obama was like, look, guys, he was confident, he
Speaker 5: was cool, he took the issue, had on. He talked
Speaker 5: to us I think Sunday morning of that long weekend,
Speaker 5: He's like, look, guys, I got this. Here's the plan,
Speaker 5: here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna win Iowa. Here's how.
Speaker 5: But bu bu bu b and they, you know, we
Speaker 5: did have a plan. And it was after that that
Speaker 5: that's when I, you know, we all like basically moved
Speaker 5: to Iowa. I had a caucus district. I had to
Speaker 5: get one hundred and twenty people to sign cards, and
Speaker 5: I got like one hundred and forty. Like the people
Speaker 5: were excited, and that one those cards I got of
Speaker 5: people pledging Obama. They came to the caucus and we
Speaker 5: had that plan across Iowa. He was right, he did
Speaker 5: have it. We won, little end cup. Then they immediately
Speaker 5: moved us all to New Hampshire. New Hampshire was a
Speaker 5: little hiccup. I'll tell my other Larry David's story from
Speaker 5: New Hampshire, but the rest was history. After New Hampshire,
Speaker 5: we had a plan. Hillary had not really concentrated on
Speaker 5: the caucuses and the other ways to garner votes, and
Speaker 5: we did well and we won, and then I helped
Speaker 5: solid ate A bunch of my friends brought him over
Speaker 5: from Hillary. So the Larry David story was he came
Speaker 5: to New Hampshire. He was not in Iowa for caucus night,
Speaker 5: but he felt badly that he missed out, so he
Speaker 5: came to New Hampshire and they had all of us
Speaker 5: finance people with the friends and family. I was there
Speaker 5: with the friends and family, the top campaign staff. He
Speaker 5: had us in a little room to celebrate, to have
Speaker 5: a party. It actually wasn't that fun. Afterwards, we started
Speaker 5: getting rumors Brock was going to lose because he wasn't
Speaker 5: very good in news debate with Hillary. He was a
Speaker 5: short rant and Larry David at about I don't know
Speaker 5: nine thirty really before we had final results, but the
Speaker 5: word was we were going to lose. He like puts on
Speaker 5: his coat, was talking to him and hanging out a
Speaker 5: little bit. He puts on his coat and he's like
Speaker 5: heading out the door. I'm like, Larry, where are you going?
Speaker 5: Barrock and Michelle are going to come talk to us,
Speaker 5: And he's like, I'm going out to buy some nuts,
Speaker 5: like someone was leaving a party to go get snacks.
Speaker 5: But of course he went back to his hotel, he
Speaker 5: packed up, he got on his plane and he left.
Speaker 5: He didn't want to be there. It was too emotional
Speaker 5: for him, so Fortunately, the rest of it went a
Speaker 5: lot better than New Hampshire. There will be ups and
Speaker 5: downs with Kamala. We know that not every five days
Speaker 5: is going to be as great as these first five days.
Speaker 5: But it's super exciting and I think she's going to win.
Speaker 5: More importantly, she's not going to be a drag on
Speaker 5: the ticket. He's going to lift up all the other
Speaker 5: Democratic candidates. We have a super chance of taking back
Speaker 5: the House to go with the presidency, and we have
Speaker 5: a shot. It's a long shot, but we have a
Speaker 5: shot in the Senate, and all kinds of important state
Speaker 5: races are out there as well. He's lifting all those
Speaker 5: tides and you see it. I was talking to the
Speaker 5: Wisconsin people. Ben Wickler, Wisconsin Party chair, good friend of mine.
Speaker 5: He says, it's like rockstar energy like he hadn't seen
Speaker 5: since Obama. We certainly didn't see it with Biden, and
Speaker 5: you didn't see it in Biden' That was a vote
Speaker 5: to save America. That was not like a you know,
Speaker 5: a generational energetic inflection point.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Norm.
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back sometime soon anytime.
Speaker 3: No moment, fu Rick Wilson isn't our moment. Molly it
Speaker 3: is our our special time.
Speaker 4: Moment, so not I know right, it is our moment of.
Speaker 3: It is our moment of fuckery, my moment of fuckery.
Speaker 3: Molly is well, everybody in America was celebrating watching Evan
Speaker 3: Gershkowitz and Paul Whalen and the other hostages get off
Speaker 3: that plane last night.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: MAGA was doing everything they could to shit on it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it really tells you how low these people are
Speaker 3: and how how desperate they are to pretend that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is something bigger than he is, especially when you
Speaker 3: saw a good president pull off a complicated deal. These people,
Speaker 3: like always, they just they just crap on America as
Speaker 3: much as they possibly can.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important moment of fuckery, especially
Speaker 1: because these multi country hostage deals are, as you and
Speaker 1: I both know from all of our work in national
Speaker 1: security I'm kidding.
Speaker 3: And our extensive hostage negotiation efforts.
Speaker 1: And my time in the CIA, that these things are
Speaker 1: very complicated and hard to maneuver. And nobody got killed
Speaker 1: then everybody got out, and Groshkowitz was known as like
Speaker 1: kind of a prize hostage.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: And Putin has killed Prize hostages pretty recently, including Alexander Navolney's.
Speaker 1: So the fact that he was gotten out is not nothing.
Speaker 1: And his parents were so happy, and it was just
Speaker 1: such an incredible moment to shit on.
Speaker 4: It is really Grandma, Do you want to know what
Speaker 4: my moment of fuckery is?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: So my moment of puckery is here. We have Harris
Speaker 1: who is raising a ton of money and speaking beautifully,
Speaker 1: and Chris crossing the whole country. One of the things
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did in twenty sixteen was he went everywhere,
Speaker 1: and one of the secrets of winning the presidency is
Speaker 1: going everywhere. So next week, Harris is going to Wisconsin twice, right,
Speaker 1: two different parts of Wisconsin.
Speaker 4: She's just incredible.
Speaker 1: I am watching her in awe and delight, and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump tries to steal the spotlight away from her by
Speaker 1: pretending he doesn't understand what it means to have a
Speaker 1: black father and an Indian mother. And that is my
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery, is him trying to just take a
Speaker 1: moment away from her and from all of us who
Speaker 1: are just having a sort of nice moment in American politics, of.
Speaker 4: Which they are very very very few.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to say, those moments are exceedingly rare
Speaker 3: in our.
Speaker 1: World, exceedingly and we were having this nice moment where
Speaker 1: we were seeing just the relationship between Biden and Harris
Speaker 1: has been the kind of relationship I don't know what
Speaker 1: it's like behind the scenes, but what it's like publicly
Speaker 1: is the kind of very inspirational relationship between a mentor
Speaker 1: and a protege, the kind of thing that you hope
Speaker 1: is happening in companies and state legislatures and around the world.
Speaker 1: And Donald Trump yet again took that from us to
Speaker 1: try to shift the news cycle to a very bad
Speaker 1: faith attack on her.
Speaker 3: He is a bad faith actor at every level. And
Speaker 3: nothing changes that, nothing, nothing at all. But I don't
Speaker 3: think the era of good times is over yet. I
Speaker 3: think she's a happy warrior and I think that's the
Speaker 3: way she's been running her campaign, and that is good
Speaker 3: stuff for this country exactly.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening,