Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well,
Speaker 1: we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's
Speaker 1: best minds.
Speaker 2: And Governor Wall says he's sick and tired of hearing
Speaker 2: about thoughts and prayers. We have a star studded show
Speaker 2: for you today. Lever News founder David Sirota Stupspy to
Speaker 2: talk to us about his podcast The master Plan, which
Speaker 2: is my personal favorite documentary podcast I've heard in a
Speaker 2: long time. David details how the right mapped out legalizing
Speaker 2: corruption through the Supreme Court. And this is really just
Speaker 2: such an amazing podcast that we'll talk to Yale professor
Speaker 2: Jason Staley about his new book, Racing History, how fascists
Speaker 2: rewrite the past to control the future. But first we
Speaker 2: have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's
Speaker 2: own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: What the fuck is going on? Rick Wilson?
Speaker 3: Well, I believe it was what the Mayans predicted to
Speaker 3: be the apocalyptic end times, where rains of fire and
Speaker 3: blood will fall from the sky.
Speaker 1: No, look, welcome to Mayans. So early in the election
Speaker 1: cycle was sixty.
Speaker 3: Days to go. You know, Look, here's the thing. We
Speaker 3: had another week where the media was the zone got
Speaker 3: so flooded. Even well intentioned media folks could not keep
Speaker 3: up with crazy bullshit from Trump. It will never cease
Speaker 3: to amaze me how capable he is of changing the
Speaker 3: subject so rapidly, not always deliberately sometimes it's inadverton, but
Speaker 3: of changing the subjection so rapidly and leading to such chaos.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, we had things this week that would
Speaker 3: have been disqualifying for a presidential candidate.
Speaker 1: Another week talking about childcare is childcare or something?
Speaker 3: Falter yourself care? And all the things we're going to
Speaker 3: do to make it so big, bigger than anyone ever thought.
Speaker 1: Was the were tarriffs are going to fun childcare? How
Speaker 1: would that even work?
Speaker 3: He is rapidly breaking down, rapidly decompensating. Is not mentally
Speaker 3: all there, you know when he's out there ranting that
Speaker 3: Egene Carol isn't the chosen one, and it was an
Speaker 3: ai image of right that was amazing that press conference.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry I heard for ten eleven, twelve months that
Speaker 3: any slip or stutter or verbal bump that Joe Biden
Speaker 3: had was a side of his imminent dementia and Parkinson
Speaker 3: sweeping over him and killing him instantly, and with Trump,
Speaker 3: we get ten of those things a week now. I
Speaker 3: had a conversation with somebody last night. It was like,
Speaker 3: we're good, We're a really competent report, Like, oh.
Speaker 1: Tell us who because you're at the trip fest, so
Speaker 1: tell us who.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: No, no, that was off the record, but they're like,
Speaker 3: we're trying to keep up. We have so much time
Speaker 3: and bandwidth every day to write this stuff, and we're
Speaker 3: trying to keep up. And it's the combination of the
Speaker 3: newsiness of it and the bullshit of Trump's craziness. It
Speaker 3: has added up to this very ugly, kind of like
Speaker 3: dead end a lot of the time, I think.
Speaker 1: But I would also add that they don't want to
Speaker 1: look partisan, and if you call out how crazy Trump is,
Speaker 1: you look partisan because it's so crazy.
Speaker 3: That's the problem with defining devianc down. The craziest aspects
Speaker 3: of Trump now are. I don't want to say the
Speaker 3: media is defending them, but the way they're processing them
Speaker 3: is because they are afraid of having a Fox News
Speaker 3: fact checkers. There's a fucking line for you that just
Speaker 3: you should melt your brain, you know, so that they're
Speaker 3: being unfair. They're biased against Donald Trump and blah blah blah,
Speaker 3: and it's such a load of horseshit, and yet simultaneously
Speaker 3: it has And the argument that was made to me
Speaker 3: last night also was the processes of editorial and writing
Speaker 3: do not keep up with Trump's latest insanity. By the
Speaker 3: time one insanity is being reported, another insanity has occurred.
Speaker 3: It was a legitimate, I think point. But the thing is,
Speaker 3: I think the insanity itself needs to be the center
Speaker 3: of a lot more.
Speaker 1: Reporting, right, no question.
Speaker 3: You know. I made that case because there's a lot
Speaker 3: to the question of Trump's mental stability. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: this as a campaign line or anything else. I honestly
Speaker 3: believe Donald Trump is mentally ill.
Speaker 1: He was mentally ill in twenty sixteen, but in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen he could, you know, get on a plane and
Speaker 1: read a prompter. That is no longer than Trump.
Speaker 3: We know Trump in twenty sixteen still had his physicality
Speaker 3: and his energy level overcame the mental illness in the
Speaker 3: minds of most voters. In twenty twenty, it was a
Speaker 3: different election because of COVID and everything else. Although he
Speaker 3: was slipping in twenty really the decline and fall. The
Speaker 3: other day I was looking for a video clip, and
Speaker 3: I found something from December of twenty two where he
Speaker 3: really seemed off and it was weird how off he was.
Speaker 3: And I think this gets worse every day. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's ever going to get any better. And where
Speaker 3: along for the ride, unfortunately.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: You are at trip Fest. At trip Fest and popular
Speaker 1: Democratic boogeyman, your friend Dick Cheney. I was thinking about
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney because I was thinking about my grandfather, Howard
Speaker 1: Fast wrote about one hundred columns about Dick Cheney and
Speaker 1: how evil he was. So Dick Cheney is voting for
Speaker 1: Vice President Harris discuss.
Speaker 3: I'm here with my fellow noted liberal extremists, Judge, Letgig,
Speaker 3: Liz Cheney. You know all of us are deeply embedded
Speaker 3: in the antifa movement.
Speaker 1: That's right. All you want is to sign the er.
Speaker 3: All I want is to nationalize the means of production
Speaker 3: and usher in the worker's paradise. You know, the usual
Speaker 3: stuff as one does in the conservative movement.
Speaker 1: Minimum basic income for all.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I can't wait to have a national string of
Speaker 3: collective farms. But yesterday Liz Cheney, echoing what she had
Speaker 3: said at Duke University earlier in the week, came out
Speaker 3: and said I am voting for Kamala Harris. She said
Speaker 3: it again yesterday and articulated it further than she had
Speaker 3: at Duke, blew the audience way by saying, oh, and
Speaker 3: by the way, Dick Cheney is voting for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: What was the room like at that moment? Were you there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were there. Utterly exploded cuckoo town. I mean,
Speaker 3: people could not believe it. And I have to tell you,
Speaker 3: the second it started breaking out on Twitter, long defunct
Speaker 3: text chains of old bushies were like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, my phone was melting for hours of people,
Speaker 3: you know, who've been sort of waiting for the damn
Speaker 3: to break a little further. And there are a lot
Speaker 3: left of the people that are in this category. If
Speaker 3: anyone wants to argue that Liz and Dick Cheney are not, again,
Speaker 3: dear listeners, whether you agree with this or not, they
Speaker 3: are impeccably credentialed conservatives of the First Law. And I
Speaker 3: will tell you one of the things I picked up
Speaker 3: very quickly was just how freaked out and pissed off
Speaker 3: Trump world was because they recognized you can't make Dick
Speaker 3: Cheney into like antifoot Dick. You can't make it right
Speaker 3: right the golden Black Lives Matter. It's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: No. Now, I mean, I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And I do think that Dick Cheney is not involved
Speaker 1: in Black Lives Matter, as much as that would be amazing.
Speaker 3: You can see the shift where a tack vector on
Speaker 3: Cheney is he's a warmonger who will help continue the
Speaker 3: war in Ukraine against our friends the Russians.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about Tenant Media the last time, and
Speaker 1: we were on the podcast Tenant Media. All the worst
Speaker 1: people on the internet worked for Tenant Media. Laurence Southern,
Speaker 1: Bennie Johnson, Tim Poole, Beanie Guy, and Dave Rubin. That
Speaker 1: crew is all. Now we have seen in this big
Speaker 1: federal indictment they were being paid hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars by the Kremlin. Discuss and there are more people
Speaker 1: in the indictment. There are more unnamed people.
Speaker 3: Let's make three points really clear. This is one of
Speaker 3: many indictments we had. We saw another one against Dimitri
Speaker 3: Sions earlier this week. We also saw an FBI raid
Speaker 3: on Scott Ritter.
Speaker 1: Who's Scott Ritterer.
Speaker 3: Scott Rider is a former United Nations Arms inspector, former
Speaker 3: Army captain I believe, who was later arrested for pedophilia
Speaker 3: and child rape and then got out of prison and
Speaker 3: became a Russian apologist. Oh wow, so you've got these folks.
Speaker 3: These are these four people and folks. Molly and I
Speaker 3: are in the content creation world. Okay, you should know
Speaker 3: we have the creators of the content. We make a
Speaker 3: lot of it. They were being paid for hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a month, just as we are here on the right.
Speaker 1: Four. We actually make four million dollars a month. Hi. Sorry, Mary,
Speaker 1: We're doing this podcast from my helicopter.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm in space on the International Space take which
Speaker 3: I have heard. No, they were being paid four hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a month each each to produce pro putin videos.
Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
Speaker 3: There was one particular video that's made the rounds of
Speaker 3: this week. We'll find it if you look for it.
Speaker 3: It's about Timpoole and he is attacking Ukraine like a
Speaker 3: rabid dog, like a crazy wall. The Ukrainians have no
Speaker 3: right to the sacred province of Kursk and he was
Speaker 3: literally reading the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs talking points
Speaker 3: on the air Live wall Line.
Speaker 1: My favorite was Ben Shapiro's defense of them, which was like,
Speaker 1: how could they have known?
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know, Molly. If a strange guy claiming
Speaker 3: to be a Belgian billionaire who does doesn't appear on
Speaker 3: the internet anywhere when he searched for him, named Edward Gregorian,
Speaker 3: if he comes to you and says, by the way,
Speaker 3: I'd like to pay you forty thousand dollars a month
Speaker 3: to do pro putin videos on your website, on your channel,
Speaker 3: and you don't say to him, really, why pro putin videos?
Speaker 3: Where's the money coming from? I mean, inferentially a fucking
Speaker 3: toaster of and could figure out that this was Russian money.
Speaker 3: The stupidest person, and I mean even Benny Johnson, who
Speaker 3: was a low wattage plagiarizing shit ard, should be able
Speaker 3: to figure And by the way, if you want to guys,
Speaker 3: want to ever laugh your ass off, Benny Johnson is
Speaker 3: such a weak dick that when he worked at BuzzFeed
Speaker 3: he was plagiarizing wells.
Speaker 1: Lots, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. No. He's famous for his plagiarism.
Speaker 1: I do think that's right. I also think we still
Speaker 1: have more people in this indictment. And also just the
Speaker 1: defense that they were so stupid that they didn't know
Speaker 1: what was happening, I think is not really plausible.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry, I'm not buying it.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's interesting that Bennie Johnson and
Speaker 1: Temple did this much more. But Timple's whole thing was
Speaker 1: we're going to do civil war. So right, we're going
Speaker 1: to do civil war. Well, it turns out that that
Speaker 1: we're going to do civil war message is the Kremlins message? Correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's important.
Speaker 3: We're near a civil war. Civil war is coming. The
Speaker 3: libtards have forced us into a civil war.
Speaker 1: We want to hear the most cursed text ever. Jesse
Speaker 1: just sent me.
Speaker 3: Do it?
Speaker 1: What about Rand Paul?
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's not forget Rand Paul's chief guy, Jesse Benton,
Speaker 3: is presently in jail because Jesse Benton was involved in
Speaker 3: a weird Russian information operation in which he was paid
Speaker 3: in fucking bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Right, bitcoin, you'll remember bitcoin as something that is financing
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's presidential run.
Speaker 3: There's an entire pro Russia faction in the GOP right now,
Speaker 3: and we got.
Speaker 1: To talk about Mike lay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the story did not offend them. This story left
Speaker 3: him going like, well, where's a my four hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars of them? Well, that's my grandma would say, why
Speaker 3: by the cow when the milk is free? But they
Speaker 3: bought the cow. They bought These people, they knew what
Speaker 3: they were doing. There is nothing on God's green Earth
Speaker 3: that will convince me that these people, when they're producing
Speaker 3: pro Russia videos that are overtly pro pudent, overtly anti Ukraine,
Speaker 3: overtly anti American, that these people had no clue. Are
Speaker 3: you telling me you can't figure it out if you're
Speaker 3: being asked to read the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs talking
Speaker 3: points about the Battle of Kursk, fuck out?
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think also when you talk about this
Speaker 1: Tenet Media story, it's important to remember that these were
Speaker 1: the people that Elon Musk interacted with more than anything.
Speaker 3: He retweeted Tenet Media or ten There were the Tenet
Speaker 3: media players something like three hundred times. I read the other.
Speaker 1: Day, and Elon Musk sits on a pile of government contracts,
Speaker 1: He controls half of the world satellites. He is a
Speaker 1: major national security player, and he is also a fleet
Speaker 1: believer in Russian propaganda.
Speaker 3: He takes it hook line and sinker. And you know,
Speaker 3: the greatest conceit on the right is I'm just an independent,
Speaker 3: critical thinker. I'm just looking at the banks and the data.
Speaker 3: In fact, you're not looking at the facts of the data.
Speaker 3: You're looking at Vladimir Putin's ass while you're kissing it.
Speaker 3: These people, I mean, the more they echo this stuff,
Speaker 3: the better for me. Honestly, because we've identified an awful
Speaker 3: lot of Republican voters out there who grew up in
Speaker 3: the Cold War. They have boomers, exers, and even early
Speaker 3: millennials who remember Red Dawn the documentary. Don They remember
Speaker 3: Red Dawn, They remember the Cold War, they remember the
Speaker 3: Wall coming down, they remember that the Russians and Putin
Speaker 3: are the fucking bad guys. And the more this cognitive
Speaker 3: dissonance sort of splits them apart from what the Trump
Speaker 3: people have absolutely had their dicks in, it is astounding
Speaker 3: just how bad it's going to be for them. I
Speaker 3: think this is going to end up being one of
Speaker 3: these stories. It's going to keep unfolding. You know, well,
Speaker 3: you and I have not exactly been Merrick Carlin's biggest cheerleaders.
Speaker 1: At least he did.
Speaker 3: It looks like they're actually doing this. Finally, I think
Speaker 3: it's remarkable.
Speaker 1: Well, and it must be so much evidence that he
Speaker 1: can't possibly put it off because we know Merrick Garland
Speaker 1: and he's conflict avoidant.
Speaker 3: Eric Donland went to wake over with the mariego how
Speaker 3: am I going to cause trouble merrek lonaland wakes up
Speaker 3: in the Marigo's How can I be as invisible as possible?
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't know he was still working there. Well, Merek,
Speaker 1: what Jesse wants us to talk about? Dmitri Simes? Who
Speaker 1: the fuck is that?
Speaker 3: Dmitri the other guy who was indicted this week. He
Speaker 3: is part of the Rampaul network. As we've talked about
Speaker 3: a few minutes ago. Dmitri is a guy who's been
Speaker 3: on Channel one, one of the Russian propaganda channels, and
Speaker 3: he has been somebody who's been out there taking the
Speaker 3: absolutely pro Russian position on Ukraine. Ukraine is the sacred
Speaker 3: motherland of Russia and it must be destroyed. Zelenski is
Speaker 3: a puppet of.
Speaker 1: The Jewish Nazi.
Speaker 3: He's a Jewish Nazi. I was just.
Speaker 1: As they say, exactly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, look, and I mean there's a really key
Speaker 3: line in the main indictment of the tenant indictment. That
Speaker 3: key line is the first sentence that these people were
Speaker 3: working for RT, which is a Russian government controlled propaganda channel,
Speaker 3: and for personal reasons that will hopefully become apparent on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: That line is super important for me. But I'll let
Speaker 3: you know more like next week about it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, this is not fair.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you later.
Speaker 1: Are you fucking better? We're going to hit one other
Speaker 1: thing now, which is Nate Silver.
Speaker 3: Must we Yes? What are we going to hit him with?
Speaker 5: Is the question?
Speaker 1: Because as the polling averages have gotten better and better
Speaker 1: for the Vice President, Nate Silver has decided that they're
Speaker 1: not better, and in fact she is losing to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: What is his methodology?
Speaker 3: Besides his methodology, from what I can tell, is that
Speaker 3: Peter Thiele is running the polymarket site and Nate's making
Speaker 3: a pile off of that. I think Nate also, I'm
Speaker 3: going to give Nate a little fraction of grace here.
Speaker 3: I also think that there is some PTSD from twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen with Nate's ever gotten over. Maybe that's it. I
Speaker 3: can't really understand it, because every professional who's looking at
Speaker 3: these numbers and looking at the electoral college pathways and
Speaker 3: the mechanics and the mathematics of these pathways, this is
Speaker 3: in a steadily improving picture for Vice President Harris. It
Speaker 3: is a darkening cloud for Donald Trump. You know, Look,
Speaker 3: they pulled out this week, as you know, of New Hampshire, Virginia,
Speaker 3: and Minnesota. Those are not the top tier gettable states,
Speaker 3: but they thought all of them were gettable. They thought
Speaker 3: New Hampshire was very gettable. Those three are dead. Now
Speaker 3: they're running out of money. The polling in the states
Speaker 3: is moving in the wrong direction for them. The next
Speaker 3: tranch of states they were looking at right now to
Speaker 3: pull out of whatever one they choose of the three
Speaker 3: or four that are in contention, which are like what
Speaker 3: North Carolina. Yeah, now they're going to have to put
Speaker 3: money into Florida. Now. They don't think they're going to
Speaker 3: lose Florida, but it's getting close enough where they're freaking out.
Speaker 1: And Florida's expensive.
Speaker 3: Florida has ten of the top thirty media markets in
Speaker 3: the country. It's very expensive and running out of money.
Speaker 3: He spent thirty one million dollars more than he raised
Speaker 3: last month.
Speaker 1: Those spending numbers show that Trump is spending a lot
Speaker 1: less than Harris. But isn't it true that there are
Speaker 1: dark money packs that are not included in those buys?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent? There are many dark money packs that
Speaker 3: are out there. However, they are not sufficiently drawing off
Speaker 3: to counterbalance what Harris and the Democratic super PACs are
Speaker 3: doing right now. They're not in the same financial tier
Speaker 3: as the overall Harris plus Democratic superPAC era.
Speaker 1: But what about like Elon?
Speaker 3: Elon hasn't given any money. It was bullshit. Like many
Speaker 3: things from Elon, you'll be surprised to hear he was
Speaker 3: full of shit.
Speaker 1: What about the America Pack? And Rick explained to us
Speaker 1: who is funding it and what it looks like.
Speaker 3: There are a number of Trump super packs that are
Speaker 3: out there, but one consistent through line of every single
Speaker 3: Trump super pack is that they're running your money through
Speaker 3: Trump related entities and enterprises. So you'll find in a
Speaker 3: lot of them American made media, and that is a
Speaker 3: Trump family super pac controlled by Jared Kushner and Brad Parscal.
Speaker 3: Last time I checked, that takes an enormous skim off
Speaker 3: the top of every dollar they spend, so maybe fifty
Speaker 3: sixty cents of every dollar does not go to persuade voters.
Speaker 3: It goes back to fund the Trump family and the
Speaker 3: Trump enterprises. Look, this is the most successful business Donald
Speaker 3: Trump has ever had, by in order of magnitude.
Speaker 1: Just like Pat you can. And he's figured out that
Speaker 1: running for president is a good business.
Speaker 3: Trump likes to improvise, Okay, he likes to make ups.
Speaker 3: Yet he likes to run and gun, and so that
Speaker 3: makes it hard for him to run a real campaign
Speaker 3: where he's doing big dollar donor fundraising all that. He
Speaker 3: hates all that shit. But these super packs allow individual donors.
Speaker 3: Heyre writ two million dollar check right in the a
Speaker 3: million dollars a year, right, he did this and that,
Speaker 3: and you know what that shit it's dark money. It
Speaker 3: is hidden away. They've also built all these LLCs that
Speaker 3: are like Wyoming LLC's managed through Delaware with poking in
Speaker 3: the Cayman Isle. All this bullshit, right, but.
Speaker 1: It's also Trump World funneling the money. You get the
Speaker 1: least bang for the buck.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's like a race car where you know, you
Speaker 3: fill it up with gas and I hope it's going
Speaker 3: to go five hundred miles, but the first thing you
Speaker 3: do is somebody takes out, you know, half of the
Speaker 3: gas in the tank.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Rick Wilson, You are welcome.
Speaker 2: We have even more tour dates for you. Did you
Speaker 2: know the Linkeodn projects. Rick Wilson have Fast Politics BOLEI
Speaker 2: jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring you
Speaker 2: a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join
Speaker 2: us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the
Speaker 2: Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh
Speaker 2: at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
Speaker 2: We'll be at the Bavarium in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 2: first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
Speaker 2: in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
Speaker 2: the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
Speaker 2: at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October,
Speaker 2: we'll be in Affiliates City Winery, and then DC on
Speaker 2: the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just
Speaker 2: announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
Speaker 2: of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh
Speaker 2: as we get through this election and hopefully never hear
Speaker 2: from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
Speaker 2: we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
Speaker 2: to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
Speaker 2: this election season and give you the inside analysis of
Speaker 2: what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now
Speaker 2: by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
Speaker 2: as Unusual dot bio. David Serota is the founder of
Speaker 2: lever News, the creator of the podcast The Masterplin, and
Speaker 2: screenplay author of Don't Look Up.
Speaker 1: Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Dave Serota, thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Jesse and I's obsession are these kind of stories, and
Speaker 1: you know, we did something on Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: on YouTube which was like an interviews here and this
Speaker 1: just is like an endless topic that is like informs
Speaker 1: everything around us. So explain to us how you came
Speaker 1: to this project. You know, let's start there.
Speaker 5: So Master Plan traces the fifty year history of how
Speaker 5: corruption was legalized in America and it connects directly to
Speaker 5: Project twenty twenty five because one of the organizations and
Speaker 5: funders that began part of this Master plan is the
Speaker 5: sponsor of the organization, is the sponsor of what we
Speaker 5: now know as Project twenty twenty five. So the story
Speaker 5: starts in and around the time of Watergate, as so
Speaker 5: many things do, and Watergate, as we trace in our podcast,
Speaker 5: Watergate was actually people know about the break in, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. It was actually the first major campaign finance
Speaker 5: scandal of the late twentieth century in that it was
Speaker 5: funded in part by illegal, secret corporate donations. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's sort of the first version of dark money, where
Speaker 5: we're talking about brand name corporations American Airlines and the
Speaker 5: like funding the break in.
Speaker 1: American Airlinese.
Speaker 5: Yeah, American Airlines was one of the major corporations that
Speaker 5: put secretly large sums of money into Richard Nixon's slush fund,
Speaker 5: and it was ultimately American Airlines and its executives were
Speaker 5: prosecuted for that by the Watergate prosecutors. It's something that
Speaker 5: I think people don't really know now.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 5: Yeah, It's like I mean, when I started reporting this,
Speaker 5: I was kind of blown away. And that's one of
Speaker 5: many corporations that was prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Like Benny Johnson didn't know that he was getting four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars from Russia or didn't. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 5: Go on, sorry, Right, So, I think a lot of
Speaker 5: people also know that that after Watergate there were these
Speaker 5: campaign finance reforms that were supposed to clean up Washington.
Speaker 5: These are the modern campaign finance laws that Gerald Ford signed.
Speaker 1: And that Citizens United ended effectively.
Speaker 5: Correct. Right, So what happens is at the roughly this
Speaker 5: same time, a guy named Lewis Powell, who was the
Speaker 5: head of the American Bar Association, a tobacco industry lawyer,
Speaker 5: kind of pinnacle of the establishment. He writes this memo
Speaker 5: to the Chamber of Commerce in which he lays out
Speaker 5: a case that corporate America is under attack, that the
Speaker 5: ralph Naders of the world are winning too many things.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is the era you know, where Medicare, Medicaid,
Speaker 5: the EPA, all this stuff is passing. And he says,
Speaker 5: you know, corporations need to go on the attack, and
Speaker 5: really the government has become too democratically responsive. The corporations
Speaker 5: have to focus on taking over the courts and building
Speaker 5: a movement to take over the government. And one of
Speaker 5: their focuses is deregulating the campaign finance system and effectively
Speaker 5: gutting the anti corruption, anti bribery laws. And so in
Speaker 5: those post Watergate reforms were some loopholes that actually created
Speaker 5: the what we now know to be the corporate Political
Speaker 5: Action Committee. There was an explosion of these corporate packs
Speaker 5: because of these loopholes. And what also came out of
Speaker 5: this movement at the time was the push to enshrine
Speaker 5: a radical theory into law, which was money and politics
Speaker 5: isn't corruption. Money in politics is constitutionally protected speech. So
Speaker 5: the Buckley v. Valo case comes out of this era.
Speaker 5: By the way, Buckley, that radical idea was masterminded by
Speaker 5: none other than you cannot make this up John Bolton,
Speaker 5: the same John Bolton.
Speaker 1: I mean that continues to be. One of the truly
Speaker 1: amazing things about this whole story is and it's all
Speaker 1: the same people again and again and again, and it's like,
Speaker 1: not even is it all the same people. It's like
Speaker 1: my grandpa was jailed by the House on an American
Speaker 1: Activities Howard Fast by the Roy you know, Roy Cohen
Speaker 1: worked for that and later trained Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: We have a term for this, We call it the
Speaker 5: master Plan cinematic universe. These same people Robert Bork, John Bolton.
Speaker 5: I mean, these are the they just keep popping up.
Speaker 5: Here's the thing, after they enshrine, you know, money isn't corruption,
Speaker 5: money is free speech. Lewis Powell, the guy who wrote
Speaker 5: that memo, he ends up on the Supreme Court and
Speaker 5: he soon after creates a ruling that says corporations are
Speaker 5: entitled to those same free speech rights to spend in
Speaker 5: an unlimited fashion on elections, which is the basis becomes
Speaker 5: the basis for the citizens United decisions. So the point
Speaker 5: here is the deregulated campaign finance system, the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: gutting the anti bribery laws in this country. This is
Speaker 5: not a force of nature, It's not an inevitability. The
Speaker 5: master planners, essentially corporations and oligarchs did this on purpose.
Speaker 5: They knew that they could not win the policies they
Speaker 5: want in a one person, one vote, functioning democracy, so
Speaker 5: they knew they had to have ways legally to use
Speaker 5: their money to rig that process.
Speaker 1: And I feel like it's important to point out that
Speaker 1: Republicans still basically feel this way that the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: right now is making decisions. Like when you're talking, all
Speaker 1: I can think of is that the Supreme Court this
Speaker 1: year made a decision which said that you can bribe
Speaker 1: a politician if you're not being clear about exactly what
Speaker 1: you want.
Speaker 5: I read that ruling as almost even worse, like I
Speaker 5: think you've almost understated it, which is basically like a
Speaker 5: politician can do a favor for a donor as long
Speaker 5: as the donor gives them the money afterwards, as like
Speaker 5: a gratuity. It's like, if you just sequence the money correctly,
Speaker 5: it's all fine. And to be clear, the Supreme Court
Speaker 5: did this. I think a lot of people didn't mention
Speaker 5: this when that ruling came out. The Supreme Court did
Speaker 5: this when the Supreme Court has people on the court
Speaker 5: who are taking gifts from the people whose cases they're overseeing.
Speaker 1: This last Supreme Court session, I thought a few cases
Speaker 1: were like, see, we're not that bad, and then everything
Speaker 1: else was like, let's set the table.
Speaker 5: For our guy, Donald Trump yep, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 5: I think John Roberts, who we report a lot about
Speaker 5: in Master Plan, I believe in the idea that he
Speaker 5: has this theory that the court will accept a set
Speaker 5: of cases that are like even more insane than they're
Speaker 5: willing to accept so that they make a show out
Speaker 5: of voting them down, to make the like other crazy
Speaker 5: ones that they're going to put through seem like that
Speaker 5: they're moderate or moderate. I mean that's the moving of
Speaker 5: the Overton window for sure.
Speaker 1: By the way, Gorsag Cavanaugh, I mean, these people have
Speaker 1: all you know, Gorsich's mother was in the EPA under.
Speaker 5: Nixon Master Plan Cinematic Universe.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the other thing I was going to say was
Speaker 1: I feel like what we see in this world again
Speaker 1: and again is that the eleventh circuit really sets them
Speaker 1: up for this. You know, there's a circuit that's so
Speaker 1: crazy they will take anything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the fifth circuit down in Texas as well. Yeah,
Speaker 5: this is all part of a plan. It's not an inevitability.
Speaker 5: And look, I think you can look back to the
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies when the conservative movement was essentially out of power,
Speaker 5: and you can look back now and say, wow, they
Speaker 5: really had a vision. And the interesting thing is, as
Speaker 5: we document in our podcast, is that they wrote a
Speaker 5: lot of it down. I mean we found never before
Speaker 5: seen documents about this. I mean we have a document.
Speaker 5: Let me just give you an example where Gerald Ford
Speaker 5: is literally being flown into Disney World for a meeting
Speaker 5: about how to implement Lewis Powell's memo, and months later
Speaker 5: Gerald Ford is then the president who's signing those loopholes
Speaker 5: in the campaign finance laws, signing them into law. And
Speaker 5: so the point is is not to be You know,
Speaker 5: sometimes I feel like I sound like the guy from
Speaker 5: It's Always Sonny in Philadelphia at the whiteboard, like a
Speaker 5: crazy person, like how much expira? But like they wrote
Speaker 5: it all down, it's all documented, it's all they did
Speaker 5: it all, and they said they were doing it all well.
Speaker 1: And I also think we constantly doubt ourselves. But like
Speaker 1: Merret Garland, who again I would like to criticize more
Speaker 1: than I do, but because of his inability to hold
Speaker 1: anyone accountable. But he did announce yesterday that like three
Speaker 1: of the biggest Trump YouTubers are actually willingly or unwittingly
Speaker 1: either as bad take you money from Russia so for
Speaker 1: their pro Trump views. So like, if you occupy reality,
Speaker 1: none of this should be all that shocker.
Speaker 5: No, And what we've allowed to happen is we've created
Speaker 5: a system where money buys our politics, buys the political discourse.
Speaker 5: And what I worry about here is that we're now
Speaker 5: so immersed in this culture of corruption that we've become
Speaker 5: desensitized to it that we've simply accepted it as supposedly.
Speaker 5: It's no longer corruption, it's just what politics is. And
Speaker 5: the truth is that's not the way it has to be.
Speaker 5: I think back to I think a lot of people
Speaker 5: can't even remember this era, but the late nineties early
Speaker 5: two thousands, where John McCain decided to make campaign finance
Speaker 5: and corruption a major national issue, and I think people
Speaker 5: forget that His first major set of political headlines in
Speaker 5: his career was he got burned in a corruption scandal,
Speaker 5: the Keating five scandal, where he was one of the
Speaker 5: five senators who was pressuring a federal banking regulator, and
Speaker 5: out of that he came to the campaign finance cause
Speaker 5: with the zeal of a convert. And my point in
Speaker 5: bringing this up is, yes, you can name any corruption
Speaker 5: scandal from today's headlines, this week's headlines and say, you know,
Speaker 5: this is just what politics is and there's nothing to
Speaker 5: be done about it. But in my lifetime, I can
Speaker 5: remember when political leaders said, you know what, this is
Speaker 5: not okay, even Republicans, and you know, it's interesting one
Speaker 5: of his aides tells us in the podcast, you know,
Speaker 5: we told him that nobody would really care about corruption.
Speaker 5: It wasn't going to be a salient issue in the election,
Speaker 5: and McCain ignored us and proved us wrong. He went in,
Speaker 5: you know, he campaigned in that primary, and part of
Speaker 5: the way he won New Hampshire, the major way was
Speaker 5: was on this anti corruption platform. And so the question
Speaker 5: is where is that politics now? It feels like it's gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agreed, and will be so interesting
Speaker 1: to see. By the way, if Trump wins an American democracy,
Speaker 1: he dies, that'll be sad for all of us. But
Speaker 1: if Trump loses and American democracy survives, which I think
Speaker 1: is a possibility, a real possibility, it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 1: You know, if there's any interest in the Republican Party
Speaker 1: rejecting some of these larger authoritarianism. I want you to
Speaker 1: talk about how the sort of baby authoritarianism of the
Speaker 1: seventies begets this larger authority, because this is all the
Speaker 1: road to Trump.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I mean one hundred percent. Let me give you
Speaker 5: an example. We talked about Project twenty twenty five. So
Speaker 5: the Powell Memo is written one of the people who
Speaker 5: says that he was inspired to become politically active because
Speaker 5: of the Powell Memo is a guy named Joe Cores
Speaker 5: from out here. I'm coming to you from Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 5: Out here in Colorado, and Joe Cors provides the seed
Speaker 5: funding for what became the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation
Speaker 5: in all of this organizing legal you know, the conservative
Speaker 5: movement is building a legal movement, it's building a political
Speaker 5: organization for elections. The Heritage Foundation carves out its role
Speaker 5: as the policy machine for this movement, and it decides
Speaker 5: that one of the ways it can be most effective
Speaker 5: is to produce this Mandate for Leadership Series. That's what
Speaker 5: they called it, and it's a detailed agenda for Republican presidents.
Speaker 5: And if that sounds familiar, that's because Project twenty twenty
Speaker 5: five is the ninth iteration of the Mandate for Leadership Series,
Speaker 5: and the Mandate for Leadership Series. The first famous one
Speaker 5: was in nineteen eighty which was for Ronald Reagan and
Speaker 5: he implemented, according to Heritage itself, sixty to sixty five
Speaker 5: percent of its recommendations that were executive order, executive power
Speaker 5: of the unitary executive essentially centralizing power in the presidency.
Speaker 5: And so now we are at Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 5: which again is the ninth iteration of this, and it's
Speaker 5: much the same or similar kinds of policies to vest
Speaker 5: more and more power in executive branch. There's so many
Speaker 5: times nine hundred pages, right, I got the social safety
Speaker 5: that got the regulatory state, got what the Heritage Foundation
Speaker 5: calls the quote unquote administrative state, but really centrally vest
Speaker 5: the president with as much power as possible. So you
Speaker 5: look at that through line and then you see the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court case that says the president has immunity. And
Speaker 5: these are Supreme Court justices, many of them came out
Speaker 5: of this movement. You realize this is not a natural inevitability.
Speaker 5: I mean, one other thing, just to go off on
Speaker 5: one other tangent here, because I know you remember this.
Speaker 5: I think the other part of the story that we
Speaker 5: tell that kind of still blows my mind is how
Speaker 5: quickly they flipped the court. There's like a period of
Speaker 5: a few months in two thousand and five where the
Speaker 5: Court goes from William Rehnquist and Sandrade O'Connor to John
Speaker 5: Roberts and Sam Alito and the throwing out of Harriet
Speaker 5: Myers in favor of Sam Alito. I think because there
Speaker 5: was so much going on, it was sort of on
Speaker 5: the eve of the Republicans losing in the mid terms,
Speaker 5: the eve of Obama coming into office, that we forget that,
Speaker 5: like the court shifted so significantly, so in like a
Speaker 5: bat of an eye. Right, if you want to go
Speaker 5: back to a period of history and like rewind, has
Speaker 5: you had a time machine and you could rewind something
Speaker 5: to change the whole next twenty years, it would be
Speaker 5: those few months where John Roberts and sam Alito get
Speaker 5: on that court and switch out for Renquist and O'Connor.
Speaker 5: It just kind of blows my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying not to get agitated. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us some of the crazier stuff that you found in
Speaker 1: this series?
Speaker 5: Sure, I mean, listen, the secret meetings about organizing for
Speaker 5: the Powell Memo are kind of mind blowing. Again, they
Speaker 5: wrote it all down. I mean, we found one document,
Speaker 5: here's a fun one one document at one of these
Speaker 5: task forces where it's corporate executives getting together, how do
Speaker 5: we implement Lewis Powell's agenda? Where Roger ales Yes gives
Speaker 5: a presentation saying that corporate executives should use their power
Speaker 5: as advertisers to influence TV programming. And there's a series
Speaker 5: of letters on some of the ALMMO task forces are
Speaker 5: not only you know, the executives from major industrial corporations,
Speaker 5: but we're talking about executives from ABC, CBS, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. And there's correspondence in which these executives are
Speaker 5: saying they are trying to influence the news coverage to
Speaker 5: be less anti business a more pro quote unquote free market.
Speaker 5: There was I think people who are old enough to
Speaker 5: remember this, there was a Ford administration US government sponsored
Speaker 5: ad campaign in conjunction with Exxon and other major corporations
Speaker 5: through the Ad Council to basically promote free market capitalism
Speaker 5: because they were afraid of the rising tide of like,
Speaker 5: you know, natiorism. The Chamber of Commerce produced a movie
Speaker 5: starring Jimmy Stewart to promote this. I mean that we
Speaker 5: have clips in the in the in the podcast about
Speaker 5: I mean, Jimmy Stewart sounds like a right wing Maybe
Speaker 5: he was, I guess he was a right wing guy.
Speaker 5: I mean it's like super right wing propaganda. And then
Speaker 5: and then the one other I'll give you is that.
Speaker 5: So the Buckley v. Valeo case, right, this is this
Speaker 5: case to say money is speech, money is not corruption.
Speaker 5: Is it the Buckley it's his brother, James Buckley was
Speaker 5: a senator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because that family is filled with conservative propagandas.
Speaker 5: Yes, James Buckley, the New York senator who is the
Speaker 5: brother of William F. Buckley. James Buckley, by the way,
Speaker 5: goes on to become after being in the Senate, a
Speaker 5: federalist society, right wing judge. Of course. In Buckley v. Valeo,
Speaker 5: it's the Ford administration. Remember I told you Ford had to,
Speaker 5: you know, sign these these laws. The Ford administration doesn't
Speaker 5: like the new campaign finance laws, but it's after Watergate,
Speaker 5: so Gerald Ford kind of has to sign it. So
Speaker 5: Robert Bork, master planned Cinematic Universe, is still the Solicitor General.
Speaker 5: So his job is to officially defend the law and
Speaker 5: to try to stop the Buckley case from going forward.
Speaker 5: That's his like official job. He's representing the government. So
Speaker 5: he files a sort of weak brief defending the Federal
Speaker 5: Election Commission saying, you know, money is regulatable, it's not
Speaker 5: free money. In politics is not free speech. But then
Speaker 5: he files a second brief much stronger on behalf of
Speaker 5: the Ford administration, undermining his own case. In other words,
Speaker 5: undermining his own defense. It's this sort of bait and
Speaker 5: switch which proves pivotal and gets the Supreme Court to
Speaker 5: create this foundational pillar that money in politics can't be
Speaker 5: regulated because it's constitutionally protected speech. If you want to
Speaker 5: go back to I mean, that is the fundamental foundational
Speaker 5: building block of the rest of the corruption that comes.
Speaker 5: Nothing else can stand up. Oh, one other tiny little
Speaker 5: nugget that I love. Anthony Kennedy, the guy who writes
Speaker 5: Citizens United. Do you know what Anthony Kennedy did? What
Speaker 5: the first part of his career was. Do you know
Speaker 5: what he before he was a judge. Now, Anthony Kennedy
Speaker 5: was a corporate lobbyist known for handing out campaign cash
Speaker 5: to legislators in Sacramento. Right, So by the time he
Speaker 5: writes citizens you're like, you know, Anthony Kennedy's this like
Speaker 5: swing vote is his longtime trip. It's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 5: you're telling me the guy who was like in the
Speaker 5: Sacramento swamp of politics, a corporate lobbyist who, by the
Speaker 5: way helped draft Ronald Reagan's first anti tax ballot measure.
Speaker 5: That now it all makes sense, Like, of course, the
Speaker 5: guy who wrote Citizens United was a corporate lobbyist, you know,
Speaker 5: who got his start in the swamp of essentially soft
Speaker 5: corrupt politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not super surprised. It's just crushingly depressing them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's like if you wrote this as a movie, right,
Speaker 5: you turned in a script, the executives would say, you know,
Speaker 5: the script is too on the nose. It's like two,
Speaker 5: it's two on the nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
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 up with iHeart to make
Speaker 1: a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five would be for America his future.
Speaker 1: Right now, we have just released the final episode of
Speaker 1: this five episode series. They're all available by looking up
Speaker 1: Molly Jong Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and
Speaker 1: if you are more of a podcast person and not
Speaker 1: say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your
Speaker 1: phone in the lock screen and it will play back
Speaker 1: just like the podcast. All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 1: We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
Speaker 1: would or could do to this country, So please watch
Speaker 1: it and spread the word.
Speaker 2: Jason Stanley is a professor at Yale University as well
Speaker 2: as the author of e Racing History, How Fascists Rewrite
Speaker 2: the Past to Control the Future.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Pologics, Jason Stanley.
Speaker 4: Great to be in discussion with you, Molly.
Speaker 1: We've had you on a ton of times about your
Speaker 1: book How Fascism Works, and also just in general about
Speaker 1: what is happening in this sort of run up to
Speaker 1: the election. Talk to as about this new book, Erasing History.
Speaker 4: So Erasing History is about educational authoritarianism. You'll notice that
Speaker 4: across the world when authoritarians get into power, they go
Speaker 4: after not just the courts, as we see in the
Speaker 4: United States where the Supreme Court is dominated by Trump's lackeys,
Speaker 4: but they go after the schools. So that's not just
Speaker 4: in the United States, it's every country. As Vladimir Putin
Speaker 4: recently said, wars are won by teachers. So what I
Speaker 4: do in Erasing History is explain the theoretical reason why
Speaker 4: authoritarians always go after schools. It's among their primary targets schools, voting,
Speaker 4: press courts. So I've set the situation in the United
Speaker 4: States where we're watching university after university system be destroyed
Speaker 4: and public schools under attack, a mood of terror and
Speaker 4: atmosphere of fear among teachers and professors. Now and I
Speaker 4: explain both conceptually and historically and setting into international contexts,
Speaker 4: how it works and why authoritarians always go after schools
Speaker 4: and universities as one of their very first targets.
Speaker 1: So one of the states where this is happening, I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting. There are different Republican run state it's
Speaker 1: different red states where they're sort of trying this out,
Speaker 1: and the biggest one is probably Florida. Explain to us
Speaker 1: how in Florida this kind of erasing history authoritarian war
Speaker 1: on education manifests.
Speaker 4: What you do is you create a culture of terror
Speaker 4: around teachers and professors so they feel they can't even
Speaker 4: go near history that might get them in trouble. And
Speaker 4: it's best to think of this as perspectives on the
Speaker 4: present history. Is it reflects certain group's perspectives on the
Speaker 4: present first. As you'll see in Erasing History, DeSantis has
Speaker 4: created a culture of fear in public schools and universities.
Speaker 4: Let's remember what Descantis does. He's created a fake electoral
Speaker 4: police force whose job is to target non existent cases
Speaker 4: of voter fraud.
Speaker 3: Really or well, in there's almost no.
Speaker 5: Voter fraud in the United States.
Speaker 4: It's like zero point zero zero zero two five percent
Speaker 4: or something completely non existent problem. The only goal is
Speaker 4: to camp down minority votes, especially black votes, by creating
Speaker 4: an atmosphere fear. That's what authoritarians do. They create in
Speaker 4: that atmosphere fears. Then they've passed these divisive concept laws
Speaker 4: which say that you can't teach anything that makes people
Speaker 4: feel badly about their race or their gender identity. I
Speaker 4: like to make comparisons here between what's happening with Florida
Speaker 4: and the Day in Germany. The af Day is the
Speaker 4: far right, extreme neo fascist extremist party that in fact
Speaker 4: is officially an extremist party according to the German police,
Speaker 4: and they have the same goal. They're running to say
Speaker 4: the Nazi regime was not all bad. We've got to
Speaker 4: stop dumping on the Nazi regime is bad. There are
Speaker 4: some good aspects of it.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh because it's so fucking bleak, but like
Speaker 1: some good Nazis as a hell of a hell to
Speaker 1: die on.
Speaker 4: Exactly, it's like saying there's some good enslavers. It's especially
Speaker 4: horrifying when Jewish Americans back this stuff because they're essentially
Speaker 4: backing anti Semitic neo fascist movements in Germany of all places.
Speaker 4: They're saying, you shouldn't have education that makes people feel badly.
Speaker 4: The primary purpose is to create this culture of reporting people,
Speaker 4: to get people used to reporting people. So there's online
Speaker 4: forms and KNA that the state has up to report
Speaker 4: professors who are teaching divisit concepts. So these are concepts
Speaker 4: like white privilege. So if you teach black history, you're
Speaker 4: teaching that most Black Americans were excluded from the mortgage market,
Speaker 4: from federal housing loans until the nineteen seventies, so most
Speaker 4: Black Americans don't have inherited wealth because they didn't get
Speaker 4: to inherit a house. But that is deemed white privilege,
Speaker 4: and you're not allowed to teach it. So you're not
Speaker 4: allowed to teach the truth. The truth. You're not allowed
Speaker 4: to teach the truth. And then We're seeing more and
Speaker 4: more textbooks talk about how slavery wasn't all bad. Enslaved
Speaker 4: people got skills things like this and again and again,
Speaker 4: and teachers are under sheer terror. LGBT perspectives are being eliminated.
Speaker 4: New College of Florida they just threw out in the
Speaker 4: college library all their gender studies books, all books on't right.
Speaker 1: I saw the photos of that. Yeah, it looked like
Speaker 1: circa nineteen thirty three Germany.
Speaker 4: The first Nazi book burning in May tenth, nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 4: One third of it, I believe, I believe it was
Speaker 4: one third. I'm at be getting the percentages wrong. But
Speaker 4: one out of the three collections destroyed was Magnus Hirschfeld's
Speaker 4: Institute for sexu Elivisenschaft's collection, which was all books from
Speaker 4: LGBT perspectives and photographs documenting gender fluidity. So yes, it
Speaker 4: looks like nineteen thirty three. So when these laws passed,
Speaker 4: initially in Florida, now in Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, initially people
Speaker 4: are like, oh, they won't have much of an effect.
Speaker 4: They're having a tremendous effect. Curricula have to be rearranged.
Speaker 4: I mean Tony Morrison's books are being banned our Nobel
Speaker 4: Prize winner in literature. So this thing of banning the
Speaker 4: perspectives or removing the perspectives of distinguished writers from minority
Speaker 4: groups is so. We see this in Hungary with cortege there,
Speaker 4: Jewish Holocaust survivor Nobel Prize winner in literature whose work
Speaker 4: has been removed from the national curriculum, and we're seeing
Speaker 4: open and explicit admiration of Victor Or Bond, the Hungarian
Speaker 4: autocrat who also started his campaign with an attack on
Speaker 4: universities for supposedly spreading gender ideology. So if you're an
Speaker 4: LGBT youth or child of LGBT parents, what's being targeted
Speaker 4: is the normalcy of your life. Florida instituted this post
Speaker 4: ten year review, which said that every five years you're reviewed,
Speaker 4: and you're reviewed on a long number of dimensions, including
Speaker 4: intellectual diversity.
Speaker 1: So they're undoing tenure basically totally.
Speaker 4: Almost twenty percent of the University of Florida's professors received
Speaker 4: unsatisfactory reviews and are going to be fired. Similar bills
Speaker 4: have been passed in Ohio and Indiana, and we can
Speaker 4: expect the same results there. In Ohio, State and University
Speaker 4: of Indiana are two of the world's greatest public universities.
Speaker 4: The United States is willingly dismantling it's the best university
Speaker 4: system in the world, to stuff it with right wing
Speaker 4: supporters of the Republican Party and to destroy it.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us how Trump world could enact
Speaker 1: this on a federal level.
Speaker 4: They want to eliminate the Department of Education, so this
Speaker 4: means that there'd be no way to oversee what states
Speaker 4: are doing. They're going to target federal funding for universities.
Speaker 4: Private universities like my own university, tend to think that
Speaker 4: they're outside the scope of this destruction. They'll target federal
Speaker 4: funding or private universities if they don't do whatever the
Speaker 4: government says. They'll start with DEI programs, I think, and
Speaker 4: then they'll move to things like divisive concept laws, which
Speaker 4: essentially removes African American studies from the curriculum. It removes
Speaker 4: gender studies, things like this. So they're going to target
Speaker 4: federal funding. They've already said that on the public school level,
Speaker 4: they're going to maybe pass federal divisive concept legislation. Trump
Speaker 4: has talked about making sure there's patriotic education, so we
Speaker 4: see this in Hungary, obviously, in Russia, India, these are cases, Israel,
Speaker 4: these are cases I look at in the book where
Speaker 4: there's substantial misrepresentation of history, but Trump so in Hungary.
Speaker 4: I have friends in Hungary whose kids go to public schools,
Speaker 4: and they talk about the blatant nationalist nonsense their kids
Speaker 4: are forced to swallow. And this is the kind of
Speaker 4: thing we're going to expect to see in the United States.
Speaker 4: We're going to expect to see bans on criticizing the
Speaker 4: Fonders or talking about how they were enslavers. We can
Speaker 4: expect to see a course of vicious clampdown on LGBT.
Speaker 4: Florida has already removed any mention of Black Lives Matter
Speaker 4: protests from their curriculum, and we're going to return to
Speaker 4: the kind of fake history that was taught for many decades.
Speaker 4: I didn't learn about reconstruction in high school. I kind
Speaker 4: of learned, okay, black people had to vote for a
Speaker 4: little and then they weren't ready for democracy, so they
Speaker 4: lost it. I learned lies until two thousand. So the
Speaker 4: book goes through a lot of textbooks. I hired research
Speaker 4: assistance to go over Russian textbooks, US textbooks, textbooks in
Speaker 4: India and some of the material in Israel as well
Speaker 4: as Hungary and other countries. And I put this in
Speaker 4: perspective to see what an education agenda under a one
Speaker 4: party state that we face. We face the lost, permanent
Speaker 4: loss of our democracy, and essentially Trump until he dies
Speaker 4: and then whoever Trumpet points as his successor, So we
Speaker 4: can look at what's going to happen with education. And
Speaker 4: what I do in the book is I place their
Speaker 4: agenda into a larger international agenda. Now what you have
Speaker 4: that's distinctive about the United States is do you have
Speaker 4: these tech billionaires, the ones that Obama criticized in his
Speaker 4: DNC speech, whose goal is to just lower their own
Speaker 4: taxes and destroy public goods. And schools are the central
Speaker 4: public goods and democracy. So they are laser like focused
Speaker 4: on destroying schools. They want to destroy the public schools.
Speaker 4: Their own kids go to elite private schools. Their own
Speaker 4: kids education won't be affected elite private high schools, but
Speaker 4: the kids of other people, the public school system will
Speaker 4: be destroyed. There will be no common basis of reality.
Speaker 4: There will be some miss mash of religious schools to
Speaker 4: satisfy the religious right. The Christian Nationalists and just private
Speaker 4: charters schools. So we see this in Devasti's program or schools.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm so struck by is trumpsm
Speaker 1: is not that popular. It seems to be you know,
Speaker 1: he may win, but it's looking like he may not.
Speaker 1: There are still down ballot at the state level, we
Speaker 1: see endless Trump mimeographs, Trump copies who are embracing a
Speaker 1: lot of the scariest elements of trump Ism, and that
Speaker 1: is the anti democracy elements. How do we get to
Speaker 1: a place where the Republican Party rejects this authoritarian bent
Speaker 1: or is it too late?
Speaker 4: Well, much of the Republican Party is an authoritarian party
Speaker 4: that aims for a one party state, and they're already
Speaker 4: explicitly anti democratic. Many states in the South are super
Speaker 4: majority Republican, Even states like North Carolina super majority Republican legislature,
Speaker 4: even though the majority of registered voters are Democrats. So
Speaker 4: the Republican goal is to create a one party state
Speaker 4: in the United States, and it is David Pepper discusses
Speaker 4: in his book.
Speaker 1: And he's a sort of Ohio expert.
Speaker 4: Right, we have let the states become one party states.
Speaker 4: So I just got back from doing political work in Tennessee.
Speaker 4: In Tennessee, rape and incest are not excuses to have
Speaker 4: an abortion. Abortions are illegal, even in the cases of
Speaker 4: rape and incests. To get any contraception, anyone under the
Speaker 4: age of eighteen has to have pre parental consent, and
Speaker 4: the list goes on. Tennessee also is looking to fire
Speaker 4: professors who teach black history. Essentially, so what happens once
Speaker 4: you move to a one party state is they lock
Speaker 4: down control, they gerrymander things, and then they pass the
Speaker 4: most extreme legislation. It's really important to have movements that
Speaker 4: challenge these super majorities in these one party autocratic states.
Speaker 4: There need to be grassroots movements. Even if you live
Speaker 4: in a state that Trump is going to win, you
Speaker 4: have to go out and vote for democratic state representatives.
Speaker 4: We need to overturn some of these supermajorities. The goal
Speaker 4: is to make it such that voting is irrelevant because
Speaker 4: the Republicans have the levers of power. Unfortunately, the majority
Speaker 4: of Supreme Court justices are simply in the pocket of
Speaker 4: the Republican Party and are purely partisan actors. And it's
Speaker 4: not clear what to do with that situation.
Speaker 1: What just an absolute disaster. Just give me something hopeful
Speaker 1: about the authoritarian band.
Speaker 3: Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: The great thing about the United States is that we seem,
Speaker 4: even if it takes decades and decades and decades, we
Speaker 4: seem to be able to confront these forces. Most Southern
Speaker 4: states have never been democracies because of white supremacy. I mean,
Speaker 4: when I tell people in Europe that the South has
Speaker 4: the largest group of African Americans, that Mississi is well
Speaker 4: over thirty percent Black. Black people in these states have
Speaker 4: virtually no power, no political power. This continues America. But
Speaker 4: you know, as you can see for example, from Amani
Speaker 4: Perry and Jarvis Gibvens Black Teacher Project, they digitized all
Speaker 4: these documents from black teachers in the Jim Crow South.
Speaker 4: There is a long history of teaching black history under
Speaker 4: the table, as it were. There's a long history of resistance.
Speaker 4: They're going to put cameras in classrooms to make that harder.
Speaker 6: So insane, That is so insane, I mean, what, but
Speaker 6: I get what you're saying about how these Southern states
Speaker 6: have never really had democracy and they've really always been
Speaker 6: sort of laboratories of oppression.
Speaker 1: But it's still so depressing.
Speaker 4: And there's a lot of hope in erasing history. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of discussion of movements to reclaim history, to
Speaker 4: fight back against these forces, even in Russia, the scary
Speaker 4: place to do it.
Speaker 3: You're not living in a.
Speaker 4: Democracy unless there's a struggle against fascism that's just how
Speaker 4: life works, or some kind of authoritarianism. So it's a democracy.
Speaker 4: We have to preserve our democracy. We need to look
Speaker 4: to the local level. We need to prevent Trump from
Speaker 4: winning at the federal level to preserve the.
Speaker 3: Best, the most.
Speaker 4: The one area that America dominates is universities. So if
Speaker 4: Trump wins, they're going to dismantle the US university system.
Speaker 4: And if you think that the United States could maintain
Speaker 4: a great university system under this culture of fear and intimidation,
Speaker 4: look at China. China's university system is in deep decline
Speaker 4: because you know, you can't really teach freely under those conditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Molly anytime you want to talk.
Speaker 1: No, mo, Rick Wilson, your moment of fucker.
Speaker 3: My moment of fucker. This week is a state level issue.
Speaker 3: In Florida, the pro choice ballot initiative got a record
Speaker 3: number of signatures, vastly more than it needed to be
Speaker 3: on the ballot. And now Ron DeSantis, I fucking kid
Speaker 3: you not, that twisted little dwarf Savona roll a bitch
Speaker 3: sending his election police along with regular cops, to people's
Speaker 3: houses saying did you sign this petition? And they have
Speaker 3: files of people's driver's licenses and their personal information and
Speaker 3: their photographs, and they are trying to intimidate voters by
Speaker 3: sending the Ron de Santis election police to people's houses.
Speaker 3: This little shit bag, this old fuck wit, is absolutely
Speaker 3: engaging in the worst kind of demagogic reaction I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: I mean, I had low opinion of the guy before,
Speaker 3: I had a minimal opinion of the guy before, but
Speaker 3: this is something that is so borderline Nazi I can't
Speaker 3: even concede it. The fact that people who signed a
Speaker 3: petition are being hunted down by Ron DeSantis's election cops,
Speaker 3: get the fuck out.
Speaker 1: That is an amazingly scary and horrible thing. Ron Santis
Speaker 1: is about to be term limited out anyway, so Lacey's
Speaker 1: running a hearty fuck that guy. And when Matt Gates wins,
Speaker 1: he's going to put Rond de Santa's in Gitmo. My
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery involves the woman who could be Liz
Speaker 1: Cheney but isn't, Nicki Haley. Nicki Haley is going to
Speaker 1: die on the hill, that trump Ism is not that bad.
Speaker 1: She's willing to campaign with him. She thinks he's a
Speaker 1: good candidate.
Speaker 3: I heard she's going to play Harrison debate prep.
Speaker 1: I mean, find yourself a primary candidate who is willing
Speaker 1: to suck up to Trump and remember everything Trump touches dies.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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